Note 522 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Annals, 8th Cong. 2d Sess. 207. John Quincy Adams's description of all of the evidence is important and entertaining:
"Not only the casual expressions dropped in private conversations among friends and intimates, as well as strangers and adversaries, in the recess of a bed-chamber as well as at public taverns and in stage coaches, had been carefully and malignantly laid up and preserved for testimony on this prosecution; not only more witnesses examined to points of opinion, and called upon for discrimination to such a degree as to say whether the deportment of the Judge was imperative or imperious, but hours of interrogation and answer were consumed in evidence to looks, to bows, to tones of voice and modes of speech—to prove the insufferable grievance that Mr. Chase had more than once raised a laugh at the expense of Callender's counsel, and to ascertain the tremendous fact that he had accosted the Attorney General of Virginia by the appellation of Young Gentleman!!
"If by thumbscrews, the memory of a witness trace back for a period of five years the features of the Judge's face, it could be darkened with a frown, it was to be construed into rude and contumelious treatment of the Virginia bar; if it was found lightened with a smile, 'tyrants in all ages had been notorious for their pleasantry.'
"In short, sir, Gravity himself could not keep his countenance at the nauseating littlenesses which were resorted to for proof of atrocious criminality, and indignation melted into ridicule at the puerile perseverance with which nothings were accumulated, with the hope of making something by their multitude.
"All this, however, was received because Judge Chase would not suffer his counsel to object against it. He indulged his accusers with the utmost licence of investigation which they ever derived [sic], and contented himself with observing to the court that he expected to be judged upon the legal evidence in the case." (J. Q. Adams to his father, March 8, 1805, Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, iii, 112-13.)