Judge Abbott was born in Chelmsford on the first of November, 1814. He
was fitted for college under the instruction of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He
entered Harvard College at the early age of fourteen and was graduated
in 1832. After taking his degree, he studied law with Nathaniel Wright,
of Lowell, and was admitted to the bar in 1837. In 1840, he formed with
Samuel A. Brown a partnership, which continued until he was appointed to
the bench in 1855.

From the very first, Judge Abbott took a leading position in his
profession, and at once acquired an extensive and lucrative practice,
without undergoing a tedious probation, or having any experience of the
"hope deferred which maketh the heart sick." In criminal cases his
services were in great demand. He had, and has, the advantage of a fine
and commanding person, which, both at the bar and in the Senate, and, in
fact, in all situations where a man sustains the relation of an advocate
or orator before the public, is really a great advantage, other things
being equal. As a speaker, Judge Abbott is fluent, persuasive, and
effective. He excites his own intensity of feeling in the jury or
audience that he is addressing. His client's cause is emphatically his
own. He is equal to any emergency of attack or defence. If he believes
in a person or cause, he believes fully and without reservation; thus he
is no trimmer or half-and-half advocate. He has great capacity for
labor, and immense power of application, extremely industrious habits,
and what may be called a nervous intellectuality, which, in athletic
phrase, gives him great staying power, a most important quality in the
conduct of long and sharply contested jury trials. After saying this, it
is almost needless to add that he is full of self-reliance and of
confidence in whatever he deliberately champions. His nerve and pluck
are inherited traits, which were conspicuous in his ancestors, as their
participation in the French and Indian wars, and in the war for