CHOATE, Rufus, American lawyer : b. Ipswich, Mass., 1 Oct. 1799; d. Halifax, N. S., 13 July 1859. He as a child showed remark able precocity; was graduated at Dartmouth College in 1819; was admitted to the bar and began practice in Danvers in 1823; removed to Salem in 1828; and was a member of Congress in 1830-34, resigning in the latter year. Remov ing to Boston in 1834, be rapidly acquired a large practice. He was successor of Daniel Webster in the United States Senate in 1841-45; resuming his legal practice in Boston at the expiration of his senatorial term. He traveled in Europe in 1850 and was a delegate to the Whig National Convention in Baltimore in 1852. After Webster's death Mr. Choate was acknowledged the leader of the Massachusetts bar. He made many political speeches, the most brilliant, while a United States senator, includ ing those on the Oregon Boundary, the Tariff, the Fiscal Bank Bill, the Smithsonian Institu tion and the Annexation of Texas. His style is peculiar and characteristic, but to be commended as a model for imitation; it is rich, vivid and glowing, instinct with passion and colored with all the hues of fancy, but some times, it must be admitted, a little extravagant and exaggerated. The most remarkable feature,
however, in his written compositions, is the structure of his periods. These are not the short and compact statements, involving but a single proposition, in which most writers of our times express their thoughts; but they recall and renew the continuous and long resounding march of the prose writers of the 16th century. They are often of breathless length, containing clause after clause, modify ing, enlarging or limiting the leading idea. His 'Addresses and Orations' appeared in a sixth edition in 1891. Consult Brown, 'Life of Rufus Choate' (1870) ' • Neilson, (Memories of Rufus Choate' (188; Whipple, 'Recollections of Eminent Men' (1886).