Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Choate, Joseph Hodges

CHOATE, Joseph Hodges, lawyer, b. in Salem, Mass., 24 Jan., 1832. He was graduated at Harvard in 1852, and at the Dane law-school in 1854. In the year following he was admitted to the bar in Massachusetts, and in 1856 in New York, since which time he has practised in New York city. Mr. Choate was counsel for Gen. Fitz John Porter in the protracted investigation in West Point, before the board of officers appointed by President Hayes, which resulted in the reversal of the judgment of the original court-martial. He also defended the celebrated Cesnola case (see Cesnola). Mr. Choate for many years was president of the Union league club, and of the New England society, in New York, and was a member of the “committee of seventy,” and took part in the municipal canvass of 1871, which resulted in the overthrow of the ring that had plundered the city treasury. He has delivered addresses on social, charitable, and other occasions. — His brother, William Gardiner, b. in Massachusetts about 1830, was graduated at Harvard in 1852, and at the Dane law-school in 1854. For some time he was U. S. judge of the southern district of New York, an office which he resigned to resume the practice of his profession in New York city.