Old Drum, a black and tan foxhound whose bronze effigy stands before the courthouse in Warrensburg, Missouri, inspired an attorney’s closing argument that has endured as one of the most well-known and oft-reproduced tributes to the dog.
Bronze statue of Old Drum in Warrensburg, Missouri
One crisp October night in 1869, the music of the foxhounds was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot. Charles Burden stepped outside to listen. The hound music continued, but one voice was missing—that of his favorite dog, Drum. The next morning he went to the adjoining farm to call on his brother-in-law, Leonidas Hornsby. Hornsby had lost one hundred sheep to stray dogs and had threatened to shoot the next stray that came on his property. In answer to Burden’s questions, Hornsby claimed that his ward, Dick Ferguson, had shot a load of shelled corn at a black looking dog. The next day Burden found Drum lying dead.
Although the evidence was circumstantial, Burden brought a lawsuit against Hornsby. The jury failed to reach a decision, and a second trial was held which Burden won. Hornsby appealed, and the verdict was overturned. By the time the three trials were held, the whole community had become involved and had taken sides. It was said that one witness was threatened with a horsewhipping if he continued to offer testimony. He wisely disappeared.
Plaintiff Burden did not give up. He enlisted the services of the Sedalia law firm of Phillips and Vest and was granted a new trial on the basis of new evidence. Defendant Hornsby was well represented by a future governor of Missouri. The Kansas City Star reported that “More oratory was turned loose than was ever heard in the most celebrated murder case ever tried in a Missouri court.”
After talking about dogs in the Bible, in the classics, and in poetry, then briefly covering the applicable legal points, George Graham Vest moved close to the jury and quietly, with great emotion, delivered an extemporaneous speech said to have produced many a tear-filled eye in the courtroom, and which has endured in the annals of American canine history.
The jury took two minutes to return a verdict in Burden’s favor and to award damages of fifty dollars. One law journal described the case as “the most celebrated dog case in Johnson County, the state, or for that matter, the world.”
Vest’s Eulogy to the Dog
“Gentlemen of the Jury:
“The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his worst enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it the most. A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.
“Gentlemen of the jury, a man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains.
“When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfullness, faithful and true even to death.”
Posted January 9, 2015
“Old Drum 1870” is inscribed in the pedestal (left) and a bronze plaque containing Vest’s eulogy is mounted in front.