BENCH AND BAR OF WAYNE COUNTY --- THE PEOPLE OF "PRECEDENTS" --- THE COMING LAWYER --- THE LAWS AND OTHER LEGISLATION --- FIRST COURT, GRAND JURY AND LAWYER IN THE COUNTY --- HUBBARD, WILSON --- EDWIN AND C. A. BEECHER --- CAMPBELL, HANNA, BOGGS AND MANY OTHERS, INCLUDING THE PRESENT ACTIVE PRACTITIONERS, ETC.
The very earliest settlers in Illinois had neither churches,
preachers,
doctors, nor lawyers. A good dog and a trusty rifle were a
greater necessity than any of these now probably necessary evils of
modern times, and refined villainies and wide-spread demoralization
that have not only kept pace, but apparently outstripped, the
wonderful growth of schoolhouses and splendid churches, whose bristling
steeples, piercing the sky, and are kissed by the earliest morning sun,
and point so eloquently the way to Heaven, that now so plentifully are
dotted all over the land. At one time in the history of the early
settlement of Illinois, was here a people without courts, officers of
the law, churches or schoolhouses. There are some astounding
truths to be read between lines in this recital of a simple historical
fact, by that reader who has the comprehension to read all that there
is in the naked announcement of this truth. It is full of food
for the unprejudiced and reflective mind. Look on this picture
and then on that.
Gov. Reynolds has given us the following account of the people he found
here in 1800, the year he came to the Territory: "They were an
innocent and a happy people. They were removed from the
corruption of large cities, and enjoyed an isolated position in the
interior of North America. In a century before 1800, they were
enabled to solve the problem that neither wealth, nor splendid
possessions, nor an extraordinary degree of ambition, nor energy, ever
made a people happy. These people resided more than a thousand
miles from any other colony, and were strangers to wealth and poverty;
but the Christian virtues governed their hearts, and they were
happy. One virtue among others was held in high esteem and
religiously observed. Chastity was a sine qua non, and a
spurious
offspring was almost unknown among them. * * *
* Their energy or
ambition never urged them to more than an humble and competent
support. To hoard up wealth was not found written in their
hearts, and very few practiced it. They were a temperate, moral
people. They very seldom indulged in drinking liquor to excess,
etc."
Remember, reader, this was away back in the year 1800, and the old
ranger was writing his recollections after he had lived here fifty-five
years, and had seen and been a part of all the wonderful changes that
the half century had wrought. There are none living here now who
saw the people of Illinois at the time he did. And the traditions
that we have are often wholly wrong when they are called upon to tell
us what manner of people these were who lived here, sans
churches, sans
preachers, sans courts, sans everything. They had
no
schoolhouses, and they were, as a rule, illiterate, and that unthinking
man who confounds illiteracy with ignorance would foolishly say that
they were very ignorant. Yet the truth was, that the prominent
men of that day would be great men now, or in any age or in any place.
The people were in the way of superstitious beliefs more ignorant then
than now --- that is, than some are now. But remember, the whole
world believed then in witches and spooks and a literal brimstone and
hell fire. Hideous apparitions universally confronted men in
every turn in life, projecting their ghastly presence between husband
and wife, parent and child, and crushing out all the highest and
holiest human impulses and passions. The revolutions of the earth
have brought us the times of universal faith among men --- beliefs and
so-called moral codes enforced by fire and faggot, by the headsman's ax
and the gibbet, by the bloodiest wars in the tide of time, turning this
bright and beautiful world into a blackened and desolate waste, when
men became moral monsters and every fireside was a penal colony, where
the flesh was punished to the limit of endurance, and the imagination
tortured until poor suffering men and women sought refuge in suicide
and a wild plunge into the literal hell and the inconceivable tortures
of the damned. Time, when not only a whole nation, but all
so-called civilized people believed the same belief, and the church and
State were one and the same. The State was supreme over body and
soul, and persecution had completed its slaughter, and the permitted
science, literature and philosophy of the learned world, consisted only
of the Lives of the Saints --- of which the pious and learned churchman
had gathered many great libraries of hundreds of thousands of volumes.
Here then are the two extremes --- the earliest pioneers without church
or
State --- the old world with nothing else but church and State, that
laid
waste a world and dried up the fountains of the human heart, and made
the whole earth desolate and sterile. One producing death and
desolation, the other wresting the desert wilderness from the savage
and the wild beast, and literally making the solitude to blossom with
intelligence and bear abundantly the immortal fruit of glorious
civilization. These stateless, churchless, schoolless people
blazed the way and prepared the ground for the coming of the school
teacher, the preacher and the lawyer, the hospitals, the insane asylums
and the penitentiaries, the problems of life, the knot of the hangman,
the saloon and the gambler, the broken-hearted wife and the bloated
sot, the great sob of innocence betrayed, and the leer of human goats
as they wag their scut and caper unon their mountain of offense, the
millionaire and the starving tramp; and then, too, with all these, come
the comforts of wealth, refinement and culture. And with that
highest and most enduring pleasure of all life, the acquisition of new
truths. With these lazaroni, these goats and monsters of
civilization, thank God, there came also the man of doubts and
questions, the star of hope in the universal gloom, the world's beacon
lights that shine out upon the troubled waters.
The hardy and illiterate pioneer awoke here the resting echo, and
following them, when they had fought out the battle with the plumed
hereditary lords of America, and his congener, the wild beast and the
deadly viper, came together into one plot all the ends of the world,
and all the degrees of social rank, and now they offer to the same
great writer, the busiest, the most extended and the most varied
subject, for an enduring literary work. For is not their simple
story a sublime epic? Their lives a tremendous tragedy --- their
present struggles, their vast schemes, their whited sepulchers, a
perpetual comedy? The travail of ages --- of the revolutions,
wars,
beliefs and bloody reforms and revivals --- things that seem to retard,
but really are the demonstration of the progress of the race. The
creation, molding and building up of that philosophy that reaches out
to the great mass of mankind, and results in that culture and
experience which deepens and strengthens the common sense of the
people, rectifies judgments, improves morals, encourages independence,
and dissipates superstitions. In the prolonged human tragedy of
the ages --- this chaos of ignorance and wild riot of bigotry --- there
has
been born now and then the great thoughts of the world's few thinkers,
and they are growing and widening slowly but forever, as truth alone is
eternal, and is beginning to yield the world a philosophy that worships
the beautiful only in the useful, and the religious only in the
true. A philosophy that is the opposite and the contradiction of
sentiment as opposed to sense, that requires a rational personal
independence of thought on all subjects, whether secular or sacred, and
that equally rejects an error, whether it is fresh and novel, or
gloriously gilded by antiquity. A philosophy that yields no
homage to a thing because it is a mystery, and accepts no ghostly
authority administered by men, and the root of which lies in a florid
mysticism. There is a perceptible intellectual activity that
marks the present age, and that pervades all classes, asking questions
and seeking causes. It is practical, not theoretical, and its
chief end is to improve the arts and industries, to explore and remedy
evils and to make life every way better worth living. Its types
are the electric light and the telephone, better ships and railways,
cleaner houses and habits, better food and wise institutions for the
sick, insane and destitute, and that has already scored upon its side
of victories, that immeasurable boon of lengthening the life of a
generation to forty years, where a few years ago it was scarcely more
than thirty years. In the history of the human race, all its
advances, all its victories compared to this one, are as the invisible
moat to the wheeling world. Let the mind dwell upon this
magnificent miracle, and call these practical philosophers what you
please, but what coronet is fit to crown their memory save that of the
divine halo itself. They taught mankind the sublime truth that
God intends us to mind things near us, and that because knowledge is
obtainable, it is our duty to obtain it, and that the best religion is
that which abolishes suffering and makes men and women better and
healthier.
The disputes of the schoolmen and theologians are regarded as a jargon
of the past, and to listen to them is time wasted. Nothing is
considered worth studying but what can be understood, or at least
sufficiently understood to be usefully applied. This is kindly,
tolerant and courageous thought, free from the disfigurement of bigotry
and prejudice. This is where we can see the advancement in the
school, the press, in the pulpit and everywhere. It is
irresistable, and its inflowing tide is sun-lit with hope, like the
blue Aegean, when the poet spoke of "the multitudinous laughter of the
sea waves." This is the meaning of Bacon's idea, that the growth
of truth is like the "delivery" of the body of a tree. "It draws
its sap and growth from the soil of ages, and its fruitage and
perfection will be displayed in a distant but glorious summer."
In the slow, dreary centuries, the world looked to the learned
professions --- by some strange twist of the tongue called "learned"
--- the
law, medicine and theology for their wisdom, that is, the bread of
life, and received the stones and husks that were cast to them;
swallowed them, and thus puffed out, they thought they grew strong and
fat. Theology appealed to the strong arm of the law and the
bloody sword to make people moral, and in the faith, if their morals
were strictly attended to, their intelligence would take care of
itself. The medical men appealed to Esculapius, in the belief
that he knew all that could be known about "hot water and
bleeding." And the lawyers appealed to ancient precedent, and
told the world that here was the concentrated wisdom of the ages.
Each one of these learned professions had their special followers, who
put their faith exclusively in them, while the great unthinking mass of
mankind implicitly believed in the infallibility of all of them.
This self-constituted trinity of wisdom was agreed upon one thing,
namely, that all worldly or other wisdom must come through them, in
order to be "regular." Any thought or theory that was not
"regular" in their judgment was to be ostracised, to the extent of
being burned at the stake, if milder means failed to kill it off.
They were all theorists, whose methods were exclusively metaphysical,
and the greatest man among them was invariably the wildest theorist,
who talked the most about which he knew the least. Hence,
medicine, theology and law became in the largest affairs of life
coparceners, and one entrenched the other, and all wared upon poor,
suffering mankind.
To this bloody triumvirate came the orator and the poet "crooking the
pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift might follow fawning," singing
their praises in word and song, and thus finally church and State, law
and medicine and poetry, and eloquence and literature were so braced
and interwoven that they were nearly all-powerful in worldly matters,
and they held high carnival over their possessions over men. They
complacently deified the old and the mysterious, and they gave the
world their unchanging ukase and emblazoned their own glories across
the face of the sky. They esteemed their victory over the
thoughts of men as complete and perpetual; they had put shackles upon
the human mind,and imprisoned it in the impenetrable cells of the
gloomy dungeons. But at all times in the world's history there
were other men, men who had never been of the "learned professions,"
or, if having been once members, had quit them, and turned their faces
away from the ancient precedent, and looked ahead and not behind, and
saw the slow, yet resistless power of truth as it has, through these
men, fought back ignorance enthroned in power, which has at least
compelled even the learned professions to begin to look and learn ---
to
investigate and study for themselves. This is the one great page
in the book of life --- the most important lesson in the world's
history. In all organized governments of laws and constitutions
the lawyers are a component part of the government itself. A
lawyer is in one sense an officer of the government under which he
lives. Differing greatly, it may be true, from any other official
of the ruling power, yet his status is as fixed as any of them.
Upon him rests the highest of the temporal duties toward men that flow
out to them from the government. Their cast of thought should
have grown in a larger mold than did any of the other so-called learned
professions. Possibly it did. Yet it was never of that
sufficiently large and ennobling quality that could fill a supreme
mission and help the world to true freedom in the great fight between
right and wrong. They not only left her to fight her battles with
ignorance, but too often joined in the unholy crusade against truth ---
we
mean that persecuted minority who asked questions and sought out
causes. They who, if they looked at the old, it was to point out
its errors as well as to perpetuate its few demonstrated truths.
Their great concern was for the Now, and they could see no more reason
for deep concern for a future that they could know nothing about than
for the past, when "all was without form and void." And the work
of these men is the adding of ten years to the average life of
man. These were the men, when a man announced a new truth from
nature's arcana, who never stained their hands in his blood for making
the discovery, but if he could demonstrate his fact, they gave it a
patient examination, and without prejudice for or against, yielded to
their unbiased judgements.
The extent of the labors required of these men who thus gave the world
this new lease of ten years of life to the individual, was a long, a
great, a patient, dangerous and immeasurable one. Their innocent
and heroic blood stained the stream of time from its source to the
present hour. They worked out their inventions, proclaimed their
immortal discoveries and were killed at once, or became hiding
fugitives from the inappeasable wrath of mankind. The brutal mob
tore their quivering bodies into shreds, and then complacently erected
those immortal monumental piles to baseness and ignorance that pierced
the heavens and disfigured the face of the earth. This was the
unequel fight between truth and ignorance. To look at the world
in its travails, to reflect how pure and good and stainless is truth,
and how very weak it seems when brought face to face with panoplied
ignorance and brute force, is to despair and believe that creation
itself is a mere horrible nightmare, but in the long centuries that
reach down to us, her victories are marvellous, and in return for the
cruel tortures and death that were lying in wait upon every foot of the
pathway of these children of thought, they have given us all these
glories of this gilded civilization we now enjoy. "Return good
for evil," saith the command of heaven, but here is more, it is the
blessing to all, and that endureth forever, that transcends as infinity
does the tick of the clock, all the earnest and united supplications of
the just and holy that ever ascended toward the Great White
Throne. Their blessings are not only the comforts, pleasures,
wealth and holy love of one another that we see, but it is life itself
purified and exalted beyond the comprehension of the ignorant receivers
of the inestimable boon. No lash was ever raised, no law was ever
enacted, no pain was ever inflicted, no schoolhouse was ever built, no
policeman was ever starred, no judge was ever ermined, no diploma was
ever granted, no law was ever invoked in the interest and in behalf of
these outlawed children, who thought, who invented, who discovered
these immortal truths that are great enough, strong enough to lift up
and bear aloft civilization itself.
When the "learned profession" secured the protection of the State, and
enacted a law that no one should practice or compete with them, except
he be first licensed by authority, they admitted away all their claim
to be of the "learned profession." The idea of a license to
labor, to earn your living by the sweat of you brow is an open
confession of barbarism. Protection! From whom? The
"learned" from the ignorant; the lawyer from the lout; the doctor from
the quack.
"Like a weak girl, the
great Caesar cried,
Help me Cassius, or I
sink.
When the lawyer has set the example, and claimed a license to protect
his guild from the outside and unlearned poacher, the doctor is
certainly not to blame for claiming a similar protection for
himself. The lawyer who studies the law should be the first man
in the community to begin to see the plain, first principles of
political economy. He should not have waited to be told by a
non-lawyer, that one of the most glaring oppressions that have
afflicted men in all governments, is over-legislation. This
applies to every government of which history gives any account.
And always it has been the newest governments that have suffered the
least. Time only gives the legislative bodies the opportunity to
pile up these evils, the new upon the old. Pelion upon Ossa,
until human endurance ceases, and with the sword, the insurgent people
cut their way out.
Ignorance feels an imaginary or real oppression, and it cries out for
some new law to remedy the wrong, when there can be no safer assertion
than that there is not one remedial law in a thousand but that
aggravates the evil it was intended to cure. So wide-spread is
this ignorance, that almost every man who gets elected to the
Legislature, understands his constituents, will measure his greatness
and value by the number of new laws that he can have passed that have
his trade mark upon them. Success here will constitute him a
leading legislator, and make him a great man at home and abroad.
Ignorance and demagogism have so pushed this in this country that our
immeasurable statute laws are a marvel to contemplate. There is
not a lawyer alive that ever even cursorily read them all, and yet the
most practical and inflexibly enforced maxim is "every man is presumed
to know the law." Indeed, an instance happened in the Supreme
Court of this State recently, wherein, without knowing it, it gave one
opinion that was exactly opposite to a recent preceding one. An
opinion of the Supreme Court is law. An act of Congress is
law. So of the Legislature. A city ordinance is law.
A custom is law. Contracts, agreements and transactions among men
are quasi laws. The United States, the State, the
county, the
city and village, the township and the road district, all have
executive and to some extent law-making powers. Then there are
the multitudinous courts pouring out their printed volumes of laws
annually by the hundreds of volumes. And next month the high
courts will reverse each decision upon every contested case made last
month. To all these are charters, constitutions, treaties, great
libraries of commentators, laws fundamental, general, public and
private. Decisions and orders of departments, civil and
military. Revenue, postal, and excise laws, criminal, civil and
chancery, written and unwritten laws, worlds without end. Upon
nearly every contested question of law may be found hundreds of
decisions, no two of which will exactly agree, and the proposition has
been seriously advanced for the State to commission a board of lawyers
to attend upon the Legislature to act as a supervising committee upon
every new law brought forward by our great statesmen, to see how many
other laws it may come in direct conflict, or agreement with. In
the mad whirl of folly we cannot imagine why such a commission is not
in existence. It might be a good thing. Who can tell?
Let this commission be provided with clerks, auditors, judge advocates,
and a hundred or so of the leading attorneys of the State, at a fat
salary, as counsellors, and a suffering world that is always weeping
for more law --- forever more, may temporarily be made happy, until
some
other good scheme is thought up. The thing of appointing a board
of commissioners, is a modern invention. It relieves the strain
for more new laws by the cord and ton every hour from the legislative
solons. Its a kind of side-show possessing, we suppose, a mixture
of the legislative and executive powers and duties. Illinois is
now blessed with commissioners on taxes and on railroads. Why not
follow this up with one on forms and another on tooth-pick shoes for
our dudes? In short, there need be no limit to this new patent
process of multiplying laws and law-makers, and it is a thing that
would only exhaust itself when every man, woman and child in the State
was in some way a part and parcel of a board of commissioners.
The unthinking people do not realize the evils that come to them from
the folly of the law makers. They are taught that it being the
highest duty of a good citizen to obey and respect the law, therefore,
law is of itself a good. And from here springs much of the flood
of foolish and mostly bad laws. And, hence, the evils are now
great from this source, and a mere reference to the whole stupendous
fabric is but little else than a biting satire upon the common
intelligence.
For much of these evils we lay the charge at the door of the lawyers,
not that they have any more than the average intelligence as a mass,
but their study and investigation should have shown them first of all,
and they should have warned the people that it is not quantity in laws
that is good, but that the fewer, simpler, and more stable the laws,
the happier and better the people. Upon the threshold of their
reading, this simple fact should have been patent to the law student,
and we do not doubt had such convictions ever entered his mind, he
would have at once so proclaimed to the world. We are aware it
has not been a willful fault of the profession, but the law student,
like nearly all other students, when he was first placed in position to
study and prepare himself to master his profession, universally had his
face turned exactly the wrong way, and that he would look only in the
direction pointed out to him was to be expected. Hence it has
been that the world is at last being taught the true philosophy of law
by biologists and philosophers that have come not of the "learned
professions."
It will take many years to teach the mass of mankind to unlearn the
lessons that have been instilled into it on this subject. The
average man clings to the old; he reverences only long accepted ideas
of things, and he resents as a personal indignity, as well as a slur
upon the memory of his forefathers, any innovation upon the way that
they thought, and the ideas they accepted and approved. When
schools are founded and run upon this idea, the world will soon be much
better educated than it now is. Better scholars will come from
our colleges, and better lawyers and doctors from the
universities. Then the great doctor will be he who teaches
mankind how to best live; how to conquer contagious diseases and
epidemics, and to avoid disease and suffering in all its forms, and
meet and overcome them in a better way than did our progenitors.
He will then cease to be an empiric (that's all there is in medicine
now), and his greatness will not consist in these miraculous cures that
are so common, and that bring such notoriety and so much money to the
lucky ones in life's lottery. Empiricism and quackery are a mere
play upon words --- tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. To the
money-getters in the profession these will be words worse than
wasted. They will, as they ought to, resent and condemn them
without stint. But, nevertheless, while it has always been true,
it will always remain true that the world's truly great men, its
sublime benefactors, its givers of all good, have received neither
money nor fame for their grand labors in behalf of mankind. Their
immortal work came like the gentle dews of heaven, silent and unseen,
and no more appreciated by men than they were by the dull cattle upon
the hills.
The coming great lawyer will be also not the great compiler or the
brilliant student of ancient precedents and hair-splitting decisions;
not the magniloquent orator, nor the successful and rich practitioner,
with his troops of rich clients; and the mob, with greasy caps and
stinking breaths, shouting at his heels, but he who frankly tells them
the truth, and, mayhap, therefor receives their blows; he who teaches
the people that law is not a blessing, but a necessary and oppressive
evil. It is immaterial whether this truly great man has a license
and is called a lawyer by authority or not. He will compel
ignorant man to know that his welfare consists in the fewest, plainest,
simplest possible laws; so few and so plain and so simple that the
school child may be able to master them all in a day, and once mastered
they will never be forgotten and they will not be changed. This
Utopia may never come --- we do not at all believe it a possibility ---
but
its smallest approach is a boon for which let the praying pray, and the
militant fight to the death.
Gov. Hubbard---The first lawyer that ever filed a paper in the
Circuit
Court of Wayne County was Adolphus F. Hubbard. As further
noted
above, there were but two civil cases, both of debt, at this first
court, and the declaration in each case was signed by Hubbard.
He
was the second Lieutenant-Governor of the State, succeeding Pierre
Menard December 5, 1822. His residence was Gallatin County.
Concerning Gov. Hubbard we find the following interesting items in the
current history of the State:
"In the summer of 1825, emigration revived considerably. A great
tide set in toward the central part of the State. Through
Vandalia alone, 250 wagons were counted in three weeks' time, all going
northward. Destined for Sangamon County alone, eighty wagons, and
400 persons were counted in two weeks' time. Sangamon County was
at that time, without doubt the most populous county in the
State. All the northern counties were most disproportionately
represented in the General Assembly. While such counties as
Randolph and White had each a Senator and three Representatives,
Sangamon had one Senator and one Representative.
"It happened at this time that Gov. Coles was temporarily absent on a
visit to Virginia, and Lieut.-Gov. Hubbard was acting-Governor.
His excellency, ad interim, struck with the injustice of this
unequal
representation, issued his proclamation for an extra session of the
Legislature, to convene at the seat of government on the first Monday
in January, 1826, for the purpose of apportioning the State and for
business generally. He was not loth to claim power. Gov.
Coles returned on the last day of October, and resumed his office, but
the acting-Governor was not inclined to yield up, claiming he had
superceded the former, and to be Governor de jure under Section
18,
Article 111, of the constitution which read:
In case of an impeachment of the Governor, his removal from
office,
death, refusal to qualify, resignation or absence from the State, the
Lieutenant-Governor shall exercise all the power and authority
appertaining to the office of Governor, until the time pointed out by
the Constitution for the election of a Governor shall arrive, unless
the General Assembly shall otherwise provide by law for the election of
a Governor to fill such vacancy.
"After the arrival of Gov. Coles, Hubbard, as a test, issued a
commmission to W. L. D. Ewing, as Paymaster-General of the State
militia, which was presented to the Secretary of State, George Forquer,
for his signature, who refused to sign and affix the signature
thereto. In December following, the Supreme Court being in
session, Ewing applied for a rule on the Secretary to show cause why a
mandamus should not be awarded requiring him to countersign and
affix
the seal of the State to his commission issued and signed by Adolphus
Fredrick Hubbard, Governor of Illinois. The rule being granted,
the Secretary answered, stating the facts, whereby the whole question
was brought before the court, and argued at length with much ability by
talented counsel on both sides. The judges after much
deliberation, delivered separate opinions of great learning and
research, but all agreed in the judgment pronounced, that the rule must
be discharged. Hubbard was still irrepressible, and next
memorialized the Legislature in reference to his grievance. But
the Senate decided that the subject was a judicial one, inexpedient to
legislate upon, and the House laid his memorial upon the table."
In this connection, we cannot refrain from giving a remarkable incident
in the State's history, a part of which arose out of thin contest of
Hubbard's.
The census of the State, for 1825, returned a population of 72,817,
being considerably less than the sanguine expectations of many led them
to hope for. The State was duly apportioned anew at the special
session of January, 1826, with reference to the distribution of
population, in accordance with the call of Gov. Hubbard. The
question was also mooted at this session of repealing the Circuit Court
system, not that the court did not subserve a great public need, but
that the politicians in their disappointment in obtaining office the
winter preceding, sought to redress their grievances first by depriving
the Circuit Judges altogether of office, and next by loading the
Supreme Judges with additional labors by remanding them to circuit
duty. The latter being life members, could not be otherwise
reached as objects of their vengeance, wherefore they were charged with
having too easy a life as a court of appeals for a State so embarrassed
as was Illinois. The house, however, struck out of the bill to
repeal all after the enacting clause, and as a piece of pleasantry
inserted a section to repeal the wolf-scalp law, in which the Senate
did not concur.
In March, succeeding this special session of Hubbard's legislature,
within five miles of where this body sat, a five-year old child of
Daniel Huffman, which had wandered from home into the woods a mile or
so, was attacked and killed by a wolf. The animal was seen
leaving its mangled and partly consumed body, by the neighbors in
search of it on the following day.
In the race for Governor of the State in 1826, the candidates were A.
F. Hubbard, Thomas Sloo and Ninian Edwards. The first named had
just been Lieutenant Governor and he supposed it was a matter of course
he would be elected Governor. It turned out however, that the
real contest lay between Sloo and Edwards. Sloo had been a member
of the General Assembly for years, from Gallatin County, and possessed
a wide and favorable acquaintance over the State, that he attracted to
him by his agreeable manners and irreproachable character. He was
a merchant, and was not accustomed to public speaking, while Edwards
was a fine talker, polished and courtly in manners, vain and
gifted. The vote was close between the last mentioned two, but
Edwards was elected, and Hubbard's faith in the people was probably
much impaired.
Gov. Hubbard was a better lawyer than politician. He was a
genial, open-hearted and generous companion and friend. Very
liberal in money matters, and altogether warm-hearted and impulsive,
and generally impecunious. The latter arising from his
inattention to financial matters and his open-handed liberality.
An instance related by Judge George, throws much light on his
characteristics in this respect. Mr. George had gone to
Shawneetown on his way to Kentucky, and for expense money, depended
upon collecting a due-bill which he held on a prominent business man of
Shawneetown. Upon arriving there and telling his wants to his
friends, the fact came out that the debtor did not have the money, and
after making several efforts, had failed to raise it, and the
disappointment of the two men was very great. After repeated
failures Mr. George had concluded to return home to Fairfield, and
await a while before making the Kentucky trip. The two men were
bewailing their fate when Gov. Hubbard came in, and when he learned the
situation of affairs, he was much concerned, and finally run his hand
in his pocket and jingling the ten or twelve silver dollars he
possessed remarked, I've got some money, and I wish I could loan it to
you. I would do so in a minute, but the fact is, I owe this and
at least fifteen hundred times more, and I must pay my creditors some
or they will begin to get uneasy. His auditors knew he was telling the
truth and they warmly thanked him and took the will for the deed.
To complete the story of Mr. George's financial trouble we will say
that while they were thus talking and bewailing the bad luck all
around, a man rode up, called out the debtor and paid over just $25,
that he owed him, and, as in the move all were made happy, and the
Judge did not have to retrace his long ride to Fairfield in vain.
Judge George informs us that Gov. Hubbard was a great snuff-taker,
especially when deeply engaged in the court room, and he was constantly
taking snuff or else getting rid of it, and that he could blow the
loudest nasal blasts that were ever heard in a court room.
Gov. Hubbard came to Illinois about 1809, and fixed his permanent abode
in Gallatin County. He was intimately known to all the early
settlers in Wayne County, at one time owning an extensive stock farm
here, which he would from year to year lease out to some citizen on the
shares.
Circuit Courts.---The first Circuit Court ever held in Wayne
County,
commenced on Monday the 13th day of September, 1819, at the house of
Alexander Campbell (between eight and nine miles south of the
present
city of Fairfield); Judge Thomas C. Browne was the Presiding
Judge. Samuel Leech was the Clerk. He had been
appointed by
Judge William P. Foster, and his commission bore the date of June 19,
1819, and was issued at Kaskaskia. Andrew Kuykendall was the
first Sheriff, and on the opening day of the court produced his
bond as
such officer, with George Borah, Archibald Roberts, John Johnston,
Enoch Wilcox, Tirey Robinson and Alexander Campbell as sureties,
which
bond was approved and the following grand jury was reported and
sworn: Enoch Beach, foreman; William Frazer,
Alexander Clark,
John Young, Robert Gaston, Andrew Clark, William Clark, Solomon Clark,
James Clark, Alfred Hall, Seth Cayson, George Close, John Turney,
William Davis, Andrew Carson, Robert Gray, William Simpson, Thomas Cox,
Ephraham Meritt and Caleb Ridgeway. John M. Robinson
was Circuit
Attorney, and came into court and took the several oaths of office.
Samuel Leach gave bond with Enoch Wilcox, Archibald Roberts
and Andrew
Kuykendall as sureties; which bond was approved by the court.
The first case entered on the docket was Benjamin Dulany vs. James
Brown; in debt. This suit, on motion was dismissed at the
cost of
the plaintiff. The papers in this and the second case of Cardwall
vs. Hooper and Slocumb, are each in the name of A. F. Hubbard,
P.
Q. Just what kind of an attorney that is the writer does not
know, but one thing is evident, Mr. Hubbard was, by the papers,
a
first-class common law pleader, and his papers indicate he was a
thorough master of Chitty's pleadings.
The labors of the grand jury at this first term consisted in the
finding of a single bill of indictment against Alexander Campbell,
for
assault and battery. When he was tried at the succeeding term of
the Circuit Court he was acquitted.
Daniel I. Wilson was a Constable, and attended upon this court
as
Deputy Sheriff, and he was made a regular Deputy Circuit Clerk by
Samuel Leech.
The second term of the Circuit Court convened at the house of Samuel
Leech on Monday, April 10, 1820. At this court William
Wilson was
the Presiding Judge. He continued to hold every Circuit Court in
Wayne County until 1824, when Judge James Hall held several
terms, and
then James O. Wattles held court, and Judge Hall again
was presiding;
and, 1827, Judge William Wilson again appeared as Judge, and
for years,
until 1835, he presided as Judge at every term of the court. At
the March term, 1835, Justin Harlan was the Presiding
Judge. At
the September term, 1835, A. F. Grant was Judge. Then Judge
Harlan held the courts until April term, 1841, when Judge
William
Wilson again was presiding officer. Of all the remarkable
jurists
in Illinois, Judge Wilson will take rank as pre-eminent in
history. He came to Illinois a very young man, and had nothing of
the politicians' tricks about him, and yet at the age of twenty-four
years he was elected Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and lacked
only a few votes of beating Gov. Reynolds for the office of Chief
Justice, and in 1825 he was elected over Reynolds to that office by an
overwhelming majority. He continued to be Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court until he was legislated out of office, in 1848, by the
Constitution of that date. He was an eminent and just Judge, a
great man, his grandeur of character at once impressing itself upon all
with whom he came in contact. He was a Whig in politics, though
never a politician, and the Democrats did a very unwise thing when they
legislated him out of office. It was a miserable political
victory over this great jurist, who for nearly thirty years was Supreme
Judge of Illinois, and who was as innocent as a babe of all political
intrigue. He had held his place solely by his strength of
intellect and the purity of his convictions of duty. His
education was such as he had acquired by dilligent reading and self
culture. As a writer, his diction was pure, clear and elegant, as
may be seen by reference to his published opinions in the court
reports. With a mind of rare analytical power, his judgment as a
lawyer was discriminating and sound, and upon the bench his learning
and impartiality commanded respect, while his own dignified deportment
inspired decorum in others. He was an amiable and accomplished
gentleman in private life, with manners most engaging and friendships
strong. He died at his home in Carmi, on the banks of the Little
Wabash, in the ripeness of age and the consciousness of a life well
spent, April 29, 1857, in his sixty-third year.
At the second term of the court in Wayne County, the grand jury was
composed of Anthony B. Turney, foreman; Benjamin Sumpter,
John
Johnston, David Wright, James Butler, William Simpson, Toliver Simpson,
Michael Turney, William Watkins, Robert H. Morris, William Penix, Jacob
Borah, James Dickeson, Richard Hall, Walter Owen, Nathan Owen, James
Patterson, Daniel Bain, Sr., John Elledge, Joel Elledge, and John
Young. The grand jury returned fourteen indictments against
nearly every prominent man in the county. All for assault and
battery.
John Darrah appears upon the records at this term as the
first citizen
naturalized in the county.
At the September term, 1820, the grand jury was James Bird, foreman;
William Clark, James Gaston, Thomas Cox, Thomas Lee, John Turney,
Stephen Coonrod, Daniel Kenshelo, Robert Gaston, Epraham Merritt,
Richard Locke, John Owen, Robert L. Gray, Solomon Shane, George Close,
Tirey Robinson, Thomas Ramsey, John B. Gash, Rennah Wells, George
Turner, Andrew Carson and John Walker.
At the September term of the court, Enoch Wilcox presented his
bond as
Sheriff and entered upon the duties of that office. His sureties
were Tirey Robinson, John Carson, Solomon Clark, Samuel Leech,
Andrew
Kuykendall and Andrew Carson. John Walker was the
County Coroner.
The first lawyer to locate here was a man named Osborn.
He came
here from Clay County. This was about 18 0, it is
supposed. He was meager and somewhat stunted, and his career was
insignificant and it is said was cut short by an order of Judge
Wilson's. About 1842, a lawyer named Selby, from
Portage County,
Ohio, came. He was a fine looking man, and a fair lawyer.
He remained only a short time and left.
The third was a man named Ward. He was from Memphis,
Tenn.
Died in early part of 1845. His widow and family eventually
returned.
Judge Edwin Beecher came in April, 1844. Born in Herkimer
County,
N. Y., which place he left when eighteen years, and in company with
father's family removed to Licking County, Ohio, remaining there until
1844, when he came to Wayne. Read law with Henry Stanberry and
Van Trump, relatives of Judge Beecher. When he was
admitted to
the bar, he turned his eyes westward, and through the solicitations of
an old schoolmate, came to Salem and thence to Fairfield. The
coming to Fairfield through a letter from Rigden B. Slocumb,
the then
County Clerk of Wayne County. He found office with the Circuit
Clerk, J. G. Barkley. The first court he remembers, or
was at
here, Was in August, 1844. Wilson, Judge, Ficklin and Linden,
from Coles County. Bat Webb, S. F. S. Hago, Albert Shannon, were
attorneys from Carmie, and Charles H. Constable from Mt. Carmel;
Kitchell, of Olney, was Prosecuting Attorney. Gov. A. C. French,
from Palestine, was also an attendant. He says the average length
of a court then was two days; recollects no jury trial at the term.
The first case the Judge had was an assault and battery before John
H.
Brown, Justice of the Peace. Daniel Wheeler made an
assault on a
woman. Was elected Probate Justice --- now called County Judge
--- in
August, 1846, and served until the constitutional amendment of 1848,
which created the new office of County Judge. On the 4th of June,
1855, he was elected Judge of the Twelfth Judicial Circuit. This
circuit then consisted of Wayne, Edwards, Wabash, Marion, Jefferson,
Hamilton, Saline, Gallatin, and White Counties. The term served
was six years.
Judge Beecker was appointed Paymaster by President Lincoln, on
the 19th
of November, 1862, in the army, and entered upon active duties of the
office in January, following. He was mustered out about
1872. He had been retained under some orders in referece to the
Freedmen's Bureau.
John Trousdale came in 1845, from White County. He had
read law
in Carmi, and was there admitted to the bar. He died in 1864, in
Fairfield, leaving a widow and six children, three girls and three
boys. Trousdale was a fair lawyer. He was a much
better
lawyer before a jury than before a court. He went to California
in 1850, as much for his health as anything else. He died of
consumption.
Louis Keller, from Indiana; Bob Bell came from Mt.
Carmel. These
men were partners here. Keller was a very fine young man,
universally popular, and promised well in his profession. He died
in Mt. Carmel when young, to which point the firm had removed after
practicing here nearly two years. Bob Bell is still in
Mt.
Carmel --- a good lawyer, very clever and pompous gentleman. It
is
said that on the smallest occasion he could start a covey of spread
eagles and soar them all up at once, and send them higher, and spread
their pinions wider than any other lawyer in the Wabash "deestrict."
Joe Conrad, a partner of Judge Constable, was located a
short time here.
Jacob Love, of whom we can learn nothing, except that at one
time in
the early day he was here a short time as an attorney.
Tom Houts, before he got to be a reverend, was one of the
regular
practicing attorneys who visited the Fairfield courts. He was a
good lawyer, and rapidly laid the foundations for an extensive and
lucrative practice. But when young in life, and especially in the
practice of the law, he laid down the law and turned his attention to
theology, and was soon ordained a minister of the Methodist
Church. His commanding talents, and his power and force as a
preacher, has here singled him out from his brethren even more strongly
than it did in the law. He is still actively at work in his
chosen path of life, and was recently made Chaplain to the Southern
Illinois Penitentiary.
A. B. Campbell, the temperance lecturer, came here ten or twelve
years
ago from Indiana, and formed a partnership and practiced law for a
while. When business would be dull with him in the law line, he
would enliven things generally by a lordly spree. He left here
and went to Bloomington, where we believe he now makes his home.
He is a relative of Campbell, the founder of that church.
In
person he is large and inclined to be portly, very brilliant, and at
times eloquent when speaking, and always forcible and commanding.
For the past few years, he has given up all other business, and has
traveled and lectured over many of the Western States in the cause of
temperance. The writer saw Mr. Campbell at the general
United
States Conventions of the "Murphy movement" at Decatur, Ill., and
Bismarck, Kan., and has always remembered him as much the most
conspicuous figure at either one of these gatherings of the lights of
temperance. In his private confidences, he tells his friends that
when his law practice would keep him busy --- always when his work
would
literally rush him along -- he then had no desire for stimulants, but
the
moment a lull came and he had nothing to do, then he must have
drink. That it was only upon such occasions that the
uncontrolable desire would come upon him, but that when it came at such
time he could no more restrain himself than he could control his heart
beating, etc. Then he went down, down, down, until the bitter cup
would be drained to its bitterest dregs. For him to tell the
simple story of his horrible sufferings that would follow such a
debauch, was always a powerful temperance lecture, that would impress
the hearer like a hideous nightmare. But it has always been a
serious question in the writer's mind whether such recitals by these
gifted but unfortunate erratics were not of evil tendency in their
final results upon the minds of our young people or not. Their
commanding eloquence in their recitals --- their erratic genius and its
loud applause, are ever returning to take their places in the mind of
the young listener, and unconsciously, in the end he will clothe the
drunk and the genius in one and the same glamour, and, in the end, that
which is low, beastly and horrible, is in some indefinite way mixed
with the gifted and admirable; and then he saw the open way to win the
world's pity and applause by making of himself a drunken genius.
They can command the drunk, but the gifts of genius are as far out of
their reach as the farthest star, and they are the simple, disgusting
drunken beasts that polute the pure air of Heaven and defile the fair
face of the earth. How many youths, think you, have been made
drunk by reading the story of Daniel Webster and his fondness for wine
in his boyhood? Webster's transcendant genius made him a nation's
idol, and the only way a boy can be like Webster is to drink, and,
therefore, in the language of Byron, "Man being a reasoning being must
get drunk."
I. S. Warmoth was at one time one of the regularly enrolled
attorneys
of Fairfield. He came here, we believe, a harness-maker, and for
some time carried on his trade. He was from Kentucky, and was
born a little over seventy years ago, and came to Illinois when a young
man. At one time he kept a hotel here, and the Judge and lawyers
often stopped with him during the term of courts. He was for
years a Justice of the Peace, and his attention being thus directed to
the statute laws, he soon became sufficiently acquainted with the
practice to be licensed by the court as a regular lawyer. His
son
Henry, now a citizen, and ex-Governor of Louisiana, was reared in
Fairfield. He was always a bright, though very mischievous
boy. He attended the public schools, played "hookey," and went
fishing and swimming, and thus successfully passed through the
cat-killing-bird-nest-robbing age of boyhood successfully, and
heroically encountered the usual assortment of measles, whooping-cough
and mumps, and when eighteen or nineteen years old commenced reading
law with W. B. Cooper, of Effingham. The mischievous boy at once
became the attentive student, and he set about seriously preparing
himself for the battle of life. He was soon admitted to the bar,
and removed to St. Louis, and here he actively engaged in politics, and
became the editor of a paper that soon commanded considerable
influence. Here he soon attracted the notice and patronage of
Gen. Frank Blair and other leading anti-slavery men of Missouri.
Then came the late war, and this was the ripened opportunity of young
Warmoth's life. He raised a regiment, was made Colonel of it, and
soon was widely and favorably known to the country. While in the
South with the army, he looked about him and saw here a most inviting
field for ambitious young men from the North. The war over, he
located in New Orleans, and in the work of reconstruction he was the
one commanding figure. He was soon made Governor of the State,
and filled the position, even in the most trying time in the State's
history, with ability, so much so, that to this day his administration
is remembered with respect by his political friends and foes.
Hon. Charles A. Beecher was born in Herkimer County, N.
Y., August 25,
1829, and with his family removed to Licking County, Ohio, September,
1836, and located in Fairfield June 8, 1854. He had been a
pupil --- irregular attendant --- in the Wesleyan University, Delaware,
Ohio,
from September, 1849, to December, 1853, and during vacations he taught
school during the winters and attended school during the summers, and
sometimes performed hard manual labor during vacations. He
attended the Law Department of the Farmer's College, College Hill, near
Cincinnati, Ohio, from December 1, 1853, to June, 1854, and was
admitted to the bar in February, 1856, and at once entered actively
upon a lucrative and successful practice. During five years, from
1870 to 1875, he was out of the active practice of the law, and was
bending all his energies toward the construction of the Springfield
Branch of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad. In December, 1868,
he had been elected Vice-President of that road, which position he held
until the property was sold to the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad in
January, 1875. In September, 1873, he was appointed Receiver with
Alexander Storms by the United States Circuit Court of Illinois, of the
Springfield & Illinois Southeastern Railway, and this position he
continued to fill until the sale of the road by a decree of the
court in September, 1874. Mr. Beecher was then appointed
the
agent of the bondholders, and operated and controlled the road in their
behalf until the formal transfer of the road to the Ohio &
Mississippi Railroad March 1, 1875. He was then made Division
Superintendent of the Ohio & Mississippi, in which capacity he
acted until June 1, 1875, at which time he was appointed General
Soliciter of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad and branches.
This road was placed in the hands of a receiver in November, 1876, and
Mr. Beecher has continued to the present time its general
soliciter. October, 1876, he was elected a member of the Board of
Directors of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad and is still a member,
and his term of office to this position will not expire until 1886.
The charter of the Illinois Southeastern Railway was granted in 1867,
and Mr. Beecher was made one of the incorporators, and upon the
original organization of the company he was elected Treasurer. In
1872, the duties of his office required him to move his residence to
Springfield, Ill., where he remained for three years, and, in 1875, he
removed to St. Louis, and, in 1879, the growth of the work in his
office as General Solicitor of the great corporation of the Ohio &
Mississippi Railway required his removal to his present residence in
Cincinnati, Ohio. These are the dates and figures that are the
strong outline, when well studied, of the career of Mr. Beecher
since,
as a very modest and unassuming young attorney, he commenced life in
Fairfield. The dates and figures tell much of the story of a man
who was destined to rise by the inherent power that was within
himself. He entered the corporation of the Springfield &
Illinois Southeastern Railway as one of its most unassuming
corporators. A stranger would notice in the young attorney but
little else than a pleasant, smiling face, affable manners and a
retiring modesty. He was given, much by accident, an obscure and
unimportant office --- Treasurer to a corporation without a dollar, and
with but little hopes of ever being more than a paper railroad.
His nature was not self-asserting, and yet no great progress had been
made in putting the enterprise on its feet until it was most manifest
he was the master spirit of the scheme, and many men from Shawneetown
to Springfield soon came to know that if the road was ever built it
would owe this good fortune largely to Beecher. His
genius and
untiring energy gave all that part of Southern Illinois the railroad
now running from Shawneetown to Beardstown. The ordinary rule in
life is for the big fish to swallow the little ones, but it is a very
easy matter to read most plainly between lines, as we give the dates
and facts above of Mr. Beecher's connection with the great
corporation
at which he now stands at the most important post, that he controlled
its destinies. From his first connection with the railroad
interests he was thrown in contact with some of the ablest financiers,
as well as some of the most eminent attorneys in the country as well as
in Europe, and yet he came in conflict with none that in either law or
in large and intricate financial schemes that ever overreached him, or
that probably did not retire in the faith that in some way the rural
attorney from Wayne County had left them at the foot of the class.
Mr. Beecher cast his first vote for President in 1852, for Gen.
Scott. In 1856, he voted for Fremont, and has since voted
regularly with the Republican party. From 1862 to 1868, he was a
member of the Republican State Central Committee. In 1867, he was
one of five Commissioners appointed by Gov. Oglesby to locate and build
a Southern Illinois Penitentiary, but the Legislature failing to make
the necessary appropriation, therefore nothing further was done.
Such are the outlines of the career of no common man, and of all the
attorneys who have ever pitched their tents in Wayne County we strongly
incline to the belief he will go into history as the prominent central
figure in the entire list. He is but now upon the threshold of
his professional life, and has already accumulated a large fortune, and
a fame and name among the attorneys of the country that cannot be
gainsaid.
Judge C. C. Boggs was born in Fairfield in 1842. He
attended the
Law Department of Ann Arbor University, and read law with Judge
Beecher, and was admitted to the practice in 1867. Was at one
time State's Attorney from 1872 to 1876, and the year following was
elected County Judge of Wayne County. He was married, in
Fairfield, to Miss Sarah Shaefer in 1870. A strong and
brilliant
attorney, a Mason, an A. O. U. W., and a stanch and unflinching
Democrat, and don't you forget it.
A. M. Funkhouser was also a native of Wayne County. He
attended
the public schools here, and was awhile, we believe, a student in Ann
Arbor University. He was at one time County Attorney of Wayne
County, and had built up an extensive practice, but, deeming his
opportunities here circumscribed, he went to St. Louis, where he is now
engaged in the practice of the law.
W. J. Travis, a native of Kentucky, came to the county and
taught
school and studied law; was admitted in 1879. Was City Attorney,
and in the early part of 1883 removed to Kansas, where he is now
practicing.
M. H. Bacon, of White County, came here, studied law with Robinson
& Boggs, married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas L. Cooper,
of this
place. She died soon after marriage, and Mr. Bacon left
the
county and located in Florida.
James A. Creighton, born in White County, came to this county
when very
young. Studied in the office of C. A. Beecher. He
removed
to Springfield in 1877, where he now resides.
W. J. Sailor was among the ante-bellum times. Was a
student at
McKendree College, and with some other students stole away from school
and enlisted in the army in the late war. He practiced for some
time in the firm of Beecher, George & Sailor, and finally
he
relinquished the active practice and became the cashier of the bank, a
position he now holds.
Col. H. Thompson, formerly of New York, and later of the
northern
portion of Illinois, came to Wayne County about 1877.
Ben S. Organ, now of Carmi, was for some time a prominent lawyer
here. He recently removed to his present home, where we
understand he has already a good practice.
James McCartney, the present Attorney General of the State of
Illinois,
is a resident of Fairfield --- the only man ever elected to a State
office
from Wayne County. His complete biography may be found in another
chapter.
The present bar of Wayne County is composed of the following: J.
G. Crews, W. H. Robinson, C. C. Boggs, G. W. Johns, R. P. Hanna, R. D.
Adams, Edwin Beecher, John Keene, Jr., Jacob R. Creighton, C. E.
Sibley, G. J. George, W. P. Bunch, Edward Kramer, N. S. McCown, F. P.
Hanna, J. I. Montray, H. Tompkins and Z. B. West.
| Visit Our Neighbors | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Marion | Clay | Richland | |
| Jefferson |
 |
Edwards | |
| Franklin | Hamilton | White | |
