USA > Indiana > Biographical and historical sketches of early Indiana > Part 30
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Judge Blackford was not a member of any church, and he attended religious meetings wherever his taste or inclination led him. He was a believer in the Christian religion. He was, in short, a conscientious, modest, firm and incorruptible man. He was economical in habit, plain in dress, and unostentatious in manner. He was shy in deportment, avoided discussions, and made no enemies by his manner or treatment of men. He was a constant reader, and had an extensive miscellaneous as well as an excellent law library. He took the leading Ameri- can and foreign magazines and carefully read them. He was great as a judge. He was not great as an advocate, or states- man, or scholar, or orator, or writer, but as a judge he stands in advance of any man our State has produced.
He was not a rapid thinker or powerful reasoner, but his sense of justice and fair dealing, his ability to weigh legal ar- guments, his untiring perseverence in the investigation of cases, put him in the front rank of Indiana judges, and there he will stand.
Without favor, fear or affection he held up the scales of jus- tice before the world. His spotless rectitude and unswerving justice made his name a household word in Indiana, a State whose judicature he found in swaddling clothes and left clad in beautiful raiment.
STEPHEN C. STEVENS.
ONE of the leading lawyers of early Indiana was Stephen C. Stevens. He ran a political career at an early stage of his his- tory in the State, which may be briefly summed up as follows :
In 1817 he was elected to the Legislature from Franklin county (he then lived at Brookville). He was made chairman of the Commission on Revision of the Laws. Soon after this he removed to Vevay, in Switzerland county, and in 1824 was sent to the Legislature from Switzerland county, and was elected Speaker of the House. The next year he was re- elected to the Legislature from Switzerland, and was appointed chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
In 1826 he was elected to the State Senate from Switzerland and Ripley counties, and in 1828 was re-elected to the Senate from said counties. He was always a prominent figure in the Legislatures in which he served.
He was an officer in the Vevay branch of the Bank of Vin- cennes, an institution chartered by the Territorial Legislature in 1814. Subsequently he removed to Madison, and remained a resident of that city while he lived. On the 28th of January. 1831, Governor Ray appointed him a Judge of the Supreme Court, a position he held until May, 1836, when he resigned and returned to the practice of the law.
Judge Stevens was not a great lawyer. However, he was a painstaking one, and his industry and care made him a success- ful practitioner. For years he had the largest collection busi- ness of any member of the Madison bar. He was a fair jury lawyer, and excelled most of his compeers in the preparation
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of legal papers and in the collection of claims. In these re- spects he was fully abreast of any member of the ablest bar in the State.
Judge Stevens was diffuse and prolix in his writings. He always told the whole story. I remember writing up the com- plete record of the case of Warfield vs. Warfield, a chancery case disposed of in the Jefferson Circuit Court in 1847. Judge Stevens was the plaintiff's attorney, and had prepared most of the papers. There were several depositions taken and pub- lished, the questions and answers of which were written by the Judge. Each deposition commenced as follows :
" The deposition of John Smith, a man of sound mind and discretion, taken before Hiram Harris, Esq., a justice of the peace in and for the township of Shelby, in the county of Jeffer- son and State of Indiana, duly elected, commissioned and qualified, at his office in the town of Canaan, in the township, county and State aforesaid," etc.
While I was making up the record Judge Stevens came into the Clerk's office, and I asked him why he prefaced the depo- sitions so minutely and particularly. He answered, that when a school-boy the master once called him up and interrogated him about a difficulty he had had with one of the scholars, and ended with administering to him a pretty severe flagellation ; that subsequently, on learning all the circumstances connected with the difficulty, the teacher said that if he had told the whole story he would have escaped punishment. "This was a lesson," said the Judge, " I have never forgotten. Since then I have made it a rule to tell the whole story."
Judge Stevens was an old-time Abolitionist. He was an anti- slavery man at a time when it required great courage to be one. It is impossible for those whose memory does not go back twenty years to realize the prejudice, and even bitterness, that then ex- isted against the Abolitionists. They were not only considered " outside of any healthy political organization," but they were socially tabooed and ostracised. And particularly was this the case in Southern Indiana, where Judge Stevens lived. But op- position to slavery was with him a principle.
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In 1845 the Liberty party nominated Judge Stevens for Gov- ernor of the State. From a speech he made during the can- vass I make the following extracts, illustrative of his extreme views on the question of slavery and his bold style of presenta- tion :
" Sir, let us know but two classes of men in church and state- the friends of slavery and its enemies.
" We are asked how slavery is to be abolished? Sir, I will tell you. We must reach the abolition of slavery over the dead bodies of both the old political parties ; not slain by violence, but destroyed by the overthrow of their principles, the only thing which holds them together and gives them party existence. As long as those parties exist so long will slavery find a shelter under their folds. In the second place, we must reach the abo- lition of slavery through the doors of twenty thousand churches. I do not mean that we must destroy them, so that they will cease to be churches, but that we must bring them on the side of Jesus Christ instead of that of slavery. All this we must do by teach- ing the truth and correcting the errors of the people.
" But we are told that our plan is seditious and factious ; that we are agitators, yes, agitators. Well, Christ was an agitator. What makes agitation wrong is that it is error and not truth which agitates. The only question whether our agitation, like that of Christ and his apostles, is justifiable and necessary, is whether what we teach is the truth ; and it is the truth, God knows !
"""'But we shall divide the church !' Sir, division implies separa- tion ; and what shall we separate? Why, the sin of slaveholding from Christianity. God send that division soon. We are told, too, that we shall divide the Union ; that we are disunionists. Now, sir, I am for the Union ; but I say if the only Union we can have with the South, in church and state, is to be and must be cemented by the blood of three millions of my brethren, I say, in God's name, let it go down. I am for no union the bond of which is open crime. No church can or will be recognized for Christ in the great day which is cemented together by blood. The doom of Sodom and Gomorrah will be more tolerable in that day than theirs.
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ยทยท But we are told to remedy all our evils at home before touch- ing slavery. Doctor, cure yourself.
" Sir. if we must wait till no injustice exists among men be- fore we touch slavery we shall never touch it. Is that what they want?
" But our black laws in the free States, which they ask us to repeal before touching slavery, are a mere sequent-a tail-a fol- lowing thing to slavery itself. When slavery is destroyed these laws, which are a mere consequence of slavery, will fall with it. Destroy the tree and you kill the branches."
He believed slavery wrong, and he lifted up his voice against it at all times, in season and out of season. In 1851 or 1852 a negro committed a rape on a white woman some thirty miles from Madison, and was lynched by an infuriated mob. The author, who was born and reared in a slave State, and taught to believe in the divinity of slavery, was talking with Judge Stevens about this case, when the latter remarked that, although rape was a great crime, and its perpetrators should be severely punished, yet there were mitigating circumstances in this case which should have shielded the negro from extreme punish- ment. Shocked at his words, I asked him what he meant. He answered that the commission of a criminal assault by a negro upon a white woman was not so great an offense as the com- mission of a similar assault by a white man. This was so con- trary to my own feelings that I told him I was surprised at such an avowal ; that I had not supposed there was a man in the State who entertained such sentiments. He replied that the white man had the school-room, the church and the Bible to en- lighten and christianize him, while the negro was denied them all. Said he: "A man must answer according to his oppor- tunities ; when the educated white man makes a beast of him- self he is more culpable in the sight of God, and should be in the sight of man, than the ignorant negro who does a similar thing." However contrary to my education and feelings this position of Judge Stevens was, I could not but admit its force.
Judge Stevens was a Presbyterian, and for some time was a member of the New School Presbyterian Church at Madison. . As is known, the New School branch was formed on account
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of the conservatism of the Presbyterian church on the subject of slavery. The New School Presbyterians were anti-slavery, but they were not sufficiently so to suit the views of Judge Ste- vens. He refused to affiliate with any one in the church who upheld slavery, and therefore severed his connection with the church at Madison, and joined one located in the Abolition set- tlement some twelve or fourteen miles away. He remained a member of this church while he lived.
In his younger days Judge Stevens was an active member of the Masonic fraternity. He was one of the eleven men who met at Corydon, December 3, 1817, and laid the foundation for the Grand Lodge of Indiana. In his latter days he did not affiliate with the order, having left it at the time of the Morgan excitement, but he never ceased to have a high respect and re- gard for it while he lived.
Judge Stevens accumulated a competence by his profession, and lived in good but not extravagant style. In 1851 or 1852 he invested all his means in a contemplated railroad. Although he had seen much of the world, and was a close observer of men and things, he ignored the fact that those who build rail- roads seldom operate them. He put all the money he had, and even his home, into the road and lost it all. He soon found himself without a dollar of money or a home. The shock was too great for him to bear, and it impaired his mind. He imagined himself immensely rich, and traveled over the State in search of investments for his surplus money. Wherever he went he bar- gained for farms, for houses and lots, and for anything that struck his fancy. The author saw him at Franklin in 1861 or 1862, and remembers that he contracted for the finest residence property in that city. Having known him in the days of his in- tellectual strength and worldly prosperity, I was deeply pained to see what a wreck he had become. He was but a shadow- and a faint one, too-of his former self. Time did not improve his mental condition, and on the 29th of June, 1869, he was ad- mitted into the Indiana Hospital for the Insane as a patient. He remained in that institution, with but little apparent benefit, until November 7. 1870, when death came to his relief. His remains were taken to Madison and buried in the cemetery
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there, and all that was mortal of Stephen C. Stevens rests near the homestead where he lived so long.
Judge Stevens was a large, raw-boned man. He was slightly stoop-shouldered, and in person was somewhat ungainly. He had an active mind and strong body, but the first gave way to misfortune and the latter to age. He was an old man when he died, but had not adversity overtaken him he would most prob- ably be living now. Bodily disease is not the only thing that kills ; reverse of fortune often causes disease of mind, and when the mind dies it is a blessing for the body to follow.
Oliver H. Smith, in his Early Indiana Trials and Sketches, thus speaks of Judge Stevens :
** He stood high at the bar, and was one of the strongest advo- cates in the State, but the diffuseness of his opinions supplied to many obiter dicta for other cases, in the opinion of many sound members of the bar. He was one of the most laborious judges upon the bench, and furnished Blackford's Reports with many valuable opinions."
For the following additional incidents of interest the author is indebteded to the venerable Judge Test, yet living, who knew the subject personally and well :
"Judge Stevens came to Brookville with his mother about 1812. It was during the war, and the Indians were troubling us a great deal. Stevens reported one day that he had shot at an Indian that was coming up to his house, and that he had wound- ed him. Some were rather doubtful about the matter, and fol- lowed the trail of blood down to the river, but finding nothing, they accused him of having killed a chicken and passed it off as an Indian. This got him down a good deal. He was a mer- chant then on his own account. Before the close of the war he went to New Orleans and joined Jackson's army. He was one of the few men wounded in the battle of New Orleans, being wounded on the top of his head. This restored his reputation at home, and the people thought his Indian story might not be altogether untrue. He had studied law while operating as a merchant, and when he returned to Brookville he commenced the practice of law, building a little office in the south part of
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town. After this he moved to Vevay, living there with his mother. He was very devoted to his mother, taking good care of her and living for her. He was president of the Vevay bank, and after the bank broke he practiced law with some success. I became better acquainted with him at this time and came into collision with him in one case. He was a very diffuse man and covered a good deal of paper to express a small idea. The last time I saw him he was in the Insane Asylum. The superin- tendent asked me if I had known Judge Stevens. I told him I had known him very well, having lived in the same town. The superintendent informed me he was there and I found him lying on the bed in his drawers, while an old fellow named Mussel- man, from Logansport, was mending his breeches. He looked at me intently, as if trying to gather up his thoughts, and then said : . I don't know you,' then added, ' Yes, of course I know you ; but ever since the top of my head was cut off my memory is not as good as it used to be.' After leaving the asylum I went to the Governor's office and told him the circumstances, and how poor the old man was. Governor Baker pulled out a ten dollar bill, and going around to others, raised some fifty or sixty dollars within an hour, which was sent up to the superin- tendent with instructions to buy Stevens a suit of clothes. His measure was taken and when the suit was made, it was pre- sented with the compliments of the bar. Stevens made quite a speech to the effect that he was glad to be remembered by the bar. In a few days after this he died and was buried in his new suit."
G
CHARLES DEWEY.
No name is more venerated by the bar of Indiana than that of Charles Dewey. Although not so learned in the books as his great compeer, Isaac Blackford, nor so elegant in his dic- tion as his other companion on the bench, Jeremiah Sullivan, yet, in strength of intellect and ability to grasp legal questions, Judge Dewey was superior to either of them. Such is the judg- ment of those best qualified to know.
Charles Dewey was born in Sheffield, Massachusetts, March 6, 1784. He was well educated, having graduated at Williams College with the honors of his class. After completing his course at college he studied law, and in 1816 came to Indiana and located at Paoli, in Orange county. He opened an office- and commenced the practice of the law, and soon had a large business, not only in the county where he lived, but in other counties on his circuit. In these days a lawyer did not confine his practice to a single county, but traveled over a large extent of territory, and took cases wherever they were offered him.
Mr. Dewey, like most lawyers of his time, and indeed of this. also, took an interest in politics, and in 1821 was elected to the Legislature from his county. He served with such distinction as to attract the attention of the people throughout his section of the State, and the next year they demanded that he should run for Congress. His district comprised one-third of the State, and it was very thoroughly canvassed both by him and his com- petitor, General William Prince. General Prince had been with Aaron Burr in his Southwestern expedition, and it was charged that Mr. Dewey had favored the Hartford convention ; therefore, the honors were even so far as charges went. But the pioneers of Indiana were more antagonistic to the Hartford con-
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vention than to Burr's filibustering expedition, and, although Mr. Dewey had not been a member of the Hartford convention, the charge was " a good enough Morgan " to defeat him.
In 1824, two years after Mr. Dewey made his unsuccessful race for Congress, he removed to Charlestown, in Clark county, and lived there until his death. He devoted himself assiduously to the practice of the law, and reached a high place in the pro- fession. While taking an interest in politics he was not a can- didate for office until 1832, when he ran for Congress against General John Carr, and was beaten. This was the last race he made for office before the people.
In 1836 Governor Noble appointed Mr. Dewey Judge of the Supreme Court, to fill the place of Stephen C. Stevens, who had resigned. Oliver H. Smith, in his "Early Indiana Trials and Sketches," speaks thus of this appointment : "The Judge brought with him a matured mind, and a large experience as a practitioner. Many doubted, at the time, whether he could sus- tain on the bench his high reputation at the bar. But as his judicial powers were developed he rose as a judge, and fully sustained himself in the opinion of the bar, who are good judges and safe depositories of the judicial reputations of the judges."
Judge Dewey sat on the Supreme bench eleven years, and honored it as few have done. He came fully up to the mark, the public having, by common consent, placed him in the very front rank of Indiana judges.
Under the first constitution of Indiana, Supreme Judges were appointed by the Governor, by and with the consent of the Sen- ate. In politics Judge Dewey was a Whig. In 1843 James Whitcomb, a Democrat, was elected Governor, and re-elected in 1846. When the Governor came into office one of the Su- preme Judges-Isaac Blackford-was a Democrat, and the other two-Dewey and Sullivan-were Whigs. When the terms of the judges expired, the Governor sent to the Senate the name of Judge Blackford to succeed himself, and those of Samuel E. Perkins and Thomas L. Smith to succeed Judges Dewey and Sullivan. The Senate confirmed Judge Blackford, but refused its consent to the appointment of Messrs. Perkins and Smith. A long and acrimonious contest took place between the Governor and the Senate over these appointments.
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The Governor sent the names of several other gentlemen to the Senate, but they were promptly rejected. After the Legis- lature adjourned Governor Whitcomb gave Judges Dewey and Sullivan temporary appointments to last until the meeting of the next Legislature. When that body convened, the Senate, like that of the previous session, refused to confirm the Gov- ernor's nominees. A few days after it had adjourned the Gov- ernor sent Judge Dewey another temporary appointment. Be- fore accepting it he had an interview with the Governor, and told him he should decline the appointment unless he had as- surances that he would be regularly nominated to the next Sen- ate. Governor Whitcomb told him that he should, as a com- promise measure, nominate him and Judge Perkins to the next Senate, "unless he should be diverted from his purpose in re- spect to him-Judge Dewey-by the course the Whigs might take in the coming canvass for Governor." It was, undoubt- edly, Governor Whitcomb's intention, at the time to re-appoint Judge Dewey, but he was diverted from the purpose, mainly through the influence of Ashbel P. Willard, afterward Gov- ernor of the State. Willard was then just rising to influence and power in the politics of Indiana, and Judge Dewey, being a Whig, was fiercely antagonized by the rising young politician. He succeeded in preventing the nomination of Judge Dewey, and in securing that of his friend and townsman, Thomas L. Smith, but, as many thought at the time, at the expense of the Governor's good faith.
In February, 1847, Judge Dewey published a letter in the In- dianapolis Journal, in which he recounted at length his com- plaints against Governor Whitcomb. After reciting the several interviews he had had with the Governor, and naming the pledges which he asserted had been given him, he closed as follows : "I have only to add that the Governor's word has not been kept ; his pledge is unredeemed."
On leaving the Supreme bench Judge Dewey resumed the practice of the law. He took into partnership George V. Howk, now of our Supreme Court, and for many years they practiced together. The firm had a large practice in Southern Indiana as well as in the Supreme Court of the State, the reputation of the senior partner bringing it business, far and near.
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In April, 1849, Judge Dewey, while riding in his carriage, was thrown out, and suffered the fracture of a leg. He never recovered from the hurt, being compelled during the remainder of his life to walk with crutches, but he continued the practice of his profession while he lived. He died at his home in Charles- town, April 25, 1862, and was buried in the cemetery there. Judge Dewey was cotemporaneous with the men who made In- diana a State. He was the friend and neighbor of Jonathan Jennings, and was his legal adviser in the trouble between him and Christopher Harrison about the governorship. He practiced at a bar which contained many able members, but none of them outranked him. He and Benjamin Parke, the first United States District Judge of Indiana, were friends, and usually came to Indianapolis together, when business called them there, al- though they lived many miles apart. Judge Dewey was a great reader of novels, and tried to have Judge Parke read them also, but the latter could not get interested in the fictitious creations of genius, and continued to prefer Coke and Blackstone to Fielding and Smollet. After Judge Parke's death Judge Dewey, at the request of the bar of the State. delivered a eulogy upon his departed friend worthy of the distinguished subject. The address was printed, and a few copies of it only are in existence. I have been unable to find any literary effort of Judge Dewey save this address and his published opinions, but these prove him to have been a writer of remarkable ability. The clean-cut sentences of his eulogy upon Judge Parke remind one of the writings of Burke. There is no superfluity of words. His meaning is never obscure. Judge Dewey was not blessed with the graces of oratory. He could, however, talk with ease and fluency, and was very effective when presenting his views to a court.
Judge Dewey was fond of anecdotes. Having been person- ally acquainted with most of the leading men of early Indiana, he was full of reminiscences and stories, which he was in the habit of recounting to attentive listeners. When on the bench he was dignified and somewhat austere, but when off it he was always ready to tell a story.
Throughout Judge Dewey's long life he was a supporter of the Christian church. A short time before he died he made a
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profession of the Christian religion, and joined the Presbyterian church, in whose communion he died.
I am indebted to Professor Campbell, of Crawfordsville. for the following characteristic anecdotes of Judge Dewey :
"On a certain occasion there were assembled a pleasant party in the parlor of the Washington House, Indianapolis, who were enjoying especially the joke of Dewey's menagerie, as they facetiously termed the traveling concern which happened at the time to be exhibiting at Indianapolis, and was located on some vacant lots on Washington street belonging to Judge Dewey, when a young man of somewhat diminutive stature and pompous manner approached the Judge with a ' Well, Judge, I think I shall patronize your menagerie to-night.' 'Glad to hear it,' replied Dewey ; ' glad to hear it. Our pony has just arrived, and our monkey is sick ; we shall need you.' Gifted as he was in this quickness of repartee. he enjoyed equally well a sally of wit, even though he himself were the subject. On another oc- sion, at the same hotel, in a company of lawyers, John L -- , of Madison, with a little unwarranted liberty, remarked, in reference to the long nose and chin of Judge Dewey, that they would probably meet soon. The Judge replied, somewhat bit- terly, that they never had met yet ; whereupon Henry S. Lane, with ready wit, added : 'Yet a good many hard words have passed between them!' The merry twinkle with which this was received established a cordiality and friendship between them that lasted while they lived.
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