USA > Missouri > A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements Until the Admission of the state into the union, Volume III > Part 3
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' Reynold's Pioncer History, p. 185. Reynolds further says, "He never married according to the laws of the country, but to all appearances he was never without a wife or wives;" that on one occasion he ran off with a married lady of Cahokia to Peoria; that at another time he resided on the Mississippi bluff northwest of Alton with another woman; that Col. Easton purchased Darnielle's pre-emption rights of land granted him by Act of Congress; from Illinois he removed to Kentucky where he died in 1830 at the age of 60 years.
1º Jefferson Papers, 2d Series, vol. 76, No. 99.
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EDWARD HEMPSTEAD
quiring 25 days. He remained in St. Louis that month and then went to Ste. Genevieve to settle and practice law; but after a year he returned to St. Louis. While in Ste. Genevieve he married Miss Anna Marie Elliott, daughter of Dr. Aaron Elliott, from Connecticut. In St. Louis Carr occupied for many years a prominent and influential position. In 1826 he was appointed Circuit judge, a position which he held for eight years, being suc- ceeded by Luke E. Lawless in 1834. After the death of his wife in 1826 he married, in 1829, a daughter of Silas Bent. He died on March 31, 1851, at the age of 68 years.
Rufus Easton, who came to St. Louis in the same year was born in Litchfield, Conn., May 4, 1774. At the age of 17 years he began to read law, and about the year 1800 he removed to Rome in the state of New York where he soon became known as a promising young lawyer. In 1803 we find him in Washington, and from there he went west with the intention of settling in New Orleans, but on his way south he changed his mind, and went to Vincennes, where he remained for several months. Then with General Harrison and the Indiana judges he came to St. Louis and took up his residence there. In 1804-5 he visited Washington again and secured the appoint- ment as one of the judges of the territory of Louisiana under the new Act. In the same year he was appointed first postmaster of St. Louis, but was not reappointed judge when his commission expired in 1806, and this led to the correspondence between him and Jefferson already. alluded to. He also acted as United States Attorney for the territory for some time. In 1814 he was elected delegate of the territory to Congress, but was defeated by John Scott at the next election. When Missouri was admitted to the Union Easton was appointed United States Attorney for the state of Missouri. In 1822 he removed from St. Louis to St. Charles, where he died in 1834. Unlike many other members of the legal profession he would not be drawn into duels. On one occasion he was challenged to fight by Scott, but declined in these words, "I don't want to kill you, and if you were to kill me I would die as a fool dieth."
Edward Hempstead was the first delegate in Congress from the territory of Missouri, and the trans-Mississippi country, and at the close of the term did not become a candidate for re-election. But his career was well nigh run, for in 1817 be accidentally was thrown from his horse and died shortly after from the effect of the fall. He married a daughter of Louis C. DuBreuil at Ste. Genevieve, in 1808.
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
Hempstead's death was universally lamented at the time. Flint says of him that he was "a man unlettered, but of strong sense, and it was said by competent judges, a great special pleader; he had a kind of fierce, sharp and barking manner of speaking, which had such an effect as to awe the jury, and had become so popular that it descended to the bar as his mantle, after he was dead. Often have I heard young and incompetent lawyers attempting to catch the bark of Edward Hempstead."11
In 1810 Henry M. Brackenridge for a short time thought he would take up his residence and practice law in St. Louis and the territory. After a couple of months of "busy idleness, " being admonished by the low state of his finances he concluded to follow "the county courts which were held in each of the four or five counties of the territory twice a year." He went from St. Louis on horseback to Ste. Gen- evieve, Cape Girardeau and New Madrid, to attend these courts, and was accompanied by a young lawyer who, he says, afterward fell in a duel. He first went to Ste. Genevieve, from Ste. Genevieve "retraced the road in company with my brethren of the bar" on the route which he had "traveled on foot with Bill Hewlings and Mark Higginbottom" to Cape Girardeau. After court adjourned there he proceeded to New Madrid, his mind constantly occupied with the changes which he saw had taken place since first he had traveled this road, a little boy riding on a pony with Lucas. After court adjourned at New Madrid he says he returned to St. Louis "fully resolved it should close my professional career in upper Loui- . siana." 12 A man of the literary inclina- tion and disposition of Brackenridge could hardly be expected to settle down on the frontiers of civilization, although - he had been reared amid such surround- Im Brackenntpe ings. He was a man of a roving dispo- sition, keen to observe the faults of From Nat. Cycl. . Am. Biog. White & Co., N. Y. others and the reason for their failures, but could not or would not apply his observations to himself. To his temporary residence in Louisiana we owe his "Views of Louisiana," his "Journal of a trip up the 11 Flint's Recollections, p. 184.
12 Recollections of the West, p. 235.
17
DAVID BARTON
Missouri," and his "Recollections of the West," giving us a delight- ful picture of times otherwise long forgotten.13
As intimately connected with the legal profession of his time we also may mention Silas Bent, who was born in Massachusetts in 1768, moved to Ohio in 1788 and came to St. Louis in 1806, having been appointed Deputy-Surveyor for the territory; in 1807 he was appointed judge of the court of Common Pleas and Quarter Ses- sions, Lucas and Augustus Chouteau being his associate Judges. Subsequently he was Clerk of the County court, and Recorder for a number of years; and died in office in 1827.
In 1812 David Barton and his brother Joshua Barton, in 1814 Edward Bates and Matthew McGirk, and in 1815 Thomas H. Benton and Luke E. Lawless came to St. Louis to practice law, a brilliant galaxy of great names. The Bartons came from Tennessee. They were the sons of a Baptist preacher, Rev. Isaac Barton. David Barton, shortly after his arrival in the territory, was appointed Circuit Judge but soon afterward resigned, and beginning to practice law on the St. Louis circuit, he became very popular. When the consti- tutional convention met in 1820 he was unanimously elected presiding officer of that body; and after the admission of the state to the Union, was elected first United States senator of the new state by acclama- tion. The support he gave Adams in 1825 closed his political career, just as it closed that of Scott. After his retirement from the Senate in 1830 he removed to Cooper county where he was elected to the state senate in 1834-5. He died September 28, 1837. Barton county was named in his honor. His brother Joshua, associated with Edward Bates in the practice of law, was appointed Secretary of State in 1821; resigned his office to accept the position of United States Attorney for Missouri, and was killed in a duel with Rector, June 30, 1823. It is said that as a lawyer he was superior to his brother, and Edward Bates one time declared that he "was the most ac- complished lawyer that he had ever met." 14
Edward Bates was intimately associated with the Bartons and in
12 James A. Graham was the name of the young lawyer who traveled with Brackenridge. He came to St. Louis in 1810 and died in consequence of a wound received in a duel with Dr. Farrar.
" Isaac Barton, a third brother, also came to St. Louis and lived there for a time; acted as deputy sheriff, and was appointed clerk of the U. S. Dis- trict court by Judge Peck. Mrs. Murphy, widow of Rev. Wm. Murphy of the Murphy settlement, who came to upper Louisiana during the Spanish govern- ment, was a sister of the Bartons. The present city of Farmington is located where the Murphys received their Spanish grants.
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
political sympathy with them. He came to the territory without a profession, induced to do so doubtless by the fact that his brother, Frederick, was then living in the territory and occupying a prominent position. Upon his arrival he entered the office of Rufus Easton and began to read law, and in 1816 was admitted to the bar. In 1818 he was appointed District Attorney by Governor Clark, and in 1820 elected a member of the constitutional convention. Afterward he was appointed Attorney-General, and in 1824 United States District Attorney. In 1826 he was elected to Congress, defeating John Scott, but in 1828 was himself defeated by Spencer Pettis; he was then elected to the state legis- lature, and after his term of service expired, retired to a farm on Dardenne prairie in St. EDWARD BATES Charles county; but in 1842 he resumed the practice of law in St. Louis. His name now became national and as a lawyer he was constantly growing in public esteem. In 1860 he was appointed Attorney-General of the United States in Lincoln's first cabinet, but ill health caused him to resign and he died in 1864. An indefatigable student of law, he presented his points in matchless order, in the words of Colonel Gantt, "some- times wringing from a reluctant court by irresistible argument a recon- sideration and over-ruling of a hasty decision." The public schools of St. Louis owe to him much of the great endowment made by Act of 1812; but for his legal ability and acumen a large portion of that great grant might have been lost.15
Matthew McGirk came to St. Louis from Tennessee where he was born in 1790. He had his law office "on the hill" in an old stone building, which had been occupied as officers' quarters by the old Spanish garrison, situated on what is now Fourth street opposite the
13 In 1823 he married Julia D. Coalter, one of the five daughters of David Coalter of St. Charles. The Coalter family originally settled in Augusta county, Virginia, thence removed to South Carolina and from there came to the Missouri territory. The sisters of Mrs. Bates all married men of distinction. One became the wife of Hamilton R. Gamble, afterward Governor of Missouri; another the wife of W. C. Preston, United States Senator from South Carolina; another was the wife of Chancellor Harper of South Carolina, one of the most distinguished jurists of the South, and another the wife of Dr. Means, an eminent practitioner of medicine. His brother-in-law John D. Coalter, was one of the early lawyers of St. Charles and a member of the legislature from that county. It is worthy of note that the Coalters were related to the Tuckers, and that Miss Naylor, the wife of Judge Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, was also related to the Coalters.
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LUKE E. LAWLESS
present courthouse. Upon the organization of the state government he was appointed one of the judges of the Supreme court, and this office he held until 1841. In 1827 he removed to Montgomery county where he married a Miss Talbot.
Thomas H. Benton when he first came to the territory settled at Winchester to practice law; but remained there only a short time, then removed to Ste. Genevieve and finally to St. Louis where he at once took an active interest in political matters. The law was always a secondary occupation with him, his ostensible rather than his actual profession. After he was elected to the Senate he aban- doned the practice of the law and severed all connection with the liti- gation involving Spanish titles, claims which no doubt he well knew required additional congressional legislation. His intimate friend and supporter was Luke E. Lawless, born in 1781 at Dublin, Ireland. As a youth Lawless entered the British navy, and after his discharge from the navy, it is said, matriculated and graduated at the Dublin University. In various sketches of his life it is said that, as a Cath- olic, the numerous disabilities then in force seemed to present insuper- able obstacles to his advancement, but the fact seems to have been overlooked that, as a Catholic, at that time he could not have found even admittance to Dublin University, nor graduated at that institu- tion. Another statement, that he was in the French service under his uncle, General Lawless and that in 1810 he acted as military secre- tary for the duc de Faltre and was promoted to a colonelcy seems equally romantic, as it is hardly to be be- lieved that in two years he could attain even the nominal rank of colonel in the French ser- vice. But be this as it may, in 1816 or 1817 he appeared in St. Louis and his aggressive conduct at once made him a figure of mark. He soon became an intimate associate of Benton, and was his second in the Benton- Lucas duel. In 1826 he became involved in a difficulty with Judge James H. Peck of the United States District court. Lawless representing the claims of the Soulards for LUKE E. LAWLESS ten thousand acres of land, wrote an article for the "Enquirer" in which he criticised the opinion of the court in a similar case.16
1º It was in this case when Judge Peck requested that the manner in which Spanish grants were made be explained to the court, and Judge Lucas arose and proceeded to do so, that Lawless arose and said: "May it please the court,
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
Judge Peck issued an attachment for contempt, against the proprietor of the paper, and it then appeared that Lawless was the author of the article. Lawless was thereupon cited to appear before the court, and, after a hearing, he was sentenced to be imprisoned for 24 hours and suspended from practice in the court for eighteen months. But he was not a man to be cowed in that way. He resolved to appeal to Congress and prepared a me- morial charging Judge Peck with tyranny, oppression and usurpation of powers; and this memorial being presented to Congress by Scott, and referred to a committee of the House, was afterward duly reported with the recommendation that charges of impeachment be preferred against Peck. This case, involving the question of the liberty of the press, attracted wide attention, one of the managers of the impeachment for the House being James Buchanan. Peck, on the other hand, was ably defended by William Wirt and Jonathan Meredith, the most celebrated lawyers of the day. Half the members of the St. Louis bar of that day were witnesses in the case, and the trial occupied six weeks. Peck was acquitted, and the decision settled many questions relating to the powers of the courts to punish for contempt. Yet Lawless did not wholly fail, because Congress, as if to soothe his lacerated feelings, passed a special Act by which his clients secured the ten thousand acres of land, and thus the case which was the cause of all his woe was satisfactorily settled. When
so far as my clients are concerned, I most respectfully protest against Judge Lucas saying anything on the subject of these French and Spanish claims in this court. Judge Lucas, if your Honor please, is not a licensed attorney of the court," and then Lucas turning upon Lawless a scornful look of contempt and making a most graceful bow to the court, said: "If the court please, I am licensed by the God of Heaven: He has given me a head to judge and deter- mine and a tongue to speak and explain;" and proceeding said that he had received a finished education in the best schools of France; that he had studied the civil law; that after he came to this country he made himself familiar with the common law; that he had been judge in the great state of Pennsylvania, where he administered the law and had been a member of Congress from that state; that he had been Judge of the Superior courts of the territory of Missouri, and concluding, said: "One reason why the gentleman does not think me (Lucas) qualified to practice law, is perhaps the fact that when he (Lawless) applied for a license to practice law here, it was my (Lucas') duty as chief justice of the Superior court of the territory with my two associate judges to examine him to see whether or not he was qualified to practice law, and that on that occasion I well recollect I thought he might be licensed when my two associates did not think him qualified; and as the majority of the court was against him, it was at my request (Lucas') that the other judges yielded and agreed that he might be licensed," and then bowing again he continued, "May it please the court, I did not come to this country a fugitive and an outcast from my native land. I came as a scholar and a gentleman, upon the invitation of Dr. Frank- lin." Judge Lucas then continued his statement during three sittings of the court, and his argument was published by him in 1825.
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HENRY S. GEYER
Judge Carr was impeached and resigned as Judge, Lawless was ap- pointed as his successor, but so unpopular did he become on the bench on account of his arbitrary conduct that when, in 1837, it was proposed to reappoint him, the bar of the third judicial circuit pro- tested, all the most distinguished and eminent lawyers of St. Louis joining in this protest. In May 1825 he married at Georgetown, D. C., the Baroness Grenham, widow of the Resident Minister of Prussia. Lawless died in September, 1846. He was a slender man, dignified, lame, owing to a wound said to have been received in a duel in France, not eloquent as a speaker, but terrible "in his pun- gent sarcasm." Darby says that Lawless was connected with the Irish rebellion in 1798 and very likely was colonel in that uprising rather than in the French service.
Judge James Hawkins Peck, the Federal judge who punished Lawless for contempt, also from Tennessee came to St. Louis in 1817. After the admission of Missouri he secured the appointment, through the influence of Colonel Richard M. Johnson, supported by David Barton, who had recently been elected senator of the new state. Apparently, at least, in return for this support, Peck appointed Isaac Barton clerk of his court. "Judge Peck," says Darby, "was a tall, fine looking man, over six feet in height," and "pompous in his language, manner and carriage." He labored under the delusion that if he exposed his eyes to the light he would go blind, and conse- quently when he left his room, in daylight, would bandage his eyes with a large white handkerchief, and then, according to the veracious Darby, his colored servant would lead him to his carriage, assist him in and out, lead him to the court room, and up to the bench where he would take his seat; with his head perfectly blindfolded he would try cases seeing neither the clerk nor the lawyers, hearing them read papers and authorities in the cases he was try- ing. Evidently he was what we would now call "a crank." Peck died, unmarried, April 30, 1837, in St. Louis county, opposite St. Charles.
Henry S. Geyer, another celebrated lawyer HENRY S. GEYER of St. Louis, arrived there in 1815. He was of German descent, born in Frederick county, Maryland, December 9, 1790. He studied law and was admitted to the bar before he came to the Missouri territory. In the war of 1812 he entered the
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
army and rose to the rank of Captain. Within two years after he arrived in St. Louis he compiled and published a digest of the laws of the territory then in force. In 1818 he was a member of the territorial assembly; he became a member of the first House of Representatives in 1821 and was elected Speaker. In 1824-5 he made the first revision of the statutes of Missouri; he also participated in the revision of 1835, and in 1843 he was again appointed to revise them but declined to serve. For "forty-three years his clear, acute and logical mind, unimpaired to the last, dealt with all the great questions which have arisen in connection with the peculiar juris- prudence of this state." He made the argument in the celebrated Dred Scott case, which went to the United States Supreme court from Missouri. The decision of Chief Justice Taney, in that case, furnished at the time much political capital by taking isolated and disconnected sentences out of the text and representing the same as the opinion of the court. He gained great reputation as a criminal lawyer in the case of Darnes who was tried for the murder of Davis, publisher of a newspaper in St. Louis. His argument in the case which occupied two days, was published in book form in Boston, and Rufus Choate expressed the highest admiration for the ability which Geyer displayed in that case.17 But it was in the great land litigation, in the Supreme court of the United States, involving early Spanish titles, that his learning and legal acumen were most conspicuous, notably in the case of Strother vs. Lucas, in which he was associated with William Wirt. In 1851 Geyer was elected to the United States senate as successor to Thomas H. Benton. He died March 5, 1859, aged 69 years.18
17 Darnes was a resident of Scott county; represented that county in the legislature.
18 From 1804 to 1821 a number of other lawyers came to St. Louis, estab- lished themselves professionally and achieved distinction. Among these Robert Wash must be noted. Wash was born in Louisa county, Virginia, in 1790; was educated at William and Mary college, graduated in 1808; during the war of 1812 he served on the staff of General Howard in the Indian cam- paign on the Mississippi; was appointed United States Attorney by President Monroe, and in 1824 appointed one of the judges of the Supreme court of Mis- souri, a position which he held until 1837 when he resigned. Alexander Gray, another early lawyer in St. Louis, came to the Missouri territory in 1815 from Kentucky; first settled in Cape Girardeau, then moved to St. Louis. He was appointed Circuit judge of the circuit north of the Missouri river; he died in 1823. Robert P. Farris (1815), a native of Natick, Mass .; died December 27, 1830. Archibald Gamble (1816) a native of Virginia, at first clerk in the St. Louis Bank, then deputy under Marie P. Leduc in the Circuit Clerk's office; attorney of the St. Louis Public Schools, married Louisa Easton, a daughter of Col. Rufus Easton, died Sept., 1866. Horatio Cozzens (1817), from Virginia;
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ALEXANDER BUCKNER
Among the attorneys who appeared, in 1805, before the first court in Cape Girardeau we find the name of Anthony Hayden and George C. Harbison. Harbison died September 16, 1811, after an illness of six days. The name of Nathaniel Pope also appears in the records of the court of that day; and at the next term the name of John Scott. James Evans, for a number of years one of the most prominent attor- neys of the territory and state, began at this time the practice of law in this section of the state. He was for a time very popular; repeatedly elected to office; member of the first constitutional con- vention, and on several occasions candidate for Congress. In 1837 he was appointed Circuit judge for the ninth circuit, but his term of office was short. His career was ruined by his appetite for intoxicants and he became an habitual drunkard, a mental and a financial wreck. He resided at Perryville during a part of the latter years of his life, but, finally, he removed to Kentucky where he died.
In 1815, when the county seat of Cape Girardeau county was removed to Jackson, General Johnson Ranney began the practice of the law there. Being a native of Connecticut he met with much opposition on account of prejudice then existing against "Yankees," but his firm and resolute disposition quietly overcame all that. He was opposed to slavery, and on this account in 1820 he was threatened with personal violence, but, entrenching himself in his office, he defied his political antagonists. He was not a brilliant or impressive speaker, but a profound lawyer, and a laborious student. He served several terms in the legislature; was a Major General of militia, and died at Jackson, November 11, 1849.
Alexander Buckner, third United States senator from Missouri, came to Cape Girardeau county in 1818, from Kentucky, with his
was murdered in 1826 by French Strother on account of some political diffi- culty with Strother's uncle. Eleazor Block (1817), first Hebrew lawyer, came from Richmond, Virginia. Rufus Pettibone (1818), from Litchfield, Conn .; appointed judge of the Supreme court in 1823; dicd in office at St. Charles, July 81, 1825; his brother, Levi, who came to the country with him, died in 1883 at St. Louis, 103 years old. A. L. Magenis (1818); Francis Carr (1818); B. D. Wright (1819), who removed from St. Louis to Jackson in 1822, and from there to Florida; Frederick White (1819); Abraham Beck (1819), from New York, first settled at St. Charles; died at St. Louis, 1822; Amos Wheeler (1819), from Albany, N. Y., married a daughter of Joseph Charless, Sr .; died thirteen days after his marriage, June 8, 1840; Josiah Spalding (1819), from Connecticut; born 1797; graduate of Yale; died May, 1852; D. H. Conrad (1820); George French Strother (1820), of Culpepper county, Virginia; when he came to St. Louis was appointed Receiver of the Land Office; represented Culpepper district in Congress in 1817; was a prominent man of the St. Louis bar; died Nov. 20, 1840; Francis Carr died, aged 26 years, in St. Louis, Sept. 15, 1821, a brother of W. C. Carr.
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