USA > Ohio > Bench and bar of Ohio; a compendium of history and biography, Vol. II > Part 17
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50
128
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
Lewistown reservoir has never since been seriously menaced. Major Johnston is the oldest native born citizen of Piqua now living. He arrived at the age of manhood about the time the then little village began to try to better its condition, and from that day to the present has been associated with almost every public enterprise that promised to benefit the city. He has the esteem of the profession and respect and admiration of his fellow citizens. He was married in 1837 to Miss Uretta Garnsey, daughter of Chester Garnsey, one of the early citizens of the town. Seven children were born to them, four of whom are living.
HIRAM L. SIBLEY, Marietta. Hiram Luther Sibley was born in Trumbull county, Ohio, May 4, 1836. His father was a minister, and in later life a member of the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The ancestry is traced to John Sibley, who came from England in the Fleet, A.D. 1629, and settled at Salem, Massachusetts. He became a selectman of that town, and member of the general assembly at Boston. On the mother's side the parentage was from Colebrook, Connecticut. The maternal grand- mother and the late Mrs. Joshua R. Giddings were sisters. The grandfather, Luther Simons, was a school teacher, who at times did the work of a " petti- fogger." He was gifted with a remarkable intellect. His brother-in-law, Mr. Giddings, a strong lawyer, once told him he was " the only man he ever feared to meet in a lawsuit." A partly dislocated spine made Mr. Simons a cripple, and he died in what otherwise would have been the prime of his powers. At thirteen Mr. Sibley went to the shoemaker's trade, not to leave it until three years after his majority. During this period he had two terms of six months each in select schools, working nights and mornings to pay board and tuition. April 22, 1858, Mr. Sibley was married to Miss Esther A. Ellis, of Racine, Ohio, by whom he has living three children. The same year he began the study of law, rising for that at 4 A. M., but doing his day's work in the shop. He was elected clerk of the courts for Meigs county in 1860. In 1862 he accepted a lieutenancy in Company B, 116th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, resign- ing his office to enter the Union army. He fell under the command of Major- General R. H. Milroy, who in April, 1863, recommended him for provost marshal of the fifteenth district of Ohio, saying : " I have known Lieutenant Sibley for the last six months, while with his regiment in my command, and have observed that he is an able, energetic, and efficient officer; always prompt and attentive to duty ; a true gentleman of high moral character and excellent business talents and habits." June 15, 1863, in the valley of Vir- ginia, with near half the command to which he belonged, he was captured by the advance of Lee's army, then moving North, and held a prisoner at Rich- mond, Virginia ; Macon and Savannah, Georgia; Charleston and "Camp Sor- ghum," near Columbia, South Carolina. December 10, 1864, he was exchanged, and January 11, 1865, honorably discharged. being too much enfeebled by his imprisonment for military duty. April 14, 1865, Mr. Sibley was admitted to
The Century Publishing & Engraving Co Chicago.
Miran & Sibley
129
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
the Bar at Pomeroy, Ohio. The August following he went to Marietta and served as clerk one year in the United States assessor's office. September, 1866, by request of its senior member, he began practice as one of the law firm of Ewart, Shaw & Sibley. The next year he was nominated for prosecuting attorney, but, with the rest of his ticket, defeated. About that time he formed a partnership with Honorable R. L. Nye. Broken health drove him out of practice for a year, but in 1870 he became one of the firm of Paine & Sibley, at Pomeroy. Just before this he wrote some newspaper articles upon the con- stitutional law of Ohio, respecting religious liberty. Two short extracts are as follows :
" I. What is a 'right of conscience,' in the sense of our Constitution ? We answer. (1.) The right to entertain any opinion, conviction or faith what- ever, in regard to morality or religion, without question or molestation. (2.) The right, also, to act in accordance with the opinion, conviction or faith entertained, so long as the conduct is consistent with an equal right in all oth- ers, and is not palpably destructive of social order.
II. As to the condition of the citizen with reference to these rights we affirm. (1.) That in matters of conscience all persons are equal before the law ; and (2) are entitled to full and adequate protection therein.
III. The power and duty of the State in the premises is. (1.) To extend to every citizen the protection to which he is entitled, in the exercise of his rights of conscience. (2.) Beyond that, to refrain from any interference what- ever, in matters of conscience."
Finally, in answer to a critic, was the following :
"Your fallacy is in confounding every conviction of conscience with a right of conscience. These are not always convertible. Either may exist in the absence of the other. A right of conscience, in legal and constitutional sense, is the right to entertain any opinion whatever in regard to religion or morality, without question, and to act in accordance therewith, so long as the conduct is consistent with an equal right in all others, and not palpably destructive of social order. These rights the State obligates itself in the Con- stitution to protect. Hence, when the conviction of conscience coincides with the rights of conscience, the ægis of the Constitution is thrown around it, but not otherwise. This distinction will dissipate a thousand sophistries, grounded upon a tacit assumption of the necessary and unvarying identity of a convic- tion with a right of conscience."
A little later, by request, Mr. Sibley addressed a Teachers' Institute in Meigs county, on the Nature and True End of Education. We give a para- graph :
" In virtue of a law penetrating to the center of his being, for a man habitually to exert his powers for self alone, is moral debasement, spiritual defilement, and death. Selfishness is a malignant cancer in the best impulscs and tenderest affections of the heart, a fatal blight upon the noblest desires and holiest aspirations of the soul. Like a darkness that can be felt, unless dispelled by the light and power of love, it settles down upon the spirit, enshrouding it from the healthful, life-giving influences of goodness, and sliut- ting up the soul to die from moral and spiritual inanition. Under this general law of his Constitution, therefore, man is forbidden the use of the power of education of self alone. Hence, considered with exclusive reference to its sub- ject, the true end of culture reaches beyond himself, and shrivelling moral and
130
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
spiritual death confront him as the divinely ordained penalty for clipping the wings of education until its powers and ends are cooped in the narrow limits of his own soul. * * * Wherever Christian thought has penetrated, and the best results of philosophical inquiry are known, the oneness of our race in nature and general capability is recognized and believed. Out of the notion of com- mon endowment, and the idea of unity in origin, arises the conception of the brotherhood and social nature of man, with all their sequences of mutual obli- gations and duties, in virtue of which, if we live in obedience to the law of our being, we necessarily become reciprocating co-workers for the common good. Alike, therefore, upon the principles of philosophy and Christianity, every one stands in correlated obligation with all his fellows to use his various abilities and powers for others as well as himself, so long as he remains a subject of social relations. * *
* The educated man, as a member of society, by virtue of his moral Constitution, is imperatively bound to use his culture for the elevation of his kind. He is to raise up those bowed down in ignorance, to establish the weak in knowledge, to open the eyes of the blind to truth, to aid in breaking the power and dominion of passion, and keep in the work of dispelling the thick clouds of prejudice that every where overshadow the uned- ucated mind. In brief, he is to consecrate his culture to the doing of good, and exalt it thereby into an instrumentality of human progress. Here the true social and individual ends of education meet as brethren to dwell together in unity."
In a Decoration day address at Marietta, Ohio, in 1877, Mr. Sibley maintained that " rectitude is an inseparable element of true greatness." By force of " the laws of our moral being," he said, "we come to assign the honors of history, not merely to great abilities or wondrous success in what men undertake, but more to the royal qualities found in intrepid uprightness of character-the genius for being right as well as able and successful in the affairs of life." He concluded thus: "It is right here, however, in the application of the principle we have endeavored to present and illustrate, that we touch upon the real grounds of distinction in the honors which history will confer upon the brave men who fell on opposing sides in this terrible struggle. They were all Americans. Speaking in general terms, both armies were equally heroic in the field. Upon the whole, perhaps their leaders will not be found to differ largely in military genius and skill. Yet the proud record of those who fought for the American Union and human liberty will shine in ever increasing brightness and glory when compared with that of our equally gallant countrymen behind whose line of battle were the flag of disunion and the clanking chains of slavery. Those who followed the Nation's ' banner of beauty and glory ' were allied by their cause to the most exalted aspirations and hopes of the future, and consequently were fighting a battle for the elevation and progress of the race. Government by the people, for the people, was inwrapped with their success. On the other side was the principle of civil disintegration, the fact of human bondage-iron links which bound our brave but erring fellow-citizens to the dead body of a barbaric past. In truth, the Lost Cause was lost before its fight with arms began. The thing itself-disruption and slavery-was an anachronism. Judged by the moral sense of mankind, as well as the law of the land, the attempt to sustain it by war was a crime. The spirit of the age, the conclusions of the best political thought, and the high demands of the immediate future were all in league against this cause. It received no sympathy, and was entitled to none, from the toiling millions of civilization, but only the deceptive, baleful friendship of tottering despots, or aristocracies whose very foundations were crumbling under pressure of the great ideas of popular government. Hence, though we saw it not, if faithful to our duty, the success of this cause was from the begin-
131
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
ning impossible. No human genius or bravery could save it. And for the same reasons the heroism of those who fell, its devoted victims in the carnage of battle, cannot lift them to the position in history forever to be occupied by the soldiers of 'Liberty and Union,' who in the mighty conflict 'perished for the Right.'"
At its Commencement, in 1878, Marietta College gave him the honorary degree of Master of Arts. In the presidential canvass of 1880, at Pomeroy, Mr. Sibley delivered a speech, published by request of those hearing it, on State Rights. After showing that these doctrines, or "more properly State supremacy, as against the power and authority of the National government under the Constitution," had " been in contest ever since-that instrument was before the people for ratification," he said :
" But it is to the administration of Washington that the country is most deeply indebted for the assertion and practical establishment of the powers and authority of the general government upon the National principles embodied in the Constitution. The laws enacted by Congress during that period provided for a National judiciary invested with the power of final authoritative decision, in all cases at law or in equity, arising under the Con- stitution itself, the laws of Congress and treaties made by the Nation. They also armed the President with the authority and means of performing his sworn duty to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,' and of taking 'care that the laws be faithfully executed.' Moreover, as a matter of wise policy, Washington, against the bitter opposition of the State Rights school of his time, made the National Constitution and laws supreme in fact as they were in legal theory, by crushing, with military force, in 1794, armed resist- ance to them in what is familiarly known as the Whiskey Insurrection of Western Pennsylvania. Before his retirement from the Presidency, there- fore, the true theory of the Constitution and of National power had become essentially settled, not only in the letter of the law, but in the vastly higher efficiency of its actual enforcement by the combined civil and military power of the people acting in National capacity. The result was a second and most signal defeat of the advocates of State Rights or State supremacy, the first having been in the adoption of the Constitution by the people. At a later period the same principles respecting the National authority and power were emphatically asserted and acted upon by the Supreme Court of the United States, through the great Chief Justices Jay and Marshall; were sanctioned and carried into execution with patriotie vigor by the prompt, decisive action of Jackson in his conflict with State rights as nullification, and were made clear and intelligible, and thus immensely strengthened in the popular mind through the masterly expositions of Webster. Thus vitalized, they from time to time overcame the 'political heresy ' of State supremacy even when sup- ported by the name and fame of Jefferson, the acute and subtle argument of Calhoun, the influence of a great party organization, and finally by an armed rebellion of unprecedented magnitude and power."
While in practice his firm was engaged in a number of cases whieli went to the Supreme Court. In all but one Mr. Sibley framed the arguments and wrote the briefs, and in that he put in a brief of his own. Most of the cases were won. He also wrote an extended and able argument in a case in the United States Distriet and Circuit Courts, involving the question of whether or not an assignee in bankruptey takes title to assets subject to equitable liens
132
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
good between a creditor and the bankrupt. . The decision was against him, but later the Supreme Court of the United States held the doctrine for which he contended in a precisely similar case, putting its decision on the ground also asserted in his brief. (Stewart v. Platt, 101 U. S., 731.) In 1882 Mr. Sibley was elected Common Pleas judge, in 'the Seventh District, and re-elected in 1887 and 1892. He was each time nominated by acclamation, and for his third term elected without opposition. During more than twelve years on the Bench he has been reversed but twice by the Supreme Court. A number of his decisions, however, have been affirmed by that body. Judge Sibley first of all the Bench of Ohio, announced the law, under the Code, as to the limita- tion of suits to foreclose mortgages. For more than a generation the uniform practice had been to apply the rule of twenty-one years. Upon careful investi- gation of the whole subject he set this aside and held that such actions were barred in fifteen years. His opinion in the Ohio Law Journal (v. 23, 246) is one of the most thorough and able examinations of the question to be found in the reports of the State. The Circuit Court overruled him. But the case was taken up and the Supreme Court reversed the Circuit ruling, holding the law to be as Judge Sibley had declared it. (31 Ohio L. J., 290.) Another case tried by him was taken to the Circuit Court by appeal. On the same facts he in effect was reversed. The case turned upon the application of the statute of limitations where part of a public road had been fenced in. It was taken to the Supreme Court. The decision of the Circuit Bench was overruled, and the same judgment as that by Judge Sibley in the Common Pleas entered. (33 Ohio L. J., 220.) Two other important cases wherein he was affirmed throughout, and the doctrine of which had not before been declared in any reported Ohio decision, are Brundred vs. Rice, 49 O. S. 640, and Pride vs. Andrew, 32 Ohio L. J. 248. On request of members of the Bar, several other of his opinions have been reported. In one of them he was called on to define an action, right, cause, and the place of an action. This he did with such clearness and force that a judge of the Supreme Court wrote him in these words : "The able manner in which you have applied elementary principles, and your analytical distinction of an action, right of action, and cause of action will make the opinion of permanent value to the profession." The syllabus is as follows : " An action is a judicial proceeding for the preven- tion or redress of acts in violation of legal duty or right, the threat of which in some cases, and the doing of in all, is in law a wrong. A right of action is the right which, upon the commission of a wrong ipso facto arises from the law of remedy, to the injured party, of prevention or redress, by suit, against the wrong doer. A cause of action, in personam, is the wrong which, under the remedial law, gives to the party injured a right of action. Generally, the locus of a cause of action is the place where the wrong which con- stitutes it is done." In 1896 Mr. Sibley was nominated and elected circuit judge for the Fourth Circuit of Ohio, and began his duties as such in February, 1897. To accept this added honor he was compelled to resign from the Common Pleas Bench, which, however, he occupied longer than any other
133
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
judge in the district which elected him had ever done. Since 1856 Mr. Sibley has been a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1884 he was a lay delegate to the general conference. That body, in 1888, provided for a con- stitutional commission of three bishops, seven ministers and seven laymen. Of the latter, he was one. In 1896 another commission was authorized, on which he has been appointed. The judge won recognition as an able and useful member of both bodies. To the second Ecumenical Methodist Conference, held at Washington, D. C., in October, 1891, he was appointed a delegate and given a place on the program. He delivered an address upon "Marriage and Divorce Laws," which is published in the report of its proceedings. This attracted much attention, both on account of the principles maintained and the ability shown in their advocacy. He was at once engaged to write an article for the Methodist Review, on "The Grounds of Divorce." In this, after showing that Paul makes desertion a cause, he says :
"Christ, then, named one ground, St. Paul another, wholly different. Consequently neither stated the moral law of divorce. Each, however, gave a case within, and which illustrates it. The law itself, evidently, must be broad enough to cover.both cases, in which event it may, and as shown, does include others. Thence follows that it is not embodied in what is said on the subject by Paul and Christ. Hence the Scriptures nowhere declare this law. Therefore it is to be deduced from the nature, right to, and obligations of the marriage union, the two cases given justifying its severance, in connection with the consequences of these or like misdeeds, to a faithful mate, if divorce were denied. I state it thus: Adultery, desertion, and other acts which, like the first, destroy the sexual purity of marriage, or like the second, operate to deny to an innocent partner and to society the substantial benefits of, and so what is essential in the right to marriage, if its bonds be held indissoluble, are in morals, as on sociological grounds, valid causes for annulling it. The gist of this obviously is in the principle, resting equally upon reason and Scripture, that the right to marriage, in what it implies, becomes paramount to the rule relating to its permanence, in cases of wrong to an innocent partner, whereby a primal law of the relation is abnegated, and one or more of the fundamental objects of the union is defeated. This view of the subject makes the great ends of marriage, moral and social, more important than its naked bond, as manifestly they are. It looks on the union, also, in its real character of a means designed to work noble results for those within it, and not a chain to fetter the good after the bad break and repudiate it. Moreover, it leaves to the innocent escape from propagation with' the moral rot of adultery, or kindred vices, and from celibacy forced upon them otherwise, by the wicked- ness of desertion, or like crimes. Finally, we profoundly believe it accords perfectly with the Scriptures, so read as to give the life of their teaching on the whole law of marriage."
For a decade the judge has been writing upon questions of church law. In 1894 he published a small volume on " The Organic Law of the Methodist Episcopal Church," which has been highly commended in critical notices. At its commencement in 1895, Claflin University, of Orangeburg, South Carolina, conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. This, like the earlier one from Marietta College, came without solicitation on his part, or so much as a hint of it, until done. In the Methodist Review for July, 1895.
134
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
· the judge published an able article entitled " A Doctrine of Civil Liberty." He analyzed the conception of government and found its essential elements. Only his final summary can be given here.
"Our discussion," he says, " has conducted to the conclusion that a sound doctrine of civil liberty may briefly be stated in three general propositions : 1. The true source of governing power is the properly expressed will of the men of a nation. 2. The relative rights of the subjects of government are determined by the rule of equality before the law. 3. Government is limited in its power to such action as may be necessary to preserve social order, and to affairs of a public nature which it can better manage than could private per- sons. The first gives to government its popular character and presents the true antithesis to monarchic, oligarchic, and aristocratic systems. The second prevents the rule of the governing class from degenerating into tyranny, and so conserves justice, the great end of government. The third adjusts the balance between the freedom of the individual, as such, and the control over him, as an integral part of the social organism, which the governing body may exercise."
The judge is a great lover of music, especially that of the violin. He wrote a lecture on this instrument, which has been delivered at Mount Lake Park, Maryland ; De Funiak Springs, Florida ; Chautauqua, New York, and else- where. Critics declare it to be a very finished production, of great interest to those who care for the king of instruments. He also recently has lectured on " How Civil Laws Come to Be," and is often called upon for speeches and addresses. His intellectual tastes and sympathies are broad and varied. Theology, history, philosophy, sociology, political economy, and particularly what relates to improving the condition and opportunities of the laboring classes excite his interest and attention. His opinions accord with those of. Professor Ely, and others of the new school of economic thinkers, with respect to "socializing" or putting into government ownership "natural monopolies." He is a Knight Templar and belongs to the G. A. R. and Loyal Legion. A Republican in politics, his personal qualities and demeanor on the Bench are such that many of his warmest friends and supporters are Demo- crats. He belongs to the progressive party rather than the conservative, whether in church or State. Yet he does not break with the old until the superior worth of the new is clearly seen. Working with the exhaustion of a long "prison life " upon him and struggling more for knowledge than wealth, his means are limited. But his library, private and professional, is one of the best in the city where he lives.
WILLIAM BUTLER LOOMIS, Marietta. The same energy and determina- tion to succeed that made the name of Loomis prominent in the industrial development of Connecticut for two hundred years, placed the subject of our sketch high up in his chosen profession at the Bar of Ohio. It is not ease, but effort; not luck, but labor, that brings success in the profession of law are maxims that Judge Loomis realized and acted on early in his career. His ancestors came from Essex in England and settled in Connecticut in 1638.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.