USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912, Volume II > Part 18
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The local banks had been issuing paper currency without limit, and no sort of control had been exercised over them. The natural result was that they soon became unable to redeem their currency and there was a general suspension of specie payment. Congress passed an act requiring the resumption of specie pay- ments in 1817, which they were totally unable to do, and the act was claimed to be a great hardship, for which, in the minds of the people, the United States Bank was largely responsible.
When the legislature assembled in 1819, acting under the leadership of such men as William Henry Harrison and Charles Hammond, an act was passed en- titled : "An act to levy and collect a tax from all banks, and individuals, and com- panies, and associations of individuals, that may transact banking business in this state without being allowed to do so by the laws thereof." The act recited that the Bank of the United States pursued its operations contrary to the laws of the state, and provided that if after the first day of the following September, the said bank or any other should continue to transact business in the state, it
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should be liable to an annual tax of fifty thousand dollars upon each office of discount and deposit, and further provided for the summary collection of the same by the state auditor, by demand and levy, with authority to go into every room, vault, etc., and to open every chest, etc., in search of what might satisfy the claim. The bank declined to pay the tax or to leave the state, and thereupon, Ralph Osborn, auditor of state, in the following September issued his warrant and levied upon the branch bank at Chillicothe for the sum of one hundred thou- sand dollars, the payment of which being refused, the agents of the auditor took it by force from the vaults of the bank and carried it up to the capital at Colum- bus and delivered it to the state treasurer. These high-handed proceedings led to a great litigation. The bank filed a bill in the United States Circuit Court of Ohio to enjoin the proceedings of the auditor and recover its money. The case was heard in the circuit court, which rendered judgment for the bank and directed the restoration of the one hundred thousand dollars. The case was then carried to the supreme court of the United States, where it was argued before Chief Justice Marshall and a full bench by a great array of counsel. At the head of these, on the part of the state of Ohio, was Charles Hammond, who was as- sociated with and assisted by Nathaniel Wright. The bank was represented by Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Mr. Sergeant of Pennsylvania, and others. The argument of Mr. Hammond was subtle and powerful to a degree. In deference to its force the great chief justice, in deciding the case, reviewed and restated the grounds of the decision of the court in the famous preceding case of Mc- Culloch vs. Maryland. The principal point was whether the United States Bank was subject to taxation by state authorities. Mr. Hammond, in arguing the af- firmative of that question, said it depended upon the nature and character of the institution. "If it stands upon the same foundation with the mint and postoffice, if its business character justly be assimilated to the process and proceedings of the federal courts, we admit without hesitation that it is entitled to the exemption it claims. The state cannot tax the official establishments and operations of the national government. Banking is in its nature a private trade, and is a business in which individuals may at all times engage, unless the municipal law forbids it. Wherever this is not the case, it is competent for individuals to contract to- gether and create capital to be employed in lending money and buying and selling
coins, . promissory notes and bills of exchange. No law is necessary to authorize a contract between individuals for concentrating capital to be thus em- ployed, nor does the business itself depend upon any special laws for its creation or existence. He further argues that the incorporation 'of such a body engaged in the banking business does not change its condition, "but only enables it to manage its own affairs and hold property without the perplexing intricacies-the hazardous and endless necessity of perpetual conveyances for the purposes of transmitting it from hand to hand. It is chiefly for the purpose of clothing bodies of men in these qualities and capacities that corporations were invented and are in use." From these premises he argued that such an institution was necessarily subject to taxation by the state, as any other business conducted by individuals would be. Mr. Hammond further contended that the real defendant of the action was the state of Ohio and not the auditor, against whom the bill
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was filed, and that under the provisions of the eleventh amendment to the con- stitution, no such action could be maintained against the state.
Chief Justice Marshall, in deciding the case, recognized the force of Ham- mond's argument, but pointed out that while the mere business of banking is in its own nature a private business and may be carried on by individuals or com- panies having no political connection with the government, the United States Bank was not such an individual or company ; that it was not created for its own sake or for private purposes, but for the purpose of carrying into effect the powers vested in the government of the United States, and that while it might carry on the business of private banking in connection with its operations as an agent of the government, the two were inseparably connected, and the private banking might be and was a valuable adjunct and assistance in carrying out the operations which were deemed by the government as useful and necessary for the whole people, and that therefore the two parts of its business, private and public, could not be separated, and for that reason it was all necessarily exempt from taxation.
The statement of the foregoing case has been included for the purpose of showing that while the litigation in pioneer times mainly involved small matters and local questions, yet there were occasions when great questions arose, and such occasions always found lawyers quite competent to deal with them.
Charles Hammond was in many respects a remarkable man. During nearly all the time of his practice of the law, he was also connected with a newspaper. The Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette of which he soon became chief editorial writer, and for which he later abandoned his practice at the bar and became fam- ous as a political leader and writer, though he always declined public office. Among other positions which he declined to accept, was that of a justice of the Supreme court of the United States, which was at one time tendered him by Presi- dent J. Q. Adams. He was famous as a leader of the Whig party, and still later as an anti-slavery writer. We have seen that in the beginning of his career he had distinguished himself as an advocate of the extreme view of state rights, a position which he took in common with Harrison and others, who afterwards became famous as leaders of the Whig party, which was not distinguished as an instru- mentality for the promotion of state's rights. Their action in connection with the bank case goes to show to what extremes people may be carried in times of great popular excitement. The intense feeling against the United States Bank at that time made them leaders in what was essentially an act of attempted nullification. At the time of his death, there was probably no more famous editor in the western states than Charles Hammond. As showing his versatility of talent it may also be stated that he has left behind him some very readable verses, sufficient to give countenance to the claim that he was a poet.
In addition to the other duties performed by him, Mr. Hammond acted as re- porter for the Supreme court of Ohio. The first eight volumes of the reports of that court were compiled by him.
From the time of the construction of the courthouse in 1819, and for many years thereafter, the growth of the city and county were very rapid, the popula- tion and wealth of both constantly increasing. The bar grew in proportion. The membership increased to thirty-nine in 1825, and in 1831 was fifty-seven. Among . the distinguished names added to the list during that period are those of Salmon
Vol. II-10
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P. Chase, Vachel Worthington and Timothy Walker, all of whom continued to practice in Cincinnati for many years afterwards, and greatly distinguished them- selves.
Mr. Chase was a man of large and commanding proportions, cool, careful and deliberate in speech and action, of untiring industry and very great ambition. He was the first compiler of the general laws of Ohio, and "Chase's statutes" still continue to be the standard and only compilation of that sort for the period cov- ered by them, namely from the foundation of the state government down to about the year 1840. Mr. Chase took an active part in politics, at first in connection with the democratic party, and was elected governor of Ohio and afterwards to the United States senate. He was one of the earliest of the prominent men of the country to take a decided position antagonistic to slavery, and became known throughout the country as a strong anti-slavery leader.
He was always the friend and defender of the negro fugitives from slavery who found their way to Cincinnati. On the occasion of the removal of Mr. Chase's remains from Washington and their interment in Spring Grove cemetery, the late Governor Hoadly delivered an address in which he says of Mr. Chase : "His legal services were freely bestowed in the protection of every fugitive slave and the defense of his friends. He was a walking arsenal of the law of liberty. What he could not do with the writ of habeas corpus, no man might accomplish. His weapons were ever ready for instant service. They required no burnishing, no loading, and with or without preparation they were always at hand for use. This office he never refused; this duty he never neglected."
When the republican party was founded, he cast in his fortune with it, and so continued until after the Civil war, when he returned to the Democratic party. At the republican national convention in 1860, he was strongly supported for the nomination for the presidency and received the votes of a majority of the Ohio delegation, but was defeated by Abraham Lincoln, who showed his magnanimity and judgment of men by appointing Mr. Chase as secretary of the treasury in his cabinet, an office for which Chase was peculiarly fitted by reason of his long ex- perience with the banking laws of Ohio and the difficulties which had been en- countered in the state in establishing a satisfactory system of banking, but which was finally accomplished. He greatly distinguished himself as secretary of the treasury by providing the necessary funds for the conduct of the Civil war, an enormous undertaking, and the foundation of the system of national banks, the original act for which was drawn by him and still exists, with very little change, and under which all such banks are organized and now operate. Later, in the year 1864, he was appointed by President Lincoln, chief justice of the supreme court of the United States, which position he held until the time of his death, and the duties of which he discharged with great ability and success, but it is well known that he was never quite satisfied with the position and was always ambitious to become president. He received support in the democratic convention of 1868, and although the vote he received was very small, the circumstances were such that it was believed that a large portion of the convention was ready to go to his sup- port in case of a favorable opportunity, which never came. Horatio Seymour of . New York received the nomination, and was subsequently defeated by General Grant.
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One of the cases decided by Mr. Chase as Chief Justice, was that of Hepburn vs. Griswold, in which it was held by him, with the concurrence of a majority of the court, that the legal tender feature of the law authorizing the issue of "green back" currency, was unconstitutional and invalid as to preexisting indebtedness. Mr. Chase was charged with inconsistency in so deciding, because that currency had been issued while he held the office of secretary of the treasury and, it was claimed, upon his initiative. The answer of his friends to this charge was that the issue of that currency was during the Civil war and while the government was grasping at any and all means to raise money for the prosecution of the war, and that if Mr. Chase had assented to its original issue, it was due to the stress of the times and circumstances, and that his decision in the supreme court represented his real opinions on the subject. The judgment in Hepburn vs. Griswold was afterwards reversed by the supreme court and the legal tender clause held to be valid in all respects, a proposition which has not by any means received the unani- mous assent of the bar of the country, and which has been quite as sharply criti- cised as was Chase's original decision.
Another New England man of somewhat the same type, who made his ap- pearance at the Cincinnati bar about the same time as Mr. Chase, was Timothy Walker. He devoted himself and almost his entire life to the practice of the law, not taking any great part in public affairs and holding but a single office for a short time, that of presiding judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He accumu- lated a large practice, and had the profound respect of the whole bar and the people of the city generally as a man of the highest character and finest attain- ments. In the year 1833, in conjunction with some others, he laid the foundation of the Cincinnati Law School, and for a number of years was the sole instructor in it. It was the first institution of its kind in any state west of the Alleghanies, and is now the oldest law school in the country except the Harvard. A little further along we shall have something more to say about this institution. Judge Walker continued on, devoted to the law and its practice, to the last. Among other things, he published a volume entitled "Walker's Introduction to American Law," which had a great circulation and has always been regarded as one of the best elementary works in existence stating the general principles of the law for the benefit of beginners.
Vachel Worthington, born in Kentucky in 1802 and graduated from the Transylvania University in 1822, settled in Cincinnati and began the practice of the law in 1824, and continued in the practice, with some minor interruptions, from that time until his death in 1877. He was in many ways a re- markable man. Clear, profound, incisive and of untiring industry, he was a model lawyer, and few, if any better, have ever practiced in Cincinnati. He was not an eloquent or an especially forcible speaker, but he greatly excelled in clear statement. He could state the facts in a complicated case in chancery so clearly and simply as to cause them to be understood by the least trained intellect. He was famous for the care and skill with which he prepared com- plicated legal documents. He wrote a round, smooth, clerkly hand, so that all his conveyances presented a pleasant appearance to the eye, for, according to the old practice, he nearly always wrote them with his own hand, and is said to have disdained the use of a printed form, as he could without form of any kind
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write out on blank paper the most complicated instrument without blot or erasure. In court his cases were always thoroughly prepared, both as to law and fact. On one occasion he was presenting a somewhat complicated transac- tion to a judge of the court of common pleas, who was also a professor in the law school, and while Mr. Worthington was speaking, many of the students of the school were standing about the room listening to him, and when he had concluded, the judge, for the moment forgetting his surroundings and apparently thinking he was in the law school, said, enthusiastically: "There, young gentle- men, that's the way to present a case to a court,"-and Worthington was as nearly a model in such matters as could be found. He took very little part in politics, but confined himself to the practice of his profession. His name ap- pears in the printed reports of the supreme court of Ohio as early as 1827, and for the last time in 1875. He was attorney for the United States Bank and for the Ohio Life Insurance & Trust Company, during their existence in Cincinnati. Some of the most famous lawyers of the bar of that city were trained in his office under his instruction, among them William S. Groesbeck, Stanley Mat- thews and Samuel S. Cox. Late in life he accepted a position for a term in the state senate, and there, as elsewhere, greatly distinguished himself by the in- dustry and thoroughness with which he attended to his duties. He was the author of an act relating to the City of Cincinnati, which established what has since become a part of the policy of every political sub-division of the state, namely, the act requiring that before the city enter into any contract involving the ex- penditure of money, the money necessary to pay the contract price shall be in the city treasury and set apart for that purpose. It has been called "the pay as you go" plan, and obviously has a great tendency to prevent cities and villages from accumulating indebtedness. This law was originally known as the "Worth- ington Law." During the larger part of his life, Mr. Worthington practiced alone, but at one time he had for a partner one of his former students, Stanley Matthews.
The twenty years preceding the Civil war was a period of great growth and expansion in Cincinnati and the State of Ohio generally. The bar was a par- taker of the general prosperity and increased in numbers and capacity as never before. The adoption of the new constitution in 1851, followed immediately by the passage of the Code of Civil Procedure and the first general codes of law relating to municipal and other corporations, opened a new era in the legal history of the state, and in Cincinnati the importance of these changes was greatly enhanced by the creation of the superior court and the election of the three famous judges who first occupied its bench. When that event occurred, and those judges first took their seats in general term, a body of counsellors and advocates appeared before them quite worthy of such a court. The list is too long to insert here, but it is sufficient to say that, taken as a whole, it constituted a body of lawyers not inferior to any then or since assembled at any local bar in our country.
In the front rank of those who were probably present at the opening of the new court in 1854 stood George Hoadly. His term of office as judge of the old superior court, which had been created some twenty years before and consisted of a single judge, ended with the advent of the new regime, and although he was
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the last official of the old, we may be sure that he heartily welcomed the new court. He was a young man not yet twenty-eight, although he had already served two or three years on the bench, of medium height, spare but not slender, and was notable for his intellectual countenance in which blazed two luminous eyes beneath a large dome-like forehead. His appearance plainly indicated his character, at once energetic and reflective. Of New England origin, he had among his ancestors famous theologians and instructors. In early life his father had removed to Cleveland, and he received his education there at the Western Reserve, now Adelbert College, and afterwards at the Harvard Law School. Coming to Cincinnati, he entered the office of Salmon P. Chase, from which he was admitted to the bar in 1847. After the expiration of his term as judge of the former superior court, he remained at the bar for some five years, two of which he served in the office of the city solicitor. In 1859 he was elected a judge of the superior court, where he served out a full term with honor to himself and satisfaction to the bar and the public. Not many of his opinions have been reported, probably because there was no systematic reporting of the opinions of the superior court at that time. A few of them are to be found in the second volume of Disney's Reports and the legal periodicals of the day. They are marked by clearness, vigor and accuracy of judgment, and where occasion called for it, by a wide research of the authorities, and it is a matter of regret that more of them were not published. At the expiration of his term on the bench, Judge Hoadly resumed the practice of the law at the head of the firm of Hoadly, Jackson & Johnson, in connection with which he continued in active practice for nearly twenty years, during which time his practice, always large, was steadily growing and his reputation expanding. Not many, even of the best lawyers, have anything more than a local reputation. Any one may test this assertion by stopping to think how few of the lawyers of cities outside of his own state are known to him, and if he will exclude those who have become known to him by reason of prominence in politics, it is quite certain that he will find the number to be very small. Judge Hoadly was an exception to the rule. He had a national reputation as a lawyer before he acquired a similar distinction in politics, and he deserved it. Our country has had few better all-around lawyers. At once profound and rapid, a great and continuous student of the law, amazingly industrious and broad-minded, with a ready wit and great facility of expression, he had a breezy quality of manner which compelled attention and pleased the hearer. He was famous for his quickness to take advantage of an opportunity or to avoid an attack. It was said of him that if he got a fall in the trial of a cause, he always managed to alight on his feet. He was equally at home before a jury or a court in banc. He was a wise and sympathetic coun- sellor, and his opinion and assistance out of court were in constant demand by those in control of the largest interests of the city, and in later years they came to him from distant states. He was always a welcome advocate to the supreme court, because he had a clear and forcible way of proceeding at once to the point of a case and stating his views so that they could not be mistaken or forgotten. He had the confidence of all courts before which he appeared, because his sin- cerity in the presentation of a cause was as obvious as his ability. His fairness and generosity to opponents was one of the causes of his universal popularity
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with the members of the bar. During nearly all of the time of his work on the bench and at the bar, he was professor at the Cincinnati Law School, and it has been said that some of his most valuable work was done in that institution. . His manner was so frankly genial, his sympathy so quick, his words so ready, his wit so nimble, and his humor so contagious, that he was a delightful com- panion, and on the rare occasions when he put aside his work and permitted himself to indulge in social recreation, he at once became the center of an inter- ested and admiring group. While Judge Hoadly rarely took an active part in political management, he was always deeply interested in public affairs, and fre- quently spoke out about them in a way that was influential. Generally holding to the principles of the Democratic party, he was a strong opponent of the institu- tion of slavery, and for that reason he was one of those who assisted at the original organization of the Republican party in Ohio. He attended the first national convention of that party in 1856, in part to promote the nomination of his preceptor and life long friend, Salmon P. Chase, but the nomination went to Fremont, a result with which he was a good deal dissatisfied. He voted with the Republican party until about 1872, when he assisted in organizing the movement which led to the nomination of Horace Greely, another miscarriage of well meant endeavor. After that he returned to the Democratic party, with which he con- tinued to act during the remainder of his life. In the year 1883 he was nomi- nated and elected governor of Ohio, and served out his term with such satisfac- tion to his party that he was renominated against his own wishes, but the oppo- site party was in the ascendency that year and the whole ticket was defeated. It was during his term of office as governor that the great riot and burning of the courthouse occurred in this city, and it was due to his promptness and energy ยท that the state militia arrived in Cincinnati in time to suppress the riot while the courthouse was still in flames. In 1887 he removed to New York City, where he immediately took rank with the foremost leaders of the bar, and practiced there with great success for some fifteen years, dying August 26, 1902. Two causes in which Judge Hoadly was engaged may be cited as evidence of his standing at the bar. He represented Mr. Tilden and the Democratic party . before the electoral commission in the great contest which arose out of the presi- dential election of 1876, and he was subsequently appointed counsel for the United States in the cases against the Pacific railroads to enforce the lien of the government upon those roads for. monies loaned in aid of their construction. In the latter case he was eminently successful, as he collected the entire amount due, with interest, amounting to more than sixty millions of dollars. The labor of this great case, with its long history and many details, is said to have been one of the causes of the impairment of health which led to his death. His practice in New York was very successful and lucrative. It is said, however, that his heart was ever in Ohio; and he always greeted any of his old Cincinnati friends with affectionate enthusiasm when he happened to meet them in New York.
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