History of Ashtabula County, Ohio, Part 30

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.)
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Philadelphia : Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 458

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HISTORY OF ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO.

himself forward. At nineteen he was solicited to teach school. He undertook it. His was a mind to profit more than those of his scholars by his efforts to instruct them, even when most successful in that. This season of teaching was his own best time of pupilage.

This self-communing mind and soul, nursed in forest solitude, reared in familiar intercourse with nature, fertile in expedients, trained by intercourse with people who showed him all their native qualities without restraint and thus helped to mature, early became familiar with the whisperings of young ambition, and dreamed of position and influence among his fellows. Such success attended his efforts that he was enabled to undertake the study of law at twenty-three, which he did in the office of the late Elisha Whittlesey, at Canfield, Ohio, from which so many distinguished lawyers graduated, and who was hituself worthy of a memoir. One would like to know what books he read at that day. Plowden, Fearne, Bacon's Abridgement, Powel's works, Buller's Nisi Prius were doubtless among them. Whatever they were. one knows he mastered them. Ile was eminently fitted by nature for the study of the counmnou law, and at the end of the two years' reading he was an inchoute lawyer. He was admitted to the bar in 1821. and commenced practice at the small town of Jefferson, the shire town of Aslıtabula County.

Les- numerous in proportion to the whole number of people, the lawyers of that time occupied a higher position in popular estimation than at the present, not so much by reason of any individual superiority or greater learning. In this last re- spect they were probably not the equals of the same class of to-day. Nor is this the place to discuss the causes of the difference in the consideration accorded to the lawyers of the two periods. It is doubtless due to the causes which have wrought general changes in the tone and spirit of social life in this country in the past fifty years. No calling among a free people so well fits a man for leadership of his fellows as the bar, to which is mainly due the preponderance of the men of that profession in public life ; and usually there is nothing so fatal to continuous success at the bar as any considerable withdrawal from it for political employment or a position on the bench. With us, eminence as a lawyer is not attainable without fair ability as an advocate. Fortunately, most men, American born, can acquire reasonable fluency in speech. No people, ancient or modern, surpass us in this respect. Among the endowments essential to the qualification of an advocate is the capacity to see and feel intensely one and his side of a case,-the reverse of the judicial. It is probable that a country practice, on the whole, presents a better school for the formation of that many-sideduess so necessary to a popular leader than that of a large city. He deals with a wider range of cases, sees and mingles with a greater variety of men. In cities there occurs among lawyers that usual division of labor which tends to specialties, so fatal to the production of fitness for leadership. A residence in a small town has its disadvantages, hardly in existence at the time of which I write, in the west. While a man can much easier acquire a reputation in a village, he soon reaches the limit of what it can do for him in this respect. It is only a great city that can make his name widely renowued.

In 1-21, the period of Mr. Giddings' appearance in the courts, the region of his practice was still sparsely populated, the courts sat in log structures, the cases few and fees small. There was this compensation : nothing was then so attractive to the people as a lawsuit, and no point could equal in interest the county-scat during court week, and no men were so famous as the ready, fluent lawyers. The court of common pleas had a wide jurisdiction, composed of four members elected by the legislature, a presiding judge, usually the most eminent lawyer of the circuit, and three associates, laymen, of the county where it sat. The circuit was composed of five or six counties, iu which this court was held three times each year. The supreme court was composed of four judges, which was also a circuit court with a jury, and sat in each couuty once each year. It carly begau to reserve cases to be heard by the four judges in banc,-the origin of the fixed sessions of that court.

In the early of his student days Mr. Giddings was married to Laura Waters. All marriages of the young were pure love-matches then. Imprudeut for any other but this, any man is safe with such a girl as Laura Waters. A Yankee girl, who cared for herself since fourteen, who kept school, and carned a flock of sheep, a sale of which purchased the beginning of the young lawyer's library,- "orthodox law sheep." Pretty, piquant, witty, devoted. full of resources, the happy mother of several children, whose care mainly devolved ou her in the absence of the lawyer and congressman. What a delicious picture of family home life, sketched by the hand of the youngest of that favored band,* lies under my eye, tempting me to linger and transcribe ! What neighbors! what friends ! so loved and blessed the parents were. And when the husband passed suddenly away, spite of the love of the surviving children, the wife pined. drooped. and died within a few months.

With the first collection of the Ohio statutes, known as " the sheepskin code," and such other books as he could command, such clients and cases as came, the young lawyer proenred a horse and portmanteau, joined his few professional brethren, and started with the presiding judge on the common pleas circuit through mud and forest, legal lanee in rest, stopping at log taverns, and settling grave cases in log temples of justice. Those were the days of free manners, free lives, and practical jokes ; though the Grand River presbytery expressed their dis- approbation of gathering sap on Sunday. The commanding figure,-six feet two in moccasins,-massive head, laughing gray eyes, and frank manners of the young lawyer, with a reputation of great physical strength, agility, and courage, made him a favorite with the primitive people, who flocked from all parts of the coun- try and crowded the court-rooms to hear and see the lawyers, and to treasure up and repeat their sayings, and tell absurd stories of them to their less fortunate neighbors at home. Those were not the days of long trials nor of great speeches. Court began at eight A.M. and sat till ten P.M. The young lawyer soon became noted for the thoroughness with which he studied his case itself, the tact with which he brought out his evidence, and shrewdness in dealing with the witnesses on the other side. Bland and wary, an inflexible will, a passionate earnestness, lay, seemingly passive, under a suavity of manner not easily disturbed. With his in- dustry, application, and power of physical and mental endurance, he rapidly grew -for good lawyers grow rather than are made-to be an accomplished lawyer of his day, and his name was mentioned at points out of his circuit with admiration and respect. His strength was in the care and thoroughness of his preparation, his tact and skill in conducting the trial of his case so that the final argumneut was really a summing up, a condensed statement, of the points already brought out, in a forcible and happy arrangement. His knowledge of the law in the range of the cases of his time was thorough, his method of presentation to the court clear and logical. He had sowie difficulties to overcome in his addresses to juries, but be- came a persuasive, ingenious advocate, knowing exactly the quality and calibre of his men and the reasons and motives that would control them. At times, under the pressure of important interests, in the stir and heat of powerful emotions, he exhibited some of the best qualities of the advocate. He early secured and retained the respect and confidence of the judges before whom he appeared, and came to be intrusted with a large number of cases, some of which had a long-con- t ued celebrity. There was the famous malpractice case of Williams vs. Hawley. A poor woman, thrown from a horse, broke the boues of her leg just above the aukle. Dr. Hawley, the leading physician of that region, in reducing it, removed a sec- tion of the smaller bone. Giddings, quite young then, brought the suit. All the doctors were against him. He won a verdict. The defendant appealed to the supreme court, where he had a second trial. This resulted as before. The court set aside the verdict, and changed the venue to Trumbull county. The case was prepared anew. The famous surgeons of New York and Philadelphia gave de- positions. The plaintiff's counsel spent months and hundreds of dollars of his own mouey. The celebrated John C. Wright was secured from Cincinnati for the defense. The case was tried for the third time, with a third verdict-heavy. for that day-for the plaintiff, none of which, as was said, went to compensate or reimburse her counsel. This case made his name known throughout the State. Then there was the case of Ohio vs. Barns, for murder, tried in Geauga county. A beautiful girl, a young thing only fifteen, was met in the Kirtland woods, out- raged, and murdered,-one of those tragie things that cling to the hearts of folk, and live forever in legend. Barns was a peddler, and his wagon was seen stand- ing in the vicinage at the time when it must have occurred. Mr. Giddings eon- ducted the defense. The able prosecutor was aided by Sherlock J. Andrews, one of the best advocates of the west. Barns was acquitted through the remarkable efforts of his leading eouusel. This must have been in 1831, and the survivors still believe Barns was guilty. This mystery, like that of the Sarah Cornell case, was never cleared, but facts came to light loug after tendiug to show that Barns was inno- cent,-a confession by a convict in the penitentiary. There is a story that Gid- dings' first thought of the law was to recover the farm lost by his father at the centre of Wayne, where the first cabin was built. However this was, he cer- tainly brought a suit on the ground of adverse possession mainly, which he main- tained for years, but ultimately failed in.

Such was the consideration in which Mr. Giddings was held that, at the end of ten years after he came to the bar, few cases of importance within the region of his practice arose in which he was not engaged.

In 1831 he formed a partnership with Benj. F. Wade, then a rapidly rising man. The firm soon commanded one side of every case in their immediate neighborhood, and both were often called away to the trial of ituportant cases at points remote. This was at the subsidence of traveling the circuit. Most of the counties had a resident bar of able lawyers, and the business of Giddings and Wade was confined to Ashtabula, Trumbull, and Geauga.

In 1826 Mr. Giddings was elected to the house of representatives of the Ohio

- Mrs. G. W. Julian.

HISTORY OF ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO.

legislature. It is safe to say that this was donc by the friends of Henry Clay, of whom he was then a personal and political admirer. Hc at once took a high position in the house, to which he declined a re-election the next year. In 1828 he was a candidate for the State senate, and was defeated by Samuel Wheeler, one of his rivals at the bar. This was the only time he ever failed before the people.

Elisha Whittlesey, who represented the same people continuously from 1823 to 1839, resigned his seat during the Twenty-fifth congress. Mr. Giddings was nominated over his competitor, the late Governor Seabury Ford, by the district Whig convention, and elected for the residue of the Twenty-fifth and the Twenty- sixth congresses, and sat in the house, without interruption, till the end of the Thirty-fifth. Before taking his seat he dissolved his connection with Mr. Wade, and his career as a lawyer was substantially closed with his entrance upon his new duties, for which his previous life had been but a preparation.

It is scarcely probable that he had forecast his career in the field to which he was now called-a career, beginning and ending in the house of representatives, as remarkable as that of any American statesman in that body, and fraught with as great and lasting results to his country and to mankind as has thus far attended the services of any man as a representative of the people. To a just appreciation of his labors in congress, and a proper estimate of him as a man, a representative, a patriot, and a philanthropist, a brief résumé of the course and case of slavery in the national councils and administration, and the state of popular opinion when he entered the house, will be necessary. One may then estimate the attitude and resources of the enemy, whose shield he at once struck with the point of his lance, and thus defied to mortal combat.

At the organization of the government under the constitution nobody attempted to justify, and few excused, the existence of slavery. The majority of slave- owners regarded it as an evil, hung their heads, and remained silent when it was named. All viewed it as temporary. It found no name and no certain abiding-' place in the constitution, and no one dreamed of its vitality or power of conquest. It secured three concessions in that instrument : Congress should not prohibit the enforced immigration of persons from Africa till 1808; the States were to return fugitive persons owing service ; and, for the purposes of representation in con- gress, three-fifths of these African immigrants were to be counted. The States enacted laws for the return of southern absconding debtors. It was not satisfac- tory, and seventeen years after the great declaration of rights, and less than four after the organization of the government under the constitution, without a shadow of warrant from that instrument, the first fugitive slave act was passed. This was the first departure, followed by an ever-widening deviation.

Before that time the Quakers had emancipated their slaves, and in North Carolina the State seized and sold them again. Slaves had fled from Georgia to the Creeks, and when, to save a war, they promised to return them, the slaves fled to Florida. In 1800 the District of Columbia, already ceded to the United States, was, by act of congress, kept under the slave code. In 1803 the Indiana Territory, since the State of Indiana, asked for a suspension of the order of 1787, which was refused. The same year Louisiana was purehased,-a new slave empire. In 1804 we fought African Tripoli and Tunis to redeem white slaves, and im- ported black ones from the same continent to New Orleans and Charleston. In 1805, a proposition that all children born at the national eapital should be frec, was rejected. In 1806 we broke off commercial relations with Saint Domingo bceause slaves there were in arms for their freedom. In 1808 we prohibited the foreign slave-trade, made it piracy, and cherished the coastwise and interstate traffic in the same commodity, and so protected the Ameriean manufacturer of the artiele. In 1810 and 1811, Georgia raised an army and invaded Florida, to recapture persons owing service. The negroes and Indians combined and drove them baek, and Georgia elamored for Florida. Though we were at peace with Spain, congress sat in secret session, and General Mathews, of Georgia, with an armed force, took possession of Amelia island, on the eastern coast, which became a rendezvous of African slaves and South American pirates. Spain complained, and our government disclaimed.

Men began to find slavery a good thing, and the traffie in slaves at the capital became such an abomination that, in 1816, John Randolph of Roanoke pro- nounced a philippic against it in the house of representatives. With 1818 came the first Seminole war for the capture of runaway slaves. The negroes and In- dians took refuge in Fort Niehols, built by the English during the War of 1812, a depot of their Indian ageney. Hot shot were fired into the magazine, and ncarly three hundred men, women, and children destroyed by the explosion. Of the sur- vivors, two or three were delivered to our Indian allies for torture,-a costly amusement at the price of negroes. In the progress of this war General Jack- son fought two bloody battles, and retired from the country with small profits and great loss. 1820 saw the Missouri compromise, followed by more slave States. The only gain to the north was the addition of a new slang word to current lan-

guage,-" Dough-face,"-contributed by Mr. Randolph. In 1821, Florida was purchased, and a question arose as to what should be done with the Maroons, as the escaped slaves, their wives and children, were called; and notwithstanding they were to be protected under the terms of the treaty with Spain, a long and interminable war was entered upon to restore such as were not killed, to the arms of bereaved masters.

In 1826 occurred a great discussion of slavery in congress, on the proposition to send commissioners to the new South American republics. The south feared that slavery might suffer in Cuba and Porto Rico. In 1837 the long-pending controversy with Great Britain about the slaves deported by her ships at the end of the War of 1812 was terminated by the award of the Emperor of Russia, who decided that England should pay us one million two hundred thousand dollars." The Creek nation had long been a land of refuge for persons owing service to white men in Georgia; and that State induced the general government to retain from money due the Indians, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. After pay- ing all claimants there remained one hundred and forty-one thousand dollars of this fund. It was an old transaction, but ncar the close of General Jackson's administration this was paid to the Georgians to compensate for the children the slave-niothers would have bornc had they remained with their masters,-which Mr. Giddings told them of one day.

John Quincy Adams took his seat in the house December, 1831,-a sad day for " the Peculiar." Soon after he presented fifteen petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and said that whatever might be his views of slavery, he was not in favor of abolishing it in the District. It is believed that this continued to be his view, for which he seems never to have given a satisfac- tory reason. Soon after followed the contest between South Carolina and the United States,-Hayne and Webster, concluded by Mr. Clay's compromise- another surrender to slavery.

The Seminoles were ordered to remove to lands assigned them in the Creek coun- try, west. They knew the Creeks would seize their blacks as slaves, and refused. They prepared for war. Major Dade, in moving from Fort Brook to Fort King with his command through the forest, guided by " Louis," a slave, was ambushed by the Maroons and every man killed but two, and the new war was opened. In its progress of six years the army captured some five hundred escaped negrocs, at a cost of eighty thousand dollars each. In 1836, Thomas Morris, senator from Ohio, presented petitions for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade at the capital. Mr. Buchanan denounced this as morally wrong. The constitution had - in the clearest manner recognized the right of property in slaves. The petitions were received as similar petitions werc in the house. On debate in that body, however, on motion of Pickens, of South Carolina, it was moved that all such

memorials should be laid on the table without debate. Mr. Calhoun brought for- ward his measure to prevent the circulation of incendiary matter in the mails, which only failed through a nullification element incorporated in it. Mobs in the south executed the contemplated law on village postmasters, and their legislatures called on the legislaturcs of the free States to prohibit sending incendiary matter across the southern border. Mainc promptly responded by resolutions, and her Senator Ruggles boasted truly that in his State a statute was unnecessary, as there was not an Abolitionist in Maine. Arkansas was admitted with a constitution prohibiting the abolition of slavery.

Notwithstanding the Piekens resolution, Mr. Adams plied the house with abo- lition memorials with much assiduity, and while so engaged, on the 3d of February, 1837, he asked a question. Hc had, he said, a petition from twenty-two persons ealling themselves slaves, and asked if that was within the Piekens resolution. He coolly sent it up for inspection. The house was aghast. The speaker, spceeh- less for a moment, finally said the ease was too extraordinary for him to deal with. Members, supposing that Mr. Adams had undertaken to present a petition from slaves, as he undoubtedly would if asked,-were greatly exeited. Hayne, of Geor- gia, could only fecbly cxpress his astonishment. Lewis, of Alabama, ealled on the members of the slave States to punish Mr. Adams. Alford, of Georgia, hoped the petition would be committed to the flaines (referred to fire). Thompson, of South Carolina, demanded that Mr. Adams be eensured, and though a Whig, said Mr. Adams should be indieted for stirring up insurrection in the District of Columbia. Frank Granger, of New York, expressed his surprise. Lewis moved a resolution deelaring that, for presenting a petition from slaves for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, Mr. Adams had committed an outrage on the Union, and invited the slaves of the south to insurrection. Mr. Adams arose and sug- gested to Mr. Lewis to amend his resolution. "The petition does not pray for the abolition of slavery. It prays that it may not be abolished in this district." Mann, of New York, expressed his astonishment. Thompson rebuked Mr. A. for his levity, amended his resolution so as to charge him with contempt of the house in offering a petition from slaves, thereby creating the impression that it was for the abolition of slavery, enabling the house to deceive itself, and that he be cen-

HISTORY OF ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO.

sured. Three days were spent in debating this enormity, when Mr. Cambreling, of New York, quietly told the house the whole thing was a hoax, better understood by Mr. Adams than by his enemies. Finally Mr. Adams took the floor, and replied with great power in a speech of mingled argument, sarcasm, and ridicule. Speaking of his alleged attempt to create an impression, he said his great erime was " giving color to an idea." The resolutions were rejected by an overwhelm- ing majority.

Meantime, Mexico abolished slavery. Texas would not submit, and revolted. Our army was sent across the border to defend against Indians, as the President told the Mexican minister, who thereupon called for his passports and left the country. Our coast slave-ships passing Florida were sometimes blown out to sea and wrecked with their cargoes on British islands, and the slaves liberated. Mr. Calhoun induced congress by resolutions to attempt to inject into the laws of nations that slaves were property, and must remain such. We demanded com- pensation for the loss, which Great Britain haughtily refused.

General Jackson passed from the presidency, and Mr. Van Buren succeeded him. With him eate the Twenty-fifth congress, and there arose a protracted debate as to the best means of soothing the north, now restive under the aggressions of slavery. There was already the nebulous matter of opposition through the free States, which might evudense into sentiment and inspire action. To say nothing of the earlier efforts, the American Anti-Slavery society was formed at Philadel- phia in 1833, and was busy collecting and distributing faets and "incendiary matter." The Lane Theological seminary at Cincinnati had suppressed the dis- cussion of slavery, and Theo. Weld seeeded and led the insurrectionary students to Oberlin. He had also with matchless eloquence fired the northern conscience till he lost his voice in 1836, and was now in the employment of the anti-slavery society, with his pen. The Quaker, Lunday, had traveled, writteu, lectured, and converted muany. He and Garrison established The Genius, at Baltimore, in 1-29, and openly advocated emancipation. It denounced the coastwise slave- trade as piracy, and Garrison was convicted of " malignant libel" and committed to prison in 1831, when his fine and costs were paid by Arthur Tappan, and he was uow publishing The Liberator. An anti-slavery convention at Clinton hall, New York, was broken up by a mob, October, 1833, and ten thousand dollars offered for Arthur Tappan. Another at Chatham street chapel, July 4, 1834, and an attempt to speak drowned with eries of treason. Mr. Tappan's house was sacked, the furniture piled up and burned in the street. Churches were broken into, and school-houses for colored children demolished. In August, 1834, a pro-slavery wob held a three-days' carnival in Philadelphia. and several colored people were put to death. In Worcester, Massachusetts, an anti-slavery lecturer was mobbed, as were several on the Western Reserve. In August, 1835, an academy was torn down in Concord, New Hampshire, because it admitted colored boys. Men were mobbed in Connecticut, in Boston, Utiea. Cincinnati, and various other places, of which the above are instances. Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered, November 8, 1836, because he would not abandou the publication of his paper in Illinois, after it had been many times mobbed and his press twice destroyed. It is thus seen that the rebellion against slave dominion was in its acute stage in the north. It might become chronic.

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History of Ashtabula County, Ohio, Part 30

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.) Publication date: 1878 Publisher: Philadelphia : Williams brothers Number of Pages: 458

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.)
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Philadelphia : Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 458