Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/92

Rh side by side, carried muskets under General John Stark at Bennington.

The education of the subject of this sketch was principally obtained at Springfield (Ohio) Academy, and at Granville College, now Denison College. There he excelled as a debater. He read law with General Samson Mason and W. A. Rogers, prominent at the Bar of Springfield; but being young and preferring out-door occupation, he found employment in civil engineering in the construction of the Little Miami railroad. Afterwards, he went to Pontotac, Mississippi, and there attempted, but soon abandoned, farming; was there admitted to the Bar, and, entering politics, was an unsuccessful candidate for the legislature, on the "bond-paying" Democratic ticket. The climate not agreeing with the young lawyer, he came to Chicago. He there began practice in 1844, and also edited the " Democratic Advocate," and was city attorney. In 1846 he married, and settled in Horicon, Dodge County, Wisconsin, which place, and the beautiful lake on which it is situated, he named, and there he founded a home and erected mills.

In 1847, he was elected a member of the second constitutional convention. He took an active and prominent part; and several important features of the constitution that have since proved statutory safeguards that were strongly advocated by him. The "homestead exemption clause" was his special hobby, so to speak. He was a powerful advocate of the restriction upon state indebtedness, and the provision against state internal improvements, and the clauses preventing the division of counties by the legislature without local consent.

In 1848, upon the adoption of the constitution, and the admission of the State into the Union, he was elected circuit judge of his district, which made him one of the judges of the Supreme Court, as at first organized. He much distrusted his fitness. "I know I have mind and firmness enough; but then, I am such a lazy dog," he wrote.

TIMOTHY O. HOWE.

Afterwards he said he had been honest and industrious on the bench, but doubted whether he had been an able judge. He served on the bench as part of the Supreme Court till its reorganization in 1863. In 1852, he ran for chief justice of the Separate Supreme Court, on the Democratic ticket, but was defeated by Chief-Justice Whiton. He served on the circuit bench until 1858, when he resigned to become a candidate for Congress, at the urgent solicitation of Stephen A. Douglas, whose personal friend and faithful follower he was, who wanted to show his anti-Lecompton strength in the Northwest in view of the Charleston convention of 1860. He made a spirited canvass, and so great was his personal popularity he overcame a twenty-five-hundred Republican majority; but, when running for re-election in 1860, he shared the fate of his