support Van Buren. While the campaign was at its height, he addressed a Van Buren meeting in Stcubenville. The Democracy came out in full force to hear what he had to say. His arraignment of Cass and the Democratic platform was relentless. The old-line Democrats in the audience, exasperated at the change in their dashing leader of 1840, withdrew and held an indignation meeting on the court-house steps, at which Stanton was roundly denounced. Instead of being disconcerted, he was rendered more vehement by this demonstration, and poured a scathing fire upon the leaders of the local Democracy, and had the satisfaction, a few days later, of seeing Cass defeated.

The firm of Shaler and Stanton had not been long in business before the necessity of a trained and careful office lawyer developed. "As neither Shaler nor Stanton had an aptitude for keeping accounts," says Robert T. Hunt, who was in their office for some years, "Theobald Umbstaetter, Stanton's Ohio partner, was brought to take care of the office business. Before that Shaler drew his checks and posted his share of the books in black while Stanton used red ink; and that is the way they kept track of things."

"Shaler and Stanton received great fees," says Major C. Shaler of Washington, D. C. "I remember that they received for just one opinion ten thousand dollars. They earned a great deal, but before the coming of Judge Umbstaetter, saved very little of it."

During July, 1849, Stanton began a suit which gave him lasting fame-that of "The State of Pennsylvania vs. the Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company and others." The corporation named began the erection of a suspension bridge over the Ohio River at Wheeling, Virginia, in 1847. The structure, the longest of its kind in the world, the central span being one thousand feet in length, the cables of which were hauled over the great towers and from shore to shore by platoons of oxen, obstructed the navigation of the river. The chimneys of the larger packets were unable to pass under it.

the Democratic party: "Although known as a Democrat, I really never took serious stock in Mr. Stanton's Democracy. He was more of a student than a politician anyway; and after his professional reputation became strong, took no interest in partisan controversies, except as they involved his friends or clients. Law, law, law was his god, his mistress, and there he never ceased to worship. He always was opposed to slavery extension and to slavery itself, and I, who knew him all his life, never thought that he was ever really a Democrat, though at times an apparently vehement Democratic partisan."

Some of the owners and commanders of the two hundred and fifty packets then plying those waters were already Stanton's clients, and applied to him for relief. The questions involved were in many respects new and certainly important, affecting the enormous commerce of the river and the prosperity and development of numerous cities.

For some time he revolved the case in his mind, and while thus engaged, in order to strengthen the basis for what he at last proposed to do, boarded the steamer Hibernia No. 2, with numerous competent witnesses, and ordered the commander to proceed down the river. He well knew that the steamer-one of the finest and costliest on the Ohio-could not pass under the bridge, nevertheless he commanded Captain Charles W, Batcheler* to proceed at full speed in the usual channel between the piers. The tall chimneys, extending nearly eighty feet above the water, were carried away, and the upper works of the packet demolished-as expected. Thus reinforced, he began suit against the stockholders of the bridge company for damages and secured the consent of Pennsylvania to employ her sovereignty in a suit to abate the bridge as a public nuisance—a bar, hindrance, and obstruction to free commerce between the several States on navigable water and a damage to the general welfare.

On July 20, 1849, Associate-Justice Grier, of the United States Supreme Court, referred a motion for an alternative writ to compel the bridge company to abate their structure or show cause why it should not be abated as a public nuisance, to the full bench to be heard at the ensuing December term. Stanton was elated, brother

*Says Captain Batcheler: "Often Stanton came on board my boat and went to Wheeling to witness the entire operation of making the journey, lowering the chimneys, etc. River boats were then, as they have been ever since, annoyed by the collection of wharfage at all the towns along the river; and frequently the wharfage was more than the business for which the boats landed. On one of his trips he said: 'Charlie, why don't you quit paying wharfage at these places? They have no right to collect it. If the boats will give me two thousand dollars I will agree to rid them of that wharfage.' The result was that we quit paying wharfage at Wellsville, and they sued us. Stanton filed an answer contending that the collection of wharfage from a boat passing from one State into another was a tax upon commerce between the States and a violation of the constitution. The authorities did not dare to contend against him, and our boats never afterwards paid wharfage at Wellsville,"

attorneys having predicted that the motion would not be entertained.

While preparing for the hearing he made a scientific examination of combustion under all possible circumstances-with large and small furnaces; strong and light draft; wood and coal mixed and wood and coal alone for fuel and with high and low chimneys for each class of fuel, experimenting upon boats of different sizes and construction, always with witnesses on board in the persons of men of well-known reputation and skill in physical sciences. He also visited the towns along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the commerce of which was in any way affected; gathered statistics of the volume and value of the inland commerce of the Mississippi Valley for thirty years, and collected a mass of documents showing the relative cost of railway and water transportation, so that he might conclusively prove the wide-spread injury inflicted by obstructing the free navigation of the Ohio River and its tributaries.

While interviewing pilots at the Pittsburg wharves, he fell into the hold of the Isaac Newton, and suffered a compound fracture of the knee, an injury which compelled him to walk with a hitch during the remainder of his life. He was taken to Steubenville on the next steamer and transferred to his house on a stretcher, where, under the care of Dr. Tappan, he lay practically helpless for weeks. Nevertheless, having attendants to handle books and documents, he continued to study and prepare his cases, attend to correspondence, and send out papers for service, so that the bridge suit suffered no delay. The Reverend George Buchanan, calling upon him at this time, found him propped up in bed, surrounded by law books and legal documents. "This is a lucky accident," observed Stanton to his pastor, "for I shall be a good lawyer by the time I get well."

Judge Benjamin Patton of Hicksville, Ohio, has several letters written while Stanton was thus confined, one of which is as follows: Steubenville, Dec. 11, 1849.

Dear Sir:

Pain and the inconvenience of writing in the only position I am allowed to occupy (the broad of my back) have prevented my acknowledging your favor, and expressing how much your letter delighted me.

The pleasure of your society and the tokens of friendship and confidence I receive at your hands, are esteemed among the most valuable consequences of my residence at Pittsburg, to merit and retain which will always be an earnest desire in my heart.

I trust we shall be able to go East together, and we can be in Wash

ington about the most interesting period of the season. I hope you keep Shaler [Stanton's partner] in good spirits. The old gentleman has a hard time with his partners, who seem to be perpetually getting him into some scrape or other.

As to the ladies to whom you so kindly offer to bear my messages, I do not know that I can do better than to give you carte blanche. As the present is the first period of leisure I have had for some years, it may be as well that I am not able to expose myself to the influence of their charms; but I will stand up to whatever you may say in that behalf, feeling assured that with you for my attorney I shall appear better than in person, and have a better plea entered than I could put in for myself.

Let me repeat my desire to hear often from you, and believe me to be, Ever most faithfully your friend,

The Honorable B. Patton.

E. M. Stanton.

On February 25, 1850, he was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court on motion of Reverdy Johnson and made his first argument in the bridge case before the full bench.

The owners of the bridge contended that the Court had no jurisdiction. Labored and exhaustive arguments followed, involving constitutional points and questions of practise in equity. Chief Justice Taney and Justices Wayne and Curtis personally thanked Stanton for the learning and acceptable array of new facts brought before them; and held that they had jurisdiction. The entire case was, on May 29, 1850, referred to Chancellor Walworth of New York. On February 6, 1851, he made a voluminous report, holding that the bridge was an unwarranted and unlawful obstruction to navigation, and that it must be either removed or raised so as to permit the free and usual passage of boats.

At the December term, 1851, the report was affirmed, after long argument, the Court holding that it had full jurisdiction, and in May, 1852, (Chief Justice Taney and Justice Daniel dissenting), rendered final judgment on the merits of the case in favor of Stanton with costs, requiring the bridge to be elevated to the height of one hundred and eleven feet level headway over the channel of the river, and “that the same shall be removed by the respondents, or so altered on or before the first day of February, 1853."

After the Supreme Court had assumed jurisdiction, but before it had entered this decree, Congress was appealed to by the bridge. company for relief, which was granted in the form of an act passed August 31, 1852, declaring the Wheeling suspension bridge a post route and a lawful structure as it then stood, thus revising and annulling the solemn judgment of the highest court in the Republic!

The contest before Congress and its committees was conducted with great ability for several months. The majority report, of the House Committee on Post Roads is said to have been prepared by Reverdy Johnson, and the "views of the minority," protesting against Congress reversing and annulling a judgment of the United States Supreme Court, was written by Stanton. The majority report took the ground that it was better to regulate the size of boats and the height of their chimneys and upper works than to regulate obstructions to national commerce upon navigable waters! Also that the "development of the wonderful power of steam" was reason for reversing the final judgments of the nation's highest court! Stanton's minority report declared that nothing but chaos could result from following such a precedent; that a reversal of the decree of the Supreme Court in one case in favor of a private corporation might be followed by others of like nature, and then the Government would be disrupted. In answer to the enunciation of the majority report that the "development of the mighty power of steam" was a sufficient warrant for Congress to step in and upset a formal judgment of the Supreme Court, he said that "if such a doctrine has. been developed by the mighty power of steam, it were better that that power had remained unknown." The real point at issue throughout the case before Congress was whether the United States or a given one of the States was sovereign.

Beginning in 1816, charters for a bridge over the Ohio River at Wheeling had been granted by Ohio or Virginia or both, and many other charters for structures over that stream had been granted by Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois; but every one, including that under which the Wheeling bridge itself was erected, contained an express clause that nothing therein contained should be construed to authorize a structure which should "obstruct the free and common navigation of said stream." But the bridge was up and did "obstruct the free and common navigation" of the stream, so the legislature of Virginia passed another law-after the Federal court had assumed jurisdiction of the case-declaring that the "said wire suspension bridge erected across the Ohio River at Wheeling, as aforesaid, be and the same is declared to be of lawful height."

Thus, a structure erected in violation of the repeated statutes of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, and Virginia herself, and therefore unlawful, was declared, by a peculiar