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Annals of Iowa
Vol. IX, No. 1, Iowa City, April, 1909, 3rd Series.
Page 1-18
JUDGE JOHN F. DILLON
By Edward H. Stiles*
I venture to say that no son of Iowa
has conferred a more substantial and enduring honor upon her
name, or more justly deserves to be embalmed in her historic
archives, than John F. Dillon; successively Judge of one of
her District Courts; Judge and chief Justice of her Supreme
Court; Judge of the United States Circuit Court for the
Eighth Judicial Circuit, in which Iowa with other States was
embraced; Professor of Real Estate and Equity Jurisprudence in
the Columbia College Law School; Storrs-Professor of Yale
University; author of Municipal Corporations; of Removal of
Causes from the state to the Federal Courts; of Dillon's
Reports of the United States Circuit Courts for the Eighth
Circuit; of Laws and Jurisprudence of England and America; of
various opinions, essays, lectures, addresses and papers;
member of L'Institut de Droit International; lawyer, author
and publicist of conspicuous international fame.
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| *Edward H. Stiles commenced
the practice of his profession at the city of Ottumwa
where he resided for a period of nearly thirty years
and was during that time a leading member of the Iowa
bar. In 1859 he was chosen City Counsellor. In 1861,
County Attorney. He was elected to the Iowa House of
Representatives for the session of 1864, and to the
State Senate in the autumn of that year he resigned
the Senatorship, to accept the position of Reporter of
the Supreme Court of the State. He served in this
position until 1875. His Reports fill 16 octavo
volumes. He also prepared and published in four
volumes a Digest of the Decisions of the Supreme Court
of Iowa from the earliest territorial period. He was
the Republican candidate for Congress in General
Weaver's district, the Sixth Iowa, then a Democrat
stronghold, in 1883 and came within a few votes of
election. He was the attorney of the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company, and of the
Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Company, for
twenty years in the Ottumwa district. In 1886 he
removed to Kansas City, Mo., where he has since
practiced his profession, and is a leading member of
that bar. He was the Republican candidate for Circuit
Judge in 1892, and has since November of that year has
been Master in Chancery of the United States Circuit
Court for the Western Division of the Western District
of Missouri. In 1882 at the request of the then
judges of the Supreme Court, he commenced to gather
material for biographical sketches of the lawyers,
judged and leading public men of early Iowa. He is now
engaged in utilizing the material thus compiled, the
result of which we are authorized to say he expects in
the near future to place before the public in book
form. |
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The causes which led to this high
distinction and those as well, which established him in the
universal esteem and veneration of his compeers, it will be my
endeavor faithfully though but in outline, to trace.
When upwards of forty-two years ago, in
January, 1867, I became Reporter of the Supreme Court of Iowa,
the Judges coming to its bench were John F. Dillon, George G.
Wright, Ralph P. Lowe and Chester C. Cole. The Court
then ranked as one of the strongest in the nation and its
decisions were held in high esteem. Under the then existing
law it became the duty of the Reporter to be present at each
session of the Court for the purpose of observing the
proceedings and hearing the arguments of council, with the
view of his gaining thereby a more accurate knowledge of the
cases he was to report. The Court, so to speak, was
perambulatory, for while its principal sessions were held at
the capital, Des Moines, both spring and fall terms were held
respectively at Davenport and Dubuque, whither the Reporter
went with the Judges. In this wise it was my good fortune to
come in personal touch and association with the Judges, and
thus began my personal acquaintance with Judge Dillon.
I may be pardoned for these
self-allusions. I make them as tending to show my acquaintance
with the personality as well as the career of which I purpose
to write.
In the execution of this purpose I
shall confine myself to an impartial narration of the leading
circumstances and achievements of his life; for upon these,
aided by the judgment of his contemporaries, rather than upon
the tributes of a friendly biographer, must rest all proper
estimates concerning him.
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At the time of which I have spoken,
Judge Dillon was thirty-six years of age; in the very
flush of his splendid manhood. In figure he was rather
above the medium height; rotund in person, placid in
temperament, active but not nervous in movement. His
features were strikingly attractive and well chiseled,
though, much to his disadvantage, as I always thought,
partially concealed by a full beard, save the upper
lip which was always cleanly shaven. His ample head
was well poised on shapely shoulders; his forehead
broad and full; his hair dark, his nose prominent, his
upper lip wide and handsomely curved, his mouth firm
and characteristic; his dark eyes, deeply set under
heavy brows, full, lustrous and penetrating. His whole
expression beamed with the superbly intellectual,
patient, kindly, but heroic forces which unfailingly
supplied him.
In the latter period of his life his appearance had
somewhat changed, from the inroads of time, from his
having adopted an entirely full beard which had faded
from its dark hue to one of gray, from the effects of
long years of close and trying intellectual labors,
and more than all, from the unspeakable grief flowing
from the loss of his devoted wife and daughter, who
perished at sea while making passage to Europe on the
ill-fated French liner, La Bourgogne, in 1898.
But his mind relaxed not in the least
its pristine vigor. He kept up his daily office rounds, and
continued in the performance of professional and literary work
of the greatest importance until a very advanced age, as we
shall hereinafter see.
His manner on the bench, while not lacking in firmness
or dignity, was considerately urbane on all occasions
and under all circumstances. He seemed to be utterly
devoid of that acerbity of temper and precipitancy of
action which occasionally mar the Judicial Office. In
return he was respected and beloved by the entire bar,
and by the suitors and witnesses who came before him.
Counting in round
numbers he was on the bench twenty-one years; five on the
State District bench, six on that of the State Supreme Court,
and ten on that of the United States Circuit Court for the
Eighth Judicial Circuit. |
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Though born in the State of New York he
was essentially a product of Iowa. He came here as a child.
His home was in Davenport. He lived for forty-one years,
until his removal to the City of New York. His affection for
Davenport and indeed for all of Iowa and her institutions, was
constant and profound, and no man did more to build
substantially and strong their foundations. In 1838 Iowa was
organized as a territory out of what was previously a part of
the territory of Wisconsin. In that year the family, attracted
by the possibilities of the distant west, removed from their
eastern home to Davenport, then but an unorganized village or
settlement on the Mississippi. As the interior of Iowa was
then for the most part an unbroken wilderness, and Davenport
but an outpost of civilization, his means of education were
necessarily limited. He had, however, the irresponsible
instincts of a scholar and that insatiable thirst for
knowledge which deeply characterized his whole life, and
brought forth fruits which will durably perpetuate his name.
His original purpose, like that of his
distinguished associate, the late Mr. Justice Miller of the
Supreme Court of the United States, was to be a physician;
and, indeed, such was the actual calling of both for a long
time. He commenced the study of medicine when but seventeen
years of age, and two years thereafter, in 1850, was graduated
as a physician at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at
Davenport. In June of that year he was one of the regular
physicians of the State who met at Burlington to organize the
Iowa State Medical Society. The organizers of this Society,
many of whom had already gained eminence in their profession,
were as follows:
Drs. E. Lowe, G.R. Henry, Philip
Harvey, E.D. Ransom, J.H. Rauch, J.W. Brookbank, H. M.
Matthews, Burlington; John F. Sanford, J. C. Hughes, D.L.
McGugin, E.R. Ford, Josiah Haines, Keokuk; N. Steele, J.
Robinson, J. F. Moberry, Fairfield; John F.
Dillon, Farmington; J. D. Elbert, J.E. Evans, Davenport;
J.H. Hersey, George Reeder, Muscatine; M.J. Morseman, Iowa
City; W.H. Rosseau, Washington. I have given these names
because of their historic interest and because I thought it
would pleasantly stir the memories of many who knew or in
family converse had heard of, at least some of them.
Judge Dillon is the only survivor of
the group, and of the charter members of that Society, which
still flourishes. Though then but nineteen years of age , his
talents must have attracted the attention of that
distinguished body, for he was elected Librarian of the
Society. He also had the honor of writing the first article in
the first number of the first medical journal published in
Iowa, "The Western Medico-Chirurgical Journal," published at
Keokuk. The article is entitled "Rheumatic Carditis,
Autopsical Examination, by John Forrest Dillon, M.D.,
Farmington, Iowa." The foregoing general facts are gathered
from the address of Dr. George S. Jenkins, president of the
Keokuk College of Physicians and Surgeons, appearing in the
February, 1908, number of the "Iowa Medical Journal,"
published at Des Moines.
Dr. Dillon evidently had a taste and a
fitness for the medical profession, and had he remained
therein he would undoubtedly have attained high professional
rank. How the shift from Medicine to law came about we shall
presently see. In tracing his early life we happily meet along
the line occasional auto-biographical sprinklings that serve
authentically to light the way and invest the narrative with a
charm that would be wanting in the mere recitals of a
biographer. I will, therefore, in great measure let them
tell this part of the story.
Dr. Jenkins, in preparing the address
hereinbefore referred to, wrote to Judge Dillon for some data
respecting himself and his early connection with the Society.
In response he received the following letter from Judge Dillon
which I am sure will of itself invest this sketch with
interest:
| New York, February 1, 1907 |
Prof. George F. Jenkins, M.D
Keokuk, Iowa.
My Dear Doctor:-
I duly received your letter stating that you expect to
make an address before the Iowa State Medical Society
at it next meeting in which you will consider the
history of that Society since 1850, when the society
was formed, down to the present. You remind me
in your letter that I was one of the charter members
of the first Iowa State Medical Society, organized in
Burlington in June, 1850, and that I was for a time
connected with the medical profession in the State,
and you ask me for some personal recollections in
respect of that meeting and of my own connections with
the medical profession.
I feel sure that anything I can say will have very
little intrinsic value and I fear very little interest
to the members of the profession who are now upon the
scene fifty-seven years distant. I shall make my
response as brief as I can and you may use any portion
of the same that you may deem suitable to the purpose
of the occasion.
I was born in the State of New York on December 25,
1831. My father moved with his family, of which I was
the eldest, to Davenport, Iowa, in July 1838, I being
then a little less than seven years of age. I
lived in Davenport from that time until 1879, when I
came to New York to accept a professorship of law in
Columbia University and the position of general
counsel of the Union Pacific Railroad Company.
I commenced the study of medicine when about seventeen
years of age in the office of Dr. E. S. Barrows, at
Davenport, Iowa. Dr. Barrows was a prominent physician
and successful surgeon, having been a surgeon in the
United States Army in the Seminole Indian war. He had
wonderful skill in diagnosis and was a bold and
successful practitioner. He made very little use in
his ordinary practice of any other remedies but
calomel, blue mass, Dover's powder and compound
cathartic pills.
A year or so after I entered the office of Dr. Barrows
as a student, was formed the Rock Island Medical
School, the prototype or original, as I understand it,
of the present College of Physicians and Surgeons of
Keokuk, Iowa, of which you are President.
I attended one course of lectures at Rock Island. The
next year the college was removed to Davenport, Iowa,
where I attended a second course and was regularly
graduated in the spring of 1850 an M.D.
The professors as a body were able men, some of them
men of great learning and even genius. Abler teachers
than Professor Richards, who taught Practice,
Professor Sanford who taught Surgery and Professor
Armor who taught Physiology, it would have been
difficult to find in the chairs of any contemporary
medical institution.
I happened to attend the first meeting of the Iowa
Medical Society in 1850, at Burlington, in this way.
Having been graduated I desired to seek a place in
which to practice my profession and I consulted
Professor Sanford, having an admiration and affection
for him. He said, "I have lived many years in
Farmington, Van Buren County, a small place on the Des
Moines river, but my duties in connection with the
medical college are such that I have resolved to
change my residence and follow the college to Keokuk."
Dr. Sanford had obtained great celebrity as a surgeon
and indeed had outgrown the little town of Farmington.
He suggested to me that his leaving Farmington would
create a vacancy which would perhaps make that town a
desirable place for me in which to locate. When I
reflect that I was really under twenty years of age,
without experience, the idea that I could go to
Farmington and occupy in any degree the place which
Dr. Sanford left seems now to me almost amusing. I
resolved, however, to take his advice and so arranged
my journey from Davenport to Farmington as to enable
me to attend the first meeting of the Iowa Medical
Society in Burlington in June, 1850.
After the lapse of fifty and seven years I distinctly
recall that meeting and I regarded it then, as I have
regarded it even since, as an assemblage of men of
remarkable learning and ability. Among those present
were Sanford, Huges, McGugin, Henry, Elbert, Fountain,
Haines, Lowe, Ransom, Rauch, all distinguished names.
My exchequer was far from plethoric and I was obliged
to practice strict economy. I rented for an office a
small brick building on the crumbling bank of the Des
Moines river, one story high, about twenty feet
square, in a dilapidated condition, at a cost of $4.00
per month. I engaged board and lodging at a
boarding house kept by Mrs. Corwin, where I made my
home during the three or four months I remained at
Farmington at a cost of $3.50 per week. Among the
boarders was a young lawyer by the name of Howe, who
had resided in Farmington some little time. We became
well acquainted and spent nearly every evening walking
up and down the banks of the Des Moines river,
speculating upon what the future had in store for us.
He was almost as destitute of clients as I was of
patients.
There were at least two old physicians in this little
place, Dr. Barton and Dr. Lane. How could a young man
under twenty years of age expect to find employment
under these circumstances unless both of these
physicians were engaged or out of the place? I
will mention one case with a little particularity
since it was epochal, having had the effect of
changing the whole current and career of my life. On
the hills near Farmington, about two miles distant,
there was a large brick yard. On a hot August day the
men worked hard, and their skin being relaxed and the
appetite vigorous, they ate a hearty supper, when a
cool and grateful breeze sprang up and swept the
valley. These workmen sat out in it, became chilled
and two or three hours afterward were seized with
violent attacks of cholera morbus. They sent post
haste to town for a physician, but both Dr. Barton and
Dr. Lane were absent and there was was nothing to do
but to call on me. I had no horse or buggy of my own
and if I had I would have found it difficult to have
driven over the rough roads, and as I had been
troubled with inguinal hernia for many years, I could
not ride horseback. The last time I attempted to do so
nearly cost me my life. There was no alternative but
walk to the brick yard where I found the men in great
suffering, requiring doses of laudanum and stimulants
and my personal attention for several hours. Weary and
exhausted I sought my way home on foot, and I saw the
sun rising over the eastern hills just as I was
reaching my lodgings. Maybe it was the sun of
Austerlitz but I didn't so regard it at the time.
Two or three years ago when Dr. Lorenz of Vienna was
in this country he took lunch with myself and several
gentlemen, one of who mentioned I had formerly been a
physician, whereupon Dr. Lorenz evinced curiosity to
know why I had left the profession, and I proceeded to
give him the narrative that I am now relating. When I
had finished one of the gentlemen said, "Now that you
have told all there is there is one thing you have not
mentioned, did these men live or die?" to which I
responded. "That question has been more than once
asked but I have always evaded the answer."
This night's experience set me thinking and the next
evening when young lawyer Howe and myself were taking
our regular walk up and down the banks of the Des
Moines river I turned to him and said, "Howe, I have
made a great mistake, I cannot practice medicine in
this county without being able to ride on horseback,
which I am utterly unable to do. I might as well
admit the mistake and turn my mind to something else.
I shall read law. Tell me, what is the first
book that a student of the law requires?' He
answered, "Blackstone's Commentaries." "Have you got
them?" He replied , "Yes I have them and the Iowa Blue
book of laws, and those are the only books I have."
He was kind enough to loan me his Blackstone and I
began at once to read law in my little dilapidated
office.
Another event in my brief medical career at Farmington
is chronicled in the first number of the
Medico-Chirurgical Journal of Keokuk, of September 1,
1850. It is the first article and first number of that
publication, entitled, "Rheumatic Carditis, Autopsical
Examination, by John Forrest Dillon, M.D., Farmington,
Iowa," thus connecting me in a slight way with the
earliest medical literature of the State.
On inquiry of the present officers of the Keokuk
Medical College I learned that they had no copy of the
publication and I only succeeded in obtaining one
through the kindness and courtesy of the Historical
Department of Iowa.
I shall not undertake to re-state the substance of
that article; briefly outlined it is this: A laborer
on the public works at the small town of Croton, about
five miles distant from Farmington, suddenly died
under circumstances that led to a very general
belief among the people of Croton that he died from
malpractice. The postmortem examination disclosed,
however, that he died of apoplexy caused by
hypertrophy of the heart. The heart was found to be
nearly double the normal size and double the weight.
it fell to my lot after conducting the examination to
take the organ in my hand and explain to the excited
citizens the cause of the death and thus allay public
excitement. The article concluded as follows:
"Before taking my departure from Croton, I took
occasion to give the botanic physician some salutary
advice -- adverted to the unenviable predicament in
which his ignorance had plunged him, and endeavored to
inspire him with a love for scientific knowledge, by
following the example of Le Maitre de Philosophic, in
a Comedie of the celebrated Moliere, in which he
endeavors to impress the truth of the following
sentiment upon the mind of Monsieur Jourdain 'sans la
science, la vie est presque une image de la mort.'
Whether I succeeded in convincing him of it, so
readily as was the case with Le Bourgeoise gentilhomme,
the future must determine.
I have drawn up this hasty sketch of the above case
for two prominent reasons; in the place to present
your readers with some additional testimony
confirmatory of the frequent connection between
arthritic and cardiac disease, and in the second
place, to illustrate the great benefit often derivable
from necroscopic examination. The one is frequently
overlooked, the other too sadly neglected."
In the fall of 1850 I concluded to return to Davenport
where my mother and sister lived and take up my home
with them and utilize my little knowledge of drugs and
medicine and get a livelihood by opening a small drug
store, which would also afford leisure time to enable
me to read law. This I continued to do until the
spring of 1852, when I applied for admission to the
bar of the District Court of Scott County, Iowa, and
on motion of Mr. Austin Corbin, a man very well-known
afterwards in Iowa and elsewhere, I was admitted. The
same year I was elected prosecuting attorney for the
county for the county and practiced law in Scott and
adjoining counties until 1858, when I was elected
Judge of the District Court of the Seventh Judicial
District for the Counties of Muscatine, Scott, Clinton
and Jackson; re-elected four years afterwards. Was
then transferred to the Supreme bench of the State and
was re-elected six years afterwards. Before qualifying
for my second term I was appointed by President Grant,
United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Judicial
Circuit comprising the States of Minnesota, Iowa,
Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, and afterwards
Colorado. I held the last mentioned office for ten
years, until 1879, when I resigned the same to accept
the professorship of law at Columbia University and
removed east, where I have ever since practiced my
profession. I find the little knowledge that I
acquired of medicine and its principles not only to be
a great satisfaction to me throughout my life but at
times to be of utility, and I maintained a nominal
connection with the medical profession until about the
period when I came to New York by delivering each year
lectures on medical jurisprudence at the Iowa
University to the combined law and medical classes of
that institution.
I fear the foregoing is a weary waste of way but I
relieve myself of all responsibility because you asked
me for it. It gratifies me exceedingly to know that
the small gathering at the first Medical Society in
1850 has grown into 2000 members, and I wish with all
my heart the Iowa State Medical Society a long and
continued career of usefulness. I am, Dear Doctor,
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Very sincerely yours.
John F. Dillon. |
In the further utilization of
autobiographical data touching his early life, as well as the
primitive conditions and character of the times, which
necessarily constitute a part of his environments, I give the
following excerpts from a letter written by him to the editor
of The Davenport Democrat in October, 1905 on the
occasion of the semi-centennial of that paper:
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"You remind me that I am a Davenporter,
and ask me to send you for the Half-Century number
reminiscences of Davenport of 1855 and of an earlier day,
--not history, which you say your readers can look up for
themselves, but something personal concerning myself and
others. If what I shall say has too personal a flavor,
put not the blame on me but yourself. **** Yes; you are right!
I an a Davenporter and always expect to be in my memories, my
sentiments and my affections. It was my home and my only
home for the long period of 41 years -- early boyhood to
beyond the meridian of life. Though absent it is and will ever
remain to me the city of the heart. What wonderful changes,
general and local, have I witnessed! In 1831, the year of my
birth, what is now known as Iowa was an uninhabited region
filled with savages. In 1837, my father left his young family
in Herkimer county, New York, and in company with his
brother-in-law, John Forrest, sought a home in the far West
and finally fixed upon Davenport, and in August, 1838, my
father brought his family to Davenport, and thus became one of
the pioneer settlers. In 1839, when the town was
incorporated, my father became one of the first trustees or
councilmen of the infant place. Its population at that time
probably did not number 500 people. Such was the humble
beginning of the present large and prosperous city of
Davenport.
Though I well remember, I shall not
recount the privations and struggles of the early settlers for
many years after 1838. Money was there almost none. Everything
was done on a traffic or trade basis. My father kept a hotel
on the bank of the river near Western Avenue, for the
accommodation of travelers and especially of the farmers in
the surrounding country, who, coming to town with their
produce or on business, had to remain over night. The standard
charge for supper, lodging and breakfast for man, and stable
accommodation for beast for the night, was 50 cents, for which
we were paid not in money, but in store orders on Burrows, or
Burrows & Prettymen, Charles Lesslie, or other merchants who
bought the farmer's produce, "payable in store goods." I well
recollect this, for it fell to my lot to help take care
of the farmers' horses, and to take in my hand the store
orders, go to the store for sugar, coffee, or what not, have
the amount of each purchase endorsed on the order, and to
carry home the articles purchased. We were passing through the
hard times of 1837.
In the campaign of 1840, "Tippecanoe
and Tyler too," General Harrison was elected president on the
alluring cry of "two dollars and roast beef." Davenport,
thrilled with the excitement of the hard cider campaign, built
a log cabin at the southeast corner of Third and Harrison
streets, which was used afterwards for a schoolhouse and in
which I attended school. When my grandfather, Timothy
Dillon, with his family followed my father to Davenport in
1840, he brought some silver money with him, and he gave to me
a new coined silver dime, the first I ever saw. How rich I
felt! It was many years afterwards before business got on a
cash basis. Not long ago there still remained on the Iowa side
opposite Moline and its mills a warehouse with a conspicuous
sign, "Cash for Wheat." This meant at that time a good deal
more than the passing traveler of today would think. It meant
that at last the time had come when the farmer could get cash
and not merely store goods.
During the period of 1838 to 1841, the
Iowa Sun, a small weekly Democratic sheet, was the
only newspaper, but like the greater Sun of a later
date in New York, the Iowa Sun shown for all. The
first number was issued in the very month my father and his
family arrived in Davenport. Andrew Logan was proprietor and
editor, and his sons set up the paper, and carried it around
the streets on publication day and sold it. It was as eagerly
sought for as the Democrat of today. I hope your
anniversary number will contain from some correspondent a
fitting notice of the Sun and its proprietor, Andrew
Logan. He did a good work in his day. The last time I saw him
was in 1858, at the first annual meeting of the Pioneer
Settlers' Association of Scott County.
The Sun continued to shine until 1841,
which year marked the advent to Davenport of Alfred
Sanders and Levi Davis, and the establishment of a Whig
newspaper -- the Davenport Gazette -- with
which these gentlemen from the first, and later Gen. Add. H.
Sanders, were so long, honorably and usefully connected. The
Gazette was afterwards absorbed by the more
prosperous Democrat, but it was, throughout its existence, a
most respectable and influential paper, ably edited, and
standing always for the right as Alfred and Addison Sanders
saw the right.
I have many pleasant memories of the
Gazette -- too many to recount. I saw the press when it
landed. I have seen Levi Davis, after setting up the type and
working off the paper, carry it around the streets to
distribute and sell. I have sat hour after hour in the press
room and watched Levi Davis wet down the paper, put it on the
old Franklin hand press, and himself work it off, sheet after
sheet, on one side, and the next day repeat the same process
on the other side . The proprietors were very proud of the
record of their paper, and justly so. In 1858, at the Old
Settlers' meeting, I heard Alfred Sanders (who was an
elocutionist, and who gave lessons in elocution gratis to
young men, myself included) swell with pride when, in sonorous
voice, speaking of the pioneer press of Scott County, he
exclaimed:
"With pride I say it--as I presume it
to be the only instance on record in the West--that although
we had to purchase all our paper and material in the East, and
have them brought out by the slow and tedious course of the
Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and although we had our paper
sunk, and burned, and delayed by accidents, and although my
assistants were sick, and I alone had to fill every department
of the paper--editorial, typesetting, working the press, and
rolling the paper, yet during the sixteen and a half years I
have controlled the Gazette, it never has missed a single
number."
It may be expected, perhaps, that I
shall say something concerning the old and early bar of
Davenport. A few words must suffice. Of the earliest
territorial bar of Iowa, say from 1837 to 1846, its high order
of ability has often been remarked,--for example, Grimes,
Starr, Rorer, Mason, Hall, Darwin, Browning of Burlington;
Hastings, Lowe, Woodward, Richman of Muscatine; Folsom,
Byington, Carleton of Iowa City; Leffingwell of Lyons; Platt
Smith, Hempstead, Bissell, Samuels of Dubuque; Smythe of
Marion; Knapp, wright of Keosauqua; Love, Beck, D.F. Miller of
Lee County, etc. etc.
In Davenport we had Judge Grant, Judge
Mitchell, Ebenezer Cook, and afterwards John P. Cook, who
were, in all respects, the peers of the Iowa lawyers above
named. The semi-annual terms of court in Davenport were also
regularly attended by Knox and Drury of Rock Island, and often
by lawyers from other places. Court week, to hear the lawyers
plead, ranked with the annual circus as one of the few
entertainments possible in this new and distant region. In
early life I have spent an hour in the old brick courthouse on
Fourth Street, listening to the trial of cases, at a time when
I had no fixed purpose of becoming a lawyer myself. Every day
I used to see the erect form of Ebenezer Cook as he passed my
father's house, walking to and fro, cane in hand, between his
home on the Cook farm and his office in the town. One day he
was kind enough to stop and say to my mother that when I was
old enough he wished me to enter his office and become a
lawyer, which (after a detour by way of Dr. Barrow's office
and a short course of medical instruction) came to pass in
1851. In 1850 and 1851 I studied law by myself whilst keeping,
for a livelihood, a small drug store at the corner of Third
and Brady. I had no instruction or aid in my studies. As
a law student I was never in a law office or law school. Of
law schools there were but few in the country at the time, and
none within my reach or means. I recollect when reading in
Kent about mortgages, I wished to see the form of such a
document, and that I was compelled to walk to the courthouse,
where Hiram Price was the recorder, and there had, on the
records, my first inspection of this important instrument.* In
1851, Austin Corbin came to Davenport, bearing with him a
letter of introduction to me from Judge Grant, who was holding
court in Dubuque. In May, 1852, Corbin moved my admission to
the bar. The last time I saw him in New York, just before his
tragic accidental death, he pleasantly admonished me, as we
parted at the corner of Cortland and Broadway: "John, don't
forget I am your godfather in the law."
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The old bar of Scott county in 1855,
and soon afterward, had been much enlarged, and contained
lawyers whose ability and character are an honor and an
ornament to the city, the State, and the profession.
I cannot name them all, but may mention Davison, True,
Hubbell, Lane, Bills, Putnam, Rodgers, Corbin, Dow, Cook,
Waterman, French--and there were many others.
Noted as the bar of Davenport has ever
been for its character, talents and learning, the present bar
may look back with a sort of ancestral pride upon the first
and oldest bar: Knox, the most eloquent jury lawyer I have
ever heard; Drury, the judicious councilor; Grant, the
intrepid and fearless advocate; Mitchell, the comprehensive
and well poised lawyer; Ebenezer Cook, whose judgment on legal
questions and problems was as sure-footed as that of any man I
ever knew; John P. Cook, a natural born trial lawyer,
aggressive, bold, courageous, who like General Taylor, was
generally victorious, and who like him, never knew when he was
whipped.
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*Colonel J. H. Benton, one of
the leaders of the New England bar, in speaking recently
of Judge Dillon said:
"He told me many years ago that when he was reading
Kent, trying to learn law, he did not get a clear idea
of what a mortgage was and in order to do so went to the
courthouse, asked permission to look at the Register of
Mortgages in order to copy one and did copy it in full,
and then he said to me, "I knew what a mortgage
was; I had read it and handled it."
"This," says Colonel Benton, "Impressed me very much and
I used it in my lectures in the law schools as an
illustration of the qualities of mind which make a man a
great lawyer, that is what I call the instinct of
the concrete." |
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Along the same lines and as
further showing his deep and abiding affection for Iowa
and for all that concerns her welfare, the following
extract is given from the address delivered by him on the
invitation of the faculty before the graduating class of
the law department of the Iowa State University in 1893:
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"Coming once more into the State, and
into this academic city, with whose University not a little of
my uneventful career has been connected, the memories and
associations of half a century, re-awakened and refreshed,
throng around me! I recall the happy days, when a
barefoot boy with stone bruised feet I hunted carnelians on
the shores of the Mississippi, swarm and sailed and fished in
its waters, and skated upon its frozen and burnished surface.
Fifty years ago in a spring that issued from its banks, I saw
mirrored the first eclipse of the sun my youthful eyes ever
beheld. The Indians were then more numerous than white
men. The wolf's long howl was a familiar sound. Behold the
wonderful contrast and transformation! -- the Iowa of 1838 and
the Iowa of 1893! When the Supreme Court of the State was held
in yonder building-- the old Capitol, -- I argued therein with
fear and trembling my first causes-- Stanchfield vs. Palmer (4
G. Greene's Rep. 23, 1853), and McManus vs. Carmichael (3 Iowa
Rep. 1, 1856). In my judicial capacity I have held courts in
the city in exchange with your former fellow citizen, Judge
William E. Miller. I was afterwards honored with an
appointment as on of the Regents of this University, and for
several years, and down to the date of my removal from the
State, I filled the chair of Medical Jurisprudence, lecturing
to the combined Law and medical classes. I therefore feel as
you may well suppose a deep and abiding interest in all that
concerns the weal of the State and its University. Their
growth and prosperity truly rejoice me. I know I feel that
they are a large part of my own life, and I love to cherish
the pleasing hope, however illusory it may be, that in some
humble, albeit unperceived degree, I too, am some part
of their history. I never come into the State of my love and
affection without going down to the banks of the great river,
there to meditate in age where I sported in youth, and to dip
my hands lovingly into its waters and therewith bathe and cool
my fevered brow."
For the same purpose and as
throwing additional light upon his early years I give
the following excerpt from his address at the
dedication of the Davenport Free Public Library in
May, 1904:
"From early boyhood Davenport
was my home. "The mystic chords of memory" here bind
me to the past by the sweetest and the saddest of
ties. Other days and scenes involuntarily rise before
me. I see the little town of 1838 with its few hundred
people, without schools, without libraries, without
many of the comforts and with few of the luxuries of
modern life, when the Indians were thicker than white
men, when packs of wolves coming out on the ice from
the island below the town were a familiar sight and
their long, dismal howl a familiar sound. The earliest
school was kept in a small log cabin near the river
below Western Avenue by the aged father of Alexander
W. McGregor. There it was that I received from him my
earliest lesson in astronomy. In those days the
banks of the stream abounded in springs. With
our hands we scooped out the sand and gravel, rudely
walled up the space, and behold there was living water
bubbling up from below at which we slaked our thirst,
the girls immediately by the use of a gourd cup, the
boys immediately by laying down flat and drinking
directly from the crystal spring. A partial eclipse of
the sun occurred near mid-day and the teacher, good,
albeit severe, having no smoked glass in readiness,
led us to the spring, showed us the sun in eclipse
mirrored in the waters, and explained as best he could
the wonderful phenomenon. It was a miracle to us small
boys then, and it seems to me to be a miracle still
that finite man on this atom of the Universe called
the Earth, which to the inhabitants of the planet in
the eclipse would seem no larger than the diamond that
sparkles on a ladies finger, -- can foretell years and
years ahead the very day and hour when such s
phenomenon will recur or appear.
Later some years and before
there were any public schools in Iowa, on the very
site where this library edifice stands, a school for
girls and boys was kept by James Thorington. For his
kindly nature I hold his name in affectionate
remembrance. This school I attended with many other
pupils, and among them one* who in after years was
actively connected with the Davenport Library
Association and to whom that institution, next to Mrs.
Clarissa C. Cook, is as much if not more indebted than
to anyone else, but who, though the heart and memory
are fraught with tender and insurgent recollections,
shall be nameless in this connection further than to
say that the Trustees of the new building have fitly
voted to place the portrait of this rare and gifted
woman upon its walls.
*Anna
Price, afterwards Mrs. Dillon.
And now, when everything is
changed except the overarching shy, the majestic river
and the encompassing hills, when the small town of
those early days has grown into a city of 40,000
people, a city of wondrous beauty, prosperous, well
ordered, well governed and with undimmed hopes for the
future, it has the good fortune to become and be the
owner of this noble structure, consecrated to noble
ends.
The distinct personal note
which I find runs through these remarks I have sought
to encourage nor repress. It seemed natural under the
circumstances, and I feel confident that your
friendship will not ascribe it either to the
reminiscential propensity od age or to personal
vanity, but will rather regard it as spontaneous and
not unfitting in an address to my former
fellow-townsmen and to friends of a lifetime. As
recollections of the past must percolate through the
memory they are necessarily flavored by the character
of the soil through which they have passed, and this
quality I have made no attempt to neutralize or
eliminate."
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These delightful papers throw a flood
of light on his personality and character, and it only remains
to summarize the events thus disclosed and place them with
others not yet told in their proper settings.
In 1850 he commenced the study of law.
In 1852 he was admitted to the bad, and soon thereafter became
associated with John P. Cook, one of the most widely known and
distinguished lawyers of the State, under the firm name of
Cook & Dillon. In this same year he was elected
prosecuting attorney of Scott County. He displayed abilities
of a high order. As a result he was chosen by the Republicans
in 1858 as their candidate and elected by an
overwhelming majority of the people Judge of the District
Court of the Seventh Judicial District. He performed the
duties of this position with such signal ability and general
satisfaction, that at the end of his term he was requested by
the entire bar, without distinction of party, to accept
another term and was elected thereto without opposition.
In 1863 his exalted abilities and supreme fitness for high
judicial position had become so conspicuous that in the fall
election of that year, he was chosen Judge of the Supreme
Court of the State for a term of six years, to accept which he
resigned his position on the District bench. In 1869 he was
re-elected for another term. Before qualifying therefor he was
appointed by President Grant, and confirmed by the Senate,
Judge of the United States Circuit Court for the Eighth
Judicial Circuit, comprising the States of Iowa, Minnesota,
Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and, soon after,
Colorado.
After a decade of the most
distinguished service on the Federal bench, in the fall of
1879, he tended his resignation to accept the position of
Professor of Real Estate and Equity Jurisprudence in the Law
School of Columbia College, and that of General Counsel of the
Union Pacific Railroad tendered him at the same time. This
resulted in his removal to New York, and thus ended his
official and professional career in the State which he so
deeply loved and had so highly honored. Let us briefly review
it before touching upon subsequent events.
Fir the repeated honors which had been
bestowed upon him he was indebted to no political stratagems.
His rapid advancements did not spring from that source. They
were gained by the steady display of those superlative
qualities that inhere in and, as it were, create great lawyers
and judges, and of which the instinct of unremitting toil is
the greatest. He recognized with Carlyle that "there is
a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in work," and that
rare excellence can be attained only by its exercise. A more
constant observance of these principles has rarely been so
well exemplified in any other public man.
Of his labors on the State District
bench and the superior abilities he there displayed as a
nisi prius Judge, no attestation need be added to those
carried in what has already been said.* While Judge of that
Court he prepared and gave to the profession the first Digest
of Iowa Reports, known as "Dillon's Digest." How this
came about he once related to me, and as it illustrates the
searching industry and thoroughness he gave to every
undertaking, I give that relation. He told me that when
he was elected District Judge he entered upon the careful
study of each and every case that had been before and decided
by the Supreme Court, as they appeared in the Reports, making
notes as he proceeded and placing each under its appropriate
head. That his sole purpose in doing this was to
familiarize himself with what that Court had decided in order
that he might not run contrary thereto, and be in harmony
therewith. That he kept this up and added to it as additional
reports appeared. That it then occurred to him that by a
little remoulding and enlarging it might be useful to the
profession. This he did, and that is the way the lawyers of
Iowa came to have what at that time was of the greatest
convenience to them. I cannot refrain from remarking as
I pass that it all our judges would so qualify themselves we
should have far less incongruity in our Jurisprudence.
*No less
authority than Judge Henry C. Caldwell has said of him, that
he was the best nisi pruis judge he had ever seen on
the bench. ANNALS OF IOWA, 3d Series, Vol. 3, p. 630.
When at the age of thirty-three he
came to be Judge and afterward Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, he brought to that bench, notwithstanding his lack of
years, equipments of the highest order; his fitting experience
on the District bench; a thorough knowledge of the State, her
history and people; a virile and well poised intellect; a
thoroughly judicial temperament; a keen and unerring sense of
justice; a mind disciplined by years of the closest legal
study, and, as the result of scholarly promptings and wide
reading, enriched with varied learning.
His opinions from that bench, as well
as from that of the United States Circuit Court are, by reason
of his name and fame, as well as the general soundness of the
opinions themselves, deferred to as authority by all the
courts of this country. Those of the State Supreme Court run
through fourteen volumes of the Iowa Reports. The first case
is that of Welton vs. Tizzard, 15 Iowa (7th of Withrow) 495;
the last one Greenwald vs. Metcalf-Graham & Co., 28 Iowa (7th
of Stiles) 363. Those of the Federal Court will be found
in volumes 1,2,3,4,5, of Dillon's Circuit Court Reports.
There they will stand as perpetual memorials of a great Judge
and as beacon lights in Judicial history.
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