should be a free territory which could not make a bondsman of a black man, but it must exclude the remainder of the conflict then raging on his behalf in certain quarters. Judge Nelson upheld the constitutionality of the law against free blacks, and two offenders were given thirty days in which to leave the territory.[1]
The judges found a large number of indictments in the first and second districts.[2] The most important case in Yamhill county was one to test the legality of taxing land, or selling property to collect taxes, and was brought by C. M. Walker against the sheriff, Andrew Shuck, Pratt deciding that there had been no trespass. In the cases in behalf of the United States, Deady was appointed commissioner in chancery, and David Logan[3] to take affidavits and acknowledgments of bail under the laws of congress. The law practitioners of 1850–1–2 in Oregon had the opportunity, and in many instances the talent, to stamp themselves upon the history of the commonwealth, supplanting in a great degree the men who were its founders,[4] while endeavoring to rid the terri-
- ↑ By a curious coincidence one of the banished negroes was Winslow, the culprit in the Oregon City Indian affair of 1844, who had lived since then at the mouth of the Columbia. Vanderpool was the other exile. S. F. Alta, Sept. 16, 1851; Or. Statesman, Sept. 2, 1851.
- ↑ There were 30 indictments in Yamhill county alone, a large proportion being for breach of verbal contract. Six were for selling liquor to Indians, being federal cases.
- ↑ Logan was born in Springfield, Ill., in 1824. His father was an eminent lawyer, and at one time a justice of the supreme court of Illinois. David immigrated to Oregon in 1850 and settled at Lafayette. He ran against Deady for the legislature in 1851 and was beaten. Soon after he removed to Portland, where he became distinguished for his shrewdness and powers of oratory, being a great jury lawyer. He married in 1862 Mary P. Waldo, daughter of Daniel Waldo. His highly excitable temperament led him into excesses which injured his otherwise eminent standing, and cut short his brilliant career in 1874. Salem Mercury, April 3, 1874.
- ↑ The practising attorneys at this time were A. L. Lovejoy, W. G. T'Vault, J. Quinn Thornton, E. Hamilton, A. Holbrook, Matthew P. Deady, B. F. Harding, R. P. Boise, David Logan, E. M. Barnum, J. W. Nesmith, A. D. M. Harrison, James McCabe, A. C. Gibbs, S. F. Chadwick, A. B. P. Wood, T. McF. Patton, F. Tilford, A. Campbell, D. B. Brenan, W. W. Chapman, A. E. Wait, S. D. Mayre, John A. Anderson, and C. Lancaster. There were others who had been bred to a legal profession, who were at work in the mines or living on land claims, some of whom resumed practice as society became more organized.
