The Story of a Great Court/Chapter 7

by John Bradley Winslow

For the first year the business of the new Court was principally of a routine character, involving the usual controversies, public and private, which would naturally be expected to arise in a new state. Important questions were impending, however, and the infant Court was soon to become the theater of a great political drama, which was to claim the attention of the nation. The great wave of anti-slavery sentiment was sweeping over the north, gathering strength and volume with every passing week and the irrepressible conflict between freedom and bondage was on. In order to fully understand how the Court became involved in one of the preliminary struggles in this historic conflict it will be necessary to take a backward glance at federal legislation.

When our forefathers constructed the Federal Constitution, they placed therein without debate or serious opposition the following simple provision: "No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."^[1]

The purpose of the provision is very apparent, and its necessity, so long as slavery existed under the protection of the law in any part of the Union, is equally apparent. In pursuance of this section, Congress passed a law during the administration of President Washington, providing that the owner of any runaway slave might arrest him, take him before a judge of either the Federal or State Courts, and prove by oral testimony or by affidavit that the person arrested owed service to the claimant under the laws of the State from which he had escaped, and thereupon it was made the duty of the judge to give a certificate that such proof had been made, and the claimant could remove the fugitive to the State from which he had escaped. The law also provided a penalty of $500.00 for obstructing its execution or concealing the fugitive with knowledge that he was such.

Thus the law remained until the year 1850. Meanwhile the moral sentiment of the North became aroused; the liberty party was organized, the underground railroad flourished, and northern men and women refused to act as slave-catchers, or assist in perpetuating the crime of slavery. In proportion as the anti-slavery feeling grew at the North, the devotion of the South to the "divine institution" seemed to become more determined; the constant stream of fugitives that passed through the Northern States to Canada, and the evergrowing difficulty which the slave-holder experienced in attempting to assert his rights in his human chattels in the North, alarmed the people of the South, and they demanded greater guarantees and more certain remedies for the retaking of their runaway property. Finally an act was passed in 1850 which was intended to meet the demands of the South. It placed the whole machinery for the recaption of runaway slaves exclusively in the hands of the Federal officers. It provided for a hearing before a United States judge or court commissioner, and made the certificate of such officer conclusive; it allowed proof to be made by affidavit on the part of the claimant, but shut out the testimony of the fugitive entirely; it increased the penalties for resistance to the enforcement of the law and for concealment of the fugitive, and contained other obnoxious provisions.

This law was a part of the compromise legislation of that year, but, like most compromises, it failed to satisfy either party. Instead of settling the matter, it simply added fuel to the flame of excitement in the North, and nowhere in the West perhaps did the excitement run higher than in Wisconsin. The immigration into this State from the New England States and New York was very heavy during the early fifties, and the immigrants brought with them their love of freedom and hatred of slave-catchers. On the 19th of May, 1848, Sherman M. Booth arrived at Milwaukee. He was young in years, but he had stumped Connecticut for the Liberty party for six successive years. He was an enthusiastic, perhaps a fanatical, abolitionist, and he came West to further the cause that he loved by editing a newspaper. The "American Freeman" was then being published in Milwaukee, and Booth purchased a half interest in it and became its editor. He changed its name to the "Wisconsin Freeman," and after the Freesoil party was organized the name was again changed to the "Free Democrat," and he became the sole proprietor. For several years it was the only out and out abolition paper in the State. Probably it made up in quality for what it lacked in quantity. The times were exciting, and Booth contributed his share to the excitement without difficulty. After the compromise acts of 1850, his denunciations of the slave power were more vitriolic than before. The inevitable conflict was approaching faster than any one knew and Booth was one of those who were hurrying it on.

In the spring of the year 1852 a negro slave named Glover ran away from his master, one Garland, who resided near St. Louis, and came to Wisconsin. He stopped at Racine and found employment in a mill about four miles from the city. Here he lived until March, 1854. In some manner Garland ascertained his whereabouts and came to Wisconsin early in March to reclaim his property. He made the requisite complaint before the late Winfield Smith, United States Court Commissioner at Milwaukee, and a warrant was issued for the arrest of the negro. A deputy marshal of the United States proceeded to Racine with Garland and several assistants and during the evening of March 10th forced an entrance to Glover's cabin, knocked him down, bound and handcuffed him and put him in a wagon, drove rapidly to Milwaukee and lodged him in the county jail. The news of the brutal arrest was not long in reaching Racine, and the excitement in that thriving city ran high. In those days the court house meeting was the universal remedy for every public ill. The use of the court house was free to all. Every man was an orator, and resolutions of mighty sound and startling import were easily drawn and enthusiastically passed. So in the early morning of Saturday, March 11th, the court house bell at Racine rang vociferously and the people hurried to the temple of justice. Fiery speeches were made and resolutions were passed. By these resolutions the arrest of Glover was denounced as a brutal outrage, and a fair and impartial jury trial of Glover in this State was demanded; the citizens also resolved that they would attend in person to secure Glover's release, adopting as their motto the golden rule; and further that "inasmuch as the Senate of the United States has repealed all compromises heretofore adopted by Congress, we, as citizens of Wisconsin, are justified in declaring, and hereby declare, the slave catching law of 1850 disgraceful and also repealed."

The pioneers of Wisconsin were men of high courage and prompt action. These resolutions prove the fact. None other would attempt to repeal an act of the Congress of the United States after a debate of half an hour at a court house meeting. A committee of one hundred citizens was appointed at the meeting to see that the resolutions were carried out, and the committee departed for Milwaukee by steamboat early in the afternoon. Meanwhile history was being rapidly made in Milwaukee. The news of the arrest came to Booth by telegraph early in the morning of Saturday, and he at once consulted with Gen. James H. Paine and his son, Byron Paine, who were then practicing lawyers in Milwaukee, as to the legal measures to be taken to free Glover; a writ of habeas corpus was agreed upon as the proper remedy, and it was procured from Judge Charles E. Jenkins, of the County Court. But here arose a serious difficulty. Neither the sheriff nor the United States marshal would obey the writ and produce the prisoner, because they claimed that the prisoner was within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States Court. This refusal created great excitement and indignation; a meeting was called in the court house square at two o'clock in the afternoon; men rode through the streets on horses summoning "freemen" to the meeting. It was largely attended and was addressed by fiery and eloquent speakers, and as a result a rush was made for the jail at about six o'clock in the evening, the door battered down, and Glover taken out and hurried away.

The following description of the affair contained in the weekly Racine Advocate of March 20, 1854, may prove interesting:

"A committee of twenty-five of the citizens of Milwaukee was appointed a committee of vigilance and protection. A committee of two was also appointed to wait upon the sheriff to see if he still persisted in refusing to serve the writ. This refusal being persisted in, measures were immediately taken to see what steps were necessary to see that the 'Republic received no detriment' and that the laws of the land were enforced. The citizens of Milwaukee, on this notice being given, assembled to the number of five thousand in the court house square, where they were addressed by the most eloquent and influential members of the Milwaukee bar. The excitement continued and spread to all parts of the city. At five o'clock the delegation from this city arrived at Milwaukee and were escorted to the court house square, where the citizens of Milwaukee were listening to addresses upon the subject matter. The military had been ordered out, but did not appear on the streets. At six o'clock the friends of law and order came to the conclusion that it would be unsafe, as well as eminently wicked, for a human being to be locked up in a jail over the Sabbath against whom no crime had been alleged; accordingly a courier was despatched for a team, and as the court house bell rang the tocsin of liberty the writ of 'open sesame' was enforced, while the glorious sun sank smilingly in the west as he shed his rays upon the spires of Milwaukee for the 11th day of March, 1854; a glorious prelude to the coming day of rest. The doors of the prison shook as though another Peter were within, and the willing cell yielded up its victim to the fresh light and air of God's glorious earth. The negro waved his hat as he mounted the wagon in return to the waving of hats and joyous shouts which arose from that vast crowd of freeman who said that the Milwaukee jail could not be used for the confinement of men who had committed no crime."

The mixture of biblical allusion, "fine writing" and satire in this account is certainly amusing, if not effective.

Booth describes his own share in the rescue in the course of an address delivered by him in Madison, March 12, 1897, as follows:

"In riding through the streets of Milwaukee to call a public meeting, I did not cry as was reported and sworn to, 'Freemen to the rescue.' A forcible rescue was never my purpose; I aimed simply to secure for Glover a fair trial and competent counsel, and in calling the meeting I used but two forms of speech, viz.: 'All Freemen,' or 'All citizens who are opposed to being made slaves or slave catchers turn out to a meeting in the court house square at two o'clock,' the only variation being that I sometimes used the word 'men' and sometimes the word 'citizens'. * * * The immediate cause of the rescue was the speech and report of C. K. Watkins, chairman of the committee to wait on Judge Miller and inquire if the writ of liberty would be obeyed. He reported that Judge Miller said, 'No power on earth could take him from his jurisdiction.' He (Watkins) expatiated on the tyranny of the judge and the hardship of imprisoning Glover over the Sabbath; I had invited the Racine delegation to meet our committee at the American House for consultation and was about to start when I heard a shout and saw a rush for the jail and anticipated the result. I went up to Dr. Wolcott and Byron Paine, standing on the court house steps, and said to them as the crowd was bringing Glover out, that I regretted the act, that it was a bad precedent and the people would not discriminate between this case and one in which a prisoner was rightfully held. To personal appeals of Democrats before the first meeting was opened, 'Mr. Booth, let us take him out,' I answered, 'No, we must use legal and peaceful methods,' and during the whole of this scene I counselled against violence, publicly and privately. Yet in all the histories of this case, in newspapers, pamphlets and books, I am represented as riding through the streets of Milwaukee shouting 'Freeman to the rescue.' * * * I respectfully decline the honor of a deed I never performed. The only responsibility attaching to me for the rescue of Glover is that I helped create a strong public sentiment against the fugitive slave act and called the meeting to protect the legal rights of Glover and give him a fair trial. If, when assembled for peaceable and lawful purposes, the course of the judge and his bailiffs excited the people to take Glover out of jail against my advice, I was guiltless of the rescue."

Glover made good his escape and was never recaptured. The great "writ of freedom" had failed indeed, but a power more effective than any writ, the righteous wrath of an outraged people, had accomplished the purpose. Now commenced the legal battle which was destined to array court against court, and last until the booming guns of Sumter announced the coming downfall of slavery.

While the negro had thus been permanently released, Booth still remained at his post, and the temptation to bring down upon his head the penalties of the law which he had set at defiance was too great to be resisted. He was arrested for aiding in the escape of a fugitive slave, was examined before a United States Commissioner, and bound over for trial before the United States Court. Bail was furnished, but his bondsmen soon surrendered him at his own request, and the Court Commissioner by warrant committed him to the custody of the United States Marshal. Probably this surrender was for the purpose of instituting the legal proceedings which now began in the State Court. Byron Paine was then a young lawyer in Milwaukee, not yet twenty-seven years of age. He had come to Milwaukee with his father, James H. Paine, some seven years before. The father was a man of ability, a lawyer of some prominence, and so strong and pronounced an abolitionist that he found it necessary, or at least desirable, to remove from Painesville, Ohio, to Milwaukee. So Byron drank in abolitionism with his mother's milk. Possessed of a rare power of language and literary composition, he wrote much for Booth's paper, the Free Democrat, while preparing for the bar. He had not attained great eminence in the profession, though his capabilities were known by some and his sterling honesty and courage by many. The time had now come when he was to demonstrate his abilities and he recognized the opportunity and grasped it. His whole soul was in the cause; he entered the combat as did the knights of old who fought for the holy sepulchre. It was to him the cause of God as well as the cause of freedom. Upon the day following the commitment of Booth to the custody of the marshal, application was made to Judge Smith at chambers for a writ of habeas corpus directed to the marshal. The writ was allowed, the marshal claimed justification under his warrant, but after argument by Mr. Paine and Mr. J. R. Sharpstein on the other side, Mr. Justice Smith in a long and able opinion discharged the prisoner on the ground that Congress was given no power by the United States Constitution to legislate on the subject, but that the clause in the Constitution providing that fugitive slaves should be given up to the owner was simply a command to the State and to be enforced by the states alone.^[2]

This decision was received by the partisans of Booth in all parts of the State with great enthusiasm. The court house meeting was immediately reconvened at Racine, and again passed resolutions. It will be interesting to note their tone—they are as follows:

"Resolved, That we hail with unmingled satisfaction the decision of Judge Smith by which the constitution is vindicated and restored to its original purity;

"Resolved, That Judge Smith's construction is the true and undoubted meaning of the Constitution as left by the hands of the fathers who framed it, that the reasoning by which he arrived at that conclusion is unanswerable and places the Judge in the front rank of constitutional jurists;

"Resolved, That it is 'holy light' when compared with the muddy and discrepant opinions of the United States Court in the famous Prigg case, reported in 16th Peters; "Resolved, That with him we sincerely and solemnly believe that the last hope of a free representative government rests upon the state sovereignties and fidelity of state officers to their double allegiance to the state and federal government;

"Resolved, That Judge Smith has manfully and ably fulfilled the trust of double allegiance which the people of Wisconsin committed to him.

The case was immediately taken before the full bench of the Supreme Court by writ of certiorari, and heard at the June term, 1854. Upon this hearing, Mr. Paine again appeared for Booth, and he then met a foeman worthy of his steel, one who like himself was destined in after years to add lustre to that very bench, Edward G. Ryan. Paine's speech has been preserved in pamphlet form, and it was worthy of the occasion and the man. He argued that the fugitive slave law was unconstitutional on three grounds: (1) because Congress had no power to legislate upon the subject at all, being the ground taken by Judge Smith in his opinion; (2) because it provided that a man might be reduced to a state of slavery without a trial by jury, and (3) because it vested judicial power in Court Commissioners contrary to the terms of the Constitution, which provided for the vesting of such power in certain Courts. The Court affirmed the order of Justice Smith discharging Booth from imprisonment, July 19, 1854.^[3] The affirmance was unanimous, but the judges differed on the ground upon which the decision should be based. Chief Justice Whiton admitted that it was finally established by the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 16 Peters, 640, that the United States had power to legislate on the subject of fugitive slaves, but he held that the act was unconstitutional for the reason that it vested judicial powers in Court Commissioners, and because it denied to the fugitive a jury trial. Judge Smith retained his views as to the lack of power in Congress to pass any law on the subject, and concurred with the Chief Justice in his objections to the law; while Justice Crawford dissented from the conclusion of the majority, holding the law to be valid, but agreeing in the result because the commitment did not on its face show that the case was within the law.

The legal victory thus won by Byron Paine seemed to be complete. He had met in the highest tribunal of the State one of the greatest men of the profession, and had utterly routed him. The decision of the Court touched and thrilled the popular heart, and the beardless champion of human freedom was unquestionably the hero of the hour. Nor was the enthusiasm over the victory confined to the narrow limits of the State of Wisconsin. The contest had been eagerly watched by leading abolitionists in all parts of the country, and the victory was hailed by them with delight and the youthful victor was overwhelmed with praise.

Charles Sumner wrote on the 5th of August, 1854:

Washington, Aug. 5th, 1854.
"* * * I congratulate you upon your magnificent effort which does honor not only to your State but to your country; the argument will live in the history of this controversy. God grant that Wisconsin may not fail to protect her own right and the rights of her citizens in the emergency now before her. To her belongs the lead which Massachusetts should have taken. * * *"

Wendell Phillips thus congratulated him:

Milwaukee, Nov. 24th.
"Dear Sir:
I hoped to have met you last evening to tell you with what unbounded delight I read your argument in the Booth case. You know you have many companions in the pathway of that effort; but I think none excels you in the completeness and force with which the points are presented and some of the views with which you sustain points made by others are strikingly original. I cannot see that you leave anything further to be argued. * * *"

But the litigation had not ended; it was in fact but just begun. The discharge from confinement did not stop the prosecution of Booth in the United States Court. In July, 1854, Mr. Booth and one John Rycraft were finally indicted for violation of the fugitive slave law, and were arrested on warrants to answer the indictments. Booth again applied for a writ of habeas corpus to the Supreme Court, but it was unanimously denied, not because there had been any change of view in the minds of the justices on the main question, but because, the United States Court having obtained jurisdiction of the case and the prisoner being held by apparently lawful process issued by such Court, (and not by a Court Commissioner), no other Court should interfere and endeavor to take the decision of the question of jurisdiction away from that Court. This is the familiar rule of comity, by which, when the jurisdiction of a matter has been acquired by one Court, another Court of concurrent jurisdiction will not interfere.^[4]

Booth and Rycraft were now tried in the United States Court, found guilty, and sentenced to a short term of imprisonment in the county jail and to pay a fine of $1,000.00. This conviction aroused intense feeling all over the State. Indignation meetings were held in Milwaukee and in many of the smaller places, most of which passed resolutions denouncing the conviction, and some going so far as to demand armed resistance. Again a writ of habeas corpus was issued from the Supreme Court and the prisoners were finally discharged in February, 1855, the Court deciding that it could review the question of the jurisdiction of the United States Court upon habeas corpus and could discharge the prisoners, even when the Federal Court had tried the case and passed judgment upon them.^[5] The position was an extreme one and the judges recognized the fact. It meant a direct clash with the Federal Courts, but the judges did not falter. Justice Smith said in a note:

"This Court has no disposition to interfere with the criminal jurisdiction of the District Court of the United States. Unless that Court proceeds within the limits which the constitution and laws of Congress have prescribed, its acts are a nullity; its jurisdiction is always open to question and must affirmatively appear; if jurisdiction be wanting, its process, judgments and decrees are void. Were it otherwise, that Court might proceed to indict, convict and punish for common assault, libel, breaches of the peace, and so forth, imprison our citizens at its own will and pleasure, administer the whole common law code of offenses and punishments, from whose judgment there could be no appeal and whose prison doors no earthly power could unlock. Such doctrine is monstrous. We have not yet reached the point of submission."^[6]

The note of defiance here rings out with unmistakeable clearness; it was magnificent, but it was not good law.

The issue was too important to rest without final decision by the Court of last resort, and writs of error were sued out of the Supreme Court of the United States by the marshal to review both judgments of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin discharging Mr. Booth. To the first writ issued in October, 1854, return was made without objection, but when the second writ was issued and served in June, 1855, the justices of the Supreme Court directed the clerk to make no return to the writ on the ground that no writ of error could run from the United States Supreme Court to the Supreme Court of a State, and that the act of Congress purporting to authorize such a proceeding was unconstitutional. This was going a step further than before. By the previous action, the Court had only asserted its power to inquire into and decide for itself the question of the jurisdiction of a Federal Court, and the validity of its judgment; by this latter act it asserted in legal effect that its decision was final and supreme and could not be reviewed by any Court on earth. The refusal to return the record in obedience to the writ could not prevent the consideration of the case by the United States Supreme Court, but it did delay such consideration.

The Attorney General of the United States (Jeremiah S. Black) had procured a certified copy of the record, and when it finally appeared that no return would be made to the writ, the Court ordered that this copy be filed with the same effect as if returned by the clerk, and the cases were finally reached in January, 1859. Mr. Black appeared and argued the case for the United States, but no counsel appeared on the other side. Booth sent to the Court a copy of the pamphlet argument of Mr. Paine with copies of the opinions of the justices of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, and submitted his case on these without argument. The cases were decided and the judgments reversed March 7, 1859, in an opinion by Chief Justice Taney.^[7] The issue was of supreme importance, and the opinion was one worthy of the issue and of the distinguished jurist who wrote it.

It has been the fashion to belittle and blacken the memory of Chief Justice Taney by falsely attributing to him the statement that a negro had no rights which white men were bound to respect. Happily, time has to a great extent corrected this great injustice, and there are few now who do not acknowledge the purity and probity of the character of this great jurist, and admit that he stands among the very greatest of the great men who have adorned the Supreme Bench of the United States. While the opinion in this case is of some length, the Chief Justice stated the issue and its inevitable conclusion in a few sentences so clearly that I cannot refrain from quoting them.

"If the judicial power exercised (by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin) in this instance has been reserved to the States, no offense against the laws of the United States can be punished by their own courts without the permission and according to the judgment of the Court of the State in which the party happens to be imprisoned; for if the Supreme Court of Wisconsin possessed the power it has exercised in relation to offenses against the action of Congress in question, it necessarily follows that they must have the same judicial authority in relation to any other law of the United States, and consequently their supremacy and controlling power would embrace the whole criminal code of the United States and extend to offenses against our revenue laws or any other law intended to guard the different departments of the general government from fraud or violence, and it would embrace all crimes from the highest to the lowest, including felonies, which are punished with death, as well as misdemeanors which are punished by imprisonment. And if this power is possessed by the Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin, it must belong equally to every other State in the Union when the prisoner is within its territorial limits; and it is very certain that the State courts would not always agree in opinion, and it would often happen that an act which was admitted to be an offense and justly punished in one State, would be regarded as innocent and indeed as praiseworthy in another. It seems to be hardly necesesary to do more than state the result to which these decisions of the State Courts must necessarily lead. It is, of itself, a sufficient and conclusive answer; for no one will suppose that a government which was now lasted nearly seventy years, enforcing its laws by its own tribunals and preserving the Union of the States, could have lasted a single year or fulfilled the high trusts committed to it if offenses against its laws could not have been punished without the consent of the State in which the culprit was found."

These propositions seem now to be very plain and simple truths, but not so in 1859. The judgment of reversal was followed by a storm of popular indignation in Wisconsin, which will be fully described in its proper place. It is sufficient now to say that in the judicial elections of 1855, 1857, 1859 and 1860 the question whether the Booth case was rightly decided and should be adhered to formed practically the sole issue, and that notwithstanding their radically different positions in that case both Justices Crawford and Smith lost their seats by reason of such positions.

The ordinary litigation which came before the Court during Judge Crawford's brief term of two years was not great in volume, yet some important fundamental propositions took their places in the jurisprudence of the young state.

One of the most important cases was the Blossom case, already referred to, where it was held that the Supreme Court had been endowed by the constitution with original jurisdiction in cases publici juris, involving the prerogatives and franchises of the state and the liberties of the people.^[8] The great importance of this principle and its value to the people of the state was later clearly demonstrated in the railroad cases^[9] and the other cases of absorbing public interest and importance which have followed that case. Had the Court been shorn of this great power by a narrow construction of the grant of power contained in Section 3 of Article VII of the constitution the result would have been to practically deprive the public of redress or relief in many great emergencies, when only prompt action by the court of last resort could be effective.

Among the more important legal principles laid down during this period are the following: that a ministerial officer is protected in the execution of a writ regular on its face and issued by a competent tribunal, so long as he has no knowledge of any lack of jurisdiction on the part of the tribunal which issued it;^[10] that repeal by implication is not favored in the law and that on the contrary courts are bound to uphold the prior law if by reasonable rules of construction the two acts may well subsist together;^[11] that a deed, absolute on its face, will be held a mortgage whenever the real transaction is a loan of money and the deed is given as security for its repayment;^[12] that the right of trial by jury secured by the constitution contemplates a jury of twelve men as understood at common law and not of any less number;^[13] that in ejectment the plaintiff must recover, if at all, on the strength of his own title, and that there may be dedication of lands to public use by parol;^[14] that a deed obtained by duress is void, not only as between the original parties, but as to a subsequent purchaser with notice;^[15] that a riparian owner upon a meandered stream owns to the thread of the stream, subject to the public easement;^[16] that a public nuisance may be enjoined at the suit of a private person if he suffer a private or special injury therefrom;^[17] that in actions ex delicto exemplary damages may be awarded when the injury is inflicted with malice or under circumstances of aggravation insult or cruelty;^[18] that the consideration for a promise to answer for the debt of another must be expressed in writing as well as the promise itself in order to take a case out of the statute of frauds;^[19] that organized towns are not municipal corporations within the meaning of Sec. 2 of Article XI of the constitution, but only quasi-corporations;^[20] and that when constitutional provisions or statutes which have been the subject of previous judicial construction in another state, are adopted by this state it is presumed that such construction is also adopted.^[21]

Notes

1. U. S. Const. Art. IV. Sec. 2.
2. 3 Wis. Rep. *1.
3. 3 Wis. *49.
4. 3 Wis. *145.
5. 3 Wis. *157.
6. 3 Wis. *157. See page *217.
7. 21 How. (62 U. S.) 506.
8. Atty. Genl. v. Blossom, 1 Wis. *317.
9. Atty. Genl. v. R. R. Co.'s, 35 Wis. 425.
10. Sprague v. Birchard, 1 Wis. *457.
11. Atty. Genl. v. Brown, 1 Wis. *513.
12. Rogan v. Walker, 1 Wis. *527.
13. Norval v. Rice, 2 Wis. *22.
14. Gardner v. Tisdale, 2 Wis. *153.
15. Brown v. Peck, 2 Wis. *261.
16. Jones v. Pettibone, 2 Wis. *308.
17. Walker v. Shepardson, 2 Wis. *384.
18. McWilliams v. Bragg, 3 Wis. *424.
19. Taylor v. Pratt, 3 Wis. *674.
20. Norton v. Peck, 3 Wis. *714.
21. Atty. Genl. v. Brunst, 3 Wis. *787.