time which I now have before me, and from which, as bearing on the point alluded to I quote. Judge Caldwell said:

I was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House and Judge Hall was second on the committee. We became very warm friends and were in accord on all questions that came before the extra session of May, 1861. One night Judge Hall came to my room with a paper in his hand which he laid down on my table and said: "Caldwell, I have drawn a bill providing for taking the vote of the soldiers in the field during the war. This is going to be a great war. Mr. Seward is greatly mistaken in his estimate of its duration. It will be one of the greatest wars of ancient or modern times; and before it ends all the able-bodied men liable to do military duty may be compelled to enter the armies of the Union and go to the front. This would take from their homes the great mass of the patriotic men and friends of the government within the military age, leaving behind those who are unfriendly to the government and whose sympathies are with the rebellion; and with these ballots they would be able to do the government more damage than if they were at the front with muskets in their hands fighting against us. The votes of these men would be more dangerous than if they themselves were in the open field. Hence in order to provide against such a state of affairs, we must confer the right to vote on the soldiers in the field." I suggested that it would be unconstitutional. He said that he had investigated that question and was satisfied that it would be constitutional, and be so declared by the Supreme Court in the event of litigation. Judge Hall was not only a lawyer of great ability, but a great man, and his patriotism and profound, prophetic foresight in this single instance, shows him to have been such.

As I had heard the origin of the measure ascribed to others I thought it possible that there might be some mistake about the matter. In a few days, however, I received from Judge Caldwell a copy of the House Journal which he had procured from the state archives, fully confirming the statement he had made. As the origin of the measure has been obscured, as it essentially affects the biography of Judge Hall and throws a strong light upon his character, I, in order to place the matter, in a particular manner, beyond controversy, here reproduce the Journal entries referred to. On reference to the Journal of the House of Representatives at the extra session of the General Assembly of the State of Iowa which convened at the capitol in Des Moines, on Wednesday, the 15th day of May, 1861, by referring to page 98 of that Journal under date of the 27th of May, the following entry will be found:

Mr. Hall, by leave, introduced the following bill:

House File No. 39. "A bill for an act to authorize volunteer officers and soldiers who are absent from the State and in the service of the United States, and citizens of this State to vote at State Elections.''

Which was read a first and second time and referred to the Committee on Elections.

Under date of May 28th, on page 110 of the Journal, the following entry will be found:

By leave, Mr. Rees submitted the following Report:

Your Committee to whom was referred House File No. 39: "A Bill for an Act to authorize Volunteer officers and soldiers who are absent from the State and in the service of the United States and citizens of this State to vote at State Elections," report the bill back and recommend its passage.

SAMUEL REES,

D. D. SABIN,
J. W. LELACHEUR.

On the same day the following entry appears on page 118 of the Journal:

Mr. Hall moved that the House take up House File No. 39: A Bill for an Act to authorize Volunteer Officers and Soldiers who are absent from the State and in the service of the United States, citizens of this State, to vote at the State Elections. Carried. Mr. Williams moved to postpone the further consideration of the bill till the year 2065. Upon this motion Mr. Hall demanded the yeas and nays, which were ordered and were as follows:

On the same day the House adjourned sine die.

Mr. Williams, who made the motion to postpone the consideration of the bill till the year 2065, was one of the representatives from Dubuque county, and immediately upon the adjournment of the Legislature he proceeded to Virginia, his former home, and entered the Confederate service.

When it is remembered that this action of Judge Hall was only a little more than a month after the bombardment of Fort Sumter (April 12th, 1861), and more than two months before the first battle of the war (that of Bull Run, July 21st, 1861), and that the seventy-five thousand troops called for by the President for three months had been thought in high quarters sufficient to crush the insurrection, no one can fail to appreciate the profound discernment which enabled him, it would seem beyond any man of his time, to so clearly foretell the mighty events which lay in the future.

I have referred to the fact that many of the lawyers of that time, and perhaps largely as a class, were convivial. Do not let me be misunderstood, for while they were more or less convivial, they were not debauched. The flowing bowl was an incident of those days, but it was rarely abused, and while lawyers indulged more freely than members of the other learned profession, they were seldom dissipated, or hors de combat in the hour of action. Why they took precedence, in the respect mentioned, over doctors and clergymen, is easy to understand. The vocation of clergymen, for obvious reasons, properly placed them under very different limitations and conditions. To a great extent the same may be said of the doctors. Both of these were comparatively isolated in their fellowship and professional action. Neither, so to speak, "flocked together" as did the lawyers, at the courts of their own and those of the other counties composing their circuit, and which all the leading ones attended. To do this, they frequently went long distances and through all kinds of weather-not by railroad, bicycle or automobile, for it was before their day-but overland, and generally, though not always, on horseback. Their almost constant companionship naturally made them convives.

It is not alone the glamour of biography that makes it valued or interesting. It is rather its incidents, that serve. to portray the individual from different points of view, and as he really was in his every-day as well as in his Sunday clothes; in his relaxation as well as in his strength. Human weaknesses in the great, it is said, make us love them. They make us akin.

But the frailties of these men were of the forgivable and healthy sort as compared with those we frequently see to-day. They were faithful to their families, their friends and the State. The disgraceful exhibitions of domestic treachery and official corruption, which are constantly passing before our eyes like the scenes of some frightful panorama, were unknown.

With this preliminary, I feel justified in narrating an incident which will, as it were, throw a vivid side-light on some distinguished counselors of that period, and thereby

serve to illustrate the customs of the time, and what I have said. The dramatis personae of the incident were four noted lawyers, who were taking a little ride of 250 miles through an almost unbroken wilderness, to procure some testimony in a certain contested election case. They were the Hon. Daniel F. Miller of Keokuk, the Nestor of the Iowa bar for length of continuance of service at the time of his comparatively recent death; Judge Jonathan C. Hall of Burlington, the subject of this sketch; the Hon. Lyman Johnson of Keokuk, and the Hon. John F. Kinney, then a judge of the Supreme Court, who had been appointed as the commissioner to take the testimony. The contestants were the said Daniel F. Miller, commonly referred to as "Dan," and William Thompson of Mount Pleasant, a well-known lawyer, familiarly known as "Black Bill," from his dark complexion. They had been opposing candidates for Congress in the southern district (there were then but two districts in the State). Thompson being awarded the election, Miller entered the contest, on the ground that the poll-books from the Mormon precinct at Kanesville, now Council Bluffs, had been stolen from the room where they were deposited, and that the returns, if shown, would give him a clear majority. Not being able to find the missing pollbooks, Miller was proceeding with his compagnons de voyage to Kanesville where the vote had been cast, to take testimony to show who had voted, for whom the votes had respectively been cast, and that the same had been polled and forwarded. Hall and Johnson represented Thompson in the proceeding. Miller represented himself.

In after years it so happened that on the 6th of December, 1884, I met Mr. Miller-whom I as nearly everybody else loved-at Des Moines, and we came home on the same train, occupying the same seat. It was night and the journey was long and slow. I desired to learn all I could of the earlier times and of the men who had invested it with so much extraordinary interest, and plied him with many questions; among others some relating to his contest with Thompson. He gave me all the details respecting the alleged theft of the pollbooks and their subsequent unexpected discovery, which it

would not be germain to relate here. He then gave me the following narrative of the journey across the country above alluded to, which I at the time reduced to writing in a memorandum book I carried, which I afterward read over to him for correction and approval, and which I now give in his own language as thus written:

We started to take depositions in my election case with "Bill" Thompson. The State was divided into two Congressional districts. Thompson and myself had run for Congress in the southern district. The poll-books had been stolen and we had to take secondary evidence, so to speak, as to how the vote had gone. Judge Kinney, then one of the territorial judges, had been commissioned by the Government to take the testimony. J. C. Hall and Lyman Johnson were Thompson's attorneys; I represented my own case. We, Kinney, Hall, Johnson and myself started westward. We had a two-horse wagon. Johnson drove. It was the cholera season. Many had died in Keokuk. We laid in a lot of medicine to meet the event of cholera sickness. We started from Keokuk. As we were about to start, and before I got into the wagon, I pulled out a bottle of brandy which I had taken the precaution to provide myself with, and as I held it up in my hand, I cried out, "I have got the advantage of you fellows.' "Not by a great sight,'' says Hall, and as he spoke he raised from the bottom of the wagon a twogallon jug. Thus equipped, we started. In due course of time we arrived at Keosauqua. We took some testimony there. Fifteen persons had died there with the cholera. We did not stay there long, but pressed westward. Our ultimate destination was the Missouri river in the vicinity of Council Bluffs-then called Kanesville-to take the testimony of Mormons who had encamped there on their way to Salt Lake. They had been driven from Nauvoo, they had tarried in Iowa, had remained there long enough to vote; quite a large body of them had reached and congregated in the neighborhood of the Missouri river.

We went from Keosauqua to Centerville. The only road was the Mormon trail-a trail they had made in their removal westward over the prairies and across the streams. We followed this trail. It was the month of March; our way lay through the wilderness; the weather was somewhat rough, but we kept supplied with a sufficient amount of whiskey to keep us warm, enliven our spirits, and thus shorten the journey. In order to do this pretty effectually, the intervals between drinks were not as long as those between the governors of North and South Carolina. The country along our route was uninhabited, save at intervals of great distance. We would generally manage to make a cabin for the night. We reached Centerville and rested there a while. The contents of the jug had run out and we were obliged to replenish our stock, and got the demijohn filled again. This was necessary in order to keep us warm and maintain our cheerful spirits. From there we struck towards the Missouri river. After some days of travel and when within some fifteen or twenty miles of the river, we came after nightfall upon a clearing and cabin, of which we had been informed and at which we expected to get accommodations for the night. We drove up towards the cabin; out came a pack of hounds roaring like so many lions. We hallooed for the inmates, and presently out came a man and hallooed back to us. "Who is it ånd what do you want?'' said he. "We are on our way to the river and have been informed we could