Samuel Lisle Smith, of Pennsylvania, said to have been one of the most brilliant public speakers and ablest advocates at the Chicago bar during the period of his connection with it, died of cholera in 1854, while still a young man.

Justin Butterfield, born in New Hampshire, was one of the acknowledged leaders of the bar for many years. Among all his contemporaries none wielded a greater influence, none acquitted himself more creditably under all circumstances, none was better entitled to rank among the great lawyers of the west. He served as commissioner of the general land office at Washington under President Tyler, and died in 1855.

Isaac N. Arnold, noted as lawyer, statesman and author, began the practice of law in Chicago in 1835, and died here in 1884. He was born in New York, and after receiving an academic education, studied law. He was not only an able lawyer, but took an active interest in public affairs. He was elected to the Thirty-seventh Congress, and served two terms in that body. Afterward he served as auditor of the treasury for the postal department during a portion of President Johnson's administration. He was not only an admirable public speaker, but an admirable writer. After his retirement from public life he wrote a history of Abraham Lincoln, a work for which his many years of intimate association with "great emancipator" peculiarly fitted

the

him. Afterward he published a life of Benedict Arnold, and made many valuable contributions to historical literature.

Mark Skinner, who served the public as one of the judges of the Cook County Common Pleas Court one or more terms, Hugh T. Dickey, who also sat on the bench, and E. G. Ryan, late chief justice of Wisconsin, were also among the lawyers who practiced in the pioneer courts of this city.

Norman B. Judd, minister to Berlin during President Lincoln's first administration, and later collector of the port of Chicago, began his professional career also in 1836, and his name is one which sheds lustre upon the bar, with which he was identified.

Judge George Maniere, also a lawyer of great ability and high charac ter; Thomas Hoyne, whose tragic death in a railway accident some years since cast a gloom over a circle of personal friends, larger, perhaps, than had any other old resident of Chicago; John Wentworth, noted as lawyer, politician and journalist, of Titanic physique, and mind proportionately strong; and George W. Meeker, a scholarly man and thorough lawyer, but afflicted with physical infirmities, were also members of the bar during the pioneer period.

All these came to Chicago as young men. A majority of them began their professional careers here, and a remarkably large proportion of them developed into able and widely known members of their profession.

WHEN the Republican Party held its Second National Convention, in the old wigwam at Chicago, in 1860, it was a distinguished Chicago lawyer who placed Abraham Lincoln in nomination for the presidency of the United States. When the Third National Convention of the Party of Union and Liberty met in Baltimore, four years later, it was another eminent Illinois lawyer, afterwards a prominent member of the Chicago bar, who placed "The Great Emancipator" a second time in nomination for the presidency. The first of these noted Illinoisans, Hon. Norman B. Judd, has been dead some years. The second, Hon. Burton C. Cook, retired from the active practice of law only two or three years since, and still devotes a considerable portion of his time to professional work.

There are few men now living, who have had to do with more stirring events, or events calculated to a greater extent to shape the destinies of the nation, than Burton C. Cook, who has lived a full half century of public and professional life in Illinois.

He was born on the 11th of May, 1819, in Monroe County, N. Y., his father being Rev. Chauncey Cook, a Congregational minister of that State. The family is of New Eng

land origin, having descended from Henry Cook, who came from Kent, England, and located at Salem, Mass., in 1638.

academic

After completing an course of study, Burton C. Cook read law for a short time with Joseph Cartter, of Rochester, N. Y., brother of David K. Cartter, afterwards Chief Justice of the District of Columbia. He then came to Ottawa, Ill., and entered the law office of Judge T. L. Dickey-who sat for many years upon the Supreme Bench of the Statewhere he completed his preliminary course of study, and entered upon the practice of law, in 1840.

Six years of practice at the Ottawa bar gained for him the reputation of a thorough lawyer, and in 1846, he was elected by the Legislature to the office of States Attorney, for the Ninth Judicial District, to serve for two years. At that time what was known as the Ninth Judicial District, was composed of the Counties of La Salle, Kendall, Kane, De Kalb, Bureau, Stark, Peoria, Marshall, and Putnam. It covered a large area of country, which in the early history of the State, was over-run by criminals of every class and description. A vigorous prosecution of these criminal classes, car

ried on without fear or favor, followed Mr. Cook's induction into the office of States Attorney, and as a consequence his labors were exceedingly arduous, while many of his experiences were of that thrilling character which constituted a prominent feature of this branch of the practice of the law, in the days of the pioneer It was necessary for him to be present at all the sittings of the court in various portions of the district, and long tedious trips had to be made from one point to another, by stage or private conveyance, sometimes on horseback, in all kinds of weather, and not infrequently under trying and distressing circumstances.

western courts.

In 1848 he was married to Miss Elizabeth Hart, a daughter of Judge Orris Hart, of Oswego, N. Y., and the same year he was re-elected by populary vote to the office of States Attorney for a term of four years. He continued to reside at Ottawa, and in 1852, at the expiration of his term of office as District Attorney, he was elected to the State Senate, for a term of four years.

It was while serving this term in the Senate that he came to the front as a political leader, and was one of the five men who became the virtual founders of a new party in the State of Illinois. These five men were State Senators Norman B. Judd, Burton C. Cook, and John M. Palmer, and Representatives Baker and Allen. The three first named had been elected to

the Legislature as Democrats, and the two last named as Whigs. While all of these men were more or less devoted to the political organizations with which they were nominally identified, they were interested above every thing else, in preventing as far as possible, the extension of slavery. This they looked upon as the issue of vital importance to the nation at that time. In May of 1854, Congress had passed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, repealing the Missouri Compromise, which defined the limits of slave territory. When the Illinois Legislature convened in the following January, an opportunity presented itself to that body for expressing its sentiment, concerning the act which threw down the bars, and opened up the way for the extension of slavery into the territories of the United States. A United States Senator was to be elected, and General James Shields, who had supported the Kansas-Nebraska bill, was a candidate for reelection. Including all who had been elected to the Legislature as Democrats, that party had two majority on joint ballot. The three above named, however, refused to recognize any party necessity or obligation, which would prevent them from throwing all their influence in favor of the return of a pronounced anti-slavery man to the United States Senate. The two Whigs, Baker and Allen, assumed the same attitude, and when the Whigs and Democrats held their respective caucuses to nominate can