George P. Fisher
George Purnell Fisher was an American lawyer and politician from Wilmington, in New Castle County, Delaware. He was a member of the Whig Party and the Republican Party, who served in the Delaware General Assembly, as Attorney General of Delaware, as Secretary of State of Delaware, as U. S. Representative from Delaware, as a judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Fisher was born in Milford, Delaware, on October 13, 1817, he at the age of 17 entered Mount St. Mary's College in Maryland. One year he entered the sophomore class at Dickinson College, where he graduated in July 1838, he read law with John M. Clayton the chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court. Fisher was admitted to the bar in April 1841 and began practicing in Dover, soon developing a thriving practice, he served two terms in the Delaware House of Representatives, in 1843 and 1844. Governor Joseph Maull, who had taken office, appointed Fisher as Secretary of State of Delaware in March 1846. In 1847, Fisher became an aide-de-camp to Major General Nathaniel Young, commander of the Delaware militia.
In 1849, Fisher worked in Washington with William Hunter, as a confidential clerk to Secretary of State John M. Clayton. Fisher assisted in negotiating the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty with Great Britain. In 1850, Fisher was appointed by President Zachary Taylor to be a commissioner to adjudicate claims against Brazil. In 1855, Fisher was appointed Delaware Attorney General. Fisher was elected on a People's Party ticket. In Congress, Fisher supported Abraham Lincoln's compensated emancipation proposal, but failed to find someone in the Delaware General Assembly willing to introduce it. Fisher lost. On October 13, 1862, Fisher was commissioned as a colonel of the First Delaware Cavalry, his service was brief, because he was nominated by President Lincoln on March 10, 1863, to a seat on the newly created Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. He received his commission the next day. In 1867, Fisher presided over the trial of John Surratt, one of the Lincoln assassination conspirators. In May 1, 1870, Fisher resigned as judge to accept an appointment as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, serving until 1875.
Fisher returned to Dover, where he had "no intention of again entering public life." However, he was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison in mid-1889 to be the First Auditor of the Treasury Department, in which capacity he served until the end of the Harrison administration, on March 23, 1893. Fisher "then returned to the home of his childhood, lived in his extensive library, devoted the last years of his life to reading and literary pursuits." Fisher died in Washington on February 10, 1899, at the age of eighty-one. Elections are held the first Tuesday after November 1. Members of the General Assembly took office the first Tuesday of January. State Senators have a four-year term and State Representatives have a two-year term. U. S. Representatives took office March 4 and have a two-year term. Martin, Roger A... Delawareans in Congress, the House of Representatives 1789-1900. ISBN 0-924117-26-5. George Purnell Fisher at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
Biographical Directory of the U. S. Congress Delaware’s Members of Congress Find a Grave The Political Graveyard
United States District Court for the District of Columbia
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia is a federal district court. Appeals from the District are taken to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; the court was established by Congress in 1863 as the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, replacing the abolished circuit and district courts of the District of Columbia, in place since 1801. The court consisted of four justices, including a chief justice, was granted the same powers and jurisdiction as the earlier circuit court. Any of the justices could convene a local criminal court. In 1936, Congress renamed the court the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia, its current name was adopted in 1948, from on justices were known as judges. Housed in the former District of Columbia City Hall, the court now sits in the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse located at 333 Constitution Avenue, Washington, D. C; the District has no local district attorney or equivalent, so local prosecutorial matters fall into the jurisdiction of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.
Assistant United States Attorneys are tasked with prosecution of not only federal crimes but crimes that would be left to the state prosecutor's discretion. Because of this the District has the largest U. S. Attorney's Office in the nation, with around 250 AUSAs; as of December 1, 2018 Chief judges have administrative responsibilities with respect to their district court. Unlike the Supreme Court, where one justice is nominated to be chief, the office of chief judge rotates among the district court judges. To be chief, a judge must have been in active service on the court for at least one year, be under the age of 65, have not served as chief judge. A vacancy is filled by the judge highest in seniority among the group of qualified judges; the chief judge serves until age 70, whichever occurs first. The age restrictions are waived if no members of the court would otherwise be qualified for the position; when the office was created in 1948, the chief judge was the longest-serving judge who had not elected to retire on what has since 1958 been known as senior status or declined to serve as chief judge.
After August 6, 1959, judges could not remain chief after turning 70 years old. The current rules have been in operation since October 1, 1982. Associate Justices Clabaugh, McCoy and Laws were elevated to Chief Justice. Chief Justice Laws was assigned to the new Seat 13 by operation of law upon the abolition of the Chief Justice Seat 1. Courts of the United States List of United States federal courthouses in the District of Columbia U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia Official Website Official Courthouse History Federal Judicial Center's History of the Court
John Archibald Campbell
John Archibald Campbell was an American jurist. He was a successful lawyer in Alabama, where he served in the state legislatures. Appointed by Franklin Pierce to the United States Supreme Court in 1853, he served until the outbreak of the American Civil War, when he became an official of the Confederate States of America. After serving six months in a military prison, he resumed a successful law practice in New Orleans, where he opposed Reconstruction. Campbell was born near Georgia, to Col. Duncan Greene Campbell. Considered a child prodigy, he graduated from the University of Georgia in 1825 at the age of 14, enrolled at the United States Military Academy for three years and would have graduated in 1830, but withdrew upon the death of his father and returned home to Georgia, he read law with his uncle, former Georgia governor John Clark, was admitted to the bar in 1829, at the age of 18 which required a special act of the Georgia legislature. While at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, on December 24–25, 1826, Campbell was involved in the Eggnog Riot known as the "Grog Mutiny."
Proceedings began on December 26, 1826, courts-martial was complete on March 16, 1827, ended on May 3, 1827, with the President adjusting some of the verdicts and approving of the rest. Campbell was among 70 cadets that were involved but a review concluded that only 20 cadets and one enlisted soldier be charged. Many notable cadets such as Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, were involved in the incident. Nine expulsions were approved by President John Quincy Adams. There was a call for Campbell to be expelled, along with James W. M. "Weems" Berrien but this was rejected so Campbell escaped court martial. In 1830, Campbell moved to Montgomery, where he met and married Anna Esther Goldthwaite and earned a reputation as a talented lawyer specializing in Spanish land grant titles. Hailed as a war hero for his involvement in the Creek Indian War of 1836, Campbell was elected state representative for that same year's term establishing himself as a Jacksonian Democrat in the state legislature; that meant that Campbell aligned with Jackson on national policies, supporting the bank veto and condemning nullification, but he remained a moderate proponent of states' rights.
After his only term in office and his young family relocated to Mobile and Campbell served a second term as state representative in 1842. For Campbell's law career, Mobile was a bustling port city that generated commercial lawsuits and Spanish grant disputes. In one such grant case, Mayor of Mobile v. Eslava, Campbell revealed his states-rightist attitude and first articulated his doctrine of "original sovereignty" before the state supreme court. Campbell argued that because each of the original 13 states had retained sovereignty over the navigable waters within its borders, the Constitution makes all new states enter the Union on equal terms with existing states, new states like Alabama thus retain sovereignty over their navigable waters; the Supreme Court upheld original sovereignty in an 1845 decision and Campbell would refer to it in his Dred Scott concurrence. Thereafter, Campbell's star continued to rise as one of the most sought-after attorneys in Alabama, in 1852, he acted as an attorney for Myra Clark Gaines against Richard Relf before the Supreme Court.
In most cases, Campbell represented debtors against banks, demonstrating a Jacksonian Democratic tendency to advocate for state control of corporate development and champion the individual's economic freedom. Twice, he turned down offers to sit on the Alabama Supreme Court, on several occasions, he argued cases before the US Supreme Court. During this successful early period as a lawyer, his political involvement increased. From 1847 to 1851, for example, Campbell joined the national debate on slavery with the publication of four essays in the Southern Quarterly Review in which he called for improved conditions for slaves and gradual emancipation. Here, his theories and practices diverged: Campbell owned up to 14 slaves throughout his life, but he freed several before his Supreme Court appointment. Moreover, Campbell attended the Nashville Convention in 1850, where he helped compose a series of resolutions in reaction to the proposed Compromise of 1850. Although he drafted several of the final 13 resolutions in a conciliatory tone and never called for southern resistance, Campbell advocated the rights of slaveholders, condemned the free soil philosophy, asserted the sole right of the states to regulate slavery within their borders.
In 1852 the death of Justice John McKinley created a vacancy on the Supreme Court. President Millard Fillmore, a Whig, made four nominations to fill the vacancy, all of whom withdrew, declined to serve, or were not acted on by the Democratic-controlled Senate. After the election of Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, a group of sitting Supreme Court justices approached Pierce to recommend Campbell as a nominee. Pierce, hoping to stave off an insurrection by appeasing the South, agreed to nominate the Alabamian Campbell; the nomination was made on March 21, 1853, though Campbell was only 41 and had no previous judicial experience, the Senate unanimously approved the appointment within three days, indicating Northerners, who hoped that Campbell's moderate tendencies would help overpower the growing sectionalis
George Washington Lane
George Washington Lane was a United States federal judge. Born in Cherokee County, Lane moved to Limestone County, Alabama with hs family in 1821 and read law with Judge Daniel Coleman in Athens, Alabama to enter the bar, practiced there until 1829, he was a member of the Alabama House of Representatives from 1829 to 1833, a County Court judge in Alabama beginning in 1832, a judge on the Alabama Circuit Court from 1834 to 1846. He was in private practice in Huntsville, Alabama from 1846 to 1861. Lane opposed the secession of Alabama from the United States. On March 26, 1861, Lane was nominated by President Abraham Lincoln to a joint seat on the United States District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of Alabama, all vacated by the resignation of William Giles Jones, who had joined the Confederacy. Lane was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 28, 1861, received his commission the same day. Lane was unable to serve on the court, as it was not recognized to exist by the Alabama government.
Though Lane was a strong Unionist, his son, Captain Robert W. Lane, was killed in the Confederate service in Forrest's Cavalry Corps. Historian Willis Brewer wrote of Lane that, "as a judge he was lenient but sound and reliable, as a man he was always popular because of his kind and humane nature". Lane's service ended in 1863, in Louisville, Kentucky. George Washington Lane at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center. Middle District of Alabama biography of George Washington Lane
John McLean
John McLean was an American jurist and politician who served in the United States Congress, as U. S. Postmaster General, as a justice of the Ohio and U. S. Supreme Courts, he was discussed for the Whig and Republican nominations for President. Born in New Jersey, McLean lived in several frontier towns before settling in Ohio, he founded The Western Star, a weekly newspaper, established a law practice. He won election to the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1813 until his election to the Ohio Supreme Court in 1816, he resigned from that position to accept appointment to the administration of President James Monroe, becoming the United States Postmaster General in 1823. Under Monroe and President John Quincy Adams, McLean presided over a major expansion of the United States Postal Service. In 1829, President Andrew Jackson appointed McLean as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. On the court, McLean became known as an opponent of slavery, he was mentioned as a presidential candidate for various parties.
McLean received the support of delegates at the 1848 Whig National Convention, the 1856 Republican National Convention, the 1860 Republican National Convention. He was one of two justices to dissent in the landmark case of Dred Sandford. McLean served on the court until his death in 1861. McLean was born in New Jersey, the son of Fergus McLean and Sophia Blackford. After living in a succession of frontier towns, Virginia, it was here that Mclean received his formal education in the classical style and that his interest in law began to develop. Going on to graduating from Harvard in 1806, it can be argued that his anti-slavery views began to form at this time, given his upbringing as an evangelical Methodist with a focus on egalitarianism. His brother William was a successful Ohio politician, his brother Finis McLean was a United States Representative from Kentucky. He read law and was admitted to the bar in 1807; that same year he founded a weekly newspaper at Lebanon, the Warren County seat. In 1810 Mclean transferred ownership of the Star to his brother Nathaniel and hung up his shingle, beginning to practice law as an individual lawyer for the first time.
He was elected to the U. S. House for the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1813, until he resigned in 1816 to take a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court, to which he had been elected on February 17, 1816, replacing William W. Irvin; this case, which occurred during McLean's tenure on the Ohio Supreme Court, foreshadowed McLean's future dissent in an important fugitive slavery case, Dred Scott v. Sandford. In it, a black man named Richard Lunsford, a Kentucky slave, applied for a writ of habeas corpus to obtain freedom from his owner, Thomas D. Carneal; the Ohio Constitution of 1802 forbade slavery in the state, at issue was whether slaves owned by a man traveling in Ohio became free once they traveled to Ohio and whether a slave who resided in Kentucky could be sent to work in Ohio without gaining his freedom. Lunsford, as a slave, sent to work in Ohio, sued on the grounds that, by having him travel to work in Cincinnati for periods of over a week, Thomas Carneal forfeited his right as Lunsford's master.
The Court ruled, with McLean issuing its opinion, that since Carneal sold Lunsford to a Mr. James Riddle, the man who sent Lunsford to Cincinnati, he did in fact forfeit his right to be Lunsford's owner; the most notable portion of this case was McLean's opinion, which highlighted his personal distaste for the institution of slavery: "Were it proper to consider it, the Court, as well as from the principles recognized by our Constitution and Laws, could not hesitate in declaring that SLAVERY, except for the punishment of crimes, is an infringement upon the sacred rights of man: Rights, which he derives from his Creator, which are inalienable." He resigned his judgeship in 1822 to take President James Monroe's appointment to be Commissioner of the General Land Office, serving until 1823, when Monroe appointed him United States Postmaster General. McLean served in that post from December 9, 1823, to March 7, 1829, under Monroe and John Quincy Adams, presiding over a massive expansion of the Post Office into the new western states and territories and the elevation of the Postmaster Generalship to a cabinet office.
While Postmaster General, McLean supported Andrew Jackson, who offered him the posts of Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy. McLean declined both and was instead appointed to the Supreme Court by Jackson on March 6, 1829, to a seat vacated by Robert Trimble. McLean was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 7, 1829, receiving his commission the same day. Known as "The Politician on the Supreme Court," he associated himself with every party on the political spectrum, moving from a Jackson Democrat, to the Anti-Jackson Democrats, the Anti-Masonic Party, the Whigs, the Free Soilers, the Republicans. Through the 1830s and 1840s, he was discussed as a potential Whig presidential candidate. President John Tyler offered him the post of Secretary of War; because of his anti-slavery-extension positions, he was considered by the new Republican party as a presidential candidate in 1856. Despite his efforts, the nomination went to John C. Frémont, he tried again in 1860. McLean's tendency toward economic nationalism can be seen in cases such as Groves v. Slaughter, 40 U.
S. 449. In this case, McLean u
Iowa
Iowa is a state in the Midwestern United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states. In colonial times, Iowa was a part of Spanish Louisiana. After the Louisiana Purchase, people laid the foundation for an agriculture-based economy in the heart of the Corn Belt. In the latter half of the 20th century, Iowa's agricultural economy made the transition to a diversified economy of advanced manufacturing, financial services, information technology and green energy production. Iowa is the 26th most extensive in land area and the 30th most populous of the 50 U. S states, its capital and largest city by population is Des Moines. Iowa has been listed as one of the safest states in, its nickname is the Hawkeye State. Iowa derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many Native American tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa is bordered by the Mississippi River on the east.
The southern border is the Des Moines River and a not-quite-straight line along 40 degrees 35 minutes north, as decided by the U. S. Supreme Court in Missouri v. Iowa after a standoff between Missouri and Iowa known as the Honey War. Iowa is the only state whose east and west borders are formed by rivers. Iowa has 99 counties; the state capital, Des Moines, is in Polk County. Iowa's bedrock geology increases in age from west to east. In northwest Iowa, Cretaceous bedrock can be 74 million years old. Iowa is not flat. Iowa can be divided into eight landforms based on glaciation, soils and river drainage. Loess hills lie along the western border of the state. Northeast Iowa along the Upper Mississippi River is part of the Driftless Area, consisting of steep hills and valleys which appear mountainous. Several natural lakes exist, most notably Spirit Lake, West Okoboji Lake, East Okoboji Lake in northwest Iowa. To the east lies Clear Lake. Man-made lakes include Lake Odessa, Saylorville Lake, Lake Red Rock, Coralville Lake, Lake MacBride, Rathbun Lake.
The state's northwest area has many remnants such as Barringer Slough. Iowa's natural vegetation is tallgrass prairie and savanna in upland areas, with dense forest and wetlands in flood plains and protected river valleys, pothole wetlands in northern prairie areas. Most of Iowa is used for agriculture; the Southern part of Iowa is categorised as the Central forest-grasslands transition ecoregion. The Northern, drier part of Iowa is categorised as the Central tall grasslands and is thus considered to be part of the Great Plains. There is a dearth of natural areas in Iowa; as of 2005 Iowa ranked 49th of U. S. states in public land holdings. Threatened or endangered animals in Iowa include the interior least tern, piping plover, Indiana bat, pallid sturgeon, the Iowa Pleistocene land snail, Higgins' eye pearly mussel, the Topeka shiner. Endangered or threatened plants include western prairie fringed orchid, eastern prairie fringed orchid, Mead's milkweed, prairie bush clover, northern wild monkshood.
There is little proof to suggest that the explosion in the number of high-density livestock facilities in Iowa has led to increased rural water contamination and a decline in air quality. In fact, covered manure storage in modern barns prevent that manure from washing away into surface water, as it does in open lots as snow melts and thunderstorms occur. Other factors negatively affecting Iowa's environment include the extensive use of older coal-fired power plants and pesticide runoff from crop production, diminishment of the Jordan Aquifer. Iowa has a humid continental climate throughout the state with extremes of both cold; the average annual temperature at Des Moines is 50 °F. Winters are harsh and snowfall is common. Spring ushers in the beginning of the severe weather season. Iowa averages about 50 days of thunderstorm activity per year; the 30 year annual average Tornadoes in Iowa is 47. In 2008, twelve people were killed by tornadoes in Iowa, making it the deadliest year since 1968 and the second most tornadoes in a year with 105, matching the total from 2001.
Iowa summers are known for heat and humidity, with daytime temperatures sometimes near 90 °F and exceeding 100 °F. Average winters in the state have been known to drop well below freezing dropping below −18 °F. Iowa's all-time hottest temperature of 118 °F was recorded at Keokuk on July 20, 1934. Iowa has a smooth gradient of var
Illinois
Illinois is a state in the Midwestern and Great Lakes region of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product, the sixth largest population, the 25th largest land area of all U. S. states. Illinois is noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, natural resources such as coal and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, is a major transportation hub. Chicagoland, Chicago's metropolitan area, encompasses over 65% of the state's population; the Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois Waterway to the Illinois River. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports.
Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics. The capital of Illinois is Springfield, located in the central part of the state. Although today's Illinois' largest population center is in its northeast, the state's European population grew first in the west as the French settled the vast Mississippi of the Illinois Country of New France. Following the American Revolutionary War, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky in the 1780s via the Ohio River, the population grew from south to north. In 1818, Illinois achieved statehood. Following increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes after the construction of the Erie Canal, Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River at one of the few natural harbors on the southern section of Lake Michigan. John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal made transportation between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River valley faster and cheaper, new railroads carried immigrants to new homes in the country's west and shipped commodity crops to the nation's east. The state became a transportation hub for the nation. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars; the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in the state, including Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago, the center of the Chicago Metropolitan Area, is now recognized as a global alpha-level city. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Barack Obama. Additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was born and raised in the state.
Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln, displayed on its license plates since 1954. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. "Illinois" is the modern spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers' name for the Illinois Native Americans, a name, spelled in many different ways in the early records. American scholars thought the name "Illinois" meant "man" or "men" in the Miami-Illinois language, with the original iliniwek transformed via French into Illinois; this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for "man" is ireniwa, plural of "man" is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has been said to mean "tribe of superior men", a false etymology; the name "Illinois" derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa - "he speaks the regular way". This was taken into the Ojibwe language in the Ottawa dialect, modified into ilinwe·.
The French borrowed these forms, changing the /we/ ending to spell it as -ois, a transliteration for its pronunciation in French of that time. The current spelling form, began to appear in the early 1670s, when French colonists had settled in the western area; the Illinois's name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans; the Koster Site demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation. Cahokia, the largest regional chiefdom and urban center of the Pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois, they built an urban complex of more than 100 platform and burial mounds, a 50-acre plaza larger than 35 football fields, a woodhenge of sacred cedar, all in a planned design expressing the culture's cosmology.
Monks Mound, the center of the site, is the largest Pre-Columbian structure north of the Valley of Mexico. It is 100 feet high, 951 feet long, 836 feet wide, covers 13.8 acres. It contains about 814,000 cubic yards of earth, it was topped by a structure thought to have measured about 105 feet in length and 48 feet in width, covered an area 5,000 square feet, been as much as 50 feet high, making its peak 150 feet above the level of the pl
.jpg)
