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15 1 The Willson Era The Inception of the Northern District of Ohio, 1855–67 Roberta Sue Alexander In the mid-1850s, lawyers, newspapers, and civil boosters across northern Ohio campaigned for the creation of a new federal court in the region. As Cleveland’s Plain Dealer noted: “The interest of the people of Northern Ohio imperatively demand a new U.S. Judicial District. Ohio should be divided into a Northern and Southern district, with the court of the Northern half held at [Cleveland].”1 In 1855, this campaign was successful, as Congress created the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio (NDOh). In 1803, when Ohio became the seventeenth state of the Union, Congress created the U.S. District Court for the District of Ohio, located in Chillicothe, then the state capital.2 When Ohio moved its capital to Columbus in 1820, Congress relocated the federal court there.3 But as the state continued to grow, with increased commerce, immigration, and industry, the citizens of Cleveland and Cincinnati, the leading cities, became more and more resentful of Columbus ’s domination of the political and judicial life of their state. They complained that “the people on the Lakes and on the Rivers” were “compelled” to travel “away from where nearly all the business rises . . . , making expenses so onerous as to defeat the end of justice.”4 Moreover, even if lawyers undertook the “tedious 16 Roberta Sue Alexander journeys to Columbus” to obtain the necessary papers to collect money owed them from a shipping dispute, it was almost impossible to enforce their liens, for they often returned home only to find that the vessels involved in the lawyers ’ cases had “slipped away.”5 Despite the active lobbying by the bench and bar of both Cincinnati and Cleveland and support from many in the state legislature, there was enough controversy to cause Congress to take over a year to pass the bill—introduced in the Senate by Salmon Portland Chase, a Cincinnatian, on December 21, 1853 —that would divide the state into two federal districts.6 Columbus’s leading citizens worked feverishly to defeat the bill in hopes of avoiding the loss of the prestige and patronage that they reaped from housing a federal district court.7 Some argued that political differences played a role in slowing the bill’s progress. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s Democratic newspaper, placed the blame for opposition to a federal court in Cleveland on the “fact” that northern Ohio was represented by abolitionists, among them Benjamin Wade and Joshua Giddings, who were sacrificing the welfare of the region “on the altar of ‘God and Liberty.’” Who, the Plain Dealer asked rhetorically, would support a U.S. district court planted in a city where federal laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act “are repudiated and so openly defied and resisted”?8 Further, rumors persisted that some Cincinnati and Cleveland leaders either opposed or were lukewarm about the division of the district court.9 The Cleveland Bar fought back, appointing one of the city’s leading attorneys , Hiram V. Willson, to go to Washington to work for the bill’s passage.10 Members of the bar also unanimously passed resolutions supporting “the division of Ohio into two U. S. Judicial Districts, believing that the convenience and interests of the citizens of the State imperatively demand such division.”11 Finally, on February 10, 1855, President Franklin Pierce signed into law the bill that created the Northern District of Ohio, assigning to it the northern fortyeight counties of the state.12 The Plain Dealer saw this victory as so important to the future of Cleveland that it published the entire statute, along with an editorial explaining what the federal courts did so that citizens would understand the “advantages which Cleveland is destined to derive from this wise arrangement .”13 It predicted that the new court would be “a windfall to our city equal to half a dozen Rail Roads.” The district and circuit courts would bring to the city “not only lawyers from all parts of the State . . . , but suitors and witnesses; who, unlike rail road patrons, stop instead of going through town.” Further, the 17 The Willson Era business of the Northern District would be at least as great as it had been for the entire district of Ohio, since many had previously “abandoned” potential suits rather than travel to Columbus.14 The day he signed the act, President Pierce also nominated Hiram Willson...

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