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178 DOI: 10.7330_9780874219203.c010 10 The Establishment of a Territorial Court at Alder Gulch Law now reigns supreme. —Montana Post, January 28, 1865 A significant actor in the efforts to introduce lawful procedure to Montana Territory was its chief judge, Hezekiah L. Hosmer. To his friends, his nickname was “Hez.”1 Hosmer had almost died in a house fire as a child.2 He was born in Hudson, New York, on December 10, 1814, and when he was sixteen years old moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he studied law under the tutelage of a relative.3 The relative , a Mr. Allen, also gave instruction in the law to another student, Stephen A. Douglas,4 who would later run against Abraham Lincoln for the presidency of the United States. Hosmer was admitted to the practice of law in Ohio in 1835.5 After practicing law and engaging in some journalism, he devoted himself as the full-time editor of the Toledo Daily Blade from 1844 to 1855.6 He also wrote plays, addressed learned societies, and gave temperance lectures.7 He returned to the practice of law and dabbled in Whig Party politics until 1860, when he became an active Republican.8 Hosmer stated in his unpublished autobiography that “[i]n the Lincoln campaign I took a prominent part and won considerable reputation for my speeches.”9 In 1861 he traveled to Washington, DC, in the hope of securing the position of congressional librarian.10 He was instead hired as the secretary to the House Committee on Territories, which was chaired by Ohio congressman James M. Ashley.11 His work for the committee included the organization of the territory of Montana.12 Through his familiarity with territorial issues and The Establishment of a Territorial Court at Alder Gulch 179 his newly formed connections in Washington, Hosmer was appointed during the summer of 1864 to the position of chief judge of the recently formed territory of Montana.13 He arrived in Montana in October of that year.14 Hosmer’s biographical sketch described Montana as “further from the center of civilization than South Africa is today.”15 The same biographical sketch described the settlers of Bannack and Virginia City in 1863 and 1864 as being worse than “the convicts liberated on the approach of Napoleon on condition that they burn Moscow.”16 Miners’ courts in Montana were arbitrary, law books were absent, no legislature had yet met, no municipal buildings had been erected, and the Organic Act made no provision for the procedures by which courts were to be organized and conducted.17 Hosmer did not necessarily accept the position of chief justice for the sole purpose of serving the law. Federal appointees often used their positions to advance private commercial interests, and Hosmer was no exception. Indeed, during his time in Montana, Judge Hosmer invested in mining, roads, financing, ranches, and in the manufacture of pottery and brick.18 It was said that he “tried to get [his] fingers into every financial pie within reach.”19 Correspondence from Hosmer’s territorial business partner, T. C. Everts, contained Everts’s prediction that “we can make enough to satisfy us in two years, which is long enough to live in this country.”20 Hosmer’s primary focus appears to have been directed at mining ventures. He invested in his own mining company within weeks of his arrival in Montana, maintaining operations at Norwegian Gulch.21 He also invested in the Oro Fino Mining Company with such territorial luminaries as Attorney General Edward Nealley, attorney William Chumasero, Internal Revenue collector Nathaniel Langford, Madison County sheriff Robert C. Knox, county treasurer Andrew Leach, Virginia City treasurer Richard Leach, banker Joseph Mallard, and banker Samuel T. Hauser.22 He wrote a letter to eastern investors in 1865 vouching for Edwin Reuthven Purple’s New York and Montana Mining and Discovery Company, pitching that “I believe there never will be another time on this continent when opportunities so inviting will be presented for investment as are now open here.”23 Author Jeffrey Safford states that Hosmer’s “thirst for profit at least equaled, if not exceeded, his passion for justice under the law.”24 However, there is no evidence that Hosmer or any of Montana’s territorial judges ever decided court cases in a manner calculated to advance their personal commercial interests. Upon Hosmer’s arrival in the territory, there was not yet any written penal law or criminal procedure. Montana’s First Territorial Legislature convened...

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