The Supreme Court of Michigan. 6, 1824, studied law at Palmyra in the office of Theron R. Strong, and when twenty years old came to Michigan. Within the next ten or twelve years he had been a member of three different law-firms; had lived in three different towns; had edited, as a Free-soil newspaper, the " Adrian Watch tower; " had engaged in farming; had held some minor law-offices, and having removed to Toledo, Ohio, had there been defeated forthedistrict judgeship. In 1857 he became compiler of the General Statutes; in 1858, State reporter and Jay professor of law at Ann Arbor; and in 1864, on the death of Judge Manning, he took his place in the Supreme Court, where he remained until twenty-one years af terward he was de feated by one of those inexplicable convul sions of the popular vote that will now and then deprive the State of the services of its ablest citizens. Mean while he had published
his text-books on Con stitutional Limita tions, Taxation and Torts, besides editions of Blackstone and of Story on the Constitu tion, and, like his colleague Judge Campbell, had written a history of Michigan. His defeat was a good thing for himself and for the national government, for it led indirectly to the wider field of usefulness which he has since occupied in his unique and responsible position as chairman of the Inter-State Com merce Commission, where the most daring experiment in constitutional law has been intrusted to the first constitutional lawver in the country. He had a brief but instruc-
39 1
tive preliminary training for this task in his work as a member of that Board of Arbitra tion which met in 1882 to consider the ques tion of freight-rates to the different Atlantic ports, and in his temporary control and management of the Wabash Railway, as receiver, under the order of Judge Gresham. Nothing less than the most unsparing indus try would have enabled any man to accom plish as much as he has; and the busier he has been the more readily has he under taken additional tasks. His literary style, as one may know from his books, is the perfection of clearness; and he has a keen and incisive humor that is well illus trated in his sketch of the Lenawee County Bar, heretofore cited. Benjamin Franklin Graves was a farmer's boy, born Oct. 18, 1 817, at Rochester, N. Y. A fit of sick ness that disabled him from muscular exer tion set him to study ing law, and he was admitted to practice in CHAMPLIN. 1 84 1. He was jour nal clerk of the New York Senate in the winter of 1841-42, and in 1843 he went to Battle Creek, Michigan, where he has since lived. Like Cooley and Christiancy, he was a Free-soiler in 1848; the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the scheme of slavery extension made him a Republican, and since he left the bench he has always been seen at the annual banquets of that powerful political organization, the Michigan Club, of which he is a distin guished member. As Pratt's successor he sat for a few months in the old Supreme Court, and on the re-organization of that
