Missouri Historical Revi Ew
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MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVI EW, CONTENTS > A Century of Missouri Legal Literature John D. Lawson Missourians in China J. B. Powell The Missouri and Mississippi Railroad Debt E. M. Violeite Atchison County's Memorial at Rock Port, Mo. John C. Stapel Influence of the Mississippi Valley on the Develop ment of Modern France Maurice Casenave The Followers of Duden William G. Bek Popularizing State History Floyd C. Shoemaker Shelby's Expedition to Mexico John N. Edwards Historical Notes and Comments Historical Articles in Missouri Newspapers STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY a/* MISSOURI THE MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW Vol. XV July, 1921 No. 4 CONTENTS A Century of Missouri Legal Literature 595 JOHN D. LAWSON Missourians in China 611 J. B. POWELL The Missouri and Mississippi Railroad Debt 617 E. M. VIOLETTE Atchison County's Memorial at Rock Port, Mo 648 JOHN C. STAPEL Influence of the Mississippi Valley on the Development of Modern France 651 MAURICE CASENAVE The Followers of Duden 660 WILLIAM G. BEK. Popularizing State History 700 FLOYD C. SHOEMAKER Shelby's Expedition to Mexico 707 JOHN N. EDWARDS Historical Notes and Comments 721 Historical Articles in Missouri Newspapers 743 FLOYD C. SHOEMAKER, Editor The Missouri Historical Review is published quarterly. The sub scription price is $1.00 a year. A complete set of the REVIEW is still obtainable—Vols. 1-15, bound, $60.00; unbound, $30.00. Prices of separate volumes given on request. All communications should be addressed to Floyd C. Shoemaker, Secretary, The State Historical So ciety of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. "Entered as second-class matter at the postoffice at Columbia, Missouri, under the Act of Congress, Oct. 8, 1917, Sec. 442." CONTRIBUTORS JOHN D. LAWSON, author and jurist, is Missouri's most celebrated adopted son in the field of legal writing. He has practiced law, taught law, and written on the law for half a century. His works have both a national and international repute. His book on Contracts is known to every student of American law. Dr. Lawson taught in the Law School of the University of Missouri from 1891 to 1916, being Dean of this School from 1903. He is prominent in the Inter national Law Association, having served as vice-president from the United States. He is an honorary LL. D. of the Universities of Missouri and Toronto. For years he was editor of the Central Law Journal and of the American Law Review. He has been president of the Missouri Bar Association and has served as a member of the General Council of the American Bar Association. Since his retirement in 1917 he had devoted himself to his greatest work—American State Trials, 20 volumes. J. B. POWELL, journalist, is editor and publisher of Millard's Review, Shanghai, China. He is a graduate of the School of Journalism, University of Missouri, and was instructor in this school for five years. Mr. Powell is secretary of the American Chinese Commission and vice-president of Associated Advertising Clubs of the World. E. M. VIOLETTE, author and teacher, is professor of history in the Northeast Missouri State Teachers College at Kirksville. Professor Violette is the author of several historical works, his latest compilation being A History of Missouri. He has contributed a number of valuable articles to The Missouri Historical Review, and has done much in the cause of State history. JOHN C. STAPEL, journalist, is editor and publisher of the Atchison County Mail, Rock Port, Mo. He is a graduate of the School of Journalism, Univer sity of Missouri. MAURICE CASENAVE, diplomat, holds the rank of minister plenipotentiary in the French diplomatic service. He has held diplomatic posts in Greece, China, and Brazil. During the World War, prior to our participation, he rep resented the French Republic in its extensive financial operations in America. He is today director-general of French activities in the United States. WILLIAM G. BEK, a native Missourian, is head of the department of Ger manic languages in the University of North Dakota. His contributions, bro chures and translations relating to German settlements in the United States place him among the highest authorities in this line of historical research. His translation of "Duden's Report," lately published in the Review, is regarded by scholars as one of the most important contributions to western history that has appeared in recent years. JOHN N. EDWARDS (deceased), one of the most widely known journalists of Missouri, was a member of Shelby's expedition to Mexico. He is regarded by some competent authorities as having been the greatest master of journalistic writing that the State has produced. (594) A CENTURY OF MISSOURI LEGAL LITERATURE By JOHN D. LAWSON, LL. D. The first book printed on the soil of Missouri, and the first printed in the English language in the great territory west of the Mississippi River is a book of laws. Its title page reads: "The Laws of the Territory of Louisiana, com prising all those which are now actually in force within the Same. Published by Authority. St. Louis (L). Printed by Joseph Charless, Printer to the Territory. 1808/' This book, therefore, bears the same relation in the history of the "art preservative of all arts" that the Guttenburg or Mazarin Bible, the first book printed from movable type, does to the history of printing in Europe, and that the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in the English Colonies, does to the history of printing in America. Of the few copies of this book in existence, one is in the Lawson Library of Criminal Law and Crimonology. It was once owned by Senator Geyer, whose autograph it bears. Henry S. Geyer (1798- 1859) was not only a United States Senator and Missouri's greatest forensic orator but was according to the historian of our Bench and Bar, "the greatest lawyer of the Missouri Bar." And he was the first to publish a law book in this state, when in 1818 his "Digest of the Laws of Missouri Territory" was given to the profession.1 The name that leads all the rest on the roll of Missouri legal literature is that of Seymour Dwight Thompson (1842- 1904), whose reputation was not only national but interna tional. Born in Illinois, the son of a Presbyterian minister, he entered the Civil War in an Iowa regiment at the age of eighteen and having fought at Shiloh, Vicksburg and other great battles, was mustered out of the army as a cap- *His greatest speech was made on the trial of Darnes for murder in St. Louis in 1840. See 16 Am. St. Tr. An oil portrait of him from life is in the Portrait Collection of Judges and Lawyers, of the Law School of the University of Missouri. (595) 596 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. tain, at Memphis in 1866. Obtaining a clerkship in the office of a City court he continued his study of law (for he had car ried a copy of Blackstone and Kent in his knapsack during his campaigns) and was admitted to the bar in 1869. His taste for investigation and writing soon bore fruit in the pub lication of two local works on law and a treatise on "Self Defense." These attracted the attention of St. Louis pub lishers to which city he removed in 1871 to become editor of the Central Law Journal and to carry on his legal writings. Associated with Judge Dillon, the founder of the Journal, he was appointed a master in Chancery of the Federal Court, in which office there came before him during the next five years several important cases involving large sums of money and from which he earned some handsome fees. He also engaged in the practice and I was his first partner, the firm being dissolved in 1880 on his election to the St. Louis Court of Appeals. But he never ceased to write and before he went on the bench four legal works of his came from the press, the last of them being his well-known "Law of Negligence," which was spoken of by the reviewer of the day as "a credit to the author whose reputation as a legal writer is already assured, and an honor to American literature." During the rest of his life he was a constant writer on legal topics, bulky treatises, monographs, addresses before State and National Bar Associations, and magazine articles flowed from his pen. Should his miscellaneous writings ever be collected, it will be found that Judge Thompson was one of the most tireless and indefatigable literary workers of his time. His labors on the bench did not interrupt him, for while a judge he wrote his greatest work, "The Law of Corpora tions,"—its seven volumes constituting the most extensive legal treatise on a single topic ever published in the English language. At the time of his death a new edition of his "Law of Negligence," greatly enlarged and to cover six vol umes, was going through the press. Around him during these years he had gathered a coterie of young lawyers whom he instructed and who were his assistants. I was one of his earliest pupils in the art of legal writing, as were Edwin G. A CENTURY OF MISSOURI LEGAL LITERATURE. 597 Merriam, for many years a prominent railroad attorney, and Eugene McQuillan, later a St. Louis judge; so were William P. Wade, who became a California judge, Frank W. Peebles, the librarian of the St. Louis Law Library Association, and Wil liam L. Murfee, Jr., sometime Dean of the Law School of the University of Colorado, the last three now deceased.