Ohio History Journal

M. PAUL HOLSINGER

 

 

Timothy Walker: Blackstone

For the New Republic

 

 

 

 

In the generation before the Civil War, few persons within the state of Ohio were

as nationally renowned as Timothy Walker of Cincinnati. During the so-called

"Golden Age of American Law" between 1820 and 1860, Walker, from his

adopted home on the banks of the Ohio River, wrote probably the most widely

read legal treatise of nineteenth century America, the Introduction to American

Law. A founder of the Cincinnati Law School, the first permanent law school

west of the Appalachians, he almost single-handedly maintained the institution

throughout its first ten years. During the decade after October 1843, he also edited

the Western Law Journal, one of the most influential law journals published in

pre-Civil War America. It is no exaggeration to suggest that in the slightly over

twenty-five years that he lived in Cincinnati before his untimely death in early

1856, there was no one who did more to make the city known throughout the new

West as a center for legal scholarship or professional training in law than he.

Much has been written about the economic side of pre-Civil War Cincinnati as

"Porkopolis" incarnate; recently, however, historians have begun once again to

emphasize the many social, cultural, and intellectual aspects of those same ante-

bellum years.¹ Ironically, the city's leadership throughout the West in the area of

innovative legal thinking, a vital part of the latter emphases, has all too often

been forgotten or severely slighted. Proper balance demands that the many con-

tributions made by western barristers be included in any study of the period be-

fore 1861. An appreciation of the life and work of Timothy Walker, a man whom

many of his contemporaries called "America's Blackstone," is fundamental since

so much of the groundwork in the legal field was laid out by him.

Like so many leaders of Cincinnati life in the early nineteenth century, Walker

was a New Englander by birth.² Born in the rural town of Wilmington, Massa-

chusetts, on December 1, 1802,3 he had been largely self-educated before his ac-

ceptance into the Harvard College class of 1826 at the then late age of nineteen.

A brilliant student, he passed through the college with the highest honors, win-

 

 

 

1. See particularly Louis Leonard Tucker, "Cincinnati: Athens of the West, 1830-1861," Ohio His-

tory, LXXV, 11-25, 67-68.

2. Interestingly, though not altogether accurately, Catherine Beecher wrote to her sister Harriet

from Cincinnati in 1831, one year after Walker's arrival in the city, "This is a New England city in all

its habits, and its inhabitants are more than half from New England ...." Charles Beecher, ed., Auto-

biography and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher (New York, 1865), II, 268.

3. Many biographical sketches list the year of Walker's birth as 1806; Appleton's Cyclopaedia of

American Biography, VI, 331. It is evident from his personal papers on file at the Cincinnati Historical

Society, however, that the proper date is indeed 1802.

 

Professor Holsinger is an Associate Professor of History at Illinois State University.

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146                                                        OHIO HISTORY

ning every prize the school offered including the Bowdoin gold medal for the best original essay in 1825.4 During his senior year, he was voted into Phi Beta Kappa, and at graduation in August 1826 he was chosen "first orator," symbolic of hav- ing finished at the head of his class academically.5 Though he noted in his diary some years later that he had planned to be a lawyer from the first moment that he arrived on the campus at Cambridge,6 he did not begin the formal study of law immediately after graduation. Instead, anxious to be self-sufficient economically, he accepted a position as tutor in mathematics at the still new but already prestigious Round Hill School in North- ampton, Massachusetts. During the next three years, young Timothy's career was both varied and complex. Teaching school full time, he also managed to read law under the tutelage of a local member of the Massachusetts bar, publish a popular volume on the Elements of Geometry that quickly went through several editions, translate for pay a number of treatises in natural science from both French and German at the behest of professors from his alma mater, prepare a series of articles for the North American Review on widely diversified subjects, give several major addresses to neighboring townsfolk and, if all this were not time- consuming enough, complete work on a Master's degree in the Arts at Harvard.7 But law was always foremost in his mind; in 1829 when Harvard announced the restructuring of its Law School and the appointment of United States Su- preme Court Justice Joseph Story as one of the first endowed professors, Walker resigned from Round Hill and, that fall, became one of the first students to sit under Story's instruction. Once again he distinguished himself academically, but by the spring of 1830 he was growing increasingly anxious about his career. At   4. Timothy Walker Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society. 5. Ibid. 6. Walker, Personal Diary, October 28, 1827, Walker Papers. 7. Walker Papers. Walker graduated with a Master's degree from Harvard in the summer of 1829.

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Timothy Walker                                                         147

 

twenty-seven, he was already considerably older than most of his law school

colleagues; to postpone entrance into the practice of law much longer seemed

out of the question. Massachusetts law, however, complicated matters. To be

admitted to the bar in the state required a three-year probationary period in the

office of an attorney, and for the impatient young man this seemed unreasonable.

Quick checking showed that, though Ohio had a somewhat similar two-year law,

one of those years might be waived in his case because of the training at Harvard.

Well aware of Cincinnati's growing importance to the economy of the West,

Walker determined to relocate in the Queen City during the coming summer.

Obtaining letters of recommendation from Justice Story, President Josiah Quincy

of Harvard, and others,⁸ he set out for Cincinnati in August 1830, hopeful of

entering his "road to eminence" as quickly as possible.

Cincinnati met all of the young lawyer's aspirations. In his diary during Sep-

tember 1830, he confided, "I am delighted with this beautiful city. It seems a

work of enchantment."⁹ Within a few weeks he was firmly established in the of-

fices of Bellamy Storer and Charles Fox, probably the most distinguished law

firm in the city at the time. By April of 1831 he could write President Quincy that

he had "more than realised" all his expectations in moving West.10 Indeed, by

Independence Day 1831, his pleasure with Cincinnati had taken on an almost

booster-like quality. Speaking at a Fourth of July rally at Fulton, he noted en-

thusiastically that in Cincinnati "inhabitants multiply like the hydra, buildings

spring up like Jonah's gourd; for incessant activity what can you call it but an

immense human hive." The future of the city seemed unlimited to young Walker.

"I cannot help believing that it is destined, at no distant period, to become the

seat of government of the greatest empire on Earth," he added, for surely persons

simply would not be willing to travel more than 600 miles to their nation's capital.

In this regard, Cincinnati was ideal.11

If Walker expected much of Cincinnati, certainly many persons expected much

of him in the Queen City. President Quincy, for instance, in April 1831, wrote

that "it is to just men as you that we look to fix in [the Ohio River Valley] the

manner, principles and character of New England."¹² A young Vermonter, Isaac

Appleton Jewett, soon to be a law clerk in Walker's own office, repeatedly wrote

friends in New England of Walker's unique ability. "He has some fame already,"

Jewett wrote in May 1831, "and in some years [he] will probably roar louder

than any lion in Ohio. He is one of those universal men who will live and grow

mightily in any soil."¹³ Justice Story had written earlier: "I rejoice that the West

is to gain so worthy a Son in law-I confess that I had indulged a faint hope that

we might be able to regain you . . . but I presume it is all over and that hence-

forward you are to be a citizen of Ohio. God grant you much honor, much profit,

much happiness in that sunny, in that new--New England."14

The early years, nevertheless, did indeed seem to offer all three for young

Walker. After his probationary legal waiting period was over and he had been

admitted to the Ohio bar, he quickly opened his own law office. Private practice

was, however, not successful and in April 1832 the firm of King, Chase, and

 

 

 

8. Letters of Recommendation, President Josiah Quincy, July 13, 1830, John H. Ashmun, August

1830, Joseph Story, August 1830, Walker Papers.

9. Walker Diary, Septermber 18, 1830.

10. Quincy to Walker, April 16, 1831, Walker Papers.

11. Scrap Book #2, 77-79, Walker Papers.

12. Quincy to Walker, April 16, 1831, Walker Papers.

13. Isaac Appleton Jewett to Samuel Appleton, May 8, 1831, Jewett to Appleton, August 16, 1832,

Walker Papers.

14. Joseph Story to Walker, November 24, 1830, Walker Papers.

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148                                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

Walker was formed. It was an auspicious choice of partners. Edward King, former

Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, son of Federalist Presidential

candidate Rufus King, and son-in-law of former Governor Thomas Worthington,

had recently moved to Cincinnati from Chillicothe in hopes of expanding his

business practice. Salmon P. Chase, future governor, United States Senator,

Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court,

though younger than Walker, was already gaining the distinguished reputation

that was eventually to lead him into politics and nationwide fame. Chase, seek-

ing larger financial resources, remained in the firm only until November, but the

partnership of King and Walker continued until the former's premature death in

February of 1836. While the two men may never have gained all their expecta-

tions monetarily, the few remaining records indicate that the business they re-

ceived was steady and reasonably lucrative. Both quickly became leaders of the

local bar.15

Walker also was able with little difficulty to be accepted by the best of Cin-

cinnati society. As an extremely eligible young bachelor, it was not long before

he was attending all the "proper" functions. By May 1831 he became engaged to

Anna Lawler Bryant, the granddaughter of Matthew Lawler, one of Cincinnati's

richest men. One year later the two were married and apparently were, if one can

believe Walker's diary, extremely happy. Two sons were born to the couple, one

in July 1833 and another in October 1834. The latter birth proved to be too much

for Mrs. Walker; a week afterwards she was dead, and ten days later the baby

died also.¹⁶ The shock of this personal tragedy, coupled with the death of his re-

maining son in 1836 at the age of three, for some years made Walker almost a

social recluse. In March 1840, however, he married Ellen Page Wood and, in

subsequent years, six children were born to them. The eldest, Bryant, followed

in his father's footsteps, attending Harvard College and the Law School in Cam-

bridge and, before his death in 1874, teaching in the Cincinnati College Law De-

partment and serving on the Superior Court of the city through an appointment

of Governor Rutherford B. Hayes. The oldest daughter Susan was married ten

years after her father's death to Nicholas Longworth II, thus merging the two

families; her son, Nicholas Longworth III, rejecting the aversion of his grand-

father for politics, eventually became Speaker of the United States House of

Representatives. A second son, Edward, born in 1853, became one of the most

distinguished physicians in the city of Cincinnati.17

Honors began to fall into place almost with regularity during Walker's early

years in Cincinnati. In September 1831, for example, he was appointed to the

city school board for a three-year term, and at the Cincinnati Lyceum, which he

helped to found, he was repeatedly asked to give lectures on topics dealing with

both science and history.¹⁸ He was one of the founders of the city's Mercantile

Library, and it was not long before he also helped to organize the now famous

 

 

 

15. "Edward King," obituary, Western Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, VI, 126-127; Al-

bert B. Hart, Salmon Portland Chase (Boston, 1899), 22.

16. Miscellaneous records, Walker Papers; also see "Opinion in the Case of the Heirs of T. B. Walk-

er, Aug. 1837," Davis Bevan Lawler Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society.

17. Cincinnati Gazette, December 31, 1874; Charles Frederick Goss, Cincinnati: The Queen City,

1788-1912 (Chicago, 1912), 612-615. Susan Walker and Nicholas Longworth's eldest daughter, Clara,

became the Countess de Chambrun; it was she who donated to the Cincinnati Historical Society her

grandfather's manuscript journal and other papers, without which this study could not have been made.

18. See for example, Walker, "A Lecture on the Character and Writings of Sir William Jones. De-

livered in the Cincinnati Lyceum, 20th March, 1832," Illinois Monthly Magazine, XI, 550-567; also,

"The Steam Engine," manuscript of a lecture read at the Cincinnati Lyceum in March 1831, Walker

Papers.

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Timothy Walker                                                            149

Semi-Colon Club, one of the city's most distinguished literary bodies, the Inquis- tion, "a society that discusses publically questions and papers submitted by its members once a week," the Cincinnati Legislative Club, and, eventually, the New England Society, to which he was always one of the largest contributors.19 Though he "dislike[d] parties at any time," Walker admitted he always went to such affairs "as a part of social duty." "When I give parties," he confessed to his diary in the summer of 1838, "I expect my friends to come and I do as I would be done by."20 Perhaps as a result, his home often became a center for major social gatherings. In 1842, for instance, when Charles Dickens came to Ohio, it was in Walker's home that he was feted by the leaders of Cincinnati society, and it was Walker who showed the English author and his wife around the city. Walker received several letters from Dickens and, as the latter wrote to friends in Great Britain, "I saw a good deal of Walker in Cincinnati. I like him very much."21 The most noteworthy achievement of the young lawyer in the years before 1837, however, had nothing to do with social relationships. In the spring of 1833,     19. Louis L. Tucker, "The Semi-Colon Club of Cincinnati," Ohio History, LXXIII, 13-26; Cincin- nati Directory, 1834, 246; Western Law Journal, 1, 438; Lee Shepard, "The New England Society in Cincinnati," Bulletin, Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, V, 35-37. 20. Walker Diary, June 11, 1838. 21. Charles Dickens to C. C. Felton, April 29, 1842, reprinted in Robert Price, "Boz Reports on Ohio," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LI, 198. Dickens liked Walker and his hospital- ity; Walker returned the feeling. "I have read all his works and with great interest. Felt acquainted with him before I saw him. Like him still better now," Walker confided to his diary on April 5, 1842; also see Dickens to Walker, April 13, 1842, Walker Papers.

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150                                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

Walker, along with Edward King, John Crafts Wright, and J. M. Goodnow, de-

cided to form a school where students could study law in a formal setting rather

than by reading in individual private offices. Though the Cincinnati Law School,

as the four men named it, was not eligible to grant degrees, it was clear from its

first announcement that it was unique to the area west of the Alleghanies. In

many ways patterned after Harvard, the school promised all future students

"lectures upon general and local law, practice in moot courts organized upon the

model of the several courts of Ohio and frequent examinations upon the books

read." Any new or "difficult cases" from circuit courts throughout the state would

be submitted to the students for study. The combined law libraries of the four

men would be, the announcement for the school noted, open for the students'

use; totalled together, they "will form as extensive a law library as any in the

western territory." King and Walker also agreed to allow students to "witness

practice" in their offices.²²

The school was almost immediately successful. At the end of the first year,

thirteen students had finished the course of study; by the following fall, enroll-

ment had climbed to twenty-three. They came not only from the immediate Cin-

cinnati area but also from such widely separated places as St. Louis, Missouri,

Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Manchester, Massachusetts.²³ The students received

a remarkable bargain for the sixty dollar per year tuition fee. Lectures on almost

every aspect of the law highlighted the nine-month curriculum, but students were

also promised that "efforts will be made to render students expert draughtsmen."

For those who wished to remain in Cincinnati during the summer, free access to

the libraries of the instructors was offered.²⁴

The new school's greatest problem in its earliest years was the fact that it was

not approved by the state to grant professional degrees. Though students of east-

ern universities and colleges, such as Harvard, were able to receive, according to

Ohio practice, one year's credit towards their legal apprenticeships, Cincinnati

Law School enrollees were not. This situation, so potentially damaging to the

future of the school, deeply concerned both Walker and his colleagues, and they

sought a remedy. A solution was found when Cincinnati College, a school which

had been given full academic accreditation by Ohio in 1819 but which consisted

in the summer of 1835 only of a medical department, offered to absorb the law

school under its aegis, thus giving it full and immediate recognition. Walker,

King, and Wright all quickly agreed to the merger.²⁵ In August 1835, the title

Professor of Law in the college, was officially bestowed upon each of the three

lawyers.26

Walker was unquestionably the leader in making a law school in Cincinnati a

reality. A number of part-time colleagues came and went over the next few years,

but in the center of the faculty was Timothy Walker. Indeed, in 1837, when the

college decided that it could not afford to pay four lecturers, an arrangement

was made whereby he became the only professor in the school, a situation that

continued until his resignation in 1844, seven years later, at which time a re-

structuring of the school became necessary.²⁷ He was a natural teacher and often

 

 

 

22. American Jurist and Law Magazine, X, 484-485.

23. A List of Graduates of the Cincinnati Law School (Cincinnati, 1904).

24. Circular of the Cincinnati Law School, June 14, 1834, Walker Papers.

25. J. M. Goodnow apparently failed to participate in the operation of the school after its first year.

26. W. R. Morris to Walker, Edward King, and John C. Wright, August 24, 1835, and Walker and

King to Trustees of Cincinnati College, August 25, 1834, Walker Papers.

27. The importance of Walker to the Law School is nowhere seen more clearly than during the

summer of 1842 when, due to his repeated illnesses, a decision was made not to hold classes at all

throughout the academic year 1842-1843.

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Timothy Walker                                                                    151

 

wished that it were possible to devote himself full time to that profession. In 1838,

for instance, he noted in his diary, "my vocation is to teach. I can do it better than

anything else. I wish it were my permanent occupation."²⁸ Apparently nearly

everyone connected with the school agreed. Year after year letters came to him

from students thanking him for his concern and fine lectures.²⁹ Even the news-

papers took notice. Walker was, a reporter for the Cincinnati Beacon wrote that

same year, "a gentleman who has, perhaps, as high capabilities for teaching as

any other law professor in the United States. He delights in the business of in-

struction, and, consequently, performs it with an enthusiasm which seldom fails

sympathetically to awaken and sustain the attention of every pupil."³⁰

Though Walker left the school after the 1843-1844 academic year in order to

devote more time to his private practice, his role in helping to establish the law

school remains one of his most lasting contributions to American legal develop-

ment and to the prestige of Cincinnati. The Law Department of Cincinnati Col-

lege, as the school was known from 1835 onward, eventually merged with the

University of Cincinnati in 1896, with William Howard Taft, an alumnus, as its

first dean. The affect the school had on many facets of society in the Middlewest

is incalculable. Its graduates were influential not only throughout the region but

across the continent. Congressmen, judges, two justices of the United States Su-

preme Court, and hundreds of general practitioners passed through the school

during its first sixty-three years.³¹ Today, the school is one of the oldest continu-

ous professional centers for legal training in the United States, a testimony to

Walker's efforts, at times single-handedly, to make his dream of a school similar

to Harvard a reality for the West.³²

From his experiences at the law school came one of the most important books

written in the nation during the nineteenth century, the Introduction to American

Law. Initially published in 1837 as an outgrowth of lectures delivered to the stu-

dents at the law school in the previous years, Walker's Introduction quickly be-

came the standard first text for beginning law students across the United States.

By the time the eleventh edition came from the presses in 1905, nearly fifty years

after its author's death, three successive generations of legal neophytes had, like

future Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., encountered Walker's ideas. Many

of them, like Holmes, received from the volume their first clear idea "of what law

was and what was the profession upon which [they were] entering."³³

What Walker did in the Introduction, far better than any other legal scholar of

his day, was to catch and emphasize the Americanization of the law. Though

 

 

 

28. "The Dominical Journal of Timothy Brewster Walker," November 4, 1838, Walker Papers. The

Journal was written between the years 1838 and 1852 in Cincinnati.

29. J. N. Morris to Walker, December 8, 1835, Walker Papers.

30. Reprinted in both the Liberty Hall and Commercial Gazette, September 4, 1838, and the Cin-

cinnati Chronicle, September 1, 1838.

31. Taft was a graduate of the school in 1880 during the deanship of Rufus King, the son of Walker's

former partner. Willis Van Devanter, another future United States Supreme Court Justice (1911-

1937), graduated in the class of 1881. See Anton-Herman Chroust, The Rise of the Legal Profession in

America (Norman, 1965), 11, 216.

32. A List of Graduates of the Cincinnati Law School. Among the students instructed by Walker

were Charles D. Drake (class of 1833), United States Senator from Missouri (1867-1870) and Chief

Justice of the United States Court of Claims (1870-1885); also James W. Denver (class of 1844) future

governor of Kansas Territory and the man for whom Denver, Colorado is named. Only three law

schools (Harvard, 1819; Yale, 1825; and the University of Virginia, 1826) are older today than the

University of Cincinnati law school.

33. Editions of Walker's Introduction were published in 1837, 1844, 1855, 1860, 1869, 1874, 1878,

1882, 1887, 1895, and 1905. See Mark DeWolfe Howe, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Shaping

Years, 1841-1870 (Cambridge, 1957), 191; William Howard Taft, Dedication Alphonso Taft Hall:

Address by William Howard Taft October 28, 1925 (Cincinnati, 1925), 6.

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152                                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

American differences had been clearly defined in regard to English law, from

which most of our legal heritage was traced, students before 1837 still had to start

their training by reading Sir William Blackstone's commentaries on the law of

Great Britain before venturing into any of the obvious American variations.

There were, of course, some persons who believed such reading nearly useless.

The editor of the Western Literary Journal and Monthly Review spoke for many

when he wrote in 1844:

The justly renowned work of Blackstone has been universally, and continues to be gen-

erally, the first book put into the hand of the American student; and after he has tortured

himself and exhausted his patience for six long months in memorizing the prerogatives of

the crown, the sources of revenue, hereditary rights, the political and ecclesiastical con-

stitution of the government, the feudal services, relations of knight and vassal, and the

invasion of William the Norman, he will be found on examination about as wise a lawyer

as he would be had he spent the same time upon the novels of Sir Walter Scott.³⁴

 

Because Walker redirected the student's attention to what was purely American,

his work received almost instant praise. The volume, stressed an editor of the

North American Review, "is ... thoroughly American .... The tone and spirit of

the book are such as become our country; they are congenial with our free insti-

tutions and our expanding political character."³⁵ Justice Story and his Harvard

Law School colleague, Simon Greenleaf, wrote that "as a general outline of

American law . . . it supplies a want, which has been extensively felt .. ."³⁶ "It

is absurd," emphasized a third reader, "to make the Commentaries of Blackstone

the first book for American students when we have so clear an exposition of our

political and judicial system as the Introduction to American Law."³⁷

Walker always rejected the idea that he had in any way become "America's

Blackstone" by the publication of his lectures, but many of his colleagues dis-

agreed. The term became widely used during his lifetime; as a consequence, Cin-

cinnati was elevated, literally overnight, to one of the major centers for legal

thinking in the country.

For many years Walker had been calling for such sweeping legal reforms as

full codification of the law to replace the old yet still accepted judge-made com-

mon law, and he had been trying to demystify the intricacies of the profession so

that the American people could really understand their form of government. The

Introduction was dedicated to fulfilling these and other goals of modernization in

the law, and the Queen City soon became the focal point for such philosophies in

the entire West.³⁸ Anxious to follow up on the impact of his work, Walker in 1843

launched an even more ambitious undertaking, the publication of a scholarly law

magazine which he named the Western Law Journal. At a time when all the other

such publications were printed in either New York City or Boston, the thought of

producing in the Ohio River Valley a review which would offer its readers updated

reports with commentary on all major American and English legal decisions, and

especially those cases of particular concern to the western United States, while

 

 

 

34. Western Literary Journal and Monthly Review, I, 105.

35. North American Review, XLV, 485.

36. Western Law Journal, XI (1844), 92, quoting a letter from Story and Greenleaf dated May 15,

1837.

37. Review, Western Literary Journal and Monthly Review, 1, 105. See also the Columbus Ohio

State Journal, July 11, 1837 which commends "this valuable work to every member of the profession

of the law--particularly in Ohio."

38. In a review of the Introduction, the editor of American Jurist and Law Magazine, XVIII, 382,

placed especial stress on Walker's emphasis on legal reform: "On all . . . subjects," it was claimed,

Walker "writes like a man of sense and reflection whom the love of truth has led to certain results."

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Timothy Walker                                                                    153

 

at the same time serving as "a medium through which the legal profession of the

west may express their sentiments on the great questions of law reform," was a

daring financial gamble to say the least.³⁹ It is not insignificant that it was Walker,

the innovator, who was willing to invest his own personal fortune in an attempt

to make the journal successful.

Almost single-handedly during the next seven years, Walker "performed near-

ly all the editorial labor" connected with the Journal.⁴⁰ In the fall of 1850 he

added M. E. Curwen from the Cincinnati Law School as a co-editor, who in the

remaining three years of the review did most of the editing. Walker not only paid

for the issuing of the periodical each month but also assumed the role of con-

tributing author.⁴¹ Every month for ten years the Journal appeared filled with a

full forty-eight pages of comments, editorials on needed changes in the law, re-

printed case decisions from courts across the land, news items of importance to

the legal profession and much more.⁴² Though initially Walker had intended the

Journal to be of service basically to the bar in the West, its influence soon spread

nationwide. "We always devour its contents with great eagerness," wrote the

editor of the New York-based American Law Journal in 1849.

It is quite a mistake to suppose that we must always look to the old States for "the glad-

some lights of jurisprudence." The diversified interests of western life give rise to a great

variety of new and important questions, and the ability with which they are discussed and

disposed of by the fresh and great intellects of the West command our highest admira-

tion.⁴³

The major objective in the publication of the Western Law Journal was, for

Walker, an opportunity "for promulgating my notions upon Law Reform of

which, I believe, I was the first thorough going advocate in Ohio."⁴⁴ As early as

1833 his "A View of Ohio" published in the American Quarterly Review seriously

called for revision of the constitution of the state in order to make it more mod-

ern. The section on the judiciary was so bad "it would be hardly possible to make

it worse by any degree of ingenuity," he wrote.⁴⁵ This theme, coupled with the

desire to see the law codified in the hopes that there could be ultimately a "sys-

temizing and nationalizing of our jurisprudence," appears over and over again in

the pages of the journal.⁴⁶

Though there were often persons who objected to his stands on reform,⁴⁷

Walker was never hesitant to express his opinions in the pages of the Journal. "I

can see neither policy, justice, nor humanity in many of the legal doctrines re-

 

 

39. Western Law Journal, VII, 89.

40. Letter from Timothy Walker to "Subscribers and Friends," June 15, 1853, Western Law Jour-

nal, X, 430-431. There were, from time to time, many official co-editors of the Journal, including

former Kentucky governor James T. Morehead, 1845-1846; C. D. Coffin, 1846-1849; and Charles

Gilman, 1847-1848. By both Walker's statements and their own, it is obvious that none of them did

much to make the Journal a success. See for instance, Morehead's apology for having achieved little

success, Western Law Journal, III, 144.

41. Western Law Journal, X, 430.

42. A reading of the 5800 plus pages appearing in the ten volumes of the Western Law Journal

published between October 1843 and September 1853 offers an invaluable understanding of the con-

cerns of the legal profession in the West during those years. The series is now available to any li-

brary on microfilm as part of the American Periodical Series.

43. "The Western Law Journal," The American Law Journal, VIII, 44.

44. Walker Diary, October 1, 1844.

45. Timothy Walker, "A View of Ohio," American Quarterly Review, XXV, 110-111.

46. See for example, "Law Reform in Ohio," Western Law Journal, I, 37-38; Ibid., VII, 89-90;

Ibid., X, 46; and "Codification," Western Law Journal, I, 435-440.

47. See for example, Washington Van Hamm, "Codification, Its Practicability and Expediency: In

Answer to Judge Walker's Report," Western Law Journal, I, 529-542. Also note Walker's comments

on the Journal's "Reform Spirit," Western Law Journal, X, 46.

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154                                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

specting married women," he wrote in one column. "They bear every mark of a

barbarous origin" with "nothing but their antiquity in their favor." "We require

[women] to support and obey government as much as if they were men but we

allow them no share in its administration." The very thing which caused the

American Revolution, lack of rights, might now be the basis for a "female revo-

lution" unless this "too long neglected subject" of equality was remedied.⁴⁸ To

lawyers who believed that making a personal fortune was the most important

thing to emphasize in their careers, Walker chided:

Remember that by becoming lawyers you do not cease to be men and that nothing can

justify you in doing for a client what you would blush to do in your own behalf. ... [Clients]

purchase your services, but not your consciences. You are not responsible for the good-

ness of their cause but you are responsible for the means you use to gain it.

 

Indeed, Walker added, "Lawyer and gentleman ought to be synonymous terms."⁴⁹

"I am opposed to capital punishment, both on principle and expediency," he

wrote in 1844.50 Such a modern-sounding stand, he reiterated time and time

again in his discussion of specific cases.

Of all his calls for reform,⁵1 however, perhaps Walker's most controversial in

a legal journal were his attacks on reactionaries in his profession who stood in

the way of modernization. The major opponents of reform, he once noted in a

discussion on the need for legal codification, would inevitably be lawyers. "And

the reason is natural. They are the most directly interested in keeping things as

they are. The more abstruse and recondite you make the law, the more indispen-

sable will be their professional services." Self-interest as well as "an attachment

[for the law] bordering on reverence" clouded the minds of far too many lawyers

so that they could not think clearly on the need for change, Walker believed.⁵²

One of the "great truths of our profession," he had earlier argued, was that the

"law is not always synonymous with justice."⁵³ Thus, though men ought never

be "lovers of innovation for its own sake," continual change was essential to avoid

a "deep and hopeless lethargy" in the land.⁵⁴ Such thoughts were bound to an-

tagonize many of Walker's fellow lawyers as well as other leaders of established

society, yet his fame spread rapidly nonetheless. Colleges offered him honorary

degrees, and he was called on to make a number of addresses on reform through-

out America. In 1850, he was selected to give the Phi Beta Kappa address at

Harvard, an occasion he characteristically used to expound on the spirit of re-

form.⁵⁵

Unfortunately, the Western Law Journal was not nearly as successful as Walker

himself. Despite its prestige as a journal of ideas, the periodical was never a fi-

nancial success. As early as its first anniversary, Walker was faced with the first

of a continual series of losing statements, yet "convinced it [would] support it-

self," he "resolved to persevere."⁵⁶ But there was never any money to pay for

 

 

 

48. Timothy Walker, "The Legal Condition of Women," Western Law Journal, VI, 146-159; also

Western Law Journal, I, 281.

49. Ibid., 485.

50. Ibid., 285.

51. Walker was also a firm believer in the direct election of Presidents. See Timothy Walker, Ora-

tion on the Life and Public Services of Daniel Webster: Delivered Before the Bar of Cincinnati, No-

vember 22nd, 1852 (Cincinnati, 1852), 26.

52. Western Law Journal, I, 433.

53. Ibid., 94.

54. Ibid., 435.

55. Manuscript, "The Spirit of Reform," Walker Papers.

56. Walker Diary, October 1, 1844.

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Timothy Walker                                                                155

 

contributions,⁵⁷ and the money from the limited subscriptions at $3.00 a year

never allowed him and his co-editors to do more than break even. During the last

two years, in fact, Walker was even unable to find a publisher willing to help

print the magazine and he personally took on the full cost of getting the Journal

out each month himself.⁵⁸ When it finally became clear that not only would the

average barrister not subscribe but also that the magazine could not count on

free articles or reviews from judges or lawyers from the West as Walker had

hoped, its founder was forced to make the reluctant decision to allow the Journal

to die a natural death after the September 1853 issue. The failure of the Western

Law Journal, however, does nothing to diminish its lasting importance. For ten

years Walker managed to produce, in an era when few magazines of any kind

survived for more than a few volumes, a first-rate work of legal scholarship. Even

today, students of American law frequently return to the pages of the Journal in

their quest to understand the legal thinking of the antebellum United States.

Above all else, Walker was an instructor of men and a disseminator of ideas.

Though he could have easily entered politics, as did so many of his contempo-

raries, he steadfastly refused to be involved in matters of partisanship, for he be-

lieved that there was nothing more "ridiculous and contemptible" than "the

shuffling and legerdemain of . . . modern politician[s]."⁵⁹ Ideologically a Whig,

he rarely appeared at meetings of a political nature, thus totally blunting any

opportunity he might have had to achieve fame in politics.⁶⁰ His chances of ap-

pointment to more prestigious posts were thus severely hampered; only once, in

1842, did he receive a major politically oriented post, being named Presiding

Judge of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas as a replacement to fill

an unexpired term. Though he remained in that office for only one year, the

designation "Judge" became an unofficial title which never was omitted from his

name during the last dozen years of his life. How many other such honors he

might have had if he had been willing to enter the political arena is a moot point;

certainly there seems no doubt that he might have well rivaled any of his now

more famous contemporaries such as Salmon Chase or the youthful Rutherford

B. Hayes.

But Walker was a lawyer first and last. In practice for himself and in partner-

ship with men such as John Crafts Wright, John Kebler, or Manning Force, he

built up a solid, if unspectacular, business.⁶¹ His legal training also lent itself to

a number of directorships and trusteeships, such as that of the Ohio Life Insur-

ance and Trust Company. A Cincinnati city council member, he was also a part

of the three-man committee that helped to establish the first full time fire de-

partment for the city, and he served in a number of capacities for the Whitewater

canal.⁶²

Timothy Walker's "liberalism" did not at first carry over to his attitude toward

slavery and the states-rights controversy. He had long taken pride in the fact that

 

 

57. Western Law Journal, II, 576.

58. Ibid., X, 430-431.

59. Walker Diary, October 28, 1827.

60. In 1844 there was a small but unsuccessful movement to have Walker receive the Whig nomi-

nation for governor. He was "bold, fearless, and uncompromising," a "noble and fluent speaker,"

capable of teaching "Locofocoism a lesson that would never be forgotten," noted the editor of Belle-

fontaine's Logan Gazette, February 17, 1844. Similar notices appeared in other Ohio papers. See for

example, the Columbus Ohio State Journal, February 12, 1844; and Walker Scrapbook #2, Walker

Papers.

61. Walker was associated with John C. Wright from 1836-1842, with John Kelber from 1848-

1856, and with Manning Force from 1853-1856. For a few months in 1838 he was also joined by his

younger brother, Joseph, though the latter soon moved to St. Louis.

62. Clippings and miscellaneous documents, Walker Papers.

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156                                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

 

for over the two decades he lived in Cincinnati he had never been an abolitionist,

"in the common acceptance of that word."⁶³ Indeed, during the anti-abolitionist

riots of 1836 which resulted in the destruction of James G. Birney's Philanthropist

press, Walker had played a prominent, if not leading, role.⁶⁴ Though he person-

ally opposed the institution of slavery, he could not, like his former partner Salmon

P. Chase, bring himself to challenge the law which supported it. "The law is

confessedly imperfect in many particulars," he wrote on one occasion, "but

nevertheless it is the law, and as such is entitled to implicit obedience." If mem-

bers of the bar were to forget all else but one thing, he believed, it should be the

dictum: "Maintain the supremacy of the law at all hazards and under all circum-

stances."⁶⁵

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 changed that attitude dras-

tically. In a speech made in March of that year, he noted, "I regard slavery as so

great an evil in itself and so stupendous a wrong, that it seems to be a sacred duty

to exert all the power I possess to prevent its extension to territories now free."⁶⁶

He began to defend slaves and to attack the fugitive slave laws which he had

earlier accepted.⁶⁷ All slaves ought to have the full privileges of freemen, Walker

argued in June 1855. Vowing never to help carry out the Fugitive Slave Law of

1850, Walker noted to a Whig party gathering that he had recently turned down

a retainer from a "Southern gentleman" who had proposed suing a railroad for

transporting a certain number of slaves to Canada.⁶⁸ But his leadership in any

radical program was not to be. In August 1855, his carriage was hit by a runaway

horse as he was driving to his office from Walnut Hills, and he was thrown vio-

lently from it. Injured severely, he tried to get up and go back to work at his law

practice too quickly, only to suffer a relapse that led to pneumonia. On January

15, 1856, at the age of fifty-three he died. Several days later, following Unitarian

services at his home, he was buried in the family plot in Spring Grove Cemetery,

which he had helped to found twelve years earlier.⁶⁹

Contemporary legal historians, when they deal with Walker at all, find it hard

to be anything less than enthusiastic. The story of his career, Professor Charles

Haar of the Harvard Law School noted in 1965, could easily "be narrated as a

homily on the virtues of industry.... Walker was of Pilgrim stock, and it may not

be a distortion to view him as a latter-day pilgrim transplanting the legal culture

of the East to the Western section of the country."⁷⁰ Francis R. Aumann agrees:

"the role of Timothy Walker ... [and] the graduates of the Cincinnati Law School

... which he founded ... is beyond measurement." The Introduction to American

Law and the Western Law Journal both continue to receive praise as examples of

Walker's concern for detail and reform.⁷¹

In many ways, Timothy Walker was a man of his time, deeply committed to

most of the trends of change being experienced by the legal profession. Admitted-

 

 

 

63. "Walker's Speech on the Nebraska Bill," Universalist, March 9, 1854, clipping in Walker Scrap-

book #2, 167-169, Walker Papers.

64. The Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, July 25, 1836-August 16, 1836.

65. Western Law Journal, IV, 328; and I, 549.

66. Walker Scrapbook #2, 167-169, Walker Papers.

67. Western Law Journal, VII, 57.

68. Cincinnati Daily Commercial, June 25, 1855.

69. Walker was the sixth permanent member of the Unitarian Congregation in Cincinnati, and he

had remained active in the programs of that group throughout his life. Manuscript, "Sermon delivered

by the Rev'd A. A. Livermore before the Unitarian Congregation of Cincinnati on the Life and Death

of Timothy Walker, 20th Jan., 1856," Walker Papers.

70. Charles M. Haar, The Golden Age of American Law (New York, 1965), 51-52.

71. Francis R. Aumann, The Changing American Legal System: Some Selected Phases (New York,

1969), 116-117; Chroust, Legal Profession in America, II, 216.

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Timothy Walker                                                          157

 

ly most of these changes would have come to Cincinnati through the proverbial

back door had it not been for Walker's work, but because of him, Cincinnati be-

came the center for all legal reform in the huge area west of the Alleghanies.

When easterners thought of law in the new West, it was clearly to Cincinnati

that their attentions turned after 1833. It is easy to overstate in any biographical

sketch; in Walker's case, however, this is difficult to do. Cincinnati, and indeed

the state of Ohio itself, changed for the better because of his efforts. That he has

been virtually ignored for so long by all but a few legal experts is today the most

surprising fact of all.

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