Platt Smith

SMITH

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 4/8/2008 at 16:58:32

Recollections and Sketches
Edward H. Stiles, Homestead Pub. Co., 1916

Platt Smith developed through different stages, from a poor uneducated boy to one of the ablest lawyers of the Iowa bar. He was born in the State of New York in 1813. He was reared and worked on his father’s farm. Until he was fourteen there was no school in the district. After the establishment of one, he attended enough to enable him to read. On leaving school he engaged on a small scale in merchandising, in which he failed during the financial panic of 1837. He then applied himself to learning the art of a millwright, paying his expenses with whatever else he found to do. At the age of twenty-six, in 1839, he emigrated to Jackson County, in the Territory of Iowa, where he resided for some years in the family of John E. Goodenow. While there a claim controversy arose between two settlers, and young Smith, who had come to be recognized as a man of parts, undertook to represent one of them in the trial before a Justice of the Peace. A jury was called in the case, and after the evidence was closed Smith made a speech and the jury returned a verdict in favor of the settler he represented. The skill he exhibited in both the trial and the argument gave him a sudden reputation for ability and he was persuaded to study law, which he commenced to do after obtaining some books for that purpose. He began reading under Henry Hopkins, a lawyer of Bellevue, in 1842. While doing this he sawed wood for money with which to pay his board. In February of the following year he was denied an examination upon the ground that he had not studied long enough. He concluded himself that further study was required and returned to his old friend, Mr. Goodenow, at Maquoketa. In a short time he engaged in rafting lumber down the Mississippi. On one of the rafts he went to Muscatine, acting as pilot in running it over the Rock Island Rapids. He stopped at Muscatine, hired a horse, went to Tipton with the view of applying for admission to the bar before Judge Williams, who was then holding court there. Arriving at Tipton he found that in changing his clothes at Muscatine he had left his pocketbook behind him. He told Ralph P. Lowe, afterward Governor and Judge of the Supreme Court, to whom he had come for advice with reference to some matter that had arisen between him and his crew, of his situation. Lowe thereupon gave him ten dollars, which was afterward duly paid back. He applied to the court for admission to the bar, a committee was appointed, the examination was satisfactory and a certificate of his admission was duly issued, in March, 1843. The following April he attended the court held at Andrew, the county seat of Jackson County, on the docket of which it is said his name was marked as counsel in the majority of the cases there pending, though he had not been admitted to the bar when they were so docketed. This was the result of the reputation he had established by his ability in the conduct of cases before Justices of the Peace throughout the County. He had become locally famous as a lawyer without in form being one. For the first five or six years he especially devoted himself to the criminal practice and was employed in a large number of trials for capital offences. It is said that he tried seven or eight murder cases in one year. He became highly distinguished in that line, but after a while tired of it and devoted himself principally to civil cases, in which he became eminently successful. He was associated with J. M. McKinlay and B. W. Poor under the firm name of Smith, McKinlay & Poor. They built up an immense practice. He was the attorney of the Dubuque & Pacific Railroad Company, drew the articles of its incorporation, the stock subscriptions, and procured the right of way in person.

The first case in the fourth volume of Greene’s Reports is that of Dubuque County vs. The Dubuque & Pacific Railroad Company, in which it was held that a county had the constitutional right to aid in the building of railroads within its limits, a doctrine that was afterward overruled. He represented the company in that case, and the firm of Smith, McKinlay & Poor appears in connection with thirty-six cases in the volume referred to. It is said that Smith argued all these cases in person. He was connected with the Railroad Company in the capacity of attorney and sometimes Vice President and President for several years and until it was completed to Iowa Falls. He then organized the Iowa Falls & Sioux City Company and was one of the four Directors that had the management of the road until it was completed to Sioux City in 1870, and was subsequently the organizer of several other roads. In short, he became a prominent railroad builder and businessman. These enterprises naturally disconnected him to a great extent from his profession, though he was occasionally engaged in important cases.

As will be seen by reference to the sketch of Judge Thomas S. Wilson, embodied in the chapter relating to the Judges of the Territorial Supreme Court, Smith was associated with Wilson in the important case of Choteau vs. Maloney, which involved the title of the land upon which Dubuque is located. Wilson and Smith represented the settlers; they had the celebrated Reverdy Johnson of Maryland to contend with before the Supreme Court of the United States. The arguments of both Smith and Wilson before that tribunal were remarkable ones and received the compliments of the Chief Justice. As is well known, the case was decided in favor of the settlers. Smith was also employed and made the argument for Gregoire in Fanning vs. Gregoire in the same tribunal, and the brief filed by Mr. Smith in the case received the approbation of the Judge delivering the opinion. Mr. Smith was also employed to make the argument in the Dubuque & Pacific Railroad Company vs. Litchfield, and in delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Catron quoted freely from Smith’s argument. A specimen of Mr. Smith’s briefs will be found in connection with the case of Sanders vs. The State, Second Greene, 251.

In one of my interviews with James W. Woods (Old Timber) more than thirty years ago, he said:

“Platt Smith, I knew well. When I first knew him he was engaged in rafting lumber from the Pineries down the Mississippi river. He had some trouble with his crew, and called upon Ralph P. Lowe, of Muscatine, for advice; the result was Judge Lowe advised him to apply for admission, which he did and was admitted to the bar, where he immediately took first rank. If he had been educated, I make no doubt he would have been the ablest lawyer and advocate in Iowa; as it was, no one got away with him. He was a man of large frame, but rather rough and unsocial in his manners. He turned his attention to railroading in the latter part of his life and accumulated considerable fortune.

I met him a number of times in Dubuque and heard him, when he was somewhat advanced in years, make an argument that tended strongly to confirm what I had previously heard of his great natural ability.”