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 While acting as judge his circuit included Marion county. The author of the County History thus writes of him: “He was always pleasant and affable. At the opening of a court in May, 1861, when the people were excited about the war, he ordered the sheriff to raise the national flag over the cupola of the Court-house in Marion, which order the sheriff refused to obey. The latter was, therefore, brought into court and fined for contempt. He then hoisted the flag according to the original order. In 1862 the Judge went to the front with a regiment, of which he was Colonel. While in the service his salary as Judge continued, which he drew and distributed to the school districts throughout his circuit, for the benefit of the families of the soldiers.” The author speaks of the Judge as though he had passed away, but he remains very much of a live gentleman. When we last saw him, in June, 1889, he seemed the embodiment of manly vigor and cheerfulness, full in figure, full-chested, remarkably neat in apparel, and wearing a button-hole bouquet on the lapel of his coat—in all respects, morally and physically, a fragrant presence; and what we believe has helped to make him such has been his life-practice of the principle illustrated in the name he gave to a daughter—Mary Temperance Lawrence. His law arguments would make several volumes. An able writer, familiar with these and referring to a voluminous opinion he gave as to property rights growing out of the schism in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, in 1899, said: “Judge Lawrence is one of the most eminent of living American lawyers. His opinion must be regarded as entirely impartial, and it is maintained with marked ability and forcible argument from beginning to end. “Judge Lawrence’s reports and speeches while in the Ohio Legislature and in Congress would make volumes, many of them on Constitutional Law and on all the great questions in Congress during the period of twelve years following the rebellion. His report in Congress, February, 1869, on the New York election frauds, led to important legislation there and in Congress to preserve the purity of elections. He first urged in Congress the law establishing the ‘Department of Justice,’ and is author of most of its provisions converting the ‘office’ of Attorney-General into a ‘Department.’ He is the author of the law giving to each soldier as a homestead 160 acres of the ‘alternate reserved sections’ in the railroad land grants, under which so many homes have been secured to these deserving citizens. “He was the first in Congress to urge, in the interest of securing the public lands to actual settlers, that Indian treaty sales of these lands should be prohibited, as they were by act of March 3, 1871; thus breaking up one of the most gigantic agencies for squandering the public lands and creating monopolies. On the 7th of July, 1876, he carried through the House a bill called the ‘Lawrence Bill”, requiring the Pacific railroad companies to indemnify the government against liability and loss on account of the government loan credit to the companies, as estimated, of $150,000,000. The railroad companies resisted this, employing Hon. Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, and Hon. Wm. M. Evarts, of New York, and others, whose elaborate arguments before the Judiciary Committee were met by a voluminous report and speech by Judge Lawrence, answering every opposing argument.”—Biog. Cyc. Ohio |
