Removed to Des Moines
The practice of law in Van Buren county did not prove very remunerative. The district court met only twice a year. The business of the term sometimes occupied only two or three days, seldom beyond one week, and never beyond two weeks.
During the time I had continued to reside in Van Buren county one of the most important cases in which I was retained was a contest over the legality of a will in which the deceased had made a bequest of a small tract of land to the Methodist Episcopal church, organized out on what was called "Utica Prairie." The will provided that the land should be sold by the trustees of the church and a fund created out of which should be paid so much a year to the missionary cause and so much to the support of the minister. The remainder should be expended by the trustees in erecting a house of worship. The trustees of the church had not been incorporated, and the heirs sought to set aside the will on the ground that there was no legal capacity in the trustees to receive the bequest, and on the further ground of the uncertainty of the beneficiaries under the will. I was retained in the case in behalf of the trustees, and had them immediately adopt articles of incorporation and file the same as provided by the statutes of the state. I filed an answer in the case, setting forth with particularity the character of the Methodist Episcopal church's organization, with proper averments as to the certainty of the continued existence of the beneficiaries under the will. The case was tried upon demurrer to this answer, and upon appeal to the supreme court of Iowa the will was sustained. The opinion of the court is fully reported in the case of Johnson et al. vs. Mayne et al., Trustees, 4th Iowa, 180.
Charles Clinton Nourse
From an air brush copy of an old photograph
loaned by D. W. Nourse, Kenton, Ohio.
I charged and received from the trustees the sum of $200 for my services in the case, being the largest amount that I received in my practice from any one case during the seven years I remained in Keosauqua.
The railroad up the Des Moines valley from Keokuk had been located some three or four miles north of the town of Keosauqua, and I saw no immediate prospect of any improvement or growth in the town. Added to these discouragements, my wife and myself in the fall of 1857 were both taken down with the fever and the ague. On advice of our physician we made a visit to Kentucky and also to Ohio to visit our relatives, hoping by some means to escape or shake off the dreaded disease, but the more we shook the stronger the ague kept its hold. I had during that year (1857) been employed by Edwin Manning, the commissioner of the Des Moines River Improvement, to represent the interest of the state in certain suits commenced against him by the Des Moines Navigation & Railroad Company, for the purpose of compelling him to certify to the company certain lands belonging to the state under the grant of congress, made for the purpose of aiding in the improvement of the navigation of the Des Moines river, the company claiming that they were entitled to certain of these lands at the rate of $1.25 per acre for moneys expended in the building of locks and dams upon the river, which expenditure had been certified by the state engineer. The general assembly of the state of Iowa was to meet for the first time in the city of Des Moines on the first day of January, 1858, and I went to Des Moines in company with Mr. Manning at that time for the two-fold purpose of calling the roll of senators upon the organization of the senate, that being my duty as the secretary of the past session, and also to look after the interest of the state in the settlement that was then to be made between the state and the Des Moines Navigation Company, the supreme court having decided the suit, to which I have referred, in our favor. I found Des Moines to be a thriving young city of something less than five thousand inhabitants, but with great expectation for the future as the permanent capital of the state of Iowa. I was introduced after a few days' stay in the city to Judge W. W. Williamson, an old time lawyer with a good collecting business, who offered me a full partnership in his business, and I finally determined, after transacting the business I had in Des Moines, to return to Keosauqua and dispose of my affairs there and remove to this city, which I finally did, and on the 6th day of March, 1858, with my wife and household goods and the ague, we came to Des Moines.
About a year or more before we left Keosauqua I had traded off the house I had first purchased in the village for a very beautiful home that had been built by L. J. Rose. It had about a full block of ground well planted with young fruit trees and vines and shrubbery and rose bushes. The house was well located on the hill in the northwest part of the village, and my wife as well as myself had become fondly attached to the place. During our five years of residence we had many friends in the town, and we found it hard to leave them. My wife shed many tears at the thought of leaving the place, but the largest amount that my practice had yielded in any one year whilst in Keosauqua was $800, and I was satisfied that our best interests would be promoted by our new location. The location of the permanent capital of the state at Des Moines, and the fact that our supreme and United States courts would be located there, and that it would necessarily become a railroad center and build up and become one of the chief cities of the state, had attracted many other young men of the profession. Within twelve months before the time I settled in Des Moines probably a dozen well educated, enterprising young lawyers had preceded me. The result was a fierce competition and struggle for business, every young man realizing that it was a question of the survival of the fittest, and that his success depended upon himself. Before arriving in the city I had secured a small house of two rooms and a shed kitchen on Sixth street, at a rental of twenty dollars per month. We moved our goods into this house on Saturday, and on Sunday morning after a light breakfast both my wife and myself went to bed with the ague. The chill was succeeded, of course, by the usual high fever, and in the middle of the afternoon we were delighted by a call from an old acquaintance, a girl that had been raised at Keosauqua and who had married Mr. R. L. Tidrick, of Des Moines. She made us a cup of tea, and we came out of the fever encouraged and contented.
The first two years of my practice in Des Moines were not remunerative. In addition to our earnings we spent $1500 in our living, having saved that amount from the proceeds of the property that we disposed of at Keosauqua.
In the fall of 1859 I took an active part in the political campaign that resulted in the election of Samuel J. Kirkwood for Governor and the defeat of Augustus Ceasar Dodge, former democratic Senator from Iowa. As I had become interested in and contemplated taking an active part in the politics of the state and nation, I occupied my leisure time in more serious and thoughtful consideration of the grave questions that were soon to confront the nation. I read with great interest and studied with great care the debates between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln that had taken place in the state of Illinois, and the struggle between those parties for a seat in the United States senate. I also read with some care and great interest the great questions that had divided those who had framed the constitution of the United States. I became thoroughly grounded in the theory that our fathers in forming our national constitution had established a government with all the essential attributes of sovereignty. Whilst there is a limitation upon the subjects over which the government should exercise jurisdiction, yet within the sphere over which it might exercise any power it was absolutely sovereign and supreme; that the constitution was not a compact or treaty between sovereign states, but that it was a government, deriving its powers directly from the people, with power to make its own laws and through its courts to interpret and administer its own laws, and through its executive and his appointees had the power to execute its own laws; that the relation between the national government and the individual was direct, with power over his person and his property so far as it was necessary to assert and maintain its jurisdiction; and that it collected and disbursed its own revenues, enlisted and maintained its own armies, built and maintained its own navies, and that its constitution and laws, by the very terms of its organization, constituted the supreme law of the land. That the assumption that it was a mere treaty between the sovereign states, from which any state might at any time secede at its pleasure, was an erroneous assumption, and inimical to our national existence and prosperity. I found upon examination of the decisions of the supreme court of the United States that these views of our national government and its powers had been fully sustained by the supreme court of the United States by the most eminent jurists of the land. Particularly I studied with great care the decisions of the supreme court of the United States, and the opinions of the Chief Justice Marshall of that court, delivered in the early history of our government.