Abram D. Smith

Abram Daniel Smith (June 9, 1811 – June 3, 1865), often abbreviated A. D. Smith, was an American lawyer, politician, and pioneer. As a leader of the Hunters' Lodges, he was elected President of the Republic of Canada in the midst of the Canadian Rebellions of 1837–1838. Later, he became a prominent lawyer in the Wisconsin Territory, and was one of the first justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where he authored a major opinion against the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Early life Smith was born in Lowville, New York. He eventually settled in Sackets Harbor, New York, where he read law. Smith was a fervent member of the Equal Rights Party (also known as the Locofocos) an anti-Tammany faction of the Democratic Party in New York. They emphasized economic justice, and equal rights for all.

He married Mary Augusta Reed (1811-1866) of Westford, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1832. Mary's family settled in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, then at Castleton, Vermont. Smith probably met her there when he was attending Castleton Medical School, graduating in 1831. The Smiths moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1836 or 1837, and he was elected a justice of the peace in Cleveland in March 1837.

Canadian Rebellion

In Cleveland, Smith was a prominent leader of the Hunters' Lodge, a paramilitary organization which aligned itself with Canadian anti-royalist rebellions taking place in 1837 and 1838. After the rebels declared a new Republic of Canada, Smith was elected its president at a convention of Hunters' Lodges in Cleveland in September 1838. The Lodges were organized much like the Freemasons, of which Smith was also a member. In sympathy with the Canadian rebellion, the Hunters' Lodges launched the Patriot War against Canada in 1838, but it was ultimately unsuccessful due to the combined efforts of both the American and British governments. He was a candidate for Mayor of Milwaukee in 1851, but was unsuccessful.

Supreme Court

In 1853, he was elected to the newly established Wisconsin Supreme Court. One of his most famous decisions was the case In Re: Booth, in 1854, in which abolitionist Sherman Booth was charged with assisting the escape of former slave Joshua Glover in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Booth's attorney, Byron Paine, sought relief from the Wisconsin Supreme Court and obtained an order from Judge Smith freeing Booth and ruling that the Fugitive Slave Act was an unconstitutional usurpation of state authority. His decision was challenged before the full Wisconsin Supreme Court by United States Attorney John Sharpstein, but the full court unanimously concurred that the arrest order for Booth was defective, and, in a 2-1 decision, concurred that the Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional. Wisconsin was the first state to declare the Fugitive Slave Act to be unconstitutional, and the case was an important precedent in state attempts at nullification of federal law in the years leading up to the American Civil War.

The decision, however, did not stand, as it was then challenged in federal court. It eventually reached the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1859 case of Ableman v. Booth. The Supreme Court overturned the Wisconsin decision and asserted the Supremacy Clause required that state courts could not be allowed to invalidate the decisions of federal courts. Booth was ultimately pardoned by President James Buchanan at the request of United States district judge Andrew G. Miller.

Electoral history Milwaukee Mayor (1851)

Wisconsin Supreme Court (1852)