In 1846 came on the great Van Zandt case. Van Zandt was originally a thriving Kentucky farmer and slave owner. He figured in Uncle Tom's Cabin under the name of Van Tromp. He was a man who, under a shaggy exterior, had a great, kind, honest heart, and in that day, when ministers and elders were studying the Bible to find apologies for slavery, Van Zandt needed no other light than that of this same heart to teach him that it was vile and devilish, and so, setting his slaves free, he came over and bought a farm in the neighborhood of Cincinnati; and it was well known that no hungry, wandering fugitive was ever turned from Van Zandt's door. The writer has still memory of the wild night ride of husband and brother through woods, and over swelled creeks dangerous enough to cross, which carried a poor, hunted slave girl to this safe retreat. But Van Zandt was at last found out, and the slaveocrats brought suit against him. Chase and Seward defended him, and made noble pleas--pleas as much for the rights of the whites as of the blacks. Of course, like all cases of the kind at that date, the judgment had been pre-ordained before the court sat. Chase's elaborate and unanswerable argument before the United States Court, was afterward printed in a pamphlet of some three hundred and fifty octavo pages. The opening of this great plea and its close we shall quote as best showing the solemn and earnest spirit in which this young lawyer entered upon his work. "MR. CHIEF JUSTICE AND JUDGES: I beg leave to submit to your consideration an argument in behalf of an old man, who is charged, under the act of Congress of February 12, 1793, with having concealed and harbored a fugitive slave. Oppressed, and well nigh borne down by the painful consciousness, that the principles and positions which it will be my duty to maintain, can derive no credit whatever from the reputation of the advocate, I have spared no pains in gathering around them whatever of authority and argument the most careful research and the most deliberate reflection could supply. I have sought instruction wherever I could find it; I have looked into the reported decisions of almost all the state courts, and of this court; I have examined and compared state legislation and federal; above all, I have consulted the constitution of the Union, and the history of its formation and adoption. I have done this, because I am well assured, that the issues, now presented to this court for solemn adjudication, reach to whatever is dear in constitutional liberty, and what is precious in political union. Not John Van Zandt alone--not numerous individuals only--but the States also, and the Nation itself, must be deeply affected by the decision to be pronounced in this case." Then followed the technical and legal plea which is a most close and unanswerable legal argument, showing conclusively that under the words of the statute the defendant could not be held guilty.