“On the other side we have the courts of law to protect the inventor and punish the thief. It is impossible that these instrumentalities should do their work imperfectly. This is the American system. Under its protection great inventions have been born, and have thriven. It has given to the world the steamboat, the telegraph, the sewing-machine, the hard and soft rubber. It has reconstructed the loom, the reaping-machine, and the locomotive. It has won from the older homes of the mechanic arts their richest trophies, and like Columbus, who found a new world for Castile and Leon, it has created new arts in which our nation has neither competitive or peer.” The first Superintendent of the Patent Office was Doctor W. Thornton, a gentleman of great attainments, who held his position for many years. The present Commissioner of Patents is General Mortimer D. Leggett, born of Quaker parents, in the State of New York, fifty years ago. At an early age, he went with his parents to the Western Reserve, Ohio. He received an academical education, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and at twenty-eight, was established in a flourishing business in Warren, Ohio. Jacob D. Cox, late Secretary of the Interior, studied law with General Leggett, and ultimately became his partner under the firm name of Leggett & Cox. General Leggett afterwards filled the position of Professor of Pleadings and Equity Jurisprudence, in the Ohio Law College, which he occupied till 1857, and later was called to become the Superintendent of Public Schools in the city of Zanesville, which his management made pre-eminent among the schools of the West. At the beginning of the war, he entered the field at the head of the Seventy-eighth Ohio. This regiment received its first baptism in the snow and sleet of Fort Donelson, and was under fire there. The executive and administrative ability of Colonel Leggett, as shown in the discipline and condition of his regiment, attracted the attention of General Grant, who made him Provost-Marshal of the post. He did his work so well, that he was repeatedly chosen again, and by the warm commendation of his chief, was made Brigadier-General. At the battle of Shiloh, and the siege of Corinth, General Leggett held advanced posts. In the siege of Vicksburg, General Leggett commanded the first brigade of Logan’s Division—the brigade which, for its gallant service, was honored by being designated for the coveted distinction of marching first into the captured works. Soon after, he received command of this division, and was made Major-General, and with it, made with Sherman, the famous “march to the sea.”