One cannot examine the records of the various cases that have been passed in review in the preceding pages of this chapter without being struck in many instances by the character of the men that served as counsel for fugitive slaves and their friends. It not infrequently happens that one comes upon the name of a man whose principles, ability and eloquence won for him in later years positions of distinction and influence at the bar and in public life. In the Christiana case, for example, Thaddeus Stevens was a prominent figure; in the Van Zandt case Salmon P. Chase and William H. Seward presented the arguments against the Fugitive Slave Law before the United States Supreme Court;[820] Mr. Chase also appeared in Eells' case, and in the case known as _ex parte_ Robinson, besides others of less judicial importance. Rutherford B. Hayes took part in a number of fugitive slave cases in Cincinnati, Ohio. A letter written by the ex-President in 1892 says: "As a young lawyer, from the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law until the war, I was engaged in slave cases for the fugitives, having an understanding with Levi Coffin and other directors and officers of the U. R. R. that my services would be freely given."[821] John Jolliffe, another lawyer of Cincinnati, less known than the anti-slavery advocates already mentioned, was sometimes associated with Chase and Hayes in pleading the cause of fugitives.[822] The Western Reserve was not without its members of the bar that were ready to display their legal talent in a movement well grounded in the popular mind of eastern Ohio. An illustration is afforded by the trial of the Oberlin-Wellington rescuers, when four eminent attorneys of Cleveland offered their services for the defence, declining at the same time to accept a fee. The event shows that the political aspirations of these men were not injured by their procedure, for Mr. Albert G. Riddle, who spoke first for the defence, was elected to Congress from the Cleveland district the following year, and Mr. Rufus P. Spalding, one of his associates, was similarly honored by the same district in 1862.[823] In November, 1852, the legal firm of William H. West and James Walker, of Bellefontaine, Ohio, attempted to release from custody several negroes belonging to the Piatt family of Kentucky, before their claimants could arrive to prove property. The attempt was successful, and, by prearrangement, the fugitives were taken into a carriage and driven rapidly to a neighboring station of the Underground Railroad. The funds to pay the sheriff, the court expenses and the livery hire were borne in part by Messrs. West and Walker.[824] [820] Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. I, p. 477. [821] Letter of Mr. Hayes, Fremont, O., Aug. 4, 1892. [822] _Reminiscences of Levi Coffin_, pp. 548, 549.