In Philadelphia there were several lawyers that could always be depended on to resist the claims of the slave-owner to his recaptured property in the courts. William Still mentions two of these, namely, David Paul Brown and William S. Pierce, as "well-known veterans" ready to defend the slave "wherever and whenever called upon to do so."[831] Robert Purvis relates an incident of David Paul Brown that will be recognized as characteristic of the spirit in which the class of advocates to which he belonged rendered their services for the slave. A case growing out of the capture of a negro by his pursuers occupied the attention of Mr. Purvis for a season in 1836, and he desired to engage Mr. Brown for the defence; he accordingly presented the matter to the distinguished attorney, offering him a fee of fifty dollars in advance. Mr. Brown promptly undertook the case, but refused the money, saying: "I shall not now, nor have I ever, accepted fee or reward, other than the approval of my own conscience, and I respectfully decline receiving your money."[832] [831] _Underground Railroad Records_, p. 367. [832] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 359. In what was, so far as known, the last case under the Slave Law of 1850, Mr. John Dean, a prominent lawyer of Washington, D.C., displayed noteworthy zeal in the interest of his client, a supposed fugitive. The affair occurred in June, 1862, and came within the cognizance of the United States courts. Mr. Dean, who had just obtained the discharge of the colored man from arrest, interfered to prevent his seizure a second time as the slave of a Virginian. The claimant, aided by other persons, sought to detain the black until a civil officer should arrive to take him into custody, but the attorney's surprising play at fisticuffs defeated the efforts of the assailing party and the black got away. He soon enlisted in one of the colored regiments then forming in Washington, and it is to be surmised that all question concerning his status was put to rest by this step. Mr. Dean was indicted for aiding in the escape of a fugitive slave, and although the affair is said to have caused great excitement in the Capital, especially in the two Houses of Congress, it never reached a legal decision, but lapsed through the progress of events that led rapidly to the Emancipation Proclamation and the repeal of the Fugitive Slave laws.[833] [833] This case is given by Mr. Noah Brooks, in his _Washington in Lincoln's Time_, 1895, pp. 197, 198.