CURTIS, GEORGE TICKNOR (1812-94). A dis tinguished American jurist and writer on the constitutional history of the United States, He was born in Watertown, Mass.; graduated at Harvard in 832 ; was admitted to the bar in 1836, and began the practice of the law in Worcester, Mass. In the following year lie re moved to Boston, where he continued with short intermissions to practice law until 1862, from which time until his death he practiced in New York City and before the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D. C. While in Boston be acted for many years as United States Com missioner, and in this capacity, though his sympathies were strongly against the institu tion of slavery and the rendition of the fugitive slaves, he ordered the return of Thomas Sims (q.v.) to his master in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Law in 1852, and for so acting was denounced by the Abolitionists throughout the country. Among the well-known cases iu which he appeared as counsel are the Dred Scott case, the legal-tender cases, the Colt revolver suits, and the sewing-machine cases. He was popular as a public speaker and delivered many able addresses dealing for the most part with legal or political subjects. He will best be re
membered as a writer, and especially as the author of the valuable Constitutional History of the United States from, their Declaration of Independence to the Close of their Civil War (1896), a part of which was first published in 1854 as The History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States; and of the Life of Daniel Webster (1870), and the Life of James Buchanan (1883). He also published, besides numerous magazine articles: Digest of the English and American Admiralty Decisions (1839) ; Rights and Duties of Merchant Seamen (1841) : American Convey ancer (1846); Law of Patents (1849); Equity Precedents (1850) ; Commentaries on the Juris prudence, Practice, and Peculiar Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States (1854-58) ; Memoir of Benjamin R. Curtis (1880) ; Creation or Evolution: .t Philosophical Inquiry (1887) ; and a novel entitled, John Chambers: .1 Tale of the Civil War in America (1839).