HON. DANIEL F. MILLER

MILLER, PHILLIPS

Posted By: County Coordinator
Date: 3/14/2020 at 15:35:14

HON. DANIEL F. MILLER, - The history of Lee County without the life of this old and eminent citizen would be like the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out; for we have certainly no citizen now living whose active labors have been so intimately identified with the growth and progress of the county, during the third of a century, in which he has been a prominent actor among us. It is unnecessary to preface this brief sketch with any assertion of the distinguished character of its subject; for his talents and labors as a jurist, his integrity as a public officer, and his rare social qualities, are recognized and appreciated by all who know him.

Around the bar of Keokuk and Fort Madison cluster many recollections of its distinguished members, whose talents, learning and eloquence have added lustre to the profession of which Mr. Miller is a member, but few have honored the profession more than he, or rendered more important services to his fellow citizens.

Daniel F. Miller was born on a farm on a spur of the Allegheny Mountains, called Dan’s Mountain, about eight miles from Cumberland, Maryland, on the 4th of October 1814. His parents emigrated to Wayne county, Ohio when he was about two years old. That portion of Ohio was then a wild, woody country, and had few inhabitants and they were generally of the frontier character, - men who loved the pursuit of forest game and romance, and who kept close on the receding steps of the Indians. He was sent to school closely from his sixth to his twelfth year of age, and after then, until his fifteenth year, worked on a farm and in a printing office. When fifteen years old he taught school nine months, and by frugality and economy got a small start in money matters. In his sixteenth year he started on foot to Pittsburg, Penn., (one hundred and twenty miles,) there to study law as soon as he could get money enough to pay his board and other expenses while engaged in the same. He got employment at good wages, in a store, the second day after his arrival in Pittsburg and became a disciple of Chatty and Blackstone. He pursued the study of the law constantly and laboriously from the time he commenced it till he was admitted to the Pittsburg bar in the spring of 1839. While a student-at-law he was often called on to act as attorney in cases in Justice’s Courts and before Referees. And besides earning some money thereby, gained considerable experience in the details of law practice.

By his admission to the bar he had accomplished the object on which his heart had been set; but he was broken down in health from over-study, and needed rest and travel. At that period, the territory of Iowa, commonly called “the Black Hawk Purchase,” on account of its reputed fertility, healthfulness, and beautiful scenery, was attracting much attention in the Eastern States, and having a love for a new country and frontier life, he took steamboat for Iowa, and landed in Fort Madison on the 15th day of April, 1839, and immediately stuck out his “Law Shingle,” though still in enfeebled health.

Iowa had but few white people in it at that period; full three-fourths of its domain being yet in possession of the Indians, and under their rule.

He has been engaged in the active practice of law ever since, except on several occasions when he stepped aside to indulge in the excitements of political life. In 1840 he was elected a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from Lee County. His first legislative act (on the third day of the session) was a motion for a bill to abolish imprisonment for debt. That remnant if barbarism “imprisonment for debt, “was then the rule, both of American and English law. Mr. Miller met with much opposition, and in a test vote at the early part of the session was defeated. But he subsequently renewed the effort, and succeeded in carrying it through the branch of the Legislature to which he belonged; but it did not pass the Council, nor become a law, until two years afterwards. He also introduced a law to give colored people the right of trial by jury when arrested as fugitive slaves. By the “Black Code” of Iowa, as it was then called, a colored person was not even entitled to a trial on the question of his freedom; but the so-called master could file an affidavit claiming a certain colored man was a slave, and would then get a warrant from a Justice of the Peace, causing him to be fettered and sent back into slavery. Mr. Miller made a hard struggle to get the law changed; but after a fruitless debate he carried but three other members of the Legislature with him; and the right of a colored man to equal laws in Iowa was postponed to another and a better day.

In 1848 Mr. Miller was elected on the Whig ticket, Representative in Congress from Iowa, but did not get the certificate of election because of a fraud perpetrated on one of the ballot-boxes of a western county. He went before Congress and exposed the fraud and his opponent was unseated and a new election ordered; and in 1850, at the new election, he was elected by a majority of about eight hundred, in a district opposed to him politically by almost a thousand majority. His hatred of slavery united him in the anti-slavery movement which grew out of the Kansas-Nebraska Territorial Organization, and in 1856 he was chosen Presidential Elector at Large for Iowa, on the Republican ticket. In the spring election of 1873, he was elected Mayor of the city of Keokuk by the citizens, irrespective of party.

These bare dates give but a faint outline of the public life of Mr. Miller. They indicate, of course, that he has been popular with the people, and that he has held many important places of responsibility and trust; but they afford little clue to the figure he cut and the place he filled in the legislature, the forum, and the courts of his country. He was one of the foremost in council and one of the most eloquent in debate. He was the tall Iowa Chief, on whose face rested the light of intelligence. And in whose heart glowed the fire of friendship.

At school, when a boy, he took learning easily. His mind was naturally quick and vigorous, his intellect sharp and active, and his memory remarkably retentive. He possesses a well-balanced brain, strongly developed in the reasoning, reflective and moral faculties, with considerable ideality and a highly impressible and motive temperament. It is not to be wondered at, which such a combination of faculties, and with such hard and laborious study as he was addicted to in his early days, and has pursued, in fact, all his life, that he should be well informed, and have a mind stored with knowledge on almost all subjects, particularly on those relating to his profession as a lawyer. From a correspondence with an old legal friend of his we are permitted to quote a few extracts. He says: “The great ambition of my life, so far as worldly honors were concerned, was to attain to the position of a thorough lawyer. With an honorable reputation in my business, and a social relation with my fellowmen.”

We may well believe this when we see what efforts he has made, and what difficulties he has overcome to attain this object. He was scarcely sixteen when the idea began to fire his mind. He was poor, and all the money he earned and laid up had especial reference to this cherished purpose. For this he performed the journey on foot, a hundred and twenty miles, to Pittsburg, and worked and taught school, and never faltered till he had taken the first great step towards the goal of his ambition, by studying his profession and being admitted at the bar. Nor did he stop here; having entered the profession his ambition was to excel in it. The extent of his success cannot be fully told in a meagre sketch like this; but public sentiment has long since stamped upon him the mark of distinction in his profession. He has been one of the ablest lawyers Iowa has ever had, and while age has brought ripeness and wisdom, it seems not to have abated in any appreciable degree the strength and vigor of his faculties. His heart is as young as it ever was; for he is a man of remarkable genial nature, and of strong attachments and social feelings.

When he was younger than at present, his temperament was somewhat excitable, a fact which he thus deplores in the correspondence above referred to: “While I can look back on my life with many pleasurable reflections, there is one thing I cannot think of with any patience. It has been the cause of nearly all the trouble I have ever had with my fellowmen. I refer to an excitable temperament, which has often caused me (especially in the earlier periods of my manhood) to become at enmity with men without just reason, and separated me for a time from those with whom I should have been friendly. Some of the most cherished friends I now have are those with whom I was at such foolish ill-will long years ago.”

It is manly to make such a confession, and proves that the subject of our sketch has “grown in grace” as well as in years.

Mr. Miller has great attachment to his old friends, and nothing pleases him more than to meet them and talk over the events of “old pioneer times,” when he and they “roughed it” together in the border settlements of Iowa. Times have changed since then; still the memory of them is precious to Mr. Miller and he loves to have it perpetuated to future generations. To this end he as been very active in getting up n “Old Settlers’ Association,” of which he is President, and has taken great pains to get and record, in a book of the society. The names and records of the Old Pioneers of the county who came here prior to 1840.

We will give the account of his marriage in his own words, taken from a letter to his legal friend:

“In 1832, I formed an attachment for my wife, whose maiden name was Rebecca S. Phillips, which was consummated in marriage on the first of June, 1841. We have had ten children, eight of whom are living.”

Mr. Miller is the senior law partner in the firm of McCrary, Miller & McCrary, of this city. He is also at the present time Mayor of Keokuk, and not withstanding he is sixty years of age, discharges the duties of his profession and office with scarcely less alacrity than in his most palmy days.

Source:
Illustrated Historical ATLAS of Lee County, IOWA
A. T. Andreas
Chicago, ILL.
1874

Transcription by Mary H. Cochrane, Volunteer