ery. General Pettus also made a speech in support of the section. It was adopted as read, and is now section 3 of the Alabama Code, and is also carried into the American Bar Association's third

canon.

Section 5 of the Code as submitted was then read, and Colonel G. W. Hewitt, of Birmingham, moved to strike out that part of the section characterizing as a deceit unworthy of attorneys "offering evidence which it is known the court must reject as illegal, to get it before the jury, under guise of arguing its admissibility." Colonel Henry C. Tompkins then offered as a substitute the following: "Arguing the admissibility of evidence which it is known the court must reject, for the purpose of getting it before the jury." Messrs. Blakey, Jones, London, Stansel, and Stone spoke in favor of leaving the section as reported. The motions of Colonels Hewitt and Tompkins were lost. Section 5 is now a part of the American Bar Association's canon No. 22.

Section 14 of the proposed Code read. as follows:

"An attorney must decline in a civil cause to conduct a prosecution, when satisfied that the purpose is merely to harass or injure the opposite party, or to work oppression or wrong; but once entering the cause he is bound to avail himself of all lawful advantages in favor of his client, and cannot without the consent of the client afterwards abandon the cause."

On motion the word may was substituted for the word must. And then, on motion of Major Jones, the portion of the section which I have italicized was stricken out. The first change does not appear to have been made in copies sent out by the association, nor does it appear in American Bar Association's canon No. 31, which is based on this section of the Alabama Code.

Section 20 provided that "an attorney should not be counsel in his own cause.' When this was read, Mr. Alex T. London, an able Birmingham lawyer, evidently having in mind the ancient maxim, said he saw no objection to the section. "But," he continued, "it is one of the American privileges to make a fool of yourself, and it is guaranteed by the Constitution, and I don't see anything wrong

in it, anything immoral in it." His motion to strike the section was carried without further discussion.

Thus the Code as written by Colonel Jones, without model or guide, though, of course, he had read Judge Sharswood's Essay on Professional Ethics, and without amendment except in two unimportant particulars, was adopted, and the Alabama State Bar Association has the honorable distinction of having adopted the first Code of Legal Ethics in America.

The Alabama Code was so clear and precise in its provisions and so admirably arranged that it became the foundation of all other Codes, and was adopted almost totidem verbis in the following states, in the order indicated: Georgia, Virginia, Michigan, Colorado, North Carolina, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri.

But still greater honors were to come to the Alabama Code of Ethics and its author. In 1907 the committee on code of professional ethics of the American Bar Association made a report, and, among other things, recommended that it "be continued and enlarged by the addition of Judge Thomas Goode Jones, author of the Alabama Code, which with but few alterations has been adopted by the bar associations of eleven other states." The committee also said: "While Sharswood's Essay on Professional Ethics was doubtless the inspiration for the Alabama Code, the profession is nevertheless indebted for that Code's existence to the initiative of Colonel Thomas G. Jones."

The American Bar Association's committee made its final report in 1908, and the Canons of Ethics submitted by them were adopted. Among those who composed the committee were Henry St. George Tucker, chairman, Lucien H. Alexander, secretary, David J. Brewer, J. M. Dickinson, Thomas H. Hubbard, Francis Lynde Stetson, Alton B. Parker, and Thomas G. Jones. Section 4 of their report reads as follows:

"The foundation of the draft for Canons of Ethics, herewith submitted, is the Code adopted by the Alabama State Bar Association in 1887, and which with but slight modifications has been adopted in eleven other states. The

committee in this connection (Judge Jones not concurring in the personal reference to himself) desire to record their appreciation of the help they have received in this work from their fellow member, Honorable Thomas Goode Jones, of Alabama, who was the draftsman of the Alabama Code of Ethics, and who attended the three days' session of your committee in Washington, March 30 to April 1, 1908, and moved the adoption of a number of your committee's modifications of the Alabama Code drafted by him more than a score of years ago."

Major Jones, the young lawyer forty years old, probably little thought as he penned the words, "The lawyer who shall

frame such a Code need ask no greater or more enduring fame," that he would be the author of the Code. Yet he was, and ere his long and useful life closed among the people he loved, in his record as a brave Confederate soldier, a wise governor of Alabama, and a just and. fearless judge, he earned "more enduring fame."

Walter B Jones

In order to appreciate the position of the prisoner and the environment under which the trial was held, it will be well to review for a moment a few leading facts as to Brown himself.

John Brown's ancestors were amongst the Puritans who landed at Plymouth; in his veins mingled the blood of three sturdy races, the Scotch, the Dutch, and the Welsh. For at least three generations the Brown family had been abolitionists, and John Brown, reared amongst such environments and possessed of an intense nature, became an intense abolitionist. He himself attributed much of his zeal to the ill treatment of a young negro slave which had come under his observation when he was very young, and which, he said, caused him to dedicate his life to the abolition of slavery. Right well did he keep his vow.

The first idea he seems to have had on the subject, as shown by a letter to his brother Frederick, written in 1834, was to educate the slaves; being of the opinion that, if he could accomplish this, the slave owners would be forced to begin the work of emancipation without delay. It was about this time that, gathering his older sons in his humble home, he and they engaged in earnest prayer for the cause of abolition; and whilst

From paper read before the Virginia State Bar Association.

on their knees, with hands and voices raised to Heaven, each solemnly pledged himself to devote his life to an effort to abolish slavery.

In the year 1840 he was engaged as a surveyor in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, and thus acquired some information as to the country, and perhaps heard the remark which had been attributed to George Washington, to the effect that the mountains around Harper's Ferry would serve as a stronghold for the Continental Army in the event it was repulsed by the British. Subsequently, Brown expressed the opinion that these same mountains were designed by the Almighty as a refuge for the fugitive slaves.

In 1846 Gerrit Smith, a large landowner of New York, donated 10,000 acres of wild land in Northern New York to such colored families as would settle upon, clear, and cultivate it. Brown approved that plan, and, in order to aid it, obtained himself a small part of this land, upon which he moved with his family, and which he ever afterwards regarded as his home.

Shortly after locating in New York, Brown seems to have become very hostile to all slave owners, and we find him in Springfield in 1847 denouncing slavery in look and language fierce and bitter, and declaring that slave holders had forfeited their right to live, and that the slaves had the right to resort to any means to rid themselves of their masters and gain their liberty.

In 1854 the Kansas excitement was at its height; five of Brown's sons moved to Kansas, attracted by the double inducement of finding desirable homes and of lending their aid to the effort to make Kansas a free state. In October, 1855, John Brown himself went to Kansas and played no small part in the stirring scenes which occurred in that state during the

accomplish his object materially changed. As early as 1847 he is said to have consulted with Fred Douglass and secured his approval of a scheme for transporting fugitive slaves into a free country, and protecting them until such transportation could be accomplished.

Afterwards, in discussing the Harper's Ferry incident, Brown declared that his only object was to establish on

only be accomplished by resort to arms, for in that year he established at Tabor, Iowa, a school for military drill and later a similar school at Springdale, Iowa. During the same year he obtained possession of 200 rifles which had been contributed by George L. Stevens, of Massachusetts, for the use of the Free State people of Kansas, and began negotiating with friends for money, ammunition,

etc., and in 1858 he made a trip North to raise money to be used in carrying out his scheme.

On the 3d of June, 1858, he left Boston with permission to retain the rifles, also with $500 in gold; later he made other collections of money and contracted with a Connecticut firm for the manufacture of 1,000 pikes.

Brown does not seem to have realized the difficulty of collecting an army to be composed of fugitive slaves, nor to have realized that the placing of a pike in the hands of such men would not convert them into soldiers.

Harper's Ferry seemed well suited for his purposes. Accordingly, in June,

1859, Brown and two of his sons appeared in that neighborhood for the avowed purpose of buying a home, or renting a farm for a term of years. They gave the name of Smith, John Brown himself being known as Isaac Smith. They succeeded in renting a place known as "the Kennedy Farm," where they resided unsuspected by the neighbors until the attack on Harper's Ferry, when Brown was recognized, after his capture, by Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, of the United States troops, who had known him in Kansas and who addressed him by his true name when he was captured. Brown's daughter, Ann, and his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Owen Brown, kept house for them. Here they gradually received the rifles from Ohio and the pikes from Connecticut, and gathered together their men.

In August he met Fred Douglass by appointment. They met in an abandoned and long-neglected rock quarry near Chambersburg. Douglass brought with him the negro Shields Green, while Brown was accompanied by his trusted friend Kagi. The meeting was kept strictly secret. They remained in consultation most of Saturday and Sunday. With rocks serving as chairs, they discussed the matter in all of its details, Brown announcing his purpose to take Harper's Ferry. Douglass urged that they should adhere to the former plan of running off slaves, pointing out that Brown's plan would necessarily be fatal to all those engaged; that it would likely be regarded as an attack upon the Fed

eral government, and would arouse the whole country. Brown thought that the whole country should be aroused. He believed that the attack upon Harper's Ferry would be as a great bugle blast at which all of the slaves and their friends would rally, and, armed with rifles and pikes, would be practically invincible. He urged Douglass to join him, but he was as immovable as Brown. When about to leave, Douglass asked Green what he had decided to do, to which Green replied, "I believe I will go wid de ole man ;" and he did to the bitter end.

By the middle of October, Brown had collected at the Kennedy Farm twentytwo men, six of them negroes; these spent the days in hiding, only going out. at night.

On Sunday evening, October 16, 1859, it was dark, cold, and raining. Brown decided that the time for action had come. After delivering a short address. to his men, he started to the ferry with eighteen men, two being left to take care of the supplies at the farm, whilst two were sent to cut the telegraph wires, and then to protect some arms and ammunition left at a schoolhouse, about a mile from the ferry. By half-past 10 they had reached the United States Arsenal, which they broke open with sledge hammers, and, overpowering the guard, appropriated such of its contents as they desired, and established headquarters. By midnight his men were in possession of the town and quietly patrolling the streets. Six of his men were sent out to arrest some of the more prominent of the slave owners in the adjoining country, who were to be, and afterwards were, held as hostages.

Shortly after midnight the east-bound express train was due; four men were sent to stop it, and in this effort the negro porter was shot and killed, being the first life to be sacrificed in this enterprise. The train was detained for several hours, but finally, in a moment of weakness, Brown released it, and it was allowed to go on, spreading the news of the raid and hastening the doom of the raiders.

When the citizens of the town awoke on Monday, October 17th, from twelve to fifteen prisoners had been brought