2
The Green Bag
partner and conducted successfully the Oneida Indians litigation. In 1854 he removed to Wisconsin and located in Janesville, then a promising city in the southern part of the state. He at once took rank with the leading members of the local bar, including in the list such names as that of Matthew H. Carpenter, afterwards a United States Senator from Wisconsin, Judge John R. Bennett, of the state circuit court, Charles G. Wil liams, subsequently a member of Con gress from Wisconsin, Judge David Noggle, of the state circuit court, and others. He was elected District Attorney of Rock Countyin 1858 and was re-elected in 1860. He was elected a Representative to Congress in 1862 and again in 1864. He continued to reside in Janesville until he removed to Madison, the capital of the state, in 1874. While in Madison, he formed a law partnership with Breese J. Stevens and W. A. P. Morris for practice under the firm name of Sloan, Stevens & Morris. His brother, A. Scott Sloan, was elected Attorney-Gen eral of the state at the annual elections in 1873 and 1875. During a portion of the term of his brother as AttorneyGeneral, Mr. Sloan was his Assistant Attorney-General. For a number of years during his residence in Madison he was a lecturer in the law department of the University of Wisconsin, and for ten years prior to 1890 he was the Dean of the Law Faculty of the University. He continued the practice of his profession at Madison until 1898. Failing health then compelled him to cease from active labor. He retired to his farm near the city of Janesville, the scene of his early labors and early triumphs, where he died on the 24th day of December, 1898, at the age of seventy-six years. Thus is summarized, in a few sentences, the long and busy career of this able member of the Wisconsin bar. But no
attempt has been made to direct at tention to his valuable professional ser vices to his adopted state and to the nation. And it is mainly with Mr. Sloan's career as a lawyer that we are most concerned. For, as a lawyer, his public services were of the herculean quality. Always great in a court of justice, he seemed greatest when engaged in legal argument before a bench of welltrained judges. It has been already intimated that Mr. Sloan excelled before the court rather than before the jury, in forensic rather than in oratorical ability. This view seems to be quite generally enter tained by his brethren of the bench and bar. One of these has said: "He did not carefully prepare or deliver ad dresses before the public on any topic. . . . He made no effort for oratori cal display. His strength was in his great power of analysis and his logical and accurate expression of his conclu sions. He was forceful and extremely persuasive in argument. He seized upon the strong point in his case and presented it with great cogency, relying almost wholly on his own reasoning and giving but little attention to the authorities. He did not weaken his arguments on the strong and decisive questions in his case by endeavoring to establish and sustain the doubtful and immaterial ones, but usually passed them with little or no notice." Another lawyer, who was intimately associated with him for a number of years, says : "He was one of the foremost lawyers of the state and of great natural ability. He was not a laboiious man, . . . yet when interested in a legal question his interest would not fail by reason of his inclination to idleness. He worked then with diligence and force and great rapidity. His memory of what he had read, and where to look for
