User:Parkwells/Francis Butter Murdoch

Francis Butter Murdoch (b. 18xx-d. 18xx) was an attorney notable for working on freedom suits in Saint Louis, Missouri, as well as for having prosecuted the murderers of the abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy as sheriff of Alton, Illinois. He was involved in nearly one-third of the freedom suits from 1840-1846, on behalf of slaves. He prepared the case of Dred Scott and his wife Harriet, but moved to California in 1846 before it was heard by the Missouri court.

Early life and education
Murdoch was born in. He became an attorney.

Career
In 182x, he was serving as sheriff of Alton, Illinois when Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in a confrontation over his printing plant. Although he prosecuted some men, no one was convicted. Murdoch moved to St. Louis, where he became involved in representing slaves who had filed freedom suits. Under the 1824 Missouri law, the court would appoint counsel for a slave it believed had a valid case to be tried. Murdoch represented slave plaintiffs in nearly one-third of the freedom suits from 1840-1846, including that of Polly Wash on behalf of her daughter Lucy Ann Berry. Wash and Murdoch also attracted the aid of Edward Bates, a prominent judge who later served as US Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln. Bates succeeded in gaining freedom for the 14-year-old Lucy Ann Berry, based on her mother's having been held illegally as a slave in the free state of Illinois when she was young. This was an example of application of the principles of "once free, always free", which the Missouri Supreme Court had upheld since 1826 in Rachel v. Whiteside, and partus sequitur ventrum, which held that a child took the status of its mother. The jury in 1844 determined that because Polly Berry had been considered legally free due to her time in Illinois, as the jury determined in her case of 1843, so was her daughter, born later.

Among the freedom suits which Murdoch prepared was that for Dred Scott and his wife Harriet in 1846. The attorney moved to California before the case was heard in June 1846 by the Missouri court.http://www.umsl.edu/~virtualstl/phase2/1850/events/ds03.html "Dred Scott Freedom Suit"], St. Louis Virtual City Project: 1850 Decade, University of Missouri - St. Louis, accessed 28 May 2011