James Ralston was happy in his marriage to Jane Alexander, and his professional career flourished along with his ambition.
In 1836, Ralston, a Jackson Democrat, was elected by a handsome margin from Adams County to the lower house of the 10th session of the Illinois Legislature. It was in the new Illinois statehouse building in Vandalia that he first made the acquaintance of two-term Whig representative from Sangamon County Abraham Lincoln and first-term Democrat representative from Morgan County Stephen Douglas.
A few months later, these three men met in a wood-framed house on Thompson Street in Vandalia where Lincoln rented a room during the legislative session. Lincoln and Douglas did not agree on some of the issues facing the Illinois Legislature, though they did seal a bipartisan agreement. Both men would support Ralston for the 5th Circuit Court judgeship, a position recently vacated by the new Illinois senator and Ralston's good friend, Judge Richard Young. At age 30, Ralston became the youngest circuit judge in the short history of the state.
Lincoln and Ralston met again at the Carthage courthouse in April 1839. Lincoln defended accused murderer Fielding Fraim, who in a drunken rage had pulled a butcher knife and ran it to the hilt into the chest of a steamboat shipmate. The murder so shocked and angered the local townspeople in Frederick that Lincoln asked for and received a change of venue to Carthage.
Circuit Judge Ralston would hear the case. Lincoln had little with which to argue his case other than his subtle humor and a demeanor that exuded straightforward honesty. Apparently, the jury was unmoved by Lincoln, and at day's end, they returned a guilty verdict. Lincoln could not persuade Ralston to set the verdict aside, and Fraim was sentenced to death by hanging. This case was the only one of the 27 murder cases Lincoln tried that he lost.
"The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be… driven from the state." These were the words in Missouri Gov. Lilburn W. Boggs' Executive Order 44 issued from the capital in Jefferson City on Oct. 27, 1838. Joseph Smith and others were still jailed in Liberty, Mo., in the early winter of 1838-39 when news reached the Mormons that a temporary safe haven had been found. The citizens of Quincy, just across the Mississippi River about 180 miles to the east, had offered the Latter-day Saints whatever help they could provide.
Ralston took his personal interest in the Mormons safety a step further. He made a point to be one of the first attorneys to meet with Joseph Smith Jr. in Quincy in April 1839 after Smith and his close associates were aided in an escape from their Missouri captors. This early acquaintance and his sound counsel gained Ralston an ongoing association as a key attorney for Joseph Smith and generally for the Latter-day Saints.
In August 1840, James campaigned for and was re-elected to the Illinois Legislature, this time in the upper chamber as a senator. A great amount of his support came from the Mormon faithful.
A month after his election to the legislature, Ralston was again on the business of the Mormons. He made his way to the Quincy riverfront for a government auction. Of particular interest to the Mormons were a small side-wheeled steamboat, the Des Moines, and two shallow draft keelboats used in engineering work on the Mississippi.
The Mormons intended to use the steamboat to transport newly arriving European church members up the Mississippi from New Orleans to their new Zion, Nauvoo. The keelboats would ferry church members across the river.
Ralston introduced himself and shook hands with the young Army captain who commanded the engineering troops and was the agent in charge of the auction, Capt. Robert E. Lee. Ralston was the successful bidder. He was impressed with the intelligent and dashing captain, believing he would likely find continued success in the Army.
As time passed, many Illinois residents believed the Mormons had overstayed their welcome. Therefore, the more Ralston accomplished for his Mormon clients, the less he was appreciated by the state's non-Mormons. After the murder of brothers Joseph and Hyrum Smith in the Carthage jail on June 27, 1844, a trial convened nearly a year later to try those involved in the crime. Attorney Ralston assisted in the prosecution of those charged. The verdict, as expected, was not guilty.
Early in the next year the new Mormon leader Brigham Young led the first of what would be several waves of Latter-day Saints from Nauvoo to what became a few years later the Utah Territory. Ralston and his wife agreed that they, too, had overstayed their welcome and it was time to look for new opportunities beyond Quincy. They would both miss their home and the close friends made during their 15-year marriage.
At the outbreak of the Mexican-American War in 1847, Ralston was appointed a quartermaster captain in the army and sent to San Antonio. A year later, Jane and their 2-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, joined him. Five months later, Jane died and was laid to rest in San Antonio. Capt. Ralston successfully campaigned to restore the Alamo mission to its condition before the battle with Santa Anna's army 11 years earlier. Out of the Army, the judge returned to Quincy in 1849 to see whether he could once again gain acceptance in Quincy society; without Jane by his side, he was unsuccessful.
A year later, he made the overland journey to California, where he and his daughter made their new home in Sacramento. In the West, Ralston significantly added to the list of his accomplishments. He would not return to Quincy before wandering to his premature death in the Nevada desert in 1864.
Bob Keith is a retired university information systems director. With an intense interest in genealogy, he has written four books based on his paternal and maternal ancestry. Judge J.H. Ralston and Dr. J.N. Ralston are his great-great maternal uncles.
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