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HAUSER, KASPAR. 



Academy, and went thence to Union College, 

 where he was graduated at the head of his 

 class in 1824. He studied law in Albany in 

 the office of Ambrose Spencer, and was ad- 

 mitted to the Albany bar in 1828. During 

 the succeeding seventeen years he devoted 

 himself to his profession, and rose to the high- 

 est position in the estimation and confidence 

 of the public. In 1844 he was elected mem- 

 ber of Assembly bj the Whigs of the Albany 

 district, and again elected in 1845. In 1846 

 he was chosen State Senator. In 1848 he be- 

 came Judge of the Supreme Court, and held 

 that position for twelve years. In February, 

 1861, Judge Harris was elected United States 

 Senator. On that occasion the Republicans 

 had control of the Legislature, and the leading 

 candidates were Horace Greeley and William 

 M. Evarts. Eight ballots had been taken in 

 the caucus without any decisive result. Find- 

 ing that Mr. Greeley was gaining, the friends 

 of Mr. Evarts relinquished their candidate, 

 and made Mr. Harris the party nominee, the 

 vote standing as follows : Harris, 60 ; Greeley, 

 49; Evarts, 2; scattering, 6. In the Senate 

 Mr. Harris served on the Committee on For- 

 eign Relations and Judiciary, and the Select 

 Joint Committee on the Southern States. At 

 a time when partisan bitterness prevailed in 

 Congress he showed his candor and indepen- 

 dence, particularly in his defense of Hon. 

 Jesse D. Bright, the Senator from Indiana. 

 Although he supported the Administration, in 

 the main, he did not fear to express his oppo- 

 sition to all measures, however popular at the 

 time, that did not appear to him either wise 

 or just. Senator Harris's term expired in 

 186V, when he was elected a delegate at large 

 to the Constitutional Convention of 1867. He 

 was, for more than twenty years, Professor of 

 Equity, Jurisprudence, and Practice, in the Al- 

 bany Law School. During his senatorial term 

 he delivered a course of lectures at the Law 

 School of Columbian University, Washington, 

 D. 0. He was for many years President of 

 the Board of Trustees of Union College, and 

 was one of the founders of Rochester Univer- 

 sity, of which he was the Chancellor. 



HAUSER, KASPAR, the mysterious foundling 

 who was found in the streets of Nuremberg, 

 May 26, 1828, and died by an unknown hand 

 at Anspach, December 17, 1833, has not yet 

 ceased to be the subject of animated literary 

 controversies. The 'continued interest taken 

 in the history of this foundling arises chiefly 

 from the fact that a number of writers still re- 

 gard him as the legitimate heir of the grand- 

 duchy of Baden, whom the Countess of Hoch- 

 berg, the grandmother of the present grand- 

 duke, caused to be abducted in order to secure 

 the succession in Baden to her own son. This 

 theory, first circulated in 1834, by a political 

 refugee from Baden, by the name of Gamier, 

 owes all the importance that it has obtained to 

 the authority of the great jurist Feuerbach, 

 who acknowledged that he regarded it as prob- 



able. The opinion of Feuerbach was for the 

 first time publicly stated in a work on his life, 

 published in 1852 by his son, the philosopher 

 Ludwig Feuerbach (" Feuerbach's Leben und 

 Wirken," Leipsic, 1852). Among the writers 

 who have defended, circulated, and further de- 

 veloped the view of Feuerbach, no one has 

 displayed so great a zeal as G. F. Kolb, the 

 author of the well-known statistical works, and 

 for many years a Democratic deputy of the 

 Bavarian Diet. His first work on the subject 

 was published in 1859, under the pseudonym 

 of Broch ("Kaspar Hauser, kurze Schilderung 

 seines Erscheinens und seines Todes," Ziirich, 

 1859). The views of this work were repro- 

 duced by him in 1868 in a series of articles, 

 published in the Frankfurter Zeitung. In 

 1872 the interest in Hauser was very exten- 

 sively revived by the publication of official 

 documents (" Authentische Mittheilungen iiber 

 Kaspar Hauser," Anspach, 1872), by means 

 of which Julius Meyer, a Bavarian jurist and 

 son of a former teacher of Hauser, endeavored 

 to prove that Hauser was an impostor. Kolfc 

 undertook to refute this work (in another 

 series of articles in the Frankfurter Zeitung), 

 and he was this time vigorously supported by 

 two men who had intimate relations with Hau- 

 ser Herr von Zucker, a councilor of the 

 Supreme Court of Appeal, and Prof. Daumer, 

 the foster - father and educator of Hauser. 

 Prof. Daumer had in a former work, published 

 in 1859 ("Enthilllungen tiber Kaspar Hauser"), 

 expressly disclaimed any belief in the guilt of 

 the grand-ducal house of Baden ; but in his new 

 work, chiefly directed against the views of 

 Meyer ("Kaspar Hauser, sein Wesen, seine Un- 

 schuld, seine Erduldungen und sein Ursprung," 

 Ratisbon, 1873), he eagerly collated everything 

 which seemed to favor the claims of Hauser to 

 the throne of Baden. The combined attacks 

 upon the house of Baden did not remain with- 

 out effect, and reviewers of the new literature, 

 in some of the prominent periodicals of Ger- 

 many, even went so far as to declare this con- 

 troversy as virtually settled. Public opinion 

 appeared to be so strongly influenced by the 

 new turn the controversy was taking, that the 

 grand-ducal house of Baden for the first time 

 deemed it opportune to publish from the fam- 

 ily archives the official documents relating to 

 the death of the heir-apparent who had been 

 identified with Kaspar Hauser. These docu- 

 ments, dated October 16, 18, and 31, 1812, 

 contain an official account of the baptism ad- 

 ministered to the prince two hours before his 

 death, of the dissection of the corpse two days 

 after the death of the prince, and the solemn 

 funeral in the family vault at Pforzheim. The 

 documents proved that the prince was in the 

 last hours of his life attended by his father, 

 the midwife, Mrs. Horst, the two court physi- 

 cians Schrickel and Kramer, and two high offi- 

 cers of the court ; that the corpse had been in- 

 spected and dissected by nine physicians in the 

 presence of the state Minister Berckheim, and 



