OBITUARY NOTICES. 
417 
end with diligent application, unswerving rectitude, and dis¬ 
tinguished success. He studied law with the Honorable 
Simson Mason, and was admitted to the bar in Troy, Ohio, 
in 1846, in his twenty-ninth year. 
Four years later, in 1850, we find him a member of the 
legislature of his native State, and thus serving his law¬ 
making apprenticeship in the session at which the present 
constitution of Ohio was framed and adopted. He contin¬ 
ued his service in the State legislature for several terms, and 
in the fall of 1860 was promoted by election to membership 
in the Thirty-seventh Congress from the Springfield district. 
Thus he began his career in the national legislature in the 
stormy days of 1861. Ending his term in March, 1863, he 
was not returned. Two years later, however, he was again 
chosen, and served as a member of the Thirty-ninth and 
Fortieth Congresses, from 1865 to 1869, thus participating in 
the ex citing, controversies over reconstruction and impeach¬ 
ment. It was in the debate upon reconstruction that his 
strength as lawyer, debater, and orator shone forth with their 
greatest clearness. Section 6 of the reconstruction act of 
March 2, 1867, as it now stands in the statute book, was 
drafted by him as an amendment late at night on February 
20, 1867, immediately offered, and adopted without change. 
The original manuscript is preserved as a family heirloom. 
It was in this same year that Alaska was purchased, a 
measure which Judge Shellabarger, as he was usually called, 
opposed because, said he, “ Those nations which have been 
most compact and solid have been most enduring, while 
those which have had the most extended territory have lasted 
the shorter time.” 
At the close of his third term in Congress, President Grant 
appointed him, in 1869, United States Minister to Portugal. 
He accepted the appointment and went to his post, but re¬ 
signed it in December of the same year and returned home. 
He was for the last time elected as a Member of Congress in 
1870, and served during the Forty-second Congress, 1871™ 
1873, but declined a renomination, 
