Representative Orlando Bell Ficklin

Orlando Bell Ficklin (December 16, 1808 – May 5, 1886) was a U.S. Representative from Illinois and a prominent Democratic lawyer and legislator in that state during the mid-nineteenth century. Born in Scott County, Kentucky, he attended the common schools before pursuing legal studies. He graduated from Transylvania Law School in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1830. That same year he was admitted to the bar and moved west to Illinois, where he commenced the practice of law in Mount Carmel.

Ficklin’s early career combined legal work with military and local public service. In 1832 he served in the Black Hawk War as a quartermaster, and in 1833 he held the rank of colonel in the militia of Wabash County, Illinois. His legal abilities brought him to public attention, and in 1835 he was appointed state’s attorney for the Wabash circuit. That year he also entered state politics as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, to which he was again elected in 1838 and 1842. In 1837 he relocated his law practice and residence to Charleston, in Coles County, Illinois, which remained his home for the rest of his life.

As a member of the Democratic Party representing Illinois, Ficklin contributed to the legislative process during four terms in the United States House of Representatives. He was first elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth, Twenty-ninth, and Thirtieth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1843, to March 3, 1849. During this period he participated in the national debates of a significant era in American history, representing the interests of his Illinois constituents. In the Twenty-ninth Congress he served as chairman of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, giving him a role in overseeing federal construction and property. Known for his advocacy of western development, he argued passionately that the federal government should promote the settlement and cultivation of the prairies, warning that without measures such as land grants, the fertile lands would remain the domain of wild deer and wolves rather than farmers and their plows.

Ficklin’s legal career continued alongside his congressional service and brought him into frequent professional contact with Abraham Lincoln. Although they worked together as co-counsel on many cases, they were on opposing sides in one of their most notable legal contests, the Matson slave case of 1847 in Coles County. In that case Ficklin and his friend Charles H. Constable represented enslaved people who had run away while in Illinois and claimed their freedom under the Northwest Ordinance, which forbade slavery in the territory that included Illinois. Usher F. Linder and Abraham Lincoln represented Robert Matson, a Kentucky enslaver who had brought the enslaved people from his Kentucky plantation to work land he owned in Illinois. Lincoln argued that Matson retained his rights under the doctrine of “right of transit,” which allowed enslavers to bring enslaved people temporarily into free territory without losing ownership, emphasizing that Matson did not intend to settle them permanently in Illinois. The judge in Coles County ruled in favor of Ficklin’s clients, and the enslaved people were set free. The decision reflected and reinforced the principle, adopted in Illinois and other free states, that “once free, always free,” distinguishing between enslaved people merely in transit and those effectively domiciled in a free state.

After leaving Congress in 1849, Ficklin was returned to national office by Illinois voters in 1850. He served a fourth term in the House in the Thirty-second Congress from March 4, 1851, to March 3, 1853. During this term he chaired the Committee on the District of Columbia, giving him influence over legislation affecting the federal capital. At the close of this service he resumed the practice of law in Charleston, maintaining his position as a leading attorney in eastern Illinois. He remained active in Democratic Party politics, serving as a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions of 1856, 1860, and 1864, participating in the party’s deliberations during the tumultuous years surrounding the Civil War.

During the Civil War era, Ficklin’s standing in his community and his legal skills drew him into sensitive political matters. In the summer of 1864 he led a delegation to Washington, D.C., to seek the release of fifteen Coles County men who had been arrested by military authorities for rioting. Arguing for the primacy of civilian courts, he requested that the prisoners be turned over to civil authorities for indictment and trial. The President granted his request about a week before the November 1864 election, a notable assertion of civil judicial process in wartime. Although a Democrat in an area known for its strong Copperhead, or antiwar Democratic, leanings, Ficklin publicly eulogized Abraham Lincoln after the President’s assassination, praising him as a statesman and lamenting his death.

Ficklin continued to play a role in Illinois public life after the Civil War. He served as a delegate to the Illinois state constitutional convention of 1869–1870, contributing to the framing of the state’s fundamental law in the Reconstruction era. Later, he again held legislative office as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives in 1878, returning to the body in which he had begun his political career more than four decades earlier. Throughout these years he remained based in Charleston, where he practiced law and remained a figure of local and state influence.

Orlando Bell Ficklin died in Charleston, Illinois, on May 5, 1886. He was interred in Mound Cemetery in that city. His long career as lawyer, legislator, and four-term Democratic member of Congress, together with his participation in significant legal controversies and his advocacy for western development, left a distinct imprint on the political and legal history of Illinois in the nineteenth century.