George Ticknor Curtis

George Ticknor Curtis (November 28, 1812 - 1894) was a U.S. author, writer, historian and lawyer.

Curtis was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard and then Harvard Law School. [cite book | last = Warren | first = Charles | title = History of the Harvard Law School and of Early Legal Conditions in America | publisher = The Lawbook Exchange | date = 1999 | pages = 440-441 | url = http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7GbD_J57LbQC&pg=PA440&dq=George+Ticknor+Curtis+-inauthor:%22George+Ticknor+Curtis%22&as_brr=3&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U1FgN5_bovHZZI3dok5l0YLxS64cA#PPA440,M1 | isbn = 1584770066] After admittance to the Massachusetts bar in 1836, Curtis was very successful as a patent attorney, working for (among others) Samuel F. B. Morse, Charles Goodyear and Cyrus McCormick.

From 1840 to 1843, Curtis was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a Whig. A political ally of Daniel Webster, he was one of the "Cotton Whigs" who joined the Democratic Party when the Whig party dissolved in 1856.

Later, as a U.S. commissioner at Boston, Curtis was compelled to send a former slave, Thomas Sims, back to slavery in compliance with the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. He served as co-counsel for Dred Scott when his case reached the United States Supreme Court in 1857. His brother, Benjamin Robbins Curtis, was notable as one of the two dissenters in "Dred Scott v. Sanford".

Curtis wrote biographies of Webster (1870) and James Buchanan (1883) as well as a number of legal treatises. Among these, his "Constitutional History of the United States [...] to the Close of the Civil War (2 vols, 1889 and 1896) has been called the classic Federalist interpretation of the Constitution.

While not a Mormon himself, Curtis was also a defender of the Mormon church, writing pro-Mormon articles for New York newspapers and magazines, most notably the "New York Evening Post" (July 14, 1887) and "The Forum" (November 1887).

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