Untitled From the Biographical Record of the Counties of Rock, Green, Grant, Iowa and Lafayette, Wisconsin, publ. 1901- page 631

JUDGE JOSEPH T. MILLS was one of the men prominent in the early history of Southwestern Wisconsin. He fought the great battle of the anti-slavery party in the Federal court, and by both word and pen helped to form that public opinion which made the creation of the Republican party a necessity. He was an abolitionist from conviction, when it was considered disgraceful to be one. His childhood was spent in Kentucky, where he had seen the evil of slavery with his own eyes. He was always ready to battle for the right, at any cost to himself, as this incident shows: At one time an Abolitionist lecturer came to Lancaster. He was mobbed, and took refuge with Mr. MILLS. The mob followed him to the home, and , planting an old cannon near the house, threatened to blow the house and its occupants into eternity if the lecturer were not delivered into their hands. Mr. MILLS was in no wise dismayed. Taking his rifle, he warned them that the first man who moved near that cannon or entered that yard would be shot. His wife stood by him, also armed, and, like many frontier women, she was known to be a sure shot. Gradually one after another of the scowling, howling mob withdrew, until the intrepid couple were left in quiet possession of their home and of the cannon. Meanwhile the lecturer had escaped by a back window, into the woods which surrounded the house. He was not of the heroic mold.

One other time Mr. MILLS faced a mob, and nearly unaided cowed it. It was when a young recruit deserted from the garrison at Prairie du Chien. He was followed by a detail from the garrison, and was overtaken near Lancaster. As he did not halt at the command he was shot and killed by the officer commanding the party. This officer was quickly arrested by the civil authorities. The youth of his victim, the feeling that the act, in a time of peace, was unwarrantedly brutal, possessed the people, and lynch law was threatened. The mob was led by "some of our best citizens," and they dangled the rope before the eyes of the guilty man. Then Mr. MILLS put himself between them and the murderer. He appealed to their sense of honor, their civic pride. He showed them the evil consequences which always follow a community when the law is outraged, and gradually their better sense prevailed. The writer has heard men characterize the protest of Judge MILLS as the most eloquent defense of law and the most withering denunciation of lynch law which were ever made in that section of the country. In either of the above instances one can discern the splendid courage of the man, for it has been often said that a man who would face a pack of wolves may well run from a mob of angry men.

Judge MILLS was apparently a timid man, but sometimes he dared fate to the extreme. He never sought a fight. In ordinary matters he was pacific to the extreme, but once roused he would not be downed. He was repeatedly told that he would never present his bill of exceptions in the Sherman Booth case to Judge MILLER. He never said he would, but the bill was prepared, and when the time came he walked into the court and presented it. MILLER refused to sign. Mr. MILLS said: "I present you this bill of exceptions for your signature." MILLER gain refused. Mr. MILLS said, "That bill will be signed before you leave the bench," and MILLER signed it then and there.

There was a moral force in Mr. MILLS which no coward or evil doer could withstand. He was incorruptible. He was a member of the Legislature at the time of the "forty thieves." In the investigation which followed the exposure of that session the agent was asked if he approached J. T. MILLS. "No," he replied, "there isn't money enough in the whole United States to buy him." To his profession he has bequeathed the code. Of the Wisconsin code, copied closely from the New York code, he was the father and defender. As a writer recently said of him, "he was ever the advocate of reforms that reformed."

Judge MILLS was born in Kentucky in 1811. He died in Denver, Colo., in 1897. During his whole life he was a great student, not only of the law, but the mathematics, sciences and literature. He was a man of extreme modesty, and his sense of innate worth would not allow him to push himself. If his merit was not recognized he would not vaunt it, and many times he was supplanted by those who were much his inferiors. His neighbors and friends thought nothing too good for him. He was judge of the 5th circuit from 1864 to 1872, an office he filled with honor to himself and the circuit, but probably no title ever gave him greater pleasure than the one by which he was universally known in Grant county, "Honest Joe MILLS."



This biography generously submitted by Carol Holmbeck