Curtis, George Ticknor, 1812–94, American lawyer and writer, b. Watertown, Mass. A highly successful patent attorney, Curtis served in the Massachusetts legislature (1840–43) and as U.S. commissioner at Boston under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. He was one of the defense counsel in the Dred Scott Case. Closely associated with Daniel Webster, he was one of the “Cotton Whigs” who became Democrats. He wrote biographies of Daniel Webster (1870) and James Buchanan (1883), and many legal treatises. His Constitutional History of the United States … to the Close of the Civil War (Vol. I, 1889; Vol. II, ed. by J. C. Clayton, 1896), his most notable work, is the classic Federalist interpretation of the Constitution.
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