ABSTRACT
Daniel's sundry and tangled legal papers, replete with cross-outs, doodles, and omissions, rendered with a quill pen in an impossibly small script, reveal that many of his Boston clients were among the better classes. A ship's captain, a “man of feeling,” had been provoked into violence in a “mere ebullition of momentary passion” by an inflammatory provocation. The Wingate case paled in comparison to Daniel's largest, knottiest, and most contentious legal undertaking that involved disputes over Maine land claims, a subject with which he was all too familiar. As Cumberland County attorney he had represented the state against the claims of the Pejebscot Proprietors in 1809. The settlers who came into the area after the Revolution revived the claimant's interest in their property if only to force the settlers to purchase their tracts before another proprietor showed up and demanded the same thing.
