Philip T. Van Zile

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.

Philip T. Van Zile (July 20, 1843 - 1919) was a politician and judge from the U.S. state of Michigan.

Van Zile was born in Osceola, Pennsylvania on July 20, 1843. He prepared for college at Union Academy near Knoxville, Pennsylvania, and entered the classical course of the Alfred University and graduated in 1863. He enlisted in the army, and served in Battery E. First Ohio Light Artillery, until the end of the American Civil War. He received his discharge in August, 1865.

With the opening of the fall term of the University of Michigan, Van Zile entered the law department and graduated in the spring of 1867. He then went to Charlotte, Michigan and was admitted to the bar in Judge Woodruff’s court and began the practice of law. In the fall of 1868 he was elected prosecuting attorney and re-elected in 1870. In 1872 he was elected judge of probate, and in 1875 was chosen circuit judge of the 5th district.

In 1878 on the joint recommendation of U.S. Senators Thomas W. Ferry and Isaac P. Christiancy and Representative Jonas H. McGowan, he accepted at the hands of President Rutherford B. Hayes the office of U.S. District Attorney for the Territory of Utah. On the first of April, 1878, he resigned the circuit judgeship and went to Salt Lake City, where he served for nearly six years. The Mormon Oligarchy had set up a rival government to that of the United States. These men had treason in their hearts and their hands were red with the blood of murdered men and women in their determination to carry out their religious and fanatical views. It was a time when a man risked his very life if he performed his duty.

Aside from his duties as District Attorney Van Zile succeeded in getting Congress to enact some laws that broke the back of the oligarchy, the first being a law disfranchising every polygamist in the Territory of Utah. This law secured for the territory a legislature none of whom were polygamists whereas hitherto ninety-five percent of that body had been polygamists. It also retired from the halls of congress George Q. Cannon who had been a delegate in congress for ten years, and secured in his place a man who was not a polygamist. It was one of the laws which has made it possible for the dawn of a new civilization to shine in upon that benighted and priest ridden country. He also succeeded in securing the passage of a law regulating marriages thus taking it from those secret and unenterable halls of the Endowment House, and making it a public ceremony, where records can be made of it. Another bill permitted the first and legal wife to testify against her husband in polygamy cases. Judge Van Zile also secured the passage of another law, punishing lewd and lascivious co-habitation which struck at the very vitals of the old outlawed polygamist marriage, thus making it possible to break up that relation among the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He also prosecuted and convicted John Miles, in the celebrated case of the United States vs. Miles, which finally went to the U.S. Supreme Court where his contention was sustained, namely, that a Mormon who believed in the prophecies of Joseph Smith upon this question was not qualified to sit as a juror.

In 1884' Van Zile returned from Utah to Michigan. In the Presidential campaign of James G. Blaine he was chosen by the convention, in his absence, to be chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. He served as chairman for two years.

Van Zile moved to Detroit in 1899 and the following year became a lecturer in the Detroit College of Law, and shortly after was elected dean of the college and has held that position ever since. He was also chosen Grand Commander of Knights Templar of Michigan in 1900. In 1894 Alfred University conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and in 1904 that of Doctor of Laws. Aside from some small books, he has written for the legal profession, as well as for the college, “Van Zile’s Bailments and Carriers,” and “Van Zile’s Equity Pleading and Practice.”

Philip T. Van Zile died in 1919.