[3] In 1850, the General Assembly passed an act calling a convention to revise or amend the constitution of the state of Ohio, and Judge Swan was elected as a delegate from Franklin County.

There are, no doubt, many slaveholders who would follow the impulses of human sympathy; and if I did, and were prosecuted, condemned and imprisoned, and brought by my council before this tribunal on a habeas corpus, and were there permitted to pronounce judgment in my own case, I trust I should have the moral courage to say, before God and country, as I am now compelled to say, under the solemn duties of a judge, bound by my official oath to sustain the supremacy of the Constitution and the law, "the prisoner must be remanded".This famous decision ended Swann's legal career, as he expected it would.

In 1869 he was appointed general solicitor of the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway Company, where he served for ten years, until failing health compelled resignation.

[2] His funeral was at Trinity Church, and burial was at Green Lawn Cemetery, Columbus, Ohio, next to his wife, Hanna Ann Andrews, originally from Rochester, New York, whom he had married in January 1833.

After Swan's death, the Franklin County Bar Association prepared a memorial, written by Richard A. Harrison, Allen G. Thurman, Chauncey N. Olds, and others.

Wise, patient, firm, impartial, courteous, he never lost sight of the dignity of his high office, to which he brought unusual native vigor of mind, large stores of learning, untiring industry, and the most conscientious regard for the rights of litigants, and abhorrence of all injustice and wrong.