He also successfully defended Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt Earp along with Doc Holliday when they were accused of murdering Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury during the Gunfight at the O.K.

He witnessed the laying of the first rail at the western terminus of the Overland Route in Sacramento and the last one at Promontory Point in Utah.

In 1859, he found a job as local editor for the Milwaukee Free Democrat where he worked for one year before moving to San Francisco, California, in the summer of 1860.

"[11] Fitch, his wife, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law occupied a suite of rooms across the hall from Clemens and Dan DeQuille in the Dagget Building in Virginia City.

[13] Clemens commented that, "When I first began to lecture, and in my earlier writings, my sole idea was to make comic capital out of everything I saw and heard."

You closed a most eloquent description, by which you had keyed your audience up to a pitch of the intensest interest, with a piece of atrocious anti-climax which nullified all the really fine effect you had produced.

[2][7] In December 1869, he spoke against the pending anti-polygamy Cullom Bill, which would strip the Utah territory's residents of local authority.

[18] On May 1, 1871, he went to Salt Lake City in connection with mining litigation, and while there was retained by Brigham Young as an attorney and general counsel to the Church.

He was charged with lewd and lascivious cohabitation with his plural wives but allowed to remain in his home guarded by a marshal.

[20] On October 12, Judge McKean issued his decision on Fitch's motion to quash the indictment in which he positioned the case as a trial of the entire church.

The attorneys asked for time to prepare for the case and based on McKean's ruling, Fitch inferred that the trial would proceed in March.

McKean believed that he had a divinely appointed mission in Utah, "to the carrying out of which he was evidently prepared to subordinate all other considerations."

He said this included "whenever and wherever I may find the local or federal laws obstructing or interfering therewith, by God's blessing I shall trample them under my feet.

"[16]: 264  Fitch described him as "A sort of missionary exercising judicial functions," "a very determined man," "of considerable personal courage," "but not fit to be a judge.

"[16]: 264 During February and March Fitch spoke eloquently about the political necessity of forgoing polygamy from the Utah state constitution.

If Abraham had lived on the line of the overland road in the afternoon of the nineteenth century; if Isaac had been surrounded by 40,000,000 monogamous Yankees; if Jacob had associated with miners and been jostled by speculators, there would, I apprehend, have been a different order of social life in Palestine.

[22] Lee was the only person brought to trial for the attack, in which "a band of Mormons dressed as Paiute Indians ambushed a wagon train heading to California and killed more than a hundred innocents.

[2]: 51 [25] In 1879 he was elected a member of the 10th Arizona Territorial Legislature representing Yavapai County and was chosen as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

[28] Fitch may have based his defense on what he saw as Spicer's repugnance of the perjured testimony and unjust outcome in Lee's case.

Fitch had Wyatt Earp prepare a written statement, as permitted by Section 133 of Arizona law, which would not allow the prosecution to cross-examine him.

Prosecution witnesses repeatedly stumbled when Fitch asked them questions, in many instances replying weakly, "I don't remember.

Will McLaury left his Texas law practice and his children with a caretaker to help prosecute the Earps and Doc Holliday.

In response to his questioning, Clanton denied seeking confirmation from Wyatt Earp about the reward offered by Wells, Fargo & Co, "dead or alive", for the stage robbers.

In his ruling, he noted that Ike Clanton had the night before, while unarmed, publicly declared that the Earp brothers and Holliday had insulted him, and that when he was armed he intended to shoot them or fight them on sight.

He wrote, "the great fact, most prominent in the matter, to wit, that Isaac Clanton was not injured at all, and could have been killed first and easiest.

"[37] He described Frank McLaury's insistence that he would not give up his weapons unless the marshal and his deputies also gave up their arms as a "proposition both monstrous and startling!"

"He needed the assistance and support of staunch and true friends, upon whose courage, coolness and fidelity he could depend..."[37] Spicer noted that if Wyatt and Holliday had not backed up Marshal Earp, then he would have faced even more overwhelming odds than he had, and could not possibly have survived.

In 1891, he defended Ed Tewksbury who was accused of murdering Tom Graham in one of the final acts of violence growing out of the Pleasant Valley War in central Arizona.

He briefly moved to Utah in 1894 when the territory was granted statehood and announced his candidacy for United States senator but failed to receive the nomination.

[40] Later in his life he credited his oratorical skills to the influence of Col. E. D. Baker and Thomas Starr King and to the time he spent with Mark Twain and Joaquin Miller.