[1] He left the college after defending Stephen A. Douglas and the Kansas-Nebraska Act and finished a master's degree from Indiana University at Bloomington in 1858.

He was appointed by Democratic President Grover Cleveland as a judge for the Northern District of the United States Court for the Indian Territory.

He also worked for the National Livestock Association as their capital affairs lobbyist, where he learned of the Kiowa Indian reserve's grasslands.

[3] In 1901, Springer was hired by numerous Indians from the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Reservation to represent them in what became the federal court case of Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553 (1903).

Reservation ceded most of their lands to the United States federal government who would then open it up for allotment to white settlers.

[citation needed] Lone Wolf asserted and Springer argued on his behalf in federal court that: On July 22, 1901, Springer, who was also aided by fellow sympathetic attorneys Hays McMeehan, William C. Reeves, and Charles Porter Johnson, filed for a temporary restraining order and a permanent injunction halting the cession of territories and the opening of surplus lands after the members of the K.C.A.

[citation needed] Springer and his lawyer colleagues appealed to The Supreme Court for the District of Columbia in Washington where on June 21, 1901, Justice Andrew Coyle Bradley denied again the K.C.A.

The Court rejected the Indians' and Springer - Carson's argument that Congress' action was an unfair taking under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

[7] Springer died at age 67 from pneumonia at his home in Washington, D.C., on December 4, 1903, with notices and obituaries in numerous national newspapers.