Samuel Whiteside's Spy Battalion. (His brother may have begun spying on Chief Black Hawk before the war formally began, as disaffected young warriors had begun raiding white settlements.) Ford served as the local prosecutor for the northwestern section of the state until 1835, and also achieved recognition as one of three defense counsel for Illinois Supreme Court Justice Theophilus W. Smith, who had married Ford and his wife in 1828 and survived an impeachment trial in 1833. Not long after Forquer became the state senator for Sangamon County, Illinois, the legislature elected Ford a state court judge for northern Illinois (9th circuit). Ford would serve two terms (notwithstanding his resignation in 1837 to care for Forquer, who had tuberculosis and had moved to Cincinnati for medical treatment and where he died), as well as one term as a municipal judge in the newly chartered city of Chicago. Judge Ford presided over the initial action in the Jean Baptiste Beaubien land claim (concerning the land under the soon-to-be-decommissioned Fort Dearborn), and his decision (against the transferee of the long-term settler and trader next to the partially-decommissioned fort) was ultimately upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Wilcox v. Jackson. Ford joined the Supreme Court of Illinois as an associate justice in February 1841, as the Democratic-majority legislature increased that bench to nine members (from four). The other new justices were former U.S. Senator Sidney Breese, future U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Walter B. Scates and Samuel H. Treat. Upon agreement with his colleagues, Ford was assigned circuit duties on the northern circuit and moved to Oregon in Ogle County, Illinois, but would ultimately only serve as associate justice on that court for little more than a year. Governorship In 1842, the Democratic candidate for Illinois governor, state senator Adam W. Snyder died in May, just months before the election. Although Ford had never held an elective office, he learned while holding court in Ottawa, Illinois on May 25, 1842 that he had become his party's candidate against Whig Joseph Duncan, a previous governor and long a political nemesis of Ford's family. Although some thought Duncan would win because of rising anti-Mormon sentiment (and the Mormon leader Joseph Smith had told his followers to vote for Democrat Snyder), Ford won 57% of the vote and became the state's 8th governor. Democrats also won large majorities in both houses of the legislature.