Erastus Dean Culver (March 15, 1803 – October 13, 1889) was an attorney, politician, judge, and diplomat from New York City. Culver was active in the anti-slavery movement and, while in Congress in the 1840s, opposed the extension of slavery to Texas and the territory of Oregon. As an attorney, Culver was part of a team that defended eight Virginia slaves in a freedom suit, Lemmon v. New York (1852), successfully gaining their freedom in New York City's Superior Court. Culver was later elected judge of Brooklyn's City Court, serving from 1854 to 1861. In 1857 Culver decided the well-known freedom suit of a fugitive slave named "Jeems" and set him free by ruling against the people who had detained him, including police officers who hoped to collect a bounty under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1