McGinty Brian. Lincoln and the Court
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John Catron
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Born of German ancestry about 1781, probably in Pennsylvania,
John Catron became a favorite of Andrew Jackson after he
moved to Tennessee early in the nineteenth century and em-
barked on a career in the law. Largely self-taught, he owed his
success at the bar to shrewd common sense and a rigorously logi-
cal mind. Jackson nominated him to the Supreme Court on his
last day as president in 1837, but the Senate did not confirm
him until five days later, so his formal appointment came from
Jackson’s successor, Martin Van Buren. More than six feet tall,
with a large frame, black eyes, dark hair, a large nose, and a
prominent, almost combative jaw, Catron was, according to one
of his biographers, a man whose “manner attracted attention.”
He supported slavery and joined in the notorious Dred Scott de-
cision of 1857 (though for entirely different reasons than Taney)
but took a rigorously pro-Union stance after his home state se-
ceded in 1861. He refused to resign from the Supreme Court and
tended diligently to his circuit court duties in Kentucky, Tennes-
see, and Missouri, where his strong decisions against secession
earned him the enmity of Confederates and the praise of
Unionists. Prevented by illness from attending court during the
1864–65 term, Catron died at his home in Nashville on May 30,
1865.
(Photo credit: Handy Studios, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.)
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the print version of this title.]
Samuel Nelson
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Associate Justice Samuel Nelson was a Democrat of Scotch-
Irish heritage who planned to study for the ministry before he
switched to the law. Born in New York in 1792 into a family
that supported slavery (his studies at Middlebury College were
said to have been financed by his father’s sale of a Negro girl),
Nelson became known as “a Northern man with Southern prin-
ciples” after President John Tyler appointed him to the Supreme
Court in 1845. He was a capable judge, noted for his proficiency
in admiralty and common law, but without keen political in-
stincts. In 1861 he joined with Justice John Archibald Campbell
of Alabama in an unsuccessful effort to broker a North-South
compromise that would avert secession. If his wartime decisions
were not supportive of Lincoln, neither were they aggressively
antagonistic. In appearance, Nelson was a stern-looking man
with a large head made to appear even larger by his luxuriant
hair and full side whiskers that drooped low across his collar.
George Templeton Strong, who encountered Nelson one day at
a Columbia Law School commencement, described him as look-
ing “leonine and learned enough to represent Ellenborough and
Kenyon and Mansfield and Marshall all in one.” After twenty-
seven years of Supreme Court service, Nelson died in
Cooperstown, New York, in 1873, at the age of eighty-one.
(Photo credit: Matthew Brady, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.)
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Robert C. Grier
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Associate Justice Robert C. Grier of Pennsylvania was a Demo-
crat known for industrious work habits, a tendency to make
quick decisions, and a sharp, often cutting tongue. Born in 1794
in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, he graduated from
Dickinson College in 1812 and was admitted to the bar in 1817.
His political instincts were pro-Southern, but during the Civil
War he was rigorously loyal to the Union. After visiting his
daughter in Kentucky in 1861, he reported to Justice Clifford
that his son-in-law was “a secessionist, as insane as the others,”
and after the rout of the Union Army at the First Battle of Bull
Run, he told Clifford that “we must conquer this rebellion or de-
clare our republican government a failure.” Grier’s majority
opinion in the Prize Cases (1863) gave Lincoln his most impor-
tant judicial victory and was fully as important as a battlefield
triumph. A bear of a man, standing more than six feet tall and
weighing close to three hundred pounds, Grier had blond hair,
blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion. His departure from the
Court was one of the saddest in the tribunal’s history. Beset by
illnesses, including a serious stroke, he was physically immobi-
lized and mentally weakened when in 1870, during deliberations
for the Legal Tender Cases, his colleagues persuaded him that he
was unable to fulfill his duties and should resign. His last day on
the Court was January 31, 1870. He died in Philadelphia eight
months later.
(Photo credit: Handy Studios, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.)
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
John Archibald Campbell
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Associate Justice Campbell of Alabama came to the Court in
1852 after the sitting justices unanimously petitioned President
Franklin Pierce to appoint him to a seat left vacant by the death
of Justice John McKinley. Only forty-one years old at the time of
his appointment, Campbell had already earned a national repu-
tation as a brilliant lawyer, learned in the law and other subjects.
He supported slavery, though he realized that it hampered the
South both economically and socially, and joined in the notori-
ous Dred Scott decision of 1857. Though he defended the consti-
tutional right of secession, and regarded Lincoln’s election in
1860 as “a calamity to the country,” Campbell sought in early
1861 to work out a compromise that would keep the Southern
states in the Union. When the attack on Fort Sumter signaled
the failure of the compromise, he resigned from the Court and
returned to his home state. Disappointed to learn that his fellow
Alabamians had no affection for him, he went to New Orleans,
where he practiced law until Union forces occupied the city in
early 1862. He then went on to Richmond, Virginia, where he
became assistant secretary of war in the Confederate cabinet.
After the war Campbell continued his law practice, appearing
frequently in important Supreme Court cases. A moderately tall
man with a bald head, a pale complexion, gray eyes, and bushy
eyebrows that he nervously tugged at when lost in thought,
Campbell was gentle, even shy in his manner, but when he
spoke he commanded attention. His resignation from the Court
cut short a career that might have been one of the most brilliant
in the nation’s history, and also one of the longest, for his death
did not occur until 1889, just short of thirty-six years after his
appointment and twenty-eight years after his resignation.
(Photo credit: Handy Studios, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.)
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Nathan Clifford
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Associate Justice Clifford of Maine was a Northern Democrat
with Southern sympathies who kept a low profile during the war,
neither challenging nor lending notable support for the policies
of the Lincoln administration. Born in New Hampshire in 1803,
he had begun his law practice and political career in Maine,
served as attorney general in President Polk’s cabinet, and at the
close of the Mexican War went to Mexico to try to resolve dif-
ferences arising out of the treaty that had ended the war with
that country. When President Buchanan chose him to replace
the resigned Benjamin Curtis on the Supreme Court in 1857,
the New York Tribune attacked his qualifications, saying he was
“just about equal to the trial of a case of assumpsit upon a prom-
issory note in the court of a Justice of the Peace.” Though not
on the court at the time the Dred Scott case was decided, Clif-
ford made it clear that he agreed with that controversial deci-
sion. A big man who tipped the scales at more than three hun-
dred pounds, Clifford was a meticulous and thorough worker,
though characteristically phlegmatic in his manner and almost
totally devoid of any sense of humor. He served on the Court
without much distinction until his death in 1881, just short of
his seventy-eighth birthday.
(Photo credit: Handy Studios, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.)
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]