McGinty Brian. Lincoln and the Court
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Noah H. Swayne
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Associate Justice Swayne of Ohio was Lincoln’s first appoint-
ment to the Supreme Court and, on the whole, his most disap-
pointing. Though noted as one of Ohio’s most successful law-
yers, he never made much of an impression as a justice, though
he persisted for years in the foolish hope that he would one day
be named chief justice. Lincoln chose Swayne because he
wanted a justice from Ohio to replace the deceased Justice John
McLean, because McLean himself had thought highly of
Swayne, and because Swayne had a host of influential support-
ers. He loyally supported Lincoln’s policies during the war but
beyond that did little to distinguish himself. Born to a Quaker
family in Virginia in 1804, he had moved to Ohio because of his
strong opposition to slavery. Originally a Jacksonian Democrat,
he became a Republican in the 1850s, when the nation was
racked by the growing controversy over the extension of slavery
into the territories. By that time he had won a reputation as one
of the best trial lawyers in the nation and had built up a clien-
tele that included influential banks, railroads, and other corpo-
rations. Like so many of his colleagues, Swayne was a large man,
both in height and girth, with a massive head, a ruddy complex-
ion, and dark hair that thinned toward baldness in later years.
His photographs reveal a handsome face that was deeply lined
as he grew older, a high forehead, and a curious habit of tilt-
ing his head to the right. When first encountered he could
be charming, but on further acquaintance many felt his charm
was contrived and insincere. Swayne served on the Court until
his resignation in 1881. He died three years later at the age of
seventy-nine.
(Photo credit: Matthew Brady, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.)
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the print version of this title.]
Samuel Freeman Miller
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Associate Justice Miller of Iowa was arguably Lincoln’s best ap-
pointment to the Court, though the president was unacquainted
with him before his appointment and had little opportunity to
get to know him during the war. Originally a medical doctor, the
Kentucky-born Miller had switched to the law and moved to
Iowa in the 1840s, where his legal reputation became so great
that lawyers, judges, legislators, and governors all along the Mis-
sissippi joined to urge that he be appointed to the Supreme
Court in 1862. Miller had a commanding intellect and a forceful
personality, and when Salmon P. Chase became chief justice late
in 1864 he found that Miller was, “beyond question, the domi-
nant personality upon the bench.” A large man, with a big head,
a square jaw, and a muscular body, Miller wrote opinions in
some of the most important cases of the Reconstruction era, in-
cluding the controversial Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873, which
provided the first important opportunity for the Court to inter-
pret the Fourteenth Amendment. In all, Miller wrote opinions
in more than six hundred cases—almost one hundred of them
on constitutional issues—becoming, in his own words, the “or-
gan of the Court” in constitutional issues. He continued to serve
on the Court until his death in 1890 at the age of seventy-four.
(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.]
David Davis
ﱟﱟﱗﱟﱟ
David Davis of Illinois was one of Lincoln’s oldest political
friends, but as an associate justice of the Supreme Court he be-
came best known for his ringing opinion in Ex parte Milligan
(1866), rebuking Lincoln’s administration (though not the pres-
ident himself) for its policy of subjecting civilians to military
justice in states where the courts were open and functioning.
Davis had serious doubts about his qualifications to serve on the
Court before Lincoln appointed him in late 1862. Although he
had been a trial judge for many years, he had never argued a case
on appeal, he was not a legal scholar, and he wrote slowly and
with difficulty. Aside from his Milligan opinion, he had only a
mediocre record as a Supreme Court justice. While on the
Court, he continued to dabble in politics, even aspiring at one
point to be the presidential nominee of the Liberal Republicans,
and in 1877 he resigned to become United States senator from
Illinois. An imposing man physically, Davis stood just under six
feet in height and, from middle age on, weighed upwards of
three hundred pounds. In groups of lawyers, he was more of a lis-
tener than a speaker. He had a roaring laugh (which was often
set off by Lincoln’s stories) and a genial face, and despite occa-
sional flashes of anger, he was almost always good-natured. As
the wife of one of the lawyers who practiced regularly in his Illi-
nois court commented, he “had a big head and a big body, a big
brain and a big heart.” Davis was seventy-one years old when he
died in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1886.
(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.]
Stephen Johnson Field
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Associate Justice Field of California took his seat as the tenth
member of the Supreme Court on December 7, 1863, but be-
cause of the illnesses of other judges the full complement of ten
justices was actually present for only five court days, from Mon-
day, December 7, through Friday, December 11, 1863. Field’s ap-
pointment is sometimes cited as a Republican effort to “pack”
the Supreme Court with friendly judges, but his appointment
owed more to circuit court requirements than to political calcu-
lations—specifically, the need to bring the rich and increasingly
important state of California under the umbrella of the Supreme
Court with the creation of a tenth judicial circuit for the Pacific
Coast. Born in Connecticut in 1816, Field belonged to one of
the nation’s most accomplished families (one of his brothers was
a leading attorney in New York City and a frequent Supreme
Court advocate, and another laid the first telegraph cable across
the Atlantic Ocean in 1858). Field himself was a formidable
lawyer and an accomplished judge, with a fine mind, a deter-
mined (if combative) personality, and a devotion to the law. A
Democrat, he supported the administration during the war but
broke with the Republicans over the Test Oath Cases in 1867.
With his dissent in the Slaughterhouse Cases in 1873, Field be-
came the Supreme Court’s leading exponent of the controversial
doctrine of substantive due process. Field continued to serve un-
til old age dimmed his mind and he was persuaded to resign, ef-
fective December 1, 1897. By that time, he had established a re-
cord of Supreme Court service (thirty-four years, six months,
and eleven days) that broke John Marshall’s previous record and
stood until it was in turn broken by William O. Douglas’s record
of more than thirty-six years. The last survivor of Lincoln’s five
Supreme Court appointments, Field was eighty-four years old
when he died on April 9, 1899.
(Photo credit: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.)
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Salmon P. Chase
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Lincoln waited eight weeks after Roger Taney died before nam-
ing Salmon Portland Chase of Ohio as the new chief justice in
December 1864. For three years Chase had served ably as Lin-
coln’s secretary of the treasury, but he had used much of that
time to further his own presidential ambitions and undermine
Lincoln’s credibility with Congress and the public. Four or five
times he responded to differences with the president by submit-
ting his resignation, confident that Lincoln would decline to ac-
cept it. Finally, in June 1864, Lincoln decided that he “could
not stand it any longer” and accepted his ambitious secretary’s
latest resignation. Despite their personal differences, Lincoln
apparently never seriously considered appointing anyone other
than Chase as chief justice. He conceded that the Ohioan was a
man of extraordinary ability, and believed that he shared his
own views on the key issues of emancipation and legal tender. In
fact, Chase believed that the Legal Tender Act (which he sup-
ported as secretary of the treasury) was unconstitutional, and in
Hepburn v. Griswold (1870) he struck it down. He served Lin-
coln’s legacy better in Texas v. White (1869), in which he con-
demned secession and held that the Constitution created “an
indestructible Union composed of indestructible states.” A tall
man with a handsome face, an aversion to alcohol, a hatred of
slavery, and an appalling lack of humor, Chase continued to as-
pire to the presidency until his death in 1873. After his passing,
he was remembered as a man of great attainments and even
greater (and unfulfilled) ambitions.
(Photo credit: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.)
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