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The First Justice Harlan: a Self-Portrait from His Private Papers

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The First Justice Harlan: a Self-Portrait from His Private Papers Kentucky Law Journal Volume 46 | Issue 3 Article 1 1958 The irsF t Justice Harlan: A Self-Portrait From His Private Papers Alan F. Westin Cornell University Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/klj Part of the Judges Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Westin, Alan F. (1958) "The irF st Justice Harlan: A Self-Portrait From His Private Papers," Kentucky Law Journal: Vol. 46 : Iss. 3 , Article 1. Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/klj/vol46/iss3/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Kentucky Law Journal by an authorized editor of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The First Justice Harlan: A Self-Portrait From His Private Papers By ALAN F. WE.sn'N* INTRODUCTION To open this commemorative issue and to provide a backdrop for the specialized articles which follow, the journal asked me to contribute a general article on John Marshall Harlan as a man and a Supreme Court Justice. For any biographer caught in mid- stream, and aware how many inlets must still be explored before an accurate chart can be drawn, this is a difficult assignment. In dealing with Harlan, the problem is even greater, since most of the "portrait articles" written about him must be classed as non- objective art by anyone who has seen the Harlan Papers and studied the Kentucky political and social scene from 1830 to 1880. Rather than contribute too vague a sketch or too particular a discussion of one part of Harlan's career, I have chosen to sift through the Harlan collection and other sources and assemble a documentary self-portrait, to let the first Justice Harlan present his own image." Happily, the Harlan Papers are well suited to such an enter- prise. In the year before he died, Harlan dictated a series of memoirs for his family covering his entire pre-Court career. Mrs. Harlan, after her husband's death, wrote a long autobiographical account which not only presents her picture of Kentucky life but also contributes several fine vignettes of Harlan after he joined the Court. In addition to these sources, selections have been made from Harlan's writings, his speeches, and his private letters, almost all of which are published here for the first time. To make these materials most useful, the reader may require an outline summary of Harlan's life to put each document in its * Assistant Professor of Government, Cornell University; Member of the Dis- trict of Columbia Bar. (Professor Westin is the official biographer of John Marshall Harlan, Ed.) 1 For an extended biographical article see Alan F. Westin, "John Marshall Harlan and the Constitutional Rights of Negroes: The Transformation of a Sou- therner," 66 Yale L.J. 637 (1957). KENTucKy LAw JOURNAL [Vol. 46, setting. John Harlan was born in 1883 in what is now Boyle County, Kentucky. He grew up in Harrodsburg and Frankfort while his father was successively a practicing lawyer, U.S. Con- gressman, Secretary of State of Kentucky and State Attorney Gen- eral. After attending Centre College and Transylvania Law School, Harlan became a member of the Frankfort bar and joined his father and older brother in general practice. As a staunch young Whig, Harlan plunged into politics just in time to accom- pany the disintegrating Kentucky Whigs on their tortured march in search of a party: first into the Native American Party, then as Opposition members, and, just before the Civil War, as Unionists. During this period, Harlan found great success as a young poli- tician, stumping the state as a Whig-American elector in 1856, becoming the successful candidate for Franklin County Judge in 1858, and being barely defeated as the Opposition Congressional nominee from the Ashland District in 1859. From Louisville, where he moved in 1861, Harlan entered the Federal Army as a Lieutenant Colonel and gathered a company of infantry volun- teers committed to the same war perspectives as their Commander and most Kentucky Unionists: preservation of the Union with slavery rights untouched. For two years, Harlan soldiered in the border state campaigns. He resigned in 1863 when his father died suddenly and the affairs of his extensive law practice had to be set straight. Almost as soon as he had hung up his blue coat, Harlan found himself caught up in the confused multiparty politics of Kentucky in the late 1860s. As a military hero because of his outflanking of the Morgan Raid- ers in 1862, Harlan was nominated and elected as State Attorney General on the Constitutional Union ticket in 1863. During the four years he spent in office, he tried to fashion the party into a middle group between the Confederate-oriented Democrats and the Radical-directed Republicans in Kentucky. This proved im- possible. With the Confederates regaining control of the state by 1865, with the rise of Klan violence against former Union leaders and the newly freed Negroes, and with the narrow reactionary economic policy of the Democrats offensive to his progressive outlook, Harlan moved slowly but with a final decisiveness into the new Republican party formed in Kentucky after 1868 under the Grant banner. 1958] A SELF-PoRnHAI From 1868 on, Harlan remained a staunch Republican and became the party's nominee for governor in 1871 and 1875, its candidate for U.S. Senator on many occasions, and its spokesman on behalf of civil rights, economic reform, and increased public education. By 1876, Harlan had built a large law practice, a firm national reputation as a fighting Southern Republican, and was in demand as a campaign orator from Maine to Mississippi. 1876 was also the year in which Harlan managed the presidential bid of his law partner and fellow Kentuckian, Secretary of the Treas- ury Benjamin Bristow. When it became clear at the Republican Convention of 1876 that Bristow could not be nominated and the effective choice lay between James G. Blaine and Rutherford B. Hayes, Harlan swung the Kentucky delegation to Hayes at exactly the critical moment and earned a top place in Hayes' esteem. During the following year, Harlan served as one of President Hayes' chief Southern advisors and was named to the Louisiana Commission of 1877, a group assembled to determine which of two rival regimes in the state was the lawfully elected govern- ment. A short time later, with the resignation of Justice David Davis, Harlan was appointed to the Supreme Court. His tenure lasted from 1877 to 1911, 84 years in which Harlan came to be known as the "Great Dissenter" because of his frequent and vigor- ous disagreements with the Supreme Court of the Gilded Age in everything from anti-trust and tax cases to those involving civil rights, fair procedure, and labor organization. He died in harness in 1911, at the age of 78. PART I TBm EAnLy YEARS Harlanto his son Richard.' Pointe au Pic, Province of Quebec, Canada July 4th, 1911 Dear Richard: I have promised many times to commit to paper, for preserva- tion by my family, numerous things that have been told them by 2 Harlan Papers, Author's Possession. I am grateful to the present Justice John M. Harlan, grandson of the first Justice, for entrusting the papers to me for the purpose of preparing a biography. KENTucKY LAw JourNAL[ [Vol. 46, me as to the relations between 'my father and Henry Clay, prior to the Civil War... My father was an ardent admirer of John Marshall, and held to the views of constitutional construction which that great jurist embodied in the opinions delivered by him as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was equally ardent in his opposition to the views of constitutional law which were sup- posed to be, and doubtless were, entertained by Thomas Jefferson. Marshall, my father always contended, held to views which, all concede, would give to the country a government that would be supreme and paramount in respect to all matters entrusted to the General Government, its powers, however, to be so exerted as not to infringe upon the rights which remained with the People of the several States, which had never been surrendered or granted, expressly or impliedly, to the National Government. My father adhered firmly to these views and opposed those main- tained by Jefferson, because he believed that Jefferson's views were based upon a narrow, literal construction of the words of the Federal Constitution which, in time, would so minimize the functions of the Government intended to be established by that instrument as to place the National Government so completely at the mercy of the States that it could not accomplish the objects of its creation. He regarded "Jeffersonianism," speaking generally, as an evil that needed to be watched and overcome. He so thought during his entire life, and hence he became a follower of Webster and Clay. He gloried, so to speak, in being a Whig, and an opponent of the Democratic Party... [We] may take some pride in the fact that he was regarded by Mr. Clay as his warm personal and political friend. In 1846, Mr. Clay delivered in the Market Place at Lexington, Kentucky, what was called his Mexican War speech, in which he charged the Democratic Part , with having unnecessarily and unjustly brought on that war. My father heard that speech, upon invitation from Mr.
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