John Archibald Campbell

Early life and education

Campbell was born near Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia to the former Mary Williamson and her husband, Col. Duncan Greene Campbell (for whom the now-defunct Campbell County, Georgia, was named). Col. Campbell had been born in North Carolina and attended college in Chapel Hill before moving to Wilkes County, Georgia and studying law under Judge John Griffin. An attorney, he also served as a trustee for many years of Franklin College, which his son attended, and which later became the University of Georgia. In 1824, while this boy was in college, President James Monroe appointed Duncan Campbell and another man to try to buy the land of the Creek Native Americans. His maternal grandfather was Lt. Col. Micajah Perry Williamson (1744-1796), who was born in Isle of Wight County, Virginia and became a trusted officer serving under General Elijah Clarke during the American Revolutionary War. He received 12,000 acres in Franklin County, Georgia for his Revolutionary War service and became a wealthy landowner in Wilkes County, including helping to lay out the county seat named after General Washington, and establishing the Wilkes Academy in 1797.

Considered a child prodigy, Campbell graduated from the University of Georgia in 1825 at the age of 14, and immediately enrolled at the United States Military Academy, where he studied for three years. He would have graduated in 1830, but withdrew upon hearing of his father's death in July 1828 and returned home to Georgia.

While at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, on December 24–25, 1826, Campbell was involved in the Eggnog Riot (also known as the "Grog Mutiny"). Campbell was among 70 cadets that were involved, but a review concluded that only 20 cadets and one enlisted soldier should be charged. Court-martial proceedings ran from December 26, 1826, to March 16, 1827. On May 3, 1827, President John Quincy Adams adjusted some of the verdicts and approved the rest, so nine cadets were expelled. Other involved cadets included Jefferson Davis (involved but not charged), and Robert E. Lee (not involved but testified). Although some called for Campbell and classmate James W. M. "Weems" Berrien to be expelled, this was rejected.

Returning to Georgia, Campbell read law with his uncle, former Georgia governor John Clark, and was admitted to the bar in 1829, at the age of 18 which required a special act of the Georgia legislature.

Personal life

In 1830, Campbell relocated to Montgomery, Alabama, and married Anna Esther Goldthwaite, a native of New Hampshire who had settled in Alabama. Together, they raised five children: one son and four daughters.

Campbell’s marriage lasted over five decades until Anna’s death in 1887, two years before Campbell himself died in 1889.

Alabama lawyer and legislator

In 1830, Campbell moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where he met and married Anna Esther Goldthwaite and earned a reputation as a talented lawyer specializing in Spanish land grant titles. Hailed as a war hero for his involvement in the Creek Indian War of 1836, Campbell was elected state representative for that same year's term, firmly establishing himself as a Jacksonian Democrat in the state legislature. Thus Campbell aligned with Jackson on national policies, supporting the bank veto and condemning nullification, but he remained a moderate proponent of states' rights.

After his only term in office, Campbell and his young family (which eventually expanded to include five daughters and one son) relocated to Mobile, Alabama, and Campbell later served a second term as state representative in 1842. Fortunately for Campbell's law career, though, Mobile was a bustling port city that constantly generated commercial lawsuits and Spanish grant disputes. In one such grant case, Mayor of Mobile v. Eslava (1849), Campbell revealed his states-rightist attitude and first articulated his doctrine of "original sovereignty" before the state supreme court. Briefly, Campbell argued that because each of the original 13 states had retained sovereignty over the navigable waters within its borders, and the Constitution makes all new states enter the Union on equal terms with existing states, new states like Alabama thus also retain sovereignty over their navigable waters. The Supreme Court upheld original sovereignty in an 1845 decision and Campbell would later refer to it in his Dred Scott concurrence. Thereafter, Campbell's star continued to rise as one of the most sought-after attorneys in Alabama, and in 1852, he even acted as an attorney for Myra Clark Gaines against Richard Relf before the Supreme Court. In most cases, Campbell represented debtors against banks, demonstrating a Jacksonian Democratic tendency to advocate for state control of corporate development and champion the individual's economic freedom. Twice, he turned down offers to sit on the Alabama Supreme Court, and on several occasions, he argued cases before the US Supreme Court.

During this successful early period as a lawyer, his political involvement also increased. From 1847 to 1851, for example, Campbell joined the national debate on slavery with the publication of four essays in the Southern Quarterly Review in which he called for improved conditions for slaves and gradual emancipation. Here, his theories and practices diverged: Campbell owned up to 14 slaves throughout his life, but he freed several before his Supreme Court appointment. Moreover, Campbell attended the Nashville Convention in 1850, where he helped compose a series of resolutions in reaction to the proposed Compromise of 1850. Although he drafted several of the final 13 resolutions in a conciliatory tone and never called for southern resistance, Campbell advocated the rights of slaveholders, condemned the free soil philosophy, and asserted the sole right of the states to regulate slavery within their borders.

Supreme Court

Appointment

In 1852 the death of Justice John McKinley created a vacancy on the Supreme Court. President Millard Fillmore, a Whig, made three nominations to fill the vacancy, all of whom withdrew, declined to serve, or were not acted on by the Democratic-controlled Senate. After the election of Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, a group of sitting Supreme Court justices approached Pierce to recommend Campbell as a nominee; that is one of the few known times that sitting justices have made recommendations for new nominations. Pierce, who was hoping to stave off an insurrection by appeasing the South, agreed to nominate the Alabamian Campbell. The nomination was made on March 21, 1853, and even though Campbell was only 41 and had no previous judicial experience, the Senate unanimously approved the appointment within three days, including Northerners, who hoped that Campbell's moderate tendencies would help overpower the growing sectionalism.

Constitutional contributions

Under the direction of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Supreme Court weighed in on a number of important economic cases. In the 1837 case of Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, for instance, Taney wrote the majority opinion, arguing for strict construction of corporate charters and effectively restraining the implications of the Marshall Court's 1819 ruling in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, which had recognized corporate charters as contracts under constitutional protection. Thereafter, the slight majority of Jacksonian Democrats on the bench became uneasy supporters of corporate privilege, bound to respect rights that were expressly granted in corporate charters and effectively limiting state control over intrastate internal improvements. Moreover, in 1844, the Taney Court had expanded upon the Marshall Court's 1809 decision in Bank of the United States v. Deveaux and upheld in Louisville v. Letson (1844) that regardless of where its shareholders resided, a corporation could claim citizenship in the state of its incorporation and thereby bring suit to the federal court under diversity jurisdiction. Although the Taney Court quickly reversed the precedent in Marshall v. Baltimore & Ohio Transportation & Railroad Company (1854) and ruled that corporations, in fact, derive their citizenship from their shareholders and not from the states themselves, diversity jurisdiction still applied to corporations.

Campbell refused to accept the Taney Court's recent precedents on these corporate issues. His opinion in Marshall v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company marked his first major dissent, in which he clearly argued, "a corporation is not a citizen. It may be an artificial person, a moral person, a judicial person, a legal entity, a faculty, an intangible, invisible being," but, he continued, quoting John Marshall, "it certainly is not a citizen." Contesting corporate citizenship as the basis for diversity jurisdiction, Campbell further argued that corporations were not "within the contemplation of the framers of the Constitution when they delegated jurisdiction over controversies between the citizens of different states". The Privileges and Immunities Clause (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1), in other words, should not extend citizenship to corporations. Arguably, Campbell's argument here, as well as in the dissenting opinions of fellow southern Justices John Catron and Peter V. Daniel, implicitly defended slavery. After all, if states could confer federal citizenship on corporations, then free blacks might also claim federal citizenship under the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Later in his dissent, Campbell the Jacksonian Democrat also argued that the Court had encroached upon state powers by overextending federal jurisdiction in this case and that corporations themselves threaten states' internal powers. Explicitly, Campbell wrote, "their [corporate] revenues and establishments mock at the frugal and stinted conditions of state administration; their pretensions and demands are sovereign, admitting impatiently interference by state legislative authority." If left unchecked by state legislatures and even protected by the national government, corporations threatened states' rights. In his first important case, then, Campbell took a hard stance against corporate privilege, defended states' rights, and arguably protected slavery.

American Civil War

In March and April 1861, prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War, Justice Campbell served as a mediator between three commissioners representing the Confederacy (Martin Crawford, Andre B. Roman, and John Forsyth Jr.), and the Lincoln administration. The commissioners indicated they were interested in preventing war if possible. Since President Lincoln denied that secession was valid, he refused any official contact with the Confederate commissioners, but Justice Campbell was permitted in their place.

On March 15, 1861, following the impassioned Senate speech of Stephen A. Douglas calling for the withdrawal of US forces from Confederate territory in order to ease tensions and prevent war, Lincoln's Secretary of State William H. Seward met with and assured Justice Campbell that Fort Sumter would be evacuated within ten days. Again on March 20, 1861, Campbell was assured by Seward of the Lincoln Administration's intent to withdraw from the key military outpost. Due to a distrust of Seward, Campbell brought fellow Supreme Court Justice Samuel Nelson to this second meeting to act as a witness to Seward's promise.

As feared by Campbell, on April 8 Lincoln reversed course by publicly stating he intended to resupply Fort Sumter either "peacefully, or otherwise by force". This resupply mission resulted in the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, Lincoln's proclamation of a state of rebellion and the start of the war.

As a result, Campbell resigned from the Supreme Court on April 30, 1861, and returned south. He was the only southern justice to do so. Threatened with lynching and effectively banished from Alabama for his moderate views, opposition to secession, and attempt at mediation, Campbell settled in New Orleans. A year and a half later, in October 1862, he was appointed Confederate Assistant Secretary of War by Confederate president Jefferson Davis. He held that position through the end of the war.

Since Campbell served the Confederacy after his role as mediator, Lincoln's private secretary and subsequent biographer John G. Nicolay, ascribed ill motives to Campbell in that he "came to Seward in the guise of a loyal official, though his correspondence with Jefferson Davis soon revealed a treasonable intent". However, even when serving the Confederacy, Campbell still advocated for peace.

Postbellum

Federal detention

On April 14, 1865, five days after the war ended, Lincoln was assassinated. Having previously met with Lincoln as a member of the Confederacy, Campbell was loosely suspected in the assassination. He was arrested on May 30, 1865, and was held in federal detention at Fort Pulaski, Georgia, for the next five months. Campbell was never formally charged. Former colleagues and Supreme Court Justices Benjamin R. Curtis and Samuel Nelson intervened on Campbell's behalf, and he was released in October 1865.

Legal career

At the end of the war, Campbell was not able to immediately practice law. Due to laws passed by Congress, attorneys who had aided the Confederacy were prohibited from practicing law in Federal Court. In Ex parte Garland this law was held to be unconstitutional and Campbell was able to get back to work. He was again recognized as one of the nation's most competent attorneys and became so busy that he argued only cases brought before the U.S. Supreme Court. Campbell argued (but lost) the noted Slaughterhouse Case, representing a group of butchers who suffered business losses due to a Louisiana law which limited slaughterhouses to a single location in New Orleans. He argued that the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause guaranteed the butchers' right to practice an otherwise lawful trade. However, Campbell lost the case. The Supreme Court held that the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment protected nothing more than a limited set of pre-existing federal rights, and did not include the right to pursue a trade. The result stood for decades. Some believe that had the court adopted Campbell's argument, federal civil rights would have been extended to the states decades earlier.

Campbell was a member of the "Committee of One Hundred" that went to Washington to persuade President Grant to end his support of what they called the "Kellogg usurpation". Grant had sent troops to support Governor William Pitt Kellogg of Louisiana. Grant initially refused to meet them but later relented; he did not, however, change his position on the matter.

Death

Campbell died on March 12, 1889, in Baltimore, Maryland. He is interred at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.

Legacy and honors

During World War II the Liberty ship SS John A. Campbell was built in Brunswick, Georgia, and named in his honor.

The John Archibald Campbell United States Courthouse was built in Mobile, Alabama in 1934. He is also the namesake for the Federal Building next door, built during the Richard Nixon Administration.[1]