CAMPBELL, JOHN ARCHIBALD

CAMPBELL, JOHN ARCHIBALD

John Archibald Campbell was a politician, a
statesman, and an associate justice on the U.S.
Supreme Court during the turbulent years preceding
the outbreak of the Civil War.
Born June 24, 1811, in Washington, Georgia,
the son of a prominent landowner and lawyer,
Campbell was a child of exceptional intellectual
ability. He entered Franklin College (now the
University of Georgia) at the age of eleven and
graduated at fourteen with high honors.He then
entered West Point but he withdrew after three
years to return home and support his family following
the death of his father. He also studied
law privately and in 1828, at the age of eighteen,
he was admitted to the Georgia bar by a special
act of the Georgia legislature. He then moved to
Alabama, married, and practiced law, first in
Montgomery and then in Mobile.
Widely known for his skilled arguments and
his extensive knowledge of the law, Campbell
quickly became a leading lawyer in Alabama. He
turned down two appointments to the state
supreme court, the first one offered to him when he was only twenty-four. An active Democrat,
Campbell also found time for politics and, in
1836, he was elected to the first of two terms in
the Alabama state legislature. He was a delegate
to the Nashville Convention of 1850 which was
convened to protect southern rights against
what was viewed as the growing encroachment
of the North, especially with respect to SLAVERY.
Campbell, known for his moderate views, prepared
many of the resolutions adopted by the
convention, which were conciliatory in nature
and designed to avoid inflaming passions on the
slavery issue.
Campbell was nominated to the U.S.
Supreme Court in March 1853 by President
FRANKLIN PIERCE, the new Democratic president,
after the Senate had previously refused to
act on three candidates offered by the lame-duck
president MILLARD FILLMORE. The sitting justices
of the Court had taken the unprecedented
step of sending a delegation to the president to
request that Campbell be nominated to the
Court. Campbell, only forty-one at the time, was
confirmed unanimously.
Campbell was, for the most part, a vigorous
STATES’ RIGHTS advocate while on the Court. In
his dissent in Dodge v. Woolsey, 59 U.S. 331, 18
How. 331, 15 L. Ed. 401 (1855), for example, he
argued against the Court’s extension of federal
jurisdiction over state-chartered corporations.
Campbell believed that state legislatures should
regulate such matters. However, Campbell displayed
somewhat more moderate views with
respect to slavery. He opposed secession and
argued that slavery would eventually disappear
on its own and be replaced by free labor if the
South were left undisturbed. Upon his appointment
to the Court, he freed all his own slaves
and then hired only free blacks as servants. But
Campbell was nevertheless widely criticized for
his views, especially by northern abolitionists,
when he joined the majority of the Court in the
controversial Dred Scott decision. In DRED
SCOTT V. SANDFORD, 60 U.S. 393, 19 How. 393,
15 L. Ed. 691 (U.S. Mo. Dec. Term 1856), the
Court held that blacks were not citizens of the
United States, with the right to sue in federal
court. In his concurring opinion, Campbell contended
that the federal government had no
choice but to recognize as property whatever the laws of the individual states determined to be
property, including slaves.
In 1861, Campbell served as an unofficial
mediator between the federal government and
southern commissioners seeking a resolution to
the conflict over secession and slavery. SECRETARY
OF STATE William H. Seward, acting
through Campbell but without the authority of
the president, promised that Fort Sumter, South
Carolina, then occupied by federal troops,
would be evacuated. When it was instead reinforced,
Campbell was accused of treachery by
the southern commissioners.
When the Civil War later broke out and
Alabama seceded from the union, Campbell
remained loyal to his home state and resigned
from the Court in April 1861. After returning to
the South, he was appointed assistant secretary
of war for the Confederacy.When the Confederacy
collapsed in 1865, he was named to the commission
at the Hampton Roads peace
conference, which was convened to help bring
about peace between the North and South. The
commission failed to reach any agreement.
Campbell again attempted to intervene to bring
about peace, this time through a private meeting
with President ABRAHAM LINCOLN, which
resulted in an order allowing the Virginia legislature
to convene to consider Lincoln’s terms for
reconstruction.Within a few days the South surrendered
and Lincoln withdrew his approval of
the meeting, claiming that Campbell had misconstrued
the terms of the plan. After Lincoln’s
assassination Campbell was accused of TREASON
and imprisoned for several months.
Virtually all Campbell’s property and
belongings in Alabama were destroyed during
the war and after his release from prison he
faced the prospect of starting over. He decided
to settle in New Orleans, where he soon established
another successful law practice along with
a nationally renowned private law library. He
appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in a
number of significant cases, including the
SLAUGHTER-HOUSE CASES, 83 U.S. 36, 16 Wall.
36, 21 L. Ed. 394 (1872). In the Slaughter-House
cases, the Court considered the legality of a
statute that granted a corporation chartered by
the state of Louisiana the exclusive right to
maintain within New Orleans all butcher shops,
slaughter pens, stockyards, and stables. Campbell,
though previously known for favoring the
rights of states, argued that the law created a
MONOPOLY in violation of the recently adopted
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the
Constitution. The Court, in construing the
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT for the first time in
its history, narrowly rejected Campbell’s argument
in a 5–4 decision that would be reversed
twenty years later.
Campbell continued to practice law for
another quarter century before withdrawing to a
reclusive retirement in New Orleans. He died in
1889 at the age of seventy-seven.
FURTHER READINGS
Congressional Quarterly. 1989. Guide to the U.S. Supreme
Court. 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.
Elliott, Stephen P., ed. 1986. A Reference Guide to the United
States Supreme Court. New York: Facts on File.
Saunders, Robert, Jr. 1997. John Archibald Campbell, Southern
Moderate, 1811-1889. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama
Press.
Swisher, Carl B. 1974. The Taney Period, 1836–64. Vol. 5 of
History of the Supreme Court of the United States. New
York: Macmillan.