Lawyers and Lawmakers of Kentucky, by H. Levin, editor, 1897. Published
by Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago.  Reprinted by Southern Historical
Press.  p. 151.  Jefferson County.

JOHN MARSHALL HARLAN, associate justice of the supreme court of the
United States, was born in Boyle county, Kentucky, June 1, 1833.  His
father was James Harlan, one of the most eminent lawyers, one of the best
men and one of the best citizens of his day,--which was one of the most
illustrious periods of Kentucky history,--a member of the twenty-fourth
and twenty-fifth congresses and afterward secretary of state of Kentucky
and attorney general, and for a time during the war district attorney of
the United States for Kentucky.  His mother, Eliza Shannon (Davenport)
Harlan, was born in Danville, Kentucky, October 5, 1805, and was a
daughter of Richard and Elizabeth (Tadlock) Davenport.
     The son, Justice Harlan, graduated at Center College, Kentucky, in
1850, and studied and practiced law with his father until 1858, when he
was elected judge of the Franklin county court, and in 1859 he was
tendered the nomination of the Whig party for congress in the famous
Ashland district and made a gallant and brilliant race,--one of the most
famous political contests ever known in Kentucky.
     In 1861 he moved to Louisville, and when the war broke out promptly
cast his lot with the Union, at a time when the situation and conditions
in Kentucky made the act one of significant loyalty and courage.  In the
fall of 1861 he became colonel of the Tenth Kentucky Volunteer Infantry,
a regiment in the original division of General George H. Thomas.  After
active service in the field, he was compelled by the death of his father
to resign from the army in order to give needed attention to the affairs
of his father's estate.  It required a high sense of duty to do this, for
he had just been nominated to be brigadier general, and his nomination
was pending before the senate and promotion sure.  In 1863 he was nominated
by acclamation by the Union party of Kentucky for the office of attorney
general, and elected; but in 1867 he again returned to the practice of law
at Louisville.
     In 1871, and again in 1875, he received the Republican nomination
for governor of Kentucky, by acclamation, the latter time accepting with
great reluctance and only after the most urgent insistence by the
party leaders; and he made in each campaign a canvass noted for its
tremendous energy, great earnestness, courage and ability, establishing
his standing as the most distinguished and prominent of the Kentucky
Republicans and Union men.  His campaign of 1871 was the beginning of
the Republican organization in Kentucky with any real purpose of trying
to carry the state.  President Hayes offered him a first-class foreign
mission, which he declined, and in 1877 he served as a member of the
Louisiana commission, and on November 29th of that year was commissioned
as associate justice of the supreme court of the United States, taking
his seat on the bench of that great court December 10, 1877, when he was
only forty-four years old, in the prime of physical and mental vigor.
He was at that age one of the leaders of the bar in Kentucky, which was
justly distinguished for the power and ability of its lawyers.
     From the beginning of his labors in the supreme court, he has given
all his great energy and power to the most devoted and untiring work
to uphold the laws and maintain the dignity and influence of that great
court.  During all the time since he was appointed,--nearly a score of
years,--he has labored unceasingly and with the greatest study, research,
learning and power, and year by year his reputation for industry, care,
zeal in good work, learning, statesmanship and patriotism has grown.
Every opinion delivered by him has added to his reputation.  From almost
the first, although he had been greatly distinguished as an advocate,
those cases were assigned to him in which the opinions required the
greatest conservatism and prudence in their preparation and expression. No
member of the court has done more work in his time, or had done it with
greater judgment, common sense and care.  There is no opinion by him in the
books that shows negligence or even lack of the greatest care.  He is
distinguished for his clear and concise grasp of a case, the orderly and
wise arrangement of the opinion and the terseness and force of expression
and extent of research and learning.  He has been distinguished for his
judicial independence.  Some of his noblest opinions, notably that in the
civil-rights case, have been opinions dissenting from the decision of the
court; and his resolute maintenance of the dignity and power of the
national government is a noted feature of his judicial career.
     During his long service he has not only performed a great and
honorable share of the enormous labors that have fallen to the lot of the
supreme court, but he has performed great labor in some of the most
important cases in the circuit courts to which he was assigned.
     Justice Harlan's public career has been marked by experiences and
opinions which have established his reputation as a statesman of broad,
liberal and comprehensive views, and exalted and unfaltering patriotism,
quite as clearly as it has that of a great jurist.  Not only his opinions,
but also his eminent service on the Behring sea tribunal of arbitration,
and earlier in life his magnificent discussion of public questions in
correspondence with the leading men of the country, and his expressions
in reunions with his army comrades and friends, all mark one of the
noblest and most loyal hearts, one of the grandest and wisest minds, one
of the strongest and most earnest characters known to our history.  In
Kentucky his name is a household word, and in a broader field to which
his public duties have transferred him he has won and holds the unfailing
confidence, respect and admiration of the legal world and of all
connected with the more important and responsible of our national affairs.
And it will not surprise any close observer or truly great man to be
told that this really great man is, in his home life and in the circle
of his friends and acquaintances, simple-hearted and unaffected, of
plain and simple tastes, with great aversion to mere formalities or
technicalities, with an uncontrollable natural independence of feeling,
which sometimes amounts to disregard of mere conventionalities; with an
inexhaustible fund of genial and delightful reminiscences and anecdote;
with a mind singularly free from any small motives of feelings, and
singularly buoyant, cheerful and pleasant, so that his presence is a
continual delight, association with him a never-failing pleasure. One of
the latest expressions, when he was not under the restraint of judicial
duty, but opened his heart to his army comrades, was at the grand
encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic in Louisville, when he
addressed his comrades informally, giving expression, in his wise and
thoughtful way, to sentiments which showed not only undying patriotism,
but noble-hearted liberality and broad statesmanship.  His addresses on
that occasion to the members of the regiment which he commanded during the
war was in these words:
     "But, comrades, other thoughts come to me on this occasion, to which,
in view of the circumstances attending our meeting, I may give expression.
While our love of the Union is unabated, and while time has not weakened
our affection for the memory of comrades who have gone before us, nor
diminished our love for those who have survived the conflict of arms and
are still with us, the feelings once cherished by us toward those who have
so bravely fought on the other side, have undergone a great change.  The
American people, the entire people, are standing today more firmly than
ever before for the safety and the integrity of our free institutions.
We have reached a stage of our national life when fidelity to the flag and
love of country is not, as once it was, wholly measured by the relation
which the citizen held to the struggle of 1861.  We no longer doubt that
the welfare of the country, and of the whole country, is an object of
supreme affection with every true American; nor do we doubt that the
national honor and the national dignity, whatever differences exist on
political questions, are safe in the hands of those who sought by force to
dissolve the Union.  We have now a union of hearts as well as a union of
lands.  The foreign nation that will expect, in a conflict with this
country, a division among our people on the lines that divided them in the
civil war, would soon find that Americans, whether Union or Confederate,
would stand as one man in defense of our common heritage of freedom.  We
are all glad that such is our condition.  We rejoice that no division
exists among us in respect of any matter involving the rights or the
safety of the republic.  So, up with our flag, in the face of the world,
and let the nations of the earth know, if they do not already know, that
all Americans will be united in vindicating the honor of this country
whenever such vindication becomes necessary.
     "One thought more.  What we have seen during the present week, and
what has occurred in the past few years, will tend to strengthen the
bonds of union between the people and the descendants of the people who
took part in the civil war.  In this goodly city we have Union and
Confederate soldiers mingling together upon terms of cordiality and
brotherly love.  They have sat around the same camp-fires and recalled
the incidents of past campaigns.  They are all Americans.  We feel-indeed,
we know--that all of them, Union and Confederate, are warmly devoted to
their country.  In different parts of our land are beautiful cemeteries
in which are buried the remains of the dead soldiers of the Union.
Throughout the state whose people struggled to establish a separate
government for themselves, are cemeteries in which are the remains of dead
soldiers of the Confederacy.  These resting places of the deceased should
always be objects of our care and affection.
     "Union and Confederate soldiers sit side by side in the highest
judicial tribunal of our country, in the cabinet, in the two houses of
congress and in the legislatures of the states.  They have sat with each
other, in a foreign land, as members of a tribunal of arbitration, called
into existence to settle the disputes of powerful nations.  Confederate
soldiers, for many years past, have represented our country in high
diplomatic position.  Compensation for all such services has been, and is
being, made out of the common treasury of the country.  Further proof is
not needed that the American people, although cherishing the glorious
memory of their past history and recalling with pride the splendid valor
of the dead, have put behind them the mere hates and divisions of the
civil war, and now have their faces to the future, all alike concerned for
the perpetuation of a Union under which, as nowhere else, is enjoyed
liberty regulated by law.
     "Now, my comrades, let me again express my joy at this reunion, and
my affection for each of you.  I trust you will remember that you are all
very near to my heart, and that I will be glad at all times to do whatever
in me lies to bring you happiness and comfort. God bless you all."
     The reasonable limits of this article forbid a review of Justice
Harlan's judicial labor or anything more than a general expression of the
outlines of his life and character; but it is pleasant to feel that his
splendid constitution gives promise of many more years of noble judicial
labor, of splendid service in laying down the lines on which our
national government is to develop, as his great predecessor, for whom he
was named, Chief Justice John Marshall, bore a commanding and immortal
part in defining the lines of the original frame-work of our government.
It is a valuable hope of our country that he may be spared to a ripe old
age of power to work and to study; and it is already fixed and settled
that his career in this great court is one of the greatest, one of the
most industrious, one of the most useful and one of the most enduring of
all the great men who have been members of that tribunal.
     In every relation of life he has been great.  He was a devoted and
faithful son and brother.  He is a husband and father who realizes that
the best ideal of American manhood, and he has been and is a faithful,
honest and just judge of commanding learning, power, wisdom, common
sense and industry, a glory to his profession and to American manhood.
                                   Augustus E. Willson,
                                        Louisville, Kentucky.


Harlan Davenport Tadlock Willson Marshall
=
Danville-Boyle-KY

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/jefferson/harlan.jm.txt