Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/506

 The Green Bag.

Vol. II. No. ii. BOSTON. November, 1890.

JUSTICE SAMUEL F. MILLER.

NOTHER great -jurist has gone. Mr. Justice Miller died in Washington on the 13th of October. He was the senior justice of the United States Supreme Court, having served more than twenty-eight consecutive years.

Samuel F. Miller was born in Richmond, Kentucky, on the 5th of April, 1816. The first twelve years of his life were spent on a farm, and there he underwent all the hard ships and toil incident to life of this kind. He left school when fifteen years of age, but not until he had shown an unusual power for study, and a good deal of proficiency in grammar and mathematics. He was devoted to both studies all his life. He left his books, however, to become an apothecary's boy, and served an apprenticeship in this calling. He then entered the medical school of Transylvania University, now the University of Kentucky, whence he graduated as a physician in his twentieth year.

Then he went to Barboursville, a rude little hamlet of four hundred inhabitants in Knox County, back in the Cumberland Mountains, not far from the Tennessee and Virginia lines. Here he married, and here he doctored without a competitor for ten years, during the last two of which he read law between sick visits. He discovered his uncommon natural aptitude for law and argument as a member of the same village debating society which not only gave the Supreme Court of the United States an excellent judge, but also, in the person of Green Smith, started a man versatile enough to fill creditably the shrievalty of his county, the judgeship of his circuit, a seat in both the Kentucky Legislature and the National House, and, finally, the sixth auditorship of the Treasury, besides giving Governor Woodson to Missouri.

Miller was thirty years old, and the father of two children, when he abandoned medicine for law. The rising young attorney was an enthusiastic follower of Henry Clay. That great leader's attitude toward the institution of slavery planted in him the seed of abolitionism. When the question of gradual emancipation came up, he took earnest part in behalf of it. The cause was defeated; and in 1850, for the purpose of escaping from the effects of local prejudice, no less than of seeking his fortune in a newer and more hopeful community, the young lawyer moved to Iowa. There, making his home in Keokuk, which was then no more than the distance of a good walk from the slavery of Missouri, he became a pioneer politician in the Republican party. When the war broke out he was a conspicuous leader, but had an unbroken record for refusing to be come an office-holder.

He quickly achieved success at the bar. Ambitious, extraordinarily studious, possessing a wonderful capacity for work, he rapidly gained in reputation as a lawyer, and in 1860 was generally looked upon as, by odds, the ablest man of his age at the bar in his State. When the time came to reorganize the demoralized judiciary of the divided country in 1862, there was a remarkably unanimous agreement on Mr. Miller for an associate justiceship in the Supreme Court. The lawyers of Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, and Wisconsin urged his selection, 61