Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/208

Rh State since 1862. When it became apparent to him that the power of the Confederacy was broken, and that the supremacy of the Union in Tennessee could not again be threatened, he undertook to reorganize the Supreme Court, though he had no warrant of authority for his action. On Jan. 25, 1865, he, as acting Governor, commissioned Russell Houston, Samuel Milligan, and Henry G. Smith as judges of the Supreme Court. Russell Houston declined the office, and before the court organized removed to Kentucky to become general counsel of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company. In the mean time Wm. G. Brownlow had been chosen as Governor by a Union convention held at Nashville, and was recognized and upheld as such by the United States authorities. On May 16, 1865, he commissioned Alvin Hawkins as Supreme Judge; and on Aug. 24, 1865, he commissioned J. O. Shackleford as such judge. The court organized for the transaction of business at Knoxville on Sept. 11, 1865. It was composed of Judges Milligan, Hawkins, and Shackleford. By a series of resignations and appointments, its membership was changed; but the court continued to act until displaced by the Constitutional Convention of 1870. Aside from those named, it numbered among its members Henry G. Smith, George Andrews, Horace H. Harrison, and Andrew McClain.



This court is known to lawyers as the "apocryphal" court. Many of its decisions have been overruled, and its opinions are infrequently referred to as authority. There were two of the judges who were men of talent, and were good lawyers, Judges Milligan and Andrews. The opinions of Judge Milligan particularly were noteworthy. But he was soon promoted to be judge of the United States Court of Claims. The other men composing the court were of mediocre ability, who could not by possibility have reached a position of such importance in ordinary times.

All the members of the court, without exception, were bitter partisans. They had all been Union men, and they took the partisan view of all questions growing out of the war. Such cases Were innumerable. The status of the seceding State was to be determined; acts of all the officers of its various departments were drawn in question; many payments had been made in Confederate money; contracts between the citizens of belligerent States were to be passed upon; returned Confederate soldiers were sued civilly for torts alleged to have been committed by them in their military service, and they were indicted under the criminal laws as well. The administration of Governor Brownlow assumed to itself the most extraordinary powers for depriving all not in sympathy with him of any share in the government, for punishing those lately in rebellion, and for suppressing all demonstrations hostile to his rule. He procured the passage of many oppressive acts from a