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VOL. V.

No. 5.

BOSTON.

MAY, 1893.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON. BY H. M. DOAK. TTON. HOWELL E. JACKSON, re*- •*- cently appointed by President Har rison and confirmed by the Senate to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Bench of the United States, was born at Paris, Tenn. in 1832, eldest son of Dr. A. Jackson and his wife Mary W., née Hurt, both native to Virginia. They were married in 1829, and removed to Paris in 1830. His father was a large, tall, striking, and handsome man, vig orous in mind and. active in body, always a leading man in his community; a strong Whig in politics, and a political leader and debater; a promoter of county stock and agricultural fairs and of scientific agriculture; a capable man of affairs. His mother was a handsome, refined woman, of bright intellect, tempered by sober good sense and devotion to domestic duties, moving in the first social circles of West Tennessee. Intellectually, Judge Jackson combines the delicacy and acuteness of his mother with the breadth of grasp and strong intelligence of his father. In personal appearance he leans to the side of his mother. His academic education was completed at Jackson, whither his father had removed from Paris. One of his old school compan ions, still his devoted personal friend, who differed with him during the War, and has been an active Republican since the War, says of him : — •' As a youth, during his academic course, he was, as he has been as a man, serious, studious, thoughtful, and hard-working. He toiled for what he got, appeared only what he was, never sought 27

to appear other, never borrowed the results of others' toil, and what he got came to him because it belonged to him. One thing only could tempt him from severe and continuous labor. When the skating was good, he would snatch some time for skating."

There are those who sow wild oats and reap good grain, — likely, even then, perhaps, to be flavored of wild oats. If a rare few do get an after grip upon their badly running machinery and make good ending of bad beginning, Judge Jackson's youth is but another instance of a rule so general that it is almost universal: As the boy, so the man. In 1850 he entered the University of Virginia, and graduated from that great Southern university with high honors. After reading law for a year with his kinsman, Hon. A. W. O. Totten, one of the Supreme Judges of Tennessee, he entered and gradu ated from the Law Department of Cumber land University, and, in 1856, began the practice of his profession at Jackson, Tenn., removing thence to Memphis in 1858, where he formed a partnership with D. M. Currin, and continued in his profession until the out break of the Civil War. His thorough busi ness qualifications led to his appointment as receiver, under the Confederate Sequestration Act, for the Western District of Tennessee; and he discharged so well the difficult duties of this onerous position, and so justly withal, that he escaped altogether the censure that usually followed that difficult part. After the war he was associated with Hon. B. M. Estes, of Memphis, in the practice of law,