Nathan Clifford was an American statesman, diplomat and jurist, whose career culminated in a lengthy period of service as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He joined the court in 1858 after a nomination from Justice James Buchanan.
Background
Mr. Clifford was born on August 18, 1803, in Rumney, New Hampshire, United States, to an industrious farming family. As the oldest child and only son of the seven children born to Nathaniel Clifford and his wife, Lydia Simpson Clifford, Nathan Clifford discovered early that his parents valued manual toil more than education. He absorbed their devotion to work but aspired to more education than his parents thought necessary.
Education
Nathan Clifford's mother and father grudgingly permitted him to attend a nearby academy, where he financed his education by part-time teaching and by providing singing lessons to young men. When his father died, however, college proved beyond his means, and he settled instead for a legal apprenticeship with Josiah Quincy, a prominent local attorney.
Career
By 1827 Mr. Clifford had been admitted to the New Hampshire bar and soon established a legal practice in Newfield, Maine. A few years later, Nathan Clifford entered politics, winning election to the state legislature as a Democrat in 1831. His political skills proved substantial enough to earn him the post of speaker of the House in 1833, when he was only 28 years old. He held that position until the following year, when he was appointed state attorney general.
While serving as attorney general from 1834 to 1838, Nathan Clifford campaigned for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Failing in this bid, he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1838. He served in Congress for two terms until voter redistricting in Maine undercut his Democratic base and cost him his congressional seat in 1843. With only a dozen years of political service, Mr. Clifford was hardly a prominent figure on the national front by this time. He was, though, a loyal Democrat and a New Englander, and President James K. Polk eventually had need of both traits to fill the position of attorney general in his cabinet. Not for the last time, party loyalty and a reputation for competent, hard work secured the appointment for Mr. Clifford in 1846. Almost immediately, though, self-doubt besieged Nathan Clifford, afflicting him with uncertainty over whether he was qualified to appear on behalf of the U.S. government in the various federal courts. Mr. Polk managed to reassure his worried appointee, and the Senate confirmed his nomination unanimously.
The new attorney general did, in fact, warm to his position and managed to acquit himself competently. Of most interest historically, Nathan Clifford participated as attorney general in the argument of Luther v. Borden (1849), a case that involved legal claims arising out of the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island. The rebellion occurred when disenfranchised Rhode Island citizens attempted to establish a new state constitution and elect officials under it. After officials under the existing state government refused to recognize the new constitution or the elections held under it, they declared martial law, and state judges convicted the reform governor of treason. The Luther case was brought by Rhode Island resident Martin Luther against a state militiaman, Luther Borden, who had entered his house and searched it pursuant to martial law. The case challenged the declaration of martial law and insisted that the existing Rhode Island government did not satisfy the requirement in Article IV of the Constitution that states be provided a "Republican Form of Government." Attorney General Clifford appeared in the case on behalf of Martin Luther to argue that states had no power to order martial law. The Supreme Court on which he would one day sit ruled, however, that the resolution of the issues presented in the cases were political questions that must be decided by the political process rather than by the courts.
When he returned from Mexico to private life in 1849, Mr. Clifford settled in Portland, Maine, and set up a legal practice with John Appleton. His three years of service in the James Polk administration had made the private practice of law tedious, though, and he tried, without success, to return to public life by winning a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1850 and again 1853. The return of the Democrats to power with the election of Franklin Pierce as president in 1852 cast no political plums into Mr. Clifford’s lap, nor did his old friend James Buchanan immediately find a place for Nathan Clifford in his administration upon his election as chief executive in 1856. Only after Justice Benjamin Curtis resigned from the Supreme Court in the wake of the controversial decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), and after Mr. Buchanan had cast about without initial success for a replacement for the retiring justice, did the president finally remember Nathan Clifford. But the Senate that had unanimously confirmed Mr. Clifford as attorney general more than a decade earlier was much less enthusiastic about his nomination as an associate justice of the Supreme Court on December 9, 1857. Now his political opponents characterized him variously as "doughfaced," a Northerner with Southern sentiments; incompetent; or, at best, a political hack being rewarded for nothing more than loyal party service. In the face of such stiff opposition, he nevertheless won confirmation by a cliffhanging vote of 26-23 in the Senate.
In terms of historical significance, Mr. Clifford’s service as chairman of the commission appointed by Congress to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876 surpassed his service as a justice. Samuel Tilden, the Democratic candidate, had won a majority of the popular vote, but Republicans disputed whether he had also secured a majority in the electoral college over his Republican opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes. The commission, consisting of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, ultimately approved by a straight party-line vote an electoral count that certified Mr. Hayes as the winner of the presidential contest by one electoral vote. Justice Clifford duly communicated the result to Congress on behalf of the commission but declined to attend Mr. Hayes’s presidential inauguration. In fact, the disputed Republican victory apparently stiffened his resolve to hold onto his seat until a Democratic presidency assured him of a suitable replacement, even as the closing years of the decade saw his health fail. He had been eligible for full retirement since 1873, but he held his seat even after the election of Republican candidate James Garfield in 1880 ended Mr. Clifford’s hope of a Democratic replacement and a stroke the same year incapacitated him. Mentally and physically unable to serve any longer, Justice Clifford refused to relinquish his seat until his death in 1881, in Cornish, Maine, rendered the issue moot.
Nathan Clifford was a supporter of the Democratic Party of the United States. He voted with the conservative majority on most of the constitutional issues arising out of the Civil War.
While serving on President Polk’s cabinet, Mr. Clifford vigorously supported the president’s pursuit of the war against Mexico. He acted as an informal mediator between the president and Secretary of State James Buchanan over the president’s policy regarding the war, managing to remain on good terms with both. After Mexico surrendered, President Polk persuaded Nathan Clifford to resign his position as attorney general and undertake a mission to Mexico as a peace commissioner to ensure that the administration’s preferred terms of peace were met. What Mr. Clifford may have lacked in political brilliance he supplied in loyalty, and he agreed to undertake the dangerous mission, seeing it through to a successful conclusion.
Connections
Nathan Clifford married Hannah Ayer, the daughter of an influential family in the town. The match brought Clifford a good deal of business and, eventually, a sizable family.