Howell Edmunds Jackson was an American jurist and politician. He served on the United States Supreme Court, in the U.S. Senate, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Tennessee House of Representatives. He authored notable opinions on the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Background
Mr. Jackson was born on April 8, 1832, in Paris, Tennessee, United States. His father, Alexander Jackson, was a physician, and his mother, Mary Hurt Jackson, was the daughter of a Baptist minister. The couple had migrated from Virginia to Tennessee shortly after their marriage in 1830, and Howell Jackson was the first of two sons born to them. Eight years after his birth, his parents moved to Jackson, Tennessee, where his father served two terms in the state legislature and as mayor of the town from 1854 to 1856.
Education
After Howell Jackson’s early education in a preparatory school, he attended Western Tennessee College, from which he graduated in 1850, and then completed two more years of academic study at the University of Virginia. Afterward, he studied law for a year with Judge A. W. O. Totten, a relative on the Tennessee Supreme Court, and Milton Brown, a former congressman, before spending a year studying law at Cumberland Law School, from which he graduated in 1856.
The Civil War that soon intruded on the nation’s peace also intruded on Mr. Jackson’s legal practice. Though he opposed secession, he remained loyal to the South after war broke out. He did not take up arms for the Confederacy, but he accepted a post that called on him to oversee the liquidation of property confiscated from Unionists in his area of Tennessee. Later during the war, he sought a position as a Confederate military judge. Although he did not obtain this position, his interest in it was the first inkling of judicial aspirations that would one day earn him a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
After the war, Howell Jackson resumed legal practice in Memphis with Bedford M. Estes. He specialized in corporate and banking matters, and his partnership with Bedford Estes flourished. At the end of the Civil War, he was able to realize a long-held aspiration to become a judge. First, he obtained a position as a special judge to the Madison County chancery court, followed in 1875 by an appointment to the Court of Arbitration for West Tennessee. This temporary court assisted the Tennessee Supreme Court in resolving cases that had arisen from the Civil War. After it was dissolved, Mr. Jackson came within a single vote of gaining the Democratic nomination for a seat on the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1877.
The temporary frustration of Mr. Jackson’s judicial aspirations did not spell the end of his political career. By 1880 he had won a seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives. Within a few months, however, a far more prestigious political prize fell into his lap. James E. Bailey, incumbent U.S. senator from Tennessee, had surrounded himself with sufficient political controversy to scuttle his reelection prospects. In the ensuing scramble to find a candidate, Howell Jackson’s political moderation eventually made him an attractive compromise candidate for both Democrats and Republicans and secured him a seat in the U.S. Senate. The five years Mr. Jackson spent in the Senate were less important for any legislative initiatives he sponsored than for the relationships he forged there. He sat beside Indiana Republican senator Benjamin Harrison, and the two men formed a relationship that would one day place Mr. Jackson on the Supreme Court. More immediately, however, he formed a cordial relationship with President Grover Cleveland. In 1886, toward the end of his term in the Senate, President Cleveland solicited from him names of possible candidates for an appointment to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Set on appointing a Tennessean to this position, the president eventually rejected the candidates Mr. Jackson suggested and persuaded Howell Jackson himself to accept a seat on the federal appeals court.
In all, Howell Jackson served seven years on the federal circuit court. He demonstrated a meticulous mind, adept at wading through the details of contracts and patent cases that formed a large part of his docket as an appellate judge, though not at crafting concise and interesting opinions in these cases. During his years on the circuit court, Mr. Jackson also cemented a friendship with a federal district judge in Michigan, Henry Billings Brown. This friendship proved fortuitous for both judges since each assisted the other in obtaining a position on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jackson served on the Sixth Circuit until 1893, when President Benjamin Harrison, despite the difference in their respective political parties, nominated him to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States upon the death of Lucius Q. C. Lamar. His nomination was non-partisan, and was announced on February 2, 1893. He was confirmed 16 days later by a unanimous Senate vote at the age of 60. Howell Jackson wrote 46 opinions and four dissents during his service.
At the end of the Civil War, Howell Jackson became a Democrat. He supported issues such as civil service reforms, creation of an Interstate Commerce Commission, and restrictions of Chinese immigration.
Connections
Mr. Jackson came into contact with Sophia Malloy, the daughter of one of the firm’s banking clients. They formed their own marital partnership in 1859. Together the couple would have six children. Tragedy struck, however, in 1873 when an epidemic of contagious diseases descended on Memphis and claimed Sophia’s life. Following the loss of his wife, Mr. Jackson returned to Jackson, Tennessee, where he formed a new law partnership with General Alexander Campbell. He soon remarried, to Mary E. Harding, whose father, General W. G. Harding, divided his 3,000-acre plantation and stock farm between his two daughters and their families. Howell Jackson and his wife took over part of the plantation while his wife’s sister - fortuitously married to Mr. Jackson’s brother - assumed control of the remaining portion of the plantation.