Eugenius Aristides Nisbet was an American legislator, supreme court judge, and congressman. He was also an influential figure in both the secession movement and the Confederate government during the Civil War (1861-65).
Background
Eugenius Aristides Nisbet was born on December 7, 1803 in Greene County, Georgia, United States. He was the son of Penelope (Cooper) and James Nisbet, a physician who removed from North Carolina to Georgia in 1791, was a member of the convention that framed the constitution of 1798, and for twelve years served on the board of trustees of the University of Georgia. He was the descendant of John Nesbitt, whose father had emigrated to America from the North of Ireland and who, himself, changed the spelling of his name to Nisbet and removed from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to Rowan County, North Carolina, about 1741.
Education
The boy received an excellent education at Powelton Academy, at South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina), and at the University of Georgia, where he was graduated in 1821 with highest honors.
Career
He began to read law in the office of Judge Augustin S. Clayton but soon went to the law school established by Tapping Reeve and James Gould at Litchfield, Connecticut.
Returning to practise his profession, he obtained a special act of the legislature to admit him to the bar, since he was still under the legal age, an unusual procedure that provoked a spasm of opposition and brought him valuable publicity. He located at Madison in the Ocmulgee circuit, where, gifted in tongue, pen, and bearing, he met immediate success.
Nisbet was a member of the General Assembly for eight terms, two in the House, 1827-29, and six in the Senate, 1829-32, 1834, 1835. He was a follower of Troup, and later, like many of the Troup adherents, he became successively a member of the State-Rights, Whig, and Know-Nothing parties.
He was offered the chair of belles-lettres in the University of Georgia, and, later, in Oglethorpe College, a Presbyterian institution at Midway, of which he was one of the founders.
In 1837 his growing practice led to his removal to the larger center of Macon. The following year he was elected to Congress on the Whig ticket and in 1840 was reelected. He resigned before the expiration of his second term to assume the burden of a heavy debt for which, during his absence, his firm had become liable as surety. When the supreme court of Georgia was inaugurated in 1845, he, Joseph Henry Lumpkin, and Hiram Warner received the honor of selection as judges by the General Assembly. During the first difficult years of the existence of the court he contributed all the force of his vigorous mind. Of the opinions he wrote several are notable. In William Culbreath vs. James M. Culbreath and Daniel C. Culbreath he maintained, along a delicate line of reasoning, that there existed a well-defined distinction between ignorance of the law and a mistake in understanding the law and that the courts were bound to recognize such a difference; in Wiley Mitchum vs. The State of Georgia he held that a new trial should be granted because, in argument to the jury, counsel overstepped the rules of justice in commenting on facts not proven, and this opinion had the distinction of being used as the decision of another court without acknowledgment of the quotation. Resuming his law practice in Macon in 1853, he soon became, in cooperation with Benjamin Harvey Hill, a leader of the Know-Nothing party in Georgia.
To the secession convention that assembled in Milledgeville on January 16, 1861, he had been chosen as a delegate, though known as a Union man and an opponent of the Democratic majority in the state, and he proved an unexpected accession to the leadership of secession. On January 18, he proposed a resolution that it was the right and duty of Georgia to secede from the Union and to co-operate with such of the other states as had done or would do the same for the purpose of forming a Southern Confederacy, and that a committee be appointed to report an ordinance to assert the right and fulfil the obligation of the state. Notwithstanding the opposition of Herschel V. Johnson, Benjamin H. Hill, and Alexander H. Stephens, the committee was appointed. Nisbet, as chairman, drafted the ordinance of secession that was prepared by the committee and presented to the convention. In 1861 he was his party's candidate against Joseph E. Brown but was unsuccessful. He declined election to the provisional Congress of the Confederacy and continued to practise in Macon until his death.
Achievements
Nisbet introduced the committee report to the full convention and proposed the "unanimity of signature" rule, whereby, as a show of resolve, all convention delegates signed the ordinance regardless of their views on secession.
Views
Nisbet was known at this time for his support of education and of all liberal movements and for his literary ability.
Connections
On April 12, 1825, he married Amanda Battle, his boyhood sweetheart. Of their twelve children, five boys and seven girls, nine reached maturity.
