Arthur Francis Hopkins was an American lawyer and politician. He served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, and president of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad.
Background
Arthur Francis Hopkins was born on October 18, 1794 in Danville, Virginia, United States. He was the son of James and Frances (Carter) Hopkins. Through his paternal grandmother he was related to Thomas Jefferson; his father served in the patriot army during the Revolutionary War.
Education
Hopkins was educated at several different private academies in Virginia and North Carolina and attended the University of North Carolina, but did not graduate. He studied law under William Leigh of Halifax County, Virginia.
Career
Hopkins was admitted to the bar on March 28, 1814, in Bedford County, Virginia. In 1816 he went to Huntsville, Alabama, where he became a successful practitioner and acquired a reputation for effectiveness in appeals to juries.
Throughout his life he had a wide variety of interests. He not only practised law, but he became a large land owner, controlling plantations in Alabama and Mississippi. He accumulated a considerable fortune through speculation in real estate, and ten years before his death he gave up his law practice to become the president of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad.
He was one of the authors of the "Address of the Committee of the Whig Convention to the People of Alabama" in 1840 and was on the Harrison electoral ticket in that year. In 1844 he was the temporary chairman of the Whig national convention.
He was a member of the first constitutional convention in Alabama in 1819 and a member of the state Senate from 1822 to 1824 inclusive. Here he attracted attention by his opposition to the establishment of a state bank. In 1834 he was elected to the supreme bench of the state by a Democratic legislature. His colleagues elected him chief justice, but he resigned the office within a year to become the candidate of his party for the United States Senate. He was a candidate in 1844 and again in 1849, after which year until the outbreak of the Civil War he gave his attention chiefly to his private affairs. In 1861 he served as Alabama's commissioner to Virginia to arrange for cooperation in secession. During the war he was state agent for Alabama hospitals. He died at Mobile.
Achievements
Religion
Hopkins was a Presbyterian.
Politics
Although Hopkins was related to the family of Thomas Jefferson, he was throughout his life an active opponent of the political principles of that great leader. In his young manhood he was an ardent supporter of Alexander Hamilton; in his later years he was an admirer of Henry Clay, and became the acknowledged leader of the Whig party in Alabama. Although he was politically ambitious and frequently the candidate of his party, his views were so at variance with those of most people of his state that he was rarely elected to public office.
Connections
In 1815 Hopkins married Pamelia Thorpe Moseley, who died in 1852. He was married again in 1854 to Juliet Ann Opie. He had fourteen children, six of them died in infancy. Later he also adopted one daughter, Juliet Butcher.