Background
John Erskine as born at Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland. At an early age he was taken by his parents to St. John, New Brunswick, where his father soon died.
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John Erskine as born at Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland. At an early age he was taken by his parents to St. John, New Brunswick, where his father soon died.
The family then moved to New York City and John lived there until he was about fourteen years old, when he returned to Ireland to be educated by relatives.
In his eighteenth or nineteenth year he went to sea.
He had an inquiring mind and a retentive memory, and from his many voyages he acquired an unusual amount of information concerning the various countries and peoples of the world.
This, coupled with extensive reading throughout his life, contributed no doubt to the breadth and tolerance of his character.
He loved the sea, but when he was twenty-five lung trouble forced him to abandon so rigorous a life, and, seeking a mild climate, he went to Florida.
He was admitted to the bar at the age of thirty-three, and his success as a lawyer was almost immediate.
In 1855 he moved to Georgia where he lived, first in Ncwnan, then in Atlanta, for the rest of his life.
He strongly opposed secession, but because of his tact and moderation he did not lose the friendship of those about him.
To free him of the necessity of engaging in the conflict, Governor Brown of Georgia gave him a civil appointment under the state government.
He held this position until 1882 when the state was divided into two federal judicial districts and Erskine was assigned to the southern district.
He served there a year when, having reached the age of seventy, he retired.
Erskine served through the Reconstruction period, and in the discharge of his judicial functions he had to declare void the Confederate statutes under which debts due Northern citizens had been confiscated, and to make other unpopular rulings, yet so great was public confidence in his integrity and fairness that he entirely escaped the obloquy then attached to federal office-holding in the South.
Moreover, many of his decisions were of practical helpfulness, as, for example, his ruling that the act of Congress forbidding ex-Confcderate soldiers to practise law was unconstitutional (ex parte William Law, 35 Ga. , 286) ; and he aided in preserving racial purity in the South by upholding the right of the state to forbid miscegenation (Hobbs alias Johnson).
None of these decisions of his was reversed.
In a case of first impression he decided that the federal legal tender acts were constitutional.
The Supreme Court of the United States in another case later held to the contrary (Hepburn vs. Griswold, 8 Wallace, 603), but they finally reached Erskine’s conclusion, and reversed themselves (see Legal Tender Cases, Knox vs. Lee and Parker vs. Davis, 12 Wallace, 457).
There can be little question that because of his fair and sympathetic attitude toward a conquered people he aided in making Reconstruction less irksome in Georgia than it was in some of the other Southern states.
admitted to the bar at the age of thirty-three
He was a kindly man, with a keen sense of humor, and was widely beloved. He had an inquiring mind and a retentive memory, and from his many voyages he acquired an unusual amount of information concerning the various countries and peoples of the world.
In 1851 he married Rebecca Smith, a daughter of Gen. Gabriel Smith of Alabama.
