Background
Hornblower was born in Belleville, New Jersey in 1777. He was the twelfth and last child of Josiah and Elizabeth (Kingsland) Hornblower. His father was a native of England and a distinguished engineer.
Hornblower was born in Belleville, New Jersey in 1777. He was the twelfth and last child of Josiah and Elizabeth (Kingsland) Hornblower. His father was a native of England and a distinguished engineer.
Because Joseph was a frail and delicate boy, his early education was fragmentary. Such academic training as his health would permit was gained at Orange Academy.
In his sixteenth year he suffered a paralytic stroke which for a time seriously impaired his physical and mental powers. After a tedious period of convalescence, he became associated in business in New York with his brother-in-law, James H. Kip, a merchant. Business did not prove congenial to his tastes, however, and in 1798 he entered the law office of David B. Ogden in Newark. When Ogden opened offices in New York in 1800, Hornblower was placed in charge of the Newark office, although he was not admitted to the bar until 1803.
Native ability, coupled with untiring industry, grasp and knowledge of the law, honesty of purpose and integrity of character, soon placed him in the front ranks of his profession. He was elected to the legislature in 1829, but a strictly political office was apparently distasteful to his refined and sensitive nature. At any rate, he would not accept reëlection to that body. Following the death of Chief Justice Charles Ewing in 1832, the legislature elected him to fill the vacancy, in spite of objections to his appointment based upon his impulsive and emotional nature. Reëlected by the legislature in 1839 he served as chief justice for fourteen years.
The cases with which his name is most frequently identified are Stevens vs. Enders, 1833, which had to do with the law of remainders; State vs. Spencer, 1846 and State vs. The Sheriff of Burlington, decided March 4, 1836 (not published in the regular court reports, but discussed in detail by R. S. Field, post). In the Spencer case, the Chief Justice ruled, despite the prevailing doctrine to the contrary, that in a trial for murder a juror is not disqualified by previous expressions of opinion as to the guilt of the accused unless the opinion expressed was such as to indicate ill will or malice. The rule thus established has since been followed in New Jersey and has received the approval of jurists elsewhere. In the Burlington case a fugitive-slave case, the Chief Justice took a stand which is interesting in the light of subsequent events. He held: first, that if Congress had the right to legislate upon the subject of fugitive slaves at all, its jurisdiction was exclusive; second, that the Fugitive-Slave Law, enacted by Congress in 1793, which related to the surrender of slaves, being addressed to the states and conferring no jurisdiction upon Congress over the subject-matter, was unconstitutional.
In 1844 he was elected a delegate to the convention which framed the New Jersey constitution of that year. As chairman of the committee on the executive department, he took a leading part in its proceedings. He was especially instrumental in securing the adoption of a bill of rights, setting forth the so-called natural and inalienable rights of the individual. Hornblower hoped and believed that this provision would put an end to slavery in New Jersey, but his associates on the supreme court held that it had no such effect.
After retiring from the bench in 1846, Hornblower resumed the practice of law in Newark. He was the first president of the New Jersey Historical Society, serving 1845-64. In 1847, he was called to a professorship of law in the College of New Jersey (Princeton), but resigned in 1855 without having succeeded in building up a school of law.
In politics, he was first a Federalist, then a Whig, and finally a Republican. A strong believer in and supporter of the Union, he was president of the electoral college of New Jersey in 1860 which cast its vote for Lincoln and Hamlin.
He was twice married. His first wife, whom he married April 9, 1803, was Mary Burnet, daughter of Dr. William Burnet, Jr. , of Belleville, and granddaughter of Dr. William Burnet, member of the Continental Congress. She died December 18, 1836, and on March 9, 1840, he married Mary Ann Kinney, daughter of Maj. John Kinney of Speedwell, Morris County, who survived him several years. He had eight children, all by his first marriage. His youngest daughter, Mary, married Joseph P. Bradley, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
