Background
Luther Hall was born on August 30, 1869, near Bastrop, Louisiana, United States, the only son of Bolling Cass and Antoinette (Newton) Hall. His father, a planter, traced bis ancestry back to seventeenth-century Virginia.
Luther Hall was born on August 30, 1869, near Bastrop, Louisiana, United States, the only son of Bolling Cass and Antoinette (Newton) Hall. His father, a planter, traced bis ancestry back to seventeenth-century Virginia.
Since his family was only fairly well off, young Hall occasionally went into the fields between terms in the Bastrop public schools. At sixteen he spent a year at Tulane University, but graduated, in 1889, at Washington and Lee, with valedictory honors. During a year’s interruption in his course he studied law in Bastrop. He returned to Tulane in 1892 for his degree of LL. B. , and was immediately admitted to the bar.
After attempting to practise in Alexandria, Louisiana, Luther Hall returned to Bastrop and became the partner of Judge George Ellis. He soon, however, entered the firm of his uncle, Churubusco Newton, and here founded his distinguished legal career.
From 1898 to 1900 Hall filled the unexpired term of State Senator Baird. His election as judge of the 6th congressional district in 1900 and his reelection in 1904 brought about his removal to Monroe, Louisiana. In 1906 he was chosen judge of the court of appeals for the northern district of Louisiana, a position covering nine parishes. His continued rise culminated in his election to the supreme court of Louisiana in 1911.
Meanwhile Democratic politics in Louisiana fostered such flagrant bossism that an independent Democratic Good Government League was formed in 1911 under John M. Parker’s leadership. Although by temperament and training judicial rather than executive, moved by his fidelity to duty as he saw it, Hall resigned from the supreme court in 1912, without having actually served, in order to become the League’s gubernatorial candidate. John T. Michel, thirteenth-ward boss of New Orleans, and James B. as well, state superintendent of schools, were both running for the Democratic nomination, but after an extensive tour of the parishes, Hall won the Democratic primary and thus the assurance of election.
Hall was inaugurated on May 20, 1912. Most of his twenty-five platform pledges were redeemed at the first session of the legislature. In his main battle, however, which was the fight for reassessment of taxation to increase state revenue without further burdening the small property holder, he was defeated.
After four stormy years in the governorship, he removed to New Orleans in 1916 to practise law. He became assistant attorney-general of Louisiana in 1918, in which year he was defeated for the United States Senate by E. J. Gay. In August 1921 he was defeated for the Democratic nomination to the supreme court of the state; but asserting that his opponent was not legally qualified, he waged a bitter fight to secure from the courts recognition of his own nomination. His death occurred in the midst of this contest.
Luther Hall is best remembered as the 35th Governor of Louisiana, which position he held from 1912 to 1916. Improved levees, port development for New Orleans, a conservation commission, reduced executive patronage, public schools freed from politics, and a bonding of the state debt were some of the accomplishments of his administration.
On November 23, 1892, Luther Egbert Hall married Clara Wendell of Brownsville, Tennessee, who born him two children.
