Background
John Baxter was born on Match 5, 1819, in North Carolina, the son of Catherine (Lee) Baxter and William Baxter, an Irish immigrant, who came to Rutherford County in western North Carolina, where he accumulated a modest competence.
John Baxter was born on Match 5, 1819, in North Carolina, the son of Catherine (Lee) Baxter and William Baxter, an Irish immigrant, who came to Rutherford County in western North Carolina, where he accumulated a modest competence.
The only formal education John Baxter received was in the "old field schools. " To the last he had little taste for general reading and was markedly a man of slender education except in law.
John Baxter was first a merchant in a country town, and then after a brief study of law, rose to some prominence at the North Carolina bar. He was several times a member of the North Carolina legislature, and once speaker of the lower house. In 1844 he was district elector on the Henry Clay presidential ticket. In May 1857 he removed to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he soon attained leadership in the law. A Whig in politics, he was a slaveholder with strong sympathies for the Southern position, but was not a secessionist.
When the Civil War was drawing near, Baxter advocated in vain a convention of delegates from the Southern states for the purpose of considering means of saving the Union. Against secession he took the stump and made many bitter speeches, but later became more moderate. At a Union convention, held in Greeneville, East Tennessee, on June 17, 1861, it was proposed that a new state be formed which would raise an independent army with Baxter as general, a movement which was not successful on account of the encircling of the region by Confederate forces. For a time it seemed that Baxter might follow the state into the Confederacy, but in 1862 he was publishing a Union newspaper in East Tennessee. The same year he was arrested in Memphis and held in prison for several days as an enemy of the South. When he went back to Knoxville, he openly joined the Unionist sympathizers and was a thorn in the side of the Confederate cause.
After the Confederacy failed, Baxter tried in vain, with Thomas A. R. Nelson, to organize a new party, to occupy a middle ground between the Democrats and the Republicans. In the state constitutional convention of 1870 he was one of the few ex-Unionist delegates but in recognition of his learning in the law, he was made chairman of the important judiciary committee, and had much to do in framing the new constitution. At sometime between 1872 and 1875 he became a political follower of William G. Brownlow. He was now not only a leader of the East Tennessee bar, but was generally considered one of the best lawyers in the state and was engaged in most of the well-known cases which developed in the ten years following the Civil War.
Baxter was appointed United States circuit judge by President Hayes in 1877. As judge he made no notable decisions and wrote no notable opinions, but managed to simplify procedure in his court and used drastic measures to clear cases before him of technicalities.
John Baxter died at the age of 67 in Hot Springs.
John Baxter was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons (1842-1843, 1846-1848, 1852-1857).
John Baxter was a man of great native ability, assertive, self-reliant, and of marked individuality. He was fairly learned in the law and based his arguments, even in the more important cases, upon general principles. He was a good speaker with a rather harsh manner, who made bitter enemies and devoted friends.
On June 26, 1842, John Baxter married Orra Alexander.