Background

Peter Stenger Grosscup was born in Ashland, Ohio, United States on February 15, 1852, the son of Benjamin and Susannah (Bowermaster) Grosscup.

His great-grandfather, Paul Grosscup (probably of the family Grosskopf), was a colonial magistrate who served in the state constitutional convention of 1790 and in the Pennsylvania state legislature from 1792 to 1798.

Education

Peter Stenger Grosscup was prepared for college at Ashland and graduated in 1872 at Wittenberg College as valedictorian of his class. He graduated from the Boston Law School in 1873.

Career

After graduating from the Boston Law School in 1873, Peter Stenger Grosscup settled down in Ashland, where he practised law till 1883, serving as city solicitor during six years of that period.

In 1883 he removed to Chicago, where he became a law partner of Leonard Swett, who had been a law partner of Abraham Lincoln. During the eighties Grosscup took part in several important criminal cases in Chicago, namely, the Election Conspiracy of 1884, the Ker and Mackin cases and the Hoke Case at Peoria, but his practice was mainly civil, some of the more important litigation involving the Chicago University property, the Storey will case, and the Crawford, Webster, and Kean cases.

In December 1892, President Harrison appointed Grosscup district judge for the northern district of Illinois. He immediately gained a reputation as a judge learned in the law by his dissenting opinion in the case relating to the Sunday closing of the World’s Columbian Exposition, his view being upheld by the circuit court of appeals, of which Chief Justice Fuller was the presiding justice.

It was during the Chicago railway strike of 1894, however, that he sprang into national prominence and from that time on he was constantly in the public eye.

He and Circuit Judge William A. Woods had issued an injunction against Eugene V. Debs and other officers of the American Railway Union, restraining them from interfering with interstate commerce or the transmission of the mails.

When the injunction was disobeyed, and mob violence seemed imminent in Chicago, he joined with the district attorney and others in a telegram to President Cleveland calling for federal troops.

But not unmindful of the duties of his own office he immediately summoned a grand jury and delivered to them a charge, a classic in forensic English, which did much to restore public confidence in law and order and brought him a national reputation as a fearless judicial officer.

In January 1899, Grosscup was promoted to the circuit court of appeals and in 1905 was made presiding judge. It was while he was serving in that court that the case involving the Standard Oil Company of Indiana came before him, in which the court reversed the decision of District Judge K. M. Landis, who had fined the defendant $29, 240, 000 for accepting rebates as a shipper in interstate commerce.

Although the decision of the court was unanimous, Grosscup’s opinion drew a sharp attack in the press from President Roosevelt implying that the result was a miscarriage of justice, to which Grosscup replied that there was no more reason why he should take any notice of the President’s criticism than if it came from an ordinary citizen.

Grosscup also figured in other outstanding cases, important among which were the Chicago Union Traction Company cases; United States vs. James et ol. , involving the right of silence based on the Fifth Amendment; the Beef Trust Case; and the Western Union Telegraph Case, in which he chose “rather, to make precedent” in order to protect a news service not copyrightable.

His power of ready analysis and lucid statement, coupled with apt illustrations, served to give his opinions high rank in American judicial literature. Grosscup did not confine his activities to the bench, for he was an exceedingly able public speaker and writer and delighted in polemics. He delivered several notable addresses on public questions.

His debate with Carl Schurz on the subject of territorial expansion, at the Saratoga Conference of the Civic Federation in 1898, in which he took the affirmative, attracted attention throughout the country.

But his favorite theme on the platform and in the magazine columns was industrial consolidation. He contended with the constancy of a crusader that the control of trade by the corporations was inevitable and even desirable; that the evils arising therefrom could be prevented by reasonable regulation and a wide distribution of the shares, or a “peopleizing” of the corporations, which he believed was the surest method of combatting socialism.

In the Chicago Traction cases, he demonstrated that he was no doctrinaire and that he was capable of leading in the work of reorganizing and coordinating those intricate corporate and municipal interests, but his controversial temperament increasingly tended to impair his influence on the bench.

In 1907 he was indicted with the other directors of the Mattoon and Charleston Interurban Railway, following a wreck in which fifteen lives were lost. The indictment was quashed, but the affair gave added color to the charge, repeatedly made, that he was a tool of the corporations, based on his decisions in some of the corporation litigation and in the reorganization of the Chicago Union Traction Company.

He resigned from the bench in October 1911, though not until he had openly defied his critics to produce any evidence of misconduct in office on his part, offering to cooperate in any investigation into his judicial career and private business.

He gave as his reason for resigning his desire for more freedom as an individual and as a citizen to take his part in moulding public opinion.

Achievements

• Grosscup sprang into national prominence during the Chicago railway strike of 1894, delivering a charge to the strikers. He was an able public speaker and writer, delivered several notable addresses on public questions.

Works

More photos

• book

  • President Roosevelt's Railroad Policy

    (The Shelf2Life Trains & Railroads Collection provides a u...)

  • Celebration of Abraham Lincoln's Birthday: And Second Anniversary of Institution of General James Shields Council No; 967 Knights of Columbus, ... III., Tuesday, February 12, 1907, at 8 P. M

    (Excerpt from Celebration of Abraham Lincoln's Birthday: A...)

  • Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Revise the Statutes Relating to Patents, Trade and Other Marks, and Trade and Commercial Names, Under Act of

    ( The Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and Inte...)

  • Popular self-mastery: the duty of lawyers towards its promotion : an address delivered on the invitation of the faculty, before the graduating class ... at the annual commencement, June 9, 1897.

    (The Making of the Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 ...)

  • Celebration of Abraham Lincoln's Birthday and Second Anniversary of Institution of ...

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday and second anniversary of institution of General James Shields council no. 967

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The Supreme Court Decisions ...... - Primary Source Edition

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

  • The Supreme Court Decisions ......

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

  • A simple and sure solution of the transportation problem

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Trusts & national incorporation

Politics

Peter Stenger Grosscup became active in the Republican party and was the Republican candidate for Congress in 1876, but running in a Democratic district, he was defeated. Two years later, being thrown by reapportionment in the same district with William McKinley, he put the latter in nomination for the seat in Congress, to which he was elected. Grosscup was again defeated for Congress in 1880.

Later in life he continued his role of the stormy petrel, espousing the cause of the Progressives in the election of 1912, despite his former tilt with Roosevelt, and defending the Germans for their violation of Belgium’s neutrality; but when the United States entered the war he appeared at a public function in New York City on the platform with Joseph H. Choate and pledged his support to the President and the nation as a loyal citizen.

Personality

His power of ready analysis and lucid statement, coupled with apt illustrations, served to give his opinions high rank in American judicial literature. Grosscup did not confine his activities to the bench, for he was an exceedingly able public speaker and writer and delighted in polemics.

Connections

Grosscup was married on December 16, 1885, to Virginia Taylor, of Loudonville, Ohio, who died in 1899, leaving one daughter, Mrs. Frank Leslie Moon, who survived him.

Father:

Benjamin Grosscup

Mother:

Susannah (Bowermaster) Grosscup

Wife:

Virginia Taylor

Partner:

Leonard Swett

References

• President Roosevelt's Railroad Policy