Chapel Hill, NC, United States
Pearson graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1823.
Chapel Hill, NC, United States
Pearson graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1823.
Richmond Mumford Pearson was born on June 28, 1805, in Rowan County, North Carolina, United States. His father, Richmond Pearson, who moved from Virginia to North Carolina after serving in the Revolution, was a planter and merchant. His mother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Robinson Mumford, of Connecticut parentage, a descendant of Elder William Brewster who had settled in North Carolina after a period in Jamaica.
Pearson attended schools in Washington, D.C., and Salisbury, North Carolina before graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1823.
Richmond Mumford Pearson began in 1829 four successive terms in the House of Commons. In 1835 he was defeated for Congress, and in 1836 was elected a judge of the superior court. During the next twelve years, he gained a reputation as an unusually able and efficient trial judge. In 1848, although a Whig, he was elected associate justice of the supreme court by a Democratic legislature. Ten years later he became chief justice. In 1865 he was defeated for the "Johnson" convention, by which all offices were vacated, but he was at once reëlected chief justice, and in 1868, the existing government having been overthrown by congressional reconstruction, he was the choice of both parties for the same position, which he held until his death from apoplexy in Winston while on his way to a session of the court.
In 1836 Richmond Mumford Pearson established a law school at Mocksville. He moved to Richmond Hill in Surry County in 1848 and continued the school there. He proved himself a really great teacher, and more than a thousand students read law under him, whom he filled with enthusiasm for the subject and with lasting personal affection for himself. Three of them were later on the supreme bench with him.
In 1868 Richmond Mumford Pearson identified himself with the Republican party, published an appeal for Grant's election, and in other ways was active politically. When the bar under the lead of B. F. Moore signed a protest against the political activity of the judges, he was the prime mover for disabling the signers from practice and did not thereby add to his legal reputation. In 1870 when the Kirk-Holden war occurred, he issued the writ of habeas corpus for those illegally held, but, forgetting his favorite legal maxim, fiat justitia, ruat coelum, which he had uttered so often in 1863 and 1864, Richmond sustained the governor, William Woods Holden, to the extent of refusing to summon a posse comitatus to enforce the writs, but, instead, declared the power of the judiciary exhausted. When the collapse of the movement came, he was pathetically fearful of impeachment. He engaged counsel and prepared a defense which he submitted to the Senate only to have it rejected. He was not impeached, however; largely, it is supposed, because of the influence of his former students. Mumford presided with outward impartiality in the impeachment trial of Holden, but his sympathies were naturally with the Governor and he privately advised his counsel as to their conduct of the case.
Richmond Mumford Pearson was known for his twenty years of service as Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Pearson is best remembered for his supreme court opinions, which reflect his learning in the law, his keen intellect, the strength of his convictions, and his ability to penetrate quickly to the heart of a question. He used many everyday, down-to-earth illustrations in his opinions and expressed them with clarity and forcefulness.
Pearson, a staunch Federalist, and old-line Whig had previously opposed the nullification movement of the 1830s, and that he had similarly set his face against the secession movement and the dissolution of the Union. After the American Civil war, he became Republican.
Comparison of Pearson with Thomas Ruffin, his great predecessor, is almost inevitable. Inequity Pearson did not approach him, but in the common law, he was certainly Ruffin's equal, if not his superior. Certainly, too, Pearson was more original. During the Civil War, Pearson incurred great unpopularity throughout the South by his decisions in habeas corpus proceedings growing out of the conscription laws, which his critics declared were designed to injure the Confederate cause. His whole conduct in the matter shows his disregard for precedents and for the opinion of others, but his rulings were in accordance with the law and were upheld by his colleagues until in Gatlin vs. Walton, a case involving the power of Congress to change the terms of the exemption, he was overruled. His dissenting opinion is notably weak. He opposed secession on constitutional and moral grounds, and he had no love for the Confederacy, but there was about him no taint of disloyalty toward his state. More open to criticism, however, was his conduct during reconstruction.
Richmond Mumford Pearson was a good lawyer, not eloquent, but painstaking in preparation of cases. His presentation of them was simple, logical, and, as he would have phrased it, "full of meat." Pearson was plain and simple in manner, with a touch of the rough and uncouth, which many thought he cultivated. Richmond Mumford Pearson had no high degree of culture, was cold and stern in temperament, inclined to be unforgiving in disposition, and was relentless in his determined ambition. For many years Pearson drank to excess. Cold in temper though he was, in intellect he was blazing. Richmond Mumford Pearson had strong native powers of mind, and, never a wide reader, achieved his intellectual development through reasoning.
As a judge, while a master of the common law, Richmond Mumford Pearson cared little for precedents. He grasped principles firmly and recognized the most delicate distinctions. A striking characteristic was his ability to cut through the artificial and irrelevant matter in a case and reach directly the matter at issue. His style was terse and pithy, baldly unadorned, clear and strong, and his opinions abounded in homely illustrations drawn from every-day life. All his opinions reflect the clarity of his thinking, the grasp of his subject and the law applicable to it, his power of logical analysis and deduction, and his strong personality.
Richmond Mumford Pearson was twice married: on June 12, 1831, to Margaret McClung Williams, daughter of Senator John Williams of Knoxville, Tennessee. The marriage had produced ten children. Eight of these children were alive at the time of their mother's death, but only three survived past their father's death some twenty-two years later.
In 1859 after the death of his first wife, Pearson married Mary McDowell, widow of John Gray Bynum.
1751-1819
1771-1845
1849-1862
1843-1904
1776-1834
1778-1823
1807-1848
1808-1849
1797-1878
1839-1862
1852-1923
1814-1855
1848-1870
