Warwick Hough was an American lawyer, soldier, and judge.
Background
Warwick was born in Waterford, Virginia, in 1836, the son of George W. and Mary (Shawen) Hough, both natives of Loudoun County, Va. He was a descendant of Richard Hough, of Cheshire, England, who settled in Pennsylvania in 1683. The family moved to Missouri in 1838, settling in Jefferson City, the capital of the state.
Education
After graduating from the University of Missouri, Hough became chief clerk to the secretary of state at Jefferson City, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1859.
Career
From 1858 to 1861 he was secretary of the Missouri Senate. In January of the latter year he was appointed adjutant-general of the state, then a position of importance, because Gov. Claiborne Jackson was determined to maintain the doctrine of state rights, by arms if necessary.
After the outbreak of the Civil War, there were two contending state governments in Missouri, the secessionist government of Jackson, supported by the state legislature, eventually recognized by the Confederacy, and the anti-secessionist government of Provisional-Gov. Hamilton R. Gamble, supported by the state convention and recognized by the federal authorities. Accepting the economic principles of the agricultural section of that part of the state in which he lived, the fertile Missouri Valley with large estates and slave labor, Hough adhered to the secessionist government, serving part of the time in the field with the state army under Gen. Sterling Price and part of the time as secretary of state.
When the secessionist government of Missouri was overthrown, Hough went south, was commissioned a captain in the Confederate army, and served until his surrender in May 1865. For the next two years, 1865-67, he practised law in Memphis, Tenn. , but after the drastic test-oath requirement for practicing certain professions in Missouri was nullified by the Supreme Court of the United States, he returned to Missouri and for several years was an active member of the bar of Jackson County. Elected judge of the supreme court of Missouri in 1874, he served a full term of ten years, being chief justice for two years.
From 1884 until his death he lived in St. Louis, where except during the years from 1900 to 1906, when he served a term as judge of the circuit court, he enjoyed a lucrative law practice. Always proclaiming himself faithful to the doctrine of state rights, Hough, after the war, by common sense and judicial temperament reduced the doctrine to a theory reminiscent of sectional loyalty instead of a practical program of political action. In 1881, during his judgeship on the supreme court, he concurred in a decision holding that state courts must respect as valid a judgment of a federal court against a municipality on its bonds, declining to dissent with one of his colleagues whose rhetorical dissenting opinion is an echo of ancient Missouri hostility toward federal power.
Achievements
Connections
In 1861 Hough married Nina Massey, a Missourian of Virginia ancestry, who with their five children survived him.