John Archibald Campbell

(b. Washington, Ga., 24 June 1811; d. Baltimore, Md., 12 March 1889; interred Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore), associate justice, 1853–1861. John Campbell was the son of a well‐to‐do and politically active Georgia landowner and lawyer of Scotch‐Irish descent. Reflecting his family's intellectual ability, Campbell enrolled at the University of Georgia at the age of eleven and graduated three years later with top honors. He began studying law in 1828 and was admitted to the Georgia bar the same year. Moving to Alabama in 1830, Campbell became involved in politics, serving in the state legislature from Montgomery in 1836 and from Mobile in 1842. His law practice also prospered, and he was acclaimed for his arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The death of fellow Democrat and native Alabaman justice John McKinley on 19 July 1852 provided Campbell the opportunity to join the Supreme Court himself. Lame‐duck Whig president Millard Fillmore could not satisfy the Democrat‐controlled Senate, despite sending three nominations. Consequently, the vacancy remained unfilled by the inauguration of Franklin Pierce, 4 March 1853. In an unprecedented display of judicial clout (and presidential impotence), the Court requested the president to nominate Campbell. On 25 March 1853, the forty‐one‐year‐old Campbell received the Senate's unanimous confirmation.

A states' rights Jacksonian Democrat, Campbell was nonetheless a moderate on the slavery issue. He commanded wide respect not only of the Court and Senate, but also of the public, possessing a hard‐earned reputation based on dedication, talent, and unswerving integrity.

While on the Court, Campbell often delivered powerful and eloquent dissents. In Dodge v. Woolsey (1856), for example, he opposed the Court's enlargement of federal jurisdiction over state‐chartered corporations. The state legislatures, he said, should regulate matters within the states, for they are the truer voice of the states' citizens. Accordingly, the Court should exercise judicial restraint by strictly construing the Constitution.

As the nation became polarized during the late 1850s, Campbell's position became increasingly untenable. His moderate stance on slavery alienated Southerners, while his proslavery opinion in the Dred Scott case outraged many Northerners. By 1860, Campbell found himself in the unenviable position of a moderate seeking accommodation between irreconcilable factions. He believed free labor would gradually and peacefully displace the less efficient “peculiar institution.” Secession, though possible, was therefore unwise and unnecessary.

Nevertheless, when war came and Alabama seceded, Campbell resigned from the Court on 26 April 1861, ever loyal to his home state. He served the Confederacy as assistant secretary of war, hoping somehow to bring about peace. But following Appomattox he was thrown into prison at Fort Pulaski for four months.

Upon his release at the order of President Andrew Johnson, Campbell went to New Orleans, where he established a prosperous law practice. His skill brought him before the Supreme Court time and again. In the Slaughter‐house Cases (1873), Campbell ably contended that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prevented state governmental encroachment upon economic liberty. Although his argument failed in a 5‐to‐4 decision, the Court reversed itself some twenty years later.

— Tony Freyer

For more information on John Archibald Campbell, visit Britannica.com.

Scots architect. He commenced practice in Glasgow with J. J. Burnet in 1886, and practised alone from 1897 to 1909 when he entered into partnership with Alexander David Hislop (1876–1966). Shawlands Old Parish Church, Pollokshaws Road (1885–9), is an essay in First Pointed, with a defensive street elevation and a dramatic north elevation facing Shawlands Cross in which parts of Dunblane Cathedral were quoted, but the Barony Church (1886–9— now the ceremonial hall of Strathclyde University) is a masterpiece of First Pointed, much influenced by the work of Pearson (who was adjudicator during the architectural competition) and again with quotations from Dunblane: in both of these Glaswegian works Burnet was deeply involved. On his own account Campbell designed the mighty office building at 157-67 Hope Street, on the corner with West George Street (1902–3), the great height of which relies on load-bearing masonry with cast-iron columns supporting steel beams spanning between internal brick piers. His last independent work was the office building at 84–94 St Vincent Street, Glasgow, the city's first steel-framed building, with a Portland Stone front.

Bibliography

• Das Werk
• Williamson, Riches, & Higgs (1990)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

John Archibald Campbell was a politician, a statesman, and an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court during the turbulent years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War.

Born June 24, 1811, in Washington, Georgia, the son of a prominent landowner and lawyer, Campbell was a child of exceptional intellectual ability. He entered Franklin College (now the University of Georgia) at the age of eleven and graduated at fourteen with high honors. He then entered West Point but he withdrew after three years to return home and support his family following the death of his father. He also studied law privately and in 1828, at the age of eighteen, he was admitted to the Georgia bar by a special act of the Georgia legislature. He then moved to Alabama, married, and practiced law, first in Montgomery and then in Mobile.

Widely known for his skilled arguments and his extensive knowledge of the law, Campbell quickly became a leading lawyer in Alabama. He turned down two appointments to the state supreme court, the first one offered to him when he was only twenty-four. An active Democrat, Campbell also found time for politics and, in 1836, he was elected to the first of two terms in the Alabama state legislature. He was a delegate to the Nashville Convention of 1850 which was convened to protect southern rights against what was viewed as the growing encroachment of the North, especially with respect to slavery. Campbell, known for his moderate views, prepared many of the resolutions adopted by the convention, which were conciliatory in nature and designed to avoid inflaming passions on the slavery issue.

Campbell was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court in March 1853 by President Franklin Pierce, the new Democratic president, after the Senate had previously refused to act on three candidates offered by the lame-duck president Millard Fillmore. The sitting justices of the Court had taken the unprecedented step of sending a delegation to the president to request that Campbell be nominated to the Court. Campbell, only forty-one at the time, was confirmed unanimously.

Campbell was, for the most part, a vigorous states' rights advocate while on the Court. In his dissent in Dodge v. Woolsey, 59 U.S. 331, 18 How. 331, 15 L. Ed. 401 (1855), for example, he argued against the Court's extension of federal jurisdiction over state-chartered corporations. Campbell believed that state legislatures should regulate such matters. However, Campbell displayed somewhat more moderate views with respect to slavery. He opposed secession and argued that slavery would eventually disappear on its own and be replaced by free labor if the South were left undisturbed. Upon his appointment to the Court, he freed all his own slaves and then hired only free blacks as servants. But Campbell was nevertheless widely criticized for his views, especially by northern abolitionists, when he joined the majority of the Court in the controversial Dred Scott decision. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 19 How. 393, 15 L. Ed. 691 (U.S. Mo. Dec. Term 1856), the Court held that blacks were not citizens of the United States, with the right to sue in federal court. In his concurring opinion, Campbell contended that the federal government had no choice but to recognize as property whatever the laws of the individual states determined to be property, including slaves. See also Dred Scott v. Sandford.

In 1861, Campbell served as an unofficial mediator between the federal government and southern commissioners seeking a resolution to the conflict over secession and slavery. Secretary of State William H. Seward, acting through Campbell but without the authority of the president, promised that Fort Sumter, South Carolina, then occupied by federal troops, would be evacuated. When it was instead reinforced, Campbell was accused of treachery by the southern commissioners.

When the Civil War later broke out and Alabama seceded from the union, Campbell remained loyal to his home state and resigned from the Court in April 1861. After returning to the South, he was appointed assistant secretary of war for the Confederacy. When the Confederacy collapsed in 1865, he was named to the commission at the Hampton Roads peace conference, which was convened to help bring about peace between the North and South. The commission failed to reach any agreement. Campbell again attempted to intervene to bring about peace, this time through a private meeting with President Abraham Lincoln, which resulted in an order allowing the Virginia legislature to convene to consider Lincoln's terms for reconstruction. Within a few days the South surrendered and Lincoln withdrew his approval of the meeting, claiming that Campbell had misconstrued the terms of the plan. After Lincoln's assassination Campbell was accused of treason and imprisoned for several months.

Virtually all Campbell's property and belongings in Alabama were destroyed during the war and after his release from prison he faced the prospect of starting over. He decided to settle in New Orleans, where he soon established another successful law practice along with a nationally renowned private law library. He appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in a number of significant cases, including the Slaughter-House cases, 83 U.S. 36, 16 Wall. 36, 21 L. Ed. 394 (1872). In the Slaughter-House cases, the Court considered the legality of a statute that granted a corporation chartered by the state of Louisiana the exclusive right to maintain within New Orleans all butcher shops, slaughter pens, stockyards, and stables. Campbell, though previously known for favoring the rights of states, argued that the law created a monopoly in violation of the recently adopted Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution. The Court, in construing the Fourteenth Amendment for the first time in its history, narrowly rejected Campbell's argument in a 5-4 decision that would be reversed twenty years later.

Campbell continued to practice law for another quarter century before withdrawing to a reclusive retirement in New Orleans. He died in 1889 at the age of seventy-seven.

For other persons of the same name, see John Campbell.

John Archibald Campbell
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office April 11 1853 – April 30 1861
Nominated by	Franklin Pierce
Preceded by	John McKinley
Succeeded by	David Davis
Born	June 24 1811(1811--) Washington, Georgia, U.S.
Died	March 12 1889 (aged 77) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.

John Archibald Campbell (June 24, 1811 – March 12, 1889) was an American jurist.

Campbell was born near Washington, Georgia, to Col. Duncan Greene Campbell (for whom the now-defunct Campbell County, Georgia was named). Considered a child prodigy, he graduated from the University of Georgia in 1825 at the age of 14, and attended the United States Military Academy for three years, but withdrew upon the death of his father and returned home to Georgia. He read law with former Georgia governor John Clark, and was admitted to the bar in 1829, at the age of 18 (this required a special act of the Georgia legislature).

Campbell later moved to Alabama, establishing a practice in Montgomery. There he married Anne Goldthwaite and, in 1836, was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives. In 1839 he moved to Mobile and resumed private practice, but was elected again to the state legislature in 1843. Campbell was twice offered appointment to the Alabama Supreme Court, but declined on both occasions.

Portrait of John A. Campbell

In 1852 the death of John McKinley created a vacancy on the Supreme Court. President Millard Fillmore, a Whig, made three nominations to fill the vacancy, all of whom were denied confirmation by the Democratic-controlled Senate. After the election of Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, a group of sitting Supreme Court justices approached Pierce to recommend Campbell as a nominee; this is one of the few times sitting justices have made recommendations for new nominations. Pierce, who was hoping to stave off insurrection by appeasing the South, agreed to nominate the Alabaman Campbell, and he was approved by the Senate in March of 1853.

Campbell strongly opposed secession, and in early 1861 served as a mediator between William H. Seward, Simon Cameron, and the three Confederate commissioners Martin Crawford, Andre Roman, and John Forsyth, Jr.. Campbell had been instructed that the Lincoln administration's policy was for peace and reconciliation, not war, but during the meetings Campbell learned that the U.S. government was reinforcing Fort Sumter and had requested 75,000 volunteers, and Campbell decided that he had been lied to.

Judge John A. Campbell

Facing this, Campbell resigned from the Court on April 30, 1861, and returned to Alabama. A year later he was named Assistant Secretary of War by Confederate president Jefferson Davis, a position he held through the end of the war. After the fall of Richmond in 1865, Campbell was arrested and imprisoned at Fort Pulaski, in Georgia, for six months. After his release, he was reconciled and resumed his law practice in New Orleans, Louisiana. In this private practice he argued a number of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court including the Slaughterhouse Cases and a number of other cases designed to obstruct Radical Reconstruction in the South.

Campbell served only eight years on the Supreme Court, though he remained in good health until his death in 1889 and could have served on the court for many years had the Civil War not intervened. He was regarded as a brilliant jurist.

Further reading

Michael A. Ross, "Obstructing Reconstruction: John A. Campbell and the Legal Campaign against Reconstruction in New Orleans, 1868-1873," Civil War History, 49(September 2003): 235-253.

References

• Data drawn in part from the Supreme Court Historical Society and Oyez.
• Justice John Campbell—Last of the Jacksonians, by Christine Jordan

Preceded by John McKinley

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States April 11, 1853 – April 30, 1861

Succeeded by David Davis

The Taney Court
1853–1857:	J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | P.V. Daniel | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | B.R. Curtis | J.A. Campbell
1858–1860:	J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | P.V. Daniel | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | J.A. Campbell | N. Clifford
1860–1861:	J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | J.A. Campbell | N. Clifford

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