(b. Eatonton, Ga., 17 Sep. 1825; d. Macon, Ga., 23 Jan. 1893; interred St. Peter's Cemetery, Oxford, Miss.), associate justice, 1888–1893. Few Americans have enjoyed as extensive and diverse a public career as L. Q. C. Lamar. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, he served in all three branches of the national government, first as a member of the House of Representatives and Senate, then as secretary of the interior, and finally as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Born into the plantation aristocracy of middle Georgia, Lamar developed a strong patrician code that emphasized tradition, region, and propriety. Those values especially influenced his decisions in public office. Law and politics dominated his career. Over time Lamar practiced, taught, wrote, enforced, and interpreted law. As a professor at the University of Mississippi, moreover, he pioneered the case method approach to legal education. Political influence came primarily from his father‐in‐law, Augustus Longstreet, a college president and avowed separatist. Lamar authored the Mississippi ordinance of secession and resigned from Congress just before the onset of the Civil War. Yet years later, the same Lamar stirred Congress with impassioned pleas for reunification, earning him the reputation as the “Great Pacificator.” His eulogy of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in 1874 is chronicled in Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy.

President Grover Cleveland in 1887 nominated his able interior secretary to fill the vacancy on the Court caused by the death of William B. Woods. Senate confirmation did not come easily. Opponents attacked Lamar on grounds of legal inexperience and advanced age, issues that shrouded partisan Republican politics. By a narrow vote of 42 to 38, Lamar took a seat on the high bench as the first southerner since his own cousin John A. Campbell (1853) and the first Democrat since Stephen J. Field (1862).

Lamar played a modest role on a Court faced with emergent issues of interstate commerce and state regulation of business. He almost always aligned with the majority, usually led by Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller. Until failing health limited his participation, Lamar wrote his fair share of assigned opinions. For the most part, however, he received inconsequential cases involving patent rights, land claim disputes, mortgage foreclosures, personal injury suits, and municipal bonds.

Arguably the most salient theme in his judicial philosophy emerged in three notable dissents involving the scope of national authority. In the landmark case of Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co. v. Minnesota (1890), that ushered in a era of judicial activism, Lamar joined in a steadfast dissent that legislatures, not courts, should determine the reasonableness of public policy (see Judicial Self‐Restraint). Months later in what some scholars consider his finest opinion, In re Neagle (1890), Lamar challenged the expansion of executive power. Without explicit statutory authorization, he reasoned, a United States marshal who had defended a federal judge by killing an assailant may not claim to have acted in an official capacity. And in Field v. Clark (1892), Lamar charged that Congress had unlawfully delegated to the president its legislative power to impose discretionary tariffs (see Delegation of Powers). In these and all cases, Lamar followed personal values refined by political experience.

Bibliography

• James B. Murphy, L. Q. C. Lamar, Pragmatic Patriot (1973)

— John W. Winkle III

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (1825-1893) was an American politician of the Confederate South. He later became a member of President Grover Cleveland's Cabinet and a Supreme Court justice.

Born in Putnam County, Ga., on Sept. 17, 1825, Lucius Q.C. Lamar was reared by his mother after his father committed suicide. He attended Emory College in Oxford, Ga., and married Virginia Longstreet, the college president's daughter. After studying law for 2 years, he taught mathematics at the University of Mississippi.

In 1852 Lamar returned to Covington, Ga., to practice law. He was elected to the state legislature as a Democrat. In Mississippi in 1855, he bought a large plantation with many slaves. He was elected to Congress in 1857, where he criticized Stephen Douglas's concept of "territorial sovereignty" as too compromising of the rights of slaveholders. However, with Jefferson Davis he counseled Southern extremists not to bolt the deadlocked 1860 Democratic convention.

In November 1860, following Abraham Lincoln's election as president, Lamar fought secession until the secession convention proved determined to leave the Union; thereafter, Lamar urged a strong Confederacy. He resigned from Congress in January 1861, and he fought for the Confederacy until he became ill. After his recovery he went to Europe to lobby for the Confederate cause.

When the war was over, Lamar reentered politics in order to "redeem" peacefully his state from integrated rule and to gain national support for this effort. With some blacks supporting his benign paternalism, Lamar won election to Congress in 1872 and spoke widely in the North in favor of ending sectional strife. His eulogy of Senator Charles Sumner and his politeness toward a black senator allowed him to lull Northerners, apprehensive of the white supremacists, into entrusting the blacks to Southern whites.

In Congress, Lamar played a leading role in the Compromise of 1877, by which the disputed Hayes-Tilden election was settled. Rutherford B. Hayes was made president in return for the promise of aid for the Texas and Pacific Railroad (linking the South and West) and the end of Northern involvement in securing rights for Southern blacks. It was this role that gained Lamar his fame in American history. Though the Civil War ended slavery, during Reconstruction the nation failed to define a satisfactory role for the freed slaves. The problem was referred to white conservative leaders of the South like Lamar, who were determined to maintain white supremacy. Thus the hopes of African Americans for equality were deferred, and the fears of another war over sectional racial disagreements were allayed.

Elected to the Senate in 1876, Lamar served until 1885, when he became President Grover Cleveland's secretary of the interior. In 1887 Cleveland appointed him to the Supreme Court - the first former Confederate named since the Civil War. Though Lamar's work on the court reflected high scholarly standards, it was not of major consequence. A widower in 1884, Lamar married Henrietta Dean Holt in 1887. He died in Macon, Ga., on January 23, 1893.

Further Reading

A judicious sketch of Lamar by Arnold Paul is in Fred L. Israel, The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1969, vol. 2 (1969). See also Edward Mayes, Lucius Q.C. Lamar: His Life, Times, and Speeches (1896; rev. ed. 1974), and W.A. Cate, Lucius Q.C. Lamar: Secession and Reunion (1935). On the Compromise of 1877, C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction (1951; rev. ed. 1956), is recommended.

• Born: Sept. 17, 1825, Eatonton, Ga.
• Education: Emory College, B.A., 1845
• Previous government service: Georgia House of Representatives, 1853; U.S. representative from Mississippi, 1857–60, 1873–77; U.S. senator from Mississippi, 1877–85; U.S. secretary of the interior, 1885–88
• Appointed by President Grover Cleveland Dec. 6, 1887; replaced William Woods, who died
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Jan. 16, 1888, by a 42–38 vote; served until Jan. 23, 1893
• Died: Jan. 23, 1893, Macon, Ga.

Lucius Lamar was a prominent leader of the Confederate States of America and wrote the state of Mississippi's ordinance of secession from the United States. In 1861 he resigned from the U.S. Congress to become a colonel in the Confederate army and fight against the Union in the Civil War. Years later, Lucius Lamar was called the “Great Pacificator” because of his efforts to reconcile the differences between Americans who had fought on opposing sides in the Civil War.

During the latter half of the 1800s, Lamar served in all three branches of the federal government: as a member of Congress, as the secretary of the interior, and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. His nomination to the Court by President Grover Cleveland was bitterly opposed by diehard foes of anyone associated with the Confederate cause. As a result, Lamar was narrowly confirmed by a Senate vote of 42 to 38. He was the first Southerner to take a seat on the Court since his own cousin, John A. Campbell, in 1853. During his brief term on the Court, Lamar tended to vote with the Court majority in opposition to strong state regulation of economic activity.

Sources

• James B. Murphy, L. Q. C. Lamar, Pragmatic Patriot (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973)

(lū'shəs kwĭntəs sĭn'sĭnăt'əs) , 1825–93, American statesman, b. Putnam co., Ga. He practiced law in Oxford, Miss., and sat (1857–60) as a Democrat in Congress. Although he at first opposed secession, Lamar drafted the Mississippi ordinance of secession. In Nov., 1862, he was appointed Confederate commissioner to Russia but was recalled from Paris before reaching Russia. He returned to the Army of Northern Virginia, in which he had previously served as lieutenant colonel of a Mississippi regiment, as a judge advocate. After the Civil War he resumed his practice at Oxford and taught at the Univ. of Mississippi. He was a U.S. Representative (1873–77), Senator (1877–85), and Secretary of the Interior in President Cleveland's cabinet from 1885 to 1888, when he resigned to serve (1888–93) as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. His efforts after the war to restore friendly relations between North and South brought him into particular prominence.

Bibliography

See biographies by E. Mayes (1896) and J. B. Murphy (1973).

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1888 to 1893. Lamar's public service, spanning almost fifty years, included both houses of Congress, the executive branch, and the Confederacy.

Lamar was born September 17, 1825, in Macon, Georgia, the son of a wealthy plantation owner. He graduated from Emory College in 1845 and then apprenticed in the law. He was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1847. In 1849 he moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he taught mathematics at the University of Mississippi.

He briefly returned to Georgia, where he served in the Georgia House of Representatives in 1853. He relocated to Mississippi in 1855 and began building his political career. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served from 1857 to 1860, relinquishing his seat with the secession of the southern states in 1861.

Lamar played an important role in the 1861 Mississippi Secession Convention. Although he had doubts about the theory of secession from the Union, he was influenced by his father-in-law, Augustus Longstreet, an avowed separatist. At the convention Lamar drafted the ordinance of secession, which declared Mississippi no longer a part of the Union. He joined the Confederate militia and served as a colonel in the Mississippi regiment. He also acted in various diplomatic capacities for the Confederacy, and from 1864 to 1865, he served as judge advocate of the Army of Virginia.

Following the war Lamar resumed his law practice and teaching career in Oxford. His teaching duties expanded to the University of Mississippi law school. In 1873 Lamar was again elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1877 he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1885 President Grover Cleveland appointed Lamar secretary of the interior.

In 1887 President Cleveland nominated Lamar to the U.S. Supreme Court. Republican opponents fought the nomination, arguing that Lamar lacked legal experience and that he was too old. The Senate narrowly approved his nomination, by a vote of 42-38, making Lamar the first southerner to join the Court since John A. Campbell in 1853, and the first Democrat since Stephen J. Field in 1862. He served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1888 to 1893.

Lamar's tenure on the Court was spent under the leadership of Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller. The Fuller Court reviewed the efforts of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce and curtail the power of monopolies and trusts. In most cases it agreed with business that the federal government had limited constitutional authority to regulate industry. Lamar concurred, adhering to a belief in the doctrine of federalism. This doctrine has many facets, including a fundamental assumption that the national government must not intrude on the power of the states to handle their affairs.

Lamar did not author any landmark majority opinions, as he generally received inconsequential cases. He joined in the dissent of Justice Joseph P. Bradley in Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad Co. v. Minnesota, 134 U.S. 418, 10 S. Ct. 462, 33 L. Ed. 970 (1890), which stated that legislatures, not courts, should determine the reasonableness of railroad rates and other public policy matters.

Lamar died January 23, 1893, in Vineland, Georgia.