Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court During the Civil War Era

Justice Miller And A Changing America

The evocatively titled "Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court during the Civil War Era" (2003) by Michael Ross is a biography of a leading American Supreme Court Justice and a legal and political history of the United States from the Civil War through Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. The author, Michael Ross, associate professor of history at Loyola University, New Orleans, received his law degree from Duke and practiced corporate law briefly before changing his career direction and earning a PhD in history. His changing direction bears a resemblance to that of his subject. Samuel Miller practiced medicine for several years before studying law. Miller became a successful attorney before President Lincoln appointed him to the Supreme Court without even meeting him in person.

As Ross points out, Miller (1816 -- 1890) and Lincoln shared similar backgrounds. Both men were born in rural Kentucky to poor families. Miller, as did Lincoln, decided early in life that he wanted to escape from a life of grinding agricultural poverty. After winning the opportunity to study medicine, Miller moved to a small Kentucky town, Barbourville, which he thought, mistakenly, had a great future ahead of it. During his Barbourville years, Miller became a lawyer. When the community became economically depressed, Miller moved with his family to another town, Keokuk, Iowa, on the Mississippi River which, again, he thought destined for large growth. Highly ambitious, Miller wanted to rise and become wealthy and respected. He accumulated property and a thriving legal practice, and he remarried following the death of his first wife. Keokuk, however, became the victim of an 1857 depression and the growth Miller anticipated failed to materialize. Miller became active in Republican Party politics and an early supporter of Lincoln. While not an abolitionist, he opposed the entry of slavery into the territories. Miller, as did Lincoln, saw Republicanism as the party of opportunity, which allowed every individual to rise as far as ambition, talent, and work would allow.

In 1862, Miller became the second of Lincoln's five appointees to the Supreme Court. He served 28 years and was still on the bench at the time of his death in 1890. Lincoln's Court appointees all were strong supporters of Union and of Lincoln's war policies. Beyond that, the Justices differed substantially. As Ross points out, Miller had certain populist strands in his thinking that might not have been Lincoln's. Other long-serving Lincoln appointees, such as Justice Stephen Field, did not share Miller's populist orientation.

Ross' book goes relatively lightly on Miller's personal life. It concentrates instead on his work on the Court and on the changes in America during Miller's long judicial service. Ross describes the course of Supreme Court jurisprudence from the Civil War, where Miller was a solid voice in support of Lincoln, through the difficulties of Reconstruction, through the growth of corporate America. Ross examines Miller's work during his early years on the Court focusing on his views on the conduct of the war and on civil liberties. The larger part of the book deals with the impact of the Court's decisions on Southern Reconstruction and with the Court's emerging views on economic regulation and on what attorneys call substantive due process.

Miller's most famous decision, still studied at length by scholars and law students, is the "Slaughter-House" case decided in 1873, which became the leading case on interpreting the scope of the 14th Amendment. Miller sustained an act by a Reconstruction-constituted local government to require that livestock be taken to a facility located outside the city of New Orleans for butchering, rather than to have the process done randomly throughout the city streets. He read the 14th Amendment narrowly to reject the claims of the butchers. There is strong language in Miller's opinion about the Amendment's role in protecting the role of the Freedpeople (as opposed to the businesses challenging the local law in the case.) But Miller's decision became known for eviscerating the 14th Amendment and for limiting its use for many years in protecting the rights of the former slaves. Ross discusses the many ambiguities in this celebrated case and in Miller's majority opinion. He also discusses several other Reconstruction-era cases and activities, including Miller's role in the disputed presidential election of 1876 which brought an end to Reconstruction.

The other focus of Ross' study is economics and business. While in Iowa, Miller had taken cases against the railroads and other large creditors. He sought, usually unsuccessfully, to have municipalities such as Keokuk repudiate or readjust bond debt which could not be repaid due to economic depression. During his tenure on the Court, Miller remained highly critical of legal attempts to protect bondholders at the expense of other interests. He also became disillusioned with large-scale Eastern capitalism. Miller never abandoned the commitment to the entrepreneurial, individualistic spirit of his youth. He came to believe that the concentration of wealth in a few hands was stifling to the individual spirit. Miller wrote extensively on economic issues during his years on the Court, most of the time in dissent.

For Ross, Miller is a Justice of "Shattered Dreams" because the United States when Miller died in 1890 was a far different country from the United States of 1816. While no egalitarian, Miller's dreams for Reconstruction were shattered when the Federal government withdrew from its role in protecting the Freedpeople and the state governments proved hostile to their rights. Miller's dreams for growth were shattered. He saw an America of small towns and entrepreneurs rather than an America in which the Court became the protector of conservative, corporate capitalism. According to Ross, Miller became pessimistic about his own course and about the course of the nation in the latter years of his life and judicial career.

Ross has written a moving, fascinating book about Justice Miller, the Court, and American history. It is a scholarly study which demands close reading and some prior background in American history during the second half of the Nineteenth Century. The book will appeal to readers with a strong interest in American history of the Reconstruction Era. Lawyers interested in legal history will also benefit from this book. Samuel Miller was a robust, intelligent person and a great Supreme Court Justice. His accomplishments and failings are worth getting to know.

Robin Friedman