Confederate judge impeached by the US – Tennessee’s West Humphreys

Impeachments of judges and justices don’t really happen all that much in our history. By 1862, only three impeachments had been successful – those of Judge John Pickering (1803), Associate Justice Samuel Chase (1804), and Judge James H. Peck (1830). It was probably with a degree of excitement that the trial of District Judge West H. Humphreys began in the US Senate in 1862.

Established by the Constitution in 1878 and the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Federal judicial system has three tiers – district, circuit, and supreme court. District courts lie (usually) within one state, and the judge for that court usually comes from that state. District courts can only hear cases that deal with federal statutes, the Constitution, or treaties. District court judges are appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and are lifetime appointments. 

 
Many Southern states were divided into more than one district. In Alabama, there was a northern and Southern District. William G. Jones was the judge (appointed by James Buchanan in 1850) of both districts within the state of Alabama. With the creation of the Confederate States of America, Jones resigned his judgeship, effective January 12, 1861, and went on to be appointed a district judge for the Confederate States by Jefferson Davis, serving until the end of the war. It seems that most of the Federal district judges resigned and were later appointed to the same post in the Confederate States by Jefferson Davis: Daniel Ringo (Arkansas); McQueen McIntosh (Florida); John C. Nicoll (Georgia); Theodore H. McCaleb and Henry Boyce (Louisiana – resigned US, neither served as Confederate judges); Samuel J. Gholson (Mississippi); Asa Biggs (North Carolina); Andrew G. Magrath (South Carolina); and James D. Halyburton and John W. Brockenbrough (Virginia). However, Judge William Marvin, Southern District of Florida, and Judge Thomas H. Duval, Texas, did not resign and continued to serve as Federal judges throughout the war years. 

 
Judge West H. Humphreys, Federal judge for both districts in Tennessee, also became a Confederate judge for the state of Tennessee. But it appears that Humphreys missed an important step. He did not actually resign his former job, and the Federal government impeached and convicted him for it.

Humphreys was born in Montgomery County, Tennessee in 1806. His father was a state judge. He attended Transylvania University and then read law. Humphreys was in private practice in Clarksville and Somerville from 1828 until 1839. In 1834, he was a member of the state constitutional convention. He was a member of the General Assembly from 1835 to 1838, Attorney General of Tennessee 1839 to 1851, and reporter for the Tennessee Supreme Court those same years. In 1853, Humphreys was nominated to fill the judge’s seat for the United States District Court for Tennessee by President Franklin Pierce.

On July 25, 1861, Jefferson Davis submitted to the Confederate senate the names of two men to be judges, including West H. Humphreys. Nothing really seems to come of Davis’s nomination of Humphreys. On March 26, 1862, Thomas Bragg again submitted the name of Humphreys to Jefferson Davis to be a district court judge. It appears that the senate confirmed Humphreys on March 29.

Word made its way back to Washington, D.C., that Humphreys had taken the position of a Confederate District Judge. The US House impeached Humphreys and appointed managers on May 7, 1862, to go to the Senate to try Humphreys for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

On May 8, 1862, the notification of Humphrey’s impeachment reached the US Senate. The Senate convened as a jury on May 22, with Vice President Hannibal Hamlin presiding. There were seven articles of impeachment. Those articles included public speaking “to incite revolt and rebellion” in Nashville, Tennessee, December 29, 1860; that in early 1861 Humphreys “together with other evil-minded persons within said State, openly and unlawfully support, advocate, and agree to an act commonly called an ordinance of secession”; in 1862 he “unlawfully, and in conjunction with other persons, organized armed rebellion against the United States and levy war against them”; disregarded his duties as a Federal judge by refusing to hold district court; deprived Andrew Johnson and John Catron of their property; and had William G. “Parson” Brownlow arrested. The Secretary then issued a summons that Humphreys appear before the Senate to answer these charges on June 9. The Senate then moved to postpone the trial until June 26. With that, the court adjourned.

The sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, George T. Brown, made his way to Nashville, but was unable to find Humphreys. (Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1862) The Senate published ads in three Washington, D.C., and one Nashville, Tennessee, newspapers, summoning Humphreys to the US Senate. The House managers presented their case, including a list of witnesses that included Jacob McGavock, William H. Polk, Horace Maynard, and William G. Brownlow. The witnesses were examined, and the articles of impeachment were gone through. Humphreys never made an appearance, and the Senate impeached him. Humphreys was removed from office and was disqualified from ever holding an office under the United States again.

Information on Humphreys for the remainder of the war is kind of sparse. There are a few mentions in Robinson’s Justice in Grey regarding a couple of cases, but Humphreys, like most Confederate judicial personnel, slips out of the pages of history. We do know that Humphreys was indicted for conspiracy against the government of the United States. Humphreys was able to resume his law practice in 1866, and continued to practice until 1882. He died on October 16, 1882, and is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Nashville, Tennessee.

The Strange Cases of William Marsh, Carter County, Tennessee

Louis Brown, in his book on the Salisbury Prison, has a long list of civilian prisoners incarcerated at the North Carolina stockade. One of those men listed is William Marsh. In 1860, Marsh was living in Elizabethton, Carter County, Tennessee, working as a hatter. Marsh was twenty-four years old, married to Ellen, with two children. They were all born in Virginia. His personal estate was only worth $50, so being a hatter was obviously not a lucrative job in mid-nineteenth-century Elizabethton.

In 1864, Marsh wrote Andrew Johnson, then serving as a representative of Tennessee in the United States Senate, explaining that he was once again “under the Stars & Stripes,” albeit by “peculiar circumstances.” Marsh explained that he was a friend of Dan Stover, took an active part of the 1860 presidential election, and was a member of the East Tennessee Convention. In September 1861, he visited his parents in Virginia, where he was arrested for disloyalty. He was first confined in Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, and then sent to the prison in Salisbury. Over the next nine months, Confederate officials repeatedly offered Marsh the opportunity to take the Oath, which he declined, until he felt he was “compelled to take it to save life as my constitution was fast giving way under the treatment received.” In July [1864?], Marsh stated he was “arrested” and sent to a regiment in John C. Breckinridge’s division. When he arrived with his regiment, Marsh was sick, and left at a house, “confined to my room with a fever.” He was afraid that once the troops returned, he would be arrested again, and wanted Johnson to do something to keep him out of the Confederate army. The letter is dated September 24, 1864, Valley of Virginia.

At some point, it appears that Marsh was captured by Federal forces. In October 1864, he was discharged from the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. He apparently got a job working at the wharf on G Street in Washington, D.C. It seems, maybe in his excitement over being released from confinement, he indulged a little too much one evening, and his employer found that he had dropped his copy of his Oath of Allegiance to the Confederacy. Marsh’s boss had hired Marsh, “a Confederate refugee… through sympathy.” The official wrote that Marsh swore he had not taken such an Oath (prior to losing his Oath). What happened after that point in time is unknown. [1]

There is a little more to story. William Marsh’s name appears on a list of “Union Men Confined at Salisbury, N.C.” in the New York Tribune, July 29, 1862. While there is no information with this article, there is a letter, in the Official Records, from Brig. Gen. James S. Wadsworth (US), written on August 10, 1862, stating that an article from the New York Tribune was being enclosed, and that Wadsworth was holding thirty Confederate citizens from the area between Fredericksburg and Washington, D.C., “as hostages.” [2]

What became of William Marsh? It seems that he hired himself as a substitute for John C. Wellbanks, and was mustered into Company C, 1^st Delaware Infantry. He was mustered in as a private on December 24, 1864, then promoted to sergeant on January 24, 1865. In June, he was promoted to second lieutenant and transferred to Company F. Marsh was mustered out of service on July 12, 1865.  Marsh apparently did not return to East Tennessee. He is listed on the 1870 US Census as a resident of Fort Chiswell, Wythe County, Virginia. It appears that his first wife, Ellen, passed in the previous decade. He was, in 1870, married to Susan V. Marsh and had four children at home. In 1880, he was in Surry County, North Carolina. According to a family history chart on Ancestry, William Marsh died on April 2, 1893, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and he was buried in the Bob Marsh Cemetery, Grayson County, Virginia.

Civilians arrested by the Confederate government for disloyalty is a seldom discussed topic. Mark Neely Jr., writes that there were at least 4,108 political prisoners arrested during the war.[3] It would be interesting to find additional information on Marsh, namely, what led to his arrest. Maybe those records will turn up one day.

 

 

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[1] Case Files of Investigations by Levi C. Turner and Lafayette C. Baker, 1861-1866.M797, Record Group 94, NARA. Some of Marsh’s records were microfilmed with those of Adam Mohr.

[2] Official Records, Series 2, volume 4, 368.

[3] Neely, Southern Rights, 1.

Pilfering Andrew Johnson's papers

   This next project, "Feeding the Army of Northern Virginia," has me reading a great number of letters, diaries, and reminiscences. Over the next few months, I'll probably be posting many shorter stories, things that I find interesting.

   A couple of days ago, I finished reading Last Order of the Lost Cause: The Civil War Memoirs of a Jewish Family from the "Old South." It was edited by Mel Young and looks at the Moses family of Georgia, most notably Maj. Raphel Jacob Moses, commissary on Longstreet's staff for part of the war.

   Longstreet and a portion of his corps spent the winter of 1863-1864 in east Tennessee, fighting Federals, some guerillas, and hunger pains. Moses left this story in his reminiscences:

Andrew Johnson

   "On another occasion in East Tennessee we stopped at Greenville, and I had my headquarters in the Capitol law library of Andrew Johnson, afterwards President of the United States, within site of his office, by the way, was in one of the side rooms of the Tavern. We were in sight of the little shop, still standing where Andy, as the Tennesseans called him, had his Taylor shop."

   "After leaving Greenville we went to Morristown, about fifteen miles, and while there I happened to mention a heavy box in Johnson's library, which was nailed up. Fairfax immediately 'snuffed, not tyranny but whisky, in the tainted air,' and exclaimed, "By George! Moses, why didn't you tell me before we left? Old Andy was fond of his 'nips,' and I'll bet that box was full of good old rye whiskey, and I mean to have it.' He immediately got a detail of soldiers and a wagon, and had the box brought to camp. When it arrived, Fairfax's eyes glistened with anxious expectation, soon followed by despondency, as on opening the box it contained, instead of old liquor, nothing but Andy Johnson's old letters and private papers..." (116-117)

   There the narrative ends. Did they leave the papers in Morristown? Were they used to start fires? Did Johnson ever get this box of papers back?

   The closest National Park to me having a strong war-time connection is the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greenville, Tennessee. I've been over there several times, and Johnson and some of his surviving papers were important in my own book, Kirk's Civil War Raids Along the Blue Ridge. I've always found Johnson's life interesting. He was not liked by the Democrats or Republicans once he became president upon the death of Lincoln. But I wonder what happened to those papers, not only his papers, but the reams of things lost during the war. Those stories told by the War Department clerks of the piles of burning documents in the streets of Richmond have always bothered me, as well as the county-level documents that were destroyed when the likes of George Stoneman rode through western North Carolina in early 1865. We would all be richer, historically speaking, if there had been a little more care taken with these pieces of the past.

A Refugee Crisis

When we think of refugees during the War years, Vicksburg always comes to mind. Residents in the besieged city were forced out of their homes, living in caves dug into the hillsides about the river town. The often told stories include civilians who lived on rats, dogs, cats, birds and mules, just trying to survive.

Yet the stories of refugees is far greater that just those told about the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River in Vicksburg. The War produced hundreds of thousands of refugees across the South (an estimated 200,000 in Virginia alone). The could be found coming from small towns, like Winston, North Carolina, the first town burned by Federal troops (February 1862). Larger locations, like Atlanta and Columbia, were put to the torch, while other areas were shelled so extensively there civilian populations chose to flee. Charleston and Petersburg come to mind.

There were of course, the more famous Southern refugees, like Mary Chesnut, Varina Davis, and the family of Leonidas Polk. Refugees were not confined to women either: North Carolina governor Zebulon Baird Vance became a refugee at war's end. He fled to Statesville, living not far from the Confederate Senator from Tennessee, Landon Carter Haynes, who became a refugee much earlier.

The war touching places was not confined to these larger districts: it came to the rural areas as well. Arizona Houston recalled that when Kirk's raiders passed through the North Toe River Valley area of present-day Avery County, North Carolina, her mother was forced to relocate to her parents house after losing everything they owned. Col. John B. Palmer's (58th NC) home, and possible another residents, were burned during the same raid. The raiders took everything they had. In neighboring Yancey County, the home of Melchizedek Chandler was robbed and his wife threatened with hanging. When Chandler returned, he abandoned his home and moved closer to the relative safety of Burnsville. One county further west, in the Laurel community of Madison County, came the story of Confederate soldiers forcing some families into one single home, and then torching the others.

Technically, unless the former owners agreed to keep their former slaves on as hired hands at the end of the war, 3.6 million slaves became refugees, with no place to go, no house to live, no jobs, and with very limited (marketable) skills. There were Unionist displaced as well, like the families of Andrew Johnson, Horace Maynard, and William G. Brownlow. They were escorted from the Confederate controlled East Tennessee and sent packing up north.

What got me to thinking along these lines was a recent reading of Letters from Lee's Army, by Susan Leigh Blackford and Charles Minor Blackford. Blackford commanded a cavalry company early in the war, and then served as an assistant judge advocate on Longstreet's staff. While these letters are very edited (much like Mary Chesnut's Diary), they contain some fantastic description of life during the war. On July 11, 1864, Blackford writes from Petersburg:

We are camped just outside of town... The whole country around here is filled with refugees from Petersburg in any kind of shelter, many in tents. Mr. Watkins is about a mile from here in a barn. His party consists of his wife and himself, Mrs. Hall, Miss Cary and all the children. They sleep on the barn floor.... Every yard for miles around here is filled with tents and little shelters made of pine boards, in which whole families are packed; many of these people [are] of some means and all of great respectability. There must be great suffering." (266)

Yael Sternhell argues that the massive amount of refugees the war created remade the South's social landscape. The War "challenged the laws and customs that governed movement in the antebellum years and subverted structures of power that determined which Southerners had the right to move at will and which did not." (Routes of War, 7) I would argue that scarcely any family in the South was not affected by the refugee crisis the war produced. They knew of people displaced by the war, took in people displaced by the war, or became refugees themselves. Those people that Blackford encounter living in tents, barns, and shanties outside of peoples in June 1864 were just a fraction of those dislodged during the 1860s.

Looking for James H. Lane's pardon

I really don't like unanswered questions. However, delving into the murky past provides me with scores, nay, hundreds of unanswered questions.  Writing the book on the Branch-Lane brigade is no exception. I would still like to know what flag was issued to the brigade on the eve of the Seven Days campaign. I'd still like to know just how far to the left the 33rd NC was at the battle of Second Manassas. Just why did Lane and some of his lieutenants go into the fight on the afternoon of May 12, 1864, unarmed? Maybe in time, I will find these answers. Nevertheless, this project is just about finished for me.

Of course, there are several instances where I have made some pretty good finds - like information on the role of the brigade on day two at Gettysburg, and Lane's personal observation about Appomattox. Some really good stuff you will not find in other places.

There is, however, one piece I am still seeking: James H. Lane's pardon.

Lane wrote his letter on July 10, 1865, from Matthews County, Virginia, the home of his parents. The letter is short, just one page.

"I respectfully make application for pardon under your amnesty proclamation of May 29, 1863, and ask to be restored to all the rights of a citizen of the United States. I entered the Confederate service from the State of North Carolina, and served as a Brigadier General in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States from the 1st of November 1862 to the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. I am without property and without money. My address is Norfolk, Va Care of Mr. William R. Hudgins."

There is just one other piece - on July 11, 1865, Lane went before the provost marshal and took the Oath of Allegiance. Missing is the date Lane was granted his pardon.

Lane, post-war, with cloth covering the buttons on his Confederate coat. 

In trying to find Lane's pardon, I came across an article entitled "The Soldier's Burden: A Study of North Carolina Confederate Officer Request for Amnesty." According to the article, US President Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction on May 29, 1865. Former Confederate soldiers were all pardoned, unless they fell into one of fourteen classes. Lane, serving as a brigadier general, was excluded and had to write the president, through the governor, asking to be pardoned. Lane should have sent his letter to North Carolina governor W. W. Holden, although nothing in the file indicates this.

There were thousands of applications that flooded into Washington City. Johnson was slow on pardoning Confederate officers. While there does not appear to be evidence that Lane ever did, other former Confederate officers frequently wrote friends in Washington City, inquiring about their application and asking for intervention.

President Johnson, in an attempt to speed up Reconstruction, pardoned all but men who fell into three classes on September 7, 1867. Men who had served as Confederate brigadier generals were still in the unpardoned class. On July 4, 1868, Johnson granted amnesty to all former Confederates, except a group of 300, who were under indictment in United States courts under the charge of treason or other felonies. Johnson issued his final mass pardon on December 25, 1868.

As far as I can tell, James H. Lane should have been pardoned on July 4, 1868. I've not found where he was under indictment, although he was once arrested and imprisoned at Fortress Monroe for incendiary speech. He was later released when it was discovered it was another man named Lane making the remarks.

But then again, I don't having anything that actually says Lane was pardoned on July 4, 1868. The search goes on.....