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After the death of Chief Justice Chase, President Grant appointed another attorney from the Sixth Circuit to succeed him--Morrison R. Waite of Ohio. Unlike his predecessor, the Seventh Chief Justice of the United States brought with him to the Supreme Court little background of experience in public office when he assumed his new duties on March 4, 1874.
Son of a Chief Justice of Connecticut, Waite was born in Lyme, Connecticut, November 27, 1816. He graduated from Yale College, studied law in the office of his father, then moved to Maumee County, Ohio, near Toledo, and studied law under Samuel M. Young. As a practicing attorney at Toledo, he abhorred slavery and was a strong opponent of secession. He declined an appointment as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio.
Although a successful Toledo lawyer, associated with leading law firms in Eastern financial centers, he was not well known outside the circles of his profession. He was strictly a business lawyer, attracting little attention from the press and the public. Politics had little appeal to Waite. He served one term in the Ohio legislature in 1849 and made unsuccessful races for Congress in 1846 and 1862. After he became Chief Justice, he rejected emphatically an invitation to have his name submitted for the Presidential nomination in 1876.1
President Grant appointed him in 1871 as one of three attorneys to represent the United States before the Tribunal of Arbitration at Geneva in connection with claims against Great Britain growing out of the Civil War. His argument before that Tribunal at Geneva produced an award of $ 15,000,000 and enhanced Waite's reputation as an able lawyer.
The favorable impression Waite made upon President Grant was responsible for his appointment as Chief Justice. His neighbors at Toledo gave him a rousing welcome upon his return home from Geneva. He was elected a delegate to the Ohio Constitutional Convention and was serving as president of that Convention when appointed Chief Justice. His fourteen years as Chief Justice covered President Grant's second term and the administrations of Presidents Hayes, Garfield, Arthur and Cleveland. In 1922, author Charles Warren described the Waite Court thusly:
The problems of the war and its aftermath had been largely settled before he came upon the Bench; but new and grave economic and social questions now presented themselves. These years saw the growth of the Western States and the immense development of the material resources of the country, and gave rise to a multitude of decisions on subjects of political and industrial importance--the new phases of the regulation of interstate commerce, of the transcontinental railroads and the telegraph, railroad receiverships, the Granger legislation, control of public utilities and rates, the relation of the States to the liquor traffic, strikes and anarchist riots, polygamy, anti-Chinese legislation, superintendence and status of the Indian wards of the Nation, repudiation of State and municipal debts, the constitutionality of Federal laws enacted for the protection of the negro, the right to sue State officials and the scope of the Eleventh Amendment, the liability of agents of the Federal Government to respond for tortious acts and Federal protection of such agents for acts done in pursuance of their duties. It was fortunate for the country that the molding of its destiny in these various directions fell upon the shoulders of a Court containing Judges of such strength of mind and character and of such breadth of vision as Waite, Miller, Field and Bradley. And the general public confidence in the Court was shown by the fact that for over ten years after Waite's accession, it was substantially free from serious attack, either in Congress or in the press. When it is recalled that in every year from 1850 to 1873 (with the exception of the five years of the war) there had been Congressional legislation proposed in serious derogation of the Court's powers, the practical immunity from assault which occurred from 1873 to 1884 is a notable feature in its history.2
He was one of the Peabody Trustees of Southern Education and was an earnest advocate of aid to schools for the education of Southern Negroes. He died of pneumonia March 23, 1888. |
