Catron, John

Catron, John (b. Pennsylvania, 1786; d. Nashville, Tenn., 30 May 1865; interred Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Nashville), associate justice, 1837–1865. Although the exact location and date of his birth have not been determined, John Catron was probably born in Pennsylvania in 1786; his family moved to Virginia when he was a child. Catron's parents were poor German immigrants, and his early life was one of considerable hardship and little formal education. Catron grew to adulthood in Kentucky, where he married Mary Childress in 1807. In 1812 he and his wife moved to Tennessee and built a home in the western foothills of the Cumberland Mountains. Catron served under General Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and, after cessation of hostilities, returned to Tennessee to seek his fortune as a lawyer. Little is known about Catron's legal training, but in 1815 he was admitted to the Tennessee bar. Initially, Catron established a general private practice, although he also served as a part‐time public prosecutor. He moved to Nashville in 1818 and soon became one of the leaders of the Davidson County bar. In 1824 he was appointed to the highest state tribunal, the Court of Errors and Appeals, and in 1831 was elevated to chief justice.

As a state jurist, Catron wrote a number of colorful opinions dealing with such matters as gambling and dueling, which he detested, and slavery, which he supported. When the Tennessee legislature abolished the Court of Errors and Appeals in 1834, Catron returned to private practice. A loyal Jacksonian Democrat, Catron managed Martin Van Buren's 1836 presidential campaign in Tennessee. On his last day in office, President Jackson rewarded Catron with a nomination to the United States Supreme Court, and Catron was sworn in as associate justice on 1 May 1837.

Throughout his twenty‐eight‐year tenure on the Supreme Court, Catron was a stalwart defender of states' rights (see State Sovereignty and States' Rights) and of the “peculiar institution” of slavery. Catron joined the Court's decision in the landmark case of Cooley v. Board of Port Wardens (1852), where the justices upheld the power of state governments to regulate local aspects of interstate commerce. Catron also concurred in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), in which the Court struck down the Missouri Compromise of 1820 in which Congress had banned slavery in certain federal territories.

Despite his views on slavery and states' rights, Catron did not support southern secession. When the Supreme Court completed its term in the spring of 1861, Catron returned to Tennessee hoping to prevent the state from leaving the Union. After secession, Catron still attempted to hold federal court in Tennessee but was eventually persuaded to leave the state lest he face difficulties with Confederate authorities. Catron was, however, able to continue his circuit riding duties in Kentucky and Missouri, where he cooperated with the military's detention of civilian Confederate sympathizers by refusing to grant writs of habeas corpus.

His staunch Unionism notwithstanding, Catron dissented from the Supreme Court's decision in the Prize Cases (1863), in which the Court upheld President Abraham Lincoln's unprecedented order for a naval blockade of southern ports shortly after the outbreak of hostilities. Catron lived just long enough to see the Union maintained by General Lee's surrender. He died in Nashville on 30 May 1865, survived only by his wife.

John M. Scheb II