Swayne, Noah H. (1804–1884)

• Author: Stanley I. Kutler
• Pages: 2628

Page 2628

Noah Haynes Swayne was the first of President ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S five Supreme Court appointees. Geography, antislavery credentials, and support for the Union constituted Lincoln's chief criteria when he made his first appointments to the Court. Swayne fulfilled these qualifications.

Because of his hostility to SLAVERY, Swayne left his native Virginia and in 1823 moved to Ohio, where he served in the state legislature. In 1830 President ANDREW JACKSON named him United States Attorney. During the next several decades, he continued his active political career, and he appeared as counsel in a number of FUGITIVE SLAVERY cases. In 1855, he joined the fledgling Republican party and became a leading figure in the Ohio group. His close friend, Justice JOHN MCLEAN, had suggested Swayne as his successor. When McLean died early in 1861, Swayne quickly marshaled support from leading Ohio Republicans; Lincoln appointed him in January 1862.

On the Supreme Court, Swayne enthusiastically supported the administration, approving of Lincoln's blockade of southern ports in the PRIZE CASES (1862), upholding the Legal Tender Act of 1862 in Roosevelt v. Meyer (1863), and sustaining military trials in EX PARTE VALLANDIGHAM (1864). After the war, in EX PARTE MILLIGAN (1866), he joined the Court's minority faction which declined to discuss the question of congressionally authorized military tribunals.

During RECONSTRUCTION, Swayne again demonstrated consistent support for the congressional Republican program. For example, he dissented in the TEST OATH CASES (1867), and he voted to decline JURISDICTION in the unreported case of Mississippi v. Stanton (1868), when the Court divided evenly on whether to take another case that might have decided the fate of the Reconstruction program. Perhaps Swayne's clearest deference to congressional determination of Reconstruction was expressed in his dissent in TEXAS V. WHITE (1869). He rejected the majority fiction that Texas was not out of the Union and insisted that Texas's relationship to the Union must be determined by Congress. Swayne recognized that the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT had been designed in part to benefit the freedmen, as evidenced by his vote in STRAUDER V. WEST VIRGINIA (1880), striking down RACIAL DISCRIMINATION in jury selection. Yet he repeatedly supported the Court's narrow construction of the FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, thus limiting black VOTING RIGHTS.

After the CIVIL WAR, Swayne continued...