Twenty years after the end of the American Civil War, middle-aged Confederate veterans began to rise to positions of power in Washington D.C. In 1885, Republicans lost the Presidency to Democrat Grover Cleveland, a New Yorker who won every state in the South. Reconstruction had ended, Southern whites had risen to power again, and Mississippi led the charge for Cleveland with over 63% of the vote.
One of Mississippi’s United States Senators, LQC Lamar, remarked that Cleveland would be the first administration friendly to the South since the Civil War. How prescient he was. Shortly after the election, Cleveland named Lamar as Secretary of the Interior, even though Lamar unabashedly had supported secession. Lamar was a lawyer who, after the Civil War, became a law professor at Ole Miss and, during this time, gained political allies. He was elected from Mississippi’s First District to the House of Representatives and fairly quickly moved from there to the Senate and then Cleveland’s Cabinet.
Lamar’s history is particularly important because 1888 marked the year he entered the nation’s judicial branch. Though he never previously served as a judge and had not worked in private practice since a young man, Cleveland wanted a former Confederate on the Supreme Court. The nation yearned to move on from sectional differences, and Lamar had made earnest efforts at reconciliation while in Congress and the Cabinet. Cleveland nominated Lamar, and many Republicans immediately attacked the choice of a man who had committed treason against the Union, opposed black suffrage, and defended the leaders of the Confederacy. They also claimed he was too old (63) and had little legal experience for such a prestigious seat. Nevertheless, the Democrats had the votes, the nation was moving into an industrial age, and the fading sectional hostilities allowed Lamar a spot on the Supreme Court.
By the standards of the time then, Lamar was viewed by many as a liberal ex-Confederate, someone willing to move forward with the Union and address the demanding issues of domestic and foreign policy. Justice Lamar remained on the Supreme Court until his death in 1893 and is generally viewed by court historians as a competent and noncontroversial jurist.
Mississippi has had only one citizen on the nation’s highest court, and that is LQC Lamar. In 1904, the Mississippi Legislature carved a new county out of Marion County and named it after LQC Lamar. Landmarks all over our state bear his name. Without question, he was the beneficiary of the emerging Jim Crow laws. Though not virulent on race relations, he opposed the post war Constitutional amendments to provide blacks the rights and protections of citizenship. By all accounts, he was an honest man of good character and high intellect. Thus, his legacy is complicated.
Over one hundred years after his death, Lamar’s place in history is almost forgotten. Very few people know the name Lucious Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar. My hope is that someone reads this article and when Lamar County rivals Sumrall and Purvis face off again, they will think of Mississippi’s first and last United States Supreme Court justice. Though flawed, he was part of our highest legal institution tasked with pursuing the words written on the court’s iconic building, “Equal Justice Under Law.”
Clark Hicks is a lawyer who lives in Hattiesburg. His email is clark@hicksattorneys.com.
