In political terms, John was wading into a swamp, and Robert knew it. Radical Republicans would never confirm a Supreme Court justice who could be blamed for surrendering to a mob of ex-Confederates. John was sacrificing his career to Hayes’ convenience. In Robert’s eyes, focused on the Black community and its Northern allies, no good could come of this commission. And many people believed that Hayes’ Louisiana Commission, which John Harlan had just loyally pledged to join, was a sham orchestrated to produce the very outcome that had already been promised: restoration of power to racist Democrats. troops, still mustered in New Orleans 12 years after the end of the Civil War.Īlmost everyone sensed that Hayes was on the verge of removing the troops, part of the unwritten bargain that had enabled him to assume the presidency.

Democrats, however, decried the federal mandates preventing unrepentant Confederates from exercising their franchise, restrictions that were enforced by U.S. His allies cited massive violence that had kept Black voters from the polls.

The situation was so fraught that the Republican governor was a virtual prisoner in his makeshift statehouse. So any nominee had to be both Southern and fully satisfactory to Northern progressives.Īt this perilous moment, John Harlan agreed to take on one of the most politically thankless tasks of the era: serving as one of Hayes’ representatives to assess a violent uprising in Louisiana, where disruption in state elections had yielded rival governments. But that appointee would have to run a gauntlet: confirmation by a deeply suspicious Senate Judiciary Committee headed by a Vermont Republican who was wary of Southern backsliding on civil rights. Hayes, who had prevailed in a disputed election by promising concessions to Southern whites, wanted to pick a southerner for the court seat. Whether that was true or not, Robert, who was 16 years older, knew that John’s late father had dreamed of John going to the Supreme Court since giving the newborn baby the name of his own legal hero, Chief Justice John Marshall.įorty-four years later, John was in contention for the court seat being vacated by one of Abe Lincoln’s old friends, David Davis, and Robert was taking on the self-appointed role of adviser and protector.

And some newspapers had reported as fact what had long been rumored: They had the same father. But their relationship remained close enough that they strategized together in the days surrounding the 1876 Republican convention, which nominated the man who had just become president at the time the letter was sent, Rutherford B. There was also one difference: One of them, Robert, was born into slavery. They had come to express similar political sentiments. Each had watched the other rise to national prominence. But Robert and John shared more than a last name.

John marshall history