Howell E. Jackson, appointed to the United States Supreme Bench. Judge Lurton now holds this position. Judge Lurton is the only man who served in the Confederate army that has been ap pointed United States Circuit Judge. When at Cincinnati, shortly after his qualification, he was presented to a lawyer who had a vivid recollection of Morgan's raid through Ohio. On meeting the Judge, he referred to his former visit to the State, adding, " Well, the war is over." In the opinion of the profession generally, Judge Lurton took the lead of the bench after his accession to it, and he maintained it so long as he was on the bench. His influfluence in the consultation-room is shown by his rare dissents, — he usually carried the majority with him when he took a firm stand. His opinions are among the richest contri butions to the legal literature of the State, and they have commanded the respect of the courts of other States in a way that the opinions of no other judge of the State in late times have. It has so chanced that in the allotment of cases a larger number of the important ones fell to Judge Lurton than to any other judge. He is an ambi tious judge, and availed himself to the fullest of the opportunity afforded him in such cases. He has never failed to deliver an opinion worthy of the case. He has the rare faculty of usually convincing the losing lawyer of the correctness of the position taken in the opinion. This is so, principally, because his decisions are always founded on broad grounds, and never on narrow technical views. Judge Lurton is equally at home in every branch of the law; but corporation law and equity may be said to be those in which he has done his best work. Every one of the seven volumes of Pickle's reports con tains several notable opinions on these two subjects. All his opinions are good; -but perhaps the greatest he ever wrote was in the case of H. Clay King v. State, 91 Tenn. 619. Colonel King, a prominent lawyer of Memphis, had killed D. H. Poston, a brother-
lawyer. After a trial extending over .amonlh, he was convicted of murder in the first de gree, and sentenced to be hanged. On appeal to the Supreme Court, the judgment was affirmed, Judge Lurton delivering the opinion of the court. The opinion concluded thus : — "The verdict is well supported. The defend ant was entitled to a full, patient, and impartial trial. This he has had by a jury of his own selec tion. Upon his appeal the record has been labori ously re-examined. No doubt exists as to the righteousness and justice of the judgment from which he has appealed. "The defendant stands condemned by that law at whose altar he has so long stood as a minister j ing priest. The decrees of that law, to be re ! spected, must be impartial, for all are within its
- compass; 'the very least as feeling its care, and
the very greatest as not exempt from its power.'"
Benjamin J. Lea was born on Jan. I, 1833, in Caswell County, N. C. He is of English and Scotch descent. His mother was a Kerr, belonging to a family prominent in the States of North Carolina and Virginia. After completing his pre liminary studies at schools convenient to his home, he entered Lake Forest College, where he graduated in 1852. Immediately on graduation, he removed to Brownsville, Haywood County, Tenn., where he has since resided. He studied law under GenL. M. Campbell, and was admitted to prac tice in 1855. He was elected to the Lower House of the General Assembly in 1859 for a term of two years, being the second Democrat elected from his county. On the breaking out of the Civil War, he enlisted in the Fifty-first Tennessee Regi ment, and was chosen as its colonel. He continued in the Confederate army through out the war, his regiment serving with the Army of the Tennessee. At the close of the war he resumed the practice of his profes sion at Brownsville. He was elected in 1878 Attorney-General and Reporter for a term of eight years. He was not a candidate for re-election in 1886, but became a candidate for Supreme
