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Biography of Samuel Freeman MillerName: Samuel Freeman MillerBirth Date: April 5, 1816 Death Date: October 13, 1890 Place of Birth: Richmond, Kentucky, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: jurist Samuel Freeman Miller Samuel Freeman Miller (1816-1890), American jurist, was an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.Samuel F. Miller was born on April 5, 1816, in Richmond, Ky. He earned his medical degree at Transylvania University in 1838. While serving as a country doctor, he read law and was admitted to the bar in 1847. A Whig and a member of a Kentucky group advocating the end of slavery by gradual emancipation, Miller hoped the state constitutional convention of 1849 would advance this goal; instead, the institution of slavery was strengthened. In 1850 he left Kentucky and set up his law practice in Keokuk, Iowa.Miller became a Republican and strongly supported Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election. When a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy occurred, lowa Republicans sought the first west-of-the-Mississippi seat. Miller, an affable politician with no experience as a judge, was appointed in July 1862.Like his colleagues on the Court, Miller did not seek to …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…back into the hands of racial conservatives, the Slaughter-House doctrine became a bastion of white supremacy. In Slaughter-House Miller had, somewhat unwittingly, given a new direction to American history: Reconstruction and Negro advancement faltered, while business interests were given strong impetus. In a less ambiguous civil rights decision, Ex parte Yarbrough (1884), Miller upheld, under the 15th Amendment, the right of a Negro to vote in a Federal election.Miller unsuccessfully sought the chief justiceship in 1873. He was considered a Republican presidential possibility in both 1880 and 1884. He married twice and was the father of two children. He died on Oct. 13, 1890, in Washington, D.C., while still serving on the bench. Further Reading Charles Fairman, Mr. Justice Miller and the Supreme Court, 1862-1890 (1939), is a fine, occasionally uncritical biography. Miller is somewhat overpraised by William Gillette in Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1969, vol. 2 (1969). |