The Nashville globe. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1906-193?, 1911-10-20

Mr.. Justice Harlan was appointed
to the Supreme Court Bench by
President Hayes, November 10, 1877.
At that time he was serving as a
member of the famous Louisiana
Commission, which, pursuant to an
Act of Congress, was investigating
the frauds practiced against Louisi-
ana Republicans by the Democratic
party in the presidential election or
1876. In the work of the commission
Mr.. Harlan was deeply interested
He was the leading spirit of the
committee, and his fellow commits
sioners followed his leading in
searching and exposing the ballot
thievery of southern democrats in
the election, practice which pre-
ceded and in some degree indicated
the nefarious disfranchisery and jim
Grow laws which now disgrace the
statue books and darl;en the consti-
tutions of the South, So that Mr.
Justice Harlan took his seat in the
greatest Court in the world, not only
with carefully formed opinions re-
specting the sacred right of the indi-
vidual in the Republic but also and
particularly with thorough knowl-
edge of the machination which VIC
timized Republicans at the South, OF
whom colored men constituted three
fourths, as they do in the present.
Where in 1877 colored men were only
half free as citizens in the southern
states, in 1911, when the mighty
Kentuckian joined "the innumerable
caravan they are not free at all.
He was burdened in the heart with
the thought that he was a member OF
the tribunal to which they appealed
for relief-a relief earnestly sought
under the operation Of that part or
the organized law written into it for
the express purpose of aTordlng such
relief as the future might justify
the oppressed in seeking, and which
against every principle or justice,
every argument of reason, every dc
tate of liberty and every breath of
mercy, turned an ear so deaf that
reason blushed that the nearing of
the learned, like the honor of the
thief, was a convenient virtue.
Mr.. Justice Harlan's opinion from
the bench attracted uncommon in
terest among lawyers teachers and
the people from his very first de-
cision handed down shortly after he
took his seat in 1877, in a we'll
known case styled National Banks
VS.. Insurance Companies (No 673,
95 u. 81 which had to do with the
validity of insurance policies. Ear
! ly in his career he earned the name
/ Of the Great Dissenter.' He lived
to see this sobriquet, first aimed in
dersion, become a title of honor and
a crown of distinction He dissent
ed on the side of justice, liberty ana
equality He dessented from the
rover of privilege. He dissented
from the assumption of caste. He
dissented from the hypocrisy of col
or. He dissented from the Haunting
of race He dissented from all who
assented to the damnable proposition
that this is a white mans country"
lie kept COlupduy Will Ju6 SplllC VI
the greatest of the immortal five
Thomas Jefferson.
The name of Mr. Justice Harlan
is associated with cases whose inn
portance will be fadeless to the end,
for they have a weighty bearing
upon the genius of our institutions,
and the relationship of tire govern
ment to the petple in vital points.
The Insular Case, involving the right
of a trial by jury under the AmerI-
can flag; the famous Knight case,
decided in 1895, the first interpreta-
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