Horace Harmon Lurton Horace Harmon Lurton ( February 26 , 1844 – July 12 , 1914 ) was an American jurist who served for four years as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States . Appointed at the age of 65 , Lurton was the oldest justice appointed to the Court . Life . Lurton was born in Newport , Kentucky , the son of a physician turned clergyman . He was a Sergeant Major in the Confederate Army during the Civil War , serving in the 5th Tennessee Infantry , 2nd Kentucky Infantry , and 3rd Kentucky Cavalry . He was twice captured by Union forces , the second time sent as a prisoner of war to Johnson ' s Island Prison Camp in Sandusky Bay , Ohio . He was later paroled by President Lincoln because of pleas for mercy from his mother . Education and early practice . Before the war , he attended Douglas University , and then earned an LL . B . in 1867 at Cumberland School of Law which was then part of Cumberland University , but is now part of Samford University . At Cumberland he was a member of Beta Theta Pi . Lurton then practiced law in Clarksville , Tennessee . Career as a judge . In 1875 , Lurton left private practice after being chosen as a judge of the Tennessee Chancery Court for the Sixth Chancery Division . After three years , Lurton then returned to his practice until 1886 , when he was appointed to the Tennessee Supreme Court . From this position , in 1893 , Lurton was appointed by President Grover Cleveland to a federal appellate judgeship on the U . S . Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit . While still on that court , Lurton first taught at , then served as dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Law from 1905 until 1909 . Supreme Court service . In 1909 , Lurton ' s friend , President William Howard Taft , named him to a seat on the Supreme Court that had been vacated by the death of Justice Rufus Wheeler Peckham . This was the first of Taft ' s five Supreme Court appointments - six if one counts the elevation of Edward White to Chief Justice - and surprised some observers because unlike Taft , Lurton was a Democrat . Taft ' s attorney general George W . Wickersham said that at 66 , Lurton was too old to become a Supreme Court justice , but Taft had always admired him . According to the " Complete Book of U . S . Presidents " ( 2001 edition ) , Taft later said that " the chief pleasure of my administration " was the appointment of Lurton . Lurton sided most frequently on the court with Oliver Wendell Holmes , Jr . , a progressive Supreme Court justice . The most notable opinion he authored was probably the opinion of the Court in " Coyle v . Smith " , 221 U . S . 559 ( 1911 ) , which held that the Federal Government couldn ' t tell a State where to locate its capital , and reaffirmed the doctrine that all the States must be on " equal footing . " Lurton took his seat on the Court at the beginning of 1910 . His tenure on the Court was brief , as he served only four years before dying in Atlantic City , New Jersey of a sudden heart attack , in 1914 . According to his obituary in the New York Times ( July 13 , 1914 , p . 1 ) , he had been in poor health since the previous December , suffering from asthma and then pneumonia .