James Garfield’s part-time law career: cases that “bristled with law points”

James A. Garfield never fully gave up the law. Through his congressional career he kept an active part-time practice, and after his first Supreme Court success, the Milligan case, it grew: patent disputes, suits for damages, questions about the powers of territorial governments, and contract cases. Eleven of his cases reached the Supreme Court. He saw the work as an intellectual challenge and as a way to add to his income. In the spring of 1871 he wrote a friend that his state-court and Supreme Court practice had brought in about $2,000 a year for four years.

Garfield argued many cases before the Supreme Court, seen here in 1868. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase had been a close friend of his during the Civil War, when Chase was Secretary of the Treasury and Garfield a young Union officer awaiting orders in Washington. U.S. Supreme Court.

A tax sale and a tenant: the Hunter case

Some cases grew out of the Civil War. In 1870 Garfield argued In re Bennet vs. Hunter. Early in the war Congress passed a law to collect direct taxes in insurrectionary districts, with forfeiture and sale of the land if the tax went unpaid. A tax was levied in 1862 on a tract in Alexandria, Virginia owned by B. W. Hunter. Hunter died, his son, a Confederate soldier, inherited it, and the tax went unpaid. When the land was advertised for sale in January 1864 but before it was sold, the Hunter side sent a tenant to pay the full tax and penalties. The commissioners refused because the owner had not come in person, and the land was sold. Hunter sued, and since the federal government had both taxed and sold the property, the case reached the Supreme Court.

Garfield reminded the justices that in the Milligan case they had held that equal justice shields every citizen, and asked them to make a similar ruling for the rights of property. The Court agreed, and Hunter's land was restored.

Congressman James A. Garfield in the 1870s, when he was doing a great deal of legal work. Library of Congress.

War and life insurance

Another wartime question, Garfield said, was entirely new: whether war voided the life insurance policy of a man living in the South, a belligerent. His side argued that it did. A justice was absent and the Court tied four to four. The next year a similar case from the New York Life Insurance Company reached the Court, and the company hired Garfield to argue both. He spent the winter of 1875 preparing his arguments and briefs, the case was heard on April 26, 1876 and the Court ruled for the insurance companies.

A tax case with many law points

Not every case was a great constitutional question. In 1872, in U.S. vs. 100 Barrels distilled spirits, also called Henderson's Distilled Spirits, Garfield took the case saying the amount at stake was small but it bristled with law points. The tax law in question, passed in July 1866, had seventy-one sections and ran seventy-five large, closely printed pages, taxing hundreds of products. One section taxed distilled spirits, payable by the distiller before the liquor was sold or moved to a bonded warehouse.

A distiller, Nimrod Johnson, put 100 barrels in a bonded warehouse in New Orleans without paying the tax. Henderson bought them, paid the tax and shipped them to a bonded warehouse in St. Louis to await sale, where federal agents seized them because Johnson still owed. Everyone agreed Henderson was an innocent, good-faith buyer, and he won in federal district court. At the Supreme Court Garfield argued for two hours and said he was pretty well satisfied with how he had presented the case. The Court ruled for the government.

Law or politics

During nine terms in the House, Garfield several times considered leaving politics for full-time law, and each time a political or personal reason stopped him. In 1875 he worried in his diary that he had delayed too long, and the next year he decided his House leadership took all his time. He began taking new cases again in 1879, seeing that his House leadership might end and a lighter Senate career might begin. His presidential nomination in June 1880 effectively ended his legal career.

Garfield's legal career ended when he became the Republican presidential nominee in 1880. This campaign banner shows him with his running mate and successor, Chester A. Arthur. National Park Service.

Sources

• National Park Service, "“It Bristles with Law Points”: James A. Garfield’s Career as a Lawyer, Part II" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/-it-bristles-with-law-points-james-a-garfield-s-career-as-a-lawyer-part-ii.htm), which draws on a biography by T.C. Smith and on Garfield's letters and diary; rewritten in hubnx's own words.