Howell E. Jackson, 1893-1895

HOWELL E. JACKSON was born on April 8, 1832, in Paris, Tennessee. He was graduated from West Tennessee College in 1849, and studied law at the University of Virginia from 1851 to 1852 and at Cumberland College in 1856. He was admitted to the bar and began practicing law in his hometown of Paris. In 1859, he moved to Memphis and established a law practice. Although opposed to secession, Jackson served the Confederacy during the Civil War as the receiver of stolen property. In 1875, he was appointed to the Court of Arbitration for Western Tennessee, a provisional court established to liquidate the backlog of cases created by the War. In 1880, Jackson was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives and in 1881 to the United States Senate. He resigned his Senate seat before the end of his term to accept an appointment as a Federal Judge on the Sixth Circuit in 1886. In 1891, he became a judge of the newly established United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. On February 2, 1893, President Benjamin Harrison nominated Jackson to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Senate confirmed the appointment on February 18, 1893. Jackson contracted tuberculosis in 1894 but he continued to serve on the Supreme Court until his death on August 8, 1895, at the age of sixty-three.