Catron, John

Born: 1781-1792

Died: 1865-05-30 Nashville, Tennessee

John Catron was a War of 1812 veteran, lawyer, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The exact date and location of his birth is unknown; most authorities claim that he was born between 1781 and 1787 in Pennsylvania, but census records indicate he was born in Virginia in either 1791 or 1792. Little is known about Catron's childhood except that he lived in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. In 1807, Catron married Matilda Childress, a native of Nashville, Tennessee. In 1812, they moved to Tennessee, building a home in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains. During the War of 1812, Catron served under General Andrew Jackson, seeing action in the Creek War and, according to some accounts, the Battle of New Orleans. In 1815, he earned admission to the Tennessee bar and established a private practice. In 1818, he moved to Nashville, where he established a large private practice and became a leading member of the Davidson County bar. In 1824, he became a justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court of Errors and Appeals, and in 1831, he became the court's chief justice. The new Tennessee State Constitution enacted in 1834 abolished the Court of Errors and Appeals, and Catron returned to private practice. A Democrat and supporter of Jackson as president, Catron aided Martin Van Buren in his bid for the presidency in 1836, directing Van Buren's campaign in Tennessee. On this last day in office, Jackson nominated Catron for appointment to the United States Supreme Court, and he was sworn in as an associate justice in May 1837. During his tenure on the court, Catron proved a staunch defender of state's rights and slavery, concurring with the majority in pro-slavery decisions in Cooley v. Board of Port Wardens (1852) and Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). In addition to his duties on the Supreme Court, Catron presided over the federal circuit court, composed of Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In 1850, Catron was living in Nashville and owned $4,000 in real property and ten enslaved persons. By 1860, Catron had amassed $105,300 in real property, with a personal estate of $31,900. After the outbreak of Civil War, Catron returned to Tennessee hoping that he could aid in keeping his state loyal to the Union. After Tennessee seceded, Catron still endeavored to fulfill his circuit duties in the state, but eventually was forced to leave the state lest he draw the ire of Confederate authorities. Catron continued his circuit duties in Missouri and Kentucky, assisting the Union cause by refusing writs of habeas corpus to Confederate sympathizers arrested and detained by the Union Army. He dissented, however, from the Supreme Court's ruling in the Prize Cases (1863), arguing that the Constitution did not allow President Abraham Lincoln to blockade Southern ports without the consent of Congress. At the conclusion of the war, Catron resumed his circuit duties in Tennessee, but he was in poor health and died soon thereafter. John and Matilda Catron had no children, but there is strong evidence that John had a son with his mistress Sally, an African-American enslaved person who worked in a Nashville laundry. John Catron never acknowledged this child.

Richard L. Aynes, "Catron, John," American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4:579-80; Kermit Hall, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, Second Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 151-52; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Nashville, Davidson County, TN, 115; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Slave Schedule, Nashville, Davidson County, TN, 641; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 3, Nashville, Davidson County, TN, 91; Sidney Blumenthal, All the Powers of Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1856-1860 (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2019), 279. Illustration courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL.