Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Pre-Court Career Of John Marshall Harlan., Thomas L. Owen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thesis deals with the political career of John Marshall Harlan prior to his appointment in 1877 as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Throughout the majority of those twenty-three active years in Kentucky politics, Harlan was an adamant defender of the slave system, and despite the fact that he had been a strong Unionist during the Civil War, he resisted emancipation of the slaves and opposed every effort to gain civil rights for the blacks once they were freed. When Harlan became a Republican in 1868, he hurriedly reversed himself, and became a consistent advocate of …