Horace Harmon Lurton did not spend many years in Campbell County, but he was a county native and a Civil War soldier who rose to national prominence in the decades after the war ended.
He was born in Newport on February 26, 1844, the son of Dr. Lycurgus L. and Sarah Ann Lurton.
In the 1850s, the family moved to Tennessee, where the young boy attended school in Clarksville, before going to the Old University of Chicago at the tender age of 16.
When the Civil War started, he joined the Confederate 35th Tennessee Infantry Regiment in April of 1861. Stories say he was captured when the Confederates surrendered Fort Donelson.
Lurton, of course, did not like being in prison and requested a way out, writing on February 25, 1862 to Colonel R.H. McClain, A.A.G. of the Union’s Department of the West: “application is hereby made…for the parole of the undersigned officer of the 5th Tennessee Regiment held as prisoner of war on board the steamer Nebraska. He is the only one of that regiment held as prisoner of war. He would humbly request that he be placed on his honor in any city or town the Commanding General may see proper to designate.”
He eventually found his way out of confinement. Official records do not show exactly how, though legend says he escaped.1 He soon joined John H. Morgan’s Confederate forces.
On August 25, 1862, he joined Company G of the 2nd Kentucky (Gano’s) regiment, a group which eventually became company G of the 7th Kentucky Cavalry. He then was captured near Buffington Island, Ohio on July 19, 1863, at the end of Morgan’s “Great Raid” through Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio, and a form in his file lists him then as a private in company G of the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry, though how or when he changed regiments is unclear.
He spent time at the Seminary General Hospital in Covington, Kentucky and at Kemper Barracks in Cincinnati, before moving to Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio and then to Johnson’s Island.
He again did not enjoy his time as a prisoner, and his family and friends worked to secure his release. A petition from citizens in his home area, over the signatures of local judges, stated: “His family is one of high responsibility” and that Lurton was then “a prisoner of war at Johnson’s Island” and had been “a private in Company G 3rd Kentucky (Rebel) Cavalry.”
The document explained:
He has been a prisoner about nineteen months. When he joined the army, he was only about eighteen years of age, of quick and sanguine temperament, and like thousands of young and thoughtless boys was swept into the ranks of the Rebellion by the passion and fury of the times. He is now willing and anxious as we are credibly informed to avail himself of the amnesty oath offered by the President and return a peaceful and orderly citizen of the United States.
This plea proclaimed:
no question but that if permitted to take the oath and be discharged he will faithfully abide by & discharge all his duties as a good and loyal citizen. We therefore trust & pray that it will be deemed compatible with the interests and mercy of the government to administer to him the oath & permit him to return to his home.
His father also mailed a letter, dated January 23, 1865, probably around the same time as the other petition. He wrote:
My son, Horace H. Lurton, a prisoner of war, confined 14 months at Camp Chase, and five months at Johnson’s Island, petitioned the war department for his discharge in the month of September 1863 from Camp Chase, which petition was endorsed by His Excellency Governor Todd of Ohio and other important figures.
Since which time another petition was forwarded by citizens, endorsed by His Excellency Governor Andrew Johnson (editor’s note: in 1864, between the time of the son’s petition and the father’s letter, Johnson had been elected Vice-President of the United States) to all of which, no successful issues have followed.
He pressed on: “It may be proper for me to say that my son went into the army without my advice or council, led away by the excitement of the times and from undue influence exerted by ‘stay at home patriots.’ “
The elder Lurton swore:
No one loved the union more than I, and in this sphere exerted more influence for its preservation, and no one would more gladly hail the return of union, peace, and concord. You will perceived that an early date I made efforts for his discharge and but for the helplessness of efforts would have continued…I am now induced to make another effort, because that I hear from my son that many are being discharged and, amongst them, some of our own citizens.
My son writes me that he is healthy, tired, both of war and prison, as was shown by his petition forwarded to Col. Hoffman, commissary of Prisons, which petition I presume is still on file in his office.
I pray you therefore to extend that clemency which will cost you no sorrow, but gladden the hearts of parents, and bring to you this warm gratitude, and the consciousness of an act of mercy, which shall sooth many a sorrow. I know these pleas are numerous, and sometimes wearisome, yet remember that God the Father is thus judicious by the vast multitudes of His erring, rebellious children, for pardon and for peace and grow not weary or turns a deaf ear to their cry, but daily and hourly says go in peace, and sin no more. May He give you a like spirit to say to my boy…sin no more.
A note in Lurton's file states: “desired release from Camp Chase of Horace H. Lurton, prisoner of war. Release ordered by the President. Referred by the War Dept for execution of President’s order.”
That Presidential order commands: “Let this prisoner take the oath of Dec. 8, 1863, and be discharged. A. Lincoln.”
Other stories claim that Lurton's mother had visited the President to beg him to release her son, but the actual story was much less dramatic, as he was “released on oath(f sllegiance Feb. 11, 1865” from Camp Chase
After the war, Lurton earned a Bachelor of Laws Degree from the Cumberland School of Law and returned to Tennessee to begin his law practice. He was appointed a judge in Tennessee’s 6th Chancery Division in 1875 and in 1886 earned appointment to Tennessee’s Supreme Court. He also was a law professor at Vanderbilt University for more than a decade, then, in 1893, President Grover Cleveland added him to the 6th U.S. Circuit of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, where Lurton forged a relationship with William Howard Taft.2
When Taft became President, he appointed Lurton to the Supreme Court in 1910. The new member of the court was 66, the oldest person to be appointed as Associate Justice. He was a “constitutional conservative and opposed the concept that social changes be brought about through judicial interpretation.”3
His Supreme Court experience was neither long, nor especially active. Oyez.org asserts that he “wrote infrequently during his brief tenure on the Court. He confined his talent, such as it was, to procedural issues or employer liability cases.”4
Late in 1913, Judge Lurton fell ill and passed away on July 12, 1914, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. His body lies at rest in Greenwood Cemetery in Clarksville, Tennessee.
1https://library.cqpress.com/scc/document.php?id=bioenc-427-18168-979356&v=2db3e18e820a4607
2www.britannica.com/biography/Horace-H-Lurton
3Ibid
4www.oyez.org/justices/horace_h_lurton
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