Josiah A. P. Campbell Biography - Mississippi Genealogy Trails

Josiah A. P. Campbell

Courts, Judges, and Lawyers of Mississippi, 1798-1935, By Dunbar Rowland, B.S., LL.B., LL.D., Press of Hederman Press, Jackson, Mississippi, 1935, pgs 103-110

The old Colonial states of the American Republic have given to Mississippi many illustrious sons, and not one shed more luster upon its name than Judge Josiah A. Patterson Campbell, statesman, soldier, and chief justice of its supreme court. Judge Campbell’s life covered that period of the State’s history when national epochal events were taking place. He possessed the talent to plan and design, and the strength of purpose to execute, attributes and qualities that fit men for the accomplishment of difficult task. No line of least resistance lured him in the performance of public service. He was not a prater, nor prater fond of airing his own opinions, but a deep student of all questions that affected government and the life of the people. He was well fitted for high position. He came of an ancestral line illustrious in the history of the British Isles. His ancient forbears established the House of Argyle and were among the Scottish chiefs with their numerous shields, tartans, and coats of arms. One had little difficulty when noting his magnificent frame and lofty, well-posed head in recalling such names as Bruce and Wallace.

In America the family was first represented by several brothers, one of whom settled in Boston, Massachusetts. A member of the family became a distinguished editor, having established one of the first newspapers in American. It is the branch of the family that identifies itself with the Cavaliers of Virginia and South Carolina that Mississippians are more interested. Judge J. A. P. Campbell, of Mississippi was a descendant of this line. He was born in Lancaster District, South Carolina, March 2, 1830. At the age of fifteen he removed in 1845 with his parents to Madison County, Mississippi, which was at that time receiving numerous representatives of the best families of the Colonial states. The boy’s childhood and early youth in South Carolina were strewn with exceptional opportunities. It was his good fortune to have been the son of educated, cultured parents, a circumstance that contributed largely to his success in life. Men sometimes fail to reflect birth and environment, but more often than nor these make up the man that we see in later life, let him strive as he may to be otherwise. To translate an old Latin maxim, “Though you drive out nature with a pitch fork, yet she will return.”

Judge Campbell’s father was a distinguished Presbyterian minister, a graduate of the Princeton Theological Seminary. That in itself was a great good fortune in the inheritance of the son.

The mother of Judge Campbell was Mary A. Patterson, daughter of Josiah Patterson, a wealthy planter of Abbeville District, South Carolina. His plantations lay along the Savannah river and were among the finest in the district. Mary Patterson, like her husband, was educated. Early records tell us that before they entered higher institution she had “taught her six young children reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and English grammar.” As in the case with the minds of so many great men aspirations came early to the son of this home who in later years was to become a leader of influence in his adopted State. He could read before he was four years of age. Not alone content with intellectual attainment, Mary had a deeper thought and meaning in the preparation of her son for his lifework. From the Westminister (sic) Shorter Catechism she assisted him early in life in discovering spiritual truths and imbibling (sic) spiritual strength, without which she knew the mind and spirit became brittle, inelastic and incapable of a higher and nobler range of thought. Her son responded generously to her teaching and early became an earnest student in the realm of both literature and law. It might be thought much of a miracle, did not the records bear out the truth, that young Campbell was licensed to practice law when he was but a few months older than seventeen years of age. The young attorney settled in Kosciusko in 1848 where he soon enjoyed a lucrative practice. At the age of twenty, he married Miss Eugenia S. Nash, a member of an influential family. Like his father, he was blest in the selection of the woman who was to share his fortunes through life.

It was after they had been married many years that the writer came in contact with these two worthy beings upon whom God had bestowed his most choice gifts. What the two lives meant in the development and uplift of Mississippi and the city of Jackson, would make a vast volume. While the woman took little active part in her husband’s public career, with a nature and training like that of all the Southern women of her day, she became his helper, comforter, and inspiration. Her own life was not without color and individuality. No more earnest and beautiful spirit than hers has moved among the people of Jackson in every station of the social life of the city. At the gate of both rich and poor, worthy and unworthy, her carriage was constantly seen, and no woman’s voice had more influence than hers in the affairs of her church. It is little wonder that the distinguished man who had drawn so much of his inspiration from her should pay her such high tribute in his autobiography.

Writing of Judge Campbell as a young man whom he knew in earlier days, Bishop Charles B. Galloway said: “Among the men of the bar that I, when a youth, remember more distinctly was Hon. J. A. P. Campbell – young tall, erect as a soldier, with long wavy hair, graceful in every movement and handsome as a picture, he was the very embodiment of manly dignity and superb ability.”

No more distinguished name is recorded in the State’s history than that of Judge J. A. P. Campbell. His whole public life was one continuous advance to high position. When scarcely more than a youth, at the age 21, while practicing law at Kosciusko, in Attala County, he was elected to the State legislature. At the age of 29 he became speaker of the house of representatives.

It was at this time that at the age of thirty, he was elected by the Constitutional Committee which adopted the ordinance of secession, one of seven delegates to represent Mississippi in the Provisional congress to form a Southern Confederacy. When his duties as a member of the Provisional congress had expired, he immediately joined the army and served with honor and distinction as captain, lieutenant-colonel, and colonel. He was the last survivor of the forty-nine delegates whose names are subscribed to the Constitution of the Confederate States of America. (For military service see Rpwland’s Military History of Mississippi).

Judge Campbell’s public service was of a broad nature. During the dark period of reconstruction and military rule that followed the War between the States, he was a member of the committee of which General J. Z. George was chairman that by foresight, boldness, and courage led the movement to free Mississippi from the rule of alien hands and restore the control of the government to the citizens of the State. “No higher duty”, it has been said, “was ever performed by any man and no step in civilization further advanced than characterized his efforts during the corrupt military rule that followed the war.”

At the close of the war Judge Campbell was elected to preside over the Kosciusko court district. “This was in a state of confusion almost chaotic through the doubtful status of state currency.” But throughout this unhappy period in the State’s history he did invaluable work in upholding law and order.

He was elected circuit judge of the fifth judicial district of Mississippi composed of the counties of Attala, Leake, Madison, Yazoo, and Holmes, in 1865, soon after his arrival home from the army, when thirty-five years of age. He was reelected without making a canvass.

Judge Campbell was a democrat presidential elector, selected by the State convention, but did not attend. He became judge of the supreme court of Mississippi when forty-six years old and served continuously eighteen years. He was twice chief justice of the court, missing only eighteen days from his judicial duties. After serving nine years as supreme judge, he was appointed by Governor Lowry to succeed himself.

In 1870 he was appointed by the governor and confirmed by the senate one of three commissioners to codify the statutes of Mississippi and succeeded in securing several valuable new laws in the interest of the people. But the legislature amended the work of the commissioners to such an extent that it was injured. In 1787 an incoming legislature invited him to prepare a new code, which he did while engaged with his duties on the supreme bench. It was adopted with but little change by the legislature of 1880. The code of 1880 abound in reformatory laws which have proved of great value to the people. It contains nearly two hundred sections written solely by Judge Campbell, which were adopted as written, and the record shows that not one has been declared unconstitutional by the supreme court in later years.

The State Bar Association of Mississippi expressed high appreciation of his service as the author of the Code, as is shown by a committee report by C. H. Alexander, himself one of the truly great lawyers of the State. The report states that Judge Campbell was the “author of more legal reforms than any other lawyer, judge, or legislator in the State.”

Judge Campbell retired from the supreme court in 1894, as full of honors as of years. A meeting of the bar in attendance was held in the court room, and the following resolutions of high commendation were adopted and signed, and an engrossed copy presented to him and his family:

“Whereas Honorable J. A. P. Campbell, chief justice of the supreme court of Mississippi, is about to retire from service on the bench, and those members of the bar of that court practicing in this city wish to give some expression of the feeling occasioned by an event so important in the history of the judicial department of our State government.

Be it Therefore Resolved, That the long and devoted service of this learned, upright and able judge I such as to inspire, along with universal regret at his retirement, a profound sense of the obligation under which he has put our great commonwealth for the conversation, enrichment, and elevation of its jurisprudence:

Resolved Further, that our admiration for his various endowments and accomplishments as an expounder and codifier and author in large measure of the law under which we live, is not earned than our appreciation of his uniform courtesy and consideration.”

There is a story of Judge Campbell’s retirement from the bench that should be written in the pages of Mississippi history. Though beyond sixty years of age, he was, owing to a vigorous constitution and perfect health, as well preserved as some are in the prime of life. His voluntary withdrawal from a most congenial position to which Governor Stone desired to reappoint him, and in which the state bar and public desired his continuance, was the occasion of no little surprise. The explanation as made to personal friends of Governor Stone was that under a recent change in the law, if Judge Campbell was reappointed, his colleague and devoted friend, Judge Woods, being from the same district, would be forced to retire at the end of his term. Judge Campbell coupled the withdrawal of his name for renomination (sic) with an earnest appeal that Judge Woods, a lawyer of the first class, be reappointed. It was an arrangement to which Governor Stone, himself the embodiment of all that was true in Southern manhood, finally agreed.

In 1870, Judge Campbell was elected professor of law in the University of Mississippi, and urged to accept the position but declined. The university conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. in recognition of his erudition not only as a student in the science of law but for scholarly attainment as well.

He was not in that class of public officials whom the office educates. His cultural attainments were no crude patchwork, representing a hopeless confusion of ideas. He brought to official position an educated, trained, and scholarly mind. Few public men in the history of Mississippi were more gifted in oratory nor more polished as a writer. He made great speeches that live in the historical literature of the State. He was much in demand as a public speaker at different periods of his life. In 1890, by invitation of the legislature, he delivered before the body his great memorial address on the “life and Character of Jefferson Davis”, which was printed and placed in every library of the State and country. From its pages, Charles B. Galloway said that he drew much of his inspiration for his own great speech. Some of Judge Campbell’s greatest speeches were made at the time of the overthrow of radical rule in the State. Eloquent and convincing at all times, when deeply stirred, his eloquence grew impassioned in behalf of the liberties and honor of the State. While gentle and tender in all his family and social relations, Judge Campbell was fearless in his condemnation of public wrong, and at times his speech was scathing.

In 1874, When Federal soldiers were in control of the State, he delivered a powerful address at Canton before a great audience on Memorial Day, in the face of northern troops. This was published at the request of the leading citizens of the place. From the ardent labors in behalf of the State, he, at times loved to turn away to pay tribute to the dead Confederacy; and in 1892 he delivered an address in the old state capitol before the Confederate veterans assembled in convention, that stirred his hearers with pride. Among the invitations to make addresses of this nature out of the State, the following which he was compelled to decline will interest the Daughters of the Confederacy, among whom are his two loyal daughters.

“The Arlington Confederate Monument Association of the United Daughters of the Confederacy request the honor of your presence at the unveiling ceremonies of the Arlington Confederate Monument, in Arlington National Cemetery, Thursday afternoon, June fourth, at three o’clock, nineteen hundred and fourteen. Mrs. Daisy McLaurin Stevens, president General United Daughters of the Confederacy; Col. Hilary A. Herbert, Chairman Executive Committee, Arlington Confederate Monument Association.”

Judge Campbell’s death occurred Jan. 10, 1917, in the city of Jackson, surrounded by his large family of devoted children and grandchildren. “While he was,” one wrote of him at the time of his death, “a landmark of an era that he long survived, and had outlived his day and contemporaries, his survival was singularly free from mental decay.” He possessed an acute and vivid memory and evinced intense desire to keep in touch with current affairs. So clear and unprejudiced was his recollection of great events that when historians from the other States visited the State historical department, its Director always sent them to converse with him. As the body of this great and good man lay in state in the capitol, one who came to view whispered: “I could make no better wish for Mississippi than that all of her sons might be as upright and faithful.”

Although Judge Campbell was eminent in many walks of life, it was as a judge of the courts of his State that he excelled. Paraphrasing the numerous tributes paid him at death, with a mind evenly evenly (sic) with conservative balance, a native strength of character, a genius for the discernment of the principles of law, and a true sense of justice, he combined a highly be said that he ranked among the great American judges.