John Baxter (North Carolina Politician)
John Baxter (March 5, 1819 – April 2, 1886) was an American attorney and jurist who served as a judge on the United States Circuit Court from 1877 to 1886. Initially a Whig, he had previously served several terms in the North Carolina House of Commons, including one term as speaker, before moving to Knoxville, Tennessee, to practice law.
Baxter opposed secession on the eve of the Civil War, and was a delegate to the East Tennessee Union Convention, which sought to create a separate, Union-aligned state in East Tennessee. He subsequently took the Oath of Allegiance to the Confederacy, in part to provide legal defense for Unionists charged in Confederate courts. Those he defended during the course of the war included several members of the East Tennessee bridge-burning conspiracy and several participants of the Great Locomotive Chase. He ran unsuccessfully for the Confederate Congress in September 1861. By mid-1862, he had returned to his pro-Union stance.
Baxter supported Democratic presidential candidate George B. McClellan in 1864, but would eventually join the Republican Party. In 1870, he was a delegate to the state constitutional convention that created the current Tennessee State Constitution.
Read more about John Baxter (North Carolina Politician): Early Life, Civil War, Postwar Activities, Federal Judgeship, Family
Famous quotes containing the words john, baxter and/or carolina:
“Whither goest thou?”
—Bible: New Testament Peter, in John, 13:36.
The words, which are repeated in John 16:5, are best known in the Latin form in which they appear in the Vulgate: Quo vadis? Jesus replies, “Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.”
“In necessary things, unity; in disputed things, liberty; in all things, charity.”
—Variously Ascribed.
The formulation was used as a motto by the English Nonconformist clergyman Richard Baxter (1615-1691)
“I hear ... foreigners, who would boycott an employer if he hired a colored workman, complain of wrong and oppression, of low wages and long hours, clamoring for eight-hour systems ... ah, come with me, I feel like saying, I can show you workingmen’s wrong and workingmen’s toil which, could it speak, would send up a wail that might be heard from the Potomac to the Rio Grande; and should it unite and act, would shake this country from Carolina to California.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)