Early Life and Political Career
Harlan was born into a prominent Kentucky slaveholding family whose presence in the region dated back to 1779. Harlan's father was James Harlan, a lawyer and politician; his mother, Elizabeth, née Davenport, was the daughter of a pioneer from Virginia. After attending school in Frankfort, Harlan enrolled at Centre College, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi and graduated with honors. Though his mother wanted Harlan to become a merchant, James insisted that his son follow him into the legal profession, and Harlan joined his father's law practice in 1852. Yet while James Harlan could have trained his son in the office as was the norm in that era, he sent John to attend law school at Transylvania University in 1853, where George Robertson and Thomas Alexander Marshall were among his instructors.
A member of the Whig Party like his father, Harlan got an early start in politics when, in 1851, he was offered the post of adjutant general of the state by the governor at that time, John L. Helm. He served in the post for the next eight years, which gave him a statewide presence and familiarized him with many of Kentucky's leading political figures. With the Whig Party's dissolution in the early 1850s, he shifted his affiliation to the Know Nothings, despite his discomfort with their opposition to Catholicism. Harlan's personal popularity within the state was such that he was able to survive the decline of the Know Nothing movement in the late 1850s, winning election as the county judge for Franklin County, Kentucky in 1858. The following year, he renounced his allegiance to the Know Nothings and joined the state's Opposition Party, serving as their candidate in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat William E. Simms for the seat in Kentucky's 8th congressional district.
During the 1860 presidential election, Harlan supported the Constitutional Union candidate, John Bell. In the secession crisis that followed Abraham Lincoln's victory, Harlan sought to prevent Kentucky from seceding. When the state legislature voted to create a new militia Harlan organized and led a company of zouaves before recruiting a company that was mustered into the service as the 10th Kentucky Infantry. Harlan served in the Western theater until the death of his father James in February 1863, whereupon Harlan resigned his commission as colonel and returned to Frankfort in order to support his family.
Three weeks after leaving the army, Harlan was nominated by the Union Party as their nominee to become the Attorney General of Kentucky. Campaigning on a platform of vigorous prosecution of the war, he won the election by a considerable margin. As attorney general for the state, Harlan issued legal opinions and advocated for the state in a number of court cases. Party politics, however, occupied much of his time; Harlan campaigned for Democrat George McClellan in the 1864 presidential election and worked as a junior partner to the state Democratic party in the aftermath of the Civil War. After losing a bid for reelection as attorney general, Harlan joined the Republican Party in 1868.
Moving to Louisville, Harlan formed a partnership with John E. Newman, a former circuit court judge and, like Harlan, a Unionist turned Republican. There their firm prospered, and they took in a new partner, Benjamin Bristow, in 1870. In addition to his legal practice, Harlan worked to build up the Republican Party organization in the state, and ran unsuccessfully as the party's nominee for governor of Kentucky in both 1871 and 1875. Despite his defeats, he earned a reputation as a campaign speaker and Republican activist. In the 1876 presidential election, Harlan worked to nominate Bristow as the Republican party's nominee, though when Rutherford B. Hayes emerged as the compromise candidate, Harlan switched his delegation's votes and subsequently campaigned on Hayes's behalf.
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