Robert L. Caruthers - Legal and Political Career

Legal and Political Career

Caruthers was born near Carthage, Tennessee, the youngest of seven children of Samuel and Elizabeth Looney Caruthers. His father had represented Sullivan County at the constitutional convention of the State of Franklin in the 1780s. After his death, Robert went to live with an uncle in Columbia, Tennessee, where he attended Woodward Academy. He later attended Washington College in Jonesborough and Greeneville College in Greeneville, and studied law under Judge Samuel Powell in Greeneville.

Caruthers returned to Carthage in 1823 to practice law. He served as the clerk for the Tennessee House of Representatives for the 1823–1824 term, and worked as editor of the Tennessee Republican newsletter. In 1826, he moved to Lebanon, Tennessee, and married Sally Sanders, a niece of Andrew Jackson's wife, Rachel Donelson Jackson. That same year, he was appointed attorney general for the Sixth Judicial District (based in Lebanon) by Governor Sam Houston. He served in this position until 1832. In 1834, he was elected brigadier general in the Tennessee militia. In 1836, he and Alfred O. P. Nicholson published A Compilation of the Statutes of Tennessee, which remained the state's standard compilation of statutes for over two decades.

In 1835, Caruthers was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives, representing Wilson County. He served on the House Judiciary Committee, and did not seek reelection. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Tennessee's 7th District for the 1841–1843 term. Once again, he served just one term, and did not seek reelection. In 1844, he was the Whig elector for Tennessee's at-large district, and as such, canvassed the state for unsuccessful presidential candidate Henry Clay.

In 1852, Caruthers was appointed by Governor William B. Campbell to fill the term of Nathan Green (who had retired) as Middle Tennessee's justice on the Tennessee Supreme Court. The following year, the state legislature voted to give Caruthers a full term. In 1854, after the state constitution was amended to allow popular election of justices, Caruthers managed to win reelection to the court.

One of Caruthers' most important decisions on the court was his opinion in Rippy v. State (1858), which involved killing in self-defense. In this decision, he rejected a literal interpretation of a statement in Judge John Catron's opinion in Grainger v. State, issued three decades earlier, that suggested a person did not need sufficient grounds to kill in self-defense, but merely needed to testify that there was imminent danger. Caruthers' opinion reinstated the "sufficient grounds" rule. He wrote of Grainger, "no case has been more perverted and misapplied by advocates and juries."

Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Caruthers was a delegate to the Washington Peace Convention in February 1861, which sought to find a peaceful resolution to the sectional strife between the North and South. He remained pro-Union until the Battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861, after which he aligned himself with the Confederacy. In August 1861, he resigned from the court to represent Tennessee in the Provisional Confederate Congress.

On July 17, 1863, the state's Confederate leaders met in Winchester, Tennessee, and nominated Caruthers for governor to replace Isham G. Harris, who was prohibited by the state constitution from seeking a fourth consecutive term. Caruthers was officially elected on August 6, but the state constitution required that the governor-elect take the Oath of Office before the General Assembly. Since the Union Army controlled most of Middle and West Tennessee at this time, the Assembly was unable to convene, and Caruthers never officially took office. Confederates continued to recognize Harris as governor until the end of the war. Union forces, in the mean time, had installed Andrew Johnson as military governor.