Don’t Repeat My Family’s Past, Bar Insurrectionists from Federal Office
Per the Supreme Court of Colorado, former President Donald Trump is disqualified from seeking a second term because he engaged in insurrection. Multiple members of my family committed insurrection in the 1860s and their crimes didn’t stop them from becoming a Supreme Court Associate Justice and a member of Congress after the war. We should not repeat past mistakes. We should not enable insurrectionists to be on the 2024 ballot.
My family’s insurrectionist past and subsequent political rehabilitation involves one governor, three representatives, a Speaker of the House of Representatives, one senator, and eight US presidents. My great great great grandfather was Howell Cobb, former governor of Georgia and former Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was serving as Secretary of Treasury for President Buchanan on the eve of the Civil War. In this role, he advised Georgians to secede. Cobb then became President of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America (CSA) and took up arms against President Lincoln. General Sherman happily torched Cobb’s plantations on his march through Georgia. President Johnson pardoned Cobb after the war and Cobb didn’t seek reelection because he died in 1868.
Cobb’s son-in-law Tinsley White Rucker (my great great grandfather) joined the Confederate Army in 1864. Rucker became a member of Congress in 1917. How did a Georgia Confederate go to World War I Washington? The answer is the General Amnesty Act of 1872 signed by President Johnson -
“I….do hereby proclaim and declare unconditionally, and without reservation, to all and to every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion, a full pardon and amnesty for the offense of treason against the United States, or of adhering to their enemies during the late civil war, with restoration of all rights, privileges, and immunities under the Constitution and the laws which have been made in pursuance thereof.”
TW Rucker’s cousin was Joseph Rucker Lamar. JR Lamar was born in 1857 and was named for his grandfather Joseph Rucker, the first millionaire in Georgia. His money came from slaves. JR Lamar was a childhood friend of President Wilson and President Taft nominated JR Lamar to be an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. Lamar was too young to fight during the Civil War but I’ve often wondered why no one has ever asked how his Confederate family (which includes cousin Colonel Edmund Rucker, for whom an Army base was formerly named) influenced his decision making on the US Supreme Court.
I’ve left the hardest one to explain for last — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar. JQC Lamar was Howell Cobb’s wife’s cousin. Howell Cobb’s wife was Mary Ann Lamar Cobb. He was also a cousin on the Rucker side. Clearly, my southern family didn’t marry outside of certain circles.
President Cleveland nominated LQC Lamar to be an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court in 1888 which boggles my mind given that LQR Lamar helped draft the Mississippi Ordinance of Secession, served as CSA Commissioner to Russia, and then the Judge Advocate for the the CSA Third Army Corps (General Lee’s lawyer).
LQC Lamar first served in Congress in 1857. He was a representative from Mississippi and after the Civil War he wanted to go back to Washington. The 1868 14th Amendment states that no one who commits insurrection can serve in federal elected office. But the amendment includes an exception “(b)ut Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
In 1872, LQC Lamar petitioned Congress to remove all disabilities imposed on him by the 14th Amendment because of his participation in the “late rebellion”. The General Amnesty Act of 1872 pardoned most of the Confederates which is how my great great grandfather Tinsley White Rucker was able to become a Congressmember in 1917 but it didn’t include all of them. It didn’t include the senior CSA leaders like LQC Lamar.
LQC Lamar’s petition (HR 3125) was referred to the House Committee on the Removal of Political Disabilities. My jaw dropped when I first read the title of that committee. I’ve sworn to uphold the US Constitution multiple times in my life — as a military officer, locally elected official, and political appointee. LQC Lamar did so as well when he became a member of Congress in 1857 so to define his treasonous acts as political disabilities is something I struggle with.
The committee supported the petition and the full House voted for it in December 1872. The Senate voted to support it shortly thereafter. President Grant notified the House of Representatives on December 17, 1872 that he’d signed the bill. He didn’t veto it. He didn’t stop someone who took up arms against him from returning to Washington.
In LQC Lamar was again serving as a representative from Mississippi. Senator Sumner, an ardent abolitionist, died in 1874 and LQC Lamar delivered a eulogy on the Senator’s life on the floor of Congress. President Kennedy cited Lamar and the Sumner eulogy in his 1957 Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage. Per President Kennedy, it was courageous for Lamar to eulogize a man whose thoughts and ideas he so violently fought against during the Civil War.
As one of Lamar’s cousins, I don’t agree with President Kennedy’s assessment of Lamar’s speech. In 1932, Senator Harrison shared a more accurate accounting of the Lamar’s political acumen in the Congressional Record -
“His great opportunity to awaken the conscience of the North to the bitter wrongs that were inflicted upon his people by northern misrule came on the death of Hon. Charles Sumner, Member of Congress from Massachusetts and an ardent abolitionist of the New England type…….He had awakened the sleeping conscience of the North. The South felt that at last a champion worthy of her cause had entered the lists to bring the tragic era of reconstruction and the reign of terror of the carpetbagger to an early close.”
To put it bluntly, LQC Lamar used Sumner’s eulogy as a way to get Northern troops out of the vanquished South.
Lamar then became the first Confederate to join the US Senate in 1877. President Cleveland nominated Lamar to be Secretary of the Interior in 1885 and then Associate Justice in 1888.
He served on the court until 1893 and in 1936 Senator Harrison introduced S. Res 280 authorizing funds for Atala N. Lamar, Lamar’s widow. The funds were linked to Lamar’s service as “an employee of the Senate.” Keep in mind that similar private bills weren’t introduced for the slaves that the Lamar family once owned.
Four years ago, I sent a letter to Supreme Court Justice Roberts asking that he and the other justice examine their institution’s connection to the Confederacy. This was the same time that I asked Speaker Pelosi to remove my great great great grandfather Speaker, House of Representative Howell Cobb’s portrait from the Capitol and advocated for the removal of cousin Colonel Edmund Rucker’s name from an Army base. Both occurred but I never received a response from the judicial branch.
My family’s history shows that one can participate in a rebellion against the United States and then successfully return to the corridors of power after losing. This lesson is not a lesson we should repeat. We have the opportunity to prohibit insurrectionists from being on the ballot in 2024 and I say that we grab hold of that opportunity with both hands and not let go.
