The Green Bag.
JUSTICE STANLEY MATTHEWS.
STANLEY MATTHEWS, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, died in Washington, March 22, 1889. In his death the country mourns the loss of a great advocate, and a judge of remarkable ability.
Stanley Matthews was born in Cincinnati July 21, 1824, and sixteen years later was graduated at Kenyon College. After studying law he was admitted to the bar of Maury County, Tennessee, but returning to Cincinnati shortly afterwards, he soon became recognized as one of the most promising young lawyers of Ohio. With the early opponents of slavery he joined hands cordially, and in 1846–1849 was an assistant editor of the Cincinnati "Herald," which was the first anti-slavery paper published in that city. Two years later he was elevated from the bar to the bench, becoming judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Hanover County, Ohio. In 1855 he was elected a member of the State Senate, and in 1858–1861 was United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio.
His interest in the abolition of slavery carried him into the war as lieutenant-colonel of the Twenty-third Ohio Regiment. His command was first located in West Virginia, participating in the battles of Rich Mountain and Carnifex Ferry. In October, 1861, he became colonel of the Fifty-seventh Ohio Regiment, and in that capacity commanded a brigade in the Army of the Cumberland, and was engaged at Dobb's Ferry, Murfreesborough, Chickamauga, and Lookout Mountain.
He resigned from the army in 1863 to accept a seat on the bench of the Superior Court of Cincinnati. This seat Judge Matthews held only one year, however, as he felt it incumbent on him to return to the more profitable practice of his profession. In the years following, he was also able to take a more active part in public affairs. In 1864 he was a presidential elector on the Lincoln and Johnson ticket; and in the same year he was a delegate from the Presbytery of Cincinnati to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Newark, N. J., and as one of the Committee on Bills and Overtures reported the resolutions that were adopted by the Assembly on the subject of slavery. Four years later he was a presidential elector on the Grant and Colfax ticket, and in 1876 he was defeated for Congress on the Republican ticket. His name was among those considered for a place in the Supreme Court of the United States when the late Chief-Justice Waite was appointed.
It was in 1877 that Mr. Matthews first attracted national attention, when he, as one of the counsel before the Electoral Commission, opened the argument in behalf of the Republican electors in the Florida case, and also made the principal argument in the Oregon matter. In March of the same year he was chosen by the Ohio Legislature to the seat in the United States Senate made vacant by John Sherman's confirmation as Secretary of the Treasury. Senator Matthews remained in office until March, 1879, and during that period introduced in the Senate the resolutions that were passed in favor of the restoration of the silver dollar to rank as lawful money. His general course
