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Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court

The University of North Carolina Press

Chapter One

Cloverport, Kentucky, southwest of Louisville on the Ohio River, was the birthplace of a Supreme Court justice, Wiley Blount Rutledge Jr., who never became more pretentious than the community of 1,600 he called his first home. When he was born on July 20, 1894, the town was a lively place. It served as the shipping hub for a surrounding farm population; as the center of a coal region named the "finest in the world" at the Columbian Centennial in Chicago; and as the docking point for Ohio River showboats-the Cotton Blossom and Emerson's Grand Floating Palace-featuring "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Ten Nights in a Bar Room."

Actually, Mary Lou Wigginton Rutledge gave birth to her first child at a cottage outside Cloverport, in a resort area called Tar Springs, because the parsonage of the Cloverport church her husband was serving had burned. The senior Rutledge, a Southern Baptist minister, came from a Scotch-Irish farming family which had lived for generations in the Sequatchie Valley of eastern Tennessee near Chattanooga (and was not traceable to South Carolina's John Rutledge, a signer of the Constitution and an original justice of the U.S. Supreme Court). Commonly called "Brother Rutledge," Wiley Blount Rutledge Sr.-the Blount came from an admired Tennessee governor of that name-had come to Cloverport with the "bride he had freshly married in Mt. Washington," the small town of his first pastorate, near Louisville.

Depression hit the nation a year before Wiley Jr. was born, and living was modest for a minister's family in any event. So parishioners would help the Rutledges through annual "donation parties" providing coal, food, dry goods, kitchenware, and-for "Baby Rutledge" one year-"a nice suit of warm clothes" and "a pretty little red chair." In 1897 a daughter, Margaret, was born to the Rutledges after they had lost an infant son. Three years later, the family decided to leave Cloverport. The young mother had incipient tuberculosis, so her husband accepted a pastorate in the "better climate" of Asheville, North Carolina. There, Wiley Jr., now six, continued the public schooling he had begun in Cloverport.

On August 3, 1903, two weeks after Wiley Jr.'s ninth birthday, Mary Lou Rutledge died, just thirty-three years old. Not much is recorded about her. We know that she studied with her future husband during his last year at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, that she taught Sunday school in Cloverport, and that after her death friends and family spoke to the young boy of his "angel mother," a "lovely Christian woman," a "favorite" among them. The only detailed recollection that her son mentioned in a lifetime of correspondence was in reference to "the saloon" that his "mother used to picket in WCTU campaigns" in Cloverport. But Wiley grew to manhood with a profound awareness of his mother's love during the years she nurtured him. To his wife, Annabel, soon after they were married, Wiley wrote with a curious mixture of tenses: "I want us to know that our love is true, just as I know my mother's love is true without having to have her tell me about it and keep me confident, because of what she says-it's because of what she is and was, what she did and does that I know she loves me, and even if she should never speak to me again, I would know she loves me and be glad."

Immediately upon the death of Mrs. Rutledge, her mother, Georgia Lovell Wigginton, came to the reverend's home in North Carolina to care for Wiley and Margaret, although soon she took them back with her to Mt. Washington. Their uncle Ernest recalled that when the young Rutledge family had lived in Cloverport, "Grandma Wigginton" used to drive there from Mt. Washington "in a horse-drawn buggy to see her grandchildren"-more than eighty miles over difficult terrain. Ernest Wigginton also confirmed that their grandmother had "stuck with them" in her own home or theirs "to the day of her death in 1911." From her actions and a surviving photograph, we can be sure that Grandma Wigginton was a strong woman in physique, character, and spirit. Her grandson remembered her as "full of vigor and health," and a boyhood friend of Wiley's recalled her "wit and humor." Most importantly, as we observe the boy's developing warmth and emotional security, it seems certain that Grandma Wigginton embraced her young grandson with deep love and affection.

The Wiggintons are traceable to a Welshman who arrived in Virginia in the mid-1650s. Generations later, Wiley Jr.'s great-grandfather migrated from Virginia to Kentucky, where he acquired land and slaves. But the family's substantial wealth eventually dissipated because of property divisions required by inheritance. On her mother's side, Georgia Wigginton was a Lovell, a family of whom little is known beyond their appearance in Virginia in the mid-1700s, moving later to Kentucky. Grandma had two sisters and three brothers, and in later years Wiley would mention with great fondness his two Lovell great-aunts. "I always liked Aunt Mary next to Grandma," Wiley once wrote to Annabel, and in the same letter he indicated obvious affection for his other "great-aunt 'Sal.'" Wiley also expressed affection for "poor old Uncle Jim," his great-uncle-the unexplained "black sheep" of the Lovell family-with whom he used to share a room at Mt. Washington. Of his mother's immediate family, Wiley was fond of her brother, Uncle Ernest, as well as her other brother, Uncle "Lud," who gave Wiley the first money he ever earned, acting as a conductor on the wagon full of children that his uncle drove to the county fair. But he felt an especially deep love for his mother's only sister, Cora-to Wiley, always just plain "Auntie"-who had been "almost a mother," to him, he once wrote.

Grandma Wigginton, Aunt Mary, Aunt Sal, and "Auntie": not a complete substitute for the loss of a boy's loving mother at the age of nine. But probably as close as it comes.

The future justice lived with his grandmother from the fall of 1903 to the summer of 1905 at Mt. Washington, where he attended "a one-room private school." Wiley also remembered happily the several weeks that he, Margaret, and his grandmother lived during the summer of 1904 with his Uncle Ernest and Aunt Bess in Waterford, Kentucky, where he spent most of his time, at the age of ten, "listening to the men talking politics" before the election won by Theodore Roosevelt. "As I recall it," he once wrote, "most of them were good Democrats, standing up for [Alton B.] Parker ..., and naturally I joined in with them."

It is not clear how often young Wiley and his sister saw their father during the first two years after their mother died. The Reverend Rutledge did not-probably could not-follow his children back to Kentucky. He apparently left Asheville for a brief pastorate in Cleveland, Tennessee, northeast of Chattanooga, a hearty distance from Mt. Washington even by train. The reverend was often described as a circuit-riding preacher, and he apparently rode more during the two years after his wife died than before or after. But there can be little, if any, doubt that Wiley Rutledge "tramped around a lot" with his father during the summer of 1904, with his grandmother along to help care for the boy and his sister.

The Reverend Rutledge was a loving father, with whom his son developed a close relationship. Some have said that the reverend came to treat the boy "more like a younger brother," although on the way to such parity young Wiley literally would be taken to the woodshed when his father saw the need for a switching. The senior Rutledge taught family and parishioners alike a religion that reflected literal acceptance of the Christian Bible and an abhorrence of Roman Catholicism. A strong Democrat, he was once quoted as saying, nonetheless, that "he would vote for the blackest man in Africa before voting for Al Smith." Other than this comment, we have no indication of the father's attitudes on race. We do know that the neighborhoods where the boy grew up, as well as the church congregations his father served, were racially segregated, as were other social relations. We also know that as a child, Wiley once befriended "a little Negro boy," who, according to southern custom, "was supposed to do things for him," act as a servant of sorts. According to Wiley's daughter Mary Lou, "they were very good friends," but the social distinction was intrinsic to the relationship and reinforced in Wiley a perception of racial hierarchy that in due course required undoing.

As a minister, Wiley's father was known for his long sermons and his compassion-and for his church's steady attendance. Reportedly, he wrote out his sermons, never repeating one; but in going on and on "he'd come close to trying the patience of even the most devout worshipers." He conscientiously visited the members of his flock and received the affection and respect of those in his spiritual care. Fondly, his parishioners recalled his "kindness" and "wise counsel." One in particular remembered the pastor as "a broad minded lovable character"; another observed that the senior Rutledge "was one preacher who did not know which side of the railroad track a member lived on." The reverend loved "a good conversation"; he enjoyed "stopping to talk with people." Indeed, he "liked," even "loved," people generally. Those acquainted with him also recognized "a good sense of humor." And, as one friend recalled, Brother Rutledge loved a good "coon hunt."

In 1905 the Reverend Rutledge accepted a pastorate in Pikeville, Tennessee-a farming community of fewer than 500 souls near his birthplace in Sequatchie Valley-where almost all the residents were native-born, white Americans, and where Protestant community "singings" and church revivals "were the greatest social events of the year." Living near his own father and relatives, the reverend helped "with the farming and logging when he had spare time," and his son Wiley "enjoyed the family there" while earning top grades at the Pikeville Training School (92s to 99s, with straight 100s in "Deportment"). These were, Wiley once recalled, his "Mark Twain years"-years of the "old swimming hole." And fights. "About the worst fight I ever had in my life," he later wrote, "was with Tom Swafford," whose father had "ambushed and killed" another boy's father in a feud. "Tom was a bully and before I had known him very long we had tied into each other," Rutledge recalled, but the fight ended in a draw followed by "mutual respect." Wiley, it is clear, was no sissy. Beyond that, he had the knack for good peer relations in these early years, even with boys, he once recalled, "who were older than" he. Pikeville also gave Wiley a foretaste of his future. "[A]s I look back," he once revealed, "I got my first interest in the law ... by attending trials at the Bledsoe County courthouse."

In 1908 Wiley's father took another pastorate, in Maryville, Tennessee, population 2,400, a community twelve miles south of Knoxville at the gateway of the Great Smoky Mountains. Like Pikeville, Maryville was surrounded by farms in a county where almost all the residents were native white Americans. Because of Maryville's small Presbyterian preparatory school and college-together called Maryville College-the town offered considerably more educational and cultural opportunity than Pikeville. The boy thus moved to a more sophisticated community that he called home for five years, a period of powerful influences on his life. Wiley's interest in a legal career received "added impetus at Maryville." He recalled, in particular, "the trial of John Mitchell for the murder of his father-in-law.... We all wondered whether John really cut in self-defense, because he was much taller, younger and stronger than the old man and was sober when he did the deed. Nevertheless, Mose Gambell and one or two associates successfully defended Mitchell, and I think I shall never again hear oratory like that which Gamble used in his defense before the jury."

Also during his Maryville years, Wiley's fascination with politics received major reinforcement, especially in the summer of 1910 when he was sixteen. His father, "always very much interested in political affairs," had often brought him along to hear noted political, religious, and other speakers. When the reverend learned that William Jennings Bryan was coming to Knoxville, he took his son over to hear the Great Commoner. Wiley was particularly excited, because when Bryan had run for president two years earlier, the family "had been his enthusiastic supporters" but had not been able to hear him in person. Wiley listened spellbound with "some five or six thousand people ... for more than two hours." When Bryan then waited to shake hands with the hundreds who filed by, Rutledge and his father stood in line. "Just to touch his hand was a thrill for me," Rutledge later reminisced. So he stood in line again and shook hands with Bryan a second time.

In the fall of 1910, Wiley Rutledge began his college career at Maryville, a coeducational school with a student body of 190 or so. Founded in 1819 as the Southern and Western Theological Seminary and renamed Maryville College in 1842, the college was "New School Presbyterian." That is to say, it adhered to "Hopkinsianism," a doctrine named after the New England theologian Dr. Samuel Hopkins, who regarded "self-love" as sinful and preached "disinterested benevolence" that focused on helping others. As a New School institution, moreover, Maryville welcomed women, as well as a few African Americans and Cherokee and Choctaw Indians, as early as the 1820s. Maryville closed during the Civil War but reopened as a liberal arts college in 1866. Soon women were on the faculty, as well as in class, and by the late 1880s, largely as a result of Christian missionary graduates, Maryville began to welcome foreign students from the world around. In the meantime, a group on the board of directors committed to educating young African Americans prevailed against those who opposed it, and by the 1880s African American graduates of Maryville were working, teaching, and preaching in eight states. Others followed until 1901, when the Tennessee legislature barred racial integration of private, as well as public, institutions. Wiley Rutledge thus entered a racially segregated Maryville College, but he could not have been entirely oblivious to its history of racial tolerance, if not equality.

No thought had been given about universities for Wiley outside Tennessee; the educational universe simply did not extend further. Consideration had been given to the state university at Knoxville, but Wiley feared its size. There would be greater comfort at home near his father and Grandma Wigginton. And, it appears, Maryville gave a tuition break to preachers' children.

Wiley flourished at Maryville and made lifelong friends there. He had an outstanding academic record, with most grades in the 90s or high 80s.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court by John M. Ferren Copyright © 2004 by John M. Ferren. Excerpted by permission.
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