STANLEY

See also:

• STANLEY MATTHEWS (1824-1889)

MATTHEWS (1824-1889)  , American jurist, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the 21st of July 1824 . He graduated from Kenyon College in 1840, studied law, and in 1842 was admitted to the bar of Maury county, Tennessee . In 1844 he became assistant prosecuting attorney of Hamilton county, Ohio; and in 1846-1849 edited a short-lived anti-slavery paper, the Cincinnati Herald . He was clerk of the Ohio House of Representatives in 1848-1849, a judge of common pleas of Hamilton county in 1850-1853, state senator in 1856-1858, and U.S. district-attorney for the southern district of Ohio in 1858-1861 . First a Whig and then a Free-Soiler, he joined the Republican party in 1861 . After the outbreak of the Civil War he was commissioned a lieutenant of the 23rd Ohio, of which Rutherford B . Hayes was major; but saw service only with the 57th Ohio, of which he was colonel, and with a brigade which he commanded in the Army of the Cumberland . He resigned from the army in 1863, and was judge of the Cincinnati superior court in 1863-1864 . He was a Republican presidential elector in 1864 and 1868 . In 1872 he joined the Liberal Republican movement, and was temporary chairman of the Cincinnati convention which nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency, but in the campaign he supported Grant . In 1877, as counsel before the Electoral Commission, he opened the argument for the Republican electors of Florida and made the principal argument for the Republican electors of Oregon . In March of the same year he succeeded John Sherman as senator from Ohio, and served until March 1879 .

In 1881

President Hayes nominated him as associate justice of the Supreme Court, to succeed Noah H . Swayne; there was much opposition, especially in the press, to this appointment, because Matthews had been a prominent railway and corporation lawyer and had been one of the Republican " visiting statesmen" who witnessed the canvass of the vote of Louisiana' in 1876; and the nomination had not been approved when the session of Congress expired . Matthews was renominated by President Garfield on the 15th of March, and the nomination was confirmed by the Senate (22 for, 21 against) on the 12th of ' It seems certain that Matthews and Charles Foster of Ohio gave their written promise that Hayes, if elected, would recognize the Democratic governors in Louisiana and South Carolina . May . He was an honest, impartial and conscientious judge . He died in Washington, on the 22nd of March 1889 .