This biography of Joseph Henry Lumpkin (1799-1867) details the life and work of the man whose senior judgeship on Georgia's Supreme Court spanned more than twenty years and included service as its first Chief Justice. Paul Hicks portrays Lumpkin as both a civic-minded professional and an evangelical Presbyterian reformer. Exploring Lumpkin's important contributions to the institutional development of the Georgia Supreme Court, Hicks discusses Lumpkin's opinions in cases ranging in concern from family conflicts to slavery. He also shows how Lumpkin cleared a way through the thicket of antiquated laws that threatened to strangle the growth of corporate banking and business in Georgia. Treated in depth as well are the evolution of his views on slavery and secession and his involvement in social and economic reform, including temperance, education, African American colonization, and industrialization. Hicks also covers Lumpkin's undergraduate days at the University of Georgia and Princeton, his experiences as a state legislator and successful lawyer, and his family life. Among the family members portrayed are Lumpkin's older brother, Wilson, a two-term governor of Georgia; and Lumpkin's son-in-law, Thomas R. R. Cobb, cofounder with Lumpkin of the University of Georgia Law School. Joseph Henry Lumpkin played an important role in the public life of Georgia during the formative era of American law and the age of sectionalism. Here is a full and compelling portrait of Lumpkin as an individual of both intellect and passion, on and off the bench.

Inspiring and instructive biographies of the 100 most influential judges from state and federal courts in one easy-to-access volume. Great American Judges profiles 100 outstanding judges and justices in a full sweep of U.S. history. Chosen by lawyers, historians, and political scientists, these men and women laid the foundation of U.S. law. A complement to Great American Lawyers, together these two volumes create a complete picture of our nation's top legal minds from colonial times to today. Following an introduction on the role of judges in American history are A–Z biographical entries portraying this diverse group from extraordinarily different backgrounds. Students and history enthusiasts will appreciate the accomplishments of these role models and the connections between their inspiring lives and their far-reaching legal decisions. William Rehnquist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and 12 other Supreme Court justices are found alongside federal judges like Skelly Wright, who ordered school desegregation in 1960. Influential state judges such as Rose Elizabeth Bird, California's first woman Supreme Court Chief Justice, are also featured.

“This is a remarkable collection of essays. Citizenship clearly forms the backbone for these investigations but the range of the contributors’ backgrounds (in terms of disciplinary training) and the approaches they take to the question makes this collection both broad and deep. As it turns out, there is no other way to tackle a concept as central but also as slippery as citizenship. A shorter or more focused collection would miss the nuances and insights that this one offers.”—Aaron Sheehan-Dean, author of Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia “President Obama’s citizenship continues to be questioned by the ‘birthers,’ the Cherokee Nation has revoked tribal rights from descendants of Cherokee slaves, and Parliament in the U.K. is debating ‘citizenship education.’ It is in both this broader context and in the narrower academic one that Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South stands as a smart, exciting, and most welcome contribution to southern history and southern studies.”—Michele Gillespie, author of Katharine and R.J. Reynolds: Partners of Fortune and the Making of the New South “Combining historical and cultural studies perspectives, eleven well-crafted essays and a provocative epilogue engage the economic, political, and cultural dynamics of race and belonging from the era of enslavement through emancipation, reconstruction, and the New South.”—Nancy A. Hewitt, author of Southern Discomfort More than merely legal status, citizenship is also a form of belonging, shaping individual and group rights, duties, and identities. The pioneering essays in this volume are the first to address the evolution and significance of citizenship in the American South during the long nineteenth century. They explore the politics and contested meanings of citizenry from a variety of disciplinary perspectives in a tumultuous period when slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction, and segregation redefined relationships between different groups of southern men and women, both black and white.