OWH, JR

Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior (1841-1935) was Massachusetts born into a solid and prosperous family. His father, OWH Senior was a physician and occasional poet, probably best known for the versifying part. As such, his son was attending Harvard when the Civil War began in 1861. He was twenty – and immediately left school to enlist in the famous 20th Massachusetts. He believed it was his duty as an abolitionist and Unionist.

Due to his mature age, education and family influence, he was commissioned a second lieutenant, and continued to rise in the military. He was wounded three separate times. The first, at Ball’s Bluff, an early skirmish notable mostly for claiming the life of Col. Edward Baker, a long-time close friend of President Lincoln. He was wounded again at Antietam, and finally Chancellorsville. By then, he had become disenchanted with the war, the incompetence (both sides), and was even considering that the Confederacy should go its own way. Regardless of abolition.

His experiences in the War would color the rest of his life, his thinking, and even some of his important legal opinions.

Nevertheless, now a captain, OWH recovered from his Chancellorsville wounds and returned to active service, assigned in 1864 as an aide to General Horatio Wright, in command of Fort Stevens, one of several fortresses surrounding/guarding Washington DC. 

The Lincoln Encounter

By midsummer 1864, Union General Ulysses S. Grant was doggedly chasing Confederate General Robert E. Lee through Virginia, centering on the major railroad hub of Petersburg. Lee assigned General Jubal Early to provide some diversionary action around the Union capital. Early planned a raid on Washington, and had visions of capturing Lincoln himself.

Lincoln, always eager to support the troops in person if possible, had decided (unbeknownst to Early) to visit Ft. Stevens to demonstrate his faith in its military defenses to panicked Washingtonians. But unbeknownst to both General Wright and Lincoln, Confederate sharpshooters tasked with checking the fort’s defenses were within striking distance. Lincoln jumped up on one of the parapets for a better view. The 6’4” President, adding nearly another foot with his stovepipe hat, presented an unmistakable seven-foot target. 

According to lore, it was Captain Holmes standing nearby, who shouted to the POTUS, “Get down you damn fool before you get shot!” Lincoln, unaccustomed to a smart-mouth retort, was said to smile and take the advice.

The smart-mouthed officer was never demoted, transferred or chastised for his “impertinence.” Lincoln likely had to admit the young fellow was right. 

The Making of a Justice

Oliver Wendell Holmes returned to Harvard after the war, received a legal degree, and went on to a stellar career in jurisprudence. He purchased a fine home in Massachusetts, traveled frequently, and was widely regarded for a philosophical and liberal interpretation of law. His thinking, his wit, his command of language guaranteed his presence as one of the country’s premiere legal minds. 

He practiced law in Boston for fifteen years, grew a trademark handlebar mustache, and served as an editor of the new American Law Review. He summarized his thinking in a series of lectures, collected and published as The Common Law in 1881, an important compendium of jurisprudence that has never been out of print.

In late 1882 he was appointed as an associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, and in 1899, became its Chief Justice.

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. to the Supreme Court of the United States, a nomination that was quickly confirmed. He went on to serve in that capacity for more than thirty years – a record that still stands to this day. He was ninety.

The FDR Roosevelt Connection

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a distant cousin (and uncle by marriage) to Theodore Roosevelt. He may have had opportunities over the years to become moderately acquainted with the renowned (and witty) Justice, but it was never more than superficial.

When FDR was inaugurated President on March 4, 1933, the country was deep in the throes of a horrible economic depression which was affecting the entire world. Pockets of troublesome international strife were cropping up regularly. While the new President Roosevelt sported a famous name and a popular governorship of New York, he was generally untried and considered a lightweight.

He was also crippled by polio, confined to a wheelchair and occasional leg-braces, assiduously kept from the general public.

It had also been a tradition for a century, that a sitting POTUS was happy to receive calls, but did not pay calls (other than perhaps family members).

The Visit

March 8 was Holmes’ 92nd birthday.

Only three days after his inauguration, in the midst of a “bank holiday” to reorganize failing banking policies, Franklin D. Roosevelt paid an unprecedented personal “courtesy” visit to Justice Holmes to wish him a happy birthday.

According to author Jonathan Alter, the two men chatted pleasantly, which included the aged Justice recalling some of his Civil War experiences. He advised the new President that the only thing to do when losing a battle, was to stop retreating, blow the trumpet and give the order to charge.

Then he thumbs-upped FDR’s iconic litany of new economic programs, by affirming “and that’s exactly what you are doing.”

After they said their goodbyes, Holmes gave his oft-repeated opinion of young Roosevelt: “He has a second class intellect, but a first class temperament.”

It was a pithy assessment. FDR’s intellect was superior to many, but he was hardly “brainy.” But the “first class temperament” was exactly what was needed to see the country through the trials and tribulations that would befall the entire world in the years ahead.

Sources:

Alter, Jonathan – The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope – Simon & Schuster, 2006

Ward, Geoffrey – A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt – Harper & Row, 1989

https://jackmillercenter.org/article/the-fort-stevens-incident

https://supreme.justia.com/justices/oliver-wendell-holmes-jr/