Justice John Catron

Justice John Catron. Summer Home. This is the site of the antebellum summer home of United States Supreme Court Justice John Catron (1786-1865) and his wife, Mathilda Childress Catron. Born in Virginia, Catron moved as a youth to Kentucky and served in the War of 18 12. He read law, was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1815, and established a practice in Nashville in 1818. Catron sat on the Tennessee Supreme Court of Errors and Appeals, 1824-1834, and then retired to private practice. , President Andrew Jackson, under whom Catron had served in the War of 18 12, appointed him to the United States Supreme Court on Jackson's last day in office on March 3, 1837. During his tenure, which endured until his death in 1865, Catron remained not only a staunch defender of slavery but also a steadfast supporter of the Union. He sided with the majority in the most notable case in which he was involved, Dred Scott u. Sandford, which declared in 1857 that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. The Compromise had banned slavery in the territories., Once the Civil War began, Catron never returned to his Tullahoma house. In 1862, the town used it as a hospital for sick or wounded transient Confederate soldiers. Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg occupied it for six months in 1863. Union Gen. Henry W. Slocum used it as his headquarters after the Confederates evacuated Tullahoma. Fire destroyed the house in 1900., "Judge Catron.... has a neat summer cottage in the suburbs, but it is badly soiled by the occupation of soldiers." -Union Gen. Alpheus S. Williams, letter to his daughter, Nov. 30, 1863