Corporations Under Eminent Domain

Jeremiah Sullivan Black
17 pages (2008/1901); 188KB download
WOWIO Books; ISBN: WOWIO-00477

DESCRIPTION

“In the public affairs of the United States before and after the Civil War, from the time be entered politics as a supporter of Andrew Jackson until his death in August 1883, [Jeremiah Sullivan Black] stood for one of the great forces of minority opinion, seldom strong enough to control by mere weight of its impact, but always liable to assert itself in every great emergency as a controlling balance of power. When attacked by his last illness he was writing a reply to Jefferson Davis, suggested by a somewhat heated attack made upon him by Mr. Davis, because while declaring that ‘the States have rights carefully reserved and as sacred as the life, liberty, and property of the private citizen,’ he held Andrew Jackson’s view of secession. If this closing incident of his career is kept in mind and brought to bear on his grim jest that ‘next to the original Fall of Man the landing of the Mayflower was the greatest misfortune that ever happened to the human race,’ the illustration will give a better idea than could be given by any definition of his attitude during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. Judge Black served on the supreme bench of Pennsylvania and in the cabinet of President Buchanan, but his great influence was never an incident of official prominence. As a man and as a lawyer he showed an individuality so marked, and in certain ways so representative, that men of all parties listened to him with an attention they seldom give the official utterance of any public man. When, in 1883, he went before the judiciary committee of the Pennsylvania senate and delivered an address on the State’s power of eminent domain, and on the duties of corporations as public servants, the effect was felt throughout the country. It is doubtful if any other speech on a technical question of law and industrial economy ever produced effects so profound and so far-reaching. It is believed that the forces set in motion by sympathy with Judge Black’s views thus expressed decided more than one presidential election and did more than anything else to make possible the radical changes which took place in the politics of the Northwestern States between 1883 and 1892.”—David J. Brewer

“Corporations Under Eminent Domain” is his 1883 address about the State’s power of eminent domain and the duties of corporations as public servants.