Path to the Supreme Court
Nathan Clifford climbed from a New Hampshire farm through Maine politics — legislator, attorney general, congressman — to Polk's cabinet as Attorney General, then to Mexico, where he managed the exchange of ratifications of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. A northern Democrat with southern sympathies — a 'doughface,' in the era's sneer — he was Buchanan's choice for the seat Curtis (§32) had vacated, and the Senate confirmed him 26–23 in January 1858, one of the narrowest votes of the century.
On the Supreme Court
Clifford wrote more opinions than nearly anyone of his generation — commercial law, admiralty, procedure, Mexican land grants — and almost no famous ones; his significance was positional. He joined Nelson's (§29) Prize Cases dissent; stood alone in Loan Association v. Topeka, denying courts any power to void statutes on unwritten 'public purpose' grounds; and dissented at length in Knox v. Lee when the reconstituted Court blessed the greenbacks he had helped strike down a year earlier. In 1877 he presided over the Electoral Commission and voted for Tilden on every 8–7 question; he reportedly never afterward entered Hayes's White House. A stroke felled him in 1880, but he refused to resign, waiting for a Democratic president to name his successor. He died still waiting, in July 1881, and the seat went to Horace Gray (§47).
The Voting Record
How Clifford voted in the 3,376 cases the Supreme Court Database records from the 1857 term through the 1880 term, using that database’s classification of each vote as liberal or conservative. The gold tick on each bar is the rate for the other justices sitting on those same cases.
Across the whole career Clifford voted with Swayne more than with anyone else — the same side of the judgment in 61.0% of their 410 divided cases — and with Bradley least, at 44.5%. See this Court →Compared against the 5 colleagues Clifford shared at least 300 divided cases with.
Source · The Supreme Court Database (Spaeth, Epstein, Nelson, Martin, et al.) · how these figures are made
Key Decisions
Prize Cases
1863Holding · The dissenters would have held the blockade unlawful until Congress recognized a state of war in July 1861.
Role · Clifford joined Nelson's (§29) dissent, with Taney (§24) and Catron (§26).
The doughface Democrat's war, in judicial form.
Read the opinion →Knox v. Lee
1871Holding · The Legal Tender Acts were constitutional; greenbacks could discharge pre-existing debts.
Role · Clifford dissented at length, adhering to the hard-money holding of Hepburn v. Griswold he had joined the year before.
His monument to Jacksonian hard money, written as the world moved on.
Read the opinion →Loan Association v. Topeka
1874Holding · Taxation must serve a public purpose; municipal bonds issued to subsidize a private ironworks were void.
Role · Clifford was the lone dissenter: courts may enforce only written constitutional limits, not unwritten ones.
A positivist objection to judge-made limits that reads, ironically, like a preview of the Lochner debates.
Read the opinion →Go Deeper
Nathan Clifford, Democrat (1803–1881) (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1922) by Philip Greely Clifford — the only biography, written by his grandson, and for once the filial genre produced the right title: "Democrat" is the thesis of the whole life, from the New Hampshire hills to the deathbed refusal to surrender his seat to a Republican president. A century old and never replaced.
The Bookshelf
The grandson is loyal but not blind, and the book preserves correspondence and Maine detail found nowhere else: the party man's climb — Jacksonian legislator, Polk's Attorney General, the minister who carried the ratified Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Buchanan's doughface appointee. Read it with the modern election-of-1876 literature for balance. G.P. Putnam's Sons; public domain.
The modern account of the crisis that gave Clifford his one appointment with history: the disputed returns, the improvised fifteen-member commission — five justices among them — and the party-line 8–7 votes that made Hayes president. Clifford presided with scrupulous form over a body whose every division he found illegitimate, then signed the result he never accepted; by the standard account, he never entered Hayes's White House. Woodward's classic Reunion and Reaction (1951) supplies the older 'Compromise of 1877' frame. University Press of Kansas.
Returning from the Grier page, where its founding case lived — and Clifford is its sequel and escalation: the 1880 stroke, the visible incapacity, and the refusal to resign while a Republican held the appointment power. Where Grier's colleagues pushed him out, Clifford's could only wait; he died in office, and the seat he guarded for a Democrat went to a Republican's nominee anyway. The mortal court's purest case study in how a life commission becomes a partisan asset. University Press of Kansas.
The memorial tradition, as the FJC's bibliography lists it: Bradbury — a former senator who knew him — for the Maine Historical Society, and Chandler (who also wrote the Catron centenary) with the bar's self-made-man framing. That the profession's tribute to a twenty-three-year justice leads with effort rather than brilliance is, gently, the verdict. Both public domain.
The state survey returns from the Woodbury page, with Clifford as its second subject — the Rumney farm boy who had to leave New Hampshire to rise. Two of the five are now covered on this site; Chase arrives with the next era, Stone and Souter far beyond.
A changing of the guard on this site's context shelf: Swisher's Taney Period covers Clifford's first six years, and Fairman's massive Reconstruction volumes — the new standing anchor as the site crosses into the postwar Court — cover the remaining seventeen, including the Legal Tender wars and the Slaughter-House docket Campbell argued. Fairman also gave the Electoral Commission its own Holmes Devise volume (Five Justices and the Electoral Commission of 1877, 1988). Macmillan.
Gillette's chapter is the standard scholarly sketch of Clifford — sharper than the filial 1922 biography on the vices as well as the virtues. The same reference set already cited across these shelves; listed here for the justice it covers best.
The standard modern biographical encyclopedia of the Court: a signed essay on each of the 110 justices from Jay to Alito, alphabetically arranged, by a named scholar or journalist. Length tracks reputation — two pages for Thomas Johnson, three for Woods, eleven for Holmes — which is itself a rough map of who the literature has bothered with. It is not a substitute for a biography, and for the justices who have never had one it is often the most careful short account in print. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The one-volume reference on the Court: more than a thousand signed entries on cases, doctrines, institutions and the justices, current to 2005. Cases and people share one alphabet, so a citation can be followed without changing volumes, and the biographical entries are short, written by specialists, and better than a longer sketch at carrying the historiography — what the argument about a justice currently is. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.The grandson's biography — for the only full life — "Democrat" as thesis
- 2.Holt (with Woodward) — for 1877 — the workhorse presiding over the century's ugliest verdict
- 3.Atkinson — for the ending: the seat held against a Republican pen, to the grave
- 4.Bradbury and Chandler — for the memorial tradition — effort as the verdict
- 5.Jones — for the Granite State five, two down
- 6.Fairman — for the Reconstruction Court — the site's new standing context anchor
Where the Papers Are Kept
Nathan Clifford papers, 1831–1881 — 2 feet, about 200 items: two boxes of legal opinions and three bundles of correspondence in the city of his practice, as the FJC lists them. The opinions — twenty-three years of them — are free online for anyone auditing the plow-horse reputation. Visit →
Online Resources
Ideas for Further Research
- The era's coda: confirmed 26–23 — the narrowest margin of the age, a purely sectional vote — Clifford was the last justice a Democratic president would appoint for thirty years, and he died in office rather than let a Republican fill his seat. The anti-Curtis: the most brilliant short tenure succeeded by the least brilliant long one.
- The 1877 Electoral Commission — five justices lent to politics, deciding a presidency by party-line 8–7 votes — deserves its own site essay someday; Fairman wrote it its own Holmes Devise volume. Clifford presided, voted Tilden throughout, and reportedly never entered Hayes's White House.
- MILESTONE: Clifford completes the Taney era — fourteen justices (§21–34) — and with it the Court's first three eras: 34 of 116 justices covered, every one from Jay to Clifford. Next: the list sprint; then Noah Swayne opens Lincoln's Court.