(Not So) Famous Amos
Amos Tappan Akerman
Amos Tappan Akerman was born February 23, 1821 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire moving to Savannah in 1846 as a tutor in the home of Senator John McPherson. He would study law in the Senator’s library and was admitted to the Georgia Bar in 1850. He made his living as both an attorney and farmer at one point owning eleven slaves. Although he opposed secession as the outbreak of civil war neared, Akerman served in the Confederate Army attaining the rank of Colonel.
After the war Akerman joined the Republican party and was “among the most influential leaders in the work” of the convention that crafted Georgia’s 1868 Constitution. Rivals accused him of supporting the opposition candidate in that year’s bitter presidential contest and he would write a letter to the New York Times to dispose of the rumors. Akerman also used the occasion as a forum to advocate for equal political and civil rights.
In his letter, the tempo of his argument began with a sober assessment of the confederate government and the Civil War.
In 1861, we embarked in a bold political adventure, which was soon followed by a voluntary resort of arms. . .with a chance of victory. . .and the risk of defeat. With the fortunes of war compelling surrender, the spirit of resentment and revenge was improper at all times [and] peculiarly unbecoming now.
That spirit permeated the contentious aftermath of the war. Akerman laid out the cause and consequence of that spirit in the starkest of terms saying,
We gave up the Confederate Government. We gave up slavery.
Recognizing that new government would soon be formed, Akerman made a compelling case for extending the right to vote to the newly emancipated.
There is no reason why a colored voter should not seek the welfare of the country to which he has so many ties. The ends to be sought by good white men and good black men, in the act of voting, are precisely the same. Both want good laws and a good administration of them.
Akerman rounded out his thoughts on the matter by concluding that “the most important view is this; that the abolition of all political distinctions founded on color will remove, effectually and forever, all danger of a conflict of races.” This sentiment would carry over into his time in private practice where the litigation of the reconstruction period had begun to shift “from the enforcement of technicalities toward the administration of justice on broader principles of equity and a sense of right.” The most noteworthy example of this shift involved a lawsuit tailor made for Akerman and the Georgia Supreme Court to outfit themselves in the “courage to break away from old forms and precedents.”
White v. Clements presented an issue of first impression, namely “the right of persons of color to hold office in this State.” Richard W. White was elected Clerk of the Superior Court of Chatham County in April 1868. His opponent, William Clements challenged the outcome claiming that he was eligible to hold the seat “because he was not a person of color, and did not have in his veins any African or negro blood.” The lower court agreed and held that a person of color was ineligible to hold office.
Akerman, who by then had earned the distinction of being “the best Republican lawyer in the state” took up the appeal. Both he and Justice Henry Kent McCay, who authored the opinion, were influential in the state constitutional convention, which no doubt prompted the salient viewpoint that:
The people of Georgia, without distinction of color, came together at Atlanta in December, 1867, by their delegates, to form for themselves a Constitution and frame a government, men of both colors sat as delegates…and yet it is now contended that the rights guaranteed by that Constitution, stand as to the two colors, on a different footing, that as to the white man, they are securities, but as to the negro, they are grants…The whole thing is absurd.
Overturning the ruling of the trial court, Judge McCay held, “. . . the fundamental law – the Constitution of the State – guarantees to men of color the right to be chosen to an office, and I put my judgment upon that ground.”
Partiality and injustice breed discontent. Let us then be instructed by bitter experience. Let us abandon all absolute dogmas and unseasonable sentiments. Let us recognize truth even when in variance with our prepossessions.
Akerman would later serve as Attorney General of the United States, earning the distinction of being the first to head the newly created Justice Department and establishing its first investigative unit, which was the precursor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His tenure was marked by his zealous prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan and its violent reprisals against Negro suffrage, marking him as the first in federal civil rights litigators. After leaving the Justice Department Akerman lived the remainder of his life in Cartersville until his death in 1880.
This post is adapted from Derrick Alexander Pope, Bending the Arc: Georgia Lawyers in the Pursuit of Social Justice, Georgia Bar Journal, April 2018
