Samuel Miller (1816-1890)

Samuel Miller was born in Richmond, Kentucky on April 5, 1816, the son of Frederick and Patsy (Freeman) Miller. Miller graduated in 1838 from Transylvania University with a medical degree. He practiced medicine for a decade, and then studied law on his own. He became a member of the Kentucky bar in 1847. Although not an abolitionist, Miller was strongly opposed to slavery. As the slavery issued became more heated in the late 1840s (temporarily resolved only by the Compromise of 1850, facilitated by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, like Miller, a Whig), Miller decided to move to Iowa. After the demise of the Whig Party, Miller helped form the Republican Party in Iowa. He supported Lincoln's presidential bid in 1860, and was nominated to the Court in 1862, after the outbreak of the Civil War. He replaced Peter Daniel, who had died in May 1860.

Miller is most well known for his opinion in the Slaughterhouse Cases, which narrowly interpreted the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th Amendment. He did so, in my view, in order to limit the transfer of power from the states to the federal government. A broad interpretation of the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th amendment would have allowed a citizen of a state, disappointed with a law of that state, to sue in federal court. The narrow interpretation favored antebellum federalism, as though the Civil War had not happened.

Miller was a Republican appointee to the Electoral Commission of 1876 (see the biography of Joseph Bradley for details).

Miller participated in more than 5,000 cases on the Court.

Miller married Lucy Ballinger in 1839. After her death in 1854, Miller married Elizabeth Winter Reeves in 1857. He died on October 13, 1890.

Further reading: Charles Fairman, Mr. Justice Miller and the Supreme Court: 1862-1890 (1939); Michael A. Ross, Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court during the Civil War Era (2003); .