James Moore Wayne

James Moore Wayne (1790 – July 5, 1867) was an American attorney, judge, and politician who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1835 to 1867. A prominent Jacksonian Democrat, he previously served as the sixteenth mayor of Savannah, Georgia, from 1817 to 1819 and as a member of the United States House of Representatives for Georgia’s at-large congressional district from 1829 to 1835, when he was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Andrew Jackson. His long judicial career spanned the Marshall, Taney, and early Chase Courts, and at the time of his death he was the last sitting justice who had served on the Marshall Court.

Wayne was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1790, the son of Richard Wayne, who had emigrated to America in 1760 and married Elizabeth (née Clifford) Wayne on September 14, 1769. His mother died in 1804, when he was fourteen years old. Wayne’s family was connected to several later prominent American figures: his sister Mary Wayne, the wife of Richard Stites, was the great-grandmother of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA, and the second great-grandmother of Massachusetts governor Endicott Peabody. Between 1818 and 1820, Wayne built a Regency-style residence at 10 East Oglethorpe Avenue in Savannah; he sold the home in 1831 to his niece, Sarah Anderson (née Stites) Gordon, and her husband, William Washington Gordon, a former law student of Wayne’s and later mayor of Savannah. The house is now known as the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, reflecting the family’s enduring civic and cultural legacy.

After completing preparatory studies, Wayne attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), from which he graduated in 1808. He then read law and was admitted to the bar in 1810, beginning his legal practice in Savannah. On March 4, 1813, he married Mary Johnson Campbell (1794–1889), daughter of Alexander Campbell, a grandson of the Scottish-born Reverend Archibald Maciver Campbell, and Mehitable Hetty (née Hylton) Campbell. James and Mary Wayne had two surviving children: Henry Constantine Wayne (1815–1883), who married Mary Louisa Nicoll, daughter of Henry Woodhull Nicoll, in 1842, and Mary Campbell Wayne (1818–1885), who married Dr. Brigadier General John Meck Cuyler on October 15, 1840. Through their daughter, the Waynes were grandparents of Mary “May” Caroline Campbell Cuyler, who married Sir Philip Grey Egerton, 12th Baronet, in 1893.

Wayne’s early public career was shaped by military and state service in the era of the War of 1812. From 1812 to 1815 he served in the United States Army as a captain in the Chatham Light Dragoons, a cavalry unit now known as the Georgia Hussars. Entering elective office soon after the war, he served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1815 to 1816. He was elected mayor of Savannah and held that office from 1817 to 1819, after which he returned to private legal practice in Savannah until 1824. During this period he also began his judicial career, serving as judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Savannah from 1819 to 1824 and then as a judge of the Superior Court of Georgia from 1824 to 1829. These positions established his reputation as a capable jurist and prepared him for national office.

In 1829 Wayne entered Congress as a Jacksonian, elected to represent Georgia’s at-large congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. He served four consecutive terms from March 4, 1829, to January 13, 1835. As a member of the Jacksonian Party representing Georgia, he contributed to the legislative process during a significant period in American political development, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents in a rapidly expanding nation. In Congress he aligned with President Andrew Jackson on major economic and constitutional issues: he favored free trade, opposed federal funding of internal improvements except for rivers and harbors, and opposed the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States. His steadfast support for Jacksonian policies and his prominence as a Southern Democrat made him a logical choice when a vacancy arose on the Supreme Court.

Wayne resigned his House seat on January 13, 1835, to accept appointment as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. President Andrew Jackson nominated him on January 7, 1835, to fill the seat vacated by Justice William Johnson. The United States Senate confirmed his nomination on January 14, 1835, and he received his commission the same day. Wayne would serve on the Court for 32 years, one of the longest tenures in its history, sitting through the closing years of the Marshall Court, the entirety of the Taney Court, and into the early years of the Chase Court. Throughout his judicial career he generally favored a strong national government, often emphasizing the authority of federal institutions such as Congress and the federal courts.

On the Supreme Court, Wayne participated in many important cases involving slavery, taxation, commerce, and institutional reform. A Jacksonian nationalist, he agreed with President Jackson’s views on deepening rivers and harbors to promote commerce but opposed broad federal support for highways and canals. He also supported Jackson’s Indian Removal policy and took the position that Native American nations within Georgia were not independent sovereigns, but that their lands ultimately belonged to the state. His refusal to recognize Native American tribes as independent nations and his support for their forced removal westward made him particularly appealing to many white Georgians of his time. At the same time, Wayne was a Southern Unionist who opposed the formation of the Confederate States of America and rejected the legality of secession, even as he remained a slaveholding Southerner and supported many pro-slavery legal positions.

Wayne authored a significant opinion in Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston Railroad Co. v. Letson (1844), a case in which a citizen, Letson, sued a multistate railroad corporation over an alleged breach of contract concerning the expansion of a rail line. The case addressed whether a citizen of one state could sue a corporation that had members in multiple states in federal court. In his opinion, Wayne wrote that “a corporation created by a state to perform its functions under the authority of that state and only suable there, though it may have members out of the state, seems to us to be a person, though an artificial one, inhabiting and belonging to that state, and therefore entitled, for the purpose of suing and being sued, to be deemed a citizen of that state” (43 U.S. 497, 555). By treating corporations as “citizens” of their state of incorporation for jurisdictional purposes, the decision facilitated corporate access to federal courts and strengthened the role of the federal judiciary in commercial disputes, illustrating Wayne’s willingness to expand federal judicial authority over economic matters.

Wayne is also remembered for his concurrence in Dred Scott v. Sandford, decided on March 6, 1857. In that landmark case, the Court, by a 7–2 vote, ruled against Dred Scott, an enslaved man who had sued for his freedom. The majority held that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens of the United States and therefore could not sue in federal court, and further declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional as a violation of the Fifth Amendment, thereby denying Congress the power to prohibit slavery in the federal territories. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney authored the majority opinion, in which he asserted that people of African descent were considered by the framers to be “an inferior order” with “no rights which the white man was bound to respect” (60 U.S. 393). Wayne wrote, “Concurring as I do entirely in the opinion of the court as it has been written and read by the Chief Justice,” and stated that he concurred in “assuming that the Circuit Court had jurisdiction,” while noting that he personally abstained from expressing an opinion on the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise’s eighth section, even as he acknowledged that “six of us declare that it was unconstitutional” (60 U.S. 393). The decision, widely regarded by scholars and historians as one of the worst in the Court’s history, intensified sectional tensions and helped set the stage for the American Civil War.

The Civil War years placed Wayne in a position of acute personal and professional strain. His son, Henry Constantine Wayne, left the United States Army and served as a general in the Confederate Army, and his colleague on the Court, Justice John A. Campbell, resigned to join the Confederate government. Wayne, however, remained on the Supreme Court and loyal to the Union, consistent with his long-standing nationalist convictions and his belief that no state had a legal right to secede. His Unionism made him unpopular in his native Georgia, but he believed that by remaining on the bench he could continue to protect certain Southern interests while upholding the national government. After the war, he worked to mitigate punitive measures against the South, reflecting his enduring attachment to his region even as he maintained his commitment to the Union. Throughout his tenure, his jurisprudence generally emphasized federal supremacy and the authority of national institutions, a stance he maintained even in the face of intense criticism for his role in pro-slavery decisions such as Dred Scott.

Beyond the bench, Wayne was active in historical and civic affairs. He served as president of the Georgia Historical Society from 1841 to 1854 and again from 1856 to 1862, during which time he helped shape the preservation and interpretation of Georgia’s early history. The Georgia Historical Society today holds a collection of his papers, including correspondence and miscellaneous documents dating from 1848 to 1863, which provide insight into his judicial work, political views, and personal relationships. His long service and influence were later recognized during World War II, when the Liberty ship SS James M. Wayne was built in Brunswick, Georgia, and named in his honor, symbolizing his enduring association with his home state and his national prominence.

James Moore Wayne died on July 5, 1867, in Washington, D.C., while still serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, and he was interred in Laurel Grove Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. At the time of his death, Congress had recently enacted the Judicial Circuits Act of 1866, which provided for the gradual reduction of the Court from ten to seven justices by eliminating seats as they became vacant. The vacancy created by the death of Justice John Catron in 1865 had not been filled, so Wayne’s death left the Court with eight members. In 1869, Congress passed the Circuit Judges Act, fixing the size of the Court at nine justices. Because there were then eight sitting justices, one new seat was created and was ultimately filled on March 21, 1870, by Joseph Philo Bradley, while William Strong had in the meantime been appointed to the seat vacated by Justice Robert Cooper Grier. Wayne’s three-decade tenure, his role in defining federal jurisdiction over corporations, his concurrence in Dred Scott, and his steadfast Unionism despite Southern origins made him a consequential and controversial figure in nineteenth-century American constitutional history.