His name was John William Augustine Sanford. He was Georgia-born, but he lived in Alabama and served that state most of his life. He was a soldier and a lawyer, but that’s a little like describing the RMS Titanic as a famous boat.
There is more to the story.
Sanford was born November 3, 1825 in
Milledgeville, Georgia. He earned university degrees from Oglethorpe University
(BA in 1844), Harvard University (BL, 1851) and the University of Alabama (LLD,
1878). Sanford was admitted to the bar in 1852.
Sanford joined the 3rd
Alabama Infantry Regiment as a private at the start of the Civil War and was
quickly promoted to assistant quartermaster. In 1862 he was authorized to raise
a regiment and he eventually became a Lt. Colonel in the Third Battalion of
Hilliard’s Legion. In 1863, after the Legion’s ranks were terribly thinned
during the battle of Chickamauga, the four battalions of the Legion were
reconstituted as the 23rd Battalion Alabama Sharpshooters and the 59th
and 60th Alabama Infantry Regiments. Sanford was promoted to full
colonel and given command of the 60th.
Sanford surrendered on April 9, 1865,
along with the remainder of the Army of Northern Virginia, at Appomattox Court
House. At that point, he still had 36 years of service in front of him.
Immediately after the war, Sanford was
elected Alabama’s Attorney General. Three years later, General George Gordon
Meade, the commander of the military district that governed Alabama at that
time, removed Sanford and other state officers from their positions due to
Reconstruction policies of the Federal government.
Sanford responded the way most lawyers
would: He sent Meade a letter. In the letter, Sanford asserted Alabama’s right
to establish a government for herself and complained in very strong language
about Reconstruction. It was a strongly-worded letter. It was written by a
lawyer. Somehow, it fell into the hands of newspaper editors and Sanford became
famous.
He was re-elected as Attorney General
three times before he became the Clerk of the Alabama Supreme Court in 1880. He
resigned from that position November 5, 1892.
But Sanford still wasn’t done. In 1896
he was an Elector to the State at large and on April 23, 1901, he was elected
to be a delegate from Montgomery County to the Constitutional Convention.
Sanford died August 7, 1913. As a
soldier, he fought for a cause we find repellant today. As a politician, he
railed against Reconstruction and became popular because of that.
To understand the Civil War and
Reconstruction, we need to study men like Sanford. He made a difference on battlefields
and in courtrooms and that, my friends, is an interesting career.
Thanks for reading.
