The Life of RICHMOND MUMFORD PEARSON
RICHMOND MUNFORD PEARSON 1805-1878
STATE SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE 1858-1878
(North Carolina Lot)
PESCUD SECTION, LOT STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA
The monument to Chief Justice Richmond Mumford Pearson has a massive base with a low, tapering shaft and crowned with a urn and cloak. Inscribed on the monument is the seal of the North Carolina Supreme Court and beneath is carved: “His epitaph is written by his own hand in the North Carolina Reports. Erected by an association of the bar of North Carolina, composed mainly of those who studied under Chief Justice Pearson and who learned in the woods and fields about old Richmond Hill to revere his great mind and to love his simple life.” On another face of the monument are carved the words: “Richmond Munford Pearson, born at Richmond Hill, Rowan County, N. C., 1805, died 1878. As judge, justice and chief justice he presided in the courts of North Carolina continuously for 42 years, through all the changes of peace and war and reconstruction.”
Richmond Munford Pearson was born in June, 1805, in Davie County, the fourth son of Colonel Richmond Pearson. His older brother was the Honorable Joseph Pearson, a member of the state congress from North Carolina. When his father’s mercantile business fell on hard times and there was no money for Richmond’s education, brother Joseph stepped in to ensure that Richmond received quality schooling. He received his early education under the instruction of John Mushat, a most successful teacher of his day residing in the Brentwood area of Washington, D.C.
In 1815, Richmond Pearson entered the University of North Carolina, graduating with the highest honors as the head of his class in 1823. Choosing law as his profession he studied under Judge Leonard Henderson (later Chief Justice of North Carolina) for several years, attaining his license in 1826. He began his practice in Salisbury, North Carolina, and in 1829 he was elected to the State Legislature, serving three terms.
In 1837, he was elected a judge of the Superior Court, a position he held for 12 years. In 1849, he was elected a member of the States’s Supreme Court.
In the mid-1850's, Justice Richmond Pearson’s home, northwest of Boonville, near the Yadkin River and the community of Richmond Hill, was the site of a law school he conducted. His students stayed in small log cabins on the homestead with most lectures held out of doors. A few of the students stayed at Rockford across the Yadkin River and “rowed the river” to attend the judge’s school. In 1858, upon the death of Chief Justice Nash, Richmond was chosen Chief Justice and he closed his home school and moved to Raleigh.
As the Civil War approached, Pearson, although a slave-owner himself, firmly believed in the constitutional supremacy of the central government and opposed succession. During the war he became much more widely known throughout the state and the south because of his highly controversial rulings affecting the conscription of men into the Confederate Army. In 1863 Pearson ruled that the Governor of North Carolina had no authority to use the states militia to enforce the Confederate conscription laws. His decision was denounced by Confederate civil and military authorities but was upheld by Governor Zebulon Vance. Pearson was famous for his use of the writ of habeas corpus to free men who believed themselves unjustly conscripted. One famous case was about a man who hired a substitute to fulfill his military obligation. When a change in the laws made the substitute himself subject to conscription, the man who hired him was taken into the army. Pearson’s controversial decisions during the Civil War were founded not in any personal doubts about the legitimacy of the Confederacy, but rather in his firm belief in the rule of law and in the freedom of the individual. As the conclusion of the Civil War, Pearson was appointed provisional Chief Justice by military authority in 1865 and when full civilian authority was restored during reconstruction, he was elected to retain his position, which he held until his death in 1878.
Elected a judge when he was 30 years old, Judge Pearson presided over the courts of North Carolina for more than forty years. So impressive was Judge Pearson’s record that upon the death of United States Supreme Court Justice Chase, President Grant signed the commission for Pearson to become Chase’s replacement. However, upon learning that Pearson was 68 years old, Grant decided not to make the appointment, instead appointing Justice Waite, already serving on the U.S. Supreme Court as the Chief Justice. Waite, at the time, was a youthful 61 of age.
As a man he was distinguished for his honesty of purpose, unbending integrity, inflexible idea of justice, and conscientious devotion to what he considered to be his duty. While to the eyes of the world he seemed somewhat cold and austere, to those that knew him intimately he was a genial, generous, warm-hearted man.
He was married twice: first on June 12, 1832, to Margaret McClung Williams, daughter of United States Senator John Williams of Tennessee, and niece of Hugh L. White, also United States Senator from Tennessee and unsuccessful candidate for president in 1836; and second in 1859 to the widow of General John Gray Bynum, Mary McDowell Bynum. Judge Pearson and Margaret had one son, Richmond Pearson, born in 1852.
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