NICHOLAS, JUDGE SAMUEL SMITH, Lawyer, was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in April, 1797. His father was the distinguished George Nicholas, whose family was closely connected with the history of Virginia, and who was himself a prominent member of the Virginia Convention, a zealous advocate of the Federal Constitution, and an influential and prominent member of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the State of Kentucky. On the maternal side, he was descended from an old and well-known Maryland family named Smith, two members of which, Robert Smith and General Samuel Smith, of Baltimore, were prominent patriots and statesmen during the Revolution, and, in the early days of our Government, Robert Smith held Cabinet positions, under Jefferson and Madison.
Gen. Samuel Smith was United States Senator from Maryland for twenty-nine years, and rendered distinguished military service in the war of 1812, for which he was rewarded by Congress with a sword. Samuel S. Nicholas was a nephew of these two men. He was the twelfth of thirteen children, all of whom, except himself and the child younger than himself, were short-lived. He was but two years old when his father died, and but eight or ten when he lost his mother. Being thus orphaned, he was thrown, at a tender age, upon the world, without means and without advantages. His father died supposing himself (and thought by others) a very rich man; but, through security debts, which his estate had to pay, and for which valuable property was sacrificed, and through the gross mismanagement of executors, his family had small means left, and, at the death of his wife, his younger children became dependent for support and education.
Gen. Samuel Smith, of Baltimore, a wealthy merchant, as well as a distinguished politician, sent for his nephew and namesake, Samuel Smith Nicholas, to come to Baltimore to live with him. He took him into his counting-house, intending his education to be entirely that of a merchant; but the boy pursued, in his leisure hours, his studies with great diligence, keeping up his knowledge of Latin and teaching himself French; and, although he had, up to this time, only the barest rudiments of an education, such was his advancement in thought and his facility with his pen, that, at the age of fifteen, when an old Presbyterian clergyman of Baltimore published a very vulnerable article, he undertook to reply to it. Two or three articles and their answers were published before the reverend doctor discovered that, instead of a foeman worthy of his steel, he was battling with a counting-house lad, and great was his vexation and chagrin on making the discovery. Samuel Nicholas never went to but one school, and that a country school, near Danville, Kentucky, kept by Joshua Fry, the grandfather of the Hon. James Speed, of Louisville, and to that school he went only three or four years. He was almost entirely self-educated and self-raised, never having had assistance from any one, except the situation given him in the commission-house of his uncle. He was also sent as supercargo, when sixteen years old, on one of his uncle’s vessels, to South America and to China. He made two voyages, and was absent altogether about five or six years. During that time he acquired the Spanish language, and kept an interesting journal of his voyages and the countries he visited. After returning from these voyages, having been trained for mercantile life, he went to New Orleans, and began his career there as a merchant; but, soon discovering his unfitness for that life, he withdrew from it, and went to Frankfort, Kentucky, where he studied law with Chancellor Bibb. In 1825, he moved to Louisville, where he first engaged in the practice of law. He was soon appointed agent and lawyer for the old United States Bank, and rose rapidly in his profession from that time.
In 1829, he married Matilda Prather, daughter of Thomas Prather, a wealthy merchant of Louisville, and in this marriage he had seven children. This wife died in 1844; and, in 1848, he married Mary Smith, a cousin, and the granddaughter of General Samuel Smith, who had taken him to live with him when a boy. She survived him, but died in 1874. In this second marriage, he had three children, making in all a family of ten children — seven daughters and three sons.
He was appointed Judge of the Court of Appeals, in 1831, by Governor Metcalfe, and held the place until 1837, when, finding that it compelled his absence from home for a large portion of the year, and separated him from his children, who needed his superintendence of their education, he resigned what was a most congenial professional position, for what he considered to be higher duties — those of the home circle. In 1844, he received the appointment of Chancellor, at Louisville, from Gov. Letcher, and this position he retained until a change in the State Constitution made it elective, when he resigned. His friends urged him to run for the office, but he declined, knowing that he had no personal popularity, and being unalterably opposed to an elective judiciary. In resigning the position of Chancellor, he probably made the greatest sacrifice of his life, for it was a position well suited to his taste and inclination.
In all the deep and life-long interest he took in professional and public affairs, he was never a self-seeker — never a candidate for office but twice in his life — in his early life, for the Legislature, when he was defeated once, and elected once. He took a great delight in politics. It was an inherited passion with him, but he knew he lacked the manners and the disposition to be successful with the people, and, except when he wished to have some legislation carried out for the benefit of Louisville, he never offered for any public position. Such honors as he received during his life, were, in a sense, thrust upon him. Certainly he did not seek them. They sought him. In 1850, he was appointed, by Gov. Crittenden, to revise the Code of Practice in Kentucky, in connection with Charles Wickliffe, and Squire Turner ; and to him the State is indebted for some of the most important and valuable changes in its laws. He was often heard to say, that there was but one position in the gift of the Government which he ever allowed himself to covet, and that was a judgeship in the Supreme Court of the United States. Andrew Johnson was most anxious to appoint him to that position after the death of Judge Catron, of Tennessee, and he tendered him the nomination, but Judge Nicholas declined it, believing the Republican Senate would refuse to confirm him, because of his well-known hostility to them and their measures. In the emancipation movement in Kentucky, he was one of the most prominent and influential leaders. Although a slave-holder himself, he ardently desired the gradual emancipation of the slaves in his State, for the furtherance, as he supposed, of its material prosperity. During the agitation of the movement, and until it became a hopeless undertaking, he gave much time and thought to the means by which emancipation could be accomplished within Kentucky ; so as best to subserve the interests of both masters and slaves.
After retiring from the chancellorship he took up again the practice of his profession, but only to try cases of great importance. At this time, he began to occupy himself with his pen, and gave his time almost wholly to writing, reading, and study. He gave thirty years of study and reflection to a new plan for electing the President. This scheme when perfected, according to his views, became the intellectual pet and pride of his life. He thought it the best creation of his mind, and claimed that he had bestowed upon it his best thought and labor. This scheme was presented to the United States Senate, by Senator Powell, of Kentucky, is now on file among Congressional records, and has been republished and discussed, during the past year, by some of the New York papers.
In politics, Judge Nicholas was remarkable for his perfect independence of thought, expression, and action. It was his boast that he was never hide-bound to any party, and that he placed patriotism, and the common weal of his countrymen, far above the obligations of mere party ties. He especially loathed and abhorred every thing like narrow partisanship, sectionalism, and the selfish, sordid, interested motives which actuate many men in public life. He had more affiliation with the Whig party than with any other, but he was in no sense a party man. He was a patriot and a statesman of the highest type, for upon all public questions he took the largest, broadest, most liberal, most national, and disinterested views. He labored unceasingly, with his pen and by his personal influence, to turn the revolutionary tide which threatened at one time to drag Kentucky into secession, and he probably did more than any other man toward saving this State to the Union. He was a profound thinker, and an able writer and expounder. In moral force he may be said to have been truly great. Had he lived in a wilderness, he would have done what he believed to be right as if the eyes of the whole world had been upon him. He was in all things a law ynto himself, and he lived up to that law most rigidly. His attachment to the Constitution of the United States amounted almost to a passion. He saw from afar the first symptoms of a waning reverence for the spirit and tenor of that instrument, and he was unceasing in entreaty and warning ; appealing to patriotism, reason, national pride, and to sacred traditions, to a just concern for the future, to the reverence for the past, to justice, to integrity, to the sanctity of oath, in behalf of the Constitution.
The last years of his life were spent in interpreting and expounding the Constitution, and his papers on that subject are a rich legacy to the constitutional law of the land. The day must come when they will be held as authority, and occupy the place they so richly deserve. His reputation as a wise judge, a learned lawyer, and expounder of the law in all its branches, won for him the respect and friendship of the most able, and distinguished statesmen and jurists of the land. He was a man of cold manners and exterior, and his affections and friendships were limited, but they were ardent and strong. His charities were great, but his left hand knew not what his right did. He was always interested in all measures for the advancement of the people, and probably did more than any other man to establish the public school system of Louisville. He took an unfailing interest in every thing relating to education, the improvement in school books and the training of teachers. While his manners in the social circle were cold and forbidding, his demeanor upon the bench, as judge, was unexceptionable — always courteous, patient, respectful, and attentive.
He died, after a brief and painless illness, in November, 1869. His body lies buried in “Cave Hill Cemetery,” near Louisville, Kentucky.
