John Curtiss Underwood

American judge (1809–1873)

For the Confederate engineer and Kentucky politician, see John C. Underwood .

John Curtiss Underwood (March 14, 1809 – December 7, 1873) was an attorney , abolitionist politician and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Virginia and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia .

Early life

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Born in Litchfield , New York , Underwood graduated from Hamilton College in 1832, and was a founding member of Alpha Delta Phi . After graduation, Underwood traveled to what was then western Virginia and tutored in Clarksburg . He then returned to New York to read law and began a private legal practice, which he continued in New York and Virginia from 1839 to 1856.

Politics and abolition

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Underwood had been a Whig , but as that party was disintegrating, he joined the Liberty Party in the 1840s because of his anti-slavery views . He unsuccessfully ran for United States Representative and then district attorney in 1847. He joined the Free Soil Party in 1848 and in the following year moved with his young family back to Virginia. Underwood hoped that successful operation of a dairy farm and cheesemaking factory in adjoining Clarke and Fauquier counties would show the superiority of using free, rather than slave, labor.

When the Republican Party was being formed, Underwood became one of its first supporters in Virginia, and in 1856 he traveled to the party's convention in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , where John C. Fremont was nominated for United States President . Underwood's vigorous campaign for Fremont, the Republican Party, and abolitionism led to his receiving death threats, so in 1857 he temporarily left Virginia for New York and wrote of his persecution in an account published in _The New York Times _. In 1857, President James Buchanan named Underwood Chief Justice of the Nebraska Territory , but Underwood declined the appointment and did not appear in the courts there.

Underwood became Secretary of the Emigrant Aid and Homestead Society (which he incorporated with Massachusetts congressman Eli Thayer ) from 1856 to 1861. He worked to encourage the migration of Republicans and European emigrants to the Ohio Valley counties of Virginia. These counties would become West Virginia when Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861. His efforts met with little success and then vanished completely in October 1859 in the aftermath of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry , when the Black Horse Cavalry searched and confiscated the Underwoods' Virginia property by order of Governor Henry A. Wise . Only Maria and the children lived there at the time; Underwood had been permitted to return only temporarily to settle his affairs after giving his pro-Fremont speech.

The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer , which Underwood supported financially, became the most influential Republican paper in any major slaveholding state. In 1860, Underwood was a delegate to the Republican Convention in Chicago , Illinois , that selected Abraham Lincoln as its candidate. He campaigned for Lincoln in border states, and on October 17, 1860, made possibly the only speech in favor of that Republican candidate in Virginia, in Bellton , (now West Virginia). The New York Tribune published that endorsement speech, which extolled the superiority of free over slave labor, about a week later.

Proposed diplomatic post

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In 1861, although the Senate approved Underwood's appointment to the position of United States Consul at Callao , Peru , Underwood declined the post, accepting instead the office of fifth auditor in the United States Department of the Treasury , a position in which he served from 1861 to 1864, under Treasury secretary Salmon P. Chase .

Federal judicial service

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Underwood received a recess appointment from President Abraham Lincoln on March 27, 1863, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia vacated by Judge James Dandridge Halyburton . He was nominated to the same position by President Lincoln on January 5, 1864. He was confirmed by the [Un

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