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37 Tenn. L. Rev. 334 (1969-1970)
Escaping the Shroud of Anonymity: Justice Howell Edmunds Jackson and the Income Tax Case

handle is hein.journals/tenn37 and id is 348 raw text is: ESCAPING THE SHROUD OF ANONYMITY: JUSTICE HOWELL EDMUNDS JACKSON AND THE INCOME TAX CASE* IRVING SCHIFFMAN** The shroud of anonymity is heavy and wide and the lives and careers of a multitude of men are secreted away beneath its covering. Buried in this coffin of historical neglect are the names of a number of Supreme Court Justices and, were it not for a single incident in his life, the name of Howell Edmunds Jackson would be among them. The dramatic series of events which caused a nation to take notice of Howell Jackson were nearing completion as the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad train carried him to Washington the first weekend in May of 1895. Jackson was returning to the federal city because he did not wish to re- sign from the Supreme Court. Illness had kept the justice off the bench since the preceding October and his haggard appearance gave evidence that he was far from recovered. But one of the most important cases in the Court's history was to receive a rehearing and strong pressure had been brought to bear on the gentle Southerner either to attend the arguments or to resign so as to allow the President to appoint a pro-income tax man in his stead. The friends who greeted him at the station in Washington early Sunday morning could not help wonder- ing whether in making the journey from Tennessee the Justice had gambled away a great deal of the short time he had remaining. The case which had brought Jackson back to the Capitol was Pollock v. Farmer's Loan & Trust Co.,' and the issue concerned was the consti- tutionality of the federal income tax. Conceived in the South and mid- West as a means of reapportioning the burden in a tax system based mainly on tariffs, the newly enacted tax on income was fiercely de- nounced in the East and North as a levy on thrift and a communistic assault on private property. The personal income of the wealthy classes, which had escaped assessment since the repeal in 1872 of the less com- prehensive Civil War income tax, was now to be plundered again by rebel planters and western Socialites. The measure had been intro- duced in Congress by Tennessee Representative Benton McMillan and a campaign brilliantly led by McMillan and William Jennings Bryan * Adapted from a chapter appearing in THE JUSTICES OF THE UNITED STATES SUREME COURT: THEIR LIVES AND MAJOR OPINIONS, Published by Chelsea House Publishers in association with the R. R. Bowker Company. **Member, Nm', York Bar. 1. 157 U.S. 429 (1895).

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