Samuel Freeman Miller

(1816–1890)

Samuel Miller was born in Richmond, Kentucky, in 1816 and received a medical degree from Transylvania University in 1838. Studying law while he worked as a doctor for over ten years, Miller was admitted to the bar to practice law in 1847. Like many other Kentuckians in the antebellum years, Miller left the state and moved to Iowa because of his emancipationist views on slavery.

Samuel Miller supported Abraham Lincoln’s candidacy for the presidency in 1860. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Lincoln in 1862 and served until his death in 1890. During his service on the court in the Civil War years, Miller supported President Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and the trials by military commission.

U. S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Freeman Miller

Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division