NELSON, SAMUEL

born Nov. 10, 1792, Hebron, N.Y., U.S. died Dec. 13, 1873, Cooperstown, N.Y. associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (184572). Against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to enter the ministry, Nelson studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1817. His practice in the town of Cortland, New York, grew quickly; and Nelson was appointed postmaster, served as a presidential elector for James Monroe, and was a delegate to the New York constitutional convention, in which he advocated the abolition of property requirements for suffrage. He was appointed in 1823 judge of the sixth circuit and in 1831 associate justice of the state Supreme Court. In 1845, after an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate, Nelson was named to the U.S. Supreme Court by President John Tyler. A hard-working member of the court, Nelson became an authority on international and maritime law and patent law and often addressed himself primarily to the technical aspects of the cases before the court. The only justice who did not enter into the political and constitutional aspects of the Dred Scott case, he declared merely that the slave Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri and therefore could not sue in a federal court. He opposed the expansion of federal power and urged conciliation with the Confederacy during the American Civil War. In 1871 he was named by President Ulysses S. Grant to the Joint High Commission that met at Geneva to settle the Alabama claims. He was a close friend of the novelist James Fenimore Cooper and retired from the court in 1872 to Cooperstown.