During the Gilded Age the Supreme Court, reflecting the growth of large-scale industrial enterprises, became the bastion of property rights, the champion of laissez-faire, and the enemy of state regulation of commerce. Prior to the Civil War the Court interpreted the commerce and contract clauses of the Constitution to allow states considerable regulatory latitude, and in the 1870s it continued that practice. For example, in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), the Court upheld the right of Louisiana to grant a monopoly in order to regulate butchering, and in Munn v. Illinois (1877)—one of the Granger cases—the Court approved state regulation of interstate railroads. But by the 1880s economic and political changes had affected the personnel of the Court and changed its attitude.
The dominant Supreme Court jurist during the Gilded Age was neither Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite (187488) nor Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller (1888-1910) but rather Associate Justice Stephen J. Field, who served on the Court from 1863 to 1897. Field dissented in the slaughterhouse cases, arguing that the monopoly awarded by the state violated the Fourteenth Amendment by depriving persons of property the due process of law, and he similarly dissented in Munn on grounds that state regulation of railroads threatened private property. Field reiterated that argument until, by the late 1880s, it was accepted by the Court. In Wabash v. Illinois (1886) the Court adopted Field’s view that states could not regulate interstate commerce. The Court, which continued to reflect Field’s influence as late as the 1930s, defended private property from the federal government and narrowly defined its regulatory power. Accordingly, the Court in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Co. (1895) declared the federal income tax, a direct tax, unconstitutional and emasculated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 in United States v. E. C. Knight (1895) by holding that the sugar trust’s monopoly of refining (manufacturing) did not constitute restraint of trade. In 1897 the Court stripped the Interstate Commerce Commission (established in 1887 to regulate railroads as a result of the Wabash decision) of its power to regulate rates and to eliminate the long-hauf/short-haul abuse.
While Field dominated the Gilded Age Supreme Court, its voice of the future belonged to Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan, who served on the Court from 1877 to 1911 and was its great dissenter. He did not think the court should base its decisions on so-called natural laws like laissez-faire nor should it abuse its power of judicial review. He disagreed with the majority in both the Pollock and Knight cases. Most notably, while the Court in the Gilded Age became the ardent defender of property rights—ironically, using the civil rights Fourteenth Amendment to do so—it, with the conspicuous exception of Harlan, neglected human rights. He forcefully dissented in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), when the majority held that equal rights in public accommodations were not covered by the Fourteenth Amendment, and most notably when the Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), agreed that “separate but equal accommodations” did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. “Our Constitution,” Harlan declared, “is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”
Further reading: Lauren P. Beth, John Marshall Harlan: The Last Whig Justice (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1992); Kermit L. Hall, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Carl B. Swisher, Stephen J. Field: Craftsman of the Law (Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution, 1930); Tinsley E. Yarbrough, Judicial Enigma: The First Justice Harlan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Tammany Hall See corruption, political.
Tanner, Benjamin Tucker (1835-1923) author, minister
Benjamin Tucker Tanner, an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) bishop, was born in December 1835 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of 12 children of Hugh and Isabella Tanner. He celebrated his birthday on December 22 or 23 until about 1860, when he claimed December 25 as his date of birth. Tanner began working at least by age nine, when he delivered copies of Martin Delany’s newspaper, The Mystery. He left home in his early youth to work as a barber, first in Chicago and then in Cincinnati and other Ohio River ports. Tanner’s diary, which he started in 1851, shows an interest in politics, especially in the issues of slavery, and revealed his dismay when he wrote in 1851 that he did not wish to die in the United States. Returning to Pittsburgh, Tanner studied from 1852 to 1857 at Avery College; joined the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in 1856; studied at the Western Theological Seminary from 1857 to 1860; was ordained an AME minister; and in 1860 was chosen to go to California as a missionary. Unable to raise sufficient funds, Tanner was permitted by Bishop Daniel A. Payne to assume the pastorate of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C. Subsequent assignments led him to pastor AME Churches in Frederick and Baltimore, Maryland. Tanner was proficient in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, but he feared that he lacked the spiritual commitment to preach. His diary entry for February 10, 1866, stated, “I pray for a faith that I can believe without a doubt and recommend without an indifferent spirit. Such a faith I have not. O God give it to me lest I die.”
Indeed, Tanner is more renowned as an author and editor than as a preacher. His book An Apologyfor African Methodism (1867) led to his appointment as editor of The Christian Recorder in 1868. This position provided him an opportunity for 16 years to indulge his passion for scholarship. Tanner became in 1884 the first editor of The AME Church Review, a journal that was the culmination of years of anticipation on the part of the church’s intellectuals. Tanner used the editor’s position of both journals to comment on AME missions, development of clergy, race relations, American and international politics, and other issues of interest to African-American readers.
Tanner was critical of racial segregation. He stated in 1872 that “we want schools for Americans. . . not for Chinese. . . Negro. . . German. . . Irish nor English Americans but simply Americans.” Tanner was equally critical of black nationalists who sought separation or who identified themselves as “Negro.” It was his contention that “Negro” was reserved for Africans and not for “Colored” Americans (his preference), who were a racial mixture. He wrote in 1881, “we are not African. Certainly to designate us as Negroes is a fraud. We are Americans [and] the sooner we recognize it the better.” His desire for an integrated society led him to declare in 1884 that American geography would lead to a distinctive American race that would combine European, African, and American Indian blood to form a race that would be seven-eighths white, one-eighth African, “with a mottle of yellow.”
Tanner was a conservative theologian whose opposition to female preachers conflicted with the more liberal views of Henry M. Turner, Bishop John M. Brown, and Theophilus G. Steward. Tanner argued that God, Jesus, and the disciples did not sanction female preachers. He was extremely critical of Steward’s theology that embraced the Darwinian theory of evolution as God’s plan of creation. Tanner castigated Steward for asserting that the Battle of Armageddon in biblical prophesy would end Anglo-Saxon superiority rather than the world and would result in the rise of true Christianity from Africa and Asia with equality for all races. Tanner contended that Armageddon would lead not to a transfer of power but to the second coming of Christ and the resurrection. Tanner, however, did argue that Africans were major contributors to the origin of Judaism and Christianity. After Tanner was elected to a bishopric in 1888, he wrote little on secular matters and concentrated on advice for ministers and building the church as it sought to open mission fields in Canada, the Caribbean, and Africa. During this period he was at odds with Henry M. Turner, who advocated not only a more aggressive African mission endeavor but emigration to Africa.
Tanner was a prolific writer. In addition to his Apology he wrote The Negro’s Origin or Is He Cursed of God? (1869), The Color of Solomon—What? (1895), The Descent of the Negro (1898), The Dispensation in the History of the Church and the Interregnums (1898), and The Negro in Holy Writ (1900). Tanner married Sarah Elizabeth Miller on August 19, 1858. Their union produced nine children, seven of whom survived infancy. Carlton was an AME clergyman and writer, Halle became the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Alabama, and Henry became an internationally famous painter whose art is displayed in the world’s museums and art galleries.
Further reading: William Seraile, Fire in His Heart: Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner and the AME Church (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998).
—William Seraile
World History
