Black, Jeremiah Sullivan

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Jeremiah Sullivan Black
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    5
    Family
    Henry Black (father), Mary Sullivan (mother), Mary Forward (wife, 1836)
    Occupation
    Politician
    Attorney or Judge
    Writer or Artist
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Church or Religious Denomination
    Other
    Other Religion
    Disciples of Christ
    Political Parties
    Democratic
    Government
    Buchanan Administration (1857-61)
    State supreme court
    State judge

    Jeremiah Sullivan Black (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    The issue that above all others put Black in the center of sectional controversy was the Buchanan administration's response to South Carolina's secession in December 1860. The question split the cabinet into northern and southern factions. Although Black initially believed in the right of a state to secede, he backed away from urging endorsement of that position in response to the president's request for a legal opinion on secession. The attorney general responded that the federal government had a duty and right to collect duties and to defend public property and execute the laws. Yet this right could only be enforced peacefully, and if force were necessary, only Congress could legislate such procedures. Black asserted that Congress could not "arm one part of the people against another for any purpose beyond that of merely protecting the General Government in the exercise of its proper constitutional functions" (quoted in Works of James Buchanan, vol. 11). Black thus took an essentially conservative approach, which became the position of the administration, a stance that cynics argued was tantamount to saying, "You cannot do it, but we cannot stop you if you do." In essence, Black argued that secession was unconstitutional but that the federal government had no power to coerce a seceded state back into the Union.
    Frederick J. Blue. "Black, Jeremiah Sullivan," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00108.html.
    Chicago Style Entry Link
    Brigance, William Norwood. “Jeremiah Black and Andrew Johnson.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 19, no. 2 (1932): 205-218. view record
    Coleman, Evan J. “Doctor Gwin and Judge Black on Buchanan.” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 19 (January 1892): 87-92. view record
    Davis, Kenneth W. “Black, Buchanan and Secession.” Laurel Messenger 15 (February 1975): 1, 8. view record
    Hubbell, John T. “Jeremiah Sullivan Black and the Great Secession Winter.” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 57, no. 3 (1974): 255-274. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "Black, Jeremiah Sullivan," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/12125.