George Washington Stone

George Washington Stone (October 24, 1811 – March 11, 1894) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama from 1856 to 1864, and then again from 1876 to 1884; and was then Chief Justice of that court from 1884 to 1894.

Early life and education Stone was born in Bedford County, Virginia, on October 24, 1811, to Micajah and Sarah Leftwich Stone. The family moved to Lincoln County, Tennessee, on the border with Alabama, in 1818, where George attended the local schools. His father, a well-to-do planter, died in 1827; George, after briefly participating in mercantile activities, began studying law in the office of a Fayetteville, Tennessee, lawyer. He never attended college. Stone received his license to practice law in 1834, and he wed Mary Gillespie that same year.

Legal career Stone moved to Coosa County, Alabama, where he taught school for several months before beginning to practice law at Sylacauga in Talladega County. He went to Talladega in 1840 and practiced law with William P. Chilton, who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama. The legislature elected him to a full six-year term that December, and he served until his resignation in 1849, at which time he took up the practice of law in Hayneville. In Ex parte Hill, in re Willis v. Confederate States (1863), he voted to uphold a conscription law passed by the Confederate Congress; according to the historian Timothy S. Huebner, his "long and confusing" opinion "attempted to reconcile his simultaneous devotion to both state sovereignty and the Confederate war effort". Citing cases such as Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816) and Sturges v. Crowninshield (1819)—pro-federal-government Marshall-Court decisions that Southerners had long hated—Stone demonstrated support for a strong central Confederate government, although the opinion also contained language sympathetic to states' rights. The Birmingham Age-Herald stated that "he impressed himself on the judicial jurisprudence of the State as no other Justice has. Of the fifteen Chief Justices he stands pre-eminent."