Thomas H. Coldwell

Thomas Harvey Coldwell (August 29, 1822 – March 10, 1891), was an American lawyer who served as Attorney General and Reporter of Tennessee from 1865 to 1870, during the state’s Reconstruction era. Coldwell entered office shortly after Governor William G. Brownlow took power in 1865, and he supervised the state’s appellate litigation while issuing legal opinions to the executive branch on matters ranging from state-aided railroads to the restoration of civil order. He is widely identified as a Republican, and—until the 2014 selection of Herbert H. Slatery III—was regarded as the last Republican to hold the office during the post-Civil War period.

Coldwell was born in Shelbyville, Tennessee on August 29, 1822. In 1864, Governor Andrew Johnson appointed Coldwell as a chancery court judge, but he only served in the position for a short time.

Contemporary and historical state references list Coldwell in the succession of attorneys general that bridged the end of the Civil War and Tennessee’s “Redemption” in 1869–70. Scholarly accounts of Reconstruction in Tennessee also quote Attorney General Coldwell’s contemporaneous conclusions in disputes involving Radical/Unionist officeholders.

Coldwell was succeeded in 1870 by Joseph Brown Heiskell, as political power shifted in the state at the close of Reconstruction.

Coldwell returned to Shelbyville and became a civic leader there. In 1871, Governor Dewitt C. Senter recommended him to President Ulysses S. Grant as State of Tennessee commissioner for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. He served as one of the vice presidents of the organizing commission until 1877.