William Burnham Woods — Yale valedictorian, Democratic Speaker of the Ohio House — converted to the war, rose to brevet major general marching with Sherman to the sea, and then did what few Union officers did: went south to stay, planting cotton and practicing law in Alabama before judging Reconstruction's Fifth Circuit from Atlanta. When Hayes named him in December 1880, he became the first justice appointed from the former Confederacy since Campbell (§33) in 1853.
The arc of Woods's jurisprudence is the arc of Reconstruction's abandonment, written in a single hand. As circuit judge in 1871, in United States v. Hall, he held that the Fourteenth Amendment made the first eight amendments' guarantees privileges of national citizenship that federal law could defend even against private conspiracies — as broad a reading as any court gave the amendment in that century. Twelve years later, from the Supreme Court, he wrote United States v. Harris, striking the Ku Klux Act's conspiracy section because the amendment reaches only state action, and Presser v. Illinois, holding the Second Amendment no restraint on the states. The nationalist of 1871 had become the undertaker of his own doctrine. He died in May 1887, barely six years in; Cleveland gave the seat to L.Q.C. Lamar (§49).
United States v. Hall (on circuit)
1871Holding · The rights secured by the first eight amendments are privileges of national citizenship that Congress may protect — even against private conspiracies.
Role · Woods wrote the circuit opinion sustaining an Enforcement Act indictment for Klan-style violence.
The high-water mark of Fourteenth Amendment interpretation in the nineteenth century — still quoted in incorporation debates.
United States v. Harris
1883Holding · The Ku Klux Act's criminal-conspiracy section was unconstitutional; the Fourteenth Amendment does not reach private violence.
Role · Woods wrote for the Court.
The author of Hall dismantled Hall — federal protection against Klan terror ended by the judge who had once supplied it.
Read the opinion →Presser v. Illinois
1886Holding · The Second Amendment limits only the federal government; states may ban private armed parades.
Role · Woods wrote for the Court.
The nineteenth-century baseline of Second Amendment law, undisturbed until the incorporation ruling in McDonald (2010).
Read the opinion →There is no biography of William Burnham Woods, and after nearly 140 years it is safe to stop waiting for one. The closest things are Louis Filler's chapter in the Friedman & Israel set and Thomas E. Baynes Jr.'s aptly titled article 'Yankee from Georgia: A Search for Justice Woods' (Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook, 1978) — the 'search' in the title is the tell, because Woods left no significant body of personal papers. Approach him the way historians do: through the reference works for the life, Fairman for the era, and the two opinions — Harris and Presser — that are the reason anyone still looks him up.
The Bookshelf
Louis Filler's chapter on Woods is roughly ten pages, and it is the longest sustained treatment of the man ever published — which tells you most of what you need to know about the shelf. Filler covers the full arc efficiently: Newark lawyer-politician and speaker of the Ohio House, Sherman's army from Shiloh to the sea, the Alabama chancery bench, eleven years riding the sprawling Fifth Circuit, and the quiet six-year tenure that produced Harris and Presser. He is honest about the puzzle at the center of it: a judge who read the Fourteenth Amendment generously on circuit and then wrote one of the retreat's key opinions from the bench above. Chelsea House.
The opinion that defines his place in the story. A Tennessee lynch mob had been indicted under the Ku Klux Klan Act's criminal-conspiracy provisions; Woods held that the Fourteenth Amendment reaches only state action, not private violence, and struck the provisions down. Harris belongs on the same shelf-line as Waite's Cruikshank (§43) and Bradley's Civil Rights Cases (§41) later the same year — the doctrinal corridor through which federal protection of Black citizens drained away, over Harlan's protests (§44). The puzzle is the author: on circuit in the early 1870s Woods had read the amendment broadly. Free online.
His other opinion with an afterlife. Herman Presser had paraded four hundred armed workingmen through Chicago as a private militia; Woods held for a unanimous Court that the Second Amendment restrains only the federal government, not the states. For over a century Presser was a fixture of the incorporation debate — cited, distinguished, and finally superseded in 2010 when McDonald v. Chicago applied the Second Amendment to the states. A minor justice's opinion that courts argued about for 124 years. Free online.
The standing institutional frame for this shelf, and where Woods's judicial work gets its only serious scrutiny — the circuit years under the 1869 Judiciary Act, the traffic between the Fifth Circuit and the Court on Enforcement Act questions, and the doctrinal corridor from Cruikshank (§43) through Harris to the Civil Rights Cases (§41). For a justice with no biography, the era history has to carry the load, and this one can. Macmillan.
The sole standalone study of Woods ever published — Baynes's search for the transplanted Ohio Union general who became a New South justice and wrote almost nothing memorable in six years. That this article is the entire dedicated literature is the measure of Woods's obscurity.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.The Filler chapter — for the only real biographical essay — the whole life in ten pages
- 2.United States v. Harris — for the opinion that gutted the Klan Act and defines his place in the retreat
- 3.Presser v. Illinois — for the other survivor — the pre-incorporation Second Amendment
- 4.Fairman — for the Court and circuit world that made a Union general a narrow constructionist
Where the Papers Are Kept
No dedicated collection of Woods personal papers is known to exist — the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, which holds most justices' papers, has none for him — so the official record is effectively the archive (NARA RG 267, the Court's case files). The Hayes Presidential Library in Fremont, Ohio is the natural hunting ground for the 1880 nomination correspondence. Visit →
Online Resources
Ideas for Further Research
- The circuit-to-Court reversal. Woods read the Fourteenth Amendment broadly as a Fifth Circuit judge in the early 1870s, then wrote Harris in 1883. Was the shift doctrinal conviction, deference to Cruikshank (§43) and Bradley (§41), or careerism? His circuit opinions are the only evidence — no private papers survive.
- The reconciliation seat as an institution. Compare the politics of Woods's 1880 appointment — Union general residing in Georgia, the first justice from a former Confederate state since the war, confirmed 39–8 — with Cleveland's follow-on choice of the actual ex-Confederate Lucius Lamar (§49) for the same seat. What changed in seven years to make the real thing confirmable? Seat lineage: Strong (§40) → Woods → Lamar (§49) — and note the arc: Strong wrote Strauder (§40), Woods wrote Harris.
- A justice without papers. Use Baynes's 'Yankee from Georgia: A Search for Justice Woods' (1978) as a starting map and hunt Woods letters scattered in other men's collections — Hayes, Sherman, and Fifth Circuit correspondents — toward the biographical article that still doesn't exist. He died in office in 1887 (one of the 51).