M. L. Stephenson (1838–1911)

M. L. Stephenson, a Union officer from Illinois, fought in several major Civil War battles in Missouri and Arkansas, was wounded three times, and eventually settled on a law career in Arkansas that climaxed in a very brief but eventful term on the Arkansas Supreme Court, where he participated in one of the critical episodes and law cases of the post–Civil War era—the dispute that became the Brooks-Baxter War. Stephenson was one of the Republican justices who ruled that Joseph Brooks, not Elisha Baxter, had been elected governor in 1872—a decision that President Ulysses S. Grant effectively reversed.

Marshall Lovejoy (M. L.) Stephenson was born on March 29, 1838, in rural Nicholas County, Kentucky, northeast of Lexington. His parents, Robertus Hervey Stephenson and Elizabeth Charlotte Shepherd Stephenson, were farmers. They soon moved to Granville, Illinois, southwest of Chicago. Stephenson attended Putnam Academy, a nearby boarding school, and graduated in 1858 before studying law at a firm in Springfield. One of the partners he practiced with was Abraham Lincoln.

The Civil War in 1861 interrupted his studies, and in November he enlisted in the Tenth Illinois Cavalry as a captain, although he was only twenty-three years old. Stephenson mustered out of service four years later as a colonel. He participated in a number of battles in Arkansas and Missouri, including the Battle of Prairie Grove on December 7, 1862. In 1863, he was commissioned in the Second Arkansas Infantry, a Union regiment, and assigned to raising troops for the Union in Missouri and Arkansas. He commanded six companies in General Frederick Steele’s Camden Expedition into southern Arkansas in 1864, including the actions of Poison Springs and Jenkins’ Ferry. The Arkansas Gazette’s announcement of his death said he had been wounded three times during the war. Fay Hempstead’s history of Arkansas said he was “severely wounded” at Jenkins’ Ferry.

After the war, Stephenson settled in Fort Smith (Sebastian County), graduated from the Cincinnati Law School, and was admitted to the bar in 1866. The next year, he moved to Huntsville (Madison County), and in 1868 he was elected to the Arkansas Senate from Madison, Marion, Carroll, Fulton, and Izard counties, serving in two sessions in one year. In 1869, Governor Powell Clayton appointed him judge for the northwestern Arkansas circuit. Stephenson resigned in 1871 and moved across the state to Helena (Phillips County), where he was soon appointed judge of the eastern Arkansas circuit—the First—by the acting governor, state Senator Ozro Hadley. (Governor Clayton had resigned as governor to become U.S. senator.) In 1872, Stephenson was elected on the Republican ticket to associate justice of the Supreme Court and took his seat in 1873.

Except for the Brooks-Baxter case, his brief term (he resigned in 1874) was uneventful and the cases inconsequential, mostly dealing with private civil disputes. One of the cases was an appeal of one of his circuit court decisions at Helena; he had to recuse. The Brooks-Baxter case was effectively inconsequential as well. It was only one of the governmental institutions dealing with the dispute and brief conflict over who won the governor’s race—the “Brindletail” Republican Joseph Brooks or the “Minstrel” Republican Elisha Baxter. The Arkansas General Assembly refused to settle the issue. The Pulaski County Circuit Court ruled that Brooks won the race, which ignited the brief battle in Little Rock (Pulaski County), and the Supreme Court, in Brooks v. Page on May 7, 1874, upheld the circuit four to one, with Stephenson joining the majority. President Grant promptly declared that Baxter was the elected governor and ordered the state to comply. On May 19, Baxter took office, and Stephenson resigned from the court on the same day. He had written only thirteen opinions since taking the oath of office.

He returned to Helena and opened his law office again, taking on a student, Jacob Trieber. They and Stephenson’s brother, L. C. Stephenson, would practice together for many years—Trieber until 1900, when he became the first Jewish federal judge in the United States, and M. L. Stephenson for forty years.

Stephenson had married Louisa McGowan of Battle Creek, Michigan, who became a celebrated citizen at Helena. She founded the public library at Helena and, according to the Gazette’s announcement of her death in 1916, was a nationally recognized ornithologist. She was instrumental in the passage of a law in Arkansas to protect songbirds.

Stephenson died on September 11, 1911, and his wife died five years later. Both are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery at Battle Creek.

For additional information:
Hempstead, Fay. Pictorial History of Arkansas from Earliest Times to the Year 1890. St. Louis, Missouri, and New York City: N. D. Thompson Publishing, 1899, p. 891.

“Judge M. L. Stephenson Dies.” Arkansas Gazette, September 19, 1911, p. 12.

Stafford, L. Scott. “Supreme Court Justice Marshall L. Stephenson.” Arkansas Lawyer (Spring 2015): 40.

Ernest Dumas
Little Rock, Arkansas