Caruthers Hall

Cumberland's law school taught by the short course. After the Civil War it adopted a one-year program, a hard and focused year that sent trial lawyers across the South. Earlier, George W. Harkins, a Choctaw chief, took a law degree from Cumberland and became a judge in 1834. Students read treatises, recited each morning and argued moot court; in the 1850s the fee was $50 a session. In the early 1960s the school left Lebanon, and it now belongs to Samford University in Alabama.

What the plaque says

Caruthers Hall Cumberland University School of Law, 1847-1962, was housed at this site from 1877 until 1962. For many years it was the largest law school in the United States. Graduates included U.S. Supreme Court Justices Horace Lurton and Howell E. Jackson: Secretary of State Cordell Hull; ten governors, ten United States Senators; seventy-five United States Representatives.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wynnewood State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A National Historic Landmark log inn at the Bledsoe's Lick springs, beside a Mississippian mound center and tied to the domestic slave trade.
• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 18 mi
  Andrew Jackson's cotton plantation east of Nashville, where visitors can walk to the quarters, Alfred's Cabin and the Enslaved Cemetery as well as the mansion.
• Stones River National Battlefield — 24 mi
  The Murfreesboro battlefield of December 1862, with a national cemetery built by Black soldiers, a Trail of Tears route and the story of the freedmen's settlement called Cemetery.
• Red Boiling Springs — 33 mi
  A Macon County spa town built around red sulphur springs, with five kinds of mineral water, red-painted pumps and the surviving hotels of a resort that once held more than a dozen.

More markers nearby

• Robert Looney Caruthers — steps away
• Battle of Lebanon — 0.3 mi
• Wilson County Courthouses — 0.3 mi
• Cumberland University — 0.3 mi