Justice John Catron

Catron held to slavery and to the Union at once, and the war tested both. Before the Dred Scott ruling he traded letters about the case with President-elect James Buchanan, then wrote a concurrence holding that Congress could not bar slavery from the territories. In 1861 he went to Nashville to urge Tennessee's leaders to stay in the Union, was warned his life was not safe, and fled. He returned only in June 1862, when Federal occupation let him reopen the U.S. District Court, and in 1863 he ruled that the Confiscation Act reached the pro-Confederate Republican Banner newspaper.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tims Ford State Park — 10 mi
  A lake park on the Elk River below the Cumberland Plateau, made by a 1970 TVA dam on land the Cherokee and Chickasaw ceded by treaty in the early 1800s.
• Jack Daniel Distillery — 10 mi
  The oldest registered distillery in the United States, in a limestone hollow outside Lynchburg, where the tour now names Nathan Nearest Green, an enslaved man, as the first master distiller.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 10 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.
• Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration — 16 mi
  The Shelbyville show grounds where the Tennessee Walking Horse has been crowned world grand champion each late summer since 1939, and where the practice of soring is part of the story.

More markers nearby

• Fortress Tullahoma — 0.3 mi
• Camp Forrest — 0.4 mi
• Isham G. Harris — 0.4 mi
• War Comes to Manchester — 11 mi