Robert Looney Caruthers

Caruthers left a mark on the law before he left one on politics. In 1836 he and Alfred O. P. Nicholson published a compilation of Tennessee's statutes that stayed the standard reference for more than two decades. On the state supreme court he wrote the 1858 Rippy v. State opinion, restoring the rule that a killing in self-defense needs sufficient grounds, and he faulted an older ruling as misapplied by advocates and juries. He backed the Union until Fort Sumter, then went to the Confederate Congress. He had come to Lebanon in 1826.

What the plaque says

Robert Looney Caruthers 1800-1882 Born in Smith County in 1800, Caruthers was elected Confederate Governor in 1863. However, due to the Federal occupation of Tennessee, he was not inaugurated. A co-founder of Cumberland University, he served in the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1835 to 1837; the U.S. House of Representatives from 1841to 1843; the State Supreme Court from 1852-1861; and the Confederate Congress from 1861 to 1863. Built by Caruthers in 1828 in the Greek Revival style, but later altered, this was his home until his death in 1882.

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

• Caruthers Hall — steps away
• Battle of Lebanon — 0.2 mi
• Wilson County Courthouses — 0.2 mi
• Cumberland University — 0.3 mi