Wheeler Hazard Peckham

Wheeler Hazard Peckham (January 1, 1833 - September 27, 1905) was a lawyer from New York and a failed nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States. His father, Rufus Wheeler Peckham, was also a lawyer, and a New York Court of Appeals judge and congressman. His brother, also named Rufus Wheeler Peckham, was also a New York lawyer, state court judge, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Peckham was born in Albany, New York, on New Year's Day in 1833. He was educated at Albany Academy and at his father's alma mater, Union College, which he left early due to poor health. Peckham started a private legal practice in New York City, and gained fame for prosecuting former Tammany Hall leader "Boss" Tweed as special counsel for the State with Lyman Tremain in 1873. Peckham again represented the State against Tweed in 1876, when he won a $6 million verdict in a civil fraud suit. Governor Grover Cleveland appointed him District Attorney of New York in 1884, but Peckham resigned the same year.

In 1894, Cleveland, who was then in his second non-consecutive term as President, nominated Peckham to replace Samuel Blatchford on the U.S. Supreme Court. However, this nomination was caught in the middle of a political tug-of-war between Cleveland and New York Senator David Hill, and Wheeler became the second nominee of Cleveland's that Hill managed to block, by a Senate vote of 32-41; Senator Edward Douglass White was instead confirmed to the Court. By the time another seat on the Court was vacant after the death of Howell E. Jackson in 1895, Hill was weakened politically and Cleveland turned to Wheeler's brother, Rufus, who was confirmed within six days.

Peckham was active in New York City politics and society, presiding over social events and advocating for reform of "municipal degradation":

"The issue is simply one of men. You cannot remedy matters by law nor by system, you have got to remedy it by the simple expedient of turning out the maladministrators and putting in their places men who are honest and capable. We must organize a power that will overcome present conditions and put in office men who are capable and aggressively so. Vice, that has awakened such an outburst of public opinion, is but one of the things that must go."

Peckham is buried in the Peckham family plot at Albany Rural Cemetery, along with his wife, Annie Aertsen Keasbey (d. 1916). His father, who was lost at sea, also has a cenotaph there.

External links

• New York Times, January 5, 1901—account of dinner talk on "The Causes of Our Present Municipal Degradation", presided over by Wheeler Peckham. Samuel Clemens was among the notable guests.