Alleged Evil Genius: The Life and Times of Judge James H. Ferguson (review)

Professor Kenneth R. Bailey has produced a significant addition to West Virginia historiography with his excellent biography of Judge James Harvey Ferguson. With scholarly depth and good craftsmanship his study brings to life a little-known mover in the legal, political, and economic life of the state throughout much of the nineteenth century. In addition to his successful political career extending over fifty-two years, the self-taught Ferguson developed into one of the best lawyers ever produced in the state. Bailey tells the reader up front that his study "does not challenge earlier works but brings to light the life and works of a man whose contribution to the state's history has been under reported and largely ignored."

After arriving in the Cabell County town of Barboursville in 1835 from cismontane Virginia, Ferguson worked as a cobbler and studied law until his 1840 admission to the bar. He served as jailor for Cabell County and then was appointed prosecuting attorney for Logan County in 1845, a post he held until 1848 when he won a seat in the Virginia legislature. His political stature grew considerably during 1850-1851 when he became one of three delegates to the Virginia Constitutional Convention from a district composed of Cabell, Mason, Putnam, Boone, and Logan Counties.

Although Ferguson suffered financially while away from his legal practice during the extended stay in Richmond, he was able to rub shoulders with numerous prominent men. He had been reelected to the legislature in l850 which limited his participation in the convention, but he wholeheartedly supported the new constitution of 1851 which granted the franchise to all white males over the age of twenty-one and brought other reforms sought by the western counties. Although never a slave owner himself, he generally took a pro-slavery position throughout the pre-Civil War era.

A genuine mystery engulfed Ferguson in the 1850s when he abruptly disappeared from western Virginia–probably bound for the West. Wild speculation from an association with Brigham Young to another woman surrounded his absence before and after the event. Ferguson, who would never discuss the matter, just as suddenly returned to Barboursville and hung out his shingle in April 1864. The author thinks "there will never be a definitive answer to his disappearance."

Ferguson was elected judge of a district encompassing Cabell, Wayne, Lincoln, Logan, and Boone Counties in 1868 on the Unionist ticket, and, though he served but eighteen months, he was known for the rest of his life as "Judge Ferguson." Despite financial troubles ending in bankruptcy, by 187l he had relocated in Charleston where he formed a legal practice with John E. Kenna, a congressman and later U.S. senator from West Virginia. He not only joined lawyers W. A. Quarrier and E. Willis Wilson (afterwards governor) in deflecting a legal challenge to permanent location of the capitol in Charleston, but he also began to amass a considerable fortune by representing New York bankers in complicated court proceedings over vast land holdings in the state. Ferguson was able to build still-standing "Grand View," a private home overlooking the Kanawha River and downtown Charleston.

Further tenure in the West Virginia legislature ensued until 1891 when he won election for the last time, and where he generally took positions easing restrictions on former Confederates who sought reintegration into the state's political and economic fabric. Political and legal associations with men such as William A. McCorkle, Henry Gassaway Davis, Collis P. Huntington, and Johnson Newlon Camden, the latter an associate of the Rockefellers, enabled Ferguson to enhance his reputation. In short, he became "the Alleged Evil Genius of the West Virginia Democracy." Bailey asserts that "his years in the political arena placed him in a leadership role in the Democratic Party as it fought to wrest control of West Virginia from the Republicans following the Civil War." A long running struggle with alcohol led to his unsuccessful...