Franklin J. Moses, Sr., served as the first chief justice of the Supreme Court following its creation under the Constitution of 1868. He was elected to an initial 6-year term on July 29, 1868, on the third ballot in a joint session of the South Carolina Senate and House of Representatives.(1) His closest competitor was David Timothy Corbin, the President Pro Tempore of the South Carolina Senate. Corbin was a Vermont lawyer sent to the Freedman’s Bureau in Charleston after the Civil War who served also as the United States Attorney for South Carolina. At the time of his election, Moses was disqualified from holding office due to his brief service in the Confederate Army. A report of the South Carolina House Judiciary Committee in December 1879 indicated that he was commissioned as chief justice on July 31, 1868.(2) However, he did not actively join the Court until December 1868, after the disqualification was removed.

Moses was re-elected to a second 6-year term with 124 of 128 votes cast on January 30, 1874.(3)

Chief Justice Moses was born Israel Franklin Moses in Charleston, SC, on August 13, 1804, the son of Major Myer Moses and Esther Phillips Moses.(4) (His father was identified, apparently incorrectly, in a contemporary obituary as Captain Isaiah Moses.(5)) As an adult, Moses reversed the order of his first two names. He later dropped the name Israel entirely and changed his middle initial to “J.” (6) Moses was married to Jane Dorcas McLellan.(7) They had three daughters and a son.

He attended South Carolina College, receiving his degree in 1823.(8) (An obituary in The News and Courier and historian Benjamin Ginsburg place his graduation, apparently incorrectly, as having occurred at age 17 in the class of 1821.(9)) He studied law under James L. Petigru and was admitted to the Bar after reaching age 21 in 1825.(10) While travelling on his way from Charleston to Columbia to begin his law practice, he is said to have stopped in Sumterville (now Sumter), South Carolina. There he met Judge John S. Richardson, who encouraged Moses to settle in the area. Moses thereafter established his law practice in Sumter, practicing first with John L. Wilson and then with his brother Montgomery Moses.(11)

Moses was elected in 1841 to the South Carolina Senate, representing the Sumter District. He was originally a Unionist,(12) opposed to secession, but by 1852 was aligned with the cooperationists,(13) who generally supported the idea of secession but opposed unilateral secession.(14) He was sent by South Carolina as a commissioner to North Carolina in 1861 to encourage that state’s secession.(15) He served in the Senate until December 1865, serving as president pro tempore in 1865. On December 14, 1865, he was elected as a law circuit judge.(16)

Moses was a trustee of South Carolina College from 1850-1865(17) and was Professor of Law at South Carolina College from December 8, 1875, until his death in 1877. (18) In December 1876, his service as a professor was used by opponents in the House of Representatives as justification for a brief legislative effort to declare the office of chief justice vacant and elect a new chief justice. On December 8, 1876, the House created a special committee to look at possible grounds to impeach members of the Court and at whether any justices had violated a constitutional prohibition of holding simultaneously more than one public office.(19) On December 11, the House accepted the report of the committee finding that a professorship did constitute a second office.(20) The report concluded that Moses had vacated the post of chief justice by accepting the position of professor of law and that election of a new chief justice was appropriate. The Senate received the report from the House on December 11, but it was tabled in the Senate and not further pursued.(21)

Moses’ son, Franklin J. Moses, Jr., served as speaker of the House of Representatives at the time the senior Moses was elected chief justice. The younger Moses later became governor in 1872, and the chief justice is reported to have actively campaigned for his son’s ticket.(22) In 1874, David Chamberlain succeeded the younger Moses as governor and then blocked the General Assembly’s election of Franklin Moses, Jr., as a circuit court judge by refusing to issue a commission. Three years later, Chief Justice Moses worked to ensure that a majority of the Court would recognize the election of Wade Hampton as Governor in a hotly disputed election with Chamberlain. Moses died days before the issuance of that decision.(23)

Despite his efforts in the final months of his life to end Republican control by recognizing the election of Hampton as Governor, Moses’ earlier willingness to accept election as chief justice by the Republican legislature had permanently fractured his ties with the white establishment in South Carolina. Following his death, the Charleston News and Courier wrote as follows about his decision to accept a seat on the Court in 1868:

The purest purpose, the most elevated motives, could not, in that dark hour, excuse desertion to the exultant enemy, especially the desertion of such as were bound, by gratitude at least, to respect the prejudices and feelings of those who, for decades, had honored them with positions of public trust.(24)

A more conciliatory memorial was published in an editorial of the Columbia Register after Moss died:

South Carolina today bends over his bier, choosing not to recall his foibles and defects, but gratefully to remember only his faithful services when her “need was the sorest.”(25)