Augustus Hill Garland

Garland was appointed to the Provisional Confederate Congress and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives in the 1st Confederate States Congress in 1861, where he was a member of the Committees on Public Lands, Commerce and Financial Independence, and the Judiciary. He was reelected in 1863, and in 1864 was appointed to the Confederate States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Charles B. Mitchel. As a Congressman, he made efforts to establish a Supreme Court of the Confederate States and supported President Jefferson Davis, with the exception of Davis' aside suspending the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of the war (as had Lincoln in the North). He returned to Arkansas in February 1865, when it was clear the Confederacy was about to lose so that he could help facilitate the return of his state to the Union.

Not long after the Civil War ended, President Andrew Johnson pardoned Garland on July 15, 1865. He was nonetheless forbidden to resume his legal practice without taking the Ironclad Oath, which the United States Congress had required of all Confederate government or military officials, per a law passed on January 24, 1865. In Ex parte Garland, Garland argued that the law was unconstitutional and ex post facto. On January 14, 1867, by a vote of five to four, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. The ruling caused considerable uproar in the north, but former Confederates hoped that the judicial system could be used to prevent the implementation of Congressional Reconstruction. Garland then pushed the Supreme Court to hear the case of Mississippi v. Johnson which challenged the constitutionality of those acts; however, the Court refused.

Augustus H. Garland (c. 1870).

Arkansas legislators elected him to the United States Senate for a term beginning in 1867 but was not allowed to take the seat because Arkansas had not yet been readmitted to the Union. Garland in 1869 helped found the Southern Historical Society and gathered papers of Arkansas Confederate veterans. As he resumed his legal practice, Garland observed politics from a distance. In 1872, with the Republican Party split into three factions, Arkansas Democrats sought Garland to help elect Democrats into the state legislature and had been considered for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. During the conflict known as the Brooks-Baxter War, Garland became a primary strategist for Governor Elisha Baxter and briefly served as the secretary of state. He was an advisor and constitutional scholar at the next state constitutional convention and, with strong support from the Democratic Party, was elected Governor of Arkansas.

Garland was faced with a number of problems after taking office as Governor including turmoil in the state over threatening groups like the Ku Klux Klan, an ongoing congressional investigation over the Brooks-Baxter conflict and the state debt of $17,000,000. With help from the finance board, the debt was significantly lowered in two years time. Garland was a strong supporter of better education. He urged the legislature to establish schools for the blind and deaf, successfully advocated in appointing a new president for the Arkansas Industrial University, today the University of Arkansas, and helped found the Branch Normal College, today the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, which made education more accessible for African-Americans. Under his administration, he also oversaw the creation of the Arkansas Bureau of Statistics and the Arkansas Bureau of Agriculture, Mining and Manufacturing.

Garland ran successfully for the United States Senate in 1876, thus succeeded Republican Powell Clayton. Voters re-elected him in 1883. In the Senate, he served as a member of the Committees on Public Lands, the Territories and the Judiciary, serving as chairman of the Territories Committee in the 46th Congress. As a Senator, he made efforts to bring about tariff reform, internal improvements, as well as the regulation of interstate commerce and a federal prison system, federal aid to education and civil service reform.

Garland resigned from the Senate in 1885 after accepting the appointment of Attorney General of the United States by newly elected President Grover Cleveland, becoming the first Arkansan to receive a cabinet post.[10]

Not long after taking office, Garland became embroiled in a political scandal. While serving in the Senate, Garland became a shareholder in and attorney for the Pan-Electric Telephone Company which was organized to form regional telephone companies using equipment developed by J. Harris Rogers. The Bell Telephone Company brought suit against Pan-Electric for patent infringement after it was discovered that their equipment was similar to that of Bell's. Garland was ordered to bring a suit in the name of the United States to invalidate the Bell patent, breaking their monopoly of telephone technology, but refused to do so. However, while Garland was on vacation in the summer, Solicitor General John Goode authorized the suit.

A year-long congressional investigation and constant public attention affected his work as Attorney General, however, despite having to serve under a cloud of suspicion, he was supported by President Cleveland. Garland was also the first, and to date only, United States cabinet secretary to be censured by Congress when, in 1886, Garland failed to provide documents about the firing of a United States Attorney.