Alexander Hamilton Handy was an attorney and chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court in the 1860s.
Born on December 25, 1809, in Somerset County, Maryland, Handy attended Washington Academy in Maine and studied law. After becoming a practicing attorney in 1834, he moved to Mississippi in 1836 and set up a successful legal practice. Handy was elected justice in Mississippi’s High Court of Errors and Appeals (the precursor to the state’s supreme court) in 1853, and remained in that position for nearly fifteen years.
Handy was an outspoken defender of slavery and secessionism during the sectional conflict that led to the Civil War. In January 1861, he served as a commissioner from Mississippi to his birth state of Maryland, where he warned that the election of Abraham Lincoln and the anti-slavery Republican Party was a subversion of southern rights within the constitutional union.
Handy remained on the Mississippi Supreme Court through the Civil War. He served as chief justice from 1864 until 1867, when he resigned from the high court in protest of federal Reconstruction policies. He left Mississippi and moved back to Maryland, where he practiced law. He also taught at the University of Maryland Law School for a short period of time.
In 1871, Handy returned to Mississippi. He died on September 12, 1883. He was married to Susan Wilson Stuart and had at least five children. Handy is buried in Canton City Cemetery in Canton, Mississippi.
(Wikipedia; “Substance of Speech delivered by Hon. A. H. Handy, Commissioner to Maryland, at Princess Anne, Maryland, on the 1st day of January, 1861,” Civilwarcauses.org; FindaGrave)
Alexander Hamilton Handy belonged to the following social groups:
