Franklin County FlArchives Biographies.....Raney, George Pettus 1845 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/fl/flfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com January 31, 2008, 10:55 pm Author: B. F. Johnson George Pettus Raney George Pettus Raney was born at Apalachicola, Franklin county, Fla., October 11, 1845, and has given more than twenty-five of the forty-two years of his manhood to the public service of his native State, and of the communities where he has resided, in various positions of trust and honor, ranging from member of the House of Representatives, from Franklin county, in the Legislature of 1868, to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which position he resigned in 1894; besides the various responsible positions he has occupied in the councils of the Democratic party. His paternal grandparents were William Raney and Rebecca Abernathy, and his maternal grandparents Miles Jordan and Harriet Pettus. His father, David G. Raney, moved to Tallahassee, Fla., in 1826, while his grandfateer [sic] Miles Jordan came to Gadsden county with his family in 1828; all from Virginia; and his father and mother married in Gadsden county in 1834. Judge Raney was educated in the schools of Apalachicola including the private tutorship of Mr. W. W. Fay, in the family of Mr. Thomas L. Mitchell, became a student at the University of Virginia at the age of seventeen, but left his studies in 1863 to enlist in the Confederate army as a private, and served until the close of the war, being paroled at Waynesboro, Ga., in 1865. He returned to his alma mater in 1866 to pursue a course in the law department of the University, spending the session of 1866-1867 there; and returning to Florida was admitted to the bar in the summer of 1867, and began the practice of his profession at Apalachicola. In 1868, when only twenty-two years of age, he was elected to represent Franklin county in the House of Representatives at Tallahassee, being one of the few Democratic members of that body. He was the Democratic candidate for the speakership on the reorganization of the House in 1869, and then became chairman of the Judiciary Committee, serving until the end of his term. In 1869 he removed to Tallahassee, which city has since been his, home, and in 1873 he became a partner of Hon. Mariano D. Papy, who was a learned and successful lawyer, and who had, from 1854 to i860, been Attorney-General of the State. From that time until the memorable political campaign of 1876 (when the Democratic party, for the first time after the reconstruction of 1867, was successful at the polls in the election of Hon. George F. Drew as Governor, and of a majority of both Houses of the Legislature), Judge Raney diligently applied himself to the practice of his profession, but found time, nevertheless, to take an active part in political campaigns. As a member of the State Democratic executive committee in the campaign of 1876, and as an effective speaker on the hustings, he gave his best services to the party; and when the election was contested before the Supreme Court, he represented Governor Drew as one of his counsel, participating in the signal victory over their opponents, the court, although two-thirds Republican in their political sympathies, deciding that Drew was entitled to the office of Governor. He (with others) had, from the date of the sending out of the famous Zack Chandler telegram demanding the electoral vote of Florida as necessary to Republican success, up to the close of the Drew case, given his entire time to the matter of the canvass of the votes for Presidential Electors by the State Canvassing Board, and the incidental matters involved in the public questions which brought the State of Florida so prominently into public notice and were the occasion of the concentration at Tallahassee of many distinguished men of both political parties from different sections of the country, and who became known in the language of the day as "visiting statesmen." When Governor Drew assumed the reins of government early in January, 1877, he, in forming a new cabinet of administrative officers, appointed Judge Raney to be his Attorney-General, which office he filled with remarkable ability throughout Governor Drew's administration, acting, also, as counsel for the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund in all of the volumious and protracted litigation arising out of the numerous legislative land grants to railroad and canal companies, the guaranty by the pledge of Internal Improvement lands to railroad bond issues, the failure of such companies to meet their obligations, and the consequent sale of the railroads to satisfy the claims of creditors and of the State. In 1881 he was re-appointed by Governor Bloxham to the same position, and completed, in 1885, a service of eight years in that office. January 13, 1885, he was appointed by Governor Perry to be one of the justices of the Supreme Court to succeed Hon. James D. Westcott, Jr., resigned, such appointment then being for life. After four years' service as Associate Justice, he was elected, in 1888, under the new Constitution, a Justice of the Court, and was chosen, in 1889, Chief Justice, and served in that capacity until the end of May, 1894, thus completing over nine years of continuous service on the Supreme Bench. While serving as Attorney-General (and ex officio as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund) during Governor Bloxham's first administration, Judge Raney assisted in consummating the celebrated "Disston Sale," negotiated by the Governor, of four million acres of State land to Hamilton Disston, of Philadelphia, the proceeds of which served to relieve the public domain from the incubus of debt imposed on it under the land grant legislation. Of this litigation, one feature was that large bodies of lands of the Internal Improvement Fund had been sold by Republican Trustees of such Fund for coupons representing interest on bonds for the payment of which interest the Internal Improvement lands had been pledged under the Florida Internal Improvement Law, and such sales had been set aside by the Federal Court previous to the Drew administration, and the lands covered thereby re-conveyed to the Trustees. During the administration of Governor Bloxham the purchasers of such lands applied to the Federal Court for the surrender of the coupons which had been paid as such consideration, and such applications were resisted on the ground that such coupons had been paid by the Trustees previous to such purchases, and were not a valid claim against the Fund. This defense was successfully maintained, and the Court refused to surrender the coupons, which upon their face amounted to very many thousands of dollars. After the veto by Governor Drew, in 1879, of legislation which proposed to violate the contract rights of holders of railroad bonds against the Internal Improvement Fund lands, Judge Raney was applied to by friends of the vetoed measures to draft what he might deem to be the best legislation practicable under the then debt-burdened and seemingly insolvent condition of the Internal Improvement Fund, and in responding to such requests he drew the Gainesville, Ocala, and Charlotte Harbor Railroad and the Tampa, Peace Creek and St. Johns' River Railroad charter acts, which were passed by the Legislature and approved March 4, 1879, being chapters 3167 and 3168 of the Laws of Florida. The similarity in principle of the land grant provisions of subsequent land grant acts will be seen by their comparison with these models. During the period of Judge Raney's service on the Supreme Bench some of the most important litigation which has affected the larger financial and industrial interests of the State and its people was considered and disposed of. Of the numerous opinions prepared by Chief Justice Raney, one of the most notable was in the case of the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad Company versus the State of Florida, decided May 1, 1889, in which, for the first time in any State Supreme Court, it was held that the prescription of a tariff of freight and passenger rates which will not pay the expenses of operating a railroad, a fact shown by the pleadings in the case, is an abuse of the discretion given to railroad commissioners by a statute authorizing them to prescribe reasonable and just rates of freight and passenger transportation, and amounts to a taking of the railroad company's property, "without due process of law." This principle has been largely followed by the courts of other States, and is now universally regarded as a well settled rule. In this opinion was also announced the principle that when a tariff of freight and passenger rates has been established by railroad commissioners, and the railroad company and the commissioners differ as to whether such rates, considered as a whole, will prove remunerative to the company, and there is room for a difference of intelligent opinion on the question, the courts cannot interfere or substitute their judgment for that of the commissioners, but the tariff as fixed by the commissioners must, in so far as the courts are concerned, be left to the test of experiment. This principle has found recognition by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Wilcox versus Consolidated Gas Company of New York, and in the Knoxville case, both decided early in 1909. Chief Justice Raney resigned his office May 31, 1894, to resume active practice at the bar. He at once attained success, and from the first has stood in the front rank of the profession in Florida, having been engaged in many of the most important cases arising in the several courts of record throughout the State. Since April, 1903, he has served as chief counsel in Florida of the Seaboard Air Line Railway Company, as such achieving many legal victories. He has never, however, permitted the cares of office or the exigencies of his profession to prevent him from performing his obligations as a citizen and a Democrat. In 1898 Judge Raney was elected to serve for two years the county of Leon in the House of Representatives, and in 1902 he was elected State Senator from Leon county, serving four years. He was also a Presidential Elector in 1896 and was the Florida member of the National Democratic executive committee from 1900 to 1904. While serving as Attorney-General he prepared, and there was published at public expense, a Justice of the Peace Manual, embodying the provisions of the Constitution establishing the jurisdiction of these inferior courts and the statutory law regulating the practice in such courts, and the entire criminal law of the State. It was found that a compilation of this kind was indispensable in the performance by such courts of their duties, as at that time the greater part of the statutory law of the State had not been compiled, and was found only in the pamphlet acts, of which there was not a sufficient quantity to supply the officers of such courts; and in 1899, under an act of the Legislature, he prepared, on a much enlarged scale, a similar Justices' Manual embodying not only the statutory law of the character indicated above, then in force, but also forms of procedure for use in civil and criminal actions, and a short treatise on pleading and evidence, such work having been made necessary to the administration of justice by the accumulation of statutory law since the Revision of 1892. Judge Raney was married at Athens, Ga., November, 4, 1873, to Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Col. Thompson B. and Sarah B. Lamar, of that place, and four children, now living, were born to them, viz: Sarah B., George P., Jr., Clyde L and Lamar Raney. Mrs. Raney died in 1899, and in 1901 he married Evelyn Byrd Cameron, who died in 1902. He is a member of the Virginia Historical Society, a member of the Florida Historical Society, a member of the National Geographical Society, and while in college became a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity of the University. Judge Raney is a close student of all knowledge relating to his profession, a general reader in so far as his professional engagements permit, keeps carefully informed concerning all current events, and has a somewhat pronounced fondness for the history of his native State. He regards the education of the young as the most vitally important question that can engage the attention of the people of the State. He has assisted several young men in their preparation for the bar, directing them as to the proper course of study, and quizzing and instructing them at his home at night; and it may be truthfully said of him that young attorneys have always found him a willing adviser on application for assistance. In his relations with his fellowmen, he is courteous and affable, easily approachable, and though usually busy, he seems seldom to worry over his work, but gets and gives pleasure as he pursues his labors; and, like many other professional men, is willing to give gratuitous legal service to those whom he knows are unable to pay. Additional Comments: Extracted from: FLORIDA EDITION MAKERS OF AMERICA AN HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL WORK BY AN ABLE CORPS OF WRITERS VOL. III. Published under the patronage of The Florida Historical Society, Jacksonville, Florida ADVISORY BOARD: HON. W. D. BLOXHAM COL. FRANK HARRIS HON. R. W. DAVIS SEN. H. H. McCREARY HON. F. P. FLEMING W. F. STOVALL C. A. CHOATE, SECRETARY 1909 A. B. CALDWELL ATLANTA, GA. COPYRIGHT 1909 B. F. JOHNSON Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/fl/franklin/photos/bios/raney5gbs.jpg File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/fl/franklin/bios/raney5gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/flfiles/ File size: 13.9 Kb