Charles Augustus Peabody

Charles Augustus Peabody (born July 10, 1814 – July 3, 1901) was a prominent New York attorney and a judge of the United States Provisional Court for the State of Louisiana during the American Civil War, from 1863 to 1865. Early life, education, and career Born in Sandwich, New Hampshire, Peabody established himself in New York City as a young man. In 1834, Peabody began the study of law in Baltimore, in the office of Nathaniel Williams, then United States District Attorney of Maryland. After two years, Peabody moved to Massachusetts and pursued his studies in the Law School of Harvard College. In 1839, he moved to New York, where he entered began the practice of law, and "became identified socially, through domestic ties, with the most eminent families of the metropolis". Political and judicial activities In 1855, Peabody participated in the formation of the Republican Party in New York in 1855, and in 1856 he was appointed a judge of the New York Supreme Court (the trial-level court of the state). In 1858, he was appointed a quarantine commissioner to succeed ex-Governor Horatio Seymour. In 1862, with the government of Louisiana having voted to join the Confederate States of America and declaring its secession from the United States, President Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order stating that the insurrection "having temporarily subverted and swept away the civil institutions of that State, including the judiciary and the judicial authorities of the Union" made it necessary to appoint "some judicial tribunal existing there capable of administering justice". Therefore, Lincoln stated in this order: