American Historical Ephemera and Photography Online

Partly-printed pay voucher signed by Union officer John M. Harlan ("Jno. M. Harlan") as Colonel 10th Kentucky regiment of United States Volunteers. 23 October 1862. 1p, 16 1/2 x 10 1/2 in. (creasing at folds, light toning). Document indicates the pay received by Harlan and his two private servants for a term of service from 1 May 1862 through 31 August 1862. Bottom left "Description of Servants" identifies two African American men, "Bob" with a "Dark" complexion, eyes and hair, and "Ed" with a "Mulatto" complexion, dark eyes and hair.

John Marshall Harlan, a native of Boyle County, Kentucky, remained a staunch Unionist during the Civil War despite coming from a prominent slave-holding family. In 1861 he left his law practice to raise the 10th Kentucky Infantry regiment, but resigned his commission in 1863 upon the death of his father. Harlan was shortly thereafter elected Kentucky Attorney General, and in 1877 was appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes to the United States Supreme Court. There he earned the moniker "The Great Dissenter" for his numerous dissents in cases involving Civil Rights including Plessy v. Ferguson in which Harlan was the lone dissenting justice. Anticipating views of the Warren Court decades later, Harlan rejected the majority decision in the case noting that the law was "cunningly devised" to overturn the results of the Civil War.