Josiah Abigail Patterson Campbell was born in Lancaster District, South Carolina, the son of a Presbyterian minister and the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner.

He was appointed to a seat on the Supreme Court of Mississippi vacated by the resignation of Jonathan Tarbell in 1876, and served as Chief Justice from 1891 to 1894.

In 1892, for example, about eighteen months after the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 went into effect, he gave a lengthy speech at the state capitol to a group of Confederate veterans.

As Chief Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, he made blatantly racist statements to Confederate veterans assembled in Jackson for a reunion.

He characterized federal power as "coercive" and trampling upon the rights of white citizens by granting citizenship to African Americans.

[5] Campbell was a supporter of legal equality of court testimony between races, but insisted throughout his career that obstacles for voting be carefully guarded so that "radical misrule" did not overtake the state's system of government.