William Littleton Harris

[3] In 1858 Harris was appointed by Governor John J. McRae to a seat on the Mississippi High Court of Errors and Appeals vacated by the resignation of Ephraim S. Fisher.

[6] In 1860 President James Buchanan tendered him the appointment to a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, but Harris declined "because of the impending secession".

The cry has been, and now is, 'that slavery must cease, or American liberty must perish,' that 'the success of Black Republicanism is the triumph of anti-slavery,' 'a revolution in the tendencies of the government that must be carried out... Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.

This new administration comes into power, under the solemn pledge to overturn and strike down this great feature of our Union, without which it would never have been formed, and to substitute in its stead their new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races.

Under this wretched, lawless spirit and policy, now usurping the control of that government, citizens of the South have been deprived of their property, and for attempting to seek the redress promised by the compromise laws, have lost their liberty and their lives.

[citation needed] After the war his appointment to the High Court of Errors and Appeals of Mississippi was overthrown by president Andrew Johnson in 1867.