West Hughes Humphreys

Born on August 26, 1806, in Montgomery County, Tennessee, Humphreys was the son of attorney and judge Parry Wayne Humphreys and his wife Mary West. His father later served on the State Supreme Court, was elected to one term in Congress, and served nearly two decades on the state judicial circuit. Humphreys was educated privately and attended the law department of Transylvania University. Failing to graduate due to ill health, he read law with an established firm in 1828. He passed the bar and entered private practice in Clarksville, Tennessee from 1828 to 1829. He moved to Somerville, Tennessee, continuing in private practice from 1829 to 1839. He was elected and served as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1835 to 1838. He was the 3rd Attorney General of Tennessee from 1839 to 1851. He was reporter for the Tennessee Supreme Court from 1839 to 1851. He resumed private practice in Nashville, Tennessee from 1851 to 1853. ==Federal judicial service==

Humphreys was nominated by President Franklin Pierce on March 24, 1853, to a joint seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee vacated by Judge Morgan Welles Brown. On June 26, 1862, the United States Senate began the trial of the impeachment in his absence and later that day unanimously convicted him of all charges presented, except that of confiscating the property of Andrew Johnson. Humphreys was removed from office and barred from holding office under the United States for life. He held his Confederate judgeship until the end of the Civil War. ==Later career and death==

Following the end of the American Civil War, Humphreys resumed private practice in Nashville from 1866 to 1882. In later life, Humphreys argued for the prohibition of alcohol and wrote several books. He died on October 16, 1882, in Nashville. ==Family==

Humphreys' father, Parry Wayne Humphreys, was an attorney, judge who served on the state Supreme Court and nearly two decades in the state judiciary, and one term as United States Representative from Tennessee. Humphreys was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He married and had a daughter, Annie Humphreys, who married John W. Morton, who during the Civil War served as a captain in the Confederate States Army. Afterward, Morton was a founder of the Nashville chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Reportedly Morton initiated former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest into the KKK. ==Works==

• Suggestions on the Subject of Bank Charters (1859) • Some Suggestions on the Subject of Monopolies and Special Charters (1859) • An Address on the Use of Alcoholic Liquors and the Consequences (1879) ==References==