Our History
Chief Justice Logan E. Bleckley
Hair Like Moses, Self-Taught in Law and Decisions with Wit and Poetry By Dick Cinquina
S
tanding a lanky six-feet-five, Logan E. Bleckley was not known to frequent barbershops. His hair hung loosely around his shoulders, and his generous beard flowed down his chest. When asked about his appearance, he replied that Moses also wore his hair long, which also had the benefit of protecting his neck. Bleckley was a student of philosophy, mathematics and a serious poet, although one of his poems pays homage to cucumbers, said to be his favorite vegetable. His resemblance to an Old Testament prophet and the cucumber stanzas aside, the Rabun County native is renowned as Georgia’s greatest jurist of the nineteenth century. As an Associate and later Chief Justice of the state’s Supreme Court, he became one of the most quoted judges in America. He accomplished this despite being completely selfeducated in the law…and just about everything else. “Destitute of Real Learning” Born in 1827 near Clayton, Bleckley, like most children at that time, had virtually no formal education. Itinerant teachers passing through Rabun County accounted for his only schooling several months out of the year. Later in life, he said “while not illiterate, I was destitute of real learning.” His father was clerk of Rabun County’s Superior, Inferior and Ordinary courts, and Bleckley began working in his office at the age of 11. Copying legal documents gave him an early love for the law. In addition to borrowing law books from traveling circuit lawyers, he studied Blackstone’s Commentaries, an eighteenth century treatise on British Common Law that formed the basis of the American legal system. The self-taught Bleckley was admitted to the Georgia bar at 18 under a special act of the Georgia legislature since he was not 21. Bleckley opened a law practice in Clayton in 1846. During this time, he was outraged at seeing a Clayton woman imprisoned for not paying a debt. He drafted and then helped pass a bill in the
Logan E. Bleckley 1827-1907
Dick Cinquina holds graduate degrees in history and journalism, making his work for the Rabun County Historical Society a natural fit for his interests. He is the retired president of Equity Market Partners, a national financial consulting firm he founded in 1981. In addition to writing monthly articles for the Georgia Mountain Laurel, Dick helped produce the Society’s new web site and is involved with the renovation of the group’s museum. After vacationing in this area for many years, he and his wife Anne moved to Rabun County in 2018 form Amelia Island, Florida.
84 - www.laurelofnortheastgeorgia.com - March 2022
