Charles A. Peabody
American judge and lawyer (1814–1901)
Charles Augustus Peabody (born July 10, 1814 – July 3, 1901) was a prominent New York attorney and a judge of the United States Provisional Court for the State of Louisiana during the American Civil War, from 1863 to 1865.
Early life, education, and career
Born in Sandwich, New Hampshire, Peabody established himself in New York City as a young man. In 1834, Peabody began the study of law in Baltimore, in the office of Nathaniel Williams, then United States District Attorney of Maryland. After two years, Peabody moved to Massachusetts and pursued his studies in the Law School of Harvard College. In 1839, he moved to New York, where he entered began the practice of law, and "became identified socially, through domestic ties, with the most eminent families of the metropolis".
Political and judicial activities
In 1855, Peabody participated in the formation of the Republican Party in New York in 1855, and in 1856 he was appointed a judge of the New York Supreme Court (the trial-level court of the state). In 1858, he was appointed a quarantine commissioner to succeed ex-Governor Horatio Seymour.
In 1862, with the government of Louisiana having voted to join the Confederate States of America and declaring its secession from the United States, President Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order stating that the insurrection "having temporarily subverted and swept away the civil institutions of that State, including the judiciary and the judicial authorities of the Union" made it necessary to appoint "some judicial tribunal existing there capable of administering justice". Therefore, Lincoln stated in this order:
I do hereby constitute, a provisional court, which shall be a court of record for the State of Louisiana, and I do hereby appoint Charles A. Peabody, of New York, to be a provisional judge to hold said court, with authority to hear, try and determine all causes, civil and criminal, including causes in law, equity, revenue, and admiralty, and particularly all such powers and jurisdiction as belong to the district and circuit courts of the United States, conforming his proceedings, so far as possible, to the course of proceedings and practice which has been customary in the courts of the United States and Louisiana — his judgment to be final and conclusive.
When the U.S. Department of State instituted a numbering scheme in 1907, it retroactively identified this as United States Executive Order 1.
“Charles A. Peabody” enters the record as american judge and lawyer (1814–1901). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charles, Peabody and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19596559. VIAF identifies the subject as 55644483. The Library of Congress control number is n86813322. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1814, 1901, 1863 and 1865.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles A. Peabody” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.