{{Short description|American judge (1809–1883)}} '''Alexander Hamilton Handy''' (December 25, 1809 – September 12, 1883) was a Mississippi attorney who served on the Mississippi Supreme Court from 1853 to 1867, sitting as Chief Justice of Mississippi from 1864 to 1867.<ref>Franklin Lafayette Riley, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=KhAqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA380 School History of Mississippi: For Use in Public and Private Schools]'' (1915), p. 380-82.</ref><ref name="Southwick">Leslie Southwick, [https://dc.law.mc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1410&context=lawreview Mississippi Supreme Court Elections: A Historical Perspective 1916-1996], 18 Miss. C. L. Rev. 115 (1997-1998).</ref>
==Biography== Handy was born in Somerset County, Maryland on December 25, 1809, the son of Betsey (née Wilson) and George Handy.<ref name=Lloyd>{{Cite book|last= Lloyd |first=James B. |author-link= |title= Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi|date=1981 |isbn=9781617034183 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RfXGJBB1HvoC&q=%22Alexander+Hamilton+Handy%22&pg=PA217 |accessdate=May 5, 2018}}</ref><ref name="Green Bag">Thomas H. Somerville, "A Sketch of the Supreme Court of Mississippi", in Horace W. Fuller, ed., ''The Green Bag'', Vol. XI (1899), p. 510.</ref> He studied at the Washington Academy and was admitted to the bar in 1834.<ref name=Lloyd /> After marrying, he moved to Mississippi with his family,<ref name=Lloyd /> in 1836.<ref name="Green Bag"/> In 1853, he was elected as an associate justice on the High Court of Errors and Appeals and was reelected in 1860, and again in 1865.<ref name="Green Bag"/> on April 18, 1864, he was made Chief Justice, where he served until October 1, 1867.<ref name=Lloyd /> He resigned his office due to the Reconstruction-era subjection of the court to military power by the Federal government.<ref name="Green Bag"/> Thereafter, he returned to Baltimore, Maryland where he practiced law and taught at the University of Maryland Law School.<ref name=Lloyd /> In 1871, he moved back to Canton, Mississippi where he died on September 12, 1883.<ref name=Lloyd />
Handy was a secessionist, opining of the "black" Republican Party that:
{{Blockquote|text=The first act of the black republican party will be to exclude slavery from all the territories, from the District of Columbia, the arsenals and the forts, by the action of the general government. That would be a recognition that slavery is a sin, and confine the institution to its present limits. The moment that slavery is pronounced a moral evil, a sin, by the general government, that moment the safety of the rights of the south will be entirely gone.|author=Judge Alexander Hamilton Handy|source=February 1861.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/civil-war-overview/why-non-slaveholding.html |title=Why Non-Slaveholding Southeners Fought |work=Address to the Charleston Library Society |date=January 2011 |first=Gordon |last=Rhea |publisher=Civil War Trust |accessdate=August 2, 2015 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110321183207/http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/civil-war-overview/why-non-slaveholding.html |archivedate=March 21, 2011 }}</ref>}}
==Personal life== In 1835, he married Susan Wilson Stuart. His daughter Arianna Handy married German-Jewish immigrant musician and conductor Otto Sutro (also brother of San Francisco mayor Adolph Sutro).<ref>{{cite book|page=247|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7XaQMhh2qfkC&pg=PA247 |first=Donald G.|last=Miller|title=The Scent of Eternity|year = 1990|isbn = 9780865543324}}</ref> His granddaughters were the piano duettists Rose and Ottilie Sutro.
==References== {{reflist}}
{{s-start}} {{s-off}} {{succession box |title=Justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi |before=William Yerger |after=Court abolished |years=1853–1867}} {{s-end}} {{Chief Justices of Mississippi}} {{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Handy, Alexander Hamilton}} Category:1809 births Category:1883 deaths Category:Washington Academy alumni Category:People from Somerset County, Maryland Category:University of Maryland School of Medicine faculty Category:People from Canton, Mississippi Category:Sutro family Category:19th-century Mississippi state court judges Category:Justices of the Supreme Court of Mississippi Category:19th-century American businesspeople
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