Jeremiah Sullivan Black - PLAQUE
Stonycreek Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Birthplace of Jeremiah Sullivan Black, 10th January, 1810, President Judge, Sixteenth Penna. Judicial District, 1842-1851, Associate Justice and Chief Justice of Penna. 1851-57, Attorney General of the United States 1857-1860, Secretary of State of the U.S. 1860-1861. Fearless and eloquent defender of constitutional rights, of trial by jury, and of civil and religious liberty until his death, 19th August, 1883. "To live unmolested is not a political privilege, but a natural, absolute and indefeasible right, which human government may protect, but cannot either give or withhold." From his address on religious liberty.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
This marker honors Jeremiah Sullivan Black, born here in 1810, who rose from a Pennsylvania judgeship to become Chief Justice of the state's Supreme Court and then Attorney General and Secretary of State of the United States under President James Buchanan on the eve of the Civil War. A formidable legal mind, he was remembered as an eloquent champion of trial by jury and of civil and religious liberty. The plaque quotes his conviction that liberty is "a natural, absolute and indefeasible right."
Why it matters
Black's career bridged the antebellum bench and the national government during the secession crisis, and his defense of constitutional and religious freedom left a lasting mark on American legal thought.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The man honored here was born in this corner of the Pennsylvania mountains in 1810, when the United States was still a young republic finding its footing. It was a rural, hardworking region, and a boy of real ability could still rise a very long way through the law — reading, arguing, and reasoning his way from a county courthouse toward the highest offices in the land.
Those middle decades of the nineteenth century were a time when American law and American politics were being defined at the same time. Courts were working out what the Constitution actually meant in practice; the country was arguing fiercely over the limits of government power and the rights of individuals. A gifted lawyer of this era did not merely settle disputes — he helped shape the framework the nation would live under.
And it was, increasingly, an anxious time. The republic was drifting toward a crisis over its deepest divisions, and the men in its high offices would soon face questions with no easy or safe answers. This birthplace marks the starting point of a career that ran straight into that storm.
People & events
Jeremiah Sullivan Black climbed the ladder of the law about as far as it goes. He served as a president judge of a Pennsylvania judicial district, then rose to the state's Supreme Court as an associate justice and chief justice. From the bench he moved into national service as Attorney General of the United States, and then as Secretary of State — the two highest legal and diplomatic posts in the government of his day.
He held those national offices in the administration of President James Buchanan, in the years just before the Civil War. That placed Black at the center of government during the secession crisis, when the very survival of the Union was in doubt and every official decision carried enormous weight. He was, by reputation, a formidable and eloquent advocate — the kind of lawyer whose arguments were remembered.
What the marker chooses to preserve about him is not a list of victories but a conviction. It records him as a fearless defender of constitutional rights, of trial by jury, and of civil and religious liberty, and it quotes his belief that living unmolested is not a privilege a government grants but a natural right it can only protect. He died in 1883, and it is that principle, more than any single office, that the plaque asks you to remember.
Its place in the American story
Black's life traces a thread that runs through the whole American story: the idea that liberty is not handed down by the powerful but belongs to people by right, and that the job of government — and of the law — is to protect it. He put that idea in plain, uncompromising words, and those words outlived him.
His defense of trial by jury and of religious liberty touches two of the load-bearing beams of the American constitutional order. The right to be judged by one's peers and the right to worship — or not — free of government coercion were hard-won principles, and they needed advocates in every generation who would state them clearly and stand behind them. He was one such advocate at the national level.
That he did this work during the country's gravest constitutional crisis only sharpens the point. When a nation is under the most pressure is precisely when its stated principles are tested. A career like his is a reminder that the meaning of American liberty was argued out, again and again, by people willing to defend it in words that still ring true.
If you visit
This is a birthplace marker, so let it work on your imagination. You are standing where a life began that would reach from a country courthouse to the cabinet of the United States. Picture the distance — geographic and social — between this rural Pennsylvania ground and the halls of national power, and you begin to appreciate the ambition and intellect it took to travel it.
Take a moment with the words the plaque preserves. It could have simply listed his titles; instead it hands you his conviction that liberty is a natural, indefeasible right. Read that slowly. It is the kind of sentence worth carrying away from a roadside stop, and it tells you what the people who raised this marker most wanted remembered.
As a destination this is a quiet, reflective one rather than a grand site — a good pairing with the other historical markers scattered through this part of Pennsylvania. Come for the ideas and the sense of a remarkable life's origin, and give yourself the pleasure of realizing how far a single determined mind once traveled from a place like this.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Jeremiah Sullivan Black
- · James Buchanan
Themes & tags
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