Digital Bob Archive

When James Wickersham received his second appointment as U.S. District Judge at Fairbanks in 1904 it was the beginning of a four-year battle for Senate confirmation, a battle that he ultimately lost. In the early years of that battle he had a great deal of support within Alaska. Most of the newspapers were for him, including the Alaska Daily Record at Juneau, one of whose owners was Wilford B. Hoggatt, an owner of the Jualin Mine at Berners Bay. Wickersham also had the support of a Juneau lawyer named Lewis P. Shackleford who was a crony of Hoggatt and a member of the Republican Central Committee.

Wickersham lost the support and gained the active enmity of Hoggatt and Shackleford, and of their numerous followers, because of a decision he made while serving on the bench at Juneau in the spring of 1907. By that time Hoggatt had become governor of Alaska and Shackleford was pulling strings to be named Republican National Committeeman for Alaska. He also pulled other strings.

One of these was an effort to have Wickersham exchange places with Judge Royal Gunnison of Juneau for a court term, and in this he was successful. Wickersham fell into the trap because he was anxious to avoid having to try certain Fairbanks mining cases in which close friends were involved.

Shackleford wanted Gunnison out of the way because he planned to bring disbarment proceedings against his arch foe, John H. Cobb, a lawyer who was active in the Democratic party and who opposed Shackleford in many court cases. Shackleford feared Judge Gunnison would not favor the disbarment.

Shackleford was born in 1875 in Lexington, Kentucky, where his father was president for many years of Transylvania University. Young Shackleford got a law degree from the University of Michigan and moved to Tacoma, Washington, to join a brother in a law practice. He came to Alaska in 1901 and was first at Skagway in the law office of John R. Winn of Juneau. In 1902 Shackleford was appointed an assistant U.S. Attorney and in 1904 he returned to private practice as a partner of Thomas R. Lyons. Among his clients over the years were the Treadwell, Alaska Gastineau and Alaska Juneau mining companies.

The case over which Shackleford brought the disbarment proceedings against Cobb was a complicated one involving a mortgage foreclosure and receivership of some of the Nowell mining property at Berners Bay. Shackleford himself had done some work on it and put in a bill for $4,000 which Wickersham disallowed. That did not endear him to Shackleford, and when after hearing all the facts he declined to disbar Cobb, Shackleford was furious. So was Governor Hoggatt. From then on they were bitter enemies of Wickersham, not only in the confirmation matter but in his later campaigns for the office of Delegate in Congress. And the affair split the Republican party and generated a Juneau newspaper war which included some bloodshed.