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JOSEPH P. BRADLEY
was born in Berne, New York on March 14, 1813. He attended
a country school and began teaching at the age of sixteen.
He attended Rutgers University several years later and
was graduated in 1836. Bradley studied law in the Office
of the Collector of the Port of Newark, New Jersey, and
was admitted to the bar in 1839. For thirty years, he
specialized in the practice of patent, commercial, and
railroad law. In 1862, after lobbying in Washington for
a compromise settlement of the Civil War, Bradley was
a Unionist candidate for the United States House of Representatives
but did not win election. President Ulysses S. Grant nominated
Bradley to the Supreme Court of the United States on February
7, 1870. The Senate confirmed the appointment on March
21, 1870. In 1877, Bradley served on the electoral commission
created to decide the outcome of the disputed 1876 presidential
election. The commission was divided seven to seven on
partisan lines. Bradley voted with the Republicans on
all issues, making Rutherford B. Hayes President by a
margin of one electoral vote. Bradley served on the Supreme
Court for twenty-one years. He died on January 22, 1892,
at the age of seventy-eight. |
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