John Catron, born in Virginia in 1786, moved as a youth to Kentucky, served in the War of 1812, read law, joined the Tennessee bar in 1815, and established a practice in Nashville in 1818. He served on the Tennessee Supreme Court of Errors and Appeals from 1824 to 1834 before returning to private practice. On March 3, 1837, President Andrew Jackson appointed him to the United States Supreme Court on Jackson's last day in office. During his tenure until his death in 1865, Catron remained both a staunch defender of slavery and a steadfast supporter of the Union. He joined the majority in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 decision that held the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional after it had banned slavery in the territories. His antebellum summer home in Tullahoma was never reoccupied by him after the Civil War began; in 1862 the town used it as a hospital for sick or wounded transient Confederate soldiers, Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg occupied it for six months in 1863, Union Gen. Henry W. Slocum later used it as his headquarters after the Confederates evacuated Tullahoma, and fire destroyed the house in 1900.