The Bitter Trial of G. Harrold Carswell

It's a relief. This has been an agonizing experience for me, my family and my friends.

COMING on the heels of his rejection by the Senate for elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge G. Harrold Carswell's statement could be seen as an attempt to mask his obvious disappointment. In fact, there is every reason to believe that the statement was sincere. For Carswell, as for Judge Clement Haynsworth Jr. before him --both men who were thrust from the relative obscurity of their positions into national prominence and scrutiny--the nomination fight was a bitter trial that affected lives, family and friends.

In the first weeks after his nomination by Nixon to the court, Carswell, pleased by his new fame, welcomed the outside world into his well-ordered life. He opened his house to newsmen and treated them with his customary Southern affability. But then, as the opposition to his appointment grew, he reasserted a claim to privacy. Members of his family and intimates helped provide protection by setting up a 15-hour-a-day command-post type of operation to shield him from visitors and telephone callers, and telling all but his closest friends that the judge was unavailable. "He became something of a recluse," commented a friend, Malcolm Johnson. "He was a prisoner in his own home."

Normally gregarious, Carswell withdrew into a virtual state of siege. He rarely went to the court house, took no new cases, worked on old ones at home. He gave up his leisurely, chatty lunches at Angelo's, a Tallahassee restaurant. He and his wife Virginia, who is described by acquaintances as "a cheerleader type," began to turn down many invitations to parties and dinners and limited their social engagements to bridge games with close friends. "We were not used to being in the limelight," says Carswell's daughter, Mrs. Ramsay Langston, 24. "We wondered if it was ever going to be over."

Last week about 25 friends and family members gathered in the living room of Carswell's white brick house overlooking Lake Jackson to watch a pair of television sets that brought them the news of the judge's defeat. "It was like a wake," said one woman. After the Senate vote, Tallahassee Postmaster Peyton L. Yon Sr., one of Carswell's favorite bridge partners, walked over to the judge and shook his hand. "I sure am glad we didn't lose you to Washington and glad we'll keep you in Tallahassee," he said. The Carswells accepted his consolation, then retired to their bedroom to compose themselves before driving downtown to face newsmen.

Publicly, Carswell expressed no bitterness at his rejection, but his friends did. Florida Lieutenant Governor Ray Osborne, who had organized a "Citizens for Carswell" committee, was angry. "Once again, a Southern conservative has been persecuted by the pseudo--and I emphasize pseudo--liberals who want the Supreme Court packed with their own kind," he said. Others defended Carswell against the charges of racism and mediocrity. "I've hunted with him and have never heard him express one word of racial bias even privately," said Carswell's friend, Attorney Robert Pokes. "I think he would have made a good judge," said former Florida Governor LeRoy Collins, an erstwhile Southern liberal. Others were not so sure.

Mrs. Clifton Lewis, one of the city's most outspoken liberals, described his limitations: "Harrold wants everybody to be happy and grow roses and have a football ticket." Journalists at work in the state capitol press room let out a restrained cheer when the wires moved a bulletin on Carswell's defeat.

Carswell quickly announced that he would keep his seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Presumably he will return to the pleasant round of hunting trips, parties and football games that he pursued before Nixon's nomination made him a national figure. He has a good precedent for such a course in the conduct of other rejected nominees.

Federal Judge Homer Thornberry of Texas, whose 1968 nomination collapsed when the Senate refused to confirm Abe Fortas as Chief Justice, accepted his fate with equanimity, returned to his Fifth Circuit Court bench, and talked jokingly of writing a book about his experience. Judge Clement Haynsworth, who suffered from conflict-of-interest charges after he was nominated, has also survived his ordeal. Declaring that "what happened last fall is dead and buried behind me," Haynsworth has resumed his intensely private way of life in Greenville, S.C., dividing his attention between his court cases and his prizewinning camellias. He has also discovered that being a Supreme Court nominee, even a failed one, has improved his social life. A cousin reports that "because of what they did to him in Washington," Haynsworth has been invited to a great many more parties and dinners than ever before. Perhaps for the same reason, he is accepting the invitations.

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