the same time hailing from the same state". Abraham Lincoln broke with this tradition during the Civil War, and "by the late 1880s presidents disregarded it with increasing frequency". Although the importance of regionalism declined, it still arose from time to time. For example, in appointing Benjamin Cardozo in 1929, President Hoover was as concerned about the controversy over having three New York justices on the court as he was about having two Jewish justices. David M. O'Brien notes that "from the appointment of John Rutledge from South Carolina in 1789 until the retirement of Hugo Black [from Alabama] in 1971, with the exception of the Reconstruction decade of 1866–1876, there was always a southerner on the bench. Until 1867, the sixth seat was reserved as the "southern seat". Until Cardozo's appointment in 1932, the third seat was reserved for New Englanders." The westward expansion of the U.S. led to concerns that the western states should be represented on the court as well, which purportedly prompted William Howard Taft to make his 1910 appointment of Willis Van Devanter of Wyoming. Geographic balance was sought in the 1970s, when Nixon attempted to employ a "Southern strategy", hoping to secure support from Southern states by nominating judges from the region. Nixon unsuccessfully nominated Southerners Clement Haynsworth of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, before finally succeeding with the nomination of Harry Blackmun of Minnesota. The issue of regional diversity was again raised with the 2010 retirement of John Paul Stevens, who had been appointed from the midwestern Seventh Circuit, leaving the court with all but one Justice having been appointed from states on the East Coast. , the court has a majority from the Northeastern United States, with five justices coming from states to the north and east of Washington, D.C.: two justices born in New York (two in New York City), one in New Jersey, and two from Washington D.C. itself. The remaining four justices come from Georgia, California, Colorado, and Indiana; until the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana in 2020, the most recent justice from the Midwest had been John Paul Stevens of Illinois who retired in 2010. Contemporary justices may be associated with multiple states. Many nominees are appointed while serving in states or districts other than their hometown or home state. Chief Justice John Roberts, for example, was born in Buffalo, New York, but