fill the term of Nathan Green (who had retired) as Middle Tennessee's justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court. The following year, the state legislature voted to give Caruthers a full term. In 1854, after the state constitution was amended to allow popular election of justices, Caruthers managed to win reelection to the court. One of Caruthers' most important decisions on the court was his opinion in Rippy v. State (1858), which involved killing in self-defense. In this decision, he rejected a literal interpretation of a statement in Judge John Catron's opinion in Grainger v. State, issued three decades earlier, that suggested a person did not need sufficient grounds to kill in self-defense, but merely needed to testify that there was imminent danger. Caruthers' opinion reinstated the "sufficient grounds" rule. He wrote of Grainger, "no case has been more perverted and misapplied by advocates and juries." Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Caruthers was a delegate to the Washington Peace Convention in February 1861, which sought to find a peaceful resolution to the sectional strife between the North and South. He remained pro-Union until the Battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861, after which he aligned himself with the Confederacy. In August 1861, he resigned from the court to represent Tennessee in the Provisional Confederate Congress. On July 17, 1863, the state's Confederate leaders met in Winchester, Tennessee, and nominated Caruthers for governor to replace Isham G. Harris, who was prohibited by the state constitution from seeking a fourth consecutive term. Caruthers was officially elected on August 6, but the state constitution required that the governor-elect take the oath of office before the General Assembly. Since the Union Army controlled most of Middle and West Tennessee at this time, the Assembly was unable to convene, and Caruthers never officially took office. Confederates continued to recognize Harris as governor until the end of the war. Union forces, in the meantime, had installed Andrew Johnson as military governor. Cumberland University Cumberland University was established in Lebanon by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1842. Winstead Paine Bone, in his book, A History of Cumberland University, wrote that Caruthers, a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, "had more to do with the founding of Cumberland University than any other person." He was appointed president of the school's first board of trustees in the Summer of 1842, and helped the school secure a charter