Representatives who Voted for the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, Abolishing Slavery, 38th Congress

ALLEY, John B. 1817-1896  In 1858 he was elected a Representative in Congress from Massachusetts. He entered upon his fourth Congressional term in 1865 as a member of the Thirty-Ninth Congress.


JOHN B. ALLEY was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, January 7,1817. Having learned the art of shoemaking, he devoted himself to the shoe and leather trade. After having served several years in the City Council of Lynn, he was chosen a member of the Governor's Council in 1851. He was a member of the Massachusetts Senate in 1852, and of the State Constitutional Convention held in the following year. In 1858 he was elected a Representative in Congress from Massachusetts. He entered upon his fourth Congressional term in 1865 as a member of the Thirty-Ninth Congress; and was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by General Butler. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1863-1876. Alley was an Anti-slavery member of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties. Co-Edited he “Free-Soiler Newspaper.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868.



ALLISON, WILLIAM BOYD was born in Wayne County, Ohio, March 2, 1829. He was educated at Alleghany College, Pennsylvania, and at Western Reserve College, Ohio. From 1851 to 1857 he practiced law in Ohio, and subsequently settled in Dubuque, Iowa. He was a member of the Chicago Convention of 1860. As a member of the Governor's staff, in 1861, he rendered efficient service in raising troops for the war. In 1862 he was elected a Representative in the Thirty-Eighth Congress, from Ohio. He was re-elected in 1864, and again in 1866. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1863-1871, U.S. Senator.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868, p. 527.


WILLIAM B. ALLISON was born in Perry, Wayne County, Ohio, March 2, 1829. Most of his boyhood was spent upon a farm. He was educated at Alleghany College, Pennsylvania, and at Western Reserve College, Ohio. He then entered on the study of law, and was admitted to practice in 1851. He continued the practice of law in Ohio until 1857, when he removed to Dubuque, Iowa. He was a delegate in the Chicago Convention of 1860; and, in 1861, he was a member of the Governor's staff, rendering essential service in raising troops for the war.

In 1862, Mr. Allison was elected from Iowa a Representative to the Thirty-eight Congress, and re-elected to the Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, and Forty-first Congresses. He has served on the Committee on Public Lands, Roads and Canals, also on Ways and Means, Mines and Mining, and Expenses in the Interior Department.

The Congressional records show Mr. Allison to be vigilant and faithful in his duties in the House. His speeches evince sobriety and care, at the same time that they display ability and fearlessness in the advocacy of his views.

Mr. Allison's speech, June 4, 1868, on the “Internal Tax Bill," while it evinces much ability, presents facts and statements of special interest to the country at large. The following extracts are selected in illustration :

“Mr. Chairman, I fear we must resort to something more perfect if we would check the frauds on the revenue which exist in this country to-day. I beg leave to differ with gentlemen on this side of the House as to the cause of these great frauds. I do not attribute their commission to the division of responsibility. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue is a bureau officer under the Secretary of the Treasury. The Secretary of the Treasury is to-day the responsible head of the Department, charged with the collection of the revenue of the country. It is no defense for him to say that he does not know of the existence of these frauds. Is it not enough for him to know that there are produced in this country at least seventy-five million gallons of distilled spirits, and that but seven million gallons pay the tax during the fiscal year about to close ? Is it to be said that the responsible head of the revenue department—the Secretary of the Treasury -does not know that the reason why this revenue is not collected is because of frauds in his Department, and that he must wait for his subordinate officer to bring those frauds to his knowledge ?

“I say the responsibility rests to-day upon the Secretary of the Treasury, unless he can shift that responsibility upon the President of the United States, where I believe it legitimately and properly belongs. While I give the Secretary of the Treasury credit for integrity of purpose and purity of character, he is unfortunately too much of a partisan, or is not willing to assume the responsibility which is within his power and control. Many of these revenue agents belong to what my colleagues on the Committee of Ways and Means and others here donominate “ the whisky ring.” They are constantly roaming over the country and forming leagues, by which the Government is defrauded. * * *

“ These men are not removed from office. I have been told that the Secretary of the Treasury makes representations to the President of the United States; but I have yet to learn that a single man who has been engaged in these fraudulent practices has been removed by the President of the United States. Hence, Mr. Chairman, I think the chief reason for these frauds is inherent in our present political situation, and that we never can get rid of them except in one way, that is by having harmony in the administration, and harmony in legislation, and administration and legislation on the side of the Government.” On the 29th of February, 1868, the House having under consideration the Articles of Impeachment, as reported from the Committee, Mr. Allison sustained them in a speech of which the following is an extract:

“ The President by the Constitution is especially enjoined to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and he is therefore not only bound, as is every other citizen of the Republic, to observe the laws that may be passed from time to time, but has the higher duty imposed upon him of seeing to it that every citizen obeys the laws; and if he can set at defiance this law, he may with equal propriety disregard any law that may be found upon the statute-books, and set up in defense that he regards the law as unconstitutional. The very nature of the executive office requires him to obey the law, as it is involved in the executive authority conferred upon him by the Constitution, and as such executive officer he is bound to execute the laws, whatever may be his individual opinion as a citizen with reference to their constitutionality; and a failure on his part to execute any law not declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, is to violate his oath of office, which compels him to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

“When laws are duly made and promulgated, they only remain to be executed. No discretion is submitted to the executive officer. It is not for him to deliberate and decide upon the wisdom, expediency, or constitutionality of the law; that power he has exhausted when he returns a bill, with his objections, to the House in which it originated. What has been once declared to be law under all the cautious forms of deliberation prescribed by the Constitution, ought to receive a prompt obedience; and a failure to obey in the President should be regarded as a high misdemeanor in office.”

After having referred particularly to the President's violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act, Mr. Allison concluded as follows:

“But, Mr. Chairman, this is but one link in a long chain of usurpations on the part of the President. It is but a chapter (I hope the last) in the history of a great conspiracy, begun by the President in December, 1865, and continued in perseveringly to the present moment, to turn over the Government of at least ten States, if not of the whole country, to the enemies of the Republic.

“It is possible the first act by which he has brought himself within the provisions of a criminal statute, but only one of many instances in which he has used the powers of his high office to thwart the will and judgment of the people. He has attempted to usurp to himself the absolute control of the rebel States, and has sought by every means possible to thwart the execution of the humane laws passed for their restoration to the Union. Under his guidance, life, liberty, and property in those States have been put in jeopardy; and the spirit of rebellion, though dormant, is as strong as during the war, all because this spirit has in him an advocate. Shielded and protected and powerful, because he happens to hold the Presidential office, he has tried in various ways to secure the Army to sustain him; and foiled in every way, under the forms of law he now seeks to wrest it by force, thereby seeking to place the War Department and the Army under the control of a weak, irresolute old man, who will do his bidding. In the meantime every material interest of the country is suffering, because this man persists in retaining in office men who are utterly unworthy of place. The country wants peace, and peace it cannot have while this criminal remains in office. If we allow this last act or acts of usurpation to pass without applying the peaceful constitutional remedy, we may naturally expect that these usurpations will continue, until republican government itself will be destroyed, and upon its ruins a dictatorship established in the interest of the worst enemies of liberty and law.”

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 1, 1869.



AMES, Oakes was born in Easton, Massachusetts, January 10, 1804. He has devoted most of his life to the business of manufacturing, taking but little public part in politics. Having served for two years as a member of the Executive Council of his State, he was, in 1862, 1864, and 1866, elected a Representative in Congress, from Massachusetts. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 2nd Massachusetts District 1862-1873, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868, p. 31.


OAKES AMES was born in Easton, Bristol County, Massachusetts, January 10, 1804. His father, Oliver Ames, many years ago began the business of manufacturing shovels in a small way, which has developed into the immense establishment employing hundreds of men under the control of O. Ames & Sons. Years ago, Oakes Ames, while still enlarging and extending his original business, entered the wider field of railroad enterprise. He invested capital and inspired energy in several languishing railroad enterprises, and was largely concerned in the construction of extended lines of railway in Iowa.

When the Pacific Railroad was regarded by multitudes of intelligent men as impracticable, if not impossible, Mr. Ames, with wise faith in the future, invested largely, and contributed in many ways to the success of the greatest material achievement of the age. His brother, Oliver Ames, entered into the enterprise, gave almost undivided attention to its affairs, and is now president of the road. Notwithstanding the demands of a large business, Mr. Oakes Ames gave some time and attention to political affairs. He served for two years as a member of the Executive Council of Massachusetts. In 1862 he was elected a Representative from Massachusetts to the Thirty-eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-ninth, Fortieth and Forty-first Congresses. He served on the Committees on Manufactures, and the Pacific Railroad. He was not in the habit of making speeches, and yet he exerted much influence in legislation.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 2, 1869.



ANDERSON, Lucien  Elected as an Unconditional Unionist to the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1865); declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1864.

ANDERSON, LUCIEN, a Representative from Kentucky; born near Mayfield, Graves County, Kentucky, June 23, 1824; attended the public schools; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1845 and commenced practice in Mayfield; presidential elector on the Whig ticket of Scott and Graham in 1852; member of the State house of representatives 1855-1857; elected as an Unconditional Unionist to the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1865); declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1864; delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1864; resumed the practice of his profession; died in Mayfield, Kentucky, October 18, 1898.

Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)



ARNOLD, Isaac N. Delegate to the Free-Soil National Convention at Buffalo in 1848. elected as a Republican to the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1861-March 3, 1865).


ARNOLD, ISAAC NEWTON, a Representative from Illinois; born in Hartwick, Otsego County, New York, November 30, 1815; attended the district and select schools and Hartwick Seminary; taught school in Otsego County 1832-1835; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1835 and commenced practice in Cooperstown, Otsego County, New York; moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1836 and continued the practice of law; was elected as city clerk of Chicago in 1837, but had served only a short time when he resigned to devote his entire efforts to his law practice; delegate to the Democratic State convention in 1842; member of the State house of representatives in 1842 and 1843; presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1844; delegate to the Free-Soil National Convention at Buffalo in 1848; again a member of the State house of representatives in 1855 and was an unsuccessful candidate for speaker; unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination to Congress in 1858; elected as a Republican to the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1861-March 3, 1865); chairman, Committee on Roads and Canals (Thirty-eighth Congress); declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1864; during the Civil War acted as aide to Colonel Hunter at the Battle of Bull Run; served as Sixth Auditor of the United States Treasury, Washington, D.C., from April 29, 1865, to September 29, 1866, when he resigned; resumed the practice of law and also engaged in literary pursuits; died in Chicago, Illinois, April 24, 1884.



ASHLEY, JAMES MITCHELL  was born in Pennsylvania, November 14, 1824. He spent several years of his early life in a printing-office, and was some time a clerk on Ohio and Mississippi steamboats. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1849, but immediately engaged in the business of boat-building. He subsequently went into the wholesale drug business in Toledo. Underground Railroad activist. Member, Free Soil Party, 1848.  Opponent of slavery. Joined Republican Party in 1854. In 1858 he was elected a Representative from Ohio to the Thirty-Sixth Congress, and has been a member of every succeeding Congress, including the Fortieth.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868, p. 306, 503, 513, 515, 525, 566.


JAMES M. ASHLEY is a native of Pennsylvania, and was born November 14, 1824. He left home before attaining his fifteenth year, and for a time was a cabin-boy on Western river steamboats. He subsequently worked in a printing office, and visiting Portsmouth, Ohio, where his father had at one time resided, he connected himself with the press, to which his tastes and inclinations appear to have led him, and presently became one of the editors of the Dispatch, and afterwards editor and proprietor of the Democrat.

From the editor's sanctum, Mr. Ashley went into the law office of C. O. Tracy, Esq., at that time one of the most distinguished lawyers of Southern Ohio. There he remained three years, and was admitted to the bar in 1849, but never practiced his profession.

He engaged for a time in boat-building, and in 1852 we find him at Toledo, Ohio, engaged in the drug business. Meanwhile he participated actively in politics, and in 1858 was elected to the Thirty-sixth Congress from the Tenth Ohio District.

Without experience in public life, Mr. Ashley entered upon his Congressional career at a time of unusual interest, when the tempest of Southern treason was gathering in the firmament. While many were faltering in the enforcement of the popular demand for the nationalization of freedom, he maintained a uniform consistency, and was among the foremost in demanding this reform. All the great measures which now shed luster and honor upon the record of the Republican party, were advocated by him long before their adoption, and many of them were by him first introduced into Congress. He prepared and reported to the House the first measure of Reconstruction submitted to Congress, which, though defeated at the time of its first presentation, finally received the overwhelming indorsement of his party, both in and out of Congress. He has presented several propositions which, at the time of their introduction, failed to command the united vote of his party in Congress, but not one of importance which did not finally receive that indorsement.

Mr. Ashley has ever been a most active and reliable friend of the soldier. Every measure for their benefit or relief has received his earnest and active support. During the war very much of his time, when not at his post in Congress, was spent in visiting them in the hospitals and upon the field, and their every want or request met with his hearty response. The greater portion of his salary was expended for their relief, and no demand upon his charity or labor in their behalf failed to meet a generous response at his hands. Since the close of the war he has been ever vigilant in looking after their claims against the Government, and his efforts have been of much service in securing them against tedious delays and the treachery of unscrupulous agents.

Mr. Ashley was the first to move in the House for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and made several speeches advocating that measure, and for some time stood comparatively alone.

On the 29th of May he took the lead again in introducing into the House a constitutional amendment, the object of which was to abolish the office of Vice-President, making the presiding officer of the Senate elective by that body, limiting the term of the President to four years, and providing for his election directly by the people.

Mr. Ashley made a speech advocating this amendment, on which a contemporary very properly remarks that “the time has been in our history when reputations for statesmanship were established by speeches of less ability.”

“The country,” said he in that speech, “has been distracted, and its peace imperiled more than once, because of the existence of the office of Vice-President. The nation would have been spared the terrible ordeal through which it passed in the contest between Jefferson and Burr in 1801 had there been no vice-presidential office. Had there been no such office, we would have been spared the perfidy of a Tyler, the betrayal of a Fillmore, and the baseness and infamy of a Johnson.

“ While each of the candidates for President and Vice-President professes to subscribe to the so-called platform of principles adopted by the conventions which nominate them, they nevertheless represent, as a rule, opposing factions in the party, and often at heart antagonistic ideas, which are only subordinated for the sake of party success. This was the case with Harrison and Tyler, Taylor and Fillmore, Lincoln and Johnson. When each of these Vice-Presidents, on the death of the President-elect, came into the presidential office, he attempted to build up a party which should secure his re-election. For this purpose they did not scruple to betray the great body of men who elected them to the office of Vice-President, nor did they hesitate at the open and shameless use of public patronage for that purpose. The weakest and most dangerous part of our executive system for the personal safety of the President is a defect in the Constitution itself. I find it in that clause of the Constitution which provides that the Vice-President shall, on the death or inability of the President, succeed to his office. The presidential office is thus undefended, and invites temptation. The life of but one man must often stand between the success of unscrupulous ambition, the designs of mercenary cliques, or the fear and hatred of conspirators."

In a recent address, Mr. Ashley paid the following tribute to certain prominent anti-slavery men of the country :

“To the anti-slavery men and women of the United States we owe our political redemption as a nation. They who endured social and political ostracism, the hatred of slave-masters, and the cowardly assaults of Northern mobs, in defense of those who were manacled and dumb, and could not ask for help, were the moral heroes of our great anti-slavery revolution. To them, and to many thousands whose names will never be written on the pages of history, but whose lives were as true, as unselfish, and as consecrated as any, is the nation indebted for its regenerated Constitution, its vindication of the rights of human nature, and its solemn pledge for the future impartial administration of justice. To me these are the men whose lives are the most beautiful and the most valuable... The world is full of men whose pure and unselfish lives ennoble and dignify the human race. My exemplars are the men who in all ages have lived such lives, whether religious reformers like Luther and Wesley, or philosophers and statesmen like Hampden and Sydney, Locke and Bacon, Cobden and Bright and John Stuart Mill; or like our own Washington and Lincoln, Phillips and Garrison, Stevens and Sumner, Greeley and Gerrit Smith. To me the only model statesman is he who secures liberty and impartial justice for all, and protects the weak against the strong. He is the statesman and the benefactor who aids in educating the ignorant, and in lightening the cares of the toiling millions."

For ten years Mr. Ashley held a seat in Congress by successive reelections. In the fall of 1868, however, the official returns gave the election to the Forty-first Congress to his opponent, but under such circumstances as to cause the seat to be contested.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 1, 1869.



BAILEY, Joseph, elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1861-March 3, 1865).   


BAILEY, JOSEPH, a Representative from Pennsylvania; born in Pennsbury Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, March 18, 1810; attended the common schools; learned the trade of a hatter, which he carried on in Parkersville; served in the State house of representatives in 1840; member of the State senate in 1843; moved to Perry County in 1845; again a member of the State senate 1851-1853; State treasurer of Pennsylvania in 1854; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1860; elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1861-March 3, 1865); member of the State constitutional convention in 1872; died at Bailey Station, Perry County, Pennsylvania, on August 26, 1885; interment in Bloomfield Cemetery, New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present.



BALDWIN, Augustus, elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1865); unsuccessfully contested the election of Rowland E. Trowbridge to the Thirty-ninth Congress; delegate to the peace convention at Philadelphia in 1866;   


BALDWIN, AUGUSTUS CARPENTER, a Representative from Michigan; born in Salina (now Syracuse), Onondaga County, New York, December 24, 1817; attended the public schools; moved to Oakland County, Mich., in 1837 and taught school; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1842 and commenced practice in Milford, Oakland County; member of the State house of representatives 1844-1846, serving as speaker pro tempore in 1846; moved to Pontiac, Mich., in March 1849; prosecuting attorney for Oakland County 1853 and 1854; delegate to the Democratic National Conventions at Charleston and Baltimore in 1860; elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1865); unsuccessfully contested the election of Rowland E. Trowbridge to the Thirty-ninth Congress; delegate to the peace convention at Philadelphia in 1866; member of the Pontiac School Board 1868-1886; mayor of Pontiac in 1874; judge of the sixth judicial circuit court of Michigan from 1875 until April 15, 1880, when he resigned and resumed the practice of law; member of the board of trustees of the Eastern Michigan Asylum; died in Pontiac, Oakland County, Mich., January 21, 1903; interment in Oak Hill Cemetery.   

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present.



BALDWIN, John Denison, 1809-1883. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Chicago Convention. In 1862 he was elected a Representative in Congress from Massachusetts, and was re-elected in 1864 and 1866. Editor of the anti-slavery journal, Republican in Hartford, Connecticut.  Owner, editor of Free-Soil Charter Oak at Hartford, Connecticut. 


JOHN D. BALDWIN was born in North Stonington, Connecticut, September 28, 1810. He graduated at Yale College. Having studied law, and gone through a course of theological studies, he published a volume of poems, and became connected with the press, first in Hartford, and then in Boston, where he was editor of the " Daily Commonwealth." He subsequently became proprietor of the "Worcester Spy." In 1860 he was a delegate to the Chicago Convention. In 1862 he was elected a Representative in Congress from Massachusetts, and was re-elected in 1864 and 1866. Editor of the anti-slavery journal, Republican in Hartford, Connecticut.  Owner, editor of Free-Soil Charter Oak at Hartford, Connecticut.  In 1852 became editor of the Commonwealth in Boston.  Supported negro causes.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868.



BAXTER, Portus  In 1860 he was elected a Representative from Vermont to the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth Congresses.   


PORTUS BAXTER was born in Brownington, Vermont. He received a liberal education, and engaged in mercantile and agricultural pursuits. In 1852 and 1856 he was a Presidential Elector. In 1860 he was elected a Representative from Vermont to the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth Congresses. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Worthington C. Smith.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868.



BEAMAN, Fernando,  In 1860 he was elected a Representative from Michigan to the Thirty-seventh Congress by a large majority. He at once took an active part in legislation, and during his first Congressional term delivered two speeches which attracted attention, one on "Provisional Governments for the Rebel States," and another on the " Confiscation of Rebel Property." He was re-elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress, and served on the same committee.  In the Thirty-ninth Congress he served on the Committees on Territories, the Death of President Lincoln.

FERNANDO C. BEAMAN was born in Chester, Windsor County, Vermont, June 28, 1814. At the age of five he removed with his parents to the State of New York, and received a good English education at the Franklin County Academy. At twenty-two years of age he entered upon the study of law at Rochester, New York. In 1838 he removed to Michigan, where after pursuing his studies another year he was admitted to the bar, and commenced the practice of his profession, which he prosecuted with much success.

Politically Mr. Beaman was a Democrat until 1854, when the passage of the Nebraska act induced him to aid in the organization of the Republican party, of which he has remained one of the most devoted and conscientious adherents. For six years he held the office of prosecuting-attorney for Lenawee County, was judge of probate for four years, and in 1856 he was a presidential elector. In 1860 he was elected a Representative from Michigan to the Thirty-seventh Congress by a large majority, running ahead of the Republican electoral ticket some six hundred votes. He at once took an active part in legislation, and during his first Congressional term delivered two speeches which attracted attention, one on "Provisional Governments for the Rebel States," and another on the " Confiscation of Rebel Property." He was re-elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress, and served on the same committee and also on that on Territories. In the Thirty-ninth Congress he served on the Committees on Territories, the Death of President Lincoln, and Frauds on the Revenue, and as chairman of the Committee on Roads and Canals. In the Fortieth Congress he was a member of the Committees on Reconstruction and Appropriations. He was re-elected to the Forty-first Congress, receiving 22,197 votes against 20,595 for the Democratic candidate.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 2, 1869.



BLAINE, James Gillespie, 1830-1893, statesman.  Founding member of the Republican Party.  Member of Congress 1862-1880.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.


JAMES GILLESPIE BLAINE was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1830. His ancestors were among See the early Scotch-Irish settlers in that State. His great-grandfather, Ephraim Blaine, was honorably distinguished as an officer in the Revolutionary war. He was originally a Colonel of the Pennsylvania Line; and for the last four years of the struggle, was Commissary General of the Northern Department. It is related in Appleton's “Cyclopedia ” that “during the dark winter at Valley Forge, the preservation of the American army from starvation was in a great degree owing to the exertions and sacrifices of Colonel Blaine.”

The immediate subject of this sketch graduated at Washington College, Pennsylvania, in 1847. After two or three years spent in teaching, he adopted the editorial profession, and removed to Maine in 1852, where he successively edited the Kennebec Journal and the Portland Advertiser, the two leading Republican papers in the State at that time. In 1858, Mr. Blaine was elected to the State Legislature from the city of Augusta. He served four consecutive years in that body; the last two, as Speaker of the House of Representatives. In 1862, Mr. Blaine was elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress from the Third Congressional District of Maine, and has been three times re-elected by very large majorities.

During Mr. Blaine's service in Congress, he has been a member of the Post-Office Committee, the Military Committee, the Committee on Appropriations, and the Committee on the Rules. He enjoys the reputation of being an exceedingly industrious committee man, and he takes at all times a very active and prominent part in the business and in the debates of the House.

During the Thirty-eighth Congress, Mr. Blaine made a speech on the subject of the General Government assuming the “war debts of the loyal States," in the course of which he discussed at some length the ability of the nation to prosecute the war in which we were then so desperately engaged. This feature of Mr. Blaine's speech attracted great attention at the time, and it was made one of the Campaign Documents by the Union Republican party in the Presidential struggle of 1864.

During the Thirty-ninth Congress, Mr. Blaine bore an active and conspicuous part in the legislation on measures of reconstruction. Early in January, 1866, Mr. Blaine introduced a resolution, which was referred to the Reconstruction Committee, and was made the basis of that part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution regulating the matter of Congressional Representation. Before the introduction of Mr. Blaine's resolution, the tendency had been to base representation directly on the voting population; but this was entirely changed; and it appears that the first resolution, looking to the modification, was introduced by Mr. Blaine, and supported by a speech which, at the time, attracted much attention.

During the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, Mr. Blaine's participation in the Reconstruction Regulation was prominent and influential. The “ Blaine Amendment,” so well known in the public reports at the time, was moved by Mr. Blaine as a modification of Mr. Stevens' Military Bill. It was not adopted in precisely the form originally introduced by Mr. Blaine, but the measure since known as the “Howard Amendment,” and sometimes as the “Sherman Amendment,” as finally moved in the Senate, is substantially the same as originally proposed by Mr. Blaine in the House.

In the financial discussions of the Fortieth Congress, Mr. Blaine has been specially prominent. At the very opening of the December session, 1867, Mr. Blaine made an elaborate speech reviewing and opposing the Pendleton theory of the payment of our bonds in greenbacks. At various times subsequently, he took prominent part in upholding the public credit and the national faith. In Mr. Blaine's first speech he closed with the following declarations, which coincided with singular accuracy with the conclusions since reached and enunciated by the Republican party in its National platform :

“ The remedy for our financial troubles, Mr. Chairman, will not be found in a superabundance of depreciated paper currency. It lies in the opposite direction; and the sooner the nation finds itself on a specie basis, the sooner will the public Treasury be freed from embarrassment, and private business relieved from discouragement. Instead, therefore, of entering upon a reckless and boundless issue of legal tenders, with their consequent depression, if not destruction of value, let us set resolutely to work and make those already in circulation equal to so many gold dollars. When that result shall be accomplished, we can proceed to pay our five-twenties either in coin or paper, for the one would be the equivalent of the other. But to proceed deliberately on a scheme of depreciating our legal tenders, and then forcing the holders of Government bonds to accept them in payment, would resemble in point of honor the policy of a merchant who, with abundant resources and prosperous business, should devise a plan for throwing discredit on his own notes with the view of having them bought up at a discount ruinous to the holders and immensely profitable to his own knavish pocket. This comparison may faintly illustrate the wrongfulness of the policy, but not its consummate folly; for in the case of the Government, unlike the merchant, the stern necessity would recur of making good in the end, by the payment of hard coin, all the discount that might be gained by the temporary substitution of paper.

“Discarding all such schemes as at once unworthy and unprofitable, let us direct our policy steadily, but not rashly, toward the resumption of specie payment. And when we have attained that end-easily attainable at no distant day if the proper policy be pursued—we can all unite on some honorable plan for the redemption of the five-twenty bonds, and the issuing instead thereof a new series of bonds which can be more favorably placed at a lower rate of interest. When we shall have reached the specie basis, the value of United States securities will be so high in the money markets of the world that we can command our own terms. We can then call in our five-twenties according to the very letter and spirit of the bond, and adjust a new loan that will be eagerly sought for by capitalists, and will be free from those elements of discontent that in some measure surround the existing funded debt of the country.”

Mr. Blaine is an indefatigable worker, an accurate statistician, a logical reasoner, and a fluent speaker. He possesses thorough knowledge of parliamentary law. His tact in discharging the duties of presiding officer has often been tested by his temporary occupancy of the Speaker's Chair. Whether in the Chair or on the floor of the House, he always maintains his self-possession, dignity, and good humor. A sprightly correspondent of the New York Tribune thus describes his appearance near the close of the Thirty-ninth Congress : “Mr. Blaine, whose amendment excites the opposition of the great Pennsylvanian, is metallic; you cannot conceive how a shot should pierce him, for there seem no joints to his harness. He is a man who knows what the weather was yesterday morning in Dakota, what the Emperor's policy will be touching Mexico, on what day of the week the 16th of December proximo will fall, who is the chairman of the school committee in Kennebunk, what is the best way of managing the National Debt, together with all the other interests of to-day, which anybody else would stagger under. How he does it, nobody knows. He is always in his seat. He must absorb details by assimilation at his finger ends. As I said, he is clear metal. His features are made in a mould ; his attitudes are those of a bronze figure; his voice clinks; and, as you know, he has ideas fixed as brass."

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 1, 1869.



BLAIR, Jacob B.,  elected as a Unionist from Virginia to the Thirty-seventh Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of United States Representative John S. Carlile (December 2, 1861-March 3, 1863); elected as an Unconditional Unionist from West Virginia to the Thirty-eighth Congress (December 7, 1863-March 3, 1865).


BLAIR, JACOB BEESON, a Representative from Virginia and from West Virginia; born in Parkersburg, Wood County, Virginia (now W. Virginia), April 11, 1821; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1844; lawyer, private practice; prosecuting attorney, Ritchie County, Virginia (now W. Virginia); elected as a Unionist from Virginia to the Thirty-seventh Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of United States Representative John S. Carlile (December 2, 1861-March 3, 1863); elected as an Unconditional Unionist from West Virginia to the Thirty-eighth Congress (December 7, 1863-March 3, 1865); United States Minister to Costa Rica, 1868-1873; associate justice of the supreme court of Wyoming, 1876-1888; probate judge for Salt Lake County, Utah, 1892-1895; surveyor general of Utah, 1897-1901; died on February 12, 1901, Salt Lake City, Utah; interment in Mount Olive Cemetery, Salt Lake City, Utah.   

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present.



BLOW, Henry Taylor,  1817-1875, statesman, diplomat.  Active in pre-Civil War anti-slavery movement.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1863-1867. 


HENRY T. BLOW was born in Southampton county, Virginia, July 15, 1817. In 1830 he removed to Missouri, and soon after graduated at the St. Louis University. He engaged extensively in the drug and lead business. He  served four years in the Senate of Missouri. In 1861 he was appointed by President Lincoln Minister to Venezuela, but resigned the position before the expiration of a year. In 1862 he was elected a Representative from Missouri to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Carman A. Newcomb.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868.



BOUTWELL, George Sewall  1818-1905, statesman, lawyer. 20th Governor of Massachusetts.   Helped organize the Republican Party.  Member of Congress, 1862-1868.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senator.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Secretary of the Treasury under President Ulysses S. Grant.  Supported African American citizenship and voting rights during Reconstruction.  Important leader serving on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which framed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. 


GEORGE S. BOUTWELL was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, January 28, 1818, and removed to Groton in 1835. He was engaged in mercantile business as clerk and proprietor for several years, and subsequently entered the profession of the law. From 1842 to 1850 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. In 1849 and 1850 he was Bank Commissioner. In 1851 he was elected Governor of Massachusetts, and served two terms. He was a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853. He was eleven years a member and Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and ten years a member of the Board of Overseers df Harvard College. He was appointed Commissioner of the Internal Revenue, in July, 1862, and organized the Revenue system. In 1863 he took his seat as a Representative in Congress from Massachusetts, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses. He is the author of a " Manual of the School System, and School Laws of Massachusetts," "Educational Topics and Institutions," "A Manual of the Revenue System," and a volume just published, entitled " Speeches on Reconstruction." 

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868, 31, 91, 442, 475, 526, 528, 536, 553.



BOYD, Sempronius, Hamilton, born 1828, lawyer, Union soldier.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Colonel, 24th Missouri Volunteers. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 341; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


BOYD, Sempronius Hamilton, lawyer, born in Williamson county, Tennessee, 28 May, 1828. He received an academic education at Springfield, Missouri, after which he studied law. In 1855 he was admitted to the bar and practised in Springfield, where he became clerk, attorney, and twice mayor. During the civil war he was colonel of the 24th Missouri volunteers, a regiment which he raised, and which was known as the “Lyon Legion.” In 1863 he was elected as representative in congress from Missouri. Afterward, resuming his profession, he was appointed judge of the 14th judicial circuit of Missouri. He was a delegate to the Baltimore convention in 1864, and in 1868 elected to congress, serving until 3 March, 1871. Since then he has spent a quiet life in Missouri, devoting his time partly to the practice of his profession and partly to stock-raising. The Springfield wagon factory and the first national bank of Springfield were founded by him.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 341



BRANDEGEE, Augustus, 1828-1904, lawyer, jurist, abolitionist.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Elected to Connecticut State House of Representatives in 1854.  There, he was appointed Chairman of the Select Committee to pass a “Bill for the Defense of Liberty,” which was to prevent the Fugitive Slave Law from being enforced in the state.

(Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; Congressional Globe)


AUGUSTUS BRANDAGEE was born in New London, Conn., July 15, 1828. He graduated at Yale College in 1849, and at the Yale Law School in 1851. From 1854 to 1861 he served in the Connecticut Legislature, of which he was Speaker in the latter year. He was a Presidential Elector in 1861, and was elected a Representative to the Thirty-Eighth Congress from Connecticut in 1863, and was re-elected in 1865. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Henry H. Starkweather.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868.



BROOMALL, John M. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  In 1862 he was elected to represent the Seventh Pennsylvania District in Congress. Two years later was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress.


JOHN M. BROOMALL was born in Upper Chichester, Pennsylvania, in 1816. Having received a common-school education, he devoted himself to legal studies and pursuits. In 1861 he was a Presidential Elector. In 1862 he was elected to represent the Seventh Pennsylvania District in Congress. Two years later was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, and was re-elected to the Fortieth Congress.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868.



BROWN, William Gay,  elected as a Unionist to the Thirty-seventh Congress (March 4, 1861-March 3, 1863); upon the admission of West Virginia as a State into the Union was elected as an Unconditional Unionist from West Virginia to the Thirty-eighth Congress and served from December 7, 1863, to March 3, 1865. 

BROWN, WILLIAM GAY, (father of William Gay Brown, Jr.), a Representative from Virginia and from West Virginia; born in Kingwood, Preston County, Virginia (now West Virginia), September 25, 1800; attended the public schools; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1823 and commenced practice in Kingwood, Virginia; member of the State house of delegates in 1832 and 1840-1843; elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth Congresses (March 4, 1845-March 3, 1849); delegate to the State constitutional conventions in 1850 and 1861; delegate to the Democratic National Conventions at Charleston and Baltimore in 1860; elected as a Unionist to the Thirty-seventh Congress (March 4, 1861-March 3, 1863); upon the admission of West Virginia as a State into the Union was elected as an Unconditional Unionist from West Virginia to the Thirty-eighth Congress and served from December 7, 1863, to March 3, 1865; died in Kingwood, W. Virginia, April 19, 1884; interment in Maplewood Cemetery.  

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present.



CLARK, Ambrose Williams,  elected as a Republican to the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1861-March 3, 1865).


CLARK, AMBROSE WILLIAMS, a Representative from New York; born near Cooperstown, New York, on February 19, 1810; attended the public schools; publisher of the Otsego Journal 1831-1836, of the Northern Journal in Lewis County 1836-1844, and of the Northern New York Journal at Watertown 1844-1860; surrogate for five years; elected as a Republican to the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1861-March 3, 1865); appointed consul at Valparaiso by President Lincoln and served from 1865 to 1869; acted as Chargé d'Affaires in Chile in the absence of the Minister in 1869; died in Watertown, New York, October 13, 1887; interment in Brookside Cemetery.  

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present.



CLARKE, Freeman, elected as a Republican to the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1865); was not a candidate for renomination in 1864.  


CLARKE, FREEMAN, a Representative from New York; born in Troy, New York, March 22, 1809; attended the common schools; went into business for himself at the age of fifteen; began his financial career as cashier of the Bank of Orleans, Albion, New York; moved to Rochester, New York, in 1845; became director and president of numerous banks, railroads, and telegraph and trust companies of Rochester and New York City; delegate to the Whig National Convention at Baltimore in 1852; vice president of the first Republican State convention of New York in 1854; appointed Comptroller of the Currency in 1865; delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1867; elected as a Republican to the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1865); was not a candidate for renomination in 1864; Comptroller of the Currency from March 9, 1865, to February 6, 1867; again elected to the Forty-second and Forty-third Congresses (March 4, 1871-March 3, 1875); resumed his former business pursuits; died in Rochester, New York, on June 24, 1887; interment in Mount Hope Cemetery.  

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present.



COBB, Amasa.  In 1862 he was elected a Representative in the Thirty-eighth Congress, and resigned his commission as a Union colonel.  He was re-elected to the Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, and Forty-first Congresses.


AMASA COBB was born in Crawford County, Illinois, September 27, 1823. He was educated in the common schools, and at the age of nineteen went to Wisconsin territory, and worked five years in the lead mines. At the breaking out of hostilities with Mexico, he volunteered, and served as a private during the war. Such leisure time as he found during his service, he employed in study, and on the return of peace commenced the practice of law. He soon attracted public notice, and in 1850 was elected a district-attorney and served four years. In 1854 he was elected to the Wisconsin State Senate, and in 1855 was adjutant-general of Wisconsin, an office which he held until 1858. He was a Representative in the State Legislature in 1860 and 1861, and during the last term held the office of Speaker. On the breaking out of the civil war he raised the 5th Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers, and went into the service as its colonel. In 1862 he was elected a Representative in the Thirty-eighth Congress, and resigned his commission. Subsequently, however, during a recess of Congress he raised the 43d Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers, which he commanded until July, 1865, when he was mustered out. He was brevetted for gallant service at Williamsburg, Golden's Farm, and Antietam. He was re-elected to the Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, and Forty-first Congresses. He served on the Committee on Claims, the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and the Committee on Military Affairs. Although a ready and fluent speaker, he did not often address the House. His speech on Impeachment was an able review of the acts which in his opinion rendered President Johnson "worthy of impeachment and removal from office."

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 2, 1869.



COFFROTH, Alexander H.  He was elected a Representative to the Thirty-Eighth Congress. He appeared as a member of the Thirty-Ninth Congress


ALEXANDER H. COFEROTH (D) was born in Somerset, Pennsylvania, May 18, 1828. He commenced the practice of law in 1851. He was a delegate to the Charleston Convention in 1860, and was elected a Representative to the Thirty-Eighth Congress. He appeared as a member of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, but his seat was successfully contested by William H. Koontz.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868.



COLE, Cornelius, born 1822, lawyer.  Member of the National Republican Committee, 1856-1860.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California, 1863-1865.  U.S. Senator, 1867-1873.    

In the year 1800 the grandparents of the subject of this sketch penetrated the wilderness of Western New York. David Cole, his father, was at that time twelve years old, and Rachel Townsend, his mother, was ten; the former having been born in New Jersey, and the latter in Dutchess County, New York.

Cornelius Cole was born in Seneca County, New York, September 17, 1822. He was afforded such educational facilities as the thrifty farmers of New York were accustomed to give their sons. When he was about seventeen years old, a practical surveyor moved into the neighborhood and proposed to instruct some of the boys in his art. Flint's “Treatise on Surveying” was procured, and in eighteen days young Cole, without assistance, went through it; working out every problem, and making a copy of each in a book prepared for that purpose.

In the following spring, the instructor having died, young Cole entered into practice as his successor, executing surveys in the country about.

It was after this that he began in earnest preparation for college; first in the Ovid Academy, and afterwards at the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary.

He spent one year at Geneva College, but the balance of his collegiate course was passed at the Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where he was graduated in the full course in 1847. After a little respite he entered upon the study of law, in Auburn, New York, and was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of that State at Oswego, on the 1st of May, 1848.

After so many years of close application, recreation was needed, and an opportunity for it was presented by the discovery of gold in California. On the 12th of February, 1849, he, in company with a few friends, left his native town for a journey across the continent. On the 24th of April, the party, consisting of seven, crossed the frontier of Missouri and entered upon the open plains.

At Fort Laramie the wagons of the company were abandoned, and the rest of the journey was made with pack and saddle animals alone; arriving at Sacramento City, then called the Embarcadero, on the 24th of July. After a few days of rest, he returned to the gold mines in El Dorado County, and worked with good success till winter, often washing out over a hundred dollars a day. When the rainy season set in, he first visited San Francisco, and in the following spring began the practice of law there. While absent in the Atlantic States in 1851, two most destructive fires visited that city, and he returned to find himself without so much as a law book or paper upon which to write a complaint. He visited some friends at Sacramento, and unexpectedly becoming engaged in law business, opened an office there.

Though he had been active in the political campaign of 1848, on the free-soil side, he took little or no part in politics in California beyond freely expressing his anti-slavery opinions, until his law business became entangled in it in this way: certain negroes had been brought out from Mississippi, and having earned much money for their master, were discharged with their freedom. Afterwards they were seized by some ruffians, with the purpose of taking them back to slavery. Cole unhesitatingly undertook their defense, and thus brought down upon himself at once the hostility not only of the claimants but of all their sympathizers, from the highest officers of the State down to the lowest dregs of society. California was at that time as fully subject to the slave power as any portion of the Union.

About this period he was united in marriage to a young lady of many accomplishments, Miss Olive Colegrove, who came from New York, and met him at San Francisco by appointment.

He contended vigorously with the elements of opposition in his profession until 1856, when, the presidential campaign opening, he was urged by the Fremont party to edit the Sacramento Daily Times, the organ of the Republicans for the State. The paper was conducted to the entire satisfaction of the party, and at the same time commanded the respect of the Democrats and Know-Nothings. After the election its publication was suspended, and Mr. Cole returned to his profession.

During the following four years he was the California member of the Republican National Committee and an active member of every convention of his party, always taking strong ground against both the Breckenridge and Douglas wings of the opposition, and never consenting to any party affiliation with either.

In 1859 he was elected District-Attorney for the city and county of Sacramento, being about the only Republican elected to any office in California that year.

His execution of that office during the two years for which he was elected was in the highest degree satisfactory to the people, and the subject of frequent favorable comment by both the courts and the profession.

In 1862 he visited the theater of the war. Before his return to the Pacific he had been named for Congress, and the following year was elected, receiving 64,985 votes.

In the Thirty-eighth Congress he was eminently successful in accomplishing results. He was a member of the Committee on the Pacific Railroad and of the Committee on Post-offices and Post Roads. As a member of the latter committee, he originated the project for mail steamship service between San Francisco and the East Indies, known as the “ China Mail Line.” The success of this great measure is universally conceded to be the result of his considerate management. His speech upon the subject was concise, and at the same time comprehensive and convincing.

He delivered a speech in favor of establishing a Mining Department at Washington, full of argument and statistics.

In February, 1864, when our arms were in their most depressed condition, he made a very effective speech in favor of arming the slaves.

Mr. Cole was among the most earnest advocates of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, and on the 28th January, 1865, made an effective speech in favor of the measure.

Mr. Cole's first term in Congress ended with the first term of Mr. Lincoln's administration. In him the war always found a warm supporter, and he enjoyed in an eminent degree the confidence of Mr. Lincoln. He was not elected to the Thirty-ninth Congress, but returned to California, to be very generally named for the United States Senate to succeed Mr. McDougall. In December, 1865, he was elected to that high office, receiving on the first balloting 92 votes out of 118, — having been nominated in the caucus of his party on the first ballot by a vote of 60 to 31.

Mr. Cole's career as a Senator, which has just begun, promises to be replete with useful service to the country, watchful regard for the interests of his State, and honor to himself. He is deliberate in forming his opinions, as he is firm in maintaining them when reached.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 1, 1869.



COLFAX, Schuyler, 1823-1885, Vice President of the United States, statesman, newspaper editor.  Member of Congress, 1854-1869.  Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana.  Secretary of State.  Opposed slavery as a Republican Member of Congress. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.    


THE name of Colfax appears in Revolutionary history. General William Colfax, grandfather of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, commanded the life-guards of General Washington during the Revolutionary war. Subsequently to the war he was one of Washington's most intimate personal friends. The wife of General Colfax was a cousin of General Philip Schuyler.

Schuyler Colfax, son of General Colfax, and father of the Statesman, resided in New York, where he held an office in one of the city banks. He died soon after his marriage, and before the birth of his son.

Hon. Schuyler Colfax was born in the city of New York March 23, 1823. He attended the common schools of the city until he was ten years old. At this early age his school training terminated, and he launched into active life to acquire learning and make his way as best he could. The boy served three years as clerk in a store, and at the end of that time removed with his mother and stepfather, Mr. Matthews, to Indiana. They could have found no more attractive region in all the West than the place they chose for settlement—the beautiful region of prairies and groves bordering the River “St. Joseph of the Lakes.”

For four years following his removal to the West, the youth was employed as a clerk in a village store. At the age of seventeen, having been appointed deputy auditor, he removed to South Bend, the county town which ever since has been his residence. He frequently wrote for the local newspaper of the town, and attracted attention by the perspicuity and correctness with which he expressed his views. During several sessions of the Legislature he was employed in reporting its proceedings for the Indianapolis Journal.

In 1845 Mr. Colfax became proprietor and editor of the “St. Joseph Valley Register,” the local newspaper of South Bend. At the outset he had but two hundred and fifty subscribers, and at the end of the first year he found himself fourteen hundred dollars in debt. Being possessed of tact, energy, and ability, he pushed bravely forward in his laborious profession, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing his paper a success. A few years later his newspaper office was burned, without insurance, and the editor had to begin his fortune again at the foundation. Mr. Colfax applied himself with renewed industry to his work, and in a few years made the St. Joseph Valley Register the most influential paper in that portion of the State.

Mr. Colfax was, in 1848, a delegate and secretary to the Whig National Convention which nominated General Taylor. Although his district was opposed to his political party, his personal popularity was so great that in 1849 he was elected a member of the Convention to revise the Constitution of Indiana. He was soon after offered a nomination to the State Senate, which he declined on account of the demands of his private business.

Mr. Colfax received his first nomination as a candidate for Congress in 1851, and was beaten by a majority of only two hundred votes in a district strongly opposed to him in politics. In 1852 he was a delegate to the Whig National Convention which nominated General Scott. · He declined to be a candidate for Congress in the subsequent election, which went against his party by a majority of one thousand votes.

The succeeding Congress signalized itself by passing the Nebraska bill, which wrought a great change in public opinion throughout the North. The Representative from Mr. Colfax's district voted for this odious act. He came home and took the stump as a candidate for re-election. Mr. Colfax was put forward as his opponent, and the two candidates traversed their district together, debating before the same audiences the great question which agitated the public mind. The unfortunate member strove in vain to justify his vote, and render the Nebraska act acceptable to the people. He who had gained the previous election by one thousand votes now lost it by a majority of two thousand.

The Thirty-Fourth Congress, to which Mr. Colfax was then elected, convened December 3, 1855. At that time occurred the memorable contest for the Speakership which lasted two months, and resulted in the election of Mr. Banks. At one stage in the contest, an adroit attempt to foist Mr. Orr, of South Carolina, upon the House as Speaker, was defeated by an opportune proposition made by Mr. Colfax, by which the question was deferred and the result avoided.

On the 21st of June, 1856, Mr. Colfax delivered a memorable speech on the “ Laws” of Kansas, which fell with decided effect upon Congress and the country, as a plain and truthful showing of the great legislative enormity of the day. During the Presidential campaign of that year, half a million copies of this speech were distributed among the voters of the United States.

While in Washington, Mr. Colfax was nominated for reelection, and, after a laborious canvass, carried his district, although the Presidential election went against his party. To each succeeding Congress Mr. Colfax has been regularly nominated and re-elected.

In the Thirty-Sixth Congress, Mr. Colfax was Chairman of the Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads—a position in which he did good service for the country, by securing the extension of mail facilities to the newly-settled regions of the far West.

The nomination of Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, was eminently satisfactory to Mr. Colfax, who entered with great spirit into the canvass, and did much to aid in carrying Indiana for the Republican party. During Mr. Lincoln's entire term, down to the day of his assassination, he regarded Mr. Colfax as one of his wisest and most faithful friends, whom he often consulted on grave matters of public policy.

At the opening of the Thirty-eighth Congress, December, 1863, Mr. Colfax was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. Ile has since been twice re-elected to this important office, on each occasion by a larger majority than before. He has displayed signal ability in performing the duties of an office of great difficulty and responsibility. His remarkable tact, unvarying good temper, exhaustless patience, cool presence of mind, and familiarity with parliamentary law, all combine to render him, as a Speaker of the House, second to none who have ever occupied its Chair.

In April, 1865, Mr. Colfax went with a party of friends on a journey across the continent, to San Francisco. The evening before his departure he called at the White House to take leave of President Lincoln. An hour after he grasped his hand with a cheerful and cordial good-bye, he was startled with the intelligence that the beloved President was assassinated. Before leaving for the Pacific, Mr. Colfax delivered a eulogy on the murdered President at Chicago, and afterward, by invitation, repeated it in Colorado, at Salt Lake City, and in California.

On his way westward, Mr. Colfax spent a few days among the Mormons at Salt Lake City, studying their organization with the eye of a statesman. “I have had a theory for years past,” he said, in explaining the motives of his journey, “ that it is the duty of men in public life, charged with a participation in the government of a great country like ours, to know as much as possible of the interests, developments, and resources of the country whose destiny, comparatively, has been committed to their hands.” Brigham Young, inquiring of him what the Government intended to do about the question of polygamy, Mr. Colfax shrewdly replied that he hoped the prophet would have a new revelation on that subject, which would relieve all embarrassment.

The reception of Mr. Colfax along his route and on the Pacific coast was an ovation which revealed his great popularity. On his return, Mr. Colfax, by urgent solicitation, delivered in various cities and before vast audiences, an eloquent and instructive lecture describing adventures, scenes, and reflections, incident to his journey “ Across the Continent.” The proceeds of the delivery of this lecture were generally given to the widows and children of soldiers who had fallen in the war, and to other objects of benevolence.

On the 20th of May, 1868, the National Republican Convention assembled in Chicago. After unanimously nominating General U. S. Grant for President, the Convention nominated Hon. Schuyler Colfax for Vice-President, receiving on the first formal ballot a majority over all the distinguished gentlemen who had been named as candidates. This nomination was made unanimous amid unbounded enthusiasm.

On the day following his nomination, Mr. Colfax received the congratulations of his friends in Washington, and in the course of a brief speech on that occasion, uttered the following noble sentiments : “Defying all prejudices, we are for uplifting the lowly, and protecting the oppressed. History records, to the immortal honor of our organization, that it saved the nation and emancipated the race. We struck the fetter from the limb of the slave, and lifted millions into the glorious sunlight of liberty. We placed the emancipated slave on his feet as a man, and put into his right hand the ballot to protect his manhood and his rights. We staked our political existence on the reconstruction of the revolted States, on the sure and eternal corner-stone of loyalty, and we shall triumph.”

No public party ever made more popular nominations. Both candidates added special and peculiar elements of strength to the Republican ticket.

After one of the most important and exciting political campaigns in the history of the country, Mr. Colfax was, on the 3d of November, elected Vice-President of the United States, receiving, with the illustrious candidate for the Presidency, a large majority of both the electoral and popular votes.

Mr. Colfax was first married at the age of twenty-one to an early playmate of his childhood. After being for a long time an invalid, she died several years ago, leaving him childless. His mother and sister have since presided at his receptions, which, if not the most brilliant, have been the most popular of any given at the Capital. On the 18th of November, a fortnight after his election to the Vice-Presidency, Mr. Colfax was married to Miss Ella M. Wade, of Andover, Ohio. She is a niece of Hon. Benjamin F. Wade, and is a lady whose virtues and accomplishments fit her to cheer the private life, and grace the public career of her distinguished husband. Mr. Colfax is of medium stature and compact frame, with a fair complexion, a mild, blue eye, and a large mouth, upon which a smile habitually plays. He has a melodious voice, a rapid utterance, and smooth and graceful elocution. Consistent in politics, agreeable in manners, and pure in morals, he has all the elements of lasting popularity.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 1, 1869.



CRESWELL, John Angel James, 1828-1891, statesman, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, 1863-1865.  U.S. Senator 1865-.  Supported the Union.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  From 1863 to 1865 he was a member of the national House of Representatives; but in March of the latter year he was elected to the Senate to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. In January 1865, after Maryland had freed its slaves, he made a strong impression by a speech in the House in favor of general emancipation. As senator, he stood for manhood suffrage, the compensation of loyal owners of drafted slaves, and strict enforcement of the Civil Rights Act.


JOHN A. J. CRESWELL was born in Port Deposit, Maryland, November 18, 1828. He graduated at Dickinson College in 1848, and was admitted to the bar in 1850. He was successively a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, Assistant Adjutant-General for the State and a Representative in the Thirty-Eighth Congress. In 1865 he was chosen a United States Senator for' the unexpired term of T. H. Hicks, deceased. 

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868, p. 134, 136.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 541;

CRESWELL, JOHN ANGEL JAMES (November 18, 1828-December 23, 1891), postmaster-general, was born at Port Deposit, Maryland. His father, John G. Creswell, was a Marylander of English ancestry, and his mother, Rebecca E. Webb, a Pennsylvanian, whose forebears were German and English, one of the latter being the famous Quaker missionary, Elizabeth Webb. Creswell received his advanced education at Dickinson College, graduating with honors in 1848. After studying law for two years, he was admitted to the Maryland bar, in 1850, and soon began to practise. Early in his career he married Hannah J. Richardson of Maryland, a woman of considerable wealth.

In politics, Creswell was a strong partisan. He first affiliated with the Whigs, then after that party broke up, was for a short period a Demo crat, and attended the Cincinnati convention which nominated Buchanan. After the Civil War opened, however, he became and remained a staunch and influential Republican. In the critical days of 1861 and 1862 Creswell filled his first public office, as loyalist member of the Maryland House of Delegates, and did much toward keeping the state in the Union. A year later, as assistant adjutant-general, he had charge of raising Maryland's quota of troops for the Northern army. From 1863 to 1865 he was a member of the national House of Representatives; but in March of the latter year he was elected to the Senate to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. In January 1865, after Maryland had freed its slaves, he made a strong impression by a speech in the House in favor of general emancipation. As senator, he stood for manhood suffrage, the compensation of loyal owners of drafted slaves, and strict enforcement of the Civil Rights Act.

Creswell's most important public work was done as head of the Post Office Department, to which he was appointed by President Grant in March 1869. The country has had few, if any, abler postmasters-general. The changes made by him in the Department were sweeping, reformatory, and constructive. The cost of ocean transportation of letters to foreign countries was reduced from eight cents to two, and great increase in speed was secured by giving the carriage of the mails to the best and fastest steamers, four of which were to sail each week, and by advertising a month in advance the vessels selected; the pay to railroads for mail-carriage was rearranged on a fair basis; there was great increase in the number of railroad postal lines, postal clerks, and letter-carriers, and in the number of cities having free delivery of mail and money-order departments; one-cent postal cards were introduced; the system of letting out contracts for the internal carriage of the mails was so reformed as ultimately to do away with straw bidding and to secure fair competition among responsible bidders; the laws relating to the Post Office Department were codified, with a systematic classification of offenses against the postal laws; and postal treaties with foreign countries were completely revised. Creswell also denounced the franking system as the "mother of frauds," and secured its abolition, and he strongly urged the establishment of postal savings banks and a postal telegraph.

Pressure of private business led him to resign from the Post Office Department in July 1874, but he later accepted the position of United AT States counsel before the court of commissioners on the Alabama claims, and served until the court expired by law in December 1876. Thereafter, he spent most of his remaining years at Elkton, Maryland, where he had his home, and gave his attention to banking and the practise of law. Here, following two years of general ill health, he died of bronchial pneumonia.



DAVIS, Henry Winter  1817-1865, statesman, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 3rd District of Maryland, 1854, 1856, 1858, 1863-1865.  Anti-slavery activist in Congress.  Supported enlistment of African Americans in Union Army.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.


DAVIS, HENRY WINTER, (cousin of David Davis), a Representative from Maryland; born in Annapolis, Maryland, August 16, 1817; was tutored privately; lived in Alexandria, Virginia and Wilmington; returned to Maryland in 1827 with his father, who settled in Anne Arundel County; attended Wilmington College in 1826 and 1827; St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, and Hampden-Sydney College, Virginia; was graduated from Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, in 1837; studied law at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia; was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Alexandria, Virginia; in 1850 moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he continued the practice of law and also engaged in literary pursuits; elected as the candidate of the American Party to the Thirty-fourth through Thirty-sixth Congresses (March 4, 1855-March 3, 1861); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1860 to the Thirty-seventh Congress; elected as an Unconditional Unionist to the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1865); chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs (Thirty-eighth Congress); co-sponsor of the Wade-Davis bill of 1864; was not a candidate for renomination in 1864; died in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 30, 1865; interment in Greenmount Cemetery.   

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 119:

DAVIS, HENRY WINTER (August 16, 1817- December 30, 1865), politician, statesman, was the son of Reverend Henry Lyon Davis, president of St. John's College (Maryland), an ardent Federalist and Episcopalian, and Jane (Brown) Winter, a cultured woman with aristocratic connections in the town of Annapolis. During the campaign of 1828 Davis's father was removed from his position by the partisans of Jackson on the board of trustees of the college, and set adrift under circumstances which greatly influenced the career of Henry Winter Davis. After a strenuous course at Kenyon College (Ohio), young Davis procured, after much delay and difficulty, the meager funds necessary to enable him to study law at the University of Virginia. He left the University in June 1840 with some knowledge of law, mainly Coke on Littleton, and began his career at Alexandria, Virginia, a handsome man of twenty-three, six feet tall, and of aristocratic bearing and manner. Here he quickly won an enviable reputation, obtained a good income from his profession, and on October 30, 1845, married Constance C. Gardiner, daughter of a prominent citizen of the town. After her death, he married, on January 26, 1857, Nancy Morris of Baltimore, whither he had moved in 1849. Attaching himself to the Whig party, Davis appeared on the platform as a speaker with Robert Winthrop and Horace Greeley in the unhappy campaign of General Winfield Scott for the presidency in 1852. In 1855 he was chosen to a seat in Congress where he immediately took a prominent place among the leaders of the Know-Nothing party. The hot disputes about Kansas left him unmoved, nor did the ardent campaign of 1856 budge him from his steady conservatism. He supported Fillmore, and endeavored to hold his neutral position from 1856 to 1860. But the decline of the Know-Nothing party and the break between Douglas and Buchanan compelled him to take sides. On the last clay of January 1860, after a deadlock of seven weeks, he cast his vote for William Pennington, Republican candidate for speaker. This enabled the new party to organize the House and to prepare more effectively for the presidential campaign already opened. The decision made Davis a national character, but the legislature of Maryland repudiated his action by a vote of 62 to 1. From that clay to his death every public act of Davis was a matter of immediate concern to the country. He was for a moment candidate for the Republican nomination for the vice-presidency, and thought of himself from that time forward as a suitable candidate for the presidency. He was guided by an overweening ambition, but his abilities as a statesman and an orator were acknowledged to be extraordinary. In his district he was both hated and loved beyond all other public men and his campaigns for reelection were violent and bloody. Notwithstanding his vote for the Republicans in January 1860, he was the guiding spirit of the Bell and Everett party in Maryland; and he procured the nomination of Thomas H. Hicks [q.v.], Unionist, for governor. His purpose was not to defeat the Republican party in Maryland, but the regular Democrats, with Breckinridge as their candidate. Bell and Everett won; Hicks likewise was successful.

Davis, serving the balance of his term in the House of Representatives during the critical winter of 1860-61, keenly desired to sit in the new cabinet. But Montgomery Blair, a member of perhaps the most influential family in the country and the leader of a forlorn hope of Republicans in Maryland, was chosen. Davis was alone and without a party, for the Union party was rapidly disintegrating. On February 7, when the Confederacy was just raising its head in Montgomery and the leading Republicans of the North were acquiescing in the secession movement, Davis in one of the important speeches of his life asserted that in Maryland they did not recognize the right of secession and that they would not be dragged from the Union (Congressional Globe, Appendix, 36 Congress, 2 Session). But Governor Hicks and the people of Maryland did recognize the right of Southerners to secede and they seemed about to take legislative action in that direction. Davis said later that but for his activity Lincoln would have been inaugurated in some Pennsylvania village. He wrote a public letter to the New York Tribune urging that th e Federal forts in Maryland be placed in the hands of Union men. Then he simply announced himself as a candidate for a seat in the House of Representatives. It was the 15th of April. Four days later the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was attacked in Baltimore. One of the most spectacular and bitter of political contests ensued, with Davis everywhere the militant leader of the Unionists. On June 13 his opponent, Henry May, a Southern sympathizer, was elected by a vote of 8,335 to 6,287.

It was a decisive defeat, but Davis became even better known to the country, traveled widely, and spoke often for the Union. However, either his chagrin at the presence of Montgomery Blair in Lincoln's cabinet or the President's open violation of many of the sacred traditions of the country led him into opposition. He could hardly contain himself when he thought of the procedure in the many courts martial of the day, or of the thousands of men in prison without proved offense. To him the habeas corpus was sacred beyond a question. Before a very hostile Brooklyn audience, early in November, he bitterly arraigned the President and all about him. There are few instances of a speaker's attaining such complete mastery over his audience as Davis did on that occasion. Nor did he-ever cease to oppose most of the President's policies. He was not arrested or imprisoned, however, and in the hotly contested election of 1863 he was returned to the House, where he was at once made chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. He then became and remained a close friend and ally of Thaddeus Stevens, chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means. It was at the moment when Lincoln sent to Congress his program of reconstruction, known as the Louisiana Plan. Davis ranged himself at once on the side of the opposition, attacking upon every possible occasion the " usurpations" of the President, and ridiculing unmercifully the foreign policy of Seward, the management of the navy by Gideon Welles, the conduct of General Frank P. Blair as an army commander, and the unrelenting campaign of Montgomery Blair against himself in Maryland. In a little while the great majority of the House hung upon his words and followed him implicitly. He was more the master of that body than Thaddeus Stevens himself.

The most important of Davis's campaigns in the House of Representatives began early il1 the session and culminated in a victory over the President in spite of all that Seward, Welles, and the Blairs could do. Instead of reporting a reconstruction bill such as Lincoln suggested, Davis wrote and substituted a measure of his own. The President would leave the reconstructed states to abolish slavery themselves; Davis would compel immediate emancipation. The President would allow ten per cent of the voters to set up a new state government; Davis would require a majority. The President would proscribe only a few of the leading Confederates; Davis would proscribe a vast number. The President said nothing about repudiating Southern debts; Davis would compel repudiation of all Southern war debts, state and Confederate. His was a policy of "thorough," like that of the Cromwellians in England. Davis's principal speech in support of his drastic plan was made on March 22, 1864, when the supporters of the President and the rising radical opposition were engaged in the bitterest warfare. He denied the right of the President to reconstruct a state and considered the Emancipation Proclamation as invalid until approved by Congress. He claimed all power for Congress and wished so to reconstruct the Southern states, when they were completely beaten and utterly helpless, that no court could ever undo the work. The Davis bill passed the House and the Senate by large majorities. When at last, after his renomination and the adjournment of Congress, Lincoln pocket vetoed the measure, Davis was beside himself with rage. He took the extreme risk of a violent attack upon the nominee of his party at a moment when' few thoughtful men had any real hope of complete success in the war. In July, conferences of leading Republicans were held in New York. Davis took part. In the spirit of these troubled men, Davis wrote the famous Wade-Davis manifesto which appeared in the leading papers on August 8, 1864. In this document he reviewed the history of the congressional plan of reconstruction and ridiculed the President's plan in unmerciful language (Speeches and Addresses of Henry Winter Davis, pp. 415-426).

It is said that Davis never entered the White House during Lincoln's incumbency and that this manifesto brought the relations of the two men, as well as of the opposing groups in the Republican party, to the necessity of some understanding. The presidential election was pending and the people of the North had plainly lost heart. Davis was in Baltimore waging his campaign for reelection, while Seward, Weed, Welles, and the rest were fighting in Washington and elsewhere for the success of their chief. On July 1, Chase resigned and gave up his open fight on the President. On September 4, the news of victory at Atlanta reached Washington. Early in September, Montgomery Blair ceased his war upon Davis and offered his resignation. Before the end of September, Davis called at the White House and henceforth made speeches on behalf of the President. Lincoln was reelected and Chase took his seat as chief justice, but the ambitious chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations was defeated in his district.

When Congress met, however, in December 1864, Davis, now a "lame duck," was the most popular man in it. He fought through the short session, saw Andrew Johnson inaugurated with more than wonted pleasure, and, after the death of Lincoln, went to Chicago to make another of his great speeches: He attacked Johnson as he had attacked Lincoln, and outlined once more the program of congressional reconstruction which was indorsed by Charles Sumner at Worcester on September 14 and readopted by Congress the next year. Davis, still only forty-eight years old, looked forward to the day when he might sit in the coveted White House, mean while impeaching Andrew Johnson, as he must have sought the impeachment of Lincoln if the latter had lived. A private citizen of extraordinary prestige, he returned to Washington in December 1865, and with his mere presence at the door of the House of Representatives broke up the session. Exposed to inclement weather during the holidays, he took cold. This developed into pneumonia and on December 30 he died. W.E.D.



DAVIS, Thomas T.,  1810-1872, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1862 and 1864 from Syracuse, New York. 


THOMAS T. DAVIS was born in Middlebury, Vermont, August 22, 1810. Having removed to the State of New York, he graduated at Hamilton College in 1831, and was admitted to the bar in Syracuse in 1833. He has devoted much attention to business relating to railroads, manufactures, and mining. In 1862 he was elected a Representative from New York to the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected to the Thirty-Ninth. He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Dennis McCarthy. 

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868, p. 63, 361.



DAWES, Henry Laurens, 1816-1903, Massachusetts, judge, U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts.  Served in Congress 1857-1873. U.S. Senator 1875-1893.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.


HENRY L. DAWES was born October 30, 1816, at Cummington, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, among the Berkshire Hills, whose inhabitants and interests he has represented in Congress for more than thirteen years. He is of the English yeomanry stock, and the founder of the Massachusetts family; was among the early colonists, settling at Abington, in the eastern portion, whence the parents of Mr. Dawes removed to Cummington, afterwards settling on a small farm in North Adams. Several uncles served in the Continental army throughout the "War for Independence, though his father was too young for such duty.

It was amid these associations and surroundings that Mr. Dawes was' reared, attending school in the winter, and working hard, as soon as able, on the hill-side farm. At the age of twenty-three he graduated at Yale College, having, when he entered, about forty dollars with which to meet his necessary expenses. When vacation came he travelled a-foot to the homestead at North Adams, and in the same primitive manner returned to his Alma Mater, teaching school and working on the farm during vacations in order to obtain means sufficient to carry him through the collegiate course.

Leaving Yale, he was soon after admitted to the bar, and devoted himself generally to the practice of his profession, diversifying the struggle with teaching school at intervals and for several years editing the " Greenfield Gazette." The young lawyer and editor took his position with the Whig party, and did it good service by voice and pen. In 1848 he was elected a Representative in the State Legislature, and again in 1849 and 1852, serving one term as State Senator. During this legislative service he was more or less closely identified with the Free Soil movement, being always recognized as possessed of decided anti-slavery convictions, though, by temperament, moderate in methods and cautious in policy. In 1853 he was elected to and served in the State Constitutional Convention, and from that time until 1857 he was State district-attorney. The Know-nothing movement had control of Massachusetts for a season, but during its whole career it was steadily opposed by Mr. Dawes. He was the only anti-Know-nothing member of the Massachusetts delegation when his Congressional career began in 1857. He entered Congress at the beginning of the fierce and turbulent Lecompton struggle, and was a useful ally to the party resisting that iniquity. In the Thirty-sixth Congress he was placed on the Committee on Elections, of which he was made chairman in the Thirty-seventh Congress, continuing to serve thereon until the close of the Fortieth Congress.

In 1860 he was prominently mentioned as a candidate for Governor, receiving a handsome vote in the convention that nominated. John A. Andrew. In the winter of 1861-62 he was a member of the famous Yan Wyck Investigating Committee, which was charged with an inquiry into government contracts. Mr. Dawes was active in the investigation, preparation of the report, and in support of it on the floor, proving himself a valuable ally or formidable opponent, as the need required.

Throughout the war Mr. Dawes was an able and faithful supporter of the administration, always voting or speaking in behalf of all necessary measures for the suppression of rebellion and maintenance of the Union. Outside of Congress he was an active and efficient stump speaker, always in demand and popular, both from his thorough acquaintance with political affairs, men and measures, and his clear, logical and attractive mode of statement and argument. His arduous labors on the Committee on Elections though important, were not calculated to attract as much attention as some other labors more closely connected with the stirring events of the time. Mr. Dawes was a consistent friend of emancipation, and his votes may always be found recorded on that side. During the reconstruction period, Mr. Dawes, though at times indicating views of a more moderate character than was generally entertained by the majority in the House, recorded his votes on those grave issues with the great body of the party of which he is so useful a member.

During the Fortieth Congress, Mr. Dawes was prominently mentioned for the Speakership of the Forty-first Congress, but as Mr. Blaine's candidacy made it impossible to unite New England delegations, Mr. Dawes retired gracefully and with honors. He was appointed chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, to which important duty he brings the conscientious industry and the careful, painstaking attention which are marked characteristics of his public life and labors. It evinces the high esteem in which the abilities of Mr. Dawes are held at home, that he was offered by Governor Claflin a position on the Supreme Bench of Massachusetts. He declined the honor, preferring legislative to judicial labors.

In a paper read before the American Social Science Association, held in New York, October 26, 1869, Mr. Dawes discussed "the mode of procedure in cases of contested elections." His long experience as a member and chairman of the Committee on Elections, extending through ten years, enabled him to produce a most valuable paper, which illustrates the strongly non-partisan bias of his mind as well as the vigorous simplicity of his style and the compactness of his statements.

Mr. Dawes first calls attention to the fact that by the constitution both Houses were made the sole and only "judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members." With regard to this absolute power he says:

"This is a most remarkable power, and has no analogy; not remarkable in that it is supreme, for in every constitutional government there is a tribunal of last resort existing somewhere, and of course supreme over the subject-matter or the person falling within its jurisdiction. But in all such tribunals, not only the jurisdiction but the constituent parts of the body itself are defined and fixed by a law outside of, and superior to the tribunal itself. It does not pass upon its own commission. Yet, in a contested election in Congress, the subject-matter and the person falling within the supreme jurisdiction of each House are the constituents of its own body. Of whom the body shall consist, the body itself has absolute power to determine. And the power to determine of whom either House shall consist, includes that of determining the political character of that House and the fate of measures and administrations, and, it may be, of the Government itself. The grave character of this power thus becomes apparent the moment it is comprehended."

Since his occupation of the chairmanship of the Committee on Appropriations, a position accorded him by usage as the oldest continuous member, as well as by his recognized capacity for the important work needed, Mr. Dawes has made a strong record in favor of the utmost economy and retrenchment, making in the House, January 18, 1870, a vigorous speech which at the time and since created a great deal of discussion and criticism. The occasion was on a bill transferring the Philadelphia navy yard to League Island, which Mr. Dawes opposed as involving uncalled for expenditure.

Mr. Dawes is possessed of much more than ordinary literary culture, and those who know him best are often surprised at the extent and quality of the reading for which, busy man of affairs as he is and has so long been, he still finds time. As a speaker Mr. Dawes is easy, fluent, clear and cogent, always talking extemporaneously, and in the colloquial debates which arise on the floor of the House he is one of the most formidable of foes and most valuable .of friends, apt at retort, and gifted with a keen and often powerful sarcasm, which lends point to his arguments and sting to his words. As a lawyer Mr. Dawes possesses an excellent reputation, and has a good practice which might be much larger and more lucrative but for his attention to public duties.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 2, 1869.



DEMING, Henry Champion, 1815-1872, lawyer, soldier.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut, 1863, 1865.  Colonel, commanding 12th Connecticut Regiment.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery He published translations of Eugene Sue's “Mysteries of Paris” and “Wandering Jew” (1840), a eulogy of Abraham Lincoln, delivered by invitation of the Connecticut legislature in 1865, “Life of Ulysses S. Grant” (Hartford, 1868), and various addresses.


HENRY C. DEMING was born in Connecticut. He graduated at Yale College in 1836, and at the Harvard Law School in 1838. He had been a member of the Lower House and Senate of Connecticut, and for six years Mayor of Hartford, when in 1861 he went into the war as Colonel of the Twelfth Connecticut Regiment. He participated in the capture of New Orleans, and was Mayor of that city until 1868, when he returned to his native State, and was soon after elected a Representative in the Thirty-Eighth Congress, and was re-elected in 1865, He was succeeded in the Fortieth Congress by Richard D. Hubbard.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868, p. 31.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, pp. 230-231:

DEMING, HENRY CHAMPION (May 23, 1815-October 9, 1872), lawyer, politician, was a member of a family identified throughout with Connecticut. John Deming recorded his homestead at Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1641. His descendants settled at Lyme and later at Colchester, and one of them, David Deming, was a prominent merchant of the latter place and a member of the legislature. He married Abigail, daughter of Henry Champion, and their youngest child, Henry Champion Deming, was born at Colchester. His parents were well-to-do, and his early education was of the best, being completed at Yale, where he graduated in 1836. He then entered the law school at Harvard (LL.B., 1839), and on being admitted to the Massachusetts bar moved to New York City, where he opened a law office. His inclinations however were toward literature rather than law, and for a time he was on the editorial staff of the New World, a literary monthly. In 1847 he returned to Connecticut and practised law at Hartford for a short time. Possessed of unusual gifts as a public speaker and debater, he entered into local politics. A Democrat of the old school, he was elected as representative of Hartford in the state legislature in 1849, and from that time forward practically relinquished law and devoted himself to public affairs. In 1851 he became a member of the state Senate and in 1854 was elected mayor of Hartford, which office he held for five successive years. In 1859 he became again the city representative in the state legislature, and in 1860 was once more elected mayor. When the Southern states threatened secession he was strongly opposed to the adoption of coercive methods, and after the outbreak of the Civil War, announced that, though he adhered to the Federal government, he would not support a war of aggression or invasion of the seceded states. The subsequent advance of the Confederate forces upon the Federal capital, however, induced him to become a strong Unionist, and the Republican majority elected him speaker pro tempore of the state legislature. Late in 1861 the 12th ("Charter-Oak") Connecticut Regiment was raised, in order to participate in the New Orleans expedition, and he was appointed lieutenant-colonel. He took part in all the subsequent operations under General Butler and the regiment under his command was the first body of Federal troops to enter New Orleans. In October 1862 he was detached and appointed provisional mayor of New Orleans, performing his difficult duties with great tact and efficiency. He resigned however in February 1863, returned to Hartford, and was at once elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress by the Republicans. He served two terms in Congress, being placed on the committees on military affairs and on expenditures in the war Department, of which latter he was chairman. In the national House, his oratorical powers, strong character, and practical experience of war conditions combined to assure him an outstanding position. In 1866 he was a delegate to the Loyalists convention at Philadelphia, and in 1869 was appointed United States collector of Internal Revenue for his home district. This latter position he continued to hold till his death, which occurred at Hartford, October 9, 1872. He was married twice: in 1850 to Sarah, daughter of Laurent Clerc of Hartford, and in 1871 to Annie Putnam, daughter of Myron W. Wilson and widow of Sherman L. Jittson.

Holding public office almost uninterruptedly for twenty-three years, prominent alike in federal, state, and municipal politics, his reputation rested principally upon his unusual oratorical powers, though he possessed great administrative ability. Of cultured tastes and widely read, he published translations of Eugene Sue's Mysteries of Paris and The Wandering Jew (1840), and, in collaboration with G. C. Hebbe, The Smugglers of the Swedish Coast, or The Rose of Thistle Island (1844), from the original Swedish of Mrs. E. S. F. Carlen. He also wrote The Life of Ulysses S. Grant, General, United States Army (1868).



DIXON, Nathan Fellows, born 1812,   Lawyer.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Rhode Island.  Member of 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st Congress.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery


NATHAN F. DIXON was born in Westerly, Connecticut, May 1, 1812. His father, bearing the same name, emigrated from Connecticut to Rhode Island in 1800, and was a Senator in Congress from 1839 to January 29,1842, when he died at Washington. The subject of this sketch prepared for college at Plainfield Academy in Connecticut, and graduated at Brown University in 1833. He attended the law-schools of Yale College and Harvard University, and having been admitted to the bar in New London in 1837, he engaged in the practise of his profession in Connecticut and Rhode Island. He was, however, passionately fond of agricultural pursuits, and devoted much time and expense to the improvement of an extensive farm, and stocking it with the best breeds of blooded animals. He was a member of the Assembly of Rhode Island from 1840 to 1849; was a Whig Presidential Elector in 1844, and was elected a Representative from Rhode Island to the Thirty-first Congress. He was again elected to the General Assembly of Rhode Island in 1851, and, with the exception of two years, held the office until 1859.

In 1863 Mr. Dixon was elected a Representative from Rhode Island to the Thirty-eighth Congress, and served on the Committee on Commerce. He was re-elected to the Thirty-ninth, Fortieth and Forty-first Congresses, during which he served as a member, and finally as chairman of the Committee on Commerce. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia "Loyalists' Convention " of 1866. He took no public part in the deliberations of the Fortieth Congress, made no "remarks," and reported no measures, contenting himself simply with giving his vote, which was always with the Republican majority.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 2, 1869.



DONNELLY, Ignatius Loyola, 1831-1901, author, political reformer.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota 1863-1869.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.


IGNATIUS DONNELLY was born in Philadelphia, November 3, 1831. He received an academical education, graduating at the Central High School of his native city. In 1849, he commenced the study of law with the Hon. Benjamin Harris Brewster, who in a recently published letter describes his former pupil as “a man of uncommon energy, skill, and strict integrity.” Having completed his law studies, in 1853, Mr. Donnelly devoted much time and attention to furthering the interests of the Union Land and Homestead Association, of which he was Secretary. Upon Mr. Donnelly's removal from Philadelphia, a card was published in the daily papers by order of the Association attributing its success to his exertions, and expressing the best wishes of the members for his prosperity.

In 1857, Mr. Donnelly emigrated to Minnesota. Just before his removal to the West he left the Democratic party, with which he had been identified, and became a Republican. As the State of Minnesota was at that time Democratic, and the County where he went to reside was two to one Democratic, his change of party seemed unfavorable to any political aspirations he might have possessed. The result, however, proved more fortunate than the most sanguine hope could have anticipated. So favorable an impression did he make, that in 1859, two years after his arrival in the State, he was elected Lieutenant-Governor of Minnesota. In 1861, he was re-elected to the same office. In 1862, he was elected a Representative in the Thirty-eighth Congress. He was re-elected to the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses. In 1868, Mr. Donnelly was nominated for re-election to the Forty-first Congress, but another Republican candidate entering the field, both were beaten by a Democrat. The independent Republican candidate gave as one reason for opposing the re-election of Mr. Donnelly that he was “a candidate for the United States Senate, and surely had no good demand on the party to elect him to the House of Representatives merely as a stepping stone to the Senate, and to enable him the better to control votes in the contest.”

Mr. Donnelly has been an active and able member of the House, and his acts and speeches evince not only ability and energy, but are strongly marked by patriotic and philanthropic views. Among other speeches of his delivered in the Thirty-eighth Congress, was one on the “Reform in the Indian System,” from which we present one or two brief selections:

“Let it not be said that the nation shall advance in its career of greatness regardless of the destruction of the red man. There is room enough in the world, thank God, for all the races he has created to inhabit it. Thirty million white people can certainly find space somewhere on this broad continent for a third of a million of those who originally possessed the whole of it. While we are inviting to our shores the oppressed races of mankind, let us at least deal justly by those whose rights ante-date our own by countless centuries. It is the destiny of the white man to overrun this world; but it is as plainly his destiny to carry in his train the great forces which constitute his superiority, civilization, and Christianity. We are exhibiting, to-day, the unequaled spectacle of a superior race sharing its noblest privileges with the humblest of mankind, and lifting up to the condition of freedom and happiness those who, from the date of time, have been either barbarians or slaves. * *

“How shall the Indian-a nomad, a hunter, a barbarian-compete on the same soil, and under the same circumstances, in the great struggle for life with the civilized white man? Civilization means energy, industry, acuteness, skill, perseverance. Barbarism means indolence, torpidity, ignorance, and irresolution. How can the two be brought together, and the inferior not fall at once a sacrifice to the rapacity of the superior? This is the problem before us. means

“The Government must interpose its merciful protection between weakness and power. It is doing so in the case of the black man ; let it deal as fairly by the red man. Without action by this Government, a thousand years would have left the slave of the South still a slave. Under wise and just laws he will swell at once the power of the nation, increase its resources, and adorn it, in time, with great names and honored services. We cannot afford to be unjust to any portion of mankind.”

On the 7th of May, 1868, Mr. Donnelly made a speech in favor of a bill to prevent the further sale of public lands, except as provided for in the pre-emption and homestead laws. From this speech we make the following extracts :

“ The first settler is the corner-stone of all future development; the entire structure of society and government must rest upon the foundation of his labors. His work shall last till doomsday. He first unites the industry of man to the capabilities of the fertile earth. The tide of which he is the forerunning breaker, shall never recede—'Ne'er feel returning ebb, but keep due on '—until the wilderness is densely populated; until every foot of land, however intractable, is subdued; until the factories cluster thickly in great knots upon every falling stream; until cities, towns, and villages dot the whole land; until science, art, education, morality, and religion bear the world forward to a development far beyond the furthest ken of the imagination, into that unknown future of the human race which we cannot prefigure even in our dreams.

“How many beautiful traits gather around these homes snatched from the wilderness? How many fair women and noble men have seen the first light of heaven through the chinks of the log-house? How many heroes worthy to be embalmed in perpetual history have grown up in sturdy independence of the forest and prairie? By the side of such men the denizens of your cities are a dwarfed race. It needs pure air, pure sunshine, pure food, and the great stormy winds of heaven to produce the highest types of the human family, and to give to them that inflexible grain which is the first constituent of great characters.

“Consider for one instant the part performed by the people of the West in the suppression of the rebellion. Their share of the great work was well done. Wherever they advanced, they overcame the rebellion as they overcame the wilderness; they hewed it down, they out-worked it, they chopped it to pieces, they overwhelmed it with energy and industry, they bridged it, they corduroyed it, they blazed and burned it out of existence. The men whom nature in all its hard and stubborn moods could not resist, made easy victory over their misguided fellow-citizens fighting for slavery and against liberty and law.

“ They were types of thousands and tens of thousands of men through all the regions from which they came—the great West : quiet, unpretending men, steadfast and earnest, patiently fulfilling the appointed work which God has given them to do.

“This nation needs more of such men. We must cherish the institutions which have produced them. Their price is richer than rubies. They are the salt of a nation. Some one said to Cross when he showed him his treasures: “But if one should come along with more iron, he would take all this gold.” The prosperity of : people rests upon its manhood; the gold can only repose upon the iron. Without this a nation is but a conglomerate of sordidness and sensuality—a mixture of clay and brass, which must fall to pieces the moment a strong hand is laid upon it.

“Now, what is the root of all this? It is the pioneer driving his plow for the first time into the surface of the wilderness. The whole structure rests upon the occupancy and ownership of the land by the individual. Hence follow independence, self-respect, and all the incentives to labor; hence industry, intelligence, schools, society, development—not the hot-house development of the towns, but sturdy, healthy development, which has its roots in the earth, which expands in the family circle, and which brings strength and power to the best traits of human nature.”

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volume 1, 1869.



DRIGGS, John F.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.


JOHN F. DRIGGS was born in Kinderhook, New York, March 8, 1813. He served an apprenticeship in the sash -and door-making business, and soon after set up as a master mechanic in New York City. He took no part in politics until 1844, when he assisted in the reform movement by which James Harper was elected Mayor of New York. He was soon after appointed Superintendent of Blackwell's Island Penitentiary. In 1856 he removed to East Saginaw, Michigan, and was two years after elected President of that town. In 1859 he was elected to the Michigan Legislature. Two years after he was appointed Register at the Land Office for the Saginaw District, and held the office until his election as a Representative from Michigan to the Thirty-Eighth Congress in 1862. He was returned by increased majorities to the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses.

History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868.


Sources:
History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. By William H. Barnes, 1868.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: historical and biographical. By William H. Barnes, Volumes 1-2, 1869.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present.