- This article is about the politician. For the runner and author see John Bingham
(runner).
| John Armor
Bingham |
|
|
In office
March 4, 1855 – March 3,
1863
March 4, 1865 – March 3,
1873 |
| Preceded by |
Andrew Stuart
Joseph Worthington White |
| Succeeded by |
Martin A. Foran
Lorenzo Danford |
|
| Born |
January 21 1815(1815--)
Mercer, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died |
March 19 1900 (aged 85)
Cadiz, Ohio, U.S. |
| Political party |
Opposition, Republican |
| Spouse |
Amanda Bingham |
| Profession |
Politician, Lawyer, Judge |
John Armor Bingham (January 21, 1815 –
March 19, 1900) was a Republican congressman from
Ohio, judge in the trial of the Abraham
Lincoln assassination and a prosecutor in the impeachment trials of Andrew Johnson. He is also the principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Early life
Born in Mercer, Pennsylvania, he attended public schools and pursued academic
studies. His family eventually moved to Ohio where he became an apprentice in a
printing office for two years. He then studied law at Franklin College and was admitted
to the bar in 1840, commencing practice in New
Philadelphia, Ohio and eventually became district attorney for the surrounding Tuscarawas County, Ohio. He held this position from 1846 to
1849.
Politics
He became active in politics when he was elected to the Thirty-fourth
Congress under the Opposition Party. He was reelected to the
Thirty-fifth, Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh
Congresses as a Republican. His candidacy in 1862 for the Thirty-eighth Congress was unsuccessful, though
the House of Representatives appointed him that year to be one of
the managers to conduct impeachment proceedings against West H. Humphreys. Despite
being from Ohio, he became a United States judge for several districts of
Tennessee.
During the Civil War, he strongly supported the Union and became a Radical Republican.
President Abraham Lincoln appointed him
Judge Advocate of the Union Army with
the rank of Major in 1864, and he became Solicitor of the United States Court of Claims in 1865.
He was also elected to the Thirty-ninth Congress, which first met on
March 4, 1865.
Lincoln assassination trials
-
Washington was in chaos after John Wilkes
Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln
and Booth's co-conspirator Lewis Powell came near to assassinating
Secretary of State William H.
Seward on the night of April 14, 1865. Booth died on
April 26, 1865 from a gunshot wound. When the trials for the
conspirators involved in the Lincoln assassination were ready to start,
Bingham's old friend from Cadiz, Edwin Stanton,
appointed him to serve as Assistant Judge Advocate General along with General Henry
Burnett, another Assistant Judge Advocate General, and Joseph Holt, the
Judge Advocate General. The accused conspirators where
George Atzerodt, David Herold, Lewis Powell a.k.a. Paine, Samuel Arnold, Michael O'Laughlen,
Edman Spangler, Samuel Mudd and Mary Surratt. The trial began on May 10, 1865. The three judges spent nearly two months in court, awaiting a verdict from the jury. Bingham and Holt
attempted to obscure the fact that there were two plots. The first plot was to kidnap Abraham
Lincoln in exchange for the Confederate prisoners held by the
Union. The second was to assassinate President Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State Seward in a plot to throw the government into electoral chaos. It was important for
the prosecution not to reveal the existence of a diary taken from the Booth's body. The
diary made it clear that the assassination plan dated from the 14th of April. The defense
surprisingly did not call for Booth's diary to be produced in court.
On June 29, 1865, the eight were found guilty for their
involvement in the conspiracy to kill the President. Spangler was sentenced to six years
in prison; Arnold, O'Laughlen and Mudd where sentenced to life in prison; and
Atzerodt, Herold, Paine and Surratt were sentenced to hang. They were
executed July 7, 1865. Surratt was the first woman in American
history to be executed. O'Laughlen died in prison in 1867. Arnold, Spangler and Mudd where pardoned
by President Andrew Johnson in early 1869.
Later life
In 1866, during the Thirty-ninth Congress,
Bingham was appointed to a subcommittee of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction tasked with considering suffrage proposals. As a member of the subcommittee, Bingham submitted several versions of an amendment to the
U.S. Constitution which would serve to apply the Bill of Rights to the States. His final submission, which was accepted by the Committee on
April 28, 1866, read "No State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws." The Committee recommended that the language become Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Amendment was introduced to the House on May
8, 1866, and to the Senate on May 23, 1866.[1]
In the closing debate in the House, Bingham stated,
"[M]any instances of State injustice and oppression have already occurred in the State legislation of this Union, of flagrant
violations of the guarantied privileges of citizens of the United States, for which the national Government furnished and could
furnish by law no remedy whatever. Contrary to the express letter of your Constitution, 'cruel and unusual punishments' have been
inflicted under State laws within this Union upon citizens, not only for crimes committed, but for sacred duty done, for which
and against which the Government of the United States had provided no remedy and could provide none.
It was an opprobrium to the Republic that for fidelity to the United States they could not by national law be protected against
the degrading punishment inflicted on slaves and felons by State law. That great want of the citizen and stranger, protection by
national law from unconstitutional State enactments, is supplied by the first section of this amendment."[2]
Except for the addition of the first sentence of Section 1, which defined citizenship, the amendment weathered the Senate
debate without substantial change.[3] The 14th Amendment
was ratified in 1868.
Despite Bingham's intention that the 14th Amendment apply the first eight Amendments of the Bill of Rights to the States, the
U.S. Supreme Court subsequently declined to interpret it that way. In
the 1947 case of Adamson v. California,
Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black argued in his dissent that the framers' intent should
control the Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and he attached a lengthy appendix that quoted extensively from
Bingham's congressional testimony.[4] Though the Adamson
Court declined to adopt Black's interpretation, the Court during the following twenty-five years employed a doctrine of
selective incorporation that succeeded in extending to the States almost
of all of the protections in the Bill of Rights, as well as other, unenumerated rights. The 14th Amendment has vastly expanded
civil rights protections and is cited in more litigation than any other amendment to the
U.S. Constitution.[5]
Bingham continued his career as a congressman, being reelected to the Fortieth, Forty-first and
Forty-second Congresses. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Claims from 1867 to 1869 and a member of the Committee on the
Judiciary from 1869 to 1873. In 1868 he was one of the judges involved in the impeachment trials of President
Andrew Johnson. In 1872, he was unsuccessful in gaining
reelection, this time for the Forty-third Congress. President Ulysses Grant then appointed him a new position as
United States Minister to Japan, at which he served from
May 31, 1873 to July 2,
1885.
He died in Cadiz, Ohio on March 19, 1900. He was interned in Cadiz Cemetery in Cadiz.
References
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
