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Lyman Trumbull
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| Biography: Lyman Trumbull |
Lyman Trumbull (1813-1896), American statesman, was an influential senator during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Lyman Trumbull was born on Oct. 12, 1813, in Colchester, Conn. He displayed unusual intellect early in his youth: at 16 he was teaching school and, 4 years later, was superintendent of an academy in Greenville, Ga. After studying law, he was admitted to the bar in 1836 and opened an office in Belleville, Illinois. In 1840, as a Democrat, he was elected to the state legislature. He resigned a year later to become secretary of state for Illinois. In 1843 he left that post and practiced law until 1848, when he was elected justice of the state supreme court. In 1852 Trumbull was reelected to a 9-year term on the bench. In 1854, however, he relinquished his judicial seat to become a U.S. representative. Before he could assume his new duties in Washington, the state legislature named him to the U.S. Senate, and in 1855 Trumbull began his long senatorial career.
Trumbull, disillusioned by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act and by the role of fellow Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas in fostering that bill, joined ranks with the Republicans. Trumbull campaigned throughout the late 1850s against further concessions to the South and slavery. During the Civil War, he served as chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, and he was one of the acknowledged leaders of his party. Always a strict constructionist of the Constitution, Trumbull was alternately Lincoln's strongest supporter and his most inflexible opponent. In 1864 he introduced the resolution that became the basis for the 13th Amendment.
Following the Civil War, Trumbull worked tirelessly on behalf of civil rights legislation and the Freedmen's Bureau. Yet his moderate views on Reconstruction put him increasingly at odds with Radical Republican leaders in Congress. The final break came when Trumbull joined six other Republicans in opposing the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. The excesses of Ulysses S. Grant's administration caused Trumbull to support Horace Greeley in the 1872 presidential race.
Trumbull retired from the Senate in 1873, rejoined the Democrats, and resumed his law practice in Chicago. He was one of Samuel J. Tilden's defense counsels in the disputed 1876 presidential election. Trumbull himself ran unsuccessfully for governor of Illinois in 1880. Several times he was mentioned for the presidency, but he proved too unyielding in principles and had too little popular appeal to rise higher than he did. He died on June 25, 1896, in Chicago.
Further Reading
A number of Trumbull's senatorial speeches were published individually during his lifetime. Mark M. Krug, Lyman Trumbull: Conservative Radical (1965) remains the best treatment. An older study, by one of Trumbull's associates and admirers, is Horace White, The Life of Lyman Trumbull (1913).
Additional Sources
Roske, Ralph Joseph, His own counsel: the life and times of Lyman Trumbull, Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1979.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Lyman Trumbull |
Trumbull, Lyman, 1813-96, U.S. Senator from Illinois (1855-73), b. Colchester, Conn. He taught school in Georgia, was admitted to the bar, and in 1837 moved to Illinois. After serving in the state legislature (1840), as Illinois secretary of state (1841-43), and as a justice of the state supreme court (1848-53), he was elected (1854) to the House of Representatives but was appointed to the Senate before Congress convened. Formerly a Democrat, he became a Republican and a staunch supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Often allied with the radical Republicans on Reconstruction measures, he nevertheless refused to follow them in their attempt to remove Andrew Johnson from office. In the impeachment trial he was one of the handful of Republican Senators who supported the President. In 1872 he was a leader of the Liberal Republican party, but eventually returned to the Democratic fold. He was one of the counsels for Samuel J. Tilden in the contested Hayes-Tilden election of 1876.
Bibliography
See biographies by M. M. Krug (1965) and R. J. Roske (1979).
| Wikipedia: Lyman Trumbull |
| Lyman Trumbull | |
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| In office March 4, 1855 – March 3, 1873 |
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| Preceded by | James Shields |
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| Succeeded by | Richard J. Oglesby |
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| Born | October 12, 1813 Colchester, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Died | June 25, 1896 (aged 82) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Political party | Democrat, Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Julia Maria Janyne Trumbull Mary Jane Ingraham Trumbull |
| Profession | Politician, Lawyer |
| Signature |  |
Lyman Trumbull (October 12, 1813 – June 25, 1896) was a United States Senator from Illinois during the American Civil War, and co-author of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
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Education and early career
Trumbull was born in Colchester, Connecticut, the son of historian Benjamin Trumbull.[1] He attended Bacon Academy and was a school teacher from 1829 to 1833. At 20, he was head of an academy in Georgia.[1] After studying law, he was admitted to the bar and practiced in Greenville, Georgia until moving to Belleville, Illinois in 1837.
Elected office
By 1840, he was serving in the Illinois House of Representatives, and he served as Illinois Secretary of State from 1841-1843. From 1848 to 1853 he was a justice on the Supreme Court of Illinois. Although elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1854, he was elected to serve in the United States Senate before he could take his seat. He served from 1855 through 1873, during which time he claimed party affiliations with the Democrats, the Republicans, the Liberal Republicans, and finally the Democrats again. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee (1861-1872), he co-authored the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited all kinds of slavery in the United States.
Johnson impeachment trial
During President Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial, Trumbull and six other Republican senators[2] were disturbed by how the proceedings had been manipulated in order to give a one-sided presentation of the evidence.[3] Trumbull, in particular, noted:
"Once set the example of impeaching a President for what, when the excitement of the hour shall have subsided, will be regarded as insufficient causes, as several of those now alleged against the President were decided to be by the House of Representatives only a few months since, and no future President will be safe who happens to differ with a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate on any measure deemed by them important, particularly if of a political character. Blinded by partisan zeal, with such an example before them, they will not scruple to remove out of the way any obstacle to the accomplishment of their purposes, and what then becomes of the checks and balances of the Constitution, so carefully devised and so vital to its perpetuity? They are all gone."
All seven broke party ranks and defied public opinion, voting for acquittal in a principled act of political suicide.[4] None was reelected.
Yellowstone
During the December 1871 congressional debate on the creation of Yellowstone National Park, Senator Trumbull, whose son Walter Trumbull was a member of the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition to Yellowstone in 1870, made this impassioned statement in support of the park idea:
"Here is a region of the country away up in the Rocky Mountains, where there are the most wonderful geysers on the face of the earth; a country that is not likely ever to be inhabited for the purpose of agriculture; but it is possible that some person may go there and plant himself right across the only path that leads to the wonders, and charge every man that passes along between the gorges of these mountains a fee of a dollar or five dollars. He may place an obstruction there and toll may be gathered from every person who goes to see these wonders of creation." [5]
Later career
In 1873, Trumbull set up a law practice in Chicago and remained in private practice except for a brief period when he ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor (as a Democrat) in 1880. He became a Populist in 1894, and defended the railway strikers in Chicago in the same year.[6]
Memorials
During his explorations in the west John Wesley Powell named Mt. Trumbull (and now the Mt. Trumbull Wilderness) in northwestern Arizona after the senator. The Lyman Trumbull House is a National Historic Landmark.
References
- ^ a b
"Trumbull, Benjamin". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. Lyman Trumbull is the subject of the second half of this article entitled with his father's name. - ^ These seven senators were William Pitt Fessenden, Joseph S. Fowler, James W. Grimes, John B. Henderson, Lyman Trumbull, Peter G. Van Winkle, and Edmund G. Ross.
- ^ "Andrew Johnson Trial: The Consciences of Seven Republicans Save Johnson".
- ^ "The Trial of Andrew Johnson, 1868".
- ^ "The Founding of Yellowstone into Law and into Fact". John S. McDonald Jr.. http://www.yellowstone-online.com/paper.html#42a. Retrieved 5 January 2009.
- ^ "Trumbull, Lyman". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
Further reading
- White, Horace. The Life of Lyman Trumbull, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913. OCLC 824101
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lyman Trumbull |
- Lyman Trumbull at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- Lyman Trumbull at Find A Grave
- Trumbull at OurCampaigns.com
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| Preceded by Stephen A. Douglas |
Illinois Secretary of State 1841 – 1843 |
Succeeded by Thompson Campbell |
| United States Senate | ||
| Preceded by James Shields |
United States Senator (Class 3) from Illinois March 4, 1855 – March 4, 1873 Served alongside: Stephen A. Douglas, Orville H. Browning, William A. Richardson, Richard Yates, John A. Logan |
Succeeded by Richard J. Oglesby |
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Mentioned in
- Liberal Republican party (organization, United States – in politics)
- John Armor Bingham
- Confiscation Acts (American history)
- First and Second Confiscation Acts (1861, 1862)
- Lyman Trumbull House
- Reconstruction (American history)
- Civil Rights Act of 1866
- Freedmen's Bureau Acts (1865 and 1868)
- Ku Klux Klan Act (1871)
- Trumbull
- Horace White (writer)
- Committee on the Pacific Railroad
- List of members-elect of the United States House of Representatives who never took their seats
- List of Democratic nominees for Governor of Illinois
