biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1813–96)
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| biography:
| US senator and jurist, born in Colchester, Connecticut, USA. He first went to Georgia as a schoolteacher (1833–7), but after studying law he moved to Illinois to practise there, and was named to that state's supreme court. Originally a Democrat, he opposed his party on the slavery issue and was appointed to the US Senate as a free-soil Democrat (Illinois, 1855–61). He was re-elected senator as a Republican (1861–7) but after the Civil War he came to reject the Radical Republicans' policies, voted to acquit President Johnson, and returned to the Democratic Party for his final term (1867–73). He served as Samuel Tilden's lawyer during the contested presidential election of 1876, and he ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic candidate for governor of Illinois in 1880. |
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