Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart

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Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart

Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart (born April 2, 1807 in Staunton , Virginia , † February 13, 1891 ibid) was an American politician ( Whig Party ) who belonged to the cabinet of US President Millard Fillmore as Home Secretary .

Life

Alexander Stuart, son of a judge of Scottish-Irish descent, first attended the College of William & Mary before graduating from the University of Virginia in 1828 . After studying law , he was admitted to the bar in the same year and began working as a lawyer in Staunton. He was married to Frances C. Payton, who had eight children.

Political career

His political career began in 1836 with the election to the Virginia House of Representatives , to which he was a member until 1839. The following year he was elected to the US House of Representatives as a member of the Whigs. After a two-year term and a failed re-election attempt, Stuart resigned from Congress in March 1843 .

President Fillmore appointed Alexander Stuart to his cabinet in 1850 to succeed Home Secretary Thomas McKennan, who had resigned after only eleven days in office . Stuart took office on September 14, 1850, and found a culture of political patronage in his ministry . He did not succeed in fundamentally changing anything, but at least he was able to contain the chaos in the administrative area that resulted from this system.

With the end of Millard Fillmore's presidency in March 1853, Stuart also left the government. His next public office he held from 1857 to 1861 as a member of the Virginia Senate . During this time, the United States was heading towards the Civil War , with Stuart being a delegate to the Virginia Convention of Secession in 1861. After the founding of the Confederate States , he traveled to Washington in April 1861 as a member of a delegation from the South and met with President Abraham Lincoln . This reiterated his plan to hold on to the federal forts in the south, whereupon Stuart and his colleagues returned to Richmond .

After the end of the Civil War, Alexander Stuart was re-elected to the US House of Representatives in 1865, but he was not allowed to exercise his mandate. In 1870 he chaired the Committee of Nine , which laid the foundations for Virginia's re-entry into the Union. From 1874 to 1877 he was once again a member of the House of Representatives in his home state.

Further life

Also in 1874, Stuart took over the post of Rector at the University of Virginia, which he held until 1882. He also served as president of the Virginia Historical Society and worked as a lawyer again in parallel. Alexander Stuart died in February 1891 as the last surviving member of the Fillmore cabinet.

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personal data
SURNAME Stuart, Alexander Hugh Holmes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician (Whig Party)
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH Staunton , Virginia
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1891
Place of death Staunton , Virginia