Benjamin F. Whittemore

Benjamin F. Whittemore

Benjamin Franklin Whittemore (born May 18, 1824 in Malden , Middlesex County , Massachusetts , †  January 25, 1894 in Montvale , Massachusetts) was an American politician . Between 1868 and 1870 he represented the state of South Carolina in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Benjamin Whittemore attended public schools in Worcester and then Amherst College . Until 1859 he was active in the trade. After studying theology, he was ordained as a clergyman in the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1859 . During the civil war he worked as a military chaplain for various units of the Union Army.

After the war, Whittemore settled in Darlington, South Carolina. There he began a political career as a member of the Republican Party . In 1867 he was a delegate to a meeting to revise the state constitution. In the same year he became chairman of his party in South Carolina. In 1868 Whittemore was a member of the State Senate . Also that year he took part as a delegate at the Republican National Convention in Chicago , where Ulysses S. Grant was nominated as a presidential candidate.

When the state of South Carolina was allowed to provide congressional representation again in 1868, Whittemore was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the first constituency of South Carolina . There he took the seat on July 18, 1868, which John McQueen had given up on December 21, 1860, after South Carolina left the Union. In the regular congressional elections of 1868 he was confirmed in his mandate. This would have allowed him to complete a full term in Congress until March 3, 1871 . He has since been charged with his practices in nominating cadets for various military academies. That led to an investigation into the incidents. Whittemore then resigned on February 24, 1870, after he was officially reprimanded by Congress. Nevertheless, Whittemore was re-elected to the US House of Representatives in the by-election; there he was refused his seat on June 18, 1870.

In 1877, Benjamin Whittemore was re-elected to the South Carolina Senate. He then returned to Massachusetts, where he settled in Woburn . There he worked as a newspaper publisher. He died on January 25, 1894 in Montvale and was buried in Woburn.

Web links

• Benjamin F. Whittemore in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Benjamin F. Whittemore in the database of Find a Grave (English)