John F. Benjamin

John F. Benjamin

John Forbes Benjamin (born January 23, 1817 in Cicero , Onondaga County , New York , †  March 8, 1877 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician . Between 1865 and 1871 he represented the state of Missouri in the US House of Representatives .

Career

John Benjamin attended public schools in his homeland. He moved to Texas in 1845 and then to Missouri in 1848. After studying law and being admitted to the bar in 1848, he began to work in this profession in Shelbyville . Politically, he was a member of the Democratic Party at the time . Between 1850 and 1852 he was a member of the Missouri House of Representatives . In 1856 he was elector for the Democrats in the presidential election , in which their candidate James Buchanan was elected to the highest office in the United States.

Benjamin was a supporter of the Union and joined the army of the northern states as a simple soldier at the beginning of the civil war . In the course of the war he rose to become brigadier general. Between 1863 and 1864 he was Provost Marshal in charge of the military police in the eighth district of Missouri. In the meantime he had become a member of the Republican Party . In 1864 Benjamin attended the Republican National Convention as a delegate , at which President Abraham Lincoln was nominated for re-election.

In the congressional election of 1864 , Benjamin was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington in the eighth constituency of Missouri, where he succeeded William Augustus Hall on March 4, 1865 . After two re-elections, he was able to complete three legislative terms in Congress by March 3, 1871 . During this time the civil war ended. Between 1865 and 1868, as a congressman, Benjamin experienced the tension between his party and President Andrew Johnson, who came into office after Lincoln's assassination . This conflict culminated in a narrowly failed impeachment process. Benjamin was chairman of the Committee on Invalid Expenditures from 1869 to 1871 .

In 1870 he declined to run again. He then practiced again as a lawyer in Shelbyville. In 1872 an application to return to Congress failed. In 1874 John Benjamin moved to the federal capital Washington, where he worked in the banking industry. He died there on March 8, 1877. He was buried in Shelbyville.

Web links

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

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