Allen G. Thurman

Allen G. Thurman

Allen Granberry Thurman (born November 13, 1813 in Lynchburg , Virginia , †  December 12, 1895 in Columbus , Ohio ) was an American lawyer and politician who represented the state of Ohio in both chambers of Congress . He was also the Democratic Party candidate for US vice presidency alongside Grover Cleveland in the 1888 presidential election .

Attorney and Congressman

Allen Thurman was born to a teacher couple in Virginia; his father also worked as a Methodist clergyman. In 1815, his parents released their slaves and moved their son to Chillicothe , Ohio, where Thurman attended a private school run by his mother. He then learned the profession of lawyer in the law firm of his uncle William Allen , who later became governor of Ohio. At the age of 18 he worked as a surveyor for some time; three years later he became the private secretary of Robert Lucas , the governor of Ohio.

In 1835 Thurman was inducted into the Ohio Bar Association, whereupon his uncle accepted him as a partner in his office; two years later, William Allen became a US Senator in Washington . Allen Thurman married his wife Mary in November 1844; the couple had three children. In the same year he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, of which he was the youngest member at the time. He took his congressional mandate from March 4, 1845 to March 3, 1847 and did not run for re-election. During this time he voted in principle with a majority of the Democrats in the House of Representatives; only in questions of job creation he was more on the side of the oppositional Whigs . He also supported the government of President James K. Polk on the question of the war with Mexico . In addition, he voted for the Wilmot Proviso , with which the expansion of slavery to the areas gained by the war should be prevented - but only because he saw them exclusively as settlement areas for whites.

After leaving Parliament, Thurman returned to work as a lawyer. In 1851 he accepted an appointment as judge at the Supreme Court of Ohio , where he remained for five years. He held the post of Chief Justice for the past two years before returning to his private law firm. In 1853 he moved to Columbus, where he lived until his death.

In the run-up to the Civil War , Thurman spoke out against the withdrawal of the Missouri Compromise and the Lecompton Constitution, which would have allowed slavery in the new state of Kansas . In the presidential election in 1860 he supported Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois , the candidate of the moderate Democrats. After the election of Abraham Lincoln as president, Thurman became an opponent of his war policy, because although he denied a state's right to secession , he considered it unwise to fight the states concerned after the step was taken. During the war he was one of the proponents of a political solution to the conflict.

Senator and candidate for the vice presidency

Thurman ran in 1867 as a Democratic candidate for the office of governor of Ohio, where he took a clear position in his program against an extended right to vote for African Americans ; he was narrowly defeated by the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes . However, the voters also ensured a majority of the Democrats in the Ohio General Assembly , which then designated Thurman as US Senator for the term of office beginning March 4, 1869. In the Senate, he was a staunch opponent of the Republican-led reconstruction in the southern states . In 1873, Thurman was instrumental in ensuring that a democratically dominated parliament was elected again in Ohio and that his uncle William Allen won the election to governor. He himself was able to run another legislative period in the Senate, where he rose to become one of the leading figures in the democratic group. After the presidential election of 1876 , he sat on the commission that should determine the winner after the tie between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden . He voted for Tilden, but the Republican majority on the body helped Hayes, his former opponent in the gubernatorial election, to victory.

Election poster for Grover Cleveland and Allen G. Thurman

For several years Thurman was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee , where he took over its chairmanship for two years in 1879 after the Democrats had gained a majority in the Senate. From April 15, 1879 to December 5, 1880, he also acted as President pro tempore of the Senate and briefly as the actual Senate President, since US Vice President William Almon Wheeler , who was regularly assigned this task, was ill. When the Republicans won the Ohio general election in 1880, it marked Thurman's imminent departure from the Senate. First, James A. Garfield was elected to succeed him; after this surprising Republican presidential candidate and won the election, the Senate seat fell to the incumbent Treasury Secretary, John Sherman . Thurman, who left Congress on March 3, 1881, was then appointed by President Garfield as the American representative at the International Monetary Conference in Paris .

In the presidential elections of 1876, 1880 and 1884 Thurman had received the delegate votes of his home state Ohio as the so-called "Favorite Son"; it was not enough for nomination in any of the cases. For this he was selected in 1888 by the incumbent US President Grover Cleveland as running mate for the upcoming elections; Cleveland's original Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks had died in 1885 after just eight months in office. Ultimately, Cleveland and Thurman won the majority of the vote with a share of 48.6 percent over the Republicans Benjamin Harrison and Levi P. Morton , but they were clearly ahead of the electors with 233: 168, so that Thurman was denied the office of Vice President . He then withdrew from politics and died seven years later in Columbus.

Web links

Commons : Allen G. Thurman  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Allen G. Thurman in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Allen G. Thurman in the database of Find a Grave (English)