Elijah Webb Chastain

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Elijah Webb Chastain

Elijah Webb Chastain (born September 25, 1813 in Pickens , Pickens County , South Carolina , †  April 9, 1874 in Dalton , Georgia ) was an American politician . Between 1851 and 1855 he represented the state of Georgia in the US House of Representatives .

Career

In 1821 Elijah Chastain came to Habersham , Georgia with his parents , where he attended public schools. In the 1830s he rose in the state militia from captain to colonel. He then settled on a farm near Blairsville . Chastain served in the Georgia Senate between 1840 and 1850 . After studying law and being admitted to the bar in 1849, he began to work in Blairsville in his new profession.

In the congressional elections of 1850 he was elected as a unionist in the fifth constituency of Georgia to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC , where he succeeded Thomas C. Hackett on March 4, 1851 . After re-election in 1852, he was able to complete two terms in Congress until March 3, 1855 . In the elections of 1852 he was confirmed as a candidate for the Democratic Party , of which he had since become a member. From 1853 to 1855 Chastain was chairman of the Committee on Militia . During his time as a congressman there was a heated discussion of the issue of slavery . In addition, the first violent clashes began in the run-up to the civil war , which thus cast its shadow.

In 1854 Chastain renounced another candidacy for the US House of Representatives. In the following years he worked again as a lawyer. In 1860 he was a delegate at the assembly that decided the state would leave the Union. He supported the exit movement. He was also an attorney for the Western and Atlantic Railroad in 1861 and 1862 . During the civil war he was first lieutenant colonel and from 1862 colonel in the army of the Confederation . After the war he worked as a lawyer again.

Chastain died on April 9, 1874 in Murray County, not far from the city of Dalton, in neighboring Whitfield County , while attempting to cross a river on horseback. He was thrown off and drowned in the waves. Elijah Chastain was married to Clarissa Saxon Brazelton (1819-1893).

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