Francis Granger

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Francis Granger

Francis Granger (born December 1, 1792 in Suffield , Hartford County , Connecticut , †  August 31, 1868 in Canandaigua , New York ) was an American politician who served as Secretary of the Cabinet under US Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler belonged to.

Life

Francis Granger was the son of Gideon Granger , who also became Postmaster General in 1801 . His cousin Amos P. Granger also embarked on a political career and represented New York State in the US House of Representatives .

After studying classical antiquity , Granger graduated from Yale College in 1811 . Together with his father, he then moved to Canandaigua in Ontario County (New York) in 1814 . He then studied law , was admitted to the bar in 1816 and worked as a lawyer. After marrying Cornelia Rutson VanRensselaer, their son Gideon was born in 1821; In 1823 his wife died giving birth to a daughter who also did not survive.

politics

From 1826 to 1828 and again from 1830 to 1832 Francis Granger was a member of the New York State Assembly . In 1828 he ran unsuccessfully as Lieutenant Governor of New York, in 1830 and 1832 he failed each as a candidate for the National Republican Party for governorship .

In the presidential election of 1836 he was the Whigs' candidate for vice presidency alongside William Henry Harrison. Since the Electoral College was split because of the candidacy of four Whig applicants, none of the four candidates for the office of vice president occupied by a separate election received the necessary absolute majority; However, the Democrat Richard Mentor Johnson , the running mate of the new President Martin Van Buren , only missed this by one vote. For the first and only time, the US Senate had to appoint the vice president. Here Johnson finally won with a two-thirds majority.

At that time, Granger was a National Republican member of the US House of Representatives, into which he had moved on March 4, 1835. In the re-election, this time as a Whig candidate, he failed, so that he had to leave Congress after two years. In 1839 he managed to return; he was re-elected for the 27th session of the Congress beginning in March 1841. However, he resigned his mandate on March 5, after he was appointed by the newly elected President Harrison as Minister of Post in his cabinet . After Harrison's death the following month, Granger kept this post under his successor John Tyler; but he left the government on September 18 of the same year because he had been re-elected to the House of Representatives as the successor to the resigned John Greig . His term of office ended on March 3, 1843; he did not stand for re-election.

A proponent of the 1850 Compromise , Francis Granger belonged to the Whig faction , which Millard Fillmore supported and which became known as the Silver Gray Whigs because of Granger's hair color . The rift between this group and the supporters of William H. Seward finally led to the end of the Whigs in 1855.

Granger led the remnants of the party as chairman of the Whig National Executive Committee from 1856 to 1860, when he moved to the newly formed Constitutional Union Party with the remaining non- Republican members . However, this disappeared into insignificance the following year. For his part, Granger was a member of a peace convention held in Washington, DC in 1861 , which was supposed to end the civil war that was beginning , but was unsuccessful.

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personal data
SURNAME Granger, Francis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1792
PLACE OF BIRTH Suffield , Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1868
Place of death Canandaigua , New York