Henry S. Geyer

Henry S. Geyer

Henry Sheffie Geyer (born December 9, 1790 in Frederick , Maryland , † March 5, 1859 in St. Louis ) was an American politician of the United States Whig Party , who represented the state of Missouri in the US Senate .

As a boy, Henry Geyer received private tuition. He studied law and was inducted into the bar in 1811, after which he began practicing in his native Frederick. During the British-American War , he served from 1813 to 1815 as a first lieutenant in the 36th  Maryland Infantry Regiment .

After he left the army, he settled in St. Louis and worked there again as a lawyer. In 1818 Geyer began to be active politically when he became a member of the legislature of the Missouri Territory ; two years later he was a member of the Missouri Constitutional Convention. Eventually he was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1820 , where he remained until 1824; another term of office followed from 1834 to 1835, where he acted twice as speaker of the parliamentary chamber. In 1850, US President Millard Fillmore offered him the post of Secretary of War , but he refused.

Geyer belonged to the Whigs, with the party already in decline when he was elected to the US Senate in 1850. After the end of his tenure, he left the Congress on March 3, 1857 ; he did not stand for re-election.

Three days after retiring from the Senate, the verdict in the US Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford proclaims; Geyer had represented the interests of the accused slave owner John Sanford. The court ruled in Sanford's favor, which many historians believe was one of the causes of the American Civil War . Henry Geyer died before it erupted in 1859. Geyer Street in St. Louis was later named after him.

Web links

• Henry S. Geyer in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Henry S. Geyer in the database of Find a Grave (English)