Jacob Collamer

Jacob Collamer

Jacob Collamer (born January 8, 1792 in Troy , New York , † November 9, 1865 in Woodstock , Vermont ) was an American lawyer and politician from the state of Vermont.

Career

Jacob Collamer graduated from the University of Vermont at Burlington , studied law at St. Albans , Vermont, was admitted to the bar in 1813 and served as a militia officer in the British-American War (also known as the War of 1812 ). After the war he moved to Royalton in 1816 , where he opened a law firm. He stayed there for the next 20 years, where he partnered with Judge James Barrett in a successful legal practice. He also served as a probate officer ( Register of Probate ) and prosecutor, represented Royalton for four terms in the Vermont House of Representatives, and was ultimately associate judge at the Vermont Supreme Court from 1833 to 1842 . He was then elected to the US House of Representatives as a Whigs member in 1842 , defended the annexation of Texas, advocated the Mexican-American War and the tariff, and received national recognition for his "Wools and Woolens" address.

Collamer was a postmaster general in the cabinet under US President Zachary Taylor from 1849 to 1850 . He was then a Vermont district judge between 1850 and 1854. In 1855, Collamer was elected to the US Senate as a Conservative Republican who opposed slavery . During his time in Congress, he focused primarily on land and customs issues. He even defended his position when he was in the minority, as illustrated in his energetic Minority Report on membership of the Stephen A. Douglas- chaired US Senate Committee on Territories . He was also one of two US Senators who refused to vote on the Crittenden Compromise , which proposed not to obey the slavery-friendly Lecompton Constitution of Kansas in a referendum. Collamer and his colleague, James Rood Doolittle from Wisconsin , represented the minority position for the so-called Mason Report (June 1860), which was drawn up by the Senate committee, which already had the John Brown raid in October 1859 in Harpers Ferry , West Virginia examined. Collamer was also against President Abraham Lincoln's Reconstruction plans and instead advocated congressional oversight. He had won the Vermont presidential nomination in 1860 but decided to drop out after the first round of voting.

Between 1855 and 1862 he was the last president of Vermont Medical College . He was re-elected to the US Senate in 1861, where he served in Woodstock until his death on November 9, 1865.

Honors

In 1881 Vermont donated a marble statue of Collamer to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol .

Web links

• Jacob Collamer in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Jacob Collamer the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)

• Jacob Collamer in the database of Find a Grave (English)