James Gordon (politician, 1833)

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James Gordon (born December 6, 1833 in Cotton Gin Port , Monroe County , Mississippi , †  November 28, 1912 in Okolona , Mississippi) was an American politician ( Democratic Party ) who represented the state of Mississippi in the US Senate .

James Gordon was an infant when his parents moved him to Pontotoc County in 1834 . He attended public schools and a private school in Holly Springs and later a college in Alabama . In 1855 he graduated from the University of Mississippi at Oxford . Then he worked as a planter and as an author for newspapers and magazines.

Gordon first became politically active in 1857 as a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives , to which he belonged again in 1859. That year he also moved to Okolona, Chickasaw County . After the outbreak of the Civil War he joined the Confederate Army , in which he served as a colonel in several cavalry regiments established by him . In 1864 he was on a diplomatic mission in Europe for the Confederation . On his return in January 1865, he was captured in Wilmington Harbor ; a little later, however, he was able to flee and move to Canada . When he stepped back on US soil after the war ended, Gordon was accused of having been involved in the John Wilkes Booth murder plot against President Abraham Lincoln , but he was able to dispel that suspicion.

He was also politically active again after the resumption of the state of Mississippi; so he completed two further terms in the House of Representatives in Jackson in 1876 and 1886 . From 1904 to 1906 he was State Senator . At the age of 76, James Gordon was finally named a US Senator. He succeeded the late Anselm McLaurin in Washington on December 27, 1909 and remained in Congress until February 22, 1910 ; he did not run for the next election. Gordon spent his remaining years in farming and literary activities before he died in Okolona in November 1912.

Web links

  • James Gordon in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
personal data
SURNAME Gordon, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1833
PLACE OF BIRTH Cotton Gin Port , Mississippi
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1912
Place of death Okolona , Mississippi