James Speed

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James Speed

James Speed (* 11. March 1812 in Jefferson County , Kentucky ; † 25. June 1887 in Louisville , Kentucky) was an American lawyer and politician who among the US Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson as Minister of Justice ( Attorney General ) officiated.

Family, studies and professional career

Speed ​​was a descendant of the English cartographer John Speed . His brother Joshua Fry Speed ​​was the closest friend of the future President Abraham Lincoln . He studied as a son of a judge Law at the Transylvania University in Lexington . In 1833 he was admitted to the bar in Louisville.

In 1856 he was appointed professor of law at the University of Louisville , where he taught until 1858 and again from 1872 to 1879.

Political career

Kentucky Politicians and Civil War

In 1847 he began his political career as a member of the House of Representatives from Kentucky , in which until 1849 the interests of the Whig Party represented. As an opponent of slavery and an advocate of equal rights for slaves, his candidacy for the Constituent Assembly of Kentucky in 1849 failed. From 1851 to 1854 he was a member of the Louisville City Council and two years of it chairman.

Before the outbreak of the civil war he campaigned intensively for Kentucky to remain in the Union and was at times commander of the state's home guard. As leader of the pro-union forces, he was elected to the Kentucky Senate in 1861 and, as such, introduced a bill in 1862 that provided for the expropriation of the assets of the Confederacy's supporters .

Attorney General under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson

On December 2, 1864, US President Abraham Lincoln, with whom he had been friends since his youth, appointed him as successor to Attorney General Edward Bates in his cabinet . After the assassination of Lincoln on April 15, 1865, he remained in this office under his successor Andrew Johnson .

After Lincoln's assassination, he joined the Radical Republican Movement and at the same time campaigned for African-American men to have the right to vote . He saw the assassination of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth as a consequence of the politics of the Confederate States and therefore spoke unsuccessfully for the conviction of Booth by a military tribunal.

Disappointed about Johnson's increasingly conservative policies, particularly on the issue of so-called Reconstruction , he resigned from his position as Attorney General on July 22, 1866.

Unsuccessful candidacies in later years

His radical, anti-slavery views were harshly criticized in Kentucky, with the result that in 1867 a candidacy for a US Senator failed as well as in 1868 his efforts to be nominated for the Republican Party's vice-presidential nomination against Schuyler Colfax and in 1870 the candidacy for MP of the United States House of Representatives as representative of the fifth congressional electoral district of Kentucky.

Nevertheless, he was at least a delegate at the Republican National Convention in 1872 and 1876 , after six years earlier he was president of the so-called Loyalists Convention in Philadelphia .

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Speed, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1812
PLACE OF BIRTH Jefferson County , Kentucky
DATE OF DEATH June 25, 1887
Place of death Louisville , Kentucky