John A. Kasson

John A. Kasson

John Adam Kasson (born January 11, 1822 in Charlotte , Vermont , †  May 18, 1910 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician . Between 1863 and 1884 he represented the state of Iowa in the US House of Representatives several times . He was also the United States Ambassador to Germany and Austria-Hungary .

Career

John Kasson attended public schools in his home country. He then studied until 1842 at the University of Vermont in Burlington . After a subsequent law degree and qualifying as a lawyer, he began in St. Louis ( Missouri to practice in his new job). In 1857 he moved his residence and law firm to Des Moines , Iowa. Politically, Kasson was a member of the Republican Party founded in 1854 . In 1860 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Chicago , on the Abraham Lincolnwas nominated as a presidential candidate. Between 1861 and 1862 he was Deputy Post Minister ( First Assistant Postmaster General ). In 1863 he was the American representative at an international postal convention in Paris .

In 1862 Kasson was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington in the then newly created fifth constituency of Iowa. There he took up his new mandate on March 4, 1863. After re-election in 1964, he was able to represent this constituency in Congress until March 3, 1867 . There he was chairman of the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures . This time was determined by the events of the civil war and the beginning of Reconstruction . The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery , was also ratified at that time. In 1866, Kasson was not nominated for re-election by his party.

In 1867, John Kasson was the American negotiator in post-convention negotiations with European states. Between 1868 and 1872 he was a member of the Iowa House of Representatives . In the congressional elections of 1872 he was re-elected to Congress in the newly created seventh district. After re-election in 1874, he was able to spend two more legislative terms in the US House of Representatives between March 4, 1873 and March 3, 1877. In 1876 he renounced another candidacy.

Between 1877 and 1881, Kasson succeeded Edward F. Beale as US ambassador to Vienna , which was then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy. In 1880 he was elected to the US House of Representatives for the third time. There he replaced Edward H. Gillette on March 4, 1881 , who had represented the seventh constituency of Iowa since 1879. In 1882, Kasson was confirmed. He resigned prematurely from his mandate on July 13, 1884 because he had been appointed ambassador to Germany. He held this office for a year. In 1885 he was the American special envoy to an international conference on the Congo in Berlin . In 1889 he performed the same function at the Berlin Samoa Conference . In 1897 he was an American negotiator on several state treaties; In 1898, Kasson was on a mixed British-American commission negotiating differences with Canada .

John Kasson died on May 18, 1910 in the federal capital Washington and was buried in Des Moines .

Web links

• John A. Kasson in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• John A. Kasson in the database of Find a Grave (English)