John Coit Spooner

John Coit Spooner

John Coit Spooner (* 6. January 1843 in Lawrenceburg , Dearborn County , Indiana ; † 11. June 1919 in New York City ) was an American politician of the Republican Party . From 1885 to 1891 and from 1897 to 1907 he sat for the US state of Wisconsin in the US Senate .

biography

Spooner was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. In 1859 he and his parents moved to Madison , Wisconsin. There he attended schools and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1864 . During the Civil War he served in the Union Army . After the war ended, he was the private secretary to the governor of Wisconsin. At the same time he was studying law . In 1867 he was admitted to the bar. Until 1870 he was the Assistant Attorney General of Wisconsin.

In the following years he moved to Hudson , where he practiced as a lawyer from 1870 to 1884. In 1872 he was a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly . In 1884 he was elected a member of the Federal Senate, and from 1885 he represented Wisconsin for the first time in the US Senate. Between 1886 and 1891 he was chairman of the Committee on Claims . In his re-election in 1890, he was defeated by William Freeman Vilas and left the Senate in 1891. His candidacy for governor of Wisconsin in 1892 was unsuccessful. In 1893 he moved back to Madison. In 1896 he was re-elected to the Senate, where he began his second term in 1897. Between 1897 and 1899 he was chairman of the Committee on Canadian Relations and from 1899 to 1907 of the Committee on Rules . During his second term in office he was the namesake of the Spooner Act , which authorized US President Theodore Roosevelt to acquire the Panama Canal . In 1907 he resigned as a senator and resigned from Congress. During his political career, he turned down the cabinet positions offered to him three times. In 1898 William McKinley wanted to make him Home Secretary, in 1901 he was to become Attorney General , also under McKinley, and then Secretary of State in 1909 under William Howard Taft .

Spooner practiced as a lawyer in New York City until his death in 1919. He was buried in Madison.

Web links

• John Coit Spooner in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• John Coit Spooner in the database of Find a Grave (English)