John Davis (politician, 1826)

John Davis

John Davis (born August 9, 1826 in Springfield , Illinois , †  August 1, 1901 in Topeka , Kansas ) was an American politician . Between 1891 and 1895 he represented the fifth constituency of the state of Kansas in the US House of Representatives .

Career

In 1830, John Davis moved to Macon County with his parents . There he attended public schools. He then graduated from Springfield Academy and Illinois College in Jacksonville . He then began to work in agriculture and horticulture in Decatur . In 1872 he moved to Kansas, where he settled on a farm near Junction City . Davis was for many years secretary of the local horticultural society ( Central Kansas Horticultural Society ). In 1873 he was elected President of the First Kansas Farmers Convention. This then gave rise to a farmers' movement that was absorbed into the short-lived Populist Party in the 1880s . In 1875 he became the owner and editor of the Junction City Tribune newspaper.

Politically, Davis was an opponent of slavery and a supporter of the Republican Party as well as his Illinois neighbor, Abraham Lincoln . Later he joined the also short-lived Greenback Party , as its candidate he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1880 and 1882 . Then he became a member of the Populist Party. In 1890 he was elected as the nationwide candidate for the fifth seat in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC , where he succeeded John Alexander Anderson on March 3, 1891 . In the 1892 election , Kansas voted by district and Davis was re-elected in the fifth district. As a result, he was able to complete two legislative terms in Congress by March 3, 1895. There he campaigned for nationwide women's suffrage . In the elections of 1894 he was defeated by Republican William A. Calderhead .

After his tenure in Congress ended, John Davis retired from politics and took up literary affairs. He died on August 1, 1901 in Topeka, the capital of Kansas, where he was also buried.

Web links

• John Davis in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• John Davis in the database of Find a Grave (English)