John Gill Shorter

John Gill Shorter

John Gill Shorter (born April 3, 1818 in Monticello , Jasper County , Georgia , † May 29, 1872 in Eufaula , Alabama ) was an American politician ( Democratic Party ).

Career

John Shorter's father, Dr. Reuben C. Shorter, a medic and planter, had immigrated to Georgia from Virginia as a young man and became a leader of the nascent Democratic Republican Party . In 1833 Shorter's family moved to Eufaula, Barbour County , Alabama, where John Gill graduated from the University of Georgia four years later . After the young Shorter received his Bachelor of Laws , he was admitted to the bar in Alabama in 1838. In 1843 he married Mary Jane Battle, the daughter of a wealthy Barbour County planter .

The law firm of John Gill Shorter and his brother Eli Shorter flourished, the family holdings grew extensively, and in 1845 John Gill became a Democrat in the Alabama Senate . In 1852 he was elected to the judicial office of the Eufaula district, a position to which he was re-elected six years later.

As a supporter of William Lowndes Yancey , John Gill Shorter was a passionate secessionist and a member of the so-called "Eufaula Regency", a small group of lawyers and planters in Barbour County who in 1861 had a decisive influence on the separation of Alabama from the Union. Shorter served in the Provisional Confederate Congress in Montgomery and Richmond until he became governor of Alabama on December 2, 1861. He only held this office for two years. During this time he devoted himself to addressing the problems and concerns of the civil war and Alabama's relationship with the Confederate government. The predominant concerns included mobile defense, the expansion of troops (especially for the home front), the care of needy families of the soldiers, taxes, slave confiscation, the expansion of the army, military service, troop exercises, military desertions, food supplies, the prohibition of distillation during the war, the lack of salt, the relationship between the state and military authorities, state law (particularly with regard to the supplies made available to the Confederate government) and the financing of the war.

As a capable and energetic war governor, Shorter was defeated in the 1863 election. He was seen as a victim of the 1861 protests against the secessionists. The unsuccessful war and the anti-democratic party mood were seen as further reasons. After his defeat, Shorter returned to Eufaula for the remaining years of his life, where he resumed his practice as a lawyer. At the end of the war he returned briefly to Montgomery to attend the conservative redevelopment meeting. He died on May 29, 1872.

literature

McMillan, Malcolm C. The Disintegration of a Confederate State: Three Governors and Alabama's Wartime Home Front 1861-1865, 1986.

Web links

• John Gill Shorter in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• John Shorter in the National Governors Association (English)