John Pettit

John Pettit

John Pettit (born  June 24, 1807 in Sackets Harbor , New York , †  January 17, 1877 in Lafayette , Indiana ) was an American lawyer and politician of the Democratic Party . He represented the state of Indiana in both houses of Congress .

After completing his legal training, John Pettit was inducted into the bar in 1831. He moved to Lafayette, Indiana, where he began his new job in 1838. There he was also active politically for the first time and was from 1838 to 1839 a member of the House of Representatives of Indiana . He then held the post of federal attorney for the Indiana district until 1843 as the successor to Tilghman Howard .

On March 4, 1843, Pettit entered the United States House of Representatives for the Democrats . He represented the interests of the eighth constituency of Indiana there after several re-elections until March 3, 1849; in 1848 he was not nominated again by his party. In 1850 Pettit took part in the Indiana Constitutional Convention, two years later he was a Democrat in the Electoral College , which Franklin Pierce elected US President . Finally he was elected after the death of US Senator James Whitcomb as his successor and served from January 18, 1853 to March 3, 1855. When trying to re-elect, he was unsuccessful.

In the Senate, John Pettit was among other things chairman of the Committee on Private Land Claims . During the Senate debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, he spoke out in favor of extending slavery to Kansas . Referring to the United States Declaration of Independence , authored by Thomas Jefferson , he stated that Jefferson's idea that "all human beings were created equal" was not, as the document states, an established truth, but rather an established lie. Pettit's famous speech and discussion about it is credited with the return of Abraham Lincoln to the political scene.

After his time in Congress, Pettit was the chief federal judge in the Kansas Territory from 1859 to 1861 . From 1870 to 1877 he was a judge on the Supreme Court of Indiana .

Web links

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