Joseph Pomeroy Root

Joseph Pomeroy Root (born April 23, 1826 in Greenwich , Hampshire County , Massachusetts , †  July 20, 1885 in Kansas City , Kansas ) was an American politician . Between 1861 and 1863 he was lieutenant governor of the state of Kansas.

Career

Joseph Root studied at Berkshire Medical College in Pittsfield medicine and was then in New Hartford ( Connecticut for five years) as a doctor. Politically, he was a member of the Whig Party at the time. In 1855 he was elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives. After the end of the legislature, he moved to what was then Kansas Territory , which was shaken by bloody clashes between supporters and opponents of slavery at the time . Root was a staunch opponent of this institution. In the meantime, he was captured by the opposing party and then released. He went temporarily to the east to organize relief efforts for the anti-slavery cause. On his return in 1857 he became a member and president of the territorial senate. Politically, he had since become a member of the Republican Party founded in 1854 .

After Kansas' accession to the Union, Root was elected the state's first lieutenant governor alongside Charles L. Robinson . He held this office between February 12, 1861 and January 12, 1863. He was Deputy Governor . At the beginning of the civil war he helped raise new troops for the Union army . He was also on a committee that selected officers in the Army Medical Service. Later he himself took part in the war as a doctor. After the war, Joseph Root practiced as a private doctor until 1869. In 1870 he was briefly a member of the committee formed by a congressional committee for the management of state properties. In the same year he was appointed American envoy in Chile to succeed Hugh Judson Kilpatrick . He held this office until 1873. There he helped fight a smallpox epidemic. Upon his return, he practiced as a doctor in Wyandotte County . In June 1884 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Chicago . He died in Kansas City on July 20, 1885.

Web links

• The Political Graveyard
• The lieutenant governors of Kansas
• Roots entry at the US State Department