Josiah Turner Junior

Josiah Turner junior (born December 27, 1821 in Hillsborough , North Carolina , † October 26, 1901 ibid) was an American lawyer , newspaperman and politician . He also served as an officer in the Confederate Army .

Career

Josiah Turner junior, eldest son of Eliza Estes Evans (1790–1873) and Josiah Turner senior (1783–1874), was born about seven years after the end of the British-American War in Hillsborough, Orange County , and grew up there. His father, a sheriff and large landowners in Orange County, sent him to the Caldwell Institute in Greensboro ( Guilford County ) and then for a year at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill . After two years of law school in Hillsborough he received in 1845 about his license to practice law. His student days were overshadowed by the economic crisis of 1837 and the following years by the Mexican-American War . Turner established himself as a successful lawyer, likely due to his father's influence, as well as his own keen mind and tongue. In 1856 he married Sophie Chester Devereaux (1833-1880) from Raleigh . The couple had at least four sons and one daughter: Thomas Devereux (1857–1898), Chester D. (1858–1929), Katherine Johnson (1860–1861), Devereux (1862–1925) and Watkins M. (1863–1885) .

Turner also pursued a political career. He joined the Whig Party at that time . He was elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1852 and re-elected in 1854. He suffered a defeat when he ran for the North Carolina Senate in 1856, but was elected to the Senate in 1858 and re-elected in 1860. Turner was an opponent of the North Carolina secession. After the outbreak of the civil war he set up a cavalry company for the Confederate States and served there as their captain . He was seriously wounded in 1862. As a result, he retired from active service and then returned his officer license. In 1863 he was elected as a peace candidate and opponent of the administration of Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) in the second Confederate Congress . He was so strongly against conscription, conscription, taxes, and the suspension of habeas corpus that he was counted among the extremists in Congress. In November 1865 he was elected to the US Congress as a former opponent of secession , but his seats and others were stripped of their seats at that time. He was then appointed director of the state-owned North Carolina Railroad in 1866 and 1867, and elected its president in 1867.

At the end of the Civil War, Turner took decisive action against all but those who deviated minimally from the old order. When the military administration was enforced in 1867, he became a vicious and uncompromising enemy of concessional reconstruction . In late 1868, Turner acquired the Raleigh Sentinel on a loan from industrialist George William Swepson (1819-1883) and made it the leading conservative newspaper in the state. He concentrated all of his energies on putting down the Republican administration of Governor William Woods Holden (1818-1892). In this context, he made weakly founded allegations of fraud and dictatorship, ridiculed its supporters for their actual or imagined weaknesses, often with hideous-sounding nicknames, and supported every conservative opposition institution, including the Ku Klux Klan . In return, Holden's North Carolina newspaper named Standard Turner as the leader of the Ku Klux Klan. However, there is no record that he was ever more than an advocate for this institution. Turner was a master of polemical journalism when the style was highly fashionable at the time. Other newspapers followed the Sentinel for guidance, though they did not quote directly that they contributed to the overthrow of Governor Holden in 1870. This was all the more pleasant for Turner, since he was briefly captured by the governor's militia earlier in the year was taken, but was released through the fault of a commanding officer.

However, his victory proved his undoing. As a result of his unpredictability and his destructive temperament, he was always part of the opposition from birth. His conservative colleagues distrusted him and he turned against them. Turner turned down the Congressional nomination in 1872 because he apparently expected the nomination for the US Senate , but it never came. In 1874 he was denied another congressional nomination. As a delegate to the Conservative Constituent Assembly of 1875, he surpassed his colleagues in condemning past republican actions. Despite his previous popularity and large circulation, he sold his newspaper a year later due to debt. In his 1876 candidacy for the North Carolina Senate, he suffered a defeat to a Republican. In 1878 he ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate for the US Congress. Instead, he was elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1878, but was later expelled for personal attacks on his colleagues. After another failed congressional candidacy in 1884, he flirted with populism in the 1890s and eventually became a Republican. Turner was a member of the Episcopal Church . He died in his Hillsborough home in 1901 and was then buried in the graveyard of St. Matthew's Church .

A portrait of him hangs in the North Carolina Collection in Chapel Hill.

Web links

• Josiah Turner Jr. in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Josiah Turner junior at The Political Graveyard
• Josiah Turner Junior on the ncpedia.org website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eliza Estes Evans Turner in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 29, 2015.
2. ^ Josiah Turner Sr. in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 29, 2015.
3. ^ Sophia Chester Devereux Turner in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 29, 2015.
4. ^ Thomas Devereux Turner in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 29, 2015.
5. ↑ Chester D. Turner in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 29, 2015.
6. ↑ Katherine Johnson Turner in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 29, 2015.
7. ^ Devereux Turner in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 29, 2015.
8. ^ Watkins M. Turner in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 29, 2015.
9. ↑ George William Swepson on the ncpedia website
10. ↑ George William Swepson on the website of ncccha.blogspot.de