Lee Slater Overman

Lee Slater Overman

Lee Slater Overman (* 3. January 1854 in Salisbury , Rowan County , North Carolina ; †  12. December 1930 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician of the Democratic Party . He represented the state of North Carolina in the US Senate for 27 years .

Lee Overman was the son-in-law of US Senator Augustus Summerfield Merrimon (1830-1892). After graduating from Trinity College , later Duke University , in 1874 Overman worked for two years as a teacher and between 1877 and 1879 as private secretary to Governor Zebulon Vance . At the same time he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1878, after which he began to practice in his hometown of Salisbury. He later became President of the North Carolina Railroad Company and Salisbury Savings Bank, and served on the governing boards of the University of North Carolina and Duke University.

Overman was politically active for the first time in 1883 as a member of the House of Representatives from North Carolina . He was a member of this group four more times in 1885, 1887, 1893 (as speaker ) and 1899. In 1900 he was the elector for North Carolina in the election for US President , although the victorious Democrat William Jennings Bryan in Overman's home state was defeated by the Republican William McKinley .

In 1895 Overman ran for the first time for the US Senate, but was unsuccessful. It was not until 1903 that he succeeded in entering Congress , to which he belonged after being re-elected four times until his death on December 12, 1930. In 1914 he was the first Senator from North Carolina to be directly elected by the people after the 17th Amendment came into force ; the state legislature had done this beforehand. During his tenure in the Senate, Overman chaired various committees, including the Committee on Rules . In 1918 he was the draftsman of the Overman Act , a piece of legislation that gave President Woodrow Wilson extensive powers to coordinate the activities of government agencies in wartime.

In the Second World War that was Liberty Ship SS Lee S. Overman named after him.

Web links

• Lee Slater Overman in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Lee Slater Overman in the database of Find a Grave (English)