Lucius Benedict Peck

Lucius Benedict Peck

Lucius Benedict Peck (born November 17, 1802 in Waterbury , Vermont , †  December 28, 1866 in Lowell , Massachusetts ) was an American lawyer and politician . Between 1847 and 1851 he represented the fourth constituency of the state of Vermont in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Lucius Peck received a good education. Between 1823 and 1824 he attended the US Military Academy at West Point . However, he had to quit his studies there due to illness. After studying law in Montpelier and being admitted to the bar in 1825, he began to work in this profession in Barre . Peck also became the first sheriff in Washington County and was brigadier general of the state militia.

Peck became a member of the Democratic Party . In 1831 he was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives. In 1832 he moved his residence and his law firm to Montpelier. In 1839 he was a member of a commission to review the laws of his state. In the congressional elections of 1846 he was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the fourth district of Vermont , where he succeeded Paul Dillingham on March 4, 1847 . After a re-election in 1848, he was able to complete two terms in Congress until March 3, 1851 . Since 1849 he was chairman of the craftsmen's committee ( Committee on Manufacturers ). His time in Congress saw the end of the Mexican-American War and the considerable expansion of the United States' territory in the southwest and west of the country made possible by the peace treaty.

In 1850, Peck renounced another candidacy for Congress. Instead, he ran unsuccessfully for governor of Vermont. After that he worked as a lawyer again. In 1852 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore , where Franklin Pierce was nominated as the party's presidential candidate. Between 1853 and 1857, Peck was a federal attorney for the Vermont district. From 1858 he worked for the Vermont and Canada Railroad , whose president he became in 1859. He held this office until his death in 1866. Lucius Peck had been married to Martha Day since 1832 and the couple had one daughter.

Web links

• Lucius Benedict Peck in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Lucius Benedict Peck in the database of Find a Grave (English)