Orville Hickman Browning

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Orville Hickman Browning

Orville Hickman Browning (born February 10, 1806 in Cynthiana , Kentucky , †  August 10, 1881 in Quincy , Illinois ) was an American politician who held the post of Interior Minister in the cabinet of US President Andrew Johnson .

Life

After attending Augusta College , Browning studied law and was inducted into the bar in 1831. That same year he set up practice in Quincy as a lawyer. In 1832 he joined a volunteer regiment from Illinois that fought in the Black Hawk War . He made a name for himself as a lawyer in 1844 when he successfully defended five men charged with the murder of Joseph Smith , founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .

politics

Orville Browning was politically active for the first time from 1836 to 1843 as a member of the Illinois Senate . In 1850 and 1852 he ran as Whig for a seat in the US House of Representatives , but failed each. When a meeting against the Kansas-Nebraska Act was held in Bloomington in May 1856 , Browning attended as a delegate; at this convention the foundation for the establishment of the Republican Party was laid.

Browning then joined the Republicans and was a member of this party on June 26, 1861 US Senator for Illinois; he succeeded the late Stephen A. Douglas . He was denied re-election, so he resigned from the Senate on January 12, 1963. President Abraham Lincoln , whose personal friends included Browning, reportedly planned to appoint him to succeed Caleb Blood Smith as Home Secretary; but that did not happen.

It was not until Lincoln's successor Andrew Johnson brought Browning into his cabinet on September 1, 1866 , after the previous Secretary of the Interior James Harlan resigned from office due to political differences with the president. Browning was a member of the cabinet until the end of Johnson's tenure on March 4, 1869, and temporarily headed the Justice Department for a short time . He returned to Illinois, where he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1869 and subsequently worked as a lawyer again.

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personal data
SURNAME Browning, Orville Hickman
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1806
PLACE OF BIRTH Cynthiana , Kentucky
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1881
Place of death Quincy , Illinois