Stephen Benton Elkins

Stephen Benton Elkins

Stephen Benton Elkins (born September 26, 1841 in New Lexington , Perry County , Ohio , †  January 4, 1911 in Washington, DC ) was an American industrialist and politician . He was Minister of War from 1891 to 1893 . He was also a delegate of the New Mexico Territory in Congress and later a senator for the state of West Virginia .

Career

Elkins moved his family to Westport , Missouri , in the mid 1840s . He received his PhD from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1860 and then taught at a school in Cass County .

Elkins joined the Union Army as captain of the Militia of the 77th Missouri Infantry. However, with the help of a former student, the later outlaw Cole Younger , he escaped the Quantrill's Raiders , the partisan force of William Clark Quantrill . He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1864. He then crossed the prairie in 1864 to enter the New Mexico Territory . There he joined a law firm in Mesilla . In 1864 and 1865 he was elected as a member of the territorial House of Representatives. Thereafter, Elkins was appointed District Attorney for a term from 1866 to 1867. During this time he married his first wife Sarah Jacobs in 1866.

From 1866 to 1867 Elkins was a district attorney, 1867 attorney general ( Attorney General ) and from 1867 to 1870 federal attorney in the Territory of New Mexico. He was elected to the 43rd Congress of the United States in 1872 as the Republican Party delegate for the Territory and re-elected in 1874. His term of office lasted from March 4, 1873 to March 3, 1877. He did not run for election in 1876. In 1875 he met and married his second wife, Hallie Davis. In addition to his practice as a lawyer, he founded the Santa Fe National Bank and was its president. He pursued extensive business interests in land, railways, mining and money.

Around 1890 he moved to Elkins , West Virginia, a town he had earlier founded. There he was very interested in the extraction of natural raw materials (coal) and the development of industry (rail transport). President Benjamin Harrison called him Secretary of War to his cabinet : he served from December 17, 1891 to March 5, 1893. One of his goals was to reintroduce the rank of lieutenant general ( Lieutenant General ) and to increase the salaries of officers , at least those without a patent, in order to improve the quality of the service. He also expanded the Division of Military Information's espionage activities .

After serving as Secretary of War, he was elected to the US Senate in 1895 to represent West Virginia . He was re-elected in 1901 and 1907, and his term began March 4, 1895. In the Senate, he was Chairman of the Committee on the Geological Survey for the 56th and 59th Congressional terms and from the 57th to the end of the In the 61st Congressional term he was a member of the Committee on International Trade . Elkins served as senator in Washington until his death on January 4, 1911. He was buried in Maplewood Cemetery , Elkins.

He was the father of Davis Elkins , who succeeded him in the Senate.

Web links

Commons : Stephen Benton Elkins  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Stephen Benton Elkins in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Biography in the United States Army
• Stephen Benton Elkins in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)