Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson

Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson

Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson (born March 19, 1812 in Kingston , Roane County , Tennessee , †  August 24, 1873 in Knoxville , Tennessee) was an American politician . Between 1859 and 1861 he represented the state of Tennessee in the US House of Representatives .

Career

After elementary school, Thomas Nelson attended East Tennessee College , now the University of Tennessee, until 1828 . After a subsequent law degree and his admission to the bar in 1832, he began to work in Washington County in his new profession. He was twice elected attorney for the Tennessee First Judicial District. In the 1830s he became a member of the Whig Party . He supported their candidates for political office at all levels of government. In 1851 he was appointed American envoy to the Chinese Empire . He declined this appointment for financial reasons.

After his party broke up in the mid-1850s, Nelson joined the short-lived Opposition Party . In the congressional elections of 1858 he was elected as their candidate in the first constituency of Tennessee in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC , where he succeeded Albert Galiton Watkins on March 4, 1859 . There he stood up during the debates about a possible exit of the southern states - including his home state Tennessee - vehemently against secession . Nelson was a staunch supporter of the Union. After being re-elected as a Unionist in 1860, he could have spent another term in Congress until March 3, 1863. On his way to the capital, where he wanted to start his second term in Congress, he was by agents of the Confederacy captured and initially in Richmond ( Virginia imprisoned). He was later released on honor and placed under house arrest in his home town of Tennessee more or less until the arrival of the Union troops in 1863. He then went to Knoxville under the protection of the Union Army. There he campaigned for a quick re-entry of Tennessee into the Union. Despite his support for the Union, he was an opponent of the slave emancipation of President Abraham Lincoln .

After the Civil War , Nelson became a staunch opponent of the radical Republicans . In 1866 he was a delegate to the Union Convention in Philadelphia . Then he became a member of the Democratic Party . In 1868 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in New York . During the impeachment trial run by the radical Republicans against Andrew Johnson , whom Nelson had known since his youth in Tennessee, he was one of the president's defense lawyers. Thomas Nelson was a judge on the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1870 and 1871 . He resigned to defend his son David, who shot and killed James Holt Clanton , an Alabama attorney and former general in the Confederation Army. Nelson successfully pleaded for self-defense and was able to obtain an acquittal for his son, who met with great rejection and outrage in the southern states. He died of cholera on August 24, 1873 .

Web links

• Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson in the database of Find a Grave (English)