| Name |
John B. Henderson [1] |
| Prefix |
Senator |
| Born |
1826 |
Danville, Pittsylvania, Virginia  [1] |
| Gender |
Male |
| Political |
1848 |
Missouri [2] |
| to the legislature from Pike County |
| Political |
1860 [2] |
| a delegate to the Charleston convention, where he supported Douglas |
Upon his defeat for Congress in Aug. 1860, Mr. Henderson became a candidate for elector on the Douglas ticket, to be voted for in November, and his speeches in that behalf were exceptionally strong pleas as against the radicalism of the hour.
And now a time came when Henderson and every one else were drawn in to the vortex of politics. Upon the election of Lincoln, South Carolina seceded. Secession meant war. He was chosen a member of the convention that was called to take action upon the question of secession some time known as the "Long Parliament' of Missouri. In that convention he was a leader and a conservative. He was a Southern man, a Democrat, and slave-holder. His father was a Tennessean his mother, a Virginian himself a Missourian, but his mind was ever eminently judicial, and he could see nothing but ruin for the weaker side in a war such as that which was impending. And so, like John G. Carlisle, a much younger man in the Kentucky legislature, he opposed secession with all the force of his character and all the logic of his mind. It was such men as Henderson and Carlisle who saved to the Union Missouri and Kentucky.
When the war of minds gave place to the war of swords, Carlisle remained a war Democrat, but Henderson joined the Republican party and was appointed Brigadier General in the state militia. It was the great war Senate of which he was a member.
|
| Political |
1862 [1, 3] |
| elected Senator from Missouri |
He took his seat in the U. S. Senate, Jan. 29, 1862, when less than thirty-six years of age. His committee assignments show the esteem in which they held him: Finance, Foreign Relations, the very aristocracy of the Senate. Here he sat in council with Fessenden and Sherman, devising ways and means, here he consorted with Sumner and King to steer the craft of state clear of foreign shoals.
Mr. Henderson was a slave-holder, but like thousand and thousands of other Southern men, immense numbers of them in the Confederate army, he would have welcomed gradual emancipation as a solution and as settlement of the slavery question. With Lincoln he believed that sudden emancipation would work injuriously to both races; but to show how little masters of situations are even the strongest men in times of revolution, Mr. Henderson was later author of the thirteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution, which abolished slavery and abolished it instantly. The sword, however, had made the long continuance of the institution impracticable.
|
| Political |
1868 [3] |
| a 'not guilty' vote upon the impeachment of President Johnson |
It is possible, barely possible, that, had Lincoln lived his plan would have prevailed, and the country would have escaped its most doleful and most infamous chapter - the carpet bag regime. Henderson, Trumbull, Doolittle, Foster and other Republican senators were in accord with Mr. Lincoln, but the assassination of the President devolved the responsibility upon another, the radicals triumphed and the rest is history. Mr. Henderson was one of the famous seven Republican senators who voted 'not guilty' upon the impeachment charges of President Johnson. Associated with him were Fessenden, Trumbull, Grimes, Ross, Fowler, Van Winkle. Johnson's trial before the Senate in 1868 resulted in his acquittal, as the President's enemies mustered one less than the neccessary two-thirds vote.
|
| Died |
Yes, date unknown |
| Person ID |
I116590 |
If the Legends Are True... |
| Last Modified |
22 Sep 2014 |
1826 - Yes, date unknown
