- James G. Berret
James G. Berret (1815 – 1901) was an American politician who served as a
Maryland state legislator from 1837 to 1839 and as Mayor of Washington City,District of Columbia , from 1858 to 1861, when he was forced to resign from office after being jailed by the Lincoln administration forsedition .Berret was born in
Carroll County, Maryland in 1815. In 1836, at the age of 21, he was elected to theMaryland state legislature , where he served two one-year terms from 1837 to 1839. Upon leaving the legislature he was appointed to an office in theU.S. Treasury by PresidentMartin Van Buren He served in the Treasury until 1853, when heFranklin Pierce appointed himPostmaster of the District of Columbia. [ [http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/Education/Tours/WalkingTour_Mayors.pdf Belva Lockwood And The 'Way Of The World' ] ] He served on the inaugural committee for PresidentsJames Buchanan andAbraham Lincoln .In 1858, Berret was nominated as the mayoral candidate for the Anti-Know-Nothing Party, a coalition of
political parties that had been formed in 1854 as an opposition to the Know-Nothings' electoral successes in the city. However, by 1858, the Know-Nothings were a spent force, and the U.S. political landscape was such that the Republicans, who had once been a part of the Anti-Know-Nothing coalition, now stood independently from it as an opposition to President Buchanan and the Supreme Court's decision in "Dred Scott v. Sandford ". Thus Berret was pitted againstRichard Wallach , theU.S. Marshal for the District; both men were of equal popularity, means, and political reputation, but on Election Day Berret won by 680 votes.The election sparked a fierce rivalry between Wallach and Berret, enough so that when Berret defeated Wallach again in the 1860 contest by only 24 votes, Wallach published editorials in every Washington newspaper charging Bettet with massive fraud in both elections. [http://books.google.com/books?id=ZUHrL7tQVS8C&pg=PA195&lpg=PA195&dq=%22richard+wallach%22+dc&source=web&ots=xEW-ZYtHSI&sig=PAdOxsWzCeU2X_uPTwfmpXhENIY#PPA200,M1 Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Vol. 21, p.200]
With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the Republicans in the
U.S. Congress pushed through legislation that required all public officers in Union territory to take oaths of allegiance to theUnited States . When Berret refused, insisting that his oath as mayor of the nation'scapital should suffice, Secretary of StateWilliam H. Seward had him arrested, jailed in theOld Capitol Prison , then sent toFort Lafayette ,New York . Three weeks later, when no evidence of collaboration with the enemy had surfaced, Seward had Berret released and returned to Washington — on the condition that he immediately resign as mayor. Berret telegraphed his resignation to the Washington City Councils, who had already elected Wallach to replace him. [http://books.google.com/books?id=ZUHrL7tQVS8C&pg=PA195&lpg=PA195&dq=%22richard+wallach%22+dc&source=web&ots=xEW-ZYtHSI&sig=PAdOxsWzCeU2X_uPTwfmpXhENIY#PPA200,M1 Columbia Historical Society, Vol. 21, pp.209-11]Berret eventually became friends with Lincoln, although he declined when the President offered to appoint him commissioner of the emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia. In 1872, however,
Ulysses S. Grant nominated him to the board of police commissioners [ [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(ej020109)) Senate Executive Journal -FRIDAY, December 13, 1872 ] ] , which he accepted. He would later serve on another Presidential inaugural committee, this time forGrover Cleveland . Berret died in 1901 [ [http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/Education/Tours/WalkingTour_Mayors.pdf Belva Lockwood And The 'Way Of The World' ] ] .References
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