Lyman Trumbull

Infobox Senator
name=Lyman Trumbull

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width= 200px
jr/sr=United States Senator
state=Illinois
party=Democrat, Republican
term=March 4, 1855 – March 3, 1873
preceded=James Shields
succeeded=Richard J. Oglesby
date of birth=birth date|1813|10|12|mf=y
place of birth=Colchester, Connecticut, U.S.
date of death=death date and age|1896|6|25|1813|10|12|mf=y
place of death=Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
spouse=Julia Maria Janyne Trumbull
Mary Jane Ingraham Trumbull
religion=
profession=Politician, Lawyer
footnotes=

Lyman Trumbull (October 12, 1813 – June 25, 1896) was a United States Senator from Illinois during the American Civil War, and co-author of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Trumbull was born in Colchester, Connecticut. He attended Bacon Academy and was a school teacher from 1829 to 1833. After studying law, he was admitted to the bar and practiced in Greenville, Georgia until moving to Belleville, Illinois in 1837.

By 1840, he was serving in the Illinois House of Representatives and was Secretary of State from 1841 to 1843. From 1848 to 1853 he was a justice on the Supreme Court of Illinois. Although elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1854, he was elected to serve in the U.S. Senate before he could take his seat. He served from 1855 through 1873, during which time he claimed party affiliations with the Democrats, the Republicans, the Liberal Republicans, and finally the Democrats again. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee (1861-1872), he co-authored the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited all kinds of slavery in the United States.

During President Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial, Trumbull and six other Republican senators [These seven senators were William Pitt Fessenden, Joseph S. Fowler, James W. Grimes, John B. Henderson, Lyman Trumbull, Peter G. Van Winkle, and Edmund G. Ross.] were disturbed by how the proceedings had been manipulated in order to give a one-sided presentation of the evidence. [ [http://law.jrank.org/pages/13490/Andrew-Johnson-Trial.html "Andrew Johnson Trial: The Consciences of Seven Republicans Save Johnson".] ] All seven broke party ranks and defied public opinion, voting for acquittal in a principled act of political suicide. [ [http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/john.htm "The Trial of Andrew Johnson, 1868".] ] None was reelected.

In 1873, Trumbull set up a law practice in Chicago and remained in private practice except for a brief period when he ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor (as a Democrat) in 1880. During his explorations in the west John Wesley Powell named Mt. Trumbull (and now the Mt. Trumbull Wilderness) in northwestern Arizona after the senator. The Lyman Trumbull House is a National Historic Landmark.

References

Further reading

White, Horace. "The Life of Lyman Trumbull" (biography), Published by Houghton Mifflin, 1913. [http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/824101 OCLC 824101]

External links

* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6654628 Lyman Trumbull] at Find A Grave
* [http://www.ourcampaigns.com/CandidateDetail.html?CandidateID=9078 Trumbull at OurCampaigns.com]