John Armor Bingham was an American politician who served as a Republican representative from Ohio and as the United States ambassador to Japan.
34 Facts About John Bingham
2.
John Bingham was the principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
3.
John Bingham moved west to Ohio to live with his merchant uncle Thomas after clashing with his new stepmother.
4.
John Bingham apprenticed as a printer for two years, helping to publish the Luminary, an anti-Masonic newspaper.
5.
John Bingham then returned to Pennsylvania to study at Mercer College and then studied law at Franklin College in New Athens, Harrison County, Ohio.
6.
Hugh and Thomas John Bingham were longtime abolitionists who were both active in local politics.
7.
John Bingham then returned to Cadiz, Ohio, to begin his legal and political career.
8.
An active Whig, John Bingham campaigned for President William Henry Harrison.
9.
In 1846, John Bingham won his first election as district attorney for Tuscarawas County, serving from 1846 to 1849.
10.
John Bingham thus ran for reelection in what became the 16th district.
11.
President Abraham Lincoln appointed him Judge Advocate of the Union Army with the rank of major during his hiatus from Congress, and John Bingham briefly became solicitor of the United States Court of Claims in 1865.
12.
John Bingham's judge advocate service was exceptional in the sense that he was a prosecutor or appellate reviewer in three significant military trials.
13.
John Bingham oversaw critical aspects of the trials of General Fitz John Porter in 1863, Surgeon General William Hammond in 1864 and the military commission trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators in 1864.
14.
John Bingham defeated incumbent congressman Joseph Worthington White in the next congressional election.
15.
John Bingham returned to serve in the 39th Congress, which first met on March 4,1865.
16.
In 1866, during the 39th Congress, John Bingham was appointed to a subcommittee of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction tasked with considering suffrage proposals.
17.
John Bingham submitted several versions of an amendment to the Constitution to apply the Bill of Rights to the states.
18.
Ohio ratified the Fourteenth Amendment on January 4,1867, but John Bingham continued to explain its extension of citizenship during the fall election season.
19.
John Bingham continued his career as a representative and was reelected to the 40th, 41st and 42nd Congresses.
20.
John Bingham served as chairman of the Committee on Claims from 1867 to 1869 and a member of the Committee on the Judiciary from 1869 to 1873.
21.
John Bingham responded by declaring that, unlike some individuals, he was opposed to impeaching before having testimony.
22.
On February 24,1868, Bingham voted to impeach Johnson when the House voted to do so.
23.
John Bingham was implicated in the Credit Mobilier scandal and in 1872, he lost the election.
24.
President Ulysses Grant then appointed his ally John Bingham as United States Minister to Japan, which involved a salary increase but economic responsibilities with respect to the small legation.
25.
John Bingham thus sailed with his wife and two of his three daughters to Japan.
26.
John Bingham served longer than any other minister to Japan, with his appointment spanning the terms of four Republican presidents from May 31,1873, to July 2,1885.
27.
John Bingham's successor was appointed in 1885 by newly elected Democratic president Grover Cleveland.
28.
John Bingham moved the embassy from an unsuitable location and replaced a problematic interpreter with a Presbyterian missionary from Ohio.
29.
John Bingham then managed to curtail the imperialistic ambitions of fellow Union veteran Charles Le Gendre.
30.
John Bingham came to greatly respect Japanese culture, but he presciently expressed his fear that Japan's military culture would hurt the country's development.
31.
John Bingham later negotiated return of the Shimonoseki indemnity in 1877 as well as a revision of Japan's treaty with the United States in 1879, which restored some tariff autonomy to Japan, conditioned upon other treaties with Westerners.
32.
John Bingham was a delegate to the 1888 Republican National Convention.
33.
John Bingham died in Cadiz on March 19,1900, nine years after his wife Amanda had died.
34.
John Bingham was interred next to her in the Old Cadiz Cemetery in Cadiz.