1. John Conness was an Irish-born American businessman who served as a US Senator from California during the American Civil War and the early years of Reconstruction.
10 Facts About John Conness
1. 2.
John Conness introduced a bill to establish Yosemite National Park and voted to abolish slavery.
3.
In 1836 John Conness arrived in the United States at age 15 as an immigrant.
4.
For more than a decade on the East Coast in New York, John Conness learned to make pianofortes and worked as a merchant.
5.
John Conness emigrated to California in 1849 to join the excitement and promise of the Gold Rush.
6.
John Conness was among the thousands of "forty-niners" attracted by the Gold Rush in the Sierra Nevada, and the hundreds of thousands who quickly followed.
7.
John Conness declared that 'this is a conspiracy to murder the entire cabinet' and directed soldiers to go protect Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.
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Edwin Stanton 8.
At the beginning of Reconstruction, John Conness alienated some of his California constituents by advocating strongly for Chinese immigration and civil rights.
9.
John Conness lived there the remainder of his life, for nearly four decades.
10.
John Conness died in an insane asylum in Jamaica Plain, now part of Boston.