42 Facts About Lyman Trumbull

Lyman Trumbull was an American lawyer, judge, and politician who represented the state of Illinois in the United States Senate from 1855 to 1873.

Lyman Trumbull served as the Illinois Secretary of State from 1841 to 1843 and as a justice of the Illinois Supreme Court from 1848 to 1853.

In 1855, Lyman Trumbull was elected to the Senate as the choice of the anti-slavery faction of the Illinois legislature, defeating Abraham Lincoln.

Lyman Trumbull broke with the Republicans in 1870 and was a candidate for the presidency at the 1872 Liberal Republican convention.

Lyman Trumbull was born in Colchester, Connecticut on October 12,1813, to Connecticut's leading political family, which included three Governors and had arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from Newcastle upon Tyne in 1639.

Lyman Trumbull's mother, Elizabeth Mather, was a member of the Mather family of prominent New England Congregationalist clergymen including Increase Mather and Cotton Mather.

Lyman Trumbull was the seventh of eleven children, eight of whom survived into adulthood.

Lyman Trumbull attended Bacon Academy in Colchester, where he studied a traditional course in math, Latin, and Greek.

In 1840, Lyman Trumbull was elected from St Clair County to the Illinois House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party.

Lyman Trumbull only served briefly in the House, where his colleagues included Abraham Lincoln and his future Senate colleague William Alexander Richardson.

In 1841, Stephen A Douglas resigned as Secretary of State of Illinois to become a member of the Illinois Supreme Court, and Governor Thomas Carlin appointed Trumbull to succeed him.

Lyman Trumbull remained Secretary of State for two years, devoting most of his time to his legal practice while his brother Benjamin cared for the routine duties of the office.

In 1842, the Bank had suspended payments after the value of its notes had fallen to fifty cents on the dollar, and Lyman Trumbull considered repeated efforts to legalize the suspension futile and disgraceful.

Lyman Trumbull's resignation divided the Illinois Democratic Party, with the Trumbull faction including Virgil Hickox, Samuel H Treat, Ebenezer Peck, and Mason Brayman.

Lyman Trumbull then returned to Belleville to practice law and marry Julia Jayne, a physician's daughter and a friend of Mary Todd Lincoln.

In February 1846, Lyman Trumbull was a candidate for Governor of Illinois at the Democratic state convention.

Lyman Trumbull attributed his defeat to Governor Ford, who favored John Calhoun of Chicago.

Lyman Trumbull had still not yet received more than eleven votes.

When he entered the Senate in December 1855, Lyman Trumbull's credentials were challenged by Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, who argued that Lyman Trumbull was not eligible to be elected under the Illinois State Constitution, which barred state judges from holding any other office.

On March 5,1856, Lyman Trumbull was seated by a vote of 35 to 8.

On March 12,1856, Lyman Trumbull delivered a speech in the Senate on the civil violence in Kansas.

Lyman Trumbull's speeches won praise from his colleagues Charles Sumner and Salmon P Chase and served to dispel doubts from anti-slavery Lincoln men in Illinois.

In June 1856, at Lincoln's urging, Lyman Trumbull attended the first Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

Lyman Trumbull contributed $2 to a fund to defray Dred Scott's legal fees.

Lyman Trumbull took an active part in the strenuous campaign, calculated to exploit Douglas's poor health and reputation for inconsistency.

Consistent with that position, Lyman Trumbull delivered a speech in the Senate opposing the Crittenden Compromise.

Lyman Trumbull advised Lincoln, both personally and in his capacity as Senator, on appointments in Illinois and to his cabinet.

Lyman Trumbull advised against the appointment of Simon Cameron as Secretary of War, which ultimately ended in scandal for the Lincoln administration.

At the special session of Congress which Lincoln called on July 4,1861, to address the secession crisis, Lyman Trumbull was elected by his fellow senators as chair of the Committee on the Judiciary, a role he would hold for the remainder of his years in the Senate.

Lyman Trumbull remained a loyal supporter of the Union war effort throughout the Civil War.

In 1863, following the Union defeat at Fredericksburg, Lyman Trumbull was one of a committee of Republican Senators who requested the resignation of Secretary Seward after private comments Seward had made earlier in the war, criticizing the "most vehement opponents" of slavery, were leaked.

Lyman Trumbull spoke at length in its favor, arguing there could be no doubt that the Civil War originated in the institution of slavery and the hostilities between its proponents and opponents.

However, Lyman Trumbull did join the radical Republicans in arguing that under an expansive reading of the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress could bar laws and practices, including sharecropping or racial discrimination, which amounted to or threatened the reintroduction of slavery.

On January 5,1866, Lyman Trumbull introduced two major pieces of Reconstruction legislation: the Second Freedman's Bureau Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Lyman Trumbull's bill proposed citizenship be extended to all persons of African descent born in the United States and banned discrimination on account of race, color, or previous condition of slavery.

Debate over the bill focused on whether Congress had constitutional authority to pass the law, which Lyman Trumbull justified under Section 2 of the newly ratified Thirteenth Amendment, arguing:.

Lyman Trumbull worked in private practice except for a brief period when he ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1880.

In January 1883, Lyman Trumbull was given a seat of honor at the dedication of the Pullman Arcade Theatre in George Pullman's company town.

Lyman Trumbull was part of the three-member legal team, which included Clarence Darrow, when their habeas corpus case In re Debs was heard by the US Supreme Court in 1895.

Lyman Trumbull died at his home in Chicago on June 25,1896, and was buried at Oak Woods Cemetery.

In 1871, Senator Lyman Trumbull spoke in favor of the establishment of the Park and in favor of the preservation of natural beauty against the threat of private ownership.

Lyman Trumbull's house in Alton, the Lyman Trumbull House, is a National Historic Landmark.