Israel Washburn, Jr.

Israel Washburn, Jr.
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Maine's 5th district
In office
March 4, 1853  January 1, 1861
Preceded by Ephraim K. Smart
Succeeded by Stephen Coburn
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Maine's 6th district
In office
March 4, 1851  March 3, 1853
Preceded by Charles Stetson
Succeeded by Thomas J. D. Fuller
29th Governor of Maine
In office
January 2, 1861  January 7, 1863
Preceded by Lot M. Morrill
Succeeded by Abner Coburn
Personal details
Born June 6, 1813
Livermore, Maine
Died May 12, 1883 (aged 69)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Political party Whig
Republican
Profession Law
Religion Universalist[1]

Israel Washburn, Jr. (June 6, 1813 – May 12, 1883) was a United States political figure. Originally a member of the Whig Party, he later became a founding member of the Republican Party.

In 1854, angry over the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Washburn called a meeting of 30 members of the US House of Representatives to discuss forming what became the Republican Party. Republican gatherings had taken place in Wisconsin and Michigan earlier in the year, but Washburn's meeting was the first in the U.S. Capital, and among U.S. Congressmen. He was probably also the first politician of his rank to use the term "Republican", in a speech at Bangor, Maine on June 2, 1854.[2] Washburn represented the district which included Bangor and the neighboring town of Orono, Maine, where he had his home and law office.

Born in 1813 in Livermore, Maine to a prominent political family, Washburn organized the Maine Republican Party from 1854 onward. He was the 29th Governor of Maine from 1861 to 1863. During the American Civil War, he helped recruit Federal troops from Maine. In 1862, he attended the Loyal War Governors' Conference in Altoona, Pennsylvania, which ultimately gave Abraham Lincoln support for his Emancipation Proclamation.

Washburn had been an unsuccessful candidate for the Thirty-first Congress in 1848; elected as a Whig to the Thirty-second and Thirty-third Congresses, as a Republican to the Thirty-fourth, Thirty-fifth, and Thirty-sixth Congresses and served from March 4, 1851, to January 1, 1861, when he resigned, having been elected Governor. He was Chairman of the Committee on Elections (Thirty-fourth Congress).

Washburn was the brother of Elihu B. Washburne, Cadwallader C. Washburn, William D. Washburn, Samuel Benjamin Washburn, and Charles Ames Washburn. He died in 1883 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is buried at the Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor, Maine.

The town of Washburn, Maine is named in his honor.

Notes

  1. http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/universalists/Israel-Washburn-Jr.php
  2. William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party (Oxford, 1987), p. 89

References

External links

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by
Charles Stetson
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Maine's 6th congressional district

March 4, 1851 March 3, 1853
Succeeded by
Thomas J. D. Fuller
Preceded by
Ephraim K. Smart
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Maine's 5th congressional district

March 4, 1853 January 1, 1861
Succeeded by
Stephen Coburn
Political offices
Preceded by
Lot M. Morrill
Governor of Maine
1861–1863
Succeeded by
Abner Coburn
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