Benjamin Franklin Whittemore
Benjamin Franklin Whittemore ( born May 18, 1824 in Malden, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, † January 25, 1894 in Montvale, Massachusetts ) was an American politician. Between 1868 and 1870 he represented the state of South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Career
Benjamin Whittemore attended the public schools in Worcester and then Amherst College. Until 1859 he worked in retail. After studying theology, he was ordained in 1859 as minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. During the Civil War he served as a military chaplain in various units of the Union Army.
After the war, Whittemore settled in Darlington (South Carolina). There he began a political career as a member of the Republican Party. In 1867 he was a delegate at a meeting to revise the State Constitution. In the same year he became chairman of his party in South Carolina. 1868 Whittemore was sitting in the State Senate. In the same year he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in part in Chicago, was nominated on the Ulysses S. Grant as a presidential candidate.
After the state of South Carolina in 1868 again was allowed to ask Congress representatives, Whittemore was the first electoral district of South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC selected. There he took on 18 July 1868 the seat, the John McQueen had on 21 December 1860, after the withdrawal of South Carolina from the Union, abandoned. In the regular congressional elections of 1868 he was confirmed in his mandate. He could complete a full term in Congress until March 3, 1871. Meanwhile, allegations have been made for its practices in the nomination of cadets for various military academies against him but. This led to an investigation into the incidents. Then put Whittemore on February 24, 1870 from his office after he had been officially censured by Congress. Nevertheless, Whittemore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives again in the by-election; there but his seat was denied on June 18, 1870.
In 1877 Benjamin Whittemore was again elected to the Senate of South Carolina. He then returned to Massachusetts, where he settled in Woburn. There he worked as a newspaper publisher. He died on January 25, 1894 in Montvale and was buried in Woburn.