Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart

Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart ( born April 2, 1807 in Staunton, Virginia, † February 13, 1891 ibid ) was an American politician ( Whig Party ), who belonged to the cabinet of U.S. President Millard Fillmore as interior minister.

Life

Alexander Stuart, son of a judge Scotch-Irish descent, first attended the College of William & Mary, before 1828, he graduated from the University of Virginia. After studying law, he was admitted in the same year to the bar and started to work as a lawyer in Staunton. He was married to Frances C. Payton, who brought eight children into the world.

Political career

1836 began his political career with election to the House of Representatives from Virginia, where he remained until 1839. The following year, the election to the U.S. House of Representatives as a member of the Whigs took place. After two years in office and a failed re-election attempt Stuart retired in March 1843 from the Congress.

President Fillmore appointed Alexander Stuart in 1850 as successor to the retiring after only eleven days tenure Interior Minister Thomas McKennan in his cabinet. Stuart took office on on 14 September 1850 and was in his ministry a culture of political patronage ago. Although he did not succeed, because fundamentally change anything, but at least he could out of this system, the resulting chaos in the administrative area curb.

With the end of Millard Fillmore's presidency in March 1853 also Stuart retired from the government. He served as a member of the Senate of Virginia from 1857 to 1861 His next public office. During this time, the United States contributed opposed the Civil War, in which Stuart was a delegate of the Secession Convention of Virginia in 1861. After the founding of the Confederate States, he traveled in April 1861 as a member of a delegation of the South to Washington and met with President Abraham Lincoln. This confirmed its plan to hold on to the federal forts in the South, after which Stuart and his companions returned to Richmond.

After the end of the Civil War Alexander Stuart in 1865 again elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but the discharge of its mandate, was it not permitted. In 1870, he stood before the Committee of Nine, which created the conditions for the resumption of Virginia to the Union. Between 1874 and 1877 he was again in the House of Representatives in his home state.

Another Journey

Also took over in 1874 Stuart the post of Provost at the University of Virginia, which he held until 1882. He also served as president of the Virginia Historical Society and worked as a lawyer in parallel again. Alexander Stuart died in February 1891, as the last surviving member of the Fillmore Cabinet.