David Davis (Supreme Court justice)

David Davis (born 9 March 1815 to Cecilton, Cecil County, Maryland, † June 26, 1886 in Bloomington, Illinois ) was an American lawyer and politician. He was from 1862 to 1877 Supreme Court of the United States and later from 1877 to 1883 Member of the Senate of the United States.

Life

Davis first visited public schools in Maryland and completed his education in 1832 at Kenyon College in Ohio from. This was followed by studies of law in Lenox (Massachusetts ) and finally at Yale.

In 1835 he was then in Pekin (Illinois ) practiced as a lawyer, but moved in 1836 to Bloomington. Davis was elected in 1844 in the House of Representatives from Illinois and was a 1847 Constituent Assembly of the State of. From 1848 to 1862, he then served as a judge in Illinois. He organized the presidential campaign of Abraham Lincoln. 1862 Lincoln appointed him to the Supreme Court. For the Court, he resigned in favor of his further political career as a senator in 1877.

Already for the presidential election in 1872, he had let himself be within the Liberal Republican Party set up for the candidacy for the presidency, but can not prevail against Horace Greeley within the party, the presidential candidate was. In 1877 he was elected as an independent candidate in the U.S. Senate. He held office from March 4, 1877 to March 3, 1883 as a senator and was temporarily President of the Senate pro tempore. In 1882, he did not present himself for re-election and retired to the time as a senator from the public gaze.

Davis died in June 1886. His cousin Henry Winter Davis was also politically active and sat for Maryland House of Representatives of the United States. Davis ' house in Bloomington was recorded in 1972 when David Davis Mansion in the National Register of Historic Places and is since 1975 a National Historic Landmark.