James Speed
James Speed ( born March 11, 1812 Jefferson County, Kentucky, † June 25, 1887 in Louisville, Kentucky) was an American lawyer and politician who among U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson as Minister of Justice ( Attorney General ) officiated.
Family, study and career
Speed was a descendant of the English cartographer John Speed . His brother Joshua Fry Speed was the closest friend of future President Abraham Lincoln. He himself studied as a son of a judge law at Transylvania University in Lexington. 1833 was admitted to the bar in Louisville.
In 1856 he was appointed professor of law at the University of Louisville, has taught at the to 1858 and again from 1872 to 1879.
Political career
Politicians in Kentucky and the Civil War
In 1847 he began his political career as a member of the House of Representatives from Kentucky, in 1849 to represent the interests of the Whig party. As an opponent of slavery and advocates of equality of slaves failed in 1849 his candidacy for the Constituent Assembly of Kentucky. From 1851 to 1854 he was a member of the City Council of Louisville and two years of which its chairman.
Before the outbreak of the Civil War, he became deeply for the fate of Kentucky in the Union, and was at times also commander of the home guard in the state. As leader of the pro- Union forces in 1861, he was elected to the Senate from Kentucky and brought as such in 1862 introduced a bill which provided for the expropriation of the assets of supporters of the Confederacy.
Minister of Justice under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson
On December 2, 1864 he was appointed U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, with whom he was a friend from his youth, as the successor of Attorney GeneralEdward Bates in his cabinet. After the assassination of Lincoln on April 15, 1865, he remained under his successor, Andrew Johnson in this office.
After the assassination of Lincoln, he joined the Radical Republican Movement, and also pushed for a choice of male African Americans. He saw the assassination of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth as a consequence of the policy of the Confederate States, and therefore argued unsuccessfully for the condemnation of Booth by a military court of.
Disappointed with the increasingly conservative politics Johnson in particular on the issue of so-called Reconstruction, he resigned as Minister of Justice on 22 July 1866 by his office.
Unsuccessful candidates in later years
His radical, anti- slavery views were sharply criticized in Kentucky, with the result that in 1867 his candidacy for U.S. Senator also failed as 1868 his efforts for nomination as vice- presidential candidate of the Republican Party against Schuyler Colfax and 1870 candidacy for Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the fifth Congressional election district of Kentucky.
Nevertheless, he was born in 1872 and 1876 at least delegate to the Republican National Convention after he was six years earlier President of the so-called Loyalists Convention in Philadelphia.