Jesse D. Bright

Jesse David Bright ( born December 18, 1812 in Norwich, Chenango County, New York, † May 20, 1875 in Baltimore, Maryland ) was an American politician (Democratic Party). He represented the State of Indiana in the U.S. Senate, from which he was excluded in 1862 as the only senator in the North State for sympathizing with the Confederacy.

Early years and rise in the Senate

Jesse Bright, whose ancestors had immigrated from Germany, moved with his parents in 1820 to Indiana, where the family settled in Madison and the boy attended the public schools. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1831 and commenced practice as a lawyer in Madison. In 1834 he was elected judge of the probate court of Jefferson County; 1840 to 1841 he was a U.S. Marshal for the District of Indiana.

Finally Brights political career began with the membership of the Senate of Indiana 1841-1843 In 1842 he was elected lieutenant governor of his state. ; this office he held under Governor James Whitcomb from 1843 to 1845. In 1844 he won the election for U.S. Senator for Indiana, and he is based in Washington DC occupied from the 4th of March of the following year. Bright occurred in 1850 and 1856 respectively successfully for re-election and led the Senate to preside over numerous committees. He was, among other things the Committee on Enrolled Bills, the Committee on Public Buildings, the Committee on Revolutionary Claims and the Committee on Roads and Canals. On 5 December 1854 he also took over for the first time the Office of the Senate President pro tempore, a position he held until June 9, 1856 first. Two days later, he returned to that post, he again held until 6 January 1857. He also served as Acting Vice Precident each of the United States, as U.S. Vice President William R. King was shortly died after his inauguration and the Senate president pro tempore in the wake of the U.S. president took the next rank. A third short tenure was followed on 12 and 13 June 1860.

Exclusion from the Congress

1857 Bright got to be in his cabinet, the supply of U.S. President James Buchanan, Secretary of State, but the senator refused. He remained in Congress, where he not distinguished himself as a great orator, but rather by his committee work. On February 5, 1862 Bright was expelled by a majority of 29 Republican and Democratic senators ten from the Senate. The trigger was a signed by him and addressed to the Confederate President Jefferson Davis letter from the previous year, when it came to any arms sales to the breakaway southern states; Morton S. Wilkinson, Senator from Minnesota, had the letter presented to the plenary, which had been found during the First Battle of Bull Run in a captured arms dealer. The expressed therein recognition of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy drew Brights exclusion from Congress after himself, for among other Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois agreed. Jesse Bright was the 14th senator who was affected during the civil war of such action; after him not a member of the Senate was more excluded until today. In 1863 he ran unsuccessfully again for his own vacant seat

After Union troops Brights house had confiscated in Port Fulton, he left Indiana and moved to Covington in Kentucky. There he continued his political career and sat from 1867 to 1871 in the House of Representatives of the State. In the presidential elections in 1868, he was one of the Democrats on the Electoral College, but that does not victorious in Kentucky Horatio Seymour elected as U.S. president, but the Republican Ulysses S. Grant. From 1871 to 1875 Bright was then president of the Raymond City Coal Company. He spent his life in Baltimore, where he died in May 1875, and was buried.