John Hemphill (senator)
John Hemphill ( born December 18, 1803 in Blackstock, South Carolina, † January 3, 1862 in Richmond, Virginia) was an American lawyer and politician (Democratic Party), who represented the state of Texas in the U.S. Senate and later in the Konföderiertenkongress sat.
Early years
Hemphills father John, a Presbyterian minister, was migrated from County Tyrone in Ireland; his mother, Jane, was born in Pennsylvania. The late senator was born in Chester District, where he attended public schools and worked first as a teacher himself, before he continued his education at the Jefferson College in Washington ( Pennsylvania) and graduated there in 1825. After he had studied the law with a lawyer in Columbia and was admitted to the bar in South Carolina in 1829, he began practicing as a lawyer in Sumter. During the Nullifikationskrise he published in 1832 and in 1833 a newspaper, in which the position of coming from South Carolina, U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun was supported.
Lawyer in Texas
1836 Hemphill took in as a volunteer in the Second Seminole War and brought it up to the Second Lieutenant. Two years later he moved to Texas and worked in Washington-on -the- Brazos as a lawyer. From 1840 to 1842 he served as an elected judge in the fourth judicial district of the young republic; during this time he also served as a senior officer of a military expedition to the Rio Grande. In 1845 he took part in the preparation for the accession of Texas to the Union at the Constitutional Convention of the future state. In December 1840, he also was elected to the Supreme Judge of the Supreme Court of Texas, which he remained until 1858. He was first confirmed after accession to the United States from the first Governor, James Pinckney Henderson; later the decision was incumbent on this post again the voters who voted in 1851 and 1856 respectively for a further term of office.
As Chief Justice Hemphill made by its liberal interpretation of the law a name, for example in issues of women's rights. He worked intensively with the Spanish and Mexican legal system and let it flow into his suggestions work. Because of its importance for the development of the case law of his state, he was described by contemporaries as the " John Marshall of Texas".
Political career
In November 1857 Hemphill was nominated by the Democratic Party in Texas as successor by U.S. Senator Sam Houston, whose political views are no longer consistent with those of the party leadership. After successful selection by the state Senate Hemphill took his seat in Washington DC true from March 4, 1859. After giving a speech to the plenary session on the eve of the Civil War, in which he ascribed to the individual states the right to secede, was on January 6, 1861 one of 14 senators who advocated the immediate withdrawal of the Southern representatives from the Senate. He was appointed on 4 February of the same year by the Texas Secession Convention, which meets as a delegate to the Montgomery (Alabama ) Southern Convention arose from the little later, the Provisional Konföderiertenkongress. On July 11, 1861 Hemphill was excluded by resolution of the U.S. Senate.
In Konföderiertenkongress Hemphill was a member of the Committees on Trade, Finance and Justice, where he is mainly involved wear, adjust U.S. laws to the needs of the Confederacy. He applied for in November 1861 also seek a seat as senator in the first regular Congress of the Confederation, but lost almost Williamson Simpson Oldham.
Even before the end of the session Hemphill died in Richmond. He was buried in the State Cemetery of Texas at Austin. The Hemphill County and the City of Hemphill in Sabine County are named after him.