Thomas D. Eliot

Thomas Dawes Eliot ( born March 20, 1808 in Boston, Massachusetts, † June 14, 1870 in New Bedford, Massachusetts ) was an American politician. Between 1854 and 1869 he represented two times the state of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

Thomas Eliot attended the public schools in Washington DC and then studied until 1825 at the Columbian College, which later became George Washington University. After a subsequent law degree in 1831 and its recent approval as a lawyer, he went to work in New Bedford in this profession. Politically, he was a member of the Whig Party, founded in 1835. In 1839 he became a deputy in the House of Representatives from Massachusetts; in 1846 he was a member of the State Senate.

Following the resignation of Mr Zeno Scudder Eliot was chosen as his successor in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington at the due election for the first seat of Massachusetts, where he took up his new mandate on 17 April 1854. Since he resigned at the regular elections of the year 1854 on another candidacy, he was able to complete only the current legislative period in Congress until March 3, 1855. This was marked by the events leading up to the Civil War. After the dissolution of the Whigs Eliot was initially a member of the Free Soil Party. In 1855 he was a delegate to the national convention. After that, he joined the Republican Party, founded in 1854. In 1857 he declined to him being transferred candidacy for the office of Attorney General of his state.

In 1858, Thomas Eliot was re-elected in the first district of his state in Congress, where he replaced Robert Bernard Hall on March 4, 1859 was 1855 became his successor. After four elections he could until March 3, 1869, five other legislative periods spent in the House of Representatives. These were overshadowed by the events of the civil war and its consequences. Since 1865, Eliot was chairman of the Committee on the Freedmen 's Bureau. From 1867 he also headed the Trade Committee. Since 1865 the work of the Congress was overshadowed by the tensions between the Republican Party and President Andrew Johnson, which culminated in a narrowly failed impeachment.

In 1868, Thomas Eliot renounced another candidacy. After the end of his time in the U.S. House of Representatives, he practiced as a lawyer again in New Bedford, where he died on 14 June 1870.