William Brickly Stokes

William Brickly Stokes ( born September 9, 1814 Chatham County, North Carolina, † March 14, 1897 in Alexandria, Tennessee ) was an American politician. Between 1859 and 1871 he represented two times the state of Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

William Stokes attended the public schools of his home. He later moved to Tennessee, where he worked in agriculture. At the same time he began a political career. Between 1849 and 1852 he sat as an MP in the House of Representatives from Tennessee; in the years 1855 and 1856 he was a member of the State Senate. End of the 1850s he was a member of the short-lived opposition party.

In the congressional elections of 1858 Stokes was in the fourth electoral district of Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he became the successor of John Houston Savage on March 4, 1859. Until March 3, 1861, he was initially able to complete only one term in Congress. After the fourth parliamentary mandate his state was unoccupied until 1868, because Tennessee had joined the Confederacy. While Stokes ' entire term of office the work of the Congress was shaped by the events in the immediate run-up to the Civil War.

Stokes was a supporter of the Union. On May 15, 1862, he resigned as a Major in the army of the Northern states. Until his retirement from military service on 10 March 1865, he had brought it to the Colonel and Brevet Brigadier General. After a subsequent study of law and its made ​​in 1867 admitted to the bar he began in Alexandria to work in his new profession. At the same time, he continued his political career initially continued as a Unionist and then as a member of the Republican Party. After the re- admission of the State of Tennessee to the Union, he was elected in 1866 in the third district again in the Congress. After two re- elections he could remain until March 3, 1871 U.S. House of Representatives. There he experienced the conflict between his party and President Andrew Johnson, culminating in a nearly failed impeachment proceedings against the president. While Stokes ' time in Congress were adopted there the 14th and the 15th Amendment.

In the congressional elections of 1870, Stokes was defeated by Democrat Abraham Ellison Garrett. After that, he was head of the tax authority in Tennessee. He also worked as a lawyer again. William Stokes died on 14 March 1897 in Alexandria.