William D. Kelley

William Darrah Kelley ( born April 12, 1814 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, † January 9, 1890 in Washington DC ) was an American politician. Between 1861 and 1890 he represented the State of Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

William Kelley attended the schools of his home. Between 1828 and 1835, he served an apprenticeship in the jewelery trade. Then he moved to Boston in Massachusetts, where he worked in the jewelery trade. In 1840 he returned to Philadelphia. After studying law and his 1841 was admitted to the bar he began to work in this profession. In the years 1845 and 1846, he worked in his native country as a prosecutor. From 1846 to 1856 he served as an appellate judge in Philadelphia. Politically Kelley was until 1854 a member of the Democratic Party. After the repeal of the Missouri Compromise by the Kansas - Nebraska Act, he left the party. He then became a founding member of the new Republican Party. Kelley was an opponent of slavery. He also set up a life-long civil rights, social reform, and health and safety regulations. In 1856 he ran unsuccessfully for Congress yet; in May 1860 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in part in Chicago, was nominated on the Abraham Lincoln as a presidential candidate.

In the congressional elections of 1860 Kelley has been selected in the fourth electoral district of Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, where he became the successor of William Millward on March 4, 1861. After 14 Re-elections he could remain until his death on January 9, 1890 in Congress. In this period of civil war (1861-1865) fell. Between 1865 and 1869 the work of the Congress was overshadowed by the tensions between the Republicans and President Andrew Johnson, which culminated in a narrowly failed impeachment. This process was supported by Kelley. He lived until 1876 and the Reconstruction in the defeated South. He was also one of the first politicians in the capital, demanding the creation of Yellowstone National Park. During his time in Congress were 1865-1870 the 13th, the 14th and ratified the 15th Amendment.

From 1837 to 1873 William Kelley was chairman of the Committee for Weights and Measures. From 1881 to 1883 he headed the influential Committee on Ways and Means, and in 1889 the craft committee.