William Hayden English
William Hayden English ( born August 27, 1822 in Lexington, Scott County, Indiana; † February 7, 1896 in Indianapolis, Indiana ) was an American politician. He was the Democratic Party candidate for vice-president on the side of Winfield Scott Hancock in the presidential election in 1880.
William English was educated first at the College of Hanover in the traditional classical studies, before he studied law, was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Lexington. In 1843 he was Chief Administrative Officer ( Principal Clerk ) in the House of Representatives from Indiana; 1844-1848 he worked as an official in the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington DC employed.
1850 English served as secretary of the Constitutional Convention of Indiana; a two-year term as a Member of the House of Representatives of the State joined them. At times, he was also the Speaker of the Chamber. In 1853 he was elected as representative of the second congressional district of Indiana House of Representatives of the United States. There he completed four terms before he retired in 1861 out of the Congress. In Washington, he was among the allies of Indiana Senator Jesse D. Bright and was known as a sympathizer of the southern states. He introduced a later named after him as the English Bill bill in parliament, which provided the standing of the Union before the accession of Kansas Territory to expand by several million acres of land. The precondition for this was the consent of the people to a draft constitution for the new state, which would have admitted there slavery. The proposal was rejected by a large majority in Kansas.
After the end of his time as a Member English moved to Indianapolis. In 1880 he was nominated as the vice presidential candidate of the Democrats; as president candidate Winfield Scott Hancock, a politically inexperienced former general of the Union Army in the Civil War. Hancock and English achieved only in 1898 fewer votes than the Republican James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur, but had significantly during the vote in the Electoral College with 155:214 in the cold. The project, a large part of the Northern states to decide for themselves, had failed; also English's home state of Indiana voted mostly for Garfield.
William Hayden English died in 1896 in his hometown of Indianapolis. The town of English, the administrative seat of Crawford County, is named after him. There was also a statue erected in his honor as the courthouse of Scottsburg. His son William sat from 1883 to 1884 also for Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives; his grandson, William English Walling was also politician and was a member of the Socialist Party.