Oliver Hazard Perry Morton

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Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton

Oliver Hazard Perry Morton
(NSHC statue)

Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton (August 4, 1823 – November 1, 1877) was a U.S. Republican Party politician from Indiana. He served as governor of Indiana during the Civil War, and was a stalwart ally of President Abraham Lincoln. Many historians consider him the finest Civil War governor. Morton later served in the U.S. Senate for a decade.

Morton was a native Hoosier (born in Wayne County), but he spent most of his formative years in Ohio. He was named for Oliver Hazard Perry. His mother died when he was three, and he was raised by his maternal grandparents. As a teenager, he moved to Centerville, Indiana, which remained his home for the rest of his life.

Despite finishing neither high school nor college (he briefly attended Miami University and Cincinnati College), Morton was able to train himself in law, and became a successful and wealthy attorney in Centerville.

Morton entered politics as the Republican Party began, in the mid-1850s. Morton won the Republican nomination for governor of Indiana in 1856, but lost the election. The Republicans nominated Morton for lieutenant governor in 1860, and this time he was a winner. In January 1861, the newly elected governor, Henry Smith Lane, was immediately chosen by the Indiana legislature for a U.S. Senate seat thereby elevating Morton to the governor's chair.

Morton served as governor of Indiana for six years (1861 - 1867) and strongly supported the Union during the Civil War. He raised men and money for the Union army, and demonized Indiana's Confederate sympathizers. He is the only governor honored by his state's veterans with a statue in Vicksburg National Military Park.

In 1862, Morton asked Henry B. Carrington for assistance organizing the state's levies for service. Morton established an intelligence network to deal with rebel sympathizers, Knights of the Golden Circle (Copperheads), Democrats, and anyone opposed to his rule, and Carrington was put at its head. While Carrington succeeded in keeping the state secure, his operatives also carried out arbitrary arrests, suppressed freedom of speech and freedom of association, and generally maintained a repressive regime. Morton called out the state militia in July 1863 during "Morgan's Raid." Although Morton was criticized for exceeding his authority as governor (he refused to call the Democrat-dominated legislature into session in either 1863 or 1864, and quietly passed the word for Republicans to absent themselves from the capital to deprive the Democrats of a quorum), he was popular in the state and was re-elected governor in 1864.

From 1867 to 1877, Morton was a United States Senator, where he was noted for his intense partisanship. In the 1870s, he became a prominent member of the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party; a faction more concerned with building the party and its power than with any particular ideological stand.

Morton's stand on paper money made him controversial. He was considered "soft" because he favored issuing paper money with no backing during difficult times. This view, combined with his failing health, hurt him in his unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1876. He did, however, participate as a member of the Electoral Commission appointed to determine the outcome of that contested presidential election.

Oliver Morton was partially crippled by a paralytic stroke in late 1865. He suffered a second stroke while on a trip to Oregon investigating charges of bribery made against a newly elected senator from that state. He died shortly afterwards in Indianapolis.

Morton married the former Lucinda Burbank in 1845. They had five children, three of whom survived to adulthood.

[edit] References

Garraty, John A. and Mark C. Carnes. American National Biography, vol. 13, "Morton, Oliver Perry". New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.

[edit] External links

Preceded by Henry Smith Lane	Governor of Indiana 1861–1867	Succeeded by Conrad Baker
Preceded by Henry Smith Lane	United States Senator (Class 3) from Indiana 1867-1877	Succeeded by Daniel W. Voorhees