John Tyler Morgan | |
---|---|
United States Senator from Alabama |
|
In office March 4, 1877 – June 11, 1907 |
|
Preceded by | George Goldthwaite |
Succeeded by | John H. Bankhead |
Personal details | |
Born | June 20, 1824 Athens, Tennessee |
Died | June 11, 1907 Washington, D.C. |
(aged 82)
Military service | |
Service/branch | Confederate States Army |
Years of service | 1861–1865 |
Rank | Brigadier General |
Battles/wars | American Civil War |
John Tyler Morgan (June 20, 1824 – June 11, 1907) was a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, and a six-term U.S. senator from the state of Alabama after the war. He was a strong supporter of states rights and racial segregation through the Reconstruction era. He was an expansionist, arguing for the annexation of the Republic of Hawaii and for U.S. construction of an interoceanic canal in South America.
Contents |
Morgan was born in Athens, Tennessee into a family of Welsh origin whose ancestor James B. Morgan [1] (1607–1704) settled in the Connecticut Colony. John T. Morgan was initially educated by his mother. In 1833, he moved with his parents to Calhoun County, Alabama, where he attended frontier schools and then studied law in Tuskegee with justice William Parish Chilton, his brother-in-law. After admission to the bar he established a practice in Talledega. Ten years later, Morgan moved to Dallas County and resumed the practice of law in Selma and Cahaba.
Turning to politics, Morgan became a presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1860, and supported John C. Breckinridge. He was delegate from Dallas County to the State Convention of 1861, which passed the ordinance of secession.
With Alabama's vote to leave the Union, at the age of 37 Morgan enlisted as a private in the Cahaba Rifles, which volunteered its services in the Confederate Army and was assigned to the 5th Alabama Infantry. He first saw action at the First Battle of Manassas in the summer of 1861. Morgan rose to major and then lieutenant colonel, serving under Col. Robert E. Rodes, a future Confederate general. Morgan resigned in 1862 and returned to Alabama, where in August he recruited a new regiment, the 51st Alabama Partisan Rangers, becoming its colonel. He led it at the Battle of Stones River, operating in cooperation with the cavalry of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
When Rodes was promoted to major general and given a division in the Army of Northern Virginia, Morgan declined an offer to command Rodes's old brigade and instead remained in the Western Theater, leading troops at the Battle of Chickamauga. On November 16, 1863, he was appointed as a brigadier general of cavalry and participated in the Knoxville Campaign. His brigade consisted of the 1st, 3rd, 4th (Russell's), 9th, and 51st Alabama Cavalry regiments.
His men were routed and dispersed by Federal cavalry on January 27, 1864. He was reassigned to a new command and fought in the Atlanta Campaign. Subsequently, his men harassed William T. Sherman's troops during the March to the Sea. Later, he was assigned to administrative duty in Demopolis, Alabama. When the Confederacy collapsed and the war ended, Morgan was trying to organize Alabama black troops for home defense.
After the war, Morgan resumed the practicing of law in Selma, Alabama. He was once again presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1876 and was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in that year, being re-elected in 1882, 1888, 1894, 1900, and 1906, and serving from March 4, 1877, until his death. For much of his tenure, he served as Senator alongside a fellow former Confederate general, Edmund W. Pettus.
Morgan advocated for separating blacks and whites in the U.S. by encouraging the migration of black people out of the U.S. south. Hochschild wrote, "at various times in his long career Morgan also advocated sending them [negroes] to Hawaii, to Cuba, and to the Philippines - which, perhaps because the islands were so far away, he claimed were a "native home of the negro."[1]
He introduced and fought for numerous legislative bills in support of legal lynching. Morgan also staunchly worked for the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that was intended to prevent the denial of voting rights based on race.[2] He was chairman of Committee on Rules (Forty-sixth Congress), the Committee on Foreign Relations (Fifty-third Congress), the Committee on Interoceanic Canals (Fifty-sixth and Fifty-seventh Congresses), and the Committee on Public Health and National Quarantine (Fifty-ninth Congress). In 1894, Morgan chaired an investigation, known as the Morgan Report into the Hawaiian Revolution which concluded that the U.S. had remained completely neutral in the matter. He authored the introduction to the Morgan Report based on the findings of the investigative committee.
He was a strong supporter of the annexation of Hawaii and visited Hawaii in 1897 in support of annexation. He believed that the history of the U.S. clearly indicated it was unnecessary to hold a plebiscite in Hawaii as a condition for annexation. He was appointed by President William McKinley in July 1898 to the commission created by the Newlands Resolution to establish government in the Territory of Hawaii. A strong advocate for a Central American canal, Morgan was also a staunch supporter of the Cuban revolutionaries in the 1890s.
The most recent study of Morgan by Joseph A. Fry suggests an alternate reason for Morgan's desires for American expansionism in the 1890s. Morgan may have figured that the expanded territories in Latin American would center their economic development in the Southern states, not the Northern ones, and this would undo the economic dominion of the North due to its victory of 1865. As it turned out the expansion in the wake of the Spanish American War did not lead to creating a southern United States economic domination.
Senator Morgan died in Washington, D.C. while still in office. He was buried in Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, Alabama. The remainder of his term was served by John H. Bankhead.
An article by history professor Thomas Adams Upchurch in the April 2004 Alabama Review says:
"The snows will fall from heaven in sooty blackness, sooner than the white women of the United States will consent to the maternity of negro families.[4]"
"It has become the solemn necessity on our part to protect the Caucasian race on this continent against the intrusion of Oriental people.[5]"
Wikisource has the text of a 1905 New International Encyclopedia article about John Tyler Morgan. |
United States Senate | ||
---|---|---|
Preceded by George Goldthwaite |
United States Senator (Class 2) from Alabama 1877–1907 Served alongside: George E. Spencer, George S. Houston, Luke Pryor, James L. Pugh, Edmund W. Pettus |
Succeeded by John H. Bankhead |
|
|