Samuel A. Foot

Samuel Augustus Foot (November 8, 1780 - September 15, 1846; his surname is also spelled Foote) was the 28th Governor of Connecticut as well as a United States Representative and Senator. Born in Cheshire, Connecticut, he graduated from Yale College in 1797, and attended the Litchfield Law School. He discontinued law studies due to ill health and engaged in the shipping trade at New Haven; married Eudocia Hull in 1803 having seven children (the second of whom was Andrew Hull Foote). He returned to Cheshire in 1813 and engaged in agricultural pursuits.

Foot was a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1817 and 1818, and was elected to the Sixteenth Congress, serving from March 4, 1819 to March 3, 1821. He was again a member of the State house of representatives from 1821 to 1823 and 1825 to 1826, serving as speaker in 1825 to 1826; he was elected to the Eighteenth Congress, serving from March 4, 1823 to March 3, 1825, and was elected as Adams (later Anti-Jacksonian) to the U.S. Senate and served from March 4, 1827, to March 3, 1833. In the Senate he is most noted for the "Foot Resolution" of December 29, 1829 to limit the sale of public lands. It was during debate on this resolution that Daniel Webster gave his "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever" speech.

Foot was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1832; while in the United States Congress, he was chairman of the Committee on Pensions (Twenty-first and Twenty-second Congresses). He was elected to the Twenty-third Congress, and served from March 4, 1833, to May 9, 1834, when he resigned to become Governor of Connecticut, a position he held in 1834 and 1835. He was an unsuccessful Whig candidate for Governor in 1836, and died in Cheshire on September 15, 1846; interment was in Hillside Cemetery.

References

• Samuel A. Foot at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress