Trumbull, Lyman

Lyman Trumbull grew up in New England, matured in the Deep South, and in the Midwest had a long and eventful political career driven by principle and law. He was born in Connecticut, spent several years as a school principal and lawyer in Georgia, and arrived in Belleville, Illinois in 1837. By 1840 he was sitting in the Illinois house and soon after became Illinois Secretary of State. Characteristically, he resigned that post on a matter of principle in 1853. The Illinois legislature selected him over Abraham Lincoln for the U.S. Senate in 1854, and he went to Washington as a rebellious Democrat in opposition to the Nebraska Bill. By 1856 was voting as a Republican. Tall and slim, with a reputation as cold and conservative, the interplay between events and his deeply help principles seemed to drive Lyman Trumbull all his life. The Dred Scott decision appalled him, secession moved him to call for compromise, and during the war he fretted publically about the administration’s use of executive power. But he supported the Emancipation Proclamation and, most famously, co-authored the Thirteenth Amendment, after he insisted that an end to slavery could not be achieved with a mere act of Congress. He again infuriated his radical critics when he voted against the impeachment of President Johnson in 1868. This was electoral suicide and despite a run for governor as a Democrat in 1880, he never held office again. He died of cancer in June 1896 in Chicago. (By John Osborne)

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Lyman Trumbull
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    2
    No. of Children
    3
    Family
    Benjamin Trumbull (father), Elizabeth Mather (mother), Julia Maria Jayne (first wife, 1843), Mary Ingraham (second wife, 1877)
    Education
    Other
    Other Education
    Bacon Academy, Colchester, CT
    Occupation
    Politician
    Attorney or Judge
    Educator
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Political Parties
    Democratic
    Republican
    Liberal Republican
    Other
    Other Political Party
    People’s Party
    Other Affiliations
    Other
    Other Affiliation
    Populists
    Government
    US Senate
    State legislature
    State supreme court
    Other state government

    Lyman Trumbull (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    [Lyman] Trumbull was elected as a Democrat to the state legislature in 1840 but resigned the next year to become Illinois secretary of state. After an unsuccessful campaign for the federal House of Representatives in 1846, Trumbull vowed not to seek legislative office again. Two years later he was elected to fill out a term as justice of the Illinois Supreme Court; in 1852 he won a full nine-year term on the bench.

    Trumbull was outraged over the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Like many in Illinois, he saw the Missouri Compromise, nullified by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, as a pillar comparable to the compromises producing the federal Constitution. The act split the Democrats in Illinois, with Trumbull leading the anti-Nebraska faction. That fall Trumbull ran for the U.S. House from the state's Eighth Congressional District, drawing support from Whigs, Free Soilers, and anti-Nebraska Democrats. He defeated Phillip B. Foulke, a pro-Nebraska Democrat, by about 2,700 votes. In February 1855 the Illinois legislature elected Trumbull to the U.S. Senate over pro-Nebraska Democratic incumbent James Shields, Abraham Lincoln, and Governor Joel Matteson, after candidate Lincoln instructed supporters to vote for Trumbull on the tenth ballot. While in Congress, Trumbull completed the transformation from anti-Nebraska Democrat to Republican in 1857. He opposed the proslavery Lecompton constitution for Kansas, arguing that Congress should decide such matters for the territory. In the secession crisis, Trumbull rejected the Crittenden Compromise measures.
    David Osborn, "Trumbull, Lyman," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00998.html.

    Lyman Trumbull (Congressional Biographical Directory)

    Reference
    TRUMBULL, Lyman, a Senator from Illinois; born in Colchester, Conn., October 12, 1813; attended Bacon Academy; taught school in Connecticut 1829-1833; studied law; admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Greenville, Ga.; moved to Belleville, Ill., 1837; member, State house of representatives 1840-1841; secretary of State of Illinois in 1841 and 1843; justice of the supreme court of Illinois 1848-1853; elected to the Thirty-fourth Congress in 1854, but before the beginning of the Congress was elected to the United States Senate; reelected in 1861 and again in 1867, and served from March 4, 1855, to March 3, 1873; was at various times a Democrat, then Republican, then Liberal Republican, then Democrat; chairman, Committee on the Judiciary (Thirty-seventh through Forty-second Congresses); resumed the practice of law in Chicago, Ill.; unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Illinois in 1880; died in Chicago, Ill., June 25, 1896; interment in Oakwoods Cemetery.
    “Trumbull, Lyman,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774 to Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=T000392.
    Date Event
    Lyman Trumbull is born in Colchester, Connecticut
    Lyman Trumbull marries Julia Maria Jayne in Springfield, Illinois
    - Lyman Trumbull serves in the United States Senate
    Pennsylvania Republicans meet in Harrisburg and Philadelphia to ratify the recent nominations in Chicago
    President Lincoln signs the Second Confiscation Act authorizing freedom for confiscated slaves
    Reaching his home state, President Lincoln's remains arrive in Chicago to a remarkable reception
    In Washington, Senator Trumbull introduces measures to extend the authority of the Freedmen's Bureau
    In Washington, the Senate passes measures to extend the authority of the Freedmen's Bureau
    At the U.S. Capitol, the Senate passes the Civil Rights Bill of 1866
    In Washington, the House of Representatives passes the Freedmen's Bureau Bill
    In Washington, President Johnson vetoes the Freedmen's Bureau Bill
    In Washington, the Senate fails to over-ride President Johnson's veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill
    At the U.S. Capitol, the House of Representatives passes the Civil Rights Bill of 1866
    President Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Bill of 1866
    In Washington, the U.S. Senate votes to over-ride the presidential veto of the Civil Rights Bill
    Thousands of African-American citizens in Washington D.C. celebrate the anniversary of their emancipation
    Julia Jayne Trumbull dies in Washington, DC
    Lyman Trumbull marries Mary Ingraham in Saybrook, Connecticut
    Lyman Trumbull speaks at the People’s Party convention in Chicago, Illinois
    Lyman Trumbull dies in Chicago, Illinois
    Date Title
    Abraham Lincoln to Elihu Benjamin Washburne, February 9, 1855
    Abraham Lincoln to Jesse Olds Norton, February 16 1855
    David Davis to Julius Rockwell, March 4, 1855
    Abraham Lincoln to Charles D. Gilfillan, May 9, 1857
    Israel Washburn to James Shepard Pike, March 20, 1858
    New York Times, “Senator Douglas and the Republicans of Illinois,” June 8, 1858
    New York Times, "Illinois Republican State Convention," June 21, 1858
    Chicago (IL) Press and Tribune, "The Passage at Arms between Lincoln and Douglas in 1854," July 1, 1858
    - Recollection by Gustave Koerner, Lincoln-Douglas Debates
    (St. Louis) Missouri Republican, "Mr. A. Lincoln," July 11, 1858
    Gustave Philipp Koerner to Abraham Lincoln, August 12, 1858
    New York Herald, “The Illinois Campaign,” August 13, 1858
    David Davis to Ozias Mather Hatch, August 16, 1858
    Ozias Mather Hatch to Abraham Lincoln, August 17, 1858
    New York Times, "Hot Work in Illinois," August 19, 1858
    New York Times, "Meeting of Douglas and Lincoln," August 23, 1858
    B. Lewis to Abraham Lincoln, August 25, 1858
    Quincy (IL) Whig, "Lincoln and Douglas," August 25, 1858
    Joseph Medill to Abraham Lincoln, August 27, 1858
    Richard James Oglesby to Abraham Lincoln, August 29, 1858
    Norman Buel Judd to Abraham Lincoln, September, 1858
    Recollection by Henry Clay Whitney, Charleston Debate, September 18, 1858
    Chicago (IL) Press and Tribune, “The Galesburg Debate,” October 9, 1858
    New York Times, "The Illinois Election," November 5, 1858
    Abraham Lincoln to Norman Buel Judd, November 15, 1858
    Chicago (IL) Press and Tribune, “Trumbull on the Constitution,” July 2, 1859
    Lowell (MA) Citizen & News, “Kellogg on Douglas,” March 17, 1860
    Cleveland (OH) Herald, “A Difference of Opinion,” June 29, 1860
    New York Herald, “Untitled,” November 23, 1860
    New York Times, “The Military and the Civil Power,” June 13, 1863
    Andrew Johnson, Freedmen's Bureau Bill veto message, February 19, 1866
    Chicago Style Entry Link
    Di Nunzio, Mario R. “Ideology and Party Loyalty: The Political Conversion of Lyman Trumbull.” Lincoln Herald 79, no. 3 (1979): 95-103. view record
    Di Nunzio, Mario R. "Lyman Trumbull, the States' Rights Issue, and the Liberal Republican Revolt." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 66, no. 4 (1973): 364-375. view record
    Di Nunzio, Mario. “Secession Winter: Lyman Trumbull and the Crisis in Congress.” Capitol Studies 1 (Fall 1972): 29-39. view record
    DiNunzio, Mario R. “Lyman Trumbull and the Making of a President, 1860.” Lincoln Herald 75, no. 1 (1972): 11-17. view record
    Krug, Mark M. "Lyman Trumbull and the Real Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 57, no. 4 (1964): 380-396. view record
    Krug, Mark M. Lyman Trumbull: Conservative Radical. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1965. view record
    Roske, Ralph J. His Own Counsel: The Life and Times of Lyman Trumbull. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1979. view record
    Woodard, David E. “Abraham Lincoln, Duff Green, and the Mysterious Trumbull Letter.” Civil War History 42, no. 3 (1996): 211-219. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "Trumbull, Lyman," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/6744.