Pomeroy, Samuel Clarke

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Samuel Clarke Pomeroy
    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
    3
    No. of Children
    1
    Family
    Samuel Pomeroy (father), Dorcas Burt (mother), Annie (first wife), Lucy Ann Gaylord (second wife, 1846), Martha Whitin (third wife, 1866)
    Education
    Other
    Other Education
    Amherst College
    Occupation
    Politician
    Businessman
    Educator
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Political Parties
    Liberty
    Free Soil
    Republican
    Other
    Other Political Party
    Prohibition Party
    Other Affiliations
    Abolitionists (Anti-Slavery Society)
    Temperance (Prohibition)
    Government
    US Senate
    State legislature
    Local government

    Samuel Clarke Pomeroy (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 focused the slavery struggle on Kansas. When President Franklin Pierce signed the bill with its provision for "popular sovereignty" for the territories, Pomeroy allegedly told the president, "Your victory is but an adjournment of the question from the halls of legislation at Washington to the open prairies of the freedom-loving West, and there, sir, we shall beat you" (William E. Connelley, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans [1918], p. 1219). Pomeroy became one of the organizers of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, which funneled more than $100,000 through Pomeroy, as its financial agent, to aid settlers who favored Kansas as a state free from slavery.

    Accompanying a group of sponsored settlers, Pomeroy first located in Lawrence, Kansas Territory, in 1854. As chairman of the defense committee, he failed to protect Lawrence from the proslavery raiding party of 21 May 1856, but the "Sack of Lawrence" became the cause célèbre at the first national Republican presidential nominating convention in Philadelphia in 1856, where Pomeroy made a fiery speech, condemning the South. Pomeroy was a leader of the Territorial Kansas independent Free State party, which evolved into the Republican party by 1859.

    Ordered by the Emigrant Aid Society to establish a Free State town in northeast Kansas, Pomeroy purchased land in and near Atchison, previously a proslavery stronghold. He also purchased control of an influential proslavery newspaper, Squatter Sovereign, which was quickly renamed Freedom's Champion.
    Mark A. Plummer, "Pomeroy, Samuel Clarke," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00799.html.

    Samuel Clarke Pomeroy (Congressional Biographical Directory)

    Reference
    POMEROY, Samuel Clarke, a Senator from Kansas; born in Southampton, Mass., January 3, 1816; attended Amherst College, Massachusetts, 1836-1838; moved to New York State in 1838 and taught school; returned to Southampton, Mass., in 1842; held various local offices; member, State house of representatives 1852-1853; organizer and financial agent of the New England Emigrant Aid Co.; moved to Kansas in 1854 and settled in Lawrence; moved to Atchison, Kans.; mayor of Atchison 1858-1859; member of the free State convention at Lawrence in 1859; president of the relief committee during the famine in Kansas in 1860 and 1861; upon the admission of Kansas as a State into the Union was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate; reelected in 1867 and served from April 4, 1861, to March 3, 1873; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1872; chairman, Committee on Public Lands (Thirty-ninth through Forty-second Congresses); resided in Washington, D.C., for several years; died in Whitinsville, Worcester County, Mass., August 27, 1891; interment in Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston, Mass.
    "Pomeroy, Samuel Clarke," Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774 to Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=p000423.
    Chicago Style Entry Link
    Gambone, Joseph G. “Samuel C. Pomeroy and the Senatorial Election of 1861, Reconsidered.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 37 (1971): 15-32. view record
    Zornow, William Frank. “The Kansas Senators and the Re-election of Lincoln.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 19 (1951): 133-144. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "Pomeroy, Samuel Clarke," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/12955.