Big man in Congress,, part 2
Random Thoughts
Share
Tweet
August 18, 2023
As we saw last week, Dixon Hall Lewis served almost two decades in Congress: more than 15 years in the House of Representatives and four-and-a-half years in the Senate.
A states’ rights Democrat, Lewis was a powerful legislator during his Congressional tenure. He was also a wealthy slave-owning planter who lived on land that the U.S. government had forced Creek Indians to cede after the War of 1812.
He had moved to Alabama shortly after it entered the Union in 1819. He and another new arrival who also became an attorney, Benjamin Fitzpatrick, married sisters from the locally prominent Elmore family and became political allies.
The Elmore clan owned vast estates and became so well-known and politically powerful that they have a county in Alabama named after their progenitor, Revolutionary War General John Archer Elmore, who served several years in the Alabama state legislature.
Like Lewis, Fitzpatrick became politically successful, serving four years as governor of Alabama and succeeding Lewis in the U.S. Senate. Fitzpatrick served only one year as a senator until the Alabama legislature elected a new one.
Later, however, Fitzpatrick returned to the Senate and served an additional eight years until Alabama seceded from the Union and he resigned his office.
But this article is about Lewis. He was well-liked by his Congressional colleagues as well as the conservative Caucasian voters of Alabama. He was said to be rather personable and a good orator. Shortly before his death, he served as chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee.
When Lewis died in October 1848, he was only 46 years old. His death was not completely unexpected, however, as he had experienced chronic health problems throughout his life.
In fact, he died not in Alabama or Washington, D.C., but in New York City where he had traveled to find a specialist who might be able to help him. Apparently, he had waited too long and died shortly after arriving there.
We will conclude our look at Dixon Lewis’s life and career in part 3 of this story.
Reader Comments(0)