Dallas County AlArchives Biographies.....Morgan, John Tyler June 20 1824 - living in 1893 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/alfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Ann Anderson alabammygrammy@aol.com May 20, 2004, 2:36 pm Author: Brant & Fuller (1893) JOHN TYLER MORGAN, United States senator from Alabama, was born at Athens, Tenn., June 20, 1824. He received an academic education, chiefly in Alabama, whither he came as an emigrant when nine years old, and settled in Calhoun county. He read law in the office of William P. Chilton, and was admitted to the bar in 1845. In 1855 he moved to Dallas county, located first in Selma, then in Cahaba. He formed a partnership with Hon. William M. Byrd, and maintained this connection until the latter was raised to the supreme court bench. In 1860 he was named as one of the electors at large on the Breckinridge-Lane electoral ticket, a ticket that carried in Alabama. In his canvass as an elector he laid the foundation of his reputation as an orator of the first rank. In 1861 he was elected a delegate from Dallas county to the state convention that passed the ordinance of secession, and still further increased his fame among Alabamians as a debater, by his speeches in that body. He joined the Confederate army in May, 1861, as a private in company I, Cahaba rifles, and when that company was assigned to the Fifth Alabama regiment, under Col. Robert E. Rodes, he was elected major, and was afterward elected lieutenant-colonel of that regiment. He was commissioned in 1862 as colonel, and raised the Fifty-first Alabama regiment. He was appointed brigadier-general in 1863, and assigned to a brigade in Virginia. He resigned, however, to rejoin the regiment he had assisted in raising, its colonel having been in the meantime killed in battle. In 1865 he was again appointed brigadier-general and was then assigned to an Alabama brigade that included his regiment. He returned to Selma after the war and resumed work in his profession, and at once entered upon a large practice. Being nominated as a presidential elector at large in 1876, he again canvassed the state, and renewed the spell he had cast over men's minds sixteen years before. As a result of his splendid canvass he was elected, the ensuing winter, a member of the United States senate, defeating Hon. George S. Houston, who was then governor of the state. Senator Morgan was re-elected in 1882 and again in 1888. His term of service will expire March 3, 1895. In the senate, Gen. Morgan is confessedly a leader, and an eminent one. He is a great student, an indefatigable worker, and has a power of argument and statement that is fairly amazing. If he has any weakness it is the readiness with which he pours out the wealth of his ideas on all the leading subjects mooted in the senate. In the matter of the Behring sea dispute with England, he spoke for four days, and there is probably not in the annals of congress a finer example, than this speech, of sustained untiring application of mind to a master subject. He recalls by his readiness and copiousness the great lights of the senate in older times, and he exceeds them all, as any great senator of today must in the wider knowledge and broader scope of vision necessary to fairly weigh and judge the immense and multiform national interests of the United States. Senator Morgan was appointed by President Harrison, in 1892, one of the representatives of the United States to present the case of our government to the board of arbitration, a compliment of an unusual kind to a member of an opposing political party, and one that attests the senator's great acquirements as a lawyer and a statesman. In February, 1893, he proceeded to Paris on this mission. Additional Comments: from "Memorial Record of Alabama", Vol. I, p. 892-893 Published by Brant & Fuller (1893) Madison, WI This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/alfiles/ File size: 4.1 Kb