Andrew Jackson Hamilton

Andrew Jackson Hamilton was born in Huntsville, Alabama. He went to law school in Alabama and was admitted to the bar in Talladega, Alabama. In 1846 he moved to La Grange, Texas, and opened a law practice. In 1849 he moved to Austin, Texas, to become the acting state attorney general. In 1850 he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives representing Travis County as a Democrat. He joined the "Opposition Clique", a group of southern Democrats who opposed secession and the reopening of the slave trade. In 1858, Hamilton was elected to the United States House of Representatives as an Independent Democrat representing western Texas. He served on a House committee formed in 1860 to solve the growing feud between the North and South. In 1861 he returned to Texas and won a special election to the State Senate. When his pro-Union position drew death threats, he resigned from the Senate and fled to Mexico. During the American Civil War, Hamilton sided with the Union. Returning from Mexico, he toured the Northeast, giving speeches in New York, Boston, and other cities. In 1862 President Abraham Lincoln appointed him the Military Governor of Texas. He held this position from New Orleans after a Union attempt to capture South Texas failed in 1863. At the end of the war, President Andrew Johnson appointed Hamilton the provisional civilian governor of Texas. He ratified the Thirteenth Amendment that gave economic freedom to ex-slaves, and governed through Indian incursions, general lawlessness, and chaotic finances in the aftermath of the Civil War. In 1866, the members of the Constitutional Convention rejected his plans, and he aligned himself with the Radical Republicans. In 1867 he became a bankruptcy judge in New Orleans. Later that year he accepted a position as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court. He also rejoined the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1868-69 as a Republican. In 1869 he ran again for the governor of Texas but was defeated. In 1871 he served as the leader of Tax-Payers' Convention. In 1875 he died of tuberculosis.