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Born in Lexington, Kentucky, February 19, 1821.
He studied at Chapel Hill college in North Carolina, Princeton,
and then Transylvania University law school from which
he was graduated. He practiced law in St. Louis from 1842
until he went west.
Upon his return, Blair entered politics.
To give currency to his views, he established the Barnburner,
a Free-Soil newspaper. He voted for Van Buren in 1848,
supported Clay's compromise of 1850, and denounced the
Kansas-Nebraska act.
Although he did not believe that the
Federal government should interfere with slavery in the
states, he did believe that the institution of slavery
was economically obsolete and morally wrong. An adherent
of the principles of gradual emancipation, he was in Missouri
an unyielding unionist.
In 1852 he was elected to the State Legislature
on the Benton ticket and was re-elected in 1854. During
the Civil war, Blair was elected to the United State House
of Representatives three times and to the Senate once.
The stand of the Democratic party on
slavery caused him to withdraw and join the Republicans
in 1857. In that year he served in the thirty-seventh
Congress in 1861.
Resigning his seat early in that year,
however, he returned to St. Louis. In 1862 when the Union
cause looked dark, he raised seven regiments, became a
brigadier general, later a major general, and took a leading
part in a number of major engagements.
Recalled to Washington in 1864, he helped
reorganize Congress and supported Lincoln's reconstruction
plan. Blair favored readmitting the seceded stated to
the Union and leaving them free to solve their own reconstruction
problems. He opposed the registry law, test oaths, disfranchisement
of white, and enfranchisement of Blacks.
A leading spirit in reorganizing the
Democratic party in Missouri, he received the nomination
for vice-president in 1868. He was elected a member of
the Missouri general assembly in 1870 and soon became
a member of the United States Senate where he served from
January 20, 1871 to March 3, 1873.
He died in St.Louis July 8, 1875. |
