George Nixon Briggs | |
|---|---|
 Portrait c. 1848 | |
| 19th Governor of Massachusetts | |
| In office January 9, 1844 – January 11, 1851 | |
| Lieutenant | John Reed, Jr. |
| Preceded by | Marcus Morton |
| Succeeded by | George S. Boutwell |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts | |
| In office March 4, 1831 – March 3, 1843 | |
| Preceded by | Henry W. Dwight |
| Succeeded by | Julius Rockwell |
| Constituency | 9th district (1831–1833) 7th district (1833–1843) |
| Member of theMassachusetts House of Representatives | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1796-04-12)April 12, 1796 |
| Died | September 12, 1861(1861-09-12) (aged 65) |
| Political party | Whig |
| Spouse | Harriet Briggs |
| Children | Harriet Briggs George Briggs Henry Shaw Briggs |
| Profession | Lawyer |
| Signature |  |
George Nixon Briggs (April 12, 1796 – September 12, 1861) was an American lawyer and politician fromMassachusetts. AWhig, Briggs served for twelve years in theUnited States House of Representatives, and served seven one-year terms as the19th Governor of Massachusetts, from 1844 to 1851.
Raised in ruralUpstate New York, Briggs studied law in western Massachusetts, where his civic involvement and successful legal practice preceded statewide political activity. He was elected to Congress in 1830, where he supported the conservative Whig agenda, serving on theCommittee on the Post Office and Post Roads. He was also a regular advocate oftemperance, abstaining from all alcohol consumption.[1]
He was nominated by the Whigs in 1843 to run againstDemocratic governorMarcus Morton as part of a Whig bid for more rural votes, and easily won election until 1849. Although he sought to avoid the contentious issue ofslavery, he protestedSouth Carolina policy allowing the imprisonment of freeAfrican Americans. He supportedcapital punishment, notably refusing to commute the death sentence ofJohn White Webster for the murder ofGeorge Parkman. Briggs died of an accidental gunshot wound at his home inPittsfield, Massachusetts.
George Nixon Briggs was born inAdams, Massachusetts, on April 12, 1796. He was the eleventh of twelve children of Allen Briggs, a blacksmith originally fromCranston, Rhode Island, and Nancy (Brown) Briggs, ofHuguenot descent.[2] His parents moved the family toManchester, Vermont, when he was seven, and, two years later, toWhite Creek, New York.[3] The household was religious: his father was aBaptist and his mother was aQuaker, and they gave their children religious instruction from the Bible.[4]
At the age of 14, during theSecond Great Awakening, which was especially strong inUpstate New York, Briggs experienced aconversion experience and joined the Baptist faith. He spoke atrevival meetings of his experience, drawing appreciative applause from the crowds, according toHiland Hall, who came to know Briggs at that time and who became a lifelong friend and political associate.[5] His faith informed his personal behavior: he remained committed to religious ideals, for instanceobjecting to Congressional sessions that stretched into Sunday andabstaining from alcohol consumption.[6][7][8]
Briggs sporadically attended the public schools in White Creek, and was apprenticed for three years to a Quakerhatter.[9] With support from his older brothers he embarked on the study of law inPittsfield andLanesboro in 1813, and wasadmitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1818.[10] He first opened a practice in Adams, moved it to Lanesboro in 1823, and Pittsfield in 1842. His trial work was characterized by a contemporary as clear, brief, and methodical, even though he was fond of telling stories in less formal settings.[11]
In 1817 Briggs helped to establish a Baptist church in Lanesboro; in this congregation he met Harriet Hall, whom he married in 1818; their children were Harriet, George, andHenry.[12] Briggs was also called upon to raise the four orphaned children of his brother Rufus, one of the brothers who supported him in his law studies. Rufus died in 1816, followed by his wife not long afterward.[13]
Briggs' involvement in civic life began at the local level. From 1824 to 1831 Briggs was theregister of deeds for the Northern district ofBerkshire County, Massachusetts.[14] He was electedtown clerk in 1824, was appointed chairman of the board of commissioners of highways in 1826.[15] His interest in politics was sparked by his acquaintance withHenry Shaw, who served in theUnited States House of Representatives from 1817 to 1821.[16]
A criminal case tried in 1826 brought Briggs wider notice. AnOneida Indian living inStockbridge was accused of murder. Briggs was appointed by the court to defend him; convinced by the evidence that the man was innocent, Briggs made what was described by a contemporary as a plea that was "a model of jury eloquence". The jury, unfortunately, disagreed with Briggs, and convicted the man, who was hanged. In 1830 the true murderer confessed to commission of the crime.[17]
Despite his rise in prominence, Briggs was at first ineligible for state offices because he did not own property. In 1830 he decided to run for Congress, for which there was no such requirement. He was elected to thetwenty-second through thetwenty-fourth Congresses as anAnti-Jacksonian, and as aWhig to thetwenty-fifth throughtwenty-seventh Congresses, serving from March 4, 1831, to March 3, 1843. He decided not to run for reelection in 1842.[18]
Briggs was what became known in later years as a "Cotton Whig". He was in favor ofprotectionist tariffs, and opposed the expansion of slavery into western territories, but did not seek to threaten the unity of the nation with a strong stance against slavery. He served on theCommittee on Public Expenditures and theCommittee on the Post Office and Post Roads, serving for a time as the chairman of each.[18] The Post Office committee was a regular recipient of complaints from southern states concerning the transmission ofabolitionist mailings, which were seen there as incendiary; the matter was of some controversy because southern legislators sought to have these types of mailings banned. Briggs' friendHiland Hall, who also sat on the committee, drafted a report in 1836 rebutting the rationales used in such legislative proposals, but the committee as a whole, and then the House, refused to accept the report.[19] Although the authorship of the report appears to be entirely Hall's, Briggs may have contributed to it, and was a signatory to Hall's publication of the report in theNational Intelligencer, a major political journal.[20] The document was influential in driving later Congressional debate on legislative proposals concerning abolitionist mailings, none of which were ever adopted.[21] Briggs and Hall were both instrumental in drafting and gaining passage of thePost Office Act of 1836, which included substantive accounting reforms in the wake of financial mismanagement byPostmaster GeneralWilliam Taylor Barry.[22]
During his time in Congress, Briggs was a vocal advocate fortemperance. He formed the Congressional Temperance Society in 1833, sitting on its executive committee; at an 1836 temperance convention atSaratoga Springs, New York, he advocated the taking of total abstinence pledges as a way to bring more people away from the evils of alcohol,[6] and notably prepared such a pledge forKentucky RepresentativeThomas F. Marshall on the floor of the House of Representatives. His moves to organize the temperance movement in Congress died out when he left the body, but it was a cause he would continue to espouse for the rest of his life.[23] In 1860 he was chosen president of theAmerican Temperance Union.[24]
During the winter of 1834–1835, while walking along the Washington Canal, he heard a crowd exclaim that a young black boy had fallen in and was drowning. Upon hearing this, he dove into the water without removing any of his clothes and saved the boy.[25]
Briggs was nominated to run for the governorship on the Whig ticket against the incumbent DemocratMarcus Morton in 1843.[26] Former governorJohn Davis had been nominated first, but refused the nomination, possibly becauseDaniel Webster promised him party support for a futurevice presidential bid. Briggs was apparently recommended as a compromise candidate acceptable to different factions within the party (one controlled by Webster, the other byAbbott Lawrence).[27] He was also probably chosen to appeal more directly to the state's rural voters, a constituency that normally supported Morton. The abolitionistLiberty Party also fielded a candidate, with the result that none of the candidates won the needed majority. The legislature decided the election in those cases; with a Whig majority there, Briggs' election was assured.[26] Briggs was reelected annually until 1850 against a succession of Democratic opponents. He won popular majorities until the 1849 election, even though third parties (including the Liberty Party and its successor, theFree Soil Party) were often involved.[28] Although Whigs had a reputation for aristocratic bearing, Briggs was much more a man of the people than the preceding Whig governors, John Davis andEdward Everett.[29]
In 1844 Briggs, alarmed at a recently enacted policy bySouth Carolina authorizing the imprisonment of free blacks arriving there from Massachusetts and other northern states, sent representatives to protest the policy.Samuel Hoar and his daughter Elizabeth were unsuccessful in changing South Carolina policy, and after protests against what was perceived as Yankee interference in Southern affairs, were advised to leave the state for their own safety.[30]
Capital punishment was a major issue that was debated in the state during Brigg's tenure, with social reformers calling for its abolition. Briggs personally favored capital punishment, but for political reasons called for moderation in its use, seeking, for example, to limit its application in murder cases to those involvingfirst degree murder.[31] After an acquittal in an 1846 murder case where anti-death penalty sentiment was thought to have a role, Briggs, seeking to undercut the anti-death penalty lobby, proposed eliminating the penalty for all crimes except murder, but expressed concern that more such acquittals by sympathetic juries would undermine the connection between crime and punishment.[32]
[Briggs is] an excellent middle man; he looks well when speaking, and seems always ready to say something good, but never said anything; he is an orateurmanqué.
Briggs' argument was used in the 1849 trial ofWashington Goode, a black mariner accused of killing a rival for the affections of a lady. The case against Goode was essentially circumstantial, but the jury heeded the district attorney's call for assertive punishment of "crimes of violence" and convicted him.[34] There were calls for Briggs to commute Goode's capital sentence, but he refused, writing "A pardon here would tend toward the utter subversion of the law."[35]
Not long after the Goode case camethe sensational trial of ProfessorJohn White Webster in the murder ofGeorge Parkman, a crime that took place at theHarvard Medical School in November 1849. The trial received nationwide coverage, and the prosecution case was based on evidence that was either circumstantial (complicated by the fact that a complete corpse was not found), or founded on new types of evidence (forensic dentistry was used for the first time in this trial).[36][37] Furthermore,Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief JusticeLemuel Shaw was widely criticized for bias in the instructions he gave to the jury.[38] Briggs was petitioned to commute Webster's sentence by death penalty opponents, and even threatened with physical harm if he did not.[39] He refused however, stating that the evidence in the case was clear (especially after Webster gave a confession), and that there was no reason to doubt that the court had acted with due and proper diligence.[40]
During Briggs' time as governor, abolitionist activists continued to make inroads against both the Whigs and Democrats, primarily making common cause with the Democrats against the dominant Whigs.[41] Briggs' stance as a Cotton Whig put him in opposition to these forces. He opposed theMexican–American War, but acceded to federal demands that the states assist in raising troops for the war, earning the wrath of activistWendell Phillips. He did promote other types of reform, supportingHorace Mann in his activities to improve education in the state.[18]
In 1849, Briggs failed to secure a majority in the popular vote because of the rise in power of the Free Soil Party, but the Whig legislature returned him to office.[42] In the 1850 election, anger over theCompromise of 1850 (a series of federal acts designed to preserve the unity of the nation which included theFugitive Slave Act) prompted the Democrats and Free Soilers to form a coalition to gain control over the Massachusetts legislature, and divided the Whigs along pro- and antiabolition lines. With the gubernatorial election again sent to the legislature, DemocratGeorge S. Boutwell was chosen over Briggs.[43]
Briggs resumed the practice of law in Pittsfield. He was a member of thestate constitutional convention in 1853, and sat as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas from 1853 to 1858.[44] In 1859 he was nominated for governor by the fadingKnow-Nothing movement, but trailed far behind other candidates.[45]
In 1861 Briggs was appointed by PresidentAbraham Lincoln to a diplomatic mission to the South AmericanGranadine Confederation (roughly present-dayColombia andPanama). However, he died before he could take up the position.[18] On September 4, 1861[46] Briggs was getting an overcoat out of his closet at his home in Pittsfield, when a gun fell. As Briggs was picking it up, the gun discharged and Briggs was shot.[47] Briggs died early in the morning of September 12, 1861, and was buried in thePittsfield Cemetery.[48]
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| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Whig nominee forGovernor of Massachusetts 1843,1844,1845,1846,1847,1848,1849,1850 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Know Nothing nominee forGovernor of Massachusetts 1859 | Succeeded by None |
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
| Preceded by | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts's 9th congressional district 1831–1833 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts's 7th congressional district March 4, 1833 – March 3, 1843 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Governor of Massachusetts January 9, 1844 – January 11, 1851 | Succeeded by |
| Post Office and Post Roads (1808–1947) |  | |
|---|---|---|
| (Reform in the) Civil Service* (1893–1947) | ||
| Post Office and Civil Service (1947–1995) | ||
| Note | *Name shortened fromReform in the Civil Service toCivil Service in 1925. | |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
