James M. Hinds

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James Hinds
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Arkansas's 2nd district
In office
June 22, 1868 – October 22, 1868
Preceded byAlbert Rust (1861)
Succeeded byJames T. Elliott
Personal details
Born(1833-12-05)December 5, 1833
New York, U.S.
DiedOctober 22, 1868(1868-10-22) (aged 34)
near Indian Bay, Arkansas, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic (Before 1865)
Republican (1865–1868)
SpouseAnna Pratt
Children3
EducationUniversity at Albany
University of Cincinnati (LLB)

James M. Hinds (December 5, 1833 – October 22, 1868) was the first U.S. Congressman assassinated in office. He served as member of the

civil rights for black former slaves during the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War
.

Born and raised in a small town in

public education for both black and white children.[1]

Campaigning for Republican candidate

1868 presidential election, Hinds was threatened and targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. In October 1868, while travelling to a political meeting with Joseph Brooks in Monroe County, Hinds was shot to death by a Klansman.[2][3]

Early life

Hinds was born in East

St. Louis, Missouri, before graduating from Cincinnati Law School four years after his brother Henry did so.[5]

Career

Minnesota

Hinds initially left home and went west at age 19. After obtaining a law degree, in 1856 (at age 23) he moved to the Minnesota Territory and settled in St. Peter, the county seat of Nicollet County 40 miles (64 km) west of his brother Henry in Shakopee, Minnesota.[5] Hinds opened a law practice and was elected district attorney for the county.[6]

Hinds was building a career and starting a family in St. Peter during a turbulent time in the region because of conflict between settlers and homesteaders and the

Reconstruction
.

Arkansas

See also: Arkansas in the American Civil War

Hinds found Arkansas, one of the 11 states of the former Confederacy, heavily degraded by the Civil War. The economy and labor system, which had relied upon slavery, were in shambles, and fighting between Confederate and Union forces had led to population decline and the loss of millions of dollars of property.

As with many Northerners, Hinds did not understand the depth of the South's resentment toward African Americans and Northerners. He believed that in the wake of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, freedmen in the South should enjoy the same liberties as in the North, and underestimated continuing fierce resistance from whites who had sided with the Confederacy. These sentiments were later eulogized by Logan H. Roots, a contemporary who represented Arkansas in Congress. Hinds found himself referred to as a carpetbagger, a pejorative term used by resentful Southerners to disparage Northerners who moved south during Reconstruction.

In mid-1865 in Little Rock, Hinds formed a law practice with

governor of Arkansas. In October 1867, Hinds was elected a delegate at Arkansas's 1868 Constitution Convention. At that Convention he was made chairman of the Committee on the Elective Franchise. The new constitution that emerged that February, ratified in March, provided voting rights for black males over the age of 21 and for the creation of public schools for both black and white children. Elected to Congress for the 2nd congressional district early that year as a Republican, Hinds went to Washington D.C. in April 1868, where he arranged for Arkansas to be the first state to rejoin the union under the 1867 Reconstruction Acts. In May 1868, Hinds was a delegate at the 1868 Republican National Convention held in Chicago. Returning to Arkansas in August, he campaigned vigorously for Republican presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant
and for civil rights for former slaves.

Assassination

Hinds was the first U.S. Congressman assassinated in office. He was murdered on the eve of the 1868 presidential election, which was a contest over civil rights and suffrage for freed slaves. Republicans, led by former Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant, favored those measures, while the Democratic Party opposed them. On October 22, 1868, en route to a campaign event for Grant near the village of Indian Bay in Monroe County, a man shot Hinds and fellow Republican politician Joseph Brooks in the back with a shotgun. Brooks managed to stay on his horse and ride to the event to bring back assistance. Hinds was knocked off his horse by the shotgun blast to his back, and lay on the road until help arrived. Before he died, Hinds wrote a short message to his wife and identified his killer. He died about two hours after the attack. A Coroner's Inquest identified the shooter as George Clark, secretary of the Monroe County Democratic Party and a local Klansman. Clark was never arrested or prosecuted.[9]

A week after the attack, The Morning Republican newspaper published the story, recounting that "Men passing and returning soon found Mr. Hinds lying in the road still alive and rational, but conscious of the fact that his wound was of such serious nature that but a few moments more remained of his earthly career."[10]

Arkansas Governor

Washington D.C.
contains a memorial stone in his honor.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Darrow, William B. (Spring 2015). "The Killing of Congressman James Hinds". Arkansas Historical Quarterly. 74 (1): 18–55.
  2. ^ Foner, Eric (March 1989). Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. HarperCollins. p. 342.
  3. ^ "Encyclopedia of Arkansas". Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
  4. ^ Darrow 2015, p. 18.
  5. ^ a b Stevens 1904, p. 188.
  6. ^ Darrow 2015, p. 19.
  7. ISBN 978-1504202732
    .
  8. ^ Darrow 2015, pp. 20-21.
  9. ISBN 9780739183595
    .
  10. ^ Rosenwald, Michael S. (June 14, 2017). "Rep. Steve Scalise and the long, awful history of gunned-down lawmakers". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 28, 2020.
  11. ISBN 9780807830079
    .

References

Further reading

External links

U.S. House of Representatives
Vacant
Title last held by
Albert Rust
1861 		Member of the
U.S. House of Representatives
from Arkansas's 2nd congressional district

1868 		Succeeded by
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