William M. Meredith
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William Meredith | |
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Attorney General of Pennsylvania | |
In office January 16, 1861 – June 3, 1861 | |
Governor | Andrew Gregg Curtin |
Preceded by | Samuel Anderson Purviance |
Succeeded by | Benjamin H. Brewster |
19th United States Secretary of the Treasury | |
In office March 8, 1849 – July 22, 1850 | |
President | Zachary Taylor Millard Fillmore |
Preceded by | Robert J. Walker |
Succeeded by | Thomas Corwin |
United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania | |
In office 1841–1845 | |
President | William Henry Harrison John Tyler |
Preceded by | John M. Read |
Succeeded by | Thomas M. Pettit |
Personal details | |
Born | |
Spouse | Catherine Keppele (1834–1854) |
Children | 5 |
Education | University of Pennsylvania (BA) |
William Morris Meredith (June 8, 1799 – August 17, 1873) was an American lawyer and politician from
Early and family life
Born on June 8, 1799, in
William M. Meredith graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1812 (graduation at age 13 not being unusual at the time). After assisting his father in the family's saddlery business, he read law, and was himself admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar.
After his mother's death in 1828, William Morris Meredith helped raise his younger siblings. On June 17, 1834, at the age of 35 and after a ten-year engagement, Meredith married the former Catherine Keppele (d. 1854). They had one son (William, b. 1838, later a published essayist and poet) and four daughters: Gertrude Gouverneur Meredith, Euphemia Ogden Meredith, Elizabeth Caldwell Meredith, Catherine Keppele Meredith. Catherine Meredith also helped care for her husband's siblings, and his father when he was disabled by a stroke in 1839.
Career
Meredith was admitted to the bar in 1817, and began practicing law. He drew considerable public attention, as did his slightly senior colleague James C. Biddle (later his brother-in-law), by questioning the conduct of Judge Frank Hallowell in Commonwealth v. Cook, a murder case in which three black men were charged with killing a boy. During the jury's deliberation, the American Daily Advertiser published an article which defense counsel thought highly biased. The judge allowed counsel to question jurors as to whether they read the article, and when the judge refused to dismiss a juror who said he was offended by Meredith's questioning, complained such that the judge held both lawyers in contempt of court and ordered them jailed for 30 days, despite considerable public sympathy.[1][2] Upon their release, they secured release of two of the prisoners in an appeal on double jeopardy grounds. This gained Meredith a reputation for fearlessness and inflexible honesty, and he was elected President of the Philadelphia Bar Association the following year.
A Federalist, Meredith was then elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, where he served in the minority for five years, from 1824 to 1828, the year of his mother's death (during which his father was grief-stricken and never fully recovered). One of his accomplishments was establishment of a House of Refuge for juvenile offenders, and he served as that institution's manager, and also on the board of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, in which capacity he continued to serve for many years until his death.[3]
Meredith was president of the
A successful attorney, particularly after he secured termination of the German Lutheran Church's interment rights in Franklin Square in Commonwealth v. Allmyer,[5] Meredith owned the Wheatland Estate in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, from May 1845 until December 1848 before selling it to future president James Buchanan.
Meredith strongly opposed the free trade legislation passed the year before under his predecessor Robert J. Walker. He felt that there was a need to protect the American workman, who was subject to competition from poorly paid European labor. Meredith's principal contribution in office was his Annual Report of 1849 in which he set forth an elaborate argument for a protective tariff.
The increase in the public debt due to the
Civil War and later legal career
Meredith was elected Pennsylvania's attorney general in the 1860 election, and served for two terms (from 1861 until 1867). In 1861, as a delegate to a Peace Conference, he worked unsuccessfully to prevent the southern states from seceding from the Union. His brother Sullivan Amory Meredith had served in the Mexican War, and became a Brigadier General of Union Volunteers, commissioned in 1862, and the brothers helped assure Pennsylvania met its quota of troops. His son William served for a brief period as secretary to Major General George A. McCall, but his stutter and problems with cataracts caused him to resign that position.
William Meredith later served as a member of a commission working out the settlement of the
Death and legacy
Meredith died in Philadelphia in August 1873, at the age of 74. His wife, Catherine had died in 1854. Both are interred at the Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia.
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania holds the Meredith family papers.[6] A Philadelphia school was named in his honor in 1931, and remains active today.[7]
Meredith received one of only two 1849
References
- ISSN 1558-3562.
- ^ "Legacy Files" (PDF). hsp.org.
- ^ Ashhurst at 212
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
- ^ Ashurst at 215
- ^ "Finding Aid 1509 Meredith" (PDF). hsp.org.
- ^ "Meredith School - the School District of Philadelphia". Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-03-15.
- ^ "PCGS CoinFacts: Your Digital Encyclopedia of U.S. Coins". coinfacts.com.
External links
- Biographical sketch of William M Meredith, The American Law Register, Vol. 55, No. 4, Apr 1907
- The Meredith Family Papers, including William M. Meredith's political correspondence, civic papers and legal case files, are available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.