Oliver P. Morton
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Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton (August 4, 1823–November 1, 1877) was a U.S. politician of the Republican Party. He served as governor of Indiana during the Civil War, and later served in the U.S. Senate for a decade.
Morton was a native Hoosier (he was born in Wayne County), but he spent most of his formative years in Ohio. As a teenager, he moved to Centerville, Indiana, which remained his home for the rest of his life.
Despite finishing neither high school nor college (he briefly attended Miami University and Cincinnati College), Morton was able to train himself in law, and became a successful and wealthy attorney in Centerville.
In the 1850s, Morton went into politics. He won the Republican nomination for governor of Indiana in 1856, but lost the election. The Republicans nominated Morton for lieutenant governor in 1860, and this time he was a winner. The new governor was immediately chosen by the Indiana legislature for a U.S. Senate seat, and Morton was promoted to the governor's chair in January 1861.
As governor, Morton was a staunch and effective supporter of the Union cause. He successfully raised men and money for the Union army, and demonized and terrorized the Confederate sympathizers in his state. Despite being criticized for exceeding his authority as governor (he refused to call the Democrat-dominated legislature into session in 1863 or 1864), he was popular in the state and was re-elected governor in 1864.
In January 1867, Morton was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he was noted for his intense partisanship. In the 1870s, he became a prominent member of the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party; a faction more concerned with building the party and its power than with any particular ideological stand.
In late 1865, Morton was partially crippled by a paralytic stroke. He suffered a second stroke in early 1877, and died shortly afterwards in Indianapolis.
Morton married the former Lucinda Burbank in 1845. They had five children, three of whom survived to adulthood.
References
- Garraty, John A. and Mark C. Carnes. American National Biography, vol. 13, "Morton, Oliver Perry". New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.