William
Pitt Fessenden was born in Boscawen, New Hampshire, in 1806. After
graduating from Bowdoin College he worked as a lawyer in Maine. A
member of the Whig Party, Fessenden was
elected to the House of Representatives in 1841. A strong opponent
of slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska
Act he was one of the founders of the Republican
Party.
Elected to the senate in 1854, Fessenden served as a member of the
Senate Finance Committee, eventually becomings its chairman in 1861.
Fessenden was a Radical Republication
and during the Fort Sumter crisis urged
Abraham Lincoln not to back down. He
was also strongly opposed to the appointment of the conservative,
Simon Cameron, as Secretary of War.
During the American Civil War Fessenden
argued for the abolition of slavery and
the use of black regiments. As Chairman
of the Senate Finance Committee, he gave his full support to his political
ally, Salmon Chase, the Secretary of the
Treasury.
Fessenden doubted Lincoln's abilities as president. Privately he argued
that Lincoln was under the control of William
Seward, his Secretary of State. Early in 1862 Fessenden told a
friend that: "If the President had his wife's will and would
use it rightly, our affairs would look much better." As well
as urging Seward's removal Fessenden was also highly critical on Union
military commanders such as Irvin McDowell
and George McClellan who he believed
were not fully committed to defeating the Confederate
Army.
Fessenden also clashed with Abraham Lincoln
over his treatment of Major General John
C. Fremont. On 30th August, 1861, Fremont, the commander of the
Union Army in St. Louis, proclaimed that
all slaves owned by Confederates in Missouri were free. Lincoln was
furious when he heard the news as he feared that this action would
force slave-owners in border states to join the Confederate
Army. Lincoln asked Fremont to modify his order and free only
slaves owned by Missourians actively working for the South. When Fremont
refused, he was sacked and replaced by General Henry
Halleck. Fessenden described Lincoln's actions as "a weak
and unjustifiable concession in the Union men of the border states."
When Salmon Chase resigned as Secretary
of the Treasury in June, 1864, Abraham Lincoln
decided to ask Fessenden to take his place. Fessenden's continued
the policies of Chase and managed to act independently from the president's
influence. He wrote at the time: "Lincoln is too busy looking
after the elections to think of anything else. I am glad it is so,
for the less he interferes in other matters the better for all concerned.
Yet he is a man of decided intellect and a good fellow, able to do
well any one thing if he was able to content or confine his attention
to that thing until it was done."
Fessenden resigned as Secretary of the Treasury in March, 1865. At
first he supported Andrew Johnson but
changed into a fierce critic when the president attempted to veto
the extension of the Freeman's Bureau,
the Civil Rights Bill and the Reconstruction
Acts. However, he doubted the legality of trying to impeach Johnson
and voted against the measure. William Pitt Fessenden died in 1869.
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