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John Henninger Reagan

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Political People

       John Henninger Reagan
   Born October 8, 1818,
        Sevier County, Tennessee.
   Died March 6, 1905,
        Anderson County, Texas.

   John Henninger Reagan ( October 8, 1818 – March 6, 1905), was a leading
   19th-century American politician from the U.S. state of Texas. A
   Democrat, Reagan left the U.S. House of Representatives when his state
   seceded from the Union to join the Confederate States of America.
   During the American Civil War, he served in the cabinet of Jefferson
   Davis as Postmaster-General. After the Confederate defeat, he called
   for cooperation with the federal government and became unpopular, but
   returned to public office when his predictions of harsh treatment for
   resistance were proved correct.

   He has no known relation to Ronald Reagan.

Early life

   Reagan was born in Sevier County, Tennessee, to Timothy Richard and
   Elizabeth Lusk Reagan. (Some sources say he was born in the county
   seat, Sevierville.) He left Tennessee at nineteen and like many from
   Tennessee traveled in Texas. There he worked as a surveyor from 1839 to
   1843, and afterward was a farmer in Kaufman County until 1851. He
   studied law on his own and was licensed to practice law in 1846,
   opening an office in Buffalo.

   The same year he obtained his license, he was elected a probate judge
   in Henderson County and in 1847 he went to the state legislature but
   was defeated for a second term in 1849. He returned to his law practice
   and was elected a district judge in Palestine, serving from 1852 to
   1857. His labors in defeating the American Party ( Know-Nothings) in
   Texas led to his election to Congress in 1857 from Texas's First
   District.

   In Congress, he was a moderate and a supporter of the Union, but
   resigned from Congress on January 15, 1861 and returned to his home
   state when it became clear that Texas would secede. There he
   participated in the secession convention that met at Austin on the last
   day of January. The convention voted for Texas to leave the union and
   for Reagan to represent the state in the Provisional Confederate
   Congress, but within the month he was in the cabinet instead.

Civil War

   President Jefferson Davis named him to head the new Confederate States
   of America Post-office Department and he accepted. Reagan was an able
   administrator, presiding over the only cabinet department that
   functioned well during the war. Despite the hostilities of the Civil
   War, the United States Post Office Department continued operations in
   the Confederacy until June 1, 1861, whereupon the new Confederate
   service assumed its functions. Reagan's masterstroke in establishing
   his department was sending an agent to Washington, D.C., with letters
   asking the heads of the United States Post Office Department's various
   bureaus to come work for him. Nearly all did so, bringing copies of
   their records, contracts, account books, etc. "Reagan in effect had
   stolen the U.S. Post Office," historian William C. Davis wrote. When
   President Davis asked his cabinet for the status of their departments,
   Reagan reported he had his up and running in only six weeks. Davis was
   amazed.

   Reagan cut expenses by eliminating costly and little-used routes and
   forcing the railroads that carried the mail to reduce their rates.
   Despite the problems the war caused, his department managed to turn a
   profit, "the only post office department in American history to pay its
   own way" wrote William C. Davis.

   When Davis fled Richmond on April 2, 1865, before the Army of the
   Potomac under George G. Meade, Reagan accompanied the president on his
   flight to the Carolinas. On April 27, Davis made him Secretary of the
   Treasury after George A. Trenholm's resignation and he served in that
   capacity until he, Davis, and Texas Governor Francis R. Lubbock were
   captured near Irwinville, Georgia on May 10.

   Reagan was imprisoned with Confederate Vice President Alexander
   Hamilton Stephens at Fort Warren in Boston. On August 11, he wrote an
   open letter to his fellow Texans urging cooperation with the Union,
   renunciation of the secession convention, the abolition of slavery, and
   letting freed slaves vote. He warned of military rule that would
   enforce these policies if Texans did not voluntarily adopt them. For
   this, he was denounced by Texans. He was released from prison later
   that year and returned home to Palestine in December.

Return to public life

   Reagan would serve as chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas
   Enlarge
   Reagan would serve as chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas

   To those who felt that the Reconstruction was unduly harsh, his
   prescience was hailed—he became known as the "Old Roman," a Texas
   Cincinnatus. He was part of the successful effort to remove the
   Republican Edmund J. Davis from the governorship in 1874, after he
   attempted to illegally remain in office. That year he returned to the
   Congressional seat he held before the war, serving from March 4, 1875
   to March 3, 1887. In 1875, he served in the convention that wrote a new
   state constitution for Texas. In Congress, he advocated federal
   regulation of railroads and helped create the Interstate Commerce
   Commission. Though he had been elected to the Senate in 1887 (serving
   March 4, 1887 to June 10, 1891), he resigned to become chairman of the
   Railroad Commission of Texas at the behest of his friend, Governor
   James Stephen "Jim" Hogg, chairing it until 1903.

   Conscious of the importance of history, he was a founder of the Texas
   State Historical Association and attended reunions of Confederate
   veterans in his state. He wrote his Memoirs, With Special Reference to
   Secession and the Civil War, published in 1905, and died at his home in
   Palestine in Anderson County later that year, the last surviving member
   of the government of the Confederacy.

   Historian Ben H. Procter included Reagan in his list of the "four
   greatest Texans of the 19th century," along with Sam Houston, Stephen
   F. Austin, and James Stephen Hogg.

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