Benjamin Franklin Rice (26 May 1828-19 January 1905) was a Republican US Senator from Arkansas from 23 June 1868 to 3 March 1873, succeeding Charles B. Mitchel and preceding Stephen Wallace Dorsey.
Biography[]
Benjamin Franklin Rice was born in East Otto, Cattaraugus County, New York in 1828, and he became a lawyer in Ervine, Kentucky. He served in the State House from 1855 to 1856, as a Republican presidential elector in 1856, and as a Union Army captain during the American Civil War, and he settled in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1864. He helped to organize the Republican Party of Arkansas during Reconstruction, and he served in the US Senate from 1868 to 1873. He moved to Colorado in 1875 for health reasons before moving to Washington DC in 1882, and he continued his law practice until his death in 1905.