Francis Preston Blair Jr. (19 February 1821-8 July 1875) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-MO 1) from 4 March 1857 to 3 March 1859 (succeeding Luther Martin Kennett and preceding John R. Barret), from 8 to 25 June 1860 (interrupting Barret's terms), and from 4 March 1861 to 10 June 1864 (succeeding Barret and preceding Samuel Knox) and a US Senator from Missouri from 20 January 1871 to 4 March 1873 (succeeding Daniel T. Jewett and preceding Lewis V. Bogy). He was also a Major-General in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Biography[]
Francis Preston Blair Jr. was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1821, the third and youngest son of Republican Party founder Francis Preston Blair, the brother of Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, and the cousin of Benjamin Gratz Brown. He became a lawyer in St. Louis, Missouri in 1842, and he served under Stephen W. Kearny during the Mexican-American War, serving as attorney general of the New Mexico Territory once it was secured. He returned to St. Louis in the summer of 1847, and he became active in Democratic politics as a friend of Thomas Hart Benton and an opponent of slavery. He served in the State House from 1852 to 1856 as a Free Soiler and Republican, and he went on to serve in the US House of Representatives from 1857 to 1859, in 1860, and from 1861 to 1864. A pupil of President Abraham Lincoln, he helped appoint Nathaniel Lyon as commander of the Western Department of the Union Army and helped Lyon move 20,000 rifles and muskets from St. Louis to Illinois to prevent secessionists from seizing them. While this prevented Missouri from seceding, it also broke the informal truce between the unionist and pro-Confederates in the state, and Blair joined the Missouri volunteers in 1862 and became a Major-General. He commanded a division in William Tecumseh Sherman's army during the Siege of Vicksburg and took part in his 1864 March to the Sea, ending the war as a corps commander. After the war, Blair and his family returned to the Democratic Party due to their opposition to the Radical Republicans' proposals for Reconstruction. In 1868, Democratic presidential candidate Horatio Seymour chose Blair as his running mate, but his dramatic speeches about the dangers of African-American anticipation cost the Democrats the election. He went on to serve as a US Senator from 1871 to 1873, and he was forced to retire after suffering from a stroke in 1872. Blair died in 1875.