George Henry Williams (26 March 1823-4 April 1910) was a Republican US Senator from Oregon from 4 March 1865 to 4 March 1871 (succeeding Benjamin F. Harding and preceding James K. Kelly), United States Attorney General from 14 December 1871 to 25 April 1875 (succeeding Amos Akerman and preceding Edwards Pierrepont), and Mayor of Portland from 2 June 1902 to 2 June 1905 (succeeding Henry S. Rowe and preceding Harry Lane).
Biography[]
George Henry Williams was born in New Lebanon, Columbia County, New York in 1823, and he was raised in Onondaga County before becoming a lawyer in Iowa in 1844. He served as a district judge from 1847 to 1852, and, in 1853, President Franklin Pierce appointed him Chief Justice of the Oregon Territory. At the 1857 Oregon Constitutional Convention, Williams argued that slavery should be outlawed in Oregon as a precondition for statehood, and he also argued that women's property should not be subjected to their husbands' debts. Originally a Democrat, he defected to the Republican Party in 1864 and went on to serve in the US Senate from 1865 to 1871, supporting military Reconstruction and voting in favor of President Andrew Johnson's impeachment. He went on to serve as President Ulysses S. Grant's Attorney General, shutting down the Ku Klux Klan, recognizing P.B.S. Pinchback as the first African-American state governor, and was a failed nominee to the US Supreme Court. After his wife was found to have taken payment by a custom house firm in exchange for Williams dropping litigation against them, Williams resigned as Attorney General, and he worked as a vote counter in Florida at the 1876 presidential election before returning to his legal career in Oregon. He served as Mayor of Portland from 1902 to 1905, and he was briefly indicted for refusing to enforce anti-gambling laws. He died in 1910, the last surviving member of the Grant administration.