Mason Brayman (23 May 1813-27 February 1895) was the Republican Governor of the Idaho Territory from 24 July 1876 to 3 August 1880, succeeding David P. Thompson and preceding John Baldwin Neil.
Biography[]
Mason Brayman was born in Buffalo, New York in 1813, and he worked as a printer's apprentice before becoming a lawyer in 1836. He later moved to Michigan and Ohio before settling in Springfield, Illinois in the 1840s and becoming a Baptist churchman and temperance advocate. He served as a special prosecutor during the Illinois Mormon War and persuaded the Mormons to leave the state, and he went on to join the staff of the Illinois Central Railroad during the 1850s and campaigned for Abraham Lincoln's 1858 US Senate bid. Brayman joined the Union Army's 29th Illinois Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War and distinguished himself at the Battle of Shiloh, and he ended the war as a Major-General. After the war, he worked as a newspaper editor in Springfield and Quincy, Illinois before retiring to a farm in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1873. The Panic of 1873 destroyed most of his wealth and forced him to lobby for a patronage appointment, and he served as Governor of the Idaho Territory from 1876 to 1880. He was governor at the time of the Nez Perce War, and his legal inability to create a militia resulted in residents of the northern counties growing angry with Brayman, and the Republican "Boise Ring" political machine failing to disbar Brayman for suggesting that parties come to out-of-court settlements to speed the resolution of mining disputes at Rocky Bar. He also pardoned several Chinese workers who had killed an angry Irish miner in self-defense after he had murdered two of their colleagues, creating an outcry among racist white settlers. Most damning was his sale of 100 bullets and a pound of black powder to the Bannock tribe's leader Buffalo Horn just two weeks before the outbreak of the Bannock War of 1878. Brayman was legally replaced as governor the same year, but his replacement John Philo Hoyt remained governor of the Arizona Territory and refused to inherit the perilous situation in Idaho. Brayman continued to serve as governor until the expiration of his term in 1880. He left Idaho that same year, and he died in Kansas City, Missouri in 1895.