Thomas Johnston Turner (5 April 1815-4 April 1874) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-IL 6) from 4 March 1847 to 3 March 1849, succeeding Joseph P. Hoge and preceding Edward Dickinson Baker.
Biography[]
Thomas Johnston Turner was born in Trumbull County, Ohio in 1815, and he was raised in Butler County, Pennsylvania; Lake County, Indiana; and Freeport, Illinois. Turner became a lawyer in 1840 and became a judge in 1842, postmaster in 1844, district attorney in 1845, and a member of the US House of Representatives from 1847 to 1849. He supported the prevention of the expansion of slavery into the territories, refusing to admit new slave states, and the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, and he endorsed Republican Abraham Lincoln's failed US Senate bid in 1858. Turner became colonel of the 15th Illinois Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War, and he failed in his 1871 Senate bid and moved to Chicago. He died in 1874.