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Thomas Swann

Thomas Swann (3 February 1809-24 July 1883) was the Know Nothing Mayor of Baltimore from 10 November 1856 to 12 November 1860 (succeeding Samuel Hinks and preceding George William Brown), as the Democratic Governor of Maryland from 10 January 1866 to 13 January 1869 (succeeding Augustus Bradford and preceding Oden Bowie), and in the US House of Representatives (D-MD 3) from 4 March 1869 to 3 March 1873 (succeeding Charles E. Phelps and preceding William J. O'Brien) and from MD-4 from 4 March 1873 to 3 March 1879 (succeeding John Ritchie and preceding Robert Milligan McLane).

Biography[]

Thomas Swann was born in Alexandria, Virginia on 3 February 1809. He moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 1834 and joined the railroad industry and became director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1847 and its president from 1848 to 1853. He was elected Mayor of Baltimore in 1856 as a nativist Know Nothing, serving until 1860; he won re-election through voter intimidation. Swann supported internal improvements and urban modernizations, while opposing any African-American and Catholic presence in the state. He was a Republican from 1861 to 1866, when he switched to the Democratic Party. He served as Governor of Maryland from 1866 to 1869, promising to restore Maryland to "a white man's government" in the aftermath of the American Civil War. He supported President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policies, but he changed his racial views, supporting immigration and the immediate emancipation of the state's African-Americans. On his death in 1883, Swann was hailed as a great mayor, in spite of his early political views.

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