Background
Harris, Benjamin Gwinn was born on December 13, 1805 in near Leonardtown, Maryland, United States.
United States representative politician
Harris, Benjamin Gwinn was born on December 13, 1805 in near Leonardtown, Maryland, United States.
Born near Leonardtown, Saint Mary"s County, Maryland, Harris attended Yale College and Cambridge (Massachusetts) Law School.
Harris was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congresses (March 4, 1863 – March 3, 1867). He was censured by the House of Representatives on April 9, 1864, for treasonable utterances. He was tried by a military court in Washington, District of Columbia in May 1865 for harboring two paroled Confederate soldiers, and sentenced to three years imprisonment and forever disqualified from holding any office under the United States Government, but President Andrew Johnson subsequently remitted the sentence.
He died on his estate, "Ellenborough," near Leonardtown, Maryland, April 4, 1895.
He was interred in the family burying ground on his estate.
He served as member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1833 and 1836, and was admitted to the bar in 1840.