Speech of Hon.: Columbus Delano, of Ohio, on the Political Condition of the States Lately in Rebellion; Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 10, 1866 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Speech of Hon.: Columbus Delano, of Ohio, on...)
Excerpt from Speech of Hon.: Columbus Delano, of Ohio, on the Political Condition of the States Lately in Rebellion; Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 10, 1866
Mr. Speaker: I propose to examine the fol lowing question what is the political condition of the States lately in rebellion?
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Speech of Hon. Columbus Delano, of Ohio on reconstruction: delivered in the House of Representatives, February 10, 1866.
(Originally published in 1866. 18 pages. This volume is pr...)
Originally published in 1866. 18 pages. This volume is produced from digital images from the Cornell University Library Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
Columbus Delano was an American congressman, secretary of the interior. He was known as prosecuting attorney of Knox County, a member of the banking firm of Delano, Dunlevy & Company, delegate to the Republican National Convention, commissary general of Ohio, and for one term a member of the state House of Representatives, commissioner of Internal Revenue and the presidency of the National Wool Growers’ Association.
Background
Columbus Delano was born on June 5, 1809 at Shoreham, Vermont, United States. He was the son of James and Elizabeth (Bateman) Delano, and was descended from a French Huguenot, baptized at Leyden, Holland, as Philippe de la Noye, who came to America on the ship Fortune, arriving in Plymouth Harbor in November 1621. His father died when Columbus was six years old, and two years later, in 1817, the boy’s mother moved with him to Mount Vernon, Ohio, United States.
Education
Delano's education was the meager schooling of a poor boy in a frontier village.
Career
After the manner of the time he read law for a year in a law office and in 1831 secured his license to practise.
For several years, he was prosecuting attorney of Knox County. In 1844 he was elected to Congress, serving one term, 1845-47.
He was a Whig and like the other members of his party regarded the Mexican War as a Hall. Southern conspiracy for the extension of slave territory, an offensive war of the United States, with a wicked purpose.
On the Oregon question he supported Polk’s boundary compromise at the 49th parallel. In 1847 no tried without success to be the nominee of his party for governor of Ohio. He has left no account of this chapter in his life.
On his return to Ohio he established his home on the outskirts of Mount Vernon, and gave his attention chiefly to agriculture, sheep raising in particular, but he retained an active interest in party politics.
In 1860 and again in 1864 he was delegate to the Republican National Convention. During the Civil War he was for a short time commissary general of Ohio. From 1865 to 1869 he again represented his district in the national House of Representatives.
He was one of the most effective advocates of protective duties for wool and a supporter of the Wool and Woolens Act of 1867.
In debate, according to Rutherford B. Hayes, one of his associates in Congress, Delano was “clear and correct . .. a good specimen of the lively, earnest style of Western talkers. ”
In 1869 President Grant appointed him commissioner of Internal Revenue, Under his administration the whiskey revenue frauds, already notorious when he took office, continued to blacken the record of the national government.
In 1870 he succeeded Gen. J. D. Cox as secretary of the interior, and during his five-year tenure serious charges of frauds in the Bureau of Indian Affairs came to a head. Congressional committees of investigation and a special commission appointed by the President, partisan bodies, found evidence of neglect and incompetency within the Indian Bureau, but refused to throw the blame upon the officials at the head.
In order to escape the persecution that newspaper critics visited upon his conduct of public affairs, Delano resigned. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that though he was probably personally honest he was woefully lacking in high ideals of public service or an appreciation of the responsibility of a department chief .
The care of his country place, the presidency of the National Wool Growers’ Association, and duties as a trustee of Kenyon College were the interests of his latter years. He gave liberally to the endowment of the college and built for it.
Though at first inclined to the support of the presidential reconstruction policy, he was among the radical congressmen in 1867, convinced that the South required military government.
Connections
On July 13, 1834 Delano married Elizabeth Leavenworth of Mount Vernon.