Francis Granger was an American political leader. He was a Representative from New York and United States Postmaster General.
Background
Francis Granger was born on December 1, 1792, in Suffield, Connecticut. He was the second of the three sons of Gideon and Mindwell (Pease) Granger.
His father was for thirteen years postmaster-general in the administrations of Jefferson and Madison.
Education
Francis entered Yale College at the age of sixteen and graduated in 1811. When his father removed to Canandaigua, New York, in 1816, the son followed and began the practice of law.
Career
Granger was elected to the state Assembly in 1825, as a follower of Gov. Clinton, won a following, and when reelected in 1826, received thirty-three votes for speaker, but was not chosen.
The opportunity now presented itself for him to extend his popularity.
In 1828, Granger was nominated by the National Republicans for lieutenant-governor, and by the Anti-Masons, who held a separate convention, for governor.
After some consideration, he accepted the first of these nominations but was defeated in the election. The next year, he returned to the Assembly. In 1830, he was the unanimous choice of both the Anti-Masons and the National Republicans for governor, and he was nominated again in 1832.
Both times, he was defeated, and in 1834 his candidacy was not renewed, William H. Seward being nominated in his stead. Granger was by this time closely associated with the rising Whig party.
He was elected to Congress as a Whig in 1834, but played a relatively inconspicuous role. In 1836, he was nominated on the Anti-Masonic ticket for vice-president, and by the Whigs of Massachusetts for the same office.
The election was thrown into the Senate, where Granger received sixteen votes, against thirty-three for Richard M. Johnson.
He now returned to Congress, serving two more terms in the House. During this period, he joined John Quincy Adams in opposing Southern restriction on the right of petition and earned the hostility of the slave-holders.
He was a supporter of Harrison’s candidacy in 1840, and on the victory of the Whig ticket was appointed postmaster-general.
His nomination was opposed by Southern members of the Senate but was confirmed. After the succession of Tyler to the presidency, and the rupture between the President and the Whig leaders, Granger accompanied most of the other members of the cabinet into retirement.
Re-elected to Congress to fill a vacancy, he served until March 3, 1843, but thereafter resisted every effort to bring him back into public life, even declining the offer of a foreign mission.
He presided over the Whig convention of 1850, having been put in the chair, as Weed confesses in his Autobiography because that was where he could do the least harm.
When the convention adopted resolutions praising William H. Seward, Granger retired from the hall. He and the conservative Whigs held a separate convention, but made no nominations for the state officers.
Granger at this time gave the name to a faction of his party, the Silver Grays, so called from the flowing gray hair of their leader. Again retiring into private life, he emerged for the Peace Conference of 1861.
In this convention, he appeared as an ardent advocate of compromise. He was by now thoroughly conservative and had voted the Bell-Everett ticket in 1860. His part in the Conference was not very effective.
From 1861 till his death, he lived in retirement at Canandaigua.
Achievements
Views
Granger's views on the slavery question were now becoming more conservative. Though opposed to the annexation of Texas, he broke with Weed on slavery in 1845, and was a partisan of the Compromise measures of 1850 and a strong supporter of the Fillmore administration.
Connections
In 1817, Francis married Cornelia Rutson Van Rensselaer, daughter of Jeremiah Van Rensselaer of Utica, a well-to-do Federalist.