John Alexander Anderson was an American Presbyterian clergyman and politician. He served as Kansas State Agricultural College president and United States Congressman from Kansas.
Background
John Alexander Anderson was born on June 26, 1834 in Washington County, Pennsylvania, United States, and descended from two generations of clergymen. His father, Reverend William Caldwell Anderson, the son of Reverend John Anderson, married Jane Mary Anderson, the daughter of Colonel John Alexander, a soldier of the Revolutionary War.
Education
Anderson was educated at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, where he graduated in 1853.
Later he studied theology, graduating in 1857.
Career
In 1857 Anderson began his pastoral work in Stockton, California, where he had opportunity for experimental work in a frontier community. He was associated with the Rev. Thomas Starr King in the reform of the charitable institutions of the state, and in 1860 was appointed a trustee of the Insane Asylum.
At the call of President Lincoln for volunteers, in 1862, he entered military service as chaplain of the 3rd California Infantry and accompanied General Connor on his expedition to Salt Lake City. Through the influence of King, he was made California representative on the United States Sanitary Commission. Subsequently he was transferred to the central office of the Commission at New York, where he was assigned to the duty of relief agent in the 12th army corps.
In 1864, when Grant entered upon his Wilderness campaign as an approach to Richmond, Anderson was given the important position of superintendent of transportation. At the close of the campaign, he served for a time as assistant superintendent of the Canvas and Supply Department at Philadelphia. Here he edited a paper called the Sanitary Bulletin.
Subsequently he was transferred to the History Bureau at Washington, where he remained one year gathering statistics and writing the history of the sanitary work. For the next two years he was statistician for a Citizens' Reform Association movement in Pennsylvania.
In 1868, deciding to return to the ministry, Anderson accepted a call to the First Presbyterian Church at Junction City, Kansas. While his ministerial work was a success, his inquisitive, alert mind sought a wider range of usefulness. Apparently he could not keep out of public affairs.
In 1873 he was appointed president of the Kansas State Agricultural College, a position which he held for five years.
In 1878 he was elected to Congress, a position which he filled for six successive terms, retiring March 4, 1891. In Congress, Anderson served his state and nation with conscientious vigor. In 1891 he was appointed consul-general at Cairo, Egypt. The next year, on the return voyage, he died at Liverpool, England.
Achievements
Politics
Anderson was elected as a Republican to the Forty-sixth and to the next three succeeding Congresses, elected as an Independent Republican to the Fiftieth Congress, reelected as a Republican to the Fifty-first Congress.
While in Congress, Anderson was interested in the railroad land grants, and succeeded in getting measures for their regulation including the taxation of a large amount of land that had hitherto escaped.
He favored two-cent letter postage, and is credited with being the author of the bill providing it. But his chief endeavor was to make the Agricultural Department a full federal department with a secretary in the cabinet.
Connections
In 1864 Anderson married Ann Taylor Foote, who died in 1885. They had three sons.