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John Milton Niles was born on August 20, 1787 in Windsor, Connecticut, United States to Moses and Naomi (Marshall) Niles.
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editor politician postmaster general
John Milton Niles was born on August 20, 1787 in Windsor, Connecticut, United States to Moses and Naomi (Marshall) Niles.
John's parents found it no easy task to rear their five children, and John, consequently, received no better education than could be gained from the common-schools of the period. As a young man of some ambition, he applied himself to a course of self-improvement, reading largely in the fields of history and politics.
To his public career, Niles brought a strong sense of moral uprightness, derived from his Puritan ancestors. In 1817 he was admitted to the Hartford bar, and in the same year he founded the Hartford Weekly Times, a liberal paper, designed to further the cause of political reform in Connecticut.
From 1821 to 1829 he was a judge of the Hartford County court; in 1826 he served one term in the state legislature; and a year later he was a candidate for the United States Senate, being defeated, however, because of his liberal views. He had, by 1827, become a leader of the Jacksonian party, which did not secure a strong hold on conservative Connecticut until 1833. He was made postmaster of Hartford in 1829. Six years later he was chosen by Governor Henry W. Edwards to fill a vacancy in the Senate, caused by the death of Nathan Smith, and being subsequently elected he served until March 1839. At the outset of his senatorial career, he displayed independence of judgment, refusing to vote immediately for the recognition of Texas, which annoyed his fellow Democrats very much. Some of his other actions during the term were more pleasing to his constituents, especially his plea for a memorial to Nathan Hale, and several speeches in support of the sub-treasury. Niles believed the latter institution would protect the interests of the laboring classes, whose cause strongly appealed to him.
After his first senatorial term he ran unsuccessfully for the governorship of Connecticut in the elections of 1839 and 1840, and was for a short time, May 25, 1840, to March 3, 1841, postmaster general in Van Buren's cabinet. During his second term as senator, 1843-49, he was even less strictly partisan than before, although he held firmly to the doctrine of strict construction, and the belief that the activities of the federal government should be restricted to the smallest possible sphere.
In 1844 he was stricken with a severe illness, which temporarily affected his mind, giving hope to his enemies that he might be removed from office on the ground of insanity, but to their discomfiture he recovered. Shortly afterward his friends began to fear that his illness had actually altered his democratic principles, for he turned protectionist, and later showed himself very lukewarm in support of the Mexican War.
Leaving the Senate in 1849, he retired to a quiet horticultural life; he made a trip to Europe in 1851-52; and just before his death from cancer, in 1856, was about to found a new Hartford paper, the Press, as an organ of the newly formed Republican party.
Niles combined considerable literary ability with his taste for politics; he edited the first American edition (1816) of The Independent Whig, and was either joint or sole author of other works, including A Gazetteer of the States of Connecticut and Rhode-Island (1819), The Life of Oliver Hazard Perry (1820), The Connecticut Civil Officer (1823), A View of South America and Mexico (1825), enlarged and republished under the title History of South America and Mexico (1838). He was interested in the Wadsworth AthenÏum and the Connecticut Historical Society, leaving his personal library to the latter; he also bequeathed to the city of Hartford a large sum of money to be used as a charity fund.
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Niles was an ardent Republican, or Tolerationist, and when his party had secured a new state constitution in 1818, he hoped for still further democratic reforms, which were not soon realized.
Throughout his life Niles was kind-hearted and benevolent, although continual political strife threw over his behavior a cloak of diffidence, and often bitterness, which made him appear unsociable.
His speeches were not brilliant, but evidenced an accurate and discriminating mind. Because of his uncompromising democracy he was an object of loathing to Connecticut Whigs, who could hardly mention his name without adding vile and insulting epithets.
On June 17, 1824 he married Sarah Robinson, widow of Lewis Howe, and after her death in 1842, he took for his second wife, Novemebr 26, 1845, Jane Pratt, of Columbia County, New York. There were no children.
