(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
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He was born on December 22, 1814 at Simsbury, Connecticut, United States, the son of Lucy (Smith) and Elisha Phelps, a member of Congress from 1819 to 1821 and from 1825 to 1829. He was the descendant of William Phelps who emigrated from England about 1630.
He attended common school at Simsbury and then entered Washington College at Hartford, now Trinity College. He left before graduating on account of his refusal to take the part assigned to him on the Commencement program. In 1859 he was given the degree of A. B. as of the class of 1832.
He studied law under his father.
He was admitted to the bar in 1835. In Springfield he prospered and quickly became a leading lawyer of southwest Missouri.
He was elected to the state legislature in 1840. Four years later he was elected to Congress as a Democrat and served in that body continuously for eighteen years thereafter. For ten years he was a member of the committee on ways and means and from 1858 to 1860 was its chairman.
During the last six or seven years of his service in Congress his ability as well as his position of seniority made him the logical candidate for the speakership, but his Northern birth and his Union political convictions caused him to be defeated for the place. When the Civil War broke out he went home, organized the Phelps Regiment, and led it in some of the hardest fighting at the battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas.
In July 1862 he was appointed by Lincoln military governor of Arkansas, but he soon resigned the position on account of the failure of his health. In 1864 he resumed his law practice in Springfield. He was the Democratic candidate for governor of Missouri in 1868, but owing to the wholesale disfranchisements of the Drake constitution he was defeated.
Under the more liberal constitution of 1875 he became an ideal candidate because he could unify the Northern and Southern factions in Missouri Democracy. In 1876 he was easily elected, and he served the full four-year term. During his administration there was much agitation over strikes, chiefly of railway employees, and over the Greenback movement. The movement for currency reform, thanks to the steady economic recovery from the panic of 1873, produced no acute problem for him to solve. He was in hearty accord with the strong contemporary movement looking toward a more liberal support of the public schools of the state.
John Smith Phelps died in St. Louis, Missouri.
John Smith Phelps won distinction as an able and influential debater. Among the leading policies and projects that he advocated were the allotment of adequate bounties to soldiers, government aid for railroads, the establishment of an overland mail service to California, and cheaper postage. He was a leading advocate of the early admission of Oregon and California to the Union. Aa the 23rd Governor of Missouri, he supported currency reform and increased support for public education.
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Although he was not counted as extraordinarily brilliant, nevertheless, his contemporaries appreciated his faithfulness and his efficiency as well as his friendliness.
Quotes from others about the person
Upon his retirement from office the St. Louis Globe Democrat said that "it will hardly be disputed that Missouri never had a better governor than John S. Phelps".
On April 30, 1837, he married Mary Whitney of Portland, Maine. Later in the same year the bride and groom settled at Springfield, Missouri, where their five children were born.
In his wife he had an able helpmate. During the war her home was turned into a hospital, and she took care of the body of Gen. Nathaniel Lyon after the battle of Wilson's Creek. For such services Congress voted her the sum of $20, 000, which she used to establish an orphans' home at Springfield for the children of both Union and Confederate soldiers.
