Address delivered before the Vermont state agricultural society and wool growers' association
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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Luke Potter Poland was an American jurist, senator, and representative.
Background
He was born on November 1, 1815 in Westford, northwestern Vermont, United States, the eldest son of Luther and Nancy (Potter) Poland. His parents were of good Puritan stock from Massachusetts and he began life with the advantages of a strong body, unusual intellectual power, and inborn qualities of industry, honesty, and faithfulness.
He was obliged by frontier conditions and the straitened circumstances of his family to give a large part of his time in boyhood to labor on the farm and in his father's sawmill.
Education
His formal education ended when he was seventeen with a five months' course at Jericho Academy. After teaching a village school for a brief period he began the study of law.
Career
He was admitted to the Vermont bar at the age of twenty-one. Beginning his practice at Morrisville, he rose so rapidly in his profession that in 1848 he was elected by a Whig legislature to the supreme court, an unusual tribute to his strong character and professional standing in view of the fact that he was at the time the Free-Soil candidate for the lieutenant-governorship.
Removing his residence to St. Johnsbury in 1850, he served continuously for fifteen years as a member of the highest court of the state, the last five years being its chief justice. In 1865, although apparently assured a life tenure in his high office, he resigned to accept appointment and subsequent election as United States senator to fill the unexpired term caused by the death of Jacob Collamer.
Entering the Senate as a Republican at the beginning of the era of Reconstruction, he served in that body from November 1865 to March 1867. Succeeded in the Senate after a term of only sixteen months by Justin S. Morrill, author of the famous tariff of 1861, Poland was elected to succeed Morrill in the House, an exchange of position which he humorously explained by saying that the Vermont farmers seemed to think that the Senate needed more wool and the House more brains.
He entered the House in March 1867 and served continuously in that body till March 1875. Assigned in the Fortieth Congress to the committee on elections, he was also made chairman of the committee on revision of the laws. The confidence of the House in his judicial-mindedness, independence, and courage led to his being made chairman in succession of three of its select committees whose reports made memorable contributions to Reconstruction history. The first of these committees was that appointed in 1871 to investigate the outrages of the Ku Klux Klan in the South, and its voluminous report greatly influenced Congressional legislation. The second, appointed in 1872 to investigate the scandalous activities of the Credit Mobilier Company, submitted a unanimous report which resulted in relegating several high officials to private life and smirched the reputation of others. The third was appointed in 1874 to investigate affairs in Arkansas and to inquire whether federal interference was advisable in the existing contest in that state between a corrupt and defeated Carpetbag government and the native white government which had supplanted it. The report of this committee, declaring against any interference by any department of the federal government with the existing government of Arkansas and maintaining that such interference would be unconstitutional, was adopted by the House, 150-81, on March 2, 1875, despite the strenuous opposition of President Grant and his radical followers.
Poland's independent course, however, which thwarted the policy of the Administration, cost him what, in his weariness of political strife, had become the goal of his ambition, a federal judgeship. He served as chairman of the House committee on revision of the laws.
After 1875 Poland resumed the practice of the law in the higher courts except while serving in the Forty-eighth Congress and later for two terms as representative of his fellow townsmen in the Vermont legislature (for St. Johnsbury, 1878; for Waterville, 1886).
He died of apoplexy at his home in Waterville in his seventy-second year.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
Personality
He was known for his able arguments on constitutional questions, his resistance to extreme partisan demands, and his proposals for constructive legislation.
He had conservative character, aristocratic bearing, unwillingness to sacrifice his self-respect in order to win popularity.
Connections
He married Martha Smith Page of Waterville, Vermont, January 12, 1838. She died in 1853, leaving a son and two daughters, and the following year he married her sister, Adelia H. Page.