Nathaniel Springer Berry was an American politician and statesman. He was a member of the New Hampshire Senate from 1835 to 1836.
Background
Nathaniel Berry was born at Bath, Maine, United States, the son of Abner and Betsey (Springer) Berry. The accidental death of his father, a shipbuilder, when Nathaniel was six years old, meant a boyhood of hard work and meager educational opportunity.
Education
When about fourteen Nathaniel moved to Lisbon, New Hampshire, and soon afterward to Bath, in the same state. He served an apprenticeship in the tannery business.
Career
In 1818 Nathaniel established a tannery at Bristol, New Hampshire, which he operated for many years. He had personally investigated improved methods and equipment used in tanneries in the state of New York and was reported to be the first tanner in New England to use hot liquids, a method which greatly reduced the time required for the treatment of hides. He was henceforth identified with many activities, business, political, and religious, in the town of Bristol, and in its records his name constantly appears on committees, directorates, and programs. Berry represented Bristol in the legislature 1828, 1833, 1834, and 1837, and the neighboring town of Hebron in 1854. He was senator from the 11th district in 1835 and 1836. Beginning with 1841, he was associate justice of the court of common pleas and in 1856 began five years' service as probate judge of Grafton County.
He was a Democrat in his earlier years and a delegate to the Baltimore Convention of 1840, but with the rise of the slavery issue he became increasingly dissatisfied with the Democratic attitude toward that question and by 1844 had definitely severed his connection with the party. In 1846 he was supported for the governorship by the Liberty party and a group of independent Democrats. The question of the annexation of Texas was disrupting the existing parties, and Berry received enough popular votes to force the decision into the legislature where, however, he failed of election. In the following years he devoted himself to the organization of the Free-Soil movement and was unsuccessfully supported for the governorship by the new party and sundry coalitions in 1847, 1848, 1849, and 1850. He was generally regarded as an extremist and too closely allied with the abolitionist wing of the Antislavery movement.
In 1861, Berry was nominated for the governorship by the Republican party into which he had naturally gravitated. Berry in his inaugural message, June 4, 1861, made a spirited call for men and money to meet the crisis, declaring his confident expectation that "the principles upon which the republic was founded will be vindicated and made permanent; the Constitution will be sustained; the Constitutional rights of all American citizens, in all the States, will receive new guaranties; the freedom of speech and of the press everywhere in our land will be effectually secured; and the Government will come forth purified and strengthened. " He threw himself into the difficult task of getting the state on a war footing, and proved an energetic and inspiring executive, ranking high among the "war governors. " From the first he strongly advocated emancipation. In September 1862 he attended the conference of loyal governors at Altoona, and his name appears on the formal address which the conference presented to President Lincoln.
After his retirement from the governorship in 1863, Berry moved in the following year to Massachusetts, where he resided for sometime with members of his family at Andover and Worcester; later, for several years, he resided with a daughter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His last years were spent at the home of a son in Bristol, New Hampshire. Although some had considered his age a disqualification for the strenuous duties of the governorship in 1861, he survived his retirement from that office for more than thirty years, dying at the age of ninety-seven.
Achievements
Nathaniel Berry was a well-known and influential politician. He was a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 1828, 1833 and 1834 and served as the 28th Governor of New Hampshire from 1861 to 1863. As Governor he was a strong supporter of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.
Politics
In the early years Berry was a member of the Democratic Party but later he became a Republican when the party was created in the mid-1850s.
Connections
Berry was twice married: on January 26, 1821, to Ruth Smith, who died in 1857; and in January 1860 to Mrs. Louise Farley.