Background
Lawrence, Effingham was born on March 2, 1820 in Bayside, Long Island, New York, United States.
United States representative politician member of the Louisiana House of Representatives
Lawrence, Effingham was born on March 2, 1820 in Bayside, Long Island, New York, United States.
He moved to Louisiana in 1843 and engaged in the planting and refining of sugar. He served in the Louisiana State House of Representatives for some time and then successfully contested the re-election of Jacob Hale Sypher. Lawrence then served for one day in Congress but was not reelected.
He died in New Orleans in 1878. Lawrence's belated replacement of Sypher, after courts intervened to nullify the originally results and instead deliver the seat to Lawrence, marked the first time since the Civil War that a Democrat had defeated a Republican for a seat in Congress from Louisiana. The 1874 voting in which Lawrence failed "re-election" to the seat had already been held before he was seated for the term to which he had, by the later court-order, been elected in 1872.
Thus, under the congressional calendar in effect at the time, Lawrence was able to serve for one day of the 1873-1875 term to which he had, in the end, been elected. On the following day—March 4, 1875—he was succeeded by Randall Lee Gibson, a Democrat who had defeated him during the preceding autumn.
He served one day, the last day of the session of the 43rd United States Congress (March 3, 1875), the shortest term of any member of the U.S. House of Representatives.