The Revised Statutes Of The State Of Missouri: Revised And Digested By The Eighteenth General Assembly, During The Session Of One Thousand Eight ... And Fifty-five : To Which Are Prefixed The
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Charles Henry Hardin was an American politician and statesman. He also founded Hardin College for Women at Mexico, Missouri, in 1873.
Background
Charles Hardin was born on July 15, 1820, in Trimble County, Kentucky, United States, the son of Charles and Hannah (Jewell) Hardin, both of Virginia descent. His mother was a sister of Dr. William Jewell, founder of William Jewell College. Shortly after Charles Henry’s birth, the family removed to Missouri, settling in 1821 in Columbia.
Education
In Columbia Charles was educated at the local academy. He attended Indiana University and Miami University, graduating from the latter in 1841. He studied law in Columbia, and in 1843 commenced practice in Fulton, Missouri.
Career
By heredity and by temperament a Whig, Hardin was in a congenial political and social atmosphere. In 1848 Charles Hardin was elected circuit attorney for the second judicial district and in 1852 he commenced a legislative career in the lower house of the General Assembly, where he served continuously, except during 1856-1857, until 1860. His chief interest was in railroad and banking legislation.
Upon the collapse of Whig party, Hardin became an organizer of the American party, and a leader in 1860 of the Bell-Everett forces. He entered the state Senate in that year as a Conservative-Unionist opposed to secession and as a spokesman for the neutrality of Missouri. In 1855 he was appointed a member of the committee to prepare The Revised Statutes of the State of Missouri (2 vols. , 1856). In 1861, however, Hardin followed the disloyal state government in its peregrinations and became a member of the fugitive “rebel legislature, ” although he was the only senator who voted against the abortive secession ordinance. Following the military defeat and political elimination of the disloyalists, Hardin was disfranchised, placed under bond by the test-oath law of 1862, and retired from politics.
Remaining in comparative obscurity until the Liberal-Republican movement swept the Radicals from power in 1870, Hardin reentered politics as a stanch Democrat. He represented his district in the state Senate in 1872-1874, and was nominated in the latter year for governor as a compromise candidate acceptable to the various factions of his party. He was easily elected over the Granger or People’s-party candidate, becoming the first Democratic governor since the war.
His administration, directed by a man of “inflexible methods and unrelaxing solemnity, ” was characterized by conservatism, retrenchment, and rigid economy. The extravagance of the Civil War period was abruptly terminated; the railroads and warehouses were brought under state control as to rates and services; the institutions of the state were conducted efficiently. Dull and uninteresting, the administration was one of “law and order” and of scrupulous honesty, a welcome reaction from the conditions of the previous decade. One of the Governor’s proclamations which attracted comment was that setting a day of prayer for relief from a plague of grasshoppers. At the end of his term, Hardin was urged again to become a candidate but refused, retiring from public life in 1877.
Hardin was a leading layman of the Baptist church.
Politics
Hardin was a leader of the Whigs through several sessions when party and factional warfare was extremely bitter and the issue of slavery in the territories a continuous threat to the integrity and existence of the Whig party in Missouri. Later he came into politics as Democrat.
Membership
Hardin was one of the eight founders of Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
Connections
On May 16, 1844, Hardin married Mary Barr Jenkins.