Thomas was born on March 28, 1828 on a farm near West Union Church, in Greene County, Pennsylvania, United States. He the sixth child of William and Hannah (McQuaid) Stockdale and a grandson of James Stockdale who came to America at the close of the Revolution.
After overcoming economic obstacles in securing an education, he graduated from Jefferson (now Washington and Jefferson) College in 1856. In the same year he went to Mississippi, where he supported himself by teaching and devoted his spare time to reading law. This he did with such diligence that he was able to complete the two-year law course of the University of Mississippi in one year, graduating and being admitted to the bar in 1859.
He began law practise at Holmesville, Pike County, in the southern part of the state.
The young Pennsylvanian must have found a satisfactory place for himself in Mississippi before 1861, for upon the outbreak of the Civil War in April of that year he enlisted as a private in the Quitman guards. Before the close of the war, transferring from the infantry to the cavalry, he rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Most of his service was in Mississippi. In May 1865, he was paroled from the army of General N. B. Forrest and returned to his law practice at Holmesville.
During the reconstruction period Stockdale continued to ally himself with the native white people of Mississippi. In 1869 now a resident of Lawrence County, he ran for the state Senate but with all the other Democrats of the county suffered defeat. During the campaign he spoke in opposition to Governor J. L. Alcorn, but most of his hearers were negroes and gave him scant attention.
In 1872 and 1884 he was a presidential elector on the Democratic ticket. In 1886 he was elected to Congress, and served continuously for eight years (1887 - 1895). In the House he continued in his allegiance to the South, and used the fact of his Northern birth and education to drive home several telling blows in the course of sectional discussions. While not fluent, he spoke with rugged common sense and some humor.
At the end of four terms in Congress he was defeated for renomination, but found some solace in being appointed, in 1896, an associate judge of the state supreme court, to complete a term which expired in May 1897.
He died in Summit, Mississippi on January 8, 1899.
Thomas Ringland Stockdale was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1886 and served four terms. On May 5, 1888, he made his famous speech on the tariff, in which he pointed out that much of the burden of protection fell, in the form of increased cost of living, upon the negroes in agricultural work. This argument was a unique weapon for a Southern representative to wield against Northern defense of the tariff.
On February 13, 1867, he married Fannie Wicker, the daughter of a planter of Amite County. A son and a daughter survived him.
