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William Crosby Dawson was born on January 4, 1798 in Greene County, Georgia, United States; a son of George and Ruth (Skidmore) Dawson. His father was a farmer. Greene County was then on the extreme western frontier of Georgia and the Dawsons were among the earliest settlers.
He received the best educational advantages available, in the academy of Greensboro, at the University of Georgia, graduating in 1816, and at the Litchfield Law School in Connecticut.
Returning to Georgia after completing his law course, he set up as a lawyer in Greensboro and was soon regarded as an able advocate.
In 1828 he was appointed by the legislature to compile the statutes of Georgia, and the well-known Compilation of the Laws of the State of Georgia (1831) was the result of his labors.
After serving a political apprenticeship in the Georgia House of Representatives and Senate, he was elected to Congress in 1836 as a Whig. In his first election he was the only Whig who defeated his Democratic opponent.
After three years in the House, he resigned and resumed the practise of law at Greensboro. Four years later he was appointed judge of the Ocmulgee circuit. As a judge he made an excellent record, though he remained on the bench less than a year, and then went back to the practise of his profession. His reputation as a politician was made in the United States Senate.
He took his seat in 1849, having defeated a strong Democratic opponent, Walter T. Colquitt. His senatorial colleague in the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses was John MacPherson Berrien, and in the Thirty-third, Robert Toombs, both Whigs.
In the House in the same period were Alexander H. Stephens, Howell Cobb, and Alfred H. Colquitt.
Dawson was on intimate terms with Webster and Clay. With Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb he championed Clay’s compromise measures in 1850 and is said to have been instrumental in bringing Webster to their support.
He was a leading member of the Georgia convention in 1850 which adopted the “Georgia Platform, ” committing the state to the compromise measures, and he was one of the originators of the Union party its financial obligations. The Senate failed to ratify the agreement, but under a modus vivendi a receiver of customs was appointed who administered affairs under the protection of the United States navy.
Later the Senate decided to give a legal status to the collection of revenue and ratified a new convention negotiated by Dawson. During the entire time he was in Santo Domingo the internal political conditions were in a very turbulent state and foreign affairs were scarcely less disturbed. The situation made the work ot the American representative very difficult. Late in 1907 Dawson became envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Colombia, where he remained until April 1909, when he was transferred to Chile.
His service in that country was brief, for with the establishment of divisions in the State Department he was, on August 31, 1909, appointed chief of the division of Latin-American affairs—the first to hold the position. In 1910 he was appointed to represent the United States in Panama. He had scarcely entered upon his duties, when he was instructed to go to Nicaragua, where there had been a successful revolution, to arrange a settlement of the differences between the United States and the new government. An agreement was signed early in November 1910. On June 27, 1911, Dawson was appointed resident diplomatic office in the Department of State, an office which he held until his death on May 1, 1912. At the time of his death he was referred to as “the foremost Latin-American diplomat of the government. ” He was personally familiar with every Latin-American country and had served in many of them. In this service he injured his health and his early death was primarily due to this cause. The New York Evening Post declared that “the fairness, the fearlessness and the plain American sense of this diplomat made him a traveling specialist who triumphed wherever he was sent. ” He was famous for his skill in handling difficult problems. Many times his work was done at the risk of his life. He knew how it felt to look into the muzzle of a revolver in the hands of a fanatic whose pet project he was thwarting.
He had sat quietly in his home when it was besieged by furious mobs. He had addressed hostile crowds in Santo Domingo and Colombia when he fully expected that the reply to his arguments would be a shower of bullets. But he was no boaster and he was seldom willing to describe his adventures.
Register and Leader, May 25, 1912, which supported Howell Cobb for governor on a compromise platform (1851). He also supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. At the close of the Thirty-third Congress, Dawson did not offer for reflection. He retired to his home in Greensboro, where he died suddenly the following year.
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Dawson is described as above medium height, well knit and strong; his voice powerful, his walk elastic and his carriage erect ; his gray eyes “quick, vigilant and hilarious. ”
In 1819 Dawson married Henrietta Wingfield, by whom he had seven children, and who died in 1850, and in 1854 he married Mrs. Eliza M. Williams.
