Speech of Hon. William S. Groesbeck, of Ohio, against the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution: Delivered in the House of Representatives, March 31, 1858
William Slocum Groesbeck was an Ohio lawyer and congressman.
Background
William Slocum Groesbeck was born near Schenectady, New York, United States on July 24, 1815, the son of John H. Groesbeck, of prominent Dutch lineage, and Mary (Slocum) Groesbeck.
When he was three years old his parents removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, the United States, where his father engaged in banking.
Education
Groesbeck first attended Augusta College at Augusta, Kentucky, then Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, graduating with first honors in 1834.
He studied law in the office of Vachel Worthington and was admitted to the bar in 1836.
Career
During the next two decades William Slocum Groesbeck built up a lucrative practice, for he was early conceded to be an unusually gifted attorney, served as a member of the state constitutional convention of 1850-1851, and in 1852 was a member of the commission appointed to codify the Ohio code of civil procedure.
Though he was defeated in 1854 as a candidate for Congress from the 16th Ohio district, in the election of 1856 he was successful and served in the Thirty-fifth Congress.
In 1858 he failed of réélection principally because of his stand on the Kansas-Nebraska question, which was thought to be equivocal, and he thereby lost the support of many Anti-Nebraska Democrats.
He also lost the German vote in his district, which, under the leadership of Stephen Molitor, solidly supported John A. Gurley, the successful Republican candidate. Groesbeck did not again reach Congress, though in 1864 he was elected to the state Senate.
In 1861, with Salmon P. Chase and Thomas Ewing, Groesbeck was a delegate from Ohio to the Peace Convention.
He was appointed a counsel in the place of J. S. Black, who had withdrawn, and although his presentation came late in the trial, it was generally conceded to have been the most brilliantly performed part of the case.
Arguing that Secretary Stanton held his office under the commission issued during Lincoln’s first term, he held that this would have had no force in Lincoln’s second administration even if the President had lived. He contended, moreover, that since Johnson’s term was legally distinct from Lincoln’s, it was absurd to hold that Stanton’s removal had in any sense been illegal.
A small group who were dissatisfied with Horace Greeley as a candidate nominated Groesbeck for the presidency, but he was given little support in the campaign and in the election received a single electoral vote for the vice-presidency.
He was heartily in favor of the reform of the civil service. Recognized as an authority on bimetallism, he served as a member of the monetary commission of 1876 (he favored the remonetization of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one), and two years later he was sent to the International Monetary Conference at Paris, where he advocated the fixing of the ratio between gold and silver by international agreement. Groesbeck’s later years were spent quietly at “Elmhurst, ” his elegant home on the outskirts of Cincinnati.
He served in the Thirty-fifth Congress.
He was a member of the committee on foreign relations and attracted some attention by his debate with A. H. Stephens on the question of the Walker expedition.
He also served as a member of the monetary commission of 1876.
In politics William Slocum Groesbeck was a Democrat. During the war he was recognized as one of the leading Union Democrats of Ohio, and in 1866 he was a delegate to the National Union Convention. Then he became a leader of political liberals following the war and joined the Liberal Republican movement in 1872.
Connections
William Slocum Groesbeck had married, on November 12, 1837, Elizabeth Burnet, who died in 1889, leaving three sons and two daughters.