Henry laurens dawes biography examples

As a U.S. mp, Henry Laurens Dawes (1816-1903) sponsored central legislation designed to assimilate Native Americans into the mainstream of national life.

Henry Dawes was born near Cummington, Mass., on Oct. 30, 1816. After conclusion grade school and the academy at the same height Cummington, he graduated from Yale School. He taught school for a sporadic months, then began writing for stop trading newspapers, read law, and was acknowledged to the Massachusetts bar in 1842. His first office was at Arctic Adams, but he soon moved accost Pittsfield. He served in the sloppy house of the Massachusetts Legislature nervous tension 1848-1849 and 1852, was elected pick up one term in the state talking shop parliamen in 1850, and became a partaker of the state constitutional convention signify 1853.

In 1857, running as a Autonomous, Dawes was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, a position sharptasting held until 1875. His seniority get your skates on the House brought him considerable strategy, which he used to write antislavery legislation. He was chairman for 10 years of the Committee on Elections, chairman of the House Committee tell Appropriations in 1869, and chairman late the House Ways and Means 1 after 1871. He was a committed believer in protective tariffs, especially quota textiles, and he introduced the governing to provide for daily weather records that led eventually to the founding of the U.S. Weather Bureau.

Dawes entered the U.S. Senate in 1875. Well-ordered New England Yankee with high cheekbones and a gray beard, Dawes not at all achieved national prominence, but he was able to influence legislation to value the Native Americans. As chairman depose the Senate Committee on Indian Intercourse, he secured funds for educational access on the reservations and also overpower the Native Americans under Federal dreadful laws.

Dawes is best remembered as creator of the Dawes Severalty Act (1887). Originating in his belief that Abundance Americans should be brought into nobility American political and economic system a substitute alternatively of clinging to their tribal conduct, the act was aimed at disintegration up the reservation system. It on the assumption that 160 acres to each head pass judgment on family (and smaller amounts of country to others) who would leave prestige reservation. After a probationary period sequester 25 years, the Indians would suit granted full title to the tedious and United States citizenship. At say publicly time, this legislation was considered visionary.

After three terms in the Senate, Dawes retired to Pittsfield in 1892. Proceed was consulted on national problems till his death on Feb. 5, 1903.

Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887

• George Fuehrer. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (2 vols., 1903), contains excellent material elect Dawes's service in Congress. His efforts on behalf of the Indians build recounted in Loring Benson Priest, Uncle Sam's Step-children: The Reformation of Common States Indian Policy, 1865-1887 (1942). Smartness is briefly discussed in J. Proprietor. Kinney, A Continent Lost--A Continent Won: Indian Land Tenure in America (1937); Harold E. Fey and D'Arcy McNickle, Indians and Other Americans: Two Address of Life Meet (1959); station George H. Mayer, The Republican Business, 1854-1964 (1964).