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| Affiliation | Democratic |
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| Name | Alexander P. Field |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
November 30, 1800
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| Died | August 19, 1876
(75 years)
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| Contributor | Chronicler |
| Last Modifed | ev
Nov 30, 2011 04:27pm |
| Tags |
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| Info | FIELD, Alexander Pope, attorney, Illinois secretary of state and Louisiana attorney general. Born, Kentucky, 1800; was by 1820s living in Illinois. From 1822 to 1826 represented Union County in Illinois legislature and Johnson County from 1826 to 1828, when he received an appointment as Illinois secretary of state, a post he retained until 1840, when he was replaced by Stephen A. Douglas. A Democratic elector for Andrew Jackson (q.v.) in 1824, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1831 and 1836. By 1838 he had abandoned the Democratic party and supported the Whig party. Became a friend of Abraham Lincoln while practicing law in some of the same courts; present when Lincoln was admitted to practice in the U. S. Circuit Court, and they campaigned together for the Whig ticket in the southwestern part of the state in 1839. Removed to New Orleans in 1849, establishing a law office. Although he opposed secession, he was careful once it came not to offend public opinion; even after the Union occupation he admitted that he had given "willing allegiance to the Confederacy." During the war he supported the Conservative Union faction and was elected to Congress in a makeshift, unauthorized election in 1863, but was not seated by the House of Representatives. Later elected in an 1864 presidentially approved contest, but because of the dispute over Reconstruction policy between the president and Congress, he was again denied a seat. He did not aid his cause when after getting drunk he attacked an opponent of seating the Louisiana delegation, Congressman William D. Kelley, cutting him slightly on the arm in the dining room of Willard's Hotel. The affair resulted in a thirty-three page congressional "Report from the Select Committee to Investigate the Assault upon the Hon. W. D. Kelley, by A. P. Field, a citizen of La.," condemning Field but failing to assess punishment. In 1865, he headed the state executive committee of the National Conservative Union party, which claimed the middle ground between Radical Republicans and Democrats and ran, albeit unsuccessfully, as the party's nominee for the Second Congressional District. Following the triumph of the Democrats, he went over to the Radicals in February 1866 and supported the reconvening of the 1864 consitutional convention, an attempt which resulted in the New Orleans riot of 1866. Later, in the 1870s, he supported the Republican Customhouse Faction and was a successful candidate at age 72 for state attorney general in 1872. J.A.B. Sources: U. S. Congress, House, New Orleans Riots of July 30, 1866 (1867); Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library, XVIII (1923); Robert W. Johannsen, ed., The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas (1961); Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress; Peyton McCrary, Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction: The Louisiana Experiment (1978); Henry Clay Warmoth Papers, University of North Carolina.
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