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| Affiliation | Republican |
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| Name | Nathaniel Springer Berry |
| Address |
Hebron, New Hampshire , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
September 01, 1796
|
| Died | April 27, 1894
(97 years)
|
| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Last Modifed | RBH
Jan 10, 2015 03:52am |
| Tags |
Methodist -
|
| Info | Born in Bath (ME) September 1, 1796; Bristol and Hebron (NH) tanner. In state politics from 1828. Governor 1861/2.
Nathaniel Berry had little formal education. He was apprenticed as a tanner in Bath (NH) at an early age, and was in business as a tanner, first at Bristol (1820/36), then at Hebron (1836/57). He married in 1821, joined the Methodist church (1823), and began his political career as a state representative from Bristol (1828, 1833/4, 1837). He was elected to the State Senate (1835/6) and was a delegate to the Democrats' national convention of 1840 which chose President Martin Van Buren as their candidate for a second term. In the campaign the Whigs' William Henry Harrison defeated Martin Van Buren in a campaign so harrowing that Harrison died of exhaustion after only one month in office. Vice President Tyler succeeded Harrison as president, but the Whig Party was in a shambles from which it did not recover.
From 1840 on, Berry acted as an organizer for a fledgling political group which ultimately became the Free Soil Party. Disgusted by the Democrats' politics and the 1840 political campaign, Berry cut his Democratic Party roots and became the Free Soil Party's 1846 candidate for governor of New Hampshire. He was nominated each year 1846/50 by the new party and lost each time, but the Free Soil Party grew stronger in every race.
The party organized as a national party in 1848, committed to stopping the spread of slavery into new territories won from Mexico in the Mexican War (1846/8). Former President Martin Van Buren of New York was the Free Soil candidate for president. The party platform stressed, in addition to no expansion of slavery, a commitment to a homestead act, and to a tariff with which to pay for internal improvements.
The Free Soil Party was a combination of anti-slavery Whigs and New York State Democrats, both of which were pro- Van Buren, and members of the former Liberty Party. In the national election the Whigs carried New York State and the result was that Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor became president. Taylor owed his victory to Van Buren and the Whigs, and they prevailed upon Taylor to make conservative New York Whig politician Millard Fillmore his vice president. When Taylor died of cholera a year later, Fillmore became President of the United States (1850/3). Martin Van Buren, acting as kingmaker, had made the Free Soil Party a power.
Berry lost every race as the New Hampshire Free Soil Party's candidate for governor 1846/50. H stayed active politically as associate justice on the Grafton County Court of Pleas (1841/50), and as Grafton County Judge of Probate (1856/61). He was also justice of the peace for twenty-three years.
Meanwhile the Free Soil Party lost momentum and direction after 1850, when the 1850 Compromise was promulgated and signed. The Party made New Hampshire's John P. Hale their Presidential candidate in 1852, and he attracted 150,000 votes. By 1854 the Free Soilers had been incorporated into what would become the Republican Party.
As a new Republican, Berry was nominated for governor by the New Hampshire Republican Party in 1861. The first Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, had been elected in 1860, and the Civil War was underway. Berry was reelected in 1862, and his efforts were all associated with war needs. His government enlisted and equipped fifteen infantry regiments, three companies of sharpshooters, four companies of cavalry and one company of heavy artillery. He led twenty-two governors in support of the war, delivering their joint address to President Lincoln at the Altoona (PA) Conference (1861). Berry did not run for reelection in 1863.
Source: New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources
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