Edward Bates - Career

Career

Edward Bates served in the War of 1812 before moving to St. Louis, Missouri Territory in 1814 with his older brother James, who started working as an attorney. Frederick Bates was already in St. Louis by that time, where he had served as Secretary of the Louisiana Territory and Secretary of the Missouri Territory.

Edward Bates studied the law with Rufus Easton and boarded with his family. Easton was Judge of the Louisiana Territory, the largest jurisdiction in U.S. history after the Louisiana Purchase. After being admitted to the bar, Bates worked as a partner with Easton.

In 1817 the two organized the James Ferry, which ran from St. Charles, Missouri to Alton, Illinois. Easton had founded the latter town, naming it after his first son Alton.

Bates's private practice partner was Joshua Barton, who would be the first Missouri Secretary of State. Barton became infamous for fighting duels on Bloody Island (Mississippi River). In 1816 Bates was the second to Barton in a duel with Thomas Hempstead, brother of Edward Hempstead, the Missouri Territory's first Congressional representative. The fight ended without bloodshed. Barton would be killed in a duel on the island in 1823.

Bates's first foray into politics came in 1820, when he was elected as a member of the state's constitutional convention. He wrote the preamble to the state constitution—an honor that later influenced his fight against the radical Missouri Constitution of 1865. He next was appointed as the new state's attorney general.

In 1822, Bates was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. He moved up to the United States House of Representatives for a single term (1827–1829). He was elected to the State Senate from 1831 to 1835, then to the Missouri House from 1835. He ran for the U.S. Senate, but lost to Democrat Thomas Hart Benton.

Bates became a prominent member of the Whig Party during the 1840s, where his political philosophy closely resembled that of Henry Clay. During this time, he became interested in the case of the slave Polly Berry, who in 1843 gained her freedom decades after having been held illegally in the free state of Illinois for several months. Bates argued as her attorney in the separate freedom suit which she filed for her daughter Lucy Berry, then about age 14. According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, since the mother had been proved a free woman at the time of her daughter's birth, Lucy also gained her freedom. During this time, Orion Clemens, brother of Mark Twain, studied law under Bates.

In 1850 President Millard Fillmore asked Bates to serve as U.S. Secretary of War, but he declined. Charles Magill Conrad accepted the position. At the Whig National Convention in 1852, Bates was considered for nomination as vice-president on the party ticket, and he led on the first ballot before losing on the second ballot to William Alexander Graham.

After the breakup of the Whig Party in the 1850s, Bates became a Republican, and was one of the four main candidates for the party's 1860 presidential nomination. He received support from Horace Greeley, who later switched to support Abraham Lincoln. The next year, after winning the election, Lincoln appointed Bates United States Attorney General, an office Bates held from 1861 until 1864. Bates was the first Cabinet member from west of the Mississippi River.