Edward Bates | Biography

During a long career of public service, Edward Bates opposed the spread of slavery into new American territories and worked to build the country's growing internal transportation system. From 1861-64, he served as Abraham Lincoln's attorney general. Born in Goochland County, Virginia, in 1793, Bates grew up in a slaveholding family. His father, merchant Thomas Fleming, had difficulty providing for his five daughters and seven sons after going into debt while fighting in the American Revolution. After his father's death, Bates was tutored by his cousin Benjamin in philosophy, history, and natural science. During the War of 1812, he enlisted in the Virginia militia. After the war, he traveled to St. Louis to join his brother Frederick, a prominent judge and businessman. Admitted to the Missouri bar in 1816, Bates established a law practice with Joshua Barton and began investing in land. In 1823, he married Julia D. Colter, with whom he had 17 children.

After serving as Missouri's first attorney general, Bates was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1826. Defeated in a bid for reelection, he practiced law and served as a state legislator until the Republican Party was formed. Bates then left the Whigs and became one of the frontrunners for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination. His supporters believed that the election of a Southern-born moderate from a border state might avert secession, but Bates lost the nomination to Abraham Lincoln. As president-elect, Lincoln offered his four main rivals Cabinet positions. Bates chose the attorney generalship and became the first Cabinet member from west of the Mississippi River.

As attorney general, Bates issued several significant opinions. Asked by Secretary of State Salmon P. Chase to issue an opinion about whether a free black man could be captain of a ship, Bates wrote "that all free persons born in the United States or naturalized of whatever color, are citizens of the United States." He also supported the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln's 1861 suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. However, Bates did not always agree with his president. The attorney general opposed statehood for West Virginia, arguing that the region was actually part of the state of Virginia. Placing constitutional rights above military necessity, he also opposed the arming of freed slaves.

Bates' influence was strongest at the beginning of his term. He supported the war, even suggesting that the Navy establish a fleet on the Mississippi River. However, as his diary records, less conservative voices began to dominate the Cabinet. In 1864, Bates suffered a mild stroke, to which the stress of having one son in the Union army and another in the Confederate forces may have contributed. Bates resigned the attorney generalship in 1864 and devoted his efforts to opposing a radical new Missouri constitution that denied former Confederates the right to vote. His health worsened until he died peacefully at his St. Louis home in 1869.