The American journalist and politician Francis Preston Blair (1791-1876) was a close adviser of President Andrew Jackson. Blair joined the antislavery movement and was active in the newly created Republican party throughout the Civil War.

Francis P. Blair was born on April 12, 1791, in Abingdon, Va., but he grew up and was educated in Kentucky. He graduated from Transylvania University in 1811, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1817, although he never practiced. As a young man, he was in poor health, and all of his life he was frail-looking and small, weighing little more than 100 pounds; he married Eliza Gist over her father's objection that she would be a widow in 6 months. Yet Blair proved to be a prodigious worker for 50 years thereafter.

Jacksonian Politics

His family was active in politics: his father had served as attorney general of Kentucky, and an uncle was governor of the...