New Weekly Quest: The October 8th Birth Of Politicians.
This week we present The October 8th Birth Of Politicians. On this day, three great were born:
- 1747 – Jean-François Rewbell, French politician
- 1789 – John Ruggles, American politician
- 1818 – John Henninger Reagan, American politician
Great things happened on this same day!
1747 – Jean-François Rewbell, French politician
Jean-François Rewbell (October 8, 1747 – November 23, 1807) was a French lawyer, diplomat, and politician of the Revolution. Born at Colmar (now in the département of Haut-Rhin), he became president of the local order of lawyers, and in 1789 was elected as a deputy to the Estates-General by the Third Estate of the bailliage of Colmar-Schlestadt. In the National Constituent Assembly his oratory, legal knowledge and austerity of life gave him much influence. A partisan of revolutionary reforms, Rewbell voted in favor of reforms such as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, but opposed the recognition citizenship rights for Alsatian Jews.
In July 1791, after the flight of Louis XVI, the constitutional king, Rewbell left the Jacobin Club and joined the Feuillants. During the session of the Legislative Assembly, after the Constituent Assembly was dissolved in September of that year, he exercised the functions of procureur syndic, and was subsequently secretary-general of the département of Haut-Rhin. He was elected to the Republic’s National Convention in 1792, and was its envoy to the Rhineland, advocating the union of the Palatinate and other territories with France. A zealous promoter of the trial of Louis XVI, he was absent on mission at the time of the king’s condemnation. He took part in the Thermidorian Reaction movement which led to the fall of Maximilien Robespierre, and became a member of the reorganised Committee of Public Safety and of the Committee of General Security. In early 1795, he assisted Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in negotiating the surrender of the Batavian Republic to the French Republic. His moderation caused his election by seventeen département to the Council of Five Hundred.
Appointed a member of the Directory in November 1795, he became its president in 1796; he then entered the Council of Ancients. In office, Rewbell dealt with the Royalist attempted coup d’état (The 18 Fructidor), as well as the Conspiracy of the Equals; he engineered the annexation of Rhenania and the southern Low Countries to the Republic, as well as the invasion of Switzerland (and the creation of the Helvetic Republic), but was retired by ballot in 1799, after being held responsible for the French defeats of that year in front of the Second Coalition. After Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup of 18 Brumaire he retired from public life, and died
1789 – John Ruggles, American politician
John Ruggles (October 8, 1789 – June 20, 1874) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Maine. He served in several important state legislative and judicial positions before serving in the U.S. Senate. Ruggles was born in Westborough, Massachusetts. He attended public school there and in 1813 graduated from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Ruggles studied law, and after being admitted to the bar in 1815 he began practicing in Skowhegan, Maine. Two years later, Ruggles moved to Thomaston. In 1823, Ruggles was elected to the Maine House of Representatives. He served in the House until 1831, and was speaker (1825–1829 and again in 1831). He resigned from the state house to replace Samuel E. Smith (who had been elected governor) as a justice of the supreme judicial court of Maine, serving until 1834. The state legislature elected Ruggles as a Democratic-Republican (Jacksonian) to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Peleg Sprague. He was later elected for the full term beginning March 4, 1835, and in total served from January 20, 1835, to March 3, 1841. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1840.
During his tenure in Congress, Ruggles had served as chairman of the Committee on Patents and Patent Office (25th Congress), and in 1836 framed the bill for the reorganization of the United States Patent Office. He was known for his interest in inventions and patents, and because of his legislative accomplishments in this area he has become known as the “Father of the U.S. Patent Office”. Ruggles also was an inventor and the patent-holder of U.S. Patent 1, issued July 13, 1836. His invention was a type of train wheel designed to reduce the adverse effects of the weather on the track. Note that this was not the first patent ever from the USPTO; the previous patents were destroyed by fire and afterwards called the X-Patents, and new patents afterwards were numbered from 1 again. Ruggles received the first patent granted under the new system; Samuel Hopkins received the first X-Patent.
In retirement, Ruggles resumed the practice of law in Thomaston. There he made several more inventions and was well-known as a political writer and orator. Ruggles was wealthy; he and his wife Margaret George Ruggles had children and lived in the largest house on the town’s Main Street. He died in 1874 a few months before reaching age 85. He is interred in the Elm Grove Cemetery.
1818 – John Henninger Reagan, American politician
John Henninger Reagan (October 8, 1818 – March 6, 1905), was a leading 19th century American politician from the U.S. state of Texas. A Democrat, Reagan resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives when Texas seceded from the Union and joined the Confederate States of America. He served in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis as Postmaster General. After the Confederate defeat, he called for cooperation with the federal government and thus became unpopular, but returned to public office when his predictions of harsh treatment for resistance were proved correct. Reagan was born in what is now Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to Timothy Richard and Elizabeth (Lusk) Reagan. He left Tennessee at nineteen and traveled to Texas. He worked as a surveyor from 1839 to 1843, and then farmed in Kaufman County until 1851.
He studied law on his own and was licensed to practice in 1846, opening an office in Buffalo. The same year he was elected a probate judge in Henderson County and in 1847 he went to the state legislature, but was defeated for a second term in 1849. He was admitted to the bar in 1848 and practiced in both Buffalo and Palestine, Texas. Reagan was elected a district judge in Palestine, serving from 1852 to 1857. His efforts in defeating the American Party (Know-Nothings) led to his election to Congress in 1857 from First District. Reagan was a moderate and a supporter of the Union, but resigned from Congress on January 15, 1861 and returned home when it became clear that Texas would secede. He participated in the secession convention that met at Austin on January 31, 1861. He was chosen a member of the Provisional Confederate Congress, but within a month he was appointed to his Cabinet post.
President Jefferson Davis chose Reagan to head the new Confederate States of America Post-office Department. He was an able administrator, presiding over the only cabinet department that functioned well during the war. Despite the hostilities, the United States Post Office Department continued operations in the Confederacy until June 1, 1861, when the Confederate service took over its functions. Reagan’ sent an agent to Washington, D.C., with letters asking the heads of the United States Post Office Department’s various bureaus to come work for him. Nearly all did so, bringing copies of their records, contracts, account books, etc. “Reagan in effect had stolen the U.S. Post Office,” historian William C. Davis wrote. When President Davis asked his cabinet for the status of their departments, Reagan reported he had his up and running in only six weeks. Davis was amazed.
Reagan cut expenses by eliminating costly and little-used routes and forcing the railroads that carried the mail to reduce their rates. Despite the problems the war caused, his department managed to turn a profit, “the only post office department in American history to pay its own way,” wrote William C. Davis. Reagan was the only member of the cabinet to oppose Robert E. Lee’s offensive into Pennsylvania in June–July 1863. He instead supported a proposal to detach the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia to reinforce Joseph E. Johnston in Mississippi so that he could break the Siege of Vicksburg. Historian Shelby Foote noted that, as the only Cabinet member from west of the Mississippi, Reagan was acutely aware of the consequences of Vicksburg’s capture.
When Davis abandoned Richmond on April 2, 1865, shortly before the entry of Army of the Potomac under George G. Meade, Reagan accompanied the president on his flight to the Carolinas. On April 27, Davis made him Secretary of the Treasury after George A. Trenholm’s resignation and he served in that capacity until he, Davis, and Texas Governor Francis R. Lubbock were captured near Irwinville, Georgia on May 10. Reagan was imprisoned with Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens at Fort Warren in Boston, where Reagan spent twenty-two weeks in solitary confinement. On August 11, he wrote an open letter to his fellow Texans urging cooperation with the Union, renunciation of the secession convention, the abolition of slavery, and letting freed slaves vote. He warned of military rule that would enforce these policies if Texans did not voluntarily adopt them. For this, he was denounced by Texans. He was released from prison later that year and returned home to Palestine in December.
To those who felt that the Reconstruction was unduly harsh, his prescience was hailed—he became known as the “Old Roman,” a Texas Cincinnatus. He was part of the successful effort to remove Republican Edmund J. Davis from the governorship in 1874, after Davis attempted to illegally remain in office after he had lost the election. That year Reagan returned to the Congressional seat he held before the war, serving from March 4, 1875 to March 4, 1887. In 1875, he served in the convention that wrote a new state constitution for Texas. In Congress, he advocated federal regulation of railroads and helped create the Interstate Commerce Commission. He also served as the first chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads. Though he had been elected to the Senate in 1887 (serving March 4, 1887 to June 10, 1891), he resigned to become chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas at the behest of his friend, Governor James Stephen “Jim” Hogg, who had run on a platform of state regulation of railroads, and chaired it until 1903. Conscious of the importance of history, he was a founder of the Texas State Historical Association and attended reunions of Confederate veterans in his state. He wrote his Memoirs, With Special Reference to Secession and the Civil War, published in 1905, and died of pneumonia at his home in Palestine in Anderson County later that year, the last surviving member of the government of the Confederacy. Reagan was laid to rest in East Hill Cemetery Palestine Anderson County in Texas. Historian Ben H. Procter included Reagan in his list of the “four greatest Texans of the 19th century,” along with Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin, and James Stephen Hogg. Reagan County, Texas is named in his honor.