1821
- US Major General Francis P. Blair, Jr.¹ is born, in Lexington, Kentucky. The son of Francis Preston Blair, a well connected politician, that was in President Andrew Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet.” Blair would attend
school in the Washington, D.C. area and would graduate from Princeton, in 1841. After studying law, at Transylvania University, he would move to St. Louis, Missouri to practice law. He would serve in the Missouri House of Representatives from 1852–1856 and would be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1856, where he would serve two terms. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Blair would resign his congressional seat to become a colonel, in the army. He was promoted brigadier general in August 1862, and major general in November 1862. Blair would command a division at Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. During US Major General William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign, he would move to corps command, and would stay with Sherman’s army through the Carolinas Campaign. After the Civil War, Blair, discontent with the Republican stance on reconstruction, would run for vice president, as a Democrat, in 1868. He would lose. In 1871, the Missouri state legislature would elect him a U.S. Senator. Blair would die on July 8, 1875, in St. Louis, Missouri, after battling partial paralysis.
1861
- President elect, Abraham Lincoln, would arrive in New York City, on his way to Washington D.C., for his inauguration. He would be greeted by over 250,000 well wishers.
¹ BattlefieldPortraits.com and Francis P. Blair, Jr. at Wikipedia, were used to research this article.
