Montgomery Blair encyclopedia topics

Life

Blair was born in Franklin County, Kentucky. His father, Francis P. Blair, Sr., was, as editor of the Washington Globe, a prominent figure in the Democratic Party during the Jacksonian era. Blair graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1835, but after a year's service in the Seminole War, he left the Army, studied law, and began practice at St Louis, Missouri. After serving as United States district attorney (1839–43) and as judge of the court of common pleas (1834–1849), he moved to Maryland in 1852 and devoted himself to law practice principally in the United States Supreme Court. He was United States Solicitor in the Court of Claims (1855–58) and was associated with George T. Curtis as counsel for the plaintiff in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857.

The Blairs, like many other nationalist Democrats, but unusually for politicians from the border states, had abandoned the Democratic Party in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and had been among the founding leaders of the new Republican Party. In 1860 Montgomery Blair took an active part in the presidential campaign in behalf of Abraham Lincoln, in whose cabinet he was Postmaster-General from 1861 until September 1864, when he resigned as a result of the hostility of the Radical Republican faction, who stipulated that Blair's retirement should follow the withdrawal of John C. Frémont's name as a candidate for the presidential nomination in that year. Under his administration, such reforms and improvements as the establishment of free city delivery, the adoption of a money order system, and the use of railway mail cars were instituted — the last having been suggested by George B. Armstrong (d. 1871), of Chicago, who from 1869 until his death was general superintendent of the United States railway mail service.

Differing from the Republican Party on the Reconstruction policy, Blair gave his adherence to the Democratic Party after the Civil War, along with his brother, who was the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1868.

His manor in present-day Silver Spring, Maryland was named Falkland. It was burned by Confederate troops during the War. He died at Silver Spring. Montgomery Blair's wife was Mary Woodbury, a daughter of Levi Woodbury. Together, they were the great-grandparents of actor Montgomery Clift.