JAMES

See also:

• HARLAN
• JAMES HARLAN (1820-1899)
• HARLAN, JOHN MARSHALL (1833- )

HARLAN (1820-1899)  , American politician, was born in Clark county, Illinois, on the 26th of August 182o . He graduated from Indiana Asbury (now De Pauw) University in 1845, was president (1846-1847) of the newly founded and short-lived Iowa City College, studied law, was first superintendent of public instruction in Iowa in 1847-1848, and was president of Iowa Wesleyan University in 1853-1855 . He took a prominent part in organizing the Republican party in Iowa, and was a member of the United States Senate from 1855 to 1865, when he became secretary of the interior . He had been a delegate to the peace convention in 1861, and from 1861 to 1865 was chairman of the Senate committee on public lands . He disapproved of President Johnson's conservative reconstruction policy, retired from the cabinet in August 1866, and from 1867 to 1893 was again a member of the United States Senate . In 1866 he was a delegate to the loyalists' convention at Philadelphia . One of his principal speeches in the Senate was that which he made in March 1871 in reply to Sumner's and Schurz's attack on President Grant's Santo Domingan policy . He was presiding judge of the court of commissioners of Alabama claims (1882-1885) . He died in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, on the 5th of October 1899 .