JOHN HENNINGER

See also:

• JOHN HENNINGER REAGAN (1818-1905)

REAGAN (1818-1905)  , American politician, was born in Sevier county, Tennessee, on the 8th of October 1818 . He removed to Texas in 1839, was deputy surveyor of public lands in 1839-1843, was admitted to the bar in 1846, was a member of the state House of Representatives in 1849–1848, served as district judge in 1852–1857, and in 1857–1861 was a representative in Congress . His political views were determined by the ultra-democratic influence of Andrew Jackson and the state-sovereignty philosophy of John C . Calhoun . In 1861 he was a member of the Texas secession convention, served in the Confederate provisional Congress, and on the 6th of March was appointed postmaster-general in President Davis's cabinet . He served in this capacity through-out the war, and for a short time before its close was also acting secretary of the treasury . He was captured with the Davis party on the loth of May 1865, and was imprisoned in Fort Warren, Boston Harbour, until the following October . While in prison he wrote the " Fort Warren letter " (August 11th), in which he urged the people of Texas to recognize their defeat, grant civil rights to the freedmen, and try to conciliate the North . From 1875 to 1887, when he entered the U.S . Senate, he was again a representative in Congress, and from 1877 almost continuously to the close of his service he was chairman of the Committee on Commerce, in which capacity he had a prominent part in securing the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 . He was a member of the state constitutional convention of 1876 . In state politics his sympathies were with the Radicals .

In 1891, believing that his first

duty was to his state, he resigned from the Senate to accept the chairmanship of the newly established state railway commission . In 1901 he retired from public service . From 1899 until his death he was president of the Texas State Historical Association . He died at his home, near Palestine, Texas, on the 6th of March 1905 . See his Memoirs; with Special Reference to Secession and the Civil War (New York, 1906), edited by W . F . McCaleb .