VOORHEES, DANIEL WOLSEY: 1827-1897.
Daniel Wolsey Voorhees , U. S. Senator from Indiana , was born in Butler County, O., on Sept. 26, 1827. He was two months old when his parents, Stephen and Rachel Elliott Voorhees, moved to a farm in Fountain County, Ind., about ten miles from Covington .
In 1845 he entered Indiana Asbury (now De Pauw) University, from which he graduated in 1849 with the A.B. degree, receiving the A.M. in 1852 and the LL.D. in 1884. On July 18, 1850, he married Anna Hardesty of Greencastle, Ind.
Following his graduation he entered the law office of Lane and Wilson in Crawfordsville, Ind., where he read law, and was admitted to the bar in 1851. He began his practice in Covington, Ind. He was associated with E. A. Hannegan, former U. S. senator, and in 1853 he served out the term of Lew Wallace, who had resigned as prosecuting attorney of the Circuit Court. In 1856 he was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress.
Voorhees moved to Terre Haute, Ind., in 1857, and this became his permanent home. In 1858 President Buchanan appointed him U. S. district attorney for the state of Indiana . In 1859, at the request of Gov. Willard of Indiana , he acted as defense attorney for Col. John E. Cook, Willard's brother-in-law and comrade of John Brown in the raid on Harper's Ferry, and although he lost the case and Cook was hanged, his speeches at the trial made him nationally known.
He was a successful candidate for Congress in 1860, 1862, 1868, and 1870. His congressional record was one of opposition to the war government, criticism of its "tyrannies," and an almost equal hatred of secession and abolitionism. He introduced the resolution unqualifiedly endorsing President Johnson's reconstruction policy.
He was appointed in 1877 to succeed Gov. Oliver P. Morton in the U. S. Senate, was elected to the Senate in 1878, and served until 1897. Here he followed the Democratic line of opposition to high tariffs and represented the Midwest agrarian policy of cheap money and distrust of Eastern financial interests. However, he led the fight for the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 and supported the Wilson page: 327[View Page 327] Tariff bill in 1894. He is chiefly remembered as a great orator–"The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash."
He died in Washington, D. C., on Apr. 10, 1897, and was buried in Terre Haute .
Information from Representative Men of Indiana, Vol. 11; Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XIX; and De Pauw University's Alumnal Record, 1920.
- Speech Delivered in Fountain Circuit Court, July,
1857. Covington, Ind., 1857.
- Speeches; Compiled by C. S. Voorhees, with a Biographical
Sketch. Cincinnati, 1875.
- Address … to the Jury in the Case of Kilbourn vs.
Thompson, Delivered in the Supreme Court of the D. C., April 21,
1882. Washington, D. C., 1882.
- Speech, June 23, 1885, in Defence of Capt. Edward T. Johnson,
Indicted for the Murder of Maj. Edwin Henry. Washington,
D. C., 1885.
- Forty Years of Oratory: Lectures, Addresses, and Speeches;
Compiled and Edited by His Three Sons and His Daughter, Harriet Cecilia
Voorhees; with a Brief Sketch of His Life by Judge Thomas B. Long.
Indianapolis, 1898. 2
vols.
- Defense of John E. Cook on the Welfare of the Nation.
- Greeley as the Democratic Candidate for
President.
