Isaac Ingalls STEVENS, Congress, WA (1818-1862)

STEVENS, Isaac Ingalls, (cousin of Charles Abbot Stevens and Moses Tyler Stevens), a Delegate from the Territory of Washington; born in North Andover (then a part of Andover), Essex County, Mass., March 25, 1818; attended Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., and was graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1839; entered the Corps of Engineers and served on the staff of General Scott in Mexico; assistant in charge of the Coast Survey Office in Washington, D.C.; organized and commanded the northern Pacific exploration party which explored and surveyed the route for a railway from St. Paul to Puget Sound in 1853; resigned his commission as major in the Corps of Engineers to become Governor; Governor of the Territory of Washington from 1853 to 1857; was a candidate for the Democratic nomination to Congress in 1855, but withdrew; elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congresses (March 4, 1857-March 3, 1861); was not a candidate for renomination in 1860; delegate to the Democratic National Conventions at Charleston and Baltimore in 1860; during the Civil War entered the Union Army as a colonel of the Seventy-ninth New York Highlanders; appointed brigadier general and later major general in command of a division; killed at the Battle of Chantilly, Virginia, September 1, 1862; interment in Island Cemetery, Newport, R.I.

Bibliography

Hazard, Joseph Taylor. Companion of Adventure; A Biography of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, First Governor of Washington Territory. Portland, Oreg.: Binfords and Mort, 1952; Richards, Kent D. Isaac I. Stevens: Young Man in a Hurry. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1979. Reprint, Pullman, Wash.: Washington State University Press, 1993.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present