Lewis Davis CAMPBELL, Congress, OH (1811-1882)

CAMPBELL, Lewis Davis, (uncle of James Edwin Campbell), a Representative from Ohio; born in Franklin, Warren County, Ohio, August 9, 1811; attended the public schools; apprenticed to learn the art of printing 1828-1831; published a Clay Whig newspaper in Hamilton, Ohio, 1831-1835; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1835 and practiced in Hamilton until 1850; engaged in agricultural pursuits; unsuccessful candidate for election in 1840, 1842, and 1844 to the Twenty-seventh, Twenty-eighth, and Twenty-ninth Congresses; elected as a Whig to the Thirty-first, Thirty-second, and Thirty-third Congresses and as an Opposition Party candidate to the Thirty-fourth Congress (March 4, 1849-March 3, 1857); chairman, Committee on Ways and Means (Thirty-fourth Congress); presented credentials as a Republican Member-elect to the Thirty-fifth Congress and served from March 4, 1857, to May 25, 1858, when he was succeeded by Clement L. Vallandigham, who successfully contested the election; was an unsuccessful candidate for election in 1858 to the Thirty-sixth Congress; served in the Union Army as colonel of the Sixty-ninth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, in 1861 and 1862; appointed by President Andrew Johnson as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico on May 4, 1866, and served until June 16, 1867, when he resigned; elected to the State senate in 1869 and resigned in 1870; elected as a Democrat to the Forty-second Congress (March 4, 1871-March 3, 1873); was not a candidate for reelection in 1872 to the Forty-third Congress; delegate to the third State constitutional convention in 1873; resumed agricultural pursuits; died in Hamilton, Butler County, Ohio, on November 26, 1882; interment in Greenwood Cemetery.

Bibliography

Van Horne, William E. “Lewis D. Campbell and the Know-Nothing Party in Ohio.” Ohio History 76 (Autumn 1967): 202-21.

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