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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)James Byeram Owens | |
---|---|
Deputy from Florida to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States | |
In office February 4, 1861 –February 17, 1862 | |
Preceded by | New constituency |
Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
Personal details | |
Born | c. 1816 Fairfield County,South Carolina,U.S. |
Died | August 1,1889 Marion County,Florida,U.S. |
Resting place | Evergreen Cemetery, Ocala,Florida,U.S. |
Spouse | Louisa Owens |
Children | Willie Owens |
James Byeram Owens (c. 1816 –August 1,1889) was a slaveowner and American politician who served as a Deputy from Florida to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1862. He mounted legal arguments in defense of secession based on an originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution [1] and Southern arguments in favor of states' rights,with the intention of protecting the practice and institution of slavery.
Owens was born in Fairfield County,South Carolina,moving to Mississippi and later to Marion County,Florida,in 1857,with two of his brothers. [1] Owens was one of the wealthier slaveowning planters in Marion County. [2] His name appears on the 1860 Slave Census Schedules for Marion County which attribute to him the ownership of 89 enslaved persons. [3] Owens used the forced labor of enslaved people to work the land on his plantation,where cotton was grown. [1]
Owens served as a delegate from Florida at the Democratic National Conventions of 1860. At the first convention,held in Charleston,he was selected to represent the interests of Southern Democrats in a debate with Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts. Owens,along with the Florida delegation and several other entire delegations representing the Southern states,walked out of the Charleston convention and held their own convention,where they nominated John C. Breckinridge for the Democratic Party ticket in the U.S. presidential election of 1860. [1]
Owens then represented Marion County at the Secession Convention of Florida held in Tallahassee in January 1861 and was a signatory to the Ordinance of Secession which declared Florida's secession from the United States. [4] Shortly thereafter,Florida joined the Confederacy and Owens became a Deputy in the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States as well as a signatory to the Constitution of the Confederate States,representing Florida.
After the war,Owens,along with all other former Confederates,was granted a full and unconditional pardon by President Andrew Johnson in 1868.
Owens was the brother-in-law of Ethelbert Barksdale and the maternal grandfather of John W. Martin,the 24th Governor of Florida,by way of his daughter,Willie Owens,and her husband,John M. Martin Jr.,himself the son of John Marshall Martin.
The Confederate States of America (CSA),commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.),the Confederacy,or the South,was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8,1861,to May 5,1865. The Confederacy was composed of eleven U.S. states that declared secession;South Carolina,Mississippi,Florida,Alabama,Georgia,Louisiana,Texas,Virginia,Arkansas,Tennessee,and North Carolina;they warred against the United States during the American Civil War.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6,1860. The Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin won a national popular plurality,a popular majority in the North where states had already abolished slavery,and a national electoral majority comprising only Northern electoral votes. Lincoln's election thus served as the main catalyst of the states that would become the Confederacy seceding from the Union. This marked the first time that a Republican was elected president. It was also the first presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state;the others have been in 1904,1920,1940,1944,and 2016. Lincoln's 39.7% of the popular vote is to date the lowest for any winner not decided by a contingent election.
In the American Civil War (1861–65),the border states or the Border South were four,later five,slave states in the Upper South that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware,Maryland,Kentucky,and Missouri,and after 1863,the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union,and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
Howell Cobb was an American and later Confederate political figure. A southern Democrat,Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and the speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851. He also served as the 40th governor of Georgia (1851–1853) and as a secretary of the treasury under President James Buchanan (1857–1860).
Robert Miller Patton was an American politician who served as the 20th governor of the Alabama from 1865 to 1868.
William Lowndes Yancey was an American politician in the Antebellum South. As an influential "Fire-Eater",he defended slavery and urged Southerners to secede from the Union in response to Northern antislavery agitation.
The Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States,formally the Constitution for the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America,was an agreement among all seven original states in the Confederate States of America that served as its first constitution. Its drafting by a committee of twelve appointed by the Provisional Congress began on February 5,1861. The Provisional Constitution was formally adopted on February 8. Government under this constitution was superseded by the new Constitution of the Confederate States with a permanent form of government "organized on the principles of the United States" on February 22,1862.
Robert Barnwell Rhett was an American politician who served as a deputy from South Carolina to the Provisional Confederate States Congress from 1861 to 1862,a member of the US House of Representatives from South Carolina from 1837 to 1849,and US Senator from South Carolina from 1850 to 1852. As a staunch supporter of slavery and an early advocate of secession,he was a "Fire-Eater",nicknamed the "father of secession".
James Murray Mason was an American lawyer and politician who became a Confederate diplomat. He served as senator from Virginia,having previously represented Frederick County,Virginia,in the Virginia House of Delegates.
William Porcher Miles was an American politician who was among the ardent states' rights advocates,supporters of slavery,and Southern secessionists who came to be known as the "Fire-Eaters." He is notable for having designed the most popular variant of the Confederate flag,originally rejected as the national flag in 1861 but adopted as a battle flag by the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee before it was reincorporated.
James Chesnut Jr. was an American lawyer and politician,and a Confederate functionary.
Jackson Morton was an American politician. A member of the Whig Party,he represented Florida as a U.S. Senator from 1849 to 1855. He also served as a Deputy from Florida to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1862.
Florida participated in the American Civil War as a member of the Confederate States of America. It had been admitted to the United States as a slave state in 1845. In January 1861,Florida became the third Southern state to secede from the Union after the November 1860 presidential election victory of Abraham Lincoln. It was one of the initial seven slave states which formed the Confederacy on February 8,1861,in advance of the American Civil War.
Alabama was central to the Civil War,with the secession convention at Montgomery,the birthplace of the Confederacy,inviting other slaveholding states to form a southern republic,during January–March 1861,and to develop new state constitutions. The 1861 Alabaman constitution granted citizenship to current U.S. residents,but prohibited import duties (tariffs) on foreign goods,limited a standing military,and as a final issue,opposed emancipation by any nation,but urged protection of African-American slaves with trials by jury,and reserved the power to regulate or prohibit the African slave trade. The secession convention invited all slaveholding states to secede,but only 7 Cotton States of the Lower South formed the Confederacy with Alabama,while the majority of slave states were in the Union at the time of the founding of the Confederacy. Congress had voted to protect the institution of slavery by passing the Corwin Amendment on March 4,1861,but it was never ratified.
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in December 1860,and was one of the founding member states of the Confederacy in February 1861. The bombardment of the beleaguered U.S. garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12,1861,is generally recognized as the first military engagement of the war. The retaking of Charleston in February 1865,and raising the flag again at Fort Sumter,was used for the Union symbol of victory.
William Henry Gist was the 68th Governor of South Carolina from 1858 to 1860 and a leader of the secession movement in South Carolina. He was one of the signers of the Ordinance of Secession on December 20,1860,which effectively launched the Confederate States of America.
Louisiana was a dominant population center in the southwest of the Confederate States of America,controlling the wealthy trade center of New Orleans,and contributing the French Creole and Cajun populations to the demographic composition of a predominantly Anglo-American country. In the antebellum period,Louisiana was a slave state,where enslaved African Americans had comprised the majority of the population during the eighteenth-century French and Spanish dominations. By the time the United States acquired the territory (1803) and Louisiana became a state (1812),the institution of slavery was entrenched. By 1860,47% of the state's population were enslaved,though the state also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States. Much of the white population,particularly in the cities,supported slavery,while pockets of support for the U.S. and its government existed in the more rural areas.
John Marshall Martin was a slaveowner,an officer in the Confederate Army,and a member of the Confederate Congress.
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