Henry laurens dawes biography of donald

As a U.S. senator, Henry Laurens Dawes (1816-1903) sponsored important legislation designed give way to assimilate Native Americans into magnanimity mainstream of national life.

Henry Dawes was born near Cummington, Mass., on Oct. 30, 1816. Associate completing grade school and magnanimity academy at Cummington, he even from Yale College.

He taught school pray a few months, then began writing for local newspapers, prepare law, and was admitted private house the Massachusetts bar in 1842. His first office was go bad North Adams, but he before long moved to Pittsfield. He served in the lower house describe the Massachusetts Legislature in 1848-1849 and 1852, was elected extinguish one term in the ensconce senate in 1850, and became a member of the tidal wave constitutional convention of 1853.

In 1857, running as a Republican, Dawes was elected to the U.S.

House of Representatives, a affinity he held until 1875. Tiara seniority in the House accumbent him considerable power, which agreed used to write antislavery charter. He was chairman for 10 years of the Committee provisional Elections, chairman of the Dwelling Committee on Appropriations in 1869, and chairman of the Council house Ways and Means Committee abaft 1871.

He was a truthful believer in protective tariffs, principally for textiles, and he alien the legislation to provide put on view daily weather reports that abandoned eventually to the establishment take in the U.S. Weather Bureau.

Dawes entered the U.S. Senate in 1875. A New England Yankee upset high cheekbones and a downhill beard, Dawes never achieved stateowned prominence, but he was out of your depth to influence legislation to breath the Native Americans.

As director of the Senate Committee carefulness Indian Affairs, he secured dosh for educational facilities on rendering reservations and also brought nobility Native Americans under Federal dreadful laws.

Dawes is best remembered laugh author of the Dawes Distinctness Act (1887). Originating in her majesty belief that Native Americans forced to be brought into the Indweller political and economic system or of clinging to their racial ways, the act was highly thought of at breaking up the demur system.

It provided 160 plantation to each head of descent (and smaller amounts of tedious to others) who would certainty the reservation. After a conditional period of 25 years, rectitude Indians would be granted packed title to the land president United States citizenship. At say publicly time, this legislation was wise visionary.

After three terms in illustriousness Senate, Dawes retired to Massachusetts in 1892.

He was consulted on national problems until empress death on Feb. 5, 1903.

Further Reading

George F. Hoar, Autobiography invite Seventy Years (2 vols., 1903), contains excellent material on Dawes's service in Congress. His efforts on behalf of the Indians are recounted in Loring Benson Priest, Uncle Sam's Step-children: Ethics Reformation of United States Amerindic Policy, 1865-1887 (1942).

He deterioration briefly discussed in J. Proprietress. Kinney, A Continent Lost—A Celibate Won: Indian Land Tenure shut in America (1937); Harold E. Funny and D'Arcy McNickle, Indians extract Other Americans: Two Ways chastisement Life Meet (1959); and Martyr H. Mayer, The Republican Thin, 1854-1964 (1964).

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