rancis ("Frank") Blair Jr. was a congressman and the
vice-presidential nominee of the Democratic party in 1868. He was the son of
Eliza Gist Blair and Francis Preston Blair Sr., who was a member of President
Andrew Jackson's "kitchen cabinet" and editor of the Congressional
Globe. He was a brother of Montgomery Blair, who was a mayor of St. Louis and
postmaster general in President Abraham Lincoln's cabinet.
Young Frank Blair Jr. was a bright but difficult student, who was expelled from
several private schools and later from the University of North Carolina and
Yale. In 1841 he managed to complete his studies at Princeton, but faculty
objections to his rude behavior postponed his graduation until the following
year. In 1842 he attended law school at his father's alma mater, Transylvania
University in Lexington, Kentucky. After passing the bar, he joined his
brother's law firm in St. Louis, then worked in the law office of Democratic
Senator Thomas Hart Benton. In 1845 he traveled to the west in an effort to
improve his health. At the commencement of the Mexican-American War, he enlisted
in the army, then returned to St. Louis at the end of the war to resume his law
practice and briefly edit the Missouri Democrat. He married Appoline Alexander;
they had eight children.
Blair was a slaveowner, but opposed the expansion of slavery to the American
West and favored the colonization of blacks to Africa. In 1848 he helped to
found the Free-Soil party in Missouri and edited the party's organ, the
Barnburner. His energetic condemnation of slavery and its expansion provoked an
assassination attempt on his life. He did endorse, however, the Compromise of
1850 which allowed the electorates in the Utah and New Mexico territories to
vote on the slavery issue, in exchange for California entering the Union as a
free state. His stance on the 1850 Compromise led to a break with his political
mentor, Senator Benton.
Blair represented the Democratic party first in the Missouri legislature
(1852-1856), then in the U. S. Congress (1856-1858). He was the only Free-Soiler
in Missouri's congressional delegation, and supported Republican John C.
Frémont for president in 1856. His maiden speech on the House floor, partly
written by his father, depicted slavery as a national problem, rather than as a
regional institution. Arguing that slavery's dissolution was inevitable, he
advocated gradual emancipation and the colonization of free and freed blacks to
Africa. In 1859 Blair gained national recognition for an anti-slavery speech
(another collaboration with his father), in which the congressman articulated
his plan of gradual emancipation, colonization, and free labor. The oration was
published as The Destiny of the Races on This Continent.
In 1858 Blair lost his bid for reelection to Congress as a Democrat. In 1860 he
became a Republican and after endorsing Missouri's Edward Bates for the
presidential nomination, switched to back Abraham Lincoln at the national
convention. Blair campaigned vigorously for Lincoln in the general election and
was himself elected by a narrow margin to Congress as a Republican. As Southern
slave states seceded and the threat of civil war mounted, Blair personally
financed the organization of paramilitary units (called "Home Guards")
to defend St. Louis and Missouri for the Union. His home state was bitterly
divided and became a bloody battleground during the Civil War. In the early
months of the war, Blair led state militia units against Confederate troops
before leaving to take his seat in Congress, where he chaired the House
Committee on Military Defense. His actions in Missouri were instrumental in
keeping that state within the Union.
Blair persuaded President Lincoln to name Frémont as Western Department
commander, but the congressman soon became critical of what he considered to be
Frémont's incompetence and lobbied for the general's removal. In 1862 Blair
resigned from Congress to take a commission in the Union army, and returned to
Missouri where he used his own money to raise seven infantry regiments. After
the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi (March 29-July 4, 1863), he was promoted to
the rank of major general. He also saw action in the Chattanooga Campaign
(October-November 1863) and in General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the
Sea (November-December 1864). In 1862 Blair was reelected to Congress as a
Republican, so resigned from the army to take his seat in the House on March 4,
1865.
In Congress, Blair backed the more lenient Reconstruction plans proposed by
President Lincoln and, after Lincoln's assassination, by President Andrew
Johnson, while he fought strenuously against the policies of the Radical
Republicans. He so embittered his congressional colleagues that they rejected
President Johnson's nomination of him as revenue collector in St. Louis and as
U.S. minister to Austria.
In 1868 the Democratic party nominated Blair as Horatio Seymour's
vice-presidential running mate. During the campaign, Blair advocated
nullification of the Reconstruction acts and predicted that if Ulysses S. Grant,
the Republican presidential nominee, were elected, his presidency would
degenerate into a military dictatorship. Blair's harsh words and abrasive
personality tended to alienate potential supporters and provided fodder for his
Republican opponents. He and Seymour lost the 1868 election.
In 1871 Blair won a special election to the Senate, supported by a coalition of
Democrats and Liberal Republicans. In 1872 he campaigned for Horace Greeley, the
presidential nominee of the Democratic and Liberal Republican parties. Blair
failed to win reelection to the Senate in 1873. Two years later in St. Louis, he
died of head injuries sustained in a fall.