Henry Marshall (December 28, 1805 – July 13, 1864) was an American politician who served as a Deputy from

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

to the

Provisional Congress of the Confederate States The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States, also known as the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America, was a congress of Deputy (legislator), deputies and Delegate (American politics), delegates called together from th ...

from 1861 to 1862.

Antebellum period

Henry Marshall was born in Darlington District, South Carolina on December 28, 1805. He was a cousin of future Confederate general

Maxcy Gregg Maxcy Gregg (August 1, 1814 – December 15, 1862) was a lawyer, soldier in the United States Army during the Mexican–American War, and a Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War who was mortally wounded at the Battle of ...

and attended

Union College Union College is a private liberal arts college in Schenectady, New York. Founded in 1795, it was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, and second in the state of New York, after Columbia Co ...

Schenectady, New York Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...

. While a student there, Marshall walked from

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

to his home in

Society Hill Society Hill is a historic neighborhood in Center City Philadelphia, with a population of 6,215 . Settled in the early 1680s, Society Hill is one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in Philadelphia.The Center City District dates the Free Soc ...

, leaving a diary of the journey. He moved to

in the mid-1830s to seek cheap land in the west, and settled in

DeSoto Parish DeSoto Parish (French language, French: ''Paroisse DeSoto'') is a List of parishes in Louisiana, parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The parish was formed in 1843. At the 2010 United States Census, 2010 U.S. census, the population was ...

. There, Marshall became a planter, owning 8,000 acres of land and 201 slaves with property valued at over $200,000 by 1860, making him extremely wealthy by contemporary standards. He also served as a member of the Louisiana State Senate.

American Civil War

In January 1861, Marshall signed the state

secession ordinance An Ordinance of Secession was the name given to multiple resolutions drafted and ratified in 1860 and 1861, at or near the beginning of the Civil War, by which each seceding Southern state or territory formally declared secession from the United ...

. He soon defeated Benjamin Lewis Hodge for election as a delegate to the Montgomery Constitutional Convention that became the Provisional Congress by eight votes. In November he narrowly won a contest for reelection to the 1st Confederate Congress. During this period he funded a South Carolina regiment organized by Gregg. In the Confederate Congress, Marshall served as chairman of the Committee on Public Lands. An extreme advocate of

states' rights In American political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the ...

, he refused to moderate his views despite the conditions of the war, unlike other Louisiana congressmen, and in contrast to the latter was reluctant to grant President

Jefferson Davis Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a ...

new powers. Marshall opposed direct taxation and federal control over commerce and transport and desired to man the army through state levies rather than central government conscription and give states control of the appointment of officers and service exemptions. Possibly because his views were not in accord with the war situation, Marshall declined to run for reelection in 1863 and retired to his plantation, Land's End, where he died on July 13, 1864. He was buried in Trinity Cemetery near

Gloster, Louisiana Gloster is an unincorporated community and census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. ...

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links

*
Henry Marshall
at

The Political Graveyard The Political Graveyard is a website and database that catalogues information on more than 277,000 American political figures and political families, along with other information. The name comes from the website's inclusion of burial locations o ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marshall, Henry 1805 births 1864 deaths 19th-century American Episcopalians 19th-century American politicians American planters American slave owners Burials in Louisiana Deputies and delegates to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States Louisiana state senators Members of the Confederate House of Representatives from Louisiana People from Darlington County, South Carolina Signers of the Confederate States Constitution Signers of the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States