John J. McRae, Governor, U.S. Senator

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000596

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._McRae

John Jones McCrae (January 10, 1815 – May 31, 1868) was an American Democratic politician.

Biography

McRae was born in Sneedsboro, North Carolina (now a ghost town 3.3 mi (5.3 km) northeast of McFarlan). In 1817, he moved with his parents to Winchester, Mississippi.

He served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1847 to 1851. During that time, he helped set up the University of Mississippi. He also represented Mississippi in the United States Senate in 1851 and 1852, in the U.S. Congress in the 35th and 36th congresses, and in the Confederate Congress during the American Civil War. He then served as the 21st Governor of Mississippi from 1854 to 1857.

He died on a visit to his Belize, where his brother Colin J. McRae lived in exile.

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John J McRae, born in Sneedsborough in Anson County in 1815, moved to Winchester, Mississippi, in 1818 and became a prominent politician in Mississippi and nationally. McRae represented the state of Mississippi in the United States Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Confederate Congress during his career. He also served two terms as governor of Mississippi in the 1850s.

McRae moved with his family to Winchester in 1818 for his father’s business, and moved again to Pascagoula in 1827. He attended Miami University in Ohio, and then studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1835, and practiced law while also establishing a newspaper, the Eastern Clarion. In 1848 McRae was elected to the Mississippi state legislature, serving until 1850. During his second term as a legislator he acted as the Speaker of the House. McRae was governor of Mississippi between 1854 and 1857, before leaving his post to fill a vacancy in the United States House of Representatives.

In 1851 McRae was appointed to complete the U.S. Senate term of Jefferson Davis. Two years later he was appointed to finish the term of John A. Quitman in the House of Representatives. He withdrew from his position in the House with all other Mississippi representatives following the secession of Mississippi from the Union in January 1861. McRae was elected as a Mississippi representative to the lower house of the Confederate Congress, serving from 1862 until 1864. He traveled in 1868 to Belize in British Honduras to visit his brother and died shortly after his arrival at the age of 53.

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Known to his friends and followers as Johnny McRae of Chickasawhay, John J. McRae sailed his steamer Triumph up and down the Chickasawhay River “as if it were the Mississippi itself.” A contemporary described McRae, a folk hero who was extremely popular with the people of Mississippi, as “bright . . . humorous and fascinating.”

McRae was born in Sneedsboro, North Carolina, on 10 January 1815 and was only two years old when his family moved to Winchester, Mississippi, in Wayne County. After graduating from Ohio’s Miami University, McRae returned to Paulding, the seat of Jasper County, to practice law. McRae also published the Eastern Clarion, the forerunner of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.

McRae was elected to represent Clarke County in the legislature in 1847 and was named Speaker of the House three years later. On 1 December 1851 he was appointed to replace Jefferson Davis in the US Senate after he resigned to run for the Mississippi governorship. McRae served until 17 March 1852, when the legislature appointed Stephen D. Adams to complete the term. In 1853 McRae was the States’ Rights Democrats’ nominee for the governorship, and he defeated the Whig candidate by several thousand votes. He easily won reelection in 1855.

During McRae’s first administration Mississippi opened its first mental hospital and established an asylum for the deaf and speechless. The state also started a levee program in the Delta and adopted the Mississippi Code of 1857. In McRae’s second term, the state adopted a constitutional amendment designed to prevent the recurrence of the situation caused by Gov. John A. Quitman’s 1851 resignation. The amendment set the state’s general elections for the first Monday in October and moved the inauguration of the governor from the first Monday in January following the general election to the first Monday in November. That amendment shortened McRae’s second term by about two months.

In 1858, McRae was elected to Quitman’s seat in the US House of Representatives following his death. McRae remained in Congress until 12 January 1861. McRae subsequently won election to the Confederate Congress, where he served from 1862 to 1864.

McRae left public affairs after the Civil War. He died suddenly on 31 May 1868 while visiting Belize.