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Senate Years of Service: 1857-1869 Party: Republican
DIXON, James, a Representative and a Senator from Connecticut; born in Enfield, Hartford County,
Conn., August 5, 1814; pursued preparatory studies; graduated from Williams College, Williamstown,
Mass., in 1834; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1834 and commenced practice in Enfield, Conn.;
member, State house of representatives 1837-1838, 1844, and served as speaker in 1837; moved to
Hartford, Conn., in 1839 and continued the practice of law; elected as a Whig to the Twenty-ninth
and Thirtieth Congresses (March 4, 1845-March 3, 1849); member, State house of representatives
1854; declined the nomination for Governor of Connecticut in 1854; unsuccessful candidate for
United States Senator in 1854; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1856; reelected
in 1863, and served from March 4, 1857, to March 3, 1869; chairman, Committee to Audit and
Control the Contingent Expenses (Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses), Committee on
District of Columbia (Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congresses), Committee on Post Office and Post
Roads (Thirty-ninth Congress); unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the United States Senate and
the House of Representatives in 1868; appointed Minister to Russia in 1869 but declined; engaged in
literary pursuits and extensive traveling until his death in Hartford, Conn., March 27, 1873; interment
in Cedar Hill Cemetery.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography;
Albright, Claude. Dixon, Doolittle, and Norton: The Forgotten Republican Votes on Andrew
Johnsons Impeachment. Wisconsin Magazine of History 59 (Winter 1975-1976):
91-100; Burr, Nelson B. United States Senator James Dixon: 1814-1873, Episcopalian Anti-Slavery
Statesman. History Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 50 (March
1981): 29-72.
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