Collection of U.S. House of Representatives

KASSON, John Adam, a Representative from Iowa; born in Charlotte, Chittenden County, Vt., January 11, 1822; attended the local school; was graduated from the University of Vermont at Burlington in 1842; studied law; was admitted to the bar and practiced in St. Louis, Mo., until 1857; moved to Des Moines, Iowa, and resumed the practice of law; delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1860; First Assistant Postmaster General in President Lincoln’s administration in 1861 and resigned in 1862; United States commissioner to the International Postal Congress at Paris in 1863; elected as a Republican to the Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congresses (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1867); chairman, Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures (Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congresses); unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1866; commissioner from the United States in 1867 to negotiate postal conventions with Great Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy; member of the State house of representatives 1868-1872; elected to the Forty-third and Forty-fourth Congresses (March 4, 1873-March 3, 1877); was not a candidate for renomination in 1876; appointed Minister to Austria-Hungary October 17, 1877, and served until 1881; elected to the Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Congresses and served from March 4, 1881, until his resignation on July 13, 1884; appointed Minister to Germany July 4, 1884, and served one year; special envoy to the Congo International Conference at Berlin in 1885 and to the Samoan International Conference in 1889; United States special commissioner plenipotentiary to negotiate reciprocity treaties in 1897; member of the United States and British Joint High Commission in 1898 to adjust differences with Canada; died in Washington, D.C., May 18, 1910; interment in Woodland Cemetery, Des Moines, Iowa.