Montgomery Blair

(1813-1883)

Montgomery Blair was born in Franklin City, Kentucky, in 1813. His father, Francis Blair Sr., was one of President Andrew Jackson’s close political advisors.

Montgomery Blair graduated from West Point and served briefly in the Seminole War in Florida. Resigning from the army, he attended law school at Transylvania College in Lexington and then moved into law practice and served in public office in Missouri and Maryland. His views on slavery led him from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, and he argued the case for Dred Scott’s freedom before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Montgomery Blair was a delegate to the Chicago convention where Abraham Lincoln was nominated for president in 1860. Blair was made postmaster general of the United States in Lincoln’s first cabinet. He became known as a strong pro-Lincoln man during his service in the president’s administration. Blair was maneuvered out of the Lincoln cabinet by the Radical Republicans after President Lincoln’s death, but he supported Andrew Johnson’s moderate policy toward the South.

The Honorable Montgomery Blair, postmaster general in Lincoln’s cabinet.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division