Edward Bates

Edward Bates (September 4, 1793 – March 25, 1869) was an American lawyer and politician. He represented Missouri in the United States House of Representatives and served as the United States Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln. A member of the influential Bates family, he was the first Cabinet appointee from a state west of the Mississippi River Born in Goochland County, Virginia, in 1814 Bates moved to St. Louis, where he established a legal practice. He was appointed as the first attorney general of the state of Missouri in 1820. Over the next thirty years, he won election to a single term in Congress and served in both the Missouri House of Representatives and the Missouri Senate, becoming a prominent member of the Whig Party. He also represented Lucy Delaney in a successful freedom suit. After the breakup of the Whig Party in the early 1850s, he briefly joined the American Party before becoming a member of the Republican Party. He was a candidate for president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, but Lincoln won the party's nomination. Bates was appointed as attorney general in 1861, at the start of the American Civil War. He successfully carried out some of the administration's early war policies, but he objected to the Emancipation Proclamation and resigned from the Cabinet in 1864 after being passed over for a Supreme Court appointment. After leaving office, he unsuccessfully opposed the adoption of a new state constitution in Missouri.