Joshua Reed Giddings (October 6, 1795 – May 27, 1864) was an American attorney, politician and abolitionist. He represented Northeast Ohio in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1838 to 1859. He was at first a member of the Whig Party and was later a Republican, helping found the party.
Giddings is noted as a leading abolitionist of his era. He was censured in 1842 for violating the gag rule against discussing slavery in the House of Representatives when he proposed a number of Resolutions against federal support for the coastwise slave trade, in relation to the Creole case. He quickly resigned, but was overwhelmingly re-elected by his Ohio constituents in a special election to fill the vacant seat. He returned to the House and served a total of nearly twenty more years as representative.
Lincoln named Giddings Consul to Canada after his term ended in the House of Representatives. While in Canada he wrote “History of the Rebellion: Its Authors and Causes”. He lived in Quebec until his death in 1864. His body was returned to Jefferson, Ohio for burial.
Giddings is one of the main reasons that the Western Reserve was, before the Civil War, one of the most anti-slavery regions of the country.
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Early life and education
Joshua Reed Giddings was born in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, at Tioga Point, now Athens, on October 6, 1795. His family moved that same year to Canandaigua, New York, where they spent the next ten years.
In 1806 his parents Elizabeth (née Pease) and Joshua Giddings moved the family to Ashtabula County, Ohio, which was then sparsely settled. Here they settled on Ohio's Western Reserve, which "provided him with the occupational and social mobility so characteristic of the early nineteenth-century frontier", where Giddings lived for most of the rest of his life. Many settlers from New England went there. As the Reserve was widely famous for its radicalism, Giddings may have been inspired in his first stirrings of passion for antislavery.
Giddings first worked on his father's farm and, although he received no systematic education, devoted much time to study and reading. At 17 he joined a militia regiment for the War of 1812. He served for five months, including battles against American Indian allies of the British.
After 1814 Giddings was a schoolteacher. He married Laura Waters, daughter of a Connecticut emigrant, in 1819. One of their children, Grotius Reed Giddings (1834–1867), was Major of the 14th United States Infantry in the American Civil War.
Giddings later read law with Elisha Whittlesey in preparation for a career as an attorney. He made some money through land speculation.
Career
In February 1821 Giddings was admitted to the bar in Ohio. He soon built up a large practice, particularly in criminal cases. From 1831 to 1837 he was in partnership with Benjamin Wade, a future U.S. Senator. Influenced by Theodore Weld, the two formed the local antislavery society.
Giddings and his friend Wade were both elected to Congress, where they were outspoken opponents of slavery throughout their careers. Wade was elected president of the Senate during the Andrew Johnson administration, and would have succeeded to the presidency of the United States had one more senator voted for the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson.
Political career
Giddings was first elected to the Ohio House of Representatives, serving one term from 1826 to 1827.
The Panic of 1837, in which Giddings lost a great deal of money, caused him to cease practicing law. He ran for federal office and was elected to Congress, "with instructions to bring abolition into national focus in any way possible". Consistently re-elected to office, from December 1838 until March 1859, he served as a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing first Ohio's 16th district until 1843, and then Ohio's 20th district until 1859. Giddings ran first as a Whig, then as a Free-soiler, next as a candidate of the Anti-Nebraska movement, and finally as a Republican. From 1838 until 1843, his district included the city of Youngstown. From 1843 to 1853, the boundaries were shifted northwest to include Cleveland and Youngstown was subtracted from his constituency; from 1853, Cleveland was again swapped for Youngstown.
For the start of the 1841 session Giddings and some of his colleagues, Seth M. Gates of New York, William Slade of Vermont, Sherlock J. Andrews of Ohio, and others, constituted themselves a Select Committee on Slavery, devoted to driving that institution to extinction by any parliamentary and political means, legitimate or otherwise. Not being an official committee, they met their operating expenses out of their own pockets. The expenses included the board and keep of Theodore Dwight Weld, the prominent Abolitionist lecturer, who researched and helped prepare the speeches by which the members excited public opinion against slavery at every opportunity. Their headquarters was in Mrs. Sprigg's boarding-house, directly in front of the Capitol, where Gates, Slade, Giddings, Weld, and the influential abolitionist minister Joshua Leavitt, lived during sessions of Congress; others gradually joined them. John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts was not a member of the committee, but acted as a powerful ally.
Giddings found an early opportunity to attack slavery when on February 9, 1841, he delivered a speech upon the Seminole War in Florida, insisting that it was waged in the interest of slavery.
In the Creole case of 1841, American slaves had revolted and forced the brig Creole into Nassau, Bahamas, where they gained freedom as Britain had abolished slavery in its territories in 1834. Southern slaveholders argued for the federal government to demand the return of the slaves or compensation.
Honors and legacy
Joshua R. Giddings Elementary School in Washington, D.C., was constructed in 1887 and named in his honor. It closed in the 1990s and now is a sports club and gym.
His law office in Jefferson, Ohio, has been preserved as a National Historic Landmark.
A life-size bronze depiction of Giddings is featured inside the Cuyahoga County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument.
Published works
Giddings, Joshua R. (c. 1842). Pacificus: The Rights and Privileges of the Several States in Regard to Slavery. being a series of essays, published in the Western Reserve Chronicle, (Ohio) after the election of 1842.
Giddings, Joshua R. (1842). An expose of the circumstances which led to the resignation by the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings of his office of representative in the Congress of the United States, from the sixteenth Congressional district of Ohio, on the 22d March, 1842.
Giddings, Joshua R. (c. 1844). The rights of the free states subverted, or, An enumeration of some of the most prominent instances in which the federal Constitution has been violated by our national government, for the benefit of slavery, by a Member of Congress. Enumeration of some of the most prominent instances in which the federal constitution has been violated by our national government for the benefit of slavery. pp. 16 pages. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
Speeches in Congress (1853)
Giddings, Joshua R. (1858). The Exiles of Florida: or, The Crimes Committed by Our Government against the Maroons, who Fled from South Carolina and other Slave States, Seeking Protection under Spanish Laws. Follett, Foster and Company. Retrieved May 8, 2018. Reprinted with introduction by Arthur Thompson, University of Florida Press, 1964.
History of the Rebellion: Its Authors and Causes (1864).
Archival material
The Indiana State Library has a collection of his correspondence and memoirs. "The collection consists primarily of memoirs of Joshua R. Giddings. Also included are family correspondence (mainly between father and daughter Laura Giddings), journal entries by the elder Giddings, diaries of Laura, photographs, and a biography of Giddings by his daughter."