William Pitt Fessenden


A lawyer, he was a leading antislavery Whig in Maine; in Congress, he fought the Slave Power (the plantation owners who controlled southern states). He built an antislavery coalition in the state legislature that elected him to the US Senate; it became Maine’s Republican organization. In the Senate, Fessenden played a central role in the debates on Kansas, denouncing the expansion of slavery. He led Radical Republicans in attacking Democrats Stephen Douglas, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. Fessenden’s speeches were read widely, influencing Republicans such as Abraham Lincoln and building support for Lincoln’s 1860 Republican presidential nomination. During the war, Senator Fessenden helped shape the Union’s taxation and financial policies. He moderated his earlier radicalism, and supported Lincoln against the Radicals, becoming Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary. After the war, Fessenden was back in the Senate, as chair of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which established terms for resuming congressional representation for the southern states, and which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Later, Fessenden provided critical support that prevented Senate conviction of President Andrew Johnson, who had been impeached by the House. He was the first Republican Senator to ring out “…not guilty” followed by six other Republican Senators resulting in the acquittal of President Johnson.

He is the only person to have three streets in Portland named for him: William, Pitt and Fessenden streets in the city’s Oakdale neighborhood.

Wikipedia contributors, “William P. Fessenden,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_P._Fessenden&oldid=622150767 (accessed August 30, 2014).

The History of the Fessenden Family in America