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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—LouisianaSLIDELL, John
(1793—1871)
Senate Years of Service:
1853-1861
Party:
Democrat
SLIDELL, John, a Representative and a Senator from Louisiana; born in New York City in 1793; graduated from Columbia College (later Columbia University), New York City, in 1810; studied law; admitted to the bar in New York City; practiced law and engaged in business; moved to New Orleans around 1819 and engaged in law and business; unsuccessful candidate for election in 1828 to the Twenty-first Congress; United States district attorney 1829-1833; unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate in 1834, 1836, and 1848; elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Congresses and served from March 4, 1843, until his resignation on November 10, 1845; chairman, Committee on Private Land Claims (Twenty-eighth Congress); appointed Minister to Mexico in 1845, but that government refused to accept him; offered the mission to Central America in 1853, but declined; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1853 to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Pierre Soule; was reelected, and served from December 5, 1853, to February 4, 1861, when he resigned; chairman, Committee on Roads and Canals (Thirty-fourth Congress); on November 8, 1861, while on a diplomatic mission from the Confederate States to England and France, was taken from the British mail steamer Trent, sailing from Havana to England, and confined in Fort Warren, Boston Harbor; was later released and sailed for Paris; died in Cowes, Isle of Wight, England, July 9, 1871; interment in the private cemetery of the Saint-Roman family at Villejuif, near Paris, France, in the Departement de la Seine.
Bibliography
American National Biography
; Dictionary of American Biography
; Diket, Albert L. Senator John Slidell and the Community He Represented in Washington, 1853-1861.
Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982; Sears, Louis. John Slidell
. Durham: Duke University Press, 1925.
Diket, A.L. “John Slidell and the ‘Chicago Incident’ of 1858.”Louisiana History
5 (Fall 1964): 369-86.
___. Senator John Slidell and the Community He Represented in Washington 1853-1861
. Washington: University Press of America, 1982.
Greer, James Kimmins. “Louisiana Politics, 1845-1861.” Louisiana Historical Quarterly
12 (July 1929): 381-425; (October 1929): 555-610; 13 (January 1930): 67-116; (April 1930): 257-303; (July 1930): 444-83; (October 1930): 617-54.
Kautz, Craig L. “Beneficial Politics: John Slidell and the Cuban Bill of 1859.” Louisiana Studies
13 (Summer 1974): 119-29.
Sears, Louis Martin. John Slidell
. Durham: Duke University Press, 1925.
___. “Slidell and Buchanan.” American Historical Review
27 (July 1922): 709-30.
Tregle, Joseph G., Jr. “The Political Apprenticeship of John Slidell.” Journal of Southern History
26 (February 1960): 57-70.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
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