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- John Henninger Reagan was a Texas Democractic party leader and Confederate Postmaster General. His early life was not unlike that of many oung men who grew to maturity in frontier America. Although having moments to hund and fish, he worked with his father at a tannery and on their small farm. Seldom did he have time for books and schooling, and he only briefly attended nearby Nancy Academy. In 1831, his mother died, and the added duties of caring for four brothers and a sister were thrust upon him. In 1834, Reagan, whose desire for learning permeated his life, decided to follow his ambitions. After a year of hiring out to a local lanter, he attended Boyd's Creek Academy for fifteen months. When funds became low, he worked to finance a year of stucy (1837) at Southwestern Seminary in Maryville. In 1838, Reagan left Tennessee to seek greater monetary gain. Briefly, he managed a plantation near Natchez before being lured to Texas, where a job at Nacogdoches supposedly awaited him. Soon after arrival, however, he became involved in the Cherokee War and, on July 15, 1839, participated in an engagement in which the Indians were routed and their leader, Chief Bowl, was killed. For the next two years, Reagan worked as a deupty surveyor and frontier scout before being elected a justice of the peace and captain of a militia company in Nacogdoches. For several years thereafter, he also studied to be an attorney until, in 1846, he procured a temporary law license and opened an office at Buffalo on the Trinity River. When Texas became a state in 1846, Reagan began his political career. In April, he was elected the first county judge of Henderson County. The next year he became of member of the Second Legislature of Texas. Although he helped obtain the reapportionment of both the House and Senate, Reagan unsuccessfully tried to amend a bill for the Peters colony that, at first glance, seemed to benefit settlers but actually initiated costly litigation. In the race for the state Senate in 1849, this legislative measure was the chief issue of the campaign and one that led to Reagan's defeat. Yet in 1852 the Peters' colonists, who had previously opposed him, hired him to represent them after this predictions proved to be correct. As a result, when the judge of the Ninth Judicial District died in September, Reagan was popular enough to win a hastily called election. After 1855 Regan became increasingly prominent. In East Texas he helped the Democratic party defeat the surging American (Know-Nothing) party; this victory contributed to his re-election as judge in 1856 as well as to his popularity. Consequently, in the summer of 1857 the Democrats nominated and elected him United States congressman from the Eastern District of Texas. In Washington he attended to constituent needs and dealt with the controversy over the status of slavery in Kansas. He soon feared for the safety of the Union. Thus in 1859 he assumed the somewhat contradictory position of officially supporting secessionist Democratic candidate Hardin Runnels against Unionist Sam Houston in the state governor's race while campaigning for his own re-election to Congress on a middle-of-the-road, pro-Union platform. Both Houston and Reagan won impressive victories.
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1818 - 1905 (86 years)
