George Helm Yeaman
This posting is a bit of a
stretch for my Ohio County History blog, but you will find a connection
below. I think Mr. Yeaman is an
interesting subject because he was a principal character in the recent movie
“Lincoln” that most of us saw and enjoyed (2012).
There is a little “cross-roads” town named Yeaman about
14 miles NE of Beaver Dam, as the crow flies, near the Ohio – Grayson border,
and actually located in Grayson County.
This town was probably named for George Helm Yeaman, a U. S. Congressman from Kentucky
(November 1, 1829 – February 23, 1908) (please note that this little town might
also be named for a Postmaster’s son). I
guess the name of the town is not important, but I find it interesting.
George Helm Yeaman was born in Elizabethtown, Hardin County,
Kentucky, the son of Lucretia Sneed (Helm) and Steven Minor Yeaman. George completed preparatory studies and studied
law. He was admitted to the bar in 1852 and commenced practice in Owensboro, Kentucky.
He served as judge of Daviess County in 1854, and served as member of the
Kentucky House of Representatives in 1861.
Yeaman was
elected as a Unionist to the Thirty-Seventh Congress to fill the vacancy caused
by the resignation of James S. Jackson, who had resigned his seat and been
killed at the Battle of Perryville. Yeaman was reelected to the Thirty-Eighth
Congress and served from December 1, 1862, to March 3, 1865. He was an
unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1864 to the Thirty-ninth Congress;
losing the election he became a lame duck representative when the 13th
Amendment was being debated in late 1864 and early 1865. He apparently had
little to lose by switching his vote to outlaw slavery in the United States and
he was most probably promised his next job in return for his vote, although
today no one actually knows whether or not Yeaman was promised an appointment
in exchange for his vote.
In any
event, Yeaman was appointed and served as the United States Minister to Denmark
from 1865 – 1870. He resigned in 1870 and settled in New York City. He then
served as a Lecturer on constitutional law at Columbia College. He served as
president of the Medico-Legal Society of New York.
Yeaman died
in Jersey City, New Jersey, on February 23, 1908. He was interred in Hillside
Cemetery, Madison, New Jersey.
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Tom Eblen: In 'Lincoln,' forgotten Kentucky congressman
plays a pivotal role
BY TOM EBLEN
Lexington Herald-Leader
columnist Tom Eblen, November 25, 2012
"I hope to have God on my side," Abraham Lincoln remarked in 1861, "but I must have Kentucky."
Indeed, Steven Spielberg's new movie, Lincoln, makes it
clear that the 16th president needed his home state up to the very end of the
Civil War.
Kentucky is all over this terrific drama. Daniel Day
Lewis stars as Lincoln, who was born in what is now Larue County, and Sally
Field portrays Mary Todd Lincoln of Lexington. Field even spent time in
Lexington to prepare for her role.
Early in the film, Lincoln is seen talking with two black
soldiers who mention they enlisted at Camp Nelson in Jessamine County. A
constant presence in the movie is the ticking of a watch that Lincoln owned —
recorded at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in Frankfort,
where it is part of the collection.
The movie focuses on Lincoln's quest in 1864 and 1865 to
abolish slavery, in border as well as rebel states, by expanding his 1862
Emancipation Proclamation with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. To do
that, he needed to get the Senate-passed amendment through a divided House of
Representatives.
A pivotal vote Lincoln needs is that of U.S. Rep. George
Helm Yeaman of Owensboro, who is played by Michael Stuhlbarg, a California-born
actor who affects a convincing Western Kentucky accent. At this point,
even Kentucky history buffs in the audience are scratching their
heads. George Helm Who?
Yeaman, then 35, was born in Hardin County, the nephew
of former Gov. John L. Helm. A talented lawyer, Yeaman was Daviess County judge
before being elected to the General Assembly and then Congress.
Yeaman was a Unionist. But the two major parties in Congress
were Republicans and Democrats, although their personalities were the opposite
of what they are today. Democrats were more conservative, Republicans more
liberal.
Many Democrats supported slavery, while most Republicans,
including Lincoln, opposed it. The so-called "radical Republicans"
even believed in racial equality; at the time, no political idea was more
radical than that.
Yeaman disliked slavery, but he feared that abolition would
destroy Kentucky's economic and social structure. On Dec. 18, 1862, he
gave a lengthy speech in the House denouncing Lincoln's Emancipation
Proclamation.
"I protest against it as a violation of the
Constitution and the liberties of my country," Yeaman said. "I
protest against it as unwise, uncalled for, tending to widen the breach rather
than to hasten the conclusion of this war."
"Yeaman was reflecting the views of his
constituents," said Aloma Dew, who taught Civil War and Reconstruction
history at Kentucky Wesleyan College in Owensboro and
wrote The Kentucky Encyclopedia's entry about Yeaman.
Most of Yeaman's constituents supported both the Union and
slavery. "He felt that the power to confiscate private property was
unconstitutional," Dew said, adding that he also thought blacks were
unprepared for freedom.
In the movie, Yeaman, serving as a lame duck after
being defeated for re-election in 1864, is first shown giving a speech against
the proposed 13th Amendment. He warns that ending slavery could eventually
extend the vote to blacks and, even more horribly, to women. The House erupts
in jeers.
This speech leads Lincoln's operatives to think Yeaman can't
be bribed with a government job, which they were using to win the votes of
other lame duck opponents. But the president decides to try to persuade him
anyway.
Calling Yeaman to the White House, Lincoln tells him how his
father, Thomas Lincoln, moved the family from Kentucky to Indiana and
then Illinois because "he knew no small-holding dirt farmer could compete
with slave plantations."
"I hate it too, sir, slavery," Yeaman tells
Lincoln. "But we're entirely unready for emancipation."
Lincoln replies that the nation is unready for peace, too,
but will have to figure it out when the time comes.
Days later, when called upon to cast his vote, Yeaman first
mumbles, then shouts his "Aye!" to the shock of amendment opponents.
He becomes a key swing vote for abolishing slavery.
After Lincoln's assassination, President Andrew Johnson
appointed Yeaman as ambassador to Denmark. In that role, he negotiated the sale
of the Virgin Islands to the United States, only to have it rejected by
Congress. (The sale was later consummated in 1917 at more than three times the
cost.)
Yeaman resigned his ambassadorship in 1870 and settled in
New York. The former congressman who had opposed the Emancipation Proclamation
on constitutional grounds wrote several books about law and government and
taught constitutional law at Columbia University.
President James Garfield reportedly offered Yeaman an
appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, but was assassinated in 1881 before he
could follow through. With his wife in failing health, Yeaman moved to a
country home in Madison, N.J., where he died in 1908.
Spielberg's movie offers insight into the central role of
Kentuckians in the Civil War, including a nod to a reluctant hero who might
otherwise have been forgotten.
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"Lincoln" Kentucky Representative has
historians excited
By: Berry Craig, West
Kentucky Journal
Posted: Tuesday, December 4,
2012 3:11 pm.
(Mayfield,
KY - December 4, 2012) - Kentucky
history buffs are abuzz over an all-but-forgotten Owensboro congressman who is
featured in Lincoln, the new Steven Spielberg movie.
On Jan. 31, 1865, George H. Yeaman cast a
key vote for the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery. With his timely help,
the Republican-majority House passed the amendment by the necessary two-thirds
majority.
(The 13th Amendment had won Senate
approval in 1864, though Unionist Kentucky Senators Lazarus W. Powell of
Henderson and Garrett Davis of Paris voted against it.)
Before Lincoln, Yeaman, played by actor
Michael Stuhlbarg, was largely unknown in the Bluegrass State.
Anyway, Yeaman wasn't the only Kentucky
congressmen who was for the amendment. Lucian Anderson of Mayfield, William H.
Randall of London and Green Clay Smith of Covington also voted "aye."
Kentucky's five other representatives
voted "nay": Henry Grider of Bowling Green, Aaron Harding of
Greensburg, Robert Mallory of New Castle, Brutus J. Clay of Paris and William
Henry Wadsworth of Maysville.
The Kentucky congressmen were elected as
Unionists in 1863. By then, relations between border slave state Kentucky and
the Lincoln administration had gone from bad to worse.
Almost every white Kentuckian hated the
anti-slavery "Black Republican" president and his Emancipation
Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, though it didn't apply to their state. While most
citizens were pro-Union, they were also pro-slavery.
Fearing Unionist candidates might lose to
conservative, anti-Lincoln Democrats, state authorities denied the vote to
anybody suspected of disloyalty. (Suspected Unionists were disfranchised in the
Confederacy.)
Anderson could never have been elected
otherwise. Though occupied by Yankee soldiers, deep western Kentucky remained
defiantly Rebel.
Likewise, Yeaman would have had a harder
time winning had Southern sympathizers been allowed to vote.
On the other hand, Randall and Smith
probably would have been elected, no matter what. Their bailiwicks were
staunchly Unionist.
At any rate, the 13th Amendment became
part of the constitution in December, 1865, after the requisite three-fourths
of the states -- Kentucky not among them -- ratified it. "The next year,
in a senseless act of defiance, the Kentucky House of Representatives refused
to ratify the amendment," Lowell H. Harrison and James C. Klotter wrote in
A New History of Kentucky.
Neither Anderson nor Yeaman, who joined
Randall and Smith in the fledgling Kentucky GOP, returned to Washington.
A Conservative-Democrat defeated Yeaman in
1865. Anderson knew he couldn't win another term, so he chose not to seek
reelection. A Conservative-Democrat took his seat, too.
On the other hand, Randall and Smith were
reelected in 1865.
-- Berry Craig is a professor of history
at West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah and is the author
of True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon and Burgoo,
Hidden History of Kentucky in the Civil War, Hidden History of Kentucky
Soldiers and Hidden History of Western Kentucky. The books are being sold to
raise money for scholarships at WKCTC. They are available by contacting Craig
by phone at (270) 534-3270 or by email at
berry.craig@kctcs.edu.
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The other interesting thing about George Yeaman was that
his election to the U. S. House of Representatives was contested by his
opponent, John H. McHenry, Jr., who was
born in Hartford, Ohio County, 21 February 1832 and who served as Commander of
the 17th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry (Union).
McHenry filed the documents for contest on December 9,
1863, with the House of Representatives in Washington, stating that the
election held August 3, 1863 (Thirty-Eight Congress), was
unconstitutional. McHenry asked the
House of representatives to vacate the election and that another election be
held.
The specific grounds for the contest were that shortly
before the election Yeaman conspired with Colonel John W. Foster, 65th
Indiana Volunteers, with the conspiracy leading to Foster issuing “General
Order No. 12” which prescribed an oath to be taken at the election; that the
oath was unconstitutional; that General Order No. 12 was distributed to the general public before
the election; that Foster had no right to issue General Order No. 12; that
various other Orders were issued concerning the election; that armed soldiers
were placed at the polls to intimidate voters; that said soldiers required
voters to take the oath and threatened to arrest voters; and finally, generally
alleging fraud in the election.
While the Yeaman connection to Ohio County is weak (although
McHenry was born in Ohio County), this election contest may be is interesting
to those of you related to McHenry or those of you that are also addicted to the
history of Daviess County or those of us addicted to general Kentucky history. If you have further interest, you can read
the official documents, many of which are sworn depositions of Daviess County
citizens and officials, in an online book that is free:
If that link fails to
work, search for Google Books (a separate web site) and then search for the
following: Yeaman The House of
Representatives. The First Session of the Thirty-Eighth Congress.1863-'64 The first item listed is the book that
includes the McHenry v. Yeaman documents, which cover more than 100 pages of material.
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