FESSENDEN, WILLIAM PITT

born Oct. 16, 1806, Boscawen, N.H., U.S. died Sept. 8, 1869, Portland, Maine American Whig politician who was influential in founding the Republican Party in 1854. Fessenden graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me., in 1823 and began to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1827 and served the Portland area (as a Whig) in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1841 to '43. Disliking congressional life, he left the capital but returned to Washington in 1854 to represent Maine in the Senate, a position he held until his death (save for a few months as a member of Lincoln's Cabinet). Fessenden was one of a small group of Northern senators who opposed the extension of slavery into the territories, and he was one of the leaders of the movement that resulted in the formation of the Republican Party. During the Civil War (186165), he was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. On the resignation of Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase in 1864, Fessenden was appointed to the treasury post, where he served for eight months. Returning to the Senate in March 1865, he chaired the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, and, although he took issue with some of the more extreme proposals of the Radical Republicans, he was the main author of the Committee's report of 1866. In 1868, however, he alienated his fellow Republicans when, despite his dislike for President Andrew Johnson, he cast the deciding vote against impeachment.