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Posted February 4, 2008
James Wilson Grimes was a U.S. Senator from Iowa who also served as the third Governor of Iowa from 1854 to 1858, the only person to hold the post who was neither a member of the Republican nor Democratic parties.
The Whig Party included such prominent Americans as Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, Henry Clay and Zachary Taylor. Abraham Lincoln was also a Whig for a short time before joining the
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Republican Party. The main plank in the party’s platform was the belief that Congress should hold supremacy over the Executive Branch and Whigs were proponents of economic protectionism. When the party folded, most of its members gravitated to the Republican Party.
Grimes is best remembered as one of seven Republicans to vote against the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, an act of political suicide which ended his career in politics.
His conciliatory policies towards the South, his hurry to reincorporate the former Confederates back into the union, and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with the Radical Republicans. The Radicals in the House of Representatives impeached him in 1868, but he was acquitted by a single vote in the
James Wilson Grimes
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Senate. He was the first U.S. President to be impeached.
Grimes was born October 20, 1816, in Deering, New Hampshire and died on February 7, 1872 in Burlington. He graduated from Hampton Academy and attended Dartmouth College. He studied law; moved west and commenced practice in the 'Black Hawk Purchase', Wisconsin Territory, afterward the site of Burlington. He also engaged in agriculture. Grimes served as a member of the Iowa Territorial House of Representatives 1838–1839, 1843 – 1844.
Grimes was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1859 and reelected in 1865 He served from March 4, 1859, until December 6, 1869, when he resigned due to ill health.
Grimes and six other Republican senators voted for the acquittal of Johnson because of concerns about how the proceedings had been manipulated in order to give a one-sided presentation of the evidence.
Grimes died in Burlington, Iowa on February 7, 1872, aged 55. He was buried in the Aspen Grove cemetery, in Burlington. The Des Moines suburb of Grimes is named for him.
