Dickinson, Daniel S.

Born: 1800-09-11 Goshen, Connecticut

Died: 1866-04-12 New York, New York

Flourished: 1831 to 1866 Binghamton, New York

Daniel S. Dickinson, attorney and public official, was born into a farming family that settled in Guilford, New York around 1807. Dickinson received a common school education before apprenticing to a clothier. He subsequently taught school for several years and worked as a surveyor while studying law. Dickinson completed his legal education in a law office in Norwich, New York, and earned admittance to the bar in 1828. He thereafter practiced law and served as postmaster in Guilford, before relocating to Binghamton about 1831 and continuing his legal practice there. Following the incorporation of Binghamton in 1834, Dickinson became the village’s first president. Dickinson, a Democrat, won election to the New York Senate in 1836 and served for four years. He was elected lieutenant governor of New York in 1842, and was thus ex officio president of the New York Senate and president of the New York Court of Errors from 1842 to 1844. Late in 1844 Dickinson was appointed to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate, then was elected to a full term, ultimately serving in that body until March 3, 1851. Following his unsuccessful bid for reelection to the U.S. Senate in 1850, Dickinson returned to his law practice. On the advent of the Civil War he was an advocate of Union, supporting the administration of Abraham Lincoln and working with Republicans as a War Democrat. He was elected attorney general of New York in 1861 on a Union ticket. Although Dickinson reportedly plotted to replace Lincoln with Salmon P. Chase on the 1864 electoral ticket, he was himself considered as a possible running mate for Lincoln’s second term. Shortly before his assassination, Lincoln appointed Dickinson U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1865. Dickinson married Lydia Knapp in 1822, and the pair had four children.

Phyllis F. Field, “Dickinson, Daniel Stevens,” American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 6:560-61; Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 940; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Chenango, Broome County, NY, 346; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 1, Binghamton, Broome County, NY, 1; The New York Herald (NY), 14 April 1866, 5:3-4; Gravestone, Spring Forest Cemetery, Binghamton, NY.