Green, James S.

Born: 1817-02-28 Fauquier County, Virginia

Died: 1870-01-19 Monticello, Missouri

James S. Green was a businessman, lawyer, U.S. representative, diplomat, and U.S. senator. Green's family moved to Alabama and then Ralls County, Missouri in 1837. He and his brother went into business managing mills but were largely unsuccessful. Around this same time, Green married Elizabeth Reese. He began studying law and earned admittance to the bar in 1840. He opened a practice with his brother in Monticello, Missouri, and served as a Democratic Presidential Elector in 1844. Green was a delegate to the 1845 Missouri constitutional convention and won election to the U.S. House of Representatives the following year. Elizabeth died in 1847 and Green married Mary Evans. Green left the U.S. Congress in 1851 and was not reelected when he ran again in 1852 due to his strong support for slavery's extension. In 1853, President Franklin Pierce appointed him charge d'affaires to Colombia, and Green was going to become minister there but declined after a year. He won reelection to the House of Representatives in 1856, but did not take his seat because he soon won a seat in the U.S. Senate. There, Green supported the Lecompton Constitution and opposed Stephen A. Douglas's faction of the Democratic Party. He replaced Douglas as chair of the Senate Committee on Territories. As the secession crisis mounted in 1860, Green declined reelection and returned to Missouri, where he opposed the administration of Abraham Lincoln and was arrested for disloyalty. He supported Clement Vallandigham and may have engaged in pro-Confederate activities.

William E. Parrish, "Green, James Stephens," American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 9:494.