Morton, Oliver P.

Born: 1823-08-04 Wayne County, Indiana

Died: 1877-11-01 Indianapolis, Indiana

Flourished: Indiana

Born as Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton, Morton was an attorney and public official. He was born in Salisbury, Indiana and was raised by aunts in southwestern Ohio following his mother’s death. He rejoined his family in Indiana as a teenager and tried several professions before enrolling in Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1843. Morton left the university in 1845 and took up the study of law in Centerville, Indiana, where he practiced as an attorney and served in 1852 as a circuit judge. Following several months of further legal study at Cincinnati College in 1853, he established a new legal practice in Centerville. Although initially a Democrat, Morton opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and after its passage allied himself with the Indiana anti-Nebraska fusion party known as the People’s Party, and became involved in the organization of the national Republican Party. He ran for governor of Indiana as the People’s Party candidate in 1856 but lost by six thousand votes. Four years later, Morton ran with Henry S. Lane as the Republican candidates for lieutenant governor and governor respectively. Lane won the election, but the Indiana General Assembly promptly voted him into the U.S. Senate, allowing Morton to ascend to the governorship in 1861. As governor during the Civil War, Morton strongly supported the Union cause and recruited large numbers of troops. When Democrats won control of the Indiana General Assembly in 1862 and threatened to dismantle Morton’s programs and strip him of his powers, Morton chose not to re-convene the body and essentially ran the state government singlehandedly for the rest of the war. This tactic prevented him from raising tax revenue and he instead funded the state through federal and private loans. Morton was elected to a second term as governor in 1864 but resigned early in 1866 following his election to the U.S. Senate. Morton married Lucinda M. Burbank, with whom he had five children.

Patrick G. Williams, “Morton, Oliver Perry,” American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 15:956-58; Ed Runden, “Oliver P. Morton,” The Governors of Indiana, ed. by Linda C. Gugin and James E. St. Clair (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2006), 140-50; Indiana Marriages through 1850, Wayne County, 15 May 1845, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Centerville, Wayne County, IN, 171; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Centerville, Wayne County, IN, 21.