Reeder, Andrew H.

Born: 1807-07-12 Easton, Pennsylvania

Died: 1864-07-05 Easton, Pennsylvania

Andrew H. Reeder, attorney and territorial governor, was educated first in his hometown of Easton, Pennsylvania, then attended an academy in New Jersey before reading law. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1828. In 1850, Reeder was practicing law in Easton and owned $30,000 in real estate. A Democrat and supporter of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Reeder was appointed by Franklin Pierce as governor of the newly-created Kansas Territory in June 1854. Reeder was unfamiliar with the political situation in Kansas, with the increasing tensions in the territory that would lead to the Bleeding Kansas crisis, and he frustrated territory residents by delaying election for the new territorial legislature into 1855. Rampant election fraud then led him to set aside the results in six districts. Reeder quickly lost control of the situation as pro-slavery advocates in Kansas and in Washington, DC grew dissatisfied with his leadership and the territorial legislature moved the temporary capital from Pawnee to Shawnee Mission, which was closer to Missouri. When Reeder vetoed several of the legislature’s bills in protest of these actions, pro-slavery legislators petitioned Pierce to remove him, which he did in August 1855. These actions pushed Reeder to work with the Free-Soil movement, and he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in an October 1855 election staged by Kansas’ anti-slavery residents, but Congress refused to seat him. In March 1856, he was similarly elected to the U.S. Senate by the so-called “Free State” legislature, but never took his seat because Congress rejected Kansas’ admission as a state at that time. Shortly thereafter, the pro-slavery legislature of Kansas charged Reeder with treason, and he was forced to flee the state. Reeder afterwards involved himself in Republican politics, and resumed his law practice in Pennsylvania. By 1860, he had amassed $150,000 in real estate, with a personal estate valued at $10,000. At the 1860 Republican National Convention, he received support for the vice presidency on the first ballot. Reeder received a commission as a brigadier general during the Civil War but turned it down. In 1831, he married Amelia (Amalia) Hutter, with whom he had eight children.

Eugene H. Berwanger, “Reeder, Andrew Horatio,” American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 18:284-85; Wendell H. Stephenson, “Reeder, Andrew Horatio,” Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928-1936), 15:462-63; Pennsylvania and New Jersey, U.S., Church and Town Records, 1669-2013, 13 September 1831, Northampton County, PA (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2011); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Northampton County, PA, 101; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1887), 9:340, 345, 10:1; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Northampton County, PA, 11;The New-York Times (NY), 8 July 1864, 4:6; Gravestone, Easton Cemetery, Easton, PA.