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American judge

George Henry Williams (March 26, 1823April 4, 1910) was an American judge and politician. He served as chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, was the 32nd Attorney General of the United States, and was elected Oregon's U. S. senator, and served one term. Williams, as U. S. senator, authored and supported legislation that allowed the U. S. military to be deployed in Reconstruction of the southern states to allow for an orderly process of re admittance into the United States. Williams was the first presidential Cabinet member to be appointed from the Pacific Coast. As attorney general under President Ulysses S. Grant, Williams continued the prosecutions that shut down the Ku Klux Klan. He had to contend with controversial election disputes in Reconstructed southern states. President Grant and Williams legally recognized P. B. S. Pinchback as the first African American state governor. Williams ruled that the Virginius, a gun running ship delivering men and munitions to Cuban revolutionaries, which was captured by Spain during the Virginius Affair, did not have the right to bear the U. S. flag. However, he also argued that Spain did not have the right to execute American crew members. Nominated for Supreme Court Chief Justice by President Grant, Williams failed to be confirmed by the U. S. Senate primarily due to Williams's opposition to U. S. Attorney A. C. Gibbs, his former law partner, who refused to stop investigating Republican fraud in the special congressional election that resulted in a victory for Democrat James Nesmith. In 1875, Williams resigned as U. S. Attorney General after his wife was accused of taking bribes from the custom house firm Pratt & Boyd, which attempted to persuade the U. S. Justice Department to drop litigation against the company. After his resignation, Williams took part in the effort to count Florida ballots for Rutherford B. Hayes during the controversial presidential election of 1876. Williams returned to Oregon, resumed private law practice, and was elected Portland's mayor, serving two terms from 1902 to 1905. Williams, at the age of 83, was indicted for not enforcing restrictions on gambling; he was acquitted and served out the rest of his term as mayor.

George Henry Williams was born in upstate New York, New Lebanon, Columbia County, on March 26, 1823. When he was very young his family moved to Onondaga County, where was educated in public and private schools, including Pompey Academy. In 1857, he was a member of the Oregon Constitutional Convention held before the establishment of Oregon as a U. S. state. Williams remained on the court until 1858 when he resigned from the bench. He then moved to Portland, Oregon, where he resumed the practice of law. Williams, a Democrat, supported Stephen Douglas during the presidential election of 1860. Williams attended the Oregon Union convention of 1862, having opposed slavery, and was the chairman of the Election Committee.

In 1864 Williams, having changed over to the Republican Party, was elected to the United States Senate; he served one term, from 1865 to 1871. President Grant's southern Reconstruction policy worked primarily through Williams's Justice Department supported by Grant's Secretary of War, William W. Belknap. The Justice Department had been inundated by multiple caseloads against the Klan and did not have the manpower to effectively prosecute all of them. Williams finished his prosecution of the remaining Klan cases in the Spring of 1873. Both President Grant and Williams thoroughly consulted each other in considering a settlement for the contentious Alabama political crisis. On December 12, 1872, President Grant and George Henry Williams peacefully settled the disputed Alabama state elections between the Democrats and Republicans by issuing five resolutions to Governor David P. Lewis. Democrat John D. McEnery and Republican William P. Kellogg both claimed to have won the governorship; both parties mired in charges of voting fraud. After multiple state Returning Boards failed to resolve the election, U. S. District Court Judge Edmund H. Darrell ordered that Kellogg was the winner of the Louisiana election. On December 14, Attorney General Williams informed Warmoth that President Grant recognized Kellogg as the rightful, elected governor of Louisiana.

In October 1873, a privateer gun running ship flying the American flag, the Virginius, secretly owned by Cuban insurgents during the Cuban Ten Years' War was captured by a Spanish warship. In November, a total of 53 crewmembers, including American and British seamen, were tried and executed by Spanish mercenary, Juan D. Burriel, in Santiago, Cuba. On December 17, the Virginius was turned over to the United States Navy according to an agreement between the U. S. and Spain. On the same day, after investigation by the U. S. Justice Department, Attorney General Williams ruled that the Virginius had been purchased by fraud and did not have the legal right to carry the American flag, however, he argued that the Spanish did not have the right to capture it on open waters and execute American crewmen, since the United States only had the right to investigate if the Virginius had been legally registered in New York. Williams’ ruling on the ownership of the Virginius ship was a mixture of "pretense, legality, and bluff". Through negotiations, 91 crewmembers were returned to New York and families of those Americans who were executed by Burriel were eventually awarded $80,000 reparations from Spain in 1875.

In December 1873, President Grant nominated Williams to become Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Initially, Grant had Senator Roscoe Conkling's support for the nomination. However, rumor spread through Washington that Williams had used Justice Department funds to pay for his wife's expensive carriage. Williams had drawn on Justice Department funds, replaced by himself, when banks suspended payment on checks during the Panic of 1873. Sen. Conkling believed under the circumstances the nomination should be revoked. In December 1873, after previously reporting the nomination to the Senate with a favorable recommendation, the Senate Judiciary Committee held two days of closed door hearings concerning the controversy. This was the first recorded instance in which formal hearings are known to have been held on a Supreme Court nominee by a Senate committee. On January 9, 1874, an angered President Grant sent the Senate a letter that withdrew Williams's name from nomination.

On January 31, 1874, prominent members of the New York Bar and Bench attend a reception given by Col. Eliott F. Shepard in honor of U. S. Attorney General Williams. The extravagantly lighted party took place on No. 10 East 44 Street in New York from 8 pm to 10 pm. Williams had initially visited New York on vacation for a reunion with old friends.

In February 1876, Williams was part of a three man defense team who defended Orville E. Babcock, President Grant's military secretary, at the Whiskey Ring trial held in St. Louis. Babcock had been charged with secretive collusion with the ring, and throwing off investigators. The investigation into the Whiskey Ring was started by Grant's Secretary of Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow to clean up Republican corruption. Babcock was acquitted. After resigning Williams declined an offer from Grant to become the U. S. minister to Spain. George Williams campaigned for the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as president in 1876. During the controversial presidential election of 1876, Williams, now a private citizen, went to Florida to manage the Hayes ballot returns. that he had delivered as early as 1869, with the majority dating from 1885 to 1893. Intended primarily as a souvenir for friends, professional and political speeches were excluded. Among the 21 addresses presented are tributes delivered on the deaths of Generals U. S. Grant and W. T. Sherman and several prominent judges, and speeches bearing upon the history and growth of Portland, the study and practice of medicine, the militia, and the United States Supreme Court. Williams' address on the value of good thoughts was intended as advice to the 1891 graduating class of the high school at Portland. On October 11, 1901, the Episcopal Church of America met in San Francisco to decide whether Episcopal clergymen could remarry divorced persons and discipline any Episcopal members who remarried. Former Attorney General Williams attended the meeting and opposed all restrictions by the Episcopal church on married and divorced persons and stated that such matters belonged in civil law as opposed to church law. Williams was charged for not closing down gambling facilities on July 13, 1904, that operated within four miles of Portland. Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks was the keynote speaker who attended the opening ceremony.

Williams was the first presidential cabinet member appointed from Oregon. Although Williams had some successes as U. S. Attorney general, he was not a reformer and was involved in corruption during his tenure in federal office. Historian Jean Edward Smith, critical of Williams, said whenever "tested as attorney general he failed dismally."

Williams married Kate Van Antwerp in Iowa in 1850, and they had one daughter. He married a second time in 1867 to Kate Hughes George, and the couple adopted two children.