T for Trumbull

Lyman Trumbull

Born in Colchester, Connecticut in 1813 to a prominent political family, Lyman Trumbull studied law in Greenville, Georgia, before moving to Illinois to establish a practice and enter politics.  He served as the Illinois Secretary of State from 1841 to 1843 and as a justice of the Illinois Supreme Court from 1848 to 1853.

Trumbull was a leading abolitionist attorney and key political ally to Abraham Lincoln. He authored several important landmark pieces of reform as chair of the Judiciary Committee during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. 

Three of them were: (1) the Confiscation Acts, which created the legal basis for the Emancipation Proclamation; (2) the Thirteen Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished chattel slavery; and (3) the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which led to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

 

“T for Trumbull” Extra Documentation