Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/319

 JAMES DANIEL RICHARDSON ICHARDSON, JAMES DANIEL, lawyer, representative and speaker in the state legislature of Tennessee, state senator, and permanent chairman of the (Kansas City) Democratic national convention of 1900, a representative in congress from the fifth district of Tennessee for twenty years, and leader of the Democratic minority in the fifty-sixth and fifty-seventh Congresses, was born in Rutherford county, Tennessee, March 10, 1843. His father, John Watkins Richardson, a physician, was "a student, a man of piety and sobriety and of uniform habits of life." His mother, Augusta M. Starnes Richardson, is said by her son to have exercised a very strong and beneficial influence upon his character.

His early life until he was eighteen was spent in the country. After the closing of the war he removed from his country home to Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He attended good country schools, and had already entered college and was pursuing a course in Franklin college, when the Civil war broke out. He left his collegiate course without graduating and at the age of eighteen enlisted in the Confederate army, in 1861, as a private. After one year's service, he was promoted to adjutant of the 45th Tennessee regiment, and served through the four years of the war until 1865. He was wounded in the left forearm, at Resaca, Georgia, May 13, 1864. After the war, he removed to Murfreesboro, Tennessee. For two years he studied law, beginning the active practice of his profession in Murfreesboro, January 1, 1867. The principal public service he has rendered has been in his capacity as representative of the fifth district of his state in congress for twenty years. He declined the reelection, which his friends believed he could have had (since he had been returned without opposition in his own party for twelve years) in order to devote his entire time to the ancient and accepted Scottish Rite of Free Masonry. In 1871 and 1872 he had held the position of representative and speaker in his state legislature; he was state senator from 1873-74. He was chosen a delegate to the Democratic national conventions of 1876, 1896 and 1900; and was permanent chairman