Austin Blair
Michigan's 13th governor  
(1818-1894)

By Frederick D. Williams

Austin Blair, lawyer, Civil War governor, and United States congressman, was born on February 8, 1818, in Tompkins County, New York. He attended Cazenovia Seminary and Hamilton College, graduated Phi Beta Kappa at Union College in 1839, studied law, and was admitted to the Tioga County bar in 1841. In June of the latter year he moved to Jackson, Michigan, and began practicing law. Following a residence in Eaton Rapids, 1842-1844, he returned to Jackson, where he became a successful attorney and made his home there the rest of his life.

Blair entered actively into politics as an antislavery Whig, supported Henry Clay for president in 1844, and was a member of the Michigan House of Representatives in 1846. He joined the Free Soil party in 1848 and was a delegate to the Buffalo convention that nominated Martin Van Buren for president. In 1854 he was a leader of the gathering under the oaks at Jackson which formed the Republican party, and, as a Republican, he was a Michigan senator, 1855-1856, governor of Michigan, 1861-1865, and a member of the United States House of Representatives, 1867-1873. He never realized his longtime ambition to be a United States senator. His last public service was as regent of the University of Michigan, 1882-1890.

Influenced by his parents, George and Rhoda (Blackman) Mann, who long advocated the abolition of slavery, and by the liberalism of western New York, where he was reared, Blair became a zealous champion of humanitarian reform. He compensated for what he lacked in political acumen with persuasive oratory, hard work, devotion to principles, and faith in a brighter future. As a state representative he introduced legislation to enfranchise adult male Negroes, was a leading supporter of the law of 1846 which abolished capital punishment in Michigan, and advocated statewide prohibition of the manufacture and sale of spirituous liquor. His immediate purpose as a Free Soiler and as a Republican was to put slavery on a path to extinction by preventing its expansion in the territories. A foe of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, he sought to obstruct its enforcement by voting for Michigan’s Personal Liberty Law of 1855, which, with his help, remained in effect when the slaves were emancipated.

At the Republican National Convention in 1860, Blair was chairman of the Michigan delegation which worked assiduously to nominate William H. Seward for the presidency. Following Seward’s defeat, Blair declared that he and Michigan still favored that "great statesman," and would now follow him "in the grand column which shall go out to battle for Abraham Lincoln of Illinois."

In that same year Blair was elected governor of Michigan, and less than four months after he took office the nation plunged into civil war. Intense state pride, fervid nationalism, and hostility to slavery moved him to identify with radical Republicans who took an extremist position against the South. He denounced secession as treason, advocated confiscation of the property, including slaves, of every rebel, and supported a vigorous prosecution of the Civil War. Typical of his wartime efforts was his swift and effective response to Lincoln’s call for troops on April 15, 1861. Because the state treasury had been pilfered by the previous treasurer, Blair sought money from private sources, mostly Detroit bankers and businessmen, and raised about $100,000 for the organization and equipment of the First Michigan Infantry Regiment, the first western regiment to report for duty at Washington. Although he was at times critical of Lincoln, his support of the president was inestimable. When hostilities ceased Blair noted approvingly that the war had virtually destroyed the doctrine of state sovereignty. "There is," he declared, "and can be, under the Constitution of the United States, only one paramount sovereign authority." Blair’s leadership in providing prudent and honest government, and his contribution to the Union cause entitle him to be ranked among the most able and effective Civil War governors.

During his three terms in Congress Blair’s position changed from support to criticism of radical reconstruction, his principal concerns being political and civil rights for Negroes, sectional reconciliation, and the development of the nation’s economy. In 1871 he was offended when Michigan Republicans failed to nominate him for the United States Senate. By that time he was openly criticizing President Ulysses S. Grant and his administration, and advocating, among other things, civil service reform and a return to honest government. In 1872 he joined the Liberal Republicans, campaigned for Horace Greeley for president, and was himself overwhelmingly defeated as the gubernatorial candidate on a fusion ticket backed by Liberal Republicans and Democrats. Through the 1870s he denied that he belonged to either major political party. In 1876 he voted for the Democratic presidential candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, but by 1880 he was back in the Republican fold. Five years later he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Michigan supreme court.

Blair’s private life had a full share of tragedy. His first two wives died after giving birth to infants who also perished. In 1849 he married Sarah Louise Ford, a widow from Seneca, New York. They had one daughter, who died in childhood, and four sons who survived their parents. Blair’s last years were marred by a declining law practice, lack of money, and failing health. He died in Jackson on August 6, 1894.