william h. crawford
united states senator
biography
A public official, born in Neson County, Virginia, William Harris Crawford was privately educated and admitted to the bar in 1799. He settled in Lexington, Georgia, and began his public service as a state legislator and a United States Senator. He was a presidential candidate of the Democratic-Republican party in 1824. He had also served as a minister to France, a secretary of war, and a secretary of the treasury under Presidents James Madison and James Monroe. For the last seven years of his life he was a judge of the northern circuit court of Georgia.
In the contest for the Republican nomination in 1816, William H. Crawford, having worked with the Young Republicans in Congress, had fifty-four votes in the caucus to Monroe’s sixty-five, which was a very narrow margin for the Virginian who had been regarded generally as the heir apparent to Madison from the time of his acceptance of the primacy of the cabinet.
In the coming elections in 1924, William H. Crawford now secretary of the treasury, was the politician’s candidate. He had the backing of old-line party leaders, New York’s Albany Regency headed by Martin van Buren, and a considerable federal officeholder support. He avoided commitments to the tariff, but his southern connections created the impression that he accepted that section’s viewpoint.
In 1822 Crawford had seemed to be far in the lead, but two factors combined to wreck his candidacy before electors were chosen: the first a stroke of paralysis in September 1823 and the second the blundering of one of Crawford’s friends, Gallatin, holding the caucus. About his stroke, one observer noted "He walks slowly like a blind man. His feet were wrapped up with two or three thicknesses over his shoes and he told me they were cold and numb."
