The New International Encyclopædia/Blair, Francis Preston. Jr.

BLAIR, Francis Preston. Jr. (1821-75). An American lawyer, politician, and soldier, born in Lexington, Ky. He graduated at Princeton in 1841, was admitted to the bar in 1843, and removed to Saint Louis to practice law. In the Mexican War he served in the United States Army as a private. Afterwards he was editor for a time of the Missouri Democrat, became prominent in State politics, was a member of the Missouri Legislature from 1852 to 1856, and after 1856 served for several years in Congress as a Republican. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was the leader of the Union Party in Missouri, and by his energy, tact, and political sagacity was largely instrumental in preventing that State from joining the Confederacy. In April, 1861, he entered the Federal Army as a colonel, and before the close of the following year had risen successively to the rank of brigadier-general (August, 1862) and of major-general (November 29, 1862). He led a division under Sherman at Vicksburg in 1862-63, commanding the assault upon Chickasaw Bluffs (December 29, 1862), and in 1864 took a prominent part, as division commander and temporarily as commander of the Seventeenth Corps, in the famous march to the sea. He was nominated as Collector at Saint Louis and as Minister to Austria by President Johnson in 1866, but, owing to his views on reconstruction, the Senate refused to confirm either appointment. Afterwards he joined the Democratic Party, was its candidate for Vice-President in 1868, and from 1870 to 1873 was a member of the United States Senate. He published The Life and Public Services of Gen. William O. Butler (1848).