Isham G. Harris - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Harris was born in Franklin County, Tennessee near Tullahoma. He was the ninth child of Isham Green Harris, a farmer and Methodist minister, and his wife Lucy Davidson Harris. His parents had moved from North Carolina to Middle Tennessee in 1806. He was educated at Carrick Academy in Winchester, Tennessee, until he was fourteen. He moved to Paris, Tennessee, where he joined up with his brother William, an attorney, and became a store clerk. In 1838, with funds provided by his brother, Harris established his own business in Ripley, Mississippi, an area that had only been recently opened to settlers after a treaty with the Chickasaw Indians.

While in Ripley, Harris studied law. He sold his successful business three years later for $7,000 and returned to Paris where he continued studying law under Judge Andrew McCampbell. On May 3, 1841, he was admitted to the bar in Henry County and began a lucrative practice in Paris. He was considered one of the leading criminal attorneys in the state.

On July 6, 1843, Harris married Martha Mariah Travis (nicknamed "Crockett"), the daughter of Major Edward Travis, a War of 1812 veteran. The couple had seven sons. By 1850 the family had a 300-acre (120 ha) farm and a home in Paris. By 1860 their total property was worth $45,000 and included twenty slaves and a plantation in Shelby County.

In 1847, Henry County Democrats convinced Harris to run for the district's Tennessee Senate seat in hopes of countering a strong campaign by local Whig politician William Hubbard. Anti-war comments made in August by the district's Whig congressional candidate, William T. Haskell, damaged Hubbard's campaign, and he quit the race. Harris easily defeated the last minute Whig replacement, Joseph Roerlhoe. Shortly after taking his seat, he sponsored a resolution condemning the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery in territories acquired during the Mexican-American War.

In 1848, Harris was an elector for unsuccessful presidential candidate Lewis Cass. In May of that year, he engaged in a six-hour debate in Clarksville with Aaron Goodrich, elector for Zachary Taylor.

Harris was nominated as the Democratic candidate for the state's 9th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1849. After successfully tying his opponent to unpopular positions of the national Whig Party, Harris won the election easily. He spent much of his term attacking the Compromise of 1850, though he also chaired the House Committee on Invalid Pensions. Harris was reelected to a second term, but after Whigs gained control of the state legislature in 1851, his district was gerrymandered, and he did not seek a third term.