Early Life and Politics
Hamilton was born in Boonsboro, Maryland, and received early schooling from a local tutor named John Brown. He went on to attend Hagerstown Academy, and later Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, from 1836–1840. After college, Hamilton studied law with former Maryland Congressman John Thomson Mason, Jr., and was admitted to the bar in 1845. He then commenced law practice in Hagerstown, Maryland.
In 1846, Hamilton was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates, but failed to win re-election in 1847. He was, however, elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-first, Thirty-second, and Thirty-third Congresses, serving from March 4, 1849 – March 3, 1855. While Hamilton was in Congress, even though his district was largely manufacturers and miners, he supported tariffs but only as a source of revenue for the government. Other actions while in Congress included his tenure as chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia during the Thirty-third Congress.
From 1855 until 1868, Hamilton avoided politics and resumed the practice of law and farming in Hagerstown. During that time, he became widely-known throughout Western Maryland as an excellent trial lawyer.
Read more about this topic: William Thomas Hamilton
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or politics:
“They circumcised women, little girls, in Jesus’s time. Did he know? Did the subject anger or embarrass him? Did the early church erase the record? Jesus himself was circumcised; perhaps he thought only the cutting done to him was done to women, and therefore, since he survived, it was all right.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“The Troubles are a pigmentation in our lives here, a constant irritation that detracts from real life. But life has to do with something else as well, and it’s the other things which are the more permanent and real.”
—Brian Friel (b. 1929)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)