Elihu Benjamin Washburne (September 23, 1816, Livermore, Maine – October 23, 1887, Chicago, Illinois) was a member of a Maine political family that played a prominent role in the early formation of the United States Republican Party. He later served as United States Secretary of State in 1869.
In March 1839, Washburne had saved enough money and entered Harvard Law School. A year later, in 1840 he graduated and passed the Bar. Afterwards, Washburne left Massachusetts and settled West in Galena, Illinois, hoping to make his fortune.
Washburne, a resident of Galena, Illinois, represented northwestern Illinois in the United States House of Representatives from 1853 to 1869. While in Congress, he was also a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee.
He was known for his courage, and met President-elect Abraham Lincoln upon his arrival in Washington, D.C. on February 23, 1861. An assassination attempt was feared, and other Republican Party leaders were afraid to take on this duty. Washburne and his brothers had hidden the whereabouts of President-elect Lincoln by personally cutting telegraph wires in key locations.
Originally a Whig, Washburne was an early member of the Republicans and a leader of the Radical Republicans. He was among the original proponents of legal racial equality. As a congressman, he served on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. After the Civil War, Washburne advocated that large plantations be divided up to provide compensatory property for freed slaves.
Washburne was an early supporter of Ulysses S. Grant, a fellow resident of Galena, helping to secure Grant's promotions to brigadier general and lieutenant general. When Grant became president in 1869, he appointed Washburne to succeed William H. Seward as Secretary of State, with the understanding that he would hold the post only briefly and then serve as minister to France, with the added prestige of having been Secretary of State. He became ill after becoming secretary and served for only eleven days in March 1869; it remains the shortest term of any Secretary of State. As minister -- head of the U.S. diplomatic mission -- to France, he was the only diplomat from a major power to stay in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War and played a major role in providing both diplomatic and humanitarian support during the siege of Paris and, after the war, the Paris Commune.
Washburne retired from government in 1876, although he was mentioned as a presidential candidate at the Republican conventions in 1880 and 1884. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, and served as president of the Chicago Historical Society from 1884 to 1887.
Three of Washburne's brothers (Cadwallader C. Washburn, William D. Washburn, and Israel Washburn, Jr.) also became politicians. His son, Hempstead Washburne, was mayor of Chicago from 1891 to 1893.
Washburne Street at 1230 south in Chicago is named in honor of Elihu Washburne.