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Oil on canvas, William T. Smedley, 1912, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives |
CANNON, Joseph Gurney, a Representative from Illinois; born in Guilford, Guilford County,
N.C., May 7, 1836; moved with his parents to Bloomingdale, Ind., in 1840;
completed preparatory studies; studied law at the Cincinnati Law School; was
admitted to the bar in 1858 and commenced practice in Terre Haute, Ind., in
1858; moved to Tuscola, Ill., in 1859; States attorney for the twenty-seventh
judicial district of Illinois from March 1861 to December 1868; elected as a
Republican to the Forty-third and to the eight succeeding Congresses (March 4,
1873-March 3, 1891); chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office
Department (Forty-seventh Congress), Committee on Appropriations (Fifty-first
Congress); moved to Danville, Ill., in 1878; unsuccessful candidate for
reelection in 1890 to the Fifty-second Congress; elected to the Fifty-third and
to the nine succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1893-March 3, 1913); chairman,
Committee on Appropriations (Fifty-fourth through Fifty-seventh Congresses),
Committee on Rules (Fifty-eighth through Sixty-first Congresses); Speaker of
the House of Representatives (Fifty-eighth through Sixty-first Congresses);
received fifty-eight votes for the presidential nomination at the Republican
National Convention at Chicago in 1908; unsuccessful candidate for reelection
in 1912 to the Sixty-third Congress; again elected to the Sixty-fourth and to
the three succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1915-March 3, 1923); declined
renomination for Congress at the end of the Sixty-seventh Congress; retired
from public life; died in Danville, Vermilion County, Ill., November 12, 1926;
interment in Spring Hill Cemetery.
BibliographyBolles, Blair.
Tyrant From Illinois: Uncle Joe Cannons Experiment With Personal
Power. New York: Norton, 1951. Reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, [1974]; Cannon, Joseph Gurney.
Uncle Joe Cannon: The Story of a Pioneer American, As Told to L. White
Busbey. New York: Holt, 1927. Reprint, St. Clair Shores, MI: Scholarly
Press, 1970; Cannon, Joseph Gurney.
The Memoirs of Joseph Gurney Uncle Joe Cannon. Transcribed
by Helen Leseure Abdill. [Danville, Ill.]: Vermilion County Museum Society,
1996.
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