Alexander De Witt

Alexander De Witt (April 2, 1798 – January 13, 1879) was a 19th-century American politician from the state of Massachusetts who served in both the Massachusetts legislature and the United States Congress. He was born in New Braintree, Massachusetts, on April 2, 1798, and came of age in the early years of the American republic, a period marked by rapid economic change and the expansion of the textile industry in New England.

As a young man, De Witt settled in Oxford, Massachusetts, where he worked in textile manufacturing. His involvement in this growing industrial sector reflected the broader transformation of the Massachusetts economy in the first half of the nineteenth century, as water-powered mills and textile production reshaped the region’s social and economic life. His experience in manufacturing helped ground his later political career in the concerns of working communities and local industry.

De Witt entered public life as a Democrat and became active in Massachusetts politics during the Jacksonian era. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1830 and served there continuously until 1836, participating in state legislative debates during a time of significant political realignment and economic development. He later advanced to the Massachusetts State Senate, where he served multiple nonconsecutive terms in 1842, 1844, 1850, and 1851, gaining a reputation as an experienced legislator and aligning himself increasingly with anti-slavery sentiment as sectional tensions grew.

An early and outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery, De Witt eventually broke with the Democratic Party and joined the Free Soil Party, which opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. As a Free Soiler, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1853, taking his seat in the 33rd Congress. In January 1854, during the controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he was one of six signatories of the “Appeal of the Independent Democrats,” a widely circulated manifesto drafted to oppose the act’s repeal of the Missouri Compromise and its policy of allowing slavery’s expansion under the doctrine of popular sovereignty. This action placed De Witt among the more prominent congressional critics of the Kansas-Nebraska legislation and underscored his commitment to restricting slavery’s growth.

Following the demise of the Free Soil Party in the mid-1850s, De Witt affiliated with the American Party, which at that time was the only major party maintaining an explicit anti-slavery platform, despite its nativist tendencies. Running as an American Party candidate, he won a second term in 1854 and served in the 34th Congress. His service in Congress thus spanned a critical period in the 1850s when national politics were increasingly dominated by the sectional crisis and the reorganization of party alignments. In 1856, however, he was defeated in his bid for reelection, ending his brief but notable tenure in the national legislature.

After leaving Congress, De Witt returned to Oxford and resumed his previous work as a textile manufacturer, reengaging in the local economic life that had first shaped his career. As the national political landscape continued to evolve and the Republican Party emerged as the principal anti-slavery organization, De Witt joined the Republicans. During the American Civil War, he supported the Union cause and took part in efforts to recruit and equip soldiers for Massachusetts regiments, contributing to the state’s mobilization on behalf of the federal war effort.

Alexander De Witt spent his later years in Oxford, remaining identified with the industrial and political community in which he had long been active. He died in Oxford on January 13, 1879, at the age of eighty, and was buried in South Cemetery in Oxford, Massachusetts. His career reflected the trajectory of many New England politicians of his generation, moving from Jacksonian Democracy through Free Soil and American Party affiliations to the Republican Party, while consistently maintaining an opposition to the expansion of slavery and a commitment to the Union.