Andrew Humphreys

Andrew Humphreys (March 30, 1821 – June 14, 1904) was a Democratic U.S. Representative from Bloomfield, Greene County, Indiana, who served in the Forty-fourth Congress and was long active in Indiana state politics. Born near Knoxville, Tennessee, he moved with his parents to Owen County, Indiana, in 1829. The family later relocated to Putnam County, near Manhattan, where he attended the common schools. In 1842 he moved to Greene County, Indiana, where he settled permanently and engaged in agricultural pursuits, a vocation he continued throughout his life alongside his political activities.

Humphreys’s public career began in state politics. After establishing himself in Bloomfield, Greene County, he was elected as a Democrat to the Indiana House of Representatives, serving from 1849 to 1852 and again from January 8 to March 9, 1857. His early legislative service coincided with a period of rapid growth and political realignment in Indiana. In 1857 President James Buchanan appointed him Indian agent for Utah, a federal position that placed him within the national administration’s efforts to manage relations with Native American tribes in the Utah Territory during a time of heightened tensions in the West.

During the American Civil War, Humphreys emerged as a prominent Democratic critic of Indiana’s Republican governor, Oliver P. Morton, and of President Abraham Lincoln’s conduct of the war. He became associated with the Sons of Liberty, a secret society opposed to certain wartime policies, when Harrison H. Dodd, the organization’s “grand commander” in Indiana, chose Humphreys as one of his major generals. Federal authorities, viewing the group as disloyal and potentially subversive, placed its leaders under military surveillance and arrest. On September 17, 1864, General Alvin Peterson Hovey, commander of the Military District of Indiana, authorized a military commission to convene at Indianapolis to try Dodd and others held under military arrest. Humphreys was arrested on October 7, 1864, and imprisoned in the Federal Building at Indianapolis, becoming one of the defendants in the highly publicized Indianapolis treason trials.

The military commission convened at Indianapolis on October 21, 1864, to try Humphreys and fellow Democrats Lambdin P. Milligan of Huntington, William A. Bowles of French Lick, and Stephen Horsey of Martin County. They faced five charges: conspiracy against the United States government; offering aid and comfort to the Confederates; inciting insurrections; “disloyal practices”; and “violation of the laws of war.” The prosecution alleged that the defendants had organized a secret conspiracy to liberate Confederate prisoners of war held in camps in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio; seize an arsenal to arm the freed prisoners; raise an armed force to incite a general insurrection; join with Confederate forces to invade Indiana and Illinois; and wage war against the United States government. Democrats charged that the arrests and trials were politically motivated, reflecting bitter partisan conflict in Indiana over wartime policy. Later scholars have argued that the proceedings were driven by partisan considerations, conducted before a commission of biased military officers, failed to adhere to established rules of evidence, and relied on questionable informers as witnesses.

On December 10, 1864, the military commission found Humphreys, Milligan, Horsey, and Bowles guilty on all charges. Humphreys was sentenced to hard labor for the remainder of the war. The case against him was considered weaker than that against his co-defendants, and his punishment was less severe; Milligan, Bowles, and Horsey were initially sentenced to hang, though their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in May 1865. Three weeks after Humphreys’s conviction, and with the support of President Lincoln, General Hovey modified his sentence to allow his release, on the conditions that Humphreys remain within two specified townships in Greene County and refrain from any acts opposing the war. The controversial trials ultimately gave rise to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Ex parte Milligan, in which the Court ruled on April 3, 1866, that the use of military tribunals to try civilians when civilian courts were open was unconstitutional, leading to the release of the men from custody.

Humphreys was the first of the Indianapolis treason trial defendants to seek redress in the civilian courts. On February 1, 1866, he filed a complaint in the circuit court of Sullivan County, Indiana, against Samuel McCormick, the U.S. Army captain who had arrested him, seeking damages for his arrest, trial, and confinement. Humphreys won the suit and was awarded $25,000 in damages, but the judgment became entangled in appeals and he never collected the funds. After Congress amended the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of March 3, 1863, to bar further civil suits by those who had been arbitrarily arrested during the war, Humphreys turned back to electoral politics. Although he narrowly lost a bid for a seat in the Indiana General Assembly in 1868, he remained active in the Democratic Party and served as a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions of 1872 and 1888.

Resuming his legislative career, Humphreys was elected to the Indiana Senate three times. He first served from 1874 to 1876, resigning in 1876 to run for Congress. He was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-fourth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of James D. Williams and served from December 5, 1876, to March 3, 1877. Representing his Bloomfield, Greene County district during a period of post–Civil War reconstruction and economic adjustment, Humphreys participated in the legislative process on behalf of his Indiana constituents during his single term in the U.S. House of Representatives. After leaving Congress, he returned to the Indiana Senate, serving from 1878 to 1882, during which time he became chairman of the Senate’s ways and means committee, and again from 1896 to 1900. In 1896, at the age of seventy-four, he was drafted by Indiana Democrats to run once more for the state senate and won, extending his long record of public service.

Throughout his life Humphreys combined his political career with agricultural pursuits in Greene County and remained a consistent presence in party affairs, attending nearly every Democratic state convention over the course of his political life. He died at Linton, Indiana, on June 14, 1904, and was interred in Moss Cemetery.