Augustus Rhodes Sollers

Augustus Rhodes Sollers (May 1, 1814 – November 26, 1862) was an American lawyer and politician who represented Maryland in the United States House of Representatives during two nonconsecutive terms in the mid-nineteenth century. He was born near Prince Frederick, Calvert County, Maryland, where he spent virtually his entire life. Raised in a region dominated by agriculture and the tobacco trade, Sollers came of age in a period of growing political contention over states’ rights and the balance of power between the federal government and the states, influences that would shape his later public career.

Sollers received his early education in the local schools of Calvert County. He pursued the study of law as a young man and was admitted to the bar in 1836. Following his admission, he commenced the practice of law in Prince Frederick, building a professional reputation in the county courts. His legal work, grounded in the everyday concerns of a largely rural constituency, provided him with the experience and local standing that would support his entry into elective office.

Sollers’s national political career began when he was elected as a member of the Whig Party to the Twenty-seventh Congress, representing Maryland’s seventh congressional district. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1841, to March 3, 1843. His first term in Congress coincided with the Whig ascendancy under President William Henry Harrison and, following Harrison’s death, President John Tyler, a period marked by intense disputes within the Whig Party over banking policy, tariffs, and the scope of federal authority. As a Whig representative from Maryland, Sollers contributed to the legislative process during this significant period in American history, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents in a border state with both Southern and Mid-Atlantic characteristics.

After leaving Congress at the end of his first term, Sollers returned to Prince Frederick and resumed the practice of law. He remained active in state and local affairs and emerged as a figure of sufficient prominence to be chosen as a delegate to the Maryland State Constitutional Convention of 1851. At that convention, he took part in drafting and submitting the Maryland Constitution of 1851, a document that reorganized the state’s political structure, including changes to representation, the judiciary, and the method of selecting various state and local officials. His service at the convention reflected his engagement with questions of governance and institutional reform at the state level.

Sollers reentered national politics when he was elected again as a Whig to the Thirty-third Congress, this time representing Maryland’s sixth congressional district. He served from March 4, 1853, to March 3, 1855. His second term in Congress occurred during a turbulent era marked by sectional tensions and debates over slavery and territorial expansion, including the controversies that surrounded the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the shifting party alignments that would soon lead to the collapse of the Whig Party. In this environment, Sollers once more represented Maryland’s interests in the House, participating in deliberations as the national political system moved toward realignment and eventual conflict.

Following the conclusion of his second term in Congress, Sollers again returned to his legal practice in Prince Frederick. He continued to work as an attorney through the 1850s and into the early years of the Civil War, remaining rooted in the community where he had been born and had long practiced. Although the broader nation was increasingly consumed by sectional crisis and war, Sollers’s professional life remained centered on the courts and clients of Calvert County.

Augustus Rhodes Sollers died in Prince Frederick, Maryland, on November 26, 1862. He was interred in St. Paul’s Churchyard in Prince Frederick, the same community that had shaped his personal, professional, and political life. His career, encompassing service in two different congressional districts and participation in the Maryland Constitutional Convention of 1851, reflected the trajectory of a mid-nineteenth-century Whig politician who combined local legal practice with periods of state and national legislative service.