Benjamin Gorham

Benjamin Gorham (February 13, 1775 – September 27, 1855) was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts and a prominent lawyer and legislator in the early decades of the American republic. He was born in Charlestown, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, the son of Nathaniel Gorham, a leading merchant and statesman who served as one of the Presidents of the Continental Congress. Growing up in a family deeply involved in public affairs during and after the American Revolution, Benjamin Gorham was exposed early to the political and legal culture of the new nation.

Gorham pursued preparatory studies in Massachusetts and entered Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1795. Following his graduation, he studied law, reflecting both his family’s public-service tradition and the expanding opportunities for legal practitioners in the post-Revolutionary period. After completing his legal training and being admitted to the bar, he commenced the practice of law in Boston, then the commercial and political center of the Commonwealth. His legal career in Boston provided the foundation for his subsequent entry into state and national politics.

Gorham’s public career began in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he served from 1814 to 1818. His legislative work in the lower house coincided with the closing years of the War of 1812 and the immediate postwar period, when Massachusetts was grappling with economic adjustment and questions of federal and state authority. On May 26, 1819, he entered the Massachusetts State Senate, serving there until his resignation on January 10, 1821. His tenure in the state senate further established his reputation as a capable legislator and aligned him with the evolving currents of New England politics in the era of the fading Federalist Party and the rise of new national coalitions.

Gorham advanced to the national stage when he was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Sixteenth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Representative Jonathan Mason. He took his seat and, after being re-elected when the term expired, served in the U.S. House of Representatives until March 3, 1823. During this period, the Democratic-Republican Party was the dominant national party, and Gorham’s service in Congress placed him among those New England representatives navigating the transition from the first party system to the emerging divisions that would soon crystallize around figures such as John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.

After leaving Congress in 1823, Gorham returned to state service, reentering the Massachusetts State Senate for a term beginning May 28, 1823. He then reemerged on the national scene as political alignments shifted in the late 1820s. He was elected as an Adams candidate to the Twentieth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Daniel Webster, one of Massachusetts’ most prominent statesmen. Gorham subsequently was reelected as an Anti-Jacksonian to the Twenty-first Congress and served continuously from July 23, 1827, to March 3, 1831. In these terms he aligned with the National Republican and Anti-Jacksonian forces that supported the policies of John Quincy Adams and later Henry Clay, opposing the growing Jacksonian Democratic movement.

Following a term in Congress served by Nathan Appleton, Gorham again returned to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected as an Anti-Jacksonian to the Twenty-third Congress and served from March 4, 1833, to March 3, 1835. His final period in Congress coincided with the consolidation of the Anti-Jacksonian coalition that would soon evolve into the Whig Party, and he remained identified with the interests of New England commerce and a strong but constitutionally bounded national government. After this last congressional service, Gorham did not seek further national office but continued to play a role in state politics.

In 1841, Gorham once more served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, returning to the body where his legislative career had begun nearly three decades earlier. After this final term in the state legislature, he resumed the practice of law in Boston, maintaining his professional activities into his later years. He spent the remainder of his life in the city, which had long been both his legal base and his political constituency.

Benjamin Gorham died in Boston on September 27, 1855, at the age of 80. He was interred in the Phipps Street Burying Ground in Charlestown, the community of his birth, thus closing a life that had spanned from the last years of colonial rule through the formative decades of the United States and that had been marked by repeated service in both state and national legislatures.