Benjamin Gwinn Harris

Benjamin Gwinn Harris (December 13, 1805 – April 4, 1895) was a U.S. Representative from Maryland and a prominent, if controversial, pro-slavery Democrat during the Civil War era. He was born near Leonardtown, in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, where he spent much of his life and later maintained his estate, “Ellenborough.” Raised in a slaveholding region of southern Maryland, Harris came of age in a political culture deeply shaped by questions of states’ rights, slavery, and religious liberty, influences that would later define his public career.

In the late 1820s Harris attended Yale College. His time there ended abruptly when he was removed from the institution after taking part in a student protest against the poor quality of the food in the campus housing, an incident that reflected both the contentious student politics of the period and his own willingness to defy authority. He subsequently pursued legal studies at Harvard Law School from 1829 to 1830, joining a small but growing cohort of Americans who sought formal legal education rather than relying solely on apprenticeship. After completing his studies, he returned to Maryland, continued his legal training, and was admitted to the bar in 1840, beginning the practice of law in his native St. Mary’s County.

Harris entered public life as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, serving terms in 1833 and 1836. In the state legislature he opposed the nativist Know-Nothing Party, which was gaining influence in Maryland and other states, and he championed religious freedom at a time when anti-Catholic sentiment was widespread. His stance aligned with the interests of many in southern Maryland, where Catholic communities had deep historical roots. At the same time, as sectional tensions intensified in the decades before the Civil War, Harris became an increasingly staunch defender of slavery. He supported the maintenance and enforcement of the institution in Maryland and advocated measures that included the re-enslavement of Maryland’s freedmen, reflecting the hardening pro-slavery position of many conservative Democrats in the border states.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Harris’s political views placed him firmly among the most outspoken Southern sympathizers in the Union Congress. He was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1863, to March 3, 1867, as a Representative from Maryland. During his tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, he opposed the Lincoln administration’s conduct of the war and voted against every war appropriations measure brought before the House. Consistent with his long-standing defense of slavery, his vote on the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery, is recorded as “nay.”

Harris’s conduct in Congress drew national attention and controversy. In 1864, during a debate over the remarks of Ohio Congressman Alexander Long, who had called for recognition of the Confederacy, Harris rose in Long’s defense and went so far as to offer an open prayer on the House floor for a Southern victory. These “treasonable utterances,” as his colleagues described them, led the House of Representatives to censure him formally on April 9, 1864, one of the more severe disciplinary actions taken against a member during the war. His outspoken sympathy for the Confederacy continued to shape his public image throughout his congressional service.

At the close of the Civil War, Harris’s activities again brought him into conflict with federal authorities. In May 1865 he was tried by a military court in Washington, D.C., on charges of harboring two paroled Confederate soldiers. The court convicted him and sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment and to be forever disqualified from holding any office under the Government of the United States. The severity of the sentence reflected the heightened tensions of the immediate postwar period and the federal government’s determination to punish perceived disloyalty. Within weeks, however, President Andrew Johnson issued a pardon, nullifying the practical effect of the sentence and allowing Harris to return to private life in Maryland.

Following his departure from Congress in 1867, Harris withdrew from national politics and resumed his life on his estate, “Ellenborough,” near Leonardtown. There he lived as a member of the local gentry, his public career largely defined by his wartime record and his unwavering defense of slavery and Southern interests. He remained on his estate until his death on April 4, 1895. Harris was interred in the family burying ground at “Ellenborough,” closing a life that spanned from the early national period through Reconstruction and left a distinct, if divisive, imprint on Maryland’s and the nation’s political history.