Eli Sims Shorter

Eli Sims Shorter (March 15, 1823 – April 29, 1879) was a U.S. Representative from Alabama and a Confederate Army officer during the American Civil War. He was born in Monticello, Jasper County, Georgia, where he spent his early years and attended the local common schools. Raised in the antebellum South, he came of age in a period of expanding cotton agriculture and increasing political tension over slavery and states’ rights, influences that would shape his later legal and political career.

Shorter pursued higher education in the North and studied law at Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut. He was graduated in law from Yale in 1844, a notable achievement for a young southerner of his generation and an experience that exposed him to a broader national legal and intellectual environment. Shortly after completing his studies, he returned to the South and was admitted to the bar in 1844.

In the same year, 1844, Shorter moved to Eufaula, in Barbour County, Alabama, where he commenced the practice of law. Eufaula was an important commercial and river port town in southeastern Alabama, and Shorter quickly established himself as a practicing attorney there. In addition to his legal work, he engaged in agricultural pursuits, reflecting the region’s plantation-based economy and the central role of agriculture in the social and economic life of the area. His professional and agricultural interests helped root him in the community and laid the groundwork for his entry into public life.

Shorter’s political career advanced within the Democratic Party, the dominant party in Alabama at the time. He was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-fourth Congress and was reelected to the Thirty-fifth Congress, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1855, to March 3, 1859. Representing Alabama during a period of intensifying sectional conflict, he served in Washington as debates over slavery in the territories, states’ rights, and the future of the Union grew increasingly acute. After completing his two consecutive terms in Congress, he did not seek or did not secure further federal office and returned to his legal practice.

Following his departure from Congress, Shorter resumed the practice of law in Eufaula, continuing his work as an attorney in the late 1850s. With the secession of Southern states and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he aligned with the Confederacy. During the Civil War, he served in the Confederate States Army as colonel of the 18th Regiment Alabama Infantry. In this capacity, he held a field command in one of Alabama’s infantry units, reflecting the participation of many former officeholders and professionals in the Confederate military effort.

After the war, Shorter returned to civilian life in Eufaula. Like many former Confederate officers and Southern professionals, he resumed his legal and local pursuits in a region undergoing Reconstruction and significant economic and social change. He remained a resident of Eufaula for the rest of his life, maintaining his ties to the community where he had long practiced law and engaged in agriculture.

Eli Sims Shorter died in Eufaula, Alabama, on April 29, 1879. He was interred in Fairview Cemetery in Eufaula, where his burial marked the close of a life that had spanned the antebellum, Civil War, and early Reconstruction eras in the American South.