James Stone Chrisman

James Stone Chrisman (September 14, 1818 – July 29, 1881) was an antebellum United States Representative from Kentucky and later a member of the Confederate States Congress during the American Civil War. He was born in Monticello, Wayne County, Kentucky, where he attended the common schools of the area. Raised in a rural community, he engaged in agricultural pursuits in his youth, an experience that grounded him in the concerns of the agrarian population he would later represent in public office.

Alongside his work in agriculture, Chrisman pursued the study of law. After reading law in the customary manner of the period, he was admitted to the bar in 1849 and commenced the practice of law in Monticello. His legal practice, combined with his background in farming, helped establish him as a figure of some local prominence and provided the foundation for his entry into political life in Kentucky.

Chrisman’s early political career was marked by repeated efforts to secure elective office at the state level. He was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Kentucky House of Representatives in both 1845 and 1847, reflecting his early and persistent engagement in Democratic Party politics. In 1849 he served as a delegate to the Kentucky constitutional convention, participating in the revision of the state’s fundamental law at a time of significant political and social change in the Commonwealth.

Building on this experience, Chrisman was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-third Congress, serving as a United States Representative from Kentucky from March 4, 1853, to March 3, 1855. His term in Congress placed him in Washington during the tense sectional debates of the 1850s that preceded the Civil War. After leaving the House, he remained active in politics and sought to return to Congress. He unsuccessfully contested the election of William C. Anderson to the Thirty-sixth Congress. The race was at one time recorded as tied, but when Congress convened the result stood as a narrow defeat for Chrisman by three votes; a later review of the returns increased Anderson’s margin of victory to 169 votes, confirming Chrisman’s loss.

With the coming of the Civil War and Kentucky’s divided loyalties, Chrisman aligned himself with the Confederate cause. During the conflict he served as a representative from Kentucky to the First and Second Confederate Congresses, sitting in the Confederate House of Representatives from 1862 to 1865. In that capacity he took part in the legislative affairs of the Confederate government, representing a border-state constituency in a government dominated by the seceded Deep South states.

After the collapse of the Confederacy, Chrisman returned to Kentucky and resumed his public career under the restored Union. He served as a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1869 to 1873, reentering state politics during the Reconstruction era and contributing to the reestablishment of Democratic control and the adjustment of Kentucky’s institutions in the postwar period. Alongside his legislative duties, he continued to be identified with the legal profession and with agricultural interests in his home region.

In his later years, Chrisman resumed the full-time practice of law in Monticello, maintaining his residence and professional base in the community where he had been born and had spent the greater part of his life. He died in Monticello on July 29, 1881. Reflecting his lifelong connection to the land and to his home county, he was buried in a private cemetery on his farm near Monticello.