Thomas Peter Akers

Thomas Peter Akers (October 4, 1828 – April 3, 1877) was an American slave owner, attorney, college professor, Methodist minister, and member of the United States House of Representatives from 1856 to 1857. He was born in Knox County, Ohio, where he received his early education and graduated from college. After completing his collegiate studies, he read law and was admitted to the bar, laying the foundation for a professional career that combined legal practice, teaching, and the ministry.

In his early adulthood, Akers left Ohio and became a schoolteacher in Kentucky, reflecting an early commitment to education. During this period he continued to develop his legal and theological interests, which would later shape his dual roles as professor and clergyman. His experience as a teacher in Kentucky preceded his move farther west as new educational and religious institutions were being established on the frontier.

In 1853 Akers moved to Lexington, Missouri, a growing river town and regional center of commerce and education. There he joined Masonic College in Lexington, where he served as a professor of mathematics and moral philosophy. At the same time, he entered the Methodist ministry and became pastor of a local Methodist church, combining academic work with pastoral duties. His standing as both a college professor and a clergyman made him a prominent figure in the community and brought him into the public life of Missouri during a period of intense sectional and political conflict.

Akers entered national politics in the mid-1850s as the Know Nothing, or American Party, rose to prominence on an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic platform. On August 18, 1856, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a member of the Know Nothing Party to fill a vacant seat. He represented Missouri in the Thirty-fourth Congress and served from August 18, 1856, to March 3, 1857. A slave owner himself, he was an outspoken defender of slavery on the House floor. During debates he denounced Republican anti-slavery speeches as “driveling discussion” and “agitation,” and he also spoke forcefully against Catholic immigration to the United States, aligning closely with the nativist and pro-slavery positions of his party. He remained in his position through the next election cycle but did not continue in Congress beyond the expiration of his term.

After his brief congressional service, Akers returned to private pursuits. With the onset of the Civil War era and the shifting economic landscape, he relocated in 1861 to New York City, where he became involved in financial affairs. In New York he served as a vice president of the gold board, an organization associated with trading in gold and related financial instruments during a period of wartime monetary instability. His move from Missouri to New York reflected both the national turmoil of the 1860s and his own transition from politics and education into finance.

Akers’s health declined in the years following his financial career in New York, prompting another move. Because of ill health, he went to the Utah Territory, seeking a more favorable climate and conditions for recovery. After spending a period of time there, he eventually returned to Lexington, Missouri, the community where he had earlier established himself as a professor and minister. He died in Lexington on April 3, 1877. His life spanned the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras, and his career—encompassing law, education, the Methodist ministry, nativist politics, and finance—reflected many of the central conflicts and transformations of nineteenth-century American society.