George Hunt Pendleton (July 19, 1825November 24, 1889) was an American politician and lawyer. He represented Ohio in both houses of Congress and was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States in 1864.
After studying at the University of Cincinnati and Heidelberg University in Europe, Pendleton practiced law in his home town of Cincinnati, Ohio. He was the son of Congressman Nathanael G. Pendleton and the son-in-law of poet Francis Scott Key. After serving in the Ohio Senate, Pendleton won election to the United States House of Representatives. During the Civil War, he emerged as a leader of the Copperheads, a group of Democrats who favored peace with the Confederacy. After the war, he opposed the Thirteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
The 1864 Democratic National Convention nominated a ticket of George B. McClellan, who favored continuing the war, and Pendleton, who opposed it. The ticket was defeated by the National Union ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, and Pendleton's term as a Congressman expired shortly thereafter. Pendleton was a strong contender for the presidential nomination at the 1868 Democratic National Convention, but was defeated by Horatio Seymour. After Pendleton lost the 1869 Ohio gubernatorial election, he temporarily left politics.
He served as the president of the Kentucky Central Railroad before returning to Congress. Pendleton won election to the U.S. Senate in 1879 and served a single term, becoming Chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference. After the assassination of President James A. Garfield, he wrote and helped pass the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. The act required many civil service hires to be based on merit rather than political connections. Passage of the act lost him support in Ohio and he was not nominated for a second term in the Senate. President Grover Cleveland appointed him as the ambassador to the German Empire. He served in that position until 1889, dying later that same year.
Early life
Pendleton was born in Cincinnati on July 19, 1825. He was the son of Jane Frances (née Hunt) Pendleton (1802–1839) and U.S. Representative Nathanael Greene Pendleton (1793–1861).
He attended the local schools and Cincinnati College and the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Pendleton studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1847 and commenced practice in Cincinnati.
Career
Pendleton was elected as a member of the Ohio Senate, serving from 1854 to 1856. His father had been a member of the Ohio Senate from 1825 until 1827. In 1854, he ran unsuccessfully for the Thirty-fourth United States Congress. Three years later, he was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-fifth Congress and would be re-elected to the three following Congresses (March 4, 1857 – March 3, 1865). During his time in the House of Representatives, he was one of the managers appointed by the House of Representatives in 1862 to conduct the impeachment proceedings against West H. Humphreys, a US judge for several districts of Tennessee.
In the 1850s, Pendleton actively opposed measures to prohibit slavery in the Western United States. A leading defender of slavery, he was a leader of the "peace" faction of his party during the American Civil War, with close ties to the Copperheads. He voted against the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude.
National politics
Pendleton, a nationally prominent Extreme Peace Democrat, was nominated as the vice presidential running mate of George McClellan, a War Democrat, in the 1864 presidential election. McClellan, age 37 at the time of the convention, and Pendleton, age 39, are the youngest major party presidential ticket ever nominated in the United States. Their National Union opponents were President Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. McClellan and Pendleton lost, receiving about 45% of the popular vote.
Since Pendleton was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, he was not a candidate for re-election to the Thirty-ninth Congress. George E. Pugh, the Democrat nominated to run for Pendleton's seat, lost to Republican Benjamin Eggleston.
Out of office
Out of office for the first time in a decade, Pendleton ran for his old House seat in 1866 but lost. In 1868, he sought the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. He led for the first 15 ballots and was nearly the nominee, but his support disappeared and he lost to Horatio Seymour, primarily for his support of the "Ohio idea." The following year, he was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Ohio and again lost, this time to Rutherford B. Hayes.