Arnold, Isaac Newton, 1815-1884

Arnold, Isaac Newton, 1815-1884

ARNOLD, Isaac Newton, congressman, was born on November 30, 1815, in Hartwick, New York. He attended local schools and the Hartwick Seminary. In 1835, he was admitted to the bar after studying with Judge E. B. Morehouse and Richard Cooper, a nephew of the novelist James Fenimore Cooper. In 1836, Arnold moved to Chicago and, from 1842 to 1846, served in the Illinois state legislature as a Democrat. He joined the Free Soil movement in 1848 and eventually the Republican party. In 1860, Arnold was elected to the 37th Congress and in 1862 was reelected to the 38th Congress. He served on the Committee on Defenses and Fortifications of the Great Lakes and Rivers, the Committee on Manufactures, and the Committee on Roads and Canals. He voted to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, supported various confiscation measures, and urged that the Constitution be amended to end slavery.

Despite his record, Arnold frequently broke ranks with other Radical Republicans to give unequivocal support to President Abraham Lincoln's (q.v.) policies. His support of the President did not waver in the 38th Congress; on one occasion, Thaddeus Stevens (q.v.) singled out Arnold as the only Lincoln Republican left in the House of Representatives. Lincoln may have depended on Arnold to initiate certain controversial measures. For example, Arnold suggested in the closing minutes of the 37th Congress that the $300 exemption fee in the national draft bill that had just passed Congress be repealed. He renewed this proposal in the opening minutes of the 38th Congress. Regardless of whether Lincoln had a role in these related actions, Arnold represented the sentiments of Midwestern congressmen generally that their region carried a disproportionate burden in furnishing troops for the Union Army.

Arnold also was instrumental in lifting the ban that had been imposed on the publishing of the Chicago Times in June 1863. He returned to his law practice in 1865 and briefly served as auditor of the treasury for the Post Office Department. His greatest accomplishment in later life was the publication of History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery (1866), which was revised and posthumously published as The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1885). Arnold died on April 24, 1884, in Chicago. Bogue, Congressman's Civil War; Curry, Blueprint for Modern America; Geary, We Need Men.

Thomas F. Schwartz

Source: Hubbell, John T. and Geary, James W., eds. Biographical Dictionary of the Union: Northern Leaders of the Civil War. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1995.