Jacob Thompson - Secretary of the Interior



Jacob Thompson - Secretary of the Interior

Jacob Thompson served as secretary of the interior during James Buchanan’s administration. (March 7, 1857-January 8, 1861) While in office, Thompson supported Southern secessionists. In 1861, Thompson demanded that Buchanan withdraw the Star of the West, a recently deployed ship sent to re-supply troops at Fort Sumpter, and when Buchanan refused Thompson’s demands, Thompson resigned. (January 8, 1861) He informed the people of Charleston that the ship was coming, and thus indirectly influenced the blocking of the ship and firing on Fort Sumpter on April 12, 1861 that ignited the American Civil War. Before being appointed to Buchanan’s cabinet, Thompson was elected to the US House of Representatives (1839-1851) where he served as chairman of both the Public Lands and Indian Affairs committees, and was later offered the post of US counsel to Havana by Franklin Pierce, but refused. After his resignation from the office of secretary of the interior, Jacob Thompson returned to his Southern home and was named the Confederate commissioner to Canada by Jefferson Davis. (1864) In the post-war years, as is the case today, much scandal surrounds Jacob Thompson. In 1876 a congressional committee investigated if Thompson had stolen money from the Indian bureau during his time as secretary of the interior, and today historians suggest that Thompson may have provided Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth with the money needed to carry out his assassination. Born in Leasburg, North Carolina on May 15, 1810, educated at the University of North Carolina, (1826-1831) and admitted to the state bar in 1835, Jacob Thompson led a politically involved, yet extremely controversial career. Thompson died on March 24, 1885 called by some “the greatest scoundrel of the Civil War.”

Encyclopedia of the United States Cabinet. Marc Grossman, editor. 2000.

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