James Shields - Early life and career, Civil War and later career

Judge, soldier, and US senator, born in Altmore, Co Tyrone, Ireland. Setting out for Quebec c.1822, he was shipwrecked off the coast of Scotland, where he then spent several years as a tutor. In c.1826 he arrived in New York City, then settled in Illinois where he taught, fought in the Black Hawk War, and became a lawyer. As state auditor he was drawn into a quarrel with another lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, whom Shields allegedly challenged to a duel, but they resolved the issue and became firm friends. After serving on the Illinois Supreme Court (1843–6), he was briefly the commissioner of the US General Land Office, but resigned to serve in the Mexican War (1846–8), where his actions gained him the brevet rank of major-general. He served briefly as governor of the Oregon Territory, but resigned to take a seat in the US Senate (Democrat, Illinois, 1849–55). He then moved on to the Minnesota Territory and encouraged Irish immigrants there, and when Minnesota became a state he was one of the first two US senators (Democrat, Minnesota, 1858–9). He volunteered for service with the Union army and saw combat as a brigadier-general (1861–3). Settling in Missouri, he lectured on behalf of charitable, religious, and Irish causes, served in the state legislature, and then went back to the US Senate (Democrat, Missouri, 1879), thereby becoming the only person to serve three different states as a US senator. Illinois placed his statue in the US Capitol.

James Shields (May 10, 1810 – June 1, 1879) was an American politician and U.S. Army officer who was born in Altmore, County Tyrone, Ireland. Shields, a Democrat, is the only person in United States history to serve as a U.S. Senator for three different states. Shields was a senator from Illinois 1849 to 1855, from Minnesota from May 11, 1858 to March 3, 1859, and from Missouri from January 27, 1879 to March 3, 1879.

Early life and career

Shields was the nephew of another James Shields, also born in Ireland, who was a Congressman from Ohio. The younger Shields immigrated to the United States around 1826 and settled in Kaskaskia, Randolph County, Illinois. He served as a member of the State House of Representatives, beginning to serve in 1836, and then as a state Supreme Court justice and later as the state auditor. Illinois then required only that a legislator have been resident in the state for six months.)

Shields almost fought a duel with Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1842. Lincoln had published an inflammatory letter in a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper that poked fun at the Illinois State Auditor—Shields. His election was voided by the Senate on the grounds that he had not been a United States citizen for the nine years required by the United States Constitution;

Civil War and later career

Shields then moved to California and served as a brigadier general of volunteers from that state during the American Civil War.

In 1863 he moved to Mexico and operated mines, and then to Wisconsin, but in 1866 moved to Missouri, where he served as member of the state House of Representatives, and as railroad commissioner. He was the editor of A History of Illinois, from its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847 (1854).