Fitzpatrick, Benjamin, 1802-1869

United States Senator from Alabama.

Benjamin Fitzpatrick, son of William and Anne Phillips Fitzpatrick, was born 30 June 1802 in Greene County, Ga. In 1816, he moved to Alabama, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1823. He retired from the practice of law in 1827 due to ill health and became a successful planter on his estate Oak Grove in Autauga (now Elmore) County, a few miles from Montgomery. In 1827, he married Sarah Terry Elmore (1807-1837), member of a prominent Alabama family, and became a brother-in-law by marriage to Dixon Hall Lewis (1802-1848), a powerful states rights advocate in Congress from 1829 to 1848. In 1840, Fitzpatrick campaigned for Martin Van Buren, and was awarded with the Democratic Party's nomination for the governorship of Alabama. He was elected in 1841, and served two terms. In 1844, he retired once again to his Oak Grove plantation, but reentered politics when called upon to fill the U.S. Senate seat of Dixon Lewis, who died in 1848. In 1853, he was once again appointed to fill a U.S. Senate seat, this time that of William Rufus DuVane King, and he was elected for a full term in 1855. In 1860, he was nominated by the National Democratic Convention in Baltimore for vice-president on the Douglas ticket. He refused this nomination. He opposed secession, but supported the Confederate cause. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he retired once more to Oak Grove, where he died on 21 November 1869.

Benjamin Fitzpatrick had several children with Sarah Elmore: Elmore Joseph, Phillips (1830-1901), Morris, James Madison, and John Archer. In 1837, Sarah died, and, in 1846, Fitzpatrick married Aurelia Rachel Blassingame. Their only surviving child was Benjamin Fitzpatrick Jr. (1854-1892).