The Biographical Dictionary of America/Allison, William Boyd

ALLISON, William Boyd, senator, was born at Perry, Wayne county, Ohio., March 2, 1829. He was of Scotch-Irish ancestry. His father, John Allison, removed from Bellefonte, Pa., where he was born, to the newly settled state of Ohio, in 1823. In 1845 William Boyd was sent to the academy at Wooster, Ohio., where he remained two years; he then studied for a year at Allegheny college, Pa. In 1848 he returned to Wooster, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1850. In 1855 he was a candidate to the Whig convention that nominated Salmon P. Chase for governor. In 1856 he supported John C. Fremont for President, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the office of district attorney for his county. He married a daughter of Daniel Carter, of Wooster, and in 1857 located in Dubuque, Ia., where he opened a law office and took an active interest in politics, being in 1859 a delegate to the republican state convention. In 1860 he was chosen a delegate to the Chicago convention. When the civil war broke out he was appointed upon Governor Kirkwood's staff. In 1863 he was elected representative in the 38th Congress, and was returned to the 39th, 40th, and 41st congresses. In 1870 he declined a re-nomination, and contested with George G. Wright, of Des Moines, for a seat in the senate. He failed of an election, but in 1872 defeated James Harlan, and took his seat March 4, 1873. He was re-elected in 1878, '84, '90, and '96. In 1880 President Garfield tendered him the treasury portfolio, which he declined. The same position was urged upon him by President Harrison in 1888. While a representative in Congress he bore an active part in all the war legislation of the period, and as a member of the ways and means committee opposed the tariff act of 1870. As a member of the finance committee in the senate he was brought in contact with the great interests of both the east and the west, and while in no sense sectional in his political views, he became recognized beyond the Mississippi as the champion of western interests, mainly by his amendment to the Bland silver bill. In 1892 Mr. Allison was chairman of the American delegates who attended the international monetary conference in Brussels, where he acquitted himself with great ability, maintaining the American contention for the use of both metals, and winning the respect of the delegates. He was re-elected to the U.S. senate in 1902 for the term 1903-09. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Western Reserve University in 1879 and from Cornell in 1887. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the presidential nomination before the Republican national convention of 1888, and again in 1896. In the senate he was chairman of the committee on appropriations.