 = George N. Briggs = 
 
 George Nixon Briggs ( April 12 , 1796 – September 12 , 1861 ) was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts . A Whig , Briggs served for twelve years in the United States House of Representatives , and served seven one @-@ year terms as the 19th Governor of Massachusetts , from 1844 to 1851 . 
 Raised in rural Upstate New York , Briggs studied law in western Massachusetts , where his civic involvement and successful legal practice preceded statewide political activity . He was elected to Congress in 1830 , where he supported the conservative Whig agenda , serving on the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads . He was also a regular advocate of temperance , abstaining from all alcohol consumption . 
 He was nominated by the Whigs in 1843 to run against Democratic Governor Marcus Morton as part of a Whig bid for more rural votes , and easily won election until 1849 . Although he sought to avoid the contentious issue of slavery , he protested South Carolina policy allowing the imprisonment of free African Americans . He supported capital punishment , notably refusing to commute the death sentence of John White Webster for the murder of George Parkman . Briggs died of an accidental gunshot wound at his home in Pittsfield , Massachusetts . 
 
 = = Early life and education = = 
 
 George Nixon Briggs was born in Adams , Massachusetts on April 12 , 1796 . He was the eleventh of twelve children of Allen Briggs , a blacksmith originally from Cranston , Rhode Island , and Nancy ( Brown ) Briggs , of Huguenot descent . His parents moved the family to Manchester , Vermont when he was seven , and , two years later , to White Creek , New York . The household was religious : his father was a Baptist and his mother was a Quaker , and they gave their children religious instruction from the Bible . 
 At the age of 14 , during the Second Great Awakening , which was especially strong in Upstate New York , Briggs experienced a conversion experience and joined the Baptist faith . He spoke at revival meetings of his experience , drawing appreciative applause from the crowds , according to Hiland Hall , who came to know Briggs at that time and who became a lifelong friend and political associate . His faith informed his personal behavior : he remained committed to religious ideals , for instance objecting to Congressional sessions that stretched into Sunday and abstaining from alcohol consumption . 
 Briggs sporadically attended the public schools in White Creek , and was apprenticed for three years to a Quaker hatter . With support from his older brothers he embarked on the study of law in Pittsfield and Lanesboro in 1813 , and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1818 . He first opened a practice in Adams , moved it to Lanesboro in 1823 , and Pittsfield in 1842 . His trial work was characterized by a contemporary as clear , brief , and methodical , even though he was fond of telling stories in less formal settings . 
 In 1817 Briggs helped to establish a Baptist church in Lanesboro ; in this congregation he met Harriet Hall , whom he married in 1818 ; their children were Harriet , George , and Henry . Briggs was also called upon to raise the four orphaned children of his brother Rufus , one of the brothers who supported him in his law studies . Rufus died in 1816 , followed by his wife not long afterward . 
 Briggs ' involvement in civic life began at the local level . From 1824 to 1831 Briggs was the register of deeds for the Northern district of Berkshire County , Massachusetts . He was elected town clerk in 1824 , was appointed chairman of the board of commissioners of highways in 1826 . His interest in politics was sparked by his acquaintance with Henry Shaw , who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1817 to 1821 . 
 A criminal case tried in 1826 brought Briggs wider notice . An Oneida Indian living in Stockbridge was accused of murder . Briggs was appointed by the court to defend him ; convinced by the evidence that the man was innocent , Briggs made what was described by a contemporary as a plea that was " a model of jury eloquence " . The jury , unfortunately , disagreed with Briggs , and convicted the man , who was hanged . In 1830 the true murderer confessed to commission of the crime . 
 
 = = U.S. House of Representatives = = 
 
 Despite his rise in prominence , Briggs was at first ineligible for state offices because he did not own property . In 1830 he decided to run for Congress , for which there was no such requirement . He was elected to the twenty @-@ second through the twenty @-@ fourth Congresses as an Anti @-@ Jacksonian , and as a Whig to the twenty @-@ fifth through twenty @-@ seventh Congresses , serving from March 4 , 1831 to March 3 , 1843 . He decided not to run for reelection in 1842 . 
 Briggs was what became known in later years as a " Cotton Whig " . He was in favor of protectionist tariffs , and opposed the expansion of slavery into western territories , but did not seek to threaten the unity of the nation with a strong stance against slavery . He served on the Committee on Public Expenditures and the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads , serving for a time as the chairman of each . The Post Office committee was a regular recipient of complaints from southern states concerning the transmission of abolitionist mailings , which were seen there as incendiary ; the matter was of some controversy because southern legislators sought to have these types of mailings banned . Briggs ' friend Hiland Hall , who also sat on the committee , drafted a report in 1836 rebutting the rationales used in such legislative proposals , but the committee as a whole , and then the House , refused to accept the report . Although the authorship of the report appears to be entirely Hall 's , Briggs may have contributed to it , and was a signatory to Hall 's publication of the report in the National Intelligencer , a major political journal . The document was influential in driving later Congressional debate on legislative proposals concerning abolitionist mailings , none of which were ever adopted . Briggs and Hall were both instrumental in drafting and gaining passage of the Post Office Act of 1836 , which included substantive accounting reforms in the wake of financial mismanagement by Postmaster General William Taylor Barry . 
 During his time in Congress , Briggs was a vocal advocate for temperance . He formed the Congressional Temperance Society in 1833 , sitting on its executive committee ; at an 1836 temperance convention at Saratoga Springs , New York he advocated the taking of total abstinence pledges as a way to bring more people away from the evils of alcohol , and notably prepared such a pledge for Kentucky Representative Thomas F. Marshall on the floor of the House of Representatives . His moves to organize the temperance movement in Congress died out when he left the body , but it was a cause he would continue to espouse for the rest of his life . In 1860 he was chosen president of the American Temperance Union . 
 
 = = Governor of Massachusetts = = 
 
 Briggs was nominated to run for the governorship on the Whig ticket against the incumbent Democrat Marcus Morton in 1843 . Former Governor John Davis had been nominated first , but refused the nomination , possibly because Daniel Webster promised him party support for a future vice presidential bid . Briggs was apparently recommended as a compromise candidate acceptable to different factions within the party ( one controlled by Webster , the other by Abbott Lawrence ) . He was also probably chosen to appeal more directly to the state 's rural voters , a constituency that normally supported Morton . The abolitionist Liberty Party also fielded a candidate , with the result that none of the candidates won the needed majority . The legislature decided the election in those cases ; with a Whig majority there , Briggs ' election was assured . Briggs was reelected annually until 1850 against a succession of Democratic opponents . He won popular majorities until the 1849 election , even though third parties ( including the Liberty Party and its successor , the Free Soil Party ) were often involved . Although Whigs had a reputation for aristocratic bearing , Briggs was much more a man of the people than the preceding Whig governors , John Davis and Edward Everett . 
 In 1844 Briggs , alarmed at a recently enacted policy by South Carolina authorizing the imprisonment of free blacks arriving there from Massachusetts and other northern states , sent representatives to protest the policy . Samuel Hoar and his daughter Elizabeth were unsuccessful in changing South Carolina policy , and after protests against what was perceived as Yankee interference in Southern affairs , were advised to leave the state for their own safety . 
 Capital punishment was a major issue that was debated in the state during Brigg 's tenure , with social reformers calling for its abolition . Briggs personally favored capital punishment , but for political reasons called for moderation in its use , seeking , for example , to limit its application in murder cases to those involving first degree murder . After an acquittal in an 1846 murder case where anti @-@ death penalty sentiment was thought to have a role , Briggs , seeking to undercut the anti @-@ death penalty lobby , proposed eliminating the penalty for all crimes except murder , but expressed concern that more such acquittals by sympathetic juries would undermine the connection between crime and punishment . 
 Briggs ' argument was used in the 1849 trial of Washington Goode , a black mariner accused of killing a rival for the affections of a lady . The case against Goode was essentially circumstantial , but the jury heeded the district attorney 's call for assertive punishment of " crimes of violence " and convicted him . There were calls for Briggs to commute Goode 's capital sentence , but he refused , writing " A pardon here would tend toward the utter subversion of the law . " 
 Not long after the Goode case came the sensational trial of Professor John White Webster in the murder of George Parkman , a crime that took place at the Harvard Medical School in November 1849 . The trial received nationwide coverage , and the prosecution case was based on evidence that was either circumstantial ( complicated by the fact that a complete corpse was not found ) , or founded on new types of evidence ( forensic dentistry was used for the first time in this trial ) . Furthermore , Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw was widely criticized for bias in the instructions he gave to the jury . Briggs was petitioned to commute Webster 's sentence by death penalty opponents , and even threatened with physical harm if he did not . He refused however , stating that the evidence in the case was clear ( especially after Webster gave a confession ) , and that there was no reason to doubt that the court had acted with due and proper diligence . 
 During Briggs ' time as governor , abolitionist activists continued to make inroads against both the Whigs and Democrats , primarily making common cause with the Democrats against the dominant Whigs . Briggs ' stance as a Cotton Whig put him in opposition to these forces . He opposed the Mexican @-@ American War , but acceded to federal demands that the states assist in raising troops for the war , earning the wrath of activist Wendell Phillips . He did promote other types of reform , supporting Horace Mann in his activities to improve education in the state . 
 In 1849 , Briggs failed to secure a majority in the popular vote because of the rise in power of the Free Soil Party , but the Whig legislature returned him to office . In the 1850 election , anger over the Compromise of 1850 ( a series of federal acts designed to preserve the unity of the nation which included the Fugitive Slave Act ) prompted the Democrats and Free Soilers to form a coalition to gain control over the Massachusetts legislature , and divided the Whigs along pro- and antiabolition lines . With the gubernatorial election again sent to the legislature , Democrat George S. Boutwell was chosen over Briggs . 
 
 = = Later years = = 
 
 Briggs resumed the practice of law in Pittsfield . He was a member of the state constitutional convention in 1853 , and sat as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas from 1853 to 1858 . In 1859 he was nominated for governor by the fading Know @-@ Nothing movement , but trailed far behind other candidates . 
 In 1861 Briggs was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to a diplomatic mission to the South American Republic of New Granada ( roughly present @-@ day Colombia and Panama ) . However , he died before he could take up the position . On September 4 , 1861 Briggs was getting an overcoat out of his closet at his home in Pittsfield , when a gun fell . As Briggs was picking it up , the gun discharged and Briggs was shot . Briggs died early in the morning of September 12 , 1861 , and was buried in the Pittsfield Cemetery . 
 
 