Representative Charles Denison

Charles Denison (January 23, 1818 – June 27, 1867) was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania during the Civil War and early Reconstruction era. A nephew of George Denison, he was born in the Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania, an area then within Luzerne County that had been a focal point of early settlement and conflict in the Susquehanna River region. His family background connected him to an established local political lineage, which helped shape his later public career.

Denison received what was described as a liberal education and pursued formal higher education at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, one of the state’s leading institutions of the period. He graduated from Dickinson in 1838. Following his graduation, he read law in the traditional manner of the time and was admitted to the bar in 1840. He then commenced the practice of law in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the county seat of Luzerne County, where he built a professional reputation and became active in local Democratic politics.

Through his legal practice and party involvement, Denison emerged as a prominent Democratic figure in northeastern Pennsylvania. His standing in the party led to his selection as a delegate to the 1864 Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago during the height of the Civil War. That convention nominated George B. McClellan for president and adopted a platform critical of the Lincoln administration’s conduct of the war, a stance that aligned with Denison’s own views on federal power and wartime policy.

Denison was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-eighth Congress and took his seat on March 4, 1863, representing a Pennsylvania district that included Wilkes-Barre and the surrounding region. He was subsequently reelected to the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses, maintaining his position in the House through a period marked by intense national conflict over slavery, secession, and reconstruction of the Union. Throughout his congressional service, he was identified with the wing of the Democratic Party that emphasized states’ rights and strict limits on federal authority.

In Congress, Denison opposed what he regarded as the use of the Civil War to expand the power of the federal government over the southern states. He was a vocal critic of abolitionism, denouncing it as “wicked and cruel fanaticism,” language that reflected the views of many Northern Democrats who resisted sweeping social and constitutional changes during the war. Consistent with these positions, he voted against the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery. He also sharply criticized the administration of President Abraham Lincoln, characterizing it as “despotic,” and aligned himself with Democratic efforts to restrain wartime measures such as broad suspensions of civil liberties and far-reaching executive authority.

Denison continued to serve in the House during the initial phase of Reconstruction following the end of the Civil War, as Congress debated the terms under which the former Confederate states would be restored to the Union and the scope of rights to be guaranteed to formerly enslaved people. His tenure in the Fortieth Congress was cut short when he died in office in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on June 27, 1867. His death placed him among the members of the United States Congress who died while still serving between 1790 and 1899, a not uncommon occurrence in an era of limited medical care and demanding travel and work conditions.

After his death, Charles Denison was interred in Forty Fort Cemetery in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, a community near his native Wyoming Valley and close to Wilkes-Barre. His burial in that historic local cemetery underscored his lifelong connection to the region he represented. Denison’s career, spanning law, party leadership, and three consecutive terms in Congress, reflected the perspectives of a Northern Democrat who opposed abolition and the expansion of federal power during one of the most transformative periods in American political and constitutional history.