Representative Samuel Clement Fessenden

Samuel Clement Fessenden (March 7, 1815 – April 18, 1882) was an American abolitionist, clergyman, lawyer, and United States Congressman from Maine. A member of the Republican Party, he served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives during the Civil War era, participating in the legislative process at a pivotal moment in American history and representing the interests of his Maine constituents.

Fessenden was born on March 7, 1815, in New Gloucester, then part of Massachusetts and now within the state of Maine. He was a member of a prominent and politically influential New England family. His father, Samuel Fessenden, was a well-known abolitionist, and his brothers included William Pitt Fessenden, who served as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and as a United States Senator from Maine, and T. A. D. Fessenden, who also served in Congress. Through his siblings, he was the uncle of Union Army generals Francis Fessenden and James D. Fessenden, further linking the family to the Union cause during the Civil War.

Fessenden pursued a rigorous education in preparation for a career in the ministry. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1834, an institution that educated many of the state’s political and intellectual leaders. He then studied theology at Bangor Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1837. That same year he was ordained to the Congregational ministry, marking the beginning of a nearly two-decade career in the pulpit.

From 1837 to 1856, Fessenden was ordained and installed as pastor of the Second Congregational Church in Thomaston, Maine. In this role he combined religious leadership with a strong moral opposition to slavery, reflecting both his personal convictions and his family’s abolitionist tradition. After leaving the pastorate in 1856, he broadened his public engagement by establishing the Maine Evangelist, a publication that advanced religious and reform ideas. During this period he also began the study of law, signaling a transition from ecclesiastical to legal and political work.

Fessenden was admitted to the bar in 1858 and commenced the practice of law, settling in Rockland, Maine. His legal career advanced rapidly, and he eventually became judge of the Rockland municipal court. His standing as an attorney, his abolitionist views, and his family’s political prominence helped propel him into elective office as the sectional crisis deepened and the Republican Party consolidated antislavery sentiment in Maine and across the North.

As a Republican, Fessenden was elected to the Thirty-seventh Congress and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1861, to March 3, 1863. His single term coincided with the opening years of the Civil War, a significant period in American history in which questions of Union and emancipation dominated national politics. In Congress he was known as a staunch Unionist and a consistent opponent of slavery, contributing to the legislative process as the federal government mobilized for war and began to move toward the abolition of slavery. Through his service he participated directly in the democratic process at a moment when the future of the nation was at stake.

After leaving Congress in 1863, Fessenden continued in federal service. From 1865 to 1879 he served as an examiner in the United States Patent Office in Washington, D.C., a position that placed him at the center of the nation’s growing system of intellectual property protection during a period of rapid industrial and technological change. In 1879 he was appointed United States consul at Saint John, New Brunswick, a diplomatic and commercial posting he held until 1881, representing American interests in the important Atlantic port city.

Fessenden’s family life reflected both his Maine roots and his later connections outside the state. He married Mary Abigail Grosvenor Abbe. The couple had at least two sons who were born in Rockland, Maine. Their son Joshua Abbe Fessenden entered the United States Cavalry in 1862 during the Civil War and was wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga, continuing the family’s close association with the Union war effort. Another son, Samuel, was appointed second lieutenant in the 5th Maine Battery on January 18, 1865, and later established himself as a lawyer and politician in Stamford, Connecticut, extending the Fessenden family’s public service into the postwar generation.

In his later years, Fessenden resided in Stamford, Connecticut, where he spent the final period of his life after completing his consular service. He died there on April 18, 1882. Although he died in Connecticut, he was returned to his native state for burial and interred in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, Maine, underscoring his enduring ties to Maine and to the region in which his family had long been prominent in law, politics, and reform.