Representative Effingham Lawrence - Contact Information

Effingham Lawrence (March 2, 1820 – December 9, 1878) was an American politician known for serving for the shortest term in congressional history, serving—along with George A. Sheridan—for just one day in the U.S. House of Representatives. A member of the Democratic Party representing Louisiana, he contributed to the legislative process during one term in office, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents during a significant period in American history.

Lawrence was born on March 2, 1820, in Bayside, Queens, New York. He was a descendant of John Lawrence and John Bowne, both Quakers and among the pioneer English settlers of Queens, New York, which placed him within a longstanding family tradition of civic engagement and public life. His extended family included other notable public figures, such as his cousin Cornelius Lawrence, who served as mayor of New York City and as a member of Congress. Through family and historical association he has also been noted alongside other shortest-serving federal officeholders, such as Thomas Johnson, the shortest-serving justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and William Henry Harrison, the shortest-serving president of the United States.

In 1843 Lawrence moved from New York to Louisiana, where he established himself in the sugar industry. He engaged in the planting and refining of sugar, becoming part of the planter class that dominated the economic and social life of much of Louisiana in the mid-nineteenth century. His work in agriculture and sugar refining on plantations in Plaquemines Parish provided the economic base for his later political activity and tied his interests closely to those of the region’s agricultural economy.

Lawrence’s political career in Louisiana began at the state level. He served for a time in the Louisiana State House of Representatives, where he participated in the governance of the state during the turbulent Reconstruction era. As a Democrat in a period marked by intense political conflict between Republicans and Democrats in the post–Civil War South, his service in the state legislature reflected the broader struggle over political control and the direction of Reconstruction policies in Louisiana.

Lawrence’s brief service in the U.S. House of Representatives arose from a contested election. In the 1872 election for a seat in Congress from Louisiana, the voting was characterized by a number of irregularities. Jacob Hale Sypher, a Republican, was initially declared the winner and was returned to Congress. Lawrence, running as a Democrat, appealed the election results, challenging Sypher’s re-election. After prolonged legal and political contestation, courts intervened to nullify the original results and ultimately delivered the seat to Lawrence. His belated replacement of Sypher marked the first time since the Civil War that a Democrat had defeated a Republican for a congressional seat from Louisiana, underscoring the shifting political balance in the state during Reconstruction.

Because of the congressional calendar in effect at the time, the resolution of the contested election produced an unusually short federal tenure. The election of 1872 was for the congressional term running from 1873 to 1875, but the dispute was not settled until the very end of that term. By the time Lawrence was finally seated, the election for the succeeding term had already been held in 1874, and he had been defeated by another Democrat, Randall Lee Gibson. As a result, Lawrence was able to serve only one day of the 1873–1875 term to which he had, in the end, been declared elected. He took his seat on March 3, 1875, and on the following day, March 4, 1875, he was succeeded by Gibson, who had already been chosen in the preceding autumn’s election. This sequence made Lawrence, along with George A. Sheridan, one of the shortest-serving members in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives.

After his fleeting service in Congress, Lawrence returned to his life in Louisiana. He continued to be associated with the plantation economy and with Magnolia Plantation in Plaquemines Parish, where he resided in his later years. He died at Magnolia Plantation, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, on December 9, 1878. His career, though marked at the national level by an extraordinarily brief tenure, reflected the complex political and economic transformations of Louisiana during Reconstruction and the gradual reemergence of Democratic control in the post–Civil War South.