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Matt Whitaker Ransom was North Carolina attorney general and served as a Confederate brigadier general in the Civil War. Ransom was elected to the United States Senate for over twenty years and also served as the Minister to Mexico. A bust of Ransom remains within the rotunda of the State Capitol building in Raleigh.
Ransom was born on October 8, 1826, in Warren County. He graduated from the University of North Carolina, having studied law in his final year. Ransom joined the bar and returned to his home county to practice law. He married Martha Anne Exum on January 19, 1853 and moved to her home on the Roanoke River in Northampton County. He continued to practice law there until at the age of twenty-six he was elected North Carolina attorney general. A memberof the Whig Party, In 1855, Ransom resigned from his post in 1855 and joined the Democratic Party following the break-up of the Whigs and their replacement by the nativist American Party (or Know-Nothings).
As a Democrat, Ransom served as a representative in the House of Commons between 1858 and 1861, until the outbreak of the Civil War. He was sent as one of North Carolina’s three commissioners to visit the provisional Confederate government at Montgomery, Alabama, in early 1861. Enlisting as a private in the 35th Regiment N.C. Troops, Ransom entered into Confederate service with the rest of the regiment in January 1862. He would eventually command the regiment. Serving in the brigade of his brother, Robert Ransom, Matt Ransom and the 35th N.C.T. fought in many battles, including Malvern Hill and Antietam. Wounded multiple times during the war, hewas eventually promoted to brigadier general, finally surrendering his command at Appomattox in April 1865.
After the Civil War ended, Ransom resumed his law practice. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1872 to replace former governor Zebulon B. Vance, whose term was cut short due to the provisions of the 14th Amendment which prohibited those who had held certain offices under the Confederacy from serving. Ransom represented North Carolina as Senator from 1872 until 1895, at which time a candidate from a coalition of the Republican and Populist parties defeated him. Ransom was next posted by President Grover Cleveland as U.S. minister to Mexico. He served in the latter capacity until 1897, at which time he returned to Northampton County and retired from public service. He died on his birthday in 1908.
References:
Samuel A. Ashe, “Matt Whitaker Ransom) in Ashe, ed., Biographical History of North Carolina, I (1905), 420-429
Barrett, John G., “Ransom, Matt(hew) Whitaker,” in William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, IV (2000), 175-176
Weymouth T. Jordan, ed., North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, IX (1983)
Matt W. Ransom Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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