Montgomery Blair (1813 - 1883). Montgomery Blair was an American politician and lawyer from Maryland. He served in the Lincoln administration cabinet as Postmaster-General from 1861 to 1864, during the Civil War. He was the son of Francis Preston Blair, elder brother of Francis Preston Blair Jr. and cousin of B. Gratz Brown. Blair was born in Franklin County, Kentucky, site of the state capital of Frankfort. His father, Francis Preston Blair, Sr., was editor of the Washington Globe and a prominent figure in the Democratic Party during the Jacksonian era. As a boy, Montgomery often listened to the talk of his father and Andrew Jackson. Blair graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1835, but after a year's service in the Seminole War, he left the Army, studied., and began practice at, in 1839. In 1836, Blair left the Army after serving one year, married Caroline Rebecca Buckner of Virginia, and began studying law at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. Blair began to practice law in 1839 at St Louis, Missouri, working as a United States district attorney. After the death of his first wife, Carolina, in 1844, he later married Mary Elizabeth Woodbury, daughter of Levi Woodbury. After serving as United States district attorney and later as judge of the court of common pleas, Blair moved to Maryland in 1852 and devoted himself to law practice principally in the United States Supreme Court. He was United States Solicitor in the Court of Claims and was associated with George T. Curtis as counsel for the plaintiff in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857. The Blairs, like many other nationalist Democrats, but unusual for politicians from the border states, had abandoned the Democratic Party in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and had been among the founding leaders of the new Republican Party. Four years after Blair switched political parties, President Buchanan removed Blair from his position as Solicitor of the United States Court of Claims in 1858. In 1860, Blair took an active part in the presidential campaign on behalf of Abraham Lincoln. After his election, Lincoln appointed Blair to his cabinet as Postmaster General in 1861. Lincoln expected Blair, who advocated taking a firm stance with the southern states, to help balance more conciliatory members of his cabinet. While Postmaster-General, Blair instituted a uniform rate of postage and free delivery in cities. Blair also began the sale of money orders by post offices to reduce the mailing of currency to reduce post office robberies. He also called for the First International Postal Conference, which was held in Paris in 1863 and began the process that led to the Universal Postal Union. While the Blairs, as a family, were often characterized as conservative on the issue of slavery, Blair notably served as the defense counsel for Dred Scott when the enslaved African-American took his case to the Supreme Court in 1857. Scott was the slave of an Army doctor, who had taken his servant along for prolonged stays in free territory. On Scott's behalf, Blair argued that the time the black man had spent in the free state of Illinois and in Minnesota, free territory since the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, made him a free man. The ruling by Court's majority against Scott's right to freedom is often cited as one of the contributing causes of the Civil War. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roger Taney affirmed that the black man had no rights that the white man was bound to respect and that black slaves could not be considered American citizens despite having been born in the U.S. This landmark decision was denounced as a step toward the nationalization of slavery by Lincoln and others opposed to the expansion of that institution. Conservative as he may have been on other aspects of the slavery issue, Blair's work in the case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford suggests a willingness to embrace more progressive viewpoints. Blair served as Postmaster-General from 1861 until September 1864, when Lincoln accepted an earlier offer by Blair to resign. Lincoln's action may have been a response to the hostility of the Radical Republican faction, which stipulated that Blair's retirement should follow the withdrawal of John C. Fr�mont as a candidate for President in that year. Regarding Lincoln's action, Blair told his wife that the president had acted from the best motives and that it is for the best all around. After he left the cabinet, Blair still campaigned for Lincoln's re-election and Lincoln and the Blair family retained close ties.