Henry S. Foote was born on February 28, 1804 in Fauquier County, Virginia. He was the son of Richard Helm Foote and Catherine Foote. He pursued classical studies in 1819 and graduated from Washington College. He later studied the Law and was admitted to the bar in 1822.
Career
Foote moved to Alabama in 1824, where he began his law practice in Tuscumbia. He also established a Democratic newspaper. He became a co-founder and trustee of LaGrange College, later known as the University of North Alabama. Shortly after, he moved to Mississippi, where he practiced law in the state capital, Jackson, and in the river towns of Natchez, Vicksburg, and Raymond, which were centers of business associated with the cotton and slave trades. He also visited the state of Texas and wrote a two-volume book about it. Foote served as a Democratic Senator from 1847 to 1852. He was the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He played a key role in securing the Compromise of 1850. During Senate debates over the projected compromise resolutions, Thomas Hart Benton refused to support the compromise and became enraged by Foote's verbal attacks. According to the historian James Coleman, during heated Senate debates over the projected compromise resolutions, Foote drew a pistol on Benton after Benton charged him. Other members wrestled Foote to the floor; they took the gun away and locked it in a drawer. The incident created an uproar that prompted an investigation by a Senate committee. Foote defeated Jefferson Davis to succeed John A. Quitman as the Governor of Mississippi from 1852 to 1854. He was elected on a Unionist platform at a time of increasing sectional tension. It was the last Unionist ticket in Mississippi. Foote resigned and moved to California, where he practised the law in San Francisco and joined the American Party. He campaigned for the Fillmore–Donelson ticket in the 1856 presidential campaign.
American Civil War
On the eve of the American Civil War of 1861-1865, Foote returned to Vicksburg. In 1859, he was a member of the Southern convention held in Knoxville. He moved to Tennessee and settled in Nashville, where he was elected to the First and Second Confederate Congresses. As a member of the Confederate House of Representatives, he criticized the war policies of the Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In one debate, he verbally attacked the Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin, and expressed virulent antisemitism. Early in 1865, Foote attempted to cross to Union lines and travel to Washington, D.C., but was arrested by Confederates before he could do so. The Confederate House of Representatives voted on January 24, 1865, to expel him, but the vote failed to garner the necessary two-thirds majority. Later, he was appointed a Mississippi Commissioner for Confederate POWs being held by the North. He resigned from office in 1865 and moved to Washington, where he sought a meeting with President Lincoln but was refused. Given the choice of leaving the United States or being sent back to the Confederacy, Foote fled to Canada and later to London. There he started writing a memoir of the war years.
Postbellum career
After the war, Foote returned to Nashville, Tennessee, where he practiced law. He was also a frequent visitor to Washington, D.C. He joined the Republican Party in 1875, and he attended the 1876 Republican National Convention. He published two memoirs and a history of the law in the region. He was the appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes to serve as the Superintendent of the New Orleans Mint from 1878 to 1880.
Foote was married twice. With his first wife, Elizabeth Winters, he had two sons and three daughters. His son Henry S. Foote Jr. served in the Confederate States Army and later as a superior court judge in California. His other son, W. W. Foote, also served in the CSA and ran for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from California in 1892. One of his daughters married Nevada Senator William Morris Stewart. Foote had a third son with his second wife, Rachel Douglas Boyd Smiley. They briefly resided at Old Central in West Nashville, a house built in 1858 on land she had inherited from her grandfather, John Boyd, a congressman for the Republic of Texas. The land and house later became property of Vanderbilt University, where it still stands today. His third son moved to California. Foote died on May 19, 1880 in Nashville, Tennessee. He was buried in the Smiley family plot at the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville. His second wife Rachel died in 1882.
