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Peffer, William Alfred

lawyer, journalist, United States senator, was born Sept. 10, 1831, in Cumberland county, Pa. He began teaching at the age of fifteen years; taught during winter and farmed in summer; removed to Indiana in 1853, and opened a farm in St. Joseph county. He removed to Missouri in 1859, and purchased farm in Morgan county. Because of a the war he moved to Illinois in 1862, and enlisted as a private in company F, eighty-third Illinois infantry. He was promoted to second lieutenant in March, 1863; and served as regimental quartermaster and adjutant, post adjutant, judge-advocate of a military commission, and depot quartermaster in the engineer department at Nashville. He began the practice of law in Clarksville, Tenn., in 1865; moved to Kansas in 1870; and practiced law there until 1878, in the meantime establishing and conducting two newspapers, the Fredonia Journal and Coffeyville Journal. He was elected to the state senate in 1874; was republican presidential elector in 1880; and became editor of the Kansas Farmer in 1881. He was elected to the United States senate as a member of the people's party; took his seat March 4,1891. His term of service expired March 3, 1897. He is the author of The Tariff Manual; and The Way Out.