Son of a Revolutionary War veteran, Foster is born in Connecticut in 1806, graduates from Brown in 1828 and passes the bar in 1830. His home base is Norwich and he is a committed abolitionist by 1836. He edits the Norwich Republican and is elected as a Whig to the state House where he becomes Speaker in 1847. After the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act is passed he is elected to the U.S. Senate on the Opposition Party ticket. He is re-elected in 1860 and in 1865 becomes the Senate’s Pro-Tem, second in line to the presidency after the death of Lincoln. In this role he is referred to as Johnson’s Vice-President. Foster loses his seat in 1866 and returns to teach law at Yale in 1869 before serving as a justice on the Connecticut Supreme Court, retiring in 1876 and dying in 1880 at age 73.
Lafayette S. Foster
