Jesse David Bright (December 18, 1812 – May 20, 1875) was the ninth Lieutenant Governor of Indiana and U.S. Senator from Indiana who served as President pro tempore of the Senate on three occasions. He was the only senator from a Northern state to be expelled for being a Confederate sympathizer, and also the last Senator to be expelled on Confederate rebellion. As a leading Copperhead he opposed the Civil War. He was frequently in competition with Governor Joseph A. Wright, the leader of the state's Republican Party.
Bright owned 21 slaves in Kentucky.
Early life and career
Jesse Bright was born into a German family in Norwich, New York, which moved to Madison, Indiana, in 1820. Bright attended public schools as a child. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1831, commencing practice in Madison.
U.S. Senate
Bright was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1844, and was reelected in 1850 and 1856, serving from 1845 to 1862.
In the beginning of 1862, the Senate of the 37th Congress, which was composed of twenty-nine Republicans and ten Democrats, voted to expel him for acknowledging Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederate States and for facilitating the sale of arms to the Confederacy.
He was the fourteenth senator expelled from Congress during the Civil War and was (as of 2023) the last senator ever to be expelled. Soon after his expulsion from the Senate, Union authorities confiscated his property in Port Fulton, Indiana, which became Jefferson General Hospital, the third-largest hospital during the Civil War. He was an unsuccessful candidate in filling the vacancy caused by his own expulsion in 1863. Bright's longtime intra-party rival, Envoy to Prussia and War Democrat Joseph A. Wright, succeeded him in the Senate.
Later life and career
After losing his home in Indiana, Bright moved to Covington, Kentucky.