Matthew H. Carpenter

Matthew Hale Carpenter was an American lawyer, politician, and Wisconsin pioneer. He represented Wisconsin for eight years as a United States senator, from 1869 to 1875 and again from 1879 until his death in 1881. He was recognized as an authority on constitutional law, and made some of the most important legal arguments of 19th-century America, presenting several cases before the United States Supreme Court involving such matters as states' rights and regulation of corporations; during the American Civil War, he argued many important cases establishing the legal framework for President Abraham Lincoln's war powers and the postwar Reconstruction Acts.