Samuel Steel Blair (December 5, 1821 – December 8, 1890) was a Republican United States Representative from Pennsylvania. During the American Civil War, he called for increasingly harsh treatment against the southern states which had seceded from the Union, saying: "This rebellion cannot be put down by soft words and lenient measures." Formative years Born in Indiana, Pennsylvania on December 5, 1821, Blair was a product of his community's the public schools. He then attended and, in 1838, graduated from Jefferson College, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. After completing further studies in law, and securing admission to the bar in 1845, he began practicing law in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania in 1846. From 1849 until 1864, he practiced law in Hollidaysburg in partnership with John Dean, who later became a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice. Political career A member of the Republican Party in the United States, Blair was chosen to be a delegate to the 1856 Republican National Convention, and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1858 and 1860. During the Thirty-seventh Congress, Blair was named chairman of the United States House Committee on Private Lands. After unsuccessfully running for reelection in 1862, he resumed the practice of law. As the American Civil War wore on, Blair urged his colleagues in the federal government to eschew "soft words and lenient measures," and pressed them to adopt a harsher stance against the southern states that were deemed to be "in rebellion." In a lengthy speech before the U.S. House of Representatives on May 22, 1862, Blair said: "Mr. Speaker, we are divided in opinion about many things connected with the war, there is one purpose, however, in which a majority of this House would seem to be nearly united, and that is that the Government of the United States shall not be curtailed in its extent of territorial jurisdiction by the surrender of one foot of its soil to the southern confederacy. The people will not tolerate a conventional separation of any portion of this Union from the rest. If this is not a part of our fixed policy, if we are not in solid earnest to this extent, not an hour should be lost before sending an ambassador to Richmond to close the war. There was a time when it did appear as if—while the people were to be amused by movements leading to no decisive results—a subtile policy would, after