Richard Yates (January 18, 1815 – November 27, 1873) was the Governor of Illinois during the American Civil War and has been considered one of the most effective war governors. He took energetic measures to secure Cairo and St. Louis against rebel attack. Nicknamed the "Soldiers' Friend", he helped organize the Illinois contingent of Union soldiers, including commissioning Ulysses S. Grant as a colonel for an Illinois regiment. He supported the Emancipation Proclamation. He also represented Illinois in the United States House of Representatives (1851–1855) and in the U.S. Senate (1865–1871). As a Senator, he voted and spoke in favor of removing President Andrew Johnson from office. He was a Whig and then a Republican. Early life Yates was born in a log cabin in Warsaw, Kentucky. His family was of English descent and moved to Illinois in 1831. He studied at Miami University and Georgetown College and graduated from Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1835. He then studied law at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. He was admitted to the bar in 1837 and commenced practice in Jacksonville. Yates served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1842 to 1845 and 1848 to 1849. In 1850, he was elected as a Whig to the United States House of Representatives, where he was the youngest member of the Thirty-second Congress. He was reelected to Congress in 1852. During Yates' second term in Congress, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise reignited the anti-slavery controversy. He opposed the repeal, which opened the possibility of slavery expanding into Kansas, and became identified with the new Republican Party. Illinois Democrats redrew the boundaries of his district to favor their candidate, and Yates narrowly lost his bid for a third term in Congress. Yates then worked for a time as president of a railroad company. Remaining politically engaged, he campaigned on behalf of Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont in the 1856 election. He was known as an excellent orator. He had a weakness for whiskey, though at times he strove to exercise temperance. In later years, he was often conspicuously drunk, even at public functions. By 1867 he had "resolve[d] to quit drink altogether" but was unable to persist in this resolution. Governorship In 1860 he was elected governor as a Republican; he and Abraham Lincoln, with whom he was friendly, supported each other's campaigns in Illinois. Yates's inaugural address