Biography

James Rood Doolittle was a Republican Senator from Wisconsin. He was born in New York and attended common schools as well as Middlebury Academy in Vermont. In 1834 he graduated from Hobart College in New York and began to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1837 and practiced in Rochester, NY. From 1847-1850 he was the district attorney of Wyoming County, NY before moving to Racine, WI in 1851. He became a judge of the first judicial circuit of Wisconsin in 1853, which he held until 1856 when he resigned. He left the Democratic Party due to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and in January 1857 he was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican. He was reelected in 1863 and served until 1869. He was also the chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs for the Thirty-seventh through the Thirty-ninth Congresses. In 1871 he left the Republican party and ran unsuccessfully for Governor as a Democrat. He then resumed practicing law in Chicago, IL, but continued to live in Racine, WI. He was a trustee of the University of Chicago and served for a year as president, as well as teaching as a professor in its law school.