Benjamin Gwinn Harris

Who was Benjamin Gwinn Harris?

Benjamin Gwinn Harris was a U.S. Representative from Maryland.

Born near Leonardtown, St. Mary's County, Maryland, Harris attended Yale College and Cambridge Law School. He served as member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1833 and 1836, and was admitted to the bar in 1840.

Harris was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congresses. He was censured by the House of Representatives on April 9, 1864, for treasonable utterances. He was tried by a military court in Washington, D.C. in May 1865 for harboring two paroled Confederate soldiers, and sentenced to three years imprisonment and forever disqualified from holding any office under the United States Government, but President Andrew Johnson subsequently remitted the sentence. He died on his estate, "Ellenborough," near Leonardtown, Maryland, April 4, 1895. He was interred in the family burying ground on his estate.