Joseph J. Lewis

Joseph Jackson Lewis (October 5, 1801 – April 5, 1883) was an American lawyer, civil servant, and author who published the first biography of Abraham Lincoln and served President Lincoln as the second U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue from March 1863 to July 1865. He was also a leading Pennsylvania Republican who represented antislavery figures in court.

Early life and career Lewis was born in Westtown Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, to Enoch Lewis, a Quaker and abolitionist who taught mathematics at the Westtown School. Lewis was one of four lawyers who successfully represented antislavery defendant Castner Hanway, who had fought with pro-slavery raiders, in trials following the Christiana Riot of 1851. So did Henry McIntire, a Union Army officer who was elected Chester County District Attorney in 1862.

Lincoln biographer and politician In 1860, Lewis's friend and fellow Chester County native Jesse W. Fell, one of Abraham Lincoln's closest friends who had been urging Lincoln to run for president, persuaded Lincoln to write up a two-and-a-half-page autobiographical sketch. Fell sent the manuscript to Lewis, who adapted it into a biographical article published in February 1860 in the Chester County Times. Widely reprinted in the Northern newspapers, this sketch was Lincoln’s first widely read biography.

Internal Revenue Service commissioner As Lincoln's Internal Revenue Service commissioner tasked with collecting taxes and rigorously enforcing the nation's wartime tax laws, Lewis "framed the financial system which saved the nation in the Civil War." He was married to Mary Sinton Miner. His son was Charlton Thomas.