Nathaniel Henry Rhodes Dawson

Nathaniel Henry Rhodes Dawson (February 14, 1829 – February 1, 1895) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 3rd U.S. Commissioner of Education. During the American Civil War, he served in the Confederate Army as a colonel.

Early life Dawson was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on February 14, 1829. He was the eldest son of Lawrence Edwin Dawson (1799–1849) and Mary Wilkinson (née Rhodes) Dawson (1808–1851). His father, a close friend of William Drayton, had studied law at the Litchfield Law School in Connecticut. He practiced in South Carolina, where he was elected and served as a member of the state legislature several times.

Among Dawson's siblings were brother Reginald Hebner Dawson, a lawyer who fought with the 13th Alabama Regiment of the Confederate States Army; Mary Huger Dawson, who married C. M. Lide; and Lawrence E. Dawson Jr., who was a planter near Camden, Arkansas.

In 1842, his family moved from Charleston to Dallas County, Alabama. Dawson was educated at local private academies before he attended St. Joseph's College in Mobile, Alabama.

U.S. Civil War Upon the secession of Alabama in January 1861, Dawson was chosen as captain of the Selma Cadets and traveled to Virginia as a part of the 4th Alabama Infantry. From 1863 to 1864, and until the end of the war in 1865, he commanded a battalion of cavalry. During the War, he was elected to the lower house of the General Assembly of the Confederate States Congress in 1863 and 1864, serving in the Assembly and then returning to his command at the close of the legislative sessions. In 1882, he was put forth as a candidate for governor of Alabama during the Democratic state convention, but he was defeated by Gen. Edward A. O'Neal who later won and became the 26th governor of the state. In 1886, Dawson was again put forth for the gubernatorial nomination among three other candidates: Henry Clayton, John McKluat, and Thomas Seay. Although he led in the convention from the start, Seay gained the nomination and was later elected as the 27th governor. who served under Presidents Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, and Cleveland. Dawson had managed Cleveland's Alabama campaign in 1884.

After her death in 1855, he remarried to Mary Elizabeth Tarver (1833–1860) on June 17, 1857. Together, Nathaniel and Mary were the parents of: Elodie was the daughter of Kentucky merchant and politician Robert Smith Todd and his second wife, Elizabeth (née Humphreys) Todd.

Nathanial Henry Rhodes Dawson Jr. (1864–1903), who did not marry and was educated at the University of Alabama. Lawrence Percy Dawson (1869–1925), the Sheriff of Dallas County, who married his first cousin, Alice Kellogg (1874–1913), a daughter of Margaret (née Todd) Kellogg.

Elodie, his third wife, died giving birth to a stillborn baby boy in 1877. He was buried at Old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma.