Charles Westmoreland

Candidate Biography:

Born: 1829 in Georgia
Married: ????? (div.)
Child: Charles Jr.
Died: December 23, 1868 in Panama

1863: Associate Editor, Marysville Appeal
1863: Secretary of the Senate, California State Senate
1867-1868: Minority Leader, California State Assembly
1868: [Union] Primary Candidate for CD-03 (Lost)
1868: U.S. Presidential Elector

• Westmoreland was the earliest Republican Minority Leader in the Assembly that we have been able to find. [Representative and leading men of the Pacific, by Oscar Shuck (1870)]
• Westmoreland died in Panama on his way to Washington "to deliver to the president of the Senate a list of the votes of California for President and Vice-Present for eighteen hundred and sixty-eight." [United States Statutes at Large, Volume 15 by George P. Sanger (1869)]
• TV CONNECTION: It's unlikely that the writers of the TV show "Prison Break" were thinking of State Senator Westmoreland, but Episode 20 of Season 2 is titled "Panama" and features a bag of money that belonged to a Season 1 character named Charles Westmoreland.
• NOTABLE NO VOTE (University of California): This was one of sixteen state legislators (four in the Senate and 12 in the Assembly) who voted against the bill AB 583 (1868) which created the University of California.

Source: History of Political Conventions in California, 1849-1892 by Winfield J. Davis (1893)
Source: Representative and leading men of the Pacific by Oscar Shuck (1870)