PIKE COUNTY, Mo. — It’s been almost 160 years since a Pike County Missouri man joined the Senate at a critical time in American history.

John Brooks Henderson of Louisiana was sworn in on January 29, 1862 — eight months after the start of the Civil War. He replaced Trusten Polk, who was kicked out of office because of Confederate sympathies.

Henderson was coming off a year in which he helped keep Missouri in the Union and served as a brigadier general commanding troops in Northeast Missouri. He called secession a “damnable heresy.”

President Abraham Lincoln had been watching events in Missouri, and he recruited Henderson  to join the quest for broader freedoms. The senator was anxious to help, saying “the nation itself cannot lose Missouri.”

Henderson would go on to draft and introduce the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery. In later years, he would fight for women’s voting rights and prosecute federal tax evaders.