Editing P. T. Barnum (section)

== Role in politics ==
Barnum was significantly involved in politics. He mainly focused on race, slavery and sectionalism in the period preceding the [[American Civil War]]. He opposed the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]] of 1854, which supported slavery, and left the Democratic Party because it had endorsed slavery. Barnum joined the new anti-slavery Republican Party.

Barnum claimed that "politics were always distasteful to me", but he was elected to the [[Connecticut General Assembly]] in 1865 as a Republican representing [[Fairfield, Connecticut|Fairfield]].<ref name="Barnum 18882">{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/lifeofptbarnum00barn|title=The life of P. T. Barnum|last=Barnum|first=Phineas|year=1888|work=Ebook and Texts Archive – American Libraries|publisher=Buffalo, N.Y.: The Courier Company. p. 237}}</ref><ref name="obit2">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0705.html|title=The Great Showman Dead|date=April 8, 1891|work=The New York Times|access-date=July 21, 2007|quote=Bridgeport, Connecticut, April 7, 1891. At 6:22 o'clock to-night the long sickness of P. T. Barnum came to an end by his quietly passing away at Marina, his residence in this city.}}</ref> He hired spies to acquire insider information on the [[New York and New Haven Railroad]] lines and exposed a secret that would raise fares by 20 percent.{{citation needed|date=May 2019}}{{vague|date=May 2019}} He said during the ratification of the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]]: "A human soul, 'that God has created and Christ died for,' is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot—it is still an immortal spirit."<ref name="Barnum 18882" /> He acknowledged that he had owned slaves when he lived in the South: "I whipped my slaves. I ought to have been whipped a thousand times for this myself. But then I was a Democrat—one of those ''nondescript'' Democrats, who are Northern men with Southern principles."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G1M_nCbylxoC|title=The arts of deception: playing with fraud in the age of Barnum|last=Cook|first=James W.|date=2001|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-00591-4|oclc=876342914}}</ref>

Barnum was elected for the next four Connecticut legislature sessions and succeeded senator [[Orris S. Ferry]]. He was the legislative sponsor of an 1879 law that prohibited the use of "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception" and criminalized acting as an accessory to the use of contraception. This law remained in effect in Connecticut until it was overturned in 1965 by the U.S. Supreme Court in its ''[[Griswold v. Connecticut]]'' decision.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://federalbarcouncilquarterly.org/?p=396|title=P. T. Barnum, Justice Harlan, and Connecticut's Role in the Development of the Right to Privacy|date=December 13, 2014|publisher=Federal Bar Council Quarterly|access-date=May 9, 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://connecticuthistory.org/connecticut-and-the-comstock-law/|title=Connecticut and the Comstock Law|publisher=Connecticut History|access-date=May 9, 2018}}</ref>

Barnum campaigned for the U.S. Congress in 1867 and lost to his third cousin [[William Henry Barnum]]. In 1875, he served as mayor of [[Bridgeport, Connecticut]] to improve the water supply, bring gas lighting to streets and enforce liquor and prostitution laws. He was instrumental in the inception of [[Bridgeport Hospital]], founded in 1878, and was its first president.<ref name="kunhardt2">{{harvnb|Kunhardt|Kunhardt|Kunhardt|1995}}</ref>