Kasson, John Adams

Kasson, John Adams – the great survivor of 19th-century Iowa politics — was born in Charlotte, Vermont, the son of a prosperous farmer and devout mother. After his father's death, the family moved to the lumber port of Burlington, Vermont. In 1837 Kasson entered the town's Old Academy, where he studied classics and mathematics for a year. He was then admitted to the University of Vermont, where he excelled in German literature and shared the predominantly nationalist and conservative outlook of his middle-class peers. After graduation, he took up a series of temporary tutorial positions in Virginia. Although the young mandeveloped a liking for Southern whites and harbored no moral objections to life in a slaveholding society, he observed the thinness of the soil and the wasteful farming practices of the Virginians.