Editing Michael C. Kerr (section)

==Political career==
He was elected to Congress in 1864 as a [[War Democrat]], having vigorously opposed the [[Copperheads (politics)|Copperhead]] element in his district. He won the praise of Republican Governor [[Oliver P. Morton]] for helping suppress illegal conspiracies by Copperheads.<ref>Jacob Piatt Dunn, ''Indiana and Indianans'' (1919) [https://books.google.com/books?id=vt4haf_0N58C&pg=PA651 vol 2 p 651-2 online]</ref>

Kerr served in the [[United States House of Representatives]] as a [[History of the Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]] from [[Indiana]] from 1865 to 1873. In Congress he was looked upon as one of the leaders of the Democratic Party. He strongly opposed the Republican policy of [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] in the Southern States.  He was not re-elected in 1872.

His [[Hard money (policy)|hard money]] views on financial questions did not meet with favor in his agrarian constituency, where he openly antagonized the inflationists and the [[Greenback Party|Greenback]] element and favored [[Specie Payment Resumption Act|the resumption]] of [[Gold standard|specie payments]]. In 1874, however, after a sharp contest he won the seat back, and on his re-entry into Congress was elected to the [[Speaker of the United States House of Representatives|speakership]]. He presided as Speaker at only the first session of the [[44th United States Congress|Forty-fourth Congress]] and died of [[Tuberculosis|consumption]] shortly after its adjournment.