Henry A. Crabb
politician
Henry Alexander Crabb (died April 7, 1857) was an American soldier from Tennessee and Mississippi, and an early member of the California State Senate, who served during a term ending in 1854. He is famous for coming to an ignominious end as a filibuster (freelance colonizer), when he was killed by Mexican troops who reportedly sent his severed head to the capital city preserved in a barrel of wine.
Biography
He was a leader of the Whig party and was known as a pro-slavery activist. Crabb was originally from Tennessee. His father was a lawyer and a judge, Henry A. Crabb Sr. He moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1844 where he worked as a lawyer. He killed Edward Jenkins, editor of the Vicksburg Whig newspaper, in a street fight. Jenkins apparently pulled a knife and stabbed Crabb several times, in response to which Crabb pulled out a gun and fatally shot Jenkins in the heart.
Crabb also married Filomena Ainsa and had two children with her. Crabb was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate on the Know Nothing party ticket in 1857.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry A. Crabb” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.