Charles Gordon Atherton (1804–1853)

United States Senator, born at Amherst, NH, on the 4th of July 1804, and died at Manchester, NH, on the 15th of November 1853. He was graduated at Harvard in 1822, and became a member of the New Hampshire bar three years later. He sat in the state legislature from 1832 to 1837, and was a Democratic member of Congress from 1837 to 1843, and was the author of a rule that all petitions relating to slavery should be tabled without debate,—a rule known as “Atherton’s Gag.” From 1843 to 1849, and again in 1852, he was a Senator from New Hampshire.