James Ronald Chalmers (January 11, 1831 – April 9, 1898) was Confederate Brigadier General, and Southern Democrat politician.
Chalmers served as a governor appointed US Senator to fill a vacated seat in 1839. After he studied law, graduating in 1851. He was a delegate to the ordinance of secession and voted to secede.
He entered into the Civil War as a captain on the side of the Confederacy and served with distinction. He was promoted to Brigadier General and fought in significant battles.
After the war he served as a Representative to the Mississippi state congress and then was elected as a US Representative to the 45th, 46th and 47th congresses. It was a time of black voter suppression and Red Shirts. His election to the 47th congress was successfully challenged.
When his case came before the Committee on Elections on April 27, 1882, Lynch argued that in five counties, more than 5,000 of his votes had been counted for Chalmers. He further asserted that several thousand Republican ballots had been thrown out after a secret hearing because of technicalities such as a clerical failure to send a list of names with the returns and the presence of unusual marks on the ballots. Lynch’s strongest arguments were based on Chalmers’s remarks that Lynch’s votes had been thrown out and that he (Chalmers) was “in favor of using every means short of violence to preserve [for] intelligent white people of Mississippi supreme control of political affairs.” The committee ruled in Lynch’s favor, and on April 29, 1882, the House voted 125 to 83 to seat him; 62 Members abstained Wikipedia
He eventually moved to Memphis to practice law and died in 1998.
Albert Forster (26 July 1902 – 28 February 1952) is known as the Gauleiter of Danzig. He was an SS officer and Nazi politician.
Forster became a banker at Furth Bank in 1922. In 1923 he joined the Nazi party and worked as a journalist for Der Sturmer, a right wing fascist periodical. He was fired from his banking job in 1924 when his right wing ties were discovered.
He the began working for the German National Association of Commercial Employees (Wikipedia) and giving speeches at right wing rallies. In 1930 he was elected to the Reichstag and held his seat until 1940. On 15 October 1930, Forster became the Nazi Party’s Gauleiter of the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). He promoted the Nazi party, intimidated rivals and recruited new members. He stated that Poland would be no more. After the Nazi seizure of power, Forster spearheaded the Nazi annexation of Danzig in spring 1933. In 1936 he became part of Heinrich Himmler‘s personal staff.
Under orders to Germanize Poland 70 camps were set up for Polish people in Pomerania where they were subjected to murder, torture and, in the case of women and girls, rape before being executed. He personally believed in the need to engage in genocide of Poles and stated that, “We have to exterminate this nation, starting from the cradle” and declared that Poles and Jews were not human.
Forster was one of those responsible for the mass murders in Piaśnica, where approximately 12,000 to 16,000 Poles, Jews, Czechs, Kashubians and Germans were killed in the winter of 1939–1940. It is estimated that up to 30,000 Jews from Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in Pomerania and attached to Danzig-West Prussia were murdered during the war.
After WWII the British handed Albert Forster over to the Polish government. In 1948 he was condemned to death by the Polish for war crimes and crimes against humanity, with his sentence deferred. Forster was moved from Gdańsk to Mokotów Prison in Warsaw and hanged on 28 February 1952.