John Armor Bingham (January 21, 1815 – March 19, 1900) was an American politician who served as a Republican representative from Ohio and as the United States ambassador to Japan.

[1] Born in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, where his carpenter and bricklayer father Hugh had moved after service in the War of 1812, Bingham attended local public schools.

They initially allied with the Anti-Masonic Party, led in Pennsylvania by Governor Joseph Ritner and state representative Thaddeus Stevens.

[4] Matthew Simpson, Bingham's longtime friend since childhood, became a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church and urged President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Following Lincoln's assassination, Simpson delivered a prayer at the White House and a funeral oration at the interment ceremony in Springfield, Illinois.

His uncle, Thomas, a prominent Presbyterian in the area, had served as associate judge in the Harrison County Court of Common Pleas from 1825 to 1839.

In Washington, D.C., he roomed at the same boarding house as did fellow Ohio representative Joshua Giddings, a prominent abolitionist whom Bingham admired.

Known for his abolitionist views, he lost to Democratic peace candidate Joseph W. White, and thus failed to return for the 38th Congress, in part because Union soldiers (mostly Republican-leaning) who were away from home fighting in the war were not allowed to vote by mail in Ohio.

President Abraham Lincoln appointed him Judge Advocate of the Union Army with the rank of major during his hiatus from Congress, and Bingham briefly became solicitor of the United States Court of Claims in 1865.

Bingham's judge advocate service was exceptional in the sense that he was a prosecutor or appellate reviewer in three significant military trials.

That great want of the citizen and stranger, protection by national law from unconstitutional State enactments, is supplied by the first section of this amendment.

[11]Except for the addition of the first sentence of Section 1, which defined citizenship, the amendment weathered the Senate debate without substantial change.

Ohio ratified the Fourteenth Amendment on January 4, 1867, but Bingham continued to explain its extension of citizenship during the fall election season.

[14] In retrospect The National Constitution Center described John Bingham in tretrospect as "a leading Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives during Reconstruction and the primary author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.

Because of Bingham’s crucial role in framing this constitutional text, Justice Hugo Black would later describe him as the 14th Amendment’s James Madison.

Bingham played a prominent role in combatting a number of early efforts by Radical Republicans to impeach President Andrew Johnson.

Three local Republican political bosses made a deal to cut Bingham out, instead selecting Lorenzo Danford as the party's candidate.

President Ulysses Grant then appointed his ally Bingham as United States Minister to Japan, which involved a salary increase but also economic responsibilities with respect to the small legation.

[27] In his later years, he was frequently interviewed by journalists on topics ranging from current events in Japan to his 1857 appointment of George Armstrong Custer to the United States Military Academy.