James Harlan moved to Iowa in 1845 and was elected state superintendent of public instruction two years later. He became president of Iowa Wesleyan University in 1853 and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1855. After winning a second term, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him Secretary of the Interior. Harlan resigned his cabinet post in 1866 and regained his former Senate seat, but was defeated for re-election in 1872. After serving on the Alabama Claims Commission, the body empowered to settle damages resulting from loss of U.S. shipping by a British-built ship sailing for the Confederacy during the Civil War, he retired to Mount Pleasant. Harlan's daughter, Mary, was the wife of Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the president.