<P> Promotion of minstrel shows led to his sponsorship in 1853 of H.J. Conway's politically watered - down stage version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin; the play, at Barnum's American Museum, gave the story a happy ending, with Tom and other slaves freed . The success led to a play based on Stowe's Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp . His opposition to the Kansas - Nebraska Act of 1854, which supported slavery, led him to leave the Democratic Party to become a member of the new anti-slavery Republican Party . He had evolved from a man of common stereotypes of the 1840s to a leader for emancipation by the Civil War . </P> <P> While he claimed "politics were always distasteful to me," Barnum was elected to the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as Republican representative for Fairfield and served four terms . In the debate over slavery and African - American suffrage with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Barnum spoke before the legislature and said, "A human soul,' that God has created and Christ died for,' is not to be trifled with . It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot--it is still an immortal spirit ." </P> <P> Barnum was notably the legislative sponsor of a law enacted by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1879 that prohibited the use of "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception" that remained in effect in Connecticut until being overturned in 1965 by the U.S. Supreme Court Griswold v. Connecticut decision . </P> <P> Barnum ran for the United States Congress in 1867 and lost to his third cousin William Henry Barnum . In 1875, Barnum as mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, worked to improve the water supply, bring gas lighting to streets, and enforce liquor and prostitution laws . Barnum was instrumental in starting Bridgeport Hospital, founded in 1878, and was its first president . </P>

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