James Daniel Lynch

{{Short description|American lawyer, farmer, judge, poet, and writer}}

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| honorific_prefix =

| name = James Daniel Lynch

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| office = Judge

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| birth_date = January 6, 1836

| birth_place = Mecklenburg County, Virginia

| death_date = {{death date and age|1903|7|19|1836|1|6}}

| death_place = Mississippi

| occupation = Lawyer, farmer, judge, poet, writer

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James Daniel Lynch (January 6, 1836 – July 19, 1903) was an American lawyer, farmer, judge, poet, and writer. His poem "Columbia Saluting the Nations" was chosen as the official salutation for the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. He lived in Mississippi. He served in the Confederate Army.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EVLjDK5othUC&q=james+daniel+lynch+1903&pg=PA204|title=Touring Literary Mississippi|first1=Patti Carr|last1=Black|first2=Marion|last2=Barnwell|date=June 22, 2002|publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi|isbn=9781578063673|via=Google Books}} He was an opponent of Reconstruction.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C7OADwAAQBAJ&q=james+daniel+lynch+1903&pg=PT375|title=Reading Reconstruction: Sherwood Bonner and the Literature of the Post-Civil War South|first=Kathryn B.|last=McKee|date=January 8, 2019|publisher=LSU Press|isbn=9780807170618|via=Google Books}}

He was born in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, and studied at the University of North Carolina.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RfXGJBB1HvoC&q=james+daniel+lynch+1903&pg=PA305|title=Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967|date=June 22, 1981|publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi|isbn=9781617034183|via=Google Books}} He moved to Columbus, Mississippi in 1860 and taught at Franklin Academy.

His legal career became a struggle due to hearing impairment and he turned to writing. His book Kemper County Vindicated, And a Peep at Radical Rule in Mississippi was a response to criticisms of home rule by Radical Republican James M. Wells over the Chisolm Massacre in The Chisolm Massacre: A Picture of "Home Rule" in Mississippi (1877).{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RfXGJBB1HvoC&q=James+Monroe+Wells&pg=PA458|title=Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967|date=June 22, 1981|publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi|isbn=9781617034183|via=Google Books}}