Lyman Trumbull (October 12, 1813 – June 25, 1896) was an American lawyer, judge, and politician who represented the state of Illinois in the United States Senate from 1855 to 1873. Trumbull was a leading abolitionist attorney and key political ally to Abraham Lincoln and authored several landmark pieces of reform as chair of the Judiciary Committee during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, including the Confiscation Acts, which created the legal basis for the Emancipation Proclamation; the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished chattel slavery; and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which led to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Born in Colchester, Connecticut to a prominent political family, Trumbull studied law in Greenville, Georgia, before moving to Illinois to establish a practice and enter politics. He served as the Illinois Secretary of State from 1841 to 1843 and as a justice of the Illinois Supreme Court from 1848 to 1853. As an attorney, Trumbull successfully argued the case Jarrot v. Jarrot, which de facto banned slavery in the state.