Born in Mount Pleasant (now Farmer City),
De Witt County, Illinois, Warner moved with his parents to
Clinton, Illinois, in 1843. He attended public schools in Clinton, and
Lombard College in
Galesburg, Illinois. He also studied law in Clinton. Enlisted as a
private in Company E, 20th Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, June 13, 1861. He was promoted to
sergeant June 23, 1861,
second lieutenant February 4, 1862,
captain and
commissary of subsistence February 10, 1865. He was
brevetted major March 13, 1865, and was mustered out July 13, 1866. After his military service, he enrolled in the
law department of Harvard University, graduating in 1868. He returned to Illinois the same year to practice law in his hometown of Clinton, Illinois. His law partner was his father-in-law, Clifton H. Moore. Warner was elected as a
Republican to the
Fifty-fourth and to the four succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1895 – March 3, 1905). He served as chairman of the Committee on Revision of the Laws (
Fifty-fifth through
Fifty-eighth Congresses). In 1904, Warner ran for
Governor of Illinois as a Republican, but he failed to win his party's nomination. The Republican nominee
Charles S. Deneen won the general election. After the election, President
Theodore Roosevelt nominated Warner for the job of United States Commissioner of Pensions, heading an agency within the
Department of the Interior which was roughly equivalent to today's
Department of Veterans Affairs. Warner served from March 4, 1905, until November 25, 1909. He engaged in business in Clinton, Illinois, as a banker and realty owner and agent. He died in Clinton on March 31, 1925. He was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery. ==Vespasian Warner Public Library District==