USA > Indiana > Public men of Indiana : a political history from 1860 to 1890, v. 1 > Part 1
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02412 8859
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PUBLIC MEN of INDIANA
A Political History From 1860 to 1890 L133
By FRANCIS M. TRISSAL
V. 1
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Printed for the Author by W. B. CONKEY COMPANY Printers and Publishers HAMMOND, INDIANA
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8185031
PROMINENT SUBJECTS
The Presidential Election of 1860 and Subsequent Political Campaigns.
The War of the Rebellion of 1861 and Southern Sympathizers in Indiana.
The Knights of the Golden Circle, Sons of Liberty, etc.
Slavery, Emancipation, Enfranchisement, Restora- tion, Reconciliation and Reconstruction.
Conflicts Between Presidents and Senators, and Quarrels of Rival Politicians.
The Impeachment Proceedings Against President Johnson, the Issues That Brought Them About, and the Final Triumph of His Reconciliation Policies.
Periods of Financial and Industrial Depression.
The Inflation and Deflation of Currency and the Resumption of Specie Payment of the Govern- ment's Obligations.
The Credit Mobilier of America, and the Pacific Railroads.
The Contested Presidential Election of 1876.
The Records of Governors, Senators, Members of Congress, Judges and Other Officials.
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This book is affectionately Inscribed to my Grand-daughter Frances Marion Trissal A. B. and Grandson John Meredith Trissal, Freshman; of the University of Illinois
AMíTrissal
March twenty fifth nineteen hundred and tentativo
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FRANCIS M. TRISSAL
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BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
F FRANCIS MARION TRISSAL of mixed German, Scotch, and Irish ancestry, the son of Joseph and Phoebe Trissal, was born near the town of Johnsville, Montgomery County, Ohio, September 30, 1847. His mother's maiden name was McGriff, her mother's maiden name was McDonald.
His father was a school teacher by profession, who moved with his family from Ohio to Cass County, Indiana, in 1850, and engaged in his pro- fession as one of the "Hoosier School Masters" of early days, and followed that occupation in the Counties of Cass and Miami, until his death in Miami County, in 1863.
The education that Francis M. obtained was ac- quired in the public schools of Cass and Miami Counties, and under the direction of his father and his uncle John Trissal, who was also a teacher. When not attending school he was employed at farm labor until the summer of 1865, when he was employed as Deputy Clerk in the Hamilton Cir- cuit Court and continued in that service until November, 1867, when he was appointed Deputy Clerk of the Howard Circuit Court at Kokomo,
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Indiana, and served in that position for one year. These employments brought him in association with lawyers and judges and at the same time educated him in forms and methods of legal pro- cedure in the courts and influenced him to enter the legal profession. In December, 1868, he entered the law office of General David Moss at Noblesville, Indiana, with whom he was associated for seven years, two years as a student, and five years as a partner. In 1873 he was appointed by Governor Thomas A. Hendricks to fill a vacancy for one year in the office of Prosecuting Attorney. In 1875 he moved to Indianapolis where he practiced his profession for three years, then moved to Tipton, where he practiced for a short time and then took up his residence again at Noblesville, where he continued in the law practice until 1888, when he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he practiced until 1891, when he became a resident of Chicago and a member of the Chicago bar, and was soon thereafter employed as the General Attorney for Corporations and Clients having extensive in- terests in Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, among these the Bedford Quarries Company, the Southern Indiana Railway Company, the Illinois Southern and Southern Missouri Railway Companies, in each of which he was also a director. It was under his guidance and direction that the Southern In- diana Railroad was extended and constructed through the coal fields of Southwestern Indiana and increased the coal operations in the counties of
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Daviess, Greene, Clay, Sullivan, and Vigo. It was also under his direction, in part, that the Illinois Southern Railroad was extended over the Ozark Mountains from St. Genevieve to Bismarck, Missouri.
He was an active trial lawyer, and the Supreme Court Reports in each of the States of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Minnesota contain reports of decisions in cases in which he was counsel.
He was one of the founders and a trustee of the Illinois College of Law, now the law department of DePaul University, and received an honorary degree from that institution. About the year 1898, he became interested in projects for the improve- ment of the Kankakee River in Indiana, and the drainage of lands of its valleys, and acquired a body of 440 acres that he drained and developed from a dismal swamp to a high state of produc- tiveness, where he put in much of his time in later years in constructing buildings, planting orchards and otherwise improving it for usefulness.
He was married on the seventh day of October, 1869, to Harriet D. Ross, the daughter of Joseph W. Ross, a pioneer merchant of Noblesville, In- diana. Her death occurred on June 15th, 1919, as the golden anniversary approached. The occur- rence of this sorrowful event caused him to take up his residence on the farm that he had developed, in the western part of Starke County, Indiana, near what is known as the Ox Bow Bend in the Kan- kakee River, where General Lew Wallace resorted
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while producing his Fair God and Ben Hur. It was at that place in the years of 1920 and 1921, when not engaged in farm work, that he put his powers of perseverance in contest with his hours of loneliness and leisure in the work of producing the manuscript for "Public Men of Indiana," com- pleting it in 1922 at the home of his son, Julius Ross Trissal in Chicago, 6823 Anthony Avenue. March, 1922.
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PREFACE
THE term "Public Men of Indiana" is sus- ceptible of indefinite application and extension. Any Indiana man who attained popular notoriety in public affairs or in the service of his country dur- ing the period covered by this work would come under the title selected for it. It was not possible that all such characters could be given mention, consequently the author has selected for descrip- tion and statement of what they did only those to whom his personal observations and recollections extended, and his recollections have been con- firmed both as to the men and the events with which they were identified by informaton from most reliable sources.
In that selection he has chosen many quiet con- tributors to the country's history, as well as those who have been crowned with the halo they deserved in other histories that have been published.
The period covered in this volume is from 1860 to 1890, during which its many exciting and im- portant public events called forth as participants in them the best minds and the best men of the state and made their work and achievements to form an essential part of the history of the United States, as well as of their own state.
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While maintaining its status as a member of the Federal Union many of them were at the same time prominent in their personal and official associa- tion with those of other states in dealing with the great crisis of a civil war, and its incidental sub- jects of slavery, emancipation, enfranchisement, reconciliation and reconstruction, that evolved problems in the science of government more com- plex than any that had arisen at any previous period in the country's history.
To set forth the processes and acts that resulted in the solution of these great problems necessitated such a full statement of the events that evolved them as to make the work a general historic con- tribution that may be read with some interest by others as well as by Indiana people.
The production differs from other so-called his- tories that have been published in that it is not merely a collection of biographies and personally written eulogies, prepared to induce subscriptions by the eulogized, but contains the author's own narrations and estimates of the characters written about and in the main records the acts only of those who have passed from earth.
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Public Men of Indiana
CHAPTER I
M ANY of the men written about in the pages that follow had their birthplaces in log cabins or in the more pretentious hewed log houses of early days. There was not then such caste in Hoosier so- ciety as permitted the occupants of the latter to hold themselves aloof from the former. They were so dependent upon each other for acts of neighborly friendship that reciprocity was a necessity. They had then no fears of "entangling alliances" or con- venient ways of communicating with their "foreign relations," and had to be content with their isola- tion from the world. The comforts of life were to them a luxury.
These rustic homes surrounded by the trees of the forest from which they were built, with their clapboard roofs and clay or puncheon floors, were the places where these sons of pioneers first felt the breath of a mother's love and heard of the manly darings of a father's bravery.
It was inside their walls where, from the illu- minations afforded by the chimney corner lamps and the flames from the burning hickory bark in
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the old fireplaces, they read of the unseen world's progress and civilization, and had their minds trained to religious devotion and kindled with de- sires to visualize what they read about.
It was from there that the fancies of youth began their development into living realities that often ended in disappointments.
It was from there they went to attend the dis- trict schools of the winter taught in log school houses that were furnished only with wooden benches and a wide plank desk fastened to the wall for writing exercises, and where they were disciplined in mind and behavior by the sovereign Hoosier schoolmaster, and told how necessary it was for them to become availed of the education he possessed and could impart to them, and were impressed by his palming off to them as his own words those found in the preface to the old Kirk- ham's Grammar, reading thus: "We are living in an age of light and knowledge in which science and arts are moving on with gigantic strides."
It was in these Brush Seminaries that the young aspirant for oratorical attainments and fame gave his first demonstrations of talent in public speak- ing by committing and repeating the lines of poeti- cal works. Excessive schooling was not then a prevailing condition nor were any educated beyond their intellectual capacity.
These institutions of learning had no annexes with laboratories where agricultural chemistry was taught, but the old school readers suggested prac- tical means of tilling the soil by the picture of a
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man holding the handles of a plow and another holding the lines to guide the horses in pulling it, under which was printed the words:
"He who by the plow would thrive Must himself either hold or drive."
The verities of this picture, that were fully realized, caused a longing for more of the "light and knowledge," to which their teacher had alluded, on other subjects arts and sciences than agronomy, and sent many into other lines of human endeavor and in search of a higher social and scholastic life that it was believed could only be obtained in cities and other centers of population. These longings for other scenes were not diminished or restrained by the lines of the British poet, William Cowper, that read: "God made the country, man made the town." The profession of the law was more allur- ing than the sciences that teach the ways of convert- ing the works of nature to the wants of man. No doubt some who entered it erroneously believed that it afforded a better shelter for indolence, while others saw the superior advantages it afforded in the promotion of political ambitions, but did not fully anticipate the period of starvation they must endure while waiting for clients; but they survived, and fitted themselves for service to those who em- ployed them and for public stations at the same time.
It was not alone the circuit riding lawyer of those days who had the honors of public admiration and individual respect, but the itinerant preacher came
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in for his share, and was perhaps more reverently regarded because of the sacredness of his work.
The lawyers acquired knowledge of the science and purposes of government as well as the science and philosophy of law.
They were not "case lawyers," but read and relied on textbooks for education in elementary principles, and upon their own powers of reasoning in apply- ing them to facts.
On the shelves of their libraries were such in- structive works as Blackstone and Kent's Com- mentaries, Story on the Constitution, and Equity Jurisprudence, Chitty on Contracts, and Green- leaf on Evidence, and in fact textbooks that re- vealed both the science and literature of the law upon every subject of jurisprudence. These old volumes have now almost entirely disappeared from the libraries of most lawyers of the present day to make room for cyclopædias, citators and digests of decisions and reports almost as numerous as the volumes that the Roman Emperor Justinian re- quired his skilled lawyers to condense into the Pandects. The descendants of the men who en- tered the profession did not all follow their fathers in it, but many did, while others became renowned as statesmen, soldiers, novelists, poets, and in other ways as contributors to the welfare and literature of their country, a fact showing that while genius may descend as an inheritance, it is often diffluent in its courses of lineage.
The foundations for the civilizing influences of the Christian religion that has always characterized
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REV. JAMES HAVENS
the citizenship of the state were well laid by the pioneer preachers, such as James Havens, known as "Father Havens," and others of his class. He was constantly and conspicuously in his work from the year 1824, until the fourth day of November, 1864, when his death occurred at Rushville.
His son, George Havens, followed him in his religious work as a member and minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Father Havens taught patriotism as well as piety. Two of his sons, Henry Bascom and Benjamin F., were soldiers of the Civil War, serving in the Union Army, and Benjamin F. became prominent in political life as mayor of the City of Terre Haute, where he was elected as a democrat and was a member of the Indiana Board of Centennial Com- missioners at the World's Fair in Chicago.
Col. John W. T. McMullen was called from his service in the Union Army to preach the funeral sermon of Father Havens. McMullen was colonel of the 57th Indiana Regiment, that he organized and in which he served from the beginning until the end of the war. The 57th was called the "Preacher's Regiment," because of the great num- ber of preachers who wished to serve under McMullen as they had with him in his ministrations as a Methodist minister. He was long regarded as one of the ablest ministers of the state.
Chaplain John H. Lozier, of the 37th Indiana Regiment, was also a prominent and powerful preacher before, during and after the Civil War, as was Chaplain Ira J. Chase, of the Christian
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Church, who afterwards became governor of the state.
It was through the influences and activities of such men as "Father" Havens, W. W. Hibben, Milton B. Hopkins and other pioneer preachers that religious denominations established and main- tained colleges, liberal in character, that were open to all whether members of the sect that established them or not, long before the state in its sovereign capacity entered upon its policy of fostering edu- cational institutions by general taxation and legis- lative appropriations. Scores of eminent men and women were numbered among the alumni of Asbury, Wabash, Franklin, Earlham, Hanover, Northwestern Christian, Notre Dame and others of sectarian institutions, and went forth from their halls to represent public trusts, both civil and po- litical, as did many distinguished educators, orators and Christian ministers long before that time.
The importance and influence of the State of Indiana in political contests and national affairs was recognized by the people of other states and their representatives at all times following its admission into the Union of States.
The influence of the speaker of the house of national representatives over the course of legis- lation is great, and the parties having a majority in the house are careful to select one on whose sym- pathy with their views and aims they can rely.
From 1845 to 1847, John W. Davis, a democrat, was the speaker who had served as a member from Sullivan County for many years before.
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From 1863 to 1869, Schuyler Colfax of South Bend, who had served as a member for a num- ber of terms previously, a republican, was the speaker.
Michael C. Kerr, a democrat, who served as a representative of the New Albany district from 1864 until 1878 was speaker from 1875 until 1877.
For eighteen years the United States Senate was presided over by distinguished citizens of Indiana, who stood in line for succession to the presidency. These were Vice Presidents Schuyler Colfax, Thomas A. Hendricks, Charles W. Fairbanks and Thomas R. Marshall. .
President Lincoln was the first to call a citizen of Indiana to a cabinet position, by the appoint- ment of Caleb B. Smith as Secretary of the In- terior, who died while holding the office, to be followed in the office by John P. Usher of Terre Haute. He also appointed Hugh McCulloch of Fort Wayne a member of his cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury, who served also in the cabinet of Andrew Johnson.
Gen. Walter Q. Gresham, who won distinction as a Union general serving on General Grant's staff, and was for many years a federal judge, was a member of the cabinet of President Arthur, serv- ing as Postmaster General and Secretary of the Treasury, also a member of the last cabinet of President Cleveland as Secretary of State.
James N. Tyner of Peru, Indiana, was for a short term Postmaster General during President Grant's second term.
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Richard W. Thompson of Terre Haute was Secretary of the Navy in the cabinet of Rutherford B. Hayes. William H. H. Miller of Indianapolis was Attorney General during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison.
The attitude of the State and its people in re- spect to the Civil War, that began in 1861, was watched with great concern by the people of other States because of its position in bordering slave territory.
It is an undeniable fact that it contained many southern sympathizers, but they were far outnum- bered by loyal Union citizens. In the Presidential campaign of 1860 Jesse D. Bright of Southern Indiana, then a United States Senator, was a sup- porter of John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for the presidency; they had been warm personal friends and political associates while Breckinridge had presided over the Senate. His colleague, Gra- ham N. Fitch of Logansport, was also a supporter of Breckinridge. Bright was accused and found guilty of complicity with Breckinridge and other secessionists in furnishing munitions of war to them and was expelled from the Senate on the 6th day of February, 1862, a year before his term would have expired, while Fitch soon after his retirement from the Senate in 1861 recruited and became colonel of the 46th Indiana Regiment of Union soldiers and rose to the rank of brigadier general.
Oliver P. Morton, who had been elected as Lieu- tenant Governor in 1860. was ex-officio governor of the State at the time of Bright's expulsion, and
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was then in his capacity as Governor making a determined fight against the disloyal elements in the State. He was not known to have ambitions to become Senator at that time, but if he had such aspirations he had to yield them at that particular time because of overpowering necessities. He could not turn over the office of Governor to some one who would appoint him to fill out Bright's unexpired term, because there was no one legally eligible to fill the office of Lieutenant Governor in case of a vacancy, and besides to do such a thing, had it been possible, would look like desertion in the face of the enemies he was fighting, conse- quently he must either appoint a Senator to fill out the term or leave the vacancy to continue. To fill it by a member of his own party would be a danger- ous political experiment for a man of Morton's temperament. He was not given to the creation or toleration of political rivals. and he appointed former Governor Joseph A. Wright, a democrat, to fill the position until the legislature of 1863 con- vened, when David Turpie, a democrat, was elected to serve for six weeks to fill out Bright's unexpired term, and Thomas A. Hendricks was elected for the full term. Their election caused the postpone- ment of Morton's senatorial ambitions for another four years, when he could succeed Henry S. Lane, which he did in 1868, and served with Hendricks, on the opposite side of the chamber, during the eventful period of reconstruction following the close of the great war, and was re-elected in 1873.
Among the pioneer lawyers of Indiana who had
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exceptional educational advantages was Judge Stephen Major of Shelbyville, a native of Ireland, graduate of Oxford University in England, one of the early Circuit Judges whose circuit was com- posed of the counties of Marion, Hamilton, Han- cock, Shelby, Rush, and Decatur. He was the preceptor of Thomas A. Hendricks and well re- membered for his dignified mien, urbanity, and great learning, and seemingly the suavity of Hendricks was acquired by his observances of and association with that courtly character.
He was the Father of Charles Major, the author of "When Knighthood Was in Flower," "The Bears of Blue River," and other excellent con- · tributions to literature. His first story, "When Knighthood Was in Flower," brought him quick fame and popularity, was dramatized, and was as successful in a play as it was in a novel.
He, too, was a lawyer in active practice when he produced it, and it has been truly said was greatly aided in his writings by his wife, who possessed a striking personality and pronounced literary tastes. He had but little taste for public life or desires for political honors, but was elected to the legislature as a democrat and declined re-election.
Captain Reuben A. Riley, who got his military title in the war for the Union, a member of the Hancock County Bar, was the father of the great Hoosier Poet, James Whitcomb Riley, named in honor of Governor James Whitcomb.
Captain Riley is remembered not alone because of his prominence as a soldier and lawyer, but on
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account of his observance of the styles of his day, when lawyers appeared in courts clothed in "spike- tailed" coats, and Captain Riley's usually had on shining brass buttons.
That fashion and the head gear of plug hats, it has been said, was created by Tom Walpole, a pioneer lawyer of that county.
John S. Tarkington of the Indianapolis bar, still living, was prominent as a commercial lawyer and annually published a court calendar for the con- venience of lawyers of the State, giving the dates of the commencement and duration of the terms of the various courts. He was the father of the distinguished novelist, Booth Tarkington, who was given the name Booth in honor of the name of his mother and that of Honorable Newton Booth, her brother, a United States Senator from California, prominently mentioned for the republican nomina- tion for President in 1876. Newton Booth was born at Salem, Indiana.
Edwin Denby, recently chosen as Secretary of the Navy in the cabinet of President Harding, is the son of Colonel Charles Denby, a democrat, who stood at the head of the bar in Southern Indiana, some of whose history will appear in future pages of this work. Edwin's mother was a daughter of Senator Graham N. Fitch, who was an eminent surgeon of Logansport, Indiana, when he became United States Senator. James R. Slack entered the service as colonel of the 47th Indiana Regiment. 'The 46th Regiment, of which Fitch was colonel, and the 47th were in the same brigade, and both
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Fitch and Slack were eligible for appointment as brigadier general, and both had been prominent democrats. It was claimed that Fitch had the better claim for the promotion because his regiment was first organized, but Slack's commission as colonel was dated prior to the date of that of Fitch and he got the promotion, while Fitch was assigned to another brigade and served as brigadier gen- eral at the siege of New Madrid and in other engagements.
General Slack served for the greater part of the war and was succeeded in command by General George F. McGinnis. Soon after the war closed he was elected Judge of the Circuit Court for the counties of Huntington and Wells and held the office for many years. He was conspicuous as a democratic leader in the State, and presided at Democratic State Conventions on a number of occasions.
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