History of the Indiana democracy, 1816-1916, Part 91

Author: Stoll, John B., 1843-1926
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Indianapolis : Indiana Democratic Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1104

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The early politics of Jefferson county, especial- ly as to local matters, was personal rather than partisan. Colonel Paul filled every office in the county at some time, and was never opposed by anyone for election to such offices. Colonel R. C. Talbott was Clerk of the Court for many years and never had an opponent for that position. The Meeks, Alexander A. and Noble, Williamson Dunn, George Logan and perhaps others filled the most important and responsible offices in the county from time to time, and were elected without oppo- sition. Some of these men were Democrats and some were Federalists originally, and afterward Whigs, but none of them ran for office upon a party ticket. In National and State elections Jefferson county at the first showed a decided predilection toward the Federalist party, and afterward toward the Whig party, and latterly toward the Republican party. Never until 1910 did the Democratic party, as a party, elect a majority of the candidates upon their county ticket in this county.

About 1828 party lines, in local affairs, began to be drawn. The Whigs, having the majority in the county, elected practically all the county offi- cers-once in a while a popular Democrat would be elected, or an unpopular Whig would be de- feated. The Democratic leadership at this time was centered in United States Senator William Hendricks. Mr. Hendricks was a son-in-law of John Paul, the founder of the city of Madison, and the most wealthy and influential citizen of the county. He came to Madison in 1814 and entered at once actively into the practice of the law, and also edited and published the first news- paper issued in Jefferson county, the Eagle. This paper was a Democratic party organ in name, but

in fact it was more Mr. Hendricks' personal organ. William Hendricks was a man of good ability, and at once became a political leader with a large following and great influence, not only in the county but in the State as well. He was an uncle of Thomas A. Hendricks, who in later years was the undisputed leader of Indiana Democracy. Mr. Hendricks was first elected to the Territorial Leg- islature in 1814-he also held, either by election or appointment, two or three county offices. In 1816 he was the secretary of the convention called to frame a constitution for the new State, and from 1817 to 1823 was the Representative of the State in Congress. From 1823 to 1825 he was Governor, and from 1825 to 1837 United States Senator. When he retired from the United States Senate he also retired from politics, and thereafter the Democratic party in Jefferson county followed a new leadership. Jesse D. Bright, a young lawyer, who came to Madison from the State of New York with his father, David J. Bright, and his brothers, Michael G. and George M., about this time, forged to the front as the Democratic leader in the county. It is too much, perhaps, to say that he was the leader in 1837, for he was then a very young man, but twenty-four years of age, but he was even then one of the most active and aggressive among the Democratic politicians of the county. Hon. David Hillis was generally looked upon as the Demo- cratic leader during the five or six years imme- diately succeeding the retirement of Senator Hen- dricks. Mr. Hillis was a farmer living near the city of Madison-he had been an officer in the militia and was personally the most popular Dem- ocrat that Jefferson county produced before the Civil War. He was elected to the Legislature first in 1828, and in the '30's served two full terms in the State Senate. In 1837 he became Lieutenant-Governor of the State. Gathered around him was a coterie of active and popular men, such as Michael G. Bright, an elder brother of Jesse D., a man of fine legal attainment and a shrewd politician withal, and it was he who pushed the younger brother to the front.

The Whig party during this period, viz., from 1828 to 1840, was led by a number of very able and influential men, chief among whom were Wil- liamson Dunn, a farmer living near Hanover, and the father of William McKee Dunn, who later rep- resented the district of which Jefferson county was a part in Congress, and then became Judge Advocate-General of the United States Army. General Milton Stapp, a lawyer and business

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HISTORY INDIANA DEMOCRACY-1816-1916

man of Madison, and Joseph G. Marshall, a law- yer, who located at Madison in 1828, were also conspicuous in the leadership and control of the Whig party.

Beginning with the year 1840 Joseph G. Mar- shall had succeeded to the acknowledged leader- ship of the Whigs in Jefferson county, and it was only a few years until he was the acknowledged leader of the Whigs in the State of Indiana. He soon drew to him a number of very active work- ers, who afterward became celebrated locally as leaders of the new Republican party. Among these young men were John R. Cravens, who rep- resented Jefferson county in the State Senate for many years, first as a Whig and then as a Re- publican; William McKee Dunn, who represented Jefferson and the adjoining counties in Congress in 1861 to 1863, and again from 1865 to 1867; David C. Branham of North Madison, who was a member of the Indiana House of Representatives for many years, and sometimes Speaker of that body. Cravens and Dunn were lawyers and Bran- ham was a business man. In 1843 Jesse D. Bright was elected Lieutenant-Governor of In- diana. He had now become the acknowledged leader of the Democratic party in Jefferson coun- ty, although he was but thirty years of age. In 1845 he was elected to the United States Senate, and re-elected in 1851, and again in 1857. In 1861 he was expelled by that body, it having been shown that he wrote a letter of introduction for a friend who desired to see Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, for the pur- pose of introducing an improvement in firearms. Jesse D. Bright was a most virile and energetic leader, and up until the time of the Civil War his word was law and his acts were gospel with the Democrats of Jefferson county. Rolla Doolittle, John Kirk, John Marsh, Robert Right Rea and a dozen other local politicians executed his com- mands without questioning, and they maintained a good organization at all times and gave the Whig party determined battle at every election. Once in a great while they succeeded in electing a county officer, or a member of the Legislature, but not often. In 1844 Nathan B. Palmer, a farmer and business man of the county, was elected State Treasurer. In 1846 Joseph L. White, a lawyer practicing in the city of Madison, was elected to Congress. He was not re-elected, and was afterward appointed a Minister to one of the Central American countries, and died there. He was a man of fair ability, but was not an organizer and made no special impress upon the politics of Jefferson county. Senator Bright, as one of the leaders of the Democratic party in the State, antagonized Governor Joseph A. Wright, and the rivalry between them became very bitter.

In 1852 Michael C. Garber, editor of the Madison Courier, which was at the time the Democratic party organ of Jefferson county, referred to Gov- ernor Wright in a very complimentary manner. This favorable notice of his rival irritated Sen- ator Bright, and he wrote a letter from Wash- ington, D. C., where he was in attendance upon the sessions of the U. S. Senate, to Judge Wil- liam M. Taylor, a lawyer at Madison, in which he excoriated Garber and declared he would drive him out of the Democratic party. There were two men named William M. Taylor living at Mad- ison, and the letter was not delivered to the man of that name for whom it was intended, but to the other Taylor, who gave it to Mr. Garber. Mr. Garber at once came out in his paper for Gov- ernor Wright and against Senator Bright. Short- ly afterward Senator Bright came home and called a meeting of the Democrats of the county. At this meeting the Senator delivered a two-hour speech, denouncing Garber as a pretended and not a real Democrat and demanding that he be publicly read out of the party, and at the conclusion of his speech he offered a series of resolutions to that effect. Mr. Garber was present and spoke in defense of his actions. He declared that he was as good a Dem- ocrat as Senator Bright, but boldly stated that he would not submit to the dictation of the Sen- ator. He read a letter from Governor Wright attesting to his democracy, but the Democratic party leaders there assembled had followed Sen- ator Bright in a number of hard-fought cam- paigns and they refused to leave his leadership, and the assembly adopted the resolutions offered, only three votes being cast against them. Mr. Garber continued to support the Democratic na- tional and State tickets, however, but opened up a vigorous warfare upon Senator Bright and the local organization. In 1854 Mr. Garber took the Courier into the newly-formed People's party, and from there, in the next campaign, into the Republican party, and that paper, under his man- agement, and under the management of his son, Michael C. Garber, Jr., who succeeded to its con- trol in the 70's, has continued to this day to be a tower of strength to the Republican party of Jefferson county. It is probable that if the un- fortunate rupture between Senator Bright and Michael C. Garber had not occurred in 1852,

Jefferson county would have been placed in the Democratic column before 1860, as Senator Bright was an alert and vigorous leader and had formed an organization constituted of active and shrewd party workers-a much better organiza- tion than the Whig party ever had in the county and a better organization than the Republicans were able to perfect until after the Civil War, but

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HISTORY INDIANA DEMOCRACY-1816-1916

the open breach in the party, led by Mr. Garber, was a serious handicap to the party's success. The Courier was the second Democratic paper estab- lished in the county. The Eagle, edited by Wil- liam Hendricks, had ceased publication in the county in the 20's. In the 30's the Courier was established and it had done good and valiant work for the cause of democracy. Rolla Doolittle, one of Senator Bright's stanchest henchmen, was the editor for a while, then Samuel F. and John I. Covington had charge of the paper and main- tained it as a Democratic organ. In 1849 Mr. Garber took control, and soon thereafter occurred the trouble between him and Senator Bright. To replace the Courier a new paper was established in 1852 and named the Madisonian. This paper lasted less than a year, but while in existence proved to be a snappy and spirited advocate of Democratic policies and principles. Its editor was a bright young Irishman, named Robert S. Sproule. Despite the fact that Jefferson county was normally Whig and then Republican by a safe majority, and further that the Democracy had no strong and reliable newspaper organ, still the organization led by Bright, and counseled by his brother, Michael G. Bright, and sustained by Kirk, Doolittle, Marsh, Rea and others, was en- abled to hold the opposition down to a narrow margin of a majority in national and State elec- tions, and sometimes it succeeded in electing a Democrat to local office. Joseph W. Chapman, quite an able lawyer of Madison, was elected to the bench. Tyree A. Pogue, a well-known busi- ness man, was elected County Treasurer, Robert Right Rea was Sheriff for several years, and John Kirk was elected Commissioner twice, and there were other Democrats elected to office in the coun- ty besides these men, but generally as the result of the dissatisfaction of the opposition with their candidates.

In 1851, when Senator Bright was a candi- date for re-election to the United States Senate, he was opposed for this office by Joseph G. Mar- shall, who had been his opponent when he was a candidate six years before. Marshall was the leader of the Whig party, not only in Jefferson county, but in the State as well. He had been the candidate of his party for United States Senator in 1843, when the Legislature was Whig on joint ballot, that party having a majority in the House of Representatives that overcame the Democratic majority in the Senate by two votes. The Senate had refused to go into joint session with the House for the election of a Senator, and in this manner prevented the election of anyone to the United States Senate by that Legislature. The next Legislature was Democratic, and it elected Mr. Bright to the Senate. From that time on the

personal relations between Bright and Marshall were not cordial, so, during the campaign of 1851, Senator Bright took exceptions to some remarks made by Mr. Marshall in the course of a speech de- livered at Ritchie's Mill, some miles out in the country from Madison. Mr. Marshall, in effect, charged Senator Bright with bad faith upon a public matter then under discussion. Bright re- sented this charge, Marshall reiterated it, and Bright wrote him a letter that was regarded by Marshall as insulting. Marshall replied in

a letter that was, in effect, a challenge

to fight a duel. The two gentlemen, ac- companied by some friends, went to Louisville, Ky., for the purpose of arranging a meeting place and time for the duel, but their friends intervened. The matter was amicably adjusted, and they re- turned home without coming together upon the field of honor, but they never spoke to each other afterward.

The Whig party and its great leader in Jeffer- son county died about the same time, as Joseph G. Marshall passed away in 1855. The new-formed Republican party succeeded to the full strength of the Whigs in the county and at once became the leading party. The four men who were recog- nized as the all-powerful leaders of this party, from 1855 until the Greeley campaign in 1872, were John R. Cravens, William McKee Dunn, Da- vid C. Branham and M. C. Garber. They were all men of unusual ability and good standing, and aided by the patriotic feeling developed by the Civil war, which they exploited to the full, they built up a very powerful political organization and absolutely controlled both nominations and elec- tions in the county during the period named. Cravens served nearly all that time in the State Senate, and was the President of the Senate and ex-officio Lieutenant-Governor from 1861 to '65. Branham was a member of the House of Repre- sentatives during the greater part of that period and Speaker of the House a portion of the time. Dunn was elected to Congress in 1860, defeated for re-election in 1862 and elected again in 1864. At the expiration of this last term he was ap- pointed assistant judge advocate-general of the United States army, later becoming advocate-gen- eral, which caused his removal to Washington City and permanent retirement from the politics of the county in the late sixties.

Mr. Garber held the very responsible position of paymaster with the United States army during the war, but continued to edit and publish the Courier, and through its columns dealt the Democ- racy of Jefferson county many a savage blow.

During the first part of this period, that is, from 1855 to 1861, Senator Bright remained in the sad- dle as the leader of the local Democracy, but when

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HISTORY INDIANA

DEMOCRACY-1816 -1916

he was expelled from the United States Senate he left Madison and some time thereafter went to re- side in the State of Kentucky. Henry W. Har- rington, a very able lawyer, who had come to Mad- ison from the State of New York a few years be- fore, was put forward as the titular leader of the party in place of Bright, but the real control of party affairs, for twenty years, remained in the hands of Senator Bright's cabinet, as his faithful henchmen, Doolittle, Kirk and Marsh, were termed. Of this trio Mr. Kirk, commonly known as Captain Kirk, was easily the leader and the more influential and resourceful in political mat- ters. Kirk was a building contractor and a good business man. He was uneducated, being barely able to read and write, but he was a man of fine presence, cool and deliberate judgment, sterling honesty and worth and a born leader of men. As the years went on he became the one and control- ling master mind of the Democratic organization. Harrington was elected to Congress in 1862, de- feating Dunn. In 1864 Dunn defeated him for re- election, and in 1866 Harrington was again elected, but was defeated in 1868 by General Morton C. Hunter. Shortly thereafter he left the State, go- ing first to St. Louis, thence to Indianapolis, where he died in 1879. Among Captain Kirk's most val- uable lieutenants and party workers in the Demo- cratic organization, from 1861 to the early eighties, were M. A. Gavitt, an auctioneer; Isaac C. Earhart, a farmer and business man of Kent; Horace Byfield, a farmer and miller of Lancaster; Hiram Francisco, Sr., a farmer and business man of Wirt; Charles A. Korbly (father of ex-Con- gressman C. A. Korbly and Hon. Bernard Korbly of Indianapolis), a lawyer of ripe attainments and the son-in-law of Michael G. Bright, and Wil- liam Howard, who was the city treasurer of Madi- son during nearly all the seventies. Howard was short in his accounts and was made the butt of vicious attacks in the columns of the Star, a Re- publican newspaper published in Madison during the late seventies and early eighties by John D. Simpson. Howard resented these attacks and got into an altercation with Simpson in 1879, which resulted in Simpson shooting him to death. In 1872 John R. Cravens, who had come to be recog- nized as the most influential among the Repub- lican leaders of the county, followed Greeley into the Liberal Republican party, and after that cam- paign affiliated with the Democrats until his death, which occurred in 1899. At this time the removal of Mr. Dunn to Washington, the appointment of Mr. Garber as postmaster of Madison and his re- tirement from active party control, to an extent, and the impairment of Mr. Branham's activities by reason of approaching age and ill health (he died in 1876) left the Republican party of Jeffer-

son county practically leaderless for a short time. As a result the well-disciplined Democratic organ- ization, under Captain Kirk, scored a partial vic- tory in the election of 1874 by electing M. A. Gavitt sheriff, Charles W. Allfrey recorder and Messrs. Fred Harper, J. W. Shadday and James Jackson commissioners. Four years previous Hiram Francisco, Sr., had been elected senator and two years later James J. Sering, the only Democratic member of a large and powerful Re- publican family, was elected clerk of the circuit court, so at this time there were more Democrats holding office in the court house at Madison than at any period in the history of the county before that time, and more than at any period in the his- tory of the county after that time until 1910. In 1876 the Republicans got together and elected all their county ticket except treasurer, the Demo- crats succeeding in electing John W. Scott, who was the last Democrat to hold office in the county until 1902. In 1878 the Democrats nominated a popular ticket, and there was considerable dis- satisfaction among the Republicans on account of some of their nominees, and Captain Kirk and his aides worked unceasingly to wrest the county from the control of their opponents. In this they were very effectively aided by the Hon. Charles L. Jewett, who was then a young lawyer practic- ing at Scottsburg. Jefferson and Scott counties had composed the Fifth Judicial Circuit for some years and Mr. Jewett, supported by the large Democratic majority of Scott county, had suc- ceeded in being elected prosecuting attorney from 1873 to 1877, and in this year, 1878, he was the Democratic nominee for judge of the circuit. Vincent P. Kirk, a young attorney, and the son of Captain Kirk, was the nominee for prosecutor with Mr. Jewett. William H. Rogers, druggist, of Mad- ison, and a very popular man, was the candidate for representative, and the old wheel-horse, Isaac C. Earhart, of Kent, for sheriff; Mr. Scott being the candidate for re-election to the office of treas- urer and Mr. Allfrey for re-election to the office of recorder. The Republicans did not have a strong organization, but they had some shrewd and not overly scrupulous politicians in charge of their or- ganization, conspicuous among whom were Dr. W. A. Collins, James Y. Allison, judge of the court and candidate for re-election, and John W. Linck, a prominent attorney. The Democrats at the spring election had elected James Brennan, a shoe- maker, trustee of Madison township, the township in which the city of Madison was located. This was before the day of the Australian ballot, and there were but two precincts in the whole town- ship, including the city, and Brennan, by virtue of his office, was the inspector at one of these pre- cincts. Nearly 1,500 votes were cast in this pre-

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HISTORY INDIANA DEMOCRACY-1816-1916

cinct and Brennan was bribed to take out of the box 200 Democratic tickets and substitute there- for 200 Republican ballots. This he was enabled to do by the inefficiency of the other Democratic members of the board, and in this manner the Democratic candidates for judge, prosecutor, rep- resentative, sheriff, treasurer and recorder were counted out and their Republican opponents counted in. The fraud was suspected at once, and an investigation ordered, but Brennan denied the facts, and nothing came of it. Brennan rapidly went to the bad, resigned his office in disgrace and before his death acknowledged his guilt, and gave full details of the matter. In 1880 the Republic- ans of the county perfected an organization that had been growing for some time. It was com- posed of a group of exceedingly shrewd and act- ive men, foremost among whom were the Graham brothers, Thomas, William P. and James, the two former business men and the latter just a plain politician and officeholder, but the keenest and shrewdest organizer, perhaps, that the county has ever known in all its political history. A. D. Van- osdol, lawyer; M. C. Garber, Jr., who had suc- ceeded to the management of the Courier, and James H. Crozier, a business man, were the other most prominent members of this organization. These gentlemen, in addition to their political tact, were men of high standing in the community and, as a result, they built up an organization that in- creased the Republican majority, in fact, practi- cally doubled it, as compared with the majority given to that party in the seventies. As this ef- fective Republican organization grew up the Dem- ocratic organization weakened and fell to pieces. Captain Kirk was getting old, and he soon died. His faithful lieutenants mentioned herein were likewise getting old, and they all dropped out of the political game within a few years, excepting Mr. Korbly. In the place of leadership there was chaos. By this time John R. Cravens, famil- iarly known as Judge Cravens, had come to be looked upon as a Democrat of standing. His schol- arly attainments and high character naturally drew many to follow his lead, but he was now get- ting to be an old man, and while he took part in the councils of the Democracy for many years, in- deed until his death, he did not exhibit that virility and power that marked his career as a Repub- lican leader. Joseph T. Brashear, for many years mayor of Madison, was another leader of some prominence. He was a mechanic and a man of considerable natural force, but his political influ- ence was confined to the city of Madison. Joseph C. Abbott, owner of the Madison & Milton Ferry, who had immigrated to Madison from Kentucky in the late seventies, now began to take an active part in the party affairs, and in 1882 was elected

chairman of the Democratic county central com- mittee. Abbott was a shrewd and forceful char- acter, but he was not an organizer-in fact, he was just the reverse, and in a short time he in- curred antagonisms that rent the party into war- ring factions. The first great mistake made was the abandonment of a party ticket in 1882 and the putting forth of an independent ticket in the county, composed in part of Republicans and in part of Democrats, endorsed and supported by the Democratic organization. This was commonly known as the Kickapoo ticket, and it was inglor- iously defeated by the regular Republican ticket at the election, excepting only the candidate for state senator, James Hill, a wealthy farmer of Brooksburg, and a Republican, who defeated Rev. James W. Lanham of Manville, the Republican candidate. This was caused by the temperance issue, which was injected into the campaign, Mr. Hill being supported by the liberal element, as Rev. Mr. Lanham was avowedly for the prohibi- tion amendment to the Constitution of the State, which was then pending in the Legislature. An- other element in local politics now appeared in the person of Martin A. Barnett. Mr. Barnett, in 1881, came from Danville, Ind., and purchased the Madison Herald, the local organ of the Democracy, from Lin C. Jones. The Herald had grown out of the Progress, a paper started early in the seven- ties by Nicholas Manville, and which was the first pronounced Democratic paper in the county since the Courier had deserted to the opposition and the Madisonian had suspended publication in the early fifties. Upon Mr. Manville's death, in 1876, Mr. Jones had taken over his outfit and changed the name of the paper to the Herald and continued to publish it as a Democratic paper until 1881, when Mr. Barnett purchased it. The Herald was then a weekly paper, but soon afterward Mr. Barnett added a daily edition to it. Barnett, in 1885, was appointed postmaster at Madison by President Cleveland, and this made more trouble. Captain Kirk, the old Democratic wheel-horse, who had practically retired from politics, and who was nearing the end of his life, was an applicant for the office, and he and his friends took the failure of the President to appoint him very much to heart, and there were charges and counter- charges of double-crossing by the local leaders made by Kirk's friends and hurled back by Bar- nett's. In 1887 Barnett sold the Herald to one J. C. Bartlett, from southwestern Indiana, and he to Lin C. Jones, the former proprietor. In 1889 these parties and Mr. Barnett himself all became in- volved in a lawsuit over the ownership of the paper, and pending its settlement John Adams, a stove and tin merchant of Madison, and a stanch Democrat, purchased a new printing outfit and in-

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History of the Indiana democracy, 1816-1916, Part 91

Author: Stoll, John B., 1843-1926 Publication date: 1917 Publisher: Indianapolis : Indiana Democratic Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1104

Author: Stoll, John B., 1843-1926
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Indianapolis : Indiana Democratic Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1104