USA > Indiana > Public men of Indiana : a political history from 1860 to 1890, v. 1 > Part 9
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present marvelous century, and covered such a period of human progress as the eye of man had not rested on until then in all the wide and varied annals of human effort.
His first reading was on grave and serious mat- ters. His youthful mind knew nothing of fiction. His life and thoughts were real. He read mes- sages of the early governors, Jennings, Hendricks, and others, in which there glowed a fervent love of country, and a firm faith in the people.
The glorious traditions and the high American flavor of the Revolution were also fresh, and every- where prevalent, and as a boy, Governor Williams often listened in silent wonder to men not much past middle life, who had been under fire with Washington, and in council with Jefferson, Madi- son and Monroe. It has been said that from lack of education and travel he had a certain narrow- ness of view in public affairs. On the contrary, Governor Williams was developed and instructed from youth to robust manhood in a school of thought and action which never yet failed to make broader, stronger, and more useful men than the Greek lexicon or tourists' guide book. He formed his first ideas of government and of public duty from the purest and best sources, and there was not a proscriptive, intolerant, or narrow sentiment in his nature. His love of country was of the old- fashioned kind, inspired by the spirit of 1776, and it was broad enough to embrace every star of the flag, and every foot of American soil beneath its folds. But there was still another powerful reason
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why Governor Williams carried into the discharge of his duties a sound judgment and a staunch heart. He lived and died a practical farmer. He knew the laboring people better than any public man Indiana ever produced. He was born in their ranks and remained there to the end. He was at home in the broad and wholesome field, and he was familiar with the wants and ways, the hardships and the hopes of those who eat their bread in the sweat of their faces.
From the days of Cincinnatus, to the present time, men seeking popular favor have been pa- raded and eulogized as farmers, who could not tell a field of wheat from a field of oats, but the farmer in whose memory we are here today, drove his team and held the plow; planted the corn, attended its growth and gathered it in; sowed his small grain and reaped his harvests; raised horses, sheep, cat- tle and hogs, and fed them with his own hands. He made more than two blades of grass to grow where none had grown before. In the pursuit of these labors, he became deeply imbued with sympathy for the agricultural classes, and with an earnest de- sire for their improvement. At an early period of his life he became actively identified with agricul- tural associations and for more than thirty years, was a controlling member of the Indiana State Fair organization. This tribute so long continued and coming as it did, from the tillers of the soil was peculiarly grateful, and I doubt if any political honor was ever as pleasant to him, or as highly prized as his prominent connection with the county
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and State fairs of Indiana. He delighted to inter- view a herd of blooded cattle as keenly as a reporter delights to interview a string of candidates for the presidency. His enjoyment over a bunch of fine sheep or a lot of cultivated hogs, looking com- fortable from high living, and handsome from fine breeding, was very great and very genuine. In his admiration of the horses he had, without reading Bacon, adopted the Baconian philosophy. He looked to utility rather than to style and speed. His pride was in the farmer's horse rather than in the flying courser of the race track. Growing gol- den grain, the tall, dark corn, the rich golden wheat, the clover fields and broad meadow lands, were to him a source of unfailing interest and con- tinuous comment.
While traversing every part of the State a few years ago, and as the bright and beautiful farms seemed to glide by like a painted panorama on ex- hibition, how often have I heard his exclamation of delight, and listened to his comments on the more than magical changes he had witnessed. He had, indeed, in his own day and generation, seen the wilderness put off its savage garb, and array its waste places in the richest robes of progress, culture and refinement.
I have heard him recall the fact that within his recollection not a tree of the primeval forest had been disturbed by the white man's ax, where now stands the splendid capitol of our State. * * It is not any wonder, therefore, that he looked with peculiar emotions on the present condition of
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Indiana, the happy home of two million healthy, prosperous people, her fields yielding more agri- cultural wealth in proportion to area, than any other State in the Union; her coal, timber, stone and fine clays giving employment to a hundred thousand laborers.
He also saw the cause of education move for- ward with a force and rapidity unknown in any other commonwealth; he saw the whole face of the State adorned and lit up with commodious free schools, with colleges, seminaries, high schools and universities; he exulted in the fact that rising gen- erations had access to pathways of learning and science, and that there were so few left in Indiana, who were unable to read and write their mother- tongue. In all these stupendous developments Gov- ernor Williams, whether in private or public life, always bore an active and honorable part. In 1843, then being thirty-five years of age, he was first elected to the Indiana legislature as a member of the house, and from that time to the day of his death he was rarely, if ever, out of public employ- ment.
During a period of thirty years he was almost continuously elected and re-elected to the legisla- ture, either as a member of the house or the senate. Such long and unbroken confidence, on the part of those who knew him best, is a far more eloquent eulogy than can be uttered over his grave on this occasion.
The administration of Governor Williams as chief magistrate of Indiana is too recent and
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fresh in the public mind to call for discussion or extended notice. It is an honorable part of the history of a magnificent State; a State whose career in all the elements of greatness has been with the speed and strength of the eagle's wing in his flight toward the sun.
Governor Williams loved Indiana and has left no blot on her name. He was her thirteenth exec- utive, elected by the people, and in the noble fra- ternity of his predecessors in that high office he stands a peer. Others more learned in books, but none wiser in the principles of self-government, nor purer in administering them for the welfare of the laboring, producing, business interests of the State. *
But two of those who preceded him in the exec- utive chair are amongst the living, one of whom is here to join in honor to the dead. Long, long, may their useful and honorable lives be spared, and at last when the final hour of rest shall come to them, as it will to all of us, may the memories which cluster around their names in the hearts of all their countrymen, without respect to creed or party, be as kind, as free from reproach, and as gentle in their judgment as those which now gather around the name of James D. Williams and hal- low the spot where he sleeps."
Among the distinguished persons in attendance at the unveiling were, Governor Conrad Baker, and Senator Benjamin Harrison.
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CHAPTER XIX
E VENTS of the campaign of 1876 show how troublesome the liquor dealers were to the Democratic party and how the temperance people disconcerted the Republicans.
A Democratic platform that did not declare in favor of the largest liberty to liquor dealers and against sumptuary laws was a defective structure. And a Republican platform that did not inveigh against the evils of intemperance, and give some promises of local option or prohibition, failed to satisfy the strong temperance Republicans, who were insistent not only on having the platform to suit them, but also that only total abstinence can- didates should be nominated.
As already mentioned, the temperance voters in the Republican party had exacted a public pledge from General Browne that defeated him for gov- ernor in 1872. Godlove S. Orth, who was nom- inated in 1876, of German descent and known to occasionally refresh himself with a glass of beer, was so unsatisfactory to this same element of voters that many of them openly declared their intention to vote against him. He had served many terms in congress, was a man of great ability, and had been United States Minister to Venezuela.
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In addition to the charges of temperance people against him, the Democrats were giving out hints about a scandal that attached to him growing out of his having had some connection with a bond issue by the Venezuelan government that had caused some financial losses to American inves- tors. Fearing that these attacks upon him might defeat him, the Republican State Central Com- mittee gave him a hint that his withdrawal from the race would not be objected to, and he tendered his resignation as a candidate and it was accepted, and General Harrison was substituted.
The Baxter liquor law that Governor Hendricks had found no constitutional objections to and re- fused to veto, was amended in some of its provi- sions in 1875, but as amended was in force and some of its provisions were being contested in the Supreme Court, and the liquor dealers were look- ing to that tribunal for a decision against its va- lidity. and were also clamoring for its repeal if it was held valid. They were very much afraid that the Supreme Court would decide against them and particularly afraid of Judge Alexander C. Dow- ney, who was a member of the Methodist Church, and one of the trustees of Asbury University, and known to be a man of strictly temperate habits, and pronounced temperance sentiments. It so happened that a disappointed applicant for the position of librarian of the Supreme Court was willing to aid these liquor interest, by making charges against all the four Democratic judges who had been renominated, to the effect that they
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had made some court allowances against the State for some small items of stationery and office sup- plies that should have been charged to their per- sonal accounts. These charges were so magnified and repeated in the public press, and elsewhere, that the Democratic State Central Committee took notice of them and did not intend that the Repub- lican State Committee should outdo their committee in applying purifying processes to their State ticket, and called meetings of the same delegates who had attended the State convention from the respective districts of the four judges to determine whether they should be removed, and if removed, to nominate judicial candidates in their places. These conventions were held. The friends of Judge Worden of the Fort Wayne district, under the leadership of Honorable Robert C. Bell, ral- lied to his support and adjourned the convention, leaving him on the ticket. The candidates in the other three districts withdrew and William E. Niblack was nominated in place of Samuel H. Buskirk. George V. Howk was nominated in place of Judge Downey, and Samuel E. Perkins in place of John Petit. They were all elected. Judge Worden's plurality being greater than the others, and the court so constituted upheld the validity of the Baxter law in the cases involving it, but the law was repealed at the session of 1877.
The retirement of Orth from the State ticket did not retire him from public life. He was again elected to serve three terms in congress, but de- feated in his last race in 1882 by his fellow towns-
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man, Judge Thomas B. Ward, the Democratic nominee. Judge Ward was again elected in 1884 over Major Charles T. Dovey of Anderson.
William S. Holman of Dearborn County, served many terms in congress. Was a member during all of the Civil War period and for a number of years afterwards, and gained the name of the "Watch Dog of the Treasury" by his persistent objections to land grants and congressional appro- priations. His ability in defeating them was only equalled by his success in getting votes by his pecu- liar methods of electioneering. He made it a point to always put himself on familiar terms with the people of his district by calling them by their first names and asking every man he met for a chew of his tobacco. In 1863, the Confederate General John H. Morgan, with his army of about four thou- sand rebel cavalry soldiers, crossed from Kentucky into Indiana and made a raid through Holman's district, where he received many assurances of sym- pathy for the Southern cause from the Hoosiers he met, the sincerity of which he insisted should be evidenced by their turning over to him their horses, cattle, and other property that his struggling army was so much in need of, and of course they readily complied with this request. The many owners of this confiscated property placed their claims for payment against the Federal government in the hands of Holman and became staunch supporters of his in all of his after races for congress. On one occasion when he was interposing an objection to an appropriation, one of his colleagues hap-
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pened to remember about these Morgan raid claims and said he had always observed that "Watch dogs never barked when there was any of the fam- ily about." Holman was still in congress when Cleveland became president and still a member of the appropriations committee. When a new crowd of beneficiaries of appropriations belonging to his own party would be affected by his objeetions, it was deemed expedient to have him transferred from the appropriations committee to another, where his objections would not be so harmful to the of- fice holding patriots who always stand for the old flag and an appropriation. His willingness to be so transferred was made the basis of a challenge of his right to the name of a "Watch Dog" by his Republican opponents in the races he afterwards made. He met his first defeat after the war by James E. Watson, who because of his triumph be- came and continued a conspicuous figure in Repub- lican politics in the State.
The Democratic State convention of 1876, pres- ented the name of Hendricks to the country for the nomination for president. Its instructed dele- gates and all the members of his party in the State were his enthusiastic supporters at the national convention that was that year held at St. Louis. He received the votes of delegates from nearly all the Northern States, but New York had formed a combination with the solid South that forced the nomination of Samuel J. Tilden, and Hendricks was unanimously nominated for vice-president.
Indiana Democrats were greatly disappointed in
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not seeing the name of Hendricks at the head and were slow in working up their enthusiasm for the ticket. A ratification meeting was held in the State House yard, at which Honorable William H. Eng- lish presided, and in an able speech he made a clear statement of the issues that must be decided by the people. Contrary to the position that the party had adhered to in the campaign of 1874 in the endorsement of the financial policies of the Greenback party, and in opposition to the re- sumption of specie payment of the governments obligations, the St. Louis platform contained a strong arraignment of the Republican party be- cause it had made no progress toward the resump- tion of specie payment. The speech of English on that occasion, and others in line with it, had the effect to bring the party back to its original beliefs as a sound money party.
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CHAPTER XX
G ENERAL RUTHERFORD B. HAYES of Ohio, was the Republican nominee for president in 1876, defeating James G. Blaine, Ben- jamin H. Bristow, and Oliver P. Morton.
Hayes was a practicing lawyer of Cincinnati when the Civil War began, and by honorable ser- vice in the Union army became a major general, and was elected to congress in 1864 while serving in the field. James G. Blaine, his rival for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1876, had hired a substitute to perform his part in the suppression of the rebellion, he was one of the most vociferous actors in keeping alive the animos- ities of the war by waving the banner of the "Bloody Shirt."
Hayes had been a successful contender with Allen G. Thurman for governor of Ohio in 1869 and in 1875, when the questions of retiring the in- flated currency of the country and the resumption of specie payment of the government obligations were live political questions, and his stand for sound money endeared him to the financiers of the country, whose influence secured him the presi- dential nomination in the face of the great wave of enthusiasm for Blaine that rolled over the con-
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vention in response to the great nominating speech of Robert G. Ingersoll, a copy of which is here reproduced as a sample of political rhetoric, and because it has some bearing upon the same indus- trial and financial conditions then prevailing that exist now when this is written.
Benjamin H. Bristow of Kentucky had been placed in nomination by a delegate from Massa- chusetts, when the cheers that greeted Ingersoll as he came on the stage subsided, he said :
"Massachusetts may be satisfied with the loyalty of Benjamin H. Bristow; so am I; but if any man nominated by this convention cannot carry the State of Massachusetts, I am not satisfied with the loyalty of that State. If the nominee of this con- vention cannot carry the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts by 75,000 majority, I would ad- vise them to sell out Faneuil Hall as a Demo- cratic headquarters. I would advise them to take from Bunker Hill that old monument of glory.
The Republicans of the United States demand as their leader in the great contest of 1876 a man of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of well known and approved political opinions. They de- mand a statesman; they demand a reformer after as well as before the election. They demand a poli- tician in the highest, broadest and best sense, a man of superb moral courage. They demand a man acquainted with public affairs, with the wants of the people, with not only the requirements of the hour, but with the demands of the future. They demand a man broad enough to comprehend the
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relations of this government to the other nations of the earth. They demand a man well versed in the powers, duties and prerogatives of each and every department of the government. They de- mand a man who will saeredly preserve the finan- cial honor of the United States; one who knows enough to know that the national debt must be paid through the prosperity of the people; one who knows enough to know that all the money must be made not by law, but by labor; one who knows enough to know that the people of the United States have the industry to make the money and the honor to pay it over just as fast as they make it. The Republicans of the United States demand a man who knows that prosperity and resumption when they come must come together, that when they come they will come hand in hand through the golden harvest fields, hand in hand by the wheeling spindles and turning wheels; hand in hand past the open furnace doors; hand in hand by the flaming forges; hand in hand by the chim- neys filled with eager fire, greeted and grasped by the countless sons of toil. This money has to be dug out of the earth. You cannot make it by pass- ing resolutions in a political convention.
The Republicans of the United States want a man who knows that this government should pro- tect every citizen at home and abroad, who knows that any government that will not defend its de- fenders and protect its protectors is a disgrace to the map of the world.
They demand a man who believes in the eternal
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separation and divorcement of church and State. They demand a man whose political reputation is spotless as a star; but they do not demand that their candidate shall have a certificate of moral character signed by a Confederate congress. The man who has in full heaped and rounded the meas- ures, all these splendid qualifications is the pres- ent grand and gallant leader of the Republican party-James G. Blaine.
Our country, crowned with the vast and marvel- ous achievements of its first century, asks for a man worthy of the past and prophetic of her future; asks for a man who has the audacity of genuis; asks for a man who is the grandest com- bination of heart, conscience and brain beneath her flag. Such a man is James G. Blaine. For the Republican hosts, led by this intrepid man, there can be no defeat.
This is a grand year, a year filled with recollec- tions of the Revolution, filled with proud and ten- der memories of the past, with the sacred legends of liberty; a year in which the sons of freedom will drink from the fountains of enthusiasm; a year in which the people call for a man who has pre- served in congress what our soldiers won upon the battlefields: a year in which we call for the man who has torn from the throat of treason the tongue of slander, for the man who has snatched the mask of democracy from the hidden face of rebellion, for the man who like an intellectual athlete has stood in the arena of debate and challenged all comers and goers, and who up to this present moment is
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a total stranger to defeat. Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American congress and threw his shining lance full fair against the brazen fore- head of the defamed defamers of his country and the maligners of his honor. For the Republicans to desert this gallant leader now is as though an army should desert their general upon the field of battle.
James G. Blaine is now and has been for years the bearer of the sacred standard of the Repub- lican party. I call it sacred because no human being can stand beneath its fold without becoming and remaining free.
Gentlemen of the convention, in the name of the great Republic, the only Republic that ever existed upon the earth; in the name of all her defenders and of all her supporters; in the name of all her soldiers living, in the name of all her soldiers dead upon the field of battle; and in the name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch of famine at Andersonville and Libby, whose sufferings he so vividly remembers-Illinois, Illinois, nominates for the next president of this country that prince of parliamentarians, that leader of leaders, James G. Blaine."
This great speech was not responded to by the nomination of the candidate in whose behalf it was made, nor did the country realize the grandeur of the year "filled with the recollections of the Revo- lution," when the first act in the performance of reversing the result of the election of 1876 was put
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on the stage. The "fountains of joy and enthusi- asm" that gushed forth when the first returns came in suddenly, turned into a raging torrent of indigna- tion when Zach Chandler, the chairman of the Re- publican National Committee, a United States sen- ator from Michigan announced, without giving any particulars or reasons for the declaration that Hayes had received 185 votes and was elected. This astounding declaration was based on what turned out to have been the successful workings of the returning boards in the State of South Caro- lina, Florida, and Louisiana, in certifying that Hayes electors had been chosen in these States. The elections in these States were held at polling places, surrounded by United States soldiers, under laws that had been passed by the "carpet bag" governments that in substance gave the power to election officials to add to the votes that had been actually cast such a number as they chose to say would have been cast if the voters had not been intimidated. These election officers were Republi- cans, who estimated that such a number of negro voters had been intimidated as would have given the Hayes electors a majority, notwithstanding the fact that the army prevented their intimidation. At the same time they certified that the Democra- tic candidates for governors in these States had been elected by large majorities. It soon developed that on the night of the election and before Chand- ler had made his infamous declaration that a num- ber of "visiting statesmen" had been hurried to these Southern States while the returning
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were still in session and subsequent events gave color to the suspicion that these "visiting states- men" had made a tentative deal with the Southern Democratic leaders that their State governments would be bestowed to them and that carpet baggers would be relieved of their powers if there was an acquiescence in the verity and legality of the re- turns of the election officers by "Southern chiv- alry," and as a consequence the question arose as to whether congress in declaring the result of the election could go behind the returns or must only count the votes as they had been certified.
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