USA > Wisconsin > A political history of Wisconsin > Part 13
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
Probably this unpleasantness with the Democratic party helped Randall and his colleagues on the ticket, as the campaign resulted in the election of all of them by a majority of nearly 4,000, the first time the Republicans filled all the State offices since the party was organized. The newly-elected State officers were all picked men in the State. Randall began his political career in territorial times, and was never placed in an official position where he did not show to good advantage. His conduct in the executive office during the exciting and trying times of the first years of the rebellion stamped him as a statesman and a patriot. Carl Schurz had been offered the nomination for Lieutenant-Governor in the convention, but he rejected it with scorn. Butler G. Noble was then nominated-a good man and an excellent stump orator. Louis P. Harvey. the Secretary of State, was elected Governor two years later. Samuel D. Hastings, the Treasurer, was one of the best men who ever filled that or any other public office, as his eight years' occupancy of it proved. James II. Howe, the Attorney General, was a nephew of Senator Timothy O. Howe,
·
1-17
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
and was afterwards appointed federal judge of Wisconsin in place of Judge A. G. Miller. , J. F. Pickard. the Superintendent of Public Instruction, was a conspicuous educator. and afterwards was superintendent of schools in the city of Chicago. Hans C. Heg. the State Prison Commissioner, was a splendid representa- tive of our Scandinavian population. He went to the front and laid down his life for his adopted country.
Abraham Lincoln made his first and last visit to Milwaukee, and his second visit to Wisconsin, in the fall of 1859. His first visit to Wisconsin he had made while serving as a volunteer soldier during the Black Hawk War. He came to Milwaukee upon the invitation of the officers of the State Agricultural Society, which held its State Fair in this city in that year. Mr. Lincoln had been selected as a drawing card to deliver the annual address. Not that "Honest Old Abe" knew or was supposed to know anything about farming, but he had become conspicuous by reason of the great debate on the slavery question which he had held with Stephen A. Douglas the year before, who was then a. Senator from the State of Illinois, and an avowed candidate for the nomination of President on the Democratic ticket. When the senatorial term of Mr. Douglas was about to expire. the Republicans of Illinois held a State Convention and put forward Mr. Lincoln as their champion against him, and by mutual agreement they stumped the State together, attracting immense audiences wherever they went, composed of the adherents of both parties. Altogether it was one of the most remarkable political debates ever held in this country. The question of admitting slavery .into the new and unoccupied Territories of the United States overshadowed all others for the time being, and this was the subject of discussion between these two noted and clever men. Mr. Douglas had seemingly entered the contest with the chances of success largely in his favor, both from a personal and political standpoint. IFe had been for twelve years an active and recognized leader of the Democratic party in the Senate of the United States, and had been conspicuous at the bar and upin the bench before he entered the more trying arena of national politics. He was ambitious to be President of the United States, and had been called by Horace
148
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
Greeley, the editor of The New York Tribune, "the ablest tit-for- tat debater in the upper house of Congress."
This was the accomplished controversialist and trained states- man that Mr. Lincoln was expected to meet in a joint discussion of the most exciting and perplexing problem that had ever been brought to the attention of the American people since the Revolu- tionary War ended at Yorktown. He had had but little experi- ence in public life, had served one term in Congress, and was known as a country lawyer with a small practice in the lower courts. In early life he had been very poor, and had spent some time in running flatboats and splitting rails. His education was scant, and he had never seen the inside of a college or university in his life except as a visitor. Whatever he was, he was in nowise indebted to the schoolmaster for it. How well he held his own against Mr. Douglas is a matter of history. The only advantage Mr. Lincoln had over his wily opponent was that he was on the right side.
The result of that most remarkable contest was that while Mr. Douglas secured the election of enough members of the Illinois Senate and Assembly to get reelected to the United States Senate, Mr. Lincoln beat him on the popular vote in the State by 3.568 votes-the vote standing, for Lincoln, 124.68; for Douglas, 121,- 130. It is proper to state that the influence of President Buchanan was thrown against Mr. Douglas in that contest. whose prospective return to the Senate was not pleasing to that fossilized Pennsyl- vanian.
I do not remember who was the President of the State Agri- cultural Society at that time, but I know that the two most active and influential members of the organization were John W. Hoyt, the Secretary, and David Atwood, the Treasurer. Neither of these gentlemen was a practical farmer, nor had either ever been such. Hoyt had been a professor at one time in the State Uni- „versity in the incipiency of that institution, and later on became somewhat of a politician, winding up his political career by serv- ing one term as Governor of the then Territory of Wyoming. General Atwood was senior editor of The Madison Journal for many years, with Horace Rublee as his assistant, and it was Hoyt
·
.٠ ..
2
·
A POLITIC.IL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 149
and Atwood who induced Mr. Lincoln to come and make a speech to the farmers. On that occasion, the fair was held at the Cold Spring race course, and as that was before the days of horse rail- roads, the old methods of travel had to be resorted to by the crowd in getting there, and people on foot, in omnibuses, in wagons and carriages, lined the road leading from the city to what was then considered an out-of-the-way place for locating such an exhibi- tion. Mr. Lincoln did not prove to be much of an attraction on that occasion. His fame came later on with the presidency, the great rebellion and the emancipation proclamation. He was then simply "Old Abe," an Illinois lawyer, given to telling good stories, and the man who had worsted "'the little giant" in a great debate. He was not then looked upon by many of the people of Wisconsin as even a probable candidate for the presidency. It is not to be wondered at that his address, which was delivered in the afternoon, and two or three miles from the then principal business and resi- dence portions of the city, should not attract a large audience. The address itself was such a one as Mr. Lincoln might be ex- pected to deliver under the circumstances. He must have felt conscious that his appearance here was something in the nature of a show, for he was not a practical farmer, and he knew that he could not talk to agriculturalists to their profit any more than one of them could expound the law to him. However, he made the best of it and talked from observation and theory rather than from practical knowledge and experience, and in that sense he talked exceedingly well, as he always did on any subject.
A
Mr. Lincoln remained over night in Milwaukee after deliver- ing his address. a guest at the Newhall House, which was at that time the only first-class hotel in the city. Why he did not return to Chicago that same evening no one knows, but most likely it was for the reason that no night train was run on the single line of railroad that then connected us with the great town at the head of Lake Michigan. After supper many of the prominent citizens of Milwaukee called at the hotel to pay their respects to Mr. Lin- coln, and there were also stopping there some of the notable inen from different parts of the State who were in attendance on the fair. It is also true that some of Milwaukee's 400 did not con-
.
150
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
sider Mr. Lincoln of importance enough to justify them in the condescension required of them to seek an introduction to him.
It was not long after tea when the rotunda of the Newhall House was well filled. and Mr. Lincoln was busy shaking hands and making pleasant remarks to the gentlemen who were intro- duced to him. At length some one suggested that it was a great oversight that the presence of so distinguished an advocate of the anti-slavery cause as Mr. Lincoln had not been taken advantage of so that he might have delivered an address upon that all-absorb- ing topic. After a number of gentlemen had expressed their regret that a public meeting had not been called and advertised, Mr. Lin- colu was asked if he would not give them a little talk then and there, to which the "rail splitter" facetiously replied that there was no platform to stand upon, meaning that a speaker ought to be elevated above his auditors, who were all standing; and secondly, that there was nothing to talk about. The first objection was soon overcome by some one going out and soon returning with an empty dry goods box for Mr. Lincoln to stand upon. Who did this timely service for the crowd [ do not now remember, for memory is not infallible after the lapse of nearly forty years, but I think Peter Van Vechten had a hand in it. It would have been just like the man who tolled the bell in the fire engine house when old John Brown was hung a year later at Harper's Ferry. The platform being thus speedily provided. Mr. Lincoln reluctantly stepped upon it and proceeded to deliver an address upon the one burning issue of the hour-slavery. It was the absorbing question everywhere. All the churches had been rent in twain by it. The Supreme Court of the United States had declared that a negro had no rights a white man was bound to respect. The Missouri compromise line had been repealed and the slaveholders declared that under the Constitution they had the right to carry their slaves into territory then free. The Fugitive Slave Act. which outraged the moral sense of the North, had been passed and enforced. Charles Sumner had been beaten almost to death with ' a bludgeon in his seat in the Senate for making a speech upon the "barbarism of slavery." Abolitionists had been mobbed in Bos- ton, and Lovejoy had been murdered in Alton. The territory
.
151
A POLITIC.IL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
dedicated to freedom by the Ordinance of 1787 was being taken possession of by slaveholders. Slavery had ruined the old Whig party, and it had disrupted and disorganized the Democratic party. The Southern sky was already aglow with the flames of civil war. Who could talk or think of anything else?
Mr. Lincoln spoke calmly for three-quarters of an hour upon this tremendous issue that was soon to be the cause of the most bloody and expensive civil war in modern history, little thinking as he spoke that he was to be the leading man in that great his- torical drama, or that the drama would finally end in tragedy with l:imself as the victim of the assassin's bullet! I see him now, as he stood there under the gaslight upon his improvised rostrum, his tall. gaunt form trembling with suppressed emotion as he de- picted the elangers to the country which he felt to be imminent, and the look of inexpressible sadness that at times overspread his swarthy, homely features, no one will ever forget. I never saw that benignant countenance again until I looked upon it in the casket, as the remains lay in state in Chicago, when the body of the Great Emancipator was being taken back to Springfield. after J. Wilkes Booth had fired the fatal shot "that was heard around the world."
The daily papers of that day were not as enterprising as they are now, and no report was made of that notable speech delivered by the most remarkable, if not the greatest man who has yet ap- peared in our history except George Washington. Certainly he was the most picturesque character that our free institutions have yet produced, and his superb qualities of head and heart will be magnified more and more as the years pass on. Joseph Mediil. the accomplished editor of The Chicago Tribune, tells how on one occasion in his earlier newspaper experience, he went to Spring- field to report Mr. Lincoln's speech before a State Convention for his paper. and that he became so enamored of him and so much engrossed in his address that he forgot his mission entirely, and made no notes. Perhaps if some stenographer had been present on the occasion I am trying to describe, he would have lost his head and made no record for the use of the future historian. I only remember that Mr. Lincoln followed closely along the same
.
152
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
line of argument that he pursued in some of his speeches in his great debate with Judge Douglas, though, of course, it was more of a summary than an claboration. Mr. Douglas had invented the very taking phrase of "squatter sovereignty," by which he meant that the squatters in any new territory had the alienable right to establish slavery, if they so desired, and this the border ruffians from Missouri were then trying to do in "bleeding Kansas." It was a sort of declaration in favor of home rule or self-govern- ment that met with the approval of many ignorant people who were incapable of seeing the fatal result of a bad policy. Mr. Lincoln exposed the fallacy of this by simply saying that "if one man sought to deprive another man of his liberty, no third person had any right to say anything about it!" I remember that he closed his remarks with the famous declaration which he made at Springfield in June. 1858, in his opening speech in the notable discussion with Mr. Douglas, when he enunciated the startling doctrine that "the Federal Union could not permanently endure half slave and half free." I copy this remarkable prophecy from a report of Mr. Lincoln's Springfield speech made at the time. He said:
"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending. we could better judge what to do. and how to do it We are now in the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased. but has constantly augmented. In my opin- ion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot permanently endure half slave and half . free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will come all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it. and place it where the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction: or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South!"
.
مه
هـ
.
153
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
The scene was intensely dramatic, and after the lapse of nearly forty years, the picture in my memory, though somewhat dimmed by the dust of time. is still so well preserved that it can never be effaced. There stood the man of destiny as unconscious of his own great future as any of his auditors, and around him were grouped many of the prominent men of the city whose serious inces reflected the solemn utterances of the inspired seer or prophet who had given voice to their own convictions. All felt that coming events were casting shadows before. and that we were on the verge of civil war! Many of those present deeply pondered upon Mr. Lincoln's solemn prediction as they walked homeward that drizzly November night. "I do not believe that this Union can permanently endure, half slave and half free." Nearly all those who heard the great man on that occasion have passed away. Among them were Asahel Finch, Sherman M. Booth, E. B. Wolcott, Alexander Mitchell. W. H. Metcalf, Mr. Strickland, George Dyer, General James H. Paine, Byron Paine, C. L. Sholes, W. W. Coleman, Harrison Ludington, Daniel New- hall, David Atwood, Cicero Comstock, Jackson Hadley, Rufus King, Hans Crocker, J. A. Noonan, E. H. Goodrich, S. S. Merrill, J. A. Bryden, A. J. Aikens, P. Van Vechten, J. J. Orton, Ed. San- derson, William A. Prentiss, A. L. Kane, Halbert E. Paine, John Plankinion, T. A. Chapman, E. D. Holton, Rev. C. A. Staples, John R. Sharpstein, John H. Tweedy. Arthur McArthur and E. H. Brodhead. What a fine opportunity for some local Carl Marr to make himself famous by painting a picture of the scene so imper- fectly described above, that would forever link the immortal name of Abraham Lincoln with the proud city of Milwaukee!
٠,٠٠
CHAPTER XI.
THE POLITICS OF THE WAAR TIME.
.The first year of Randall's second term, 1860, was attended with the usual excitement incident to a presidential campaign. The aggressions of the slave power had thoroughly aroused the freedom-loving spirit of the North, and the Republicans of Wis- consin determined to cast the electoral vote of the State for Lin- coln and Hamlin-as it had been cast for Fremont four years before. There was unusual interest everywhere manifested on both sides. All the speaking talent among Democrats and Repub- licans was called into requisition, and the cauvass was very thor- ough. In November the vote stood, Lincoln, 86,110; Douglas, 65.021; Breckenridge, 881, and Bell. 161. Lincoln's majority over Douglas was over 20.000. For the second time in the history of the State all the Republican candidates for Congress were elected. namely, John F. Potter, Luther Hanchett, and A. Scott Sloan. Potter had already served two terms in Congress and had at- tracted wide attention by offering to fight a duel with Roger A. Pryor with bowie-knives. Hanchett and Sloan were new faces in Washington, but both had made their mark in State politics. The defeated candidates were J. E. Arnold: J. D. Reymert and Charles H. Larrabee.
Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated President March 4. 1861. . and Fort Sumter was fired upon April 12 of that year.
This overt act on the part of the rebels began the most expensive and destructive civil war of modern times, and a call ier troops was made by the President on the 16th of April. Thirty- six companies tendered their services to Governor Randall in one week, and during the last year of his administration be placed sixteen regiments of infantry in the field. During the next four years the people of Wisconsin did not bend all their energies to
154
155
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
help the administration to put down the Rebellion, bat gave some attention to politics. Party organizations and party discipline were kept up, political conventions were held as usual, and the policy of the administration in conducting the war was fiercely discussed.
The choice for United States Senator that year took place on the 23d of January, and fell upon Timothy O. Howe, who suc- ceeded Charles Durkee. His Republican competitors were Goy- ernor Randall and Cadwallader C. Washburn. The Democrats cast their votes for Henry L. Palmer. Judge Howe had been a candidate for the Senate against James R. Doolittle four years before. and would undoubtedly have been elected then if it had not been that he was opposed to the State rights doc- trine that had been enunciated by the Supreme Court in the Booth case. Now that the blaze of civil war had illuminated that theory of State sovereignty so that "he who runs might read"- if he was not running away from the draft-Judge Howe's posi- tion was better understood and he became more popular, so popu- lar in fact that Wisconsin kept him in the Senate for eighteen years. He was the close personal friend and adviser of Abraham Lincoln all through the critical period of the Civil War, and made the name of Wisconsin respected in Washington by his ability, high moral . character, patriotism and devotion to the good of the whole people. His loyalty to the Republican party: was often put to the test and never found wanting. While he was in the Senate he was offered a position on the Supreme bench of the United States, a place that he had always coveted, but if he had accepted it at that time. a Democrat would have succeeded him, and he declined the tempt- ing offer. He was appointed Postmaster-General by President Arthur. He died suddenly at Racine March 25, 1883, while a member of the cabinet.
Judge Howe was in some respects a peculiar man. He was not popular with common people, and nobody ever called him "a good fellow." Many thought him a cold-blooded man with which any sort of intimacy was impossible, but those who knew him person- ally thought him exceedingly agreeable. companionable and lov- able. He won his way to eminence by his fine ability, his high
156
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
moral courage, his clean private and public life, his unyielding integrity, and his determination to do right as he saw it. The record that he made during the eighteen years he served the State and the country through the most critical period in the history of the nation will remain a monument to his memory as long as sincerity in a public servant is admired.
It was in the dark days of 1863, when the life of the nation hung tremblingly in the balance, during a debate in the Senate on the proposition to employ the negroes in the Union army, which Howe was advocating, that he was interrupted by Browning of Illinois, who declared that there was no authority in the Con- stitution for doing it. Howe immediately replied: "Let us do it, then, in the name of God!"
At the close of Governor Randall's administration in 1861, he announced his intention of entering the military service, and there was much speculation as to his successor in the executive office. There was a disposition among a large class of Republicans to ignore party lines, and to make the preservation of the Union the only test of loyalty; but this generosity met with only a feeble response. Accordingly, a slimly attended Union convention was held in Madison September 24, to nominate State officers. and L. P. Harvey, then Secretary of State, a Republican, was nominated for Governor, and Henry L. Palmer, a prominent Democrat, was nominated for Lieutenant-Governor, who subsequently declined. and James T. Lewis was substituted in his place; W. C. Allen for Secretary of State; S. D. Hastings ior Treasurer; J. H. Howe for Attorney General; John Bracken for Bank Comptroller; Hans C. Heg for State Prison Commissioner, and J. E. Pickard for Super- intendent of Public Instruction. Two days later the regular Repub- lican State Convention put the following ticket in nomination: Governor, L. P. Harvey; Lieutenant-Governor, Edward Salomon; Secretary of State, James T. Lewis; Treasurer, S. D. Hastings; Attorney General, J. H. Howe; Bank Comptroller, W. H. Ram- sey; Superintendent of Public Instruction, J. L. Pickard; State Prison Commissioner, A. P. Hodges. This ticket was elected by a majority ranging from 5,000 to 10,000.
On the night of the 21st of April Governor Harvey fell over-
157
A POLITIC.IL. HUSTORY OF WISCONSIN.
board from a steamboat at Pittsburg Landing. on the Tennessee River, and was drowned. He had finished his work among the sick and wounded soldiers at Shiloh and was ready to start for home. No event ever occurred in the State that caused such uni- versal sorrow. He was a man greatly beloved by all who knew him, and public meetings were held in all parts of the State to give expression to the feelings of the people. He was the son of poor parents and had to make his own way in the world. like Lin- coln, Garfield. and other noted and useful citizens. He entered the Western Reserve college at Hudson, Ohio, but ill health com- pelled him to leave before graduation: He then devoted himself to the honorable and useful occupation of teaching, which he fol- lowed for some years with much success. Locating in Kenosha in 1841, he opened a select school, and amused himself by employ- ing his leisure time in writing editorials for the Southport (Ken- osha) American. This gave him a taste for public affairs. He soon began to make political speeches for the edification of the country people, who flocked to the school houses at the cross roads to hear the brilliant young teacher and editor discourse upon the issues that divided the two parties. He was a man a little above medium height, of pleasing address, winning in his conversa- tion, and made friends readily. In 1847 he removed to Rock county and at once took a leading part in the affairs of that splendid locality. The same year he was elected to help in the important work of framing a second constitution for the State, and after Wis- consin was admitted into the Union he served two terms as a mem- ber of the State Senate, and was president pro. tem. of that body. In 1860-I he was Secretary of State, and in January, 1862. he was transferred from the State department to the executive office. No man in Wisconsin ever took the gubernatorial chair with a brighter prospect of an honorable career before him than Louis P. Harvey. He had superior ability, a clear insight into public affairs, a natural adaptation for political life, backed by incorruptible integrity and a conscientious fidelity to truth and duty. His premature deathi was sincerely mourned by all parties.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.