History of Milwaukee from its first settlement to the year 1895, Part 17

Author: Conard, Howard Louis, ed. cn
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Chicago and New York, American Biographical Publishing Co
Number of Pages: 840

USA > Wisconsin > Milwaukee County > Milwaukee > History of Milwaukee from its first settlement to the year 1895 > Part 17

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POLITICS AND POLITICAL ISSUES BEFORE THE WAR.

any suit under the provisions of this act, the cause or foundation of which shall be the act of an individual under the influence of intoxicating liquor, it shall only be necessary, in order to sus- tain the action, to prove that the principal in the bond sold or gave intoxicating liquor to the per- son so intoxicated or in liquor, whose acts shall be complained of, on that day or on the day previous to the commission of the offense." There were other sections in the same spirit as this, intended to encourage prosecutions and to make it difficult for vendors of liquor complained of under the provisions of the act to escape conviction. The law passed both houses of the legislature and was signed by the Democratic governor, Nelson Dewey.

While the law was pending, remonstrances against its passage had been sent to the Milwaukee delegation in the legislature. Senator Smith sub- sequently averred that no remonstrance had been sent to him personally. The news of the enact- ment of the law was the signal for an instanta- neous outburst of indignation among the Germans. On the evening of the 4th of March, men and boys to the number of four hundred or upward gathered in Market Square, where a bonfire had been lighted, and where the firing of guns and pistols, the beating of tin pans and the blowing of horns made a hideous noise and naturally attracted the curious. It had been quietly given out that Senator Smith was to receive a testimonial of popular disapproval in the form of a charivari. Forming in procession, the motley throng marched through the streets, making a great deal of noise and attracting much curious attention. At about nine o'clock they stopped in front of the house of Senator Smith, and made a discord loud enough to wake the dead. The senator and his wife were not at home, having gone out earlier in the even- ing to attend a lecture. The only occupants of the house were four children and a servant girl. The crowd knew nothing of this, and when the sere- nade of "cat-music" had gone on for some time without eliciting response, some of the serenaders grew ugly, and hurled bricks and billets of wood through the windows. Others, bolder still, entered the house, poured the contents of the parlor lamp upon the carpet, and committed other acts of van- dalism. Meantime, trembling and frightened, the children and the servant crept out at the rear of the house, and fled to a neighbor's for safety. One resident of the vicinity who left his door step and

went among the members of the crowd to protest against the lawlessness in which it was engaged was knocked down and otherwise roughly handled. Then the gathering dispersed.

In looking back to this affair, it must be remem- bered that it occurred at a time when Milwaukee had practically no police force. The presence of a policeman or two upon the scene would probably have been sufficient to overawe the turbulent element and prevent destruction of property. The Volksfreund of the following day no doubt spoke candidly the sentiment of German residents generally when it said : "We do not believe the demonstrators intended anything beyond a chari- vari, and we should have been very glad to have seen property respected and to the family of the delinquent an unnecessary and unmerited agony spared." There were some Americans who took this view of the matter, and while deploring the violence that had been committed, considered the legislation which had occasioned the outbreak to be unwise and naturally provocative of resent- ment.

During many months following the affair the populace were divided into hostile camps, each believing evil of the other. Excited public meet- ings were held, the "friends of law and order" denouncing the "riot " and the liquor interest, and demanding thestrict enforcement of the new law, while the " friends of free trade and equal rights" called for the repeal of " the blue ukase of the temperance societies." Mayor Upham and the majority of the common council were opposed to the Smith law, though the mayor as the official head of the city government decried the breach of the peace which had been committed at the resi- dence of Senator Smith.

The " friends of free trade and equal rights and enemies of the blue laws " held a meeting at Military Hall, on the evening of March 11, 1850, which was called to order by Frederick Fratney. The meeting is said to have been the largest ever held in Milwaukee up to that time. Mayor Upham, who was asked to preside, spoke of the liquor law as odious, arbitrary, unwise and imprac- ticable, and expressed the opinion that it would never in the slightest degree check the evil to remedy which it was devised. HIe counseled all present to remember that they were American citizens, and that they must discountenance all violence and destruction of property, and obtain a

HISTORY OF MILWAUKEE.

redress of their grievances by legal means. The mayor's remarks were interpreted into German by Mr. Fratney for the benefit of those present who could not understand the English language, and a strong address in German against the law was made by Moritz Schoeffler. While Mr. Schoeffler was speaking, a portion of the floor near the en- trance of the hall gave away, and about a hundred people were precipitated into the cellar, six feet below. Notwithstanding this mishap, no one in the crowded audience was seriously injured. The meeting adjourned to Market Square, where it con- tinued its proceedings by the light of a bonfire. A committee consisting of Frederick Fratney, Levi Blossom, Moritz Schoeffler, Charles F. Bode, Alanson Sweet, Captain McManman and George Fischer was appointed to consult together and devise the most proper means for the protection of the citizens aggrieved by the law and for securing its repeal." The meeting adopted resolutions, one of which set forth that "while we would be law- abiding and peaceful citizens, we would deprecate in the strongest terms the singling out of any class of business men from among our industrial citizens as the special objects for oppressive legis- lation, and all such acts, emanate from whatever source they may, shall at all times and at all places meet our decided disapprobation." Another of the resolutions declared that " we discard the idea of making the liquor vender a trustee of the morals of the people at large, as ominous and derogatory to the dignity and sovereignty of the people." Several transparencies were exhibited in Market Square, among the mottoes displayed being the following: "Down with the wooden nutmeg legislators!" "Bad laws are the real source of riot and despotisin ; " "Legislation by the people-not hy single societies; " "Down with the Ukases of the Temperance Aristocracy!" The meeting was certainly successful in demon- strating a widespread and deepseated opposition to the enforcement of Senator Smith's law.

In response to this expression of sentiment by enemies of the Smith law, its friends to the num- ber of twelve hundred signed a call for a meeting at the Free Congregational church on the 22nd of the month. This meeting was attended by supporters of Mayor Upham, who called him to the chair, a committee consisting of J. B. Cross, Frederick Fratney, Moritz Schoeffler and others being appointed to draft resolutions. The reso-

lutions which were submitted by this committee, and which, after a vote had been taken amid much confusion, were declared adopted, denounced the recent outrage committed upon the property of the Honorable J. B. Smith as "an open violation of the laws of the land, deserving not only the frowns and censure of an indignant community, but also the severest penalty of the law." They went on to express confidence in the mayor and other city authorities and to declare that their measures to ferret out and bring to justice the guilty authors of the outrage were the wisest that could have been adopted, and justly entitled them to the confidence and esteem of the public.

The people who had called the meeting were not satisfied with this action. When, after consid- erable disorder, the friends of the mayor had been eliminated from the meeting, it was reorganized, with E. D. Holton in the chair, and resolutions were adopted condemning the mob, and declaring that "the late meeting at Military hall, over which the mayor of the city presided, was composed in great part of the same persons who either com- mitted or connived at the riot, and have, as we be- lieve, a design to overawe the friends of law and order." The resolution went on to charge liquor dealers and their friends with "instigating the late riot," thereby furnishing " a new and forcible proof of the evil nature of the liquor traffic, and of the necessity and wisdom of the law making the liquor dealers responsible to the community and individuals for the results of their business." In addition to admonishing the city authorities, the resolutions pledged each member of the as- semblage to use his influence to sustain and en- force the Smith law.

Nor did the recalcitrants stop here. At a very late 'hour they adjourned to reassemble in the same place the next morning, when, with Mr. Holton again in the chair, they adopted another set of resolutions, charging the mayor with having been one of the leaders in " a conspiracy" to take the meeting of the previous evening out of the hands of those who had called it. The resolutions closed with this fiery challenge, which reads as if it were the composition of S. M. Booth :

" Resolved, That we accept the issue of law or no law, or- der or disorder, the government of reason or the government of brute force, which has been tendered by the mayor and his mob, and we pledge ourselves to maintain the rights of prop- erty, of free speech and of the supremacy of the law against the assaults of the rioters at all hazards."

POLITICS AND POLITICAL ISSUES BEFORE THE WAR.

Mayor Upham issued a proclamation referring to the excited state of the community and earn- estly requesting all real friends of law and order to desist for the time being from calling or partici- pating in general meetings to discuss the liquor act.

The municipal election in the April following this blustering March, witnessed three tickets in the field-the regular Democratic ticket, headed by Don A. J. Upham as a candidate for re-elec- tion; the Whig ticket, headed by General Rufus King, and a People's law and order ticket, headed by John B. Smith. The number of votes cast for Smith was three hundred and eighty-five, while King received five hundred and fifty-six, and Up- ham one thousand nine hundred and eighty-one, or more than twice as many as were cast for both the others. When General King had run for the mayoralty against Byron Kilbourn, the regular Democratic nominee, two years previously the lat- ter had defeated him by a majority of only two hundred and twenty-two.

The agitation of the liquor question continned till the fall election in 1853, when, under the pro- visions of an act of the legislature, the people of the state were called upon to vote on the question of whether or not Wisconsin should have a law like that of Maine, placing the liquor traffic under ban. Milwaukee's vote on this subject was over- whelmingly adverse to the Maine law-two thousand nine hundred and eighty-four ballots being cast against it, and only eight hundred and seventy-seven in its favor. But in the state at large. temperance people carried the day: For prohibitory liquor law, twenty-seven thousand five hundred and nineteen votes; against, twenty- four thousand one hundred and nine. When the legislature elected at this time assembled, an attempt to pass the Maine law was defeated. Thereupon, the members who had given pledges to vote for that law considered their responsibility ended, and passed no law on the subject. Subse- quently the state became formally committed to the local option principle now in force. Mayor Phillips-1870-by trying to close the saloons on Sunday, and Mayor Stowell-1882-1883-by issu- ing his "midnight closing" order, which provided for the arrest of all saloon-keepers doing business in the "wee, sma' hours," stirred up hornets' nests during their respective terms of office, and made themselves unpopular with many who had pre-

viously been their political supporters. But the ebullitions in their times, were mild compared with the raging torrent of feeling which seethed and boiled in the early '50's, and which determined the political affiliations of hundreds of voters for many years thereafter.

Though Senator Smith had been elected as a Democrat, and his bill had been signed by a gov- ernor belonging to the same party, the outcome of the fear and resentment which it aroused was immensely advantageous to the Democracy. The men who were the most prominent opponents of the unpopular law were also prominent as Demo- crats, while those who favored it were nearly all Whigs or Free-soilers, many of whom were after- ward conspicuous in the early connsels of the Re- publican party. Many Germans. like Fratney, who hated negro slavery, and had been predis- posed to take part against the Democrats, stood with the Democrats after this experience, and looked with suspicion upon their political oppo- nents. Preceding the presidential election of 1852, eight hundred and sixty-five foreigners quali- fied themselves for participation in it by taking ont their "first papers." Of these new citizens only one hundred and eighty-eight voted the Whig ticket, while six hundred and seventy-seven iden- tified themselves with the Democracy. Wisconsin at that election gave a majority for Franklin Pierce. The extent to which the city of Milwau- kee contributed to this result was by no means inconsiderable. While the Scott electoral ticket received in Milwaukee one thousand five hundred and forty-four votes, and the Hale (Free-soil) ticket only three hundred and thirty-four, the Pierce ticket received two thousand four hundred and thirteen votes. The Democratic Congressional candidate, Daniel Wells, Jr., ran four hundred votes ahead of the presidential ticket. The Demo- crats elected two State senators. In the First ward John H. Tweedy, Whig, succeeded in defeating W. K. Wilson, Democrat, for the Assembly by a majority of less than fifty, this being undoubtedly due to Wilson's erratic land bill.

Among the political curiosities in the early days of Wisconsin's statehood was the agitation, which seems to have had its origin in Milwaukee, for a law limiting the ownership of real estate. In November, 1848, W. K. Wilson and W. Whitnall, acting as the local committee of the National Reform Association of Milwaukee, sent to all

HISTORY OF MILWAUKEE.

candidates for legislative and other offices a re- quest that they sign a pledge to use "all their in- fluence, in office and out," to secure the legal adoption of the following measures:

1. To limit the quantity of land any individual may here- after acquire in this state.

2. To prevent all further traffic in the public lands of this state, and cause them to be laid out in farms and lots for the free and exclusive use of actual settlers, not possessed of other lands in limited quantities.

3. To limit the hours of labor to ten, on all public works, and in establishments chartered by law.

4. To maintain the present homestead exemption law of this state, or to oppose any changes that shall not recognize the principle that the homestead, whether a farm or lot of a limited quantity, shall be exempt, irrespective of pecuniary valuation.

In February, 1851, a measure embodying the land-limitation provision thus suggested was intro- duced in the legislature by W. K. Wilson, who had been elected to the Assembly by the Democrats of the First ward, and who stated that resolutions in favor of such a measure had been passed by ward, town, county, congressional and state con- ventions. As introduced, Mr. Wilson's bill pre- scribed penalties for the ownership by one person of more than two lots in any city or village, or more than three hundred and twenty acres of land in the country. The Assembly raised thelimit to four city lots, and six hundred and forty acres of land in the country, and with that amendment, and a further amendment providing that present holders of real estate should be undisturbed, ordered the bill to a third reading by a vote of thirty- nine to nineteen. Three Milwaukee members voted for it, one dodged, and two, includ- ing Horace Chase, spoke and voted against it. It seemed inevitable that the measure would be enacted. Three public meetings were held in Milwaukee while the bill was pending, for the purpose of protesting against its passage. At one of these meetings S. M. Booth, who ardently fa- vored the measure, attended with a crowd of its friends and offered resolutions setting forth at considerable length and with many rhetorical flourishes, the propositions that "the earth is the common inheritance of all men," and that "no men or class of men, or combination of men, cor- porate or legislative, have a right to withhold from any man his proper share of this common in- heritance," and that therefore " it is essential that a limit should be set to the amount of land which any one may acquire and possess." The meeting

at which these resolutions were introduced voted them down. The other meeting was also decidedly adverse to Mr. Wilson's proposed innovation. After much excitement in the legislature the bill was referred to the attorney-general, who pro- nounced it unconstitutional, and it was finally killed.

Wilson had been elected to the Assembly by a large majority, but his record on the "land re- form " bill put a damper upon his popularity. At a caucus for delegates to the Democratic state convention, held in the First ward, in September, 1851, he was an active candidate, but received only thirty-nine votes, against one hundred and eighty-six for E. Hertzberg, and four hundred and forty-seven for H. K. White, a son-in-law of Solomon Juneau. His defeat for the Assembly in 1852, when every one else on the Democratic ticket was elected, has been recorded. It was W. K. Wilson, who in 1853 preferred the charges which formed the basis of the celebrated Hubbell impeachment trial. In 1863, after having passed eleven years in private life, Mr. Wilson went back to the legislature as a member of the Senate, being elected to represent the Fifth district, composed of the First, Second, Sixth, Seventh and Ninth wards and the towns of Milwaukee and Granville.

The question of " bank " or "no bank," which had been submitted to the people at the general election in 1852, in accordance with the provision of the constitution, was decided by an overwhelm- ing majority in the affirmative. The Demo- crats, by a resolution adopted in their conven- tion, had decided not to make the bank question a party issue. The strength of sentiment in Milwaukee county in favor of a banking law is indicated by the vote, which was : "For," four thousand one hundred and seventy-three; "against," seventy-three.

The Wisconsin, till that time an independent Democratic paper, came out for Fremont in 1856, when the Republican party, which had been organ- ized two years previously, fought its first presiden- tial campaign. But though Republicanism carried the state, it made slow headway in Milwaukee. E. D. Holton was one of the Republican presidential electors-at-large. The city cast two thousand two hundred and twenty-eight votes for the Republican presidential electors and seven thousand for their Democratic opponents. Jackson Hadley, a Mil- waukeean, was the Democratic candidate for

POLITICS AND POLITICAL ISSUES BEFORE THE WAR.

Congress, the Republican candidate being John F. Potter. Milwaukee's vote was six thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven for Hadley and only two thousand seven hundred and ninety-six for Potter. Until the returns from all over the dis- trict came in, it was supposed that Hadley had been elected ; but, as the Republican punster phrased it, Potter "turned up a Jack in Walworth county." The Democrats elected all the assemblymen from Milwaukee, and elected August Greulich over Jasper Vliet for the State senate, by three thou- sand five hundred and seventy-two, to one thou- sand one hundred and sixty-eight.

During the four or five years immediately pre- ceding the civil war, Republican political leaders made strenuous efforts to attract the foreign-born voters to the new party, while the Democratic organization exerted itself with equal ardor to retain them. The platform adopted by the Demo- cratic State Convention in 1857 contained the fol- lowing plank :

Resolved, that we hold in detestation the intolerant and un-American spirit which aims to curtail the privileges of those who, coming from other lands, seek to be citizens of the United States, and that the Democratic party of this state will, as it ever has done, frown indignantly on every attempt to inter- fere with the existing laws relative to naturalization.

The Republican state platform of the same year sounded these clarion notes of defiance to intoler- ance :

Resolved, That the true advocates of free labor must neces- sarily be true friends to free and unobstructed immigration ; that the right of citizenship and the full enjoyment and exer- cise thereof make true American patriots out of foreigners; that an abridgment of those rights would necessarily tend 10 divide the citizens of the Republic into different classcs, a ruling and a governed class; that inequality of rights among the inhabitants of a republic will always be inconsistent with and dangerous to true Democratic institutions. And that therefore the naturalization question is, with the Republicans of Wisconsin, not a question of mere policy, but a question of principle.

Resolved, That we are utterly hostile to the proscription of any man on account of birthplace, religion or color, and that we are opposed to all secret or public organizations which favor such proscriptions.

In 1858 there was a gleam of sunlight for the Republicans of Milwaukee. For years the city administration had been conducted on a scale of liberal expenditure that had brought taxes up to a point at which taxpayers groaned beneath the burden. Moreover, there was a laxity in adminis- trative methods which gave rise to suspicions, afterwards discovered to be well founded, that

some of the minor officers in the city government were taking advantage of opportunities, to convert to their own use money which belonged to the public. In April of this year, although the normal Democratic majority in the city was four thousand, W. A. Prentiss, a Republican, running as a non-partisan candidate for mayor, defeated so respected a Democrat as A. R. R. Butler, by a majority of one thousand two hun- dred and seventy. The first official act of Mayor Prentiss was to serve notice on the city clerk and comptroller that he would sign no city orders until he had seen the bills, and that he would re- quire all orders to be filled out before being brought to him to sign. At the November elec- tion this year A. J. Langworthy, Republican, was elected sheriff over Albert Bade, Democrat, by a majority of one thousand and eighty-nine, while Cicero Comstock defeated Jackson Hadley for the State Senate. Carl Schurz and Bernhard Dom- schke did excellent and effective work among the Germans in favor of the Republican cause. John F. Potter, who ran for Congress against Beriah Brown, received a majority in the district of three thousand one hundred and seventy-three, while two years previously he had scraped in by only three hundred and six. The Democratic ma- jority on congressman in Milwaukee county was cut down to seven hundred and forty-six.

In 1859 the Wisconsin Democrats affirmed the right of expatriation, and declared that "the naturalized citizen is equally with the native-born entitled to the protection of this government in every portion of the globe." They furthermore resolved that "in the two years' amendment, in Massachusetts, under which naturalized citizens are cut off from the exercise of the elective fran- chise for two years after they have complied with the conditions of citizenship, we recognize in the self-styled Republican party the proscriptive spirit of undisguised Knownothingism."

The Republican state platform for 1859 resolved: "That the peculiar feature now contained in the constitutions of Massachusetts and South Carolina which requires before the right of suffrage can be exercised by the foreign-born, a residence of two years after naturalization, meets our united con- demnation."

In the Democratic state convention of 1857. Doctor Francis Huebschmann was a candidate for the governorship, but the nomination went to

HISTORY OF MILWAUKEE.

James B. Cross. Charles Habich, a German, was selected as the candidate for State treasurer. In the Republican Convention the leading candidate for governor at the outset was E. D. Holton of Milwaukee, but he was defeated by a combination in favor of Alexander W. Randall. The second place on the ticket was given to a German, Carl Schurz, who has since been a prominent figure in national politics, but was then unknown to most of the delegates except S. M. Booth, who intro- duced him to the convention.

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History of Milwaukee from its first settlement to the year 1895, Part 17

Author: Conard, Howard Louis, ed. cn Publication date: 1895 Publisher: Chicago and New York, American Biographical Publishing Co Number of Pages: 840

Author: Conard, Howard Louis, ed. cn
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Chicago and New York, American Biographical Publishing Co
Number of Pages: 840