Alvin Hovey (1889 – 1891) was the Republican nominee for governor in 1888. In a number of ways, his life was a thread that runs through a number of the issues we’ve already discussed in prior installments. He was born in Mt. Vernon, Indiana in 1821, shortly after Indiana became a state. He eventually worked his way through his legal studies and became a lawyer, gaining some prominence very early on through his work on the estate of William Maclure, a wealthy industrialist who collaborated with Robert Owen on his failed utopian New Harmony initiative. Maclure’s will provided that his estate be used to build libraries. However, his siblings had misappropriated much of it and, as lawyer for the estate, Hovey had to pursue more than sixty lawsuits to recover the money. The money was eventually used to build 160 libraries in Indiana and Illinois.

In 1851, Hovey was named one of the delegates to the Indiana Constitutional Convention. He was the sponsor of what became Article XIII of the Constitution of 1851 which prohibited “negroes or mulattoes” from settling in the state.  In 1854, Hovey was appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court, at age 34, the youngest Justice to have been appointed. In that capacity, he was able to interpret the Constitution he helped author, including the decision in Greencastle Township v. Black, 5 Ind. 557 (1855) which helped bring the progress of the School Law of 1852 to a halt by invalidating a statute that would allow township taxes to fund schools.

Hovey was part of the faction of Democrats who got on the wrong side of Jesse Bright and was expelled from the party, eventually becoming a Republican. Toward the end of the Civil War, Gov. Morton placed Hovey in command of the Indiana Legions in the state. In this capacity, he helped break up an alleged plot by southern sympathizers and had them tried by military tribunal. This led to the ex parte Milligan decision where the court decided that because the civil courts were in operation, conviction of a civilian by a military tribunal was unconstitutional.

After the Civil War, Hovey spent some time as minister to Peru and then spent the years from 1870 to 1886 in private practice as an attorney. In 1886, he was elected to Congress for a term and then, in 1888, Hovey became the Republican nominee for governor.  Running on a ticket with the locally very popular Benjamin Harrison as President, Hovey still barely eked out a victory over the Democratic nominee, Courtland Matson, by 1,600 votes out of about 570,000 cast (93.3% of eligible voters).  

The General Assembly remained Democratic and, apparently, remained hostile to the governor. He unsuccessfully challenged the laws Democrats had passed limiting the power of the former governor with respect to making appointments. However, one successful initiative he had was with respect to election reform in response to the Harrison “Blocks of Five” election scandal.

Under Hovey, Indiana was among the earliest states to end party printing of election ballots that were cast in public (to make sure bought voters selected the right ballot), and instead began using state-printed ballots marked in secret for its elections. Indiana also began regulating who could enter polling places and limited campaigning at sites where voters cast their ballots.

The General Assembly did, however, assist in expanding the state’s judicial system. In 1891, the Indiana Appellate Court was created. It was initially intended as a temporary measure to handle overflow cases from the Indiana Supreme Court and was scheduled to last for six years. The state was growing and, as one of my favorite quips goes: “one lawyer starves where two lawyers prosper.” In other words, lawyers have a way of making work for one another. In any event, when the six years passed, the caseload remained heavy, so the Appellate Court was continued for another four years. After that, the legislature made the court permanent and it began its function as an intermediate appellate court.

White Capping

Hovey and the General Assembly took action to crack down on the practice of “white capping” that became a problem in Southern Indiana in the late 19th century. White capping was a sort of vigilante justice where individuals in the community committed violence against other members of the community who supposedly weren’t living up to the obligations and standards of a good Christian. That sort of justice is prone to being unevenly enforced and enforced as pretext. Unsurprisingly, in the South, it ended up taking on a racial characteristic. Early on, at least, the secret societies that administered the justice targeted “men who neglected or abused their family, people who showed excessive laziness and women who had children out of wedlock.” They also targeted “women who were not believed to be adequately caring for their home and children, children who were truant from school, and people who shirked from civic duty like working on road projects.” As the movement matured and moved south, it was just as likely to be used by poor white farmers to force more prosperous black farmers off their land.

In 1889, two men suspected of murder were in the jail in Corydon. James Devin and Charles Tennyson were thought to have murdered two women of the Lemay family in a botched robbery. As they were awaiting trial, on June 12, 1889, between 150 and 200 men in hoods, the Harrison County Regulators, dragged them from their cells in the middle of the night and hung them from the West Bridge. Initial efforts to combat these groups had limited success, in no small part because a number of the sheriffs charged with enforcing those efforts were, themselves, members of the white cap groups. Hovey had campaigned on the issue to some extent and threatened to have uncooperative local officials removed and place their towns under martial law. The White Cap activity subsided somewhat with only two lynchings during Hovey’s term.

Gov. Hovey did not complete his four year term. He fell ill and died on November 23, 1891, and was succeeded by the lieutenant governor, Ira Chase.

In our last installment, I started with some history of Governor Isaac Gray before digressing into a discussion of the natural gas boom. Gray was ambitious and had a history of playing hardball. He was, after all, a Democrat who had – early in his career – made a name for himself as a Republican state senator who barred the doors against Democrats attempting to leave the Senate to break a quorum in an effort to prevent ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.

Black Day of the General Assembly

In 1884, Governor Gray’s lieutenant governor was Mahlon Manson. Gray had aspirations to have the General Assembly elect him to the U.S. Senate. Some of Gray’s fellow Democrats had no desire to see the former Republican who had locked the doors against Democrats elected to that post. So, they were content when Manson accepted President Cleveland’s appointment to the position of revenue collector. This would leave Gray with no successor if he were elected to the Senate and, therefore, served to thwart his ambitions. Gray, however, asked the attorney general to give him an opinion that it was acceptable to have a special election for lieutenant governor in the 1886 mid-term election. The attorney general responded that this was permitted.

However, Democrat Alonzo Smith was the President pro tem of the Senate and he argued that there was no vacancy. Rather, he argued, the President pro tem was the acting lieutenant governor and would be until the term expired. Nevertheless, an election was held for lieutenant governor in 1886. The Republican nominee, Robert Robertson won the election — apparently with the support of Democratic governor Gray. He believed that, with a Republican lieutenant governor, he could get Republican support to send him to the U.S. Senate since that would get him out of the way and put a member of their party in the governor’s office. Meanwhile, Republicans also took control of the Indiana House in that election. Even though the wave was against them, Democrats held on to the Indiana Senate due to senators who had not been up for election.

When the General Assembly started its session, the minority senate Republicans caused a commotion and were ignored as the (Democratic majority) Senate re-elected (Democrat) Smith as President pro tem and acting lieutenant governor. Then, the House and Senate met in joint session and the (Republican) Speaker ignored the bitter protests of Democrats as the Speaker announced that (Republican) Robertson had won the lieutenant governor’s election. The Speaker turned the gavel over to Robertson (presiding over the Senate as the lieutenant governor). Robertson was shouted down by Democrats as he tried to speak and the joint session eventually adjourned in disorder.

The Marion County Circuit Court issued an injunction prohibiting Robertson from exercising power, reasoning that the mid-term election of a lieutenant governor was unconstitutional. However, on February 23, 1887, the Indiana Supreme Court reversed the Circuit Court saying that it did not have jurisdiction over the matter and neither did the Supreme Court. Rather, the court held, it was the General Assembly’s issue to resolve. One source (I’m not  sure of that sources’ source, but it paints a picture) described the scene the next day as follows:

On February 24, 1887, Robertson arrived at the Senate Chamber to preside over the Senate. A group of Democratic Senators attacked him and beat him to the floor. The Senate president pro tempore ordered the doormen to expel Robertson. The doormen complied. Republicans soon raised a ruckus, demanding that Robertson be allowed to take his seat. When the Democrats resisted, fights broke out all over the Senate chamber. As the fighting progressed through the floor, one Democratic Senator pulled a gun and shot a hole in the Senate Chamber’s ceiling. He then threatened the Republicans, saying he would start killing them if they did not desist in fighting. This halted the conflict in the Senate, but people outside the chamber, alerted to the happenings inside the Senate, began fighting. The fight soon spread to the House of Representatives. They overwhelmed the outnumbered Democrats and ran through the Capitol, dragging Democrats outside to beat them. Another group broke down the Senate door and began dragging Democratic Senators outside. Governor Gray was compelled to send for the police, who came and brought the conflict under control. Four hours of chaos led to a total shutdown of legislative activity for that session, as the Democrats refused to communicate with the Republicans and the Republicans refused to communicate with the Democrats.

(This will not be the last incident of physical violence I write about in this Installment 6 of our series). I read one source that said the General Assembly was deadlocked and no further business was done that session. However, I also see that the General Assembly passed a bill on March 3, 1887, to create the Indiana Soldier’s & Sailors Monument, so I’m not entirely sure what transpired after the ruckus.  

Gray was, needless to say, not elected to the U.S. Senate and he earned the nickname “Sisyphus of the Wabash” for his extensive but ultimately futile labors. This incident was raised a quarter of a century later by advocates of the 17th Amendment arguing for direct election of U.S. Senators and to end the practice of state legislatures selecting them.

Isaac Gray 1885 – 1889

Isaac Gray was a Quaker who was born in Pennsylvania, moved to Ohio for some years, and settled in Randolph County, Indiana in his 20s. He was a store owner who expanded into banking and grain processing, but he studied law with an eye toward advancing his political career. Shortly after he opened his law office, however, the Civil War started, and he raised a company of volunteers. During his military career, Gray was part of the efforts to repel Morgan’s Raid in the summer of 1863.

Following the war, he unsuccessfully challenged radical Republican (and thorn in Oliver Morton’s side) George Julian for a Congressional seat in 1866. He and Julian would later follow a similar path in leaving the Republican Party for the Democrats. As the focus on slavery diminished and issues such as tariffs and corruption became more prominent, the men found their views less aligned with the Republicans and more with the Democrats.

However, in 1870, Gray was still very much a Republican and had been elected to the Indiana Senate. You may recall this passage from the discussion of Indiana’s (potentially illegal) ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment:

When the proposal was drawing near to consideration, Democrats proposed to bolt again. Republicans resolved to use some strong arm tactics. Several senators claimed to have resigned but they had not left the building. The doorkeeper was told to bring them into the chamber, the doors were locked (apparently locked by a Republican senator by the name of Isaac Gray — who would later become a Democratic governor), and they were counted for purposes of a quorum despite claiming to have resigned.

Despite that history, for the 1884 gubernatorial campaign, Democrats put aside their old resentment of Gray and nominated him to be their candidate. The platform was mostly focused on national issues, but one state issue that was raised was defense of a state law passed by the Democratic General Assembly that took appointment and control of the city police out of the hands of the mayor and placed them with a board appointed by the governor, secretary, treasurer, and auditor of state.

The Democrats that year were boosted by a Presidential ticket that included Grover Cleveland and former Indiana governor Thomas Hendricks for vice-president. The General Assembly went to the Democrats that year and Gray beat Republican nominee William Calkins by about 7,500 out of about 500,000 cast. (An estimated 92.2% of the voting age population cast a vote that year, down from 94.4% in 1880.)  Of some note, Eugene V. Debs was elected to the Indiana Senate as a Democrat. While in office, Debs tried to get a worker’s compensation bill passed that would have required corporations to compensate employees for work related injuries. The bill did not get passed and Debs (who would eventually run for President as a socialist five times) did not return to the General Assembly.

Of lesser note, it was during the Gray administration, in 1886, that the Purdue All-American Marching Band was established when the Purdue Student Army Training Corps formed a five member drum corps to play music for the cadets during their morning conditioning. According to Wikipedia, in 1887, Purdue, IU, Butler, and Notre Dame would all form football squads. (On the other hand, the Wabash football Wikipedia entry says that Wabash defeated Butler 4-0 in its first game in 1884, so that’s what I get using Wikipedia as a source.)

Natural Gas

In the mid 1880s, transportation — particularly the railroads — was changing the economy in Indiana. Manufacturing in the 1850s was typically something like flour and grist mills. Milling grain was the leading industry at the time. Other industries were related to taking advantage of the state’s natural resources: pork packing, liquor distilling, lumber production.

This sort of industry was giving way to heavier industry that took advantage of new tools and the ability to transport products beyond local markets. And, in 1886, a natural gas boom hit Indiana. Ten years earlier, in 1876, in the search for coal, W.W. Worthington and George Carter bored a test core in Delaware County.

At a depth of 606 feet they ran into “an ill-smelling gas,” that readily ignited, producing a two-foot high flame. It was a natural gas deposit, suffused with malodorous sulfur content. Disappointed that there was no coal to be found, they capped the pipe and moved on.

In 1885, Andrew Carnegie had replaced a good deal of the coal he used for steel making with natural gas. Industries looked for locations with access to natural gas. A major discovery was made in Findlay, Ohio in January of 1886 (initially so powerful a towering plume of fire burned for 4 months.) In Portland, Indiana Henry Sees followed the news out of Findlay, and convinced local investors to form the Eureka Gas & Oil Co. They struck gas in March of 1886.

Meanwhile, George Carter went to Findlay and recognized the smell of the well from the hole they’d dug in Delaware County ten years earlier. He found investors, and on September 15, 1886, his company hit natural gas in Eaton, Indiana, and produced a plume that was reportedly visible in Muncie. This was the beginning of the Trenton Gas Field, spread over 17 counties in east central Indiana.

The people of that time were profligate with what seemed like an unlimited supply of gas. They were spectacularly wasteful. “It became fashionable to erect arches of perforated iron pipe and let them burn brightly day and night for month after month.” There were calls for conservation that were largely ignored. (“In 1893 the State Inspector of Natural Gas wrote, ‘The waste has been criminal and the day of repentance is fast approaching, and can only be delayed by practicing the most rigid economy and unrelaxed efforts in the husbandry of this valuable resource of our State.’”)

Still, the gas boom attracted industry to the area:

“The rapid growth and industrialization that Findlay, Portland and Eaton experienced was repeated again and again in Indiana’s “Gas Belt.” Cities like Muncie, Kokomo, Anderson, and Marion competed to attract new industries with offers of free natural gas, land, railway sidings, and tax credits.”

Lured by the generous incentives, 162 factories were built, creating over 10,000 jobs by 1890. Among these new industries were tinplate mills in Anderson, Gas City, and Elwood as well as 21 new glass factories. “Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing” relocated to Muncie from Buffalo, N.Y.

By 1902, however, the wells were starting to fail and the falling pressure was allowing salt water to creep in. Companies that had re-located to take advantage of the cheap, readily available gas were forced to close. The boom ended as quickly as it started.

At the same time as the gas boom, during the 1880s and 1890s, railroads and interurbans were continuing to grow (pdf). In 1880, there were five major railroads that crossed Indiana to reach Chicago from the east. This established the pattern we would see with our major interstates later on. Fort Wayne, Lafayette, Logansport, Terre Haute, and Indianapolis formed as rail centers. The expanded urban centers also gave rise to the electric interurban railways. With these railways, pretty much all roads led to Indianapolis, showing its dominance of the area. (I’ve experienced this driving back roads with no map, trying to get from one small city to another — very frequently the roads, instead of continuing in a particular direction will start to bend toward Indianapolis. I did not experience this anywhere near as frequently when wandering Ohio back roads.)

The electric railway offered a more flexible and lighter-weight, self-propelled vehicle than the large steam locomotives that required an extensive infrastructure for fuel and water. Within cities, small streetcars could readily navigate the city street grid using electric power provided by a central generating source. Streetcars and interurban electric cars were still heavier than horse-drawn wagons, however, and necessitated increased load-bearing capacity in bridges on streetcar routes.

Indiana, like the rest of the country, was being rapidly transformed by changes in transportation and industry. It must have been very disorienting to the people of the time.

Friday: Isaac Gray’s term continued — including “The Black Day of the Indiana General Assembly.”

Albert Porter 1881 – 1885

The first governor of this period was Albert Porter. In 1880, Indiana had reached a population of almost 2 million people. It was 98% white and about 20% of the population lived in cities while 80% remained in rural locations. Despite the overwhelmingly white population, it was in 1880 that a black man, James Hinton, was first elected to the Indiana General Assembly.

At his election, the Indianapolis Leader proclaimed [of Hinton], “thirty years ago, the Indiana Legislature was engaged in concocting brutal laws to prevent the entrance of colored people into this state. Now a member of the race then proscribed, is a member of the Legislature. Time sets all things right.”

As for Governor Porter, he was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, only the second Governor to be born in Indiana. His family moved over the river to Kentucky when his mom inherited land there. He worked his father’s ferry across the Ohio for a period of time before enrolling at Hanover. He ran out of money before he finished. His uncle offered to pay for the remainder of his schooling if he went to a Methodist School. So, he finished at Asbury University (now DePauw) in 1843. (Recall the educational feud between Presbyterians and Methodists back in the days of Samuel Bigger.)

Porter became a personal secretary to Governor Whitcomb and was originally a Democrat, but he got caught up in the factional dispute of the 1850s over the Kansas-Nebraska Act and was on the wrong side of Jesse Bright’s faction when the dust cleared. He left the Democrats and became a Republican shortly thereafter. Porter was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1858 and served until 1863. He declined to run for another term, going into private practice in Indianapolis with, among others, Benjamin Harrison. One of his cases was the Ex Parte Milligan case.

In 1880, he was the Republican nominee for President. The election was a close one. The Democrats had held the governor’s office since 1873, the Democrats had William English as a Vice-Presidential candidate, and some prominent observers of the day felt that the state was safely Democratic. Nevertheless, the Democrats lost both the governorship and the Presidential race by less than 8,000 votes out of 470,000 cast.

The Democrats’ failure usually has been placed on national factors: e.g., the supposed political ineptitude of the Democratic presidential candidate, General Winfield Scott Hancock; the unfortunate appearance of the phrase “a tariff for revenue only” in the party platform; the general disorganization and anarchy within the party following the loss of the disputed election of 1876; and the decline in both the health and political mastery of Samuel J. Tilden in New York. Some writers have credited other national causes such as the energy, money, and imported voters which were supposedly poured into Indiana in the closing weeks of the campaign by the Republican national committee under the direction of its secretary, Stephen W. Dorsey.

Isaac Gray campaigned for the Democrats as lieutenant governor even though he was a stronger nominee than Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Franklin Landers. Gray’s actions as a Republican, locking Democrats into the Senate to maintain a quorum to pass the Fifteenth Amendment, was not forgotten by his (now) fellow Democrats. Landers lost to Albert Porter by about 7,000 votes out of 470,000 cast. According to one commentator, during the period from 1880 – 1892, the Tariff Question was “the only serious issue in Indiana politics.” The economy was shifting from agricultural to industrial. Republicans generally favored the tariff as protecting developing and diversifying local industry from foreign competition. Democrats, meanwhile, generally favored low tariffs and free trade. This appealed to farmers — particularly in the south and the west — who were exporting products like tobacco, cotton, and wheat.

During the early part of the Porter administration, the Republicans held majorities in the General Assembly, They promptly passed a bill which would have a prohibition amendment in the Indiana Constitution. This backfired on them and the next session was heavily Democratic as there was apparently a strong showing by German voters opposing the temperance legislation. The Republicans of 1881 had also passed resolutions for amendments that would have provided for female suffrage and would have made all state and county offices four year terms. (In Indiana, a proposed constitutional amendment has to pass two General Assemblies before it is eligible for a statewide vote.)

The Democratic General Assembly also employed some heavy handed opposition to the Republicans, taking away much of the Governor’s legislatively granted appointment power to offices like prison board member, State Geologist, State Statistician, and State Oil Inspector. It was also during this period that the hospitals for the insane were created at Richmond, Logansport, and Evansville.

I’m not sure the best section to put this, but I feel like an under-appreciated aspect of state and local government is our system of drainage. There are a tremendous number of miles of regulated drain in Indiana. But they’re mostly invisible to citizens. When drains are working, you simply don’t notice them. It rains, the land is wet for a while, and then it dries up. There used to be a lot less productive acreage in Indiana. From the State’s inception, government dabbled at drainage laws, but a comprehensive system seems to have begun in earnest in the 1880s. The surge in drainage activity had to do with the closing of the frontier (making more difficult land in the settled areas more attractive), an increase in land prices, and the growing proof of how valuable a system of regular drainage could be — the cost of the drains were small in comparison to the increase in value of the drained land. Despite these benefits, there is some natural resistance to construction of drains. It does not fit very well with our atomistic view of property rights and a philosophical inclination to limit government power. There was no right under the common law for one land owner to construct drains over the property of another. But, water does not respect property lines, and so through the 1880s, the General Assembly enacted a variety of drainage laws that helped open up a good deal of territory in Indiana. (I believe Northern Indiana was particularly swampy.)

A focus on problems with water were probably also triggered by the fact that 1882, 1883, and 1884 saw significant flooding along the Ohio and Wabash rivers. The 1883 flood was the most significant of these and, in Peru anyway, rivaled the flood of 1847.

On Friday, February 2, 1883, there was a heavy fall of snow, which turned to rain late in the afternoon. The ground was frozen so that the water could not penetrate it, the temperature rose during the night and the snow melted, adding to the volume of water that was forced into the streams over the frozen ground. By eleven o’clock on Saturday morning the Wabash railroad tracks were under water and the channel of the river was filled with floating ice. Rain fell all day on Saturday and during the night it turned colder, the temperature on Sunday morning being only a few degrees above zero. When the people arose that morning they found the Strawtown pike under water from the bridge to the toll house, the Mississinewa pike was under water for a mile or more, and South Peru was inundated. Frank Henton and Lou Cole led a rescuing party to convey the people in boats to places of safety. The back water had extinguished the fires at the gas works and the people had to return to coal oil, and in some instances to candles, for their light. All along the river, on the high grounds, could be seen little herds of livestock and the intense cold added to the suffering of both man and beast.

The shift from a rural agricultural economy to an urban industrial economy likely made Hoosiers feel the impact of the floods more deeply. A flooded field is no picnic, of course, but flooded out homes, businesses, and factories in cities built up against rivers are more expensive and recovery takes longer.

Even as the General Assembly was busy weakening the office of the governor, they did give Governor Porter some money and authority to address the damage caused by the floods. The Indiana Constitution prohibited consecutive terms at that time, so Porter did not run for office in 1884. He declined an opportunity to run in 1888. He did, however, have the opportunity to nominate his former law partner, Benjamin Harrison, to be the Republican nominee for the Presidency.

Benjamin Harrison 1889 – 1893

Harrison’s election seems to have been based on some very corrupt practices. Harrison’s campaign manager, Matthew Quay (a political boss from Pennsylvania), upon hearing that Harrison ascribed his narrow victory to “Providence,” was quoted as saying, “Think of the man! He ought to know that Providence hadn’t a damn thing to do with it.” Harrison, Quay added, would “never know how close a number of men were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president.”

In the election of 1888, Harrison’s fellow Hoosier, W.W. Dudley (hailing from Richmond, Indiana) was the Republican National Committee treasurer, buying votes wholesale in Indiana in what came to be known as the Blocks of Five scandal. Interestingly, ten years earlier, Dudley — while employed as U.S. Marshal in Indiana, had arrested numerous Democrats, accusing them of vote fraud. The special prosecutor, Benjamin Harrison, had managed only one conviction.

Intensely polarized and almost perfectly balanced in partisan strength, “venal Indiana” was notorious during this period for bitterly contested, frequently corrupt elections with miniscule margins between victory and defeat, margins often secured with the votes of nonresident or irregular floaters at two to five dollars each.

Fraudulent or not, Harrison took office in 1890.

One landmark piece of legislation during Harrison’s tenure was 1890’s, Sherman Antitrust Act named after Senator John Sherman (who had lost the nomination battle to James Garfield). The law was intended to combat monopolistic practices that were plaguing the U.S. economy at the time. In a general sense, a trust is an old legal device where one holds property for the benefit of another. For example, a trust that holds an inheritance for the benefit of a minor heir. But, the trust in question here was where several large businesses were held in trust together, getting around prohibitions where corporations were forbidden from holding stocks in other corporations. The law aimed to prohibit combinations that restrained trade while permitting monopolies that were created and maintained simply because that business provided the goods or services of higher quality or at a better price than others could. Initial efforts to use the Act against trusts were fairly anemic. And, in an ironic but somewhat predictable twist, its initial uses were mostly only successful against trade unions. Later legislation would specify that trade unions were acceptable and Teddy Roosevelt was able to make more effective use of the tools under the Act.

Also in 1890, the struggles with the Native Americans were coming to an ignominious end. The massacre at Wounded Knee took place on December 29, 1890. U.S. soldiers were ostensibly trying to disarm a band of Lakota but ended up killing at least 150 of them with at least 51 wounded. Twenty-five U.S. soldiers were killed and 39 wounded. Twenty soldiers were dubiously given the Congressional Medal of Honor for their actions that day. (One was given for “conspicuous bravery in rounding up and bringing to the skirmish line a stampeded pack mule.”) This was to be the last major Indian battle of the 19th century.

Tariffs continued to be a major issue. Republicans, particularly from the northeast, tended to favor them as protective to domestic industry. Westerners and southerners tended not to favor them as they restricted agricultural exports. One by-product of the high tariffs was a major (and apparently embarrassing) government surplus. Under the Harrison administration, one way the government tried to spend down the surplus was through generous pension benefits to disabled Civil War veterans (whether the disability was war related or not). This legislation had a great deal to do with the support of the Grand Army of the Republic — a lobbyist group devoted to Civil War veterans issues. Rather than lower the tariffs, Congress — through an initiative of future President William McKinley — actually raised tariffs even higher.

Harrison was the first President to have his voice preserved on a phonograph and also had electricity installed in the White House. During his administration, six new states were admitted to the Union: North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming. No states had previously been admitted in more than a decade. Congressional Democrats were reluctant to admit states that would add to Republican majorities. Their concerns were well founded. All six of those states initially sent Republican delegations.

Harrison also embraced naval technology and started the U.S. on its path to becoming a legitimate naval power. The Harrison administration, additionally, was quick to recognize the new government of Hawaii installed by Sanford Dole after a coup d’etat overthrew Queen Liliulokalani. The Harrison administration tried to move on a subsequent petition for annexation of Hawaii, but could not get it done and the second Garfield administration backed off of that initiative.  

Harrison’s re-nomination was not without trouble. A contingent of Republicans preferred James G. Blaine (continental liar from the state of Maine). Harrison did get the nomination and ended up facing a re-match with Grover Cleveland. The surplus was evaporating and the economy was declining — a precursor to the upcoming Panic of 1893. Tariffs were so high that imported goods were prohibitively expensive. Republican support in the west eroded as many former Republicans defected to the Populist Party who promised free silver, generous veterans’ pensions, and an eight hour work day.

Cleveland ended up winning the popular vote by 400,000 votes out of 10.6 million cast and an electoral vote of 277 to 145. Harrison did not win his home state of Indiana.

Grover Cleveland II: Electric Boogaloo (1893 – 1897)

Almost immediately after his election, Cleveland faced the Panic of 1893. The panic had to do with a tangle of reasons probably too complicated for me to easily explain. But it seems to have had to do with a combination of the U.S. economy’s reliance on high commodity prices, a wheat failure in Argentina, and U.S. monetary policy having to do with gold and the relative ease with which international business could obtain gold from the U.S. This triggered a panic and bank runs which left the economy in the doldrums for some time.

The McKinley Tariff Act was replaced by the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act. The sausage making nature of legislation seems to have been particularly egregious with this bill, but it lowered the tariffs from the McKinley version. The shortfall in revenue from reduction of the tariffs was made up by the first peacetime income tax — a 2% tax on incomes over $4,000 (about $100,000 today). This income tax was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and led to the passage of the 16th Amendment. Prior to the 16th Amendment, the Supreme Court held that the constitution required direct taxes to be imposed in proportion to a state’s population.

In 1894, Congress passed an enabling act permitting Utah to enter the Union as a new state. Prior to the Harrison administration, it had been a decade since a new state was admitted. While six states were admitted once the ball got rolling in the Harrison administration, Utah was not one of them. The state was thought likely to vote for Democrats, and there was still concern over polygamy (which had only been disavowed in 1890.) Those concerns were overturned and Utah joined as the 45th state in 1896.

In May and June of 1894, Cleveland faced the Pullman Strike. A strike by railroad workers over low wages and a 12 hour work day, augmented by sympathy strikes led by Eugene V. Debs and the American Railway Union ended up paralyzing national commerce. Grover Cleveland’s Attorney General had been a railroad attorney and the Cleveland administration took the side of the railroads. (“If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago”, Cleveland proclaimed, “that card will be delivered.”) The election of 1894 was disastrous for Cleveland. The economy and the hardened attitude of labor against him resulted in landslide Congressional victories for Republicans.

In 1896, Cleveland did not seek the Democratic nomination. Nationally things were not going well for his administration, and there were factions inside the Democratic Party who did not want him to run. And, while there were no term limits and he had not been elected consecutively, he had served two terms which was, by custom, the limit for Presidents. At age 36, William Jennings Bryan became the youngest major party nominee for President. He had a gift for oratory, and his Cross of Gold speech helped him secure the nomination over Richard Bland who had been the favorite going into the convention.  I should probably try to do a better job of explaining the gold/silver coinage debates, as they dominated the political discussion for a good long time. But, my understanding of the subject is limited. Basically, it had to do with whether to expand the money supply or not. The gold-standard advocates wanted to limit the money supply because it made international trade more secure and because it preserved the value of the debts owed to them. The silverites or bimetalists thought that increasing the money supply — by allowing silver to be struck into coins — would increase the nation’s prosperity. (It would also make their debts easier to pay off.) Bryan was a populist, and he was not shy about casting his message in religious terms. He concluded his speech:

Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

The speech won him acclaim, but that cross of gold fueled the election of William McKinley who outspent Bryan 5 to 1 and won the election 271 to 176 electoral votes.

In this installment, we’ll hit the end of the 19th century, starting from about 1881 and going to about 1897. The Presidents were James Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and Cleveland again. The governors were Albert Porter, Isaac Gray, Alvin Hovey, Ira Chase, and Claude Matthews. The 1851 Constitution limited governors to one term each.

James Garfield (1881)  

Garfield was  President for only about six months, from March 1881 to September of that year. Garfield was nominated as a dark horse candidate. President Hayes had promised not to run for re-election. Somehow, I had been unaware of this, but Ulysses S. Grant had sought his third term in office but, though he had a plurality of the delegates in the initial voting at the convention, could not gain a majority. His major rivals were James G. Blain (“continental liar from the state of Maine”) and John (brother of William Tecumseh) Sherman. After 36 ballots, Grant’s competitors settled on Garfield (who had been a campaign manager for John Sherman) as a compromise candidate. Grant conceded, and Garfield went on to narrowly defeat General Winfield Scott Hancock. (Apparently there wasn’t a great deal of policy difference between Garfield and Hancock, but the Republicans were still getting a fair amount of electoral success out of “waving the bloody shirt” — The G.O.P. argued that Democrats would  reverse the gains of the Civil War, dishonor Union veterans, and pay Confederate veterans pensions out of the federal treasury.)

During this period, the Republican Party was apparently much occupied by disputes between factions led by James G. Blaine (“the Half-Breeds”) and Roscoe Conkling (“the Stalwarts”). The main bone of contention between the factions had to do with a patronage-based civil service system versus a merit-based civil service systems. The Stalwarts preferred that political appointments go to party loyalists. The Half Breeds preferred civil service reform. (It was during this lesson in my high school history class that Mr. Johns observed that “today’s reforms are tomorrow’s corruption.” Back in Andrew Jackson’s day, the spoils system was seen as something of a democratic reform — forming the basis for the common man to participate in a government previously dominated by the more well-to-do.)

Garfield was more in the Blaine camp, and to balance the ticket, Chester A. Arthur — a Stalwart part of the Conkling machine was vice-president. But Conkling demanded his due when it came to patronage and was infuriated when Garfield nominated a Conkling enemy to the Collector of the Port of New York (a prize appointment). In addition to civil service reform, Garfield was an advocate of universal federal education, believing that this was the way to improve the circumstances of black Americans and limit the white, Democratic resurgence in the Confederate States. However, he Garfield did not live long enough to get much traction, and the North likely didn’t have the appetite for such an initiative in any event.

Charles J. Guiteau fancied himself a Stalwart but provided some low level advocacy for Garfield during the Presidential campaign. Apparently lacking a strong connection with reality (possibly a mental effect of syphilis), he fancied this justified an appointment by the Garfield administration to be consul in France. When he didn’t get the job (because he wasn’t qualified and hadn’t earned it), he speculated that it was because he was a Stalwart. So, his master plan was to kill Garfield and make Chester Arthur, the Stalwart, president. Guiteau shot Garfield — who died two months later from his wound, and Arthur became President.

Chester A. Arthur (1881 – 1885)

Chester A. Arthur assumed the Presidency at a time when the population of the U.S. had crossed 50 million people. The frontier was closing, and tales from the Wild West were capturing American imaginations: the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Billy the Kid was killed by Pat Garrett in 1881, and Jesse James was killed in 1882. Meanwhile, the Indian wars were coming to a close and a more sentimental view of Native Americans was taking hold — presumably, in part, now that most of the land had been appropriated and Native Americans could be admired from afar and in the abstract.

The Supreme Court put the nail in the coffin of Civil Rights with the  Civil Rights Cases which held that the 14th Amendment didn’t give Congress the constitutional authority to prohibit racial discrimination by private individuals and organizations. Jim Crow laws would be fully implemented. Republican efforts to preserve and protect black rights were desultory, and the Republicans were also generally unable to make headway against the resurgence of conservative white power in the South. Congress did, however, take a stand against polygamy; passing the Edmunds Act — directed at the Latter Day Saints in Utah, making polygamy a felony.

During Arthur’s Presidency, taxes were still at war time levels, the result being that government had taken in more than it had spent since 1866 and was running a significant surplus. Some effort was made to reduce revenues by reducing excise taxes and restructuring tariffs. But they only picked around the edges and did not reduce revenues much. Working on balancing the budget from the other angle, by spending the money, resulted in an Arthur veto when a major internal improvement act looked to have too many local projects and not enough spent on the general welfare. Congress overrode his veto and passed the $19 million Rivers and Harbors Act.

Immigration was a major focus of the Congress. Westerners blamed the Chinese for the depression of wages during the depression of the 1870s, so Congress attempted to ban all Chinese immigration. Arthur regarded this as a violation of a treaty with China, and vetoed one measure but acquiesced to another bill that banned Chinese immigration for 10 years. Congress also passed legislation banning immigration by the mentally ill, those with a criminal history, and those likely to require public assistance.

As his term came to an end, Arthur was in questionable health (he took a two month trip to Yellowstone, helping to promote the National Park System) and neither faction of the Republican Party really supported him. The Half-Breeds supported Blaine and the Stalwarts were mixed. On the first ballot, Blaine had a plurality. (Arthur received only 9 of Indiana’s 30 votes). James G. Blaine was nominated on the fourth ballot — this was the last time a sitting President was denied re-nomination by his party.

Grover Cleveland 1885 – 1889

Grover Cleveland (the Once and Future President) was the first Democrat elected to the Presidency since Buchanan had been elected before the Civil War. His campaign against Blaine produced some memorable slogans that still stick with me almost 30 years after I learned them in high school history class. Blaine was associated with some sketchy railroad deals which he had denied but was tagged with the Democratic rallying cry, “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine.” Meanwhile, Cleveland was the anti-corruption candidate who was marketed as having impeccable moral rectitude. So, the Republicans went after him when it came to light he may have been the father of an illegitimate trial. Their slogan was, “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? Going to the White House, ha, ha, ha!” Cleveland won all of what were regarded to be swing states: Indiana, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. (The latter three were probably put into play by Cleveland’s being a New Yorker. Indiana was put into play because Thomas Hendricks was the vice-presidential candidate — and perhaps due to Indiana often being “the middle-finger of the South thrust up into the North.”)

During Cleveland’s presidency, a watershed moment in the labor movement took place. On May 4, 1886, a bombing took place in Chicago’s Haymarket Square during a labor demonstration. This became known as the  Haymarket Affair. The demonstration was in support of the eight hour day and in response to the killing of several workers by police the day before. Someone threw a dynamite bomb in among police as they were trying to disperse the demonstration. The blast and subsequent shooting killed seven officers, at least four civilians, and wounded many more. Seven anarchists were convicted and sentenced to death despite what appears to have been fairly thin evidence. Four were hanged. The others were pardoned. But they became martyrs for the cause. It was a temporary setback for the eight hour day but ultimately stiffened the resolve of labor advocates.

The issue of tariffs continued to be a major issue. Cleveland and the Democrats generally favored lower tariffs. The Republicans and their northern, industrial constituents felt that protective tariffs were necessary to grow and protect American business. Republicans being mostly in control, the protective tariffs remained in place, and federal government took in more money than it spent, resulting in significant surpluses. Additionally, the issue of whether U.S. currency should be backed by silver and/or gold and how much continued to be contentious. Southerners and Westerners (who tended to be poorer) favored an expansive monetary policy with currency being backed by silver (as well as gold). Northeasterners (and Cleveland) favored the gold standard and its tighter money supply (which tends to benefit creditors).

With a Republican Congress, Cleveland found himself using the veto a lot more than his predecessors. One prominent veto was with respect to a seed program. A drought in Texas caused widespread hardship. Congress attempted to help by appropriating $10,000 for purchase of seed for Texas farmers. Cleveland vetoed that, citing a philosophy of limited government and the notion that the farmers could look to private sector charity if they were in need.

During his Presidency, in 1886, Cleveland married his 21 year old ward, Frances Folsom. She was 27 years younger than Cleveland; the daughter of Cleveland’s law partner, Oscar Folsom. Oscar died when Frances was eleven, and Cleveland began taking a role in her care. That role turned romantic at some point, and they were married in the White House on June 2, 1886, when she was 21 and he was 49.

Cleveland was defeated by Hoosier Benjamin Harrison in 1888. The Republicans nominated Harrison and a New Yorker, Levi Morton. Despite winning the popular vote, Cleveland lost Indiana and New York which he had won in the prior election, causing him to lose the electoral vote.

James D. (“Blue Jeans Bill”) Williams (1877 – 1880)

Governor Williams was a Democrat who succeeded Governor Hendricks. Williams was a farmer from Monroe City, Indiana and cultivated a “man of the people” persona. His affinity for denim earned him the nickname “Blue Jeans Bill.” Howard Burnett, writing in 1926, said of Williams, “Of the sixteen governors who served Indiana before 1877, fourteen were lawyers, one a gunsmith, and one a newspaper man. James D. Williams, who was inaugurated January 8, 1877, was the first farmer and last pioneer governor of the state.”

He served in the legislature from 1843 to 1872, so his wife Nancy carried a good bit of the load running the farm. At the first State Fair at Indianapolis in 1852, Williams took first prize for the best wheat grown in the state, and in 1855, he produced the best timothy and the best clover in the state. For a time, Williams apparently had an interest in a pork packing plant, facilitated by the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. But, what the railroad gives, it also takes away. The railroads contributed to the consolidation of pork packing in Cincinnati and Chicago, and Williams’ local pork packing business dried up in the early 70s.

During his long service in the legislature, Williams developed a reputation for frugality. His first vote in the legislature was against a measure that would have had the State pay for each member of the General Assembly to have two copies each of the Indianapolis Sentinel and the Indianapolis Journal. He was opposed to Governor Morton and accused of being a Copperhead. In 1865, he introduced the legislation taking advantage of the Congressional land grant legislation which lead to the founding of Purdue. In 1874, Williams was elected to Congress and gained notoriety by continuing to wear his Kentucky homespun, earning him the nickname of “Blue Jeans Williams”. The story goes that this epithet was used more in mockery but soon became a nickname that Williams used to great benefit.

In 1876, Williams won a close race for governor against Benjamin Harrison, future President and grandson of William Henry Harrison. Upon his nomination, the Democrats had hailed Williams as the “Great Lincoln Democrat of the Centennial Year.” During the campaign, the race was often framed as being Williams’, the man of the people versus Harrison, the remote patrician. Harrison was, however, assisted by reminders of Old Tippecanoe (Benjamin was “Young Tip”) and the “bloody shirt” of Republican supporters of the Union which shamed Democratic supporters of the Confederacy.  The bloody shirt was losing its power however. Williams won with a difference in the vote of 5,000 out of 430,000 cast.

The Great Railroad Strikes of 1877 tied up freight and passenger traffic in July of 1877. Williams at first announced that he would interfere in no way with the strike or the strikers, but after some destruction of property by the strikers had led to bitter criticism of his inaction, he called out the militia.

In March 1877, a law providing for the construction of a new state house was passed and $2 million appropriated for the purpose. Williams received credit for the construction coming in under budget.

In February of 1880, Williams’ wife of 49 years took a fall from which she never recovered. She died on June 27 of that year. Reportedly some weeks after her death, his daughter found him hidden in a hay mow “while great sobs of grief shook his frame and tears coursed down his cheeks.” He returned to Indianapolis, but his own health rapidly declined and he died on November 20, 1880.

Benjamin Harrison, Williams former political opponent said of him:

If there were nothing to be said of Governor Williams’s relation to the public affairs of Indiana at all, his life would be an honorable and successful one. I have always felt that the successful pioneer, one of those who pressed forward toward the edge of civilization in the early days, and made a successful fight with the wilderness, and cleared the primitive forest and made of it a meadow, and of the marsh a dry field, and who built up around him and for himself and for the family that God gave him, a competence, elevated them, that that life was an honorable life and worthy of mention in any assembly. This work Governor Williams has done conspicuously.

Williams’ lieutenant governor, Isaac Gray became governor and served the remainder of Williams term. However, this was only about three months and Gray would become governor in his own right in 1884, so we’ll cover him next time.

Thomas Hendricks (1873-1877)

In the 1870s, Indiana was coming into its own. The educational system was developing, transportation facilities were increasing, its population had risen to 1.6 million in 1870 and would hit 1.9 million by 1880, and as a political swing state, it was becoming a force in national politics. It was during this period that Thomas Hendricks would finally win the governor’s job.

Thomas Hendricks was the nephew of Indiana’s second governor, William Hendricks, and was apparently very keen to become governor in his own right; running for governor three times — in 1860, 1868, and finally, successfully, in 1872. Hendricks practiced law for a period of time, but his family’s political background seems to have set him on that path. He was a state legislator, a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention of 1851, a United States Congressman, a land office commissioner, a United States Senator (filling Jesse Bright’s spot, earning him a place on Bright’s lengthy enemies list), governor, an unsuccessful Vice-Presidential candidate in 1876, and a successful Vice-Presidential candidate in 1884.

Hendricks had opposed passage of the Fifteenth Amendment and was generally an opponent of the Republicans’ reconstruction efforts in Congress. He had opposed repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act until slavery was made unconstitutional. Of blacks and the right to vote, he said “I say we are not of the same race,” Hendricks declared; “we are so different that we ought not to compose one political community.”

Hendricks faced challenges during his term as governor. He was a Democratic governor in  a state that had, for about twenty years, been dominated by Republicans. Additionally, when he started his term, Europe and North America were hit by the Panic of 1873. The post-civil war era had seen a boom in railroad construction fueled by government land grants and railroad subsidies. This led to a bubble and then a bust. German economic policy trickled into the U.S. and resulted in the U.S. not backing its currency in silver, moving to a de facto “gold standard,” and depressing the silver market. The Grant administration contracted the money supply at a time when there were some major disruptions in the banking industry. The fires in Chicago (1871) and Boston (1872) apparently didn’t help anything either.

Labor Disturbances

The period after the Civil War saw more Hoosiers leaving the farm and moving to the city to work in industry. Some saw a material improvement in their living conditions. But others found such labor brutal and barely conducive to survival. Hours were frequently on the order of 10 hours per day, 6 days per week; but 12 hours per day, 7 days per week was not unheard of. Nor was frequent unemployment. During the depression of the 1870s, many people struggled to survive. Leaders in Indiana subscribed to “a blend of individualism, laissez-faire economics, and social Darwinism” — none of which lent itself to improving the lot of workers in the face of the overwhelming bargaining position of the owners of capital (whose property rights were very much the subject of government favor.)

During Hendricks’ tenure, he called the militia out to break two strikes. One was a railroad strike in Logansport and the other was a mining strike in Clay County. The Logansport strike was part of a wave of labor problems the railroads faced in the wake of the Panic. They adapted to falling freight and profits by mass layoffs, reduced wages, and, in some cases, simply withholding wages entirely. The companies did not do themselves any favors in their manner of relating to the workers; for example, telling workers of sharp wage cuts the day before they were implemented. In Logansport, 200 railroad workers halted traffic on the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis railroad. They uncoupled cars, pulled non-strikers from their cabs, and tampered with engines and boilers. They fixed one engine so it could only run backward. The Cass County Sheriff and the mayor of Logansport were unsuccessful in dealing with the strikers, and the company was helpless to run the railroad. Indianapolis engineers appealed to public sympathy during the strike, explaining that they were not willing to sell their labor at a rate that would render them unable to send their children to school; compelling them to live a life of drudgery. Hendricks sent out the militia and restored order, but it appears that the public was largely on the side of the laboring men and the militia members heart really wasn’t in the job. Even so, the two companies of militia put down the strike by means such as arresting strikers, swearing in special deputies, sending a detachment of Indianapolis police officers, and having Logansport issue a riot proclamation ordering citizens to their homes or places of business.

The mining disturbance took place in Knightsville and Brazil. Operators of the Brazil field reduced compensation to $1 per ton and, when the miners quit, the operators imported black labor. On April 15, 1873, drunk miners attacked the black men in Knightsville and the trouble spread to Brazil. Gov. Hendricks ordered out the militia (apparently a slap-dash affair due to the disorganization of the militia at that time) and some Indianapolis police, and order was restored in fairly short order.

Baxter Bill

In the 1850s, Indiana had briefly experimented with state-wide prohibition law from 1855-1858 when it was declared unconstitutional and repealed. (Temperance advocates received a boost from the nativist Know Nothings who perceived a connection between alcohol and foreigners). Temperance concerns were set aside during the Civil War but did not go away. In 1873, Gov. Hendricks signed into law a temperance law known as the Baxter Bill:

[The bill] made it unlawful to sell, or give away for the purpose of gain any intoxicating liquors to be drunk about the premises without first obtaining a permit from the county commissioners. The applicant for such a license had to file with the auditor, not less than twenty days before the meeting of the board, a petition in writing giving the exact location, also certifying that the said applicant was a voter in the county, and that he was a proper person to have such a permit. This application had to be signed by a majority of the legal voters resident in the ward, town or township. If the petition was according to law and in regular form then the applicant had to pay the expense of filing such petition and give a bond of three thousand dollars with freehold security to insure payment of all fines and costs and all damages which might result from the selling of liquors by him. These licenses were all for one year; and the man was required to keep a certificate in a conspicuous place showing when his permit expired. If this permit was violated in any manner the holder must forfeit it and no new license might be granted him for a period of five years. In addition to this he was not allowed to sell liquors to minors or intoxicated persons, or persons in the habit of becoming intoxicated. Moreover, no liquors might be sold on Christmas, Thanksgiving Day or any public holiday between the hours of nine p. m. and six a. m.

State senator William Baxter was a Quaker from Wayne County. Gov. Hendricks was apparently urged to veto the bill and did not particularly favor it himself, but he acquiesced to it as the public will. However, he seems to have misjudged the public will (though that misjudgment was good for his party). In 1874, the Democrats had a good election in no small part because of Republican support for temperance. According to the October 14, 1874, edition of the New York Times, “opposition to the “Baxter Law,” passed by the Legislature, last Winter, undoubtedly had a good deal to do with the Democratic success. … the Democrats repudiated it at their last State Convention while the Republican platform endorses it. The Germans have been particularly hostile to the law, and the rum interest has been thoroughly organized for the benefit of the Democrats, who, in consequence, have carried the State.”

Hendricks also urged the construction of a new Indiana Statehouse. Its cornerstone was laid in 1880 after he left office. (Probably not coincidentally, he enjoys a large statue on the southeast corner of the Indiana Statehouse lawn). In 1876, while he was governor,  he ran as vice-presidential running mate to Samuel Tilden. Tilden probably won that election, but, due to the “corrupt bargain” of 1876, Republicans got the disputed electors for Rutherford B. Hayes and the South got an end to any serious reconstruction, and the ability to disenfranchise black people. In 1880, Hendricks was nominated again but declined for health reasons. In 1884, he successfully ran as the vice-presidential running mate to Grover Cleveland. The Democrats electoral strategy worked that year — they were able to win Cleveland’s home state of New York, Hendricks home state of Indiana, and the “solid south.” However, Hendricks was not vice-president for long.  In November 1885, he died unexpectedly in Indianapolis at the age of 66.  

Conrad Baker (1866 – 1873)

Conrad Baker was Indiana’s first post-war governor. Baker had studied law under prominent Radical Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Stevens. In 1841, Baker moved his law practice from Pennsylvania to Evansville and became involved in Vanderburgh County politics, serving as a Whig state representative. He was outspoken against slavery and, when the Whig Party broke up, joined the Republicans. He ran as Oliver Morton’s lieutenant governor in their unsuccessful 1854 campaign. When Morton ran in 1864 (Morton had been Henry Lane’s lieutenant in 1860), Baker was again Morton’s running mate. Baker was acting governor for a period of time as Oliver Morton was recovering from a stroke and took over the governor’s position when Oliver Morton was elected to the Senate. He was elected in his own right in 1868 in a closely contested race against Thomas Hendricks.

In 1862, Congress had passed and President Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-Grant Act. That legislation had been passed to allow use of public lands for colleges focused on agriculture and the mechanical arts “in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.” Each state received 30,000 acres of public land for each member of Congress the state had. The land, or proceeds from its sale, was to be used to fund a land-grant college. In 1865, Indiana elected to accept the terms of the Act and, in 1869, Governor Baker signed legislation under the land-grant system to found Purdue.  Tippecanoe County’s proposal had included $150,000 (equivalent to $2.7 million) from Lafayette business leader and philanthropist John Purdue, $50,000 from the county, and 100 acres of land from local residents. Purdue was a merchant and former teacher with a variety of civic interests in the Tippecanoe County area. One area where he seems to have profited a great deal was from supplying pork to the Union during the Civil War.

Post-War Constitutional Amendments

It was at the end of the Morton administration and beginning of the Baker administration during which the post-war Constitutional Amendments were passed.

Thirteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery, had passed fairly rapidly under Governor Morton in February 1865. It was passed by both chambers within a week, although some Democratic dead enders contemplated an unsuccessful effort to bolt the legislature in order to stall or prevent its passage.

In 1866, an Indiana Supreme Court with four Republican justices elected on the same ticket as Morton and Conrad (and Lincoln) declared Article XIII of the Indiana Constitution invalid. Article XIII was the provision added to the 1851 Constitution that prohibited black people from moving into the state and declared void all contracts with blacks who were in the state in violation of the constitutional provision. The case was Smith v. Moody. Smith was a black man, and Moody owed him money on a promissory note. When Smith sued to collect, Moody said he didn’t have to pay because Smith was here illegally under Article XIII and, therefore, the contract was void. The Indiana Supreme Court made passing reference to the recently adopted Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, but it primarily relied on the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the U.S. Constitution to say that Article XIII illegally deprived people like Moody of the government’s protection and the enjoyment of life and liberty. While upholding some rights for black people, like freedom of movement and the right to contract; the court stopped short of full equality. Black people did not, for example, have the right to vote or hold office; and the Court said this was o.k.

Fourteenth Amendment

Ellsworth Shade, in a 1960 masters thesis examines the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in Indiana in 1866 and 1867. The Fourteenth Amendment does a number of things — it overturned the Dred Scott decision and guaranteed citizenship to blacks. It sought to guarantee equal protection and impose due process protections against state infringement. It dealt with Congressional representation in light of the three-fifths clause being nullifed. It attempted to disqualify rebels from holding office. And, it prohibited payment of Southern debts related to the rebellion. During the summer of 1866, Oliver Morton championed its ratification in Indiana. The parts that inflicted pain on the Southerners were easy enough to sell, but Hoosiers were not necessarily comfortable with the parts about civil rights for black people. Oliver Morton argued that nobody who wasn’t a monarchist or a believer in slavery could take issue with it. Appealing to regionalism, he said that, finally, Southern whites would be  prohibited from enjoying representation on the basis of a black population that had been deprived of civil rights. Indiana Democrats campaigned hard against the Fourteenth Amendment, but the elections that year strongly favored the Republicans. The Republicans controlled both chambers of the legislature and won 8 of the 11 Congressional Districts.  In advocating for ratification of the Amendment, Governor Morton unloaded on the South:

Morton then launched a verbal attack upon the South. He accused the Southerners of instituting a reign of terror by persecuting the freedmen and forcing other loyal Union men to flee for their lives. The Governor asserted that the South had, by these actions, stirred the anger of the nation and produced a cry for vengeance throughout the country. Warning Southerners to flee from the wrath to come, Morton called upon the people of the South to put away their perjured traitors, to make haste to abandon their sins, and to accept the proffered terms of restoration presented 2 to them in the proposed amendment.”

Republicans having the upper hand in the legislature and the Democrats being largely powerless to stop the amendment, the debate was relatively brief. Republicans mostly ignored Democratic arguments, quickly rehashed some of their own, and voted to ratify the Amendment about a week after the legislature convened, 29 to 16 in the Senate, and 55 to 36 in the House.

Fifteenth Amendment

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States had a tougher ratification fight. It states, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In 1913, William Gerhichs wrote a comprehensive account of its ratification in Indiana. In 1865, Oliver Morton did not particularly favor immediate enfranchisement, preferring to give freed slaves political power gradually. Among other rationales, he believed that giving blacks immediate rights would be a “pro-slavery” argument — saying that freed slaves were ready for political power would be an indication that slavery had been beneficial enough to them to prepare them for civic responsibility. In any event, given Indiana’s treatment of blacks in its recently adopted 1851 Constitution, it’s fair to say that the population wasn’t fervently progressive when it came to the rights of black people. That said, Morton came around on the issue. Probably because he was a loyal Republican as much as anything else. He felt that passage of the 15th Amendment was necessary to create loyal Republican government in the South.  As a Senator, Morton battled with Indiana’s other Senator, Thomas Hendricks. Hendricks disfavored the amendment, believing that loyal states should be able to choose their own course in terms of permitting or denying black suffrage.

In February of 1869, the Fifteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress, and on March 1, 1869, Governor Baker submitted the proposed amendment to the legislature. At first, Democrats urged that consideration of the Amendment be postponed until more routine, more pressing matters were taken care of. They also urged that because no party had campaigned on black suffrage in the most recent elections, consideration of the Amendment should be put off until the next election. When the Republicans did not go along with that, the Democrats bolted. On March 3, the Democrats caucused until midnight. On March 4, 1869, seventeen Senators and thirty-seven Representatives — all Democrats — resigned. Three Democratic Senators and six Representatives did not resign. (Republicans claimed that these were legislators who didn’t figure to get re-elected if they had resigned.) Governor Baker issued a writ for a special election to fill the resigned positions on March 23. (This was only 12 days before a regular election scheduled in April. Failing to wait the 12 days to hold the election was seen as an effort to impose punitive expenses on the districts who had elected the bolting legislators.) The Democrats were chastised for taking their per diem and their allotment of stamps and stationary. One was accused of trading his stamps for a plow:

“One of the conscientious bolters yesterday ‘turned an honest penny ’ by exchanging $18 worth of postage stamps, paid for by the money of the State, for a couple of plows. Here is a fine example of a retired statesman imitating the high Roman fashion of Cincinnatus.”

The constituents of the Democratic bolters were hardly outraged, however. All of the bolters were re-elected in the special election. A special session convened on April 12, and consideration of the Amendment was postponed until May. In that respect, the Democratic bolt seems to have accomplished one of its goals. When the proposal was drawing near to consideration, Democrats proposed to bolt again. Republicans resolved to use some strong arm tactics. Several senators claimed to have resigned but they had not left the building. The door keeper was told to bring them into the chamber, the doors were locked (apparently locked by a Republican senator by the name of Isaac Gray — who would later become a Democratic governor), and they were counted for purposes of a quorum despite claiming to have resigned. The vote was 27 to 1 with 10 marked as present but not voting. After some failed attempts in the House to get a quorum, the Speaker finally decided that the rules for a quorum on a Constitutional Amendment were different — that the necessary percentage should be calculated based on the number of representatives who had not resigned. The House then proceeded with a vote where the Amendment passed 54-0 with 3 not voting. Gehrichs concludes his evaluation of this episode with the opinion that, while the Republicans were on morally defensible ground, viewed through the letter of the law, the Fifteenth Amendment was probably never legally passed in Indiana.

Some other accomplishments during Baker’s term were “appropriations for a soldier’s home, a house of refuge for juvenile offenders, uncontrollable boys and children with unfit parents, and a woman’s prison.” After his term, Baker went into private practice, joining with incoming governor, Thomas Hendricks’ firm,” the law firm of Hendricks, Hord & Hendricks which became Baker, Hord & Hendricks when Thomas Hendricks became governor.” The firm would eventually become the prominent Indianapolis firm, Baker & Daniels (now Faegre Baker Daniels).

And, on a personal note, it appears that it was during Gov. Baker’s term that the first Massons were born in Indiana. James Masson, son of Mansfield B. Masson, had moved from Cincinnati to Indianapolis at some point in the 1850s or 1860s. In 1867, my  great-grandfather, Mansfield Ross Masson (founder of the M. Ross Masson company) was born. He had a brother (Woodburn) who would become an Indianapolis lawyer of some prominence another brother, James, who became a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and a sister, Jennie who became a stenographer and, apparently headed up the shorthand department at the Indianapolis Business University for some time.

Continuing on with installment number 5 of this bicentennial series. We’ll pick up just after the Civil War. In some ways, it felt like the country and the state had been in a stall for a long time. In Indiana, the State had gone all-in with the Mammoth Internal Improvement Act. This was immediately followed by a grinding recession precipitated by the Panic of 1837. Then the nation seemed perpetually distracted by the slavery question throughout the 1850s. That tension was finally released in the all-consuming Civil War. Coming out the other side of that stretch combined the impact of the Industrial Revolution, Americans were ready to get busy. (In reality, a lot of the action was probably underway — but history tends to focus on top level stuff, and the landscape was dominated by recession, slavery, and war.)

First, as per usual, the National Scene:

Presidents:

Andrew Johnson (1865 – 1869)

Andrew Johnson became President in 1865 after John Wilkes Booth murdered President Lincoln. Johnson had been a Democratic Senator from Tennessee. He was firmly pro-Union and did not resign his seat when members of the Tennessee government declared secession. In fact, back in Tennessee, Johnson campaigned against secession in the face of threats of physical harm. Lincoln picked Johnson as a running mate to signify the continued viability of Union. However, as a Democrat succeeding Lincoln, Johnson did not have a friendly Congress — many of whom were Radical Republicans, not at all in the mood to be conciliatory after sacrificing American lives to suppress the rebellion.

Johnson, therefore, found himself at odds with Congress over the shape of Reconstruction with its questions about whether the newly free blacks would be entitled to vote, what would be required of Southern States before they were entitled to participate in the federal government, and whether and how to punish those who had taken up arms against the United States. Georgia attempted to send Confederate Vice-President, Alexander Stephens, to Congress in December 1865. Johnson appeared to accept such a move in the name of quick conciliation. But most Northerners wanted Southerners to acknowledge their defeat. Some Northerners saw southern whites as proud and insolent. Allowing an unrepentant Southern leader like Stephens to participate in federal government would be intolerable. Congress refused to seat Stephens and established a committee to recommend appropriate reconstruction legislation.

As a Democrat, Johnson appeared to be counting on Southern support for his election prospects and, therefore, wasn’t as quick to condemn the actions of the Southern elite which were designed to, as much as possible, maintain the status quo ante despite their defeat. This alienated the Radical Republicans. Johnson vetoed a bill that would have extended the existence of the Freedman’s Bureau and another that granted citizenship to the freedmen. The veto of the second bill was overridden and Johnson had alienated the moderate Republicans. The Freedman’s Bureau bill was passed again, vetoed again, and this time that veto was overridden as well. The Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act over Johnson’s veto. Among other things, it required ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition of the end of military occupation and the return of civil government in the rebel states (except for Tennessee which had already passed the Fourteenth Amendment and been readmitted.)

Eventually, the Congressional Republicans impeached Johnson mostly because they were spoiling for a fight with him. They had passed a dubious “Tenure of Office” Act which purported to limit a President’s authority to terminate executive cabinet members once appointed. When Johnson dismissed Secretary of War Stanton without Congressional approval, impeachment hearings were initiated. The House prosecutors  fell just short of the tw0-thirds of the Senators needed to convict, with 35 guilty votes versus 19 not-guilty.

During this period, in 1867, Secretary of State Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska (a/k/a “Seward’s Folly” and “Seward’s Icebox”) from Russia for $7.2 million (about $122 million today). One of Johnson’s last acts in office was to grant a blanket amnesty that protected Confederates from prosecution for the treason they committed.

Ulysses S. Grant 1869 – 1877

Grant was, of course, the Union General and war hero who defeated his Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee, and won the Civil War. Given the significance of his victory and our love of generals, he was an unsurprising choice to run for President.

Notable for Indiana was his choice of Schuyler Colfax as a running mate. Colfax had been a deputy Auditor under his step-father in St. Joseph County, covered politics when he worked at and later owned newspapers in the Region and, in that capacity, became friendly with Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune for which Colfax contributed articles. Colfax had been an active Whig then became a Republican when that party was created. He was also a delegate to the convention that wrote Indiana’s 1851 Constitution. Colfax became a United States Representative in 1855 and was Speaker of the House until 1869 when he became Vice-President under Grant. As Speaker, Colfax was aligned with the Radicals and made sure that, despite the Speaker traditionally not voting on legislation, his name was recorded as voting for the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. Colfax got caught up in the Credit Mobilier scandal (involving, essentially, bribes related to the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad).

Reconstruction was a major issue during Grant’s Presidency – how the U.S. was going to treat the newly freed slaves and how much or how little it would do to punish the traitors. The Radicals wanted to punish the Confederates severely and/or give black people equal rights. The Democrats were more inclined to let bygones be bygones and go back to business as usual. During the Grant administration, the Department of Justice was created and used to prosecute the white Southern terrorists calling themselves the Ku Klux Klan. Congress also passed the Force Acts of 1870 and 1871 designed to allow federal enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment and protect the ability of black people to vote in the South in the face of lawless Klansmen. Grant signed into law the Amnesty Act of 1872 which allowed most former Confederates to assume public office again — despite having broken their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

The frontier was coming to a close during this period. On May 10, 1869, Leland Stanford drove the golden spike into the United States’ first transcontinental railroad, joining the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads. It was now possible to cross the country in six days. Railroads were bringing white people into more and more contact with the Native Americans in the west. Grant implemented what he called a “Peace Policy” which was essentially designed to assimilate the Indians and keep them on reservations until they were willing to be assimilated. Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn came in 1876, and Grant blamed Custer for the unnecessary loss of life. Rampant corruption in the Department of the Interior did not help anything. Expeditions to survey the upper Yellowstone led to the establishment of the Yellowstone area as the country’s first national park.

Grant’s administration was plagued by scandal. President Grant, himself, does not seem to have been personally involved, but he was unduly loyal to his friends who were not above using the government to enrich themselves. The Panic of 1873 came during his second term, caused by, among other things, speculation in the railroad industry and an overheated economy after eight years of growth following the Civil War.

Rutherford B. Hayes (1877 – 1881) 

Hayes won (or at least became President) after a hotly contested contest against Samuel Tilden. Having lost the popular vote, “Hayes won an intensely disputed electoral college vote after a Congressional commission awarded him twenty contested electoral votes. The result was the Compromise of 1877, in which the Democrats acquiesced to Hayes’s election and Hayes ended all U.S. military involvement in Southern politics.”

My primary experience with Hayes is that my grandparents lived in a house built on property that Hayes and his wife (“Lemonade Lucy”) used to own in Fremont, Ohio. Spiegel Grove which is on the Hayes’ estate and houses the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center is one of my favorite places. Not because I particularly learned much about Hayes there but because that’s where I rode bikes with my Grandpa.

But I digress. Hayes had been a lawyer in Ohio before the Civil War. In the war he was wounded five times and attained the rank of major general. After the war, he served a term as Congressman then went on to be the governor of Ohio. Because of what we’ll kindly call irregularities in how he obtained the necessary electoral votes to become President, Democrats nicknamed him “His Fraudulency” and “Rutherfraud.”

Hayes ended Reconstruction in the South and returned the Confederacy to “home rule” (i.e. depriving black people of their civil rights). Congress was apparently not willing to fund military occupation of the South for much longer anyway, and Republicans were apparently losing their appetite for the task.

In July of 1877, disgruntled railroad workers were unhappy with some of the actions taken by railroad companies (e.g. cutting wages and sometimes simply refusing to pay wages) and began striking. This was in the wake of an economic collapse caused by an overheated economy and, in particular, railroad speculation. President Hayes sent federal troops to suppress the strike in a number of cities (Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago) and that was instrumental in ending the strike.

In 1873, Congress had passed the Coinage Act which resulted in an end to the U.S. minting coins in silver. This contracted the money supply and contributed to the economic troubles resulting from the Panic of 1873. During Hayes’ term, Congress tried to fix this and passed a bill that resumed the use of silver coins. Hayes felt this was dishonest and inflationary and vetoed the bill. However, Congress was able to override the veto.

In 1868, the U.S. had entered into a treaty with China that allowed unrestricted immigration of Chinese people. When the economy went south in 1873, workers — particularly in the west — blamed their hardship on the Chinese. In response, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act abrogating the treaty. However, Hayes vetoed the act, almost leading to his impeachment. Republicans were able to prevent this by refusing to vote and breaking a quorum. During the Hayes’ administration, the last of the wars with Native Americans were taking place. For example, in 1877, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce declared, “I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

Hayes had promised not to seek re-election, and he kept that promise. In his retirement, Hayes came more to recognize the troubles with the growing wealth disparity in the country. He wrote, “ Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many. . . . We may reach and remove the difficulty by changes in the laws regulating corporations, descents of property, wills, trusts, taxation, and a host of other important interests, not omitting lands and other property.” The country had entered the Gilded Age.