Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1885 — THE PUBLIC MEN OF INDIANA [ARTICLE]

THE PUBLIC MEN OF INDIANA

‘Gath” Talks Briefly of Hoosier Governors and Other Prominent Men. General Harrison, John Gibson, Thomas Posey, Jennings, Noble, Wallace, Bigger, Howard, Whitcomb, Marshall and Wright. [Letter in Cincinnati Enquirer.] Mr. George W. Julian, of Indiana, considers ■Harrison’s nomination to have been a political mistake, and fays that his election involved no principle whatever; that he not only sought to introduce slavery into the West, but took sides with it at the admission of Missouri in 1820; was opposed to the light of petition on the subject of slavery, and had declared that “only an incoherent devil could look with approbation upon the schemes of the Abolitionists." The battle of Tippecanoe, fought on Indiana soil, killed and wounded nearly two hundred whites and about the same number of Indians. Among the killed was Col. Jo Daviess, the brother-in-law of Chief Justice Marshall, and also the District Attorney who had prosecuted Aaron Burr, in Kentucky. Burr visited Vincennes while Harrison was Governor, and obtained some of his volunteers there.

The Governor succeeding Harrison, John Gibson. removed the public offices of the Territory to Corydon, a town hardly twenty miles west of Louisville, in Kentucky. It was this officer who, .as Secretary, saved the life of Harrison from Tecumseh's tomahawk. The third Territorial Governor, Thos. Posey, was from the banks of the Potomac, and had been a Revolutionary and Indian officer, and for a while Senator from Virginia. He died from the diseases incidental to a residence in that new country, at an advanced age. In one of his messages to the Legislature at Corydon he wrote: “The settling state of my health will not admit of my longer continuance at this place. 1 find myself badly situated on account of the want of medical aid; my physician Is at Louisville, and I have taken alt the medicine brought with me.’’ At Corvdon was held the convention which adopted the first Constitution of Indiana. In 1816 the State entered the Federal Union, with Jonathan Jennings as the first Governor, Christopher Harrison as Lieutenant-governor, and William Hendricks Representative in Congress. This Mr. Hendricks was a native of General St. Clair’s county, in Pennsylvania, and settled at Cincinnati. His home in Indiana was at Madison, and although he had been only two years in the State, his behavior in the constitutional convention carried him to Congress and to the Governor’s office. He had three terms in Congress as the Territorial Delegate, and became the second Governor of the State, and after serving two terms he laid down office forever. He brought into Indiana a printing press and published the second newspaper in the State. His nephew is the Vice President of the United States, and two of his sons were killed ■on the Federal side in the' late civil war. He was a Methodist, and there is said to be no picture extant of him. He accumulated a considerable estate, chiefly in the vigorous young city of Madison. Gov. Jennings, above referred to, was a Presbyterian minister’s son, from Jersey, and his fine handwriting made him clerk of the Indiana Territorial Legislature. He was the first determined opponent in Indiana of slavery taking root upon the soil, and the Attorney General of the Territory, Thomas Randolph, was equally ardent to encourage the institution.

In the early settlement of Indiana the Vir-ginia-descended people, who held most of the official places, wanted slavery, while the New Jersey and Pennsylvania people, who finally got control of the State after it ceased to be a Territory, wanted the principles of the Articles of Confederation to stand. Slavery virtually existed here for years, and slaves were bought and sold in the public market contrary to law. A late reviewer of the State says that “public sentiment at Vincennes was as pro-slavery as it was at Richmond.” The Middle State men were warmly seconded in their hostility to slavery by the Carolina Quakers, who came not only from North but from South Carolina, and settled in the eastern portion of the State. These supported Mr. Jennings almost to a man, and he defeated Ran--dolph by a plurality, each getting little more than four hundred votes. Had Randolph gone to Congress, ne would have set to work there to have the prohibitory clause repealed. , One of the Territorial Judges from the South, named Taylor, endeavored to provoke Goy. Jennings into a duel. The pro-slavery cancudate set up against him, Mr. Posey, got nearly 1,310 votes less. The first message of this Pennsylvania scion said: “I recommend to your consideration the propriety of providing by law to prevent more effectually any unlawful attempts to seize and carry into bondage persons of color legally entitled to their freedom." Kidnaping pestered Indiana down to the very brink of the rebellion. It was Gov. Jennings who, in 1820, had his Commissioners to lay out Indianapo is. He made the Indian treaties opening Indiana to white settlement, and, being sent to Congress, relapsed into too convivial habits there, and shortened his life. Mr. Randolph, above referred to, was a cousin of John Randolph of Roanoke, and had married a daughter of Sir John Skipworth, and later a granddaughter of Gen. St. Clair, Territorial Governor.* In the political feuds of Indiana fights were not uncommon, and Randolph was once stabbed with a dirk, and he cut his adversary in the face with a pocket knife. Randolph and his belligerent friend Taylor, above referred to, were both killed at Tippecanoe. As soon as Indiana entered the Union, a university was created by law at Vincennes. James Brown Ray, a Kentuckian by birth, who succeeded William Hendricks as Governor, was a peculiar individual, who always registered his name on steamboats and at hotels with the title added. In his old aee the boys would see him stopping in the streets and writing words in the air with his cane. On one occasion, at the hanging of some white persons for murdering Indians, one of these was pardoned on the scaffold, and the Governor rode to the gallows, where the young man was seated on his coffin. "Stand up,” said the Governor to the astonished prisoner. “Do you know in whose presence you stand?” The unfortunate man shook his head "There are but two powers known to the law,” gravely said the Governor, “that can save you from hanging by the neck until you are dead One is the great God of the universe the other is J. Brown Ray, Governor of the State of Indiana. The latter stands before you. (Here he handed the young man a written pardon.] You are pardoned.” The fourth Indiana Governor, Noah Noble, was a Virginian, at whose funeral, in 1844, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, then a citizen of Indiana, performed some of the services. The next Governor of the State, David Wallace, a Pennsylvanian, put in nomination for the Presidency on the field of Tippecanoe, in 1835, Gen. Harrison, and William Ross Wallace read a poem. The next Governor, Samuel Bigger, was of the first crop of Western-born men, a native of Ohio, ana educated at one of her early colleges. He began the practice of law at Liberty, Ind., where General Bumside’s father was clerk of court, and where Bumside himself was bom of parents descended from South Carolina people. Burnside, it may be said in passing, was the most conspicuous officer Indiana produced in the war. He was sent to West Point by the friendship of Caleb B. Smith, whose coat, it is said, Burnside had mended when he was a tailor’s apprentice in the little town of Liberty. Burn«ide was born in a log cabin in Indiana. His father. Edgehill Burnside, a native of South Carolina, became a Judge. After he had led his prominent career in the army. General Burnside built a railroad in Indiana, though he had become a citizen of Rhode Island, where he was married and had been stationed before the war Governor Bigger, from the same town of Liberty, was beaten by the Methodist Church ■ for re-election, he having said, it was believed, when legislation was required for Asbury University, in Indiana, that the Methodist Church did not need an educated clergy—an ignorant clergy was better suited to it. Bishop Ames remarked on this: “It was the amen corner that defeated Bigger, and I had a hand in the work * Mr. Bigger defeated the most notable Democrat Indiana possessed prior to the war except Jesse D. Bright. This was Tilghman A. Howard. Mr. Bigger was in turn defeated by James Whitcomb, who stands next to Howard In Democratic popularity among the State Governors. Howard was a native of South Carolina, though prob-

ably of Maryland antecedents; his father was a revolutionary soldier and a Baptist preacher. His youth was passed in the county of Buncombe, which he has the credit of having introduced to the world. He told a story in one of his Apesches that a representative in the North Carolina Legislature from Buncombe County, when called to order by the Speaker for not confining himself to the question at issue, replied: “My speech is not for the Legislature; it is all for Buncombe.” Mr. Howard removed to Tennessee, and studied law with Hugh L. White. There he became a friend of Sam Houston. Governor of the State, and years after went as representative of the United States to the Republic of Texas. He took the fever there, and died at Houston, the capital of Texas, in 1844, at the early age of for-ty-seven. In Tennes-ee he was one of Andrew Jackson's Presidential Electors. In Indiana, where he settled to practice law, he became James Whitcomb's partner, and they made the strongest legal firm in the Stare. One of his law partners later in life was Joseph A. Vi right, an eminent Governor of Indiana and foreign minister. Gen. Jackson made Howard an Indian Commissioner and District Attorney, and he was only prevented from reaching the Governorship in 1840 by the popularity of Gen. Harrison, who was running for President. There was a force of character and a manly honesty about Tilghman Howard which left a long impression on the young Democrats of the State. In one of his letters he wrote: “Never write to any but men of distinction.” In another : “I have considered the matter of a public dinner. It is not Democratic.” He was finally beaten for the United States Senate by Edward A. Hannegan, and it is said that when an attempt was made to sell votes to Gen. Howard he replied that he scorned the proffer, and refused to continue any longer in the contest. He was not a college man, but was full of knowledge. On one occasion, upon making a public speech, he read’ aloud a newspaper article charging him with a disreputable act. Having read the artic'e through aloud he threw the paper down without a word and proceeded with his speech. The Legislature of Indiana some years after his death passed an act to remove his remains from Texas to the State of his citizenship. James Whitcomb, his par'ner, was a Vermont boy, who came in childhood to Ohio, and went to college at Lexington, Ky., maintaining himself by teaching in vacation. He was admitted to the bar at Lexington, and then settled at Bloomington, Ind., the seat of one of the most flourishing schools. Governor Ray, from Kentucky, already referred to, appointed him a Prosecuting Attorney. He entered the State Legislature at the time the passion for internal improvement was general, and resisted it, and hence, upon the collapse, he obtained the support of the poor tax-payers. Besides, resisting internal improvements greatly recommended him to President Jackson, who had antagonized Henry Clay on that point. Jackson made him Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington, and he held that place for eight years, it is a tradition that he learned the French and Spanish languages in order to comprehend the land grants. In course of time Thomas A. Hendricks also took his office, there being an Indiana precedent tor holding it. Whitcomb, after his long tenure at Washington, returned to Indiana aged fortysix, and opened a law office at Terre Haute. His practice became large, land cases being notable then, and in two years he was nominated for Governor. He was elected, beating Joseph G. Marshall by nearly four thousand votes. 1 his man Marshall, by the way, was a most remarkable character. A native of Kentucky and a Presbyterian preacher's son, he went to the same college with Whitcomb, and partly at the same time, and also came to Indiana and settled at the flourishing business town of Madison, which has produced such banking houses as Lanier & Co. ’s. Marshall became a Whig, was a Judge, and, after being beaten by Whitcomb for Governor, he tried in vain to enter the United States Senate. His opponent at that time was Jesse D. Bright, who refused to let the Democrats go into the election. Bright, as Lieutenant Governor, gave the casting vote against this election. The next year Bright was sent to the Senate, instead of Marshall, by a small majority. These two men, living, in Madison, hated each other with bitter fury. Marshall would have beeij sent to the Senate in 1854 but for the) Democrats refusing to go into an election] Marshall was probably the ablest Whig Indiana ever had, and some think the ablest man th;{ State ever had. He was the Tom Corwin of Indiana, with more tenacity of purpose.. AL though a Kentuckian, he took an earnest antl-i slavery position, and defended Abolitionists and those who broke the fugitive-slave law. Bright and Marshall were about to have a duel in 1851, and Marshall lay for Bright with q bowie knife on the streets of Madison. Gen, McKee Dunn, who is still alive in Washington, was one of the seconds of Marshall when he wail about to fight Senator Bright. John Defretq called Marshall “the Webster of Indiana.” To return to Governor Whitcomb. He camq into power when the State was suffering with debt, and paying no interest, and in his admin J istration resumption became feasible. He wail one of the authors of the philanthropic State) institutions, and he called out the soldiers loi the Mexican war, five regiments. Being sent tq the United States Senate, he was attacked with gravel and died in New York nine years before the war. Joseph A. Wright, whom I knew personally, having met him in Berlin, when he was Minister there during the war between Austria and Prus-. sia in 1866, was one of the immediate links between the old Democratic party and the present Republican party. He came from the same town in Pennsylvania where- James G. Blaine was educated, Little Washington. At Bloomington College he made fires and rang bells to get his schooling, and did a little brick-work and masonry also. He went to Rockville to practice law, and was sent to the State Legislature in 1833, to the State Senate on the great Harrlsoq boom of 1840, next to Congress, and, having been once defeated for Governor, he was elected in 1852, and the Pierce administration sent him to Prussia. After Jesse D. Bright was expelled from the United States Senate, Gov. Mortoni saw a chance to reconcile one wing of the Democracy, and he appointed Wright, and soon after Mr. .Lincoln sent him back to Germany, and there he died in 1867. In Prussia he spent most of his time in extricating naturalized Americans from their own follies or the persecutions of Bismarck.

State Items. —The several national banks at Lafayette refuse to pay the tax on their capital stock, and the Lafayette National has made a test case. —lndianapolis treats tramps after the fashion prescribed in Boston in the Wayfarer’s Lodge, and last year made a profit on its wood-yards over all expenses of SSOO. —Relatives of John Butcher, who murdered a man near Oakland City, and then, it is supposed, committed suicide, breathe threats of vengeance. They say Butcher did not kill himself, but was shot by an officer. Persons who assisted in the pursuit of Butcher have been anonymously warned. —Alexander Adair, an old resident of Indianapolis, died suddenly in the house of a colored family to whom he rented one of his houses, and with whom he lived. He owed considesable property, and left three sons whose addresses are not known. Mr. Adair was considered the champion checker player of the West, and was also proficient at chess. He left a book in written manuscript on these subjects, which contains many difficult problems, and his room was filled with boards and other devices of the game. Some years ago he played a series of games with Wylie, the so-called champion of the world, who was making a toip: of this country. “The spirit of inquiry is abroad in the land,” says the Gospel Herald. Of course it is, and it would have to be, or the daily press would soon come to a standstill.