Grant County, Wisconsin - Chapter 3: Political History, 1900

Chapter 3: Political History

During the territorial times, the people of the Territory, having no voice in the election of President and Members of Congress, had only a sympathetic interest in national politics, and in voting on their local affairs and for local officers seldom drew party lines. In Grant County candidates for county offices announced themselves, or were 44 brought out by their friends," irrespective of their political beliefs. The 44 Liberty" party, or abolitionists, however, organized as early as 1845 and put up a county ticket, which received eighteen votes, just the number of names on the ticket.

About 1844 an effort was made to organize the "Native Amer¬ ican" party in the county. S. O. Paine, J. E. Dodge, James P. Cox, and D. R. Burt, all able and influential men, were prominent in the agitation, which, although it created much angry discussion, had no permanent result.

As the time for admission of Wisconsin as a State approached, interest in national politics sprang up and the two great parties of the time: the Whig and the Democratic parties, formed their first organization in the county.

On the 7th of August. 1847, the Whig county convention met at Lancaster and nominated the following ticket : Treasurer, James M. Otis, of Lancaster ; Register, Morris W. Martin, of Platteville ; County Commissioners, James P. Cox, of Boice Prairie, Henry Webster, of Beetown, Samuel Virden, of Hazel Green ; Assessors, Robert Young of Hazel Green, Isaac Martin, of Big Platte, and Hiram Brunson, of Patch Grove; Clerk of Board, Enos P. Wood, of Lancaster; Coroner, Andrew J. Greene, of Potosi; County Surveyor, George R. Stuntz, of Lancaster. D. R. Burt and N. H. Virgin were nominated for the legis¬ lature. John H. Rountree was chairman of the convention.

The Democratic county convention met at Lancaster, August 14, 1847, and nominated the following county ticket : County Commis¬ sioners, Ben C. Eastman, of Platteville, Albert W. Emery, of Pleasant Valley, and Horace Catlin, of Beetown ; Treasurer, Arthur W. Worth, of Lancaster; Register, Neville H. Suttle, of Hazel Green; Clerk of Board, James McCormick, of Potosi ; Assessors, Nehemiah H. Bon¬ ham, of Hurricane, Wm. Bryant, of Patch Grove, Oliver Rice, of Fairplay. Nelson Dewey and Joel C. Squires were nominated for the legis¬ lature. Dr. Joel Angell, of Potosi, presided.

In the spring of 1848 there was an election for Governor of the State and members of the legislature. Again party lines were drawn and again the Whigs carried the count}' by a small majority. A table of this vote will be found on page 166.

In the fall of 1848 there was a presidential election, and election of county officers. Zachary Taylor, Whig, carried the county by a plurality of 501 over Lewis Cass, but four of the Whig candidates for county offices were beaten : J. Allen Barber, for District Attorney, by W. R. Biddlecome; T. J. Taylor, for Sheriff, by Matt Woods, and A. A. Parker, by J. C. Squires for County Clerk. Parker was at first de¬ clared elected, but an error of ten in copying the number of votes in Patch Grove being corrected, it was found that Squires had three ma¬ jority. J. M. Goodhue was beaten for Probate Judge by Hugh R. Colter.

Fall Of The Whig And Rise Of The Republican Party

In 1850 the Democrats carried the county by a small majority. In the presidential election of 1852 the Democrats again carried the county, the vote for President being: Pierce, 1,379; Scott, 1,341; Hale (Abolition), 129. After the defeat of General Scott the breaking up of the Whig party was rapid. The anti-slavery men in Grant County, old Whigs, Democrats, and Free-soilers, went into the new Republican party, which from the first found a stronghold in this county, and in 1854 the Republican county ticket was elected, and the party carried the county at every succeeding election for many years. The enthusiasm for the Union during war times and for several years afterward greatly added to the strength of the Republican party.

cal revolution. There was intense dissatisfaction with the corruptions of Congress, in which the Republicans had a large majority. The "Salary Grab" and "Credit Mobilier," were specimens. Theextremely hard times caused by a contraction of the currency added to the dissatisfaction with the dominant party. Legislation to control rail¬ road corporations was desired by the farmers, and seemed to be opposed by many of the professional classes belonging to the Republi¬ can party, and the powerful order of the Grange was turned against the party. In the election of 1873 the Democratic candidate for Governor, Wm. R. Taylor, almost wiped out the tremendous majority which C. C. Washburn had received two years before in the county, and three of the four Democratic candidates for Assemblymen were elected. But a reaction came the next year. In 1877 the Greenback party, which had been organized in 1876, polled a large vote for Gov¬ ernor in the county, but in 1878 it fused with the Democratic party and shared in the customary defeats of that party. A few towns in the county (notably Potosi, Cassville, and Muscoda) have remained permanently Democratic, and when Potosi and Cassville, with their large Democratic majorities, have been placed in the same assembly district, a Democratic Assemblyman has several times been elected, as William J. McCoy in 1877, 1882, and 1884.

County Funds Lost

A bit of county history which, not being political in itself, belongs in the political division only because a strong but ineffectual attempt to make political capital out of it was made, was the loss of money belonging to the county by Treasurer McMahon. The Treasurer had placed a large part of the county funds in the bank of Isaac Hodges, in Platteville. The bank failed in 1884. In 1885 a resolution was adopted by the County Board to receive the Treasurer's vouchers of deposit (amounting to $5,552.45) at half their face vulue, although it was known that probably the bank would not pay ten per cent, of its liabilities. The matter was hotly debated in the session of 1886, and again at the session of 1887, when by a vote of 25 to 15 it was resolved to accept the vouchers at their full value and entirely relieve the Treasurer of the loss. The opponents of this measure claimed that the Treasurer had placed the money in the bank to profit by the inter¬ est received, and that he should accept the losses as well as the profits of his unauthorized transaction. The Treasurer and his friends claimed that he did not place the money in the bank for the purpose of getting interest, and he had never received any interest on it ; that he put it in the bank because the county had furnished no safe place in which to keep it, and therefore the county should stand the loss.

George C. Hazelton

A political history of Grant County would be very incomplete without a mention of one of its most prominent and one of its few pro¬ fessional politicians.

George C. Hazelton came to Boscobel from Schenectady, N. Y., in September, 1863. The war was then raging and Grant County was pretty well drained of its able-bodied young men, such as Mr. Hazelton then was. But, though he made eloquent war speeches, he preferred Mercury to Mars as a steady god. He immediately went into politics, and in 1864, when he had been in the State barely long enough to be a voter, he was elected District Attorney. While holding this office he was nominated for State Senator, much to the astonishment and dis¬ gust of many of the old "wheel-horses" of his party. When his aspira¬ tions for the Senatorship were first known, they appeared no less pre¬ sumptuous than hopeless. John H. Rountree, one of the "fathers of his county," a resident for thirty years, held the office and sought a reelection. Besides his own solidity, he had behind him every news¬ paper in the county, the^great political weight of Platteville in the con¬ vention, and the aid and sympathy of the prominent lawyers and poli¬ ticians of Lancaster, who little relished the pretentions of the young adventurer to political leadership in the county. But Hazelton brought to bear against this apparently overwhelming opposition the knowledge gained in the hard-fought political fields of New York. He knew how to make a "machine" and how to run it. The political "machine" was then unknown to the politicians of Grant County. Packed and snap caucuses, the trading of delegates, the "pooling of issues" by several candidates, lavish promises of patronage - these were tactics as strange to the old war-chiefs of Grant as Napoleon's tactics were to the Austrian and Prussian generals. Hazelton's vic¬ tory in the convention at Lancaster came like a thunder clap. The Platteville Witness and the Boscobel Appeal rebelled. The Herald threatened while the nomination was pending, but after some ex¬ pressions of disgust, assumed after the nomination an attitude of

"armed neutrality" toward the victor which it retained until the elder Cover gave up its management, when it went over to Hazelton. But the opposition within the party that hardly dared to bolt Hazelton openly found an object upon which to vent their wrath. Hazelton had procured the nomination of T. J. Brooks, principal of tbe Boscobel schools, for County Superintendent, and the anti-Hazelton men and newspapers ( except the Appeal ) ferociously attacked Brooks. D. Gray Purman, who held the office, and who had the support of the Rountree men for a renomination, but was defeated, came out as an independent candidate. The result was that the vote of the county was divided nearly equally between the three candidates, but the Democrat, J. P. Hubbard, received a plurality of 139 votes over Purman.

Hazelton early made himself "solid" with the managers of the State Republican machine, and especially with that able and eloquent, but unscrupulous, Senator, Matt Carpenter. He was thus enabled to strengthen himself by distributing considerable patronage and prom¬ ising a great deal more with a show of fulfilling his promises. As a part of the anti-Hazleton movement came the bolt in the legislature of 1875. The Republican caucus had nominated Carpenter, but eighteen members, headed by B. M. Coates, of Boscobel, bolted the nomination. J. C. Holloway, of Lancaster, was, I believe, the only Senator to bolt. The firmness of the bolters rendered the election of Carpenter im¬ possible, and the Democrats and bolters united and elected Angus Cameron, a Republican.

While thus holding the office of State Senator, Hazelton laid his plans for the nomination as Congressman, and made the attempt in 1868; but the veteran Amasa Cobb, of Iowa County, was too strongly intrenched to be driven out. In 1870 J. Allen Barber was a candidate for the nomination against Hazelton and won only after one of the hardest and bitterest fights ever had in the county. In 1872 the custom of a second term was too strong to give Hazelton a show; but in 1874 he entered the field with a formidable and well trained force against two other Lancaster opponents, Col. John G. Clark and J. C. Holloway. But the First and Second Assembly Districts were carried by Col. Clark, and in the Congressional Con¬ vention Hazelton had 16 votes, Clark 8, and Richard H. Magoon, of Lafayette County, 12. Hazelton's sixteen men stood by him until the 129th ballot, when Clark's men weilt to Magoon and gave him the nomination.

In 1876, in spite of the fight of the opposing faction in Grant County, he carried the county and obtained the long-sought nom¬ ination. The Republican majority in the district was too large to be overcome by the few disaffected Republicans who dared carry their opposition to the extent of bolting a party nomination. And thus Hazelton enjoyed three terms in Congress.

But at last, in 1882, when the opposition in Grant County had become tired of the hopeless fight, defeat came from another quarter. Till then Grant County had been in a district with the "Granger" counties, and was far the heaviest of them all, but now she was in a district with the much stronger county of Dane. E. W. Keyes, of Madison, the Republican "boss," wanted the nomination, and failing to get it in the convention, he became an independent candidate. The Democratic candidate, Burr W. Jones, was also from Madison, and thus a large part of the overwhelming political force of Dane County was turned against Hazelton, and he was defeated at the polls.

He immediately used the remains of his political influence to obtain an administrative appointment at Washington, and ceased to be a factor in the politics of Grant County.