John Peter Altgeld

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John Peter Altgeld (December 30, 1847 - March 12, 1902) was the governor of the U.S. state of Illinois from 1893 until 1897. He was the first Democratic governor of that state since the 1850s. A leading figure of the Progressive Era movement, Altgeld improved workplace safety and child labor laws, pardoned the men convicted of the Haymarket Riot, and, for a time, resisted calls to break up the Pullman strike with force.

1 Early years
2 Political life
3 Final years
4 Legacy
5 References

[edit] Early years

Altgeld, the son of John P. and Mary Altgeld, was born in Prussia (now a part of Germany). He came to America early in life with his father's family, who settled on a farm near Mansfield, Ohio.

He left home at age 16 to join the Union Army (lying about his age), where he fought in Virginia with an ill-fated regiment and nearly died of fever. He then worked on his father's farm, studied in the library of a neighbor and at a private school in Lexington, Ohio, and for two years taught school.

After a brief stint in an Ohio seminary, he walked to Missouri and studied to become a lawyer while working on itinerant railroad construction crews. He was elected district attorney of Andrew County, Missouri, and a year later resigned and moved to Chicago, where he founded a prosperous law firm that soon employed such rising stars as Clarence Darrow.

He also became wealthy from a series of savvy real estate dealings and development projects, most notably the Unity Building (1891), the 16-story office building that was at that time Chicago's tallest building.

He was married to Emma Ford, the daughter of John Ford and Ruth Smith, in 1877 in Richland, Ohio.

[edit] Political life

Altgeld ran for Congress in Illinois's Fourth Congressional District in 1884. Although this district was heavily Republican, Altgeld garnered 45.5 percent of the vote in his race against incumbent George Adams, a better showing than well-known Democrat Lambert Tree had made two years earlier. As a Republican leader recalled, "He (Altgeld) was not elected, but our executive committee was pretty badly frightened by the strong canvass he made." He was elected to a judgeship in 1886, and served on the bench until 1891.

He was drafted by the Democrats to run for governor, and narrowly defeated incumbent Joseph W. Fifer. He suffered a nervous breakdown shortly after his victory, and nearly died of a concomitant fever. He managed to appear at his inauguration, but was only able to deliver a brief portion of his speech. Although the General Assembly hall was so warm as to cause several men to faint, Altgeld, clad in a heavy topcoat, was pale and visibly shivering. The clerk of the Assembly delivered the remainder of his speech.

Altgeld recovered, and as governor he spearheaded the nation's most stringent child labor and workplace safety laws, appointed women to important positions in the state government, and vastly increased state funding for education. However, he is best remembered for pardoning the three surviving suspects of a bombing who were convicted after the Haymarket Riot. John F. Kennedy even mentioned this in his acclaimed book Profiles In Courage. British lawyer Keven Tierney pointed out that Altgeld's pardon of these men may have had as much to do with spite then with courage. Altgeld had long held a grudge against the judge who sentenced the men and harshly criticized him in the pardon.

As the Pullman Strike flared up with riots, sabotage, and disruption to the U.S. Mail, Altgeld refused to allow President Grover Cleveland to send in federal troops. On July 4, 1894, Cleveland sent troops to Chicago anyway, an action later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Altgeld's opposition was seen as a highly unusual stance for a state governor at that time. When it all ended, newspapers circulated the following ryhme:

The railroad strike played merry hob;

The land was set aflame

Could Grover order out the troops

To block the striker's game?

One Altgeld yelled excitedly

"Such tactics I forbid;

You can't trot out these soldiers" yet

That's just what Grover did.

In after years when people talk

Of present stirring times,

And of the action needful to

Sit down on public crimes,

They'll all of them acknowledge then

(The fact cannot be hid)

That whatever was the best to do

Is just what Grover did.^[1]

When the besieged Pullman Workers rioted a month later, Altgeld, at the request of the mayor of Chicago, sent in the state militia, which killed seven more workers. This incident and the pardons were used against him by his political enemies, industrialists and conservatives, and, after enduring perhaps the greatest firestorm of negative press ever encountered by an American politician, he was defeated for reelection in 1896 by John R. Tanner.

Altgeld did not go down without a fight, however. He was instrumental in driving President Cleveland from the national Democratic ticket, and he campaigned hard for William Jennings Bryan. Typical was the reaction of Harper's Weekly, which in October 1896 endorsed William McKinley for fear that Bryan would be a puppet of Altgeld, "the ambitious and unscrupulous Illinois communist." Both Altgeld and Bryan lost in Illinois, although Altgeld outpolled Bryan by 10,000 votes. Altgeld was popular enough in the Democratic party that, if he had been a native-born citizen, there was the possibility that Atgeld himself would have been nominated.

Altgeld ran for Mayor of Chicago as the candidate of the Municipal Ownership Party in 1899. Although an early favorite to win, he finished a humiliating third, garnering only 15.56 percent of the vote.

Quotes on Altgeld's headstone in Graceland Cemetery

[edit] Final years

Sickly since his brush with death in the Civil War, he had suffered from locomotor ataxia while governor, impairing his ability to walk. He lost all of his property except his heavily mortgaged personal residence, and only the intervention of his friend and former protégé Clarence Darrow saved him from complete financial ruin. He was working as a lawyer in Darrow's firm when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage suffered while delivering a speech in Joliet on behalf of the Boers. He was 54 years old. Thousands filed past his body as it lay in state in the lobby of the Chicago Public Library, and he was eulogized by Darrow and Hull House founder Jane Addams. Altgeld is buried in Uptown's Graceland Cemetery. His last words were (To his last visitor) "How d'you do, Cushing. I am glad to see you".

[edit] Legacy

Altgeld was beautifully memorialized in the Vachel Lindsay poem "The Eagle Forgotten."
The statue of Altgeld in Chicago's Lincoln Park was created by Gutzon Borglum, the carver of Mt. Rushmore.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign dedicated Altgeld Hall, built in 1897 [1]. It is one of the oldest buildings on the campus.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale dedicated Altgeld Hall in 1896. It is the second oldest building on campus.
Northern Illinois University dedicated Altgeld Hall in 1895 and re-dedicated the hall in 2005 after multi-million dollar renovations.