Frank Hanly

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James Franklin Hanly (April 4, 1863 – August 1, 1920) was an United States politician who served as the 26th Governor of Indiana from 1905 to 1909.

Hanly was born in a log cabin near St. Joseph, Champaign County, Illinois. As a young man he also lived for a while on a farm in the nearby village of Homer. In Homer he attended the Liberty rural school where he became know as a formitable debater. He attended the common schools and the Eastern Illinois Normal School at Danville, Vermilion County, Illinois, from 1879 to 1881. He later moved to Warren County, Indiana where he taught in the state public schools from 1881 to 1889.

He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1889. He commenced practice in Williamsport, Indiana. He was elected a member of the Indiana State Senate in 1890 and 1891. He was elected as a Republican to the Fifty-fourth Congress, serving from March 4, 1895 to March 3, 1897. He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1896.

Hanly was elected Governor of Indiana in 1904. As governor, he crusaded against liquor, horse-racing and political corruption even prosecuting members of his own administration for embezzlement.

He was a prohibition lecturer throughout the United States from 1910-1920 and in France in 1919. Hanly was an unsuccessful candidate of the Prohibition Party for President of the United States in the 1916 election where he garnered 221,030 votes, or about 1.2%. It has been alleged that his reason for promoting Prohibition is because his father was an alcoholic.

In April 1920 Hanly argued the case of Hawke vs. Smith, a challenge to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, before the United States Supreme Court. Hanly won a unanimous decision issued on June 1, 1920, upholding the right of women to vote and prohibition.

He died as the result of an automobile-train accident near Dennison, Ohio in 1920. He is interred at Hillside Cemetery, near Williamsport, Indiana.

[edit] See also

Flying Squadron Also known as "Hanly's Flying Squadron."
Temperance movement
Temperance organizations

[edit] External links

Preceded by Winfield T. Durbin	Governor of Indiana January 9, 1905 – January 11, 1909	Succeeded by Thomas Riley Marshall
Preceded by Daniel W. Waugh	U.S. Congressman, Indiana 9th District 1895-1897	Succeeded by Charles B. Landis