Politics of 1868 -- robust times

During the presidential campaign of 1868, U.S. Rep. George Washington Julian spent time in a lot of small towns in support of the Ulysses S. Grant candidacy, which opposed Democrat Andrew Johnson's party. Johnson had been controversial as Lincoln's VP who took over after Lincoln was assassinated.

Julian was also scheduled to appear at Old Bath but had gotten ill and missed that meeting. He was pretty flimsy at his Fairfield stop, though. But he did speak.

Julian

The Brookville American was a chief Republican mouthpiece and missed no chance of boosting the GOP in its run to prominence in the years of reconstruction of the South after the Civil War.

This bit appeared on Aug. 21, 1858:

We are informed that Hon. Geo. W. Julian's address at Fairfield last Wednesday evening was a success, although the gentleman was laboring under manifest disability on account of his health. Some two hundred were present, among them quite a number of ladies. If nothing more was effected than the calling out of a reply on last Saturday evening from the Hon. C.R. Cory, that was enough to compensate for the labor of Mr. Julian.

On Saturday evening, “the faithful” with some few Republicans, to the number of forty persons in all, came together to hear the Honorable C.R.'s speech. To say that it was a failure, would not do justice to the thing, and yet amid the snoring of several sleepers, C.R. continued his dry and flat speech, worming his way through an effort, which from the manner of delivery and everything he said, seemed to give evidence that he did not believe it himself.

Cory was a prominent Fairfielder who was seeking election to the state legislature. He succeeded.

Another snippet from the American said this about Horatio Seymour, who was Grant's chief rival in the presidential election:

Seymour's physicians say he is likely to become crazy within a year. If he has any hopes of defeating Grant he is crazy already.

Seymour

Julian is considered one of the framers of the platform that created the Republican party out of the Whig party. Strongly pro-union, the GOP controlled the White House with almost unanimous clout until Woodrow Wilson won in 1914.

Seymour was not necessarily a “Southern” Democrat (he was from New York) but he did oppose Reconstruction and was a states rights politician, which dominated the Democrat agenda at the time. With passing years, that political platform no longer mattered.

Julian (1817-1899) was from Centerville in Wayne County. He is known for having introduced a women's suffrage bill in 1868 that did not pass. Later on, he became a critic of the Grant administration and a few years later, switched his allegiance to the Democratic party. It is likely he associated with Brookville author Gen. Lew Wallace. Julian's position on Lincoln was that Abe wasn't tough enough on the slavery issue.

The American wrote in October 1868 that the newly emerging Ku Klux Klan was solidly pro-Seymour. At the time, it was just loud squawking. The Democrat-leaning paper of the time isn't in the archives.

2015 BLOG PIECE ON CORY

Zachariah Ferguson

 Doctor, businessman, social organizer, lodge guru -- Zachariah had it all in the 1860s.

He owned the Grant House, the hotel named in honor of the man who was running for President that year. Then he sold the hotel to L.B. Doyle, who was in the army that Grant defeated. Name that tune, boys.

Ferguson was one of the first directors of the Three-County Asylum for the Poor, located north of Blooming Grove, in the 1830s. Much of the background on these topics is covered in the blog. 

LINKS THAT HELP

THE HOTEL

POOR FARM

LODGE LIFE

Newspaper ads from 1867-68

 

News briefs from the 1860s

 Brookville American items about Fairfield residents and their businesses:

News from long ago

 The 1868 Brookville American published these news items about the Universalist (left) and Fairfield Methodist Church. The Universalist church didn't last long after this. It was destroyed by fire and left little history. Church activities were a big deal in the small outpost villages. 

1860 -- Lincoln blinkin' and Hamlin

The presidential election of 1860 is perhaps the most defining of our country's history at a time when half the nation was considering whether to start a new country or keep the current one intact.

As we know, it didn't work as well as we'd hoped and in April 1861, the civil rebellion began. 

Prior to that, Illinois lawyer Abe Lincoln, campaigning as a pro-Union Whig (Republican) teamed up with Maine congressman Hannibal Hamlin to defeat Kentucky Democrat John Breckinridge and Illinois' Stephen Douglas in the presidential vote that leaned heavily on the slavery issue.

The North and the Lincoln Republicans favored abolition but only to the point where it preserved the union. Southern Democrats, called Copperheads, supported states' rights and, by extension, the right to own slaves. The South believed the 1842 ruling of Dred Scott preserved their right to own other people. 

The war broke out and everything changed after that. That history has been written. This drawing appeared  in the Brookville American, a pro-Union paper, on Oct. 19, 1860. With little background to call on,  Franklin County was generally Democratic though not necessarily pro-South. Douglas got more votes than Lincoln did in Franklin County. 

Lincoln succeeded James Buchanan, whose inconsistent position on the advent of the Civil War was considered quite damaging to the Union's strength. He did not strongly oppose slavery, nor did he support efforts to abolish it.

SEVERAL LINKS ON THIS BLOG RELATING TO THE CIVIL WAR

LEW WALLACE