John Peter Altgeld
John Peter Altgeld (December 30 1847 - March 12 1902) was the governor of Illinois from 1893 until 1897. He was the first U.S. Democratic Party governor of that state since the 1850s. Altgeld was admired by other leaders of the Progressive Era movement as one of the few incorruptible politicians who would stand up for the rights of workers.
Altgeld, the child of illiterate German immigrants, was born in Niederselters, Prussia (now in Hessen, Germany and grew up in poverty in Ohio. He ran away from home at age 16 to join the Union Army, where he fought in Virginia with an ill-fated regiment and nearly died of fever. 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 sixteen-story office building that was at that time Chicago's tallest building.
Altgeld ran for Congress in IL's Fourth Congressional District in 1884. Although this district was heavily Republican, Altgeld garnered 45.5% 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. He also strongly disagreed with President Grover Cleveland's decision to send federal troops to Chicago during the Pullman Strike, a highly unusual stance for a state governor at that time. When the besieged Pullman Workers rioted a month later, Altgeld, at the request of the Mayor of Chicago, sent in the state militia, who killed seven 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 politicain, 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 campaigned hard for William Jennings Bryan. Typical was the reaction of "Harper's Weekly" who in October of 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 also 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% of the vote.
Altgeld's final years were sad. Sickly since his brush with death in the Civil War, he had suffered from locomotor ataxia while governor, impairing his ability to walk. A reversal of financial fortune led to the loss of all his property except his heavily-mortgaged personal residence. Only the intervention of his friend and former protege 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 he suffered while delivering a speech in Joliet on behalf of the Boers. He was 54 years old. Thousands filed past his body as it laid in state in the lobby of the Chicago Public Library, and he was eulogized by Darrow and Hull House-founder Jane Addams.
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.
