The life of John Worth Kern

by Claude G. Bowers

I

AT the age of thirty-seven Kern took a survey of his life and an inventory of his resources and found himself dissatisfied with the result. He had a local reputation as a young man of unusual promise and ability as a lawyer, was extraordinarily popular among his Howard county neighbors, and was known as a forceful and eloquent speaker among the Democratic leaders of the state. But his worldly stores were not in keeping with his ability, and he faced the fact that he had not properly realized on his capacity. Thus it was that in 1884 he decided to be a candidate for a state office. Actuated partly by the fact that it was in the line of his profession and partly because it was at that time a highly remunerative office he concluded to be a candidate for the nomination for reporter of the supreme court. Already well and favorably known in his section of the state and among the politicians from every section his availability was impressed upon the democracy of every community through the publication in local papers of editorials “made in Kokomo” in the office of The Kokomo Despatch. This publicity factory was under the management of his friend, Oscar Henderson, afterward auditor of state. And it did effective work.

It is probable that no Democratic convention in the history of Indiana has ever been so distinguished in the personnel of its participants as was that which convened in English’s Opera House in Indianapolis in the closing days of June, 1884. Although a Democratic president had not crossed the threshold of the White House since Buchanan, the party in Indiana had never lost its courage or its militancy, and it had never been so spirited as during the summer of the year of its first national triumph in almost a quarter of a century. The national convention had not yet been held and while the reform governor of New York was being vigorously pushed for the presidential nomination it was by no means certain that he would be nominated. At any rate it did not enter into the plans of the Indiana democracy, which determined to press the claims of one of her own most distinguished statesmen, Joseph E. McDonald, formerly a member of the United States senate. While not so sagacious a politician and party leader as Hendricks nor such a brilliant, dashing, picturesque figure on the firing line as Voorhees, he was, in many respects, the intellectual superior of both. He had something of the dignity, solidity and majesty with which popular imagination clothes the Roman senator of antiquity.

Thus when Senator McDonald appeared upon the platform of the English Opera House that June morning in 1884 to call the convention to order he was hailed as the prospective standard bearer of the democracy in the national campaign. He presented to the convention, as its chairman, Senator Daniel W. Voorhees, whose hold upon the affections of the rank and file had constantly strengthened during his twenty-six years of public life, and whose genius and eloquence in the presentation of political issues has never been equaled in the state. After stirring the delegates to a high pitch of enthusiasm in his “keynote” speech, he introduced the chairman of the committee on Resolutions, William H. English, who only four years before had been the party’s nominee for the vice-presidency on the ticket with Hancock.

The only contests in the convention were over the nominations for governor and reporter of the supreme court, and the gubernatorial contest was between two of the greatest figures that ever led the democracy of the Hoosier state, Isaac P. Gray, afterward Indiana’s choice for the presidency, who died while ambassador to Mexico, and David Turpie, who had already served in the United States senate and was to return to that body a little later. While Turpie was much the abler man, a statesman of high order, he was not the equal of the astute Gray as a politician, and the latter was easily nominated on the first ballot.

McDonald, Voorhees, English, Gray and Turpie—all prominent participants in one state convention, the only absent leader of the first magnitude was Hendricks, who was to be nominated for the vice-presidency with Cleveland in less than a month. It was in such a convention that John W. Kern made his initial bow to the state democracy.

Seldom has any party put forth a stronger ticket than that on which Kern was nominated. Gray, one of the best campaigners in the state, was nominated for governor; Captain W. R. Myers, nominated for secretary of state, continued for a quarter of a century one of the most powerful figures on the stump; John J. Cooper, nominated for treasurer, was a business man of high character whose name is still conjured with; Francis T. Hord, the nominee for attorney-general, was one of the strong lawyers of the state; and James H. Rice, popularly known to this day, though dead for many years, as “Jim” Rice, was one of the cleverest politicians and most delightful personalities that ever moved across the political stage.

And this convention, notable in every way, was able to dispose of its business and adjourn in three hours and a half, having met at 10 A. M. and adjourned at 1:30 P. M.