WARREN W. GUTHRIE.
It is given to relatively few men to leave this world for the mysteries of the next, contented with what they have done here, and without regret for duties unfulfilled. At the end of a lingering illness, giving ample time for reflection, and as a last utterance, General Guthrie called closer to his bedside his faithful wife and companion and his six living children then gathered about him and whispered to them: “I know that I am about to leave you forever. I want you to know that I am going without regret except for our separation. I have raised a family in which I have had only pride. I have tried to prepare you to be good members of your own families and useful citizens. I have fought the fight and my work is done. I am ready to go. I want you to know that I leave you feeling that I have never done any man an intentional wrong, or left unfulfilled any duty I was capable of accomplishing, and that I go content.”
These last whispers give a fair index to the life and character of this sturdy pioneer Kansan. He was a type of a product of the early years of struggle in Kansas, now largely passing away. Diplomacy was a word of which he might never have known the meaning. He at least never practiced it to the prejudice of frankness. Whether as a friend who could be depended upon in any emergency and regardless of consequences to himself, or whether as a foe who could not be placated by excuses or offers of advantage personal to himself, and equally regardless of consequences his cards in the game were always upon the table face up. He despised sham and pretense in every form, and whether in business, politics or the judicial forum, he always fought his way double-fisted, straight for the goal.
Born June 9, 1834, on a flinty hillside farm on the banks of the Housatonic river in Connecticut, and ambitious for a broader field, W. W. Guthrie struck out for himself early in life. At seventeen he was providing for his further education by teaching a rural school in New Jersey, on the present site of Long Branch, where the chief qualification for the teacher was his ability to thrash the biggest young fisherman in the school. In his later years it was one of the delights of General Guthrie to tell of his experiences in instructing the youth of New Jersey with a clapboard.
In 1857 under the well known general advice of Horace Greeley, Mr. Guthrie, then admitted to the bar, came, seeking his fortune, to Kansas by way of steamboat up the Missouri river from St. Louis, landing at Whitecloud, thirty-one miles north of Atchison, then one of the cities upon the Missouri with small population but unlimited future possibilities. Shortly afterwards he moved again westward to Hiawatha, the county seat of Brown county, where he established himself in practice, his business radiating to the surrounding counties, which were reached principally on muleback. General Guthrie was over six feet in height, and he loved to tell how, as a lanky young lawyer with a small mule, it was difficult to keep his feet off the ground in traveling from county seat to county seat. At Hiawatha he and the late Gov. E. N. Morrill were close friends, kept “bach” together, and had the usual quarrels as to whose turn it was to scrape the skillet.
Elected to the Territorial legislature, his service attracted such attention that in his absence, and without his knowledge, he was given by the Republicans the first nomination under State organization for the office of attorney general; he was duly elected and served as the first attorney general of the newly created State. It was from his incumbency in that office that he became known as General Guthrie. He was not acceptable for military service and took no part in the Civil war except as a volunteer in the organization hastily effected to repel the invasion of Gen. Sterling Price, which was cut off by his defeat at the battle of Westport.
Some of General Guthrie’s friends have felt that he would not have been nominated for attorney general if he had been at the convention where he was nominated, or had known that he was to be suggested as a candidate. While General Guthrie subsequently served with credit in the Kansas State senate and was an influential factor in Kansas politics for many years in the interests of others, he was not a successful politician as a candidate in conventions not made up of a majority of men who personally knew him well. He was thrice a candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress, and once nominated by one of the two factions of a convention which split up in a row and nominated two different candidates. When it came to bodies made up of trading delegations dickering for local advantages, General Guthrie’s straightforwardness, his aversion to crooked deals and trades, and his unwillingness to offer personal reward for political assistance put him at a serious disadvantage. If he thought a man or thing was wrong he never hesitated to say so, even though he understood what the results would be. It is said that at the last congressional convention in which he was a candidate, and in which he was the favorite candidate, the balance of the power was held by a delegation amenable to the allurements of promise of office, or more direct substantial and immediate reward. His less scrupulous friends tried to “dope” the General with some medicine that would put him out of action while they used the necessary means to the end. But the General refused to be either doped or to retire and shut his eyes to the situation, preferring an honorable defeat.
General Guthrie had physical as well as moral courage. Contesting the candidacy of a former prominent citizen of Atchison who had come from another State under a cloud, General Guthrie collected the record of this candidate in his former home and announced that he would read it at a meeting to be held in old Turner Hall. This was in the early days when Atchison had her quota of “roughneck” citizens. General Guthrie was notified that they would attend and that he would read his documentary evidence at the peril of his life. He had never owned or carried a firearm except during the preparation to resist the Price raid, but on the night of the meeting he stepped out on the platform at Turner Hall, and laying upon the table a pair of old army revolvers, he looked down on the “roughnecks” in the front row and advised them that he was about to proceed with his speech, and that persons who didn’t like trouble had better leave before it began. He made the speech. The trouble did not start. The candidate he was opposing was defeated.
From the time Kansas became a State until his death, General Guthrie was a citizen of Atchison contemporary with that circle of brilliant and able men who in the early days made Atchison the mother of the political history of the State, such as Senator John J. Ingalls, Governor John A. Martin, Governor George W. Glick, United States District Judge Cassius G. Foster, Chief Justices Samuel A. Kingman and Albert H. Horton, and such early-day business men as David Auld, the Challiss brothers, Jacob Leu, and Samuel Hollister.
After his election as attorney general on December 21, 1863, General Guthrie, accompanied by his friend, Chief Justice Albert H. Horton, as best man, crossed the Missouri river to St. Joseph upon the ice, crawling upon their hands and knees, the ice being too treacherous to support a man walking upright, to be married to Julia, daughter of Capt. William Fowler, of St. Joseph, also a pioneer, the first county clerk in the territory of which St. Joseph is now the county seat. There were born of this marriage eight children, two of whom died in infancy, the others and the wife surviving General Guthrie. W. F. Guthrie, the eldest son, practiced law with his father until about the time of the death of the latter, when, with his wife and three children he removed to Kansas City and is still in practice. The second son, F. L. Guthrie, a retired banker, with wife, resides at Paola, Kan. Mary Louise Guthrie is the wife of A. E. White, head of the commissary department of the Burlington system, residing in Chicago, and the mother of four children. Warren W. Guthrie, Jr., practiced law in Atchison in association with his father and brother, and afterwards practiced alone until his death on August 17, 1914, being one of the most beloved men personally of all the people of Atchison. Theodore F. Guthrie, also the father of four children, is, as he has been since before his father’s decease, the manager of the Guthrie ranch in Chase county, Kansas. Gilbert L. Guthrie has been the wanderer of the family, a metallurgical engineer who has seen distinguished service on every continent of the globe, but has given up his work to be a companion to the widow, residing on the old Guthrie homestead adjoining Atchison.
From the first General Guthrie became and until ill health overtook him remained a notable figure at the bar, not only of Atchison, but of the State at large, and particularly northeast Kansas, where his early successes brought him in as a consultant in the territory he had formerly covered on muleback, long after that territory had developed many able lawyers of its own. His name appears frequently in the reports of the supreme court of Kansas, and in connection with the establishment of many new and novel precedents in the courts. General Guthrie was an original thinker along legal lines, and not over-tolerant of the law as he found it in the books. When it did not suit him his vigorous mind would discern logical modifications and novel applications of old doctrines to meet the new necessities of his litigation.
Every fight for the general good of the community found General Guthrie in the front of battle. No difficulty daunted him. All that was required for him was to decide as to what he thought right, and his hat was in the ring. Perhaps the greatest personal, direct service rendered by General Guthrie to the community was in connection with the failure of the Peoples Savings Bank. The Peoples Savings Bank was an auxiliary of the United States National Bank, the closing of which was brought about by the circulation of rumors affecting its solvency. It paid its liabilities in full before it closed, but the assets of the Peoples Savings Bank were invested chiefly in real estate mortgages and bonds not immediately payable, and as times were then, not readily convertible, so that its closure, following that of the United States National, left hundreds of citizens with their needed savings not immediately realizable. General Guthrie was a holder of one share of stock only in each of these banks, for the purpose of qualifying as a director as an accommodation to the operating officers, his friends. This double failure, at a time of general financial uneasiness, helped by stories circulated by enemies of the bank officials anxious to bring them into disgrace, filled Atchison with excitement. Nightly meetings, attended by hundreds of depositors, were held, and in their ignorance measures were initiated which would have resulted in a sacrifice of the assets and the realization to the depositors of but a small per cent. of their claims. General Guthrie undertook to stem this tide and save the depositors from themselves. He arranged with his co-directors to advance a sum to buy up at face value the deposits of the smaller and more needy depositors, and out of his own funds advanced the moneys necessary to protect the assets from sacrifice, and lent his own uncompensated efforts to their realization at their actual value, with the result that within a year every claim of the bank was paid in full.
Like many successful men who have been born and spent their early years upon a farm. General Guthrie was interested in farming and in farm development and in showing what could be done through proper cultivation and stock development. He left ample provision for his widow and younger children, chiefly in farm lands. He gave personal attention to the operation and improvement of his farms, and took particular delight in the management of his 6,000 acre ranch in Chase county, Kansas, and in the development of a grade of cattle originated by himself, the Polled Herefords, a strain of Herefords, from which he succeeded in breeding off the horns. Nothing gave him greater pleasure in the later years of his life than to explain his farming and cattle operations to his friends and intimates. He was ready to put aside the most intricate litigation at any time for a chat on this subject.
While General Guthrie’s open-handed warfare upon the things he thought wrong made him many enemies, his untiring energy, integrity and readiness to help anyone or anything he believed to be right, brought him a host of friends, not only among the young lawyers he raised and trained, but among the public at large, and he died an honored and respected member of this community on April 22, 1903, at the old home place adjoining the city of Atchison.