FOOTNOTES
[12] Groot Placcaet Book, I. Cols. 669, 673, 676.
[13] The italics are ours.
A FAMOUS POLITICAL CONTEST IN ILLINOIS.
HON. HENRY H. EVANS.
The most interesting political contest which has taken place in the State of Illinois since the days of Lincoln and Douglass, was that which ended with the election of General John M. Palmer to the United States Senate, on the 11th day of March, 1891. The contest was of historic interest because it elevated to the Senate, a man who had long been a conspicuous figure in American politics, and who had for many years cherished an ambition to occupy a seat in the Upper Bench of the national Legislature. It was of interest also because it gave to the Democratic party of Illinois, for the first time in many years, a representative in the United States Senate. It was moreover an intensely interesting and exciting contest—and greater interest attached to it on this than on any other account—because it developed a crisis in the political affairs of the State.
It is no harsh criticism of the Republican management of the State campaign of 1890, in Illinois, to say that the campaign was lazily conducted. At the Democratic Convention, held some months before the election, General John M. Palmer had been formally endorsed as the choice of his party for United States Senator, and his adherents at once entered upon a determined and aggressive campaign. The result of this spirited Democratic campaigning, of Republican apathy, and of disturbing “side issues,” was, that when the roll of the Thirty-seventh General Assembly was made up, it was ascertained that there were 101 Democratic members elect, 100 Republicans, and three representatives of the Farmers’ Alliance organization.
This being the political status of the body which was to choose a United States Senator, it was evident that the three independent or Farmers’ Alliance members held the balance of power as between the two great political parties. These three legislators thought they saw before them great opportunities for the advancement of their interests, and starting a political revolution. Once before it had happened in the history of the State, that a little band of five legislators—the representatives of the “Anti-Nebraska” party—had placed in the field a candidate for United States Senator, of their own choosing, and in full sympathy with their political views, and at the end of a long contest that candidate had been triumphantly elected, and a new political party had been brought into existence.
The triumvirate of the Thirty-seventh General Assembly of Illinois, hastily jumped to the conclusion that there was to be a repetition of history, and that what the “Anti-Nebraska” legislators had accomplished in 1885, could be accomplished by the representatives of the Farmers’ Alliance in 1891.
When the Legislature convened they accordingly placed in nomination as their candidate for United States Senator, Alanson J. Streeter, a farmer by occupation, whose large wealth had enabled him to take up politics as a diversion, and whose views had been of a sufficiently variegated character, to enable him to claim political kinship with any of the existing partisan organizations.
General Palmer was already in the field as the Democratic candidate for Senator, and the Republicans named ex-Governor Richard J. Oglesby as their nominee. Balloting began on the 20th day of January and continued from day to day—when the Legislature was in session—until the 11th of March, when the contest ended as already stated.