Governor of the State, and a member of the President's cabinet, is a man of no common mould, but one whom nature has endowed with an extraordinary equipment for the duties of life. General Rusk was born in Morgan county, Ohio, June 17, 1830, the youngest of ten children, and came to Wisconsin in 1853, settling on a farm in Bad Axe County (now Vernon). He was a member of the Assembly in 1862, and when the rebellion broke out he was commissioned major in the Twenty-fifth Wisconsin Volunteers, and served until the end of the war. He was made a BrigadierGeneral for gallant services and bravery on the field. He was elected Bank Comptroller in 1866 and reëlected in 1868. He represented the Sixth district four years in Congress. He was elected Governor in 1881 and reëlected in 1883 and 1885. He served four years during President Harrison's administration as Secretary of Agriculture. The Republican State Convention, which met at Madison May 9, 1888, adopted the following resolution:

"The Republicans of Wisconsin, represented in this convention, present the name of Governor Jeremiah M. Rusk to the Republican National Convention, which meets in Chicago on the 19th day of June next, as a candidate in every respect worthy to receive its nomination for Presidency. Governor Rusk's character and capacity have been proved by long and varied service in public life, both military and civil. He was one of the most gallant soldiers who fought in the war to preserve the Union. In the various positions he has occupied in civil life, as a representative in Congress for many years, and as the Governor of this State for three successive terms, he has shown a fidelity to Republican principles, and honesty, courage and wise judgment such as eminently fit him for chief magistrate of the Republic."

When the National Republican Convention of that year met in Chicago, General Rusk's name was presented, in behalf of the Wisconsin delegation, by Colonel John C. Spooner, in an eloquent and appropriate speech.

Much might be said in commendation of Governor Rusk's three administrations, and the critic will find little to condemn.

During General Rusk's occupancy of the gubernatorial chair

there were four Senatorial elections, but none of them was attended by any extraordinary excitement. When the term of Angus Cameron drew toward a close, Philetus Sawyer was elected to succeed him, January 26, 1881. But Senator Carpenter's death, which occurred at Washington. February 24, 1881, made an unexpected vacancy, and Cameron was elected to fill it, March 10, 1881, only six days after the conclusion of his first full term. January 28, 1885, John C. Spooner was elected for a full term of six years, and on January 26, 1887, Philetus Sawyer was reëlected for the full term of six years.

At the senatorial election held January 28, 1885, a new candidate for senatorial honors put in an appearance, and modestly gave notice to all whom it might concern that he had entered the contest with the desire and expectation of winning. He was the youngest man who had ever aspired to that high and honorable office; he was a lawyer by profession and a graduate of the Wisconsin State University; he had never held an important elective office, except one term in the Assembly; and he was comparatively a stranger to the older politicians of the State. His name was John C. Spooner. He left the University about the time of the breaking out of the Civil War, and he shouldered a musket and marched to the front to defend the flag. When the rebellion was put down he resumed the practice of his profession, and it was not long before he was recognized as one of the ablest of the younger members of the bar. Back in 1869 Matt. H. Carpenter had set the example, which was then contrary to all precedent, of a man of breadth and brains vaulting from his private law office into a seat in the Senate of the United States, and whatever has been once done can be done again, is an old saying. But the general rule and custom was against the young attorney's ambition, as laudable and virtuous as it might seem. All the distinguished gentlemen who had been elected to the Senate up to that time, with the exception of Mr. Carpenter, "had done the State some service," and going over the whole list from Governor Dodge to Philetus Sawyer, it was found to embrace judges, candidates for Governor, Speakers of the Assembly, State Senators and members of the popular branch of Congress. Then the seat that he coveted had been occupied by Timothy O. Howe and Matt. H. Carpenter, men who stood a head above most

of their colleagues in the Senate and who were eminent for legal learning and statesmanship. The young candidate felt the force of all these comparisons keenly, and he only promised his friends and supporters that he would do his best, and the contest was kept up. Then he had a dangerous and competent rival in the field in the person of General Lucius Fairchild, a man well known to the people of the State and greatly beloved by all. But Col. Spooner had a fine equipment for the office to which he wished to be promoted, and he felt that self-reliance which comes of conscious power and ability to accomplish whatever he undertook. He had the divine. gift of ready speech to a degree that is denied to most public men; he had already won his way to distinction at the bar and he knew himself, as others knew him, to be honest, clear headed and stanchly patriotic. General Fairchild had been constantly in public life for over twenty years, and everyone agreed that he possessed superior qualifications for a seat in the Senate. He added long experience in dealing with public affairs to mature judgment and high character, and it is no wonder that he had a strong following. Thus the friendly contest went on for days, the supporters of both candidates flocking to the capital from all parts of the State in large numbers, but it ended at last in a triumph for the younger element of the Republican party, and Col. Spooner was nominated in the caucus. His little speech of acceptance, when he was brought in by the committee, was exceedingly modest and a model of its kind. His lip trembled a little with suppressed emotion as he stood there in the bright glare of the gaslight looking into the faces of those who had bestowed a great honor upon him, only promising to do his best, and that he would never disgrace the party whose representative he was. That he has faithfully kept that promise to the letter we all know. His splendid record in the Senate during the next six years amply justified the high expectation which his admirers and supporters had indulged in regard to him, and when the Democrats in Wisconsin succeeded in electing a majority of the members of the Legislature in 1891, when his term was out, and Colonel William F. Vilas was elected to succeed him, Senator Spooner retired from the Senate with the respect of his colleagues and the admiration of the whole country. No man ever entered

the Senate and won his way to the front more quickly and held his position more securely than he. It has seldom fallen to the lot of a new Senator to make such a favorable impression upon all those who take an interest in public affairs, and it seldom happens that a young man, during his first term, impresses himself so permanently upon the older and more experienced statesmen at the capital. When he left the Senate chamber at the end of his first term in 1892, he made a vow never to enter it again until he was sent back as one of the Senators from Wisconsin, and he only had to wait six years before he was returned to his old seat by a grateful constituency.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT IN WISCONSIN.

There was a struggle during Rusk's administration to commit one or the other of the older parties to advocacy of an amendment of the constitution prohibiting the liquor traffic. Failing in this, the Prohibitionists organized a separate party, in 1881. This is an appropriate place, therefore, for a review of the history of the temperance movement in Wisconsin.

The attempt to regulate the sale of alcoholic beverages in Wisconsin by law was begun as soon as the territory was organized, and has continued with more or less zeal among the temperance advocates ever since. The first territorial Legislature that met in 1836 passed a law authorizing groceries and victualing houses to sell liquor, and fixed the license fee at $108. The penalty for violating the law was not more than $50. Changes were made in the law from time to time and the license fee reduced until 1839, when a license could be had for $25. In 1840 a law was passed forbidding the sale of liquor to Indians.

In 1849 the most stringent license law that ever was passed in any State was enacted by the Legislature that met in January of that year. The law was known as the Wisconsin Bond Law, and it was the first civil damage law probably ever passed in the United States. It provided that the seller should give a penal bond of $1,000, with three or more sufficient sureties, "conditioned to pay all damages, to support all paupers, widows and orphans, pay the expenses of all civil and criminal prosecutions, growing out of, or justly attributable to such traffic, that communities or individuals may sustain by reason of such traffic." Married women were authorized to institute, and maintain, in their own names, suits on any such bond for all damages sustained by themselves or their children. No suit for liquor bills was to be entertained by any