This week’s In Remembrance memorializes Thomas French, Michael’s 4x Great Grandfather, who was born on this date in 1820.
The headstone for Thomas and Mary (Newell) French, Mound Cemetery, Racine WI
Thomas Elmer French was born on July 8, 1820 in Ireland and arrived in the United States in January 1841 at the age of 19. He is one of our few known ancestors who arrived in this country through Ellis Island, and he’s memorialized on the American Immigrant Wall of Honor which was established by the Statute of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation to celebrate the opening of the Ellis Island Museum in 1990.
Not much has been confirmed about Thomas’ time in New York until his marriage in 1848. It’s possible he served in the US Army (a Thomas French, from Brooklyn, enlisted as a tailor in Apr 1840 and it’s possible our Thomas arrived a little earlier than recorded), or given his presence in St. Lawrence County it’s possible he was one of the scores of Irish workers involved in building the various canals in the area (as we saw with Daniel Leonard Link), but regardless we know he married Mary Jane Newell on 15 Jun 1848 in Governeur, NY. The couple moved to Wisconsin soon after and established a farm he would reside on the rest of his life.
A decorative cake plate c. 1850 with “French” inscribed, taken from Catherine (Morse) Leonard’s estate, the Great Grand Daughter of Thomas and Mary French
His first child, Suzette Newell French was born in Wisconsin in the spring of 1849, and they would have 6 others who survived to adulthood (May, Charles, John Jay, Ada, Cora and William). Thomas applied for US Citizenship soon after his arrival in Wisconsin, renouncing his allegiance to Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland on his 30th birthday, 8 Jul 1850, and he was eventually Naturalized as a citizen.
Thomas French’s farm as captured in a 1858 Racine County Plat Map, overlayed the same land today in Google Maps
The farm was 85 acres located just West of Franksville, straddling Kraut Road and running just East of Borgardt Road (Link). When Suzette married Addison Morse in 1869 they moved to a 130 acre farm on the West side of Borgardt Road, with Addison’s brother JB across the street and his 110 acres abutting Thomas’ farm’s Southern boundary. His family remained close his entire life, with most of his children living nearby and those that lived away visited often. In fact Suzette’s first son was named with her father’s middle name as his first: Elmer Addison Morse.
Mary passed away of a long illness in 1894, and Thomas survived her for another 12 years before passing away on 27 Mar 1904. He was remembered as a highly respected, a man noted for his good deeds and being every ready to help anyone in need, as well as one of the last remaining early settlers in the area.
Editor’s note: This is a non-political post on a subject that has inexplicably become political, and is merely a family history post discussing genealogy techniques. If this subject bothers you please skip it or at least keep your comments non-political. We will delete your comments and ignored if you can’t.
The hobby of genealogy, as we now practice it, became popular in the late 1800s when membership in lineage societies such as the Sons/Daughters of the American Revolution and the General Society of Mayflower Descendants helped promote it. Genealogy has evolved quite a bit since those days, as has the types of data applied to our ancestors. In the late Nineteenth Century the terms we used for immigrants, people with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ people, or African Americans were so archaic that most people now consider them slurs.
That evolution followed the progress of society and we are in the middle of exactly this type of social evolution in our lifetimes. The LGBTQIA+ community continues to gain recognition and our genealogy needs to evolve accordingly, and we’ve given a lot of thought how we’ll address it.
While these questions seem modern and “new”, the LGBTQIA+ community have always been present in our family trees. There’s more honesty, acceptance, and open discussion today, but as this image from c. 1918 demonstrates, things like gender have never been as constrained as we were led to believe.
Early in our journey to document our family history we made discoveries that upended conventional family lore, often secrets intentionally buried decades ago, and we had to decide how we’d proceed. Our North Star on these discoveries became that we’d tell the truth as we knew it because researchers 100 years from now are going to find our work and will want to know the complete stories we’ve uncovered. Additionally, these truths are fundamental to the story of our family and why we are who we are, so we’ll share them.
But there is a level of respect and love called for in how we tell these stories. For instances one of our biggest discoveries involved living relatives and we consulted them and their children on how best to proceed (Link).
Limits of traditional genealogy for newly accepted mores
The design of our genealogy tools reflects the assumption of a traditional American nuclear family. Family Tree Maker still assumes the opposite sex when you enter a new marriage fact as well as noting parents of a child as “Spouse” even if they were never married. Ancestry follows these traditional notations as well as limiting each person to Male, Female or Unknown genders when many official bodies recognize other options. However, over half of the US States recognize (or have previously recognized and issued documents with) “X” or “other” as valid genders, which challenges our ability to note the truth of these documents.
For instance, if a child is born male and, during their first 20 years, gets a driver’s license, graduates high school, and enrolls in college under one name and gender before later transitioning, the historical record could be totally confusing 100 years from now. Without context, a new woman appears to have graduated college, gotten married, worked various jobs, and renewed her driver’s license, seemingly out of thin air.
A future family historian likely be able to link what looks like two children to the parents, guessing they had two children, one who died about age 20 and the other about the same age establishing all sorts of records but nothing before the age of 20. They could also trace their ancestors back to this child and quickly find a brick wall because they can find no record of them before adulthood.
Properly recording facts for our Trans family
When we were faced with these issues in our tree, we first asked our Trans family and friends how they would like us to approach it. They largely hadn’t given it much thought, but they recognized both the inherent risk of using what they know as “dead names” (which are so named because they are hopefully never to be used again) in our quasi-official documents, as well as wanting to accurately preserve historical records for later generations to consume and understand.
The solution we arrived at was to use “at birth” attached as secondary facts. For a trans family member their current name and gender is noted as default, and we attach their dead name and original gender as secondary facts.
Adapting our tools to integrate our LGBTQIA+ family
We use Family Tree Maker as our primary family tree tool (link), which allows us to define custom facts. We’ve defined the custom facts “Name (at birth)” and “Sex (at birth)” in FTM and use those to attach sources listing original information. We keep those facts flagged as “Private” to ensure that even though the person is alive (which makes all their records hidden by default), these facts will remain private even if we choose to share info on living relatives. This is an extra step to respect our family member’s wishes, and ensure we don’t create reports, etc. where we’d accidentally share this information.
An example of the record (in Family Tree Maker) for a transgender family member, using their preferred name and gender but also capturing their name/gender “at birth”, with records attached
Another of our favorite family tree tools, RootsMagic (Blog link), allows for custom fact types as well, but we run into challenges using some online tools. FamilySearch and MyHeritage both allow for custom facts and we’ve been able to create “at birth” facts on each, however Ancestry does not allow for this. Given that Ancestry is the largest commercial ancestry website, and it has our default online integration with both FTM and RootsMagic, this limitation means we’ll be restricted in sharing these elements publicly when the time comes.
An example of a custom fact for Gender (At Birth) in FamilySearch
Marriage/Relationship facts
The question of how we will capture various relationship facts is related to our LGTBQIA+ family, but not exclusively. We sit at a time where social mores on adult relationships are more broadly defined and we are moving past the European notion of one lifelong marriage.
Divorces are much more common today, as are parenting relationships that never included marriage. Beyond that, “modern” marriage traditions increasingly include same-sex relationships, polyamory, non-traditional/non-official marriage (like handfasting), etc. We are left to decide how best to capture these relationships properly for history’s sake with tools that are not ready for relationships outside of husband and wife.
A warning from FamilySearch we are creating a same-sex marriage
For instance, our tree has children born to couples who never married and Ancestry, MyHeritage and Family Tree Maker want to default the parents’ relationship to “Spouse”. We can manually override that and select relationships like “Partner”, “Single”, or “Other”, but that’s a small list for accurately capturing relationships.
Other tools like FamilySearch don’t make it as clean or easy. Trying to create the same relationship for a child of a never-married couple results in a convoluted mess. Technically we can capture the relationship, but you can only view both parents from the child’s record.
FamilySearch doesn’t display a child’s other parent if they were never married.The only way to see the parents of a child born of a couple not married on FamilySearch is to view the child
Flexibility falls by the wayside when we try and document polyamorous couples. Polyamory is emerging as an increasingly common relationship type, but none of our tools are yet able to effectively capture these marriages. Non-traditional partnerships cannot be accurately recorded in our tools, nor can the parenting arrangements their children were born into.
Make it work!
Our family 100 years from now will likely be much more versed in these notions than we are today, at the dawn of this evolution. They will be expecting the information we have and regardless of the tools we use and regardless of the evolving nature of our family’s relationship our job is to capture our family history as we know it during our time. It’s important we capture these facts with truth and detail so the genealogists that come behind us can build off our work.
In many ways, given the current limitations of capturing this information formally, our work may be the only records that can decode the truth of our people and we need to ensure we capture it completely and with respect to the people who are living these new ways to fully enjoy their lives.
A few weeks ago a good friend Cameron who helped create, preserve, share and star in one of the greatest historical collections we own made a comment on Facebook about not being sure how the collection was being stored and it dawned on me: we’ve gone to great lengths to protect the things we’ve been entrusted with but we’ve never shared the details. Today, in what I hope will become a series of how we archive all our collections, we’ll go over how we store and protect what we’re calling “The Lost Northside Negatives”.
How did we start?
We’ve all seen the meme’s in our socials about how Gen-X had the advantage of growing up hanging out and going to parties without anyone having a camera. For us, that wasn’t the case. When I was 14 my Mom took my request for a camera for Christmas and bought me a Nikon EM 35mm SLR with a 50mm lens.
About this time the whole neighborhood group was increasingly into BMX riding, first racing and then tricks. Skateboarding was soon in the mix and a lot of the kids in the little town of Racine, Wisconsin were quickly trying to emulate the riders and skaters in Southern California often by capturing our own photos to match the pictures we saw in all the BMX/Skating magazines. Film and developing was expensive, and we were young, so we’d scrape together $15 however we could to shoot and develop a roll. Eventually some of us had jobs and so we’d buy more film, and I often had that camera on my shoulder, and we shot roll after roll.
The camera that started the collection
How we created the collection
From 1984 to around 1992 first myself, then Cameron and other friends, we’re shooting the events of our daily lives, the riding, the skating, the parties, the hanging out almost like the youth today with their phones. And this was the prime Gen-X 80’s when we were feral children, we’d be up early and out of the house all day deep into the night with little parental oversight. And there was a camera on my shoulder for much of it.
We would take the developed rolls and go through the 3” x 5” images to pick out the best, put them in photo albums, not care about the negatives at all or the prints we didn’t like so they got shoved in a drawer in Cameron’s bedroom forgotten about. Honestly, I can’t explain how we didn’t just throw them out like we did most of the prints we didn’t use. There were several hundreds of rolls of 24 or 36 images taken over the years and thousands of images total shoved in a drawer and forgotten about as we all grew up and moved out of Racine.
The author at a 1970’s themed New Years Eve party, 1992
About 10 years ago Cameron came to the house and dropped the bomb that his mom, 20 years earlier, found the negatives when she was cleaning out his childhood bedroom and saved them all. She put the sleeves into a grocery bag and then put into an orange milk crate and stored in her attic. Approximately 5,000-10,000 35mm images documenting our shenanigans from the ages of 14-22 had survived.
How we’re protecting our collections
When we bought the house my family lives in now, during the showing, we found a room in the basement that is cinder block on two sides, shelves on the others, is window-less and has a drain in the middle of the floor. We jokingly called it “the murder room” because it was pretty creepy, but as I moved all our genealogy collections in I realized this was the perfect place to store them.
It’s smaller than the rest of the basement, so easier to climate control, it has many shelves and plenty that are over 3’ off the floor, and it’s clear that basement has never leaked. The drain leads to the city storm sewer so even if the basement flooded the drain would keep this area dry and we’d have our collections up off the floor.
We’ve installed portable heating and cooling units in the room (now called the “genealogy room”…much better than it’s old name!) as well as humidifier and de-humidifiers. With that, we can keep the space at 55 degrees (+/- 5 degrees) and 35% humidity (+/- 5%) which is close to optimal for medium term storage of our documents, historical photographs, and our photographic negatives.
Long term it’s important that all family historians look to move their collections to more professional organizations for proper safe keeping (link), but it’s increasingly difficult to find archives that are willing to take in new collections due to the costs. It’s expensive to properly archive them, and then store them, so we’re putting in the time, effort and cost of using professional archiving supplies to store our collections.
How we’re protecting the Lost Northside Negatives collection
Beyond keeping them in a temperature and humidity-controlled space, we’re purchasing professional archiving supplies from Hollinger Metal Edge (link). A polyester sleeve holds each negative strip with each of the sleeves for a particular roll collected inside of an acid-free paper envelope. The envelopes then stored in a buffered acid-free metal edge box.
The current batch of Lost Northside Negatives to be scanned and archivedAn example of a fully-archived roll of 35mm film, in sleeves, showing the storage envelope and box.
When we scan in each roll (more to come on that!) we clean each negative with a lint-free cloth and proper cleaning solution, then place them in the sleeves/folders/boxes. The supplies work out to be about $3/roll, and I expect we’ll spend another $2,000 to $3,000 on archiving supplies to finish the collection. But, it’s worth it because not only are we ensuring the negatives are as protected as possible, by using top-quality supplies and industry best-proactive for archiving it’s more likely that if we ever want to donate these to a museum or archive they will accept them because there is less work for them to do to bring them into their collections.
What’s next
The negatives that somehow survived history are now well kept with full protection. I am taking longer than I would like to scan and present them because I have too many projects to manage, archival supplies are expensive, and the work itself is time-consuming. I’ve digitized about 1000 images so far (The Lost Northside Negatives) and each roll takes about 4 hours to fully process, so that effort took about three and a half work weeks. Now that we’ve got a new batch of supplies in I’m able to process a new set of negatives, but in the meantime they are protected and kept safe!
The Leonard line, as it runs through Michael, has ancestors who fought in every conflict since Europeans arrived on this continent. From King Philip’s war through World War 2, his ancestors have served, but thankfully none in his direct line have lost their lives in combat. Today, for Memorial Day, we remember one of his extended family members who gave the ultimate sacrifice: Eugene H Place.
Eugene, who was Michael’s 4x Great Uncle, lost his life in the Civil War. He was the grandson of one of the first Americans to settle in the Wisconsin territory (Finding the Yeomans), and came from a family that was staunchly committed to Abolition. In-fact, the farmers of Eastern Racine County were notoriously anti-slavery. Eugene’s parents, Thomas and Susan Place, owned a large farm in Mount Pleasant, WI in the neighborhood of the unknown safe house that Joshua Glover was smuggled to after he was freed from the Milwaukee jail. His older brother Luther enlisted as a regular in the Union army when he was 19 years old. Eugene, at 16, was the oldest son left to help on the farm. Many of the boys Luther’s age enlisted the day the war broke out, and Eugene’s younger sister would marry one of those men when he returned from service.
“100 Days Men”
Thomas and Susan had 4 sons. Luther was born in 1844, Eugene in 1846, Thomas Jr. in 1847, and Theron in 1853. Thomas was lost as an infant. By the Spring of 1864, when Eugene turned 18 years old, the Union campaign in Georgia was gaining momentum. The Governor of Ohio proposed a surge of lightly trained soldiers to replace seasoned troops who were doing rear-guard duty. The concept of a short-term enlistment for these rear guard troops was immediately adopted by President Lincoln. The 80,000 soldiers who joined were known as “100 Days Men” and Eugene enlisted 3 months after this 18th birthday (100 Days Men). The Place family’s two oldest sons were now serving in the Union Army.
The impact of the 100 Days Men like Eugene was just what the Union had hoped for. By the time they mustered out in September of 1864 Atlanta had fallen. Sherman was resting and preparing for his glorious March to the Sea while the regulars re-positioned to their original posts.
The Wisconsin 39th Regimen mustered into service on 3 Jul 1864, and he was assigned to Company D. The 3 Wisconsin 100 Days regimens were sent to Memphis after a week of training. They performed guard and picket duty while the veteran troops they replaced shifted to the battle for Atlanta.
On 21 Aug 1864 the Wisconsin 39th was the only of the 100 Days forces from Wisconsin to see combat. Confederate Calvary under Nathan Bedford Forrest attempted a raid in Memphis to capture Union commanders, but they were ultimately rebuffed. During the time of the raid, Eugene was likely already in hospital in Memphis suffering through his last days of the disease that would take his life. He died on 23 Aug 1864 at the age of 18. His body was returned to Racine where it was buried in a family plot in Mound Cemetery.
Mound Cemetery
Thomas Place arrived in Wisconsin Territory at age 16, before the Native Americans had been pushed off this land. The first winter Thomas worked for the French fur trader in the area. He became acquainted enough with the local Potowatomi band that he was invited in the winter of 1835 to a mound-building performed for the death of a tribal leader. Those ceremonies were held in an area of Racine that was dotted with burial mounds. Now almost 30 years later, that land had become the cemetery Thomas buried his middle son.
The impact of the 100 Days Men like Eugene was just what the Union had hoped for. By the time they mustered out in September of 1864 Atlanta had fallen. Sherman was resting and preparing for his glorious March to the Sea while the regulars re-positioned to their original posts. 3 men of the 39th died in combat, while nearly 10 times that many would fall to disease. In November President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address memorializing the men like Eugene who died for this country. By April 1865 the war ended.
Eternal Sacrifice, and Gratitude
Michael’s maternal line was just starting to taste their first freedom in this country. That was in no small part due to the sacrifices of men like Eugene H. Place. The Place family’s commitment to the ideals that people like Michael should be treated like human beings gave his later ancestors some of the rights the Place’s themselves held dear. The could now own property, vote, and to serve this country.
Without the sacrifices of men like Eugene, generations of people like Michael with African ancestry would likely still be enslaved in the brutal system the Southern States fought so traitorously to preserve. On this Memorial Day, it’s with profound thanks for the wonderful life we all enjoy today that we thank Private Place, and the countless others like him, for their service, their commitment, and their sacrifice.
The political upheaval the United States has experienced over the last decade can seem so extreme it’s historically unprecedented. At times it has felt that the country was facing a challenge to its democratic traditions unlike anything we’ve ever faced. However, our family history reminded us that the country has faced this political tyranny before, when one man wielded control over the White House and both houses of Congress due to Republicans not having the will to stand up to an American despot. It also reminded us that we can celebrate that ancestor who dethroned that tyrant with a courage and sacrifice that seemed completely absent from today’s Republican Party.
Elmer Addison Morse, c. 1910
Michael’s 2xGreat Grandfather Elmer Addison Morse was born and raised in the farming community of Franksville, WI but he was elected to Congress in 1906 as a Representative from Antigo, WI. E.A. (as he was known) was aligned with the Progressive wing of the Republican Party and was one of the founding members of the National Progressive Republican League along with Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette in 1911.
The Progressive bloc of the Republican party came from the Panic of 1893 (Panic of 1893) which was so devistating to the economy many started to re-evaluate their political positions. The Republican party had become very business aligned, matching the historic position of the Democrats, but more and more citizens in the electorate saw the monopoly’s, the trusts, the Guilded Age businessmen as the main problem in the United States. At the same time there was a clear undercurrent of dissatisfaction in the greed of the market praying on people as they increasingly left the farm for urban jobs, and a feeling that the Federal government should protect people from predatory business as well as use it’s power to improve the quality of life amongst the public1. The Progressive wing of the Republican party was born of this movement, as politicians across the country started openly agitating for this new political perspective.
“I believe the Republican party is progressive to the core, and I want it thoroughly understood that I am not a stand-patter in any sense of the word.
The Republican party was born to make men free from slavery, and I believe that there is vitality enough in it still to free this generation from the aggressions of Trusts and oppression of Monoploy, and to protect the remainder of our natural resources from being plundered by the favored few, to the entitlement of the many.”
E.A. Morse, 1910
By 1900 the Progressives were gaining steam, with the ascension of Vice President Teddy Roosevelt to be the 26th President, Bob La Follette being elected Governor of Wisconsin, and a significant bloc in the Republican-majority Congress. Upon his election to President in 1904 Roosevelt leaned in to his Progressive nature and pushed reforms such as eliminating the rampant corruption in politics at all levels, seizing land valuable in natural resources from private companies to ensure those now Public resources would be used for the public good, initiating actions to break up the large company “trusts” that monopolized large sectors of the US economy, creating Federal agencies to regulate the safety of Food, Medicine, and Meat for the first time.
During first Roosevelt’s Presidency, and then Morse’s time in Congress, the main block to many Progressive reforms was the Republican Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon. “Uncle Joe” Cannon was a conservative Republican and led the “Old Guard/Stand Pat” wing of the Republican Party. He served as Speaker of the House starting in 1903 and quickly amassed an unprecedented amount of power. He was not only Speaker, but he was also the chair of the House Rules Committee which determined how bills could be debated, amended, and voted upon. Bills couldn’t reach the floor unless Cannon approved of them, and he alone could determine what form they would take if they reached the floor for a vote. Additionally, he solely appointed all committee members, of both parties, which ensured that the blossoming group of Progressive Republicans were kept off of important committees and could leverage very little influence.
His power was such that even the Presidency was diminished under Cannon! While Cannon was a key foe to Teddy Roosevelt, the election of William Howard Taft in 1908 led to Uncle Joe taking complete control of the Republican Party and thus dictating the actions of the Senate as well as the President. One man now controlled two of the three branches of government.
In the 1908 Presidential election, the majority of Republicans (and all of the Progressives) ran on a platform of lowering tariffs. Protectionist tariffs had been passed years earlier, but since they were designed more to protect business interests than consumer interests, prices on key consumer items had skyrocketed. Cannon understood his power, and sensing that Taft was not as formidable as Roosevelt, he decided to break Taft of any Progressive leanings while crippling the Progressives. Against the wishes of almost the entire party, Cannon ensured that the 1909 Payne-Aldrich Tariff was signed into law.
The tariff bill was a thinly veiled punishment to those that challenged Cannon, and a threat to those that supported him, in a bid to ensure they continued that support.
Instead of the promised reduction of tariffs, Payne-Aldrich raised them on many of the 2000+ items listed. The few reductions were largely given out as political favors. The Republicans ultimately felt that failing to pass any tariff bill would be seen as a fiasco for the party, and they chose party above the relief they promised their constituents. Cannon recognized that and used it to bend the party to his will, and even many of the reformers (likely even our E.A.) fell in line and supported the bill.
Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon on the cover of the first issue of Time Magazine
Taft spun the bill that had been forced upon him by Cannon as “the best tariff bill that the Republican Party ever passed.” Taft also admitted that he put the interests of the party over the interests of the country: “I believe…the interests of the party required me to sacrifice the accomplishment of certain things in the revision of the tariff which I had hoped for, in order to maintain party solidarity.” Cannon had become the single man in charge of the American political system, and he effectively controlled both the Executive and Congressional branches of government. From this time on he was widely referred to as “The Tyrant from Illinois”.
E.A. Morse ran openly against “Cannonism” and was a part of a minority group of Republicans that bucked the party and stood up for what they felt was right. They wished to protect and expand the democratic institutions of this country and they did so at the risk of their political careers.
The Progressives had plotted their attack on Cannon for several years, and openly voiced their intention to break his power. But it took a long time before they finally found their opening and executed their courage move to stand up to Cannon. When they did move, they politically neutered him in spectacular fashion.
On March 17, 1910, the House was in session but lightly attended. There was a quorum, but many regular Republicans were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and had either left for the week, or a long weekend. Many had celebrated well into the night and were in no shape to return to the Capital even if they could be found. It was during an otherwise routine management of House business that the full group of Progressive insurgents struck out at Cannon.
George Norris, a Republican from Nebraska, had been laying it the weeds waiting for this moment. For two years he’d carried the text of a resolution in his pocket to amend the House rules to remove Cannon from the chair of the Rules committee and to strip him of his ability to appoint committee members and leaders. There had been a seemingly innocent debate the day before on if bills could be introduced directly to the House floor if they dealt with a Constitutional question. Cannon and Stand Patters ruled that it was permissible, even if the bill was not pre-printed and that the House as a whole would have to vote directly on those bills. Cannon couldn’t control those bills from being debated and voted upon.
St. Patrick’s Day morning, Norris, sensing his opening, copied the text of his resolution on the back of an envelope and rose to introduce a “resolution privileged by the Constitution.” Cannon, not knowing the danger of what was unfolding, allowed Norris to proceed. Very quickly it became apparent that Cannon had accidentally allowed a direct challenge to his power and he didn’t have the votes to stop it. One of Cannon’s allies made a Point of Order that Norris’ resolution wasn’t privileged, and that set off 26 hours of political gamesmanship. Ultimately Cannon couldn’t muster the votes and allowed the Point of Order to be voted on by the House. 42 Progressive Republicans joined 149 Democrats to ensure that Norris’ motion passed, largely because there weren’t enough regular Republicans available to beat back the challenge.
This move broke the greatest concentration of power in American political history. Cannon’s hubris and display of punitive power in the tariff bill hadn’t broken the Progressives, it laid the groundwork for them to rise up and seize control back from Cannon.
These Progressives voted for Country over party, and saved this country from tyranny but at the cost of their political careers. In the 1910 election Democrats took over the House, while many of the Progressives survived re-election. However, the 1912 election was a disaster for the Republicans and the death of the Progressives in the party.
The Progressives planned to seize control over the Republican Party during the 1912 Presidential election, but they didn’t anticipate Teddy Roosevelt’s return to American politics and his usurping of the Progressive Party. The Republican Progressives were planning on their electoral reforms helping Democratic Progressives joining them to defeat the Democratic candidate, however Roosevelt had no support amongst Democrats, so when La Follette finished 2nd in the Progressive nomination even Roosevelt admitted the Democrats would win the 1912. Additionally, a dethroned Cannon had enough power to ensure that each of the Progressives that voted to remove him faced well-funded challengers in their House elections, as well as newly drawn districts that disadvantaged them. He also pulled strings to make sure that promised Federal projects like new Post Offices which were key to legislators in Progressive districts were delayed until after the election.
E.A. Morse campaign ad defending his stand against Speaker Joe Cannon and “Cannonism” and making no apologies.
In E.A. Morse’s case, in addition to facing a Democratic “wave” election in 1912, the Old Guard Republican governor of Wisconsin helped ensure that this district was merged with another and that he faced a challenge from a popular Republican Secretary of State. In the end, Morse was handily defeated and returned to private life, in no small part due to his challenge to Uncle Joe Cannon.
Morse left public life after his loss, and had a long career as the principle of the Morse-Tradewell company in Antigo which specialized in insurance, banking, and logging. Their logging operation was so great that at one point they were the largest private holder of land in Northern Wisconsin and had a private railroad, including a steam engine, that would haul their timber for sale to the shipping depot in Lena, Wisconsin.
We don’t want to ascribe only the noblest of intentions to our ancestors, and there are troubling aspects of E.A.’s life and politics. In-fact, by 1932 Morse rant again for Congress in support of Herbert Hoover despite his overseeing our decent into the Great Depression, and explicitly denied any Progressive alignment. But that’s true for all politicians and in his case he was a part of a small group of Republicans that stood up for what was right and for what was best for the democratic institutions of this country over his political career, and he’s a heroic legend in our family. Each House Progressive paid for their courage by losing their seats soon after their insurgency.
We saw during the 2nd Impeachment of a Republican President 110 years after Morse and the Progressives stood up for what was right that the Republican Party couldn’t muster 3 people courageous enough to put an insurrectionist tyrant in check. The risk of losing their seats continues to allow a single man to dictate policies that the large majority of Americans are deeply disturbed about.
Just know we’ve seen this before, where one man stood above the Constitution and the country, and that it took just a handful of people to let their courage and sense of duty to what was right and best for the country be greater than their own needs. We can be proud our relative stood on the right side of history and ignored the political cost.
Let’s be honest, it wasn’t the “public” it was white, Protestant men…no one else had power in the politics of the United States in the late 1800’s. ↩︎
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__utma
ID used to identify users and sessions
2 years after last activity
__utmt
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests
10 minutes
__utmb
Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
30 minutes after last activity
__utmc
Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session.
End of session (browser)
__utmz
Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server
