CHAPTER XLIV.

Administration of Gov. Cullom-Thirtieth General Assembly Election of David Davis to the United - States Senate Laws-Labor Strikes - Politics in 1878Elections-Thirty-first General Assembly.

HELBY MOORE CULLOM was the fourth consecutively

of the neighboring State of Kentucky, where he was born at Monticello in Wayne County, November 22, 1829. He was so young, however, less than two years of age, when his parents removed to Tazewell County in this State, that he might almost consider himself a native Illinoisan.

Richard Northcut Cullom, his father, was a leading and influential whig in his day, and acceptably represented his district in the tenth, twelfth, thirteenth, and eighteenth Illinois general assemblies.

It was a singular coincidence, and so interesting that the reader will pardon the digression, that the father of General Logan, Dr. John Logan, after whom the county of Logan was named, also represented his district in the tenth and twelfth general assemblies. It thus happened that Illinois at one time was represented in the United-States senate by two members. whose fathers had formerly sat side by side in the State legislature.

The governor's father was a farmer, and the future statesman was early accustomed to the homely fare and training incident to farm-life in a new country. He learned to swing the ax and guide the plow; and thus laid up a store of physical strength needed in a sedentary life. In those early days, educational advantages were of a limited description and generally confined to such as were afforded by the public school. Shelby Cullom, however, feeling the need of a broader culture, was not content with these, and, though hampered by the want of means, was enabled to spend two years in study at the Rock-River Seminary at Mount Morris, though in order to

maintain himself, he found it necessary, as did Garfield and Blaine, to devote some time to teaching.

Having determined to follow a professional life, in 1853, he entered the office of Stuart and Edwards in Springfield to study law. He was admitted to the bar and began to practise in 1855. Soon after this, he was elected city attorney and from the trial of the smaller class of municipal cases in the justice's court, soon entered upon a larger and more lucrative practice, his studious and abstemious habits and faithful attention to the interests of his clients being such as to recommend him to the business community. In the upper courts, he frequently found himself confronting some of the foremost lawyers in the State, in which contests his habits of close application stood him in good stead.

Before the era of railroad building and of the growth of corporations, the practice of law in this and other western states was not a lucrative occupation, as large fees were the exception. It is hardly to be wondered at, therefore, that the best lawyers in the State, during this early period, should be unable to resist the temptation to enter the field of politics, where the opportunity was presented not only for bettering their worldly fortunes but also for bringing an increase of fame and gratifying a pardonable ambition.

In 1856, as has been already shown, Gov. Cullom made his first appearance in the political arena by entering the race for membership of the lower house of the legislature. Influenced by his early training and a warm admiration for Millard Fillmore, he owed his election to his alliance with the American party. His sympathies, however, had always been with the republicans, and being a warm personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, he gave him his cordial support in his contest with Judge Douglas for the United-States senate in 1858. Thenceforth his political fortunes were linked with those of the republican party and he was the only one of its candidates for the legislature elected in 1860 in Sangamon County, which gave Douglas a small majority. His election to the speakership of the twenty-second general assembly was a compliment not only to his success but to his ability. The chair of the house, although it had been graced by Zadoc Casey, Newton Cloud,

GOVERNOR CULLOM.

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and Sydney Breese with such distinguished ability, had never been more worthily occupied.

In 1862, he was appointed by President Lincoln on an important claims commission upon which were also Gov. Boutwell of Massachusetts, and Chas. A. Dana of New York. This same year he was prevailed upon to become a candidate for the state senate, but owing to the unpopularity of the war at this its darkest period, he suffered his first and only defeat.

In 1864, he received the republican nomination for congress in the old eighth district and defeated his former preceptor, John T. Stuart. He was reëlected in 1866 and 1868, the time of service embracing that eventful period when the questions of reconstruction, the funding and payment of the national debt, and the readjustment of the currency, were under consideration. In shaping the national policy upon all these vital questions in congress, he occupied a leading position, taking an aggressive and influential part in the debates and proceedings. He was specially conspicuous in securing the passage through the lower house of the first anti-polygamy bill.

He failed to receive a renomination for a fourth term in congress, and with a new candidate the district was lost to the republicans. Returning home, he was again honored with a seat in the legislature, 1873, and for the second time was elected speaker of the house. He was also returned as a member of the twenty-ninth general assembly, and would have been again called to the speaker's chair but for a coalition of democrats and independents, who together outnumbered the republicans. It was with such an experience in public life, broader and more varied than any of his predecessors, that Governor Cullom came to occupy the executive chair of state.

Although his many years of public life have made him so well known to the present generation, it may not be out of the way to remark that in person he is tall and spare; his hair is black, his forehead high and massive; his features clearly cut and expressive. In general contour of face and figure, he reminds those who knew them both of Abraham Lincoln, whom indeed he resembles in many of his mental characteristics. Unlike that great man, however, the senator possesses a natural ease of carriage and grace of manner which have in no small degree contributed to his popularity.

His cast of mind is solid rather than showy, and his oratory convincing rather than ornate. His rhetoric is unpolished and his illustrations homely, drawn indeed, from subjects familiar to his audiences, with whom he establishes a friendly feeling conducive to conviction-the end of oratory. He is greatly assisted in his speeches by the possession of a full, round voice, of large compass, and that sympathetic quality which captivates attention.

As a politician, Gov. Cullom has proved himself one of the most astute and far-seeing which the State has yet produced; and his public career has demonstrated the fact that he possesses those higher attributes which belong to statesmanship. To a judgment of men and affairs far above the average, he unites that plain, hard common-sense which formed one of the prominent traits in the character of Lincoln. His political sagacity has been demonstrated in many ways, but especially in the fact that he alone of all those aspirants for public honors in the State, who were unable to appeal to the people on the score of heroic service in the civil war, has thus far enjoyed a career of uninterrupted success.

Andrew Shuman, whose name followed that of Shelby M. Cullom on the republican state-ticket elected in November, 1876, was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in November, 1830. Thrown upon his own resources at an early age, his literary education was begun in the composing-room of the Lancaster Times and Sentinel, which he entered at the age of fifteen years. His business life was devoted to journalism, his earliest editorial venture having been made when he was but nineteen years old, when he published a small literary sheet known as the Auburnian, of which he was at once the editor, foreman, typo, devil, and pressman. Feeling the want of the education which circumstances had prevented his acquiring in boyhood, he abandoned editorial work to enter Hamilton College, becoming a freshman at the-now-a-day's mature -age of twenty-one, and supporting himself through his college course by desultory literary labor and working at the case during vacation. He came to Illinois in 1856 and began his career as a western journalist in the chair of assistanteditor of the Chicago Daily Journal, becoming editor in chief in 1861, and subsequently part owner of the paper.