Augustus Caesar Dodge was an American senator, diplomat, democratic politician, military leader, minister to Spain. Dodge, a Democrat, had also represented Iowa Territory in Congress as its delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, from 1840 to 1846.
Background
Dodge was born on January 2, 1812, in Sainte-Geneviève, Missouri, United States; the son of Henry Dodge and Christina McDonald. At the age of 15, his family moved from Saint Genevieve to Galena, Illinois, United States, after his father took command of a military unit that was directed to build blockhouses in an attempt to protect settlers from neighboring Winnebago tribes. Henry Dodge’s commission along the upper Mississippi placed the Dodge family on the western frontier, in the 1820s and 1830s.
The spring of 1831 brought the first engagements with Black Hawk, the Sauk leader who was seeking to regain tribal lands along the Mississippi River at Rock Island. The senior Dodge enlisted the help of Augustus Caesar A. C. Dodge as a lieutenant, serving as an aide to his father. By the conclusion of the Black Hawk War, Henry Dodge had earned recognition as “Captain of Aggressive Civilization” and “Hero of the Black Hawk War.”
Education
In Wisconsin there was little opportunity for schooling, so Dodge was self-educated.
Career
Augustus Dodge spent his youth alongside French, German, and Irish immigrants as a miner in the lead mines of the upper Mississippi River valley in an effort to help pay off family debts incurred by his father while in St. Genevieve.
Meanwhile, Galena’s status as a social and political center of the region led Dodge to turn his attention to politics. In 1838 he moved to Burlington, Iowa, to accept an appointment as the Register of the U.S. Land Office for the newly formed Iowa Territory. On November 19, 1838, Dodge recorded the first land sales in Burlington as pioneers eagerly sought to secure titles to the lands in the Black Hawk Purchase.
In 1839 Dodge accepted an appointment as brigadier general of the Second Brigade in the First Division of the Iowa Territorial Militia. The following year citizens of Burlington elected him as alderman. In the same year, the Democratic Party nominated him as the Iowa Territory’s delegate to Congress. He secured the party’s nomination and won the election over Whig Party candidate Alfred Rich and outcast Democrat James Churchman. Dodge subsequently served two additional terms as a congressional delegate, directing and securing funding for mail routes and post offices, petitioning for improvement of the Des Moines River and militia needs, securing the settlement of the Iowa-Missouri boundary dispute and Indian land disputes, and guiding the process of admitting Iowa to statehood. In 1848 Dodge was elected, along with his old friend George W. Jones, to represent the new state of Iowa in the U.S. Senate. There he joined his father, who represented Wisconsin, marking the first time in American history that a father and son had served concurrent terms in the U.S. Senate. A. C. Dodge arrived in the nation’s capital as tension over the sectional crisis was building. Henry Clay, “the Great Compromiser,” introduced to the Senate the Compromise of 1850, that limited the expansion of slavery in the expanding West and Southwest but also offered the slaveholding states strengthened federal support by way of the Fugitive Slave Act. Dodge saw the Compromise of 1850 as the best way to keep an expanding nation united and balanced.
As a member of the Democratic Party, Dodge followed the party’s lead in voting for state sovereignty. Dodge also followed party stalwart Stephen A. Douglas, voting for the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Although Lewis Cass is credited with creating the doctrine, Douglas became its champion. In response to federal limitations on slavery in the territories, Cass and Douglas contended that citizens of the territories had just as much right to self-government as citizens of the states. By 1855, however, Free-Soilers had gained political control of Iowa, and Dodge lost his Senate seat to James Harlan.
In the wake of his election defeat, Dodge accepted President Pierce’s offer of the office of minister to Spain and served in that capacity until 1859, when Dodge returned to Iowa and hesitantly accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor, but he was soundly defeated by Republican Samuel J. Kirkwood. The following year the Democratic Party united to nominate Dodge for his old Senate seat, but he again lost to his old Republican rival James Harlan. For the next 23 years, Dodge toured the state and country giving speeches and supporting the Democratic Party. He died on November 20, 1883, in the town where he had begun his political career 45 years earlier.
Achievements
Dodge is known as one of the first set of United States Senators to represent the state of Iowa after it was admitted to the Union as a state, in 1846. Dodge, a Democrat, had also represented Iowa Territory in Congress as its delegate to the U. S. House of Representatives, from 1840 to 1846.
Dodge County, Nebraska and Dodge Street in Omaha, Nebraska were named after Augustus Dodge. His home in Burlington, Iowa is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Augustus Caesar Dodge House.
Dodge was a Democrat, warmly attached to the West, and with sympathy for the South that grew out of his early life in Missouri. He voted for all of the provisions of the compromise measures of 1850. He was outspoken in his opposition to abolitionism and in defense of the Fugitive-Slave Law.
He faithfully served his state in the early days when the people of Iowa were large of Southern origin, but with the influx of Northerners and the growth of Republicanism, his supporters became a minority, with the result that retirement from public life overtook him before he reached the age of sixty.
He served in the Senate until February 22, 1855, when President Franklin Pierce appointed him to the post of minister to Spain. He served as the minister, until 1859.
Dodge supported the Kansas-Nebraska Bill with enthusiasm, characterizing it as "the noblest tribute which has ever yet been offered by the Congress of the United States to the sovereignty of the people. " A rising tide of anti-Nebraska sentiment developed, however, in his state, and in January 1855, the legislature chose James Harlan to succeed him in the Senate.
Personality
Dodge was a man of sincere convictions and aggressive force, consistent in his policies but without great flexibility of mind.
Connections
On March 19, 1837, Dodge married Claire Ann Hertich. The marriage was the culmination of a childhood romance that began before the Dodge family moved from St. Genevieve.
The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa
Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation’s affairs.
