Background
Galusha Aaron Grow, fifth of the six children of Joseph and Elizabeth (Robbins) Grow, of English stock, was born in Ashford, now Eastford, Connecticut, United States on August 31, 1822.
His father died when Galusha was four and his mother took her family to Voluntown, Connecticut, where her father, a Revolutionary veteran, was a farmer and inn-keeper. Galusha had the usual life of a chore boy with a little schooling in the winter and the activities of his grandfather’s tavern for variation. About 1834 his mother, an enterprising woman, decided to go west into Pennsylvania to seek her fortune.
Her father gave her some of his property, and thus provided she and her family joined a party which went by boat to Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and then overland to the Tunkhannock Valley where settlements were being opened up.
Here she bought 400 acres near Glenwood, and twelve-year-old Galusha settled down with his brother to farm this tract. His mother soon opened a store and as business increased the family began to deal in lumber.
Education
In 1838 Galusha Aaron Grow attended the Franklin Academy at Harford, Pennsylvania, kept by Willard Richardson, and in 1840 entered Amherst College, graduating in 1844 with an enthusiastic interest in politics.
Career
Galusha made a number of journeys down the Susquehanna to Port Deposit with lumber consignments and at fourteen was entrusted with a schoonerload of lumber to take to Annapolis or further south for sale.
He made his political début that year campaigning for Polk and after the campaign began the study of law, first in the office of Governor Cleveland of Connecticut and then with F. B. Streeter, of Montrose, Pennsylvania.
After his admission to the bar in 1847 he went into partnership at Towanda with David Wilmot. In the course of this partnership Wilmot’s political fortunes received a temporary check in 1850 when the more conservative Democrats put up a candidate in opposition.
In order to prevent a split in the party these two opponents agreed to withdraw in favor of a third man whom Wilmot should name.
Grow was the man and he took his seat forthwith in the Thirty-second Congress, as its youngest member.
His frontier experiences had made him familiar with the exactions of land-speculators and the sufferings of the frontiersmen from their rapacity.
Also, his study of Blackstone had impressed him with the doctrine that occupation and use provided the only valid claim to the ownership of land.
In Congress, therefore, he manifested immediate interest in the question of the public lands.
His first set speech was on the subject of man’s right to the soil, and he joined the group who were urging that the government be more generous in its policy of land distribution.
In his second term he introduced a bill providing that every applicant be given a quarter section, but in the famous homestead controversy of that Congress it was not his measure that passed the House.
Many congressmen with frontier interests, of whom Grow was one, were restive under the control which the conservative element, mainly Southerners, exercised over legislation, and when the question of repealing the Missouri Compromise arose, determined that the time had come for a new alignment.
As a result, conferences were held in Washington during the early part of 1854 attended by Democratic and Whig congressmen from the free states for the purpose of making new arrangements for political action.
In these conferences Grow was a conspicuous figure.
He took his place beside Campbell, Banks, Giddings, and their associates, in the rough and tumble of the turbulent congressional sessions just prior to the Civil War.
He won notoriety for his brush with L. M. Keitt, and on one occasion made use of a bodyguard and was bound over to keep the peace.
During these sessions he was also active in defeating various schemes of speculators and in urging the creation of new territories.
When secession cleared the House of the Southern members, the Republicans at length could initiate a program, and when the special session of the war Congress came together in July 1861, Galusha Grow was elected speaker.
During his term in this office Galusha Aaron Grow had the pleasure of seeing the homestead measure for which he had so long labored enacted into law. This was the crowning event in his career, for the Pennsylvania legislature had rearranged the congressional districts so that he now lived in a Democratic stronghold, and he was defeated for réélection in«the disastrous year 1862.
He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1864, 1884, and 1892, served as chairman of the state committee in the late sixties, and in the Hayes Administration declined the Russian mission. He was active in various business enterprises, lumber, oil, and railroads, even going to Texas for four years as president of the Houston & Great Northern Railroad (1871-75). Finally he did succeed in coming back to political prominence. In 1893 William Lilly, congressman-at-large from Pennsylvania, died, and as Grow’s biographer says, ‘‘Through the accident of Quay being in Florida, tarpon fishing, the organization did not promptly give orders to crush him” (p. 279), and Grow was elected. He served through four Congresses as a picturesque veteran, still actively interested in extending homestead legislation and acquiring new territory; he was a veritable Nestor in the House. Upon his retirement in 1903 Andrew Carnegie placed him upon his pension list and he went back to Glenwood to think over the past and dictate his memoirs. A frontiersman, he had labored earnestly to destroy the frontier and provide opportunity for individuals to develop the resources of the nation.
For thirty years he spent his time striving ineffectually to return to politics in the face of Cameron’s hostility.
He served through four Congresses as a picturesque veteran, still actively interested in extending homestead legislation and acquiring new territory; he was a veritable Nestor in the House.
Upon his retirement in 1903 Andrew Carnegie placed him upon his pension list and he went back to Glenwood to think over the past and dictate his memoirs.
Personality
Galusha Aaron Grow was imposing, measuring six feet two inches; his strength had been gained as a “bark-spudder” and was considerable.
Galusha Aaron Grow lacked any sensitivity which might have made another hesitate to bear the brunt of the new struggle, and his habits were reliable for he was a dyspeptic bachelor who lived apart from the convivial world.
Consequently, he could be counted on to take the offensive at any time, and this strength and coolness made him one of the most aggravating of the new Republicans, one who could easily goad an impulsive Southerner to desperation and took delight in doing so.
