Selected Correspondence Relating to the Export Trade of the United States in Live Stock and Meat Products, of Jeremiah M. Rusk, Secretary of Agriculture; Volume No.53
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Jeremiah McLain Rusk was an American congressman, the 15th Governor of Wisconsin, and secretary of agriculture. He also served as Union Army officer during the American Civil War.
Background
Jeremiah McLain Rusk was born on a farm in Morgan County, Ohio, the son of Daniel Rusk and Jane Faulkner, both natives of Pennsylvania and children of Scotch-Irish immigrants to Maryland. Both his grandfathers had fought in the Revolution shortly after their arrival in America.
Education
Jeremiah's common-school education was meager.
Career
At the age of sixteen, after the death of his father, Rusk managed his mother's farm; later he drove a stage and became a railway construction foreman. In 1853 he removed to Wisconsin, settling in Viroqua, Vernon County, as tavern keeper. To this business he soon added the ownership of a stage line and a good farm, and in time the part ownership of a bank. His extraordinary activity, sound practical judgment, and personal popularity made his numerous business enterprises uncommonly successful. Equal or greater success waited on his political ambitions.
In 1855 he was elected sheriff of his county, and two years later, coroner. In 1861, he was elected to the state Assembly, resigning in 1862 to become major in the 25th Wisconsin Infantry, a regiment he had recruited. He rose in rank from major to lieutenant-colonel, won distinction for his soldierly conduct at "The Crossing, " in the battle of Salkehatchie River, February 1865 (War of the Rebellion: Official Records, Army, 1 ser. XLVII, pt. 1, p. 387), and at the close of the war was brevetted colonel and brigadier-general.
After his return to Wisconsin, he was elected state bank controller in 1865 and reelected in 1867. In 1871 he went to Congress as successor to C. C. Washburn, and served for three terms. He declined diplomatic appointment in 1881, but was that year elected governor of Wisconsin. He set a record for length of service as governor of his state: he was elected three times and one of his terms was extended by statute, so that he was in office seven years. His devotion to duty was acclaimed so universally as to make him appear to many an available candidate for the presidential nomination in 1888. In consequence, when Harrison upon his inauguration found himself with a new office to fill in the secretaryship of agriculture, he called Rusk to that position.
After March 4, 1893, he retired to his farm, where he died eight months later. Jerry Rusk was a character to inspire legend. Tall (six feet, three inches), broad, and well set up, he was physically fit for any emergency. His democratic ways, cheery manner, spontaneous humor, and great good sense, coupled with his loyalty and dependableness, endeared him not only to business and political associates, but to the people of Wisconsin generally.
Though practically uneducated and never a reader, he was a clear, straightforward, logical thinker and writer on everyday business and administrative subjects. His was fundamentally the active, not the reflective type of mind. In politics he was a strict party conformist, and a conciliator of factional differences.
Harisson said of him: "He not only filled the measure of the man I wanted, but enlarged it".
Connections
On April 5, 1849, in Ohio, Rusk married Mary Martin, by whom he had three children. She died in January 1856, and in December of that year, at Viroqua, he married Elizabeth M. Johnson, by whom he had two children.