(Excerpt from Speech of the Hon. Joseph W. McClurg, of Mis...)
Excerpt from Speech of the Hon. Joseph W. McClurg, of Missouri, Delivered in the House of Representatives, April 29, 1864, on Motion to Print the Evidence and Report of the Investigating Committee, in the Case of the Alledged Charge Against Hon. F. P. Blair: For Violating the Laws in a "Liquor Speculation," and of the Truth or Falsity of an Alledged "Order," and the Remarks on the Same Occasion This letter was unexpected, unsolicited, and the authors are personally unknown to me. I would merely suggest that it may be an excusable offense to suspect that an individual who seems to have been engaged 1n one dishonorable transaction in the spring. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Businessman congressman governor politician
Joseph Washington McClurg, a first cousin of A. C. McClurg, was born in St. Louis County, Missouri. His grandfather, Joseph, came to the United States from Ireland as a refugee in 1798, his family, including Joseph Washington McClurg's father, also named Joseph, following later. The second Joseph married Mary Brotherton, a native of St. Louis County, Missouri . Their son, orphaned at an early age, was reared by relatives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
McClurg attended school in Xenia, Ohio, and for two years (1833 - 35) was a student at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He then taught for a year or more in Louisiana and Mississippi; later he was admitted to the bar in Texas and practised law there.
From 1841 to 1844, McClurg was deputy sheriff of St. Louis County. In 1849, he was living in Hazelwood, Missouri, at which time he joined the California gold seekers, in charge of a caravan of twenty-four ox teams. Back in Missouri again in 1852, McClurg, with two partners, established a large wholesale and retail mercantile business at Linn Creek, which was increasingly prosperous. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War he immediately took a strong stand for the Union. He organized, equipped (at considerable financial loss), and commanded a home-guard unit, called the Osage Regiment of Missouri Volunteers. Later, he became colonel of the 8th Cavalry, Missouri Militia, but resigned this position in 1862, when he was elected to Congress, in which he served practically three full terms. Though opposed to slavery in principle, he did not liberate the slaves which his wife had inherited until shortly before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Of great significance for his future political career was the fact that in the House he became an ardent disciple of Thaddeus Stevens, the bell-wether of radicalism. Moreover, his bitter attacks upon his congressional colleague, Francis P. Blair, a leading conservative Unionist, endeared him to the hearts of all Missouri radicals. In 1868, McClurg resigned his seat in the House to run for governor of Missouri on the Radical Republican ticket. Because of the military and strictly partisan enforcement of the noted test oath and registry law, enacted by the legislature in 1865-66, McClurg was elected by a majority of nearly 20, 000. During the campaign, at the polls, and throughout his administration, the spirit and the principles of Thaddeus Stevens and the carpetbaggers were logically and proudly set forth in the public utterances and policies of McClurg and his advisers. Their aim was not only to disfranchise the "rebels, " but also so to control the election machinery as to render the loyal Union Democrats and the Liberal Republicans powerless. After his term as governor he lived at Linn Creek and engaged in various business enterprises. In 1885, he moved to Lebanon, where he lived until his death, except for the years 1889 to 1893, when he was register of the Federal Land Office at Springfield.
During the Civil War he served as Colonel and commander of the 8th Missouri Volunteer Cavalry regiment in the Union Army. He was elected as a Unconditional Unionist to represent Missouri's 5th District in the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1865 until he resigned in 1868 due to having been elected Governor of Missouri. He would go on to serve in that office from 1869 to 1871.
(Excerpt from Speech of the Hon. Joseph W. McClurg, of Mis...)
If he was ignorant, it was only in the sense that he did not comprehend the short-sightedness of the radical policies. He was, in fact, less a leader than a follower. Such radicals as Charles D. Drake and others long since forgotten really dominated the party of which McClurg was the nominal head. The controversies relating to negro and white suffrage claimed the major share of his attention during the two years he was in office. With the test oath and the registry law on the shelf in 1870, he was overwhelmingly defeated for the governorship. The memory of the proscriptions which he sponsored was largely responsible for the fact that Missouri remained in the Democratic column for over thirty years.
Quotes from others about the person
"McClurg is the embodiment of all that is narrow, bigoted, revengeful, and ignorant in the Radical party. "
In 1843 McClurg married Mary C. Johnson.
