Lorenzo Crounse

January 27, 1834 (age 75)

Sharon, Schoharie County, New York, United States

In 1857 he was admitted to the bar. In 1861 he went to war as captain of Battery K, 16t Regiment, New York Light Artillery, but his service ended shortly after the second battle of Bull Run, in which he was severely wounded. In 1864 he moved to Rulo, Nebraska, later settling at Fort Calhoun, and again turned to law. From the first Crounse was active in Nebraska politics. He served in the legislature, and helped draft the constitution under which the territory was admitted as a state. He was associate justice of the state supreme court for six years following 1867 and wrote many opinions that were of great local importance. Notable among his decisions was that in Brittle vs. The People, in which he upheld the right of a colored man to sit on a jury. He served for two terms, 1873-77, in the national House of Representatives, and his disregard while he was there of the wishes of the Nebraska railroads probably accounts for his failure to win in 1876 the seat in the United States Senate to which he aspired. For four years after 1879 he was collector of internal revenues for the Nebraska district, in 1880 he attended the Republican National Convention as an ardent Blaine man, and in Harrison’s administration he became assistant secretary of the treasury. During these years he spent much time on the fine farm he had acquired near Fort Calhoun. By this time the Farmers’ Alliance had blossomed into the People’s party, and in the election of 1890, because of the agrarian uprising, the Republicans lost control of the Nebraska state government. In order to regain their former supremacy the old party leaders decided in 1892 to nominate Crounse for the governorship. This they did, but with some reluctance, for, while Crounse was no friend to Populism, his disdain for machine politics, which in Nebraska was but another name for railroad dictation, was well known. During the campaign the Demo- cratic nominee, J. Sterling Morton, joined with Crounse in attacking the record of Van Wyck, the popular and capable choice of the third party forces, who advocated ardently the regulation of railway rates by the state. Unfortunately for the Populists Crounse was able to show that his own record was more consistently hostile to the railroads than Van Wyck’s, and on this showing he won the election. Crounse probably took the governorship as a stepping-stone to the United States Senate, but in 1893 the coveted seat went to a Populist, and Crounse had to serve out his term as governor. His administration, coinciding as it did with a period of acute hard times, gave him small satisfaction. He was compelled to report at its end a condition of “partial failure of crops in the year 1893, and their total destruction in a large portion of the state in the year just closed. ” State finances were also in a deplorable state, in spite of the economies he had effected. His colleagues at the state house were for the most part small men under machine control who consistently embarrassed him. Under these circumstances he refused a renomination in 1894, and by so doing paved the way for the choice of a Populist as his successor. Crounse was out of office until 1901 when he became a member of the state Senate. That year the legislature was long deadlocked over the election of two United States senators, and for a time it seemed that Crounse, who was not originally a candidate, would be one of those chosen to break the deadlock, but, when his election was practically conceded, the Burlington and Union Pacific interests, which up to the moment had been fighting each other, joined forces and effected a compromise. Needless to say, they did not choose Crounse. After this until the time of his death in May 1909 Crounse remained aloof from politics.

Back to Profile

Photos
Works