Water Communication Between the Mississippi and the Lakes: Memorial to the Congress of the United States, and Supplement, On the Improvement of the ... Conventions Held at Prairie Du Chien, in
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California Letters of Lucius Fairchild: Wisconsin Historical Publications Collections, V31
(Lucius Fairchild Left Madison, Wisconsin, For California ...)
Lucius Fairchild Left Madison, Wisconsin, For California In 1849 And Remained In The West Until 1858. On His Return To Wisconsin, Fairchild Carved Out A Remarkable Career As A Soldier-Politician, Serving In A Wisconsin Regiment In The Civil War, Winning Election As Governor In 1866, And Then Representing The United States Abroad In A Variety Of Diplomatic Posts.
Lucius Fairchild was an American politician, army general, and diplomat. He served as the tenth Governor of Wisconsin and as United States Minister to Spain.
Background
Before the capital of the territory, Madison, had been incorporated as a city he was brought there by his parents, Jairus Cassius and Sally Blair Fairchild. They had come out of New York and New England by way of Ohio, where he was born, in Portage County, and in their mansion on Lake Monona the eastern influence remained strong for eighty years. Jairus was the first treasurer of Wisconsin, and the first mayor of Madison.
Education
Father sent Lucius for a short time to Carroll College at Waukesha, but the gold fever caught the lad and drew him across the plains to California, where he remained six years with moderate success (The California Letters of Lucius Fairchild, edited by Joseph Schafer, now in press).
Career
By 1858 Lucius was home again. He was this year elected clerk of the circuit court of Dane County as a Democrat but the war made him a Republican, and he advanced rapidly in his party, helped by his reputation as a soldier. In 1861 he entered the service in the 16t Wisconsin Volunteer Regiment; he was transferred to the 2nd Wisconsin which he commanded as lieutenant-colonel at the second battle of Bull Run. Here its performance was so good that he was made colonel, dating from August 30, 1862. His regiment was one of the five in the “Iron Brigade” (with the 6th and 7th Wisconsin, the 19th Indiana, and the 24th Michigan). He fought with his brigade in Reynolds’s corps at Gettysburg, where on the first day his left arm was shattered by a musket ball and he was taken prisoner by the Confederates. This was the end of his active service. He was made a brigadier-general of volunteers, but his health was weakened and the Republican party had nominated him as secretary of state. Mustered out in October 1863, he took up his political duties at Madison the following winter. In 1866 General Fairchild became governor of Wisconsin, holding the post through three terms until January 1872. At the expiration of this service President Grant sent him abroad as consul to Liverpool. In 1878 President Hayes transferred him, as consul-general, to Paris; and in 1880 when James Russell Lowell was shifted to London, Fairchild succeeded him as minister to Spain. Ten years of foreign residence was enough. He resigned his post in 1882, and on March 2 of that year was formally welcomed home at a notable reception in the state capitol. He expected to be welcomed to high office as well, but the decade which had elapsed had brought into the control of Wisconsin affairs Senator Philetus Sawyer of Oshkosh, and a group of railroad, land, and timber politicians skilfully managed by Henry C. Payne of Milwaukee and John C. Spooner of Hudson. Fairchild found himself on the outside, a sort of “Rip Van Winkle in politics” (Madison Democrat, Jan. 7, 1885). He received kind words and non-political distinctions, but no office. He was mentioned as a favorite son for the Republican presidential nomination in 1884 (F. B. Wilkie, Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1884). In January 1885 he was a serious and unsuccessful candidate for the United States senatorship against Spooner, who won the election. His friends among the veterans were kinder to him. He became state commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, and in August 1886 the national encampment of that society, at San Francisco, made him national commander-in- chief. In this capacity his vigorous patriotism and sharp partisanship made him speak more violently than perhaps he meant when, before a Harlem, N. Y. , meeting of the G. A. R. , he denounced President Cleveland’s order for the return of the Confederate battle flags: “May God palsy the hand that wrote that order. May God palsy the brain that conceived it, and may God palsy the tongue that dictated it” (New York Herald, June 16, 1887). Always possessed of ample means, he lived with dignity in the mansion his father had built, and here he died in 1896.
FAIRCHILD, LUCIUS, Union soldier, governor, diplomat, was throughout his life identified with the public af fairs of the state of Wisconsin.
Views
Quotations:
His vigorous patriotism and sharp partisanship made him speak more violently than perhaps he meant when, before a Harlem, N. Y. , meeting of the G. A. R. , he denounced President Cleveland’s order for the return of the Confederate battle flags: “May God palsy the hand that wrote that order. May God palsy the brain that conceived it, and may God palsy the tongue that dictated it” (New York Herald, June 16, 1887).
Connections
He was married, April 27, 1864, to Frances Bull, who survived him until 1925, and was herself survived by two of their three daughters. Her social charm, coupled with his political prominence and military bearing, gave them great distinction in the life of their community (F. C. Dexheimer, Sketches of Pioneer Women of Wisconsin, 1925, p. 52).