William Warner was a lawyer, soldier, congressman, and United States senator from Missouri.
Background
William Warner was born in Shullsburg, Lafayette County, Wis. , the son of Joseph and Mary (Dorking) Warner. The youngest of a family of twelve children, he was orphaned at the age of six, and until the age of ten he earned a few dimes occasionally at odd jobs around the lead mines of southern Wisconsin. Thereafter he worked for five years in a country store, saving enough money to pay his way through a two-year academy course.
Education
He taught school for about four years, during which time he studied law at night, and between terms took law courses at Lawrence University, Appleton, Wis. , and at the University of Michigan. He did not graduate from either institution.
Career
He was admitted to the Wisconsin bar at the age of twenty-one. During the Civil War he became first lieutenant, regimental adjutant, and, in 1863, captain of Company B, 33rd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. He served with average merit under Grant in Tennessee and Mississippi, and, because of his fine voice, was chosen to read the Declaration of Independence to both armies in the ceremony of the surrender of Vicksburg July 4, 1863. In 1864 he became major in the 44th Wisconsin Volunteers. At the close of the war he began a successful career at the bar in Kansas City. He was city attorney in 1867, circuit attorney in 1868, mayor in 1871, and a leading member of the commission which in 1875 formulated a charter for Kansas City. That instrument, with amendments of 1889 and 1908, was in force until the new manager form of municipal government was adopted in 1925. He was United States district attorney for the western district of Missouri from 1882 to 1884, in 1898, and from 1902 to 1905. In 1884 he was elected to the lower house of Congress, and was reelected in 1888. His success as a politician is further attested by the fact that he served as a delegate to practically every Republican national convention from 1872 to 1904. Twice he served as commander of the Missouri Department, and in 1888 was chosen national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. Through his congressional and Grand Army influence, he was largely responsible for the establishment of the Soldiers' Home at Leavenworth, Kan. He was the Republican candidate for governor of Missouri in 1892, but was defeated. In 1905, for the first time since the Reconstruction era, the Missouri legislature was Republican. After a long and bitter struggle between the two leading candidates, Richard C. Kerens and T. K. Niedringhaus, the choice of the Republican caucus, Warner was put forward as a compromise candidate and elected to the United States Senate. His advocacy of numerous pension bills and his support of the dependent relative pension bill in the face of the President's veto were highly satisfactory to the old-soldier element. The chief occasion on which he aspired to rise above the level of complacent mediocrity was in connection with the Brownsville, Tex. , riot of August 1906. Warner endorsed President Roosevelt's severe discipline of the rioting Negro soldiers, making the principal speech in behalf of the administration, and cross-examining the witnesses in the senatorial inquiry into that noted incident. After retiring, he was appointed civilian member of the national board of ordnance and fortifications.
Achievements
Politics
Although he held the reputation of being decidedly liberal in his religious convictions, practically his entire legal and political career bore the earmarks of conservatism.
Connections
In August 1866 he married Mrs. Sophia (Bullene) Bromley of Kansas City, by whom he had six children.