MICHIANA HISTORY PUBLICATIONS
HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL MATERIALS ON:
ILLINOIS-INDIANA-MICHIGAN-OHIO AND SELECTED OTHER STATES
Politics and Government
Indiana
Elections
Indiana Election Returns, 1816 - 1851. Compiled by Dorothy Riker and Gayle Thornbrough. Indiana Historical Bureau. 1960. 493 pages. Hardcover.
Covers the first presidential election in Indiana (1816), where three electoral votes were cast, names of the electors for later elections, representatives in Congress, United States senators, governors, and the General Assembly.
Price: $12.50
Governors - James Brown Ray
Messages and Papers Relating to the Administration of James Brown Ray, Governor of Indiana, 1825 - 1831. Edited by Dorothy Riker and Gayle Thornbrough. Indiana Historical Bureau. 1954. 726 pages. Hardcover.
Ray was elected to the sixteen-member state Senate in 1821 and was elected president pro tem. of the Senate, after Ratcliff Boon resigned his lieutenant governorship to go to Congress in 1824. Ray then became acting governor after the resignation of William Hendricks, who had been elected to the United States Senate. He was just thirty years old. He was elected to the governorship in 1825 and 1828 but after his term of office was over, he was unable to win another elective office. In state and local matters the legislation sought by Ray and considered by the General Assembly concerned internal improvements, revision of the penal code, education, care, care of the poor and handicapped, militia, county and township government, the judiciary, matters concerning Indians etc. but no significant body of legislation was passed during his administration. His correspondence indicates a generous, sympathetic attitude toward the writers who requested favors or information and a sense of the responsibility of his trust as a public officer.
Price: $17.50
Governors - Noah Noble
Messages and Papers Relating to the Administration of Noah Noble, Governor of Indiana, 1831 - 1837. Edited by Dorothy Riker and Gayle Thornbrough. Indiana Historical Bureau. 1958. 645 pages. Hardcover.
Noble was born in Frederick County, Virginia in 1794. In 1820 he ran for county sheriff and won. He was re-elected two years later, receiving all but nine votes in the entire county. Two years later he was elected to the lower house of the General Assembly. In 1830 he was elected governor. At the beginning of his administration, the Potawatomi and Miami Indians were still in possession of more than half of the land north of the Wabash River. During his administration, Indians ceded their lands, the Wabash and Erie Canal and the Michigan Road were built. He served in various committees after his term of office expired.
Price: $15.00
Governors - David Wallace
Messages and Papers Relating to the Administration of David Wallace, Governor of Indiana, 1837 - 1840. Edited by Dorothy Riker. Indiana Historical Bureau. 1963. 501 pages.
Wallace was born in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania in 1799. His mother was a niece of John Paul Jones. Civil War General Lew Wallace was the son of David Wallace. After moving to Indiana, in his youth, David Wallace studied law and became a competent lawyer. In 1828 he was chosen to the lower house of the General Assembly. He was Noah Noble's Lieutenant Governor. Wallace's administration was involved with continuing to obtain land grants to extend the Wabash and Erie Canal to Terre Haute, the construction of macadamized roads instead of railroads between Jeffersonville and Crawfordsville and between Indianapolis and Lafayette, and continued removal of the Indians. Following his term in office, he returned to private law practice.
Price: $15.00
Governors - Samuel Bigger
Messages and Papers Relating to the Administration of Samuel Bigger, Governor of Indiana, 1840 - 1843. Edited by Gayle Thornbrough. Indiana Historical Bureau. 1964. 669 pages. Hardcover.
The internal improvements advocated by previous governors Noah Noble and David Wallace had brought Indiana into a desperate financial situation. Bigger was born in Warren County, Ohio in 1802. In studied law in Ohio and in 1829 moved to Indiana. In 1833 and 1834 he was elected to the General Assembly. In 1836 the Assembly elected him as presiding judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit. He resigned after being elected governor in 1840. He was Indiana's last Whig governor. Bigger supported continuation of internal improvements, but said that they should be prioritized, or classified into levels of importance. Public debt was a major concern of his administration and the General Assembly created many committees to investigate previous expenditures for internal improvements. Investigations were also made into the State Bank . Other reports covered the care of the insane, education and the state prison. He was not re-elected, and he moved to Ft. Wayne, Indiana where he practiced private law and died in 1846.
Price: $15.00
Governors - Matthew Welsh
Welsh, Matthew. View From the State House: Recollections and Reflections, 1961 - 1965. Indiana Historical Bureau. 1981. 290 pages. Softcover.
Discusses Welsh's campaign for the governorship, the various departments under his supervision, and much more.
Price: $10.00
Vice Presidents - Schuyler Colfax
Schuyler Colfax. The Changing Fortunes of a Political Idol. By Willard H. Smith. Indiana Historical Bureau. 1952. 475 pages. Hardcover.
Few men have risen to greater heights of popularity and then fallen to greater depths of obscurity than Schuyler Colfax. Colfax was born in New York City in 1823. His father died of tuberculosis shortly before Schuyler's birth. He attended school until the age of ten. After his mother's re-marriage, the family moved to New Carlisle in St. Joseph County, Indiana. Starting his career as a clerk in his step-father's store, Colfax moved to South Bend, Indiana when his step-father became the county auditor. Young Colfax became interested in the law and politics, and often contributed articles to the New York Tribune then became a reporter for the Indiana State Journal. His journalistic interest increased and he soon found himself to be the editor/owner of the St. Joseph Valley Register, which became an influential Whig, and Republican newspaper. Colfax was elected to Congress, where he eventually became the Speaker of the House during the Civil War, and a close friend of Abraham Lincoln. When U. S. Grant was elected President, Colfax became his Vice President. The Credit Mobilier scandal ruined Colfax's political career and he spent the remainder of his life as a public speaker, often discussing Abraham Lincoln. He died of a heart attack on January 13, 1885 while on tour in Manakato, Minnesota.
Price: $17.50
United States Congress - George Washington Julian
George Washington Julian, Radical Republican. A Study in Nineteenth-Century Politics and Reform. By Patrick W. Riddleberger. Indiana Historical Bureau. 1966. 344 pages. Hardcover.
Julian was not a great political leader. He began his career as a teacher, then studied law, and finally became a politician with interests in public land policy, woman's rights, anti-slavery, Free Soilism, the labor movement, the Radical Republicans, the Liberal Republican Movement, the settlement of the West, the Quakers, and the Unitarians. His interests demonstrate that he was deeply involved in mid-nineteenth-century reform. He died in 1899.
Price: $15.00
Politicians
Gentlemen from Indiana: National Party Candidates, 1836 - 1940. Indiana Historical Bureau. 1977. 338 pages. Hardcover.
Indiana has a rich political heritage. 5 Vice Presidents have come from Indiana and many Hoosier politicians have run for the Presidency. This book covers William Henry Harrison, George W. Julian, Schuyler Colfax, William H. English, Thomas A. Hendricks, Charles W. Fairbanks, John W. Kern, Thomas Marshall, Benjamin Harrison, J. Frank Hanley, Eugene V. Debs, and Wendell Willkie.
Price: $15.00
Politicians - Richard W. Thompson
Colonel Dick Thompson, the Persistent Whig. By Charles Roll. Indiana Historical Bureau. 1948. 315 pages. Hardcover.
For over sixty years Colonel Richard W. Thompson served in many political capacities, but his most important office was that of Secretary of the Navy. He saw all the presidents of the United States from Jefferson to McKinley and was personally acquainted with most of them. He knew many who had been closely associated with President Washington. He served in Congress with Lincoln and was a member of the Cabinet of Rutherford B. Hayes. He lived to cast his vote for William McKinley in 1896. Thompson was born in Virginia in 1809 but in the early 1830's he moved to Indiana. Thompson's most important political years were during the Civil War, where his southern relatives pleaded with him to talk with Lincoln, hoping that his influence with Lincoln would help to find a way to end the conflict. He died on February 9, 1900.
Price: $15.00