Scenes of Yesteryear-Election fraud-11/11/15/09

One of the earliest, and greatest frauds ever attempted against the voters of occurred during the 1855 election for , and three little innocent settlements in the recently formed Dunn County, Menomonie Mills, Gilbert's Mill, and Eau Galle , were right in the middle of the state-wide scandal. Virtually every book ever written about early Wisconsin politics spends more than a few pages on the event that put the government of Wisconsin in limbo for three months.

Wisconsin's third governor, Connecticut native Democrat William Augustus Barstow, had an easy victory against two opponents, Edward D. Holton, as the Free Soil [Republican] candidate, and Henry W. Baird, a member of the Whig party, and began his two year term on , 1854. Historian Richard Current, in his The , writes that "the Democrats in Wisconsin were showing a tendency to fall apart" at the time with the Democratic party boss, Josiah Noonan , had been totally disgusted with Barstow as the candidate for the office.

Described as "a magnetic person but an unscrupulous politician", Barstow, after serving his two year term as Wisconsin's governor, was accused of misusing public school funds and of favoring personal friends in the loaning of State money. Those accusations, and other implied manipulations by Barstow, threatened his possible reelection in the fall of 1854 for another two-year term. He had clearly lost ground as a popular candidate, but the race went on.

In his second race for the seat, Democrat Barstow's opponent was , the first Republican candidate to run for governor in Wisconsin. Barstow, with his unimpressive record in the office, and without the full support of the segmented Democratic Party, knew he was in trouble but he was confident that he would be the winner of a second term and when the total vote was announced Barstow had won.

However for several weeks the outcome of the gubernatorial contest remained in doubt. Finally, on December 15, 1855. The board of canvassers certified their fellow Democrat, Barstow, as the winner by a mere 157 votes! Wisconsin historian Current tells us that the "...Republicans charged the canvassers with fraud, and Bashford decided to contest the election."

Dunn County had just been set off from Chippewa County on February 19. 1854, and that area included both present-day Dunn and Pepin Counties within its borders. At the time of the 1855 election there were only two precincts, Menomonie, and Eau Galle, both sparsely settled, but in the vote for governor that fall there were three precincts from Dunn County that sent voting results in the race for governor; Menomonie, Eau Galle (listed as O'Galla), and Gilbert's mills. There were 44 votes for Barstow, and only one vote for Bashford cast in the Menomonie vote; the O'Galla total was 27 votes for Barstow and 28 for Bashford, and at Gilbert's Mills the vote was 53 to 14 in favor of Barstow.

All of the above votes from Dunn County were received and certified by William Smith and Thomas Taylor, inspectors, and two clerks, Henry Wilson, Jr. and James Henry on December 14th, the day before the final report of the election results by the state canvassing board were announced on December 15th, 1885. On the 15th a late return from an non-existent Spring Creek in Polk County was determined to be a forgery and fraudulent, along with late arriving results from non-existing precincts in Chippewa and Waupaca Counties

A suspicious assistant sergeant-at-arms of the state senate, J. Billet Knapp, went by stage coach to Gilbert's Mills and there learned from the mill owner, Oliver Gilbert, that " no election precinct had been established there, and no election had been held, nor attempted to be held."

Knapp also revealed that the returns for Gilbert's Mill, Spring Creek, and from Bridge Creek in Chippewa County "were all written at the same place and time by a Jackson County official." Knapp claimed that the "official" had written them in his office at Black River Falls. He went on to explain that he had "examined the handwriting of the returns filed at Madison for the places named and had taken particular attention to the kind of paper on which the returns were written.

Knapp reported , "That he had taken particular attention to the kind of paper on which the returns were written... That he had inspected the handwriting of the official in question found in his office and in the public offices of Jackson County." The aggregate spurious votes returned from the three precincts named were 194, showing a majority for Barstow of 207. Added to this total were the fraudulent votes from an unidentified precinct in Waupaca County.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that the votes from both the Menomonie Mills and O'Galla in Dunn County were thrown out due to a lack of certification because Dunn County "had not become fully organized and it had no board of supervisors at the time." Despite of these revelations Barstow was installed as governor on January 7, 1856. After over two months of legal charges and maneuvering of lawyers representing Bashford or Barstow, the latter finally submitted his resignation as governor on March 21, 1886. On the following day Lt. Governor Arthur MacArthur informed that he was now assuming the role of governor. MacArthur's ploy did not work and on March 25th, when all of the votes had been recounted, minus the fraudulent votes, Bashford had 1,009 majorities, Bashford took over the office as Wisconsin's governor and remained there for the balance of the two-year term, the first Republican elected as governor of Wisconsin.

Bashford served one two-year term, refusing to run again, primarily because he probably knew that he would soon be charged with accepting bribes from the Lacrosse & Railroad, upon completing his one and only term as governor. He found his way to Arizona where he became that state's first Attorney General and eventually becoming President or the First Territorial Council and later becoming a territorial delegate to the U. S. Congress as an Independent.

President Grant appointed Bashford as Secretary of State for Arizona Territory, but he soon resigned to return to operating his Bashford Mercantile Store in Prescott, Arizona. He died in 1878 at the age of sixty-two.

For a more detailed look at local involvement in this scandalous affair, read all about it in the 1925 History of Dunn County at the Menomonie Public Library.

Cutline....

This sketch of the two men, Republican Coles Bashford and Democrat William Barstow, opponents in the 1855 election for governor of the state of Wisconsin. Drawing from euben Thwaites' "The Story of Wisconsin", 1891