The Best Specimen of a Tyrant: The Ambitious Dr. Abraham Van Norstrand and the Wisconsin Insane Hospital

Epilogue: “Three Percent Hastings”

E P I L O G U E : Three Percent Hastings In early 1868, Samuel Hastings would have needed every ounce of his famous self-control and Christian modesty not to yield to the thrilling expectation of a great personal reward. Not only was he poised to bring down the tyrant at the state hospital, but it appeared all but certain that the troubling qualifier “pro tempore” would soon be dropped from his title as president of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company. He had only to survive another meeting of its board of trustees, one more round of balloting, to secure a position in the business world commensurate with his role as wartime state treasurer and with unlimited potential for financial reward, professional stature, and influence generally. But by year’s end, both pending triumphs had been snatched away. Superintendent Van Norstrand had escaped unpunished. Hastings’s catalogue of outrages had not won over his fellow hospital trustees. Months later, a renegade group of Northwestern agents threw their support behind another man. Hastings lost the election for president and his seat on board as well. How greedily Abraham Van Norstrand must have feasted on the news from Milwaukee as he stocked shelves and waited for customers.1 But Van Norstrand, the lifelong Democrat, was not around to savor Hastings’s final fall from grace. In old age the former state treasurer played a minor role in a trial that was front page news for weeks. Although not a defendant, he was called to testify, and other witnesses were questioned about his actions as a state official. From 282฀฀•฀฀The Best Specimen of a Tyrant all of this emerged a dark twin to the tireless and devoted public servant of legend. In 1891 George W. Peck was sworn in as governor. Like Van Norstrand,Peck had served in Louisiana with the Fourth Wisconsin. He was well-known as the author of Peck’s Bad Boy and other books of humorous recollection. More importantly, as only the second Democrat to sit at the governor’s desk since the Civil War, he came into office with scores to settle. His attorney general immediately initiated a lawsuit to recover, in his words, “all interest misappropriated ” by a half dozen or more former state treasurers. At issue was a shadowy custom well-known to capital insiders and tolerated by a succession of Republican governors that permitted treasurers to supplement their salaries by taking pay-offs from “pet” banks. Damaging testimony was elicited from former bank presidents and head cashiers. During the war years bankers had been anxious to tap into the wealth pouring into the treasurer’s vault in the form of tax receipts and federal funds. Because the treasurer, Samuel Hastings , took a personal risk in transferring state money into private banks, he was highly selective. A banker so chosen was understandably anxious to remain in the good graces of his patron. A tangible expression of gratitude seemed almost inevitable. Usually it took the form of a percentage of the profit the bank made from loaning this money out. It was alleged that the treasurer in turn shared his bounty with the Republican party. None of this money ever showed up in the books he kept. Thus a precedent was set. For decades, government funds generated fortunes for one political party and a handful of state treasurers.2 The trial featured a cast of gilded names—former governors, war heroes, political big shots, and pioneer movers and shakers. To some of these luminaries Samuel Dexter Hastings had been known as “Three Percent Hastings.” They believed he had left office a wealthy man. It was rumored that he had cleared $100,000 in what the prosecuting attorney delicately called “gratuities.” The Milwaukee Journal was not so kind. “Treasury-looters” was how it described those who profited from such practices through the last half of the century.3 Under persistent questioning, former governors Fairchild and Hoard acknowledged they had heard that treasurers got rich this way but insisted they had no personal knowledge of the practice. Former bank presidents Van Slyke and Simeon Mills had heard the same stories. Van Slyke went so far as to admit that he had based the size of a treasurer’s payoff on the amount of state money deposited in his bank. But as for greenbacks actually changing hands, the former executives retreated behind faulty memory and...