The Heroic and the Notorious: U.S. Senators from Illinois

7. “Uncle Dick” and “Black Jack”

63 ★ 7 ★“Uncle Dick” and “Black Jack” Richard James Oglesby (1873–79) One of the most durable political figures of his time in Illinois, Richard J. Oglesby survived a chest wound suffered in the Civil War at Corinth and was elected governor three times nonconsecutively, and to the U.S. Senate once. He replaced Lyman Trumbull in the Senate in 1873. Trumbull had fallen out of favor with the Republican Party, largely because of his vote against the removal of President Johnson on charges of impeachment. In common with most other nineteenth-century political leaders in Illinois, Oglesby was born in another state, in Oldham County, Kentucky, on July 25, 1824. His father was a slaveholder and a onetime member of the Kentucky legislature. Richard lived the first ten years of his life in Kentucky, losing both of his parents to cholera when he was eight. Two brothers and a sister also perished in the same epidemic. The trauma that he endured from that massive loss must have been cruel and lasting. He went to live with an itinerate uncle, and for several years the two experienced an almost nomadic life. In 1836, when Richard was ten, they came to the vicinity of Decatur, Illinois, where there were relatives. They worked a farm for a season, spent some time in Decatur, and then went to Indiana. 64 ★ “UNCLE DICK” AND “BLACK JACK” A year later, Richard came back alone to Decatur. Two of his aunts then sent him to Kentucky to learn the carpenter trade. After two years at that endeavor, he came back once more to Decatur and, for the first time in his life, attended school. Apparently, he had come to the conclusion that there might be better ways to earn a living than those he had been pursuing. After a school term of three months, he spent the summer growing hemp, an activity that in this modern age might land him in jail, and making rope from the fibers. He became a familiar sight on the streets of Decatur, driving a team of oxen that pulled a farm cart. The young Oglesby read law in the office of Silas Robbins in Springfield and was admitted to the bar in 1845. He practiced law for a time in Sullivan, Illinois. The case of wanderlust that he had contracted in his youthful travels was still with him, however, and instead of working the family farm or continuing his law practice, he joined a Decatur army company and fought in the Mexican War. As a first lieutenant in the Fourth Illinois Volunteer Regiment, he took part in the siege of Vera Cruz and the battle of Cerro Gordo. He was back at home in Illinois in time to campaign in 1848 as a Whig for General Zachary Taylor for president of the United States. With that campaign successfully over, he practiced law for a time and attended a series of lectures on the law in Louisville. Wanderlust returned, however, and he set out in 1849 for the California gold fields. He aimed to score not as a miner but as one who supplied miners with their necessities. He borrowed two hundred fifty dollars to stake his enterprise and set off with eight other men and eighteen mules. The latter made up three six-mule hitches, and in ninety-five days, the party and its mule-drawn wagons filled with merchandise traveled from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. Oglesby turned his hand in the gold fields to whatever promised to make him a profit. He kept store, mined a bit, dabbled in banking . Within twenty months, he was back in Decatur with his debts paid and five thousand dollars in gold to his credit. Skillful investments in real estate allowed him to double those dollars, which became the basis of his later wealth. Five thousand dollars would be the equivalent of at least twenty times that much today. It is said that one of his first ventures after returning from the West was a trip to Kentucky to buy the freedom of “Uncle Tim,” who had been his father’s slave. We have to credit Oglesby with a long memory, for his father had been dead for eighteen years, since 65 ★ Richard was eight years old. He felt, he said, that the memory of Uncle Tim being sold for four hundred dollars had turned him against slavery. All...