Illinois Governors V: Dan Walker, Jim Thompson, and Jim Edgar

Daniel Walker (1973-1979), Democrat

convicted, sentenced to 7 years

Dan Walker was born in 1922 in Washington, DC, and grew up in San Diego, CA.  He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1945 and served in the Navy during World War II and in Korea.  He graduated from Northwestern University with a law degree in 1950.  He served as a law clerk for US Supreme Court Justice Vinson, an aide to
Governor Stevenson, served as a deputy commissioner in the US Court of Military appeals.

In 1968 he served as head of a study team for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, looking into the messy violence surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention.    His report was critical of the Chicago Police Department and earned him the lasting enmity of Mayor Daley.  Later as candidate for governor in 1972 he won the Democratic nomination over the Daley and the Chicago Machine favorite, Lt. Gov. Paul Simon.  During his campaign he hit upon the gimmick of walking around the state, covering over 1000 miles during his campaign.  He was elected governor, defeating Richard B. Ogilvie by 51 to 49%. 

 As Governor he clashed with both the Chicago Democratic machine and Republicans in the state.  Nevertheless he instituted some reforms against certain corrupt practices and passed a campaign finance disclosure law.  He was defeated in the state primary in 1976, and left office in 1977. 

In 1980 he started a chain of oil change shops and bought two troubled Savings and Loans Associations.  As owner of one of these banks, he committed bank fraud by borrowing $45,000 from a borrower from his bank. He subsequently pleaded guilty to bank fraud, perjury, and filing false financial statements and was sentenced to 7 years in federal prison in 1987.   After 18 months Walker was released from prison in 1989.

He later went on to become an author, writing about early Church history, San Diego History, and his memoirs of his time in Illinois state politics.  He now lives in Rosarito, Baja California in Mexico.  
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James Robert Thompson, Jr. (1977-1991) Republican

Thompson was born in 1936 in Chicago.  He attended the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Washington University in St. Louis.  He earned his law degree from Northwestern in 1959.    He served for the Cook County state's attorney, taught at Northwestern Law School, and became a US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in the early 1970s. It was as a federal prosecutor that he succeeded in convicting former Governor Otto Kerner Jr. for influence peddling in connection with the racetrack industry.  He also succeeded in gaining convictions of some of Mayor Richard J. Daley's top aides as well as some prominent Republicans in Cook County.  

In 1976 Thompson was elected governor with an overwhelming plurality.  At this time the terms of governor were adjusted to fall on non-Presidential election years, so his first term was only for two years.  He beat Michael Bakalis two years later for a second full 4 year term, and then defeated former senator Adlai Stevenson iii, son of the former governor twice in 1980 and 1984.  

After leaving office in 1991 he joined and later headed the law firm of Winston and Strawn.  As part of that law firm he has focused on corporate law and government relations, as well as  defending former Governor George Ryan in the "licenses for bribes" scandal. 

He served on the 9/11 Commission in from 2002-2004, when the commission released its report.  
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James Edgar (1991-1999), Republican

called to testify

Edgar was born in Vinita, OK in 1946 and grew up in Charleston, IL.  He attended Wabash College and graduated from Eastern Illinois University circa 1968.     In 1976 he was elected to the Illinois House from someplace in the state, and was reelected in1978.  Governor Jim Thompson appointed Edgar as his legislative liaison, and when Alan Dixon left to become US Senator, he was appointed by Thompson to fill his term as Secretary of State.  He was subsequently reelected at Secretary of State before being elected as governor of Illinois in 1990.  He served two terms as governor before leaving office in 1999.   While he was called to testify in his role in the Management Systems of Illinois scandal, he was not charged, while a number of Illinois state employees were convicted.

Citing health problems, specifically his heart surgery, he has stayed out of politics since leaving office as governor.   For example, although he was thought to have been a strong candidate for US Senator he chose not to run for the seat that Barack Obama won in 2006.
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Illinois Governors IV: Otto Kerner, Sam Shapiro, and Richard Ogilvie

Otto Kerner, Jr.  (1961-1968), Democrat

sentenced to 3 years

Kerner was born in 1908 in Chicago.  His father served as Illinois Attorney General and as judge on the Seventh Circuit of the US Court of Appeals.  He graduated from Brown University in 1930, and attended Trinity College in Cambridge before receiving a law degree from Northwestern University in 1934.  He married the daughter of Anton Cermak, the Chicago Mayor who had been fatally shot in 1933.  In the second world war, he served in the army in Italy where he made the acquaintance of Jacob Arvey, who was the leader of the Cook County Democratic Party.  Later he joined the Illinois Army National Guard, where he retired in 1954 as a major general.  

In 1947 he was appointed the US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and became a judge in the Illinois circuit court of Cook County until 1961 when he was elected governor,   denying Stratton a third term and was re-elected in 1964.   Illinois won with his efforts the contract to build the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, IL.  He worked to expand international trade in Illinois products.  He reformed the mental health system run by the state.  In the wake of the race riots of 1966, he served as chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders, having been appointed by President Johnson.  

In the last year of his second term, Kerner resigned his governorship to become a judge for the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.  

In 1973 Kerner was convicted of 17 counts of mail fraud, conspiracy, perjury and related charges.  He was sentenced to three years in Federal Prison, but served only 6 months, being released because by that time Kerner was suffering from lung cancer.  He died in 1976.  
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Samuel S. Shapiro (1968), Democrat

Samuel S. Shapiro was born in Estonia in 1907 and emigrated with his family to America as a small child.  He got his law degree from the University of Illinois and practiced law in Kankakee, IL.  He became state's attorney for Kankakee County in 1936, served as a state representative from 1947 to 1961.  In 1961 he was elected Lieutenant governor along with Otto Kerner as governor.  When Kerner left his position as governor in 1968, he succeeded him as governor.  His special interest as legislator and as Lt. Governor was mental health, which he sought to reform.  After being narrowly defeated for governor by successor Richard B. Ogilvy, he returned to his law practice.  He died in 1987.  The day he died he was supposed to be in court in Kankakee, and was only discovered to have died, when police were sent to his home to investigate why he had not been in court.  He was buried in Jewish Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, IL.
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Richard Buell Ogilvie (1969-1973), Republican

Ogilvie was born in 1923 in Kansas City, MO.  He attended Yale and then entered the army in 1942, serving as a tank commander in France, and then finished his studies at Yale, graduating in 1947 with a degree in American History.  He got his law degree at the Illinois Institute of Technology Kent College of Law in Chicago in 1949.  From 1950 he practiced law, became a US attorney in 1954 in Chicago, and in 1958-61 served as special assistant to the US Attorney General, and was in charge of a unit fighting organized crime in Chicago.  In 1962 he was elected Cook County sheriff.  In 1967 he became president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

He was elected governor in 1968 along with  Lt. Gov.  Paul Simon, a Democrat who later went on to become a US Senator from Illinois.   Aided by large Republican majority in both Senate and House in the state, he was able to call a constitutional convention in the state, instituted the first income tax for the state, and increased social spending.  The income tax resulted in the voters sending him home in 1972.  

After serving as Governor he practiced law in Chicago, where he was considered for the position of FBI director by President Nixon before giving the job to Patrick Gray.  He served as a trustee for the bankrupt railroad, the Milwaukee Road in 1979, which became as a result the Wisconsin Central.  In 1987 he was on a committee to study the feasibility of shutting down Amtrak, which never happened.  He died in 1988 and was interred at Rosehill Mausoleum in Chicago.  The Metra commuter rail station in Chicago is named in his honor.  
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Illinois Governors III: Dwight Green, Adlai Stevenson II, and William Stratton

Dwight Herbert Green (1941-1949) Republican

Green was born in 1897 in Ligonier, IN.  He went to college at Wabash College and then went to law school at the University of Chicago.   He served as US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois from 1931-1935 and was one of the prosecutors who finally put Al Capone away.  After failing to win in an election to mayor of Chicago, he went on to be elected governor of Illinois in 1940 on the strength of his reputation as a prosecutor and opposition to the Democratic Chicago machine.  While he was a popular governor, he was held responsible in regulatory negligence for the deaths of 111 miners in Centralia, IL, and was defeated in an upset in 1948 by Adlai Stevenson.  He died in 1958 and was buried in Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.
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Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (1949-1953), Democrat.

Adlai Stevenson II came from an illustrious Illinois political family, his grandfather having served as vice president under Grover Cleveland.    He was born in Los Angeles, CA in 1901, but grew up in Bloomington, IL.  He attended University High School, but transferred to Choate, an exclusive private school in Connecticut,  from which he graduated in 1918.  Although he enlisted in the Navy shortly afterwards, it was too late to participate in the First World War.  He attended Princeton University and went to Harvard where he did poorly and withdrew.  A while later he had a renewed interest in law and got his law degree at Northwestern University in Chicago, was admitted to the Illinois Bar and worked for a law firm in Chicago.  He and his wife built a home on a 70 acre tract of land in what is now Mettawa, IL., but what was at the time Libertyville, IL.   He and his wife had three sons, one of whom became Adlai Stevenson III.  

In the first term of the Roosevelt Administration he took positions in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and then in the Federal Alcohol Control Administration, but left in 1935.  In 1940 he returned to government service as counsel and assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox.  Postwar he worked in the Foreign Economic Administration and in the State Department in efforts to establish what became the United Nations. 

In 1949, put forward as the Chicago Democratic Organization's candidate, he was elected Governor over the incumbent,  Dwight Green.  The same year his wife divorced him.  He never remarried.

As governor, he reorganized the state police, removing political considerations and introducing a merit system for employment.  He vetoed a bill that would have made it a felony to belong to a "subversive group" and required "loyalty oaths" for anyone working for the state.  He famously vetoed a bill passed by bird lovers declaring that letting cats run loose was a public nuisance.   He was a character witness in favor of Alger Hiss in 1949.  

In 1952-1960 he made what would be three consecutive runs for the US presidency, losing twice to Dwight Eisenhower, and failing to get the nomination a third time, when John F. Kennedy got the nod from the Democrats.  In later years he served as ambassador to the UN.  He died in 1965.  
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William Grant Stratton (1953-1961), Republican

acquitted of tax evasion

Stratton was born in 1914 in Ingleside, IL he was son of William J. Stratton.    He attended the University of Arizona, where he majored in political science.  He served one term in the US congress in 1941-1943 and another in 1947-1949.  He was elected state treasurer in 1943-1944, served as lieutenant in the US Navy 1944-1946.  He was elected again for state treasurer in 1950-1952.  In 1952 he was elected Governor of Illinois, reelected in 1956, but defeated for reelection in 1960 by Democrat Otto Kerner. 

He was acquitted of a charge of tax evasion in 1965.  He attempted a return to the Governor's mansion in 1968, but was unsuccessful.  He maintained a home in Morris, IL and operated a livestock farm in Sangamon County.  He died in 2001. 
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Presidents of France 1: Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, later Napoleon III

Louis Napoleon was born in 1808, the son of Louis Bonaparte, the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte.  This younger brother married the daughter from the first marriage of Josephine, the barren wife of Napoleon I. Louis Bonaparte was set up as the King of Holland by Napoleon.  

After the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty he and his family had to flee to Switzerland and live in exile.  The Napoleons then moved to Rome in 1823 where the sons got involved in the radical group, the Carbonari who opposed the domination of Northern Italy by the Austrians.  In 1831 they got in trouble with the police who were moving to suppress the Carbonari and fled back to France where Louis Phillipe I had just replaced the old regime the previous year in what was called the July Revolution.  When Louis XVIII died in 1824 his younger brother, Charles X became king.  

Charles X took his royal prerogative too far, which was the beginning of the problem for him. Charles proposed perpetual forced labor for anyone profaning the containers of the consecrated host, and Charles X made it a capital crime anyone profaning the host itself.   In addition Charles proposed that those who had lost property or been declared "enemies of the people" during the first republic be indemnified.  

Delacroix's portrayal of the 1830 revolution

This made Charles X about as popular as a turd in a swimming pool and in three days in July 1830 he was overthrown and a new monarch replaced him, the much more liberal-minded Louis Phillipe.

Louis Phillipe

  Charles X abdicated and went into exile in Britain.

It was to this situation that the young Louis Napoleon with his family returned to France.  Being a Bonaparte, he wasn't exactly welcome, but they quietly returned to Paris under the name "Hamilton".  However their presence became known and following Bonapartist demonstrations they were politely asked to leave, which they did.  They went into exile, first in Britain and then to Switzerland.  

In 1836 he attempted to provoke a coup d'etat against Louis Phillipe from Strasbourg, but failed and fled to Switzerland.  Louis Phillipe was not amused and put pressure on the Swiss to give him up, but the Swiss when faced with French troops at their border, bade Louis Napoleon farewell and he went elsewhere.  From London he went to Brazil and then to New York.  His mother was taken ill while he was traveling in the US, and he rushed back to Switzerland to be at her side when she died.  She was buried in France at Reuil, but they would not allow him to re-enter France.  

He inherited his mother's fortune on her death and lived comfortably in London, but yet France was calling him, and he attempted another coup, this time launched from Boulogne.  Again this was a fiasco, one of his party was killed, and everyone else arrested.  The customs officials did not, as expected, join the rebellion.  Louis Napoleon was not so lucky this time, and was imprisoned for life.  Even then, it wasn't exactly hard time.  He had an apartment there in the prison, received celebrated visitors, had a large library, and even a mistress from a nearby town who bore him two of his children.  

Like many political prisoners, he found time to read and even to write books developing his thoughts on social issues and government.  He wrote a book while there, which was published in 1844, L'extinction du pauperism.  In 1846, with the assistance of friends on the outside, he escaped the prison posing as a laborer named "Badinguet" and made it back to England.  After his father died shortly after, he became the heir to the Bonaparte dynasty.  

During the 1848 revolution, on the same day that Louis Phillippe was leaving France for England, Louis Napoleon was leaving England for France.  When he offered his services to the provisional government set up in the wake of Louis Phillipe's departure, Alphonse de Lamartine told him to please go away.  So he returned to London and waited.  

A second outbreak of unrest occurred in June, when the left set up barricades in working class neighborhoods and street fighting.  They were brutally suppressed with up to five thousand dead and fifteen thousand arrested.  

New elections were held for the National Assembly.  He ran in 13 departments and won in five of them.  Meanwhile the government crafted a new constitution and set elections for president of the Second Republic.  Election was through popular vote, not as before by selection by the national assembly.  

He campaigned against four other candidates of various political persuasions.  Louis Napoleon chose to take a centrist approach, supporting religion, family and property, but also proposed some government intervention to look after the old age of workers and their general welfare. 

He was elected President in December 1848 and charted a centrist course.  He sent troops to uphold the authority of the pope in Italy, which pleased Catholics and infuriated the Republicans.  In the elections held a couple of months later, the conservatives prevailed and thus were able to block initiatives coming from the President.  In June 1849 the leftists attempted to seize power, which Louis Napoleon suppressed thoroughly. The conservatives dominating the assembly took the opportunity to disenfranchise opponents to their rule by restricting universal male suffrage.    Louis Napoleon then chose to campaign against the "Party of Order" as the conservatives called themselves.    

As president of the republic he was constitutionally barred from running again, and although he got a majority to amend the constitution so that he could run for a second term it was short of a 2/3 majority.   Thus frustrated Louis-Napoleon decided to stage a coup d'etat.  On December 1-2, 1851 with the backing of key officers of the French army, Napoleon's forces occupy the national printing office, the Palais Bourbon, newspaper offices, and other key points.   Certain members of the National Assembly were arrested in their homes, and proclamations were posted around the city of Paris declaring universal suffrage and new elections.  Victor Hugo, tried to organize opposition but it was quickly overcome with hundreds of deaths among the opponents and Hugo went into exile, living in the channel islands for the durations of Napoleon III's rule.

Napoleon III ran a repressive regime for several years against his political opponents, imprisoning about 6000 of them and sending others to penal colonies in French Guiana or Algeria.   After a few years he relaxed his control and allowed more political freedom.  

Napoleon III is perhaps best remembered for his renovation of Paris and other major cities.  With the

guidance of Baron Haussman, the prefect of the Seine, he demolished large swathes of medieval Paris and laid out broad new avenues, city parks, and a modernized sewer system.  His architects designed apartment buildings and public buildings in what became known as the French Second Empire style.     Other projects he pursued were the building of railroads, the building of the Suez canal, the founding of agricultural schools, and established free trade with England and other trading partners in Europe.  The new broad avenues served another purpose later on, when the Paris Commune of 1871 was suppressed relatively easily because the new avenues provided a route for troops to sweep in and take control of the city.

He expanded the French Empire, acquiring New Caledonia, Cochinchina, Cambodia and Senegal.  In Foreign policy he was aligned with Britain, fighting along with them in the Crimean War against Russia. 

Manet's take on this historic event

While he was supportive of Italian unification efforts, he defended the Papal States in central Italy from encroachment.  Other foreign adventures, however were less felicitous, such as his attempt to establish a monarchy in Mexico, which led to a bloody civil war and the execution of Maximilian I, the younger brother of the Austrian Emperor.  

Ultimately Napoleon III's downfall lay in the ambitions of Prussian Chancellor  Otto Von Bismarck to unify Germany.   Bismarck successfully manipulated the international situation  so as to trigger a war with France.  The Ems telegram, dealing with the question of whether a Hohlenzollern prince was to occupy the Spanish throne, was edited so as to make it insulting to the French, who took the bait.  The French declared war on July 19, 1870 and found themselves heavily overmatched by the Prussians and the German confederation.  In a few short months the German confederation were laying siege to Paris and in the disastrous battle of Sedan on September 1, 1870, Napoleon III and a large body of French troops were captured.  

This was the end of the Second Empire.  A provisional government was formed and fought on for several more months.  Reparation payments were imposed and the German army occupied a large portion of Northern France until they were paid.  

The third republic was declared, a new president chosen, and the Paris Commune of 1871 suppressed.  After the war and with a peace treaty signed, the Germans released Napoleon III, who with his queen went into exile in England once more.   In fragile health by this time he died in 1873.  He was buried in St. Michael's Abbey in Chislehurst in greater London.

Illinois Governors II: Louis Emmerson, Henry Horner, and John Stelle

Louis Lincoln Emmerson (1929-1933), Republican

Emmerson was born in Albion, IL in 1863.  Emmerson started out as a merchant and banker in Mount Vernon, IL.  He ran first for state treasurer in 1912, was unsuccessful, but four years later he was elected Secretary of State, and remained in that office for 12 years.  In 1928 he defeated Len Small for the Republican nomination for governor and was elected the same year.  In 1929 the great depression set in and in the tribulations brought on by that event, he eased the penalties for late tax payment and instituted a gas tax to help pay for better roads around the state.   He also started the first unemployment commission in Illinois and received a grant to complete a Lake Michigan to the Gulf Waterway.  Republicans were not popular by 1932 and he chose not to seek reelection.  Emmerson died in 1941. 
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 Henry Horner (1933-1940), Democrat

Horner was born in 1878 in Chicago.  He went to the University of Chicago and became a lawyer.  From 1915 to 1932 he served as a probate judge.  As governor, faced with a fiscal shortfall he instituted the first Illinois sales tax of 2%, which he increased to 3% in 1936.  He was a reform candidate who was opposed to graft and stoutly opposed the Nash-Kelly machine in Chicago, but was reelected in 1936 anyway owing to support from downstate.  In 1938 he suffered a stroke and spent the last two years of his life as an invalid.  He died in October of 1940, in office. He was buried at the Mount Mayriv Cemetery in Chicago. 

Horner was a collector of Abraham Lincoln memorabilia and donated his collection the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield.  A park in Chicago is named Horner Park, and the housing project Henry Horner Homes is also named in his honor.  
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John Henry Stelle (1940-1941), Democrat

Stelle was born in 1891 in McLeansboro, IL.  He was Lieutenant Governor of the state when Governor Horner died, so served the remaining 3 months of his term.

Stelle received a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.  He became state treasurer in 1935 and became Lt. Governor in 1937, which he held through most of Henry Horner's second term as governor.  In that short time he spent as Governor he lavishly rewarded his friends and supports in the state.  In one example, he appointed George E. Day as state purchasing agent, and then authorized the painting of yellow lines on all state highways to denote unsafe passing zones.  Day was a paint dealer and bought the paint from his own firm, to his great financial benefit.  

He was a fervent supporter of the military, and promoted the GI Bill of Rights later in the war.  He supported and campaigned for John F. Kennedy, who won Illinois with a narrow margin of 11,000 votes.  He died in 1962.  

Illinois Governors: Edward Dunne, Frank Lowden and Len Small

Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne (1913-1917), Democrat

Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne, was a governor from 1913-1917 and a Democrat.  His father has been an Irish Nationalist who emigrated after an unsuccessful rebellion.   He was born in Watertown, CT.  His mother was daughter of a prosperous contractor who had built the docks of Galway.    His father became a successful businessman and an ardent supporter of the Fenians.  Edward attended Trinity College in Dublin, but had to leave because of financial reverses in his father's business.  He finished his education at the Union College of Law in Chicago, and became a successful Lawyer.  He served as judge of the Circuit court from 1892 to 1905, then was elected mayor of Chicago.

As Governor from 1913 to 1917 he supported progressive causes such as Women's suffrage, and expanded the role of the state government.  He helped create the Public Utility Commission, and oversight functions in workmen's compensation, and teacher's pensions.  

After serving as governor he returned to his law practice.  he died in 1937.  
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Frank Orren Lowden (1917-1921), Republican.

Lowden was born in Minnesota, and grew up in Iowa, attending Iowa State University  and then the Union College of Law in Chicago, received his law degree and was admitted to the bar in 1887.  He married the daughter of George Pullman and was a law professor at Northwestern.
He served in the US Congress from 1906 to 1911, replacing a member who had died and, reelected in succeeding terms, stepped down in 1911.   

He was elected governor in 1917.  During his term he reorganized state government, introduced the idea of a state budget for state spending, frustrated efforts to abolish the death penalty by vetoing the bill, favored women's suffrage, opposed the League of Nations, supported the Volstead Act.  He was praised for his handling of the Chicago Race Riots of 1919 and the transit strike.   

In 1920 he was a major candidate for President on the Republican ticket, deadlocked with General Leonard Wood, but in a smoke-filled room, Harding got the nod.  In 1928 he tried again, but this time Herbert Hoover had it in the bag. 
He died in 1943 in Tucson, AZ, and was buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.  
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Lennington Small (1921-1929), Republican

acquitted under suspicious circumstances

Small was born in 1862 in Kankakee County.  He attended Northern Indiana Normal School and began his career as a school teacher.  He invested in real estate, became eventually an owner of a bank and the local newspaper.  He served in the Illinois senate from 1901 to 1905, Illinois state treasurer from 1905-1907 and 1917-1919, and was elected governor in 1920, and re-elected in 1924.  He was indicted but not convicted of embezzling a million dollars but was acquitted.   The fact that 8 of the jurors got state jobs subsequently led to a suspicion of jury tampering.   At one point he required state workers to contribute to his "defense fund" raising $650,000. After losing a civil suit against him requiring him to repay $1 million he struck a deal with prosecutors to allow him to repay the $650,000 he had raised from state employees.  He also pardoned around 1000 convicted felons, including notorious bootlegger Spike O'Donnell, in 1923. 

After two malodorous terms as Governor he was defeated in the Republican primary by a reform candidate in 1928.  He died in 1936.