Dubuque County IA Archives Biographies.....Allison, William B. 1829 - 
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Author: Lewis Publishing Co. (1896)

HON. WILLIAM B. ALLISON, Dubuque.-The American public, and more especially that
portion of it which keeps in touch with the living issues and affairs of the
day, are more or less familiar with the career of Iowa's senior United States
Senator. They know that he is accounted one of the foremost and most influential
members of the Senate, and that as a financier he is recognized both by members
of his own and of the Democratic party as one of the ablest in the land; whose
opinions carry weight, and whose acts are the outcome of careful and deliberate
thought and study. They are familiar with his success and reputation, yet many
lack the detailed knowledge of the causes that have contributed thereto.

   William Boyd Allison was born on a farm in Perry township, Wayne county,
Ohio, on the second day of March, 1829. His parents, John and Margaret
(Williams) Allison, the former of whom was born in Center county, Pennsylvania,
in 1798, removed to Ohio in 1823, and engaged in farming on a tract of land
containing eighty acres. Here, six years later, in his parents' log house, the
subject of this sketch was born. Brought up to the hardy occupation of farmer,
his early life was quiet and uneventful. During the summer months he assisted
his father on the farm, and in the winter seasons walked nearly two miles to
what was known as an old "field school-house," where he acquired an excellent
elementary education, and laid the foundation of his future success.

   When sixteen years of age he was sent to Professor Parrot's school at
Wooster, Ohio, where he remained for a year and then taught a neighborhood
school for the winter. The next spring he entered Allegheny College at
Meadville, where he remained until the close of the college term, and the
following year he spent at the Western Reserve College, located at Hudson, Ohio.
He then returned to Wooster and began the study of law in the office of Hemphill
& Turner. After two years of close and assiduous application to his studies he
was in 1852 admitted to the bar, and at once entered upon the practice of his
profession at Ashland, Ohio. An old friend of his father, Mr. Jennings, was made
clerk of the new county of Ashland, and the young man had received from him an
appointment to the Deputy Clerkship,-a position he occupied for a year, thus
acquiring an excellent knowledge of conveyancing and of the different forms of
legal instruments then used.

   After having practiced his profession alone for a year he formed a
partnership with J. W. Smith, that continued for two years, at the expiration of
which time he entered into partnership with B. W. Kellogg. In these first years
of his practice, clients were not numerous, and he occupied his leisure hours in
storing his mind on a variety of questions on finance, politics and history,
thus equipping himself for future service in the nation's councils. His father,
an old-line Whig, had voted for Henry Clay in 1824, and was a friend and
supporter of John Sloan, who afterward became Treasurer of the United States
under President Taylor. From him and from the Whig newspapers and pamphlets,
taken by his father, he received his political impressions, and participated in
the Scott campaign of 1852, when John Sherman came to Ashland to make a
ratification speech. He began to be sent as a delegate to State conventions,
being a member of the one that nominated Salmon P. Chase for governor in 1855,
and was an ardent supporter of General Fremont in 1856.

   Mr. Allison saw that if he remained at Ashland there was but little prospect
of his realizing more than a competency, and having married a daughter of Daniel
Carter, in 1854, he determined that he would go West. He remained in Chicago for
a week without finding any opportunities opening. The Rock Island road had just
been completed and he made a trip to Davenport, returned to Chicago and then
went to Dubuque. Finding an opening in that city he returned to Ohio for his
wife, and finally located there, in April, 1857. Iowa had been politically
controlled by the Democrats previous to 1854, when James W. Grimes was elected
governor on the anti-Nebraska ticket, and an organization was formed to assist
in the support of free territory, free speech, and free labor, which culminated
in the formation of the Republican party. The young lawyer became an active
supporter of this party, but he did not in any way neglect his profession, in
the practice of which he was very successful,-as junior member of the firm of
Samuels, Cooley & Allison,-the pecuniary embarrassments that followed the panic
of 1857 causing a great deal of litigation.

   In 1859 Mr. Allison was a delegate from Dubuque county to the Iowa Republican
State convention that nominated Samuel J. Kirkwood for governor, and in i860 was
a delegate to, and an assistant secretary of, the Republican national convention
at Chicago, which nominated Lincoln for the presidency.

   When Fort Sumter was attacked in April, 1861, and President Lincoln issued
his first call for men to suppress the rebellion, Governor Kirkwood was
requested to furnish Iowa's quota of troops. At his urgent request, Mr. Allison
became a member of his staff, and in that capacity superintended the enlistment
of the regiments of his section of the State, having unlimited authority to make
such contracts as were necessary for recruiting and subsisting the regiments
until they were sent to the front. This service was performed with fidelity, and
the regiments were provided and sent into the field. The next year, 1862, two
more regiments were raised in northern Iowa under the direction and supervision
of Mr. Allison on behalf of the State.

   Prior to the census of 1860, Iowa had but two members of the House of
Representatives, but under the census of that year she became entitled to six.
Mr. Allison was persuaded to become a candidate from his district, by a
convention in August, 1862. There were four candidates, the delegates from
Dubuque county presenting the name of Mr. Allison, and he was nominated on the
second ballot.

   In the summer of 1862 Mr. Allison was the first to suggest to Governor
Kirkwood the advisability of calling a special session of the Legislature for
the purpose of enacting a law that would allow the soldiers in the field to
vote, and a call for the special session was issued at once. At the fall
election Mr. Allison received 12,112 votes, as against 8,452 cast for his
Democratic opponent, D. A. Mahoney, the leader of the anti-war party in the State.

   The Thirty-eighth or "war" Congress, as it was called, met on the 7th day of
December, 1863, and among the new members who entered upon their Congressional
careers with Mr. Allison were James A. Garfield and James G. Blaine. The three
soon became friends, and during the eighteen years they served together in the
House and Senate their friendship was never marred. Mr. Allison was placed on
the committee on public lands and on roads and canals. His first Congressional
action was the introduction of a bill instructing the last named committee to
inquire into the expediency and necessity of improving the upper rapids of the
Mississippi river by a canal, commencing at Davenport. Mr. Holman, of Indiana,
since known as the "Great Objector," moved to lay the resolution on the table,
but the House voted him down and Mr. Allison's resolution was agreed to. When
certain amendments to the Pacific Railroad bill were under consideration, Mr.
Allison obtained unanimous consent to enable him to offer the following proviso:
"Provided, That no bonds shall be issued, or land certified by the United
States, to any person or company for the construction of any part of the main
trunk line of said railroad west of the one hundredth meridian of longitude and
east of the Rocky mountains until said road shall be completed from or near
Omaha on the Missouri river to the said one hundredth meridian of longitude."
The other amendments proposed were lost, but that of Mr. Allison was agreed to.

   Mr. Allison's first speech in the House of Representatives of any length was
made on the 4th day of May, 1864, in favor of a bill securing to persons in the
military and naval service homesteads on confiscated or forfeited estates in
insurrectionary districts.

   Upon the expiration of Mr. Allison's term as member of that Congress, he was
by his party elected to the Thirty-ninth Congress in 1864, receiving 16,130
votes, against 10,578 votes for the Democratic candidate. When the Thirty-ninth
Congress met, in 1865, Mr. Allison was honored as a comparatively young member
of the House by being placed on the committee on ways and means, the most
important of the House committees, of which Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, now a
senator, was chairman. He was also appointed on the committee on expenditures in
the Interior Department, but he continued to take an interest in roads and canals.

   In March, 1866, Mr. Allison entered the field of financial debate, in which
he has since been such a conspicuous figure. The question under discussion was a
new loan bill, and those who opposed its passage had presented arguments in
favor of or against the particular policy that should be furnished by the
secretary of the treasury under its administration.

   It was during the session of the Fortieth Congress that the House of
Representatives agreed to the articles of impeachment of President Johnson, and
proceedings were at once instituted. While the trial was progressing no business
of any importance was transacted in the House," and the sub-Committee of its
committee on ways and means, consisting of Messrs. Schenck, Hooper and Allison,
sat daily in a room in the Treasury Department, placed at their disposal by
Secretary McCullough. One result of their deliberations was a new tax bill,
drafted by the sub-committee, and adopted by the full committee on ways and
means, which was a consolidation of twenty-five different acts of Congress,
spreading through the statute book from August, 1861, to the time it was
prepared. It was the longest bill ever submitted to Congress. With this old
legislation codified, compressed and abridged, were many new provisions that
seemed necessary for effecting the proposed legislation, prominent among which
were the provisions for collecting the duties on whisky, beer and tobacco by
"stamps" thus inaugurated. The law thus drafted by the sub committee is
substantially the present law for the collection of taxes on distilled liquor,
beer and tobacco, though modified from time to time to meet changed conditions.

   In the Forty-first Congress Mr. Allison continued a member of the ways and
means committee. Though an eminent friend of protection to American industries,
he did' not fully agree with his Republican associates on the committee
respecting the details of the tariff bill proposed in 1870, and criticised their
details in the committee room and on the floor of the House. The criticisms made
by Mr. Allison and other Republicans met the approval of the House and resulted
in a modification of the bill in such a way as to secure the support of all
Republicans upon its final passage. Mr. Allison contended that the conditions
were such as to justify the reduction of duties in many cases rather than an
increase. This view was held by the next House, when under the leadership of Mr.
Dawes, of Massachusetts, a general reduction of ten per cent was made on the
then existing rates.

   Mr.  Allison declined a re-nomination for the Forty-second Congress. On the
death of Senator Grimes, he was brought forward by his friends as a candidate to
succeed him for the long term, but was defeated by George G. Wright, of Des
Moines, Iowa. In 1872, his friends again brought him forward, when he defeated
James Harlan, of Mount Pleasant, one of the ablest men in the State, who had
previously represented Iowa in the Senate and had been a member of President
Lincoln's cabinet as Secretary of the Interior. On the 4th day of March, 1873,
he took his seat, and was sworn in as a member of the Senate, and appointed a
member of the committee on appropriations and of the committee on Indian
affairs, and later in the session was appointed on the committee on pensions,
and for the investigation of the government of the District of Columbia. Of the
last named committee he was the chairman, and made the report which changed the
government of the District of Columbia, by providing for its government through
a commission, which form of government was made prominent in 1878, and remains
to-day the government of the district. The refunding of the public indebtedness
at a low rate of interest; a proposed amendment to the bankruptcy act; the
appropriation for the Indians; the bridging of the Mississippi and Missouri
rivers by railroads; and the entangled affairs of the District of Columbia were
among the matters which received Mr. Allison's special attention during the
protracted session of 1873-4.

   In the spring of 1874, Mr. Allison was appointed a member of the board of
visitors to attend the annual examinations at the United States Military
Academy, and met with it at West Point.

   The great question before the last session of the Forty-third Congress was
that of the resumption of specie payments, the Republicans still having a
majority of both houses. A committee of eleven senators, one of whom was Mr.
Allison, was appointed to propose a plan which would receive the support of
every shade of the Republican party. After a great many sessions and much
deliberation, a resumption bill was agreed to, which passed both houses of
Congress and became a law on January 14, 1875.

   Mr. Allison entered heartily into the political campaign of 1876, but after
making several speeches he was obliged to leave for the Black Hills to act there
as chairman of the commission appointed by the President to treat for the
cession of the Sioux reservation to the Government. After performing this duty,
he returned home and took an active part in the campaign. In March, 1877, Mr.
Allison became a member of the finance committee of the Senate, upon the
retirement of General Logan from the Senate, and has since continued as such,
and has been prominently connected with all financial matters discussed by the
Senate. Shortly afterward, the question of paying United States bonds in coin
came before the Senate, and was debated at great length. Mr. Allison took an
active and prominent part in the discussion of the question and in the course of
his remarks said:

   I admit it is a delicate and difficult question, and should be changed or
touched only after full debate and upon the strongest consideration of public
necessity. For myself I would not, by any act of this Congress, so regulate the
value of money as that in the country a dollar in silver would be less than a
dollar in gold as an instrument of exchange or measure of value. * * * Now, with
reference to the question of the obligation of the Government to pay the present
indebtedness, either in gold or silver, I think that depends not so much upon
what may be the currency of to-day as what will be the money of the country when
these obligations are payable. But in the meantime we are compelled to pay
semi-annually the interest upon these obligations, and the money in which this
interest is paid should be the money contemplated by the contract under which
the bonds were issued.

   In the meantime the House of Representatives passed a bill, known as the
Bland bill, which contemplated the immediate, unrestricted, and unlimited
coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one without cost to the owner of
silver bullion. When the bill reached the Senate it was referred to the
committee on finance, where it received the support of four members and was
opposed by a like number. This equal division left the casting vote with Mr.
Allison, who had proposed amendments looking to the use of both gold and silver
and the utilization of both as the metallic money of the country, not only then,
but in the future, by limitations in the beginning, to be followed at an early
day by the unrestricted coinage of both metals, and a full legal tender of both,
by means of an international agreement.

   The advocates of the single standard of silver, in the Senate committee on
finance, adopted Mr. Allison's amendment in preference to the free coinage
established by the House bill under consideration; and the advocates of silver
coinage accepted them as preferable to no legislation on the subject. Mr.
Allison's amendments were thus adopted by the committee on finance, and he as
their author reported the bill, as amended, to the Senate. Mr. Allison supported
these amendments in an exhaustive argument replete with information upon the
metallic and coinage questions, and showing by their adoption the time would
come when silver and gold would circulate side by side upon a common ratio, and
each would be exchangeable for the other, through an international agreement, or
by the concurrent action of leading commercial nations. The bill was amended,
passed the Senate by a vote of 48 yeas against 24 nays, seven senators being
absent. The House concurred in the amendment by a vote of 196 yeas against 71
nays, twenty representatives not voting.

   In 1881 Mr. Allison became chairman of the committee on appropriations, and
continued as such until March, 1893, when, the political control of the Senate
being changed, he was succeeded by Senator Cockrell, of Missouri. Mr. Allison is
still a member of the committee and stands at the head of the Republican members.

    When General Garfield was inaugurated in 1881 as President, he invited Mr.
Allison to enter his cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. Personal reasons,
however, compelled the declination of the position thus tendered. In the summer
of the same year, seeing that the national bank circulation would gradually
diminish in value with the payment of the national debt, he studied the question
carefully and embodied the result of his investigations in an article entitled
"The Currency of the Future," which appeared early in 1882, in the North
American Review. In this article attention was called to three things, namely:
First, that our present national bank currency is adapted to our wants.
Secondly, that the system must be materially modified, or it will die presently
by the payment of the national debt. Thirdly, that its circulation will
gradually diminish and that we will have a substitute for it.

    In June, 1882, a bill reached the Senate from the House to enable national
banking institutions to extend their corporate existence. This was referred to
the Senate committee on finance, and in due time was reported from that
committee by Mr. Allison, with several important amendments. One provided that
national banks might deposit lawful money as security for their circulating
notes, and another for the issue of gold and silver certificates, which should
be a legal tender. This last amendment led to a prolonged discussion on the
silver question, in which Mr. Allison took a prominent part.

   The question of civil-service reform came before the Senate early in the
second session of the Forty-seventh Congress. Mr. Allison expressed his regret
that at an early stage of the debate an attempt was made to give a political
character to the measure. He was willing to give the benefit of his best ability
to the perfection of the bill, but he should discourage political discussion in
connection with it. In due time he offered a substitute for the first section of
the bill, making the proposed commission entirely separate and distinct from
each and every one of the executive departments and to have no relation to any
of these departments. This amendment was adopted and the civil-service
commission, as suggested by Mr. Allison, was in due time organized.

   In the Forty-ninth Congress, when the educational bill was under discussion,
Mr. Allison offered an amendment providing that in each State in which there
shall be separate schools for white and colored children the money paid in such
State shall be apportioned in the proportion that the illiteracy of the white
and colored people, aforesaid, bear to each other as shown by the census. When
the river and harbor bill came up in the Senate Mr. Allison vigorously supported
the amendments providing for the enlargement of the Hennepin canal.

   In the winter of 1886 Mr. Allison was made chairman of a sub committee of the
finance committee to examine into the methods of the administration of the
customs laws. For two years this investigation was carried on, receiving the
cordial co-operation of Secretary of the Treasury Manning, and early in 1888 a
bill was reported to the Senate by Mr. Allison, making a complete revision of
these laws and providing a new method arid new machinery for the appraisement
and classification of important merchandise. This bill, with but slight
modifications, passed the Senate at the first session in 1888, but was not acted
upon by the House, which at this time had a Democratic majority. At the short
session in 1889, it was again passed as a portion of the Senate substitute for
the Mills bill.

   In the Fifty-first Congress, the House being Republican, Mr. McKinley,
chairman of the ways and means committee, re-introduced this bill, and it then
became a law.

   Mr. Allison was a chairman of the subcommittee which prepared the substitute
for the Mills bill in 1888 and had charge of the bill in the Senate, up to the
time of its passage by that body in 1889. While this substitute was not
considered by the House, it nevertheless formed the basis of the bill which
became a law in 1890. Mr. Allison was also a member of the sub-committee which
prepared the amendments to the McKinley bill, in 1890, and heartily supported
the reciprocity provisions inserted by the Senate in the bill.

   In 1889 President Harrison tendered to Mr. Allison the Secretaryship of the
Treasury, which however he declined, preferring to remain a member of the
Senate, where he believed he could be of more service to the people of Iowa than
as a member of the cabinet.

   In bringing to a conclusion this sketch, it seems appropriate to quote from
two estimates of Mr. Allison's character and ability, as given by writers from
widely different sections of the country. The first is from "Iowa in War Times,"
by S. H. M. Byers, one of the most gifted writers of this State. "Senator
Allison's great abilities as a statesman," says he, "have been and are
recognized throughout the country. His politics and his policy have been
considered from the war times on conservative and safe. He has been an authority
on great subjects .and a counselor for distinguished statesmen. Mr. Chase
himself, the father of the war system of finances, probably possessed no broader
views, no pro founder knowledge of our money system, than Mr. Allison, and no
man in the councils of the nation has a deeper insight into general legislation."

   The other author, one who, perhaps, was as well qualified as any other to
pass judgment upon Mr. Allison's ability, if indeed not better, was the late
James G. Blaine, long his associate and warm personal friend. In his "Twenty
Years in Congress," this most eminent statesman says: "For industry, good
judgment, strong common sense and fidelity in every trust, both personal and
public, Mr. Allison has established an enviable reputation. He devoted himself
to financial questions and soon acquired in the Senate the position of influence
which he had so long held in the House. In both branches of Congress his service
has been attended with an exceptional degree of popularity among his associates
of both parties."

   From the foregoing some idea of the personality of Mr. Allison can be gained.
His natural powers have been strengthened by an unusual experience and a wide
acquaintance with public men the country over. His friendships are many and
warm, and his loyalty to those who trust him is of the absolute kind. "The
conflicts of his life have left no scars upon his memory, and envy and
detraction have left unrippled the placid surface of his fame." When the contest
fought on party lines is over, no man can be more generous than he, and he does
not carry political warfare into private life. In the walks of social life Mr.
Allison is always affable and entertaining, and enjoys the popularity which
comes to those who have a cordial greeting for all with whom they come in
contact from day to day, and who seem to throw around them in consequence so
much of the sunshine of life. In the State of Iowa, where for nearly forty years
he has made his home, he holds the esteem, admiration and affection of all
classes of people, whatever their political proclivities. They take pride in a
success which reflects honor upon themselves.

   We are now approaching the time of another conflict between the two great
political parties of the nation, and Mr. Allison's name is one of those most
frequently and prominently mentioned as the probable choice of his party for the
presidency. Should he be chosen and elected as such, his ability, learning and
experience would enable him to reflect as much honor upon that exalted station
as its sanctity and dignity would reflect upon him.

   Mr. Allison's first wife, who, as previously mentioned, was the daughter of
Daniel Carter, of Ashland, Ohio, died in 1859. In 1872 he married Miss Mary E.
Neally, the adopted daughter of Senator Grimes, of Iowa, who died in 1883.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

A MEMORIAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD OF IOWA

ILLUSTRATED

"A people that take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will
never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote
descendants."'—MACAULAY.

"Biography is by nature the must universally profitable, universally pleasant,
of all things."—CARLYLE

"History is only biography on a large scale"—LAMARTINE.

CHICAGO: THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
1896


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