Lucas-Madison County IA Archives Biographies.....Brown, John L. 1838 - 
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Author: Lewis Publishing Co. (1896)

HON. JOHN L. BROWN, one of the most prominent and best known citizens in the
State of Iowa, living in Chariton, was born in Essex county, New Jersey, October
31, 1838, of humble parentage. His father was a farmer and removed to
Brookville, Indiana, in November, 1848, thence to Greensburg, that State, in
April, 1849, and in September, 1854, he took up his residence in Marion county,
Indiana. In 1856, at the age of seventeen, Mr. Brown, of this review, bade adieu
to his parents and came to Iowa, spending three years of the hardest times Iowa
has ever seen, in the north part of Madison county, working by the month at
anything he could get to do,-breaking prairie, hauling logs, sawing lumber,
engaging in farm work generally, through the summer, and attending school in
winter while working for his board. The times were hard, money scarce, and a
"good" dollar in the morning was often worthless at night. Prospects were
gloomy, there was no demand for labor, and, owing some service to his parents
who were anxious for him to return home, he again went to Marion county,
Indiana, in the spring of 1859, where he worked with his father on the farm and
attended school in the winter, also teaching a select school.

   While thus engaged he formed for one of his pupils, Miss Esther A. Templin, a
deep friendship which grew into love, and they were married, in October, 1861,
and began their domestic life upon a rented farm. Meantime the war of the
rebellion had been inaugurated, but at first the war was thought to be somewhat
of a holiday affair, neither the North nor the South thinking but that a few
months would terminate it. Being somewhat imbued with Quaker ideas and seeing
nothing pleasant or enticing in the desolations of war-as many seemed to do-and
having no ambition for its laurels, he was willing that those should enlist who
were anxious to go, hoping that the Rebellion might be suppressed and the Union
preserved without the need of his services. But when President Lincoln issued
his call for 300,000 men, which was soon followed by another call for 300,000
more, his patriotic spirit was aroused, and hurriedly arranging with his father
for the care of his wife and the crop which he had planted, in July, 1862, he
enlisted in Lieutenant Ben Harrison's Company, afterward Company A, of the
Seventieth Indiana Regiment, of which the future president was made Colonel.
After a few weeks spent in camp at Indianapolis, eight miles from his home, he
received word that his wife was seriously ill with typhoid fever, and the
disease had reached its worst stage, when the regiment received orders to be
ready to break camp and start for Louisville the next morning, at daybreak.

   Procuring leave of absence until the time of departure, Mr. Brown accompanied
his family physician to the bedside of his sick wife, to watch for the turning
point in the disease that was to determine the question of the life or death of
the one to him dearest of all on earth. The faithful physician gave his medicine
and watched the feeble pulse of his patient with bated breath while the hours
crept slowly by until about two o'clock in the morning, when a gleam of hope lit
up his countenance as he announced the crisis past, and that by careful nursing
the patient would recover. The symptoms continued to improve during the next two
hours and at four o'clock Mr. Brown bade adieu to his beloved wife and responded
to the call of duty, reaching camp just as the line was being formed to march to
the train that was to carry them to "Dixie." Mr. Brown received a gunshot wound
in the right elbow in a bayonet charge at the battle of Resaca, Georgia, May 15,
1864, causing the amputation of his arm forty-eight hours later. He received his
discharge from the service March 5, 1865, at Indianapolis, Indiana. Upon his
return home both he and his wife attended school at the Methodist Episcopal
Academy of Danville, Indiana, for a year, teaching a part of the time. In
October, 1866, he was elected Recorder of Hendricks county, Indiana, on the
Republican ticket, serving four years with honor to himself and credit to his
party.

   During his three years' sojourn in Iowa in the '50s Mr. Brown had imbibed
such a love for this prairie State that the idea of making it his permanent home
was ever uppermost in his mind; and at the close of his official service as
Recorder, he moved his family to Lucas county, Iowa, in the fall of 1870,
whither his father and family had preceded him three years. He farmed one year
very successfully, managing the work so as to make a full hand. In the fall of
1871 he moved to Chariton. For want of better employment at that time he
accepted the position of Constable, to which he was elected without solicitation
and against his wishes. He was afterward appointed Deputy Sheriff and also
special collector for the County Treasurer. In 1873 he was appointed Justice of
the Peace to fill a vacancy, and in 1875 he was elected County Auditor on the
Republican ticket, assuming charge of that office in January, 1876. He proceeded
at once to a thorough renovation of the office and a reformation of the manner
of doing business, establishing a systematic method of keeping a record of every
transaction, which had formerly been very indifferently done. He was three times
re-elected with ever increasing majorities, and while on his fourth term he was
elected to the office of Auditor of State, assuming control of that office in
January, 1883, having resigned the County Auditorship in the middle of his
fourth term, after serving the county in that capacity for seven years.

   As Auditor of State, Mr. Brown's services were of inestimable value to the
people, the benefits of which, though only just beginning to be appreciated,
will be co-extensive with the existence of the State Government. Being charged
with the responsibility of administering the insurance laws of the State, he at
once set about the task of familiarizing himself therewith, with a view of
enforcing its provisions for the protection of the people. He found a class of
co-operative organizations assuming to be life-insurance companies, which the
law did not place under the auditor's jurisdiction, using the auditor's
certificate (which had been furnished them through misconception of the law) as
a passport to the confidence of the people, who were being grievously imposed
upon and deceived into paying large sums of money for something of comparatively
little value, and he proceeded at once to withdraw said certificates and place
such associations upon their proper legal basis and in their right light before
the people. This action stirred up a flood of vindictive abuse from the managers
of these concerns and from all the newspapers they could influence,-which were
not a few,-and finally led to the enactment, upon his recommendation, of a law
regulating this class of associations, which he put into successful operation
and from which the people are now reaping much benefit, though the law is not
nearly so strong a safeguard as it would have been had the Twenty-first General
Assembly followed more closely his suggestions with regard to its provisions.

   In filing a vigorous protest against the appointment of a man as railroad
commissioner, who was disqualified by law for the position, and whose
appointment was made in the interest of the railroad companies, he demonstrated
the fact that there was one member of the State executive council who could not
be swerved from his duties to the public at the dictation of the corporations,
neither through the liberal distribution of "courtesies" nor the threats of
condign punishment, which they had the power to inflict; and the Republican
party, as well as the State of Iowa, was in sore need, at that time, of some
such demonstration. His course in this matter called down upon his head the dire
vengeance of all the corporation papers of the State and at the same time called
public attention to the corrupt manner in which the corporations were
manipulating the affairs of the State in their own interests and to the
detriment of the people; and a demand went up from the people for the selection
of railroad commissioners by popular vote, which demand continued and increased
until such a law was enacted.

   In the thorough overhauling which Mr. Brown gave the fire-insurance companies
of the State in 1884, eliminating from their reported condition all fictitious
assets, compelling them to make good their impaired capital and requiring their
managers to comply with the laws of the State, he rendered to the stockholders
of these companies as well as to the policy holders, both of the present and the
future, a service the benefit of which, by reason of its far-reaching effects,
is simply incalculable. Many people were led to think at the time that the
expense to the companies of these examinations was excessive; but the sequel has
abundantly proven that the reports of a less competent and trustworthy, and
hence less expensive, examiner, would have been discredited to the extent of
being pronounced worthless; whereas, not a single statement in any of the
examiners' reports under Auditor Brown's administration was shaken in the least,
notwithstanding the severe tests to which they were subjected.

   These and other reformatory measures inaugurated by Auditor Brown disturbed
the previous uninterrupted control, by the corporation influences, of matters of
State affecting their relations with the public, and, his unflinching integrity
and devotion to duty proving alike impervious to cajolery or threats, it was
determined that he must be gotten rid of at all hazards. Plans were at once laid
for the purpose of terminating his tenure of office as Auditor of State and a
manifesto was issued by the Governor, Buren R. Sherman, ordering him to vacate
said office and surrender possession of the same to one J. W. Cattell, whom the
people had not chosen to serve them in that capacity. Having been elected
Auditor of State, being duly qualified according to law, having faithfully
discharged his obligations to the people and knowing the basis of this arbitrary
order to be absolutely and unqualifiedly false, in order to be true to his oath
of office, his bondsmen, the interests of the people and his own manhood, Mr.
Brown was compelled to decline to surrender his office to another upon an
illegal demand. Whereupon the Governor, who was president of one of the
insurance companies yet to be examined, using his authority as Commander in
Chief of the State militia, took forcible possession of the Auditor's office
with loaded muskets, fixed bayonets and sledge hammers, ejected Mr. Brown and
his efficient corps of assistants, and placed Mr. Cattell in charge of the same
and labeled him "Auditor of State!" Meanwhile the corporation papers of the
State, under the pretense of "suspension," which the Governor was by law
authorized to order under certain circumstances, sought in every conceivable way
to blind the people to the facts and to excuse, condone and justify the
Governor's unparalleled act of usurpation and outrage.

   Having been held out of office about ten months under bayonet rule, upon the
advent of Governor Larrabee, the accounts of Auditor Brown were found to be all
right, the rule of the bayonet was abolished and the Auditor was again permitted
to resume his official duties. By this turn of affairs the corporations found
themselves thwarted in their plans to get rid of an officer who was not pliant
to their wishes and interests regardless of the public welfare, and in their
exasperation through their wily political manipulators they prevailed upon the
Twenty-first General Assembly to institute a "Star Chamber" investigation of the
auditor's office, the purpose of which was to paint Mr. Brown so black that the
respectable people would not recognize him and thus destroy his influence and
render him powerless to hinder their schemes by the exposure of their villanies.
The committee did the work assigned them by their masters ably and well. Under a
pretense of trying to arrive at the truth the Auditor was given no show or
quarter, and in their report he was made to appear among the veriest scoundrels
outside of the penitentiary. But there was one honest man on the committee, a
Democrat, who could not be controlled; by the corporation influences and who
made a candid minority report embodying his honest convictions, though he was
misled in some respects. Immediately after the report of this committee was
promulgated, the corporation "heelers" could be seen flitting to and fro,
halting every one they met to comment upon the great surprise the report had
created, and the climax of their comment consisted of great grief they were
called upon to endure in being "compelled to abandon to his justly merited
disgrace and infamy, the man, Brown, in whom they had always placed the most
implicit confidence as a man and public officer!" This refrain was taken up, as
it was designed it should be, and carried from mouth to mouth and from daily to
weekly press throughout the State and nation in the culminating act of the great
conspiracy to down the people's Auditor. But his unshaken faith in the final
triumph of justice and truth and the consciousness of his own integrity,
faithful service and unflagging industry in behalf of the people inspired him
with renewed confidence amid the storm of denunciation and hypocritical
expressions of grief by enemies and the desertion of friends through ignorance
of the truth.

   Conscious of his own rectitude and his ability, on a full and impartial
hearing, to demonstrate not only the utter inability of his persecutors to prove
their allegations but also his ability to prove the utter falsity of their
accusations as well as their knowledge of such falsity, he made himself the hero
of an event of which the history of the civilized world furnishes no parallel,
in demanding of the Legislature a trial by impeachment, on the ground of justice
to themselves and their constituents as well as himself. This was a bold
venture, which none but a brave man, conscious of his integrity, dare assume to
make, and it struck his weak-kneed friends with "wonderment" and surprise, and
scattered consternation throughout the camp of his persecutors. But the issue
was one which could not be dodged by the Legislature with safety to the future
political prospects of its members, and he was accordingly arraigned before the
bar of the Senate on thirty articles of impeachment, culled from the infamous
report of the "Star Chamber" investigating committee. After full investigation
and fair trial under the vigorous prosecution of seven picked lawyers from the
House, lasting about three months, in which the villainous purpose and intent of
said "Star Chamber" committee was clearly revealed, he was triumphantly
acquitted of every charge, every one of the fifty Senators agreeing that the
basis of the order of Governor Sherman and his illegal use of the militia to
deprive the Auditor of his office was absolutely false and fraudulent. After the
verdict of the impeachment court, Mr. Brown again resumed possession of his
office and finished out his term with honor to himself and credit to the
Republican party, to the progressive principles of which he has been a devoted
adherent since its organization.

   Notwithstanding the heavy expenses incurred by him in his conflict as Auditor
of State with the corporations, which swallowed up his salary and left him an
indebtedness of about $5,000, nothing daunted, in the fall of 1886, he purchased
the Chariton Herald, an independent paper, one year old, with about 400
subscribers, going in debt thereon about $3,000 more. He issued his first paper
November 4, 1886, in which he announced an entire change of its character and
policy from that of a so-called independent with Democratic leanings, to that of
a genuine, true-blue Republican paper of the anti-monopoly reform type. By
industry, tact, foresight and ability, with a steady adherence to principle, the
Herald has steadily grown in strength and in influence until it now has the
largest circulation, is the leading paper in Lucas county and is recognized as
one of the most fearless, ably edited and best county papers in the State.


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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