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EDITED BY John C. Parish
Associate Editor of the State Historical Society of Iowa
| Volume II |
December 1921 |
No. 12 |
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Copyright 1921 by the State Historical Society of Iowa
(Transcribed by Gayle Harper)
AUGUSTUS CAESAR DODGE
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The interesting article on
Governor Kirkwood in the Year Book of the Old Settlers'
Association of Johnson County for 1921, and Mr. Lathrop's book
on the Life and Times of Samuel J. Kirkwood, in which Augustus
Caesar Dodge is called an aristocrat with no sympathy for the
life and interests of the common people, may make it timely to
restate the facts about that estimable pioneer. Israel Dodge,
a soldier of the Revolution, left Kentucky in 1788 or 1789 and
crossed the Mississippi into the Spanish province of the Upper
Louisiana, settling near Ste. Genevieve now in the State of
Missouri. After the purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon
Bonaparte he witnessed at St. Louis in 1804 the unfurling of
the American flag as a signal of our sovereignty over the new
domain. At Ste. Genevieve, his grandson Augustus a. Dodge, son
of Henry Dodge, was born in 1812. The boy had brief and
insufficient schooling, a few months in a log school house
with windows of oiled paper, using pencils made of leaden
bullets hammered to a point, quill pens, and ink made by
boiling butternut bark with gun powder. When he was fifteen
years old, the family moved to Wisconsin, traveling on the
steamboat "Indiana" as far as the Rapids of the River Des
Moines and the balance of the way on a keel boat pulled by
some forty oarsmen in small boats. Landing near what is now
called Galena, the settlers were found in a panic from hostile
acts of the Winnebago Indians. Henry Dodge was requested to
take command and organized the settlers for protection. His
son, A. a. Dodge, joined this force, in the company of Captain
Wm. S. Hamilton, son of Alexander Hamilton.
After the
Indians were subdued Henry Dodge settled in Iowa County,
Wisconsin, where father and son worked in the lead mines. From
there the son moved to Burlington, Iowa, in 1838. The father
became Governor of Wisconsin. The son was elected Delegate to
Congress from the Territory of Iowa, serving from 1840 to
1846, and became one of Iowa's first United States Senators,
being the first member of that body who was born west of the
Mississippi. From the Senate he went as our Minister to Spain.
His erect carriage and much of his personal manner were due to
association with the Indians, for he knew Black Hawk, Mahaska,
Keokuk, Wapello, and Poweshiek, the great Sac and Fox leaders.
Born a frontiersman, such he remained with not a trace of
aristocracy about him. He was a Democrat in politics and in
his sympathies, the favorite of the Iowa pioneers. In the
Senate he urged the Homestead Bill, to give the public domain
to the settlers, and took leadership in the measures that laid
the foundations of the State.
One incident
in his senatorial career completely discloses his
statesmanship and his philosophy of life. The Southern
Senators had provoked a debate in which they nagged the
Northern members. On their side the debate was closed by Brown
of Mississippi in a speech full of contempt and ridicule for
the Northern people. He said that no gentleman would do
himself or others the personal service and manual labor for
which the negro was fitted by nature.
Then Senator
Dodge took the floor in reply. The Philadelphia Press
described the scene. His father, Henry Dodge, was present as
the Senator from Wisconsin. The Press said:
His straight
Indian figure, strong features and defiant air gave effect to
his tones which rang out like a trumpet call. He said: "I have
never permitted myself to believe that there can ever be civil
war between the North and South. But today I have heard with
mingled astonishment and regret in the speech of the Senator
from Mississippi such views of life and its duties that I
differ from him as widely as the poles are asunder. If his
views are those of his section, civil war is possible. I say
on the floor of this Senate, in the presence of my father, the
Senator from Wisconsin, who will attest its truth, that I have
performed and do perform, all these services denounced as
menial. I saw my own wood, I have worked in the mines, and
driven teams of horses, oxen and mules, and consider myself as
respectable as any senator on this floor."
When sent as
Minister to Spain, he immediately acquired complete use of the
Spanish language, and years later told me that he found his
command of Indian dialects useful in his study of the new
tongue. But while absent from the State Iowa had changed in
its politics and population. The pioneers who fellowshipped
him were in a minority, and the newer settlers knew him not.
Now Kirkwood was not a frontiersman nor a pioneer. Born in
Maryland, he was reared in Washington City. He moved to an old
settled community in Mansfield, Ohio, and thence to Iowa,
where he settled at the close of our pioneer period.
I knew Dodge
intimately from my childhood and Kirkwood as well later on in
my life, and they were both my friends. The actors in that
time long gone by should not be judged nor disparaged now by
importing into this age the spirit, the prejudices, and hasty
judgments of the partisan politics of the past.
JNO. P.
IRISH |
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