Political nominee chosen in unusual way 

Editor’s note: Following is the third part in a story series by contributing writer Brent Engel.

The bickering was more restrained, but there still was plenty of drama.

The battle for the 1886 Democratic congressional nomination in Missouri’s Seventh District was not quite as rancorous as the contest two years earlier – or the one that would take place in 1888.

Still, political brawls had led to the area being nicknamed “The Bloody Seventh.” So, the race was captivating. Counties covered were Pike, Ralls, Audrain, Montgomery, Lincoln, Warren, Franklin and St. Charles.

The 1884  campaign “was remarkable for its bitterness and tenacity with which the friends of the candidates stuck to their choice,” the State Times observed in 1886. “It will probably have a repetition this year.”

Five men wanted to unseat incumbent John Hutton, an Audrain County lawyer and doctor who had a powerful mouthpiece as owner of The Weekly Intelligencer newspaper in Mexico.

Many agreed Hutton had done a credible, if inconspicuous, job after defeating Republican Matthew Reynolds of Louisiana in the 1884 general election.

The Moberly Monitor called Hutton “one of the purest, most unselfish and most incorruptible men we’ve ever met” and said he’d made a “first rate record” in Washington.

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat begged to differ, saying Hutton had been “one of the most useless members of the Useless Missouri Brigade at Washington.”

The challengers were Judge Elijah Robinson of Pike County; Lincoln County lawyer Richard Norton; former state legislator Charles Peers of Warren County; Thomas Crews, a Franklin County attorney; and Ralls County farmer Richard Dalton. All except the Irish-born Dalton had sought the nomination in 1884.

Each had backers and detractors, all of whom slung mud every chance they got. The brickbats usually flew over who would be the party’s best leader rather than issues facing The Bloody Seventh. The Frankford Chronicle applauded the incumbent.

“In the midst of false friends, open enemies and all kinds of opposition, he has gone along in that quiet, dignified way which has always characterized his actions, and it is quite a relief to compare his calm demeanor with the restlessness, strife and bitter acrimony of some of the other candidates,” it said.

The Vandalia Leader predicted Norton would be “taught a lesson which will probably impress indelibly upon his memory the truth of the old adage ‘Honesty is the best policy.’”

Squabbling prompted the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to suggest that The Bloody Seventh was living up to its name. “Men worked as if at a fire,” it said of one county’s delegation.

The nominating convention in Mexico could not make up its mind. “The deadlock seems to have come, and come to stay,” wrote The Intelligencer.

The Pike County Democrat warned such outcomes were “once the rare exception” and might now lead to the kind of “ill-will and bitterness” that would hurt the party.

Delegates quarreled for five days, took two weeks off and then reassembled. One paper called it a “Democratic farce.” The Ledger feared “the same delegates will meet at the same place, and, in the same monotonous tone, cast the same vote for the same candidate.”

Hutton finally was re-nominated, but it took 838 ballots. The Globe-Democrat called the gathering “the most stubborn and protracted contest waged in a nominating convention in the country this year” and said the results “should be very encouraging to the Republicans.”

The Nevada Mail countered that the re-nomination “cannot help but strengthen” Democrats because Hutton “is above a mean or deceitful act.”

Unsurprisingly, The Intelligencer said criticism of the incumbent was “only to be expected from the trickster and the lickspittle.”

In the general election, Hutton defeated Republican Franklin County judge, lawyer and former state legislator John R. Martin. The margin was only 2,077 of 28,347 votes cast.

The Kansas City Times was among the audacious or, perhaps, oblivious when it said the “strife for the nomination has left no heart-burnings or jealousies.”

“We have Hutton; now, let’s have harmony,” echoed The Ledger.

The incumbent boarded a train and returned to Washington on Thanksgiving Day 1886. But he left behind a suitcase full of vitriol, and it wouldn’t take long for virulence to erupt again in The Bloody Seventh.

 

Next time: The “wickedest man in Missouri.”

CUTLINE FOR PHOTO:

John Hutton