Charles S. Deneen
Deneen in 1925
United States Senator
from Illinois
In office
February 26, 1925 – March 3, 1931
Preceded byJoseph M. McCormick
Succeeded byJ. Hamilton Lewis
23rd Governor of Illinois
In office
January 9, 1905 – February 3, 1913
LieutenantLawrence Sherman
John G. Oglesby
Preceded byRichard Yates Jr.
Succeeded byEdward Fitzsimmons Dunne
Cook County State's Attorney
In office
1896–1904
Preceded byJacob J. Kern
Succeeded byJohn J. Healy
Member of the Illinois House of Representatives from the 2nd District
In office
1892–1894
Serving with Michael McInerney, Robert McMurdy
Preceded byMichael McInerney, William J. Kenney, H. Dorsey Patton
Succeeded byRudolph Mulac, Oscar L. Dudley, Sherman P. Cody
Personal details
Born
Charles Samuel Deneen

May 4, 1863
Edwardsville, Illinois
DiedFebruary 5, 1940(1940-02-05) (aged 76)
Chicago, Illinois
Political partyRepublican
SpouseBina Deneen
Children4
RelativesJason Beghe (great-grandson)
EducationMcKendree College
Union College of Law
ProfessionAttorney
Signature

Charles Samuel Deneen (May 4, 1863 – February 5, 1940) was an American lawyer and Republican politician who served as the 23rd Governor of Illinois, from 1905 to 1913. He was the first Illinois governor to serve two consecutive terms totalling eight years. He was governor during the infamous Springfield race riot of 1908, which he helped put down. He later served as a U.S. Senator from Illinois, from 1925 to 1931. Deneen had previously served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1892 to 1894. As an attorney, he had been the lead prosecutor in Chicago's infamous Adolph Luetgert murder trial.

Life and career

Deneen was born in Edwardsville, Illinois, to Samuel H. Deneen and Mary Frances Ashley.[1] He was raised in Lebanon, Illinois, and graduated from McKendree College in Lebanon in 1882. He subsequently studied law at McKendree and at Union College of Law, while supporting himself by teaching school. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1886.[2] On May 10, 1891, he married fellow Methodist Bina Day Maloney in Princeton, Illinois.[2] The couple had four children; Charles Ashley, Dorothy, Frances, and Bina.[3]

His political career began soon thereafter, with election to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1892.[1] Deneen was Cook County State's Attorney from 1896 to 1904. In 1896, Deneen appointed Ferdinand Lee Barnett as the first black assistant state's attorney in Illinois upon the recommendation of the Cook County Commissioner Edward H. Wright. Deneen and Barnett worked together closely for the next two decades.[4]

Photograph of Deneen from the George Grantham Bain collection

Deneen became Governor of Illinois in 1905 and supported passage of the Illinois anti-lynching law that year. The state had not had many instances of lynchings, but in 1909 William "Froggie" James was murdered in a spectacle lynching attended by a mob of 10,000 in Cairo, Illinois. The crowd also lynched Henry Salzner, a white man, who had allegedly killed his wife. The governor sent in National Guard troops to suppress violence. Under the 1905 state law, Deneen dismissed Sheriff Frank E. Davis for failing to protect James and Salzner and resisted local efforts to have the officer reinstated.

In 1924, Deneen defeated first-term Senator Medill McCormick in the Republican primary for the United States Senate. Illinois at that time customarily had a downstate seat and a Chicago-area seat, which McCormick held. McCormick committed suicide in early 1925, for which his widow Ruth Hanna McCormick (a future U.S. Representative) blamed Deneen. She defeated him in the 1930 Republican primary, but lost the November election to James Hamilton Lewis. In 1928 Deneen's home was bombed during an outbreak of violence among rival political factions in Chicago in advance of the Pineapple Primary election.[5]

Deneen died in Chicago on February 5, 1940, and was interred there in the Oak Woods Cemetery.[3][6] The public Deneen School of Excellence was named in his honor. It is located in south Chicago next to the Dan Ryan Expressway, not far from Al Capone's former home on South Prairie.

Family relations

Deneen's daughter Dorothy married Allmand Matteson Blow, who was the son of Jennie Goodell Blow, grandson of Roswell Eaton Goodell, great-grandson of former Illinois governor Joel Aldrich Matteson, nephew-by-marriage of former Colorado governor James Benton Grant, and nephew of former Colorado first lady Mary Goodell Grant.[7][8]

Deneen's great-grandson is actor Jason Beghe.[9]

References

This article incorporates facts obtained from: Lawrence Kestenbaum, The Political Graveyard

  1. 1 2 "DENEEN, Charles Samuel". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Archived from the original on February 16, 2013. Retrieved June 21, 2013.
  2. 1 2 Illinois Blue Book. State of Illinois. 1919. p. 349.
  3. 1 2 "Ex-Senator Chas. S. Deneen Dies at 76". The Burlington Free Press. Chicago. AP. February 6, 1940. p. 10. Archived from the original on October 16, 2021. Retrieved December 17, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ↑ Finkelman, Paul, ed. Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century, Five-volume Set. Oxford University Press, USA, 2009. p137-138
  5. ↑ "Healdsburg Tribune 27 March 1928 — California Digital Newspaper Collection". Archived from the original on February 4, 2023. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
  6. ↑ "Chas. Deneen Succumbs From Heart Ailment". Streator Daily Times-Press. Chicago. AP. February 6, 1940. p. 1. Archived from the original on October 16, 2021. Retrieved December 17, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ "Allmand Matteson Blow Roster ID 5670". archivesweb.vmi.edu. Virginia Military Institute. Retrieved April 11, 2023.
  8. ↑ Cannon, Helen (Winter 1964). "First Ladies of Colorado Mary Goodell Grant" (PDF). Colorado Magazine. 4 (1). Retrieved June 1, 2020.
  9. ↑ Wagner, Curt (January 8, 2014). "Chicago P.D.' cast members feel at home'". Redeye. Archived from the original on August 16, 2014. Retrieved February 12, 2016.

Further reading

  • Fullinwider, James William. "The Governor and the Senator: Executive Power and the Structure of the Illinois Republican Party, 1880-1917." (Washington University in St. Louis ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1974. 7514897).
  • Pegram, Thomas R. Partisans and Progressives: Private Interest and Public Policy in Illinois, 1870-1922 (University of Illinois Press, 1992), extensive coverage of Deneen.
  • Tingley, Donald F. The Structuring of a State: The History of Illinois, 1899 to 1928 (1980)
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