William Hayden English

William Hayden English was born August 27, 1822 in Lexington, Indiana, the only son of Elisha Gale English and his wife, Mahala (Eastin) English.[1] Both his parents were Kentucky natives from slaveholding families of English and French Huguenot ancestry. They moved to southern Indiana in 1818. Elisha English quickly became involved in local politics as a Democrat, serving in the state legislature as well as building a prominent business career.[2] William English was educated in the local public schools, later attending Hanover College.[1] He left college after three years and began to read law. In 1840, English was admitted to the bar at the age of eighteen and soon built a practice in his native Scott County.[1] He started early in politics as well, attending the state Democratic convention that same year and giving speeches on behalf of the Democratic presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren.[3]

From the end of 1842, English was mentored by Lieutenant Governor Jesse D. Bright, who helped him rise within Bright's faction of the party.[4] The following year, the Indiana House of Representatives selected English as their clerk.[1] In 1844, he worked the campaign trail, this time in the service of presidential candidate James K. Polk.[1]

As a reward, after Polk took office in 1845, he granted English a patronage appointment as a clerk in the federal Treasury Department in Washington, D.C.[3] English held this position for four years, during which time he met Emma Mardulia Jackson. They married in November 1847.[5] They had two children: William Eastin and Rosalind.[5]

English attended the 1848 Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, where he supported Lewis Cass, the eventual presidential nominee. With the election of the Whig Party's candidate, Zachary Taylor, to the presidency, a Whig party member replaced English at the Treasury Department. He secured a job as clerk to the United States Senate's Claims Committee through party connections;[lower-alpha 1] serving until 1850 in Washington.[1]

English and his wife then returned to Indiana, where he worked as secretary to the Indiana constitutional convention.[3] Democrats were in the majority at the convention, and their proposals were incorporated into the new law, including increasing the number of elective offices, guaranteeing a homestead exemption, and restricting voting rights to white men.[6] Free blacks had formerly had suffrage in the state. The voters approved the new constitution by a large majority.[7]

In August 1851, English won his first election to the state House of Representatives.[1] As it was the first meeting of the legislature under the 1851 constitution, English's knowledge of it contributed to his election as speaker of the House at the age of twenty-nine.[3] The House had a Democratic majority and, at Bright's direction, English worked for the election of Graham N. Fitch, a member of Bright's faction of the party, to the U.S. Senate. The legislature chose a different Democrat, John Pettit, instead.[lower-alpha 2][8] Holding the office of Speaker increased English's influence throughout the state; in 1852, the Democrats chose him as their nominee for the federal House of Representatives from the newly reconfigured 2nd district.[9] The Democrats were victorious in the election that October, sweeping all but one House seat.[8] English defeated his Whig opponent 55% – 45% and joined the 33rd Congress when it convened in Washington in 1853.[10]

English's time in Congress, much like the rest of his political career, can be seen as pragmatic. While he morally abhorred slavery, he condemned abolitionists and believed in the notion of “popular sovereignty,” which argued that the people of a state or territory should choose for themselves whether to have slavery.[11] He explained his opinion in a speech in 1854:

"Sir, I am a native of a free State [sic], and have no love for the institution of slavery. Aside from the moral question involved, I regard it as an injury to the State where it exists….But sir, I never can forget that we are a confederacy of States, possessing equal rights, under our glorious Constitution. That if the people of Kentucky believe the institution of slavery would be conducive to their happiness, they have the same right to establish and maintain that we of Indiana have to reject it; and this doctrine is just as applicable to States hereafter to be admitted as to those already in the Union."[11]

English's Opera House

English declined to run for reelection in 1860 but he gave several speeches advocating compromise and moderation in the growing North-South divide. After Abraham Lincoln's election that year, English urged Southerners not to secede.[22] After southern secession occurred and the Civil War began, Governor Oliver P. Morton offered English command of a regiment, but he declined iI since he had no military knowledge or interests.[23] English, however, supported Morton's (and indirectly Lincoln's) war policies and considered himself a War Democrat. English lent money to the state government to cover the expenses of outfitting the troops and served as provost marshal for the 2nd congressional district.[23]

After retiring from Congress, English spent a year at his home in Scott County before he relocated to Indianapolis, the state capital.[23] English and ten associates (including James Lanier) organized the First National Bank of Indianapolis in 1863, the first bank in that city chartered under the new National Bank Act.[24] He remained president of that bank until 1877, including the difficult period during the Panic of 1873, when many other banks folded.[23]

English's business interests included other industries as well. He became the controlling shareholder of the Indianapolis Street Railway Company and remained in charge of the company until 1876, when he sold his shares.[25] Having also sold his shares of the bank by 1877, English turned most of his investment capital to real estate. By 1875, he had ordered construction of 75 houses along what is now English Avenue.[26]

His wife, Emma, died two years later, in 1877. he survived her by 19 years. When he died in 1896, he owned 448 properties, most of them in Indianapolis.[27]

In 1880, English constructed English's Opera House, which, according to the 1994 Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, quickly became known as the city's finest.[25] The building was modeled after the Grand Opera House in New York and seated 2,000 people.[28] It opened on September 27, 1880, with a performance of Hamlet starring Lawrence Barrett.[28] By that time, English was involved in politics once more. He turned over management of the Opera House to his son, William Eastin English, who was interested in the theater and had just married an actress, Annie Fox.[28] English Sr. later added a hotel to the Opera House, and both operated until 1948.[29]

Hancock–English campaign poster

After leaving the House of Representatives, English remained in touch with local politics, and served as chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party. His son had been elected to the state house in 1879, and the elder English was still consulted on political matters.[27] Although he had not sought elected office since 1858, he had raised his national profile in 1879 through several interviews and letters to friendly newspapers.[30] English attended the 1880 Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati as a member of the Indiana delegation, where he favored presidential candidate Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware, whom he admired for his support of the gold standard.[31] The first ballot was inconclusive, with Bayard in second place.[32] Major General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania led the voting, and on the second ballot was nominated for President.[33]

The Indiana delegation held back their votes from Hancock until the crucial moment, and as a reward, the delegates unanimously selected English for the vice-presidential nomination.[34] He was not expected to add much to the ticket outside of Indiana, but the party leaders thought his popularity in that swing state would help Hancock against James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur, the Republican nominees.[34] The Republicans believed that the real reason for English's nomination was his willingness to use his personal fortune to finance the campaign, as Democratic campaign coffers were low.[35] English gave a brief speech accepting the nomination, then replied more formally in a letter a month later. In that letter, English called the disputes of the Civil War settled, and promised a "sound currency, of honest money", the restriction of Chinese immigration, and a "rigid economy in public expenditure".[36] He characterized the election as one between

the people endeavoring to regain the political power which rightfully belongs to them, and to restore the pure, simple, economical, constitutional government of our fathers on the one side, and a hundred thousand federal office-holders and their backers, pampered with place and power, and determined to retain them at all hazards, on the other.[37]

Hancock and the Democrats expected to carry the Solid South, which, with the disenfranchisement of black Southerners following the end of Reconstruction, was dominated electorally by white Democrats.[38] In addition to the South, the ticket needed to add New York and a few of the Midwestern states to their total to win the election; national elections in that era were largely decided by closely divided states there.[39] The practical differences between the parties were few, and the Republicans were reluctant to attack Hancock personally because of his heroic reputation.[40] The one policy difference the Republicans were able to exploit was a statement in the Democratic platform endorsing "a tariff for revenue only".[41] Garfield's campaign used this statement to paint the Democrats as unsympathetic to the plight of industrial laborers, who benefited from the high protective tariff then in place. The tariff issue cut Democratic support in industrialized Northern states, which were essential in establishing a Democratic majority.[42]

The October state elections in Ohio and Indiana resulted in Republican victories there, discouraging Democrats about the federal election to come the following month.[42] There was even some talk among party leaders of dropping English from the ticket, but English convinced them that the October losses owed more to local issues, and that the Democratic ticket could still carry Indiana, if not Ohio, in November.[42] In the end, English was proven wrong: the Democrats and Hancock failed to carry any of the Midwestern states they had targeted, including Indiana. Hancock and English lost the popular vote by just 7,018.[43] The electoral vote, however, had a much larger spread: 214 for Garfield and Arthur, compared to 155 for Hancock and English.[43]

English resumed his business career after the election. He also became more interested in local history, joining a reunion of the survivors of the 1850 state constitutional convention, which met at his opera house in 1885.[27] He became the president of the Indiana Historical Society and wrote two volumes, which were published at his death: Conquest of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio, 1778–1783; and Life of General George Rogers Clark.[44] He served on the Indianapolis Monument Commission in 1893, and helped to plan and finance the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument there.[25]

He died at his home in Indianapolis on February 7, 1896. English was interred in Crown Hill Cemetery with his wife, who had died in 1877. Although many of the buildings he constructed have been demolished, English, Indiana, the county seat of Crawford County, is named after him, as is English Avenue in Indianapolis.[45] Identical statues of English stand in front of the Scott County Courthouse in Scottsburg, Indiana, and at the Crawford County Fairgrounds in English.[45] His son William served in Congress from 1884 to 1885. His grandson, William English Walling, the son of his daughter Rosalind, was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.[46] An extensive collection of English's personal and family papers is housed at the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis, where it is open for research.

• United States Congress. "William Hayden English (id: E000191)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• William Hayden English at Find a Grave