We had a beautiful day, an outstanding audience and stellar performances on Sunday for the 19th annual Chariton Cemetery Heritage Tour. As the week passes, I'll post the scripts used by the five re-enactors, commencing today with John Lee Brown as portrayed by Tyler Urich.
Brown was Iowa's state auditor when he became embroiled during 1885 in a dispute with Gov. Buren Sherman --- a dispute that makes the 2023 standoff between Auditor Rob Sand and Gov. Kim Reynolds seem rather mild by comparison.
The document at the end of the post --- Brown's December 1884 certificate of election --- is part of his own file of documents related to the case, now in the Lucas County Historical Society collection, donated during 2000 by two of his great-granddaughters. Here's the script:
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We follow the news out here on Cemetery Hill, you know; and I’ve been interested lately in the standoff between your state auditor, Rob Sand --- Number 33 in a line going back to 1846 --- and governor, Kim Reynolds.
That’s been child’s play, people; child’s play. You have no idea what a real standoff under the golden dome of the Iowa capitol looks like.
My name is John Lee Brown and I was Iowa’s 14th auditor. My nemesis was Buren Robinson Sherman, this state’s 12th governor and a slave to crooked fire and life insurance companies.
At one point in our dispute, Sherman deployed the Iowa State Militia to break down my office door in the old capitol in Des Moines with a 10-pound sledge hammer and forcibly remove myself and my staff. I was vilified, removed from office and impeached.
But in the end, I prevailed. I was known to be scrupulously honest but incapable of compromise. I also was --- as the dishonorable Mr. Sherman learned --- extraordinarily stubborn and a major pain in the backside of anyone who crossed me.
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You will notice that I have only one arm. The story behind that goes back to my younger days and the great war that preserved these United States of America.
I was born in Essex County, New Jersey, but moved west to Indiana with my farmer parents when 10 years old, in 1848.
My family was poor, so I hired out at any job I could find as a lad --- but always attended school in the winter and eventually became qualified to teach. During October of 1861, I married one of my students --- Miss Elizabeth A. Templin --- and we began a family that eventually included 11 children, two of whom died young.
The Browns were Quaker and our instincts were pacifist, but President Lincoln’s call for 600,000 troops in 1862 challenged those convictions and so during July of that year I enlisted as a private in Capt. Ben Harrison’s company of Indiana volunteer infantry. Ben went on to be elected our nation’s 33rd president in 1888, you may remember.
On the 15th of May, 1864, while engaged in a bayonet charge during the Battle of Resaca, Georgia, I sustained a gunshot wound to the right elbow and my arm was amputated the next day. So I was sidelined as a clerk until my discharge at Indianapolis on the 5th of March 1865.
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After the war, I returned to Hendricks County, Indiana, and during October of 1866 --- after a year of teaching school --- I was elected county recorder, serving honorably for four years.
But all I ever wanted to do was farm and so in the fall of 1870, Elizabeth and I brought our family west to Lucas County, Iowa. With only one arm, however, farming proved to be too much of a challenge, so we moved into Chariton during 1871 and I began a career in public service.
First, I was appointed town constable, then deputy sheriff, and --- in 1873 --- justice of the peace. In 1875, I ran for public office in Iowa for the first time and was elected Lucas County auditor. I was re-elected three times and, while serving my fourth term, was nominated to seek the position of state auditor on the Republican ticket.
Elected without much difficulty, I resigned my Lucas County post and took charge of the state auditor’s office during January of 1883, moving into offices in the old capitol at Des Moines, then relocating to the new and present building during 1886. Both the governor and I were Republicans. You would have thought we’d get along. That was not the case.
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One of my responsibilities as state auditor was to monitor and regulate Iowa’s insurance industry. I was shocked to discover that these fire and life insurance companies had been operating outside the law for many years, free from supervision.
They were headed by powerful men of influence in the government and courts, including Governor Sherman, who was president of the Globe Insurance Company.
As I pushed the insurance companies toward compliance with the law, their leaders pushed back --- and during March of 1885, Governor Sherman attempted to fire me, something he had no constitutional authority to do.
When I, my deputy and our staff refused to leave our office in the old capitol, Gov. Sherman ordered the Iowa State Militia in. The guardsmen arrived in secret --- in civilian clothing --- in order to avoid attracting attention, then changed into uniform in the basement and marched to the office door which they attacked first with the butts of their muskets, then a 10-pound sledge hammer. This was on the 19th of March 1885.
I spent the next 10 months in limbo after the Iowa Supreme Court declined to intervene in the dispute and Governor Buren’s appointee took over the office.
But the election during November of 1885 of William Larrabee as Sherman’s successor changed all of that. Governor Larrabee, like Sherman and myself a Republican, restored me to office during January of 1886 and I returned to work in Des Moines.
My enemies in the Legislature were not done, however. About $40,000 in taxpayer money was frittered away during the next few months on a witch hunt that resulted in 30 articles of impeachment against me and a three-month trial. At the end of that trial, during July of 1886, the Iowa Senate pronounced me not guilty on all 30 counts --- and I finished out my term in office during 1887 peacefully, but with no interest in seeking another.
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During those months when I was prevented from doing my job in Des Moines, I had purchased the newest and smallest of Chariton’s newspapers, The Herald. After I left office at the end of 1887, I returned to Chariton to become its full-time editor, building it into the newspaper with the largest circulation in Lucas County during the next few years.
By February of 1905, I was worn out and had decided to retire as my 66th birthday approached. We sold The Herald and at my insistence traded our home in Chariton for Lyman Whitcomb’s farm in Cedar Township and moved there during March. If I could not farm, I could at least live in the country.
But my retirement plans were derailed a year later by influenza that turned to pneumonia and killed me on the 24th of May, 1906, in my 67th year. After funeral services at the Methodist Church, my remains were buried here.
As the years passed, my children scattered, several to California where they were joined by my wife, Elizabeth. She was living in Pasadena when she died at the age of 82 on May 8, 1929, and was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.
My old friend Col. Orion O. Bartholomew delivered my eulogy. “In character, John was a man of strong traits, strong convictions, iron will and never yielded a point for policy sake --- in fact, he compromised on nothing,” Orion said. “This made him enemies as well as friends. He was a fighter in every sense of the word and a man of many admirable qualities, having a mind of unusual strength with a faculty of forcible expression.” I am satisfied that my life reflected those words.
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