Early Political Career
Altgeld's name, according to historian Philip Dray, “is synonymous with the dawn of the Progressive era.” In 1874, he was elected District Attorney of Andrew County. A year later resigned and moved to Chicago to go back into the private sector. He wouldn't run for public office again for another 10 years.
Altgeld decided to run for congress in 1884 against incumbent George Adams of Illinois's 4th congressional district. That year, he published an essay on penal reform entitled, Our Penal Machinery and Its Victims. His essay argued that rather than reform criminals, incarceration produced hardened criminals. Although this district was heavily Republican, Adams defeated him by just 8 points (54%-46%), a better showing than well-known Democrat Lambert Tree had made two years earlier. As a Republican leader recalled, “He (Altgeld) was not elected, but our executive committee was pretty badly frightened by the strong canvass he made.”
In 1886, he was elected as a Cook County Superior Court Justice and served on the bench until 1891.
Read more about this topic: John Peter Altgeld
Famous quotes containing the words political career, early, political and/or career:
“No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life’s course by a mere accident.”
—James Bryce (1838–1922)
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)