Representative Albert Gallatin Porter

Albert Gallatin Porter (April 20, 1824 – May 3, 1897) was an American lawyer, legislator, diplomat, and Republican politician who served as the 19th governor of Indiana from 1881 to 1885 and as a United States Congressman from 1859 to 1863. Originally a Democrat, he joined the Republican Party in 1856 after being expelled by the pro-slavery faction of the Democratic Party. Only the second person born in Indiana to become the state’s governor, he reluctantly accepted his party’s nomination for that office. His gubernatorial term coincided with the beginning of Indiana’s rapid industrialization, and during the second half of his administration a strong Democratic majority in the Indiana General Assembly revoked virtually all of the governor’s appointment powers and other authorities, reducing the office to its weakest point in state history.

Porter was born on April 20, 1824, in Lawrenceburg, Dearborn County, Indiana, the son of Thomas Porter and Myra Tousey Porter. His father, a veteran of the War of 1812, worked as a bank teller at the state-established Farmer and Mechanic’s Bank, founded in 1818 and closed after the Panic of 1819. Thomas Porter then served several years as a county clerk. The family later moved to Boone County, Kentucky, after Myra Porter inherited her father’s farm along the Ohio River. The property lay at a convenient crossing point on the river, and the young Albert Porter managed his father’s ferryboat, transporting wagons and passengers across the Ohio. The income he earned from this work enabled him to pursue higher education.

In 1839 Porter enrolled at Hanover College in Indiana, but his funds were soon exhausted. An uncle offered to finance the remainder of his education on the condition that he attend a Methodist institution, and Porter agreed. He transferred to Asbury University (now DePauw University) in Greencastle, Indiana, and graduated in 1843. The following year he moved to Indianapolis, where he secured a position in the state auditor’s office and briefly served as a private secretary to Governor James Whitcomb. Influenced by Whitcomb to study law, Porter read law in the office of Philip Spooner and was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1845. He entered a corporate law practice in Indianapolis headed by Hiram Brown, and on November 20, 1846, he married Brown’s daughter, Minerva. The couple had five children. During these years he also began to cultivate a public reputation through legal work and writing.

Porter’s early career combined legal practice, journalism, and municipal service. He took a secondary job with the Indianapolis Journal, reporting and recording decisions of the Indiana Supreme Court, which brought him to the attention of the state’s judiciary. Running as a Democrat, he was elected city attorney of Indianapolis and served from 1851 to 1853. In 1853 he was appointed to fill a vacancy as reporter of the decisions of the Indiana Supreme Court, and in 1854 he was elected to that post by a strong majority, serving until 1856. During this period the Indiana Democratic Party was riven by conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. In 1856 the pro-slavery wing prevailed and expelled Porter and other anti-slavery Democrats from the party. He thereupon joined the newly formed Republican Party. With the help of his brother-in-law, he organized the Republican Party in Marion County and ran successfully for the Indianapolis city council on the Republican ticket, serving a partial term before resigning in 1859 after winning election to Congress in 1858.

As a Republican representing Indiana in the United States House of Representatives, Porter served two terms from March 4, 1859, to March 3, 1863, during a critical period that included the secession crisis and the early years of the American Civil War. He was reelected once and supported much of the wartime legislation advanced by the Lincoln administration. His most notable congressional work involved an investigation of the railroads that had received extensive federal land grants before and during the war. Porter calculated the value of these grants and compared them to the sums the railroads claimed for transporting troops and munitions, helping to save the cash-strapped federal government several million dollars. Although nominated again in 1862, he declined to run for a third term, citing the inadequate congressional salary and his need to rebuild his personal finances. His service in Congress thus concluded in 1863, but it marked him as a capable legislator who had contributed materially to the wartime management of federal resources.

After leaving Congress, Porter returned to Indianapolis and resumed legal practice, becoming head of one of Indiana’s leading law firms. Among his partners was Benjamin Harrison, who would later become president of the United States. Porter participated in several prominent cases, most notably Ex parte Milligan, in which the United States Supreme Court held that Lambdin P. Milligan, an Indiana civilian arrested during the Civil War and tried by a military commission, could not be constitutionally tried by a military tribunal while the civil courts were open. The decision became a landmark in American constitutional law. Porter’s first wife, Minerva, died in 1875. He remained active in Republican politics and was offered the party’s nomination for governor in 1876, which he declined. In 1878 President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him Comptroller of the United States Treasury. In that capacity Porter oversaw the settlement of numerous complex financial claims and disputes, many of them dating back to the Civil War era, and gained further experience in federal administration.

While Porter was still serving in Washington, the Indiana Republican Party in 1880 nominated him for governor without his prior knowledge. By the time he learned of the nomination, campaign materials were already in production, and party leaders persuaded him to accept for the good of the party. He returned to Indiana and launched an energetic campaign. Known in Washington for his stylish dress, he adopted a more rustic appearance during the campaign, donning a straw hat and farmer’s attire to appeal to rural voters. His earlier support for workers during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 helped him secure the endorsement of the Knights of Labor, which mobilized a substantial labor vote on his behalf. Porter narrowly won the election by approximately 7,000 votes, becoming the first Republican governor of Indiana in twelve years. His victory, coupled with a strong Republican majority in the General Assembly, inaugurated a period of Republican dominance in state politics that lasted for a generation. Shortly after his inauguration, party leaders sought to put him forward as a candidate for the United States Senate, but he declined.

As governor from 1881 to 1885, Porter focused on industrial development, internal improvements, public health, and social reform. Recognizing the economic potential of reclaiming land, he ordered a survey of the Great Kankakee Swamp in northwestern Indiana—then one of the largest wetlands in the United States, covering nearly a tenth of Indiana and a large part of Illinois—and had plans drawn up for its drainage. The General Assembly approved the project, which ultimately reclaimed more than 800,000 acres (3,200 km²) of land for agriculture and settlement. To support such initiatives, Porter advocated the creation of the Department of Geology and Natural History, a precursor to the modern Indiana Department of Natural Resources. His administration also established the State Board of Health and enacted mining regulations that significantly improved working conditions for miners. Porter was an outspoken supporter of women’s rights; in 1881 he addressed the General Assembly to urge the extension of suffrage to women. Although the legislature took no immediate action, his advocacy revived a debate that had languished since Governor James D. Williams had made a similar appeal. Using his appointment powers, Porter named women to a variety of positions in state agencies, particularly on boards overseeing benevolent institutions such as hospitals and orphanages, and he worked to replace non-expert board members with qualified professionals.

Porter’s reform agenda, however, encountered growing resistance. After extended debate, the General Assembly proposed a constitutional amendment that combined women’s suffrage with statewide prohibition, intending to satisfy both temperance and suffrage advocates. The dual proposal proved politically unwieldy, and in the 1882 midterm elections the amendment was overwhelmingly defeated. At the same time, voters returned a large Democratic majority to the legislature. The second half of Porter’s term thus became one of the rare periods in Indiana history when the General Assembly was firmly controlled by a party hostile to the sitting governor. Taking advantage of the already limited constitutional powers of the executive, the Democratic majority moved swiftly to curtail the governor’s authority. One of its first acts was to revoke all of the governor’s appointment powers, transferring the selection of members of state boards—powers governors had exercised since the Civil War—to the legislature. Porter vetoed the measure, but the General Assembly promptly overrode him. Legislators also created a state board to manage the newly formed Indianapolis metropolitan police department, removing control from the Republican city government, and enacted other measures designed to weaken Republican influence. These actions reduced the governor’s office to its lowest ebb in Indiana’s history, and nearly fifty years would pass before subsequent governors gradually regained many of the lost powers. In this constrained environment, the only significant legislation Porter was able to secure was a relief bill following a devastating flood along the Wabash and Ohio rivers in 1883, then the worst flood in the state’s recorded history, which caused extensive damage to towns and cities in need of substantial assistance. Barred by the state constitution from serving consecutive terms, Porter left office in 1885 and returned to his law practice.

Porter’s personal life in these years was marked by both remarriage and bereavement. After the death of his first wife in 1875, he married Cornela Stone on January 5, 1881, shortly before assuming the governorship. This second marriage was brief; Cornela died in 1886. Although party leaders sought to nominate him again for governor in 1888, he declined. That same year he served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, where he delivered a speech placing in nomination his former law partner Benjamin Harrison for the presidency. After Harrison’s successful election, the new president appointed Porter as United States Minister to Italy in 1889. In that diplomatic post, Porter dealt with several sensitive issues, including negotiations with the Italian government following the 1891 lynching of eleven Italians in New Orleans after a highly publicized murder trial. The incident strained U.S.–Italian relations, and Porter’s role in the ensuing discussions formed a significant part of his diplomatic service.

Porter resigned as minister to Italy in 1892 and returned to Indianapolis. In his final years he largely withdrew from active politics and devoted himself to legal work and historical writing. He undertook a history of Indiana, drawing on his long experience in state and national affairs, but the manuscript was never completed and remains unpublished. After suffering a serious fall, his health declined steadily. Albert Gallatin Porter died in Indianapolis on May 3, 1897, and was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery. His career spanned local, state, and federal service—as city attorney, Supreme Court reporter, congressman, comptroller of the Treasury, governor, and diplomat—and his tenure as governor coincided with the onset of Indiana’s industrial era and a pivotal redefinition of executive power in the state.