Illinois State Society of Washington, DC

Illinois Hall of Fame: Ruth Hanna McCormick

By Mark Rhoads

Ruth Hanna McCormick was a suffragist and advocate for the rights of women and children. She actively campaigned for the vote for women from 1913 until the amendment was ratifed by the states in 1920. In 1913, Illinois women won the right to vote in municipal elections and for presidential electors and on bond issues. But oddly enough they did not win the right to vote for Congress, Governor, other statewide offices, or members of the General Assembly, until the 19th Amendment was ratified by three-quarters of the states in 1920. Illinois was one of the first three states to ratify the national vote for women amendment on June 10, 1919 and tied with the legisaltures of Michigan and Wisconsin on that day.

Ruth was not the the first woman to serve in Congress from Illinois. Winifred Mason-Huck was elected in a special 1923 election to succeed her father Rep. William Mason but Winifred only served a few months and did not win renomination in 1924. Ruth not only served a full term in the House but she was also the first woman of either party to win a statewide election in Illinois when she became an at-large Member of Congress as a Republican in 1928. She campaigned in 99 of the 102 Illinois counties.  There have been women representatives in Congress from Illinois in every decade since the 1920s.

The women pioneers from Illinois in the legislature included Lottie Holman O'Neill of Downers Grove who was first elected to the House in 1922. Florence Fifer Bohrer of Bloomington was the daughter of Gov. Joe Fifer and was the first woman elected to the state senate in 1924. But Lottie served longer than any other woman in a state legislature, 1923 to 1951 in the House with two years off and 1951 to 1963 in the Senate for a total of 38 years in legislative service. Lottie, Florence, Winifred, and Ruth were all Republicans.

Ruth Hanna McCormick came from two politically-powerful families and was owner and publisher of the Rockford Register-Republic and the Rockford Morning Star starting in 1930 during a time when she lived in Byron, Illinois in Ogle County.

By Mark Rhoads

Ruth Hanna McCormick was a suffragist and advocate for the rights of women and children. She actively campaigned for the vote for women from 1913 until the amendment was ratifed by the states in 1920. In 1913, Illinois women won the right to vote in municipal elections and for presidential electors and on bond issues. But oddly enough they did not win the right to vote for Congress, Governor, other statewide offices, or members of the General Assembly, until the 19th Amendment was ratified by three-quarters of the states in 1920. Illinois was one of the first three states to ratify the national vote for women amendment on June 10, 1919 and tied with the legisaltures of Michigan and Wisconsin on that day.

Ruth was not the the first woman to serve in Congress from Illinois. Winifred Mason-Huck was elected in a special 1923 election to succeed her father Rep. William Mason but Winifred only served a few months and did not win renomination in 1924. Ruth not only served a full term in the House but she was also the first woman of either party to win a statewide election in Illinois when she became an at-large Member of Congress as a Republican in 1928. She campaigned in 99 of the 102 Illinois counties.  There have been women representatives in Congress from Illinois in every decade since the 1920s.

The women pioneers from Illinois in the legislature included Lottie Holman O'Neill of Downers Grove who was first elected to the House in 1922. Florence Fifer Bohrer of Bloomington was the daughter of Gov. Joe Fifer and was the first woman elected to the state senate in 1924. But Lottie served longer than any other woman in a state legislature, 1923 to 1951 in the House with two years off and 1951 to 1963 in the Senate for a total of 38 years in legislative service. Lottie, Florence, Winifred, and Ruth were all Republicans.

Ruth Hanna McCormick came from two politically-powerful families and was owner and publisher of the Rockford Register-Republic and the Rockford Morning Star starting in 1930 during a time when she lived in Byron, Illinois in Ogle County.

Illinois Hall of Fame: Bob Michel

By Mark Rhoads

Former Congressman Bob Michel (R-Peoria), served as Minority Leader of the U.S. House and Michel was also president of the Illinois State Society of Washington, DC from 1966 to 1967.

Bob Michel was born in Peoria on March 2, 1923 and attended Peoria public schools.  He served as a combat infantryman with the 39th Infantry Regiment in World War II from 1943 to 1945.  Michel saw service in England, France, Belgium, and Germany.  He was wounded by German machine gun fire and was awarded the Purple Heart, two Bronze Stars, and four battle stars.

Michel fought in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest on the German-Belgian border.  The bitter battle in severe winter weather raged from Dec. 16, 1944 to Jan. 25, 1945 and engaged more than 1,155,000 British, American, and German troops.  It was the largest single battle for 600,000 American soldiers since the combined Union and Confederate armies faced each other in 1863 at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania during the Civil War. He was one of the veterans who returned in December 2004 for the 60th Anniversary Commemoration of that battle.

Bob Michel graduated from Bradley University in 1948.  In 1956 he ran for a seat in Congress previously held by his former boss, Rep. Harold Velde.  He served in the House for the next 38 years until his retirement in 1995.  As the House Minority Whip 1979-1985 and the House Minority Leader from 1985 to 1995, he worked closely with Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton on their legislative agendas.  In late 1994, the Illinois State Society planted a tree in honor of Bob Michel at the foot of Capitol Hill.  The tree had to be planted closer to the Senate side on Constitution Avenue due to the lack of sites on the House site.  In 2006, Bob Michel was working as a government affairs consultant for Hogan and Hartson in Washington, DC.

Bob Michel graduated from Bradley University in 1948.  In 1956 he ran for a seat in Congress previously held by his former boss, Rep. Harold Velde.  He served in the House for the next 38 years until his retirement in 1995.  As the House Minority Whip 1979-1985 and the House Minority Leader from 1985 to 1995, he worked closely with Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton on their legislative agendas.  In late 1994, the Illinois State Society planted a tree in honor of Bob Michel at the foot of Capitol Hill.  The tree had to be planted closer to the Senate side on Constitution Avenue due to the lack of sites on the House site.  In 2006, Bob Michel was working as a government affairs consultant for Hogan and Hartson in Washington, DC.

Illinois Hall of Fame: "Uncle Joe" Cannon

By Mark Rhoads

"Teddy Roosevelt has no more use for the Constitution than a tomcat has for a marriage license."  - Uncle Joe Cannon.

Joseph Gurney Cannon (R-Danville) represented Vermilion, Coles, Douglas, and surrounding east central Illinois counties in Congress for a total of forty-six of the fifty years between 1873 and 1923. He was out of office only four years after two defeats in 1890 and again in 1912.  He was the first of three members of Congress from Illinois who were elected to the office of Speaker of the House.  Cannon served eight years as Speaker from March 1903 to 1911. The other two speakers from Illinois were Henry T. Rainey (D-Carrollton) from 1933 to 1934 and J. Dennis Hastert (R-Yorkville) from 1999 to the present time.

Joe Cannon was born in Guilford County, North Carolina on May 7, 1836 and moved with his parents to Bloomingdale, Indiana in 1840. He studied law at the Cincinnati Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1858 in Terre Haute, Indiana.  In 1858 Cannon moved to Tuscola, Illinois in Douglas County where he lived in a modest house at the corner of Parke and Pembrooke Streets.  It was there in 1862 that he married Mary P. Reed.  Joe and his brother William Cannon founded the Second National Bank of Tuscola.  He became a supporter of Abraham Lincoln in his 1858 race for the U.S. Senate against Sen. Stephen A. Douglas (D-Jacksonville).

Cannon became State’s attorney Douglas and Coles Counties from March 1861 to December 1868 and was first elected as a Republican to Congress in 1873.  He moved to Danville in 1878.  He served at different times as chairman Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department, and as chair of the Committee on Appropriations.  He also served as Chairman of the Committee on Rules before he was elected Speaker in 1903.  He was nominated for president as an Illinois favorite son at the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1908 and received 58 votes.  But William Howard Taft was the choice of that convention.

Cannon was controversial as Speaker for his autocratic ways and he kept up a steady feud with President Teddy Roosevelt while he was Speaker even though both were Republicans.  Cannon had the same powers as previous speakers to appoint committees and control the flow of legislation.  But he used those powers to the maximum advantage of the majority of stand pat or Old Guard Republicans.  He both chaired and appointed all the members of the Rules Committee.  Cannon was accused by progressives of that era of abusing the powers of his office to stop their legislation and the Teddy Roosevelt agenda.  This was one of several times that the rules of the House and the powers of the Speaker would be widely debated.

Cannon for his part saw himself as a protector of the Constitution and the perogatives of the legislative branch as a check on the power of the presidency.  Both Cannon and Roosevelt viewed the other as power hungry.  Both may have been right.  Eventually in 1910 a combination of younger Republican members and Democrats staged a rebellion against the rules and procedures of the House as administered by Cannon.  The rebels did not have the votes to remove Cannon as Speaker but they did curtail some of his autocratic powers.  They used a procedure to change the rules of the House so that the Speaker could not sit on the Rules Committee and all ten members, six from the majority and four from the minority, would be elected by all the members of the House from that time on.  More importantly, the reforms meant that the Rules Committee would elect its own Chairman.

Joe Cannon declined renomination for Congress in 1922 and retired from public life at age 86.  He died in Danville, on Nov. 12, 1926 at the age of 90 and is buried in Spring Hill Cemetery in Danville.  Thirty-six years after his death, the original House Office Building across the street from the U.S. Capitol was named in honor of Joe Cannon in 1962.  The other two House office buildings were named for Congressman Nicholas Longworth (R-Ohio) who served as Speaker from 1925 to 1930 and for Congressman Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) who served as Speaker for 18 years between 1940 and 1961.

By Mark Rhoads

"Teddy Roosevelt has no more use for the Constitution than a tomcat has for a marriage license."  - Uncle Joe Cannon.

Joseph Gurney Cannon (R-Danville) represented Vermilion, Coles, Douglas, and surrounding east central Illinois counties in Congress for a total of forty-six of the fifty years between 1873 and 1923. He was out of office only four years after two defeats in 1890 and again in 1912.  He was the first of three members of Congress from Illinois who were elected to the office of Speaker of the House.  Cannon served eight years as Speaker from March 1903 to 1911. The other two speakers from Illinois were Henry T. Rainey (D-Carrollton) from 1933 to 1934 and J. Dennis Hastert (R-Yorkville) from 1999 to the present time.

Joe Cannon was born in Guilford County, North Carolina on May 7, 1836 and moved with his parents to Bloomingdale, Indiana in 1840. He studied law at the Cincinnati Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1858 in Terre Haute, Indiana.  In 1858 Cannon moved to Tuscola, Illinois in Douglas County where he lived in a modest house at the corner of Parke and Pembrooke Streets.  It was there in 1862 that he married Mary P. Reed.  Joe and his brother William Cannon founded the Second National Bank of Tuscola.  He became a supporter of Abraham Lincoln in his 1858 race for the U.S. Senate against Sen. Stephen A. Douglas (D-Jacksonville).

Cannon became State’s attorney Douglas and Coles Counties from March 1861 to December 1868 and was first elected as a Republican to Congress in 1873.  He moved to Danville in 1878.  He served at different times as chairman Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department, and as chair of the Committee on Appropriations.  He also served as Chairman of the Committee on Rules before he was elected Speaker in 1903.  He was nominated for president as an Illinois favorite son at the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1908 and received 58 votes.  But William Howard Taft was the choice of that convention.

Cannon was controversial as Speaker for his autocratic ways and he kept up a steady feud with President Teddy Roosevelt while he was Speaker even though both were Republicans.  Cannon had the same powers as previous speakers to appoint committees and control the flow of legislation.  But he used those powers to the maximum advantage of the majority of stand pat or Old Guard Republicans.  He both chaired and appointed all the members of the Rules Committee.  Cannon was accused by progressives of that era of abusing the powers of his office to stop their legislation and the Teddy Roosevelt agenda.  This was one of several times that the rules of the House and the powers of the Speaker would be widely debated.

Cannon for his part saw himself as a protector of the Constitution and the perogatives of the legislative branch as a check on the power of the presidency.  Both Cannon and Roosevelt viewed the other as power hungry.  Both may have been right.  Eventually in 1910 a combination of younger Republican members and Democrats staged a rebellion against the rules and procedures of the House as administered by Cannon.  The rebels did not have the votes to remove Cannon as Speaker but they did curtail some of his autocratic powers.  They used a procedure to change the rules of the House so that the Speaker could not sit on the Rules Committee and all ten members, six from the majority and four from the minority, would be elected by all the members of the House from that time on.  More importantly, the reforms meant that the Rules Committee would elect its own Chairman.

Joe Cannon declined renomination for Congress in 1922 and retired from public life at age 86.  He died in Danville, on Nov. 12, 1926 at the age of 90 and is buried in Spring Hill Cemetery in Danville.  Thirty-six years after his death, the original House Office Building across the street from the U.S. Capitol was named in honor of Joe Cannon in 1962.  The other two House office buildings were named for Congressman Nicholas Longworth (R-Ohio) who served as Speaker from 1925 to 1930 and for Congressman Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) who served as Speaker for 18 years between 1940 and 1961.

Hall of Fame: Father Daniel Coughlin

By Mark Rhoads

There is one officer of the U.S. House of Representatives who is in the unique position of not having to worry too much about whether Republicans or Democrats win a majority of seats in November.  He has already been told by leaders of both parties that they will renominate him for his current job, Chaplain of the House.  He is Father Daniel P. Coughlin, a Chicago native, who formerly served as Vicar of Priests in Cook County as the special liaison for Cardinal George to the priests and visa versa.  At the annual meeting of the Illinois State Society of Washington, DC in June 2006, he was also drafted as official Chaplain of the Society by a vote of the members.

Father Coughlin was born in the Wrigleyville neighborhood of Chicago in 1934 and graduated from St. Mary of the Lake University in Mundelein.  He worked as an associate pastor of St. Raymond Parish in Mount Prospect and at Holy Name Cathedral.  He received an advanced degree in pastoral studies at Loyola University, worked as the first Director of the Office of Divine Worship and from 1985 to 1990 he was pastor of St. Francis Xavier Parish in La Grange.  He then returned to Mundelein to be Director for the Cardinal Stritch Retreat House.  He has also spent time in Rome and Calcutta. 

On March 23, 2000, he was sworn in as Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives replacing Rev. James Ford.  Rev. Ford was the first Lutheran pastor in the history of the House and Father Coughlin is the first Roman Catholic clergyman ever to hold that post since 1776.

On Saturday, June 17, 2006, Father Coughlin took members of the Illinois State Society of Washington, DC on a tour of the U.S. Capitol that was supposed to last only one hour.  But like the passengers and crew of the Minnow, it turned out to be a three-hour tour due to Coughlin's enthusiasm for the Capitol building and the group's response.  The group saw wall to wall Illinois memories in Statuary Hall including the two official statues of Illinois of Gen. and Senator James Shields and Northwestern University Dean of Women, suffragist and temperance crusader Frances Willard. 

Two Speakers of the House from Illinois prior to Dennis Hastert were Uncle Joe Cannon from Danville and Henry Rainey from Carollton, the former seen in a bust and the latter in a portrait on the wall.  Two Illinois vice presidents mentioned in my last post, Charles Dawes and Adlai Stevenson both have busts in a hallway behind the Senate chamber.

The current Speaker's office looks out on the mall directly down on a statue of President and Gen. U.S. Grant from Galena, Illinois riding a horse.  The Lincoln statues, busts, and paintings at the capitol and all over Washington are too numerous to count. 

Idaho has a statue of Sen. William Borah but he was born and raised in Illinois.  Nebraska has a statue of William Jennings Bryan but he too was born in Salem, Illinois, raised there, and attended the Illinois College of Law.  The location of Abe Lincoln's desk when he was a member of the House is carefully preserved in the old House Chamber, now part of the Statuary Hall.

Father Coughlin says he has been told that the new underground visitor's center is scheduled to open in Spring 2007.  We'll see.  But from the East Front windows, members of the Illinois State Society could still see the pin oak tree from Peoria that was planted in 1969 by society members to honor Sen. Everett M. Dirksen.  So far, it has survived the damage that bulldozers have done to other trees near the visitor's center. 

At least two of the artifacts honoring Illinois leaders in the US Capitol are replicas.  There is a statue of Gen. Shields and a painting of Speaker Rainey also on display in the state capitol building in Springfield.   

Two blocks due north of the Capitol Rotunda Father Coughlin points out Washington, DC's version of Union Station.  The train station was designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham and the Columbia Fountain in front was designed by sculptor Lorado Taft from Peoria. 

Finally, the landscape plan for the grounds of the U.S. Capitol was a design by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.  Olmsted also designed the land plan for the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, the campus of the University of Chicago, the street plan for Riverside, Illinois (blame him if you get lost there), Central Park in New York and the campus of Stanford University in California. 

So if you want to feel at home with great Illinois leaders and artists of the past, then come to Washington, DC.

By Mark Rhoads

There is one officer of the U.S. House of Representatives who is in the unique position of not having to worry too much about whether Republicans or Democrats win a majority of seats in November.  He has already been told by leaders of both parties that they will renominate him for his current job, Chaplain of the House.  He is Father Daniel P. Coughlin, a Chicago native, who formerly served as Vicar of Priests in Cook County as the special liaison for Cardinal George to the priests and visa versa.  At the annual meeting of the Illinois State Society of Washington, DC in June 2006, he was also drafted as official Chaplain of the Society by a vote of the members.

Father Coughlin was born in the Wrigleyville neighborhood of Chicago in 1934 and graduated from St. Mary of the Lake University in Mundelein.  He worked as an associate pastor of St. Raymond Parish in Mount Prospect and at Holy Name Cathedral.  He received an advanced degree in pastoral studies at Loyola University, worked as the first Director of the Office of Divine Worship and from 1985 to 1990 he was pastor of St. Francis Xavier Parish in La Grange.  He then returned to Mundelein to be Director for the Cardinal Stritch Retreat House.  He has also spent time in Rome and Calcutta. 

On March 23, 2000, he was sworn in as Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives replacing Rev. James Ford.  Rev. Ford was the first Lutheran pastor in the history of the House and Father Coughlin is the first Roman Catholic clergyman ever to hold that post since 1776.

On Saturday, June 17, 2006, Father Coughlin took members of the Illinois State Society of Washington, DC on a tour of the U.S. Capitol that was supposed to last only one hour.  But like the passengers and crew of the Minnow, it turned out to be a three-hour tour due to Coughlin's enthusiasm for the Capitol building and the group's response.  The group saw wall to wall Illinois memories in Statuary Hall including the two official statues of Illinois of Gen. and Senator James Shields and Northwestern University Dean of Women, suffragist and temperance crusader Frances Willard. 

Two Speakers of the House from Illinois prior to Dennis Hastert were Uncle Joe Cannon from Danville and Henry Rainey from Carollton, the former seen in a bust and the latter in a portrait on the wall.  Two Illinois vice presidents mentioned in my last post, Charles Dawes and Adlai Stevenson both have busts in a hallway behind the Senate chamber.

The current Speaker's office looks out on the mall directly down on a statue of President and Gen. U.S. Grant from Galena, Illinois riding a horse.  The Lincoln statues, busts, and paintings at the capitol and all over Washington are too numerous to count. 

Idaho has a statue of Sen. William Borah but he was born and raised in Illinois.  Nebraska has a statue of William Jennings Bryan but he too was born in Salem, Illinois, raised there, and attended the Illinois College of Law.  The location of Abe Lincoln's desk when he was a member of the House is carefully preserved in the old House Chamber, now part of the Statuary Hall.

Father Coughlin says he has been told that the new underground visitor's center is scheduled to open in Spring 2007.  We'll see.  But from the East Front windows, members of the Illinois State Society could still see the pin oak tree from Peoria that was planted in 1969 by society members to honor Sen. Everett M. Dirksen.  So far, it has survived the damage that bulldozers have done to other trees near the visitor's center. 

At least two of the artifacts honoring Illinois leaders in the US Capitol are replicas.  There is a statue of Gen. Shields and a painting of Speaker Rainey also on display in the state capitol building in Springfield.   

Two blocks due north of the Capitol Rotunda Father Coughlin points out Washington, DC's version of Union Station.  The train station was designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham and the Columbia Fountain in front was designed by sculptor Lorado Taft from Peoria. 

Finally, the landscape plan for the grounds of the U.S. Capitol was a design by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.  Olmsted also designed the land plan for the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, the campus of the University of Chicago, the street plan for Riverside, Illinois (blame him if you get lost there), Central Park in New York and the campus of Stanford University in California. 

So if you want to feel at home with great Illinois leaders and artists of the past, then come to Washington, DC.