Today In Wyoming's History: January 6, 1919. Robert D. Carey takes office as Governor.

This starts off as a simple one line entry on our companion blog for this day (which will inevitably be updated following the publishing of this item.  That item is:

Today In Wyoming's History: January 6: 1919 

1919  Robert D. Carey takes office as governor.

This even was a big local event, of course, but will be very much overshadowed in history by another event taking place the same day which also will appear here momentarily and which will also appear on Today In Wyoming's History, that being the death of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Carey makes an interesting contrast to Roosevelt in some ways and parallels him in others.  He was born in Cheyenne in 1878, the son of legendary prior Governor Joseph M. Carey.  His father had been a prominent Republican businessman, rancher, lawyer and politician.  That Carey had been close to Theodore Roosevelt and had followed him into the Progressive Party when the GOP split.  Joseph Carey had also been a Democrat at one point due to a split in the GOP in Wyoming.

His son was Yale educated and came back to Wyoming where he became a businessman and rancher.  By World War One he was already a prominent figure in the Republican Party, and had like his father been in the Progressive Party for a time as well.  He's served on various state board and commissions, and he was by this time the President of the still powerful Wyoming Stockgrowers Association (which he would be until 1921).  Governor Frank Houx made the savvy move offering Carey command of the Wyoming National Guard, which Carey at first declined.  By the time he accepted it the position was filled and the 39 year old Carey did not serve in World War One.

When he ran for office in 1918, that fact was used against him, and it's no wonder.  The United States, while it had its share of objectors to the war, had leaped into the Great War with earnest.  Amazingly, Carey won the race none the less, which says something about the spirit of the time, the state's view on Houx, or its view on Carey, or all of those.  I don't really know, but 1918 was a banner year nationally for the reunited Republican Party which was resurgent.  So Carey became the Governor of Wyoming on this day.

Carey served only one term as Governor.  As one of the many forgotten aspects of the post war world, Wyoming's economy was very badly hit by the recession/depression that followed the end of World War One, with the prices of every single commodity in Wyoming falling.  While Carey was not responsible for this by any means, that fact attached to his administration and he was amazingly not re-nominated for the Governorship.  Indeed, William B. Ross, a progressive Democrat, took the Governor's office that year.

Carey returned to private life but came back into politics and was elected as U.S. Senator for Wyoming in November 1929.  While he remained personally popular, history repeated itself for him in that office as the Great Depression had commenced and he went down in defeat in the 1936 election when Democrats swept national office.  Carey died the following year at age 58.

Countdown on the Great War, November 6, 1918. Americans switch horses in the middle of the stream, Wyomingites vote to go dry, French and Americans take Sedan, the Kaiser urged to go.

1.  It happened the day prior, November 5, 1918, but on this day the news of the Republican landslide that swept the nation hit the press, including the Wyoming press, where GOP candidates swept the field.

The news was surprising in some ways.  Wilson had done nationally, as had the Democrats, in recent elections, following the Republican civil war that had caused the party to split.  But something about the war changed everything, as wars do, and even though Americans had solidly backed the war effort, or at least most Americans had, going into the peace they were rejecting the President and his party.

Even Robert Carey Jr. was benefiting from the Republican rise. Carey had been the subject of a lot of reporting in the Fall as Governor Houx had offered him the command of the Wyoming National Guard and he'd declined, and then belatedly accepted after that position had been filled (as it was, the Wyoming National Guard, like many Guard units, didn't not go to Europe as a single unit anyhow).  In an era in which people publicly shamed "shirkers" that Carey was able to politically survive this decision is really remarkable.  Indeed, as Carey was only forty years old in 1918, his declination is in fact somewhat inexcusable.  No matter, Houx went down in the election.

And this would matter in the upcoming effort to secure a peace. Wilson had outlined his vision in his Fourteen Points.  Would a GOP Congress support it?  As would be seen, it wouldn't.

And that wasn't the only big election news.

Wyomingites also voted to go dry, voting two to one in favor of the Constitutional amendment to bring in Prohibition.

2.  The leader of the Reichstag urged Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate, in favor of a new monarch, seeing the only alternative to be the success of a socialist revolution.

3.  The American and French armies took Sedan and the surrounding territory.  The French army too Rethel and Vervins. The Canadian army entered Belgium.  Foch assigns the American Army to advance into Lorraine.

4.  The Polish Soviet of Delegates, obviously styling themselves after the Soviets of the USSR, established the Provisional People's Government with Ignacy Daszynski as Prime Minister. As a body, it would exist only an additional week until it turned over its duties to Jozef Pilsudski, famous Polish revolutionary leader, who was newly freed from German imprisonment.  On the same day, polish peasants led by Communist Tomasz Dabal took control of Tarnobrzeg Galicia and proclaimed it an independent republic.

5. The Dutch cargo ship Bernisse struck a mine and sank.

6. The Kiel rebellion begins to spread wildly to various German cities. 

Countdown on the Great War, November 5, 1918. Heroism in the U.S. Army, Poland starts to form, German submarines hit again.

African American infantryman marching near Verdun, November 5, 1918.

1. The Allies inform Germany that negotiations may begin on the basis of President Wilson's Fourteen Points but that contact must be established through Marshall Foch.

2. Cpt. Marcellus H. Chiles engages in actions for which he would be awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor.  His citation reads:

When his battalion, of which he had just taken command, was halted by machinegun fire from the front and left flank, he picked up the rifle of a dead soldier and, calling on his men to follow led the advance across a stream, waist deep, in the face of the machinegun fire. Upon reaching the opposite bank this gallant officer was seriously wounded in the abdomen by a sniper, but before permitting himself to be evacuated he made complete arrangements for turning over his command to the next senior officer, and under the inspiration of his fearless leadership his battalion reached its objective. Capt. Chiles died shortly after reaching the hospital.

 Chiles entered the service from Denver Colorado.

 

Cpt. Chiles.

3.  The BEF cleared the Mormal Forest and the Canadians and British crossed the Grand Hornelle.

4.  The French take Chateau Porcien.

6. The Germans commence a retreat from the Meuse to Conde but order that the American Army is to be prevented from advancing north of Verdun.

7.  Enlisted sailors kill three officers and the captain of the battleship Koenig in the Baltic when they try to keep the sailors from hoisting a red flag as the sailors rebellion becomes increasing a radical Socialist one.  All German ships remaining in Kiel have the red flag hoisted on them on this day.

8.  The first Polish Soviet of Delegates meets to discuss establishing a Polish state. 

9.  The Lake Harris, an American armed merchant ship, was beached off of Lands End after a fire fight with a German submarine.  On the same day the Italian sailing ship Stavnos was sunk by the UC-74.

10.  Republicans win both houses of Congress by slim margins.  Due to the lack of instant reporting, however, you won't see any newspapers of today's date reporting that, as that would have to wait until the next day.

I became so preoccupied with the 2018 Primary Election that I neglected to say much about the 1918 one. . .

which of course took place on the same Tuesday on the calendar.

So what was going on?

Well, the following Casper newspaper from 1918 gives us a bit of a clue:

The Casper Daily Tribune for August 21, 1918, which also noted the results of the prior day's primary election.

 

I ran this on one of the 100 Days threads, but it's a report of the election results and give us a look at what was going on.

 

The sitting governor was Democrat Frank Houx.  Houx had been elected to Secretary of State, not Governor, but took over when Democrat John B. Kendrick was elected to the Senate on a rare wave of Democratic good fortune in the state.  Kendrick was the Governor at the time, so he had to resign, and Houx then stepped in, as per the Wyoming constitution.

Houx was an unusual personality.  He had studied law but had not completed his studies, taking up business pursuits instead.  He was Missouri born and his father had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War.  Indeed, Houx was related to General Sterling Price.  He'd come west to take up ranching in Montana and was headquartered out of Cody.

Houx was dedicated to his job but very much fit into the Democratic mold of the time.  He was very much for Wilson's efforts in the war, as almost everyone was during the war, and a strong backer of the Prohibition movement.  He was running for Governor for the first time.

Against him was Robert D. Carey, the Wyoming born son of the popular if sometimes controversial Joseph M. Carey.  Robert was well educated and was a rancher and banker in Cheyenne.

The Casper paper was reporting that Houx had received a serious challenge from "Osborne", whom I think was former Democratic Governor John E. Osborne.  Osborne had recently resigned from a position in the Wilson administration and had returned to Wyoming and apparently took a run at the Governor's office again.