Franklin: "Chapter II. Governors Ritner and Porter," by Alexander K. McClure, 1905
Summary: McClure describes the very different backgrounds, personalities, and political careers of two antebellum governors, Ritner and Porter. Ritner was most noted for his educational reforms and Porter was remembered for his successful efforts to prevent Pennsylvania from repudiating its debt payments.
IT HAS been my good fortune to know more or less intimately every Governor of Pennsylvania from Governor Ritner to the present time, with the single exception of Governor Shunk, whom I met only once in a casual way. Of course, I did not know Governor Ritner while he was the chief magistrate of the State, as he entered his office when I was seven years of age, nor did I know Governor Porter personally until after his retirement, but both of them lived to a ripe old age, and both were recognized as important political factors during our Civil War.
These two men furnish more interesting chapters to the early annals of the State than have been written by any of their contemporaries, and neither of them is justly estimated by the people of to-day. They were direct competitors for the gubernatorial chair in the most absorbing and desperate political contest ever known in Pennsylvania, and their administrations cover crucial periods in the establishment of our school system and in the maintenance of State credit.
In those days the people had little opportunity to make the personal acquaintance of their prominent men. Almost every citizen of the State can personally see the Governor now some time during his term with little inconvenience, but in those days, with no means of transportation but the mud wagon, state candidates made no canvass and met but a very small proportion of the people whose votes they sought, and the rural population very rarely reached the centers where the acquaintance of public men could be made. There was thus some measure of safety in assailing important candidates even to the high-water mark of defamation, and most of the people who opposed Ritner in his various contests believed him to be an ignorant Dutchman, incapable of speaking the English language with anything approaching propriety, and stupid to a degree beneath mediocrity, and most of those who opposed Porter believed him to be entirely destitute of moral attributes and utterly unfitted for responsible public trust.
Many stories were published giving circumstantial illustrations of the ignorance of Ritner. One I recall tells of a prominent citizen of Centre County who visited him in the executive office to obtain an appointment as prothonotary, as the Governor then appointed all the county officers connected with the courts. Governor Ritner was reported as saying that he was taking the counties up alphabetically and that whenever he came to the S's he would make the appointments for Centre. Porter was not charged with ignorance, as he represented a family of scholarly distinction in the State, but there was hardly a crime in the decalogue, excepting murder, with which he was not distinctly charged, and even murder was remotely intimated.
I had an intimate acquaintance with Ritner and Porter for twenty-five years before their deaths, and they were among the most interesting, entertaining and instructive of men. Ritner had been born in Berks County in 1780, and was brought up on his father's farm. He had little opportunity for educa-tion, but he was a very close student and had a strong partiality for German literature. He learned to speak the English language as near perfectly as possible for one who had not the advantage of a collegiate education, but the German accent was plainly visible. His father removed from Berks County to Cumberland, near Newville, at an early age, where he married, and later removed with his wife's family to Washington County, where he became farmer for his wife's uncle, who was an excellent German scholar and possessed a fine German library. The prospective Governor devoted all his leisure hours to the study of the library of his uncle, and very soon became a man of affairs.
In 1820 he was elected to the house of representatives and was re-elected for five consecutive years, making a service of six years in the body, during two of which he was speaker of the house. The fact that he had been so long chosen to the house by one of the most intelligent counties of the western part of the State and had been twice called to the speakership should have been sufficient answer to all the scandals about his ignorance; and when it is remembered that soon after his retirement from the Legislature in 1829 he was unanimously nominated as the Anti-Masonic or opposition candidate to Governor, Wolf, solely because he was regarded as the ablest man to lead in such a battle, it must seem unaccountable to intelligent readers of the present age that Ritner was heralded all over the State as an utter ignoramus. He was not a political manipulator and his nomination for Governor was made entirely without any effort of his own.
The Anti-Masonic party was then in its infancy, and Ritner was defeated by about 16,000 majority. He was renominated against Wolf for the same office in 1832 and was again defeated by about 3,000 majority. In 1835 he was again unanimously nominated and was elected by a plurality of nearly 30,000, although he was in a minority of 10,000 on the whole vote. The Democrats had a bolt on the nomination of Governor Wolf for the third term, chiefly because of Wolf's approval of the free school law, and Henry A. Muhlenberg of Berks was nominated as an independent Democratic candidate and polled 40,000 votes to Wolf's 65,000. In 1838 he was given the fourth consecutive nomination for Governor, when the Democrats united on Porter and defeated him by about 5,000 majority.
Ritner had able men about him while Governor of the State. Thomas H. Burrowes, who afterward became conspicuous as one of the great educational leaders of the State, was his secretary of the commonwealth, and Thaddeus Stevens was canal commissioner. Stevens was an able, sagacious and rather desperate political leader. I well remember the general judgment of his political friends when he afterward became prominent in politics as a Whig and Republican. They regarded him as a matchless leader of a minority opposition, but a dangerous leader of a majority. Ritner was thoroughly honest and intelligent, but of a confiding nature, and certainly permitted Stevens to shape some of the most objectionable features of his administration, although Ritner always denied it and I am sure died in the belief that Stevens had never dictated any important feature of his administration policy. I remember meeting Ritner when we were both delegates to a Republican State convention, of which Stevens was also a member, and he and Stevens were not in accord on some important question that was submitted. In a pleasant chat with Ritner after the adjournment he spoke with some earnestness about Stevens' great ability, but added with hiasis: "He's a dangerous leader; and useful as he was I never permitted him to control my administration when I was governor."
On the absorbing issue of that time Ritner, Stevens and Burrowes were in hearty accord. The new free school law had just been passed, but was not yet in practical operation, and it was so hindered in some localities that its enforcement seemed to be next to an impossibility. Ritner took the boldest stand in favor of perfecting and executing the free school law, and as it was Stevens' own measure the Governor had very hearty support from his canal commissioner. Stevens certainly controlled the Legislature and the Governor against all reason to involve the State in the construction of a railroad in Adams County that became one of the important factors in the defeat of Ritner. A large amount of money was expended on it, but it was abandoned after the defeat of Ritner and never was utilized until within the last few years, when it was found to be useful in perfecting a line to Gettysburg.
Ritner's administration was clean and free from any corrupt profligacy for individual benefit, but under the leadership of Stevens and Burrowes, who was chairman of the Anti-Masonic State committee, every public and private measure was shaped to serve political ends, and often without much regard to the interests of the State. The one distinctly creditable feature of the Ritner administration was the courage and sagacity exhibited in fighting the battle for free schools, and, had the administration at that time been opposed to the system, or even indifferent to its success, its defeat would have been overwhelming.
One of the most notable of state papers which have come from the Governors of Pennsylvania was Ritner's message of 1836, in which he discussed the slavery question. There was then no slavery issue to be solved in the territories, and the only agitation on the subject was made by the anti-slavery societies, which demanded the abolition of the institution. In this message Ritner arraigned slavery fiercely, and with such exceptional force that the credit of the paper was generally awarded to Stevens. It attracted so much attention that the Quaker poet Whittier published one of his best anti-slavery poems congratulating the Pennsylvania executive. It began:
I have referred in the previous chapter to the unexampled bitterness and defamation exhibited in Ritner's contest against Porter for re-election in 1838. The new Constitution, or what was commonly called "the reform Constitution," was adopted at the same election. It made sweeping changes in the fundamental law, reducing the judges from a life tenure to a term of years, and taking from the Governor the appointment of all the important county officers and justices of the peace. The returns were slow in coming in those days, but in the course of two or three weeks it was known that Ritner was defeated by Porter by some 5,000 majority. Mr. Burrowes, of the Ritner cabinet and chairman of the Anti-Masonic committee, issued an address stating that a majority of 5,000 had been returned against Ritner, but charging all manner of political frauds and declaring that there must be careful examination into them before the verdict could be accepted. After stating that it was the duty of all to bow to the supremacy of the people, he added: "But, fellow-citizens, until this investigation shall be fully made and fairly determined, let us treat the election of the 9th inst. as if we had not been defeated, and in that attitude abide the result."
This was simply playing desperate and bungling politics. It was an invitation to revolution, and naturally aroused the Democrats to take such measures as would protect their majority in the State and Legislature. The bloodless Buckshot War was the natural result, and in the end the verdict of the State was accepted and the fairly-won supremacy of Porter and his party was acknowledged.
In 1839 Ritner retired to a farm in Cumberland County, where he lived a farmer's life in very comfortable circumstances for thirty-one years, and there was no more highly respected citizen of the county. He was a frequent visitor to Chambersburg, where some of his children lived, and always called upon me there to talk over the political situation. His interest in politics was unabated until the last. He was a frequent delegate to both county and State conventions, and I met him in the first Republican national convention in 1856, where he served as a delegate. He was a man of very general intelligence, unusually familiar with all public questions, and was a delightful conversationalist. His rugged honesty and kind neighborly qualities made him beloved by all who knew him, and even when he had reached the age of fourscore and ten his face would brighten as he spoke of the progress of our common schools.
He always attended the teachers' institutes in his own county and was generally presiding officer, and he journeyed to Erie County in 1861 when eighty-three years of age to inaugurate the first State normal school of that section at Edinboro. He always pointed with pride to the fact that when he became Governor of the State the appropriation to free schools was but $75,000 annually, and that it had been increased to $400,000, while the common schools had increased from 762 with seventeen academies and no female seminaries to 5,000 common schools, 38 academies and seven female seminaries in permanent operation. Pennsylvania has had many more brilliant Governors than Ritner, but it has never had one of more sterling integrity, and his memory should ever be gratefully cherished as the man who laid the broad foundations for our present most beneficent system of free education. On October 16, 1869, he passed across the dark river, after having braved the storms of ninety winters.
David R. Porter was unlike Ritner in mental and physical organization. Ritner was short, stout and dumpy, while Porter was a man of superb physical proportions, and was a born aggressive leader, while Ritner gave more heed to the men around him. Porter was a man of fair education, and instead of entering college when he was fitted to do so he preferred to go into the surveyor general's office with his father as a clerk with Francis R. Shunk, of the same neighborhood, who later became Governor. He was a man of broad intelligence, aggressive in his ideas, a most sagacious politician, and in every emergency he was his own arbiter of his line of action. When he left the surveyor general's office he located in Huntingdon County, where he was prothonotary and clerk of all the courts for a number of years. His wife aided him in the labors of his office, and the records of deeds and mortgages in that county give many evidences of the legible handwriting and careful work of Mrs. Porter.
He was elected to the house in 1819 and in 1836 was chosen to the senate. There he made himself felt with such hiasis as a leader that Democratic sentiment rapidly gravitated toward him as a candidate to make the desperate battle against Ritner in 1838. The unex-ampled desperation of the campaign and the equally desperate efforts made to prevent him reaching the office after his election I have already portrayed. He was re-elected in 1841 over John Banks, his Whig competitor, and by more than double the majority he received three years before. His term as Governor was comparatively uneventful, with the single exception of the desperate effort made during his first term to stamp the ineffaceable stain of repudiation on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The State debt had grown to enormous proportions by the construction of our public improvements, there was universal prostration in commerce, business and trade, and demagogues were plenty to tell the people that they could not and therefore should not attempt to pay the interest on the debt.
The people of to-day can hardly understand how a great State like Pennsylvania, with 2,000,000 of people, could think of repudiating the interest on a debt of less than $40,000,000, but there is no doubt that repudiation would have run riot throughout the State and triumphed in the Legislature but for the heroic stand taken by Governor Porter. He had to resort to extraordinary and more than doubtful constitutional measures to save the credit of the State, but he felt that anything was preferable to repudiation, and it is safe to say that that great act, defying the tempest of popular passion, rescued our great Commonwealth from the terrible stigma of repudiation.
Porter retired from his office in 1845, largely estranged from his party, chiefly because his great business interests had brought him in conflict with its views on the protective tariff question. He was one of the first men to introduce the manufacture of iron with anthracite coal in the interior of the State and for some years had a season of great prosperity, but when the troublous times came he was bankrupted by heavy losses.
Porter was one of the most familiar figures on the streets of Harrisburg during our Civil War, and one of the most patriotic of our citizens. I met him many times in the dark days of the conflict, and although his head was silvered and his eyes dimmed by the infirmities of age, he would become aroused to enthusiasm when the question was discussed, and never despaired of the Republic. His life in Harrisburg was very quiet, but he never ceased to have interest in all public affairs and was regarded as one of the clearest-headed and safest counselors among the people. On August 6, 1867, his life work ended and he was borne to the city of the silent profoundly lamented by all who knew him.
Bibliographic Information: Source copy consulted: Alexander K. McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, 1905, pages 28-37.
