American politician, born in Berlin, Germany, on the 30th of December 1847, and came with his parents to Ohio two years later. He entered the Union army in 1864; was elected judge of the superior court of Cook County, IL, in 1886, and governor of the State in November 1892, as a Democrat, his term expiring January 1897. Governor Altgeld has published two volumes of essays on Live Questions, of broad views on social matters. He attracted national attention in June 1893, by pardoning the Chicago anarchists, and again in July 1894, by his bitter public criticism of President Cleveland for ordering out Federal troops to suppress the great railroad strike in Chicago. At the National Democratic Convention in Chicago, July 1896, he is said to have inspired the following clause in its platform: “We denounce arbitrary interference by Federal authorities in local affairs as a violation of the Constitution of the U.S., and a crime against free institutions, and we specially object to government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression, by which Federal judges, in contempt of the laws of the states and rights of citizens, become at once legislators, judges and executioners.” He was defeated, November 3, 1896, by John R. Tanner, the Republican nominee for governor. He died in March 1902. See also “On Municipal and Governmental Ownership.”
