Israel, Jr., the firstborn, was a sickly child and small for his age. Soon after Maine became a state (1820) he was crossing the Androscoggin River on a ferry with his mother. When his childish attempts to help the ferryman were not productive, Mr. Strickland, the ferryman, remarked “Kind of small, ain’t he, Mrs. Washurn?” Her prompt reply was, “Maybe so, Mr. Strickland, but I expect that little lad to be governor of this new state of Maine someday!”
He grew up helping in his father’s store until it failed. Then, at sixteen, he went to work as a farm hand for neighboring farmers, giving all of his earnings to the support of the family. But he was determined to become a lawyer and studied under his Uncle Reuel Washburn. After passing his bar exams in 1834 he established a law practice in Orono, where he met and married Mary Maud Webster. With brother Algernon Sidney’s financial help, he built a large home on Orono’s Main Street.
An ardent Whig, he soon entered the political arena and in 1842 was elected to the Maine House of Representatives. Election to Congress in 1851 was his next step up the political ladder. In 1854, the day after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, Israel took an important step in his career as a public man. Calling a meeting of Anti-slavery members of the House he addressed the thirty assembled Whigs, Democrats, and Free-Soilers urging the formation of a new party to be “dedicated to freedom, to resistance of slave power, the restriction of slave territory, and suggested that it be called the Republican party.”
During the early stages of the Civil War, Israel fulfilled his mother’s prophecy and served two one-year terms (1861-63) as Governor of Maine, succeeding in his task of raising, equipping, and transporting troops. Shortly after his second term expired, President Lincoln appointed him collector of the port of Portland, a post he held until 1877. He refused the offer of the presidency of Tufts College and chose instead to become president of the Rumford Falls and Buckfield Railroad. He had built a new home in Portland at Spring and Neal Streets soon after receiving the collectorship, and there he lived during his later years. Still keenly interested in the political scene, he was much in demand as a speaker against the Greenback Party. Much of his leisure time was spent at “The Norlands” reveling in the beauty of the place of his birth. Less than a year before his death on a perfect summer day he made this entry in the family journal: “Sweet, bright and balmy. There is no better picture this side of heaven than I look upon.”
Whoever in this crisis, shall maintain, or act as if he believed, that the Union ought to be preserved if slavery in it can be protected, but that without slavery it is not worth defending, making in his heart slavery and not the Union, the great object of his regard, will not fail to be known and treated as one whom no impulses of patriotism, but only the suggestions of cowardice, restrained from the practice of treason..."
Transcription of a letter from Israel to Elihu, 1864.
I. Washburn
February 27/64
Portland February 27, 1864
Dear Bro [Elihu],
Sometime ago I sent to the Pres’t an article written by me on the Rebellion in which among other things I considered the expediency and efficacy of a law by Congress prohibiting the inter State slave trade. To change the Constitution so as to abolish slavery takes time and annoys all sorts of opposition yet it can be done and will be. I think by and by – but in the mean time why not prohibit this domestic slave trade – there are even now laws regulating and recognizing a coast-wise slave trade, to our shame. By the prohibition I have advocated, slavery in all the rebel States is as effectually squelched as if those states should by change of their Constitutions do it. Unless the Pres’t fails to carry out his Proclamation of Emancipation. And I have no fear of this. But if the aim is to change the State Constitutions, what course will tend to bring this about like the prohibition of the Slave trade among the States? Slave holders seeing that their system is gone by operation of the Proclamation and of the internal slave trade prohibition will accept the further measure of abolition under state authority.
When you see the President I beg you to ask him if he has read my paper, and if not that you will request him to do so, for I am sure that his practical good sense will appreciate the importance of the measure.
The Pres’t is wonderfully popular in the North and is no where stronger than in Maine. Nothing but some great blunder can prevent his re-election – while I have very great faith in him, a faith growing day by day and do not see how it can in any sense be wise to nominate any other man for President, I am free to say that in some aspects I think he might do better, tho’ I don’t know any other man who all in all would do as well. It is I suppose not probable that any change will be made during the present term, but it is quite certain that there are some men in the cabinet who have no business there and the Pres’t has I am confident held on too long by Halleck, Meade, et idomine – including the ‘Iron man’ of whom you note. I hope in due time these will slide and that a little more pronounced recognition of earnest ideas will prevail and then all the powers of Lee and ____ – and thunder can’t shake him.
Truly,
I. Washburn Jr.
