H.G. — Some wanted ‘Gov. Burleigh!’

This is the first in an occasional series of posts about the 19th century politics of Henry G. Burleigh of Ticonderoga and Whitehall.

Politics and Henry G. Burleigh were constant traveling companions.

“Hon. H. G. Burleigh and S.C. Armstrong talked politics on Monday last,” the Lake George Mirror reported on July 27, 1895.

Burleigh, a former state Assemblyman and congressman from Whitehall, had business and social connections in Lake George and Ticonderoga, where at age 14 he started his career and later was town supervisor in 1861.

In 1890, Burleigh, along with U.S. Sen. Chauncey Depew, U.S. Secretary of War Elihu Root and others, was part of “The Miller Men,” a close-knit group that sought an alternative 1891 GOP gubernatorial candidate to state Sen. Jacob Sloat Fassett, the choice of influential state Republican leader Thomas Platt.

Former U.S. Sen. Warner Miller, the losing GOP gubernatorial candidate in 1888, was leader of the group. (New York governors served three-year terms then.)

Miller felt that Platt had purposely not done enough to support his candidacy.

Several newspapers suggested that Burleigh, himself, should run for governor.

“Governor Burleigh! That’s what they are calling our Henry G. in New York now, and that’s what they are talking of making him when Senator Fassett comes up for that office,” The Glen’s Falls Messenger reported on May 9, 1890, republishing a Troy Budget editorial. “Governor Burleigh! Verily, that hath a pleasant sound, like music blown over a bank of violets, or like one of Patti’s upper register trills ground out of a loaded phonograph! Gov. Burleigh! By all means!”

A week earlier The Morning Star of Glens Falls had reported about “a tilt” between Burleigh and Fassett when Burleigh was at the state capitol lobbying on transit legislation.

Burleigh owned a large fleet of steam boats, and had interests in banking, iron ore, lumbering and paper making.

“The latter accused Burleigh and his friends of splitting the Republican Party, and Burleigh retorted that Tom Platt was sending the party over Niagara Falls as fast as he could,” the Morning Star reported.

“Burleigh and his friends” considered themselves reformers.

“It is said that the result of the last election was too much bossism; and that the way to victory was to control the next state convention themselves.”

Other viewed the group as renegades.

The Buffalo News called the Miller group “Tammany Republicans,” suggesting their purpose was to provide “cover” for Democrats.

Burleigh did publicly endorse and campaign locally with Fassett in fall 1890.

But in December, the Miller group met at the Windsor Hotel in New York City and rescinded their support of Fassett.

At the state Republican Convention in June 1891, Burleigh backed U.S. Rep. James Wadsworth, who finished a distant second of five candidates on the first ballot, which Fassett handily won.

Burleigh said Fassett had been his second choice.

“Ah! Here is our old friend Burleigh. Henry G. Burleigh of Whitehall — familiarly known as the Bouncing Burleigh,” the Buffalo Courier editorialized, sarcastically. “He is the most genial, bustling, ubiquitous Republican in the state.”

At the general election Fassett lost by about 48,000 votes, doing particularly poor in upstate.

Burleigh, Miller and their friends, of course, got the blame.

The mood at the state Republican headquarters changed dramatically when upstate returns started to come in, the Pittsburgh Dispatch, of Pennsylvania, reported on Nov. 9, 1891.

“Until these returns began to come in, there was rejoicing. When their import was fully understood, there was bad language.”