The Keyes Papers consist of correspondence, articles, addresses, diaries, and a few other documents. Most voluminous is the incoming correspondence and bound letter books of outgoing correspondence. Articles, addresses, and diaries relate to subjects of early Jefferson and Dane County history and various matters that engaged Keyes' attention. Other documents include scattered clippings and oversize appointment documents.
The description which follows is an edited version of “Bulletin of Information, No. 81” issued by the Wisconsin Historical Society in March 1916.
Private and personal correspondence runs throughout most of the collection. The earliest letters addressed to Keyes are boyish and social, beginning in 1846 with the letters from former classmates at Beloit Academy. An oration, apparently delivered at commencement, is among the papers of the late 1840s. The personal gossip and ambitions of these youthful friends form the theme of most of the letters received before 1850. Of considerable interest to the institutions concerned is an epistolary comparison of the relative merits and demerits in their youthful days, of two of Wisconsin's important higher educational institutions, Beloit and Lawrence colleges.
By the middle of the century, young Keyes had acquired a sufficient store of knowledge to become established in the law office of George B. Smith, of Madison. For a decade the letters are largely concerned with legal and business matters, although the personal correspondence continues. The letter press copybooks, some of which are almost illegible, begin in 1852 and include professional correspondence of the law office in the 1850s.
The practice of the young lawyer consisted of business for various insurance companies, and of work for eastern collection agencies. The volume of correspondence upon the collection of Wisconsin debts due to eastern firms in the years 1856-1857 is surprisingly large. These letters throw some light upon the general financial situation and business methods of the period. Abstracts of legal cases are found here and there throughout the collection, memoranda concerning facts, trials, and costs, often puzzlingly disconnected, are preserved from time to time. Several letters from 1809-1833, bearing upon a land claim against the government, are included among the legal papers. The consecutive business correspondence, however, is confined to the decade beginning with 1850.
Incidental comment occurs during the 1850s upon the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the Dred Scott decision, and the attitude of the Democratic party towards slavery. This comment is of such character as might be expected to catch the ear of a Whig who was soon to identify his political fortunes with those of the new Republican party. The correspondence of the 1860s makes it evident that Keyes bore an active part in the founding of the new party, a fact of which the contemporary letters afford no indication. In 1860 Keyes received an appeal from the Republican Congressional Committee, containing an outline of the plans for the coming election, and a plea for his assistance in the contest. He responded so effectively as to merit political reward; accordingly, in 1861 he journeyed to Washington to swell the clamor of the office seekers who thronged about the new president.
With 1861 the political correspondence begins in earnest. In this year, after a period of anxious uncertainty, Keyes was awarded the postmastership at Madison, an office which he was to occupy in all for almost a third of a century. From the vantage point of the Madison post office, he began to build up a control over state politics which extended actively into the 1880s. Part of the correspondence of the 1860s is probably missing from the collection as it has come to the Historical Society, but from the letters which are available we are able to follow various interests.
Some valuable material is to be found upon political conditions in Washington at the opening of the Lincoln administration, and later reports of the personal inclinations of Congressional leaders were sent to Wisconsin after the close of the war. The methods of office seekers, civil and military, are exemplified repeatedly, for Keyes early acquired a proficiency in securing favors for himself and his friends which went far toward hastening his own political ascendancy. A set of resolutions of confidence in Andrew Johnson, framed by the state of Wisconsin in 1866, is among the political papers of the decade. By 1868 the Madison politician had acquired sufficient influence to stand high in the confidence of the senators and representatives of the State, and the political gossip becomes increasingly detailed and intimate in the late sixties and throughout the seventies.
Beyond the immediate realm of politics, but still within the field of public affairs, the letters of the 1860s contain frequent comment upon the course of the war, and the conduct of the post office. Near the close of the war a Fox-Wisconsin portage suit arose in which the interests of the government were entrusted to Keyes. A more important phase of the same question was reached in 1870, at which time Keyes represented the government in the arbitration settlement that ensued.
The decade of the seventies is the most important one from the political point of view. In 1870 Keyes was elected chairman of the Republican State Central Committee, and an unreserved and complete account of his manipulation of the Republican machine in Wisconsin is contained in the letters of the period. The general practices of the party leaders, their methods of attacking their opponents, whether Democrats or reformers, are interestingly illustrated. The years of the national campaigns offer the fullest material, but the State elections also necessitated a correspondence full of significant detail. The contest of 1875-1876 produced a volume of letters and telegrams from all parts of the country. The policy of the president, when finally in office, provoked a storm of astonished comment from the local politicians, whom the astute chairman of the state organization had held in line in 1876. Carl Schurz had been particularly useful in the campaign because of his influence with the German-Americans of the State, but his conduct in the cabinet elicited much caustic comment from the progressive politicians who rallied about Mr. Keyes.
The Wisconsin aspect of the whisky-ring scandals affords some interesting evidence as to the method of collecting campaign funds. Mr. Keyes and Senator Carpenter were both tried before an investigating committee in Washington for implication in these scandals, and were unanimously cleared of the charges. The correspondence in regard to this affair has been preserved with no apparent reservations, and is particularly valuable as a commentary upon the political standards of the times.
The senatorial ambitions of the party manager led to several unsuccessful campaigns in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The public interests reflected in this collection for the decade of the eighties begin to shift from national politics to questions of interest in the state. The affairs of the University and contests in regard to its management can be traced in the correspondence of these years. As an early settler with a ready memory and facile pen, Mr. Keyes became a prime mover in the Wisconsin Historical Society. His interest in this organization grew more intimate in later years, but some interesting material concerning the management and activities of the Society may be found by 1880.
State politics receive a full measure of attention to the very end of the collection. Mr. Keyes had gained the confidence of the railroads during his chairmanship of the State Central Committee, and he had done all in his power in the 1870s to prevent the Granger demands from restricting the roads too narrowly. Nevertheless he made use of the Grangers for political purposes whenever it was practicable to do so, making several canvasses of the state to estimate the strength of the Granger affiliations of its citizens. The confidence of the railroads did not terminate with his retirement from the State Central Committee, and during the eighties and nineties Keyes was employed with increasing frequency as the spokesman of the roads in facilitating favorable, or checking hostile, legislative measures. Suggestions for a significant chapter in railroad history might be gathered from the Keyes papers during this period.
Unswerving enmity to the Democratic party, rising at times almost to the dignity of religious fervor, led Keyes to make much of certain sensational exposés of public dishonesty in the Democratic administration of Governor Taylor, and the materials upon which the charges were based have been carefully preserved in his papers. In the late 1890s the mantle of odium was stretched to cover the rising insurgent movement in the ranks of his own party. As the chief leader in this movement Wisconsin's senior senator naturally became the chief target of the shafts of the aging party leader. The “good old days” of the seventies, when Keyes was at the head of the party in the state, found numerous mourners in the thinning ranks of old-line Republicans, who foresaw and vigorously foretold the ruin of the party in the “hypocritical nonsense” of the reformers. That their forebodings were not without reason is amply attested by the debacle of 1912, which Keyes, however, did not live to see. The “Mary-Anners,” as the adherents of reform were dubbed, come in for abuse and ridicule in prose and rhyme. The details of the contest over insurgency and reform are not given as clearly, however, as is done in the case of the earlier contests.
Indeed, the later papers become somewhat more diffuse, and give a less significant insight into public affairs. The personal interest of the aging politician in public matters did not wane, however. From 1861 to 1910, the date of his death, Keyes held public office, and the affairs of his occupation received attention in his letters; but in the later years his was no longer the master-hand which earlier had been so potent in shaping the course of public events, and his letters reflect to a marked degree this loss of power.
