John Wentworth Quotes
You damned fools. You can either vote for me for mayor or you can go to hell
There are very few places in America where a public official could get away with statements like this one.
John Wentworth, 1815–1888, U. S. Congressman (Democrat, IL), Mayor of Chicago (Democrat), Quoted in Chicago Magazine, June 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
When asked to run for President on the Anti-Mason ticket, the former Chief Magistrate wrote:
Ever since the beginning of the Republic, the major source of Federal revenue was customs duty from New York. The collector employed a massive bureaucracy and was then one of the largest patronage controller in the country. Thurlow Weed and other New York political bosses offered Abraham Lincoln their political support if Lincoln would give them control of the patronage. On September 5, 1864 Lincoln fired his man, Hiram Barney, and replaced him with Draper. The new collector promptly replaced key personnel down the line and stated publicly:
She had been accused of being a follower of public opinion rather than a driver of it as many politicians see themselves. At the time, she refused to stake out specific positions in her contest for the presidential nomination of her party—the socialists. She won the primary, the first such French woman, but lost in the general election.
At the time less than 10% of the Southern Blacks were allowed to vote. The result was that Southern segregationists were elected to Congress even in a state like Mississippi which had a majority Black population, The Southern segregationist bloc was large enough that with a few very conservative Republicans, they formed a coalition could block any civil rights legislation including voting rights reform,
John Wentworth (nicknamed "Long John") was the editor of the Chicago Democrat, publisher of an extensive Wentworth family genealogy, a two-term mayor of Chicago, and a six-term member of the United States House of Representatives, both before and after his service as mayor.
