Jeremiah McLain Rusk
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Categories: 1830 births | 1893 deaths | People from Ohio | Union Army generals | Members of the United States House of Representatives from Wisconsin | Governors of Wisconsin | United States Secretaries of Agriculture | People of Wisconsin in the American Civil War | American farmers
Jeremiah McLain Rusk (June 17, 1830 – November 21, 1893) was the 15th Governor of the U.S. state of Wisconsin from 1882 to 1889. Image:JMRusk.jpg
Representative Jeremiah M. Rusk
Rusk was born in Malta, Ohio. He was a member of the Republican Party. He began as a planter, then turned to innkeeping and finally to banking before the Civil War. During the war, he received a brevet appointment as a general and saw action with the 25th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. After the Civil War, he became a congressman in the United States House of Representatives. There, he was chairman of Committee on Invalid Pensions (forty-third congress). He then ran as a Republican for Governor of Wisconsin, an election he won. His most noted act during his governorship was when he sent the National Guard into Milwaukee to keep the peace during the May Day Labor Strikes of 1886. The strikers had shut down every business in the city except the North Chicago Rolling Mills in Bay View. The guardsmen's orders were that, if the strikers were to enter the Mills, they should shoot to kill. But when the captain received the order it had a different meaning: he ordered his men to pick out a man and shoot to kill when the order was given. This led to the Bay View Tragedy, in which a number of workers were killed; Governor Rusk took most of the blame. In 1889 he resigned his governorship and accepted the new cabinet position of Secretary of Agriculture in the Benjamin Harrison administration. He lived, died and was buried in Viroqua, Wisconsin. External links
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