John Coit Spooner

John Coit Spooner (January 6, 1843 – June 11, 1919) was a Republican politician and lawyer from Wisconsin. He served in the United States Senate from 1885 to 1891 and from 1897 to 1907.

Biography
Born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, Spooner moved with his parents to Madison, Wisconsin in 1859. He attended the common schools and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1864. During the Civil War, he enlisted as a private in the Union Army and at the close of the war was brevetted major. He served as private and military secretary to the Governor of Wisconsin, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1867, then serving as assistant attorney general of Wisconsin until 1870.

Spooner moved to Hudson, Wisconsin and practiced law there from 1870 to 1884. He was a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1872 and was a member of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. He was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1884 and served from 1885 to 1891, being defeated for reelection by William F. Vilas. He served as chairman of the Committee on Claims from 1886 to 1891. Afterwards, he was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Wisconsin in 1892 and moved back to Madison in 1893. He was elected to the U.S. Senate again in 1896, was reelected in 1903, and served from 1897 until his resignation in 1907. He served as chairman of the Committee on Canadian Relations from 1897 to 1899 and of the Committee on Rules from 1899 to 1907. As a Senator, he sponsored the Spooner Act, which directed President Theodore Roosevelt to purchase the Panama Canal Zone.

A popular figure in Republican politics, he turned down three cabinet posts during his political career: Secretary of the Interior in President William McKinley's administration in 1898, Attorney General under President McKinley in 1901, and Secretary of State in President William Howard Taft's administration in 1909.

Spooner and fellow Wisconsin Senator, Robert M. La Follette, were known to be bitter rivals. Spooner disagreed with La Follette's progressive policies, which were opposed to his own conservative policies. Spooner was also one of the early opponents of direct primary elections. At the time, party nominees were selected by the party officials, sometimes by party bosses. Although the system left much to be desired, Spooner had this to say in description of political campaigns after the reform of direct primary elections:


 * "Direct primaries would destroy the party machinery... and would build up a lot of personal machines, and would make every man a self-seeker, and would degrade politics by turning candidacies into bitter personal wrangles."

After his retirement from the Senate, he practiced law in New York City at the firm of Spooner & Cotton until his death there on June 11, 1919. He was interred in Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison, Wisconsin.