Louis W. Emerson made a victory lap the day after he was elected to the New York state Senate.
“Senator-elect Emerson of Warrensburg was in town yesterday and smiled on his friends and ‘friends,’” The Morning Star of Glens Falls reported on November 7, 1889.
Glens Falls newspaper publisher, business man and Republican boss Addison B. Colvin fit in the second category of ‘friend,’ even though he was of the same political party as Emerson.
“Editor Colvin, of the Times, in last evening’s issue of his paper, announces that he will support the candidacy of L.W. Emerson for senator,” The Morning Star reported on October 24,1889. “Mr. Emerson will doubtless be sorry to hear this, but since he cannot very well prevent the Times from supporting him, he will doubtless do some fervent praying to be spared from his ‘friend’ between now and Election Day.”
Whether Colvin’s endorsement of Emerson, a fellow Republican, helped or hindered Emerson’s candidacy is hard to determine.
Emerson handily won in Clinton and Essex counties, and won Warren County with an 873-vote Election Night plurality, carrying the towns of Queensbury, Bolton, Chester, Horicon, Johnsburg, Luzerne and Hague.
In Queensbury, including the village of Glens Falls, where Emerson had strong opposition during the nomination process, Emerson received 1,163 votes and Democrat Henry Graves 958 votes, a winning yet poor showing in a Republican-dominated town.
Graves carried Emerson’s home town of Warrensburg, Caldwell (the former name of the town of Lake George), Stony Creek and Thurman.
Colvin was part of a contingent from Glens Falls that had attempted to block the nomination of Emerson, a Warrensburg business man, for state Senate.
Members of the contingent included Russell Mack Little, president of the Glens Falls Insurance Co., L. P. Juvet, a jeweler and real estate investor, Orange Ferris, a former congressman, Charles Cool, who later became the first mayor of Glens Falls, and J.E. Sawyer, a retailer, among about a dozen others.
The contingent asserted that Emerson’s association with convict labor made him unelectable.
Emerson said he had no connection with convict labor, other than to sell some fabric to be made into prison uniforms.
Technically, this was so.
But Empire Shirt Company, which Emerson ran for many years before turning the company over to his brother, had contracted with the state in August to set up a convict labor operation at Clinton Prison in Dannemora.
At the Warren County Republican Committee endorsement convention on September 17 at Caldwell, Little argued that the GOP should nominate a candidate that could attract a broad base of support.
“The delegates from Queensbury will support the nominee of the party, but they cannot control hundreds of independent voters who will insist on having their say,” he said.
The Queensbury delegation supported A.B. Abbott, president of the Warren County Agricultural Society.
Emerson, with 32 votes, won the county endorsement.
Abbott received 10 votes, and a third candidate one vote, with delegates from Hague and Warrensburg and two of Stony Creek’s delegates not voting.
County Clerk W.H. VanCott, an Emerson supporter, as if to rub salt into the wounds of the anti-Emerson faction, instructed Little to usher Emerson into the room and to the dais to be notified of the endorsement.
Little complied, sniping, “By your order, and at the request of Mr. VanCott, I have brought this gentleman (Emerson) before the bar, whether to be sent to Dannemora, or to make a speech, I am not informed.”
The GOP standoff made news around the region.
“According to all accounts, the Republicans of Warren County had quite a time at their convention last week,” The Elizabethtown Post reported on September 28, 1889. “L.W. Emerson secured a majority of the delegates. He is a prison labor contractor and on that account many Republicans opposed him most strenuously for the Republican nomination.”
The Glens Falls anti-Emerson contingent made a last-ditch attempt to derail Emerson’s nomination, sending a delegation to the Senate district nominating convention at Port Henry in October to stir up opposition to Emerson.
The delegation, except for one member, left Port Henry before the convention started, conceding that Emerson had a lock on the nomination.
Democrats picked up on the prison labor issue in the general election.
“The Democratic papers in this district are howling that Louis W. Emerson, the Republican candidate for Senator, has had something to do with convict labor,” the Essex County Republican editorialized on October 31, 1889. “The nearest he has ever had to convict labor is the selling of several hundred yards of striped cloth to the agent of Sing Sing prison, to be made into suits for Democratic boodlers and other inmates of that institution.”
Republicans touted the business acumen of Emerson, who had interests in banking, garment and paper manufacturing, wool processing, and lumbering, reportedly totaling $2 million in combined revenue in 1888 – the equivalent of about $62.5 million in 2023 dollars.
“Many of our readers may not be aware that the amount of trade and exchange under his control is equal to or above that of many of the largest business firms in this country,” The Plattsburgh Sentinel editorialized on November 1, 1889.
Republicans also said that Emerson’s vote in the upcoming election of a U.S. Senator from New York would be essential to electing a pro-tariff candidate.
State legislatures chose U.S. Senators at that time.
Democrats said that Graves had a geographic advantage, living on the border between Essex and Clinton counties.
Some Democrats blamed party bosses for the loss.
“Democrats, whose sole objection to Mr. Emerson was founded on a partisan basis, were vehement in their denunciation of the party managers in Clinton and Essex counties, which they charge with treachery in conspiring to load the ticket with a passive candidate, whose only mission seemed to enact the role of dummy in the campaign,” The Morning Star reported on November 7, 1889.
Some were more tolerant.
“Other Democrats, whose partisanship is not of the pronounced type, content that Mr. Emerson will make a credible representative, and that, although opposed to them politically, it is better to have a senator from Warren County than one from some other remote section of the district.”
Emerson, when he took office, was the third youngest member of the Senate, but “the youngest looking,” according to The Argus of Albany.
He served in the state Senate from 1890 to 1893, and in Congress from 1899 to 1903.
He remained active behind the scenes in Republican politics until his death in 1924, including championing the election of his brother, James Emerson, to the state Senate in 1906.
“Mr. Emerson’s death removes one of the strongest political leaders who has ever held control of Republican politics in Warren County and for years his advice and counsel was sought by those interested in the activities of the party,” The Post-Star editorialized when Louis Emerson died in 1924.
Illustrations, from above: Louis W. Emerson in 1893; Addison B. Colvin in 1897; and the Empire Shirt Company on the Schroon River in Warrensburg, ca. 1906.
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