| Richard Franklin Pettigrew | |
| Jr/Sr: | United States Senator |
| State: | South Dakota |
| Term Start: | November 2, 1889 |
| Term End: | March 3, 1901 |
| Predecessor: | none |
| Successor: | Robert J. Gamble |
| State2: | Dakota Territory |
| Term Start2: | March 4, 1881 |
| Term End2: | March 3, 1883 Delegate |
| Predecessor2: | Granville G. Bennett |
| Successor2: | John B. Raymond |
| Birth Date: | 23 July 1848 |
| Birth Place: | Ludlow, Vermont, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Sioux Falls, South Dakota, U.S. |
| Party: | Republican Silver Republicans |
| Relatives: | Belle L. Pettigrew (sister) |
| Alma Mater: | Beloit College University of Wisconsin Law School |
Richard Franklin Pettigrew (July 23, 1848October 5, 1926) was an American lawyer, surveyor, and land developer. He represented the Dakota Territory in the U.S. Congress and, after the Dakotas were admitted as States, he was the first U.S. Senator from South Dakota.
Pettigrew was born to Andrew Jr. Pettigrew and Hannah B. Sawtelle on July 23, 1848, in Ludlow, Windsor County, Vermont, in the residences of his grandparents, parents, seven siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins. He was the sixth child produced out of nine total. Pettigrew's siblings included Hannah M., Alma Jane, Henrietta Adelaide, Luella Belle, Justin A., Frederick (Fred) Wallace, Elizabeth Medora, and Harlan Page.[1] In 1853, Andrew Jr. sold his store to the partnership of Emerson and Richards, and the family moved to Wisconsin in 1854 while Pettigrew was 6 years old. Andrew Jr. moved the family because of his neighbors' tough anti-slavery beliefs, and the store was used for the circulation of anti-slavery literature. The store was boycotted by angry, pro-slavers who threatened the Pettigrew family with violence.
The family settled in Rock County, near Union, Wisconsin.[2] Pettigrew attended Evansville Academy, in Evansville. In 1866, Pettigrew went to Beloit to enroll in Beloit College. In the winter of 1868, Pettigrew entered law school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[3]
Pettigrew moved to Dakota Territory in 1869 to work with a United States deputy surveyor. He settled in Sioux Falls, where he practiced law and engaged in surveying and real estate. He was a member of the territorial House of Representatives and served on the Territorial council. He was elected as a Republican to the U.S. House, serving from March 4, 1881, to March 3, 1883. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1882 but returned to the territorial council from 1885 to 1889.
Pettigrew was also instrumental in the founding of many local communities around Sioux Falls by donating land. Pettigrew and his wife, Bessie, donated land in 1886 to aid the founding and development of Granite, Iowa, in Lyon County. In 1888, he and S.L. Tate both donated more land and were responsible for the founding of South Sioux Falls. Pettigrew wanted to build a suburb of Sioux Falls to the south and west.
When South Dakota was admitted as a state, Pettigrew was elected as South Dakota's first Senator to the United States Senate. He served from November 2, 1889, to March 3, 1901. He introduced a bill to fund the structure, recommending that native Sioux quartzite be used for construction of the state's first Federal building. He was re-elected in 1894, but left the Republican Party on June 17, 1896, to join the Silver Republicans, a faction of the Republican Party that opposed the party's position in support of the monetary gold standard. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1900. Pettigrew was a strong opponent of President William McKinley's attempt to annex the Republic of Hawaii against the wish of its many native residents.[4] In a congressional speech, he stated:
"The American flag went up on Hawaii in dishonor; it came down in honor, and if it goes up again now it will go up in infamy and shame and this Government will join the robber nations of the world."[5]
His speech about Hawaii and annexation were at odds with some of his other views, namely in Federal Indian policy. Pettigrew was a supporter of a bill that sought to unilaterally dissolve tribal governments so as to force them to agree to allotment of their lands. In 1897, he delivered a speech on the Senate floor saying:
"There is no question but that the Congress of the United States at one blow should not only provide that laws passed by those councils, by those governments, should be approved by the President before they go into force, but, on the contrary, that the [tribal] governments themselves should be destroyed; that their power to legislate should be taken away; that their courts should be ousted and a proper judicial system furnished to those people. It is our duty to do it."[6]
In the Presidential Election of 1900, while still in the Senate, he was a delegate and a major figure in the national political convention of the Populist Party held in Sioux Falls that convened on May 9, 1900, and lasted three days. The party endorsed William Jennings Bryan as its candidate.[7]
In 1917, while being interviewed by a journalist from the Argus Leader, Pettigrew offered his opinion that the First World War was a capitalist scheme intended to further enrich the wealthy, and he urged young men to evade the draft. The local United States Attorney secured a felony indictment of Pettigrew for suspicion of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, the same charge for which Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs was then presently serving a ten-year Federal prison sentence.
Pettigrew assembled a high-powered legal defense team headed up by his close personal friend, prominent attorney Clarence Darrow. The trial was repeatedly delayed, and eventually the charge against him was dropped.
Pettigrew had the formal document of indictment framed, and prominently displayed in his home next to a framed copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, where it remains to this day as part of the exhibits of the Pettigrew Home & Museum.[8]
After his time in the Senate, Pettigrew first practiced law in New York City, but soon returned to Sioux Falls and was active in politics and business until his death in that city. He was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in Sioux Falls.
Pettigrew left his home to the city of Sioux Falls in his will. The Pettigrew Home & Museum is maintained by the city of Sioux Falls to this day, designed to emulate how a person of Pettigrew's stature would have lived at the turn of the century. The house is filled with antiques from the early 1900s and Pettigrew's personal collection of artifacts from his time as an amateur archaeologist.[9]
Announced January 12, 2009, Richard F. Pettigrew Elementary School opened in fall of 2009 in southwest Sioux Falls.
All quotes are from Pettigrew's book Triumphant Plutocracy.