Word: altgeld
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...great man"; so did Brand Whitlock, onetime U.S. Ambassador to Belgium; so did, and do, numberless others. The latest to unearth and praise the forgotten eagle is able, young (32), leftist Novelist Howard Fast (The Last Frontier, The Unvanquished, a New Masses assistant editor). Fast retells the John Peter Altgeld story in a fictionalized biography: The American, A Middle Western Legend...
...work of its kind. The biographical and historical detail limit its interest as story. The choice of facts and the touches of literary fancy work limit its value as biography. Novelist Fast knows facts when he sees them, treats them respectfully, arrays most of those relating to Altgeld's career in good order. But he adds dabs of "color," invents dialogue ("Dear . . . do you want eggs or hot cakes?" "I want hot cakes"), even pretends to plumb Altgeld's mind and explain his motives. Harry Barnard's biography, Eagle Forgotten (1938), remains by far the best...
...Wild Chicago, When the Time Is Ripe for Ruin's deeds, When constitutions, courts and laws Go down midst crashing creeds, Lift up your weak and guilty hands From out the wreck of states, And as the crumbling towers fall down, Write ALTGELD on your gates! Thus adjured the outraged New York Sun in 1893. Called anarchist (for freeing three of the Haymarket rioters) and blamed for the great Pullman strike was Illinois' liberal Governor John Peter Altgeld. Years afterwards Poet Vachel Lindsay wrote a poem about him (The Eagle That Is Forgotten}, Biographer Carl Sandburg called...
Only politicians for whom Josephson has a kind word are onetime Governor Altgeld of Illinois, onetime Senator Dolliver of Iowa, Senator La Follette of Wisconsin. He also utters qualified praise for Brooks Adams (T. R.'s political mentor), and his brother Henry Adams, who wrote prophetically in 1905: "We have got to . . . fortify an Atlantic system beyond attack; for if Germany breaks down England or France, she becomes the centre of a military world, and we are lost...
EAGLE FORGOTTEN: THE LIFE OF JOHN PETER ALTGELD-Harry Barnard-Bobbs-Merrill...