A Politician Turned General by Jeffrey Lash

Author:Jeffrey Lash [Lash, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Military
ISBN: 9780873387668
Google: TRVm73TC3rYC
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Published: 2003-01-15T04:09:47+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

The Passing of a Diplomatic Partisan

The prairie community of Belvidere, Illinois, had acquired a more sophisticated look in the twenty years since Hurlbut had arrived there as a fugitive from his native Charleston, South Carolina. By 1865, although still an agricultural town set in the midst of vast expanses of rich corn-growing farmland, Belvidere had expanded from a population of only nine hundred in 1845 to over three thousand by 1865, including large numbers of recent Swedish immigrants. A newly constructed system of sidewalks and paved roads relieved the difficulties occasioned by seasonal mud and snow. There were fashionable new buildings and homes, six churches, two commodious assembly halls, the imposing First National Bank, and the admirable residence of Judge Allen C. Fuller, who had served as the adjutant general of Illinois during the war.1

General Hurlbut and his wife Sophronia and son George returned to their modest, two-story, redbrick home late in June 1865. He reestablished his legal practice, opening a new law office upon the upper floor of the Murch & Brothers General Store building, but he assigned what few cases he obtained (chiefly veterans’ claims for federal pensions, land disputes, and probate conflicts) to Edward H. Talbott, his nephew-in-law and junior partner.2 Meanwhile, perhaps envious of General Fuller’s mansion (and perhaps also of Joseph Russell Jones’s opulent Italian villa-style residence in Galena), Hurlbut early determined to build a home that befitted a man of his rank. Decidedly not a connoisseur of Victorian architectural styles, Hurlbut hired contractors who, with his cheerful approval, planned an elaborate mansion for a lot his wife had purchased in 1864. His new home on this property, adjacent to his older and humbler residence, would emphasize his improved financial fortunes. The Belvidere Standard reported in September 1867, “Gen. Hurlbut, we notice, has raised the frame of his new residence. It looks like a large building and we expect will be something quite handsome.”3 When it was finished in 1868, the three-story, wood-and-brick, Gothic Revival mansion exhibited (besides its imposing portico and balustrade that enclosed the entire porch and house) such classic Victorian architectural features as gables, bargeboards, and lofty chimneys. The large interior contained spacious dining and reading rooms, a kitchen, and a master bedroom—all lavishly furnished. Hurlbut’s fireplace-equipped study included a law library of seventy-five books, while stables in the rear sheltered his riding horses and milk cows. Hurlbut had built the most opulent house in Belvidere, a residence that, observers agreed, surpassed in ostentation even Fuller’s mansion.4

Hurlbut also purchased (for $625) four large pieces of land near his mansion. He assumed that proposed new railroad construction (particularly the extension of the Beloit & Caledonia Railroad to connect Belvidere and Madison, Wisconsin) would substantially increase the value of the property and more than compensate for his having overspent on his splendid new house. But Hurlbut’s investment scheme failed. Desperate to recoup his losses, as late as August 1873 he urged local entrepreneurs to build more railroads, but unavailingly; he found himself forced to sell his property, piece by piece, to satisfy creditors.

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