Louis P. Harvey

Louis Powell Harvey (* July 22, 1820 in East Haddam, Connecticut, † April 19, 1862 in the Tennessee River ) was an American politician and 1862, the seventh Governor of the State of Wisconsin.

Early years and political rise

Louis Harvey moved at a young age to Ohio. There he attended the Western Reserve College. He then worked at times even as a teacher. In 1841 he came to the Wisconsin Territory, where he settled in what is now Kenosha. There he founded a school.

At the time, Harvey was a member of the Whigs. Between 1843 and 1846 he was editor of a newspaper that party related. In 1846 he moved to Clinton. In 1847 he was a delegate to the second Constituent Assembly of Wisconsin. Since 1850 he has been resident in Shopiere. In the early 1850s he was one of the founders of the Republican Party in Wisconsin. Between 1854 and 1857 he was in the State Senate, and from 1860 to 1862 he was Secretary of State of Wisconsin. In 1861 he was elected as a candidate of his party to Democrat Benjamin Ferguson as the new governor.

Short governorship and tragic end of life

Harvey took up his new post on January 6, 1862. That was right in the Civil War and the governor was concerned about the many soldiers from Wisconsin who fought in the ranks of the Union army. At the battle of Shiloh many of his countrymen were wounded. The governor sat himself at the head of a relief expedition with the goal of bringing the wounded medications from home. The wounded were on hospital ships on the Mississippi River and the Tennessee River. It came on April 19, 1862 in an accident, as the Governor rushed into the Tennessee River and drowned. His body was later found two weeks about 65 miles downstream. Louis Harvey was married to Cordelia Adelaid Perrine and had a child.