William Freeman Vilas

William Freeman Vilas ( born July 9, 1840 in Chelsea, Orange County, Vermont; † August 28, 1908 in Madison, Wisconsin ) was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He was a member of the U.S. Senate and the Cabinet of President Grover Cleveland.

Life

Vilas, who was born in Vermont, moved with his family to Wisconsin in 1851. He graduated in 1858 from the University of Wisconsin -Madison and 1860 at the Law School of the University at Albany. During the Civil War he joined the Union Army. He first served as a captain in an infantry regiment, and later as Lieutenant Colonel. After the war Vilas taught at his former university in Madison law. The governing body of the University, he was from 1880 to 1885 and again in 1898-1905.

Policy

His political career began in 1885 with the election to the Wisconsin State Assembly. In the same year he was appointed by President Cleveland as Postmaster General in the Cabinet. This he remained until 1888; after which he headed until 1889 the U.S. Department of Interior. Within the party, Vilas was one of the Bourbon Democrats, a conservative- liberal oriented wing, which greatly made ​​up for the interests of banks, corporations and railway companies.

After Grover Cleveland was defeated in the presidential election in 1888, Benjamin Harrison, William Vilas also resigned from office. As a result, he first became involved in Wisconsin in the fight against the Bennett Law, a law which prescribed the use of the English language at most schools of the state and thus turned against the German and norwegischsprachigen private schools. The German minority in Wisconsin felt discriminated against by this law. Vilas presented with success on their side: the law was withdrawn; Republican Governor William D. Hoard, who had supported it, was voted out.

1890 William Freeman Vilas was finally elected to the U.S. Senate. After six years in office, he failed in the re-election and had to leave the Congress in 1897.