Former U.S. Sen. George Turner was something of a political fluke of nature. He began as an obedient carpetbagger Stalwart Conkling-Arthur Republican Party hack in Alabama, and grew into becoming one of Washington State's great statesmen of his era as a Democrat. His opposition to the McKinley policy of imperialism is still worth heeding today. His run for Governor in 1904 was a Quixotic quest at best, but also in keeping with Turner's personality.

George Turner, according to a 1912 biography, "was born in Edina, Knox county, Missouri, February 25, 1850, a son of Grenville Davenport and Maria (Taylor) Turner. His parents in 1825 had removed from Kentucky to Missouri and had cast in their lot with the pioneer settlers of the latter state, where they maintained their residence until called to their final rest. The father, who was a cabinetmaker by trade, came of English and Dutch ancestry, while his wife, a daughter of George and Maria Taylor, was representative of a family of Scotch-Irish origin that had settled at an early period in the part of Virginia which is now West Virginia."

The Turners moved to Lebanon, Missouri in 1859, and shortly after were caught up in the Civil War. All the able bodied men in the family signed up to serve the Union. Young George became a telegraph operator. The War also interrupted his formal education, which totalled a mere 8 months for his whole life. The rest of his learning came from experience.

After the War, George headed to Alabama to join his older brother Col. W.W.D. Turner as part of the occupational "Reconstruction" government. In 1869 he entered the field of law. George soon became involved with the Republican Party, seen as invaders at that time, and became a willing pawn for U.S. Sen. George Eliphaz Spencer, called "The most unscrupulous of Alabama's carpet-bag senators" by Turner's biographer, Claudius O. Johnson. In 1874 Turner ran for State Attorney General and failed. From 1876-1880, he served as the Marshal for the southern and middle districts of Alabama. It was during this period, on June 4, 1878, "in Montgomery, Alabama, Mr. Turner was united in marriage to Miss Bertha C. Dreher, a daughter of George and Catherine (Scheiss) Dreher, the father a native of Saxony and the mother of Switzerland."

After Sen. Spencer's departure in 1879, Turner became a leader in the post-Reconstruction Alabama Republican Party, which is to say he basically had no organization to work with. During the 1880 Republican National Convention, when U.S. Grant was aiming for a third term, Turner allied himself with the former President and the conservatives against Blaine. Turner headed the Alabama delegation and, as Johnson explains, "He doggedly held his Negro delegations in line for Grant during the six-day battle between the Grant and Blaine forces, a fact which may have cost him his place as marshal. At any rate, in 1880, he left that office and returned to the practice of law."

Although Turner had prehistoric views on the rights of women, and a totally racist outlook on Asian immigration, he had an excellent and visionary record on the rights of African Americans. He enjoyed the backing of the latter community throughout his political career, both in Alabama and Washington State.

After the assassination of President Garfield and elevation of Conkling's minion Chester Alan Arthur, Turner once more fell into the good graces of his party. President Arthur appointed Turner to the Washington Territory Supreme Court in 1884. According to historian Charles K. Wiggins, "President Arthur appointed Turner Justice of the Supreme Court of Washington Territory on July 4, 1884, an apparent reward for Turner's services to the Republican party in Alabama and to Arthur's faction of the Republican party. Turner's appointment violated a plank in the Republican platform of 1884 which declared that, 'appointments by the President to offices in the territories should be made from the bona fide citizens and residents of the territories wherein they are to serve.' Arriving in Washington at age 34 with 8 months of formal schooling tempered by 15 years in reconstruction Alabama carrying Spencer's carpetbag, George Turner hardly seemed a fit candidate for a Supreme Court judge." But Alabama would leave an imprint, as Johnson observed, "It was in Alabama that he learned the game of politics-- the politics of election violence and ballot box frauds, of controlling ignorant voters, or appointing a few of the brighter ones to office, of manipulating conventions ..."

He was assigned to Washington's 4th District. He first lived in Yakima, but moved to Spokane in 1885, which became his base for the remainder of his life. As judge he was known for two things. First, he didn't play ball with the big corporations, particularly the railroads. Secondly, he was steadfast in his opposition to women's suffrage. This put him in opposition to proto-feminist 1892 Ungovernor Greene, who served on the Court until 1887. Judge Turner also brought from Alabama a courtliness and gentleman-like attitude that was charming to those who met him face to face. He was not a great speaker or rabble rouser, but his legal skills were respected by all, including those on the other side of the political spectrum. When Republican appointees were swept out during after the election of Grover Cleveland, a Democrat from Spokane, L.B. Nash, wrote in defense of Turner: "We want lawyers, not politicians. We have been greatly outraged in the past in this Territory in the appointments of judges--with a few rare exceptions. . . . Upon creation of the Fourth Judicial District about one year ago, George Turner of Alabama was appointed thereof . . . We like him. The Bar, I think, without exception, are highly pleased with him and desire that he be retained in office until the expiration of his commission. In this I fully concur, for he has proved to be first, a thoroughly educated lawyer; second, his mind is eminently judicial; third, he is a well-bred gentlemen; fourth, he entirely fair and of strict integrity; fifth, he makes his Court pleasant for attorneys and has no favorites. In short, he possesses more good qualities for a judge than one would expect to find in one appointed to fill his place."

Turner left the Court in 1888 to devote himself to private practice and also tend to his interests as a partner in a British Columbia mining operation. The latter activity would have an impact on his views concerning the gold standard and leave him open to charges of having ulterior motives behind his embrace of Populism.

Turner was held in such high esteem in legal circles, even as a private citizen, that he served as part of the 1889 Washington Constitutional Convention. 1896 Ungovernor P.C. Sullivan was also present. But it was Turner who emerged as the star of the proceedings. There was one section where the two Ungovernors worked together, according to Wiggins: "Delegate Sullivan of Tacoma proposed a new section requiring the Superior Court judges and the Supreme Court judges to report each year to the governor 'such defects and omissions in the laws as they may believe to exist.' Turner applauded the proposal as an excellent provision, and it was adopted."

Between 1889-1896 Turner tried three times to gain a seat in the U.S. Senate. Back then the voters were not trusted to select the office holder. The position was filled by the Legislature. In fact, the very term "Democracy" was considered subversive. It took President Wilson tying the word to the American WWI effort before it was respectable. Biographer Johnson explains, "That he failed of election to the Senate in 1889, 1891, and 1893 is probably explained by the fact that both as judge and as a key man in the state constitutional convention he had failed to satisfy the railroad interests which in those days usually exercised a decisive, even pernicious, influence over the state legislature."

But then came William Jennings Bryan, the Populists, and the Silver Issue. When Turner's own party embraced the gold standard, a policy that coincidentally hurt his commercial mining interests, Turner helped form the local branch of the offshoot Silver Republican Party. As Richard Fisch explains: "His interest in free silver stemmed from his mining investments and from the advantages he saw for mine owners of Spokane and those dependent on the industry for their living. Spokane's mining holdings and her resentment against the railroads gave Turner his political base. When the goldbugs controlled the state Republican convention of 1896 and the national party repudiated silver, Turner and other Spokane Republicans bolted."

The Silver Republican Party, or as some of them liked to call themselves, Lincoln Republicans, lasted about as long as the Populist Party. Along with the Democrats, the three parties fused in Washington State for the 1896 election. The Populists had the upper hand in terms of votes and numbers, and were in a position to delegate who got to run for what office. Turner's crowd had the money, connections, and political experience. So deals had to be made. When the fusion forces swept the 1896 elections, one of the first orders of the new Legislature was to select a U.S. Senator, and George Turner finally had his chance. But Turner's selection caused a rift within the Populist ranks, as explained by legislative historian Don Brazier: "During the Senate contest a rumor circulated widely that Governor Rogers was secretly supporting Turner who would in turn support Rogers for the Senate in 1899. While this was never more than a rumor, it turned many Populists against Rogers, a breach which never was closed and contributed to the rapid decline of the People's movement."

Turner's single term in the U.S. Senate covered the Spanish-American War and the rise of American overseas imperialism. Although initially supportive of the War, he became a major critic of the McKinley administration's policy of occupying the Philippines and imposing our brand on government on that country. Historian Johnson writes: "The Senator deplored the 'public clamor in favor of extending our dominions,' the 'vain and boastful spirit which seems to be abroad in the land,' perhaps thinking a little ruefully of how he had allowed himself the liberty of indulging some such sentiments just prior to the war with Spain. The Senator may not have become a statesman within the space of one year, but he was now well on the road to it. In 1898, his arguments had been strongly flavored with partisanship and jingoism; in 1899, he was taking a broad view of the issues and pronouncing considered judgments. In the former year, he was on the popular side, winning applause from the Senate galleries; in the latter year, he was with the minority. Even his hometown newspaper, the Spokesman-Review, which had been almost uniformly friendly to him, made him the subject of a very critical editorial for his speech on the unconstitutionality of an American colonial system."

Some choice Turner quotes from his speeches concerning the U.S. occupation of the Philippines and the guerilla war that followed. Note his use of sarcasm in some passages:

"Liberty knows no clime, no color, no race, no creed ... The first fundamental of all liberty is the right to select your own form of government and your own rulers. The best of all governments is a tyranny if imposed on the governed without their consent."

"We would not hear the Filipinos. It was nothing that they stood by our side as friends and allies in the war with Spain ... ; it was nothing that we were dealing with them and their liberties and their country; it was nothing that they begged and implored us to listen to their entreaties and to give heed to their warnings. We were a great and mighty nation, and they weak and insignificant. We were a world power, and they insects in the dust to be crushed under our victorious chariot wheels ..."

"Oh, you ungrateful Filipinos, why will you not accept the religion of our pulpits and the tax-burdened calicos tendered you by our statesmen ... You perverse creatures, understand one thing: We are filled with so holy a zeal for your welfare, we feel the Almighty mandate lying on us so heavily that we propose to lift you to our standard whether you wish it or not, and even though in doing so it becomes necessary to wipe you off the face of the earth ..."

When I read those quotes I think of the old saying, "All things change. Nothing perishes."

After McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Sen. Turner found himself in unexpected good stead at the White House. Theodore Roosevelt and Turner got along, both of them sharing some progressive streaks. In spite of the Senator's anti-administration career in the Capital, TR admired him enough to appoint him in 1903 as a member of the Alaska-Canada boundary dispute commission.

Turner was a respected member of the political minority in the Senate, but he was very isolated. The silver issue had passed by. John Rogers died in 1901. Turner was the last statewide officeholder standing who had been swept in as a result of the 1896 election. The Populists and Silver Republicans faded away. But instead of returning to the safety and potentially better future of his old party, Turner became a Democrat in a Republican era. He put his energy into national issues instead of local ones, earning the status of "statesman" but also having almost no political base. There was no way the pro-corporate, pro-gold standard, pro-imperialist Republicans now in control of the Washington State Legislature were going to let Turner have a second term.

At the 1904 Democratic Party National Convention, George Turner was in serious contention as a possible running mate for Judge Alton B. Parker of New York, a conservative. The former Senator had moved to the center, declaring the silver issue to be dead and gone, and repudiating Bryan. But it would appear Turner privately preferred President Roosevelt over Parker. It was only after his failure to gain the VP nomination that Turner consented to being a gubernatorial candidate. In this, the final time Washington Statewide candidates were nominated by conventions rather than direct primary elections, Turner was chosen by acclamation.

Still, he had his critics within the party. A group of disaffected Democrats splintered away and attempted to restart the Populist movement in a convention in Seattle. The 38 delegates included this bit in their plank: "In the state of Washington, we denounce and repudiate the proven pretenses and inconsistent record of George Turner from the corruption of the fusion legislature of 1897 which accomplished his election as United States senator under the assumed name Populist, to his part in the betrayal of the Bryan Democracy to Wall Street interests ..." But they failed to nominate any candidates. It was the death rattle of the Populist movement in the Evergreen State.

The 1904 Washington State gubernatorial race was really no race. Parker's defeat was a given, so Democrats really concentrated their efforts on electing Turner. The regulation of railroads, an action long opposed by the Republicans, became the big controversy. But this time the Republicans got the message. Albert Mead, their candidate in 1904, started the Republican retreat from this issue and co-opted some of Turner's talking points. Not that it mattered in terms of the election results. It was a TR-led Republican sweep. Parker did not carry a single county, where Turner at least had the consolation of taking a dozen, so he ran ahead of his ticket. As it turned out, Gov. Mead did preside over the creation of a railroad commission-- something some historians feel would not have happened if Turner had not made it an issue in 1904.

On the evening of Nov. 16, 1904, right after the election, Turner was a guest at the Olympia Hotel when that grand structure was reduced to a "heap of smoking embers" by an enormous fire. He made it out alive with only the clothes he was wearing. The hotel, a famous wheeling and dealing spot for Washington's politicians, was across Capitol Way and a bit south of Sylvester Park. The demise of this institution seemed symbolic as the "Progressive Era," which included direct primary elections, was just starting-- and the old territorial political figures, which included characters like George Turner, were entering their twilight.

In 1910 Turner "received from Secretary of State Root the appointment as leading counsel of the United States in the northeastern fisheries arbitration at the Hague." Also in that year President Taft considered Turner when looking to fill vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court. Washington State and Oregon newspapers, even those who had historically opposed Turner the Senator, were enthusiastic in endorsing Turner the Judge. But it didn't happen. In 1911 Taft appointed Turner to the American-Canadian International Joint Commission and he served for three years. He made two more runs for the Senate, 1914 and 1916, but was really more of a relic than a leader by that time.

His biographer Johnson summed up the Turner campaign style: "Turner was never at his best on the stump. There was too much of the lawyer and judge in him. He was somewhat ponderous and a bit monotonous. He made few gestures and those he made were likely to be awkward. If he tried (and he seldom did) to be less formal in his speeches, he was likely to give the impression of talking down to the sovereign voters. Seeing him and hearing him the voter was impressed with the fact that he looked like a statesman and talked like one, but that he was too dignified, too formal, too cool, too far removed from the affairs of the work-a-day man. Despite a reserve which could never be penetrated, one who met him personally was convinced of his human interest, of his warm heartedness; but this almost indispensable seasoning trait of character the Judge could not present to an audience. He was no back-slapper, no glad-hander, no first name caller. The pioneers, the children, the old folks interested him as much as they did most other candidates for public office, but he could not make sentimental references to them."

Turner's final round of public service was in the role of counsel for the United States in the American-Canadian International Joint Commission from 1918-1924.

George Turner died at his mansion in Spokane at the age of 81 on Jan. 26, 1932. His widow collected his papers for posterity. The mansion and the Columbia Theater (also owned by the Turners) were torn down to escape taxes. The Turner property, where they had lived since 1896, was purchased along with adjoining lands by the Spokane Park Board in 1945. In 2007 the Board announced the Turner gardens have been restored. Sen. Turner joins 1900 Ungovernor Frink in not winning the governorship, but leaving a legacy as the name of a park.

Sen. Turner was buried in Spokane's Greenwood Memorial Terrace under a very simple flat stone that reads, "George Turner, U.S. Senate 1897-1903, 1850-1932."