William Sprague IV
United States Senator fromRhode Island
In office March 4, 1863 – March 3, 1875
Preceded by	Samuel G. Arnold
Succeeded by	Ambrose Burnside
27thGovernor of Rhode Island
In office May 29, 1860 – March 3, 1863
Lieutenant	J. Russell Bullock Samuel G. Arnold Seth Padelford
Preceded by	Thomas G. Turner
Succeeded by	William C. Cozzens
Personal details
Born	William Sprague IV (1830-09-12)September 12, 1830 Cranston, Rhode Island, U.S.
Died	September 11, 1915(1915-09-11) (aged 84) Paris, France
Resting place	Swan Point Cemetery
Party	Constitutional Union Republican
Spouses	Kate Chase ​ ​ (m. 1863; div. 1882)​ Dora Inez Clavert ​ (m. 1883)​
Profession	Politician, Manufacturer
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	Rhode Island United States (Union)
Years of service	1848–1861
Rank	Colonel
Unit	Rhode Island Militia
Commands	Providence Marine Corps of Artillery
Battles/wars	American Civil War First Battle of Bull Run

William Sprague IV (September 12, 1830 – September 11, 1915)^[1] was the 27thGovernor of Rhode Island from 1860 to 1863, andU.S. Senator from 1863 to 1875. He participated in theFirst Battle of Bull Run during theAmerican Civil War while he was a sitting Governor.

Sprague was born in theGov. William Sprague Mansion inCranston, Rhode Island, the youngest son ofAmasa and Fanny Morgan Sprague. His uncle and namesakeWilliam Sprague III was also a Governor and U.S. Senator as well asU.S. Representative from Rhode Island. Sprague's family spent considerable time inThorsby, Alabama, but eventually returned so William and his brotherAmasa could attend the Irving Institute inTarrytown, New York. Their education was cut short when their father was murdered on New Year's Eve in 1843. The murder was considered a major event of the period, and the trial of accused killerJohn Gordon was marked by anti-Irish bigotry; Gordon was subsequently found guilty and executed.^[2]

Both brothers were called to work in the family business, the A.& W. Sprague Manufacturing Company, the largest employer in Rhode Island, which was then under the direction of their uncle William III. When their uncle died in 1856, William and Amasa^[3] – along with their cousin Col. Byron Sprague, son of William III, and their mother Fanny Sprague and Aunt Harriet, widow of William III – became partners in the company.

The second incorporation of the A. & W. Sprague Company occurred on June 2, 1859. It soon was the largestcalico printing textile mill in the world. The company ran five weaving mills in New England. TheHartford, Providence and Fishkill Railroad – of which William III had purchased controlling interest – connected the five mills to the Sprague Print Works in Cranston. The woven cloth was brought to Cranston to be printed. Sprague later became interested inlinen weaving andlocomotive building.^[4]

At age 18, Sprague joined the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery, a unit of theRhode Island Militia.^[5] He enlisted as aprivate, but soon received his commission as asecond lieutenant.^[5] Within three years Sprague had been promoted through the ranks to command the unit as acolonel.^[5] As the commander, Sprague personally funded all of its expenses, including uniforms, equipment, small arms, and a full battery of light artillery.^[5]

After leaving the Senate, he resumed the direction of his manufacturing establishments. He operated the first rotary machine for makinghorseshoes, perfected a mowing machine, and also various processes in calico printing, especially that of direct printing on a large scale with the extract ofmadder without a chemical bath. Sprague claimed to have discovered what he called the "principle of the orbit as inherent in social forces." He asserted that money is endowed with two tendencies, the distributive and the aggregative. When the aggregative tendency predominates, as before the Civil War, decadence results; but when the distributive tendency is in the ascendancy, as it was later in the 19th century, there is progress.^[6]

Sprague was theConservative candidate forgovernor in1860, defeating theRepublican candidateSeth Padelford, aRadical Republican. Sprague'sfusion candidacy drew support fromConservative Republicans, formerWhigs, andDemocrats and was endorsed by both theRhode Island Democratic Party and a conservative state convention. Conservatives charged Padelford with representing "agitation, anarchy, disunion," and "black Republicanism" and portrayed the election as a choice between "Union and Disunion;" Sprague's election was celebrated as the victory ofconservatism overabolitionism.^[7]. Sprague spent over $100,000 of his own money on the campaign.

At twenty-nine years old, Sprague was the youngest governor in the nation at that time. He was sometimes known as the "boy governor" and campaigned as the "Young Men's" candidate in 1860.^[8]

Following the election, Sprague's supporters coalesced in theConstitutional Union Party.^[9] Although the party's presidential candidate,John Bell, lost the1860 United States presidential election to the Republican candidateAbraham Lincoln, Rhode Island Constitutional Unionists remained dominant during the first years of theAmerican Civil War.^[10]

Sprague was re-elected in1861 and1862, in the latter year without opposition. Following his election to theUnited States Senate, Sprague helped to swing a coalition of conservatives andWar Democrats behind the Republican candidate,James Y. Smith, in theelection to choose his successor.^[11] Sprague's political transformation was influenced by his connection withKate Chase, the daughter of the RepublicanU.S. treasury secretarySalmon P. Chase, who persuaded Sprague to become a Republican.^[12]

As governor, Sprague backed the repeal of Rhode Island'spersonal liberty law, weakening legal protections forfree people of color targeted byslave catchers. He was closely associated with proslavery cotton manufacturers and was derisively labeled the "Cotton King of New England." In 1862, he attended theWar Governors' Conference inAltoona, Pennsylvania, which ultimately backed Lincoln'sEmancipation Proclamation and the Union war effort.^[13]

Retiring from the governor's office in 1863, he was elected by the state Senate to two six-year terms as US Senator from Rhode Island, taking office on March 4, 1863, and serving until March 3, 1875.

He served as chairman of the committees on public lands and on manufactures and as a member of the committees on commerce and on military affairs.^[4]

As theCivil War approached, Sprague promised U.S. PresidentAbraham Lincoln the support of Rhode Island. Upon Lincoln's call for volunteers in April 1861, a brigade of two infantry regiments was raised by Rhode Island, with Sprague organizing the First Rhode Island Regiment, and loaning the state $100,000 to outfit it, while his brother supplied 96 horses for the artillery brigade.^[3]

Sprague, believing that the war would last only 48 hours, accompanied the Rhode Island brigade, under the command of ColonelAmbrose Burnside, in theFirst Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. During the battle, while Sprague acted as an aide to General Burnside, his horse was shot from under him. TheConfederate victory made it clear to Sprague that the war would last longer than two days. Although he was offered a commission as abrigadier general ofVolunteers on August 9, 1861 (with a date of rank of May 17, 1861), he declined the appointment to focus on his duties as governor.^[14]

On November 12, 1863, Sprague marriedKate Chase, daughter ofSalmon P. Chase, the former Governor of Ohio and currentSecretary of the Treasury.^[15] She was considered the belle of Washington. Fifty people were invited to the ceremony, which took place in the parlor of the mansion where she lived with her father. The guests included PresidentAbraham Lincoln and his entire cabinet (with the exception ofMontgomery Blair, who refused to attend), senators, governors, generals, diplomats, and select congressmen. An additional 500 people were invited to the reception which followed.^[16]

Sprague's wedding gift to Kate was a tiara of matched pearls and diamonds that cost $5700.^[17] As the bride entered the room, the Marine Band played "The Kate Chase March" which composer Thomas Mark Clark had written for the occasion.

There was much speculation in Washington leading up to the wedding – and by historians afterward – that Kate Chase's attraction to Sprague may have been monetary, as her father was losing money by serving as Treasury Secretary, and had a burning desire to be President, which required sufficient funds to mount a campaign. Sprague was not educated, having left school early to join the family business, and was small, thin and not particularly attractive by the standards of the day. He was, however, very rich.^[3]

Although their marriage began well, quarreling became more common. They had four children:^[18]

• William "Willie" Sprague V (1865–1890), who died by suicide at age 25 in 1890.^[19]
• Ethel Chase Sprague (1869–1936),^[20] who married Dr. Frank Donaldson (1856–1906).^[1]
• Catherine "Kitty" Sprague (1872–1910), who was mentally disabled and lived with her mother.^[21]
• Portia Sprague (1873–1932), who married Frank Browning (1867–1932).^[22]

William's financial and political fortunes rapidly deteriorated in 1873, with the financial panic. His holdings were extensive both in Rhode Island and nationally. The death of his father-in-law, Salmon P. Chase, in the same year^[23] who had becomeChief Justice of the United States, added to his family problems. Severe setbacks occurred to the A. & W. Sprague Company following thePanic of 1873.

Likewise, the Spragues' marriage unravelled as William began to drink more, had affairs with other women and began to criticize Kate's spending. Kate allegedly had an affair with New York senatorRoscoe Conkling. According to popular rumor, in 1879 Sprague chased Conkling off his Narragansett estate after catching him with Kate, thus ending the alleged affair.^[24][1]

The couple divorced in 1882. William stayed with his father and the daughters lived with Kate Chase, who took back her maiden name after the divorce.^[18] After spending some time in Europe, Kate lived with her daughters outside Washington, D.C. atEdgewood, her father's estate. When her only son Willie Sprague killed himself at age 25 in 1890, Kate Chase became a recluse. She died in poverty at her homestead, Edgewood, in 1899.^[21]

In 1850, Sprague purchased the William Robertson farm in Narragansett, which was known to have once been the location of the summer campsite of NarragansettSachemCanonchet.^[25] In 1863, Sprague built a grand 64-room, four-story Victorian mansion on the property, which he namedCanonchet after the Sachem.^[25] The mansion burned to the ground on October 11, 1909.^[25] TheSouth County Museum opened on the Canonchet Farm grounds in 1985.^[25]

Following his divorce, William Sprague married Dora Inez Calvert (1859–1938) of West Virginia inStaunton, Virginia, in 1883. He regained his interest in politics to become the firstNarragansett, Rhode Island Town Council President in 1900. On October 11, 1909, a fire destroyed the Sprague mansion, including Sprague's diaries and other valuable artifacts. The Spragues moved to Paris. During World War I, they opened their apartment as a convalescent hospital for the wounded of all nationalities.

Sprague died of complications from meningitis on September 11, 1915, a day short of his 85th birthday.^[1] Following simple funeral services in France, his wife arranged for his body to be brought back to Rhode Island draped in an American flag. He received full military honors when laid to rest in the family tomb atSwan Point Cemetery inProvidence, Rhode Island.^[26] He was the last living senator who had served during the Civil War.^[27]

Notes

Bibliography

•  This article incorporatespublic domain material fromSPRAGUE, William.Federal government of the United States.
• Aldrich, Thomas M. (1904).The History of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, in the War to Preserve the Union, 1861–1865. Providence: Snow and Farnham Publishers.
• Dell, Christopher (1975).Lincoln and the War Democrats: The Grand Erosion of Conservative Tradition. Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickenson University Press.
• DeSimone, Russel J.; Schofield, Daniel C. (October 2015),Rhode Island Election Tickets: A Survey(PDF), Kingston, RI: University of Rhode Island
• McLoughlin, William G. (1986).Rhode Island: A History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
• Smith, Adam I. P. (2006).No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North. New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-534596-4.
• Smith, Adam I. P. (2017).The Stormy Present: Conservatism and the Problem of Slavery in Northern Politics, 1846–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.ISBN 978-1-4696-3389-3.

Further reading

• United States Congress."William Sprague IV (id: S000747)".Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Dictionary of American Biography
• Belden, Thomas Graham, and Marva Robins Belden.So Fell the Angels. Boston: Little, Brown Co., 1956.
• Hoffman, Charles and Hoffman, Tess.Brotherly Love: Murder and the Politics of Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Rhode Island. Amherst: TheUniversity of Massachusetts Press, 1993
• Jordan, David M.Roscoe Conkling of New York: Voice in the Senate. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, c. 1971.
• Knight, Benjamin.History of the Sprague Families, of Rhode Island. Santa Cruz: H. Coffin, 1881.
• Lamphier, Peg A.Kate Chase and William Sprague: Politics and Gender in a Civil War Marriage. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.
• Shoemaker, Henry Wharton.The Last of the War Governors: A Biographical Appreciation of Colonel William Sprague. Altoona, PA: Altoona Publishing Co., 1916
• Sokoloff, Alice.Kate Chase for the Defense. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1971.
• William Sprague Papers Rhode Island Historical Society

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