Richard Franklin Pettigrew
Portrait byC. M. Bell,c. 1891–1894
United States Senator fromSouth Dakota
In office November 2, 1889 – March 3, 1901
Preceded by	none
Succeeded by	Robert J. Gamble
Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromDakota Territory'sat-large district
In office March 4, 1881 – March 3, 1883 Delegate
Preceded by	Granville G. Bennett
Succeeded by	John B. Raymond
Personal details
Born	(1848-07-23)July 23, 1848 Ludlow,Vermont, U.S.
Died	October 5, 1926(1926-10-05) (aged 78) Sioux Falls,South Dakota, U.S.
Political party	Republican (until 1896) Silver Republican (1896-1901)
Other political affiliations	"Fusion" Populist (1900)
Relatives	Belle L. Pettigrew (sister)
Alma mater	Beloit College University of Wisconsin Law School

Richard Franklin Pettigrew (July 23, 1848 – October 5, 1926) was an American lawyer,surveyor, and land developer. He represented theDakota Territory in theU.S. Congress and, after the Dakotas were admitted as States, he was the firstU.S. Senator fromSouth Dakota.

Pettigrew was born to Andrew Jr. Pettigrew and Hannah B. Sawtelle on July 23, 1848, inLudlow,Windsor County,Vermont, in the residences of his grandparents, parents, seven siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins. He was the sixth child produced out of nine total. Pettigrew's siblings included Hannah M., Alma Jane, Henrietta Adelaide, Luella Belle, Justin A., Frederick (Fred) Wallace, Elizabeth Medora, and Harlan Page.^[1] In 1853, Andrew Jr. sold his store to the partnership of Emerson and Richards, and the family moved toWisconsin in 1854 when Pettigrew was six years old.^[1] Andrew Jr. moved the family because of his neighbors' tough anti-slavery beliefs, and the store was used for the circulation of anti-slavery literature. The store was boycotted by angry pro-slavers who threatened the Pettigrew family with violence.^[1]

The family settled inRock County, nearUnion, Wisconsin.^[2] Pettigrew attended Evansville Academy, inEvansville.^[2] In 1866, Pettigrew went toBeloit to enroll inBeloit College. In the winter of 1868, Pettigrew entered law school at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison.^[3]

Pettigrew moved toDakota Territory in 1869 to work with a United States deputy surveyor. He settled inSioux Falls, where he practiced law and engaged in surveying andreal estate. He was a member of the territorial House of Representatives and served on the Territorial council. He was elected as aRepublican to the U.S. House, serving from March 4, 1881, to March 3, 1883. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1882 but returned to the territorial council from 1885 to 1889.

Pettigrew was also instrumental in the founding of many local communities around Sioux Falls by donating land. Pettigrew and his wife, Bessie, donated land in 1886 to aid the founding and development ofGranite, Iowa, inLyon County. In 1888, he and S.L. Tate both donated more land and were responsible for the founding ofSouth Sioux Falls. Pettigrew wanted to build a suburb of Sioux Falls to the south and west.

When South Dakota was admitted as a state, Pettigrew was elected as South Dakota's first Senator to the United States Senate. He served from November 2, 1889, to March 3, 1901. He introduced a bill to fund the structure, recommending that native Sioux quartzite be used for construction of the state'sfirst Federal building. He was re-elected in 1894, but left the Republican Party on June 17, 1896, to join theSilver Republicans, a faction of the Republican Party that opposed the party's position in support of the monetary gold standard. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1900. Pettigrew was a strongopponent of PresidentWilliam McKinley's attempt to annex theRepublic of Hawaii against the wish of its many native residents.^[4][5] In a congressional speech, he stated:

"The American flag went up on Hawaii in dishonor; it came down in honor, and if it goes up again now it will go up in infamy and shame and this Government will join the robber nations of the world."^[5]

His speech about Hawaii and annexation were at odds with some of his other views, namely in Federal Indian policy. Pettigrew was a supporter of a bill that sought to unilaterally dissolve tribal governments so as to force them to agree to allotment of their lands. In 1897, he delivered a speech on the Senate floor saying:

"There is no question but that the Congress of the United States at one blow should not only provide that laws passed by those councils, by those governments, should be approved by the President before they go into force, but, on the contrary, that the [tribal] governments themselves should be destroyed; that their power to legislate should be taken away; that their courts should be ousted and a proper judicial system furnished to those people. It is our duty to do it."^[6]

In the Presidential Election of 1900, while still in the Senate, he was a delegate and a major figure in the nationalpolitical convention of the"Fusion" wing of thePopulist Party held in Sioux Falls that convened on May 9, 1900, and lasted three days. The party endorsedWilliam Jennings Bryan as its candidate.^[7]

In 1917, in an interviewed published in theArgus Leader, Pettigrew said thatWorld War I was a capitalist scheme to further enrich the wealthy, and urged young men to evade thedraft. The localUnited States Attorney indicted of Pettigrew for violating theEspionage Act of 1917. This was the same charge for whichSocialist leaderEugene V. Debs had received a ten-year Federal prison sentence.

Pettigrew assembled a high-powered legal defense team headed up by his close personal friend, prominent attorneyClarence Darrow. The trial was repeatedly delayed, and eventually the charge against him was dropped.

Pettigrew had the formal document of indictment framed, and prominently displayed it in his home next to a framed copy of theUnited States Declaration of Independence. There it remains to this day as part of the exhibits of thePettigrew Home & Museum.^[8]

After his time in the Senate, Pettigrew first practiced law inNew York City, but soon returned to Sioux Falls and was active in politics and business until his death in that city. He was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in Sioux Falls.

Pettigrew left his home to the city of Sioux Falls in his will. ThePettigrew Home & Museum is maintained by the city of Sioux Falls to this day, designed to emulate how a person of Pettigrew's stature would have lived at the turn of the century. The house is filled with antiques from the early 1900s and Pettigrew's personal collection of artifacts from his time as an amateur archaeologist.^[9]

Announced January 12, 2009, Richard F. Pettigrew Elementary School opened in fall of 2009 in southwest Sioux Falls.

• "Who Owns the United States?"International Socialist Review, vol. 17, no. 6 (December 1916), pp. 357–359.^[10]
• The Course of Empire. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1920. (Anti-imperialist speeches)
• Imperial Washington: The Story of American Public Life from 1870 to 1920. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1922. Originally published asTriumphant Plutocracy: The Story of American Public Life from 1870 to 1920.

All quotes are from Pettigrew's bookTriumphant Plutocracy.

• "Capital is stolen labor and its only function is to steal more labor."
• "The early years of the century marked the progress of the race toward individual freedom and permanent victory over the tyranny of hereditary aristocracy, but the closing decades of the century have witnessed the surrender of all that was gained to the more heartless tyranny of accumulated wealth."
• "Under the ethics of his profession the lawyer is the only man who can take a bribe and call it a fee."
• "Instead of spending hundreds of millions inconquering the Philippines, it would have been far better economy and better business judgment to spend it in reclaiming the arid lands of the west."
• "The sum and substance of the conquest of the Philippines is to find a field where cheap labor can be secured, labor that does not strike, that does not belong to a union, that does not need an army to keep it in leading strings, that will make goods for the trusts of this country."
• "It had come into being as a protest against slavery and as the special champion of the Declaration of Independence, it would go out of being and out of power as the champion of slavery and the repudiator of the Declaration of Independence." --–On theRepublican Party.
• "TheRussian Revolution is the greatest event of our times. It marks the beginning of the epoch when the working people will assume the task of directing and controlling industry. It blazes a path into this unknown country, where the workers of the world are destined to take from their exploiters the right to control and direct the economic affairs of the community."

• List of United States senators who switched parties

• Wayne Fanebust,Echoes of November: The Life and Times of Senator R. F. Pettigrew of South Dakota. Freeman, SD: Pine Hill Press, 1997.

Wikiquote has quotations related toRichard F. Pettigrew.

• United States Congress."Richard F. Pettigrew (id: P000271)".Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• A Forgotten Fighter against Plutocracy, an article about Pettigrew byGeorge Novack
• Pettigrew Home & MuseumArchived 2010-09-25 at theWayback Machine

• 1848 births
• 1926 deaths
• People from Ludlow (town), Vermont
• Politicians from Windsor County, Vermont
• Delegates to the United States House of Representatives from Dakota Territory
• Republican Party United States senators from South Dakota
• Silver Republican Party United States senators from South Dakota
• Members of the Dakota Territorial Legislature
• South Dakota lawyers
• Writers from Vermont
• Writers from Sioux Falls, South Dakota
• Politicians from Sioux Falls, South Dakota
• People from Union, Rock County, Wisconsin
• 19th-century American lawyers
• Beloit College alumni
• University of Wisconsin Law School alumni
• People acquitted under the Espionage Act of 1917
• 19th-century United States senators
• 19th-century United States representatives

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