27 Facts About Joseph Medill

Joseph Medill was a Canadian-American newspaper editor, publisher, and Republican Party politician.

Joseph Medill was co-owner and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, and he was Mayor of Chicago from after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 until 1873.

Joseph Medill was born April 6,1823, in Saint John, New Brunswick, British North America, to Margaret and William Medill.

Joseph Medill grew up on a farm and was taught English grammar, Latin, logic and philosophy from Reverend Hawkins, a clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Canton.

Joseph Medill read law under Hiram Griswold and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1846.

In 1855, Joseph Medill sold his interest in the Leader to Cowles and bought the Tribune in partnership with Dr Ray and Alfred Cowles.

Joseph Medill served as its managing editor until 1864, when Horace White became editor-in-chief.

At that time Joseph Medill left day-to-day operations of the Tribune for political activities.

So, in 1873 Joseph Medill bought additional equity from Cowles and from White, becoming majority owner.

Joseph Medill was strongly anti-slavery, supporting both the Free-Soil cause and Abolitionism.

Joseph Medill was a major supporter of Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s.

Joseph Medill regularly dismissed the Irish as lazy and shiftless.

In 1864, Joseph Medill left the Tribune editorship for political activity, which occupied him for the next ten years.

Joseph Medill was appointed by President Grant to the first Civil Service Commission.

Joseph Medill joined with Samuel Snowden Hayes and Rosell Hough in order to oppose conditions of military draft laws during the American Civil War, feeling that the government was demanding too many troops to be drafted out of Cook County.

Lincoln argued that Chicagoans and Joseph Medill's newspaper had been most uncompromising in their opposition to the south's stance on slavery, and therefore should muster the men demanded of them to supply the Union with troops.

Joseph Medill used his new powers to appoint the members of the newly constituted Chicago Board of Education and the commissioners of its constituted public library.

Joseph Medill's appointments were approved unanimously by the City Council.

Joseph Medill had strongly lobbied on behalf of the city to receive state financial aid, taking advantage of his connections with state legislators in the state capitol of Springfield, Illinois.

While, at the time, state law prohibited the direct appropriation of state funds to the city, Joseph Medill was able to get the legislature to pass a special act reimbursing the city for $2.9 million the city had expended on the state-owned Illinois and Michigan Canal.

Joseph Medill took advantage of his connections in Washington, DC, to seek such aid.

Joseph Medill convinced President Grant to give a personal $1,000 contribution to aid the city's reconstruction.

Joseph Medill was a strong Republican loyalist who supported President Grant for re-election in 1872.

At the first 1873 meeting of the City Council, Joseph Medill announced that he would be using the power to select the chairmen of members of the council committees.

Joseph Medill appointed his loyalists to lead most important committees, while aldermen of wards consisting of immigrant populations received lesser consideration for appointments.

Joseph Medill met not only resistance from a City Council divided over his exercise of power and aspects of his agenda, but resistance from citizens.

Joseph Medill died on March 16,1899, at the age of 75 in San Antonio, Texas.