Arthur MacArthur, Senor, 4th Governor
  Arthur MacArthur, Senor (January 26, 1815-August 26, 1896) was an American lawyer, judge, and politician who served as the acting governor of Wisconsin for four brief days in 1856, in the midst of an election scandal.
  MacArthur was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the descendant of Highlander nobility through his father, who had died just seven days before his birth in 1815. His mother remarried and moved the family to Uxbridge, Massachusetts in 1828. He attended schools in Uxbridge and Amherst, Massachusetts but dropped out to help his family through a severe economic depression in 1837.  Graduated from Wesleyan Univ. (Middletown, Conn.), studied law, worked as a law clerk in Boston and then New York, and was admitted to the New York bar in 1841.
   Around 1844, he married Aurelia Belcher (1819 - 1864), the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. With the help of his father-in-law, MacArthur established a very successful legal practice in Springfield.  He practiced law in New York and Massachusetts for several years, and in 1849 moved to Milwaukee where he soon became active in politics.
  Differences in politics between the immigrant Democrat MacArthur and his conservative Whig in-laws soon led him to move his family from their influence. He set up a law office in New York City in 1845, and finally settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1849. MacArthur quickly befriended the powerful in his new home state, and was elected as the city attorney of Milwaukee in 1851.  A Democrat, in 1855 was elected lieutenant governor as the running mate of incumbent, William A. Barstow (q.v.).
  Barstow's election was contested by the Republican candidate, Coles Bashford (q.v.), who charged that fraud had been committed in the balloting. Governor Barstow resigned, and on Mar., 21, 1856, McArthur became governor. The state supreme court upheld Bashford as the duly elected governor, and although McArthur had at first decided to hold the governor's office regardless of the court's decision, he reconsidered and relinquished the office four days after assuming it. The election ended in scandal. Though Barstow was initially declared winner by a mere 157 votes, the result was challenged as a fraud by Barstow's opponent, the Republican Coles Bashford, and it was substantiated that election returns had been forged from non-existent precincts. Barstow kept hold of the office anyway, and as the rivals' militia forces converged on the state capital of Madison threatening to start a civil war, Barstow and MacArthur were inaugurated publicly on January 7, 1856. Despite his promises to hold onto the office at all costs, Barstow eventually realized that he was fighting a losing battle both legally and in public opinion, and resigned on March 21, 1856, four days before the Wisconsin Supreme Court resolved the controversy in favor of Bashford. MacArthur became acting governor upon Barstow's resignation and initially repeated his predecessor's resolve to remain in office. On March 25, however, when confronted face to face with a threat to use force from Bashford, a county sheriff, and a throng of Bashford's followers, MacArthur and his supporters vacated the Capitol. MacArthur finished his term as lieutenant governor, leaving office in 1857.  He resumed his duties as lieutenant governor, and officially remained in this position until Jan., 1858.
  The election scandal somehow left MacArthur's reputation relatively unscathed, and he won election for two terms as a judge on the Wisconsin Second Judicial Circuit, from 1857 until 1869.  During the Civil War, McArthur was known as a "War Democrat," and subsequently joined the Republican party. In 1870, President Grant appointed MacArthur as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, a position that he held until his retirement in 1887. 
  After leaving the bench, MacArthur spent his remaining years in Washington moving in high society, accepting speaking engagements, and writing books and lecturing; his writings ranged from law publications to historical studies of Mary Stuart and Lady Jane Grey.
  MacArthur had two sons, Frank, and famed General Arthur MacArthur, Jr., for whom he had first secured an appointment to West Point Military Academy and then as a first lieutenant in the 24th regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers. Arthur Jr. was himself the father of a general of even greater fame, the World War II commander, Douglas MacArthur.
  He died in Atlantic City, New Jersey and was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington. Natl. Cyclopaedia Amer. Biog., 13 (1906); P. M. Reed, Bench and Bar of Wis. (Milwaukee, 1882); E. B. Usher, Wis. (8 vols., Chicago, 1914); Milwaukee Sentinel, Aug. 26, 1896; WPA MS. Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography

Coles Bashford, 5th Governor
  Coles Bashford (January 24, 1816 - April 25, 1878) was an American lawyer and politician who became the first Republican governor of Wisconsin. His one term as governor ended in a bribery scandal that forced him to leave the state, but he was later instrumental in the government of the newly-formed Arizona Territory.
  Bashford was born near Cold Spring in Putnam County, New York. He attended the Wesleyan Seminary (now Genessee College) in Lima, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1842. He served as the district attorney of Wayne County from 1847 until he resigned in 1850 and moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Elected on the Whig ticket, he served in the state senate (1853-1855).  After the Whigs split on the issue of slavery, Bashford became one of the founding candidates of the Republican Party, winning a seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly on that ticket in 1855.  Bashford ran for governor as a Republican in 1855 and was at first declared the loser to the Democrat incumbent, William A. Barstow, by a mere 157 votes. However, Bashford claimed the result was fraudulent, and it was later discovered that Barstow's win was due to forged election returns coming from nonexistent precincts in the sparsely populated northern part of the state, in addition to other irregularities such as two separate canvassing boards claiming legitimacy in Waupaca County. With rival militia units converging on the state capital in Madison, Bashford was sworn in quietly in the chambers of the Wisconsin Supreme Court by Chief Justice Whiton on January 7, 1856. On the same day, Barstow was publicly inaugurated with full ceremony. The Wisconsin attorney general filed quo warranto proceedings in the Wisconsin Supreme Court to remove Barstow, who threatened that he would not "give up his office alive." After challenging the court's jurisdiction without success and noting that the tide of public opinion had turned against him, Barstow declined to contest the fraud allegations and sent his resignation to the legislature on March 21, 1856, leaving the lieutenant governor, Arthur MacArthur, as acting governor. On March 24, the court unanimously awarded the governorship to Bashford by a count of 1,009 votes. The following day, as Madison was crowded with onlookers, Bashford entered the Capitol with the court's judgment in hand, in the company of a sheriff and a throng of followers, and announced to MacArthur that he had come to claim his office. Upon Bashford's threat that force would be used if necessary, MacArthur and his supporters quickly left. Despite initial opposition by the Democrats in the State Assembly, both houses of the Wisconsin State Legislature soon recognized Bashford as the new governor.
  During his administration (1856-1857), the legislature distributed two huge grants of land awarded to Wisconsin by the U.S. government for buildingrailroads. As governor, Bashford appointed the first African-American to Wisconsin state office when he made barber and entrepreneur William Noland a notary public in 1857.1 Bashford declined renomination from the Republican Party, and left office at the end of his term on January 4, 1858.
  Mere weeks later, an investigation was launched regarding bribes that he and members of his administration had accepted from the La Crosse & Milwaukee Railroad Company in exchange for approval of a major land grant. Bashford himself had received the largest payoff in the form of $50,000 in stocks and $15,000 in cash from the railroad company; state legislators and a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice were also involved in payoffs exceeding $400,000 in total. The prime beneficiary was Governor Bashford. From the La Crosse road alone he had received $50,000 in bonds, which he later converted into $15,000 cash. Nearly every copy of the final investigative report was seized and burned by the implicated politicians, but public outrage spread despite the suppression. Bashford managed to cash in his stock before the railroad company folded as a result of the investigation, and fled the state.
  He travelled first to Washington, DC in 1862, and then left for the Arizona Territory in 1863 with his brother, Levi, who was to be Surveyor General of the newly-created territory. They made the arduous, cross-continental journey accompanying the "Governor's party" - the appointed territorial officials led by Governor John Noble Goodwin - and arrived in Arizona Territory in December of 1863.
  Though moving to the Territory as a private citizen, Bashford was soon appointed its first Attorney General by Governor Goodwin, serving from 1864 until 1866. His position required him to journey throughout the Territory, frequently travelling through land considered "hostile Indian country", but he executed these duties without incident. Bashford was also the first lawyer admitted to practice in the Arizona Territorial Courts, and compiled the session laws of the Territory into one 400-page volume with the assistance of Associate Justice William T. Howell. He was elected President of the first Territorial Council (the Territory's upper legislative body) in 1864, and served from 1867 until 1869 as a territorial delegate to the United States Congress as an independent, rather than with his former party.
  The last political office Bashford held was as Secretary of State for the Territory by appointment of President Grant in 1869 and again in 1873. After the Territory's capital moved from Prescott, where Bashford and Levi ran the Bashford Mercantile Store, Bashford resigned in 1876 to stay close to his business interests. He died in Prescott two years later. Bashford was buried in Mountain View Cemetery, in Oakland, California. He and his wife Francis Adams had seven children: Belle (who had died at age 11), Edward, Elizabeth, Helen, Lillian, Margaret, and William Coles. The Bashford Mercantile Store remained operating in Prescott until the 1940s.  Dict. Amer. Biog.; T. E. Farish, Hist. of Ariz. (8 vols., Phoenix, 1915-1918); J. B. Win-slow, Story of a Great Court (Chicago, 1912); WPA MS. Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography