Chicago’s First Contested Mayoral Election The results of Chicago’s 1844 mayoral election came down to a margin of seven votes and became a matter for the city council to decide. C H A R L E S H. C O S G R OV E
Adapted from “The Politician,” Fortune and Faith in Old Chicago: A Dual Biography of Mayor Augustus Garrett and Seminary Founder Eliza Clark Garrett by Charles H. Cosgrove. Copyright © 2020 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University. All rights reserved. ugustus Garrett was Chicago’s seventh and ninth mayor, winning elections, which occurred annually, in 1843 and 1845. He was almost its eighth, as well. And thereby hangs the tale of Chicago’s first disputed mayoral election. Garrett was a popular South Sider, a Democrat who had once been a Whig,1 a moderate and a generally pragmatic man in a nonideological, pragmatic town of some eight thousand souls on the “northwest” frontier. In his first one-year term in office—from March 1843 to March 1844—he proved himself an able executive, not a visionary but a good manager. Although boosterish in outlook, he was, in his middle age, essentially risk averse and fiscally conservative, making him well-suited to govern the fledgling city during a debt-ridden moment in its history. As 1843 drew to a close, Garrett told his New York business partner John Seaman that “the whole city” wanted him to run again. He also confessed that he was reluctant to run—public service did not appeal to him, he worried about his health, and the sole attraction was the honor of being reelected. He told Seaman that being the agent for three insurance companies in Chicago— one of their joint ventures—was better than being mayor because “they will pay and I would get as much popularity from the agencies as I would from the Mayorship.” But when the Democrats’ sixteen delegates met in February and nominated him unanimously, he accepted.2
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The Chicago Democrat published the nominated Democratic candidates for the upcoming city elections for mayor, city marshal, and aldermen, February 28, 1844.
