Legislature Honors Fallen General Isaac I. Stevens
Lawmakers declare a ten-day mourning period for the former Governor and Union General killed in the Civil War.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Whereas, in the conflict and battles growing out of the war now pending between the Government of the United States and certain States refusing to acknowledge the power and authority of the General Government, General Isaac I. Stevens, formerly Governor of this Territory, afterwards Representative in Congress, and lately a Brigadier General in the army of the United States, was struck down by the hand of death, and the people of this Territory thereby deprived of a valuable citizen, the Army of a gallant soldier, and society of an estimable member, therefore, be it Resolved, That the people of Washington Territory, in Legislative Assembly represented, hereby acknowledge with deepest sensibility, the sad intelligence of the death of Gen. Isaac I. Stevens. Resolved, That the members and officers of the Legislative Assembly will wear the usual badge of mourning, as is customary upon such sad occasions, for the period of ten days, as a testimony of the profound respect that the members of this Legislative Assembly entertain for the memory of the deceased.
“The people of Washington Territory, in Legislative Assembly represented, hereby acknowledge with deepest sensibility, the sad intelligence of the death of Gen. Isaac I. Stevens.”
Isaac I. Stevens remains a polarizing figure in Washington history: remembered as a territorial visionary and Civil War hero, but also notorious for his role in the coercive and often violent dispossession of Indigenous land during the 1850s. This resolution reflects the somber political atmosphere of Olympia in 1862, at the height of the national existential crisis.
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