John Coit Spooner was a politician and lawyer from Wisconsin. He served in the United States Senate from 1885 to 1891 and from 1897 to 1907. A Republican, by the 1890s, he was one of the "Big Four" key Republicans who largely controlled the major decisions of the Senate, along with Orville H. Platt of Connecticut, William B. Allison of Iowa and Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island.
During the Civil War, he enlisted in the Union Army as a private assigned to Company D, 40th Wisconsin Infantry, a three-month unit. After Spooner's 100 days of service were complete, he returned home and recruited a company from his college classmates, Company A, 50th Wisconsin Infantry, which he commanded as a captain. At the close of the war, Spooner received a brevet promotion to major.
He was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate January 27, 1885, and served from 1885 to 1891, being defeated for re-election by William F. Vilas. He served as chairman of the Committee on Claims from 1886 to 1891. In 1888 and again in 1892, Spooner was a delegate to the Republican National Convention and was the chairman of Wisconsin's delegation. Spooner was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for governor of Wisconsin in 1892. After his election defeat, he moved to Madison and resumed practicing law in 1893. In 1897, Spooner was elected to the U.S. Senate, succeeding Vilas. He was reelected in 1903, and served from 1897 until his resignation in 1907. He served as chairman of the Committee on Canadian Relations from 1897 to 1899 and of the Committee on Rules from 1899 to 1907. As a Senator, Spooner was credited with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 provision that enabled the government to prosecute Standard Oil. He also promoted the legislation which created a civil government for the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. He was the author of the Spooner Act, which gave President Theodore Roosevelt authority to purchase the Panama Canal Zone. A popular figure among Republicans, he turned down three cabinet posts during his political career: Secretary of the Interior in President William McKinley's administration in 1898, Attorney General under President McKinley in 1901, and Secretary of State in President William Howard Taft's administration in 1909. Spooner and fellow Wisconsin Senator, Robert M. La Follette, were known to be bitter rivals. Spooner disagreed with La Follette's progressive policies, which were opposed to his own conservative policies. Spooner was also one of the early opponents of direct primary elections. At the time, party nominees were selected by the party officials, sometimes by party bosses. Spooner's view of political campaigns if direct primaries became standard was:
Direct primaries would destroy the party machinery... and would build up a lot of personal machines, and would make every man a self-seeker, and would degrade politics by turning candidacies into bitter personal wrangles.
Later life
After his retirement from the Senate, he practiced law in New York City. In 1910, Spooner and Joseph P. Cotton formed the firm of Spooner & Cotton, where Spooner practiced until his death until his death.
Spooner received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1894. He also received honorary LL.D. degrees from Yale University in 1908 and Columbia University.
Family
In 1868, Spooner married Annie Main of Madison. They were the parents of four children, three of whom lived to adulthood -- Charles Philip Spooner, Willet Main Spooner, John C. Spooner, and Philip Loring Spooner.
