Orsamus Cole

Orsamus R. Cole (August 23, 1819 – May 5, 1903) was an American lawyer, legislator, and jurist who became the 6th Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and, until 2013, the longest-serving justice in that court’s history, with nearly 37 years on the high court. He also represented Wisconsin’s 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives for the 31st Congress (1849–1850). His name is frequently misspelled as Orasmus.

Cole was born on August 23, 1819, in Cazenovia, New York, the son of Hymeneus Cole and Sarah Salisbury. Both of his grandfathers had served in the American Revolutionary War, a family legacy that situated him within the early national political and civic tradition. He attended local common schools in New York before enrolling at Union College in Schenectady. Cole graduated from Union College in 1843, receiving a classical education that prepared him for the legal profession. He then read law and, in 1845, was admitted to the New York bar.

In 1845, shortly after his admission to practice, Cole left New York, stopping briefly in Chicago before settling in Potosi, a lead-mining town in Grant County in the Wisconsin Territory. There he entered into a prosperous law partnership with William Biddlecome, quickly establishing himself as a capable attorney on the developing western frontier. His growing prominence in local affairs led to his selection in 1847 as one of Grant County’s delegates to the second Wisconsin Constitutional Convention. The constitution drafted by that convention was ratified by popular referendum in May 1848, paving the way for Wisconsin’s admission to the Union.

With statehood secured, Cole became active in partisan politics as a member of the Whig Party. In the fall of 1848 he was nominated by the Whigs as their candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin’s 2nd congressional district. In the November general election he defeated Democrat A. Hyatt Smith and Free Soil candidate George W. Crabb, earning a seat in the 31st United States Congress. As a Whig representative from Wisconsin, Cole contributed to the legislative process during one term in office, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents during a significant and turbulent period in American history.

During his congressional service from 1849 to 1850, Cole aligned himself with the anti-slavery wing of the Whig Party. He notably refused to support the fugitive slave provisions of the Compromise of 1850, placing himself among those northern legislators who resisted federal measures strengthening the institution of slavery. He stood for re-election in 1850 but was defeated by Democrat Ben C. Eastman. After leaving Congress, Cole returned to Potosi and resumed his law practice. In 1853 he ran statewide as the candidate for Attorney General of Wisconsin on a consolidated Whig and Free Soil ticket. That fusion slate was defeated in nearly all statewide contests, and Cole again withdrew from electoral office to continue his legal career.

The political realignments of the early 1850s soon drew Cole back into public life. Following the collapse of the Whig Party and the rise of sectional tensions over slavery, remnants of the Whig and Free Soil movements in Wisconsin joined to form the new Republican Party. In the 1854 elections, the Republicans achieved significant success, capturing a majority in the Wisconsin State Assembly. During the ensuing legislative session, Republican leaders selected Cole as their candidate to challenge incumbent Associate Justice Samuel Crawford in the April 1855 election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Cole’s well-known opposition to the fugitive slave laws became a central issue in the campaign, and he defeated Crawford, taking office as an associate justice in June 1855.

Cole’s judicial career on the Wisconsin Supreme Court proved exceptionally long and influential. He was re-elected to six-year terms in 1861, 1867, and 1873, and then to a ten-year term in 1879, reflecting sustained public confidence in his judicial service. In November 1880, following the death of Chief Justice Edward George Ryan, Governor William E. Smith appointed Cole as Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Cole was subsequently elected in April 1881 to a full ten-year term as chief justice. In total, Justice Cole served thirty-six years and seven months on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, making him the longest-serving justice in the court’s history until his record was surpassed by Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson in 2013.

At the conclusion of his term in 1892, Cole retired from the bench and moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In his later years he remained a respected figure in the state’s legal and political circles, emblematic of the generation that had guided Wisconsin from territorial status through the Civil War era and into the late nineteenth century. He died in Milwaukee on May 5, 1903, and was interred in Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison, Wisconsin.

Cole’s personal life reflected both family devotion and personal loss. He married his first wife, Julia A. Houghton, in 1848. The couple had two children: a son, Sidney, who survived to adulthood, and another son, Orsamus, who died in infancy in 1853. Julia Cole died in 1874. On January 1, 1879, in Madison, Wisconsin, Cole married his second wife, Roberta C. Noe Garnhart, the widow of John H. Garnhart. She died on June 17, 1884. Cole’s former Madison residence, later known as the Carrie Pierce House, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, preserving a tangible connection to his long career in Wisconsin’s legal and political history.