BUTTON'S INN, ONCE A POPULAR TAVERN ON THE OLD PORTAGE ROAD BETWEEN MAYVILLE AND WESTFIELD N.Y.
COPYRIGHT 1907 BY E.K. TOURGÉE
THE SCENE OF JUDGE TOURGÉE'S FAMOUS CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY ROMANCE OF THE SAME NAME.
An interesting postcard with a bit of extra history. E.K. Tourgée turns out to be the Judge's wife, Emma Kilbourne Torgée, who must have supplemented her income after her husband's death in 1905 by selling these cards. Printed by Detroit Publishing Co. in their typically beautiful lithography. The Chautauqua County Historical Society retains an original print of the photograph from which this postcard was crafted by the Detroit lithographers. Condition of this scarce original vintage postcard is VG, some corner wear, but NO creases.
Albion Winegar Tourgée (May 2, 1838 – May 21, 1905) was an American soldier, Radical Republican, lawyer, judge, novelist, and diplomat. A pioneer civil rights activist, he founded the National Citizens' Rights Association and litigated for the plaintiff Homer Plessy in the famous segregation case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Historian Mark Elliott credits Tourgée with introducing the metaphor of "color-blind" justice into legal discourse.“Justice is pictured as blind and her daughter the Law, ought at least to be color-blind.”
An active participant as a Reconstruction Carpetbagger in North Carolina, Tourgée had a number of inspiring and harrowing experiences that gave him ample material and impetus for the writing he would later undertake. He once opined that "Jesus Christ was a carpetbagger." Tourgée wrote A Fool's Errand, a largely autobiographical novel about an idealistic carpetbagger persecuted by the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.
Early life: Tourgée was born in rural Williamsfield, Ohio on May 2, 1838, the son of farmer Valentine Tourgée and Louisa Emma Winegar. His mother died when he was five. He attended common schools in Ashtabula County and in Lee, Massachusetts, where he spent two years living with an uncle. Tourgée entered the University of Rochester in 1859, but left it in 1861 without attaining a degree to teach school. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, in April of the same year he enlisted in the 27th New York Infantry. As was common practice with students who enlisted before completing their studies, the University awarded Tourgée an A.B. degree in June, 1862.
Military service: Tourgée was wounded in the spine at the First Battle of Bull Run, from which he suffered temporary paralysis and a permanent back problem that plagued him for the rest of his life. Upon recovering sufficiently to resume his military career, he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. At the Battle of Perryville, he was again wounded. On January 21, 1863, Tourgée was captured near Murfreesboro, Tennessee and was held as a prisoner-of-war in Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, before his exchange on May 8, 1863. He resumed his duties and fought at the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga. Tourgée resigned his commission on December 6, 1863 and returned to Ohio. He married Emma Doiska Kilbourne, with whom he had one child.
Reconstruction Period: After the war, Tourgée and his wife moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, where he and his wife could live in a warmer climate better suited to his war injuries. While there, he established himself as a lawyer, farmer, and editor, working for the Republican newspaper the Union Registrar. In 1866, he attended the Convention of the Southern Loyalists, where he unsuccessfully attempted to push through a resolution for African American suffrage. An active participant as a Reconstruction Carpetbagger in his new home, Tourgée had a number of inspiring and harrowing experiences that gave him ample material and impetus for the writing he would later undertake. In 1868 he represented Guilford County at the state constitutional convention, which was dominated by Republicans. There he successfully advocated for equal political and civil rights for all citizens; ending property qualifications for jury duty and officeholding; popular election of all state officers, including judges; free public education; abolition of whipping posts for those convicted of crimes; judicial reform; and uniform taxation. Nevertheless, he discovered that putting these reforms on paper did not translate into an ease of putting them into practice.
As a Republican-installed superior court judge from 1868 to 1874, Tourgée confronted the increasingly violent Ku Klux Klan, which was very powerful in his district and repeatedly threatened his life. Among his other activities, he served as a delegate to the 1875 constitutional convention and ran a losing campaign for Congress in 1878.
Literary Life: Albion's first literary endeavor was the novel 'Toinette', written while living in North Carolina between 1868 and 1869. It was not published until 1874 under the pseudonym "Henry Churton"; it was renamed A Royal Gentleman when it was republished in 1881.
Financial success came in 1879 with the publication of 'A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools', (Fords, Howard & Hulbert, Nov 1879) a novel based on his experiences of Reconstruction, which sold 200,000 copies. Its sequel, Bricks Without Straw, also was a bestseller.
In 1881, Tourgée moved to Mayville, New York, near the Chautauqua Institution, and made his living as writer and editor of the literary weekly Our Continent until it failed in 1884. He wrote many more novels and essays in the next two decades, many about the Lake Erie region to which he had located, including, among others, Button's Inn.
Plessy Case: What would become the Plessy case began when a group of prominent black leaders in New Orleans organized a "Citizens' Committee" in September 1891 to challenge Louisiana's 1890 law intended "to promote the comfort of passengers" by requiring all state railway companies "to provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing separate coaches or compartments" on their passenger trains. To assist them in their challenge, this group retained the legal services of "Judge Tourgée," as he was popularly known.
Perhaps the nation's most outspoken white Radical on the "race question" in the late 1880s and 1890s, Tourgée had called for resistance to the Louisiana law in his widely read newspaper column, "A Bystander's Notes," which, though written for the Chicago Republican (later known as the Chicago Daily Inter Ocean and after 1872 known as the Chicago Record-Herald), was syndicated in many newspapers across the country. Largely as a consequence of this column, "Judge Tourgée" had become well known in the black press for his bold denunciations of lynching, segregation, disfranchisement, white supremacy, and scientific racism, and he was the New Orleans Citizens' Committee's first choice to lead their legal challenge to the new Louisiana segregation law.
Tourgée, who was lead attorney for Homer Plessy, first deployed the term "color blindness" in his briefs in the Plessy case and had used it on several prior occasions on behalf of the struggle for civil rights. Indeed, Tourgee's first use of the legal metaphor of "color blindness" came decades before while serving as a Superior Court judge in North Carolina. In his dissent in Plessy, Justice John Marshall Harlan borrowed the metaphor of "color blindness" from Tourgée’s legal brief.
Later life: In 1897, following Tourgée's involvement in the Plessy case, President William McKinley appointed him U.S. consul to France, and he lived and served there in Bordeaux until his death, in early 1905, when he became gravely ill for several months, but then appeared to rebound. The recovery was only momentary, however, and he succumbed to acute uremia resulting from one of his Civil War wounds.
Tourgée's ashes were interred in Mayville, New York, at the Mayville Cemetery and are commemorated by a 12-foot granite obelisk inscribed thus: I pray thee then Write me as one that loves his fellow-man.
Other: On September 5, 1880 Tourgée met his wife in court to settle a financial dispute. Tourgée won, and his wife was issued a $35 fine and imprisoned
Orders over $10 will likely require package service with delivery confirmation. Additional purchases may be combined if bought same day, for one low shipping rate, if possible. Add to your cart and request total from seller for combined shipping. Sales Tax may apply, that's between you and ebay now. Please read and accept my terms of sale below before you bid.
You will find that the originals of the photos below are often larger than what ebay provides above.
1) COMBINED SHIPPING/POSTAGE: I happily combine shipping where possible, but DUE TO LIMITATIONS OF THE EBAY PLATFORM, THERE IS NOW ONLY ONE WAY TO RECEIVE ANY POSSIBLE DISCOUNTS FOR COMBINED SHIPPING CHARGES ON MULTIPLE ONE-DAY PURCHASES, both Auction and Buy-It-Now formats. There are no longer Paypal refunds for postage once payment has been made.
a. Auction Purchases: Wait for combined shipping invoice on multiple auction wins prior to payment. This may take up to a day based on my schedule, and does not affect your prompt payment status. The message line of the invoice will reflect that the postage has been combined.
b. Buy-It-Now Purchases: If you plan to buy more than one item from me, add them to your shopping cart, DO NOT USE BUY IT NOW. Once your cart is full, click on the button at top of cart page that says "Request Total From Seller." You will be prompted to commit to the purchases, at which point nobody else will be able to buy them. A notice will be sent to me to package your items and combine your shipping charges as much as possible, and send an invoice. This may take up to a day, depending on my schedule.
c. International Buyers: You must be logged in to the US eBay site (www.ebay.com) in order to use the shopping cart to request combined shipping invoice. Log out of your country specific eBay and log in at the US site. Note: listings using the eBay Global Shipping program are not subject to combined shipping.
d. No refunds will be made for those who cannot wait for a combined invoice. Please don't bid/buy if you don't agree to this.
2) POSTAGE: All USPS postage rates are calculated using the most affordable (not the quickest) shipping class, based on a pre-sale estimated weight and size of the package. If you want to upgrade to a quicker, more expensive postal class, you must let me know BEFORE you pay.
3) SALES TAX: All items shipped to addresses within New York State must be charged applicable NY sales tax unless you first send me a scan of a completed NY resale certificate ST-120 or exempt organization certificate before you checkout (see 1.b. above for requesting total). You will have my email address available after the sale to do this. I will then send you an amended invoice. If you have purchased before and I have a resale certificate already, let me know and I will send you an amended invoice. Once I have your tax form filed, I won't ask you to send another one again, but just remind me I have it.
4) INTERNATIONAL BUYERS: Please Note: Import duties, taxes, and charges are not included in the item price or shipping cost. These charges are the buyer's responsibility. Please check with your country's customs office to determine what these additional costs will be prior to bidding or buying. We won't under-value merchandise or mark the item as a gift on customs forms. Doing that is against U.S. and international laws.