IN: Wilhelm Justus Goebel was born January 4, 1856, in Albany Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, the son of Wilhelm and Augusta (Groenkle) Goebel, immigrants from Hanover, Germany. The first of four children, he was born two months premature and weighed less than three pounds. His father served as a private in Company B, 82nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War, and Goebel's mother raised her children alone, teaching them much about their German heritage. Wilhelm spoke only German until the age of six, but embraced the culture of his birth country as well, adopting the English spelling of his name.

Three men sought the Democratic nomination for governor at the 1899 party convention in Louisville - Goebel, Wat Hardin, and William J. Stone. When Hardin appeared to be the front-runner for the nomination, Stone and Goebel agreed to work together against him. Stone's supporters would back whomever Goebel picked to preside over the convention. In exchange, half the delegates from Louisville, who were pledged to Goebel, would vote to nominate Stone for governor. Goebel would then drop out of the race, but would name many of the other officials on the ticket. As word of the plan spread, Hardin dropped out of the race, believing he would be beaten by the Stone-Goebel alliance. Goebel took a calculated risk by breaking the agreement once his choice was installed as presiding officer. Hardin, seeing that Stone had been betrayed and hoping he might now be able to secure the nomination, re-entered the contest. Several chaotic ballots resulted in no clear majority for anyone, and Goebel's hand-picked chairman announced the man with the lowest vote total in the next canvass would be dropped. It turned out to be Stone. This put Stone's backers in a difficult position. They were forced to choose between Hardin, who was seen as a pawn of the railroads, or Goebel, who had turned against their man. Enough of them sided with Goebel to give him the nomination. Goebel's tactics, while not illegal, were unpopular and divided the party. A disgruntled faction calling themselves the "Honest Election Democrats" held a separate convention in Lexington and nominated John Y. Brown for governor. Republican William S. Taylor defeated both Democratic candidates in the general election, but his margin over Goebel was only 2,383 votes. Democrats in the General Assembly began making accusations of voting irregularities in some counties, but in a surprise decision, the Board of Elections created by the Goebel Election Law and manned by three hand-picked Goebel Democrats, ruled 2-1 that the disputed ballots should count, saying the law gave them no legal power to reverse the official county results and that under the Kentucky Constitution the power to review the election lay in the General Assembly. The Assembly then invalidated enough Republican ballots to give the election to Goebel. The Assembly's Republican minority was incensed, as were voters in traditionally Republican districts. For several days, the state hovered on the brink of a possible civil war.

Who won this election?

OUT: Goebel took

IN: Bowring was born in Exeter of Charles Bowring (1769-1856), a wool merchant whose main market was China, from an old Unitarian family, and Sarah Jane Anne (d. 1828), the daughter of Thomas Lane, vicar of St Ives, Cornwall. His last formal education was at a Unitarian school in Moretonhampstead and he started work in his father's business at age 13. Bowring at one stage wished to become a Unitarian minister. Espousal of Unitarian faith was illegal in Britain until Bowring had turned 21.

By 1847, Bowring had assembled an impressive array of credentials: honorary diplomas from universities in Holland and Italy, fellowships of the Linnaean Society of London and Paris, the Historical Institute of the Scandinavian and Icelandic Societies, the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, the Royal Society of Hungary, the Royal Society of Copenhagen, and of the Frisian and Athenian Societies. Numerous translations and works on foreign languages, politics and economy had been published. His zeal in Parliament and standing as a literary man were well known. In 1849, he was appointed British consul at Canton (today's Guangzhou), and superintendent of trade in China. Arriving on the HMS Medea on 12 April 1849, he took up the post in which he was to remain for four years the next day. His son John Charles had preceded him to China, arriving in Hong Kong in 1842, had been appointed Justice of the Peace and was at one point a partner in Jardines. Bowring was quickly appalled by endemic corruption and frustrated by finding himself powerless in the face of Chinese breaches of the Treaty of Nanking and refusal to receive him at the diplomatic level or permit him to travel to Peking, and by his being subordinate to the Governor of Hong Kong who knew nothing of his difficulties. For almost a year from 1852 to 1853, he acted as Britain's Plenipotentiary and Superintendent of Trade and Governor of Hong Kong in the absence on leave of Sir George Bonham, who he was later to succeed. Bowring was instrumental in the formation in 1855 of the Board of Inspectors established under the Qing Customs House, operated by the British to gather statistics on trade on behalf of the Qing government and, later, as the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, to collect all customs duties, a vital reform which brought an end to the corruption of government officials and led modernisation of China's international trade. Concerned for the welfare of coolies being exported to Australia, California, Cuba and the West Indies, and disturbed by the coolie revolt in Amoy in May 1852, Bowring tightened enforcement of the Passenger Act so as to improve coolie transportation conditions and ensure their voluntariness.

What did you find most interesting in this article?

OUT:
His son John Charles had preceded him to China, arriving in Hong Kong in 1842, had been appointed Justice of the Peace