Joseph Fellows

Joseph Fellows of Indiana.

Joseph Fellows was a Conservative who succeeded Claude Baldwin as Governor of Indiana in the 1870s. A protégé of Governor-General Herbert Clemens, Fellows was chosen by Clemens to succeed him as leader of the Conservatives, and at the Conservatives' nominating convention in Michigan City in January 1878, the delegates selected Fellows as their nominee for Governor-General. In his acceptance speech, Fellows pledged himself "to the continuation of the prosperity we have enjoyed for the past decade." During the campaign for the 1878 Grand Council elections, a wave of political violence swept the C.N.A., most of it directed against the upstart People's Coalition. The Coalition's party headquarters in Indiana was burned to the ground, and this helped turn public opinion against the Conservatives in general and Fellows in particular. On election day, February 15, the Conservative Party's seats in the Grand Council fell from 77 to 49, while the People's Coalition rose from 10 to 39, and the Liberal Party won a plurality of 62 seats.