Frank Hanly

James Franklin Hanly (April 4, 1863 August 1, 1920) was a United States politician who served as the 26th Governor of Indiana from 1905 to 1909.

Biography

Early life

Hanly was born in a log cabin near St. Joseph, Champaign County, Illinois. As a young man he also lived for a while on a farm in the nearby village of Homer. In Homer he attended the Liberty rural school where he became know as a formidable debater. He attended the common schools and the Eastern Illinois Normal School at Danville, Vermilion County, Illinois, from 1879 to 1881. He later moved to Warren County, Indiana where he taught in the state public schools from 1881 to 1889.

Hanly studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1889. He began practice in Williamsport, Indiana.

Political career

He was elected as a member of the Indiana State Senate in 1890 and 1891, as a Republican to the Fifty-fourth Congress, serving from March 4, 1895 to March 3, 1897, but was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1896.

Hanly was elected Governor of Indiana serving from January 9, 1905 until January 11, 1909. As governor, he crusaded against liquor, horse-racing and political corruption even prosecuting members of his own administration for embezzlement. In 1907, he signed the Compulsory Sterilization Law, which mandated the sterilization of certain individuals in state custody, making Indiana the first state to adopt eugenics legislation. Governor Thomas R. Marshall ordered the practice stopped in 1909. In 1921, the Indiana Supreme Court found the law unconstitutional. He also championed a bill that would allow counties to ban the sale of alcohol. Once passed, 72 of Indiana's 92 counties went dry, banning the sale of all liquors.

Hanly was a prohibition lecturer throughout the United States from 1910 to 1920 and in France in 1919. He organized the Flying Squadron of America (sometimes called Hanly's Flying Squadron), a temperance organization that staged a nationwide campaign to promote temperance. It consisted of three groups of revivalist-like speakers who toured cities across the country between September 30, 1914 and June 6, 1915.

Hanly was an unsuccessful candidate of the Prohibition Party for President of the United States in the 1916 election where he garnered 221,030 votes, or about 1.2%. Hanly's primary reason for supporting prohibition was the effect that alcoholics had on their children.

In April 1920 Hanly argued the case of Hawke v. Smith, a challenge to the Eighteenth Amendment, before the United States Supreme Court. Hanly won a unanimous decision issued on June 1, 1920, upholding prohibition.

Death

He died as the result of an automobile-train accident near Dennison, Ohio in 1920. He is interred at Hillside Cemetery, near Williamsport, Indiana.

See also

• List of Governors of Indiana
• Flying Squadron Also known as "Hanly's Flying Squadron."
• Temperance movement
• Temperance organizations

References

External links

• Biography from Indiana Historical Bureau
• Indiana County History - Hanly Biography
• National Governors Association Biography
• Details of Hawke v. Smith