Kenosha News

Editor witnessed legislator’s shocking murder

In the collection of the Wisconsin Historical Society Museum in Madison is an article of clothing that has significance to the days when the state was still a territory.

It is a vest worn by the Honorable Charles C.P. Arndt, a representative to the Territorial Legislature in 1842. The vest has a bullet hole in it. Arndt was murdered while wearing it.

The crime was the scorn of the nation and the talk of Europe, as Arndt was murdered by another member of the legislature on the floor of the council chamber in Madison.

It happened in full view of our own newspaper editor, Christopher Latham Sholes, of the Southport Telegraph. (Southport was the former name of the village that became the city of Kenosha.)

Sholes came to Wisconsin in 1837 at the age of 18 to help his brothers in Green Bay with their newspaper. He moved to Southport in 1840 to start a paper and stayed 20 years.

If his name sounds familiar, he’s the guy who is credited with inventing the first successful typewriter and the QWERTY keyboard. But that didn’t happen until much later in his life, after he moved to Milwaukee.

At the tender age of 19, Sholes took charge of the House Journal of the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature, which he carried from Madison to Philadelphia to be printed. It was a long and difficult journey.

It was while carrying out his duties in the territorial council chamber that he saw the shooting of Arndt of Green Bay by James R. Vineyard that sent shockwaves through the territory and the nation.

Vineyard, from Grant County in the southwestern part of the state, was a fellow representative in the council.

The two were friends. Vineyard had boarded with Judge John P. Arndt, Charles’ father, in Green Bay, during the winter of 1835-36 and had been treated as a member of the family.

The homicide

On the afternoon of Feb. 11, 1842, a dispute erupted on the floor of the council chambers between the two representatives over the potential appointment of Enos S. Baker as sheriff of Grant County.

Vineyard was against the appointment, preferring instead to appoint his brother. During the deliberations, Arndt implied that Vineyard was lying about something he said about Baker.

Hot and loud words were exchanged with each man accusing the other of lying and an adjournment was called.

In full view of the council members, Arndt immediately approached Vineyard at his desk and demanded a retraction. Arndt struck Vineyard in the face and before anyone could intervene to separate the two men, Vineyard drew a pistol from the breast pocket of his coat and shot Arndt in the chest from a few feet away.

The aged Judge Arndt witnessed his son’s killing and Sholes wrote in the Southport Telegraph, “... (Judge Arndt’s) mental agony and grief on the occasion are said to have beggared the powers of description.”

From his jail cell, Vineyard issued his resignation, but the council members would not accept it, choosing to expel him from the council without even allowing his resignation to be read.

Sholes gave testimony at the coroner’s inquest; it corroborated that of the others who testified.

Sholes wrote, “The practice of carrying deadly weapons is nowhere countenanced in this Territory; unless it be with some few exceptions in western and mining districts. A man would be no more tolerated in carrying a pistol or a bowie-knife about his person in eastern Wisconsin than he would be in the most refined portions of New England ... A portion of the inhabitants in the western and mining districts are of Southern origin — some of them still retain in some degree those false notions of honor and of chivalry... these relics of barbarism.”

When Vineyard came to trial the following year, the venue was changed from Dane County to Green County and astonishingly, a jury there found him innocent of the manslaughter charge. He soon left Wisconsin for California, where he died in 1863.

Dickens’ thoughts

Sholes’ detailed reporting on the incident was reprinted by many newspapers across the country and fell into the hands of the English author Charles Dickens, who toured America (including a visit to Wisconsin) from January to June in 1842.

Dickens referred to the Southport Telegraph in his book “American Notes,” which he published upon his return to England.

The Arndt murder was one of several incidents that Dickens used to show the brutality and barbarity of frontier Americans in the book.

Dickens wrote: “Vinyard (sic) was within arm’s length of Mr. Arndt, when he took such deadly aim at him that he never spoke. Vinyard might at pleasure, being so near, have only wounded him, but he chose to kill him.”

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