A crowd filled the seats at the Rockwell Ballroom in mid-November as Friends of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum hosted Terrence M. Cole for a talk on \u201cOld Yukon: Tales, Trails, and Trials.\u201d Cole, the editor of the memoir by James Wickersham, gave a humorous and commentary-filled presentation on the historical, Alaskan figure and highlighted lesser-known parts of his past.<\/p>\n
Wickersham, also known as \u201cThe Judge\u201d for his time as a district court judge in Alaska when it was still a territory, had many other notable accomplishments under his belt. He served seven terms as Alaska\u2019s lone delegate to Congress; he wrote legislation that created the Alaska Territorial Legislature; he authored the legislation which established Mount McKinley National Park; and he was responsible for the creation of public institutions like the Alaska Railroad, the public school system and the University of Alaska. He took it upon himself to compile seven volumes of Alaska Law Reports, court decisions made by the District Court Judges in Alaska as well as a bibliography of Alaska literature. He was dedicated even about writing in his diary, which he did every day from Jan. 1, 1900 until 1939, the year he died. His last entry scribbled was \u201ccan\u2019t see \u2013 blind.\u201d<\/p>\n
His memoir, \u201cOld Yukon: Tales, Trails and Trials,\u201d which he wrote on his years as a district judge, failed to publish commercially, Cole said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis memoir that he wrote \u2013 it was terribly written,\u201d Cole said.<\/p>\n
It was too long, boring, and had a number of misremembered events, Cole said, adding that weakness could be due to the passage of time \u2014 or because he was a politician. For the release of the memoir, Cole edited, fact-checked and abridged the original. He also added bits of all 47 of Wickersham\u2019s diaries to the memoir to paint a more human and more accurate depiction of Wickersham\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of Alaska\u2019s great literary treasures,\u201d Cole said of the diaries. \u201cThe State Library has transcribed the whole thing. It\u2019s such a great resource and insight into this man \u2026 He was a lot more honest and brutal in his diary.\u201d<\/p>\n
The main reason Cole decided to edit \u201cOld Yukon: Tales, Trails, and Trials\u201d was because he found the human Wickersham \u2014 not the figure \u2014 interesting.<\/p>\n
Wickersham often got called \u201cFlickering Wick\u201d and was featured in political cartoons in newspapers for his flip-flopping on some issues while in public office. He once famously launched himself at another congressmen for calling him a liar in 1911 and had to be be pulled off the man by his other fellow congressmen. He was passionate and bullheaded, Cole said.<\/p>\n
Originally, Cole said, Wickersham didn\u2019t want to come to Alaska for federal appointment. He wanted to be a consul in Yokohama, Japan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn his memoir he said he wanted to go to Alaska. That is completely bogus,\u201d Cole said. Wickersham even sent a telegram to his friend he helped elect to the U.S. Senate, Addison G. Foster, which read: \u201cMuch prefer Japan, but leave everything to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, as history shows, he made the most of the situation and accomplished quite a deal. But not everything he accomplished during his life is something people today can look back on and praise.<\/p>\n
Cole showed a photo of Wickersham with the Committee of Fifteen, a vigilante group that masterminded the expulsion of the Chinese from Tacoma, and described how proud the men were in the photo as amazing, but a sign of Wickersham being a man of his time.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Wickersham] never came to see \u2026 that this had been a mistake, but I think that obviously he must have known it, in at least part of his soul later on,\u201d Cole said. \u201cIt\u2019s a great thing for history, isn\u2019t it, that of the mistakes people make and the accommodations you have to make in order to accept who you are and what you believe as an individual and as a society.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were anti-Chinese sentiments in Juneau too, Cole said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a dilemma that we just have to accept in our society, that many times really awful things have been done in American history,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t make a more perfect union without at least acknowledging this aspect of our history, but also thinking about what does it mean. What does it mean for society to be wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n
Cole\u2019s answer? Don\u2019t be certain.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause these guys were certain back then,\u201d he said in reference to the Committee of Fifteen, \u201cand they shouldn\u2019t have been certain.\u201d<\/p>\n
One thing society was certain about was the value of a woman\u2019s chastity, in other words, virginity. This landed Wickersham into trouble while living in Washington. Cole highlighted this moment, a short period of time in Wickersham\u2019s life that plagued his political career – he was charged with seducing a teenaged woman named Sadie Brantner, brought to court, and found guilty. It was a case he brought up 23 times in his diary.<\/p>\n
Mentions of his son Howard are notably absent in his memoir \u2014 Howard died while Wickersham was working as a judge in Alaska. However, he is mentioned twice in the diaries, though the section on his death was crossed out; he laments the loss of his son, \u201cthe light of his life.\u201d When he reflects on his son\u2019s death years later, he said the loss \u201cleft him an old man.\u201d<\/p>\n
A significant part of \u201cOld Yukon: Tales, Trails, and Trials\u201d covers his attempt to climb Mount Denali, his travels as a judge, or being for Alaska\u2019s interests and numerous adventures.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t just a politician,\u201d Cole said. \u201cHe really lived a well-rounded, full life and got the most out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOld Yukon\u201d is available through the University of Chicago Press, University of Alaska Press as well Amazon in print as well as a Kindle version and available locally at Hearthside Books.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Clara Miller at clara.miller@morris.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A crowd filled the seats at the Rockwell Ballroom in mid-November as Friends of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum hosted Terrence M. Cole for a talk on \u201cOld Yukon: Tales, Trails, and Trials.\u201d Cole, the editor of the memoir by James Wickersham, gave a humorous and commentary-filled presentation on the historical, Alaskan figure and highlighted lesser-known […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":429,"featured_media":24751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-24750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24750"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}