Viewing Douglas A. Hedin, "Lafayette Emmett v. James Gilfillan: The Contest for the Election of Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, 1875."

Douglas A. Hedin, "Lafayette Emmett v. James Gilfillan: The Contest for the Election of Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, 1875."

This is the story of the election of the Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1875. Incumbent James Gilfillan received the "endorsement" of the Republican Party while Lafayette Emmett, a former chief justice who had served from 1858 to 1865, was nominated by the Democratic and the Anti-Monopoly Parties. A fourth party, the Reform and Temperance Party, nominated Sherman Page, Judge of the Tenth Judicial District. Chief Justice Gilfillan was elected in a landslide.

The platforms of the four parties are posted in the Appendix.

This is the fourth of a series of papers on the elections of justices to the Minnesota Supreme Court in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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