James W. Grimes Iowa Politician

James W. Grimes landed in Burlington when it was still half frontier, half fever dream—muddy streets, cheap whiskey, and men who argued politics like they were swinging shovels. Grimes fit right in. “This is a place where a man can make something of himself,” he supposedly said. “Preferably noise.”

Everyone who met him remembered his voice. Not loud, but cutting. It could slice through a crowded saloon and make the piano player lose his place. One editor said, “Grimes didn’t speak; he struck.” Another said, “He had the manner of a man who expected you to be wrong.”

In 1854, Iowa made him governor—a bad idea for anyone who preferred peace. Grimes was built for conflict. Slavery’s supporters tried to push their influence west, and he met them like a brick wall. “If slavery enters Iowa, it will come over my dead body,” he said, and people believed him. He didn’t smile when he said it. He didn’t smile much at all. A Davenport paper described him as “a man who looks permanently disappointed in human nature.”

He became one of the early architects of the Republican Party, back when it was more movement than machine. He didn’t care if he made enemies. “Let them shout,” he said. “I’ll shout louder.” When a rival called him radical, Grimes shrugged it off. “If freedom is radical, the Founders were radicals,” he said, and the line stuck because it sounded like something hammered into metal.

In 1858, Iowa sent him to the U.S. Senate, and Washington didn’t know what hit it. Grimes walked into the Capitol as if he’d caught the place stealing his wallet. He couldn’t stand the backroom deals or the false politeness. “Half the men here are for sale,” he wrote home. “The other half haven’t yet settled on a price.” He refused every cozy offer, every handshake that came with strings. Lobbyists avoided him like he carried a contagious honesty.

During the Civil War, he threw himself into naval affairs. He pushed for ironclads, discipline, and anything that looked like progress. One colleague said, “Grimes walked the halls like a general without a battlefield.” Another said, “He argued as if God Himself needed the correction.”

Grimes hated President Andrew Johnson, and said so every chance he got. “I have no use for the man,” he muttered, “nor his habits.” But when the vote came to remove him, Grimes did the one thing nobody expected. He voted not guilty. Not because Johnson deserved saving, but because the Constitution did. “I will not break the Republic to punish a fool,” he said. Party leaders turned on him. Papers roasted him. Iowa Republicans wondered what had snapped.

Grimes didn’t care. He’d built a career on refusing to care. He told the Senate, “My oath binds me more than your anger.” The room went silent. Even his enemies admitted it was the most Grimes thing he’d ever said.

Months later, a stroke hit him hard. His right side failed him, his voice faded, but the spark didn’t quite go out. “My body betrays me,” he wrote shakily, “but my mind would still like another battle.” It was the closest he ever came to sentiment.

He returned to Burlington and spent his last years watching the river he’d once bragged could carry a man from nothing to something fierce. When he died in 1872, one paper said, “You could disagree with Grimes, but you could not move him.” Another said, “He stood like stone—blunt, cold, unbreakable.”