Samuel D. Hastings

Samuel D. Hastings
4th State Treasurer of Wisconsin
In office January 4, 1858 – January 1, 1866
Governor	Alexander W. Randall Louis P. Harvey Edward Salomon James T. Lewis
Preceded by	Charles Kuehn
Succeeded by	William E. Smith
Member of the Wisconsin State Assembly
In office January 5, 1857 – January 4, 1858
Preceded by	Position Established
Succeeded by	Harlow E. Prickett
Constituency	Buffalo–Jackson–Trempealeau district
In office January 1, 1849 – January 7, 1850
Preceded by	Erasmus Richardson
Succeeded by	Alex S. Palmer
Constituency	Walworth 3rd district
Personal details
Born	Samuel Dexter Hastings (1816-07-24)July 24, 1816 Leicester, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	March 26, 1903(1903-03-26) (aged 86) Evanston, Illinois, U.S.
Resting place	Woodlawn Cemetery Green Bay, Wisconsin
Political party	Republican Free Soil (before 1854)
Spouse	Margaretta Schubert
Children	Sarah Elizabeth (b. 1838; died 1847) Emma Margaretta (b. 1840; died 1840) Samuel Dexter Jr. (b. 1841; died 1931) Emma Margaretta (Hobart) (b. 1845; died 1914) Florence Lydia (Hoyt) (b. 1852)
Parents	Simon Hastings (father) Betsey (Mackintosh) Hastings (mother)
Profession	merchant, banker, politician
Signature

Samuel Dexter Hastings (July 24, 1816 – March 26, 1903) was an American businessman, politician, and Wisconsin pioneer. He was the 4th state treasurer of Wisconsin and served two years in the Wisconsin State Assembly.

Background

Hastings was born in Leicester, Massachusetts, on July 24, 1816, to Simon and Betsey Hastings. He is a descendant of the 17th century Massachusetts colonist Thomas Hastings. He moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he took part in the anti-slavery movement. In 1846, he moved to the Wisconsin Territory, settling in Geneva.

Public office

In 1849 Hastings he was elected as a Free Soiler, succeeding Democrat Erasmus Richardson. In January he introduced a series of bills calculated to force the hand of Democrats and Whigs, both of which parties were courting the newly successful Free Soilers with an eye towards merger. The "Hastings resolutions", as they came to be called, urged Wisconsin's Representatives and instructed its Senators (then elected by the Legislature) to apply their power and influence to completely break with slavery: to forbid the admission of new slave states, to ban slavery in all federal territories, and to repeal any laws that favored slave labor over free. The tensions revealed by the votes of all three parties on these and related resolutions would eventually lead the Free Soilers to conclude that merger with either of the old parties was an illusion unworthy of pursuit. He was succeeded in the 1850 session by Alexander S. Palmer, a Democrat.

Hastings moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin, and later to Trempealeau.

In 1857, he was again elected to the Assembly, this time as a Republican. He served as Wisconsin State Treasurer from 1858 to 1866, and as a trustee of the State Hospital for the Insane, and in similar positions for other state bodies headquartered in Madison.

In 1884, Hastings (long involved with the temperance movement) ran as the Prohibitionist candidate for Governor of Wisconsin, and in 1892 as a Prohibitionist candidate for the Assembly from Madison.

Civic activism

He was a founding member of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, and later served as Treasurer of that body.

Hastings argued against the idea that the introduction of the wine-drinking habit into the United States would be a preventative for drunkenness.

He died March 26, 1903, at his daughter's home in Evanston, Illinois. Some of his papers are in the holdings of the Wisconsin Historical Society.