newspaperman, politician, diplomat, b. Berkshire, Franklin County, Vt. He moved with his parents to Wisconsin in 1840, settling in Sheboygan. He attended the Univ. of Wisconsin for one year (1849), taught school for a time in Sheboygan County, but soon moved to Madison, where he was legislative reporter for the Madison Argus and Democrat (1852--1853). In 1853 he cast his political lot with the Whigs, was employed as an editorial writer for David Atwood's (q.v.) Wisconsin State Journal, and in the following year purchased a part interest in the paper. Active in the organization of the Republican party, Rublee was secretary of the state mass meeting held at Madison, July 13, 1854. He subsequently became a prominent party leader, was state chairman of the Republican party (1859-1869), and was known as a prominent member of the Madison "Regency," the sobriquet applied to the ruling clique of the state Republicans. In 1868 he was a delegate to the national Republican convention, and in 1869 was an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate. Appointed minister to Switzerland by President U. S. Grant in 1869, Rublee sold his interest in the Wisconsin State journal, and served abroad until 1877. He re-entered politics upon his return, was again Republican state chairman (1877-1879), at a time when the party was divided over the "greenback issue," and successfully led the fight to force the party to make an unequivocal hard money stand. In 1879 he went to Boston to assume the editorship of the Boston Advertiser, but returned to Wisconsin after spending one year in the East. In 1881 Rublee organized a company to purchase the Milwaukee Daily News, restyled the paper the Milwaukee Republican and News, and in 1882 purchased the Milwaukee Sentinel, merging these two papers under the title Milwaukee Sentinel. Rublee was editor of this newspaper until his death, and made it the most powerful conservative Republican paper in the state. Dict. Amer. Biog.; A. M. Thomson, Political Hist. of Wis. (Milwaukee, 1900); H.L. Conard, ed., Hist. of Milwaukee (3 vols., Chicago [1896]); Milwaukee Sentinel, Oct. 19, 1896; WPA MS.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has manuscripts related to this topic. See the catalog description of the Horace Rublee Diary and Reminiscences for details.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]