During the administration of Governor Bashford in 1857 there were rumors of corruption among the legislators touching the disposing of a certain railway land grant. Governor Randall's first message to the legislature of 1858 referred to the rumors and recommended the appointment of an investigating committee. On May 13 following the committee thus appointed made a voluminous report implicating 13 state senators, 59 members of the assembly, also the state bank comptroller, the lieutenant governor, the private secretary of the governor, three officers of the assembly, 23 persons engaged in lobbying, and a justice of the supreme court. The governor himself did not escape. In 1859 ex-Gov. Bashford, then out of the state, sent a communication to the legislature asking an investigation to clear up the rumors about himself. A committee was appointed and it found that Bashford had received without payment 50 bonds from the interested railway company, after the land grant had been disposed of, but without having had any agreement or understanding with the company. The committee criticised Bashford for accepting such gratuity but exonerated him from the charge of having been influenced in his action toward the bill by the gratuity which came to him unsought. The land grants involved were made by congress in 1856, one for building a line from Madison to Columbus via Portage and the St. Croix river to Bayfield, the other for a line from Fond du Lac to some point on the Michigan line.

Wisconsin: comprising sketches of counties, towns, events, institutions, and persons, arranged in cyclopedic form, ed. by Ex-Gov. Geo. W. Peck (Madison, Wis., Western Historical Association, 1906).

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