Pansy Butler - Or How the U.S. Flag Could Have Changed

  

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Freshman Congressman Walter Halben Butler was passionate about the pansy. He was a member of the Pansy Society of America, and on his lapel wore a large pansy pin in bronze, with a diamond in the center.

   On December 18, 1892, he introduced a bill in Congress to alter the U.S. flag so the stars would be arranged in the shape of a single, large pansy. He also introduced a bill to have the pansy named as the national flower, a symbol of unity, culture and peace.

  “Be it enacted…that on the day after the 4th of July of 1893, the flag of the United States of America shall consist of…” the language of his bill began. It described the way the stars would be set inside the pansy to have the “effect at a distance of a white pansy in a blue sky.”

  The idea didn’t originate with him. The language he used in his bill and in interviews was taken directly from the Pansy Society. The Society was founded in 1891 by a gadfly named Albert C. Hawkins, who called himself the “Indian Messiah.” He had thoroughly racist ideas about how American Indians could eventually become the equal of whites rather than “sitting around waiting for extermination.” He had two big projects that garnered national attention, one involving pansies and the other Indians.

  On the Indian front he wanted tribal leaders to mount an exhibition at the World’s Columbian Exposition, better known today as the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. By putting on an exhibit, he said, Indians would realize they could strive to someday be equal to whites and see the valuable contribution they had made in “turning over to us…the country in which we live.” His second mission was the quest to change the flag.

  Hawkins readily admitted that he had no money, that he’d been traveling to promote his projects funded solely by loans from friends and family. He had lectures prepared on his pansy plan, but no money to rent a hall.

  One wonders how Butler was so swept off his feet by Hawkins – and so taken with pansies.

 

  Walter Butler was born in Pennsylvania in 1852. He was only eleven by the time both parents died. However, his father’s second wife was his first wife’s sister. So Walter’s stepmother/aunt, kept the family together, remarried in 1865 and moved the family to Mankato, Minnesota in 1868. Walter graduated from the University of Wisconsin, where he was a star sprinter and wrestler. He was said to be the first sprinter to run a 100-yard dash in ten seconds. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1875, practicing for a year in Princeton, Wisconsin.

  For the rest of his life he had an eclectic career, working in Iowa as principal of private academies and a college; owner and publisher of a newspaper; superintendent of railway mail service in St. Paul, his brief congressional career, and later, work in real estate and banking.

  His first foray into politics was in 1881, when he ran on the Democratic ticket for state superintendent of public instruction. He was warmly endorsed by the Davenport Quad-City Times, but did not win. He also ran unsuccessfully for the Iowa State Senate in 1884. The third time was the charm, though, when he cast his sights on the national office. “He is a brilliant scholar, an educator of untiring energy and splendid success. He is in every sense a gentleman,” the Quad-City Times gushed.

 

       And yet…..somehow….it all went wrong and he became a national laughingstock from just one disastrous idea. The press dubbed him “Pansy Butler” and “Pansy Blossom Butler.” Yet, he didn’t stop at the flag itself. He suggested making the official flag staff in the shape of a rattlesnake. Only, so the fragile female sex wouldn’t be frightened, the head of the snake would be replaced with an acorn, and the rattles with pansy buds. The ridicule was nationwide.

  Perhaps someday some scribbled words will be found in an archive, or an old letter will turn up in an attic that will explain his passion for the pansy. He was obviously taken with Pansy Society president Albert Hawkins. The two were only a few years apart, lived 38 miles from one another, and were both Democrats who ran for office; Hawkins in 1891 for Chickashaw County treasurer.

  “Pansy Butler’s” bill was never even assigned to a committee for consideration. He lost his bid for reelection.

 

  For another year and a half, Albert Hawkins pressed on. In January 1893 he personally lobbied Congress for the pansy flag. He announced a plan to send blank petitions to schools to garner a groundswell of support for the pansy flag. A newspaper article dryly noted that Hawkins “learned through an experience with the Fifty-second Congress that any proposed legislation to secure attention must have a popular demand behind it.” Indeed, he dreamed of 100,000 schoolchildren wearing pansy badges and “pansy bud caps” marching at the Chicago World’s Fair twirling the pansy flag. He wrote governors, and sent copies of a lecture on pansies to newspapers.

  After 1893, he seemed to completely vanish. As for “Pansy Butler” – he literally disappeared. See “Pansy Butler Disappears” for that story.

 

  Sources:

 

  United States Congress. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, - present. [Washington, D.C.: United States Congress, 1998] Web. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <lccn,loc.gov/2003533078>.

“Our Ticket – Walter H. Butler,” Quad-City Times (Davenport, Iowa), 22 June 1881, p. 2.

  Sixteenth Iowa State Democratic Convention:  The Representative (Fox Lake, Wisconsin), 24 June 1881, p. 2.

  “Indicted For Libel,” Omaha World-Herald, 26 Nov 1890, p. 1.

“A Lecture By the Messiah, An Undelivered Rhapsody by Albert C. Hopkins,” Sioux City Journal, 2 March 1891, p. 5.

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