Pettigrew, Richard Franklin (1848-1926)

US senator. Chosen as South Dakota's first US senator (Republican, 1889-1901), he became a thorough nonconformist in his party; he opposed the annexations of Hawaii and the Philippines and the entry of the USA into World War I (for which he was indicted, but not tried). He wrote The Course of Empire (1920) and Triumphant Plutocracy (1922), in which he blasted every US president since the Civil War.

Pettigrew was born in Ludlow, Vermont. He moved to Wisconsin and then to the Dakota Territory (1869), which he helped to survey. He was a territorial delegate to the US House of Representatives (1881-83) and he advocated dividing the territory into two separate states.