Spooner, John C. 1843-1919

John Coit Spooner (January 6, 1843 – June 11, 1919) was an American lawyer and Republican politician from Hudson, Wisconsin. He represented Wisconsin as a United States Senator from 1885 to 1891, then again from 1897 to 1907. In his latter stint, he was chairman of the powerful Senate Rules Committee and was considered one of the "Big Four" key Republicans in the Senate who largely controlled its major decisions, the others being Orville H. Platt of Connecticut, William B. Allison of Iowa, and Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island. He is possibly best known for the Spooner Act, which authorized the United States purchase of the Panama Canal Zone. Politically, Spooner was a conservative (or stalwart) Republican and had a bitter rivalry for supremacy in Wisconsin Republican politics against his progressive Republican contemporary U.S. senator Robert M. "Fighting Bob" La Follette.