29th Illinois General Assembly

29th Illinois General Assembly
← 28th 30th →
The Illinois State Capitol in 1879
Overview
Meeting place	Springfield, Illinois
Term	1875 – 1876
Election	1874
Illinois Senate
President	Archibald A. Glenn, Democratic
Illinois House of Representatives
Speaker	Elijah Haines, Opposition

The 29th Illinois General Assembly was elected in November 1874. The session began on January 6, 1875^[1] and adjourned on April 15, 1875.^[2] No party had a majority in either chamber. The Republicans had a plurality in both chambers, with 24 members in the Senate and 69 in the House, but control of the chambers was held by a coalition of Democrats, third parties, and independents.

The third parties represented in this session included the Opposition Party, the Independent Reform Party, and the Democratic Liberal Party, which took many of its members (including its leader, former governor John M. Palmer) and positions from the defunct Liberal Republican Party of 1872. All of these parties were organized for the first time in 1874 and disappeared shortly thereafter, their members subsequently becoming Democrats, Greenbackers, or independents.

The three-sided tensions between Democrats, Republicans and reformers led to frequent turmoil during the session, including a violent brawl that erupted in the House when Republican Alfred M. Jones threw a book at Democrat Lewis Plater. Partly due to this climate, fewer laws were passed during this session than any session since the 1830s; amounting to only 118 pages.^[2] The expenses incurred by this General Assembly were also commensurately lower, at $221,810—less than half the amount incurred by the preceding 28th General Assembly.^[3]

The 204 members of the 29th Illinois General Assembly are listed in the 1875 Illinois Legislative Manual.^[4] Because the Manual is not entirely consistent in its labeling of third-party members of the General Assembly, those identified as "Liberal Republican", "Liberal", or "Democratic Liberal" are counted as a single group in the party totals below. Likewise, the one member of the House labeled simply as "Reform" is treated as a member of the Independent Reform Party for the purpose of the totals.