Ashbel P. Willard

Ashbel Parsons Willard was state senator, the 12th Lieutenant Governor, and the 11th Governor of the U.S. state of Indiana. His terms in office were marked by increasingly severe partisanship leading to the breakup of the state Democratic Party in the years leading up to the American Civil War. His brother-in-law John Edwin Cook was involved in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and was executed. Willard went to the south to advocate unsuccessfully for his release, and became despised by southerners who accused him of having a secret involvement in the raid. He died two months before the start of the war while giving a speech on national unity, and was the first governor of Indiana to die in office.