Matthew Carpenter was born in Vermont and came to Beloit in 1848 at age 24 with seventy-five cents in his pocket and, as one biographer points out, a fortune in less tangible assets—a handsome face and figure, intellectual genius, a prodigious capacity for hard work, unmatched eloquence, great charm, and a rollicking sense of humor. Years later he was remembered as “the gem of the town.”

Inevitably, within a few years he rose to the top of his profession in Wisconsin, retained in one major case after another around the state. His offices were always on Turtle, later State Street. He and his wife lived in quarters at the Bushnell House.

With a West Point background, Carpenter early organized the first military company in Wisconsin and became its drill master.

In 1855, perhaps partly to stir up excitement, Carpenter audaciously challenged the original deeds of the early settlers of Beloit, claiming they were void because of a complicated technicality and that the legal title of the town was actually vested in the governor of Vermont, later his father-in-law, whom he represented with power of attorney. Carpenter ultimately lost the case in the Supreme Court, but its repercussions would have been felt across the nation had he won.

By 1858 Carpenter’s fame persuaded him to move to Milwaukee where he continued to distinguish himself with his unmatched eloquence and persuasiveness. In 1869 he was elected by the voters of Wisconsin to the U.S. Senate where, within two years, he had established himself as one of the Republican leaders of that body.

Also in 1869, he returned to Beloit to dedicate Beloit College’s new Memorial Hall before a large audience of students, professors, and distinguished generals. President Chapin pronounced it the greatest speech ever delivered at Beloit, and the trustees spontaneously conferred upon Carpenter the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.

In Washington, at a time when Senators could still practice law, Carpenter was repeatedly in the Supreme Court appearing in the most important cases of the day. When he was scheduled to speak, judges, lawyers, and congressmen would throng to the courtroom to hear him argue a case.

Justice Miller called him the only person of his acquaintance he could honestly call a man of genius. The Philadelphia Times declared that, with perhaps two exceptions, no genius so steady, no intellect so sustained, had appeared in any area of American life since Hamilton and Jefferson.

Carpenter lost his Senate seat in 1875 but regained it again in 1881 for a second term. However, he died that same year at age 56. As one of his colleagues said: “He was worthy to stand as he did, at the head of the legal profession, because he was profoundly versed in its learning, a thorough master of its practical rules and irresistibly powerful in forensic debate.”