Political Career
Stephenson was well-connected, and received letters from prominent people, including Jefferson Davis in 1834. That same year, Stephenson was elected to his first public office, the Illinois State Senate, after which he sought an appointment to the Land Office in Galena. From December 1834 until April 1835 Stephenson was absent from Galena. He spent time in St. Louis, where he married Ellen Kyle in December, then traveled on to Edwardsville and Vandalia, Illinois; the couple eventually had two children. In April 1835 the couple returned to Galena where James took office as Register of Lands at Galena and Chicago, and they lived an elegant lifestyle.
In December 1837, at the first "regularly constituted" Illinois state Democratic convention in Vandalia, James W. Stephenson was nominated as the party's candidate for governor of Illinois. Within six months of his nomination, Stephenson was caught in a funds embezzling scandal, surrounding his time as Register of Lands, and forced to withdraw from the election. The Democrats reconvened their convention on June 6, 1838 and nominated Thomas Carlin, a "most unexceptionable man" who had a reputation for being honest.
Older accounts of Stephenson's withdrawal from the race give differing reasons for his departure. Former Democratic Illinois Governor Thomas Ford's 1854 A History of Illinois stated that Stephenson's reason for withdrawing from the election was "on account of sickness." James Washington Sheahan wrote in his 1860 biography of Stephen A. Douglas that Stephenson's early exit from the election was due to being "charged with being a defaulter." John Moses' 1,316-page work, Illinois, Historical and Statistical (1889), characterized the accusations against Stephenson as "serious charges."
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