The last History Mystery question: On the day before the presidential election of 1908, what presidential candidate stumped here in Kenosha?

The answer: Eugene V. Debs, who ran on the Socialist ticket.

Kenosha was a popular stop for presidential candidates in 1908. A little more than five months before Debs’ visit, Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan paid a visit here.

Debs’ visit here on Sunday morning, Nov. 1, 1908, drew a reported 1,000 to the train station for the whistle stop.

Debs’ train was dubbed the “Red Special,” as he was completing the last lap of a 20,000-mile journey campaigning around the country.

In the early part of the 20th century, Kenosha, with its blossoming labor unions, was a magnet for socialist thinking.

It wasn’t until the first “Red Scare” in 1917 that the movement was perceived nationwide as radical anarchism.

Debs was originally a labor organizer before he embraced socialism. Three years before his visit here, he helped found the Industrial Workers of the World, though he played little role in its later history.

With Debs on the visit was former Kenosha minister the Rev. Harvey Dee Brown, Socialist candidate for governor.

The Kenosha News quoted Debs as saying, “The Socialist Party is the political expression of the socialist movement, and the historic mission of the socialist movement is the emancipation of the working class from wage slavery.

“The capitalist system in which we live has about run its historic course, fulfilled its mission, and upon every hand we behold the unerring signs of change.”

But the Red Special didn’t help the socialist cause very much here.

In that election in Kenosha County, Republican William Howard Taft won handily with 3,409 votes, while Bryan had 2,009 votes and Debs a paltry 600 votes.

After the election, the Social Democrats here said the vote for Debs was larger than local party members had predicted.

In the end, Kenosha County liked Brown more than they did Debs: Brown got 625 votes for governor.

The 1908 campaign marked Debs’ third run for the presidency. He would run again in 1912 and 1920, the latter which was his most successful run with nearly 1 million votes nationwide.

That year, he campaigned from prison while serving a 10-year sentence for publicly opposing U.S. involvement in World War I.

Subsequently, President Warren Harding pardoned Debs in 1921.

This week’s mystery: How did Kansasville in western Racine County, where many residents of Brighton in Kenosha County spend time, get its name?