Rogues, scoundrels, rascals and cynics
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The list of colorful characters who populate the history of 19th-century U.S. politics is longer than a William Jefferson Smith filibuster.
Many are famous (or infamous): Roscoe Conkling, Ben Butler, “Bully” Brooks, Simon Cameron, Oakes Ames, Thomas Durant, Boss Tweed, Samuel Pomeroy, Boss Shepherd, Dan Sickles and James Harlan come immediately to mind.
The notoriety of these and other personalities obscures minor but no less colorful characters whose actions or words earn them a place on the Rogues Roll of Honor.
I have come to know a variety of these lesser — but no less interesting — figures in writing about 19th-century politics. Herewith, in no particular order and without any claim to being a complete list, a guide to some of the colorful personalities I have encountered.
Philip Barton Key
The son of Francis Scott Key figured in two of the biggest scandals of pre- Civil War Washington. As the district attorney for Washington D.C., Philip Barton Key was responsible for prosecuting Rep. Philemon T. Herbert (more on Herbert below) in the fatal shooting of an unarmed waiter at the Willard Hotel in 1856 – a responsibility he badly bungled when Herbert was acquitted after two trials despite overwhelming evidence.
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Philip Barton Key. Library of Congress.
Not long thereafter, Key figured in another act violence – one in which he lost his life. When Rep. Daniel Sickles, D-N.Y., discovered that Key was having an affair with his wife, the lawmaker accosted Key near Lafayette Square in front of the White House and killed him. “The tragic affair produced a great sensation,” the New York Herald reported.
But the story would take another surprising twist. Sickles assembled a top-flight defense team that included future Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and offered an unprecedented defense — that he was temporarily insane at the time of the shooting. To the amazement of the press and others following the sensational trial, the jury bought it. Sickles walked away a free man — and later reconciled with his wife.
George Washington Jones, D-Texas
An otherwise obscure two-term lawmaker, in 1880 Jones played a colorful bit role in an incident involving Rep. James B. Weaver of Iowa, then the leading member of the Greenback-Labor Party in the House. Shortly before Christmas, Weaver was goaded by Democratic Rep. William Sparks almost came to blows with the Illinois provocateur.
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The Washington Post, Dec. 22, 1880.
“Not since the days before the has there been such an exhibition in the House,” the Washington Post reported. As members separated the two, Jones appeared in the chamber. “In the midst of the commotion,” according to the Post, “the venerable Jones, of Texas, who was born in 1828, ran down the aisle at his best paces and, stripping off his coat, exclaimed: “If there is going to be a fight I want to be in it.”
Rep. Philemon T. Herbert, D-Calif.
Herbert served only term in Congress — and for good reason. On May 8, 1856, the first-term lawmaker exploded in rage when he didn’t get the breakfast he ordered. He brawled with and shot the Irish waiter before fleeing the scene. The first attempt to prosecute him ended in a mistrial. The second trial, conducted before a jury packed with anti-Irish Know-Nothings, ended in acquittal.
Herbert continued to serve in the House while on trial but left Washington after he was acquitted and declined to run for re-election. He insisted on his innocence, however, claiming in a published letter that “I was justified in my conduct, and awarded a triumphant acquittal.” But his California neighbors didn’t want him around and drove him out of the state. He fled to Texas, fought for the Confederates and died in 1864 after suffering wounds at the battle of Mansfield, La.
Rep. Glenni Scofield, R-Pa.
Another obscure figure in the annals of Capitol Hill, Scofield served six terms in the House and chaired the House Committee on Naval Affairs. He came to my attention as a a bit player in the Credit Mobilier scandal.
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The New York Sun, Sept. 4, 1872.
Scofield was one of the lawmakers who bought shares in the profitable Union Pacific construction company from Rep. Oakes Ames. When called to testify about his transactions with Ames, Scofield claimed he knew nothing about the company when Ames approached him, nor did he have any idea of the value of the stock.
Despite knowing so little, Scofield paid Ames $1,041 to buy Credit Mobilier stock, congressional investigators concluded. When asked by Rep. William Merrick, D-Md., if he might have stayed away from Credit Mobilier had he known more about the company, Scofield revealed a deep cynicism informed by his years in Washington. ” ‘Avoid the appearance of evil’ is an injunction that, I think, sometimes rogues are more careful to observe than honest men.”
William B. Shaw
Roguery wasn’t confined to the halls of Congress. In the years before journalism was regarded as a profession, the congressional press gallery was filed with scribes eager to profit from their access and inside knowledge. Shaw, who testified in 1873 before one of the committees investigating the Credit Mobilier scandal, offers one of the best examples of the dodgy journalism ethics of the period.
Before the committee, Shaw recounted walking into the office of the treasury secretary to discover that he was examining Union Pacific bonds. Shaw asked why and was told the government was considering withholding payment on the notes — then asked to get a head’s up when the government decided to act because he owned some of the railroad’s stocks and bonds. “I would like to know it, so I can unload and get out,” he confided. Shaw succeeded in selling his holdings before the news broke, and he told lawmakers that he saw nothing wrong with it. “I always do these things before I let anyone else know,” he admitted.
Sen. William Stewart, R-Nev.
In the pay of the Central Pacific during construction of the trans-continental railroad, Stewart defended the interests of the western road whenever they were in conflict with the Union Pacific. Contemporaries recognized that Stewart took a flexible approach to ethical questions. “Give him a chance to construe the sacred law,” his friend Mark Twain once observed, “and there wouldn’t be a damned soul in perdition in a month.”
Uriah Hunt Painter
Painter made a name for himself as a reporter by getting early reports of the Union defeat at Bull Run in 1861 to his paper in Philadelphia — but made sure to tip off financier Jay Cooke to the debacle so he could sell before the news broke.
That set a pattern that the strange, disheveled correspondent followed for the rest of his career. He got early word of Oakes Ames’s sales of Credit Mobilier stock on Capitol Hill, but instead of breaking news he got in. Ames sold him 300 shares and later told congressional investigators that Painter was angry that he couldn’t buy more.
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A New York Herald headline on the Credit Mobilier investigation.
George Alfred Townsend called Painter and other insiders who attempted to profit from their knowledge of congressional business “strikers” and memorably committed his impressions of them to verse:
Slouched, and surly, and sallow-faced,
With a look as if something were misplaced,
The young man Striker was seen to stride
Up the Capitol stairs at high noontide,
And as though at the head of a viewless mob —
Who could look in his eye and mistrust it? —
He quoth: ‘They must let me into that job,
Or I’ll bust it!’
You can read more about Shaw, Painter, Jones, Stewart, Scofield and other characters in Congress and the King of Frauds: Corruption and the Credit Mobilier Scandal at the Dawn of the Gilded Age and Skirmisher: The Life, Times, and Political Career of James B. Weaver. Both are available at amazon.com.
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Skirmisher: The Life, Times and Political Career of James B. Weaver
