Simon Cameron

• 1. Introduction

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  Simon Cameron died on the 26th of June 1889, six days after suffering a stroke, at the same Pennsylvania town where he had been born ninety years earlier. He had outlived nearly every political rival he ever made, and the machine he built outlived him by several more decades, dominating Pennsylvania politics well into the 1920s. A man repeatedly accused of corruption who was never proven to have stolen a dollar for himself, Cameron won and lost and regained power so many times across more than half a century that historians have struggled to place him in any simple category. How did a printer's apprentice from a small Lancaster County town become the most powerful political operator in one of the nation's most important states? And what does his career reveal about the way American democracy actually worked in the nineteenth century?

• 2. A Printer's Education

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  Charles Cameron, Simon's father, was a tailor and tavern keeper who moved his family north from Lancaster County to Sunbury in 1808, then disappeared from the household within two years. He died in January 1811, leaving his children to board with other families. Simon was taken in by Dr. Peter Grahl, a physician in Sunbury whose household contained no children of its own. The Grahls treated him like a son and let him roam the libraries of the doctor and his neighbors, which gave Cameron a self-directed education more wide than deep.

  In Sunbury, the young Cameron crossed paths with a figure far removed from small-town Pennsylvania life: Lorenzo Da Ponte, who had written libretti for Mozart, visited in December 1813, accompanying Cameron on a trip to Philadelphia. It is one of the more improbable connections in a life full of them. Soon after Cameron turned seventeen, he apprenticed himself to Andrew Kennedy, the publisher of the Sunbury and Northumberland Gazette and Republican Advertiser. When Kennedy released him from his indentures in 1817, Cameron went to Harrisburg and found a position with James Peacock, publisher of the Pennsylvania Republican, the leading Pennsylvania newspaper outside Philadelphia. Two years later, Cameron was made assistant editor.

  Harrisburg was the state capital, and working at a newspaper there meant exposure to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Cameron later said he had attended nearly every session of the legislature since 1817. By 1822, he had purchased the Pennsylvania Republican and merged it with another paper, financing the deal with a loan from an uncle. On the 16th of October 1822, feeling financially stable enough to start a family, he married Margaret Brua; the couple would have ten children, six of whom reached adulthood. The printing trade had given Cameron exactly what a young man hungry for political influence needed: contacts, credibility, and a close seat to the machinery of government.

• 3. Building the Machine

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  The 1823 election of John Andrew Shulze as Pennsylvania's governor opened a profitable stretch for Cameron, who spent several years in the post of State Printer. Shulze appointed him Adjutant-General of Pennsylvania in 1829, a brief tenure that earned Cameron the rank of general, a title he used for the rest of his life. More durably, Shulze awarded him contracts for the construction of canals, and Cameron founded the Bank of Middletown. Railways, canals, and banking made him wealthy, and that wealth in turn funded a political network.

  Cameron's early national allegiances shifted with the political weather. He was slow to support Andrew Jackson in 1824 despite Jackson's enormous popularity in Pennsylvania, and his backing in 1828 was only lukewarm. But Jackson found him useful. The president, who had originally pledged to serve only one term, enlisted Cameron to get the Pennsylvania legislature to pass a resolution urging him to run again in 1832. Cameron delivered, and as reward he was appointed to the Board of Visitors of the United States Military Academy. The relationship with Jackson drew Cameron deeper into the emerging Democratic Party, and by the mid-1830s he had built a national reputation within it.

  Not every maneuver landed. In 1835, Cameron sought appointment as governor of Michigan Territory and did not get it. In 1838, a trip to Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin Territory, where he served as one of two commissioners adjudicating traders' claims under a treaty with the Winnebago Indians, produced allegations of abuse that followed him for decades. His biographer Erwin S. Bradley concluded that Cameron exceeded his instructions and showed poor judgment, though the charges of outright corruption were never proved. The episode earned him the mocking nickname the "Great Winnebago Chief," which he found infuriating, and it became the first of several corruption clouds that seemed to orbit his career without ever quite striking him.

• 4. The Art of the Senate Vote

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  Cameron's first Senate election, in January 1845, was itself a demonstration of the skills his enemies found most objectionable. With Pennsylvania Democrats divided after Buchanan's departure to become Polk's Secretary of State, Cameron worked to unite dissatisfied Democrats with Whigs and the nativist Know Nothing faction, hinting to each group that he shared its priorities. On the 13th of March 1845, he was elected on the fifth ballot, with 66 votes to 55 for the Democratic caucus candidate, Woodward, including 16 votes from Democrats. The mainstream party was outraged, and letters went to Vice President George M. Dallas and to Buchanan himself.

  Once in the Senate, Cameron proved he could fight as well as deal. He blocked the nomination of Henry Horn to the Collector of Customs for the Port of Philadelphia. He also defeated the nomination of Woodward to the Supreme Court. When Polk pushed a new tariff through Congress with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Dallas, Cameron had already given a lengthy speech in July 1846 arguing that the bill would harm Pennsylvania's iron foundries; his comment that no native of the state could support the tariff was a pointed jab at the vice president himself.

  Cameron's 1857 Senate election was even more audacious. Democrats held a majority in the Pennsylvania legislature, yet on the 13th of January 1857, Cameron was elected without a single vote to spare, after three Democratic members secretly broke with their party. Those three men were expelled from their hotels in Harrisburg and each lost his next re-election bid. The Senate formed a committee to investigate bribery allegations, found no proof, and dropped the matter, but the episode compounded a reputation for manipulation that Cameron could never fully dislodge. His biographer Paul Kahan noted that the lack of evidence in episode after episode became a hallmark of the Cameron story: impossible for historians to resolve and impossible for Cameron to escape.

• 5. Lincoln's Uncomfortable Ally

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  Pennsylvania's votes at the 1860 Republican National Convention were among the most coveted in the hall. Cameron arrived in Chicago as the state's favorite son candidate, but his support outside Pennsylvania was thin. Lincoln's manager, David Davis, reasoning that Lincoln could not judge from Springfield what concessions were necessary, made commitments on his behalf. William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, later wrote that Davis and his fellow managers had negotiated with the Indiana and Pennsylvania delegations and "assigned places in the cabinet to Simon Cameron and Caleb Smith." On the first ballot, Pennsylvania cast 47 of its 54 votes for Cameron; by the third ballot, 52 of those votes went to Lincoln, who won the nomination.

  What followed was months of awkward maneuvering. Lincoln initially drafted cabinet lists that omitted Cameron entirely. His advisor Leonard Swett wrote to Cameron on the 27th of November 1860 that Lincoln was not bound by any convention bargain. Lincoln nonetheless felt pressure from all directions: hundreds of letters arrived urging him to appoint Cameron, and one Pennsylvania leader warned the president-elect in stark terms that Cameron was "corrupt beyond belief" and "rich by plunder." After Cameron arrived in Springfield on the 30th of December 1860, Lincoln offered him either the Treasury or War departments, then tried to walk the offer back after a fresh wave of protests arrived. Cameron quietly displayed the offer letter while concealing the withdrawal, and the standoff continued until Lincoln reached Washington.

  On the 5th of March 1861, the day after taking office, Lincoln nominated Cameron as Secretary of War. Cameron was sworn in on the 12th, a delay that some historians read as a sign he did not take the position seriously. He arrived at the head of a War Department of 90 employees administering an army of 17,000 soldiers, neither of which could be relied upon fully to support the Union. When Union troops attacked at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, against the objections of General Irvin McDowell that they were not ready, the result was a resounding defeat. Cameron's brother James was killed in the battle.

• 6. Ouster and Exile

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  Cameron's method of managing the War Department was informal to the point of chaos. He often kept records only in his own pockets. He allowed private agents who held no government positions to award military contracts on behalf of the department, and millions of dollars passed through their hands. His lieutenant Alexander Cummings spent a quarter million dollars, much of it wasted. In April 1862, after Cameron had left the cabinet, the House of Representatives censured him for the unsupervised contracts, though the censure was eventually rescinded in 1875.

  The event that broke Cameron's tenure was a paragraph in his annual departmental report. With the approval of his legal advisor Edwin M. Stanton, Cameron inserted language declaring that freed slaves should be used to suppress the rebellion. He sent copies to post offices in advance, intending the paragraph to signal administration policy. Lincoln, believing the decision to emancipate was his alone to make, had the paragraph removed and the copies recalled. Word leaked anyway in early January 1862. On the 11th of January 1862, Lincoln sent Cameron a letter dismissing him and offering the post of United States Minister to Russia in its place. Chase and Seward persuaded Lincoln to soften the letter so that it appeared Cameron was accepting a diplomatic appointment voluntarily.

  Cameron resigned on the 13th of January and was replaced by Stanton. The Senate confirmed his nomination as minister to Russia on the 14th, 28 votes to 14, after considerable work by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Cameron had no enthusiasm for the post. On the 7th of May 1862, he departed New York aboard the ship Persia with his wife Margaret, two of their children, and the writer Bayard Taylor, who served as secretary of the legation. Cameron took a long route through Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, and did not arrive in St. Petersburg until the 15th of June. He was presented to Tsar Alexander II on the 25th. By September, he had left for home, citing Margaret's health, and formally resigned on the 23rd of February 1863.

• 7. Dynasty and Legacy

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  Cameron's return to the Senate for a third term in 1867 marked the beginning of an organized machine rather than merely a personal following. It rested on an alliance among local Republican organizations, manufacturers, and the railroads. Matthew Quay, who would become a formidable power in his own right, served as Cameron's lieutenant. On the 22nd of January 1873, Cameron won his fourth Senate term with 76 votes to 50 for William A. Wallace, and one supporter wrote, "Nothing can beat you. You are invincible." The Harrisburg Patriot named him the "undisputed master in Pennsylvania."

  Cameron's ambitions in these years were increasingly dynastic. On the 12th of March 1877, he sent his resignation by special messenger to Governor Hartranft. That same night, every Republican member of the legislature was summoned to the Cameron mansion and asked to sign an endorsement of his son Don for the seat. The Republican caucus voted for Don the next day with only one dissent. Cameron had arranged his own succession.

  In retirement Cameron traveled, purchased lands near Maytown that his grandfather and great-grandfather had worked, and increased his already considerable wealth by fifty percent. At age 88 he visited England and Scotland, hosted at Blenheim Palace by the Duke of Marlborough and in Scotland by Andrew Carnegie. On his ninetieth birthday, the 8th of March 1889, Pennsylvania's governor and legislature came to his house in Harrisburg to honor him; congratulatory telegrams arrived from figures including Buffalo Bill. Six days after suffering a stroke, Cameron died on the 26th of June 1889 at Maytown, and was interred at Harrisburg Cemetery beside Margaret.

  The saying most often attributed to Cameron is this: "an honest politician is one who, when he is bought, stays bought." Whether he coined it or not, the line captures the unsentimental view he took of the world he had navigated for fifty years. The machine passed to Don Cameron, then to Quay, then to Senator Boies Penrose, and it held Pennsylvania for decades after Simon Cameron was gone.