Simon Cameron

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Simon Cameron Simon Cameron Signature.svg

Simon Cameron , (born March 8, 1799 in Maytown , Lancaster County , Pennsylvania , † June 26, 1889 in Donegal Springs , Pennsylvania) was an American politician who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate and the cabinet of President Abraham Lincoln served as Minister of War .

Family, education and work

Simon Cameron was an orphan when he was nine years old . From 1816 he was employed as an assistant in a book printing company in Harrisburg , in 1821 he worked as editor of the newspaper Bucks County Messenger . A year later he moved to Washington , received further training and worked for the Gales and Seaton printing company . Returning to Harrisburg, Cameron was initially a member of the Whig Party and later joined the Democratic Party .

In 1822, Cameron married Margaret Brua, the daughter of a carpenter and local private entrepreneur. This marriage had ten children, six of whom reached adulthood. His son J. Donald Cameron , who succeeded him as a member of the Senate in 1877, also became Secretary of War.

In 1826 Cameron got the post of adjutant general at West Point . He now devoted himself with great zeal to the study of banking and railroading and planned several railroad lines, which were later realized by the Northern Central Railroad . In 1832 he founded the Bank of Middletown and was also involved in other businesses.

By the mid-1830s, he sought a post in the virulent patronage of office under President Andrew Jackson . To this end, middlemen like James Buchanan and other Pennsylvania Democrats recommended him as a suitable man, so Jackson considered him as a possible candidate for governor of Michigan , but in the end decided against him. To his disappointment, Jackson's successor Martin Van Buren did not consider him for any office in his spoils system . When the United States signed a treaty with the Winnebago Indians in November 1837 that promised them individual cash payments for the cession of land west of the Mississippi and assumed their debt obligations to local traders, Cameron offered himself as state agent. Finally, Secretary of War Joel Roberts Poinsett appointed him one of two plenipotentiaries and entrusted him with the Prairie du Chien to examine the compensation claims of the merchants operating in the territory of the Winnebago as well as those of half-Indians. Cameron, who took his family to Wisconsin in August 1838, kept an eye out for possible objects of land speculation along the way, which was later cited as evidence of his abuse of office, along with the fact that he had known the Half-Indian attorney for a long time.

In Prairie du Chien, Cameron and his colleague, as strangers and with no cultural background, encountered considerable difficulties in checking the claims. In the end, for every US dollar claimed in trade debt, they paid 39 cents . Regarding the compensation of the half-Indians, they were represented by white lawyers and tried to convince the commission of their descent from the Winnebago. Most likely, the legal representatives took advantage of their clients' lack of familiarity with legal cases and robbed them of their money. Due to the suspicions going in this direction, rumors, among other things, said that Cameron had cheated the Indians for 100,000 dollars through the lawyers acting as straw men, Thomas Hartley Crawford , the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs , spoke successfully at Poinsett in early 1839 for a stop of the payouts to the half-Indians. The Secretary of War also recalled Cameron and Murray. Although the Congress found no evidence of a crime by Cameron in a corresponding investigation in March 1839, it confirmed the replacement of the two agents in Prairie du Chien. Nor that found House Committee on Indian Affairs ( " Congress Committee any hard evidence against Cameron, who has never been prosecuted for his actions as a business representative of Indian Affairs") the following year. Nevertheless, he had his nickname "Great Winnebago Chief" since that time and saw his political reputation badly damaged.

Political career

From 1845 Cameron represented the state of Pennsylvania in the US Senate in Washington and became one of the leading figures of the Democratic Party. In 1855 he joined the Republicans and was re-elected to the Federal Senate by the State Legislature in 1857. Soon he was considered a possible presidential candidate of the party, but retired early in 1860 at the Republican National Convention in Chicago ; eventually Abraham Lincoln won.

After Lincoln took office and the civil war began in 1861, he was appointed Secretary of War in his cabinet by the President . But he had to resign at the beginning of 1862 because the majority of the Congress did not agree with his emancipation proclamation for the liberation of the slaves . Even before that, his administration had attracted criticism due to the lack of supplies for the troops and the awarding of army contracts to his friends. His gruff republican sentiments and his favoring of the increasingly rampant corruption in the party, for which Congress pronounced a reprimand against him, made himself impossible for other government offices. Thaddeus Stevens is said to have once remarked about him when President Lincoln asked him if he really believed Cameron was stealing: "I don't think he would steal a red-hot stove". Immediately after his resignation, he was appointed US ambassador to Russia ; he held this post until September 18 of the same year.

He later sat back in the US Senate, where he was chairman of the influential committee on foreign policy from 1871 to 1877 . Cameron joined Ulysses S. Grant , supported his two-time election for president ( 1868 and 1872 ) and also ran his third candidacy in 1880 , this time unsuccessfully.

In March 1877, Cameron resigned as Senator after ensuring that his son James Donald Cameron was elected to succeed him. After retiring from active politics, he last lived in seclusion on his farm in Donegal Springs, where he died in 1889.

Appreciation

Several places in the USA have been named after Simon Cameron:

literature

  • Paul Kahan : Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Scandalous Secretary of War. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE 2016, ISBN 978-1-61234-814-8 .
  • Erwin Stanley Bradley: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Secretary of War: A Political Biography. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1966, ISBN 978-1-5128-1056-1 .

Web links

Commons : Simon Cameron  - collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Paul Kahan: Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Scandalous Secretary of War. 2016, p. 14.
  2. ↑ Paul Kahan: Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Scandalous Secretary of War. 2016, pp. 29–40.
  3. ↑ Andrew Glass: Senate votes to seat Pennsylvania's Simon Cameron, March 13, 1857. In: Politico , March 12, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Cameron, Simon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1799
PLACE OF BIRTH Maytown , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH June 26, 1889
Place of death Donegal Springs , Pennsylvania