POL19. Sarony, NYC. General John Adams Dix (July 24, 1798-April 21, 1879). American Statesman and general. US Senator from NY 1845-49; Secretary of the Treasury 1861; General 1861-65; Governor of NY 1873-75. Cabinet Card. E. $75
POL169. Sarony, NY. Edwin Denison Morgan (1811-1883), Governor of NY (1859-1862); US Senator (1863-1869). He was the first and longest serving chairman of the Republican National Committee. Cabinet Card. VG. $75
POL175. J. Gurney & Son, NY. Nathaniel Pitcher Tallmadge (1795-1864). Senator from NY, 1833-’44; Tyler appointed him Governor of Wisconsin Territory in 1844 so he resigned from the Senate. Served only until 1845 when he was removed as Governor. CDV trimmed at bottom. VG. $50
POL194. Photographic negative from Brady’s National Portrait Gallery, published by E. Anthony, NY. Isaac Toucey (1792-1869). Governor of Connecticut ’46-’47; US Attorney General ’48-’49; Senator CT ’52-’57; Secretary of the Navy ’57-’61 under Buchanan. CDV. VG. $50
POL260. Salmon Portland Chase (January 13, 1808 – May 7, 1873) was an American politician and jurist who served as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States from 1864 to 1873. During his career, Chase was the 23rd Governor of Ohio and U.S. Senator from Ohio prior to service under Abraham Lincoln as the 25th Secretary of the Treasury. As Treasury Secretary, Chase strengthened the federal government, introducing its first paper currency as well as a national bank, both during wartime. Chase articulated the “slave power conspiracy” thesis, devoting his energies to the destruction of what he considered the Slave Power—the conspiracy of Southern slave owners to seize control of the federal government and block the progress of liberty. He coined the slogan of the Free Soil Party, “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men”. Chief Justice Chase presided over the Senate trial of Andrew Johnson during the President’s impeachment proceedings in 1868. CDV. VG. $150
POL276. C.M. Bell, Washington, DC. Cabinet Card of William Eaton Chandler (December 28, 1835 – November 30, 1917), a lawyer who served as United States Secretary of the Navy (1882-1885) and as a Republican U.S. Senator from New Hampshire. VG. $45
POL277. Cabinet Card by C.M. Bell, Washington, DC of Walter Quintin Gresham (March 17, 1832 – May 28, 1895), an American statesman and jurist. He served as a federal judge and in the Cabinet of two presidential administrations. He affiliated with the Republican Party for most of his career but joined the Democratic Party late in life. Gresham began a legal career in Corydon, Indiana after attending the Indiana University Bloomington. He campaigned for the Republican Party in the 1856 elections and won election to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1860. He served as a Union general during the American Civil War, taking part in the Siege of Vicksburg and other major battles. After the war, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Gresham to a position on the United States District Court for the District of Indiana. Gresham remained on that court until 1883, when he resigned his position to become Postmaster General under President Chester A. Arthur. After briefly serving as Arthur’s Secretary of the Treasury, Gresham accepted appointment to the United States circuit court for the Seventh Circuit. Gresham was a candidate for the presidential nomination at the 1884 Republican National Convention and the 1888 Republican National Convention. Much of his support for those nominations came from agrarian unions like the Farmers’ Alliance. In the 1892 presidential election, Gresham broke with the Republican Party and advocated the election of Democrat Grover Cleveland. After Cleveland won the election, Gresham resigned from the federal bench to serve as Cleveland’s Secretary of State. Gresham held that position until his death in 1895. G. $50
POL290. Photographic negative by Brady’s National Portrait Gallery, published by E&HT Anthony. Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. CDV. VG. $150
POL291. D. Appleton & Co., NY. Lincoln’s Attorney General Edward Bates. CDV. VG. $100
POL302. E&HT Anthony. Pierre Soulé (August 31, 1801 – March 26, 1870) was a Franco-American attorney, politician, and diplomat during the mid-19th century. Serving as a United States Senator from Louisiana from 1849 to 1853, he resigned to accept appointment as U.S. Minister to Spain, a post he held until 1855. He is likely best known for his role in writing the 1854 Ostend Manifesto, part of an attempt by Southern slaveholders to gain support for the US to annex Cuba to the United States. Some Southern planters wanted to expand their territory to the Caribbean and into Central America. The Manifesto was roundly denounced, especially by anti-slavery elements, and Soulé was personally criticized. Born and raised in France, Soulé was exiled for revolutionary activities. He moved to Great Britain and then the United States, where he settled in New Orleans and became an attorney, later entering politics. CDV. VG. $100
POL303. Photographic negative by Brady’s National Portrait Gallery, published by E&HT Anthony. William Campbell Preston (December 27, 1794 – May 22, 1860) was a senator from South Carolina (1833-1842) and a member of the Nullifier party, and later Whig Parties. CDV. VG. $75
POL311. E&HT Anthony. Roger Atkinson Pryor (July 19, 1828 – March 14, 1919) was a Virginian newspaper editor and politician who became known for his fiery oratory in favor of secession; he was elected both to national and Confederate office, and served as a general for the Confederate Army during the Civil War. In 1865 he moved to New York City to remake his life, and in 1868 brought up his family. He was among a number of influential southerners in the North who became known as “Confederate carpetbaggers.” He became a law partner with Benjamin F. Butler (based in Boston), noted in the South as a hated Union general during the war. Their partnership was financially successful, and Pryor became active in the Democratic Party in the North. In 1877 he was chosen to give a Decoration Day address, in which, according to one interpretation, he vilified Reconstruction and promoted the Lost Cause, while reconciling the noble soldiers as victims of politicians. In 1890 he joined the Sons of the American Revolution, one of the new heritage societies that was created following celebration of the United States Centennial. He was appointed as judge of the New York Court of Common Pleas from 1890 to 1894, and justice of the New York Supreme Court from 1894 to his retirement in 1899. On April 10, 1912, he was appointed official referee by the appellate division of the state Supreme Court, where he served until his death. He and his wife Sara Agnes Rice Pryor, also a Virginian, had seven children together, the last born in 1868. Active in founding several heritage societies, she organized fundraising for historic preservation. She was a writer and had several works: histories, memoirs, and novels, published by the Macmillan Company in the first decade of the twentieth century. Her memoirs have been important sources for historians doing research on southern society during and after the Civil War. CDV. G. $100.
POL312. Photographic negative by Brady’s National Portrait Gallery, published by E. Anthony. Daniel Stevens Dickinson (September 11, 1800 – April 12, 1866) was a New York politician, most notable as a United States Senator from 1844 to 1851. CDV. VG. $100
POL324. Brady’s National Photographic Portrait Galleries, NY and Washington, DC. Peter Barr Sweeny (October 9, 1825 – August 30, 1911) was an American lawyer and politician from New York. He was the son of James Sweeny, who kept a hotel in Hoboken, New Jersey, and Mary (Barr) Sweeny. He attended Columbia College, then studied law, was admitted to the bar and practiced law with James T. Brady in New York City. In 1852, he was appointed Public Administrator. He was New York County District Attorney in 1858, elected on the Democratic ticket in November 1857, but resigned due to ill health. Sweeny was City Chamberlain and Park Commissioner under Mayor A. Oakey Hall. He became notorious as a central figure in the ring that controlled Tammany Hall, and was depicted prominently in Thomas Nast’s cartoons alongside Boss Tweed, Richard B. Connolly and A. Oakey Hall. With Tweed, he was a director of the Erie Railroad, which became “a gigantic highway of robbery and disgrace”. Sweeny was also Director of the Tenth National Bank, in which city funds were deposited. In Nast’s cartoons, Tweed and Sweeny were often identified as “Tweeny and Sweed”; in others, Sweeny was identified as “Peter ‘Brains’ Sweeny”. Public indignation over the theft of millions of dollars by the Tweed ring led to the downfall of the Ring in the municipal election of November 7, 1871. Sweeny resigned from public life the following day. In February 1872, Sweeny was indicted but the D.A.’s office decided for nolle prosequi, and Sweeny went to Canada. In 1877, Sweeny paid $400,000 to New York City in exchange for forgiveness. The fact that the sum was paid in the name of his recently deceased brother, James M. Sweeney, who had been a minor player in the financial operations of the Ring, was widely condemned in the press. On June 7, 1877, the Evening Post wrote, “Of course, nobody will be deceived by this disgraceful and offensive sham. The suit of the people was not against James M. Sweeny … It is known that he lived by the breath of his brother, that he was but a mere miserable tool.” Sweeny died at the home of his son Arthur Sweeny, Assistant Corporation Counsel of New York City. CDV. G. $75
POL325. Sarony & Co., NY. John Thompson Hoffman (January 10, 1828 – March 24, 1888) was the 23rd Governor of New York (1869–72). He was also Recorder of New York City (1861–65) and the 78th Mayor of New York City (1866–68). Connections to the Tweed Ring ruined his political career, in spite of the absence of evidence to show personal involvement in corrupt activities. He is to date the last New York City mayor elected Governor of New York. CDV. G. $100
CWCDV1674. Photographic Negative from Brady’s National Portrait Gallery, published by E. Anthony. Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. VG. $200
CWCDV1686. Black, Boston. George William Brown (October 13, 1812 – September 5, 1890) was an American politician, judge and academic. A graduate of Rutgers College in 1831, he was mayor of Baltimore from 1860 to 1861, professor in University of Maryland School of Law, and 2nd Chief Judge and Supreme Bench of Baltimore City. He was founder and president of the Bar Association of Baltimore City and the Library Company of the Baltimore Bar.
Brown played an important role in controlling the Pratt Street Riot, where the first bloodshed of the Civil War occurred, on April 19, 1861. During the riot, Brown accompanied a column of the Sixth Massachusetts regiment through the streets. When the column he was leading was assailed by the mob, “the mayor’s patience was soon exhausted, and he seized a musket from the hands of one of the men and killed a man therewith.” Immediately following the Riot, Baltimore saw much lawlessness, as citizens destroyed the offices of pro-Union German newspapers and looted shops in search of guns and other weapons. Mayor Brown and Maryland businessmen visited the White House to urge President Abraham Lincoln to reroute Union troops around Baltimore city to Annapolis to avoid further confrontations that they felt would result from additional troops passing through the city.
In the few days following the Pratt Street Riot, Governor Hicks likely assented to Mayor Brown’s decision to dispatch the Maryland militiamen to destroy the railroad bridges over the rivers north of the city, to prevent more troops from passing through Baltimore. This was an act both Hicks and Brown would later deny—though Isaac R. Trimble, commanding Baltimore militia companies immediately following the Riot—later claimed that Brown authorized destruction of the railroad bridges, which may explain Brown’s later arrest and imprisonment by federal authorities. Shortly thereafter, a Maryland militia captain and Baltimore County farmer, John Merryman, was arrested, held at Fort McHenry and later denied a writ of habeas corpus, on grounds that President Lincoln had suspended the writ (but only along rail lines in Maryland). This arrest sparked the case of Ex parte Merryman.
President Lincoln agreed to reroute Union troops around Baltimore to Annapolis, so they could then travel to Washington. Northern troops (state militia companies) were able to arrive in Washington, thus avoiding further bloodshed in Baltimore. On May 13, 1861, the Union army entered Baltimore, occupied the city, and declared martial law. Mayor Brown was arrested on September 12, 1861, at his home, with Habeas corpus suspended. He was imprisoned at Fort McHenry for one night, then transported to Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and held for two weeks. Afterwards he was moved to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor and held for fourteen months. Brown was released on November 27, 1862. He returned to Baltimore and resumed his law practice. VG. $300
CWCDV1689. Brady, Washington, DC. Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. G. $200
CWCDV1716. J. Byerly, Frederick, Md. Anthony Kimmel (1798-1871) was born in 1798 in Baltimore, Maryland. The son of, Anthonius Kimmel (1746-1817) a prominent Baltimore merchant, and his wife, Margaret Ann [Meyers] Kimmel (dates unknown), he was educated at St. Mary’s College in Baltimore, under the tutorage of Rev. Louis William Valentine Dubourg (1766-1833), later Bishop DuBourg. After leaving college he engaged in mercantile pursuits until the age of 23 when he married Sydney Ann [James] Kimmel (1806-1848), a wealthy lady of Frederick County, Maryland, on October 17, 1822. He settled on a farm called ‘Linganore’ of which he took great pride. He participated in the defense of Baltimore and although a mere boy was in the action at North Point. He was a member of the Association of Defenders and rarely missed its annual reunions on each recurring Sept. 12th. He took great interest in military affairs, rising to the rank of Major General of militia. An earnest and zealous Mason, he was initiated in Concordia Lodge, March 19, 1819. Upon moving to Frederick County, he received the second and third degrees in Lafayette Lodge, No. 79, Liberty-town, but subsequently affiliated with Columbia, No. 58. He received the Capitular degrees in Concordia Chapter, No. 1, Baltimore, and the Orders of Knighthood in Maryland Encampment, No. 1, in 1828. Some years later he dimitted and affiliated with Baltimore Commandery, No. 2. In 1832 he was elected Senior Grand Warden, serving four years; Deputy Grand Master in 1842, serving three years, and again in 1857. Two years later he was elected Grand Master, serving one year (1859). In 1840 he was a member of the Electoral College which elevated General Harrison to the Presidency. He made several extended trips through Europe. He was the Vice-President of the American Delegation to The Great Exhibition, held in 1851 in London, England. He was several time an unsuccessful candidate on the Whig ticket for Congress. In 1860, he was elected State Senator from Frederick County. He died at his home, Linganore, April 25, 1871. After the initial grave yard was condemned to make way for city improvements, he was reinterred in Loudon Park Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland. VG. $100