Matthew Quay
Matthew Stanley Quay was an American politician of the Republican Party who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1887 until 1899 and from 1901 until his death in 1904. Quay's control of the Pennsylvania Republican political machine for almost twenty years made him one of the most powerful and influential politicians in the country. As chair of the Republican National Committee and thus party campaign manager, he helped elect Benjamin Harrison as president in 1888. He was also instrumental in the 1900 election of Theodore Roosevelt as vice president.
Quay studied law and began his career in public office by becoming prothonotary of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, in 1856. He became personal secretary to Governor Andrew Curtin in 1861 after campaigning for him the previous year. During the Civil War, he served in the Union Army, commanding the 134th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment as a colonel. Quay received the Medal of Honor for heroism at the Battle of Fredericksburg. He acted as Pennsylvania's military agent in Washington before returning to Harrisburg to assist Curtin and aid in his re-election in 1863. He was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1865 to 1868.
Beginning in 1867, Quay became increasingly aligned with the political machine run by Senator Simon Cameron, and, by 1880, was the chief lieutenant of Cameron and his son and successor Don. Quay served as Secretary of the Commonwealth, Philadelphia County Recorder, and Pennsylvania Treasurer. He was elected state treasurer in 1885, eclipsing Don Cameron as Pennsylvania's Republican political boss and putting Quay in position to run for the U.S. Senate. He served there from 1887 to 1899, and then from 1901 until his death in 1904. He advocated for Pennsylvania's economic interests, paying little mind to matters that did not affect his home state.
At the height of his career, Quay influenced appointments to thousands of state and federal positions in Pennsylvania, the occupants of which had to help finance the machine. Opponents within the Pennsylvania Republican Party, such as merchant John Wanamaker, contested his leadership from time to time, usually unsuccessfully, though they did block his election to a third term in the Senate for two years, causing the 1899 legislative election for senator to end with no one chosen. Increasingly in poor health, he took on few new battles in his final years. After Quay's death, his political machine was taken over by his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Boies Penrose, who continued to run it until his own death in 1921.
Early life and career
Matthew Stanley Quay was born in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, on September 30, 1833. His father was Anderson Beaton Quay, a Presbyterian minister; Matthew's mother's last name at her birth was Catherine McCain. The Quay family was of Scottish and Manx descent; Matthew Quay had a Native American great-grandmother. Matthew was named for General Matthew Stanley, who raised McCain after her parents died; he was one of eight children and the oldest son to reach adulthood.The Quay family lived in several towns in central and western Pennsylvania during Matthew's childhood as Reverend Quay accepted new positions, before they finally settled in Beaver in 1850, where the family had previously lived in the early 1840s. Despite the itinerant nature of the family's existence, the education of the children, including the girls, was not neglected. Matthew attended Beaver and Indiana academies, then enrolled at Jefferson College, where he became a member of Beta Theta Pi.
After graduating in 1850, Quay visited Mississippi, where one of his classmates lived on a plantation. They had plans to go into business giving stereopticon lectures, but the equipment broke. Unable to find suitable employment in the South, he returned to Pennsylvania, where he read law in the Pittsburgh firm of Penney and Starrett. James C. Penney, a partner in the firm, stated that he "had never known a man of his age whose mind was so well disciplined and mature". In late 1852, uncertain that he was suited to the law, Quay embarked on another tour of the South but was again unable to find profitable employment and returned to complete his legal studies under the tutelage of Colonel Richard Roberts of Beaver. He was admitted to the bar in Beaver County on October 13, 1854.
In 1856, Governor James Pollock appointed Quay as prothonotary of Beaver County, to fill an unexpired term. The appointment came because the governor and his advisors respected Reverend Quay, and the young lawyer was elected to three-year terms in 1856 and 1859. At this time, the Republican Party was being formed; Quay became a member and was the Beaver County manager of that party's candidate for governor in 1860, Andrew Curtin. Quay's success in getting delegates to the state convention from western Pennsylvania to support Curtin was crucial to his getting the nomination. In October 1860, Curtin was elected, and won Beaver County by a large margin, causing him to admire Quay's political skill.
American Civil War
When Curtin became governor in January 1861, he made Quay his private secretary—a considerable advancement for a rural lawyer. At the start of the Civil War, Quay was among the earliest from Beaver County to volunteer. During May 1861, he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the 19th Division Pennsylvania Uniformed Militia, but did not take up that place. Instead, Governor Andrew Curtin made him assistant commissary general of Pennsylvania, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. After the functions of the state commissariat were transferred to Washington, Curtin continued Quay as his private secretary. Curtin sought to be a friend of and advocate for Pennsylvania's soldiers, and hundreds of letters poured in each day, letters that the governor had decreed must be individually answered, no matter how petty the grievance. This task was delegated to Quay, and he performed it flawlessly, even reproducing Curtin's signature so perfectly even the governor could not tell the difference.Other tasks Quay performed for Curtin included being liaison to the legislature. The Republicans lost their majority in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in the 1861 election, but Quay was able to forge an alliance between the Republican minority and the War Democrats, assuring a legislature that would work with Curtin on war matters. Curtin found Quay's services valuable, and was reluctant to lose him, but Quay wanted a combat assignment, which in August 1862 he got, as colonel of the 134th Pennsylvania Infantry. He and his troops joined General George McClellan's Army of the Potomac in late September 1862, as it pursued General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia after the Battle of Antietam. He did not see combat at that time, as McClellan was content to let Lee retreat into Virginia without a battle. Shortly thereafter, Quay fell ill of typhoid fever, and on medical advice, and because Curtin wanted him to serve as Pennsylvania's military agent in Washington, he submitted his resignation on December 5, 1862, though there were delays in accepting it.
In late 1862, Union forces, Quay's among them, prepared for an attack on Fredericksburg, Virginia, on the road to Richmond, the Confederate capital. The acceptance of Quay's resignation was received on the eve of the Battle of Fredericksburg, and he refused to leave his men, persuading commanders to accept him as a voluntary aide-de-camp. Quay was warned by the chief surgeon not to join in the battle because of his health, and was told he would die like a fool. He replied, "I'd rather die like a fool than live like a coward." The attack was a disaster for Union forces, as the Confederate soldiers were well-emplaced, and could not be dislodged. Quay's troops were sent to attack the Confederate positions on Marye's Heights; hidden behind a stone wall, Confederate forces were able to unleash a torrent of fire against the attackers. Astride a horse, Quay urged his men forward, and they were able to get within 25 or 30 yards of the wall before retreating, with half the soldiers dead or wounded. Quay was not wounded, and his conduct earned him the Medal of Honor.
Quay then served as Pennsylvania's military agent in Washington. Although the federal government took a predominant role over the states in the Civil War, state governors appointed agents to liaise with federal officials, to see to the well-being of the state's soldiers, and to answer letters and complaints from troops. Unhappy in the role, in 1863, he secured a transfer back to Harrisburg as Curtin's military secretary, where he did similar work, and where he could help with the governor's successful re-election campaign that year.
Entry into politics (1864–1872)
In 1864, Quay was elected to the state House of Representatives for Beaver and Washington counties, he was re-elected in 1865 and 1866. In 1866, he became the leader of the Republican majority in the House and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Rarely participating in debate, he sought efficiency, causing the appropriations bills to be brought forward early in the session, rather than late, as was customary.In 1867, the legislature was to elect a United States Senator, since senators before 1913 were chosen by legislators, not the people. Curtin sought the seat, as did former senator and U.S. Secretary of War Simon Cameron. As well as supporting Curtin, Quay wanted to be Speaker of the Pennsylvania House, but Curtin's senatorial rivals believed that granting Quay the powers of the speakership would lead to the election of Curtin. Thus, they combined to defeat him. Cameron gained the party legislative caucus's nomination for senator, and Quay healed relations by moving to make the nomination unanimous. Cameron was thereafter elected by the full legislature. Senator Cameron took full control of the state Republican Party over the next years, as Curtin lost power, especially when he was appointed Minister to Russia by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869, leading to his extended absence from the state, and rising Republicans had to choose between alliance with Cameron or political oblivion. Quay chose the former. Nevertheless, not wanting to be seen as a traitor to Curtin, Quay's change of loyalty was so gradual it was not until 1872 that it was complete.
Quay did not seek re-election to the legislature in 1867, instead returning to his hometown and founding a weekly newspaper, the Beaver Radical, which began publication in January 1868. Quay, the editor, declared it to be Republican in outlook but not devoted to any faction. Circulation grew rapidly, and by 1872, the Radical claimed to be the most-distributed weekly in western Pennsylvania. The Radical opposed President Andrew Johnson, but decried the Tenure of Office Act, that Johnson was impeached for violating, as plainly unconstitutional. The Radical also urged Northern states to support African Americans by giving full force to the Fifteenth Amendment's promise of universal male suffrage. According to Frank Bernard Evans in his thesis on Pennsylvania politics of the 1870s, Quay made the Radical to be among "the best-known and most widely-quoted journals in the state".