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The Political Career of Stephen W 37? N &/J /V z 7 PORTRAIT OF AN AGE: THE POLITICAL CAREER OF STEPHEN W. DORSEY, 1868-1889 DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Sharon K. Lowry, M.A. Denton, Texas May, 19 80 @ Copyright by Sharon K. Lowry 1980 Lowry, Sharon K., Portrait of an Age: The Political Career of Stephen W. Dorsey, 1868-1889. Doctor of Philosophy (History), May, 1980, 447 pp., 6 tables, 1 map, bibliography, 194 titles. The political career of Stephen Dorsey provides a focus for much of the Gilded Age. Dorsey was involved in many significant events of the period. He was a carpetbagger during Reconstruction and played a major role in the Compromise of 1877. He was a leader of the Stalwart wing of the Republican party, and he managed Garfield's 1880 presidential campaign. The Star Route Frauds was one of the greatest scandals of a scandal-ridden era, and Dorsey was a central figure in these frauds. Dorsey tried to revive his political career in New Mexico after his acquittal in the Star Route Frauds, but his reputation never recovered from the notoriety he received at the hands of the star route prosecutors. Like many of his contemporaries in Gilded Age politics, Dorsey left no personal papers which might have assisted a biographer. Sources for this study included manuscripts in the Library of Congress and the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fe; this study also made use of newspapers, records in the National Archives, congressional investigations of Dorsey printed in the reports and documents of the House and Senate, and the transcripts of the star route trials. Dorsey's voting record in the Senate was analyzed with the aid of a computer, and the study of the Star Route Frauds benefited from access to the business records of Dorsey's partner, James W. Bosler, supplied by the Bosler family. This study traces the public life of Stephen Dorsey chronologically from his service in the Civil War to the end of his political career, which came with his failure to have a friend appointed governor of New Mexico Territory in 1889. Traditional interpretations of Dorsey are based on a combination of scant evidence, carpetbagger stereotypes, and the assumption that he was guilty of masterminding the monumental swindle of the Star Route Frauds. Closer examination of Dorsey's public life, however, reveals that this traditional view is distorted. Dorsey does not conform to the image of the carpet- bagger painted by Arkansas historians. Dorsey's involvement in Arkansas politics shows further that historians have misinterpreted the nature of the Republican party in Arkansas during Reconstruction. Dorsey also does not conform to the image of the machine politician typical of traditional accounts of the Gilded Age. In addition to being a politician, Dorsey was an entrepreneur, personifying the alliance of business and politics characteristic of his era. This study shows that it is impossible to study a Gilded Age political figure without also considering his business interests. Many of Dorsey's political activities, for example his involvement in the Compromise of 1877, can be traced to his business enterprises. Dorsey was typical of the many Gilded Age speculators who never realized any lasting gains from their adventures. A major conclusion of this study is that the assumption on which most traditional views of Dorsey are based, that he was the mastermind behind the Star Route Frauds, is not supported by the evidence. Although Dorsey was not entirely innocent in the frauds, he was not guilty of the crimes with which the government charged him. This study also concludes that Dorsey was left vulnerable to the prosecution which ended his career in national politics by the peculiarly personal nature of the Republican party in the Gilded Age. That personal control had contributed to Dorsey's rise to power in the Republican party; it also led to his destruction, PREFACE The political career of Stephen Dorsey provides a focus for much of the Gilded Age. Dorsey earned the Civil War record necessary for success in the Gilded Age, and from then on, he participated in nearly every significant event or movement of the period. He was a carpetbagger during Reconstruction and played a major role in the Compromise of 1877. He was in the Senate during the great currency debates of the 1870's. He was intimate with the leaders of the Stalwart wing of the Republican party, and he managed James A. Garfield's 1880 campaign and became an important adviser for the president-elect. After the Whiskey Ring, the Star Route Frauds was perhaps the greatest scandal of the period; Dorsey was on the fringes of the Whiskey Ring scandal, and he was a central figure in the Star Route Frauds. He was also a primary target of the anti-monopoly sentiment in New Mexico that surfaced in that territory's Populist revolt. But one of the lessons of this study is that one cannot treat a Gilded Age political figure without also considering his business interests. Dorsey was an in IV entrepreneur, a speculator, a promoter. He became involved in national politics through his presidency of the Arkansas Central Railway Company during Reconstruction, when many railroad owners relied on some form of government aid. His involvement in the Compromise of 1877 was at least partly related to his interest in a branch of the Texas and Pacific Railroad. When the railroad boom ended, Dorsey continued speculating in land, cattle, mining, and a number of other enterprises; his partners in these ventures were also Gilded Age political figures, such as James G. Blaine, Stephen B. Elkins, and Robert G. Ingersoll. An examination of Dorsey thus affords a closer look at, and perhaps a re-examination of, Reconstruction and carpetbaggers, Gilded Age machine politics and the scandals of the age, and the relationship of politics and business in late-nineteenth-century America. Like most of his contemporaries in Gilded Age politics, however, Dorsey left no papers. The only available Dorsey correspondence of any political significance is that preserved in the James A. Garfield papers, and this correspondence covers only an eight-month span in Dorsey's career, from July, 1880, to March, 1881. Information concerning Dorsey is therefore scant, and biographers must sift through newspaper accounts, V congressional investigations, and the testimony taken in the star route trials, carefully allowing for the bias of a Democratic editor or a self-interested witness. Most of the generalizations made about Dorsey by historians are therefore based on a combination of slender evidence and the notoriety he received in the most public event of his life, the star route trials. Scholars have assumed Dorsey's guilt in these frauds and have extrapolated that view of Dorsey backward over his entire career. Thus, one student of the 1880 election, describing Indiana as a particularly venal battleground, comments, "It was Stephen Dorsey's kind of state.When Dorsey was selected as secretary of the Republican National Committee, many of Garfield's friends warned the candidate not to trust Dorsey; many others, however, praised the selection, and both sets of predictions would have been dismissed as samples of the kind of political backbiting common to a campaign had not the star route trials made prophets of Dorsey's detractors. Historians have used the assumption of Dorsey's guilt in the Star Route Frauds "'"David M. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of New York: Voice in the Senate (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), p. 349. VI to throw light on his earlier career in Arkansas, about which little is known, and have combined this assumption with the traditional view of Reconstruction to present Dorsey as a corrupt and opportunistic carpetbagger. Charges relating to Dorsey's sale of the Sandusky Tool Company, unspoken at the time of the sale in 1871, were aired in the press during the star route trials and found their way into the official history of the company. The official history of Oberlin College, written in 1943, apologizes for the school's association with Dorsey, an apology not called for by Dorsey's record as a student in 1860. This study attempts to trace the public life of Stephen Dorsey from his birth forward, without preconceptions superimposed onto it. Examining Dorsey's career forward instead of backward allows one to trace the development of that career in a manner impossible for those who assume that the Star Route Frauds were typical of Dorsey's public life. Such an examination reveals a somewhat different picture of Dorsey's life from that usually presented, particularly with reference to his activities as a carpet- bagger, his role as a member of the Stalwart faction of the Republican party, and his part in the Star Route Frauds. Vll Because this is primarily a political biography, it will conclude with the end of Dorsey's political career, which came with his failure to secure the appointment of a friend and business partner as governor of New Mexico in 1889. Dorsey remained active in business until his death in 1916, but his influence in national affairs ended with his departure from the political arena. Correcting the traditional image of Dorsey will, it is hoped, make it possible to bring much of post-Civil War America into clearer focus. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES ix LIST OF MAPS x Chapter I. FOUNDATIONS OF GILDED AGE SUCCESS 1 II. ENTREPRENEUR AND POLITICIAN 25 III. DISASTER IN ARKANSAS 48 IV. CARPETBAGGER SENATOR 80 V.
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