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SAMUEL WARD (1814
)
Samuell Ward, born in New York City, Jan. 28, 1814, was
graduated at Columbia College, 1831, was formerly a banker, letely a
diplomatist and poet; author of "Lyrical recreations;" married 1st Emily,
daughter of William B. Astor. [their surviving Child, MARGARET
ASTOR WARD, married John Winthrop Chanler.]Married 2d, Medora Grymes. -
Children: 1. Samuel, died in 1866 2. Randolph G., died in 1864. {Sam
Ward died in Italy in
SOURCE: The
Ward Family Genealogy by John Ward
The Harvard University Library has
announced the recipients of
Bryant Fellowship Recipients for 2003
Kathryn
Allamong Jacob Curator
of Manuscripts
Schlesinger Library—Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
"King of the Lobby: The Life and Times of Sam Ward"
The award will
be used to help complete this biography of Sam Ward, one of the most
colorful and powerful figures in American politics during the "gilded
age." Expanding from an article previously published in Smithsonian,
it will include a discussion of Ward's circle of friends (among them
Charles Sumner, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Samuel Gridley Howe), his
family (his favorite sister was Julia Ward Howe), and the lobby in
Washington in the 1870s over which he reigned.
SAM WARD - KING OF THE
LOBBY
"This business of lobbying, so called, is as
precarious as fishing in the Hebrides. You get all ready, your boats go
out--suddenly there comes a storm, and away you are driven.... Everybody
who knows anything about Washington, knows that ten times, aye, fifty
times, more measures are lost than are carried; but once in a while a
pleasant little windfall of this kind recompenses us, who are always
toiling here, for the disappointments. I am not ashamed--I do not say I
am proud, but I am not ashamed--of the occupation. It is a very useful
one. In England it is a separate branch of the legal profession; there
they have parliamentary lawyers who do no other business. There the
committees sit all day to hear these lawyers, and they sit in Parliament
at night, whereas here committees are only allowed to sit for an hour
and a half; so that it is very hard to get through four thousand bills
in a session. The disappointments are much more numerous than the
successes. I have had many a very pleasant "contingent" knocked away
when everything appeared prosperous and certain, and I would not insure
any bill, if I were paid fifty per cent, to secure its passage. . . .
I was retained, I suppose, because "the king's name
is a tower of strength," and I am known as the "King of the Lobby." . .
.
We who are of the "regular army" know when we are
whipped. But gentlemen of little experience come down here, and peg on
... until the end of the session, and never understand when they had
better go home.... To introduce a bill properly, to have it referred to
the proper committee, to see that some member in that committee
understands its merits, to attend to it, to watch it, to have a counsel
to go and advocate it before the committee, to see that members of the
committee do not oversleep on the mornings of important meetings, to
watch for the coming in of the bill to Congress day after day, week
after week, to have your men on hand a dozen times, and to have them as
often disappointed; to have one of those storms which spring up in the
Adriatic of Congress, until your men are worried, and worn, and tired,
and until they say to themselves that they will not go up to the Capitol
today--and then to have the bird suddenly flushed, and all your
preparations brought to naught, these, these are some of the experiences
of the lobby."
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ISOURCE:
On March 21, 1980, Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd
launched a unique historical project – an unprecedented
series of addresses on the Senate's history and
operations... The following essay, originally delivered
on September 28, 1987, was updated in 1989 for inclusion
in volume II. For footnotes and information on sources,
see the print edition. //more// |
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Excerpted
rom the article "Annals
of the Third House: New legislation means to bring lobbyists out
into the sunlight. History suggests they’ll bask there."
By Bernard A. Weisberger
"... Sam Ward, known in his time as “King of the Lobby.” He was a poet,
linguist, bon vivant, gourmand (with ample
paunch), and wit, as much at home in London or Paris as in Washington or
New York high society. He made and lost several fortunes in a lifetime of
friendships with bankers and bohemians alike. Discreet, charming, unwedded
to absolutes (unlike his abolitionist sister, Julia Ward Howe, who wrote
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic”), he was the perfect go-between for
clients who needed government help and officials who needed convincing. In
his full-bodied magnetism he compares to modern lobbyists, who court
anonymity, as Carnegie and Vanderbilt do to today’s unpublicized CEOs. //more//
"The Whig lobbyists who hung around and debauched the legislatures of that
State were controlled and managed by a notoriously unscrupulous politician
styled King of the Lobby, who was an intimate friend and companion
of Mr. Seward. This unscrupulous man and his vicious adherents were
obnoxious to sincere and genuine Republicans in all quarters."
Rufus Rockwell Wilson, editor, Intimate Memories of
Lincoln, p. 350 (Gideon Welles).
UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER LIBRARY BULLETIN
Volume XII · Winter 1957 ·
Number 2
Samuel Ward, Alias
Carlos Lopez
--MARGARET BUTTERFIELD
Further light on the fabulous career of Samuel Ward,
who has figured in several books published during the past few years, can
be found in a series of ninety-two letters which he addressed to Secretary
of State William Henry Seward or to Seward's close associates, during the
early months of the Civil War, and now a part of our manuscript collection
at Rush Rhees Library. Part of these letters have been used by historians,
but the greater part of them, particularly those which were written under
a pseudonym, appear to have been overlooked. Written in Ward's small, neat
handwriting, they are long, gossipy letters, filled with information on
the course of events in the South, on the strength and morale of the
Confederates, and finally on the public and official attitude of Great
Britain and France toward the policy being followed by the Union in its
struggle for survival during that critical first year of the war. //more// |
