Wow, what an opportunity to have been transported in time, yet still be connected to the internet. I can do double-duty by researching the past, as well as living it. What an opportunity for corroboration. So, here’s a bit of history of the man, Roscoe Conkling, one of the draftees of the 14th Amendment, and champion of corporate (railroad) rights, and of course, the rights of former slaves. A befitting figure of the Gilded Age, and from whom one may get a consummate and accurate portrait of the era.
If any one individual personified the well-rounded gentleman of the Gilded Age, it must be that rascal Roscoe Conkling. A man once described in the papers as the most “handsome” man in New York who had the “finest torso in public life.” Big in size and ego, arrogant, aristocratic, intellectual and articulate, born in privilege, but with Radical Republican ideas. Conkling was referred to as the “Curled Darling of Utica,” with a large boxer physique (of the time, of course). A contemporary political adversary, James Blaine, matched wits with Conkling, referring to Conkling’s “haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut.”
Conkling was a contemporary of Lincoln, known for his gift of oratory in his public offices, but more for his erudite, yet perfidious arguments before the Supreme Court – a true lawyer’s lawyer. Indeed, non-charismatic lawyers often hired Conkling to plead their main arguments before the most obstinate of courts. Indeed, Mr. Conkling, the son of a Judge whose family home was regularly visited by the who’s who of polite political society, including but not limited to ex-presidents such as John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren. Indeed, Conkling had the connections to be appointed district attorney of Albany at the age of only 20.
Conkling advanced his political career, elected to Mayor of Utica, twice elected to Congress, and finally to the Senate, where he once physically defended the leading Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens – that sarcastic and outrageous congressman who chaired the powerful House Ways and Means Committee (the guys who create our tax codes, among other things). Conkling was a hard-line Reconstruction “Radical” Republican before and after the War, and was a leading Stalwart Republican (pro-patronage republican rather than the “half-breed” republicans in favor of civil service reform). Conkling was a member of the famous “committee of 15” who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, of which he will later say to have kept that private journal. This mysterious journal would be used in court to clarify the alleged intention of the 14th Amendment.
Conkling was the dominant force in New York politics and controlled absolutely the patronage system, where he embodied the “spoils system.” To get a prominent position in New York, you needed Roscoe Conkling. A personal friend of Ulysses Grant, he turned down a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court position, and will later turn down another confirmed justice nomination, stating that there was just no “patronage” in those positions. When Garfield became president as a half-breed republican determined to reform the spoils system, Conkling so incensed, he resigned his senate seat along with another Stalwart, Thomas Platt. Conkling to his chagrin was not re-nominated by the New York legislature. In an odd irony, Garfield was assassinated by that crazy Stalwart, Guiteau, two weeks later
For all of Conkling’s flaws, one can say that he always unabashedly spoke his mind. He was not a hypocrite, and stayed true to his Radical and Stalwart principles regardless of loss of political position or prestigious and powerful titles. He supported Lincoln, and supported the good ol’ boys spoils system. He spoke his principles without hedging or fear of political reprisal. A politician with these qualities was rare then, as it is now. Conkling would die at age 59 in 1888. This writer has read different versions of his death: He either died from complications from a brain tumor, or from a cold he caught in a Manhattan blizzard while walking to his law office at 10 Wall Street. I remember seeing a statue of him in Madison Square Park in Manhattan. I was reading about the statue’s inception in 1893. There was to be a statue of a “great” American at each corner of Union Square Park in Manhattan; however, the statue committee decided that Conkling was just not important enough, so he was relegated to the less prestigious Madison Square. If any life deserves a screenplay, that would confidently Roscoe Conkling. Now, on to one of his main “contributions” to American jurisprudence – his arguments for corporate personhood, and we can now get it from the proverbial horse’s mouth.
