King of the Lobby

The Life and Times of Sam Ward, Man-About-Washington in the Gilded Age

Kathryn Allamong Jacob

Publication Year: 2010

King of the Lobby tells the story of how one man harnessed delicious food, fine wine, and good conversation to the task of becoming the most influential lobbyist of the Gilded Age. Sam Ward was a colorful character. Scion of an old and honorable family, best friend of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and charming man-about-Washington, Ward held his own in an era crowded with larger-than-life personalities. Living by the motto that the shortest route between a pending bill and a congressman’s “aye” was through his stomach, Ward elegantly entertained political elites in return for their votes. At a time when waves of scandal washed over Washington, the popular press railed against the wickedness of the lobby, and self-righteous politicians predicted that special interests would cause the downfall of democratic government, Sam Ward still reigned supreme. By the early 1870s, he had earned the title "King of the Lobby" and jokingly referred to himself as "Rex Vestiari." Ward cultivated a style of lobbying that survives today in the form of expensive golf outings, extravagant dinners, and luxurious vacations. Kathryn Allamong Jacob's engaging account shows how the "king" earned his crown through cookery and conversation and how this son of wealth and privilege helped to create a questionable profession in a city that then, as now, rested on power and influence.

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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Always hungry for acclaim, Sam Ward savored the attention his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee brought his way via stories in the nation’s major newspapers. After his appearance on Capitol Hill, he crowed to his best friend of forty years, poet Henry...

CHAPTER ONE

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pp. 7-28

Sam Ward, man of the world, master of cookery, mathematics, and half a dozen languages, failed financier, handsome and forty-six years old, bobbed up in Washington in mid-1859. He arrived armed with a secret agreement to lobby on behalf of the government of Paraguay, several cases of fine wines with more on the way, and a dazzling sapphire ring that he had acquired...

CHAPTER TWO

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pp. 29-47

When the Evening Star noted of Washington’s fluid society in 1859 that, ‘‘the lock is o√ and the door stands wide open for any to enter who may be so intelligent, entertaining and well-behaved,’’ it read like a personal invitation to Sam Ward. He was all of those things, as well as a new-made man on the make. Washington might be jittery with sectional tension...

CHAPTER THREE

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pp. 48-66

Hard on the heels of the news that South Carolina had seceded came rumors that the South would attempt to take over the federal government before Abraham Lincoln could be inaugurated. Word got back to Sam and everyone else in Washington that, on Christmas Day, the Richmond Examiner had brazenly asked, ‘‘Can there not be found men bold and brave...

CHAPTER FOUR [Contains Image Plates]

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pp. 67-90

Sam’s timing was perfect. There was a new era dawning. The changes coming had been visible on the horizon in the 1850s. Some had been stymied, and some were nudged onward by the war, but the combination of old and new forces guaranteed that a man with Sam’s unusual skills could indeed ‘‘get some money’’ in postwar Washington. Just how Sam went about...

CHAPTER FIVE

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pp. 91-117

By the end of the first Grant administration, when Sam’s name appeared, as it frequently did, in one of the growing number of ‘‘news from Washington’’ newspaper columns, it was likely to be followed by ‘‘King of the Lobby.’’ Even at a time when the press was portraying lobbyists as the most reviled of men, Sam’s honorific never had the ring of an epithet. Even...

CHAPTER SIX

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pp. 118-136

Not railroads this time but shipping lines lay at the heart of the investigation by the House Ways and Means Committee that got underway in January 1875. Rumors had been circulating for months in several newspapers, asserting that the Pacific Mail Steamship Company had spent fantastic sums of money, as much as a million dollars, in 1872 to renew and...

CHAPTER SEVEN

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pp. 137-154

News had traveled fast. Although hard to believe, it was correct. A wealthy Californian, James R. Keene, had indeed just provided Sam with a modest income. Keene had immigrated to the United States from England when he was about fourteen, and he had headed for the California gold fields a year later. That was where Sam had found him, down on his luck and desperately ill in the early...

Epilogue

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pp. 155-166

Sam lay beneath the ilex trees on an Italian hillside. All four of his children and both of his wives had predeceased him. His loving-kindness was foremost in the minds of those who mourned him and was reflected in the epitaph on the simple stone cross erected some months after his death, after much consultation, by three of...

Acknowledgments

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pp. 167-169

Sam, who lived and breathed graciousness, loved giving gifts—ripe peaches, lustrous pearls, fine Madeira. His generosity of spirit has been inherited by those of his descendants, direct and collateral, and even by the spouses of descendants, whose paths have crossed with mine. J. Winthrop Aldrich, Sam’s great-greatgrandson, kindly shared not only family lore but many of the images from the...

Notes

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pp. 171-196

Essay on Sources

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pp. 197-204

Index

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pp. 205-212

E-ISBN-13: 9780801898273
E-ISBN-10: 0801898277
Print-ISBN-13: 9780801893971
Print-ISBN-10: 0801893976

Page Count: 240
Illustrations: 20 halftones
Publication Year: 2010