USA > Pennsylvania > A biographical album of prominent Pennsylvanians, v. 1 > Part 2
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WILLIAM D. KELLEY.
his personal desire to the wish of his constituents. In 1870 he wanted to retire from Congress, and consented to a re-election with the proviso that he was not to be expected to act as an office-broker for place-hunters-a very practical kind of a civil-service reform platform. For a man of his experience in public life he is one of the least skilful of politicians; indeed, he lacks about everything which makes the politician. He is plain-spoken to bluntness, sometimes brusque in manner, never hesitating to express an opinion without stopping to consider how it may be received. He often advises an office-seeking constituent to devote his time and ability to a more certain employment, and if the applicant be a young man he will have a useful trade suggested to him. Judge Kelley is too positive and self-willed to employ the arts which give a politician his grip. He will make rattling speeches on the stump, but he doesn't take kindly to "mixing," which requires the paying of pretty personal compliments without stint.
When the Judge is not engaged at Washington he delights to spend his time in his beautiful home in West Philadelphia. There is nothing pretentious about his house, but its halls are broad and its ceilings high, and ample grounds sur- round it. There is scarcely a tree on the lawn but has some pleasant memory associated with it. This one was brought by a friend from a far country and that one the Judge planted with some good friend's aid. Each tree has an individu- ality, and to them, as he walks through his grounds, the Judge delivers the rough outline of some of his best speeches. The well-stored library is his delight. His books show the bent of his mind. There is a good deal of high-class gen- eral literature, but history, finance and economic science take up most of the shelves. Henry C. Carey has an honored place ; and the free-trade writers are there, too, waiting to be slaughtered once more in the next speech. The large desk in the middle of the floor is a good deal littered up with letters, pamphlets and books-some of them sprawled out on all-fours, and all of them marked with slips of paper for reference. Between two windows stands one of those tall, old-fashioned clocks with a high-colored, chubby face looking down on the dial. " D. Kelley, Philadelphia," tells that it was made by the Judge's father, but doesn't add that the father made it for the man who was his landlord when the son was born, and that in recent years the Judge bought the stately time-piece of melodious tick from the landlord's widow. The Judge points with a tender pride to that old clock. To this workshop a friend, or one who has business, is always welcome; but it is not a good place for bores.
HON SAMUEL J. RANDALL
SAMUEL JACKSON RANDALL.
SAMUEL J. RANDALL is a son of Josiah Randall, a man well known in his day and generation, and whose memory is still fragrant in Philadelphia, where he lived and died. Josiah Randall was for years an influential factor in Penn- sylvania politics, first as a Democrat, then-and for the greater part of his life- as a Henry Clay Whig ; and finally, when the Whigs gravitated towards Aboli- tion, he embraced the Democratic faith. He never held any prominent office, but was a member of the Legislature, and was an able political contributor to the press. The death of this gentleman of the old school occurred years ago, but his wife lingered until 1880, and died in May of that year. Her son, Samuel, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, was with her at the last, and, with his brothers Henry and Robert, followed her remains to the grave. Each of these worthy parents had a strong influence in moulding the character of the son who now bears the family name so prominently and so worthily, and lawyer Josiah Randall's kecn political instincts, clear perceptions, and comprehensive grasp of public affairs are reproduced in the present Democratic leader in the House of Representatives.
Samuel J. Randall was born in Philadelphia, October 10th, 1828. His educa- tion was academic, and it was his father's intention to make him a merchant. His school-days were passed at the University Academy, on Fourth street below Arch, of which Mr. Crawford was the principal. It is said by his old school- fellows that he was a bright, plucky and ambitious pupil. From the academy he passed at once to the counting-room of Mather, Walton & Hallowell, dry goods merchants, on Market street, and there he remained several years. He was afterwards, at twenty-one years of age, in the iron business, being a partner in the firm of Earp & Randall. They had a fine warehouse, running from Delaware avenue to Water street, and did a large wholesale trade. Meanwhile he drank in political information from his father's lips, and in the old gentle- man's society acquired considerable knowledge of political methods. He found himself at the foot of the political ladder, and actually taking a step on it. The first round in this case was a seat in the City Council. He was elected to that body as an Old-Line Whig while still young, and served the old Locust ward as a City Father until the Consolidation, and then the Eighth ward, making four years in all. In those days he was " hail fellow, well met " with everybody, and became a great favorite with the voters generally. When a vacancy in the State Senate, caused by the death of Senator Penrose, father of the present Judge Pen- rose, beckoned him a step higher, he accepted the invitation with alacrity. For this place he ran as a Democrat, having changed his political relations in 1856, when his father came out for Pennsylvania's candidate for the Presidency, James Buchanan. In that year Josiah Randall went to Cincinnati ; his sons, Samuel
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SAMUEL J. RANDALL.
J. and Robert E., going with him to effect that nomination. They kept open house at the Burnett House while the National Democratic Convention was in session. It was as a Democrat, thereforc, that Samuel J. Randall was a candi- date for the Senate, and he has been a Democrat of the Democrats ever since. He was elected by a good majority, defeating Stillwell S. Bishop, and served one terni in the Senate, his brother Robert E., now a resident of New York city, serving at the same time in the lower House. Ambitious Pennsylvanians find Harrisburg right on the road to Washington, but many never get any further than the first station. Samuel J. Randall is one of the lucky few. While he was in the Legislature the war broke out. The call for ninety days' men was answered by Senator Randall in person. He was a private in the First City Troop of Philadelphia, Captain James commanding.
As soon as the call for troops was made by the National Government, on the 15th of April, 1861, the company tendered its services under the call. On the 13th of May it was mustered into the service of the United States for the term of ninety days. The horses all belonged to the troopers. The company was attached to the Second United States Cavalry, commanded by Colonel, afterwards the distinguished General, George H. Thomas. It was while in the field that Randall wrote to Washington, making the suggestion to the War Department which led to the advancement of George H. Thomas to the line of general officers. That letter called the attention of the department to the ability of General Thomas in such a way as to make an impression at head-quarters, although it came from a man in the ranks, and as yet unknown to fame. In 1879, when the equestrian statue of General Thomas was unveiled at Washington, this fact was remembered, and Mr. Randall, then Speaker of the House of Rep- resentatives, was given a special invitation to witness and participate in the ceremony.
Private Randall came back from the war as Orderly Sergeant Randall, and Sergeant Randall was, in 1862, elected a Representative in Congress from the First District, which embraccd nearly the same wards that now compose the Third District. From that day to this, although often bitterly battled against, he has never been out of Congress for a day, being successively re-elected to every Congress from the Thirty-eighth to and including the Forty-ninth. He was a very quiet member at first, and spent a good while in getting settled in his new phere and accustomed to his new surroundings. During his first term he was a member of only one committee, that on Public Buildings and Grounds; in his second he served on three, all important committees, viz .: Banking and Currency, Retrenchment, and Expenditures in the State Department; and in his third he held his place in each of these three, and was also honored as a representative of his party on the Special Committee on the Assassination of Lincoln.
On the 25th of May, 1862, Governor Curtin ordered Major-General Patterson to muster the military force under his command to protect the capital of the country. On the following morning Mr. Randall despatched a note to the general com-
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SAMUEL J. RAND.ILL.
manding the division, tendering the services of the troop. Early the succeeding day, Mr. Randall, in obedience to orders, reported by letter to the commanding general, and on the first intimation of the advance of the Southern army north of the Potomac he proceeded to Harrisburg to make arrangements by which the troop could go into service. He marched the troop to Harrisburg, and on to Gettysburg, and, as Cornet, commanded until honorably discharged. While at Columbia he was appointed Provost Marshal, and under his orders strict military rule was established, and the sale of intoxicating liquors prohibited.
The Democrats were in a hopeless minority in those days, and all that Mr. Randall could do was to make his mark as an efficient committeeman. It was not until the minority grew strong enough to have confidence in itself that he made a profound impression upon the House as a ready debater, an expert in parliamentary practice, and a fighter who fought until he was whipped, and then .
snapped his fingers in the face of defeat. In the Forty-first Congress he was a useful member of the Committee of Elections, and of the Joint Committee on Retrenchment. His next advance was in the Forty-second Congress, when his parliamentary skill brought him forward as a member of the Committee on Rules, the other members being Speaker Blaine, ex-Speaker Banks, General Garfield. and S. S. Cox ; but he continued to serve on the old committees, whose duties he had thoroughly mastered.
Then came the Forty-third Congress, which gave the member from the Third Pennsylvania District the opportunity of his life. He was not slow to seize it; not because he recognized it as an opportunity for personal advancement, but because circumstances combined to make him the mouthpiece and defender of his party and its principles. The occasion was the attempted passage of the now famous force bill, which, according to Democratic theory, was a desperate device of the Republicans to avert their fast-coming decline, at the expense of the Con- stitutional rights of the States, and in reckless contempt of the spirit of free insti- tutions. Still in a minority in the Ilouse of Representatives, the Democrats scarcely dared hope to defeat this bill; but Randall took the lead, made their fight aggressive instead of defensive, and the whole party seemed to catch his spirit. For days and nights he opposed parliamentary tactics, ready strategy and invincible pluck, to a compact Republican majority, with all the machinery of the House at its back. In the end his apparently forlorn hope was victorious, and Randall was by common consent the hero of the contest. At once and thenceforward Samuel J. Randall occupied a prominent position in the eyes of the nation, and when the House of Representatives in the next Congress was organized by the Democrats, almost everybody looked to see him carry off the great prize of the Speakership. But he was to wait a little longer before entering upon his reward. There was an honest and earnest Democrat from Indiana who had an older claim-Michael C. Kerr was the man. The South and West com- bined to give him the Chair. Mr. Randall made a good fight, but, losing, acquiesced cheerfully. "Mr. Chairman," said he to the caucus, as soon as the
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SAMUEL J. RANDALL.
vote was taken, " let the wish of the majority be the voice of all. From this moment the differences among ourselves must be at an end, and we must thus present a united front to our adversaries. Our mission on this floor must be, as far as we are able, to restore the government to its Constitutional purposes, and to expose the corruption of the administration." This speech sounded the key- note of the Democratic policy on its restoration to the control of the House of Representatives. The appointment of Mr. Randall to the Chairmanship of the Committee on Appropriations gave him a chance to impress his ideas upon legislation, in so far as a Republican Senate would allow it. As a leader of the majority he was not so impressive as when he led a minority, but the work that he accomplished under whip and spur in a single session was remarkable. Abler Republicans than any that now sit on the floor of the House of Representatives challenged him at every step; timid Democrats held on to his coat-tails, while the Senate stood like a stone wall in the path of retrenchment. Randall sur- prised everybody by his mastery of details in every department of the govern- ment business. The reforms that he proposed were so sweeping as to cause alarm ; but he was prepared to stand by every figure in his budget, and to show that he was the right one in the right place. His idea was, that the difference between the legitimate cost of running this government and the amount that was paid therefor under Republican estimates was $38,910,984.29, and this enormous balance he proposed to cut off and charge to extravagance. The party which had been holding the keys of the Treasury so long was naturally loth to admit that its trust had been abused to such an extent. General Garfield, the Chairman of the old Committee on Appropriations, under which this extravagance had been accumulating, was particularly bitter in opposition ; but there was no withstanding Randall's conclusive array of figures. Beaten in the House, the Republicans made a desperate stand in the Senate, and when the appropriation bills came back to the House there ensued a bitter discussion as to the degree to which the Senate is responsible for the raising of the revenue and the disposition of it. Randall was charged with putting the House above the Senate. Kasson, of lowa, attacked him vigorously on this line, but Randall closed the debate with the simple remark : "I take all the right for this House which the Constitution gives it, and will be satisfied with nothing less." The battle was won by the popular branch, and, thanks to Randall above all others, the Democrats in the Presidential and Congressional elections of 1876 were enabled to show that, although intrusted with only one branch of a single department of the government, they had reduced the burden of taxation to the enormous extent of $40,000,000, of which $30,000,000 was saved in a single session. This result was the tallest feather in Randall's cap then, and it is to- day.
Speaker Kerr died in the summer of 1876, and when Congress assembled in the following December it was necessary to elect his successor to the Chair for the unexpired Congressional term. There was now no doubt as to the man for
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SAMUEL J. RANDALL.
the place. Mr. Randall was selected by the Democratic caucus over S. S. Cox, of New York, a Democrat who had achieved a national reputation when his successful competitor in this fight was only a member of the Pennsylvania Legis- lature. The vote stood : Randall, 73; Cox, 63. When the election took place the country was throbbing with excitement over a disputed Presidential election. Mr. Randall was chosen by the friends of Governor Tilden to go with other prominent Democrats to Louisiana, and have an eye upon the tricks of the Returning Board. While in New Orleans, he did much by his presence and counsel to encourage the Democrats to fight for their rights before the Returning Board. It was on his return that he was elected Speaker; and a controlling influence in the choice was the general desire of the Democrats to have a clear- headed and quick-witted man, not to be bullied, in the Chair during the electoral count and the proceedings preliminary thereto. This confidence in Randall was justified. If the white feather was shown by any Democrat in that period of doubt and dread, Samuel J. Randall was not the man who showed it.
There is little need to dwell upon the last four years of Mr. Randall's life. During that time his words and acts have been read of all men, for he has not lived in a corner nor kept his hand on his mouth. His successive re-elections to Congress, in 1876 and 1878, were followed by successive re-elections to the Speakership of the House of Representatives; never without bitter opposition, but always, it may be said, without disparagement of his rivals, with the approval of the Democracy and of the country at large. As Speaker he made mistakes of judgment, yet no decision was ever overruled by the House-a remarkable fact ; but any such mistakes are insignificant compared with his great services to the party and to the nation. His occupation of the Chair of the House was a standing guarantee of an honest administration of its duties, without regard to personal or sectional considerations, and in the broad spirit of nationality. There was wincing here and there, and he has been damned up hill and down when recognition was not given to a man with an ugly axe to grind, or when a committee was not made up to please the friends of a certain great enterprise, or when his gavel, in sustaining a point of order, fell with such force as to mash a proposed subsidy as flat as a pancake ; but there is no telling how many millions he has saved the country, or from how many pitfalls he has rescued the Democratic party by this stiff-neckedness. He knew as well as any- body else that his anti-sectional and anti-subsidy policy could not be enforced without making him liable to the charge of niggardliness, and indefinitely in- creasing the number of his enemies, but he was willing to pay that price. His- tory will make Samuel J. Randall second to none of his predecessors in the Speakership, whether the standard be integrity, intelligence, decision of character, length and breadth of vision, or the mastery and application of rules of parlia- mentary proceedings.
The life which we have sketched has been passed by a man of the world among men of the world, without Pharisaical pretensions, but it has been an honest life
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SAMUEL J. RANDALL.
amid great temptations. There have been times when Randall's friends trembled lest he should stumble, and when enemies chuckled over his apparently inevi- table downfall, but he has come to his fifty-ninth year without a stain upon his personal integrity. After twenty-five years of public life, covering the most cor- rupt period in American history, he finds himself a poor man, with nothing to show for his diligence in business except an honorable position, and the plainly furnished little house in Washington, where he lives during the Congressional session. When he comes to Philadelphia he has a room at Guy's Hotel, and his summers are generally passed with his wife and children in a rented house near Berwyn, on the Pennsylvania Railroad, within a few hours' ride of the city. He did not figure on the memorandum-book of Oakes Ames, nor was he on the pay-roll of Boss Shepherd, and no lobbyist knows a sure way to Randall's good graces. There is no middleman whom he has enriched. When the Cen- tral Pacific Railway Company had a bill before the House, looking to the appropriation of Mare Island for depot purposes, by a wanton sacrifice of the government's title to that property, a lifelong personal friend of Mr. Randall went to him and said: " Look here, Sam ; I know you are opposed to this bill, and there is no use in asking you to help us get it through, but its passage will be $20,000 in my pocket. Now, all I ask is that you will favor me by not fighting it any more than is absolutely necessary." " My friend," was the reply, "I would rather lose my right hand than have you lose that fee, for I know you need the money, and I have no better friend in the world; but by -, I am opposed to that bill. It is a steal, and I am going to fight it to the death." He was as good as his word, fighting it with all his might, and it was defeated by one vote. Vice-President Wheeler, by the way, was Chairman of the Committee on Pacific Railroads at the time, and the patron of the bill. A dozen similar stories illustrating this point could be told, but everybody who knows Samuel J. Randall will acknowledge that he is a man that a lobbyist cannot bring down with any sort of shot. He has, indeed, been a warm friend of some of the enterprises, whose suit upon the floor of Congress he has rejected from a sense of public duty, with a brusqueness which verged upon rudeness and tyranny. In a matter of this kind he has no blind side; approach which way one will, he is sure to get a kick. Hence the tears of many a parliamentary broker, and the hate of every legislative rooster.
Personally, Mr. Randall is a man who would attract attention in any company, and yet he is not a man of imposing appearance. He is perhaps a little above the medium height, but a slight stoop reduces his stature to the average. He is broad-shouldered and loose-limbed. Wearing no beard, and being always close- shaven, his face is almost as smooth as a baby's. His eyes are small, black, and piercing, but this effect is modified by a habit of squinting, which seems to be the result of trying to conquer nearness of sight without the aid of glasses. But his most prominent feature is the mouth, which, while inclined to smile and reveal a fine set of teeth, shuts with a snap and assumes the firmest sort of ex-
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SAMUEL J. RANDALL.
pression under the impulse of antagonism. The sunshine of boyish frankness, which usually dwells upon his countenance, is obscured in an instant by a cloud as black as thunder. The massive lower jaw is projected, the thin lips close, a frown falls upon the brow, and the whole head is thrust forward in a defiant fashion. It is a complete transformation, and when Randall is in this ugly mood, friend and foe are equally liable to suffer from the displeasure of the moment. Very different does he look as he saunters down Chestnut street or Pennsylvania avenue, or sits in his sparsely furnished study with a few chosen friends, talking over the affairs of the day. Then he is all smiles, and nobody who has seen him laugh heartily will ever think of him with that other look. As to dress he is somewhat careless, but the fact that he went to his sister-in- law's wedding in a linen duster is not to be used against him, for that was an accident of travel. He is almost always seen in a complete suit of black broad- cloth, the coat being the long-tailed black frock, which is still considered full dress in some parts of the country. I have known him to be taken in Washing- ton for the chaplain of the House, or some visiting clergyman, and in Philadel- phia for a member of the Society of Friends.
Mr. Randall is a model husband and an indulgent father. Early in life he married a daughter of General Aaron Ward, of Sing Sing, N. Y., who was a member of Congress from 1827 to 1829, from 1831 to 1837, and from 1841 to 1843, a gentleman of liberal education and travel, who gave his children the same advantages. Mrs. Randall has been in every sense a help-meet for her husband. The Speaker's domestic circle is completed by three children, the eldest of whom is a daughter, and the youngest a bright boy, who bears his father's name. Mrs. Randall's receptions are always well attended, and, while marked by extreme simplicity, are always thoroughly enjoyable. For the last ten years Mr. Randall has been a hard student at home as well as at the Capitol. He reads a great deal and has a voluminous correspondence, makes it a rule never to allow a letter to remain unanswered over night, and after due allowance for domestic engagements finds little time to go about town. He is rarely seen in public places after dark, and his appearance in such a rendezvous as Willard's would cause a sensation. When he comes to Philadelphia he is overrun with callers, and his visits are often made between days in order that business may not be sacrificed by an undue pressure of friendly attentions. In the summer he rents a cottage, and, eschewing public concerns as far as possible, rests to gain the health and strength which he always brings to his winter's work.
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