Simon Cameron

• Born: March 8, 1799
• Birthplace: Maytown, Pennsylvania
• Died: June 26, 1889
• Place of death: Donegal Springs, Pennsylvania

American secretary of war (1861-1862)

Cause of notoriety: Cameron, as war secretary under President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, bungled war efforts and was accused of administering the war department with blatant favoritism.

Active: 1860-1862

Locale: Washington, D.C.

Early Life

As a young man, Simon Cameron (CAM-ruhn) apprenticed in the newspaper industry and soon invested in several local newspapers. Recognizing that political connections would help him make money, Cameron used his business enterprises to lead him into politics. As his financial interests diversified into mining and transportation, Cameron rose in prominence in the Democratic Party, presiding over the Pennsylvania delegation at the 1832 Democratic National Convention and serving in 1837 on Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Convention. These political connections led to his association with James Buchanan, a powerful Pennsylvania senator, who arranged Cameron’s major appointment as Indian commissioner to the Winnebago tribe. However, rumors soon circulated that Cameron was skimming money from the Winnebagos’ annuity payments, and he resigned. Thereafter, rumors of corruption followed Cameron wherever he went.

Political Career

In 1845, Buchanan became secretary of state, and Cameron ran in the special election to fill Buchanan’s Senate seat. Believing that the Whig Party’s economic platform was more agreeable to his burgeoning economic interests, Cameron appealed to the Pennsylvania Whigs for support. Cameron won the election but angered Democrats in the process. Unable to straddle the differences between the Democratic Party he represented and the Whig Party to which he owed his office, Cameron declined to run for reelection in 1848 and returned to Pennsylvania. Alienated from his Democratic supporters, Cameron determined to create a new base of political support. By 1855, Cameron’s influence rivaled that of Buchanan, and he ran for the Senate on the American (Know-Nothing) Party ticket; he lost the election.

The following year, Cameron again switched parties, this time to the new Republican Party. This move eventually led to a successful Senate campaign. As a Republican senator from a prominent state, Cameron wielded some influence on the selection and support for the Republican presidential candidate in 1860. At the Republican Convention in Chicago, Cameron could not collect enough support for a presidential nomination for himself, but he did exert enough influence to earn a major appointment from any candidate whom he decided to back. When the supporters of Lincoln promised a cabinet position for his support, Cameron backed Lincoln.

Once Lincoln became president, Cameron hoped to become secretary of the treasury in order to help his personal business interests. Instead, in December, 1860, Lincoln named Cameron as the secretary of war. However, rumors of Cameron’s shady business dealings and constant shifting between political parties worried Lincoln (one congressman told Lincoln that Cameron was so greedy, he would steal a red-hot stove), and Lincoln temporarily withdrew the nomination. The president needed the support of Pennsylvania in the looming secession crisis, so in March, 1861, he offered Cameron the position once again.

Cameron proved unable to meet the challenge of his position. First, he lacked the experience necessary to make military decisions. As the standoff at Fort Sumter, in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, intensified, Cameron provided little leadership and made few proactive decisions. Once the Civil War began, Cameron provided little advice to the president on how to conduct the war. Second, Cameron lacked the ability to control the bureaucracy at the War Department. As volunteers flooded into military service, Cameron failed to organize the department to accommodate them. Moreover, the new army constantly lacked weapons, supplies, uniforms, or anything else to shape it into an effective force. Third, Cameron deviated from the Lincoln administration’s established policy on slavery. In the annual report issued every year from the War Department, Cameron stated that it was his belief that not only should the government seize slaves from their owners, but also the slaves should be armed as soldiers. Cameron did not clear the report with Lincoln beforehand, and Lincoln ordered Cameron to withdraw the statement.

Finally, Cameron came under scrutiny for the rampant corruption at the War Department. Employing the “spoils system” of the day, Cameron placed friends and business associates in key positions for procuring equipment for the army, opening him to charges of corruption when those associates paid too much for defective rifles, sick horses, and shoddy equipment. Cameron blatantly exploited his knowledge of government business and military strategies to invest in companies soon to receive supply and transportation contracts. For instance, he invested heavily in the Central Pennsylvania Railroad, knowing that the company was to receive large sums of money from the government to haul army supplies, thus making a huge profit for himself in the process. Ever the businessman, Cameron saw no conflict of interest in acting on this insider information.

Congress soon began an investigation of the War Department, and Lincoln, wishing to minimize the damage, decided to remove Cameron before the investigation could issue its report. Lincoln named Cameron as the new ambassador to Russia, and Cameron left the country just as the congressional investigation results, highly critical of Cameron’s leadership, became public. Unhappy as ambassador, Cameron left Russia almost as soon as he arrived. He tried to run for his Senate seat in 1862 after returning to Pennsylvania, but he lost the election. Refusing to return to Russia, Cameron remained in Pennsylvania and resumed his position as political insider. Cameron ran a powerful Pennsylvania political machine, and no one could be elected without his behind-the-scenes support. He retired from politics in 1877 and died in his hometown in 1889.

Impact

Simon Cameron’s weaknesses as war secretary during the early years of the Civil War were in part responsible for early Union defeats that threatened the young nation’s survival. Cameron’s successor as secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, proved a brilliant choice. Stanton soon got the War Department under control and properly received the credit for leading the department through the Civil War. The corruption of Cameron foreshadowed the rampant corruption that plagued presidents throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. Cameron is credited with the saying that “the definition of an honest politician is someone who, when he is bought, stays bought.”

Bibliography

Bradley, Erwin S. Simon Cameron, Lincoln’s Secretary of War: A Political Biography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966. The only dedicated biography of Cameron, the book claims that charges of corruption were overstated and Cameron did the best he could in an impossible situation.

Crippen, Lee F. Simon Cameron: Antebellum Years. New York: DaCapo Press, 1972. A study of Cameron’s development as a businessman and politician, good background for understanding Cameron’s dubious reputation.

Goodwin, Doris K. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. An extensive study of Lincoln’s cabinet, with a good discussion of the delicate political decision to remove Cameron from office.