Conditions were ripe to spawn a ruthless era in which special interests, spoilsmen, and corruption seemed to ooze out the doors of every government office. There was, in fact, nothing new about the essential elements at work in Washington that gave rise to these unseemly years. The "lousy combings and born freedom stealers of the earth," as Whitman had called the evils threatening good government in the 1850s, predated even his generation. But the confluence of so many factors encouraging corruption, the scale and audacity of the ensuing scandals, the extravagant sordidness of the decade to come, those were new.
The coals were hot and ready for an unprecedented feeding frenzy in Washington -- what came to be called "the Great Barbecue." The most sought-after dishes at the feast were railroad charters and land. Between 1862 and 1872, the government granted 128 million acres of land from the public domain and about the same number of dollars in bonds and loans to new, federally chartered railroads. Business interests eyed tariff schedules and patent rights hungrily. Others coveted mail routes, mining and timber rights, Indian trading posts, and military contracts for everything from boots to beef. Describing the crowd descending on Washington after the war, one reporter identified "gentlemen in the Mining Interests, Railroad Interests, Banking Interests; Harbor, Shipbuilding, Express and River Interests; Cotton, Whiskey, Army, Manufacturing, Iron and Tobacco Interests -- gentlemen in every conceivable Interest, except the Interests of the People."
One of these gentlemen, of course, was Sam Ward. He was just as hungry as the others for fortune and, while most of his colleagues favored some degree of anonymity, he was not averse to fame. His friends in high places, his savoir faire, his trove of anecdotes and recipes, and his talents for diplomacy and friendship augured well for success on both fronts. Along the way, he would also add a new dimension to what it meant to lobby in Washington.
Reprinted from King of the Lobby: The Life and Times of Sam Ward, Man-About-Washington in the Gilded Age, by Kathryn Allamong Jacob, with permission of JHU Press.
Want to stay ahead of the curve? Sign up for National Journal’s AM & PM Must Reads. News and analysis to ensure you don’t miss a thing.
Join the Discussion