Gentleman George Hunt Pendleton

Party Politics and Ideological Identity in Nineteenth-Century America

Thomas Mach

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781612779621

The first modern biography of this notable politician

"Mach's detailed and thoughtful examination of Ohio lawyer-politician-diplomat George Hunt Pendleton is an impressive piece of scholarship and will surely be the standard for decades to come."
—H. Roger Grant, Department of History, Clemson University

"George H. Pendleton was a significant and prominent Ohio and national politician who clearly merits a biography."
—Frederick Blue, emeritus, Youngstown State University

George Hunt Pendleton is a significant but neglected figure in the history of nineteenth-century politics. A Democrat from Cincinnati, Ohio, Pendleton led the midwestern faction of the party for much of the nineteenth century. He served in the Ohio Senate for one term before serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1857 until 1865. He was a leader of the Extreme Peace Democrats during the Civil War and was General George B. McClellan's running mate in the presidential campaign of 1864. Losing both the election and his seat in the House, he spent almost fifteen years out of public office. During those years he remained active in the Democratic Party both within Ohio and across the nation and was rewarded with a seat in the U.S. Senate. Serving one term from 1879 to 1885, Pendleton fathered the first major civil service reform legislation, the Pendleton Act of 1883.

"Gentleman George" not only provides a microcosm of Democratic Party operations during Pendleton's lifetime but is also a case study in the longevity of Jacksonian principles. In an era of intense Democratic factionalism stretching from the 1850s to the 1880s, Pendleton sought to unite the divided party around its traditional Jacksonian principles, which, when reapplied to address the changing political issues, became the foundation of the midwestern Democratic ideology.

With its close examination of nineteenth-century American politics, this biography will be welcomed by scholars and lovers of history alike.

Notes

Introduction

1. John Joline to Thomas Mach, May 6, 1993, Mach personal correspondence.

2. Richard L. McCormick, “The Party Period and Public Policy: An Exploratory Hypothesis,” Journal of American History 66 (Sept. 1976): 279–98; Joel H. Silbey, The American Political Nation, 1838–1893, Stanford Studies in the New Political History (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1991).

3. Michael F. Holt, “Change and Continuity in the Party Period: The Substance and Structure of American Politics, 1835–1885,” in Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775–2000, ed. by Byron E. Shafer and Anthony J. Badger (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2001), 93–116.

4. Clifford H. Moore, “Ohio in National Politics, 1865–1896,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publications 37 (Apr.–June 1928): 251.

The Early Years

1. Henry A. Ford and Kate B. Ford, History of Cincinnati, Ohio, With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches (Cleveland, Ohio: L. A. Williams and Co., 1881), 73–84. A portion of this chapter was previously published as “Family Ties, Party Realities, and Political Ideology: George Hunt Pendleton and Partisanship in Antebellum Cincinnati,” Ohio Valley History 3, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 17–30, and is reproduced here by permission of the publisher.

2. G. M. D. Bloss, Life and Speeches of George Hunt Pendleton (Cincinnati, Ohio: Miami, 1868), 7–8; Cincinnati Enquirer, Sept. 21, 1924; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography . . . (New York: James T. White and Co., 1931), 3:273, 10:240; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774–1949 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1950), 1666.

3. Bloss, Life of Pendleton, 8; Biographical Directory, 1666.

4. Clara Longworth DeChambrun, Cincinnati: Story of the Queen City (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939), 160; “Woodward High School in Cincinnati,” American Journal of Education 4 (Sept. 1957): 520.

5. “Ormsby Macknight Mitchel,” Dictionary of American Biography Base Set, American Council of Learned Societies, 1928–1936, reproduced in Biography Resource Center (Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2005), http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC; Edward Deering Mansfield, Personal Memories, Social, Political, and Literary, 1803–1843 (1879; repr., New York: Arno and New York Times, 1970), 277; DeChambrun, Cincinnati, 165; Francis P. Weisenburger, The Passing of the Frontier, 1825–1850, vol. 3 of The History of the State of Ohio (Columbus: Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1941), 206.

6. Bloss, Life of Pendleton, 11.

7. Dr. Renger to Thomas Mach, Oct. 26, 1992, Mach personal correspondence. Dr. Renger transcribed the Heidelberg records on George H. Pendleton by letter. Unfortunately, the university archives had no further information on his scholastic endeavors or achievement.

8. Bloss, Life of Pendleton, 11–16.

9. Notes of Julia Frances Brice, Misc. Personal Papers of Julia Frances Cox, San Jose, California. Julia Frances Brice was the daughter of Pendleton’s daughter Jane. Miscellaneous clippings from the Cincinnati Enquirer, George H. Pendleton Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.

10. New York Times, Sept. 4, 1864.

11. Pugh and Pendleton were schoolmates at Woodward High and Cincinnati College. Bloss, Life of Pendleton, 16; Dumas Malone, ed., Directory of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934), 14:419–20.

12. Court records for Cincinnati are currently housed in the Archives and Rare Books Department of the Blegen Library at the University of Cincinnati. Records are very scarce, if available at all, before 1857. Apparently, a courthouse fire destroyed most of them. There was nothing available on Pendleton or Pugh other than a case in which Pendleton himself was the plaintiff.

13. Evidence of Pendleton’s involvement in real estate claims is found in the following: George H. Pendleton to A. M. Searles, July 2, 1850, Eben Lane Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago; George H. Pendleton to Samuel Bispham, May 17, 1854, Gunther Collections, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago; Williams Cincinnati Directory and Business Advertiser, vols. 1–37 (Cincinnati, Ohio: C. S. Williams, 1849–1887); Carrington T. Marshall, A History of the Courts and Lawyers of Ohio (New York: American Historical Society, 1934), 4:281. Pendleton’s practice of the law continued after he entered public office. George H. Pendleton to Samuel Bispham, Esq., Dec. 2, 1858, Pendleton Papers, The Morgan Library, New York.

14. “Edward Deering Mansfield,” Dictionary of American Biography Base Set, American Council of Learned Societies, 1928–1936, reproduced in Biography Resource Center; Mansfield, Personal Memories, 235.

15. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1945).

16. The Market Revolution refers to the changing economic practices of Americans after 1815. Farmers began to specialize, focusing on one or two crops to sell for a profit rather than on subsistence farming. Manufacturers began to find better, more efficient ways to produce and sell goods. All of these changes were taking place in an economic milieu rife with advances in communications and transportation capabilities. Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America, American Century Series, ed. Eric Foner (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), 28–29.

17. William A. Sullivan, “Did Labor Support Andrew Jackson?” Political Science Quarterly 62 (Dec. 1947): 569–80; Edward Pessen, “Did Labor Support Jackson?” Political Science Quarterly 64 (June 1949): 262–74; Walter Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy in the Working Class: A Study of the Workingmen’s Movement, 1829–1837 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1960); Stephen E. Maizlish, The Triumph of Sectionalism: The Transformation of Ohio Politics, 1844–1856 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 1983), 1–20; Watson, Liberty and Power; Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991); Donald J. Ratcliffe, “The Market Revolution and Party Alignments in Ohio, 1828–1840,” in The Pursuit of Public Power: Political Culture in Ohio, 1787–1861, ed. Jeffrey P. Brown and Andrew R. L. Cayton (Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 1994), 99–116. David Brown finds the Market Revolution interpretation lacking when applied to the South. David Brown, “Slavery and the Market Revolution: The South’s Place in Jacksonian Historiography,” Southern Studies 4 (1993): 189–207.

18. Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961), 288–328; Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827–1861 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1972); Stephen C. Fox, The Group Bases of Ohio Political Behavior, 1803–1848 (New York: Garland, 1989), 119–40.

19. See also Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979); Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).

20. Howe, American Whigs, 250.

21. Ibid., 302.

22. Lawrence Frederick Kohl, review of The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War, by Michael F. Holt, American Historical Review 105 (Dec. 2000): 1744.

23. Population Schedules of the Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, roll 687 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publications, 1964), 41; Population Schedules of the Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, roll 973 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publications, 1967), 477; Population Schedules of the Ninth Census of the United States, 1870, roll 1209 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publications, 1965), 247.

24. Cleave’s Biographical Cyclopaedia of the State of Ohio: City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1873), 20; Benson, Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, 288–328; Fox, Group Bases, 119–40.

25. Garland A. Haas, The Politics of Disintegration: Political Party Decay in the United States, 1840–1900 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., 1994), 1–51.

26. Bloss, Life of Pendleton, 9; Weisenburger, Passing of the Frontier, 215, 396; Norma Lois Peterson, The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, American Presidency Series (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1989), 31–35.

27. Howe, American Whigs, 250.

28. Neomercantilism was a political philosophy calling for the government to promote economic growth through its policies. Political piety was another Whig belief that impacted the role of government. Whigs wanted to use legislation to promote their system of morality.

29. Clement Eaton, Henry Clay and the Art of Ame...