William M. Stewart | |
|---|---|
 | |
| United States Senator fromNevada | |
| In office February 1, 1865 – March 3, 1875 | |
| Preceded by | None |
| Succeeded by | William Sharon |
| In office March 4, 1887 – March 3, 1905 | |
| Preceded by | James G. Fair |
| Succeeded by | George S. Nixon |
| 5thCalifornia Attorney General | |
| In office 1854–1854 | |
| Preceded by | John R. McConnell |
| Succeeded by | William T. Wallace |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1827-08-09)August 9, 1827 Galen, New York, US |
| Died | April 23, 1909(1909-04-23) (aged 81) Washington, D.C., US |
| Political party | Republican Silver (1893–1901) |
| Profession | Attorney |
| Signature | .png) |
William Morris Stewart (August 9, 1827 – April 23, 1909) was an American lawyer and politician. In 1964, he was inducted into theHall of Great Westerners of theNational Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.[1]
Stewart was born inWayne County, New York, on August 9, 1825. As a child he moved with his parents toTrumbull County, Ohio. As a young man he was a mathematics teacher in Ohio. In 1849 he began attendingYale University inNew Haven, Connecticut, but left in 1850 to move to theFar West toCalifornia. during the famousCalifornia Gold Rush of 1848-1852. He arrived inSan Francisco, California, and soon left to begin prospect mining nearNevada City, California.[2]: 1–4
In 1903 he was reputed to be one of the richest men in theUnited States Senate (with an estimated fortune of some $25 million and ownership of several gold and silver mines in California and Nevada) and the oldest member at that time of the upper chamber of theCongress.[3]
Stewart was married to Annie Elizabeth Foote, daughter of his law partner,Henry S. Foote, on May 31, 1855.[2]: 8
His second wife was May Agnes Cone, widow of Theodore C. Cone. They were wed on October 26, 1903, in thePiedmont Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia. JudgeThomas M. Norwood, who had served with Stewart in the U.S. Senate was thebest man.[3]
According to the bookReminiscences of William M. Stewart (published 1908), in May 1905 he moved with his new wife and her daughter to the Bullfrog Mining District (Nevada), ofBullfrog, Nevada where he started a law firm and law library.
In 1849, Stewart ran for governor inCalifornia's first gubernatorial election, but placed 5th with 4.36% of the vote and lost toPeter Hardeman Burnett. Later, in 1851, he ran for sheriff ofNevada County, California, and the next year, in February, he was at the Whig State Convention inSacramento, where he was named a delegate to the party's national convention.[2]: 5
In 1852, he studied law in the office of Nevada County District AttorneyJohn R. McConnell, becoming aDemocrat in the process. He was appointed to succeed McConnell as district attorney in November 1852. At that time he became a "motivating force" in beginning a Democratic newspaper,Young America (later calledThe Nevada Democrat). Stewart continued as District Attorney after an election in November 1853.[2]: 6, 7
Stewart was actingAttorney General of California from June 7, 1853, until December.[2]: 8
Stewart later moved toSan Francisco and became a law partner withHenry S. Foote,Louis Aldrick, andBenjamin Watkins Lee.[2]: 8
In 1860 Stewart moved toVirginia City, Nevada, where he participated in mining litigation and helped the development of theComstock Lode. As Nevada was becoming a state in 1864, he helped the state developits constitution. Stewart's role as a lawyer and politician in Nevada has always been controversial. He was the territory's leading lawyer in mining litigation, but his opponents accused him of bribing judges and juries.[4] Stewart accused the three Nevada territorial judges of being corrupt, and he barely escaped disbarment.[5]
In 1864, Stewart was named by theNevada State Legislature to theUnited States Senate as aRepublican. He served in the U.S. Senate for a decade from 1865 until 1875, when he retired and moved back west to practice law again in Nevada and California.[6] In 1873, Stewart's palatial residence, nicknamedStewart's Castle, was built in the federal. nationalcapital city ofWashington, D.C., and became a center of the city's social scene.[7][8] He was elected to the Senate again by theNevada Legislature in 1887 and reelected by them in 1893 and subsequently once more in 1899. During the1890s however, he left the then post-war dominantRepublican Party to join the small independent minoritythird party of the short-livedSilver Party (1892-1911), which was supported by many Westerners who were in favor of theFree Silver movement, a major political and economic issue in theUnited States during the late19th century and generally also favored by the then minority oppositionDemocratic Party, led by three-time presidential candidate,William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), ofNebraska.[6] During this time, Senator Stewart caucused / voted with the liberalSilver Republicans. faction of the Republican Senators rather than the opposing minority Democratic Senators (who were honestly strong in their support of "free silver").
During his many years in the Senate, Stewart drafted or co-authored several important bills of legislation, including several mining acts and laws urgingland reclamation by moreirrigation. Most famously, Senator Stewart is given credit for authoring in 1868 theFifteenth Amendment to theUnited States Constitution protecting voting rights regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, the last of the noted three post-Civil War constitutional amendments on the issues of slavery abolition, protection of citizenship rights and allowing voting rights for black / Negro former slaves. During his time as a Senator onCapitol Hill, Stewart received 50,000 acres of land on the side for his service on the Committee on Pacific Railroads, a benefit from lobbyists and company managers / directors of several of thetranscontinental railroads then being extended across the West to thePacific Ocean coast, .[9] In 1871, 18th PresidentUlysses S. Grant (1822-1885, served 1869-1877), offered Stewart a seat as anassociate justice on theUnited States Supreme Court. Stewart however declined. Stewart was also involved in an internationalscandal where he promoted the sale of a worthless worked out pit of theEmma Silver Mine atAlta, Utah for millions of pounds sterling to unsuspecting British subjects (citizen) overseas in theUnited Kingdom (Great Britain /England) inEurope.[10]
In 1899, Republican-affiliated journalist and diplomatWilliam Eleroy Curtis (1850-1911), detailed Stewart's reputation amongst his colleagues, describing as follows:
“There was an air of gloom about the Senate all to-day, as if some calamity were impending or some great sorrow had fallen upon the members. It was the result of the news from Nevada — the re-election of Senator Stewart and the prospect of being compelled to listen to his speeches for another Six years. Mr. Stewart is an interminable talker, but his colleagues could endure that if he would talk on more than one subject, which he declines to do. He makes the same speech over and over again almost every day, so that Senators with good memories can repeat it almost verbatim, and his familiar phrases about the capitalistic vampires with the fetid fangs and the money devils and thecrime of 1873 are more familiar to a majority of the Senate than the Ten Commandments…""Ex-Senator William W. Evarts (1818-1901l, fromNew York state, hit off on Mr. Stewart’s peculiarities in a little story that he told at a dinner given in honor of colleague, SenatorJohn Coit Spooner, when the latter was leaving public life six years ago… Senator Evarts, who next took to the floor of the Senate chamber at theU.S. Capitol, said that Stewart reminded him of a man he had met at an insane asylum one time when he was acting as a member of a board of visitors. The Superintendent told them that they must say cheerful things to the patients, and therefore when he saw a lunatic sitting astride of a table beating it with a whip and pretending to drive it with a pair of string lines, he walked up to him and said: 'That’s a fine hobby you have there, my friend.' 'It isn’t a hobby,' answered the lunatic. 'It’s a horse.' 'What’s the difference between a horse and a hobby?', suggested Mr. Evarts. The lunatic turned on him with an air of supreme contempt and remarked: 'You blank fool, anybody can get off a horse, but nobody ever got off a hobby.'"[11]
In 1902, Senator Stewart was inThe Hague of theNetherlands in Europe, in connection with the Mexican-American arbitration case, when his wife Annie, the daughter of formerConfederate States SenatorHenry S. Foote ofMississippi[12] was killed in an early automobile / motor-car accident back inAmerica on theWest Coast inAlameda, California.[13]
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Stewart retired from the Senate in 1905. He was a co-founder of the city ofChevy Chase, Maryland, along withFrancis G. Newlands, a fellow Senator from Nevada.[14] Stewart remained in Washington, D.C., and died there four years later. He was cremated, and his ashes were originally kept inLaurel Hill Cemetery in San Francisco before being moved toCypress Lawn Memorial Park inColma, California.
The film / television actorHoward Negley (1898–1983), portrayed Stewart in the March 31, 1953 episode (season 1, episode 15), "The Bandits of Panamint", of thesyndicated televisionanthology series, andWestern programDeath Valley Days, hosted then byStanley Andrews (the "Old Colonel"). In the story line, Stewart enters into an agreement to gain pardons for two bandits, played by actorsRick Vallin andGlase Lohman, who accidentally stumble upon a rich silver strike. Stewart, however gains ownership of the mine. ActressesSheila Ryan andGloria Winters played young women with romantic interests in the silver miners / outlaws.[15]
In another episode also in 1953, ofDeath Valley Days, "Whirlwind Courtship",Michael Hathaway, who appeared only twice on television, played Stewart as a young, up and coming Nevada lawyer determined to wedAnnie Foote, a real-life daughter of a formerU.S. Senator representingMississippi, andGovernor of Mississippi,Henry S. Foote (1804-1880), who himself had relocated to theAmerican western frontier, after his political career during the1850s inthe South andWashington, D.C.[16]
A year later, in a third episode from 1954, of the same Western anthology television seriesDeath Valley Days, entitled "The Light on the Mountain," the role of Stewart was played by actor Michael Colgan (1921–2006). In the story line, characters Stewart and "Richard Corey" (played byGlase Lohman) attempt to clean up the justice system in wild and woolyfrontier Nevada in preparation for statehood in 1864. ActressPhyllis Coates played Stewart's now wife, "Annie Foote Stewart" and famous star actressAngie Dickinson (born 1931), was cast as "Sabina Harris", a young woman with a romantic interest in lawyer Stewart's friend Corey.[17]
Media related toWilliam M. Stewart at Wikimedia Commons| U.S. Senate | ||
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| Preceded by (none) | U.S. senator (Class 1) from Nevada 1865–1875 Served alongside:James W. Nye,John P. Jones | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | U.S. senator (Class 1) from Nevada 1887–1905 Served alongside:John P. Jones,Francis G. Newlands | Succeeded by |
| Legal offices | ||
| Preceded by | Attorney General of California 1854 | Succeeded by |
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