Arthur P. Gorman | |
|---|---|
 Gorman c. 1899 | |
| Chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus | |
| In office March 4, 1903 – June 4, 1906 | |
| Preceded by | James Kimbrough Jones |
| Succeeded by | Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn |
| In office May 3, 1890 – April 1898 | |
| Preceded by | James B. Beck |
| Succeeded by | David Turpie |
| United States Senator fromMaryland | |
| In office March 4, 1903 – June 4, 1906 | |
| Preceded by | George Wellington |
| Succeeded by | William Pinkney Whyte |
| In office March 4, 1881 – March 3, 1899 | |
| Preceded by | William Pinkney Whyte |
| Succeeded by | Louis E. McComas |
| Member of theMaryland Senate fromHoward County | |
| In office 1875–1881[1] | |
| Preceded by | John Lee Carroll |
| Succeeded by | Edwin Warfield |
| Speaker of theMaryland House of Delegates | |
| In office 1872–1874 | |
| Preceded by | Ferdinand Claiborne Latrobe |
| Succeeded by | Jesse K. Hines |
| Member of theMaryland House of Delegates fromHoward County | |
| In office 1869–1875[1] Serving with William Matthews Merrick (1869–1871), Edward Linthicum (1871–1875) | |
| Preceded by | John R. Clark, I. Thomas Jones |
| Succeeded by | Littleton Maclin, Claudius Stewart |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1839-03-11)March 11, 1839 Woodstock, Maryland, U.S. |
| Died | June 4, 1906(1906-06-04) (aged 67) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Resting place | Oak Hill Cemetery Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 6, includingArthur Jr. |
| Parent |
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| Relatives |
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| Signature | .png) |
Arthur Pue Gorman (March 11, 1839 – June 4, 1906) was an American politician. He was leader of the Gorman-Rasin organization withIsaac Freeman Rasin that controlled theMaryland Democratic Party from the late 1870s until his death in 1906.[3] Gorman served asUnited States Senator fromMaryland from 1881 to 1899 and again from 1903 until his death. He was a prominent leader of theBourbon Democrat faction of theDemocratic Party. Gorman was Chairman of the Democratic National Committee duringGrover Cleveland's 1884 presidential campaign and he is widely credited with securing Cleveland's victory.[4] In 1952 Gorman was described inThe Baltimore Sun as "easily the most powerful political figure [Maryland] has ever known."[5]
As a young man, Gorman also played a prominent role in the early development of baseball in Washington, D.C. He was a founding member of the originalWashington Nationals of theNational Association, the first American baseball team, and became one of the nation's star players by 1864. Later in life, he served as a member of theMills Commission which investigated the origins of the sport.[6]
Gorman was born inWoodstock, Maryland on March 11, 1839. His father wasPeter Gorman, a construction contractor, and his mother was Elizabeth A. Gorman (née Brown). Arthur was named after the family physician, Dr. Arthur Pue. He was the first of five children, includingWilliam.[6]
Gorman's paternal grandfather, John, emigrated to the U.S. from Ireland circa 1794, first settling inHarrisburg, Pennsylvania before moving to the Baltimore area.[6]
The Gorman family moved to Howard County, Maryland around 1845,[7] where Peter Gorman bought a 150-acre (61 ha) farm several miles from Laurel.[6][8][9] Gorman attended Howard County public schools[10] and for at least one year his father hired a tutor to teach him and neighboring students.[11]: 5
In 1850, Peter Gorman used his connections to Maryland CongressmenWilliam T. Hamilton andEdward Hammond to arrange for 11-year old Arthur to serve as aU.S. Senate page.[6] Gorman became friends with prominentIllinois SenatorStephen A. Douglas, who made Gorman his private secretary.[6] Some sources state that Gorman accompanied Douglas during his debates with Abraham Lincoln in 1858,[7] although biographer John R. Lambert questions these accounts.[11]: 7 Gorman continued to work for the senate throughout the 1850s and 1860s, including positions as messenger, assistant doorkeeper, and assistant postmaster.[12] In 1866, he was appointed Postmaster.[12] Gorman's experience in the Senate gave him extensive knowledge of parliamentary procedures that he would put to use during his political career.[13]
During theAmerican Civil War, Gorman was a pro-Union Democrat. In September 1866, Republicans who held the senate majority removed him as postmaster because he supported PresidentAndrew Johnson's Reconstruction policies. Johnson immediately appointed Gorman as Collector of Internal Revenue for theFifth Congressional District of Maryland.[6]
At the age of 20 in 1859, Gorman was one of the founding members of theWashington Nationals, the first fully professional baseball team in America. He rose to become a star by the end of theCivil War era.[14] According to contemporary accounts, Gorman was the team's standout left fielder, but often substituted or filled in at every other position, including pitcher and catcher.[15]
In 1867, he led the Nationals in their first trip overthe mountains, in which they beat every midwest team exceptRockford, Illinois, which hadAlbert Spalding as its pitcher.[16] Also in 1867, Gorman was elected to a one-year term as president of theNational Association of Base Ball Players.[6][16]
In 1891, as part of an expandedNational League, a Washington franchise was added. Originally called theWashington Statesmen, the team was renamed "Senators" to honor Gorman. While this team folded in 1899, subsequent franchises would use the "Senators" name until 1971. In February 1903, Gorman and his son-in-law Wilton Lambert attempted but failed to buy theWashington Senators baseball team.[6]
Gorman was elected to theMaryland House of Delegates in 1869, serving until 1875; he served asSpeaker of the House for one session.
Gorman was closely aligned with Baltimore political leaderIsaac Freeman Rasin and supportedWilliam Pinkney Whyte for Governor in 1871. Whyte, in turn, gave Gorman a position as director of the C&O Canal.[17]
In 1875, he was elected to theMaryland State Senate, serving until 1881.[12][18]
In 1880, the Maryland legislature elected Gorman to the United States Senate, where he soon became a leader of theBourbon Democrats. TheNew York Times reported that the previous legislative election was influenced by large groups of "ward rounders" who shot and wounded black Republican voters at the Howard County polls.[19]
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In 1884 Gorman became chairman of the National Democratic Committee and served as campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Grover Cleveland.[11]: 102–103 Cleveland faced Republican candidateJames Blaine in the election. The campaign was an extremely negative and close one. Blaine actively courted the Irish Catholic vote and he publicized that his mother was Catholic.[11]: 107 On Wednesday October 29, Blaine attended a meeting with Protestant clergymen in New York City. At the meeting, Rev. Samuel D. Burchard made an introductory speech in which he denounced the Democratic Party as the party of "rum, Romanism and rebellion". The fatigued Blaine did not hear the comment and when he spoke, he failed to correct this attack on Catholicism.[11]: 107–108 Gorman, who was operating from Democratic headquarters in New York, had sent a stenographic reporter to cover the meeting.[11]: 106, 108 After learning what Burchard had said, Gorman immediately recognized the importance of the "rum, Romanism and rebellion" comment and went to work.[21]: 39 Within hours cities with large Catholic populations were blanketed with posters and handbills with the letters "R.R.R." on them[11]: 108–109 and dispatches were sent to newspapers across the country.[22]: 209–210 Blaine tried to make a disclaimer, but the damage was done. The November 4 election was determined by New York, which Cleveland won by only 1,149 votes (0.1% of the total vote). Gorman's handling of the Cleveland campaign, including the "rum, Romanism and rebellion" comment, was widely recognized as the decisive factor in securing Cleveland's victory.[4][23]
He served as theDemocratic caucus chairman from 1890 to 1898. He chaired theCommittee on Printing (53rd Congress) and served on theCommittee on Private Land Claims (55th Congress).[12]
He played a major role in financial and tariff legislation, especially theWilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894, which successfully lowered tariffs in response to theMcKinley Act of 1890, but thwarted PresidentCleveland's effort at completely or nearly free trade.
Gorman was reelected twice more in 1886 and 1892 but was defeated for re-election in 1898, losing toLouis E. McComas.[12] After his defeat, Gorman campaigned for Maryland's other U.S. Senate seat and was elected again by the Legislature in 1902.[12][24][25] He was again appointed as the Democratic Caucus Chairman, which he held from 1903 to 1906.[12]
Gorman was briefly a candidate for U.S. president in1892 and1904.[26]
In 1889, Gorman sought to differentiate his party from a growing mixed-race coalition of Republicans and independent Democrats. He was quoted as saying, "We have determined that this government was made by white men and shall be ruled by white men as long as the republic lasts."[27]
In his final years, according to the Maryland State Archives' biography, Gorman "spearheaded an attempt by Democrats to disenfranchise black voters in Maryland, who tended to vote Republican." Related legislation passed easily in the Democratically controlled Senate of early 1904, thoughGovernor Warfield did not sign the bill into law, and it was rejected by voters in late 1905.[3]
Gorman married a widow, Hannah T. "Hattie" Donagan, on March 28, 1867.[6] She was bornc. 1836 in Reading, Pennsylvania, the daughter of George P. Donagan, and her first marriage c. 1853 was to Alexander Jordan Swartz, who was amayor of Reading for a term before later working in Washington, D.C. and dying c. 1864.[28]
Gorman served as a director and eventually president of theChesapeake & Ohio Canal Company;[3] the canal ran along the north shore of thePotomac River fromGeorgetown aboveWashington, D.C., toCumberland, Maryland.
The Gormans had five daughters and one son: Ada, Haddie, Grace, Anne Elizabeth ("Bessie"), Mary andArthur P. Jr.[6] In 1890, Gorman's wife and daughter Grace escaped a fire at theirLaurel house "Fairview"; a newQueen Anne style house was built in its place the following year.[29][30][31]
Gorman's eldest daughter, Haddie, marriedStephen Warfield Gambrill in 1900.[32] Her husband later served as a Maryland state delegate, state senator, and U.S. representative.[33]
Gorman's daughter Ada married Charles Joseph Magness, a young man about half her age, against her family's wishes in 1908.[34][35][36] Magness was soon thereafter imprisoned fordesertion from the U.S. Navy. Upon his release a year later, the couple lived in Washington, D.C., and then the Baltimore suburb ofLutherville.[37]
When her mother died in 1910, Ada was cut off from her share of the Gorman family estate.[38] The marriage lasted a total of 14 years before Ada divorced in 1922 due to her husband's infidelity.[37][39] She died childless and with few friends in the spring of 1950.[37]
Gorman's daughter Grace (better known as Daisy) married Richard Alward Johnson, the first manager of theLaurel race track and later a Maryland State Senator, in 1895.[40] They had two children, Richard Jr. and Grace. They lived at the historic Overlook farmhouse inNorth Laurel, which was built for Daisy on the family property in 1911.[41] (This home was later owned from 1952 to 2018 by diplomat and businessmanKingdon Gould Jr., who raised his family and died there.)[40][41] The town ofDaisy inHoward County, Maryland, is named in Gorman's daughter's honor. Her son, Richard Jr., raised and trained horses, and her daughter, Grace Johnson, later married Braxton Bragg Comer Jr., son of former Alabama GovernorB. B. Comer.[42][43][44]
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Gorman's only son, Arthur Jr., attendedLawrenceville Prep and played on theMaryland Agricultural Collegefootball team in1892 and1893 as afullback.[45] In 1898, Arthur Jr. founded the Piedmont Mining Company in Maryland and West Virginia with his uncleWilliam and Thomas L. Marriott.[46] He married Grace Norris on November 28, 1900.[47] Arthur Jr. served as a Maryland state senator (1904–1910), the last year during which he wasSenate President.[48]
Arthur Jr. wasnominated for Governor of Maryland in 1911, but narrowly lost to RepublicanPhillips Lee Goldsborough.[49][50] He was later a state tax commissioner, until his death in 1919 due to complications from diabetes.[51][52]
Gorman's daughter Bessie married Princeton graduate and Democratic speechwriter Wilton J. Lambert on June 24, 1896, at the Gormans' Washington home on the corner of 15th and K Streets.[53][54][55] They had two children, Elizabeth (b. 1897) and Arthur.[56] An attorney, Lambert helped Bessie's father attempt to buy theWashington Senators baseball team in February 1903.[6] Bessie's son, Arthur Gorman Lambert (1899–1991), was a member of Princeton's class of 1922, also practiced law, and foundedSuburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland;[57] he unveiled a donated portrait of his grandfather, Arthur Pue Gorman, at the Capitol in 1943.[58]
Gorman's youngest daughter, Mary, married Ralph Warren Hills on February 27, 1901.[59] Their son,Ralph Gorman Hills, won a bronze medal forshot put at the1924 Summer Olympics.[60][61] He graduated from Princeton University, after which he earned an M.D. degree fromJohns Hopkins University and became a doctor;[62] his first son, J. Dixon Hills,[63] also chose to become a physician.[60]
Gorman's great-grandson, Ralph Warren Hills Jr., was aWBAL television producer in Baltimore.[63][64][65][66]
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Gorman served as a U.S. senator until his death from a heart attack in Washington, D.C., on June 4, 1906.[3] He had been ill with stomach trouble and had not left his Washington house since mid-January.[26][67] He was interred atOak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.[68][69] Gorman's wife became ill soon after his death, and died on June 21, 1910.[28]
Gorman, Maryland andGormania, West Virginia, are named after him,[70] as is Gorman Road in North Laurel.[71] An elementary school near this road is named "Gorman Crossing".[71]
The repair shipUSSTutuila was originally named SSArthur P. Gorman in August 1943.[72]
In 2000, a proposed neighborhood within theKings Contrivance section ofColumbia, Maryland was to be named "Gorman's Promise," but the naming was canceled after consideration of Gorman's involvement in the disenfranchisement of black voters.[73]
Mrs. Davis' sister was the mother of the late Senator Arthur Pue Gorman, and the two first cousins were always intimate associates
Magness was born of humble parents in Baltimore in 1885.
Magness is 22 years old according to the record of his enlistment while Mrs. Magness is said to be 38 years old.
Magness is 23 years of age, according to the record of his enlistment
The will of Mrs. Hannah D. Gorman, widow of the late senator Arthur P. Gorman, which was filed in the Probate Court yesterday afternoon, cuts off Ada Gorman Magness, who, against the will of her mother and family, married Charles Magness, a musician in the Marine Corps.
Mrs. Magness says that since Jan. 1, 1921, her husband has been guilty of infidelity on divers occasions.
Mrs. Frank Willis Comer of Eufaula announces the engagement of her daughter, Annie Laurie, to Richard Johnson Comer of Glennville Plantation
The ceremony was performed at 6.30 o'clock at the spacious home of Senator and Mrs. Gorman, corner of 15th and K streets.
have taken considerable interest and done considerable work in the line of political speech-making in Maryland on behalf of the Democratic party
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| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates 1872 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. Senate | ||
| Preceded by | U.S. Senator (Class 1) from Maryland 1881–1899 Served alongside:James Groome,Ephraim Wilson,Charles Gibson,George Wellington | Succeeded by |
| New office | Chair of theSenate District of Columbia Corporations Committee 1892–1893 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of the Senate Printing Committee 1893–1895 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of the Senate Private Land Claims Committee 1898 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | U.S. Senator (Class 3) from Maryland 1903–1906 Served alongside:Louis E. McComas,Isidor Rayner | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chair of theSenate Democratic Caucus 1890–1898 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of theSenate Democratic Caucus 1903–1906 | Succeeded by |
| Class 1 |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Class 3 | ||
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
