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Simon Cameron (March 8, 1799 – June 26, 1889) was an American businessman and politician who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate and served as United States Secretary of War under President Abraham Lincoln at the start of the American Civil War.
Simon Cameron was a U.S. senator, secretary of war during the American Civil War, and a political boss of Pennsylvania. His son James Donald Cameron (1833–1918) succeeded him in the Senate and as a political power in his state.
Lincoln had honored the promise and appointed him secretary of war,” wrote John Waugh in Reelecting Lincoln. “Cameron was slight man with a thin, calculating mouth, deepset, keen gray eyes, and gray hair. But he was a political heavyweight, the shrewdest of the Pennsylvania politicians.
Though a candidate for president in 1860, Cameron threw his support to Abraham Lincoln during the Republican National Convention, for which he was rewarded with the appointment as Secretary of War upon Lincoln's election.
He supported Abraham Lincoln’s presidential candidacy and resigned his Senate seat in 1861 when the newly elected President Lincoln tapped him to become secretary of war. Cameron served one year in the position before corruption and inefficiency in the department led to his removal from the cabinet.
Jun 11, 2018 · Lee F. Crippen, Simon Cameron: Ante-Bellum Years (1942), considers his career in relation to the times. Burton J. Hendrick, Lincoln's War Cabinet (1946), discusses Cameron's tenure as secretary of war.
Simon Cameron (above) was Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war when hostilities began in 1861. Cameron, however, was a somewhat corrupt and poor administrator; President Lincoln sent him to Russia to serve as minister in 1862.
