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Simon Cameron (March 8, 1799 – June 26, 1889) [1] 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.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jun 11, 2018 · The American politician Simon Cameron (1799-1889) is best known for the efficient political machine he developed in Pennsylvania and for the way he used it to gain public office and financial rewards for himself and his friends. Simon Cameron was born in Lancaster, Pa., on March 8, 1799.
Ambitious and materialistic, Simon Cameron set his sights higher than state politics and won a seat in the United States Senate as a Democrat in 1844. Although not re-elected at the end of his term, Cameron joined the new Republican Party and was returned to the Senate in 1857.
“The Great Winnebago Chief” and “Czar of Pennsylvania,” Simon Cameron was the Pennsylvania Republican leader who served in the Senate (1845-49, 1857-61, 1867-77), and replaced James Buchanan.
Cameron was a political insider of the slickest kind. For helping nominate Lincoln in Chicago in 1860, Lincoln’s floor managers had promised him a cabinet seat. Lincoln had honored the promise and appointed him secretary of war,” wrote John Waugh in Reelecting Lincoln.
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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.
