BIO: Simon CAMERON, Dauphin County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by JAWB

Copyright 2006.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/dauphin/
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/dauphin/runk/runk-bios.htm
_______________________________________________________________ 

Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of Dauphin County, 
Containing Sketches of Representative Citizens, and Many of the 
Early Scotch-Irish and German Settlers.  Chambersburg, Pa.: 
J. M. Runk & Company, 1896, pages 219-224.
_______________________________________________________________ 

  CAMERON, GEN. SIMON, son of Charles Cameron and Martha Pfoutz, was 
born March 8, 1799, at Maytown, Lancaster county, Pa.  On the paternal 
side he is descended from the clan Cameron, of Scotland, who shared 
their fortunes with the unfortunate Charles Edward, whose star of hope 
sunk on the field of Culloden.  Donald Cameron, his great-grandfather, 
was a participant in that memorable battle, and having escaped the 
carnage made his way to America, arriving about 1745-46.  He afterwards 
fought under the gallant Wolfe upon the Heights of Abraham, and during 
the war with France was in continuous service.  His grandfather, Simon 
Cameron, was an early associator in the Revolution, and took the oath 
of allegiance June 1, 1778; a brother John signed the same day.  Of the 
latter General Bingham, of Philadelphia, is a grandson.  On the 
maternal side he is descended from Conrad Pfoutz, an emigrant from the 
Palatinate, Germany.  He settled in Lancaster county, and Pfoutz's 
Valley, in now Perry county, perpetuates the name of a hero of the 
border warfare of Pennsylvania in the days when the treacherous 
Delawares and perfidious Shawanese sought to desolate the homes of the 
early pioneers of our State - John Pfoutz.  Charles Cameron and Martha 
Pfoutz had a large family, yet a remarkable one, and the history of our 
country gives but few instances of the successful career of an entire 
family, among whom the subject of this sketch is the most prominent.
  When young Cameron was about the age of nine years his parents 
removed to Northumberland county, where his father shortly afterwards 
dying, he was early cast upon his own exertions.  There were then few 
advantages afforded by public schools, and his educational facilities 
were exceedingly limited.  Having an unquenchable fondness for books, 
young Cameron was able to perceive no other means so likely to satiate 
his appetite as a printing office, it seeming to him the chief center 
of thought in the community in which destiny had fixed his lot.  He 
therefore entered, in 1816, as an apprentice to the printing business 
with Andrew Kennedy, editor of the Northumberland County Gazette, at 
Northumberland, where he continued one year, when his employer, owing 
to financial reverses, was obliged to close his establishment.  Being 
thus thrown out of employment, he made his way by river boat and on 
foot to Harrisburg, where he secured a situation in the printing office 
of James Peacock, editor of the Republican, with whom he remained until 
he had attained his majority.
  In January, 1821, he went to Doylestown, Pa., at the solicitation of 
Samuel D. Ingham, where he published the Bucks County Messenger.  As 
editor of this paper he evinced a breadth of information which, in view 
of his limited advantages, seemed astonishing.  In March of the same 
year he entered into partnership with the publisher of the Doylestown 
Democrat, and the firm merged their papers into the Bucks County 
Democrat, which publication was continued until the close of the year 
1821, when the establishment passed into the hands by purchase of Gen. 
W. T. Rodgers.  The succeeding winter Mr. Cameron spent in the office 
of Messrs. Gales & Seaton, publishers of the National Intelligencer, at 
Washington, as a journeyman printer.  He returned to Harrisburg in 
1822, and entered into partnership with Charles Mowry in the management 
of the Pennsylvania Intelligencer, then the organ of the Democratic 
party at the State capital and enjoyed the official patronage of the 
State administration, and was elected one of the printers to the State, 
a position he held seven years.  Having been the early friend and 
supporter of Governor Shulze, upon his ceasing to be State printer, he 
was honored by that executive with the appointment of adjutant general 
of Pennsylvania, the duties of which office he discharged with ability 
and to the satisfaction of the public.
  General Cameron at an early period took a deep interest in the 
development of internal improvements, and took extensive contracts upon 
the Pennsylvania canal, then in process of construction.  In 1826 he 
began building the section between Harrisburg and Sunbury, and after 
this was well under way he took one or two sections on the western 
division of the canal.  When Louisiana granted a charter to the State 
Bank of that Commonwealth, it provided that the bank should build a 
canal from Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans.  General Cameron took the 
contract for that great work, which was then regarded by engineers as 
the greatest undertaking of the time.  In 1831 he started for New 
Orleans.  He employed twelve hundred men in Philadelphia, and sent them 
by sea to that city.  He, with his engineers and tools, went down the 
Mississippi river, embarking at Pittsburgh.  He spent nearly half a 
year upon the work, and demonstrated beyond a doubt its entire 
feasibility.  He was recalled from his work on the Lake Pontchartrain 
canal by a summons from Major Eaton, Secretary of War under General 
Jackson, who requested him to return to Pennsylvania and organize a 
delegation to the National Convention, which had been called to meet in 
Baltimore.  This was in the interest of Martin Van Buren for the Vice-
Presidency.  Calhoun had served eight years, had quarreled with General 
Jackson during his second term, and had otherwise put himself in 
antagonism to the prevailing popularity of Jackson.  General Cameron 
respected the summons, came home and organized a delegation that went 
to Baltimore in the interest of Mr. Van Buren for the Vice-Presidency.  
This was the first National Convention ever held in the United States.  
Mr. Cameron was requested to accept the permanent chairmanship of that 
convention, but declined, and a gentleman from North Carolina was 
selected.
  After the National Convention in Baltimore he was appointed a visitor 
to West Point by General Jackson, and upon performing his duties on the 
Hudson he made his first trip to New England.  He went with a brother 
of Bishop Potter, of Pennsylvania, and thoroughly inspected the paper 
mills and other manufactures of that section.
  In the winter of 1832 the Legislature chartered the bank at 
Middletown, and he became its cashier.  From the first the bank was 
successful, but the duties of cashier were so limited that General 
Cameron sought other fields of labor and usefulness, although he 
remained there twenty-five years.  He projected and created the 
railroads from Middletown to Lancaster, from Harrisburg to Sunbury, 
from Harrisburg to Lebanon, and at the same time gave large 
encouragement to the Cumberland Valley railroad.  And in this 
connection it may be stated that the Northern Central railroad from 
Harrisburg to Baltimore was captured by him from Baltimore interests 
and made a Pennsylvania institution; and he was at one time president 
of not less than four corporations, all operating lines within a few 
miles of the spot where he was born.  
  In 1838 President Van Buren tendered to General Cameron the 
appointment of a commissioner with James Murray, one of the most 
respected citizens of Maryland, under a treaty with the Winnebago 
Indians to settle and adjust the claims made against the Indians by the 
traders.  These claims were for goods furnished the Indians during a 
long period of years, and the sum appropriated by the treaty was three 
hundred thousand dollars.  In many cases the commissioners found the 
claims of the traders unjust, and every account allowed by them met 
with the approbation of the commissioner appointed by the Indians.  In 
the settlement of some of the claims, the aggregate amount having been 
reduced from over a million to about two hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars, the traders refused to accept the award and went to Washington 
with charges against the commissioners.  It had been the usual custom 
to give the entire appropriation to the claimants, but this course did 
not allow of any division.  The charges were met by a demand from the 
commissioners for re-examination, which resulted in the appointment of 
a new commission the next year, under whose direction the Indians were 
assembled in council, who approved by a united vote of their council 
the entire acts of Messrs. Cameron and Murray, and the account thus 
adjudged was paid by the Government.
  In 1845, when James K. Polk tendered the State Department to James 
Buchanan, and that gentleman resigned his seat in the Senate of the 
United States, an election to supply the vacancy became necessary.  
General Cameron was at this time in recognized sympathy with the 
Democratic party, and selected as the representative of the wing of the 
party which favored the policy of a protective tariff.  The regular 
caucus nominee of the Democracy, however, was George W. Woodward, which 
was regarded as a free trade triumph, rendering it possible for some 
other Democrat known to be honestly devoted to the ever-cherished 
policy of the State to be elected by a union of the Whigs, Americans, 
and those Democrats in favor of the protective policy.  The result was 
the election of Simon Cameron to the United States Senate.  From March, 
1845, to March 4, 1849, he served his State faithfully in that body, 
and proved himself true to the greatest interests committed to his 
charge, and he never wearied in the support of the principles on which 
he was elected.  It may be here stated that President Polk at the first 
seemed inclined to ignore Mr. Cameron, declaring his election to the 
Senate as having been outside the party organization, but this 
treatment he found to his cost was not conducive to his own peace of 
mind, sent for General Cameron, made a truce with him, and there was 
never any more trouble.
  In the winter of 1857 the entire opposition members of the 
Legislature, consisting of Whigs, Native Americans, and Tariff-Men, 
selected General Cameron as their candidate to fill the place of 
Senator Brodhead, whose term of service expired on the 4th of March 
that year.  The Democratic caucus nominated Col. John W. Forney, then 
the intimate friend of President Buchanan, who had written a letter to 
the Legislature naming him as his choice for the senatorship, although 
a large portion of the party were in favor of Henry D. Foster, who was 
an out-spoken tariff man.  The united votes of the opposition, with 
three Democratic votes, two from Schuylkill and one from York, in which 
counties General Cameron possessed great strength and popularity on 
account of his firm devotion to their industrial interests, were cast 
in his favor, and he was elected for the full term.  He took his seat 
in the Senate on the 4th of March, notwithstanding from futile assault 
made by his colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. Bigler, upon his title to 
the place, and which that body refused to consider.  General Cameron's 
return to the United States Senate brought him again prominently before 
the public, and in the political movements which preceded the campaign 
of 1860 he was named as the choice of Pennsylvania for the Presidency; 
and his name early associated with that of Mr. Lincoln in connection 
with the Republican national ticket.
  General Cameron's national career began at the Chicago convention in 
1860, when the Republican party, crystallized into a national 
organization, made its open, clear, and stern antagonism to slavery.  
With intuitive sagacity the advocates of slavery recognized in the 
Republican party the force which would ultimately overthrow it, and men 
like General Cameron were recognized as the leaders of that force.  
There was no mistaking the measure on which it entered on the canvas in 
1860.  When Mr. Lincoln was nominated General Cameron made himself felt 
in such a manner as to win the confidence of that illustrious 
statesman.  After the great political battle of that year, General 
Cameron was the first of those to whom Mr. Lincoln turned for counsel, 
and the offer of a cabinet office by the latter to the former was a 
voluntary act, and that appointment would have been made the first in 
the selection of his cabinet had not intrigues interfered to defer it 
at the time.  Mr. Lincoln looked on General Cameron from first to last 
not only as his political, but his warm personal friend, and there were 
no such relations existing between the President and his other 
constitutional advisers.  This fact was well known when the cabinet was 
organized.  While he was in the War Department his counsel was not only 
potential in cabinet meetings, but was sought by the President in 
private, and heeded in such a marked manner as to create a feeling of 
hostility, which caused the President much unpleasantness.  Then, too, 
believing that the Civil war would require all the available resources 
of the Nation to preserve the Union, doubting the speedy settlement of 
the trouble, he began as Secretary of War a scale of preparations to 
combat it which puzzled the oldest officers in the army and chagrined 
the leaders of the Rebellion, who had calculated much on the supineness 
and lethargy of the Northern people.  General Cameron frustrated this 
hope by his energy, but he had the cabinet to a man against him.  When 
he sought to furnish the necessary supplies for the army he was met by 
sickly sentimentality about settling the war in diplomacy.  The 
Confederates resorted to the ruse of diplomacy by means of 
commissioners for the purpose of retarding this activity, but at the 
same time General Cameron was filling up the arsenals which had been 
despoiled by the former Secretary of War, thus supplying the army with 
huge quantities of ordinance and commissary and quartermasters' stores, 
etc.  Such work naturally attracted the attention of the sordid, 
excited the timid, aroused the jealous, and confounded the suspicious.  
The minister who thus labored to equip his country for a struggle with 
treason, the proportions of which he alone seemed fully to appreciate, 
was assailed for each and all of these acts.  Mr. Lincoln had the 
fullest confidence in his Secretary of War; he believed in his sagacity 
and relied on his courage, but he could not wholly withstand the 
clamor, the outgrowth of cowardice on the one side and the cunning 
greed of adventures on the other, so that General Cameron, to relieve 
Mr. Lincoln from embarrassment, resolved to resign, and on January 11, 
1862, returned the portfolio of the War Department to the President; 
but in that act he commanded the renewed confidence of Mr. Lincoln, who 
the day he accepted his resignation nominated the retiring minister for 
the most important diplomatic mission in his gift.  Nor was this all; 
Mr. Lincoln insisted that General Cameron should name his own 
successor, an act which no retiring cabinet officer ever did before or 
since.  The mission to Russia involved the safe and sagacious handling 
of our relations with the Czar's government at a moment when it 
demanded the most prudent direction.  The kindly relations which 
existed between the colossal power of the North and the great republic 
of the West dated back in their amity when Catharine declined to take 
part with England in the suppression of American Colonial Revolution 
for independence.  General Cameron restored this feeling, and thus 
frustrated English and French intrigue to organize an alliance with 
Napoleon III at its head in the interest of the Southern Confederacy.  
The country never fully appreciated this fact, because it was a part of 
its diplomacy which admitted of no correspondence.  This object 
accomplished, concluded General Cameron's mission to Russia.  There was 
in fact nothing more to do in St. Petersburg but to maintain what had 
been established, and he could with safety ask for his credentials and 
retire.
  The relations between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Cameron were always most 
cordial, and immediately upon his reaching the United States the latter 
was the accepted citizen-counselor at the White House.  At this time 
efforts were being made looking to defeating the renomination of Mr. 
Lincoln for a second term. It was a period of great solicitude to the 
President, who with characteristic modesty declined to make any 
movement in his own behalf.  In the winter of 1864 the intrigue 
referred to was talked of in political circles at Washington as a 
success.  General Cameron visited the national capital repeatedly at 
that time, and on reaching his farm after a return from one of these 
visits had a paper prepared, embodying the merits of Mr. Lincoln as 
President, acknowledging the fidelity and integrity of his first 
administration, and declaring that his renomination and re-election 
involved a necessity essential to the success of the war for the Union.  
That paper was submitted to the Republican members of both branches of 
the Legislature of the State of Pennsylvania, every one of whom signed 
it, and in this shape was presented to Mr. Lincoln, and telegraphed to 
the country at large.  Its publication accomplished all that the 
forethought of its originator anticipated.  In three weeks after the 
issuing of this letter, it was a curious spectacle to watch the 
precipitation with which the Republicans in all the States hastened to 
declare in favor of Mr. Lincoln's renomination; so that when the 
National Convention assembled to do that act there was no opposition to 
him.
  From 1864 to 1866 General Cameron took a very active part in the 
politics of Pennsylvania, giving to the organization of the Republican 
party a prestige which enabled it to bear down all opposition.  He was 
the one leader of that party who could rally it in despondency and hold 
it in fidelity to its pledges.
  In 1866 he was re-elected to the United States Senate, a position he 
held a longer term of years than any man sent to the same body from the 
State of Pennsylvania.  His influence on national legislation was as 
great as that of any man that ever served in the Senate.  The 
singularity of this influence is revealed in greater force when it is 
remembered that he seldom participated in debate.  
  He made no pretention to oratory, but his talk was sound, his 
argument lucid, and his statement of fact impregnable.  What he lacked 
in fervid, flashing speech he made up in terse, solid common sense.  
From the time he entered the Senate until he resigned his seat in 1877 
- a continuous service of eleven years - he was recognized as one of 
its most useful and reliable members, and at the date of his 
resignation was chairman of the committee on foreign relations, a 
position only accorded to a senator of admitted statesmanship.  He was 
foremost always in practical legislation.  His opinions on questions of 
commerce, manufacturing, finance, internal improvements, 
fortifications, and the public domain were always accepted as guiding 
counsel.  He encouraged the building of the first Pacific railroad, was 
a warm supporter of opening the public lands to actual settlers, and no 
man in Congress before or after he left it did more, and few as much as 
he, for the fostering, promotion and protection of American industry.  
He lost no opportunity to advocate and further the organization of new 
States, and regarded the expansion of the boundaries of the Union as 
the only true course to preserve the equilibrium of power between the 
sections.  He made history as few other statesmen in this country 
created it, by producing results in the practical walks of life, such 
as make men prosperous and happy, that stimulate the growth of 
communities, whereby the country has been constantly rendered powerful 
abroad and a blessing to its people at home.  History in its broadest 
scope will ever keep such individuals before the generations of men 
which are to live in this country, for their models in public affairs.  
General Cameron died June, 1889, at the ripe old age of ninety years, 
his faculties perfect until the last.
  General Cameron married Margaret Brua, daughter of Peter Brua, of 
Harrisburg, and their children were Rachel, married Judge Burnside, of 
Bellefonte, Brua, Margaret, married Richard J. Haldeman, James Donald, 
and Virginia, married Wayne Mac Veagh.