¹ Forney, John, Anecdotes of Public Men (New York, 1873), 394Google Scholar.

² Twain, Mark and Warner, Charles Dudley. The Gilded Age A Tale of Today (Hartford, 1874), 183Google Scholar.

³ Jacob, Kathryn Allamong, Capital Elites: High Society in Washington, D.C. after the Civil War (Washington, 1995), esp. ch. 1Google Scholar.

⁴ Latham, Milton S., “The Day Journal of Milton S. Latham, January 1 to May 6, 1860,” ed. Robinson, Edgar Eugene, Journal of the California Historical Society 11 (Mar. 1932): 16–19Google Scholar.

⁵ Briggs, Emily Edson, The Olivia Letters (New York, 1906), 417–18Google Scholar.

⁶ Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams (1918; New York, 1931), 253Google Scholar.

⁷ Ward boasted of his success to his sister Julia. Sam Ward (SW) to Julia Ward Howe (JWH), May 10, 1860, Howe Family Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (hereafter HFP-Houghton).

⁸ Jacob, Kathryn Allamong, Testament to Union: Civil War Monuments in Washington, DC (Baltimore, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁹ Caro, Robert, Means of Ascent (New York, 1991)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (HWL) to SW, Apr. 2, 1837, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Letters, Houghton Library, Harvard University (hereafter HWLL).

¹¹ All of the following showered invective upon lobbyists in the 1860–80s: Poore, Benjamin Perley, Perley's Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1886), 2:513Google Scholar; “Is There Anything In It,” Continental Monthly, June 1863, 690; Ellis, John B., The Sights and Secrets of the National Capital (New York, 1869), 188–90Google Scholar; “The Congressional Lobby,” The Republic, Apr. 1873, 71; Martin, Edward Winslow (Dabney, James), Behind the Scenes in Washington (New York, 1873), 217–20Google Scholar; Harper's Weekly, Jan. 30, 1869, 9; James Parton, “Logrolling at Washington,” Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 1869, 368. De Forest, John William, in his dark and bitter political novel Honest John Vane (New Haven, 1875)Google Scholar, portrays his hideous lobbyist, Darius Dorman, as the devil himself.

¹² Poore, Reminiscences, 2:525.

¹³ SW to HWL, Jan. 25, 1875, HWLL. Despite Ward's and his sister's best efforts, two authors did persevere and write books about him. Elliott, Maud Howe, Uncle Sam Ward and His Circle (New York, 1938)Google Scholar, is a sweet, uncritical volume of heavily edited letters to, from, and about Ward compiled by his adoring niece. The “circle” of the title is the family circle only, so there is almost no mention of Ward as lobbyist. Thomas, Lately, Sam Ward: “King of the Lobby” (Boston, 1965)Google Scholar, is a straightforward biography based on sources available in the early 1960s. One-third of the book deals with the years before Ward bobbed up in Washington, another third with the years after he left Washington, and another third for the years between 1860 and 1878 when he earned his crown.

¹⁴ Undated, unsigned note, Howe Family Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (hereafter HFP-Schlesinger).

¹⁵ Ware, Susan, “The Book I Couldn't Write: Alice Paul and the Challenge of Feminist Biography,” Journal of Women's History 24 (Summer 2012): 13–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, describes her frustration in attempting to peel away layers to reach the “real” Alice Paul and the research by triangulation she ultimately decided would not yield the information she would need.

¹⁶ Hone, Philip, The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851, ed. Nevins, Allan (New York, 1927), 1:433Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Strong, George Templeton, The Diary of George Templeton Strong, ed. Nevins, Allan and Thomas, Milton Halsey (New York, 1952), 1:55, 96Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Brevoort, Henry, Letters of Henry Brevoort to Washington Irving, ed. Hellman, George (New York, 1916), 2:133–35Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Clippings, HFP-Schlesinger; Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 26, 1885.

²⁰ Rotundo, E. Anthony, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York, 1993), 75–89Google Scholar; and Yacovone, Donald, “Surpassing the Love of Women: Victorian Manhood and the Language of Fraternal Love” in A Shared Experience: Men, Women, and the History of Gender, ed. McCall, Laura and Yacovone, Donald (New York, 1998), 195–221Google Scholar, offer helpful perspectives on the intimate male friendships of the nineteenth century, when there was no stigma associated with fraternal love and no context for a term like “homosexuality.”

²¹ HWL to George Greene, Mar. 25, 1836, in Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Hilen, Andrew (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 1:542Google Scholar.

²² Charles Sumner to SW, Nov. 9, 1842, HFP-Schlesinger; Tharp, Louisa Hall, Three Saints and a Sinner (Boston, 1956), 87–89Google Scholar; HWL to SW, June 2, 1841, “Longfellow's Letters to Samuel Ward,” Putnam's Monthly, Nov. 1907, 166.

²³ SW to SGH, Apr. 4, 1843, HFP-Houghton. If Julia drew well, he admonished Howe, surely he would exhibit her work: “Why should not a fondness for history and philosophy be also an attribute of the mother of his children—or poetry be welcome when it gushes from the ‘wellspring’ of a nature imaginative yet reasonable, aspiring though gentle?”

²⁴ Charles Sumner to SW, Jan. 19, 1842, July 25, 1843, HFP-Schlesinger.

²⁵ For the Paraguayan sources on this affair: Ynsfram, Pablo Max, “Sam Ward's Bargain with President López of Paraguay,” Hispanic American Historical Review (Aug. 1954): 313–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ SW to William Henry Seward (WHS), Feb. 16, 1861, William Henry Seward Papers, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.

²⁷ Gwin's personal account of these weeks in 1861, with many references to the “mutual friend,” is included in Coleman, Evan, “Gwin and Seward—A Secret Chapter in Ante-bellum History,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 18 (Nov. 1891): 469Google Scholar. Writing of these events twenty years later, Gwin explained, “By this time it was difficult for Mr. Seward and myself to have interviews without exciting remark, and a ‘mutual friend’ was therefore selected as our go-between.”

²⁸ SW to WHS, Apr. 9, 1861, Seward Papers.

²⁹ William Howard Russell, “Recollections of the American Civil War,” North American Review, Feb. 1898, 237; Russell, William Howard, My Diary North and South (Boston, 1863), 10–194Google Scholar; Hankinson, Alan, Man of Wars: William Howard Russell of the Times (London, 1982), 156Google Scholar.

³⁰ There is no question that the letters signed Charles Lopez were written by Sam Ward—his handwriting is unmistakable and, when he was in a hurry, almost impossible to read. Nor is there any doubt that Ward intended them for Seward. The letters, although addressed to “Dear George,” bear Seward's comments in the margins and were preserved and indexed among Seward's own correspondence now at the University of Rochester.

³¹ SW to WHS, July 23, 1862, Seward Papers.

³² SW to JWH, spring/summer 1865, in Elliott, Uncle Sam, 492; SW to HWL, no date, mid-Dec. 1870, HWLL.

³³ Concerning a deal to sell buildings and furniture to the government that netted Ward $15,000, he wrote to “My dear Barlow”: “It has taken me a week to corral my Congressional elephants and I am at length able to write you favorably touching both your projects. I can get the furniture bill passed any day.” SW to Samuel Latham Mitchill Barlow (SLMB), Feb. 23, Mar. 16, July 7, 1860, Samuel Latham Mitchill Barlow Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

³⁴ Garfield, James A., The Diary of James A. Garfield, ed. Brown, Harry James and Williams, Frederick D., vol. 2 (East Lansing, MI, 1967), Feb. 27, 28, Mar. 6, 12, Apr. 2, May 2, 1872Google Scholar.

³⁵ Although most of Sam Ward's obituaries appeared on May 20–21, 1884, the National Police Gazette ran its tribute on June 7, 1884.

³⁶ Maclay, William, The Diary of William Maclay and Other Notes on Senate Debates, vol. 9 of The Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, ed. Bowling, Kenneth R. and Veit, Helen E. (Baltimore, 1988), 215Google Scholar.

³⁷ Clifford, Deborah, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Biography of Julia Ward Howe (Boston, 1979), 79–92Google Scholar. Clifford was both Sam Ward's great-great-granddaughter and his great-niece. Her grandfather was Sam Ward's grandson Wintie Chanler, and her grandmother was Louisa Ward Crawford Terry's daughter, Daisy. Clifford shared her enthusiasm for the family's history as well as artifacts, including a stunning miniature of Sam, Louisa, and Annie Ward passed down through generations. Sadly, she died before King of the Lobby was published.

³⁸ That he was not even listed as the boy's father hurt Ward deeply. He wrote in disbelief and anger to Longfellow, “What think you of the bitterness that could brandish a hatchet at the father over his boy's corpse?” SW to HWL, Aug. 26, 1864, HWLL.

³⁹ The universe of recent scholarly books that examine the lobby in the Gilded Age is small. Two excellent ones are: Thompson, Margaret, The “Spider Web”: Congress and Lobbying in the Age of Grant (Ithaca, NY, 1985)Google Scholar; and Summers, Mark, The Era of Good Stealings (New York, 1993)Google Scholar. Other studies offer insights into lobbying and congress in these years and those that came before. For the first years of the government: Bowling, Kenneth R. and Kennon, Donald R., eds., The House and Senate in the 1790s: Petitioning, Lobbying, and Institutional Development (Athens, OH, 2002)Google Scholar. Bowling et al. , eds., Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America, vol. 7: Petition Histories: Revolutionary War-Related Claims, and vol. 8: Petition Histories and Non-Legislative Official Documents (Baltimore, 1997–98)Google Scholar, discuss the flurry of petitioning that began as soon as the First Congress got underway. Summers, Mark, The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849–1861 (New York, 1997)Google Scholar, roots in the 1850s many of the issues with which postwar Americans would grapple, the foremost being corruption. Calhoun, Charles, ed., The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD, 2007)Google Scholar, helps to explain the world in which Sam Ward and the lobby flourished, esp. Calhoun's own essay, “The Political Culture: Public Life and the Conduct of Politics,” ch. 11. Keller, Morton, Affairs of State (Cambridge, MA, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, grapples with the convergence of factors that made the Gilded Age an era both more substantive and more convoluted than most frightened, bitter, or disappointed Americans realized.

⁴⁰ Anderson, Frank Maloy, The Mystery of “A Public Man” (Minneapolis, 1948)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Crofts, Daniel W., A Secession Crisis Enigma: William Henry Hurlbert and “The Diary of a Public Man” (Baton Rouge, 2010)Google Scholar.

⁴² By the late 1860s, polite society's dinnertime had moved from five o'clock to six o'clock or later. At whatever time an important dinner was served, it was most likely service à la russe, in which each dish was offered in turn by servants, rather than service à l'américaine, in which all of the dishes were placed on the table or sideboard at once.