Background

Chauncey Mitchell Depew was born on April 23, 1834 in the Hudson River town of Peekskill, Westchester County, New York, United States. He was the son of Isaac and Martha (Mitchell) Depew. His father was of French Huguenot descent and a man of enterprise. His mother came from the line of Roger Sherman, Connecticut statesman and signer of the Declaration of Independence, being a grand-daughter of the latter’s brother, Rev. Josiah Sherman. To few men has it been given to live so long and well as did Chauncey M. Depew. Peekskill had been the home of the Depew family ever since the first of the name arrived along with the Palatines imported by Robert Livingston to clear his land grants on the eastern shore of the lordly river. Isaac Depew took to river transportation before the days of railroads and did well with it.

Education

Chauncey began his education with five years in a private school kept by Mrs. Westbrook, wife of the Dutch Reformed pastor in Peekskill, to whose faith his father and mother conformed and which was his own through life. The school was adequate; its course classical. A high-school course at the Peekskill Academy fitted him for Yale, which he entered in 1852.

Among his classmates in New Haven were David James Brewer and Henry Billings Brown, who were to become justices of the United States Supreme Court. Fellow students of note and lifelong intimacy were Wayne MacVeagh, later attorney-general of the United States, and Andrew D. White, president of Cornell University.

Depew was a popular student and a superior scholar. He was one of the Commencement Day orators when graduating in 1856.

Career

Depew entered the law office of Edward Wells and for two years studied the statutes and the intricacies of justice.

In 1858 he was admitted to the bar and began practise in his native village, a risky proceeding which like all else in his lucky life turned out well.

The Republican party came into being before young Depew’s departure from Yale. Though his family were Democrats the doctrine of free soil appealed to the rising attorney.

Upon graduation he joined his fortunes with the new organization locally and made a name for himself when put on the stump by the state committee in the Fremont-Buchanan campaign.

He attended the New York Republican state convention in 1858 as a delegate from Peekskill. Won over by Thurlow Weed, he supported for the governorship Edward D. Morgan, a metropolitan merchant, who was nominated, elected, then reelected for a second term that made him a “war” governor.

When the Civil War began in 1861, Depew was prominent in public counsels. He served in the legislature in the sessions of 1862 and 1863, being Republican nominee for the speakership the latter year.

The two parties were tied in the House, though the Republicans controlled the Senate and had a sufficient majority in joint-session to insure the election of their candidate for the United States Senate, Gov. Morgan, if only the House could be organized. After a prolonged deadlock, during which Depew’s name was withdrawn and again presented, a deal was finally effected whereby a Democrat, T. C. Callicot, was chosen speaker in return for the assurance of Morgan’s election to the Senate.

Depew refused to take advantage of the offer of a group of Democrats to give him the speakership if he would oppose this scheme, and relates that he was overwhelmed with compliments on his virtue. He could hardly have acted otherwise without affronting the powerful Thurlow Weed, who was managing Morgan’s candidacy and was party to the arrangement. Owing to legal action instituted against Callicot by injured Democrats, however, Depew acted as speaker a good part of the session. He was also chairman of the ways and means committee, and floor leader for his party.

Political promotion was easy. In 1863 he was elected secretary of state and in the campaign of 1864 he stumped New York, following and answering Gov. Horatio Seymour who was running for reelection. After Lincoln’s assassination Depew, as secretary of state, received his body in New York and escorted it to Buffalo, on the way to Springfield, 111. , where it was interred. Appointed in 1866 by Andrew Johnson as the first minister from the United States to Japan, he was duly confirmed by the Senate. The salary —$7, 500 a year—looked large in Peekskill, but while Depew was contemplating acceptance Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, then head of the Hudson River and Harlem railroad lines, offered him the place of attorney for his roads at a much smaller salary. He hesitated. “Railroads are the career for a young man; there is nothing in politics. Don’t be a damned fool, ” the Commodore is said to have remarked. Depew resigned and entered the service of Vanderbilt interests, which did not take him out of politics. He handled the political contacts of his employer with great tact and skill.

Depew joined the Independent Republican movement in 1872, took a hand in securing Horace Greeley’s nomination for president and himself ran for lieutenant-governor in New York State on the Greeley ticket. He was beaten but made a good race. It was all in the day’s work as Vanderbilt’s attorney. Legislation had a considerable share in his duties and he smoothed the way for his client at Albany. The consolidation of the several cross-state lines that became the New York Central was full of complexities, legal and legislative. These he straightened out. Securing Chicago connections was a matter of further importance.

During his term of office, which lasted thirteen years, he brought about the absorption of the rival West Shore system and was for a time its president. In 1881, following the resignation of the New York senators, Conkling and Platt, Depew was a candidate before the legislature. After prolonged balloting during which he was within ten votes of election, he withdrew his name.

In 1885 he was offered the Republican nomination for senator from New York, but declined. In 1888 his party in the state indorsed him for president. He attended the convention at Chicago where he received 99 votes. Railroads were unpopular at the moment and he withdrew in favor of Benjamin Harrison, whom he nominated and whose candidacy he actively supported in the campaign that followed. Harrison tendered him a cabinet position of his own choice but he declined. When James G. Blaine retired as secretary of state in 1892 the President invited Depew to fill out the term but he again refused. In the presidential campaign of that year Depew again took the stump for Harrison. In 1896 he nominated Levi P. Morton for president, but the honor went to McKinley.

In 1899 he was elected United States senator from New York and retired from the presidency of the New York Central Railroad but became chairman of the board of directors, a position he retained to the end.

He was received in a hostile spirit at Washington as a railway man but preserved his personal popularity. In 1905 he was reelected and served another full term. That year his name came under a cloud through the revelation made by Charles E. Hughes, counsel for the Armstrong legislative committee when investigating the practises of the great New York life insurance companies, that he had been receiving an annual retainer of $20, 000 from the Equitable Life Assurance Company. This he at once gave up. The expose put him in the background for a time, but the spot in the public heart that had grown cold, warmed up in season and Depew resumed his place in general esteem.

He was a favorite after-dinner speaker and raconteur. He was fond of quoting President James Garfield to the effect that ‘‘he might be president if he did not tell funny stories. ” He would drink nothing but champagne and that in moderation. With his fortunes well guided by the Vanderbilts he escaped worry, and with his rules of health was able to continue active until past ninety. His only office besides those named was that of Regent of the University of the State of New York, which he held from 1877 to 1904. He was a delegate to every Republican national convention from 1888 to 1924.

At eighty-two he calmed the convention of 1916 which almost got out of hand. On the appeal of the chairman, Warren G. Harding, Depew took the floor for forty-five minutes and mastered the disorder. He spoke again at the gathering of 1920. For thirty years he attended an annual birthday celebration given by the Montauk Club of Brooklyn. Yale alumni dinners and the choice affairs of the Lotos Club were occasions upon which he shone conspicuously. He occupied a large place in directorates, holding membership on the boards of many railroads, chiefly the New York Central and its dependencies, the Western Union Telegraph Company, and various bridge companies.

At the time of his death he was the oldest graduate of Yale. He was devoted to the interests of the university and to many benefactions during his lifetime he added by will a million dollars.

Achievements

• Depew served as director in the Vanderbilt system; in 1875 its general counsel; in 1877, a director in the Chicago & Northwestern; in 1882 second vice-president of the New York Central & Hudson River, which had become the designation of the combined railroads; and in 1885, its president.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Orations and After-Dinner Speeches of Chauncey M. Depew (Classic Reprint)

    (SlTE OF FEDERAL HALL, NEW YORK CITY, ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH...)

  • 1795-1895. One hundred years of American commerce ... history of American commerce by one hundred Americans, with a chronological table of the ... invention within the past one hundred years

    (This volume is produced from digital images created by th...)

  • A Retrospect of 25 Years with the New York Central Railroad and its Allied Lines

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The Depew Story Book

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The library of oratory, ancient and modern, with critical studies of the world's great orators by em

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • My memories of eighty years

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The Atlantic Cable Projectors: Painting By Daniel Huntington Presented To The Chamber Of Commerce Of The State Of New York (1895)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Addresses by the Hon. Chauncey M. Depew LL. D: On the Occasion of the Celebration of the Birthday of Abraham Lincoln at Burlington, Vermont, Feb; ... Chicago, April 1st, 1895, and at His Birthday

    (Excerpt from Addresses by the Hon. Chauncey M. Depew LL. ...)

Views

Quotations: “I am known as an after-dinner speaker, ” he said on his eightieth birthday. “I hope I am also known as the man who works. My dinners have never interfered with my business. They have been my recreation. . My digestion might have bothered me if I had not been careful. . .. I soon determined to play with everything, but to eat nothing except the roast and game courses. The trouble with the average man is that he cannot restrain his appetite. But a public banquet, if eaten with thought and care, is no more of a strain than a dinner at home. ”

Connections

Depew married Elsie A. Hegeman, November 9, 1871. One son, Chauncey M. Depew, Jr. , was born to them. Mrs. Depew died May 7, 1893.

On December 27, 1901, at Nice, Depew married May Palmer, who survived him.

Father:

Isaac Depew

Mother:

Martha (Mitchell) Depew

Second wife:

May Palmer

Son:

Chauncey M. Depew Jr

First wife:

Elsie A. Hegeman