politician representative senator statesman
William Pierce Frye was the earliest ancestor of the family to reach America seems to have come from Hampshire, England, to Massachusetts in 1638.
A great-great-grandfather of William Frye, Gen. Joseph Frye served as an officer in the French and Indian War and the Revolution.
The father of William was Col. John M. Frye, one of the early settlers of Lewiston, and his mother was Alice M. Davis. It was in Lewiston that the future senator was born.
Frye received his education in the public schools and in Bowdoin College. Frye seems to have been more fond of sport and of making friends than of serious application to study so that he graduated (1850) in the third quarter of a class numbering thirty-two.
Later, however, he became a member of the board of trustees of Bowdoin and was honored with its LL. D. in 1889. On graduating from college, Frye entered upon the study of law in the office of William Pitt Fessenden, and engaged in practice in Rockland, Maine, and later in Lewiston.
As a lawyer, Frye was described as possessing a capacity for grasping the essential elements of a case, an attractive manner and physique, and a well-modulated voice, together with imagination, earnestness, and courage.
Such qualities in a Maine lawyer pointed almost inevitably to a political career, and in fact, political offices soon followed in rapid succession. He became a member of the state legislature in 1861, serving also in 1862 and 1867, and acting as a presidential elector in 1864.
He was mayor of Lewiston in 1866-67, and attorney-general of Maine from 1867 to 1869. He was elected to the national House of Representatives in 1871. He was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1876 and 1880, and served also on the Republican national executive committee during those campaigns, as he had in 1872.
In the Forty-sixth Congress, serving with Garfield as a minority member of the committee on rules, Frye contributed to the notable simplification and codification of the rules of the House effected in 1880.
His capacity for debate, which Blaine noticed, was likewise observed by many others, and Frye became one of the most sought-for campaign speakers of his time. On March 15, 1881, he was chosen a senator from Maine to succeed Blaine, who had resigned to enter Garfield’s cabinet.
From that time until his death, Frye remained a member of the Senate. Accounts of his work in that body, written by members of both parties, scarcely differ in their general import.
As a member of the committees on foreign relations and appropriations, and particularly as chairman for many years of the committee on commerce, Frye was one of the “wheel-horses” of the Senate. He was the author of several and the proponent of many other measures aimed at the revival of the American merchant marine. The rejection of the subsidy policy was the greatest disappointment of his public career.
Some of his utterances in the period preceding the Spanish-American War were ill-advised for a member of the foreign relations committee and led Godkin, editor of the New York Nation, who hated Jingoes and Jingoism, to declare on one occasion that he had the same standards of international morality as William Walker or Captain Kidd.
He was an important factor in securing the passage of the Hawaiian annexation resolution and an earnest supporter of McKinley’s war policy.
At the close of the war with Spain, Frye was placed by McKinley on the peace commission which met at Paris. During the resulting negotiations, he joined with Senator C. K. Davis and Whitelaw Reid in urging the acquisition of the entire Philippine archipelago, although the remaining members of the commission, W. R. Day and Judge George Gray, opposed such action.
The advice of Frye and his associates was followed by the administration. Owing to the death of Vice-President Hobart during McKinley’s first term, and the elevation of Vice-President Roosevelt to the executive chair in 1901, Frye as president pro tempore was the permanent presiding officer of the Senate for a period of about five years.
During this time, he so commended himself to both parties that the Democrats initiated the movement which led to the presentation of a silver loving-cup to him at the close of the Fifty-sixth Congress. His death occurred in Lewiston on August 8, 1911.
Frye probably made his deepest impress on the history of his time during the McKinley administration. He had long been a thorough-going expansionist, anxious to acquire Caribbean territory, a transisthmian canal, and outposts in the Pacific. He also was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions where he became one of the most sought-for campaign speakers.
Frye was a strict Republican, holding firmly to the primary importance of a protective tariff.
He was conservative in regard to government regulation of industry and was commonly accounted one of the “Old Guard, ” as that term was used during the administrations of Roosevelt and Taft. He cared little for society, being, as Senator Nelson of Minnesota asserted, “emphatically a man of work. ”
Frye also was a member of the Commerce Committee (50th–62nd Congress) and a member of the commission which met in Paris in September 1898 to adjust the Treaty of Paris between the United States and Spain, ending the Spanish–American War.
As a lawyer, Frye was described as possessing a capacity for grasping the essential elements of a case, an attractive manner and physique, and a well-modulated voice, together with imagination, earnestness, and courage.
Quotes from others about the person
Of his ten years of service in the House, James G. Blaine wrote: “Frye's rank as a debater was soon established, and he exhibited a degree of care and industry in committee work not often found among representatives who so readily command the attention of the House”.
While in Rockland, Frye married, on February 27, 1853, Caroline Frances Spear, who died on December 21, 1900. Their family numbered three daughters.
27 November 1802 - 1 January 1885
10 May 1809 - October 1873
7 July 1832 - 22 December 1900
1858 - 1926
1 August 1859 - 23 November 1943
