page_title: Chauncey Depew
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Chauncey Depew / Career / Politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Chauncey Depew.
context_page_description: Chauncey Mitchell Depew was an attorney for Cornelius Vanderbilt's railroad interests, president of the New York Central Railroad System, and a United States Senator from New York from 1899 to 1911.
context_section_description: Depew served in the New York State Assembly (Westchester County, 3rd District) in 1862 and 1863. During the latter year, he sometimes acted as Speaker pro tempore while Speaker Theophilus C. Callicot was under investigation. From 1864 to 1865, he was Secretary of State of New York, elected in 1863 on the Union ticket.
  In 1867, Depew became clerk of Westchester County but resigned after a short service. In 1870 the New York Legislature named Depew Immigration Commissioner, but he declined to serve. Depew had also been commissioner of quarantine and president of Court of Claims of New York City as well as commissioner of taxes and assessments for the city and county of New York. Depew was one of the commissioners appointed to build the state capitol 1874;  and a member of the state's boundary commission in 1875.
  Depew was defeated for Lieutenant Governor of New York on the Liberal Republican-Democratic ticket in 1872. Nine years later, Depew became a candidate for U.S. Senator in an 1881 special election, but withdrew after the 41st ballot. He also declined nomination as a senator in 1885; but was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1899, and re-elected in 1905, and served from March 4, 1899, to March 3, 1911.
  The late Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma once quoted Chauncey Depew in an attack on a Senator from Indiana, "As I gaze on the ample figure of my friend from Indiana, and as I listen to him," Kerr began, "I am reminded of Chauncey Depew who said to the equally obese William Howard Taft at a dinner before the latter became President, 'I hope, if it is a girl, Mr. Taft will name it for his charming wife.' "To which Taft responded, 'if it is a girl, I shall, of course, name it for my lovely helpmate of many years. And if it is a boy, I shall claim the father's prerogative and name it Junior. But if, as I suspect, it is only a bag of wind, I shall name it Chauncey Depew.'"
  Depew stumped the state of New York for John C. Frémont in 1856 and for Abraham Lincoln in 1860.  He served as a delegate-at-large to Republican National Conventions 1888-1904 and delegate to all following conventions, including 1928, being elected the day before he died.  He made the nomination speeches for Harrison in 1892, Governor Morton in 1896, and Fairbanks in 1904.  At the convention in 1888, Depew received 99 votes for the presidential nomination, and in 1892 declined an appointment as Secretary of State in Harrison's cabinet.
  On October 7, 1897, Depew inaugurated the New York pneumatic tube mail, declaring: "This is the age of speed. Everything that makes for speed contributes to happiness and is a distinct gain to civilization. We are ahead of the old countries in almost every respect, but we have been behind in methods of communication within our cities. In New York this condition of communication has hitherto been barbarous. If the Greater New York is to be a success, quick communication is absolutely necessary. I hope this system we have seen tried here to-day will soon be extended over all the Greater New York."
  In 1898, Depew nominated Theodore Roosevelt for Governor of New York at the Republican state convention.
  In 1906, David Graham Phillips began a muckraking series entitled "The Treason of the Senate" for William Randolph Hearst's new Cosmopolitan magazine, and targeted Depew in the first article. The article's sensational charges included labeling Depew a "boodler" owned "mentally and morally" by railroad magnates Cornelius and William Vanderbilt. The piece provoked outrage from groups as diverse as President Roosevelt, the New York Sun and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.
caption: Chauncey M. Depew in 1901
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