LIVING HISTORY
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genius for the organization and control of men in masses ...
Without prating about honesty he has this essential of the
highest integrity that he meets every obligation and keeps his
every word. He has a courage which never flinches, whether
in war or politics.”
He was a learned man who corresponded in Latin with
Pennsylvania Gov. Samuel Pennypacker. The governor visited
St. Lucie, where one might imagine him sitting on the upper
balcony conversing, according to Collier’s “on topics of the
day, Like Moses, Plato, Socrates, Himself and Matthew Quay.”
POLITICAL BEGINNINGS
Quay, a Civil War veteran and a Medal of Honor recipient,
turned from journalism to politics and worked his way up
until he became the junior senator from Pennsylvania in 1887.
The next year he was chairman of the Republican National
Committee, then a much more powerful position. With the
machinery of the state and national party in his hands, Quay
exercised his power as described by a disappointed Pittsburgh
office-seeker: “If one ... ventures to question the orders
given, Mr. Quay calmly inquires whether he ever expects to
come back again, and whether he proposes to run his canvasses
in the future with aid from the State and National
Committees, or without it.”
For the next 19 years, various combinations of avowed
foes and turncoat friends fought to topple him; reformers
attempted to wrest power from his grasp and destroy his
political machine. Often his political survival was in doubt;
there were times he survived by a very slim margin. He
was indicted, arrested, beaten at the polls, attacked from
the pulpit, criticized in the press. He endured to make two
presidents and to serve three terms in the Senate.
After every major campaign or at the recurrent onsets of la
grippe, Quay would retreat to St. Lucie to recover. He called
it “the Seminole cure.” He was castigated by his adversaries
for his poor attendance record due to spending so much time
in Florida.
FACED NUMEROUS CHARGES
As the Gay Nineties began, The New York World published
an expose laying out Quay’s alleged crimes, which included
bribery, cowardice, using government funds for personal
expenses, embezzlement, and chronic drunkenness. Quay
stoically bore the brunt of all the bad publicity in the wake
of the paper’s attack, refusing to address the accusations. As
friend and foe alike wrung their hands, the boss fished on the
Indian River.
Over the years, he would refuse to talk to reporters about
politics, but he would talk about fishing: “The last tarpon
I caught ... weighed 112 pounds. I hooked him with a fresh
mullet for bait ... he dragged the boat for three miles up
Indian River and jumped ten feet out of the water, his silver
scales shining... in the morning sun. It took us just two hours
to bag that fish, and then both my boatman and myself were
too tired to fish any more that day.”
Another time he related his The Old Man and the Sea story:
The tarpon on his line was tiring when “Fifty feet away I
noticed a huge fin cutting the still water ... The tarpon, too, as
if he had human feelings (he certainly exhibited human fear)
soon knew that an immense shark was around and that a new
danger threatened him ... The great shark, intent on a full supper,
circled swiftly around both boat and fish ... I had the fish >>
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