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Matthew Quay

Matthew Stanley "Matt" Quay (30 September 1833-28 May 1904) was a Republican US Senator from Pennsylvania from 4 March 1887 to 28 May 1904, succeeding John I. Mitchell and preceding Philander Knox.

Biography[]

Matthew Stanley Quay was born in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania on 30 September 1833, and he was admitted to the bar in 1854. He represented Beaver County in the State House before the American Civil War, during which he served as a Union Army colonel and distinguished himself at the Battle of Fredericksburg. After the war, Quay became an ally of the Pennsylvania Republican Party boss Simon Cameron and became editor of a newspaper called the Radical, which defended the spoils system and called for greater African-American civil rights in the American South. He went on to serve as Secretary of the Commonwealth from 1873 to 1878 and from 1879 to 1882, as County Recorder of Philadelphia from 1878 to 1879, and State Treasurer from 1886 to 1887, when the state legislature elected him to the US Senate. Quay outmaneuvered Donald Cameron to become the new Pennsylvania GOP boss, serving as Benjamin Harrison's campaign manager in 1888 and placing third in the 1896 Republican presidential primary. Quay was notoriously corrupt, and he was on Standard Oil's payroll from the 1880s on. In 1898, he was charged with misappropriating state funds, and his Senate seat was vacant from 3 March 1899 to 16 January 1901; he won a special election to resume his service. Quay ensured that Pennsylvania remained a safe Republican state and the most boss-controlled state, and he died in office in 1904.

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