On May 16, 1881, New York Senator Thomas Collier Platt earned the derogatory nickname “Me Too Platt” when he joined his political boss in resigning from the US Senate. It seems like Platt should have ended up a forgotten footnote to Gilded Age politics, but instead, his career illustrates the power of political machinery in our system. The politicians who capture headlines are the presidents or dramatic upstarts who fire Americans’ imaginations, and it is no wonder that voters come to think that their support for one leader or another will change the course of the country. But the truth is that the party wheel horses, the drab politicians to whom no one pays much attention-the men like Thomas Collier Platt-are often the ones who actually determine events. They are the proverbial men in the smoke-filled backrooms who call the shots. Few know his name today, but Platt illustrates the power of the dedicated party operative. Platt was a true machine politician whose career started, ended, and restarted again according to the fortunes of his party faction. But after forty years of party loyalty, he wielded enough power to come very close to stopping the Progressive Movement.
Platt was born in Owego, New York on July 15, 1833. He studied theology at Yale from 1850-52 but left before earning a degree, then worked as a pharmacist, newspaper editor, banker, and railroad president while also getting involved in Republican politics. Platt campaigned for the new party’s first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, in 1856 and served as clerk of Tioga County from 1859-61. “With song and torch, and wearing a Wide-awake uniform,” Platt wrote in his autobiography, “I did all I could in my home district in 1860 to put Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, in the White House.” When Lincoln ran for reelection in 1864, “I aided in the repetition of this triumph.”
Two years after working on Ulysses S. Grant’s 1868 presidential campaign, Platt met U.S. Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. Conkling was one of Washington’s masters of using patronage to build his power base, ensure loyalty, and fill party coffers. Conkling became one of President Grant’s closest confidants on Capitol Hill. In 1872, Grant won a second term in the White House, Conkling was reelected to the Senate, and Platt won a seat in the House of Representatives. Platt served two terms in the House.
After two terms as president, Grant departed the White House in early 1877. By 1880, though, he was frustrated with President Rutherford B. Hayes and eager to return to office. Grant loyalists like Conkling, Platt, and Chester A. Arthur were all for it after watching their influence wane under Hayes. Platt followed Conkling’s lead and supported Grant’s bid for a third term. But when the Republican National Convention met in Chicago, none of the major candidates, including Grant, could garner enough votes to win the nomination. The party tapped a dark horse—James Garfield—instead. Garfield squeaked out a victory that November, and the New York Legislature elected Platt to join Conkling in Senate.
Conkling was eager to control Garfield and continue his reign as king of the patronage system. When visiting the new president to discuss civil service appointments, Conkling told Garfield that “your administration can only be as successful as I want it to be.” The largest jewel in the patronage crown was Collector of the Port of New York, the office through which millions of dollars of customs revenue passed each year—and from which Hayes had once fired now-Vice President Arthur for corruption. Conkling was adamant that he choose the nominee for this post, but Garfield resisted. “We shall see,” Garfield told his diary, “if I am the executive of the nation or the registering clerk of the Senate.” Garfield nominated Conkling foe William H. Robertson to the Collectorship, and, as expected, Conkling exploded. After a public squabble with Garfield, Conkling hatched a plan to embarrass the President: he and Platt would resign their Senate seats and then be promptly reelected by the New York Legislature. Platt had been in office just two-and-a-half months when he and Conkling resigned on May 16, 1881. Platt’s willingness to go along with this scheme earned him the derisive nickname “Me Too.”
The plan backfired when state legislators in Albany, tired of being pushed around by Roscoe Conkling, declined to send he and Platt back to the Senate. When Garfield was shot less than two months later, many feared the attack was a plot initiated by Conkling and his allies. It wasn’t, though anger over patronage and civil service reform (along with mental illness) did contribute to Charles Guiteau’s decision to shoot the President. Conkling never held another office and died in 1888. Platt returned to his New York home and dedicated himself to rebuilding the Stalwart Republican machine in New York. By 1887 he was the unquestioned leader of the party in his state.
According to the New York Times, Platt ran the Republican machine as an “easy boss.” His easygoing manner encouraged the legitimate loyalty of many Republicans, not the artificial deference based on intimidation once enjoyed by Roscoe Conkling. In early 1897, nearly sixteen years after “Me Too” Platt resigned from the Senate, the New York Legislature returned him to that office. For the next sixteen years, Platt served on various Senate committees, including Transportation Routes to the Seaboard; Printing; Cuban Relations; and Interoceanic Canals. He also sat on the Republican National Committee.
In 1898, Platt supported Theodore Roosevelt’s candidacy for Governor of New York. Platt was unimpressed with Roosevelt’s blustering style but recognized that Roosevelt’s popularity for his Spanish-American War exploits would likely get him elected anyway. Governor Roosevelt frustrated Platt by attacking corruption and political machines—the very foundations of Platt’s power. Seeing Roosevelt and his progressive ideas as a threat to his control of New York Republicans, Platt wanted TR out of Albany and worked with Mark Hanna to get Roosevelt on President William McKinley’s 1900 reelection ticket. John Adams had once articulated just how worthless an office the vice presidency was, and Platt could think of no better place for the meddling Theodore Roosevelt. Of course, Platt did not count on Leon Czolgosz assassinating McKinley in September 1901. Mark Hanna summed up Platt’s feelings about Roosevelt perfectly when, upon McKinley’s death, he said “Now look! That damned cowboy is President of the United States.”
Platt remained in the Senate until 1909, but his control of New York ended around 1902 when he lost a power struggle with Benjamin B. Odell, Roosevelt’s successor as governor. Platt was one of the last of the influential political “bosses.” His two terms as U.S. Senator were not all that distinguished, really, but his rebirth as both a powerful party boss and an elected official are impressive considering his self-inflicted fall from grace with Conkling in 1881.
An understanding of Platt’s influence as a Republican machine boss is critical to the study of the Gilded Age, but he is mostly a forgotten figure now. Perhaps that is what makes him significant: he is little remembered, yet he might have successfully buried the progressive movement. Platt and his machine were winning the battle for Republicans’ souls—until Leon Czolgosz killed McKinley and made Theodore Roosevelt—“that damned cowboy”—president. The story of Thomas Platt, then, is the story of the power of party machinery and how the men behind it try to stifle progress.