SIMON CAMERON - AUTOGRAPH DOCUMENT SIGNED 07/26/1849 - HFSID 286523

SIMON CAMERON
He signs receipt of an $833 draft, to serve as guaranty for a bank loan
Autograph Document signed: "Simon Cameron Cash[ier?], 1page, 7¾x5½. Middleton (Pennsylvania), 1849 July 26. In full: "Received of A. J. Glossbrenner a draft drawn by Joseph C. Potts, Treasurer of the Scranton Improvement upon Thomas P. Potts, Treasurer of the York Gas Company for eight hundred and thirty three dollars and thirty three cents payable to the order of Simon Simon [sic]Cameron on the fifteenth day of August 1849, which draft is received as guaranty for the payment of a note of said Glossbrenner to the Bank of Middleton for the same amount dated this day and payable 20 days after date. Said draft being the property of A. J. Glossbrenner. Simon Cameron (1799-1889) was Senator from Pennsylvania (Democrat, 1845-1849; Republican, 1857-1861, 1867-1877) and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. Cameron became Secretary of War in a political bargain at the 1860 Republican National Convention at which his political supporters convinced Lincoln's campaign managers to give him a Cabinet post in return for the votes of Pennsylvania delegates. After his appointment as Secretary of War, Cameron dispensed a raft of civil and military appointments and army contracts, and charges of corruption ran rampant. In 1862, in an effort to be rid of him, Lincoln gave him the diplomatic post of Minister to Russia, and appointed Edwin M. Stanton as Secretary of War. A. J. Glossbrenner, author of a history of York County (1834), was Sergeant-at-Arms of the US House of Representatives in the 1850s. In 1863 he founded a Democratic Party newspaper, The Age, in Philadelphia. The paper consistently attacked President Lincoln and was accused of Southern sympathies, eliciting angry demonstrations outside its office. In the year of this document, Cameron and Glossbrenner had become shareholders and board members of a private utility, the Pottstown Gas Company, and this loan may have been connected to that investment. Simon Cameron's handwritten personal correspondence is difficult to decipher, but he could write very legibly when a large sum of money was at stake, as this document attests. Left and bottom edges ragged. Lightly toned and creased. Top and bottom left corners creased and chipped away. Smudged on "and" in 4th sentence. 1 vertical 1 horizontal fold creases. Otherwise fine condition.