Arthur Pue Gorman

Arthur Pue Gorman
United States Senator from Maryland
In office March 4, 1881 – March 4, 1899
Preceded by	William P. Whyte
Succeeded by	Louis E. McComas
In office March 4, 1903 – June 4, 1906
Preceded by	George Wellington
Succeeded by	William P. Whyte
Personal details
Born	(1839-03-11)March 11, 1839 Woodstock, Maryland
Died	June 4, 1906(1906-06-04) (aged 67) Washington, D.C.
Political party	Democratic

Arthur Pue Gorman (March 11, 1839 – June 4, 1906) was a United States Senator from Maryland, serving from 1881 to 1899 and from 1903 to 1906. He also served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1869 to 1875, and the Maryland State Senate to 1881. He was a prominent leader of the Democratic Party and later served as a member of the "Mills Commission" which investigated the origins of baseball.

Gorman was born in Woodstock, Maryland, moved to Laurel, Maryland about 1845 with his younger brother William Henry Gorman, and attended the local public schools. He was appointed as a page in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1852 and was transferred to the United States Senate through the influence of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas, (famous regular Democratic presidential candidate in the split Election of 1860 versus Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln whom he earlier debated in a famous series of debates for the Illinois seat in the U.S. Senate to be then elected by the state legislature in 1858) who made him his private secretary. Gorman subsequently served the U.S. Senate in various offices as page, messenger, Assistant Doorkeeper, Assistant Postmaster, and finally Postmaster.

In September 1866, Gorman was removed from his Senate Office of Postmaster and was immediately appointed Collector of Internal Revenue for the Fifth Congressional District of Maryland. He later served as a director and eventually President of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Company which ran along the north shore of the Potomac River from Georgetown above Washington, D.C. to Cumberland, Maryland..

Gorman was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1869, serving until 1875; he served as Speaker of the House for one session. In 1875, he was elected to the Maryland State Senate, serving until 1881.

In 1880, Gorman was elected to the United States Senate, where he soon became a leader of the Bourbon Democrat wing of the Democratic Party. He served as the Democratic caucus chairman from 1890 to 1898, as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Printing (in the Fifty-third Congress), and as a member of the Senate Committee on Private Land Claims (Fifty-fifth Congress). He played a major role in financial and tariff legislation, especially the Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894, where he defeated President Grover Cleveland's low tariff goals by raising the tariff to thwart competition with industry in his state.

Gorman was reelected twice more in 1886 and 1892 (then by the state General Assembly), but was defeated for re-election in 1898, losing to Louis E. McComas. After his defeat, Gorman campaigned for the other Maryland U.S. Senate seat, and was elected to the U.S. Senate again by the Legislature in 1902. He was again appointed as the Democratic Caucus Chairman from 1903 to 1906, and served as U.S. Senator until his death of a heart attack in Washington in 1906.

His son, Arthur Pue Gorman, Jr., attended Lawrenceville Prep and traveled to the Maryland Agricultural College (now the University of Maryland at College Park), where he played on the "Terrapins" football team as a fullback and served as an assistant coach.

At the age of 22, Gorman, sr. was one of the founding members of the Washington Nationals Base Ball Club in 1859, the first official baseball team in America, and rose to become a star by the end of the Civil War era. Eventually he would become President of the National Association of Base Ball Players.

Bibliography

• Lambert, John R. Arthur Pue Gorman (1953), the standard scholarly biography
• Arthur Pue Gorman at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Political offices
Preceded by Ferdinand Claiborne Latrobe	Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates 1872	Succeeded by Jesse K. Hines
United States Senate
Preceded by William P. Whyte	United States Senator (Class 1) from Maryland 1881–1899 Served alongside: James B. Groome, Ephraim K. Wilson, Charles H. Gibson, George L. Wellington	Succeeded by Louis E. McComas
Preceded by George L. Wellington	United States Senator (Class 3) from Maryland 1903–1906 Served alongside: Louis E. McComas, Isidor Rayner	Succeeded by William P. Whyte