American public man, conspicuous in connection with the tariff legislation of 1894; born in Howard County, MD, on the 11th of March 1839; and educated in the public schools of his native county. In 1852 he was appointed page in the Senate of the United States, and continued in the service of the Senate until 1866, when he was postmaster. He was subsequently collector of internal revenue for the fifth district of Maryland (1866–69), member of the house of delegates of the Maryland legislature, as a Democrat (1869), speaker of that house (1871), and Maryland state senator (1879). He was elected to the United States Senate in January 1880, as a Democrat, to succeed William Pinkney Whyte. He took his seat in this last capacity, March 4, 1881, and was re-elected in 1886, and 1892 for the term expiring March 3, 1899. He became president of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company in 1872, of which corporation he had been a director since the year 1869.
