On April 4, 1861, the Kansas legislature elected Pomeroy (along with James Lane) to be one of Kansas's first federal senators.[3][5] In 1863, during the Civil War, Pomeroy escorted Frederick Douglass to the War Department building to meet War Secretary Edwin Stanton. Afterwards, Douglass attended a meeting with President Abraham Lincoln.[6]
In 1864, Pomeroy was the chair of a committee supporting Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase for the Republican nomination for President of the United States over the incumbent, Abraham Lincoln.[8] Pomeroy also spoke in support of Chase's candidacy in the Senate.[9] The Pomeroy committee issued a confidential circular to leading Republicans in February 1864 attacking Lincoln, which had the unintended effect of galvanizing support for Lincoln and seriously damaging Chase's prospects.[8]
During the Kansas senatorial election of 1873, it was alleged that Senator Pomeroy paid $7,000 (~$162,100 in 2023) to Mr. Alexander M. York, a Kansas state senator, to secure his vote for reelection to the Senate by the Kansas State Legislature.[11] York publicly disclosed the alleged bribe was an attempt to pin a bribery charge against the senator.[12] After 19 ballots in the Kansas Legislature, Pomeroy was ultimately defeated when insiders turned to John J. Ingalls.[13]
Pomeroy took to the Senate floor on February 10, 1873, to deny the allegations as a "conspiracy ... for the purpose of accomplishing my defeat,"[11] and urged the creation of a special committee to investigate the allegations.[11] The payment of the $7,000 (~$162,100 in 2023) was never disputed by witnesses, but instead of being a bribe it was described to the committee as a payment meant to be passed along to a second individual as seed money to start a national bank.[14] The Special Committee on the Kansas Senatorial Election issued its report on March 3, 1873, which determined there was insufficient evidence to sustain the bribery charge, and instead was part of a "concerted plot" to defeat Senator Pomeroy.[14]
Senator Allen G. Thurman of Ohio disagreed with the special committee's findings, stating his belief in Pomeroy's guilt and calling attempts to explain the payment as something other than a bribe as "so improbable, especially in view of the circumstances attending the senatorial election, that reliance cannot be placed upon them."[14] However, Thurman chose not to pursue the matter further, as March 3 coincided with Senator Pomeroy's last day in office.[14] This whole matter was alluded to in detail in the satire The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, in which the prominent character Senator Dillworth is based on Pomeroy.[15]
^Waters, Lawrence Leslie (1950). Steel Trails to Santa Fe. University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, Kansas.
^ abcBlackmar, Frank, ed. (1912). "Pomeroy, Samuel Clark". Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Embracing Events, Institutions, Industries, Counties, Cities, Towns, Prominent Persons, etc. Chicago, IL: Standard Publishing Company. pp. 485–86. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
^Cordley, Richard (1895). A History of Lawrence, Kansas: From the Earliest Settlement to the Close of the Rebellion. Lawrence, KS: Lawrence Journal Press. pp. 6–7.
^DiLorenzo, Thomas (2002). The Real Lincoln. New York: Three Rivers Press. p. 18. ISBN0-7615-2646-3.
^ abGoodwin, Doris Kearns (2005). Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Simon & Schuster, New York. pp. 605–07.
^Congressional Globe. 38th Cong., 1st sess. March 10, 1864. 1025–27.
^Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden and the Founding of the Yellowstone National Park. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of the Interior Geological Survey, U.S. Government Printing Office. 1973.
