August Belmont

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August Belmont bigraphy, stories - United States banker, financier and diplomat

August Belmont : biography

December 8, 1813 – November 24, 1890

August Belmont, Sr. (December 8, 1813 – November 24, 1890) was an American politician.

In culture

Belmont threw lavish balls and dinner parties, receiving mixed reviews from New York’s high society. He was an avid sportsman and the famed Belmont Stakes thoroughbred horse race is named in his honor. It debuted at Jerome Park Racetrack, owned by Belmont’s friend, Leonard Jerome. Today The Belmont Stakes is part of thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown and takes place at Belmont Park, just outside New York City.

Also named in Belmont’s honor is the town of Belmont, New Hampshire, an honor Mr. Belmont never acknowledged. Edith Wharton reputedly modeled the character of Julius Beaufort in The Age of Innocence on Belmont.

In 1910 famed sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward completed a bronze statue of a sitting Belmont. The statue was originally installed in front of a small chapel adjacent to the Belmont burial plot. It was later moved to the park in Washington Square where it was replaced by a marker dedicating the park as Eisenhower Park in 1960. The statue was loaned by the city of Newport to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1985 and was eventually installed about 1995 in front of the headquarters building for the Preservation Society of Newport County at the corner of Bellevue and Narragansett avenues in Newport.

Postwar political career

Remaining chairman of the Democratic National Committee after the war, Belmont presided over what he called “‘the most disastrous epoch in the annals of the Democratic Party.’”Quoted in Katz, 91. As early as 1862, Belmont and Samuel Tilden bought stock in the New York World in order to mold it into a major Democratic organ with the help of Manton M. Marble, its editor-in-chief.Garraty and Carnes, 534. Seeking to capitalize on divisions in the Republican party at the war’s end, Belmont organized new party gatherings and promoted Salmon Chase for president in 1868, the candidate he viewed least vulnerable to charges of disloyalty to the party during the Republican Lincoln-Johnson administrations.Garraty and Carnes, 534; Katz, 167–68. Horatio Seymour’s electoral defeat in that year paled in comparison to liberal Republican Horace Greeley’s disastrous 1872 presidential campaign. While the party chairman had promoted Charles Francis Adams for the nomination, Greeley’s nomination implied Democratic endorsement of a candidate who often had referred to Democrats as “‘slaveholders,’ ‘slave-whippers,’ ‘traitors,’ and ‘Copperheads’ and accused them of thievery, debauchery, corruption, and sin.”Katz, 200 Although the election of 1872 prompted Belmont to resign his chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, he nevertheless continued to dabble in politics as a champion of US Senator Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware for the presidency, as a fierce critic of the process granting Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency in 1877, and as an advocate of “hard money.”Katz, 210–276.

Entry into politics

Belmont married Caroline Slidell Perry, the daughter of Matthew Calbraith Perry, on November 7, 1849. According to Jewish newspaper sources, he converted to Christianity at that time, taking his wife’s Episcopalian faith.American Israelite, August 7, 1874, p. 4Jewish Exponent, December 19, 1924 Soon, John Slidell, his wife’s uncle, made Belmont his protégé. Belmont’s first task was to campaign for James Buchanan in New York. In June, 1851, Belmont wrote letters to the New York Herald and the New York National-Democrat, insisting that they do justice to Buchanan’s presidential run. But Franklin Pierce won the nomination instead, and Belmont made large contributions to the Democratic cause, weathering political attack. After his victory, Pierce in 1853 appointed Belmont chargé d’affaires and minister to The Hague. While in the Netherlands, Belmont urged American annexation of Cuba as a new slave state in what became known as the Ostend Manifesto.Katz, 42–45.

Though Belmont lobbied hard for it, Buchanan denied him the ambassadorship to Spain after his election in 1856, thanks to the Ostend Manifesto.Katz, 58–61; John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, Vol. II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 534 As a delegate to the Democratic Convention of 1860, Belmont supported Stephen A. Douglas, who subsequently named Belmont chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Belmont energetically supported the Union cause during the Civil War as a War Democrat, conspicuously helping Missouri congressman Francis P. Blair raise and equip the Union army’s first predominantly German-American regiment.Katz, 90. For more on Belmont’s public contributions to the war effort, see August Belmont, A Few Letters and Speeches of the Late Civil War, New York, [Private Printing], 1870. Belmont also used his influence with European business and political leaders to support the Union cause in the American civil war, dissuading the Rothschilds and other bankers from lending to the Confederacy and meeting personally with the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, and members of Napoleon III’s French government.Allen Johnson, ed., Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. II (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929), 170.