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Thomas Collier Platt

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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THOMAS COLLIER PLATT (1833-1910), American politician, was born in Owego, Tioga county, New York, on the 15th of July 1833. He studied in1849-1852at Yale, from which he received' the honorary degree of A.M. in 1876. He made money in lumbering out West, and returning to Owego became a banker and railway director. He helped to organize its Republican party in Tioga county, and in1873-1877was a representative in Congress. In 1877 he was chairman of the state Republican Convention at Rochester. On the 18th of January 1881 he was elected United States senator, but resigned, with his colleague, Roscoe Conkling, on the 16th of May following, chiefly because President Garfield, in spite of their protest, had appointed as collector of the port of New York, Judge William H. Robertson, a political opponent. Within ten years he became the acknowledged Republican "boss" of the state, and he again served in the United States Senate from 1897 to 1909. But his power waned steadily after about 1903. He died in New York City on the 6th of March 1910.