Credit: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of G.H. Chase NPG.72.13
Elected to the United States Senate as a Republican in 1857, Simon Cameron served as Abraham Lincoln's first Secretary of War before he was forced to resign amid charges of corruption late in 1861. At the end of the Civil War, Cameron re-emerged as the leader of Pennsylvania's powerful Republican party, which he led until 1877, when he passed his Senate seat and control of the party to his son, Donald Cameron.
