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Pennsylvania Senator William Wallace, circa 1880.
Credit: From Alex McCLure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co, 1905).
In the 1870s, Pennsylvania’s Democratic party was led by state senator William Wallace (1827-1896) from Clearfield and Philadelphia congressman Samuel J. Randall. Wallace won election to the United States Senate in 1874 after the Republican party, which voters blamed for the economic depression of 1873, lost control of the Pennsylvania Assembly.