Thomas C. Platt

Platt was born to William Platt, a lawyer, and Lesbia Hinchman, in Owego, Tioga County, New York on July 15, 1833. State Senator Nehemiah Platt (1797–1851) was William Platt's brother. William Platt, a successful attorney and strict Presbyterian, encouraged his son to enter the ministry. Accordingly, the young Platt was prepared for college at the Owego Academy and attended Yale College (1850–1852), where he studied theology but failed to earn a degree owing to ill health which forced his withdrawal. During the American Civil War, Platt's illness prevented him from serving in the Union military, but he raised money to support troops and actively urged support for the Lincoln Administration. Platt became secretary and a director of the United States Express Co. in 1879 and was elected president of the company in 1880. He was president of the Board of Quarantine Commissioners of New York from 1880 to 1888 and was President of the Tennessee Coal & Iron Company for several years. ==Early political career==

Platt's political involvement began at the Republican Party's inception; he made his first appearance in politics in 1856 in the campaign of the party's first presidential candidate, John C. Frémont. and was a member of the New York Republican State Committee and Republican National Committee. By 1887, Platt was the de facto leader of New York's Republicans, where he developed a reputation as the "easy boss." ==Platt supports Half-Breed Blaine for president==

During the 1884 United States presidential election, the Republican convention nominated Half-Breed leader James G. Blaine to lead the party ticket. This resulted in an intraparty schism, with a "Mugwump" faction refusing to support Blaine and instead backing Bourbon Democrat Grover Cleveland. Although Platt had allied with the Stalwarts which fiercely opposed Blaine (who long had a personal rivalry with Conkling), he supported the nominee for the general election. Blaine ultimately lost the race to Cleveland, which in part was attributed to the influence of ''Harper's Weekly'' Mugwump cartoonist Thomas Nast. ==Founding Trustee of New York Law School==

Platt was one of the original members of New York Law School's Board of Trustees. Founded in 1891, the law school was founded by Theodore William Dwight and other faculty members and students of Columbia Law School who rejected Columbia's application of the Casebook method of legal instruction because it downplayed practical lawyering skills. ==Return to the Senate, 1897–1909==

Sixteen years after Platt's resignation, he was elected a second time as a U.S. Senator from New York in January 1897 and was re-elected in January 1903. This time, he served from March 4, 1897, to March 3, 1909. He was Chairman of the Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard (in the 55th Congress). He was on the Committee on Printing (in the 56th through 60th Congresses), the Committee on Cuban Relations (in the 59th Congress) and the Committee on Interoceanic Canals (in the 59th Congress). He also served on the Republican National Committee. On January 21, 1897, Platt's photograph appeared in the New York Tribune as "the first halftone reproduction to appear in a mass circulation daily paper," according to Time-Life's Photojournalism. To increase his power as a political boss, Platt steered passage of the Greater New York bill in 1898. The bill incorporated the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island into the city, thereby creating New York City as it exists today. Platt reluctantly supported Theodore Roosevelt's candidacy for Governor of New York in 1898 in the immediate aftermath of Roosevelt's fame leading the Rough Riders in the Spanish–American War earlier that year. Once elected, Governor Roosevelt was independently minded and crusaded against machines and corruption, most notably refusing to reappoint Louis F. Payn as state Insurance Superintendent because he was widely seen as a corrupt associate of Platt. In response, Platt sought a way to "shelve" Roosevelt so that a more compliant governor could be installed in his place. President William McKinley's original vice president had died in office, leaving a place on the ticket to fill before the 1900 election. At the 1900 Republican National Convention, Platt and Matthew Quay proposed to get Roosevelt out of Platt's way in New York by nominating him for vice president. Party boss Mark Hanna was horrified by the proposition, stating "Why, everybody's gone crazy! What is the matter with all of you? Here's this convention going headlong for Roosevelt for Vice President. Don't any of you realize that there's only one life between that madman and the Presidency? Platt and Quay are no better than idiots! What harm can he do as Governor of New York compared to the damage he will do as President if McKinley should die?" But since Hanna was unable to convince President McKinley to refuse Roosevelt as his Vice President, his efforts were in vain. Roosevelt was chosen by acclamation, played a major part in McKinley's re-election, and became president in September 1901 after McKinley was assassinated in office. Platt's control over the Republican Party in New York State effectively ended in 1902. Benjamin Barker Odell Jr., Roosevelt's successor as governor, had not only acted independently of Platt but also, by 1902, insisted on taking over from Platt as leader of the party. After Platt tried but failed to block Odell's renomination as governor and Odell was re-elected, the era of a separate "boss" was over. Platt was a member of the New York Society of Colonial Wars. ==Later years, death, and legacy==

Two years after his first wife died in 1901, he married Lillian Janeway, whom the New York Times described as "young enough in appearance to pass for his daughter." Their legal separation was announced in 1906, with Platt agreeing to pay his estranged wife $75,000 in exchange for her dropping all financial claims upon him and dismissing a suit for divorce which had been previously filed. He retired from the Senate in 1909 and was stricken by what was diagnosed as an acute attack of Bright's disease on May 28, 1909, a case so severe that his doctor publicly predicted his patient's imminent demise. Platt's body was interred in Evergreen Cemetery, Owego, New York. At the time of his death, he remained married to Lillian, but she received nothing in his will. His namesake great-grandson was the lawyer and judge Thomas Collier Platt Jr. ==Footnotes==