Wayne MacVeagh

@ National Portrait Gallery

Description

Pennsylvania attorney Wayne MacVeagh was one of a group of liberal or independent Republicans-derisively referred to as Mugwumps-who jumped to the Democratic Party to support reform candidates in the late nineteenth century. Passionately opposed to slavery, MacVeagh joined the Republican Party in 1856, and seven years later he was a member of the small group that accompanied Abraham Lincoln to the dedication of the Gettysburg Battlefield cemetery. In 1892 he shifted his allegiance to the Democrats, supporting Grover Cleveland, but William Jennings Bryan's candidacy drove him back to the GOP in 1896. There, MacVeagh continued to support reform measures, including taxation on both earnings and estates in order to redistribute wealth and aid the poor. Throughout his career, he served in several diplomatic posts and also as the country's chief counsel in arbitration before the Hague Court.

Format:

Bronze Relief

Rights:

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art; gift of Eames MacVeagh, 1947

View Original At:

http://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=record_ID=npg_NPG.65.64&repo=DPLA