Nucky: The Real Story of the Atlantic City Boardwalk Boss by Frank J. Ferry Esquire

Author:Frank J. Ferry Esquire [Esquire, Frank J. Ferry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ComteQ Publishing
Published: 2012-12-03T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

GOING TO WASHINGTON UNDER SUBPOENA

Nucky’s legendary political prowess and election tactics helped him build a remarkable reputation statewide. However, being in the public eye also included heightened scrutiny by the federal government and his political opponents. On May 16, 1928, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution titled “The Election of a Senator from New Jersey,” and Nucky became one of the key targets in the special government investigations.

Nucky soon found himself under subpoena. He needed to explain how he successfully orchestrated Hamilton Fish Kean’s Republican nomination for U.S. Senate by defeating a former popular New Jersey governor and a former powerful U.S. Senator of New Jersey. In 1918, Kean made an unsuccessful bid for the senate post but lost to Governor Walter E. Edge. Despite his unsuccessful track record, Kean was determined to carry on his family’s heritage of public service that went back generations.

Kean’s father, John Kean, was the son of Peter Phillip James Kean and Sarah Sabina Morris, graduated from Princeton University in 1834. He became one of the leading business leaders of his day: He was a stockholder in the Camden & Amboy Railroad, a key to helping to build the Central Railroad of New Jersey, president of the National State Bank of Elizabeth, and president of the Elizabethtown Gas Light Company. As an old-line Whig who later switched to the Republican Party, he became a delegate to the convention that nominated Henry Clay for U.S. President. Kean married Lucy Halsted, daughter of Caleb O. Halsted, one-time president of the Manhattan Trust Company and first president of New York Clearing House.

Kean’s grandmother, Sarah Sabina Morris Kean, was a descendent of Lewis Morris who was governor of New Jersey in 1738. Lewis Morris was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, member of the New York Provincial Congress, the Continental Congress from 1775–1777, and the N.Y. Senate from 1778–1781 and from 1783–1790.

General George Washington even appointed Kean’s great-grandfather to the commission to audit accounts of the Revolutionary Army, and Kean was also a member of the Continental Congress from 1785 to 1787. Washington also appointed him Cashier of the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia, the first national bank of the new government where Kean served until his death in Philadelphia on May 4, 1795. The Kean family lineage ran pure and deep.

Kean’s passion for politics and public service extended from his role as chairman of the Union County Republican Committee from 1900 to 1906 and as a member of the New Jersey State Republican Committee. In 1916, he served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Chicago, when Charles Evans Hughes, governor of California, was nominated to oppose the re-election of President Woodrow Wilson.

In New Jersey, Kean lived in a historic mansion named Ursino, near Elizabeth. This home in Union County, aka Liberty Hall, had a storied history all its own. It was built by Governor William Livingston in 1772, General Washington held several conferences at this mansion with his officers during the Revolution, and Alexander Hamilton studied law there too.

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