Audacious Scoundrels by Steven L. Piott

Author:Steven L. Piott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TwoDot
Published: 2020-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

This drawing of Senator John Mitchell of Oregon by cartoonist Thomas Nast shows the senator with his long, chest-length beard, symbolic of an older generation of politicians.

COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, ALFRED BENDINER MEMORIAL COLLECTION

Senator John H. Mitchell, who would become the central figure in the Oregon land fraud trials, was an interesting character. Born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1835, his real name was John Mitchell Hipple. After graduating from college, he worked as a schoolteacher, and in the mid-1850s got one of his students, fifteen-year-old Sadie Hoon, pregnant and then married her. The couple would eventually have three children. Mitchell began practicing law in 1857 and seemed to be on his way to a successful career as a barrister. Then he disappeared. Taking his youngest daughter and his mistress, Maria Brinker, he borrowed $4,000 from the law firm for which he worked and set out for California, leaving his wife and his other two children to fend for themselves. Then, in 1860, he abandoned his mistress and moved to Portland, Oregon, with his daughter. Finding the frontier city to be a good place to escape his checkered past, Mitchell changed his name to John Hipple Mitchell. Soon, Mitchell married Martha Price, the daughter of a blacksmith in Oregon City, but failed to bother with obtaining a divorce from his wife Sadie. A rising star in the legal profession, Mitchell met stagecoach and railroad tycoon Ben Holiday and became his personal attorney. He was now on his way to becoming Portland’s leading railroad and timber lawyer.

Mitchell soon concluded that business and politics could mix well together and got himself elected to the state senate. Ten years later he parlayed that into election to the US Senate even though his political opponents had discovered that he had abandoned his family, was living under an assumed name, and was a bigamist! But the legislature picked the state’s US senators at that time, and his supporters did not seem to care about his past. What followed was a thirty-year run of influence peddling, disguised by an innate ability to ingratiate himself with his constituents as someone who worked tirelessly to promote the interests of his state. By the early twentieth century, Senator Mitchell had established himself as a power broker in Washington, DC.

With a letter of introduction from Franklin Mays, Puter and Mrs. Watson traveled to Washington early in 1902. Upon their arrival, Senator Mitchell introduced them to Commissioner Binger Hermann of the General Land Office who told them that the reports on the claims had been favorable, but that it would be several months before the final patent could be issued. A short time after that, however, Hermann informed Puter that he had received a report that all of the claims were fraudulent and suggested that Puter should return to Oregon and obtain additional affidavits. In a panic, Puter turned again to Senator Mitchell. Meeting Mitchell at his room in the Dewey Hotel, Puter passed him two $1,000 bills in return for his help.

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