Depew
CHAUNCEY MITCHELL, an American lawyer; born in Peekskill, N. Y., April 23, 1834, of Huguenot and Puritan ancestry; was graduated at Yale College in 1856, and was admitted to the bar in 1858. In 1860 he worked for the election of Lincoln; 1861-1862, was a member of the New York Assembly, and served some time as chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and as acting speaker; 1863, elected Secretary of State of New York; 1865, declined a renomination, and 1866 was commissioned collector of the port of New York by President Johnson, who afterward tore up the commission in a quarrel. He was appointed United States Minister to Japan, and after holding the commission a month declined, and began his career as a railroad official as attorney for the New York and Harlem Railroad. He was made attorney and director of the consolidated Hudson River and New York Central Railroads in 1869; general counsel of the whole Vanderbilt system in 1875; second vice-president of the reorganized New York Central Railroad in 1882, and president in 1885. His political career since 1866 embraces his unsuccessful candidacy as lieutenant-governor on the Liberal Republican ticket in 1872; his election by the Legislature as a regent of the State University in 1874; his candidacy for United States Senator to succeed Thomas C. Platt, in which he withdrew his name after 82 days of balloting in 1881; his declination of the United States senatorship tendered by the Republicans of the Legislature in 1884; his candidacy for the presidential nomination in the national convention in 1888; and his election to the United States Senate 1899- 1911.
In 1905 he was involved in the investigation of the New York life insurance companies and repaid a loan obtained from the Equitable, for a concern in which he was interested. At the same time he resigned his directorship in the Equitable. Two volumes of his orations and after-dinner speeches have been published.