Statue of a Politician Killed by a Blizzard - New York, NY
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neoc1
N 40° 44.470 W 073° 59.292
18T E 585426 N 4510517
Statue of Roscoe Conkling, the politician killed by a blizzard, is located in the southeast corner of Madison Square Park on 23rd street in Manhattan.
Waymark Code: WMGCEH
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 02/14/2013
Views: 11
Roscoe Conkling was an accomplished politician who also had a darker side. He was a lawyer, a congressman from 1859-1863 and 1865-1867, a senator from 1867-1881 and dominated the Republican Party in New York during the Reconstruction Era. He died after getting lost in Union Square during the famous blizzard of 1888. After he died his friends raised the funds, $16,000, and commissioned sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward to create the sculpture that was dedicated on December 1, 1893, one-half mile north of Union Square in Madison Square Park.
A 70" by 40.5" by 40" bronze statue of stands on 78.5" high by 124" square pink granite base. Roscoe Conkling is wearing an overcoat, has his right arm slightly outstretched and his left hand in the left front pocket of his trousers. The only inscription is his name, ROSCOE CONKLING, on the front of the base.
Conkling was a strongly anti-slavery and a Radical Republican supporter of the Lincoln administration. He opposed Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court and helped draft the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. He was instrumental in the passage of the second Civil Rights Act in 1875. After resigning from the Senate in 1881, he practiced law in New York City.
On the other hand, according to his biography in Wikipedia:
"Conkling had a reputation as a womanizer and philanderer, and was accused of having an affair with the married Kate Chase Sprague, daughter of Salmon P. Chase and wife of William Sprague IV. According to a well-known story, buttressed by contemporaneous press reports, Mr. Sprague confronted the philandering couple at the Spragues' Rhode Island summer home and pursued Conkling with a shotgun.[5] One account from the New York Times (October 12, 1909) states:"
"The late Senator Roscoe Conkling was a frequent visitor at Canonchet [Sprague's estate], and was unpleasantly conspicuous in the proceedings which ended in the divorce of the Spragues. Mr. Conkling was once forbidden by Mr. Sprague to come to Canonchet. Despite this, however, the Executive [Sprague] later met the Senator [Conkling] on the estate coming from the rear of the house—some reports had it that the Senator jumped from a window—and after him came the Governor with his old civil war musket in his hands."