The New International Encyclopædia/Platt, Thomas Collier

PLATT, Thomas Collier (1833—). An American political leader. He was born at Owego, N. Y.; studied at the Owego Academy, and was a member of the class of 1853 in Yale College, but withdrew in his junior year on account of ill health. He then went into business, became president of the Tioga National Bank, and invested largely in lumbering in Michigan. He was clerk of Tioga County in 1859-61, and a member of Congress from 1872 to 1876. In 1879 he was made secretary and director of the United States Express Company, and in 1880 became its president. He also acted as president of the Southern Central and other railways. In 1880 he was appointed a quarantine commissioner at the port of New York. In 1881 he was elected United States Senator, but within a few months both he and Senator Roscoe Conkling, his colleague from New York, resigned because President Garfield did not defer sufficiently to their wishes in making appointments in New York. The immediate occasion of their resignation was the appointment by Garfield of W. H. Robertson as collector of the port of New York City. (See Conkling, Roscoe; and Robertson, W. H.) In an appeal to the Legislature for reëlection they were both defeated. Platt eventually gained virtual control of the Republican Party in New York and was again elected to the Senate both in 1897 and in 1903. He has been a delegate to all Republican national conventions since 1870 as well as a member of the National Republican Committee.