Alexander K. McClure Letters

Thaddeus Stevens Compiled Collection
Library of Congress

A native of Perry County in central Pennsylvania, Alexander K. McClure became Franklin County's Republican leader by the age of 30. As a young man McClure abandoned an apprenticeship as a tanner for a life in journalism and politics. By his nineteenth birthday he had begun publication of a small newspaper in Perry County and served in small political offices. In 1852 he purchased the Franklin "Repository," and began to move up in the state Whig ranks. After an unsuccessful campaign for state auditor-general in 1855, he became an attorney by reading law with a local lawyer. In 1857 he was one of a handful of Pennsylvania Republicans elected to the state legislature, and in 1859 he became a state senator. In these years McClure turned the Repositoryinto one of the state's first Republican newspapers and became one of Franklin County's leading trial lawyers. McClure's law offices, and often the courthouse steps, became Franklin County's unofficial Republican Party headquarters.

In 1860 McClure capped his young political career with an appointment as Chairman of the State Republican Committee. From this office he masterminded Andrew Curtin's successful campaign for Governor of Pennsylvania. The shrewd McClure helped Curtin outmaneuver rival Republican factions, including that led by the ambitious and unprincipled Simon Cameron. The Curtin/Cameron feud defined the early Republican Party in Pennsylvania, and McClure's political gifts helped put the arch-nationalist Curtin in the statehouse just in time for the Civil War.

1. Alexander K. McClure to Thaddeus Stevens, 1861
2. Alexander K. McClure to Thaddeus Stevens, January 10, 1861
3. Alexander K. McClure to Thaddeus Stevens, Jauuary 12, 1861
4. Alexander K. McClure to Thaddeus Stevens, January 16, 1861
5. Alexander K. McClure to Thaddeus Stevens, January 21, 1861
6. Alexander K. McClure to Thaddeus Stevens, January 24, 1861
7. Alexander K. McClure to Thaddeus Stevens, February 2, 1861

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