Colonel Matthew S Quay commanded the 134th Pennsylvania Infantry in Maryland. They arrived on the battlefield of Antietam on the morning of 18 September after an all night march. He resigned due to illness in December, but was a Fredericksburg, VA on the 13th as an aide to General Erastus Tyler. Quay was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions there. By the end of the war he was private secretary to Governor Curtin.

He began his career in the Pennsylvania legislature in 1864 and was a political “boss” in the state for the rest of his life. He was US Senator for two terms, from 1888-1899 and again from 1901 to his death in 1904. Quay once said politics was “the art of taking money from the few and votes from the many under the pretext of protecting the one from the other.”

This lovely caricature of bosses Quay (left), Richard Crocker of Tammany Hall (seated), and Senator Thomas Collier Platt of NY (right) was on the cover of the Puck Magazine of 24 January 1900, online from ExplorePAHistory.

Please Leave a Reply