Ames named after controversial congressman

You live in a city named after a rich and powerful man – a man who spent his life embroiled in scandal. A man who has compelling evidence for both his guilt and his innocence.

In 1864, John Insley Blair named the city he planned as a strategic railroad stop after his friend Oakes Ames, wrote Ames historian Farwell Brown.

Oakes Ames is a mysterious figure, alternately convicted and vindicated of a congressional bribery scandal.

The basic facts are undisputed. Ames was a U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts. A member of the congressional Committee on Railroads, he became personally and financially involved in America’s first transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific.

From this point on, historical accounts differ.

One version – which Brown said is supported by the most recent research – says Ames is a hero who made the Union Pacific possible.

A Parks Library memoir on Ames says President Abraham Lincoln and other “men of influence” urged Ames to become involved in the railroad when they realized it was failing due to lack of funding.

Ames deliberated for a year before he agreed and bought stock in Credit Mobilier, a company funding the railroad venture, according to the memoir. But once Ames joined as a shareholder, Credit Mobilier split into two conflicting factions.

The memoir says the company divided into “one party desiring simply to make all the profit possible from the construction of the road; the other party resolved to make their profits out of the ultimate value of the road itself. The latter was headed by Oakes Ames.”

Eventually, the conflict was resolved when Ames took over the railroad contract. According to the memoir, Ames was so intent on ensuring the railroad’s survival that he sold Credit Mobilier stock to his friends, both in and out of Congress.

Brown writes that “the combination of changing contexts and a disagreement between factions within the Credit Mobilier itself, resulted in the release to the New York Sun newspaper of selected portions of letters intended to show Ames to be the perpetrator of graft.”

The memoir reports the Sun published the letters in September 1872 “with all the arts of practiced sensationalism.” In the ensuing public scandal, “the newspapers found this new charge the very fuel they wanted for feeding the flames of popular disapprobation, and they made it go as far as it would.”

Congress appointed an investigative committee, says the memoir, and “all who had the stock testified to having purchased it” before it was known to be profitable.

Ames himself always maintained his innocence in the affair, saying he, too, sold the stock before he knew it would be profitable.

But the House of Representatives voted four days before the end of Ames’ fourth term to censure him.

Brown and the memoir both call the censure politically expedient, as it might satisfy the public desire for justice without actually punishing Ames for a crime his colleagues did not feel he committed.

Both cite a curious incident as evidence of this: Immediately following the censure vote, his fellow congressmen crowded around him, shaking his hand and professing their continuing personal support.

But different accounts tell another tale, one of political corruption.

“He could well have been a scapegoat, but he was also involved,” said Tom Emmerson, professor of journalism and mass communication.

Emmerson lectures on what he calls the Credit Mobilier Scam in his journalism history class.

According to his lecture packet, once Ames and his brother got a “lucrative government contract” to build the railroad, they “set up a company to supply equipment to railroads and bought materials (from themselves) at exorbitant prices.”

Emmerson’s lecture packet estimates the Ames brothers “managed to skim $23 million out of the $73 million that had been invested or allocated by the government” in nine years.

Emmerson’s research says Ames tried to buy off the impending congressional investigation by giving Credit Mobilier stocks to “key Congressional leaders.”

But the media had “caused such a public outcry that the House was left with no choice but to vote to censure Rep. Oakes Ames,” Emmerson’s lecture packet says.

Where does the truth lie? Both Brown and Emmerson acknowledge that conflicting histories exist.

Brown, who researched the story for a book, said Ames is innocent.

“He was actually a very principled person,” Brown said. “I talked to enough people . and read material that convinced me he was actually a victim of a political conflict.”

Emmerson said he has “a lot of respect for [Brown’s] research,” but maintains Ames was guilty of fraud, citing his research that Ames gave away shares after the Sun exposed him.

The truth will probably never be known with certainty. One thing emerges clearly from the debate, however: Ames left an important and fascinating name to an Iowa city.