Empty Mansions

my children a legacy, worth more than gold, that of an unblemished name.”
    And then, after weeks of saying he would never quit, he surprised the Senate by revealing that he had written a resignation letter.
    Here’s how the entire scheme unfolded.
    1. W.A. addressed his resignation letter to “His Excellency, the Governor of Montana.” No name, only a title.
    2. The governor, Robert B. Smith, was not a friend to Clark.
    3. The lieutenant governor, oneA. E. Spriggs, was friendlier, a manager of W.A.’s Ruby mine.
    4. The newspapers spread the word that Lieutenant Governor Spriggs was out of the state, in South Dakota, at a weeklong convention of his Populist Party.
    5. Clark’s men arranged the publication in the Montana papers of a firm statement that he would never resign.
    6. Trusting too much in all this, Governor Smith was induced by a Clark associate to travel by train to San Francisco to examine the mining claim.
    7. Immediately after the governor left the state, W.A. made his resignation speech, and his son Charlie sent a telegram to Lieutenant Governor Spriggs in South Dakota with the agreed-upon signal that it was time to return to Montana: “Weather fine, cattle doing well.”
    8. Spriggs rushed back to Helena. Charlie filled in the date on his father’s resignation letter, then handed it to the lieutenant governor, who filled in the name on an order appointing Clark’s successor in the Senate.
    9. That successor? W. A. Clark. Forced to resign on a charge of corruption, he was now appointed to fill his own vacancy.
    10. The lieutenant governor wired a confirmation to W.A., adding, “I trust you will accept the appointment.” He did.
    The headlines in the
New York Herald
captured the plot: “Clark Resigns; Then Appointed. Daly Caught Napping. All a Series of Surprises.”
    After the scheme was found out, W.A.’s supporters said that he had no idea of the shenanigans done on his behalf, that reckless son Charlie must have been responsible. It aided their narrative that Charlie drank and gambled and womanized too much, and failed to repay loans. (Several years later, in 1908, W.A. wrote with optimism to a friend, “Chas is with me and is in fine shape and has not drunk anything spirituous.… I am happy over it and I do hope it will last always.”) Charlie is usually credited with making the comment during the campaign, “We’ll put the old man in the Senate or in the poorhouse.”
    The idea that Charlie was to blame was bolstered when he was implicated in 1902 in another scandal in which he was accused of offering $250,000 to a judge to fix a case. Before he could be served with a warrant, he left Butte for San Francisco, leaving behind his lovely French château not far from his father’s mansion. For many years thereafter,Charlie dared not enter the state of Montana.
    W.A.’s correspondence, however, shows that he was intimately involved in this cynical scheme to lure the governor out of the state, as he was intimately involved in all his business. On April 28, 1900, before he resigned, he wrote to a fervent supporter, John S. M. Neill, editor of the friendly
Helena Independent
. Responding to Neill’s description of the plans, W.A. objected at that point, not on moral grounds but on practical ones: “I have canvassed the proposition referred to in your letter. The plan of getting a certain party out of the State while action might be taken by another is not feasible.”
    After the plan was indeed executed and W.A. was appointed to succeed himself, he wrote again to Neill, this time approvingly, with his usual confidence that he was in the right: “The appointment by the Governor improves the situation and has thrown consternation into the ranks of the enemy. So far as we have been able to discover there is no legal reason why the Senate should not immediately order the oath of office administered upon the presentation of the credentials made in accordance with the appointment of Governor Spriggs.”
    Cleverness was not enough. Governor Smith heard the news in San Francisco, was back in Helena in three days, and sent notice to the Senate to disregard this “contemptible trickery.” The seat stayed vacant, leaving the people of Montana missing a voice in the Senate for the next fourteen months.
    “This man, Clark, has been convicted by the United States Senate of perjury, bribery, and fraud,” Governor Smith told the newspapers, somewhat overstating the case, “and it is an insult