Washington, D.C.
Ward was a Democrat with many friends and family in the South. He also believed in gradual emancipation, which put him at odds with his sister, Julia Ward, who would later write "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe. But there was no question that he would remain loyal to the Union. He put his dinner table at the disposal of his neighbor Secretary of State William Henry Seward. His elegant meals, which had already begun to be noticed, provided the perfect cover for Northerners and Southerners looking for neutral ground. In the early days of the war, Ward also traveled through the Confederacy with British journalist William Howard Russell, secretly sending letters full of military details back to Seward for which he surely would have been hanged or shot if exposed.
In 1862, he told Seward he was wrong to think that the Confederacy would have rejoined the Union had war been averted: "I differ from you. I found among the leaders a malignant bitterness and contemptuous hatred of the North which rendered this lesson necessary. within two years they would have formed entangling free trade and free navigation treaties with Europe, and have become a military power hostile to us."
At the war's end, Ward's friends in high places, his savoir faire, his trove of anecdotes and recipes, and his talents for diplomacy augured well for his success in Washington, where the coals were hot and ready for an era of unprecedented growth and corruption that became known as "the Great Barbeque" or "The Gilded Age."
Sam took great care in composing the menu and guest list for his lobby dinners. If his client's interests were financial, members of the appropriate House and Senate committees received invitations. Mining and mineral rights? That was another group of players. He also orchestrated the talk around the table and used stories from his variegated life like condiments at his dinners.
The results? "Ambrosial nights," gushed one guest. "The climax of civilization," another enthused. But how did these delightful evenings serve his clients' ends? Subtly, and therein lies what set Sam Ward apart as a lobbyist. He claimed, and guests agreed, that he never talked directly about a "project" over dinner. Instead, he let a good food, wine, and company educate and convince, launch schemes or nip them in the bud. At these evenings new friendships developed, old ones were cemented, and Sam's list of men upon whom he could call lengthened.
This was the hallmark of what reporters labelled the "social lobby," and, by the late 1860s, Sam was shown in newspapers across the country as its "King." And yet nowhere in this age of corruption, not in the press, in congressional testimony, or in his own letters or those of his clients, was there any hint that "the King" ever offered a bribe, engaged in blackmail, or used any other such methods to win his ends.
