Colton to CPH, Jan. 31, 1878, April 15, 16, 1878, Octopus Speaks, 463, 488, 489, 15, n. 18.
The best account of networks of family and friendship in American business is Pamela Walker Laird, Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), esp. 2, 15, 22-23.
George T. Clark, Leland Stanford: War Governor of California, Railroad Builder, and Founder of Stanford University (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1931), 290.
See also Adams to C. J. Smith, July 6, 1888, UP, PO, OC, vol. 44, ser. 2, r. 39.
As a set of rhetorical and cultural conventions, this species of friendship was hardly new. It resembled earlier commercial relationships between Virginia planters and British merchants in the eighteenth century, and political relationships in New York before and after the Civil War.
T. H. Breen, Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of the Revolution (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985), 84-123.
Mitchell was normally corrupt and Oregon senate seats were for sale. In 1882, unable to bribe enough legislators to obtain election, Mitchell sold his votes to his law partner, Joseph N. Dolph, for $35,000. In 1886 after failing election in a regular session, the governor called a special election that sent him back to Washington.
Mitchell to Villard, April 21, 1881, J.H. Mitchell Letters, Box 82, Villard Papers.