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Another bad day for A. J. Dorn
On this day in 1884, Andrew Jackson Dorn lost his bid to become a
congressional assistant doorkeeper. Dorn had served in a volunteer
company in the Mexican War and afterward in the regular army. Although
he claimed to have achieved the rank of colonel and to have remained in
the U.S. Army until the outbreak of the Civil War, he was in fact
mustered out of federal service in 1848. He did serve with the
Confederate military, and after the war moved to Bonham, Texas. In 1873,
he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for Texas state treasurer.
Dorn was elected on Richard Coke's ticket, but when he appointed his son
as chief clerk of the treasury, the Herald attacked him for
nepotism, "one of the most odious of all political abuses." Dorn was
reelected in 1876 and remained in office until 1879. In 1883,
unemployed, he went to Washington, D.C., seeking Samuel Bell Maxey's aid
in finding a government job. "He is the most helpless man I know," wrote
Maxey of Dorn, "an honorable, good man but a fearfully and wonderfully
made hanger-on for office." Dorn became one of seven applicants for one
of the two assistant-doorkeeper appointments to which the Texas
delegation was entitled, but when the appointments were decided by lot
on January 3, 1884, he was not chosen. In 1885, the destitute Dorn, with
Maxey's influence, was elected as doorkeeper of the state Senate. After
his tenure as doorkeeper, Dorn remained in Austin "filling some minor
positions in the state departments" until his death in 1889. He was
buried in the State Cemetery.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- DORN, ANDREW JACKSON
- MAXEY, SAMUEL BELL
- COKE, RICHARD
- STATE TREASURER
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- General Kiddoo nixes Contract Law (1867)
- Orphans get new home (1874)
- Presidio County established (1850)
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