Edward P. McCabe

Edwin P. McCabe October 10, 1850 – March 12, 1920) was an African-American settler, attorney, and land agent who became one of the first African Americans to hold a major political office in the American Old West. A Republican office-holder in Kansas, McCabe became a leading figure in an effort to stimulate a black migration into what was then the territory of Oklahoma, with the hopes of creating a majority-black state that would be free of the white domination that was prevalent throughout the Southern United States. In pursuit of this goal, McCabe founded the city of Langston, Oklahoma.

McCabe was born in Troy, New York on October 10, 1850. As a child he moved from Troy to Fall River, Massachusetts, Newport, Rhode Island, and Bangor, Maine. When his father died, he left school and began to work. Eventually he moved to New York City where he worked on Wall Street. Finding no avenues for promotion beyond clerk and porter in New York, he then moved to Chicago in 1872 where he worked as a clerk for Potter Palmer. He was then appointed clerk in the Cook County, Illinois office of the U.S. Treasury Department (Taylor).

McCabe then traveled to Nicodemus, Kansas in 1878 where he was an attorney and land agent. After two years of residing in Nicodemus he was appointed county clerk of the not long established Graham County, and the next fall he was elected to a full term as county clerk. At age 32 McCabe was elected Kansas State Auditor, and became the highest ranking African American officeholder outside of the Reconstruction South (AAME). He served two terms as the state auditor and failed to win a third nomination. He then moved to Washington D.C., where he fruitlessly lobbied for an appointment for governor in the new Oklahoma Territory, from President Benjamin Harrison (Taylor). Even though he was not appointed, he moved to the Oklahoma Territory in 1890 still looking to make a difference.

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