Stephen D. Dillaye

Stephen Devalson Dillaye (August 31, 1820 – October 3, 1884) was an American lawyer, author, and politician. In 1880, he was briefly the presidential nominee of the Union Greenback Labor Party.

Dillaye was born in 1820 in Plymouth, New York, the son of René and Clarissa Dillaye. He graduated from Harvard University in 1845 with a Bachelor of Laws degree. In 1848, he married Charlotte Malcolm, but not before executing a prenuptial agreement that later became the subject of litigation. Dillaye and Charlotte would have three daughters, including Blanche, who became an artist in the school of Thomas Eakins.

By 1852, he was residing in New York City, where he was engaged in the practice of law. Dillaye became active in Democratic politics in the city, addressing a local convention of Manhattan Democrats in 1857. As the sectional differences that led to the Civil War grew, Dillaye joined (and was later president of) the Young Men's Democratic Union Club. He was appointed to the post of General Appraiser, a patronage position in the New York Custom House in 1856, but differences with the administration and Congressman Daniel Sickles led to his removal two years later. He wrote to Treasury Secretary Howell Cobb to protest his removal and had the letter published in New York Times, but to no avail. The bad feelings continued after Dillaye's removal from office. When he met former Congressman Emanuel B. Hart, a Sickles ally, in the street later that year, the two men began to argue and Hart struck Dillaye in the head with his cane.

The next year, 1859, Dillaye was arrested in Pittsburgh, charged with forging certificates of deposit to purchase shares of stock in a bank there. He claimed to have been an innocent victim of the deception, and his explanation convinced the bank officers; the charges were dropped and Dillaye was later elected an officer of the bank. He later published a pamphlet about the incident. The New York Times suggested that Dillaye had only been charged at all because of the machinations of his political enemies.

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