Orville H. Platt (1827-1904)

Coolidge, Louis Arthur. An Old-Fashioned Senator: Orville H. Platt of Connecticut, the Story of a Life Unselfishly Devoted to the Public Service. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1910. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1879 at the age of fifty-two, Platt was a central figure in that body and in Connecticut politics until his death. This is an uncritical biography, but it is full of information about Connecticut's rela­tion to national politics during Platt's time.

Smith, Edwina Carol. "Conservatism in the Gilded Age: The Senatorial Career of Orville H. Platt." Doctoral dissertation. University of North Carolina, 1976. A study of political conservatism in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It deals with Platt's attitude about "the currency question, the pro­tective tariff, the problems of industrialization and government regulation . .., the role of government in various aspects of American life, reform and pro­test movements, and foreign expansion." (from the abstract)