Thomas A. Scott

Who was Thomas A. Scott?

Thomas Alexander Scott was an American businessperson, railroad executive, and an early robber baron industrialist.

He was the fourth president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, later the largest publicly traded corporation in the world. He became the U.S. Assistant Secretary of War in 1861, during the American Civil War. To further his railroad investments, he had a leading role in creating what became the Compromise of 1877, which marked the end to the federal interventions and civil rights efforts of the Reconstruction Era in the South.