Edward Pendleton was a nineteenth-century gambling service provider for the nation’s leaders. To get an idea of what he provided, just suppose that the mid-1990s proposal for a legalized casino within the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia had passed. Imagine that congressmen, cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, maybe the president himself, could come to the casino and be wined and dined, then offered credit for gambling at the tables. Imagine lobbyists circulating within the facility the day before a major vote in Congress or a major decision by the court. Imagine the opportunities to buy favors, to line the pockets of the mighty in exchange for policy outcomes. Well, it is not necessary to imagine. You need only read a history of Edward Pendleton and his Palace of Fortune located within walking distance of the houses of government in the District of Columbia through the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s. The facility at 14th and Pennsylvania Avenue, two blocks from the White House, became the favorite of the ruling classes. The president of the United States, James Buchanan, was a regular at the faro bank. The nation’s most important policymakers would wager at Pendleton’s faro bank and inevitably lose. They would then become indebted to the casino owner. He, of course, was a lobbyist. Actually, win or lose, he came out ahead. It is reported that in the twenty-six years that Pendleton ran the Palace of Fortune he was responsible for the passage of hundreds of bills, most of which were private bills providing favors for selected citizens. The casino was extremely luxurious, as the owner became a very rich man.
The casino was also the meeting place where abolitionists and slave-owning senators could come together on neutral ground. Many of the compromises that kept the Civil War from erupting until 1861 may have been reached over the tables of the Palace.
Pendleton married the daughter of one of the leading city architects of the District of Columbia. The couple became a dominant part of the social scene, well respected, as many other gamblers were not in other venues. When Edward Pendleton died in 1858 at the age of sixty-eight, his funeral was attended by the president and most leaders of Congress.
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