Dwight May Sabin (April 25, 1843December 22, 1902) was an American politician who served as U.S. Senator from Minnesota and in the Minnesota Legislature. He is known for the business ventures of Seymour, Sabin & Co. and the Northwestern Car Company, highly successful enterprises dependent on the highly profitable prison labor contracts he had negotiated with the Minnesota State Government in the 1870s. His election to federal office, in 1883, came following an infamous prolonged dead-lock in the Minnesota State Senate, during which incumbent Senator William Windom failed of re-election following "the worst campaign in the known history of the state."

Horace, Dwight's father, of Windham County, Connecticut, had moved west to establish his own property near Marseille, Illinois, platted 1853 as a canal town in the expectation of the completion of the Illinois-Michigan Canal. Horace's enterprise was successful, but illness returned the Sabins to Connecticut by 1857, where the family moved into the Sabin's ancestral home, part of the original Connecticut New Roxbury Grant, and descended through the family from the area's earliest white settlers, circa 1686.

In 1862, following his grandfather's death, Sabin attended Phillips Academy, studying civil engineering and mathematics, leaving school after a year of coursework to enlist as a Union soldier in the American Civil War. A period review of his life and career from 1883 noted that he arrived at Gettysburg in July, 1863, "on the second day of the decisive and dreadful battle of the rebellion, at the very period when the only regiment from Minnesota in the Army of the Republic was behaving so gallantly on Cemetery Hill," but this Minnesota reference, and its supposed significance to Sabin, may simply have been a political nod to his recent election to the US Senate at the time of the piece's publication.

While in the Federal Army, Sabin served as aide to the "chief medical officer of General Pleasanton's Cavalry", until several months' "exposure in the field" brought on an unidentified pulmonary illness that took him from camp duty to a clerkship in "the Third Auditor's Office" (Auditor of the War Department) in the US Treasury Department in Washington, D.C.. When his father died in 1864 Sabin, just twenty, was discharged and returned to Connecticut to help his mother manage his father's estate. Sabin took on the management of the family property in Windham County, while his mother, accompanying his brother Jay, returned to Illinois to take on management of the Illinois farm. The next three years were spent "cutting his woodlands into lumber and disposing of the same". 1868 was the first year of record in which a warden protested the exploitative aspects of this system, arguing that, at the very least, "inmates be allowed to work for the benefit of the state rather than for private concerns." The firm began producing threshing machines in 1876, and soon could pride itself as the largest manufacturer of the world famous model "Minnesotan Chief" thresher. Profits topped three hundred thousand dollars by 1881.

By 1882, Sabin was the "prime organizer of the Northwestern Car Company, with capital of $5,000,000", (a coterie which included "'certain wealthy persons' representing large railroad interests"

Windon, in DC as this vote was cast, immediately got on a train and headed back to his state, but it was too late. Over the next weeks, a series of indeterminate votes was cast. On January 31, 1883, Sabin's name appeared on the ballots for the first time, receiving a surprising 17 votes. Just two weeks later, on February 17, Sabin would receive 81 votes, and take the election.

United States Senator from Minnesota

Sabin served from March 4, 1883, to March 3, 1889, in the 48th, 49th, and 50th congresses, chairman, Committee to Examine Branches of the Civil Service (Forty-ninth Congress), Committee on Railroads (Fiftieth Congress), and was involved in legislation regarding railroads, veterans pensions and the development of the Soo Locks (where one lock is named in his honor).

In character, he "made no pretense to oratory, and was not known as a speech-making senator, but rather a hard working member in the interest of his state, especially in the line of transportation."

In 1888 he was not renominated by his party and returned to his business pursuits. Sabin charged that bribery had impacted the vote, but these charges were never verified.

Personal life

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left|thumb|300x300px|Senator Dwight M Sabin Stillwater Residence, circa 1880

Sabin married twice, first, to Ellen Amelia Hutchins was the adoptive daughter of a doctor from Danielson, Connecticut, who married Dwight sometime between his return from his wartime service in D.C. and his departure for Minnesota. For their family, Dwight and Ellen adopted, first, the sisters Blanche and Ethel (children of John B. Raymond of Fargo, a former congressional delegate for the Dakotas.). Later they added a third child to their family, Ada Chambers, the young daughter of a Sabin relative.

"All Stillwater believed them to be a happy pair." "Socially, Mrs. Sabin is a most fascinating lady", the New York Times reported, "in Washington she gave weekly receptions which were among the most popular given by any lady in that city, and were attended by the most distinguished people." and been unstinting in their reports on his financial machinations, approached this sad domestic story from a widely sympathetic standpoint. This stood in high contrast other reports of the period, which painted a rather more dramatic picture of Mrs. Sabin, villainously committed against her will, "Senator Sabin has acted generously by her in his provisions for her present and future comfort." Neither Mrs. Sabin, or her friends and family, would oppose the suit. Sabin's conduct in the matter, "has been all that could be expected under the melancholy circumstances of the case." She was with Sabin in Chicago at the time of his death, "unexpected heart failure", on December 22, 1902, at the Auditorium Annex. near the home of daughter Ethel, now married to T.C. Phillips. The over-magnificent Sabin mansion was left empty after Mrs. Sabin returned to Duluth, and ultimately pulled down in 1918 for its timber.

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