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Founders and Political Leaders - Part 2
BLAINE, James Gillespie, 1830-1893, statesman. Founding member of the Republican Party. Member of Congress 1862-1880. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 275-280; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 322-329; Congressional Globe)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BLAINE, James Gillespie, statesman, born in West Brownsville, Washington County, Pennsylvania, 31 January, 1830; died in the City of Washington, D. C., 27 January, 1893. He was a second son. On his father's side he inherited the hardy and energetic qualities of the Scotch-Irish blood. His great-grandfather, Ephraim Blaine, born 1741; died 1804, bore an honorable part in the revolutionary struggle, was an officer of the Pennsylvania line, a trusted friend of Washington, and during the last four years of the war served as the commissary-general of the northern department of his command. Possessed of ample means, he drew largely from his own private purse and enlisted the contributions of various friends for the maintenance of the army through the severe and memorable winter at Valley Forge. From the Cumberland Valley, where his ancestors had early settled and had been among the founders of Carlisle, Mr. Blaine's father moved to Washington County in 1818. He had inherited what was a fortune in those days, and had large landed possessions in western Pennsylvania; but their mineral wealth had not then been developed, and though relieved from poverty he was not endowed with affluence, and a large family made a heavy drain on his means. He was a man of liberal education, and had travelled in Europe and South America before settling down in western Pennsylvania, where he served as prothonotary. Mr. Blaine's mother, a woman of superior intelligence and force of character, was a devout Catholic; but her son adhered to the Presbyterian convictions and communion of his paternal Scotch-Irish ancestry. The early education of Mr. Blaine was sedulously cultivated. He had the advantage of excellent teachers at his own home, and for a part of the year 1841 he was at school in Lancaster, Ohio, where he lived in the family of his relative, Thomas Ewing, then secretary of the treasury. In association with Thomas Ewing, Jr., afterward a member of Congress, young Blaine began his preparation for college under the instruction of a thoroughly trained Englishman, William Lyons, brother of Lord Lyons, and at the age of thirteen he entered Washington College in his native county, where he was graduated in 1847. It is said that when nine years old he was able to recite Plutarch's lives. He had a marked taste for historical studies, and excelled in literature and mathematics. In the literary society he displayed the political aptitude and capacity that distinguished his subsequent career. Sometime after graduation he became a teacher in the western military Institute, at Blue Lick Springs, Kentucky Here he formed the acquaintance of Miss Harriet Stanwood, of Maine, who was connected with a seminary for young ladies at the neighboring town of Millersburg, and to whom within a few months he was married. He soon returned to Pennsylvania, where, after some study of the law, he became a teacher in the Pennsylvania institution for the blind at Philadelphia. The instruction was chiefly oral. The young teacher had charge of the higher classes in literature and science, and the principal has left a record that his “brilliant mental powers were exactly qualified to enlighten and instruct the interesting minds before him.” After an association of two years with this institution, he moved in 1854 to Augusta, Maine, where he has since made his home. Purchasing a half interest in the Kennebec “Journal,” he became its editor, his ready faculty and trenchant writing being peculiarly adapted to this field. He speedily made his impress, and within three years was a master spirit in the politics of the state.
He engaged in the movement for the formation of the Democratic Party with all his energy, and his earnest and incisive discussion of the rising conflict between freedom and slavery attracted wide attention. In 1856 he was a delegate to the first Republican National Convention, which nominated General Frémont for the presidency. His report at a public meeting on his return home, where he spoke at the outset with hesitation and embarrassment, and advanced to confident and fervid utterance, first illustrated his capacity on the platform and gave him standing as a public speaker. The next year he broadened his journalistic work by taking the editorship of the Portland “Advertiser”; but his editorial service ended when his parliamentary career began. In 1858 he was elected to the legislature, remaining a member through successive annual re-elections for four years, and serving the last two as speaker. At the beginning of the Civil War Mr. Blaine gained distinction not only for his parliamentary skill, but for his forensic power in the debates that grew out of that crisis. The same year that he was elected to the legislature he became chairman of the state committee, a position which he continued to hold uninterruptedly for twenty years, and in which he led in shaping and directing every political campaign of his party in Maine.
In 1862 Mr. Blaine was elected to Congress, where in one branch or the other he served for eighteen years. To the house he was chosen for seven successive terms. His growth in position and influence was rapid and unbroken. In his earlier years he made few elaborate addresses. During his first term his only extended speech was an argument in favor of the assumption of the state war debts by the general government, and in demonstration of the ability of the north to carry the war to a successful conclusion. But he gradually took an active part in the running discussions, and soon acquired high repute as a facile and effective debater. For this form of contention his ready resources and alert faculties were singularly fitted. He was bold in attack, quick in repartee, and apt in illustration. His close study of political history, his accurate knowledge of the record and relations of public men, and his unfailing memory, gave him great advantages. As a member of the committee on post-offices, he was largely instrumental in securing the introduction of the system of postal cars. He earnestly sustained all measures for the vigorous prosecution of the war, but sought to make them judicious and practical. In this spirit he supported the bill for a draft, but opposed absolute conscription. He contended that it should be relieved by provisions for commutation and substitution, and urged that an inexorable draft had never been resorted to but once, even under the absolutism of Napoleon. At the same time he enforced the duty of sustaining and strengthening the armies in the field by using all the resources of the nation, and strongly advocated the enrolment act. The measures for the reconstruction of the states that had been in rebellion largely engrossed the attention of Congress from 1865 till 1869, and Mr. Blaine bore a prominent part in their discussion and in the work of framing them. The basis of representation upon which the states should be readmitted was the first question to be determined. Thaddeus Stevens, chairman of the committee on reconstruction, had proposed that representation should be apportioned according to the number of legal voters. Mr. Blaine strenuously objected to this proposition, and urged that population, instead of voters, should be the basis. He submitted a constitutional amendment providing that “representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which shall be included within this union according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by taking the whole number of persons, except those whose political rights or privileges are denied or abridged by the constitution of any state on account of race or color.” He advocated this plan on the ground that, while the other basis of voters would accomplish the object of preventing the south from securing representation for the blacks unless the blacks were made voters, yet it would make a radical change in the apportionment for the northern states where the ratio of voters to population differed very widely in different sections, varying from a minimum of 19 per cent. to a maximum of 58 per cent. The result of the discussion was a general abandonment of the theory that apportionment should be based on voters, and the 14th amendment to the constitution, as finally adopted, embodied Mr. Blaine's proposition in substance.
On 6 February, 1867, Mr. Stevens reported the reconstruction bill. It divided the states lately in rebellion into five military districts, and practically established military government therein. The civil tribunals were made subject to military control. While the majority evinced a readiness to accept the bill, Mr. Blaine declared his unwillingness to support any measure that would place the south under military government, if it did not at the same time prescribe the methods by which the people of a state could by their own action reëstablish civil government. He accordingly proposed an amendment providing that when any one of the late so-called Confederate states should assent to the 14th amendment to the constitution and should establish equal and impartial suffrage without regard to race or color, and when Congress should approve its action, it should be entitled to representation, and the provisions for military government should become inoperative. This proposition came to be known as the Blaine amendment. In advocating it, Mr. Blaine expressed the belief that the true interpretation of the election of 1800 was that, in addition to the proposed constitutional amendment — the 14th — impartial suffrage should be the basis of reconstruction, and he urged the wisdom of declaring the terms at once. The application of the previous question ruled out the Blaine amendment, but it was renewed in the Senate and finally carried through both branches, and under it reconstruction was completed.
The theory that the public debt should be paid in greenbacks developed great strength in the summer of 1867 while Mr. Blaine was absent in Europe. On his return at the opening of the next session he made an extended speech against the doctrine, and was the first man in Congress to give utterance to this opposition. The long unsettled question of protecting naturalized American citizens while abroad attracted special attention at this time. Costello, Warren, Burke, and other Irish-Americans had been arrested in England, on the charge of complicity in Fenian plots. Costello had made a speech in 1865 in New York, which was regarded as treasonable by the British government, and he was treated as a British subject and tried under an old law on this accusation. His plea of American citizenship was overruled, and he was convicted and sentenced to sixteen years' penal servitude. Mr. Blaine, who, with other American statesmen, resisted the English doctrine of perpetual allegiance, and maintained that a naturalized American was entitled to the same protection abroad that would be given to a native American, took active part in pressing these questions upon public attention, and, as the result of the agitation, Costello was released. The discussion of these cases led to the treaty of 1870, in which Great Britain abandoned the doctrine of “once a subject always a subject,” and accepted the American principle of equal rights and protection for adopted and for native citizens. Mr. Blaine was chosen speaker of the House of Representatives in 1869, and served by successive reelections for six years. His administration of the speakership is commonly regarded as one of the most brilliant and successful in the annals of the house. He had rare aptitude and equipment for the duties of presiding officer; and his complete mastery of parliamentary law, his dexterity and physical endurance, his rapid despatch of business, and his firm and impartial spirit, were recognized on all sides. Though necessarily exercising a powerful influence upon the course of legislation, he seldom left the chair to mingle in the contests of the floor. On one of those rare occasions, in March, 1871, he had a sharp tilt with General Butler, who had criticised him for being the author of the resolution providing for an investigation into alleged outrages perpetrated upon loyal citizens of the south, and for being chiefly instrumental in securing its adoption by the Republican caucus. The political revulsion of 1874 placed the Democrats in control of the house, and Mr. Blaine became the leader of the minority. The session preceding the presidential contest of 1876 was a period of stormy and vehement contention. A general amnesty bill was brought forward, removing the political disabilities of participants in the rebellion which had been imposed by the 14th amendment to the constitution. Mr. Blaine moved to amend by making an exception of Jefferson Davis, and supported the proposition in an impassioned speech. After asserting the great magnanimity of the government, and pointing out how far amnesty had already been carried, he defined the ground of his proposed exception. The reason was, not that Davis was the chief of the confederacy, but that, as Mr. Blaine affirmed, he was the author, “knowingly, deliberately, guiltily, and wilfully, of the gigantic murders and crimes of Andersonville.” In fiery words Mr. Blaine proceeded to declare that no military atrocities in history had exceeded those for which Davis was thus responsible. His outburst naturally produced deep excitement in the house and throughout the country. If Mr. Blaine's object as a political leader was to arouse partisan feeling and activity preparatory to the presidential struggle, he succeeded. An acrid debate followed. Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia, assumed the lead on the other side, and not only defended Davis against the accusations, which he pronounced unfounded, but preferred similar charges against the treatment of southern prisoners in the north. In reply, Mr. Blaine turned upon Mr. Hill with the citation of a resolution introduced by him in the Confederate Senate, providing that every soldier or officer of the United States captured on the soil of the Confederate states should be presumed to have come with intent to incite insurrection, and should suffer the penalty of death. This episode arrested universal attention, and gave Mr. Blaine a still stronger hold as a leader of his party.
He now became the subject of a violent personal assault. Charges were circulated that he had received $64,000 from the Union Pacific Railroad company for some undefined services. On 24 April, 1876, he rose to a personal explanation in the house and made his answer. He produced letters from the officers of the company and from the bankers who were said to have negotiated the draft, in which they declared that there had never been any such transaction, and that Mr. Blaine had never received a dollar from the company. Mr. Blaine proceeded to add that the charge had reappeared in the form of an assertion that he had received bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad as a gratuity, and that these bonds had been sold through the Union Pacific Company for his benefit. To this he responded that he never had any such bonds except at the market price, and that, instead of deriving any profit from them, he had incurred a large pecuniary loss. A few days later another charge was made to the effect that he had received as a gift certain bonds of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, and had been a party to a suit concerning them in the courts of Kansas. To this he answered by producing evidence that his name had been confounded with that of a brother, who was one of the early settlers of Kansas, and who had bought stock in the Kansas Pacific before Mr. Blaine had even been nominated for Congress.
On 2 May a resolution was adopted in the house to investigate an alleged purchase by the Union Pacific Railroad Company, at an excessive price, of certain bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad. It soon became evident that the investigation was aimed at Mr. Blaine. An extended business correspondence on his part with Warren Fisher, of Boston, running through years and relating to various transactions, had fallen into the hands of a clerk named Mulligan, and it was alleged that the production of this correspondence would confirm the imputations against Mr. Blaine. When Mulligan was summoned to Washington, Mr. Blaine possessed himself of the letters, together with a memorandum that contained a full index and abstract. On 5 June he rose to a personal explanation, and, after denying the power of the house to compel the production of his private papers, and his willingness to go to any extremity in defence of his rights, he declared his purpose to reserve nothing. Holding up the letters he exclaimed: “Thank God, I am not ashamed to show them. There is the very original package. And with some sense of humiliation, with a mortification I do not attempt to conceal, with a sense of outrage which I think any man in my position would feel, I invite the confidence of forty-four millions of my countrymen, while I read those letters from this desk.” The demonstration closed with a dramatic scene. Josiah Caldwell, one of the originators of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad, who had full knowledge of the whole transaction, was travelling in Europe, and both sides were seeking to communicate with him. After finishing the reading of the letters, Mr. Blaine turned to the chairman of the committee and demanded to know whether he had received any despatch from Mr. Caldwell. Receiving an evasive answer, Mr. Blaine asserted, as within his own knowledge, that the chairman had received such a despatch, “completely and absolutely exonerating me from this charge, and you have suppressed it.” A profound sensation was created, and General Garfield said: “I have been a long time in Congress, and never saw such a scene in the house.”
The Republican National Convention was now at hand, and Mr. Blaine was the most prominent candidate for the presidential nomination. He had a larger body of enthusiastic friends than any other leader of his party, and the stirring events of the past few months had intensified their devotion. On 11 June, the Sunday preceding the convention, just as he was entering church at Washington, he was prostrated with the extreme heat, and his illness for a time created wide apprehension. The advocates of his nomination, however, remained unshaken in their support. On the first ballot he received 285 votes out of a total of 754, the remainder being divided among Senator Morton, Secretary Bristow, Senator Conkling, Governor Hayes, and several others. On the seventh ballot his vote rose to 351, lacking only 28 of a majority, but a union of the supporters of all the other candidates gave Governor Hayes 384 and secured his nomination. Immediately after the convention, on the resignation of Senator Morrill to accept the secretaryship of the treasury, Mr. Blaine was appointed senator to fill the unexpired term, and in the following winter he was chosen by the legislature for the full ensuing term. In the Senate he engaged in the discussion of current questions. He opposed the creation of the electoral commission for the settlement of the disputed presidential election of 1876, on the ground that Congress did not itself possess the power that it proposed to confer on the commission. He held that President Hayes's southern policy surrendered too much of what had been gained through reconstruction, and contended that the validity of his own title involved the maintenance of the state governments in South Carolina and Louisiana, which rested on the same popular vote. On the currency question he always assumed a pronounced position. While still a member of the house, in February, 1876, he had made an elaborate speech on the national finances and against any perpetuation of an irredeemable paper currency, and soon after entering the Senate, when the subject was brought forward, he took strong ground against the deterioration of the silver coinage. He strenuously opposed the Bland bill, and, when its passage was seen to be inevitable, sought to amend it by providing that the dollar should contain 425 grains of standard silver, instead of 412½ grains. He favored a bi-metallic currency, and equally resisted the adoption of the single gold standard and the depreciation of silver. Measures for the development and protection of American shipping early engaged his attention. In 1878 he advocated the establishment of a line of mail steamers to Brazil, and unhesitatingly urged the application of a subsidy to this object. On frequent occasions he recurred to the subject, contending that Great Britain and France had built up their commerce by liberal aid to steamship lines, and that a similar policy would produce similar results here. He argued that Congress had endowed the railroad system with $500,000,000 of money, which had produced $5,000,000,000 to the country, and that the policy ought not to stop when it reached the sea.
In March, 1879, Congress was deeply agitated by a conflict over the appropriation bills. The Democrats, being in control of both houses, had refused to pass the necessary measures for the support of the government unless accompanied by a proviso prohibiting the presence of troops at any place where an election was being held. The Republicans resisted this attempt, and, in consequence of the failure of the bills at the regular session, the president was compelled to call an extra session. Mr. Blaine was among the foremost in the Senate in defending the executive prerogative and in opposing what he denounced as legislative coercion, He pointed out how few troops there were in all the states of the south, and said: “I take no risk in stating, I make bold to declare, that this issue on the troops being a false one, being one without foundation, conceals the true issue, which is simply to get rid of the federal presence at federal elections, to get rid of the civil power of the United States in the election of representatives to the Congress of the United States.” He proceeded to characterize the proposition to withhold appropriations except upon the condition of executive compliance as revolutionary, saying: “I call it the audacity of revolution for any senator or representative, or any caucus of senators or representatives, to get together and say: ‘We will have this legislation, or we will stop the great departments of the government.’ ” The resistance was unsuccessful, and the army appropriation bill finally passed with the proviso. Mr. Blaine at all times defended the sanctity of the ballot, and in December, 1878, pending a resolution presented by himself for an inquiry into certain alleged frauds in the south, made a powerful plea as to the injustice wrought by a denial of the franchise to the blacks. When the attempt was made to override the plain result of the election of 1879 in Maine, and to set up a state government in defiance of the popular vote, Mr. Blaine took charge of the effort to establish the rightful government, and through his vigorous measures the scheme of usurpation was defeated and abandoned. On the Chinese question he early declared himself decidedly in favor of restricting their immigration. In a speech on 14 February, 1879, when the subject came before the Senate, he argued that there were only two courses: that the Chinese must be excluded or fully admitted into the family of citizens; that the latter was as impracticable as it was dangerous; that they could not be assimilated with our people or institutions; and that it was a duty to protect the free laborer of America against the servile laborer of China.
As the presidential convention of 1880 approached, it was apparent that Mr. Blaine retained the same support that had adhered to him so tenaciously four years before. The contest developed into an earnest and prolonged struggle between his friends and those who advocated a third term for General Grant. The convention, one of the most memorable in American history, lasted through six days, and there were thirty-six ballots. On the first the vote stood: Grant 304, Blaine 284, Sherman 93, Edmunds 34, Washburne 30, Windom 10, Garfield 1. On the final ballot the friends of Blaine and Sherman united on General Garfield, who received 399 votes to 306 for Grant, and was nominated. On his election, Mr. Blaine was tendered and accepted the office of Secretary of State. He remained at the head of the department less than ten months, and his effective administration was practically limited by the assassination of President Garfield to four. Within that period, however, he began several important undertakings. His foreign policy had two principal objects. The first was to secure and preserve peace throughout this continent. The second was to cultivate close commercial relations and increase our trade with the various countries of North and South America. The accomplishment of the first object was preliminary and essential to the attainment of the second, and, in order to promote it, he projected a peace Congress to be held at Washington, to which all the independent powers of North and South America were to be invited. His plan contemplated the cultivation of such a friendly understanding on the part of the powers as would permanently avert the horrors of war either through the influence of pacific counsels or the acceptance of impartial arbitration. Incidentally, it assumed that the assembling of their representatives at Washington would open the way to such relations as would inure to the commercial advantage of this country. The project, though already determined, was delayed by the fatal shot at Garfield, and the letter of invitation was finally issued on 29 November, 1881, fixing 24 November, 1882, as the date for the proposed Congress. On 19 December Mr. Blaine retired from the cabinet, and within three weeks his successor had reversed his policy and the plan was abandoned, after the invitation had been accepted by all the American powers except two.
When Mr. Blaine entered the Department of state, war was raging between Chili and Peru, and he sought to exercise the good offices of our government, first, for the restoration of peace, and, second, to mitigate the consequences of the crushing defeat sustained by Peru. Other efforts failing, he despatched William Henry Trescott on a special mission to offer the friendly services of the United States; but this attempt, like the one for the Peace Congress, was interrupted and frustrated by his retirement from the department. His brief service was also signalized by an important correspondence with the British government concerning the modification of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, making formal proposal for the abrogation of certain clauses which were not in harmony with the rights of the United States as secured by convention with the Colombian republic, he urged that the treaty, by prohibiting the use of land forces and of fortifications, without any protection against superior naval power, practically conceded to Great Britain the control of any interoceanic canal that might be constructed across the isthmus, and he proposed that every part of the treaty which forbids the United States fortifying the canal and holding the political control of it in conjunction with the country in which it is located should be cancelled. To the answer of the British government that the treaty was an engagement which should be maintained and respected, Mr. Blaine replied that it could not be regarded as a conclusive determination of the question; that since its adoption it had been the subject of repeated negotiations between the two countries; that the British government had itself proposed to refer its doubtful clauses to arbitration; and that it had long been recognized as a source of increasing embarrassment. Throughout the correspondence Mr. Blaine insisted in the firmest tone that “it is the fixed purpose of the United States to consider the isthmus canal question as an American question, to be dealt with and decided by the American governments.”
Upon the retirement of Mr. Blaine from the State Department in December, 1881, he was, for the first time in twenty-three years, out of public station. He soon entered upon the composition of an elaborate historical work entitled “Twenty Years of Congress,” of which the first 200 pages give a succinct review of the earlier political history of the country, followed by a more detailed narrative of the eventful period from Lincoln to Garfield. The first volume was published in April, 1884, and the second in January, 1886 (Norwich, Connecticut). The work had a very wide sale, and secured general approval for its impartial spirit and brilliant style. When the Republican National Convention of 1884 met at Chicago, it was clear that Mr. Blaine had lost none of the hold upon the enthusiasm of his party. On the first ballot he received 334½ votes, President Arthur 278, Senator Edmunds 93, Senator Logan 63½, and the rest were scattering. His vote kept gaining till the fourth ballot, when he received 541 out of a total of 813 and was nominated. The canvass that followed was one of peculiar bitterness. Mr. Blaine took the stump in Ohio, Indiana, New York, and other states, and in a series of remarkable speeches, chiefly devoted to upholding the policy of protection to American industry, deepened the popular impression of his intellectual power. The election turned upon the result in New York, which was lost to Mr. Blaine by 1,047 votes, whereupon he promptly resumed the work upon his history, which had been interrupted by the canvass. After the result had been determined, he made, at his home in Augusta, a speech in which he arraigned the Democratic Party for carrying the election by suppressing the Republican vote in the southern states, and cited the figures of the returns to show that, on an average, only one half or one third as many votes had been cast for each presidential elector or member of Congress elected in the south as for each elected in the north. This speech had a startling effect, and attracted universal attention, though Mr. Blaine had set forth the same thing in a speech that he made in Congress as long before that time as 11 December, 1878.
Mr. Blaine took an active part in the Maine canvass of 1886, opening it, 24 August, in a speech at Sebago Lake devoted chiefly to the questions of the fisheries, the tariff, and the third-party prohibition movement. The fishery controversy had acquired renewed interest and importance from recent seizures of American fishing-vessels on the Canadian Coast, and Mr. Blaine reviewed its history at length, and sharply criticised the attitude and action of the administration. He presented the issue of protection against free-trade as the foremost one between the two parties; and, with regard to prohibition, insisted that there was no warrant or reason for a third-party movement in Maine, because the Democratic Party had enacted and enforced a prohibitory law in that state. His succeeding speeches, continued throughout the canvass, followed the same line.
At the Republican National Convention at Chicago, in 1888, Mr. Blaine's name was prominently used in connection with the nomination, but he sent from Italy a telegraphic message positively declining to allow it to be so used. On the election of President Harrison, the nominee of the convention, Mr. Blaine was again called to the cabinet as Secretary of State. He was active in forwarding the Pan-American Congress, a conference of representatives of the independent governments of North and South America, held in Washington, and also gave his attention to the international conference for the adoption of regulations to govern vessels at sea. The McKinley tariff measure was supplemented, largely through his suggestions, by treaties of reciprocity with various nations, and he was also actively concerned in the diplomatic treatment of the seal-fishery dispute, the recognition of the newly organized Brazilian republic, the trouble with Italy over the lynching of alleged Italian subjects in New Orleans, the Civil War in Chili, and a dispute with Spain regarding the rights of American missionaries in the Caroline Islands.
On 4 June, 1892, Mr. Blaine suddenly resigned his portfolio, and three days later, at the Republican National convention in Minneapolis, his name was once more conspicuous among those of the presidential candidates. His resignation caused much speculation, and many persons coupled it with his subsequent candidacy for the presidential nomination; but he himself gave as his reason that he desired to rest. His health now failed rapidly, and he took no more active interest in public life, his death following soon afterward. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 275-280.
Blair, Austin
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BLAIR, Austin, governor of Michigan, born in Caroline, Tompkins County, New York, 8 February, 1818. He was educated at Hamilton and Union Colleges, being graduated at the latter in 1839, studied law, and moved to Michigan. He was county clerk of Eaton County, member of the legislature in 1846, and prosecuting attorney of Jackson County from 1852 till 1854. He was state senator from 1854 until 1856, and from 1861 till 1865 was governor of the state, in which office he was active in his support of the national government. In 1866 he was elected as a Republican to Congress, where he was a member of the committees on foreign affairs, rules, and militia, and was twice re-elected in succession, serving on the committee on land-claims. In 1873 he resumed law practice in Jackson, Michigan Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 280.
Blair, Francis Preston
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BLAIR, Francis Preston, statesman, born in Abingdon, Virginia, 12 April, 1791; died in Silver Spring, Maryland, 18 October, 1876. He was educated at Transylvania University, Kentucky, and studied law, but never practised. He early took part in politics, and in 1824 supported Henry Clay for the presidency. He dissented, however, from Clay's views in relation to the United States Bank, and in 1828 became an ardent Jackson man. In 1829 an article in a Kentucky paper by Mr. Blair against the nullification movement attracted the president's attention, and he invited the writer to establish a journal at Washington to support the union. This led to the establishment of the “Globe,” which was the recognized organ of the Democratic Party until 1845, when President Polk, against General Jackson's published protest, moved Mr. Blair from the management. This action signified the triumph of Calhoun and his adherents over the Jackson or national democracy. President Polk offered Mr. Blair the Spanish mission, which was declined. He supported Mr. Van Buren in 1848, and promoted the reunion of the party, by which Pierce's election was secured in 1852. After the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854, Mr. Blair was active in the organization of the Democratic Party, presiding over the Pittsburg Convention of 1856 and drawing up the platform adopted there. After peremptorily refusing to allow his own name to be used, he favored the nomination of Colonel Frémont for the presidency. Mr. Blair was also one of the leaders in the Chicago Convention of 1860, which nominated Lincoln, and, after the election, of the latter, had much influence with his administration. In 1864 Mr. Blair conceived the idea that, through his personal acquaintance with man of the Confederate leaders, he might be able to effect a peace. Without telling the president of his intention, he asked for a pass to the south, and had several interviews with Jefferson Davis and others. His efforts finally led to the unsatisfactory “peace conference” of 3 February, 1865. After Lincoln's death, Mr. Blair's opposition to the reconstruction measures and to the general policy of the Republicans led to his co-operation with the Democratic Party, though, his counsels were disregarded by its leaders till 1876, when Mr. Tilden was nominated for the presidency. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 280.
Blair, Francis Preston
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BLAIR, Francis Preston, soldier, born in Lexington, Kentucky, 19 February, 1821; died in St. Louis, Missouri, 8 July, 1875, was son of Francis P. Blair noticed above. After graduation at Princeton, in 1841, he studied law in Washington and was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1843, and began to practice in St. Louis. In 1845 he went for his health to the Rocky Mountains with a company of trappers, and when the war with Mexico began he enlisted in the army as a private. After the War he returned to the practice of his profession in St. Louis. In 1848 he joined the Free-Soil branch of the Democratic Party, was for a time editor of the “Missouri Democrat,” and from 1852 till 1856 was a member of the Missouri legislature. In 1856 he joined the newly organized Republican, Party, and was elected to Congress, where, in 1857, he spoke in favor of colonizing the Negroes of the United States in Central America. In 1858 the Democratic candidate for Congress was returned. Mr. Blair successfully contested the seat, but immediately resigned, and was defeated in the election that followed. He was, however, elected again in 1860 and in 1862. Soon after the South Carolina secession Convention was called, in November, 1861, Mr. Blair, at a meeting of the Republican leaders in St. Louis, showed the necessity of immediate effort to prevent the seizure by the state authorities of the St. Louis Arsenal, containing 65,000 stand of arms belonging to the government. He became the head of the military organization then formed, which guarded the arsenal from that time; and it was at his suggestion that the state troops under General Frost were captured on 10 May, 1861, without orders from Washington. It is claimed that he thus saved Missouri and Kentucky to the union. Entering the army as a colonel of volunteers, he was made brigadier-general 7 August, 1861, and major-general 29 November, 1862, resigning his seat in Congress in 1863. He commanded a division in the Vicksburg Campaign, led his men in the battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, and was at the head of the 17th Corps during Sherman's Campaigns in 1864–5, including the march to the sea. In 1866 he was nominated by President Johnson as collector of internal revenue at St. Louis, and afterward as minister to Austria; but in each case, his opposition to the reconstruction measures led to his rejection by the Senate. He was afterward commissioner of the Pacific Railroad. His dissatisfaction with the Party of the Republicans led him to return to the Democratic Party, and in 1868 he was its candidate for the vice-presidency. In January, 1871, General Blair again entered the legislature of Missouri, and in the same month he was elected to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate, where he remained until 1873, when he was a candidate for re-election, but was defeated. At the time of his death he was state superintendent of insurance. He published “The Life and Public Services of General William O. Butler” (1848). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 281.
Blair, Montgomery, 1813-1883, statesman, attorney, jurist, abolitionist, Postmaster General of the United States. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 282; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, p. 340)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BLAIR, Montgomery, statesman, born in Franklin County, Kentucky, 10 May, 1813; died in Silver Spring, Maryland, 27 July, 1883. He was a son of Francis P. Blair, Sr., was graduated at West Point in 1835, and, after serving in the Seminole War, resigned his commission on 20 May, 1836. He then studied law, and, after his admission to the bar in 1839, began practice in St. Louis. He was appointed U. S. District attorney for Missouri, and in 1842 was elected mayor of St. Louis. He was raised to the bench as judge of the court of common pleas in 1843, but resigned in 1849. He moved to Maryland in 1852, and in 1855 was appointed U. S. solicitor in the court of claims. He was moved from this office by President Buchanan in 1858, having left the Democratic Party on the repeal of the Missouri compromise. In 1857 he acted as counsel for the plaintiff in the celebrated Dred Scott case. He presided over the Maryland Republican Convention in 1860, and in 1861 was appointed postmaster-general by President Lincoln. It is said that he alone of Mr. Lincoln's cabinet opposed the surrender of Fort Sumter, and held his resignation upon the issue. As postmaster-general he prohibited the sending of disloyal papers through the mails, and introduced various reforms, such as money-orders, free delivery in cities, and postal railroad cars. In 1864 Mr. Blair, who was not altogether in accord with the policy of the administration, told the president that he would resign whenever the latter thought it necessary, and on 23 September Mr. Lincoln, in a friendly letter, accepted his offer. After this Mr. Blair acted with the Democratic Party, and in 1876-'7 vigorously attacked Mr. Hayes's title to the office of president. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 282.
Blow, Henry Taylor, 1817-1875, statesman, diplomat. Active in pre-Civil War anti-slavery movement. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1863-1867, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, p. 297; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 443-444; Congressional Globe)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BLOW, Henry Taylor, statesman, born in Southampton County, Virginia, 15 July, 1817; died in Saratoga, New York, 11 September, 1875. He went to Missouri in 1830, and was graduated at St. Louis University. He then engaged in the drug business and in lead-mining, in which he was successful. Before the Civil War he took a prominent part in the anti-slavery movement, and served four years in the state senate. In 1861 he was appointed minister to Venezuela, but resigned in less than a year. He was a Republican member of Congress from 1863 till 1867, and served on the committee of ways and means. He was minister to Brazil from 1869 till 1871, and was appointed one of the commissioners of the District of Columbia in 1874. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 297.
Blunt, Joseph, New York
Boutwell, George Sewall, 1818-1905, statesman, lawyer. 20th Governor of Massachusetts. Helped organize the Republican Party. Member of Congress, 1862-1868. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senator. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Secretary of the Treasury under President Ulysses S. Grant. Supported African American citizenship and voting rights during Reconstruction. Important leader serving on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which framed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 331-332; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 489-490; Congressional Globe; Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 348)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BOUTWELL, George Sewall, statesman, born in Brookline, Massachusetts, 28 January, 1818. His early life was spent on his father's farm until, in 1835, he became a merchant's clerk in Groton, Massachusetts He was afterward admitted to partnership, and remained in business there until 1855. In 1836 he began by himself to study law, and was admitted to the bar, but did not enter into active practice for many years. He also began a course of reading, by which he hoped to make up for his want of a college education. He entered politics as a supporter of Van Buren in 1840, and between 1842 and 1851 was seven times chosen as a Democrat to the state legislature, where he soon became recognized as the leader of his party. In 1844, 1846, and 1848 he was defeated as a candidate for Congress, and in 1849 and 1850 he was the Democratic nominee for governor with no better success; but he was finally elected in 1851 and again in 1852 by a coalition with the Free-Soil Party. In 1849-'50 he was state bank commissioner; in 1853 a member of the state constitutional convention. After the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854 he assisted in organizing the Democratic Party, with which he has since acted. In 1860 he was a member of the Chicago Convention which nominated Lincoln, and in February, 1861, was a delegate to the Washington peace conference. President Lincoln invited him to organize the new department of internal revenue in 1862, and he was its first commissioner, serving from July, 1862, till March, 1863. In 1862 he was chosen a member of Congress from Massachusetts, and twice re-elected. In February, 1868, he made a speech advocating the impeachment of President Johnson, was chosen chairman of the committee appointed to report articles of impeachment, and became one of the seven managers of the trial. In March, 1869, he entered President Grant's cabinet as secretary of the treasury, where he opposed diminution of taxation and favored a large reduction of the national debt. In 1870 Congress, at his recommendation, passed an act providing for the funding of the national debt and authorizing the selling of certain bonds, but not an increase of the debt. Secretary Boutwell attempted to do this by means of a syndicate, but expended more than half of one per cent., in which he was accused of violating the law. The house Committee of ways and means afterward absolved him from this charge. In March, 1873, he resigned and took his seat as a U. S. Senator from Massachusetts, having been chosen to fill the vacancy caused by the election of Henry Wilson to the vice-presidency. In 1877 he was appointed by President Hayes to codify and edit the statutes at large. Mr. Boutwell was for six years an overseer of Harvard, and for five years secretary of the Massachusetts state board of education, preparing the elaborate reports of that body. He afterward opened a law office in Washington, D. C. He is the author of “Educational Topics and Institutions” (Boston, 1859); a “Manual of the United States Direct and Revenue Tax” (1863); “Decisions on the Tax Law” (New York, 1863); “Tax-Payer's Manual” (Boston, 1865); a volume of “Speeches and Papers” (1867); and “Why I am a Republican” (Hartford, Connecticut, 1884). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 331-332.
Bovey, A. E.
Bowen, Thomas M.
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BOWEN, Thomas M., senator, born in Iowa, near the present site of Burlington, 26 October, 1835. He was admitted to the bar at the age of eighteen, and began practice in Wayne County, where he was elected to the legislature in 1856. In 1858 he moved to Kansas. In June, 1861, he joined the volunteer army as captain, and subsequently he raised the 13th Kansas Infantry and commanded it until the end of the war, receiving the brevet of brigadier general, and having command of a brigade during the last two years of hostilities on the frontier, an afterward with the 7th Army Corps. He was a delegate from Kansas to the National Republican Convention of 1864. After the war he settled in Arkansas and was president of the constitutional convention of that state, and for four years a justice of the state supreme court. In 1871 he accepted the appointment of governor of Idaho territory, but resigned, returned to Arkansas, and was a candidate for U.S. Senator in opposition to S. W. Dorsey, of the same party, who defeated him in an open contest before the legislature. In January, 1870, he moved to Colorado, and resumed the practice of the law. When the state government was organized in 1876, he was elected a district judge, and was four years on the bench. He afterward engaged largely in mining operations. In 1882 he was elected to the state legislature, and served as chairman of the Committee of ways and means, until he was elected to the U. S. Senate, where he took his seat on 3 December, 1883. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 337.
Brinkerhoff, Judge
Boyd, Sempronius Hamilton, born 1828, lawyer, soldier. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Colonel, 24th Missouri Volunteers. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, p. 341; Congressional Globe)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BOYD, Sempronius Hamilton, lawyer, born in Williamson County, Tennessee, 28 May, 1828. He received an academic education at Springfield, Missouri, after which he studied law. In 1855 he was admitted to the bar and practised in Springfield, where he became clerk, attorney, and twice mayor. During the Civil War he was colonel of the 24th Missouri Volunteers, a regiment which he raised, and which was known as the “Lyon Legion.” In 1863 he was elected as representative in Congress from Missouri. Afterward, resuming his profession, he was appointed judge of the 14th judicial circuit of Missouri. He was a delegate to the Baltimore Convention in 1864, and in 1868 elected to Congress, serving until 3 March, 1871. Since then he has spent a quiet life in Missouri, devoting his time partly to the practice of his profession and partly to stock-raising. The Springfield wagon factory and the first national bank of Springfield were founded by him. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 341.
Bradley, Joseph P.
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BRADLEY, Joseph P., jurist, born in Berne, Albany County, New York, 14 March, 1813. He is of English descent. His earliest ancestor in the United States was Francis Bradley, who was a member of Governor Eaton's family in '' Haven, Connecticut, in 1650, and moved to Fairfield in the same state in 1660. From Francis Bradley the judge is the sixth in line. In 1791 the family moved to Berne. His father was Philo Bradley, and his mother was Mercy Gardiner, of a Newport, Rhode Island, family. The father was a farmer, and had a library containing historical and mathematical works. Joseph was the eldest of eleven children, and worked on the farm until he reached the age of sixteen. His opportunities for obtaining an education consisted principally in his attendance, three or four months in each year, at a country school when he was between the ages of five and fourteen; but he made constant use of his father's library, and his attainments must have been very considerable. He taught a country school every winter from his sixteenth year till his twenty-first. During this period he also practised surveying occasionally for the neighboring farmers. His love of study attracted the attention of the clergyman of the village, who offered to prepare him for college. This invitation he accepted, and at the age of twenty Mr. Bradley entered Rutgers, where he was graduated with honor in 1836, unusually distinguished as a mathematician. After devoting six months to teaching, he began the study of law with Arthur Gifford at Newark, New Jersey, and was admitted to the bar in November, 1839. In May, 1840, he opened an office in Newark, where he continued in practice thirty years, until his appointment to be a justice of the Supreme Court. He was engaged in many of the most important and difficult cases that arose in the New Jersey courts and in the courts of the United States for that district, and his services as a counsellor were sought in a multitude of other business transactions. His professional career was attended throughout with great success. In 1860 he argued the celebrated New Jersey bridge case in the Supreme Court of the United States with a power and cogency that were long remembered. During many years he was a director and principal counsellor of the New Jersey, Trenton, and Philadelphia, and of the Camden and Amboy Railroad Companies, and his influence was exerted to induce those companies to yield, in favor of the public, monopolies granted to them by the legislature, but odious to the community at large. From 1857 till 1863 he was the actuary of the Mutual Benefit Insurance Company of Newark, and from 1865 till 1869 was president of the New Jersey Mutual Life Insurance Company. He was also a director of various other financial institutions. In 1849 he addressed the literary societies of Rutgers College on the subject of “progress,” and he has delivered lectures to the classes on political economy and constitutional law. In 1851 he delivered the annual address before the historical society of New Jersey on “The Perils through which the Federal Constitution has, and which still threaten it,” and in 1865 he delivered an admirable address on the life and character of the Hon. William L. Dayton. In June, 1870, he delivered the centennial address at Rutgers College. He has contributed valuable articles to several cyclopaedias. In 1859 Lafayette College conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. In 1870, he was appointed by President Grant a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and was designated circuit justice for the large southern circuit. Subsequently, on the resignation of Justice Strong, he was assigned to the third circuit, embracing the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. During his membership of the Supreme Court a very large number of cases have been brought into it, involving questions arising out of the Civil War, the Reconstruction and other acts of Congress, the constitutional amendments, the difficulties and controversies of railroad companies, and other subjects. In no former equal period have as many cases of supreme importance been decided by that court. Many of them were not only novel, intricate and difficult of solution. In the investigation and decision of all of them Judge Bradley has borne a distinguished part. His mind is remarkably analytical, capable of discovering and appreciating occult though important distinctions. Added to this, his legal learning is so large and accurate, his acquaintance with English and American decisions so extensive, and his habit of looking beyond the rule for the reason or principle upon which it is founded so constant, that his opinions have been of high value. Those opinions appear in more than forty volumes of the supreme court reports, beginning with 9th Wallace. Many of them are notable alike for the importance of the subject discussed and for the manner of the discussion. In patent cases Judge Bradley has exhibited marked ability, his natural aptitude for comprehending mechanical devices qualifying him unusually for such cases. His opinions in maritime cases, in cases relating to civil rights and habeas corpus, in suits upon policies of insurance, and in cases in which statutory or constitutional construction has been required, are especially noteworthy as able and instructive. When in January, 1877, in pursuance of an Act of Congress, an electoral commission was constituted to consider and report upon the controversies that had arisen over the counting of the votes of presidential electors, Judge Bradley was a member, and, as such, concurred in the conclusions reached by the majority of the commissioners, supporting those conclusions by elaborate arguments, which were published with the other proceedings of the commission. Judge Bradley was never what is called a politician, though always holding decided opinions respecting constitutional and other public questions, and occasionally giving those opinions to the press. In his earlier years he was attached to the Whig Party, and later be a Republican. To the government he has uniformly given a steady and efficient support. When the southern states attempted secession, he devoted his power and influence to sustaining the government against disunion, and, as counsel and director of the New Jersey Railroad Companies, he assisted very materially in forwarding troops and military supplies. On several occasions he accompanied new regiments to the field, and addressed them on the pending issues. In 1862, with much reluctance, he accepted the Republican nomination for Congress in the Sixth Congressional District of New Jersey; but so strongly Democratic was the district that he was defeated. In 1868 he headed the New Jersey Republican electoral ticket. He is an accomplished mathematician, familiar with the higher and more abstruse processes of mathematical investigation and not infrequently amuses himself by indulgence in such pursuits. In 1844 he married Mary, daughter of Chief Justice Hornblower, of New Jersey by whom he has two sons and two daughters. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, pp. 352-353.
Breckridge, Robert Jefferson
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BRECKRIDGE, Robert Jefferson, clergyman, born in Cabell's Dale, Kentucky, 8 March, 1800; died in Danville, 27 December, 1871, studied at Princeton, Yale, and Union Colleges successively, graduating at Union in 1819, read law, was admitted to the bar of his native state in 1823, and practised eight years. For four successive years he was a member of the legislature. In 1829 he made a profession of religion, and determined to be a preacher. As a politician he had advocated the emancipation of the slaves, and when the public sentiment of his state turned in favor of slavery, he was the more inclined to abandon the political career. After studying theology privately, he was licensed to preach in 1832, and soon afterward became pastor of the 2d Presbyterian Church of Baltimore, in which place he remained thirteen years. In 1845 he was president of Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, and at the same time took charge of a Presbyterian Church in a neighboring village. After two years in the presidency of the college, he moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where he became pastor of the 1st Presbyterian Church, and also superintendent of public instruction for the state. He was the principal author of the public-school system of Kentucky. In 1853 he was elected professor of didactic and polemic theology in the new theological seminary at Danville, which chair he held until his death. He published “Travels in France, Germany,” etc. (Philadelphia, 1839); a volume on “Poland " in 1841; “Memoranda of Foreign Travel.”, 1845); the “Internal of Christianity,” in 1852; and “The Knowledge of God Objectively Considered” (New York, 1857), followed by “The Knowledge of God Subjectively Considered,” two parts of an elaborate work on theology as a science of positive truth. While in Baltimore he edited a “Literary and Religious Magazine” and the “Spirit of the Nineteenth Century,” in which he carried on discussions with the Roman Catholics on questions of theology and history. He also edited at Danville, Kentucky, while professor there, the “Danville Review,” in which he not only defended his theological views, but gave utterance to his patriotic sentiments during the war. In the discussions and controversies that receded the disruption of the Presbyterian Church he was the champion of the old-school party. He was largely instrumental in actuating the managers of the American Bible Society to recede from their resolution to adopt the revised version of the Bible. Previous to the Civil War he had been inclined to conservatism, though disposed to deprecate slavery; but when the war came he was from the first intensely loyal, though one of his sons, and his nephew, John C. Breckinridge, went over to the confederacy. He presided over the National Republican Convention at Baltimore in 1864, which renominated Mr. Lincoln for the presidency. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 365.
Bristow, Benjamin Helm
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BRISTOW, Benjamin Helm, statesman, born in Elkton, Todd County, Kentucky, 20 June, 1832. He was graduated at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, in 1851, studied law, and was admitted to the bar of Kentucky in 1853. He began practice at Elkton. whence he moved to Hopkinsville in 1858. At the beginning of the Civil War, at a time when the state was wavering between loyalty and secession, he entered the union Army as lieutenant-colonel of the 25th Kentucky Infantry, and was engaged at the capture of Fort Donelson and at the battle of Shiloh, where he was wounded. He afterward became colonel of the 8th Kentucky Cavalry, and served throughout the war with distinction. While still in the field he was elected to the state senate for four years, but resigned at the end of two years, serving only from 1863 until 1865. He was U. S. District attorney for the Louisville District from 1865 until 1870. The ability with which he filled these offices led to his appointment as solicitor-general of the United States on the organization of the Department of Justice in October, 1870. In 1872 he resigned to become attorney of the Texas Pacific Railroad, but soon returned to the practice of law at Louisville. He was nominated attorney-general of the United States in December, 1873, but not confirmed. President Grant appointed him secretary of the treasury on 3 June, 1874, and this office he filled acceptably until the end of June, 1876, when he resigned, owing to the demands of his private business. At the Republican National Convention of that year, held in Cincinnati, Ohio, he was a leading candidate for the presidential nomination, receiving 113 votes on the first ballot. Since 1876 he has practised his profession in New York City. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 380.
Bross, William
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BROSS, William, journalist, born in Montague, Sussex County, New Jersey, 4 November, 1813. He was fitted for college at Milford Academy, Pennsylvania, and was graduated at Williams in 1838, after which he taught school for ten years. He then went to Chicago, where, from 1849 till 1851, he was a dealer in books, and published the “Prairie Herald.” He formed a partnership with J. L. Scripps in 1852, and established the “Daily Democratic Press,” which was consolidated with the Chicago “Tribune,” 1 July, 1858. For several years he was president of the “Tribune” Company. During 1855 and 1856 he was a member of the Chicago City Council. He was lieutenant-governor of Illinois from 1865 till 1869. He has travelled extensively in America and Europe, and has published in the “Tribune” many letters from abroad, and from almost every part of this country. He became a member of the American Society for the Advancement of Science in 1853, and has read papers before that association, as well as before the Chicago Historical Society and the Academy of Sciences. He was identified with the Republican Party from the first, and took a prominent part in its campaigns as a public speaker. He is the author of several publications in book or pamphlet form, including “A History of Chicago” (Chicago, 1876); “A Compilation of Editorials from the Chicago Tribune” and “Immortality” (1877); “A History of Camp Douglas” (1878); “Punishment” and “Chicago and the Sources of her Future Growth” (1880); “The Winfield Family” (1882); and “Illinois and the Thirteenth Amendment” (1884). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 391.
Brough, John (Bruff)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BROUGH, John (Bruff), governor of Ohio, born in Marietta, Ohio, in 1811; died in Cleveland, 29 August, 1865. At the age of twelve, and with only the rudiments of a common-school training, he became an apprentice in the office of the Marietta “Gazette.” Here he stayed for two years, but all the time sought opportunities for education, and in 1825 secured a place in the office of the Athens “Mirror,” within reach of the Ohio University, then in its infancy. He entered at once as a student, and so improved his time that he more than made good his lack of early advantages. At the same period he was so successful in business that in 1831 he became proprietor of the “Washington County Republican,” a Democratic paper published in Marietta. This journal he sold in 1833, and, in company with his brother, Charles Henry Brough, purchased the Lancaster “Eagle,” and soon made its influence felt as a democratic organ throughout the state. In 1835 Mr. Brough was elected clerk of the Ohio Senate, which office he held until 1838, when he was elected to the state legislature from Fairfield and Hocking Counties. During this period (1835–6), he was member of a joint commission to adjust the boundary between Virginia and Ohio. He was elected state auditor in 1839, and entered upon the duties of his office at a time when the whole country still felt the effects of the panic of 1837, and when the state of Ohio was peculiarly burdened with liabilities for which there appeared to be no adequate relief. Mr. Brough devoted himself to reconstructing the whole financial system of the state, and retired from office in 1846 with a high reputation as a public officer. In partnership with his brother Charles he undertook the management of the Cincinnati “Enquirer,” which was soon one of the most powerful democratic journals in the west. At the same time he opened a law office in Cincinnati. Personally, Mr. Brough took an active part in politics, and became the most popular democratic orator in the state. He retired from active political life in 1848, and in 1853 was elected president of the Madison and Indianapolis Railway, then one of the great lines of the west. He moved his residence to Cleveland, and, when the Civil War began in 1861, he was urged to become a candidate of the Republican Union Party for governor. This honor he declined, although his position as a “war Democrat” was always distinctly understood. The canvass of 1863 was held under very difficult conditions. The Civil War was at its height, a large proportion of the loyal voters were in the army, and southern sympathizers, led by Clement L. Vallandigham, were openly defiant. Vallandigham was arrested for disloyal utterances, tried by court-martial, and banished from the United States. He was sent within the Confederate lines, and subsequently received the regular Democratic nomination for Governor of Ohio. There was apparently some anger that he would actually be elected by the “peace” faction of the party. At this crisis Mr. Brough made a patriotic speech at Marietta, declaring slavery destroyed by the act of rebellion, and earnestly appealing to all patriots, of whatever previous political affiliations, to unite against the southern rebels. He was immediately put before the people by the Republican Union Party as a candidate for governor, and the majority that elected him (101,099) was the largest ever given for a governor in any state up to that time. In the discharge of his duties as chief magistrate he was laborious, patriotic, far-sighted, clear in his convictions of duty, firm in their maintenance, and fearless in their execution. He was distinctly the “war governor” of Ohio. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 391.
Brown, Benjamin Gratz
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BROWN, Benjamin Gratz, lawyer, born in Lexington, Kentucky, 28 May, 1826; died in St. Louis, Missouri, 13 December, 1885, was graduated at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, in 1845, and at Yale in 1847, was admitted to the bar in Louisville, Kentucky, and soon afterward settled in St. Louis. He was a member of the Missouri legislature from 1852 till 1859, and in 1857 made there a remarkable anti-slavery speech, which is said to have been the beginning of the Free-Soil movement in that state. He edited the “Missouri Democrat,” a journal of radical Republican principles, which had for its most violent political opponent “The Missouri Republican,” a Democratic sheet of the most uncompromising character. For five years (1854–'9) he constantly opposed the pro-slavery party, and was often threatened with personal violence, on one occasion being wounded by a pistol-shot. In 1857 he was the Free-Soil candidate for governor, and came within 500 votes of election. At the beginning of the Civil War, in 1861, he gave all his influence to the support of the union, and was in close consultation with General Lyon when he planned the capture of Camp Jackson and broke up the first secession movement in St. Louis. Brown commanded a regiment of militia on that occasion, and afterward, during the invasion of the state by Confederate generals Price and Van Dorn, commanded a brigade. He was a member of the U.S. Senate from 1863 till 1867, and lent his powerful influence in 1864 to favor the passage of the ordinance of emancipation by the Missouri state Convention. In 1871 he was elected governor of Missouri, on the liberal Republican ticket, by a majority of 40,000. In 1872 he was the candidate for vice-president on the Democratic ticket with Horace Greeley, and after the election, which resulted in the defeat of the Democrats and the election of the Republican candidate, General Grant, he resumed his law practice. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 403
Browning, Orville Hickman
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BROWING, Orville Hickman, senator, born in Harrison County, Kentucky, in 1810; died in Quincy, Illinois, 10 August, 1881; He moved to Bracken County, Kentucky, early in life, and received a classical education at Augusta College, being at the same time employed in the county clerk's office. He afterward studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1831, and began practice in Quincy, Illinois. He served in the Black Hawk war of 1832, and was a member of the state senate from 1836 till 1840, when he was elected to the lower branch of the legislature and served till 1843. At the Bloomington Convention he assisted Abraham Lincoln to organize the Republican Party of Illinois. He was a delegate to the Chicago Convention of 1860, which nominated Lincoln for the presidency, and was an active supporter of the government during the Civil War. In 1861 he was appointed by Governor Yates to the U.S. Senate, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Stephen A. Douglas, and served till 1863. On 18 July, 1861, he spoke in the Senate, declaring in favor of the abolition of slavery, should the south force the issue, and on 25 February, 1862, took an active part in the debate on the Confiscation Bill, speaking in opposition to it. While in Washington he practised law with Jeremiah Black and Thomas G. Ewing. Mr. Browning was an active member of the Union Executive Committee in 1866, and in the same year was Secretary of the Interior by President Johnson, serving till 3 March, 1869. After March, 1868, he also acted as Attorney-General. In 1869 he was a member of the state constitutional convention, and from that time till his death practised his profession at Quincy, Illinois. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 414.
Bruce, Blanche K.
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BRUCE, Blanche K., senator, born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1 March, 1841. He is of African descent, was born a slave, and received the rudiments of education from the tutor of his master's son. When the Civil War began he left his young master, whose companion he had been, and who went from Missouri to join the Confederate Army. Mr. Bruce taught school for a time in Hannibal, Mo., became a student at Oberlin, afterward pursued special studies at home, and after the war went to Mississippi. In 1869 he became a planter in Mississippi. He was sergeant-at-arms of the legislature, a member of the Mississippi Levee Board, sheriff of Bolivar County in 1871–4, county superintendent of education in 1872-’3, and was elected U. S. Senator on 3 February, 1875, as a Republican, taking his seat on 4 March, 1875, and serving till 3 March, 1881. He was a member of every Republican convention held after 1868. On 19 May, 1881, he entered upon the office of register of the treasury, to which he was appointed by President Garfield. In 1886 he delivered a lecture on the condition of his race, entitled “The Race Problem, and one on “Popular Tendencies.” Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 418.
Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1874, author, poet, editor, abolitionist. Wrote antislavery poetry. Free Soil Party. Editor of the Evening Post, which supported Congressman John Quincy Adams’ advocacy for the right to petition Congress against slavery, and was against the annexation of Texas. After 1848, the Evening Post took a strong anti-slavery editorial policy and supported the Free Soil Party, supporting Martin Van Buren. It opposed the Compromise of 1850. Bryant and the Post opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854. In 1856, the Post broke with the Democratic Party, endorsing the new Republican Party and its anti-slavery faction. They supported John C. Frémont as the presidential candidate. Bryant opposed the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court. He endorsed John Brown’s raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in1859. He strongly supported the nomination of Lincoln as the Republican candidate for president in 1860.
(Rodriguez, 2007, p. 326; Staudenraus, 1961, pp. 101-102; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 422-426; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 200; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 3)
Buckland, Ralph Pomeroy
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BUCKLAND, Ralph Pomeroy, soldier, born in Leyden, Massachusetts, 20 January, 1812. His father moved to Ohio when Ralph was but a few months old. He was educated at Kenyon College, but was never graduated, afterward studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1837. He was a delegate to the Whig National Convention of 1848, served as state senator from 1855 till 1859, and in 1861 was appointed colonel of the 72d Ohio Infantry. He commanded the 4th Brigade of Sherman's division at the battle of Shiloh, and was made a brigadier-general 29 November, 1862. He also commanded a brigade of the 15th Army Corps at Vicksburg and the District of Memphis during the year 1864. During an absence from the field, in 1864, he was elected to Congress, and served two terms. He resigned from the army, 9 January, 1865, and on 13 March was brevetted major-general of volunteers. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia loyalists’ Convention of 1866, to the Pittsburgh Soldiers' Convention, and to the Republican National Convention of 1876. General Buckland was president of the managers of the Ohio Soldiers’ and Sailors' Orphans' Home from 1867 till 1873, and government director of the Pacific Railroad from 1877 till 1880. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 439.
Burlingame, Anson, 1820-1870, New Berlin, New York, diplomat, lawyer, orator. Massachusetts State Senator, elected 1852. Republican United States Congressman, elected in 1855 and served 3 terms. Burlingame was a member of the Free-Soil Party and an early co-founder of the Republican Party in Massachusetts. Anti-slavery activist in the House of Representatives. He delivered a speech in reprimand of Senator Preston Brooks after he assaulted Senator Sumner on the Senate floor. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 456-457; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, p. 289; Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, pp. 308, 336, 491-493).
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BURLINGAME, Anson, diplomatist, born in New Berlin, Chenango County, New York, 14 November, 1820; died in St. Petersburg, Russia, 23 February, 1870. He was the descendant of a family who were among the early settlers of Rhode Island. His father, a farmer, moved, when Anson was three years old, to a farm in Seneca County, Ohio, where they lived for ten years, and in 1833 again moved to Detroit, and after two years more to a farm at Branch, Michigan In 1837 Anson was admitted to the University of Michigan, and six years later went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and entered the law-school of Harvard University, where he was graduated in 1846. He began the practice of the law in Boston, and a year or two later became an active member and a popular orator of the Free-Soil Party, then recently formed. In the political campaign of 1848 he acquired a wide reputation as a public speaker in behalf of the election of Van Buren and Adams. In 1849-'50 he visited Europe. In 1852 he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate, and in 1853 he served as a member of the state constitutional convention, to which he was elected by the town of Northborough, though he resided in Cambridge. He joined the American Party on its formation in 1854, and in that year was elected by it to the 34th Congress. In the following year he co-operated in the formation of the Democratic Party, to which he ever afterward steadily adhered. In Congress he bore himself with courage and address, and was recognized as one of the ablest debaters on the anti-slavery side of the house. For the severe terms in which he denounced the assault committed by Preston S. Brooks upon Senator Sumner, in 1856, he was challenged by Brooks. He promptly accepted the challenge, and named rifles as the weapons, and Navy Island, just above Niagara Falls, as the place. To the latter proposition Mr. Brooks demurred, alleging that, in order to meet his opponent in Canada, in the then excited state of public feeling, he would have to expose himself to popular violence in passing through “the enemy's country,” as he called the northern states. The matter fell through, but the manner in which Mr. Burlingame had conducted himself greatly raised him in the estimation of his friends and of his party; and on his return to Boston, at the end of his term, he was received with distinguished honors. He was re-elected to the 35th and 36th Congresses; but failing, after an animated and close contest, to be returned to the 37th, his legislative career ended in March, 1861. He was immediately appointed by President Lincoln minister to Austria; but that government declined to receive, in a diplomatic capacity, a man who had spoken often and eloquently in favor of Hungarian independence, and had moved in Congress the recognition of Sardinia as a first-class power. He was then sent as minister to China. In 1865 he returned to the United States with the intention of resigning his office; but the Secretary of State urged him to resume his functions for the purpose of carrying out important projects and negotiations that he had initiated. To this he finally consented. When, in 1867, he announced his intention of returning home, Prince Kung, regent of the empire, offered to appoint him special envoy to the United States and the great European powers, for the purpose of framing treaties of amity with those nations—an honor never before conferred on a foreigner. This place Mr. Burlingame accepted, and, at the head of a numerous mission, he arrived in the United States in March, 1868. On 28 July supplementary articles to the treaty of 1858 were signed at Washington, and soon afterward ratified by the Chinese government. These articles, afterward known as “The Burlingame Treaty,” marked the first official acceptance by China of the principles of international law, and provided, in general, that the privileges enjoyed by western nations under that law—the right of eminent domain, the right of appointing consuls at the ports of the United States, and the power of the government to grant or withhold commercial privileges and immunities at their own discretion, subject to treaty—should be secured to China; that nation undertaking to observe the corresponding obligations prescribed by international law toward other peoples. Special provisions also stipulated for entire liberty of conscience and worship for Americans in China, and Chinese in America; for joint efforts against the cooly trade; for the enjoyment by Chinese in America and Americans in China of all rights in respect to travel and residence accorded to citizens of the most favored nation; for similar reciprocal rights in the matter of the public educational institutions of the two countries, and for the right of establishing schools by citizens of either country in the other. The concluding article disclaims, on the part of the United States, the right of interference with the domestic administration of China in the matter of railroads, telegraphs, and internal improvements, but agrees that the United States will furnish assistance in these points on proper conditions, when requested by the Chinese government. From America Mr. Burlingame proceeded in the latter part of 1868 to England, and thence to France (1869), Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and Prussia, in all of which countries he was favorably received, and in all of which, but France, to which he intended returning, he negotiated important treaties or articles of agreement. He reached St. Petersburg early in 1870, and had just entered upon the business of his mission when he died of pneumonia, after an illness of only a few days. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.
Butler, Benjamin Franklin, 1818-1893, New York, attorney, political leader, opponent of slavery, Civil War Union General, Republican member of the U.S. Congress. Founding member and officer of the Albany auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. As Union General, he refused to return runaway slaves to Southerners at Fort Monroe. This led to a federal policy of calling enslaved individuals who fled to Union lines contraband of war. (Burin, 2005, p. 162; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 477-478; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, p. 357; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 81, 129, 178, 224).
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
BUTLER, Benjamin Franklin, lawyer, born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, 5 November, 1818. He is the son of Captain John Butler, who served under Jackson at New Orleans. He was graduated at Waterville College (now Colby University), Maine, in 1838, was admitted to the bar in 1840, began practice at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1841, and has since had a high reputation as a lawyer, especially in criminal cases. He early took a prominent part in politics on the Democratic side, and was elected a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853, and of the state senate in 1859. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention that met at Charleston. When a portion of the delegates reassembled at Baltimore, Mr. Butler, after taking part in the opening debates mid votes, announced that a majority of the delegates from Massachusetts would not further participate in the deliberations of the convention, on the ground that there had been a withdrawal in part of the majority of the states; and further, he added, “upon the ground that I would not sit in a convention where the African slave-trade, which is piracy by the laws of my country, is approvingly advocated.” In the same year he was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts. At the time of President Lincoln's call for troops in April, 1861, he held the commission of brigadier-general of militia. On the 17th of that month he marched to Annapolis with the 8th Massachusetts Regiment, and was placed in command of the District of Annapolis, in which the City of Baltimore was included. On 13 May, 1861, he entered Baltimore at the head of 900 men, occupied the city without opposition, and on 16 May was made a major-general, and assigned to the command of Fort Monroe and the Department of Eastern Virginia. While he was here, some slaves that had come within his lines were demanded by their masters; but he refused to deliver them up on the ground that they were contraband of war; hence arose the designation of “contrabands,” often applied to slaves during the war. In August he captured Forts Hatteras and Clark on the Coast of North Carolina. He then returned to Massachusetts to recruit an expedition for the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi. On 23 March, 1862, the expedition reached Ship Island, and on 17 April went up the Mississippi. The fleet under Farragut having passed the forts, 24 April, and virtually captured New Orleans, General Butler took possession of the city on 1 May. His administration of affairs was marked by great vigor. He instituted strict sanitary regulations, armed the free colored men, and compelled rich secessionists to contribute toward the support of the poor of the city. His course in hanging William Mumford for hauling down the U. S. flag from the mint, and in issuing “Order No. 28,” intended to prevent women from insulting soldiers, excited strong resentment, not only in the south, but in the north and abroad, and in December, 1862, Jefferson Davis issued a proclamation declaring him an outlaw. On 10 May, 1862, General Butler seized about $800,000 which had been deposited in the office of the Dutch consul, claiming that arms for the Confederates were to be bought with it. This action was protested against by all the foreign consuls, and the government at Washington, after an investigation, ordered the return of the money. On 16 December, 1862, General Butler was recalled, as he believes, at the instigation of Louis Napoleon, who supposed the general to be hostile to his Mexican schemes. Near the close of 1863 he was placed in command of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, and his force was afterward designated as the Army of the James. In October, 1864, there being apprehensions of trouble in New York during the election, General Butler was sent there with a force to insure quiet. In December he conducted an ineffectual expedition against Fort Fisher, near Wilmington, North Carolina, and soon afterward was removed from command by General Grant. He then returned to his residence in Massachusetts. In 1866 he was elected by the Republicans a member of Congress, where he remained till 1879, with the exception of the term for 1875-'7. He was the most active of the managers appointed in 1868 by the House of Representatives to conduct the impeachment of President Johnson. He was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for governor of Massachusetts in 1871; and in 1878 and 1879, having changed his politics, was the candidate of the independent greenback party and of one wing of the Democrats for the same office, but was again defeated. In 1882 the Democrats united upon him as their candidate, and he was elected, though the rest of the state ticket was defeated. During his administration, he made a charge of gross mismanagement against the authorities of the Tewksbury Almshouse; but, after a long investigation, a committee of the legislature decided that it was not sustained. In 1883 he was renominated, but was defeated. In 1884 he was the candidate of the greenback and anti-monopolist parties for the presidency, and received 133,825 votes. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.
Butler, Pardee, 1816-1888, Kansas, farmer, clergyman, abolitionist. He was a victim of a pro-slavery mob in Kansas in August 1855, and a Republican Party organizer in Kansas in May-June 1856.
Cameron, Simon, 1799-1889, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, statesman, U.S. Senator, Secretary of War, 1861-1862, under President Lincoln. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 508; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, p. 437)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CAMERON, Simon, statesman, born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 8 March, 1799; died there, 26 June, 1889. He early received a fair English education, and began to learn the printer's trade when but nine years of age. He worked as a journeyman in Lancaster, Harrisburg, and Washington, and so improved his opportunities that in 1820 he was editing a newspaper in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and in 1822 one in Harrisburg. As soon as he had accumulated sufficient capital he became interested in banking and in railroad construction in the central part of the state. He was for a time adjutant-general of Pennsylvania. He was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1845 for the term ending in 1849, and during this period acted with the Democrats on important party questions, such as the Missouri compromise bill. This was repealed in 1854, and Mr. Cameron became identified with the “people's party,” subsequently merged with the Republicans, As its candidate he was re-elected to the Senate for the full term of six years beginning in 1857, a period that covered the exciting crisis of secession. During this time he was so earnest an advocate of peace that his loyalty was suspected. At the Republican Convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln he was strongly supported for the presidency, and again for the vice-presidency; but lack of harmony in the Pennsylvania delegation prevented his nomination to the latter office. Mr. Lincoln at once called him to the cabinet as Secretary of War, and he proved equal to the arduous duties of the place. He advocated more stringent and aggressive war measures than Mr. Lincoln was prepared to carry out, and when General Butler asked for instructions regarding fugitive slaves, directed him to employ them “under such organizations and in such occupations as exigencies may suggest or require.” Similar instructions were given to General Sherman and other officers in the field. In the original draft of his Annual Report to Congress, in December, 1861, he boldly advocated arming fugitive slaves; but this was modified, on consultation with the cabinet. Mr. Cameron resigned the secretaryship 11 January, 1862, was at once appointed minister to Russia, and his influence undoubtedly tended in a large measure to secure the friendship of that powerful nation during the Civil War. His official conduct in a certain transaction was censured by the House of Representatives, 30 April, 1862; but Mr. Lincoln immediately sent a message assuming, with the other heads of departments, an equal share in the responsibility. He resigned as minister to Russia 8 November, 1862, and remained at home until 1866, when he was elected U. S. Senator, and appointed chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs on the retirement of Mr. Sumner in 1872. He was sent to the Senate for the fourth time in 1873, but resigned in favor of his son. During the years of his active public life he was a powerful political leader, practically dictating the policy of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania, and wielding a strong influence over its policy in the nation at large. The accompanying view represents “Lochiel,” the residence at Harrisburg of the “Czar of Pennsylvania politics,” as Cameron has been called. —His brother, James, soldier, born in Maytown, Lancaster County. Pennsylvania, 1 March, 1801; killed '21 July, 1861. At nineteen years of age he entered the printing-office of his brother Simon, at Harrisburg, and in 1827 moved to Lancaster and assumed the editorship of the " Political Sentinel," studying law in the mean time in the office of James Buchanan. During the Mexican War he accompanied the volunteers of his state as sutler, in January, 1847. When the Civil War began he was living in retirement upon his estate on the banks of the Susquehanna, but upon urgent en- treaty accepted the appointment of colonel of the 79th (Highland) regiment of New York state militia, he was killed while gallantly loading his men in a charge at Bull Run.—Simon's son, James Donald, senator, born in Middletown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, 14 May, 1838, was graduated at Princeton, in 1852, entered the Middletown Bank as clerk, became cashier, and afterward president He was also president of the Northern Central railway Company of Pennsylvania from 1863 until the road was leased by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1874, and in this place did good service to the national cause during the Civil War. The road, although several times cut by the Confederates, was a means of communication between Pennsylvania and Washington, and after the war it was extended, under Mr. Cameron's administration, to Elmira, New York, so as to reach from the great lakes to tide-water. Mr. Cameron has since been connected with various coal, iron, and manufacturing industries in his state, he was Secretary of War under President Grant from 22 May, 1876, till 3 March. 1877, and was then chosen U. S. Senator to fill the vacancy caused by his father's resignation. He was re- elected in 1879, and again in 1885, for the term ending in 1891, He was a delegate to the Chicago Republican conventions of 1868 and 1880, and chair- man of the national Republican committee in the latter year. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888. Vol. I pp. 509-510.
Campbell, Lewis P., Ohio
Carter, Robert, 1819-1879, Albany, New York, newspaper editor. Member and active in the Free Soil Party. Edited the Boston Commonwealth, a paper of the Free Soilers. Early member of the Democratic Party. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 541-542)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CARTER, Robert, editor, born in Albany, New York, 5 February, 1819; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 15 February, 1879. He received a common-school education, and passed one term in the Jesuit College of Chambly, Canada. In his fifteenth year he was appointed assistant librarian in the state library at Albany, where he remained till 1838. At this time he began to publish poems and sketches in the daily papers, his first contribution being a long poem, which he dropped stealthily into the editor's letterbox, and which appeared the next day with flattering comments, but so frightfully misprinted that he hardly knew it. This experience and a natural aptitude led him to acquire proof-reading as an accomplishment, at which he became very expert. In 1841 he went to Boston, where he formed a life-long friendship with James Russell Lowell, and together they began “The Pioneer,” a literary monthly magazine, which Duyckinck says was “of too fine a cast to be successful.” Nevertheless, it’s want of success was due, not to the editors, but to the publisher, who mismanaged it and failed when but three numbers had been issued. Among the contributors were Poe, Hawthorne, Whittier, Neal, Miss Barrett (afterward Mrs. Browning), and the sculptor Story. Mr. Carter began in its pages a serial novel entitled “The Armenian's Daughter.” He next spent two years in editing statistical and geographical works, and writing for periodicals. His story, “The Great Tower of Tarudant,” ran through several numbers of the “Broadway Journal,” then edited by Poe. In 1845 he became a clerk in the post-office at Cambridge, and in 1847-'8 was private secretary to Prescott the historian. His elaborate article on the character and habits of Prescott, written for the New York “Tribune” just after the historian's death in 1859, was re-published in the memorial volume issued by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Mr. Carter joined the Free-Soil Party in 1848, and in 1850 wrote for the Boston “Atlas” a series of brilliant articles in reply to Francis Bowen's attack on the Hungarian revolutionists. These articles were re-published in a pamphlet, “The Hungarian Controversy” (Boston, 1852), and are said to have caused the rejection of Mr. Bowen's nomination as professor of history at Harvard. At the same time Carter edited, with Kossuth's approval, a large volume entitled “Kossuth in New England” (Boston, 1852). In 1851-'2 he edited, at first as assistant of John G. Palfrey and afterward alone, the Boston “Commonwealth,” the chief exponent of the Free-Soilers. For two years he was secretary of the state committee of the Free-Soil Party, and in the summer of 1854 he obtained the consent of the committee to call a convention, which he did without assistance, sending out thousands of circulars to men whose names were on the committee's books. The convention met in Worcester, 20 July, was so large that no hall could contain it, and held its session in the open air. A short platform drawn up by him was adopted, together with the name “Republican,” and on his motion a committee of six was appointed to organize the new party, John A. Andrew being made its chairman. In 1855 Carter edited the Boston “Telegraph,” in conjunction with W. S. Robinson and Hildreth the historian; in 1856 he edited the “Atlas”; and in 1857-'9 he was Washington correspondent of the New York “Tribune.” His next work was with Messrs. Ripley and Dana on the first edition of the “American Cyclopædia” (1859-'63), in which many important articles were from his pen, including “Egypt,” “Hindostan,” “Mormons,” and the history of the United States. In January, 1864, he was appointed private secretary of the treasury agent whose headquarters were at Beaufort, South Carolina; and from July of that year till October, 1869, he edited the Rochester, New York, “Democrat,” doing such work for it as was seldom done on any but metropolitan journals. When news came of the assassination of President Lincoln, he wrote, without consulting any book or memoranda, an article giving a brief but circumstantial account, with dates, of every celebrated case of regicide. He was editor of “Appletons’ Journal” in 1870-'3, and then became associate editor for the revision of the “American Cyclopædia.” But in 1874 impaired health compelled him to discontinue his literary work, and in the next three years he made three tours in Europe. He was the author of “A Summer Cruise on the Coast of New England” (Boston, 1864), which passed through several editions; and he left unpublished memoirs, of which only the first volume was complete in manuscript.—His first wife, Ann Augusta Gray, was a successful writer of poems and tales for the young.—His second wife, Susan Nichols, is principal of the female art school in Cooper Institute, New York, and has published hand-books of art and contributed largely to periodicals. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888. Vol. I, pp. 541-542.
Chandler, Zachariah, 1813-1879, statesman, abolitionist. Mayor of Detroit, 1851-1852. U.S. Senator 1857-1975, 1879. Secretary of the Interior, 1875-1877. Active in Underground Railroad in Detroit area. Helped organize the Republican Party in 1854. Introduced Confiscation Bill in Senate, July 1861. Was a leading Radical Republican senator. Chandler was a vigorous opponent of slavery. He opposed the Dred Scott U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the Fugitive Slave Law. In 1858, opposed the admission of Kansas as a slave state under the Lecompton Constitution. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 574-575; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 618; Congressional Globe)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CHANDLER, Zachariah, senator, born in Bedford, New Hampshire, 10 December, 1813; died in Chicago, Illinois, 1 November, 1879. After receiving a common-school education he taught for one winter, at the same time managing his father's farm. He was noted when a youth for physical strength and endurance. It is said that, being offered by his father the choice between a collegiate education and the sum of $1,000, he chose the latter. He moved to Detroit in 1833 and engaged in the dry-goods business, in which he was energetic and successful. He soon became a prominent Whig, and was active in support of the so-called “Underground Railroad,” of which Detroit was an important terminus. His public life began in 1851 by his election as mayor of Detroit. In 1852 he was nominated for governor by the Whigs, and, although his success was hopeless, the large vote he received brought him into public notice. He was active in the organization of the Democratic Party in 1854, and in January, 1857, was elected to the U. S. Senate to succeed General Lewis Cass. He made his first important speech on 12 March, 1858, opposing the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution, and continued to take active part in the debates on that and allied questions. In 1858, when Senator Green, of Missouri, had threatened Simon Cameron with an assault for words spoken in debate, Mr. Chandler, with Mr. Cameron and Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, drew up a written agreement, the contents of which were not to be made public till the death of all the signers, but which was believed to be a pledge to resent an attack made on any one of the three. On 11 February, 1861, he wrote the famous so-called “blood letter” to Governor Blair, of Michigan. It received its name from the sentence, “Without a little blood-letting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush.” This letter was widely quoted through the country, and was acknowledged and defended by Mr. Chandler on the floor of the Senate. Mr. Chandler was a firm friend of President Lincoln, though he was more radical than the latter in his ideas, and often differed with the president as to matters of policy. When the first call for troops was made, he assisted by giving money and by personal exertion. He regretted that 500,000 men had not been called for instead of 75,000, and said that the short-term enlistment was a mistake. At the beginning of the extra session of Congress in July, 1861, he introduced a sweeping confiscation-bill, thinking that stern measures would deter wavering persons from taking up arms against the government; but it was not passed in its original form, though Congress ultimately adopted his views. On 16 July, 1862, Mr. Chandler vehemently assailed General McClellan in the Senate, although he was warned that such a course might be politically fatal. He was, however, returned to the Senate in 1863, and in 1864 actively aided in the re-election of President Lincoln. He was again elected to the Senate in 1869. During all of his terms he was chairman of the committee on commerce and a member of other important committees, including that on the conduct of the war. In October, 1874, President Grant tendered him the post of secretary of the interior, to fill the place made vacant by the resignation of Columbus Delano, and he held this office until President Grant's retirement, doing much to reform abuses in the department. He was chairman of the Republican National committee in 1876, and took an active part in the presidential campaign of that year. He was again elected to the Senate in February, 1879, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Isaac P. Christiancy, who had succeeded him four years before. On 2 March, 1879, he made a speech in the Senate denouncing Jefferson Davis, which brought him into public notice again, and he was regarded in his own state as a possible presidential candidate. He went to Chicago on 31 October, 1879, to deliver a political speech, and was found dead in his room on the following morning. During the greater portion of his life Mr. Chandler was engaged in large business enterprises, from which he realized a handsome fortune. He was a man of commanding appearance, and possessed an excellent practical judgment, great energy, and indomitable perseverance. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 574-575.
Chase, Salmon Portland, 1808-1873, statesman, Governor of Ohio, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1864-1873, abolitionist, member, Liberty Party, Free Soil Party, Anti-Slavery Republican Party. “A slave is a person held, as property, by legalized force, against natural right.” – Chase.
“The constitution found slavery, and left it, a state institution—the creature and dependant of state law—wholly local in its existence and character. It did not make it a national institution… Why, then, fellow-citizens, are we now appealing to you?...Why is it that the whole nation is moved, as with a mighty wind, by the discussion of the questions involved in the great issue now made up between liberty and slavery? It is, fellow citizens—and we beg you to mark this—it is because slavery has overleaped its prescribed limits and usurped the control of the national government. We ask you to acquaint yourselves fully with the details and particulars belonging to the topics which we have briefly touched, and we do not doubt that you will concur with us in believing that the honor, the welfare, the safety of our country imperiously require the absolute and unqualified divorce of the government from slavery.”
“Having resolved on my political course, I devoted all the time and means I could command to the work of spreading the principles and building up the organization of the party of constitutional freedom then inaugurated. Sometimes, indeed, all I could do seemed insignificant, while the labors I had to perform, the demands upon my very limited resources by necessary contributions, taxed severely all my ability… It seems to me now, on looking back, that I could not help working if I would, and that I was just as really called in the course of Providence to my labors for human freedom as ever any other laborer in the great field of the world was called to his appointed work.”
(Blue, 2005, pp. 19, 30, 34, 61, 70-73, 76-78, 84, 123, 124, 177, 178, 209, 220, 225, 226, 228, 247, 248, 259; Dumond, 1961; Filler, 1960, pp. 142, 176, 187, 197-198, 229, 246; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 4-5, 8-9, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 33-36, 61-64, 67, 68, 70-72, 76, 87, 89, 94, 118, 129, 136, 156, 165, 166, 168-169, 177, 187, 191, 193, 195-196, 224, 228, 248; Pease, 1965, pp. 384-394; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 46, 56, 58, 136, 173, 298, 353-354, 421, 655-656; Wilson, 1872, pp. 167-173; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 585-588; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 34; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 4, p. 739; Hart, Albert Bushnell, Salmon Portland Chase, 1899)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CHASE, Salmon Portland, statesman, b, in Cornish, New Hampshire, 13 January, 1808; died in New York City, 7 May, 1873. He was named for his uncle, Salmon, who died in Portland, and he used to say that he was his uncle's monument. He was a descendant in the ninth generation of Thomas Chase, of Chesham, England, and in the sixth of Aquila Chase, who came from England and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, about 1640. Salmon Portland was the eighth of the eleven children of Ithamar Chase and his wife Jannette Ralston, who was of Scottish blood. He was born in the house built by his grandfather, which still stands overlooking Connecticut River and in the afternoon shadow of Ascutney Mountain. Of his father's seven brothers, three were lawyers, Dudley becoming a U. S. Senator; two were physicians; Philander became a bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church; and one, like his father, was a farmer. His earliest teacher was Daniel Breck, afterward a jurist in Kentucky. When the boy was eight years old his parents moved to Keene, where his mother had inherited a little property. This was invested in a glass-factory; but a revision of the tariff, by which the duty on glass was lowered, ruined the business, and soon afterward the father died. Salmon was sent to school at Windsor, and made considerable progress in Latin and Greek. In 1820 his uncle, the bishop of Ohio, offered to take him into his family, and the boy set out in the spring, with his brother and the afterward famous Henry R. Schoolcraft, to make the journey to what was then considered the distant west. They were taken from Buffalo to Cleveland by the “Walk-in-the-Water,” the first steamboat on the great lakes. He spent three years in Worthington and Cincinnati with his uncle, who attended to his education personally till he went to England in 1823, when the boy returned home, the next year entered Dartmouth as a junior, and was graduated in 1826. He at once established a classical school for boys in Washington, D. C., which he conducted with success, at the same time studying law with William Wirt. Mr. Chase gave much of his leisure to light literature, and a poem that was addressed by him to Mr. Wirt's daughters was printed and is still extant. In 1830, having completed his studies, he closed the school, was admitted to the bar in Washington, and settled in Cincinnati, where he soon obtained a large practice. In politics he did not identify himself with either of the great parties; but on one point he was clear from the first: he was unalterably opposed to slavery, and in this sentiment he was confirmed by witnessing the destruction of the “Philanthropist” office by a pro-slavery mob in 1836. In 1837 he defended a fugitive slave woman, claimed under the law of 1793, and took the highest ground against the constitutionality of that law. One of the oldest lawyers in the court-room was heard to remark concerning him: “There is a promising young man who has just ruined himself.” In 1837 Mr. Chase also defended his friend James G. Birney in a suit for harboring a Negro slave, and in 1838 he reviewed with great severity a report of the judiciary committee of the state senate, refusing trial by jury to slaves, and in a second suit defended Mr. Birney. When it became evident, after the brief administration of Harrison was over and that of Tyler begun, that no more effective opposition to the encroachments of slavery was to be expected from the Whig than from the Democratic Party, a Liberty Party was organized in Ohio in December, 1841, and Mr. Chase was foremost among its founders. The address, which was written by Mr. Chase, contained these passages, clearly setting forth the issues of a mighty struggle that was to continue for twenty-five years and be closed only by a bloody war: “The constitution found slavery, and left it, a state institution—the creature and dependant of state law—wholly local in its existence and character. It did not make it a national institution. . . . Why, then, fellow-citizens, are we now appealing to you? . . . Why is it that the whole nation is moved, as with a mighty wind, by the discussion of the questions involved in the great issue now made up between liberty and slavery? It is, fellow-citizens—and we beg you to mark this—it is because slavery has overleaped its prescribed limits and usurped the control of the national government. We ask you to acquaint yourselves fully with the details and particulars belonging to the topics which we have briefly touched, and we do not doubt that you will concur with us in believing that the honor, the welfare, the safety of our country imperiously require the absolute and unqualified divorce of the government from slavery.” Writing of this late in life Mr. Chase said: “Having resolved on my political course, I devoted all the time and means I could command to the work of spreading the principles and building up the organization of the party of constitutional freedom then inaugurated. Sometimes, indeed, all I could do seemed insignificant, while the labors I had to perform, and the demands upon my very limited resources by necessary contributions, taxed severely all my ability. . . . It seems to me now, on looking back, that I could not help working if I would, and that I was just as really called in the course of Providence to my labors for human freedom as ever any other laborer in the great field of the world was called to his appointed work.” Mr. Chase acted as counsel for so many blacks who were claimed as fugitives that he was at length called by Kentuckians the “attorney-general for runaway Negroes,” and the colored people of Cincinnati presented him with a silver pitcher “for his various public services in behalf of the oppressed.” One of his most noted cases was the defence of John Van Zandt (the original of John Van Trompe in “Uncle Tom's Cabin”) in 1842, who was prosecuted for harboring fugitive slaves because he had overtaken a party of them on the road and given them a ride in his wagon. In the final hearing, 1846, William H. Seward was associated with Mr. Chase, neither of them receiving any compensation.
When the Liberty Party, in a national convention held in Buffalo, New York, in 1843, nominated James G. Birney for president, the platform was almost entirely the composition of Mr. Chase. But he vigorously opposed the resolution, offered by John Pierpont, declaring that the fugitive-slave-law clause of the constitution was not binding in conscience, but might be mentally excepted in any oath to support the constitution. In 1840 the Liberty Party had cast but one in 360 of the entire popular vote of the country. In 1844 it cast one in forty, and caused the defeat of Mr. Clay. The Free-Soil Convention that met in Buffalo in 1848 and nominated Martin Van Buren for president, with Charles Francis Adams for vice-president, was presided over by Mr. Chase. This time the party cast one in nine of the whole number of votes. In February, 1849, the Democrats and the Free-Soilers in the Ohio legislature formed a coalition, one result of which was the election of Mr. Chase to the U. S. Senate. Agreeing with the Democracy of Ohio, which, by resolution in convention, had declared slavery to be an evil, he supported its state policy and nominees, but declared that he would desert it if it deserted the anti-slavery position. In the Senate, 26 and 27 March, 1850, he made a notable speech against the so-called “compromise measures,” which included the fugitive-slave law, and offered several amendments, all of which were voted down. When the Democratic Convention at Baltimore nominated Franklin Pierce for president in 1852, and approved of the compromise acts of 1850, Senator Chase dissolved his connection with the Democratic Party in Ohio. At this time he addressed a letter to Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, of New York, suggesting and vindicating the idea of an independent democracy. He made a platform, which was substantially that adopted at the Pittsburg Convention, in the same year. He continued his support to the independent Democrats until the Kansas-Nebraska bill came up, when he vigorously opposed the repeal of the Missouri compromise, wrote an appeal to the people against it, and made the first elaborate exposure of its character. His persistent attacks upon it in the Senate thoroughly roused the north, and are admitted to have influenced in a remarkable degree the subsequent struggle. During his senatorial career Mr. Chase also advocated economy in the national finances, a Pacific Railroad by the shortest and best route, the homestead law (which was intended to develop the northern territories), and cheap postage, and held that the national treasury should defray the expense of providing for safe navigation of the lakes, as well as of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
In 1855 he was elected governor of Ohio by the opponents of the Pierce administration. His inaugural address recommended single districts for legislative representation, annual instead of biennial sessions of the legislature, and an extended educational system. Soon after his inauguration occurred the Garner tragedy, so called, in which a fugitive slave mother, near Cincinnati, attempted to kill all of her children, and did kill one, to prevent them from being borne back to slave-life in Kentucky. This and other slave-hunts in Ohio so roused and increased the anti-slavery sentiment in that place that Governor Chase was re-nominated by acclamation, and was re-elected by a small majority, though the American or Know-Nothing Party had a candidate in the field. In the National Republican Convention, held at Chicago in 1860, the vote on the first ballot stood: Seward, 173½; Lincoln, 102; Cameron, 50½; Chase, 49. On the third ballot Mr. Lincoln lacked but four of the number necessary to nominate, and these were given by Mr. Chase's friends before the result was declared. When Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated president, 4 March, 1861, he made Governor Chase secretary of the treasury. The difficulty that he was immediately called upon to grapple with is thus described by Mr. Greeley: “When he accepted the office of secretary of the treasury the finances were already in chaos; the current revenue being inadequate, even in the absence of all expenditure or preparation for war, his predecessor (Cobb, of Georgia) having attempted to borrow $10,000,000, in October, 1860, and obtained only $7,022,000—the bidders to whom the balance was awarded choosing to forfeit their initial deposit rather than take and pay for their bonds. Thenceforth he had tided over, till his resignation, by selling treasury notes, payable a year from date, at 6 to 12 per cent. discount; and when, after he had retired from the scene, General Dix, who succeeded him in Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, attempted (February, 1861) to borrow a small sum on twenty-year bonds at 6 per cent., he was obliged to sell those bonds at an average discount of 9½ per cent. Hence, of Mr. Chase's first loan of $8,000,000, for which bids were opened (2 April) ten days before Beauregard first fired on Fort Sumter, the offerings ranged from 5 to 10 per cent. discount; and only $3,099,000 were tendered at or under 6 per cent. discount—he, in the face of a vehement clamor, declining all bids at higher rates of discount than 6 per cent., and placing soon afterward the balance of the $8,000,000 in two-year treasury notes at par or a fraction over.” When the secretary went to New York for his first loan, the London “Times” declared that he had “coerced $50,000,000 from the banks, but would not fare so well at the London Exchange.” Three years later it said “the hundredth part of Mr. Chase's embarrassments would tax Mr. Gladstone's ingenuity to the utmost, and set the [British] public mind in a ferment of excitement.” In his conference with the bankers the secretary said he hoped they would be able to take the loans on such terms as could be admitted. “If you cannot,” said he, “I shall go back to Washington and issue notes for circulation; for it is certain that the war must go on until the rebellion is put down, if we have to put out paper until it takes a thousand dollars to buy a breakfast.” At this time the amount of coin in circulation in the country was estimated at $210,000,000; and it soon became evident that this was insufficient for carrying on the war. The banks could not sell the bonds for coin, and could not meet their obligations in coin, and on 27 December, 1861, they agreed to suspend specie payment at the close of the year. In his first report, submitted on the 9th of that month, Secretary Chase recommended retrenchment of expenses wherever possible, confiscation of the property of those in arms against the government, an increase of duties and of the tax on spirits, and a national currency, with a system of national banking associations. This last recommendation was carried out in the issue of “greenbacks,” which were made a legal tender for everything but customs duties, and the establishment of the national banking law. His management of the finances of the government during the first three years of the great war has received nothing but the highest praise. He resigned the secretaryship on 30 June, 1864, and was succeeded a few days later by William P. Fessenden. On 6 December, 1864, President Lincoln nominated him to be chief justice of the United States, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Roger B. Taney, and the nomination was immediately confirmed by the Senate. In this office he presided at the impeachment trial of President Johnson in 1868. In that year his name was frequently mentioned in connection with the Democratic nomination for the presidency, and in answer to a letter from the chairman of the Democratic National committee he wrote:
“For more than a quarter of a century I have been, in my political views and sentiments, a Democrat, and I still think that upon questions of finance, commerce, and administration generally, the old Democratic principles afford the best guidance. What separated me in former times from both parties was the depth and positiveness of my convictions on the slavery question. On that question I thought the Democratic Party failed to make a just application of Democratic principles, and regarded myself as more democratic than the Democrats. In 1849 I was elected to the Senate by the united votes of the old-line Democrats and independent Democrats, and subsequently made earnest efforts to bring about a union of all Democrats on the ground of the limitation of slavery to the states in which it then existed, and non-intervention in these states by Congress. Had that union been effected, it is my firm belief that the country would have escaped the late Civil War and all its evils. I never favored interference by Congress with slavery, but as a war measure Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation had my hearty assent, and I united, as a member of his administration, in the pledge made to maintain the freedom of the enfranchised people. I have been, and am, in favor of so much of the reconstruction policy of Congress as based the re-organization of the state governments of the south upon universal suffrage. I think that President Johnson was right in regarding the southern states, except Virginia and Tennessee, as being, at the close of the war, without governments which the U.S. government could properly recognize—without governors, judges, legislators, or other state functionaries; but wrong in limiting, by his reconstruction proclamations, the right of suffrage to whites, and only such whites as had the qualification he required. On the other hand, it seemed to me, Congress was right in not limiting, by its reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to the whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens, and of all unable to take a prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of arbitrary military governments for the states, and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions, no classes excluded from suffrage, and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the constitution and laws, and sincere attachment to the constitutional government of the United States. I am glad to know that many intelligent southern Democrats agree with me in these views, and are willing to accept universal suffrage and universal amnesty as the basis of reconstruction and restoration. They see that the shortest way to revive prosperity, possible only with contented industry, is universal suffrage now, and universal amnesty, with removal of all disabilities, as speedily as possible through the action of the state and national governments. I have long been a believer in the wisdom and justice of securing the right of suffrage to all citizens by state constitutions and legislation. It is the best guarantee of the stability of institutions, and the prosperity of communities. My views on this subject were well known when the Democrats elected me to the Senate in 1849. I have now answered your letter as I think I ought to answer it. I beg you to believe me—for I say it in all sincerity—that I do not desire the office of president, nor a nomination for it. Nor do I know that, with my views and convictions, I am a suitable candidate for any party. Of that my countrymen must judge.”
Judge Chase subsequently prepared a declaration of principles, embodying the ideas of his letter, and submitted it to those Democrats who desired his nomination, as a platform in that event. But this was not adopted by the convention, and the plan to nominate him, if there was such a plan, failed. In June, 1870, he suffered an attack of paralysis, and from that time till his death he was an invalid. As in the case of President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, his integrity was shown by the fact that, though he had been a member of the administration when the government was spending millions of dollars a day, he died comparatively poor. His remains were buried in Washington; but in October, 1886, were removed, with appropriate ceremony, to Cincinnati, Ohio, and deposited in Spring Grove cemetery near that city. Besides his reports and decisions, Mr. Chase published a compilation of the statutes of Ohio, with annotations and an historical sketch (3 vols., Cincinnati, 1832). See “Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase,” by J. W. Schuckers (New York, 1874). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 585-588.
Cheaney, Person Colby, 1828-1901, Manchester, New Hampshire, statesman, soldier, abolitionist, businessman, paper manufacturer, Republican politician, abolitionist. U.S. Senator, 35th Governor of New Hampshire. His father was abolitionist Moses Cheney. (Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 54)
Clark, Daniel, 1809-1891, lawyer, jurist, organizer and founder of the Republican Party, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire, ardent supporter of the Union. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, p. 625; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 125; Congressional Globe)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CLARK, Daniel, senator, born in Stratham, Rockingham County, New Hampshire, 24 October, 1809. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1834 with the highest honors of his class, studied law, and began practice at Epping, New Hampshire, in 1837. He moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1839, and was a member of the legislature for five years. He was elected U. S. Senator in 1857 for the unexpired term of James Bell, deceased, and was re-elected in 1861, serving till he resigned in July, 1866. He was president pro tem. of the Senate for some time in 1864-'5. On 11 July, 1861, Senator Clark offered a resolution, which was adopted, expelling from the Senate the southern senators who had left their seats on the secession of their states. He took an active part in the debates of the Senate, and was a steadfast supporter of the government during the Civil War. On his resignation, he was appointed by President Johnson U. S. Judge for the District of New Hampshire. He was president of the New Hampshire Constitutional Convention of 1876. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 625.
Clark, Myron Holley, 1806-1892, Governor of New York State. Supported by the anti-slavery wings of the Democratic and Whig Parties. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 630; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 138)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CLARK, Myron Holley, governor of New York, born in Naples, Ontario County, New York, 23 October, 1806. His grandfather, Colonel William Clark, moved from Berkshire county, Massachusetts, to Ontario county, New York, in 1790. Myron was educated in a District school at Naples, attending from three to four months annually, when between six and seventeen years old. After filling several offices in his native town, and becoming lieutenant-colonel of state militia, he was sheriff of Ontario county for two years, and, having moved to Canandaigua, was president of that village in 1850 and 1851, and state senator from 1852 till 1854. During Mr. Clark's first term as senator in 1852–’3, the law was consolidating the several railroads now forming the New York central, and it was largely by his persistent firmness that the provision limiting passenger fares to two cents a mile was adopted. As chairman of the committee on the subject he was influential in securing the of the prohibitory liquor law that was vetoed by Governor Seymour. In the anti-slavery wings of both the Whig and Democratic parties, the prohibitionists, and several independent organizations separately nominated Mr. Clark for governor, and he was elected by a small majority, his supporters in some of their state organizations taking the name of “Republicans" thus making him the earliest state candidate of that party. During his administration a new prohibitory law was passed, and signed by him. It remained in force about nine months, when it was set aside by the court of appeals. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 639.
Clay, Cassius Marcellus, 1810-1903, Madison County, Kentucky, anti-slavery political leader, emancipationist, large landowner, statesman, lawyer, diplomat, soldier, newspaper publisher. Granted land for Berea College, Berea, Kentucky. Prominent anti-slavery activist with Kentucky State legislature and member of the Republican Party. Published anti-slavery paper, True American, in Lexington, Kentucky.
(Blue, 2005, pp. 151, 171; Clay, 1896; Dumond, 1961, p. 258; Filler, 1960, pp. 213, 221, 248, 256, 272; Mabee, 1970, pp. 4, 237, 258-259, 327, 336, 372; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 5, 63, 64, 71, 107, 147, 156, 199; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 380, 619; Smiley, 1962; Wilson, 1872, pp. 628-635; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 503, 577, 639-640; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 18; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 171-173; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 4; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 311-312)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CLAY, Cassius Marcellus, politician, born in Madison county, Kentucky, 19 October, 1810, studied at Transylvania University, but afterward entered the junior class at Yale, and was graduated there in 1832. While in New Haven he heard William Lloyd Garrison, and, although his parents were slave-holders, became an earnest abolitionist. He began to practice law in his native county, and was elected to the legislature in 1835, but was defeated the next year on account of his advocacy of internal improvements. He was again elected in 1837, and in 1839 was a member of the convention that nominated General Harrison for the presidency. He then moved to Lexington, and was again a member of the legislature in 1840, but in 1841 was defeated, after an exciting canvass, on account of his anti-slavery views. The improved jury system and the common-school system of Kentucky are largely due to his efforts while in the legislature. Mr. Clay denounced the proposed annexation of Texas, as intended to extend slavery, and in 1844 actively supported Henry Clay for the presidency, speaking in his behalf in the northern states. On 3 June, 1845, he issued in Lexington the first number of an anti-slavery paper entitled “The True American.” Mob violence had been threatened, and the editor had prepared himself for it. He says in his memoirs: “I selected for my office a brick building, and lined the outside doors with sheet-iron, to prevent it being burned. I purchased two brass four-pounder cannon at Cincinnati, and placed them, loaded with shot and nails, on a table, breast high; had folding-doors secured with a chain, which could open upon the mob and give play to the cannon. I furnished my office with Mexican lances, and a limited number of guns. There were six or eight persons who stood ready to defend me. If defeated, they were to escape by a trap-door in the roof; and I had placed a keg of powder with a match, which I could set off and blow up the office and all my invaders; and this I should most certainly have done in case of the last extremity.” In August, while the editor was sick, his press was seized by the mob and taken to Cincinnati, and he himself was threatened with assassination; but, notwithstanding all opposition, he continued to publish the paper, printing it in Cincinnati and circulating it through Kentucky. This was not his only narrow escape. He was continually involved in quarrels, had several bloody personal encounters, and habitually spoke in political meetings, with a bowie knife concealed about him, and a brace of pistols in the mouth of his grip-sack, which he placed at his feet. When war with Mexico was declared, Mr. Clay entered the army as captain of a volunteer infantry company that had already distinguished itself at Tippecanoe in 1811. He took this course because he thought a military title necessary to political advancement in a “fighting state” like Kentucky. On 23 January, 1847, while in the van, more than 100 miles in advance of the main army, he was taken prisoner, with seventy-one others, at Encarnacion, and marched to the city of Mexico. On one occasion, after the escape of some of the captives, the lives of the remainder were saved by Captain Clay's gallantry and presence of mind. After being exchanged, he returned to Kentucky, and was presented by his fellow-citizens with a sword in honor of his services. He worked for General Taylor's nomination in the Convention of 1848, and carried Kentucky for him. He called a convention of emancipationists at Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1849, and in 1850, separating from the Whig Party, was an anti-slavery candidate for governor, receiving about 5,000 votes. He labored energetically for Frémont's election in 1856, and for Lincoln's in 1860, but took pains to separate himself from the “radical abolitionists,” holding that all interference with slavery should be by legal methods. On 28 March, 1861, he was appointed minister to Russia. He returned to this country in June, 1862, having been commissioned major-general of volunteers, and shortly afterward made a speech in Washington, declaring that he would never draw his sword while slavery was protected in the seceding states. He resigned on 11 March, 1863, and was again sent as minister to Russia, publicly supported the revolutionary movement in Cuba, and became president of the Cuban aid Society. In 1871 he delivered an address by invitation at the St. Louis fair, urging speedy reconciliation with the north, and at the same time attacking President Grant's administration. He was identified with the liberal republican movement in 1872, and supported his old friend Horace Greeley for the presidency. He afterward joined the Democratic Party, and actively supported Samuel J. Tilden in 1876, but advocated Blaine's election in 1884. In 1877 Mr. Clay shot and killed a Negro, Perry White, whom he had discharged from his service and who had threatened his life. Mr. Clay was tried, and the jury gave a verdict of “justifiable homicide.” A volume of his speeches was edited by Horace Greeley (1848), and he has published “The Life, Memoirs, Writings, and Speeches of Cassius M. Clay” (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 503, 577, 639-640.
Cleveland, Channcey Fitch
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CLEVELAND, Channcey Fitch, lawyer and statesman, born in Hampton, Connecticut, 16 February, 1799. He received a common-school education, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1819. He was elected to the legislature in 1826, and served four terms, again elected in 1832, and was state attorney the same year; again sat in the legislature in 1830-'6, of which body he was twice chosen speaker. He was elected governor of Connecticut in 1842, and re-elected in 1843. He returned to the legislature for the eleventh time in 1847, and in 1849 was elected to Congress as a Democrat, and re-elected in 1851. He was a presidential elector on the Republican ticket in 1860, and at two or three other elections, and was a member of the Peace Congress of 1861. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 651.
Cole, Cornelius, born 1822, lawyer. Member of the National Republican Committee, 1856-1860. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California, 1863-1865. U.S. Senator, 1867-1873. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, p. 685; Congressional Globe)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
COLE, Cornelius, senator, born in Lodi, New York, 17 September, 1822. He was graduated at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, in 1847, and, after studying law in the office of William H. Seward, was admitted to the bar. In 1849 he crossed the plains to California, and, after working a year in the gold mines, began the practice of law. He was district attorney of Sacramento City and county from 1859 till 1862, was a member of the National Republican Committee from 1856 till 1860, and during the latter year edited a newspaper. He then moved to Santa Cruz, and was a representative from California in the 38th Congress as a Union Republican, serving from 7 December, 1863, till 3 March, 1865. He was elected U. S. Senator to succeed James A. McDougall, Democrat, serving from 4 March, 1867, till 3 March, 1873. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 685.
Colfax, Schuyler, 1823-1885, Vice President of the United States, statesman, newspaper editor. Member of Congress, 1854-1869. Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana. Secretary of State. Opposed slavery as a Republican Member of Congress. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Strongly opposed the extension of slavery in the territories. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 687-688; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 297; Congressional Globe; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 297)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
COLFAX, Schuyler, statesman, born in New York City, 23 March, 1823; died in Mankato, Minnesota, 13 January, 1885. His grandfather was General William Colfax, who commanded the life-guards of Washington throughout the Revolutionary war. His father died a short time before the son's birth, and in 1834 his mother married George W. Matthews. After attending the public schools till he was ten years of age, and serving three years as clerk in his step-father's store, Schuyler went with the family to Indiana in 1836, and settled in New Carlisle, St. Joseph County, where Mr. Matthews soon became postmaster. The boy continued to serve as his clerk, and began a journal to aid himself in composition, contributing at the same time to the county paper. His step-father retired from business in 1839, and Colfax then began to study law, but afterward gave it up. In 1841 Mr. Matthews was elected county auditor, and moved to South Bend, making his step-son his deputy, which office Colfax held for eight years. In 1842 he was active in organizing a temperance society in South Bend, and continued a total abstainer throughout his life. At this time he reported the proceedings of the state senate for the Indianapolis “Journal” for two years. In 1844 he made campaign speeches for Henry Clay. He had acted as editor of the South Bend ”Free Press” for about a year when, in company with A. W. West, he bought the paper in September, 1845, and changed its name to the “St. Joseph Valley Register.” Under his management, despite numerous mishaps and business losses, the “Register” quadrupled its subscription in a few years, and became the most influential journal, in support of Whig politics, in that part of Indiana: Mr. Colfax was secretary of the Chicago Harbor and River Convention of July, 1847, and also of the Baltimore Whig Convention of 1848, which nominated Taylor for president. The next year he was elected a member of the convention to revise the constitution of the state of Indiana, and in his place, both by voice and vote, opposed the clause that prohibited free colored men from settling in that state. He was also offered a nomination for the state senate, but declined it. In 1851 he was a candidate for Congress, and came near being elected in a district that was strongly democratic. He accepted his opponent's challenge to a joint canvass, travelled a thousand miles, and spoke seventy times. He was again a delegate to the Whig National Convention in 1852, and, having joined the newly formed Democratic Party, was its successful candidate for Congress in 1854, serving by successive re-elections till 1869. In 1856 he supported Fremont for president, and during the canvass made a speech in Congress on the extension of slavery and .the aggressions of the slave-power. This speech was used as a campaign document, and more than half a million copies were circulated. He was chairman of several important committees of Congress, especially that on post-offices and post-roads, and introduced many reforms, including a bill providing for a daily overland mail-route from St. Louis to San Francisco, reaching mining-camps where letters had previously been delivered by express at five dollars an ounce. Mr. Colfax favored Edward Bates as the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1860. His name was widely mentioned for the office of postmaster - general in Lincoln's cabinet, but the president selected C. B. Smith, of Indiana, on the ground, as he afterward wrote Colfax, that the latter was “a young man running a brilliant career, and sure of a bright future in any event.” In the latter part of 1861 he ably defended Fremont in the house against the attack of Frank P. Blair. In 1862 he introduced a bill, which became a law, to punish fraudulent contractors as felons, and continued his efforts for reform in the postal service. He was elected speaker of the house on 7 December, 1863, and on 8 April, 1864, descended from the chair to move the expulsion of Mr. Long, of Ohio, who had made a speech favoring the recognition of the southern confederacy. The resolution was afterward changed to one of censure, and Mr. Colfax's action was widely commented on, but generally sustained by Union men. On 7 May, 1864, he was presented by citizens of Indiana then in Washington with a service of silver, largely on account of his course in this matter. He was twice re-elected as speaker, each time by an increased majority, and gained the applause of both friends and opponents by his skill as a presiding officer, often shown under very trying circumstances. In May, 1868, the Republican National Convention at Chicago nominated him on the first ballot for vice-president, General Grant being the nominee for president, and, the Republican ticket having been successful, he took his seat as President of the Senate on 4 March, 1869. On 4 August, 1871, President Grant offered him the place of Secretary of State for the remainder of his term, but he declined. In 1872 he was prominently mentioned as a presidential candidate, especially by those who, later in the year, were leaders in the liberal Republican movement, and, although he refused to join them, this was sufficient to make administration men oppose his renomination for the vice-presidency, and he was defeated in the Philadelphia Convention of 1872. In December, 1872; he was offered the chief editorship of the New York “Tribune,” but declined it. In 1873 Mr. Colfax was implicated in the charger of corruption brought against members of Congress who had received shares of stock in the credit mobilier of America. The house judiciary committee reported that there was no ground for his impeachment, as the alleged offence, if committed at all, had been committed before he became vice-president. These charges cast a shadow over the latter part of Mr. Colfax's life. He denied their truth, and his friends have always regarded his character as irreproachable. His later years were spent mostly in retirement in his home at South Bend, Indiana, and in delivering public lectures, which he did frequently before large audiences. His first success in this field had been in 1865 with a lecture entitled “Across the Continent,” written after his return from an excursion to California. The most popular of his later lectures was that on “Lincoln and Garfield.” Mr. Colfax was twice married. After his death, which was the result of heart disease, public honors were paid to his memory both in Congress and in Indiana. See “Life of Colfax” by O. J. Hollister (New York, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 687-688.
Conkling, Roscoe
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CONKLING, Roscoe, U.S. Senator, born in Albany, New York, 30 October, 1829, received an academic education, and studied law three years under his father's tuition. In 1846 he entered the law-office of Francis Kernan, afterward his colleague in the Senate, and in 1850 became district attorney for Oneida County. He was admitted to the bar in that year, and soon became prominent both in law and in politics. He was elected mayor of Utica in 1858, and at the expiration of his first term a tie vote between the two Candidates for the office caused him to hold over for In November, 1858, he was chosen as a Republican to Congress, and took his seat in that body at the beginning of its first session, in December, 1859— a session noted for its long and bitter contest over the speakership. He was re-elected in 1860, but in 1862 was defeated by Francis Kernan, over whom, however, he was elected in 1864. His first committee was that on the District of Columbia, of which he was afterward chairman. He was also a member of the committee of ways and means and of the special reconstruction committee of fifteen. Mr. Conkling's first important speech was in support of the fourteenth amendment to the constitution. He vigorously attacked the generalship of McClellan, opposed Spaulding's legal-tender act, and firmly upheld the government in the prosecution of the war. Mr. Conkling was re-elected in the autumn of 1866, but in January, 1867, before he took his seat, was chosen U. S. Senator to succeed Ira Harris, and re-elected in 1873 and 1879. In the Senate he was from the first a member of the judiciary committee, and connected with nearly all the leading committees, holding the chairs of those on commerce and revision of the laws. Senator Conkling was a zealous supporter of President Grant's administration and largely directed its general policy toward the south," advocating it in public and by his personal influence. He was also instrumental in the passage of the civil-rights bill, and favored the resumption of specie payments. He took a prominent part in framing the electoral-commission bill in 1877, and supported it by an able speech, arguing that the question of the commission's jurisdiction should be left to that body itself. Mr. Conkling received 93 votes for the Republican nomination for president in the Cincinnati Convention of 1876. In the Chicago Convention of 1880 he advocated the nomination of General Grant for a third term. In 1881 he became hostile to President Garfield's administration on a question of patronage, claiming, with his colleague, Thomas C. Piatt, the right to control federal appointments in his state. The president having appointed a political opponent of Mr. Conkling's to the collectorship of the port of New York, the latter opposed his confirmation, claiming that he should have been consulted in the matter, and that the nomination was a violation of the pledges given to him by the president. Mr. Garfield, as soon as Mr. Conkling Had declared his opposition, withdrew all other nominations to New York offices, leaving the objectionable one to be acted on by itself. Finding that he could not prevent the confirmation, Mr. Conkling, on 16 May, resigned his senatorship, as did also his colleague, and returned home to seek a vindication in the form of a re-election. In this, however, after an exciting canvass, they failed; two other Republicans were chosen to fill the vacant places, and Mr. Conkling returned to his law practice in New York City. In 1885-'6 he was counsel of the State Senate investigating committee, appointed for the purpose of disclosing the fraud and bribery in the grant of the Broadway Horse-Railroad franchise by the board of aldermen in 1884. After the taking of testimony, lasting about three months, Mr. Conkling, together with Clarence A. Seward, made an argument which resulted in the repeal of the Broadway Railroad charter. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 706-707.
Conness, John, born 1821. Union Republican U.S. Senator from California. U.S. Senator 1863-1869. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, p. 708; Congressional Globe)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CONNESS, John, senator, born in Ireland, 20 September, 1821. He emigrated to the United States at the age of thirteen, learned the trade of a piano-forte maker, and worked in New York City until the discovery of gold in California. He went to that state in 1849, engaged in mining, and afterward became a merchant. He was a member of the California Legislature in 1853-'4 and in 1860-'1, a candidate for lieutenant-governor in 1859, and the union Democratic candidate for governor in 1861, receiving 30,944 votes, to 32,751 cast for the Breckinridge Democratic candidate, and 56,036 for Leland Stanford, the successful Republican candidate. He was elected as a Union Republican to succeed Milton S. Latham, a Democrat, to the U. S. Senate, and sat from 4 March, 1863, till 4 March, 1869, serving on the committees on finance and the Pacific Railroad, and as chairman of the Committee on Mines and Mining. He resided in Massachusetts after the conclusion of his term. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 708.
Corbett, Henry Winslow
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CORBETT, Henry Winslow, senator, born in Westboro, Massachusetts, 18 February, 1827. He accompanied. his parents to Washington county, New York, received an academic education, entered a store at Cambridge in 1840, moved to New York City in 1843, and continued in mercantile business there for seven years. In 1850 he shipped a quantity of goods to Portland, Oregon, and the following spring settled in that territory and became a prominent merchant, and in 1867 a banker, in Portland. He has held various local offices, and was active in the organization of the Democratic Party in Oregon. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1860, and chairman of the state central committee in 1859–60, and in 1866 was elected U.S. Senator, serving from 1867 till 3 March, 1873. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 700
Covode, John, 1808-1871, abolitionist. U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania, serving 1855-1863, representing the 35th District and the Republican Party. (Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 756; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 470)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
COVODE, John, Congressman, born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, 17 March, 1808; died in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 11 January, 1871. He was of Dutch descent, spent his early years on a farm, and, after serving a short apprenticeship to a blacksmith, engaged in the coal trade. He afterward became a large woollen manufacturer, and a stockholder and director in several railroad lines. After two terms in the legislature, he was elected to Congress as an anti-masonic Whig in 1854, and re-elected as a Republican in 1856, serving four terms, from 1855 till 1863. In his second term he made a national reputation by his vigor and penetration as chairman of the special committee appointed to investigate charges against President Buchanan. His report, published by order of Congress (Washington, 1860), attracted much attention. He earnestly supported President Lincoln's administration, being an active member of the joint committee on the conduct of the war. President Johnson sent Mr. Covode south to aid in the reconstruction of the disaffected states; but he did not see matters as the president desired, and was recalled. Mr. Covode was again elected to Congress in 1868, his seat being unsuccessfully contested by his opponent, and was active in opposing the president. He was chairman of the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania in 1869, and declined a renomination to Congress in 1870. He was recognized in his state as a strong political power. His unthinking impetuosity made him many bitter enemies, but his honesty and geniality won him innumerable friends. He was known as “Honest John Covode.” Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 756.
Creswell, John Angel James, 1828-1891, statesman, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, 1863-1865. U.S. Senator 1865-. Supported the Union. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 8; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 541; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 726; Congressional Globe)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CRESWELL, John A. J., statesman, born in Port Deposit, Cecil County, Maryland, 18 November, 1828. He was graduated at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, in 1848, studied law, and was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1850. He was a member of the state legislature in 1860 and 1862, and assistant adjutant-general for Maryland in 1862-'3. He was elected to Congress, and served from 7 December, 1863, till 3 March, 1865; and, having distinguished himself as an earnest friend of the Union, was elected as a republican to the U. S. Senate in March, 1865, to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. On 22 February, 1866, he delivered, at the request of the House of representatives, a memorable eulogy of his friend and colleague, Henry Winter Davis. He was a delegate to the Baltimore Convention of 1864, the Philadelphia Loyalists' Convention of 1866, the Border States Convention held in Baltimore in 1867, and the Chicago Republican Convention of 1868. In May, 1868, he was elected secretary of the U. S. Senate, but declined. On 5 March, 1869, he was appointed by President Grant Postmaster-General of the United States, and served till 3 July, 1874. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 8.
Curtin, Andrew Gregg
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CURTIN, Andrew Gregg, governor of Pennsylvania, born in Bellefonte, Centre County, Pennsylvania, 22 April, 1815. His father, Roland Curtin, emigrated from Ireland in 1793, and in 1807 established near Bellefonte one of the first manufactories of iron in that region. Andrew studied law in Dickinson College law-school, was admitted to the bar in 1839, and soon became prominent. He early entered politics as a Whig, laboring for Harrison's election in 1840, and making a successful canvass of the state for Clay in 1844. He was a presidential elector in 1848, and a candidate for elector on the Whig ticket in 1852. In 1854 Governor Pollock appointed him secretary of the commonwealth and ex-officio superintendent of common schools, and in the discharge of his duties Mr. Curtin did much toward reforming and perfecting the school system of the state. In his annual report of 1855 he recommended to the legislature the establishment of normal schools, and his suggestion was adopted. In 1860 he was the Republican candidate for governor. The Democrats, though divided in national politics, were united in Pennsylvania, but Mr. Curtin was elected by a majority of 32,000. In his inaugural address he advocated the forcible suppression of secession, and throughout the contest that followed he was one of the "war governors" who were most earnest in their support of the national government. He responded promptly to the first call for troops, and when General Patterson, who was in command in Pennsylvania, asked for twenty-five thousand more, they were immediately furnished. General Patterson's requisition was afterward revoked by the Secretary of War, on the ground that the troops were not needed; but Governor Curtin, instead of disbanding them, obtained authority from the legislature to equip them at the state's expense, and hold them subject to the call of the national government. This body of men became known as the "Pennsylvania Reserve," and was accepted by the authorities at Washington a few weeks later. Governor Curtin was untiring in his efforts for the comfort of the soldiers, answering carefully the numerous letters sent him from the field, and originated a system of care and instruction for the children of those slain in battle, making them wards of the state. He thus became known in the ranks as "the soldiers' friend." Governor Curtin's health began to fail in 1863, and he signified his intention of accepting a foreign mission that had been offered him as soon as his term should expire, but in the meantime he was renominated, and re-elected by 15,000 majority. In November, 1865, he went to Cuba for his health, and in that year declined another offer of a foreign mission. In 1869 General Grant appointed him minister to Russia, and in 1868 and 1872 he was prominently mentioned as a candidate for vice-president. He returned home in August, 1872, supported Horace Greeley for the presidency, and subsequently joined the Democratic Party, by which he was elected to Congress for three successive terms, serving from 1881 till 1887. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 34
Curtis, George William
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CURTIS, George William, author, born in Providence, Rhode Island, 24 February, 1824. After attending a school in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, he moved to New York with his father in 1839, and for a year was a clerk in a mercantile house in that city. He with his elder brother, in 1842, joined the community of Brook Farm, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, and, after eighteen months of study and farm labor, the brothers went to Concord, Massachusetts, where they spent eighteen months more in a farmer's family, afterward tilling a small piece of land on their own account for six months. In 1846 Mr. Curtis went abroad, living for some time in Italy and Germany, and afterward travelling in Egypt and Syria. He returned to this country in 1850, and soon afterward became one of the editorial staff of the New York "Tribune." Mr. Curtis was one of the editors of the first series of "Putnam's Monthly " from its appearance in 1852 till it ceased to exist. About three years after it was established the magazine passed into the hands of the firm of Dix, Edwards & Company, in which Mr. Curtis was a special partner, pecuniarily responsible, but taking no part in its commercial management. In the spring of 1857 the house, which had also undertaken to publish books, was found to be insolvent for a large amount, and Mr. Curtis sank his private fortune in the endeavor to save its creditors from loss, which he finally accomplished in 1873. In 1853 he began in " Harper's Monthly" the series of papers entitled the " Editor's Easy Chair," and in the same year entered the lecture field, meeting with great success. He soon gained reputation as a popular orator, and in the presidential canvass of 1850 spoke in behalf of the Republican candidates. Soon after the establishment of "Harper's Weekly," in 1857, he became its leading editorial writer, which place he still holds, and on the establishment of " Harper's Bazar" in 1867 he began a series of papers under the title of " Manners upon the Road," which was continued weekly until the spring of 1873. He was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1860 and 1864, and in the latter year was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in the 1st New York District. In 1862 he declined the office of consul-general in Egypt, offered him by President Lincoln. In 1867 he was elected a delegate at large to the Constitutional Convention of New York, in which he was chairman of the committee on education. In 1868 he was nominated a Republican presidential elector, and in 1869 declined the Republican nomination for secretary of state of New York. Mr. Curtis has always been an earnest advocate of civil-service reform, and in 1871 was appointed by President Grant one of a commission to draw up rules for the regulation of the civil service. He was elected chairman of the commission and of the advisory board in which it was subsequently merged, but resigned in March, 1873, on account of difference of views between him and the president in regard to the enforcement of the rules. He was a delegate to the National Republican Convention of 1876 that nominated President Hayes, and at the beginning of the administration he was asked to select a foreign mission, which he declined, and he also declined the special offer of the mission to Germany. Mr. Curtis was chairman of a meeting of independent Republicans that met in New York on 16 June, 1884, to take action against the nomination of James G. Blaine, made by the Chicago Convention, and he subsequently supported the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland. Since 1864 Mr. Curtis has been one of the regents of the University of the state of New York, and is now (1886) its vice-chancellor. He has published "Nile Notes of a Howadji" (New York, 1851); "The Howodji in Syria" (1852); "Lotus-Eating," letters originally written to the New York " Tribune" from various watering-places (1852); two volumes of selections from his contributions to "Putnam's Magazine," entitled "Potiphar Papers" (1853) and "Prue and I" (1856); and "Trumps," a novel, which had appeared in "Harper's Weekly" in 1858-'9 (1862). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 34-35
