Ame-Atk: Ames through Atkinson

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.


AMES, Oakes, 1804-1873, manufacturer, businessman, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 2nd Massachusetts District 1862-1873, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 65-66; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 251-253; Oakes, Ames, A Memoir, 1883; Congressional Globe).

AMES, OAKES (January 10, 1804-May 8, 1873), manufacturer, capitalist, and politician, the son of Oliver Ames [q.v.] and Susannah Angier, was born in Easton, Massachusetts. He received a district-school education, supplemented at sixteen by a few months in Dighton Academy. Entering his father's shovel factory as a laborer, he became familiar with every process, was made a superintendent, and soon became his father's main reliance. He showed zeal, business acumen, and marked inventiveness. In 1844 his father retired, turning the business over to Oakes and his brother Oliver Ames, Jr. [q.v.], who carried it on under the name Oliver Ames & Sons. The two brothers rapidly expanded the business. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 lent it marked impetus, and Oakes Ames was responsible for the sale of large consignments to California merchants and adventurers upon credit. Heavy losses were ultimately sustained upon these ventures, but were more than recouped through the gold rush to Australia and the agricultural development of the Northwest. The Ames shovel was declared to be "legal tender in every part of the Mississippi Valley," and was known even in South Africa (Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1873, article "Oakes Ames"; E. L. Sabin, Building the Pacific Railway, 1919, p. 71). At the beginning of the Civil War the business was valued at $4,000,000, and the war enormously increased its prosperity.

Ames became known in the late fifties as an ardent Free-Soiler, a director of the Emigrant Aid Company during the Kansas conflict, and an adherent of the Republican party. In 1860 he was made a member of the executive council of Massachusetts, and Governor Andrew relied heavily upon his business experience. In 1862 Ames was urged by influential men to run for the national House, was elected for the second Massachusetts district, and took his seat in the Thirty-eighth Congress. He was reelected four times, serving till his death. His position in Congress was not conspicuous. He rarely made a speech; his most important committees were those on manufactures and the Pacific Railroad. His knowledge of business, however, and his shrewd judgment made him a valued working member and gave him the confidence of President Lincoln.

In 1865 Ames was drawn with his brother Oliver into connection with the Credit Mobilier, a company formed to carry on the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. The Credit Mobilier as promoted by T. C. Durant, vice-president of the Union Pacific, to keep in the hands of a small group all the profits derivable from building the road. Durant became president, the two Ames brothers were prominent among the subscribers, and largely through Oakes Ames's efforts the capital by September 21, 1865, was brought up to $2,500,000. After the line had been completed to the 100th meridian, the managers of the Credit Mobilier split into two hos tile factions, one led by Durant and the other by Ames. The upshot was an arrangement by which Oliver Ames became president of the Union Pacific, and Oakes Ames took virtual control of the Credit Mobilier's work. On August 16, 1867, when only 247 miles had been built, he contracted in his own name to build 667 miles more, at prices varying from $42,000 to $96,000 a mile, according to the terrain. He then (October 15, 1867) executed legal papers assigning these contracts, which aggregated some $47,000,000, to seven trustees (Congressional Globe, 42 Congress, 3 Sess., p. 1724). These trustees acted for the stockholders of the Credit Mobilier, and the profits were to be paid to holders of the Credit Mobilier s tock. Upon this basis the remainder of the Union Pacific line was built and turned over to the Union Pacific company. Though this method of building the transcontinental railway was vicious, exhausting the company's endowment of government grants, and by excessive costs and profits loading it with debt, it was the accepted method of building railways in 1860-80. Ames merely used the tools at hand. His purpose, he later said, was "to connect my name conspicuously with the greatest public work of the present century" (Ibid., p. 1724).

Unfortunately, at a critical moment, Ames resorted to improper acts. When Congress opened on November 21, 1867, it was evident that the Union Pacific-Credit Mobilier arrangement might come under fire. The statutes required that the Union Pacific stock be paid for in actual cash; but as a matter of fact, it was issued to Ames and other Credit Mobilier men "who paid for it at not more than thirty cents on the dollar in roadmaking" (Wilson Investigative Report, p. iii). An inquiry would be embarrassing. Moreover, on December 9, C. C. Washburn of Wisconsin introduced in the House a bill to regulate by law the rates on the Union Pacific. Ames took what he deemed a fair precautionary step by selling shares of the Credit Mobilier to other members of Congress. He had 343 shares issued him for the purpose. "I shall put [these]," he wrote from Washington on January 25, 1868, "where they will do the most good to us. I am here on the spot and can better judge where they should go" (Poland Investigative Report, p. 4). By January 30 he was able to write: "I don't fear any investigation here. I have used this [the Credit Mobilier shares] where it will produce most good to us, I think. In view of ... Washburn's move here, I go in for making our bond dividend in full" ( Ibid., p. 5). The stock was sold at par value, with interest from the previous July. Later evidence indicated that at this time Ames himself considered the stock worth at least double the par value. In fact, he wrote on February 22, 1868, that some holders considered it worth $300- $350 a share (Congressional Globe, 42 Congress, 3 Sess., p. 1718). In all, later investigators traced contracts for the delivery of 160 shares to members of Congress. When some men hesitated, Ames assured them that "we are not coming to Congress to ask any favors" (Ibid., p. 1718). He later admitted, however, that he did wish the negative favor of non-interference. "I have found," he said, "there is no difficulty in inducing men to look after their own property" (Ibid., p. 1719).

The revelation of the stock sales came about through a quarrel between Ames and Col. H. S. McComb of Delaware, an associate who alleged that an unfilled subscription entitled him to $25,000 worth of stock which he had not received. Ames resisted the claim. Col. McComb finally threatened to use, in a way to create a scandal, certain letters which Ames had written during the distribution of the stock. To this blackmailing gesture Ames refused to yield. McComb then filed affidavits in a Pennsylvania court in the summer of 1872 alleging Ames's misuse of stock. The result of the affidavits was that the letters of Ames which McComb held were published in full in the New York Sun of September 4, 1872, under the caption "The King of Frauds: How the Credit Mobilier Bought Its Way into Congress." The presidential campaign was at its height and the effect was stupendous. Congressmen who had accepted the stock and were standing for reelection seemed panic-stricken. Many who had called themselves friends of Ames and begged for favors now denied any connection with him or the company and left him to face the storm alone.

At the opening of Congress in December 1872 two committees of inquiry were appointed by the House, one under Luke P. Poland of Vermont to ascertain if any member had given or received bribes, and another under Jeremiah M. Wilson of Indiana to discover if the government had been defrauded(Rhodes, vol. VII, ch. 1). Public pressure forced the removal of the rule of secrecy from the hearings, and the disclosures day by day riveted national attention. Several congressmen Senator Henry L. Wilson of Massachusetts and Representatives H. L. D awes and G. W. Scofield had first accepted shares and then feeling the impropriety had returned them. Other members received shares to be paid for from dividends. Representative B. M. Boyer of Pennsylvania, who had bought seventy-five shares for his wife, stood almost alone in maintaining that his purchase was "both honest and honorable, and consistent with my position as a member of ·Congress" (Poland Investigative Report,p.208), Those most discreditably involved were Senator Patterson of New Hampshire and Representatives James Brooks of New York and Schuyler Colfax of Indiana. Between Ames and Representative James A. Garfield of Ohio arose a sharp issue of veracity J. A. Garfield, Review of the Transactions of the Credit Mobilier Company, 1873). The Poland Committee formally reported Ames "guilty of selling to members of Congress shares of stock in the Credit Mobilier of America for prices much below the true value of such stock, with intent thereby to influence the votes and decisions of such members in matters to be brought before Congress for action" (House Reports, 42 Congress, 3 Sess., No. 77, p. 19). It recommended that he and James Brooks be expelled. In debate Representative Poland led the attack upon Ames with much effectiveness. Ames replied in a long speech, read by the clerk, attempting a justification of his actions. He declared that his motive had been purely patriotic, that he had taken staggering financial risks, and that the stock had not been worth more than par when he sold it. Financially, he asserted, he would have been better off if he had never heard of the Union Pacific, for at its completion the railroad was in debt about $6,000,000, the burden of which fell upon himself and others. The Wilson Committee had reported that the Credit Mobilier h ad defrauded the government. Ames denied this, saying that the Credit Mobilier profits were less than $10,000,000 upon $70,000,000 of expenditures. Partly because the Judiciary Committee threw grave doubt upon the right of the House to expel a member for offenses committed so long previously, partly because expulsion was felt to be too harsh a punishment, the House dropped that penalty. It instead took up a resolution declaring that it "absolutely condemns the conduct of Oakes Ames" (Congressional Globe, 42 Congress, 3 Sess., 1 p. 1832). This was pass ed by a vote of 182 to 36; At once Ames's seat was surrounded by members who assured him that they had acted with reluctance and that they felt the warmest confidence in the rectitude of his intentions(Oberholtzer, II, 607). The consensus of historical opinion has been that Ames's action was highly improper, but that he had not contemplated bribery. He was a product of his time, and his ethical perceptions, like those of other business men of the day, were blunt. He declared that he believed his sales of stock to Congressmen were the "same thing as going into a business community and interesting the leading business men by giving them shares." His steps had been selfish and unethical, but not consciously corrupt.

Returning broken and dispirited to his North Easton home, Ames was given a hearty reception by his constituents, while plans were made by Boston business men for a complimentary dinner. But business worries ( including grave financial difficulties through which the Easton manufactory had passed in 1870) and political disgrace had undermined his health. He was stricken by paralysis and lived but four days. His death was followed by a revulsion of feeling in his favor. The dedication of a memorial hall in his honor in North Easton, November 17, 1881, evoked tributes from Governor John D. Long, George S. Boutwell, E. E. Hale, Blaine, Evarts, Tilden, and others, and the Massachusetts legislature in 1883 passed a resolution of vindication. A monument had meanwhile been erected to him by the Union Pacific at Sherman Summit, Wyo.

In personality Oakes Ames was rugged, laborious, taciturn, and kindly. He was of simple and abstemious habits, with many homely traits which dated back to his early days as a workman. In his time he was known as a temperance advocate, and had other Puritanical qualities. But business shrewdness and keenness, allied with a speculative bent, were his salient characteristics.

[A brief anonymous sketch was published in 1883, Oakes Ames, A Memoir. The two volumes on The Credit Mobilier of America by J.B. Crawford (1880) and R. Hazard ( 1881 ) both defend Ames. For the Poland and Wilson Reports see House Reports, 42 Congress, 3 Sess., Nos. 77, 78, and Senate Reports, 42 Congress, 3 Sess., No. 519. A few items of information may be found in J.P. Davis, The Union Pacific Railway (1894), and E. L. Sabin, Building the Pacific Railway (1919). The relations of Ames and Garfield are treated in T. C. Smith, Life and Letters of James A. Garfield (1925), vol. I, ch. 15. Good general accounts of the Credit Mobilier scandal are offered by J. F. Rhodes, History of the U.S., vol. VII (1906), ch. I, and E. P. Oberholtzer, History of the U. S., vol. II, (1922), pp. 600 ff. Some interesting pages, not altogether accurate, occur in George F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years(1903), vol. I, ch. 22.]

A. N.


ANDERSON, Osborne Perry, 1830-1872, African American abolitionist, member of African American Chatham Community in Ontario, Canada.  Wrote anti-slavery articles for Provincial Freedman for Black community.  Was part of John Brown’s raid at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859; hanged with John Brown, 1859. (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 327; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 1, p. 181)


ANDREW, John Albion, 1818-1867, reformer, anti-slavery advocate, Governor of Massachusetts, member Conscience Whig, Free Soil Party, Republican Party.  Supported John Brown in legal defense.  (American National Biography, Vol. 1, 2002, p. 489; Dictionary of American Biography, 1936 pp. 279-281).

ANDREW, JOHN ALBION (May 31, 1818- 0ct. 30, 1867), governor of Massachusetts, was born at Windham, Maine, of Massachusetts stock, his earliest ancestor of whom we have record, Robert Andrew, having come as it appears from England, settled in what is now Boxford, and died there a prosperous landowner in 1668. Robert's son, Joseph, moved to Salem, where the main stem of the Andrews continued to live. Jonathan Andrew, the father of the future governor, moved to Windham, Maine, in 1807, established a general store, married Nancy Green Pierce, prospered, and became the leading man of the village. On John Andrew's education unusual pains were lavished. His mother, a woman of attainments and force of character, had been a school-teacher and for a time taught the boy herself. Later, when the family was larger, finding the district school inadequate, the parents built a tiny school-house near their own door and here John, his brother, and two sisters were carefully grounded in the rudiments. The next stage, following the custom of the time, was the local academy and in due course the boy attended for a brief time the academies at Portland, North Yarmouth, and Bridgton. Late in 1831, when he was in his fourteenth year, the serious illness of his mother, to  whom he was much attached, called him home and he remained there until her death in the early spring of 1832. Soon afterward he returned to his studies, this time at Gorham Academy, where he prepared for college, entering Bowdoin in 1833. As a student he ranked among the lowest in his class. He spent more time in social fellowship than in study and graduated with more competency in argument and public speaking than in any other field. As a boy he had been stirred by the Anti-Slavery movement; he had now become a determined foe of slavery and his conviction on this issue was to shape h is political course.

He was not yet twenty when he arrived in Boston in 1837, and entered the law office of Fuller & Wash burn as a student, and he was still very youthful in appearance in 1840 when he was admitted to the bar. His progress in the profession was gradual, partly because he was of a slow-maturing type, partly because of his incurably sociable temperament which was always leading him away from the paths of legal preferment. He was active in the Unitarian Church and assistant editor of the church paper, secretary for many years of the Boston Port Society, and one of the most devoted visitors to the prisons, where he was to be found every Sunday afternoon and whence he derived more law cases than fees. It was said of him at this period, "No one who had a 'hard case,' with no money to pay for legal assistance, was ever turned away from his office for that reason; and no one however guilty was denied whatever assistance his case was fairly entitled to receive"(Chandler, p. 79). His father, with his younger son and two daughters, had removed from Maine to Massachusetts and settled at Boxford not far from Boston so as to be near the elder son. There the family hearth continued and the family life was maintained, Andrew returning constantly to recount his experiences in the city and to renew his strength in the atmosphere of love and admiration. So a decade passed while he established relations, made friends, set the foundations for the career which lay hidden before him. In 1847 he became engaged to Eliza Jones Hersey and in 1848was married.

During all this time, Andrew's interest in the Anti-Slavery movement never wavered. His association with the members of James Freeman Clarke's church and other reforming and aspiring groups had deepened the religious and humanitarian side of his nature. When the slavery question again became a burning issue he took a leading part in its discussion. Though he rejected the extreme positions of Garrison and Wendell Phillips, he maintained the firm and uncompromising opposition to slavery which represented the best spirit of Massachusetts. He took part with Bowditch, Howe, Sumner, Theodore Parker, Charles Francis Adams, and others in the fugitive slave case of the brig Ottoman in the summer of 1846 and read the resolutions at the Faneuil Hall meeting where John Quincy Adams, then in his eightieth year, presided. From this time on he was drawn into closer relations with Sumner and Howe and the Young Whigs. Politics, which had always fascinated him, now took a larger part of his thought. The campaign of 1848 stirred him deeply. He was one of the organizers of the Free-Soil party with its platform "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men,'' and he gave himself whole-heartedly to the campaign. With the Know-Nothing movement which swept over Massachusetts four years later he had little in common, and it was not until the Republican party appeared that he was again able to engage with full conviction. In 1857 he was nominated and elected on the Banks or Republican ticket to the legislature. There in the session of 1858 he won distinction by a speech so brilliant and effective that it made him at once one of the leaders of the party. Though he declined reelection his place was established and his popularity grew.

John Brown's raid, his capture, trial, and death had an effect that could not have been predicted upon Andrew's career. When the raid failed and Brown was made prisoner, Andrew took a leading part in raising funds for his defense. When sentence had been pronounced, he took part in a public meeting to raise funds for Brown's family and on that occasion used the words, "John Brown himself is right," which aroused a storm of enthusiasm among anti-slavery men everywhere. When at the instance of the Southern senators a committee was set up to investigate the raid, Andrew was cited to appear and testify. His bearing and testimony before the committee, which had the widest publicity, gave lively satisfaction to anti-slavery men, especially to Massachusetts anti-slavery men. The episode made him more popular than before and in consequence he was almost unanimously chosen delegate to the Republican National Convention at Chicago and made chairman of the delegation. He shared in the nomination of Lincoln, went to Springfield to see him, and brought back a lofty but just opinion of the great leader. One honor led to another. It had long been growing evident that Andrew was one to whom his fellow citizens were well disposed. In the month of July, 1860, a well-informed observer described him as "the most popular man in Massachusetts." In the following month occasion offered a proof. Governor Banks, whose renomination was taken for granted, suddenly declined, five days before the nominating convention. The "machine" had settled upon Henry L. Dawes, a Conservative. But no sooner was it known that Andrew's nomination was a possibility than a legion of friends hastened to his support and he was nominated on the first ballot by a great majority. By an even greater majority-in fact the greatest popular majority in the history of the state up to that time-he was elected governor on the same ticket on which Lincoln became President.

Andrew was now at his utmost vigor of mind and body. Forty-two years of age, strong and sturdy of build, full of energy, capable of great effort and equal to unusual strains of endurance, he was ready for the great labors before him. The crisis was swift in appearance. He had not written his inaugural address before warnings reached him from Adams, and Sumner that the government at Washington was in danger. He at once took steps to put the state militia in a position of readiness. Other warnings followed and within a month he had obtained from the legislature an emergency fund of $100,000, with which to arm, equip, and transport the militia if needed for the defense of Washington. Then came the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops. Andrew so labored that the Massachusetts regiments were ready and went forward before those of any other state. The 6th Massachusetts was the only armed regiment to reach Washington on that critical 19th of April before the city was cut off from the North-as it remained for nearly a week. As the war went on, the Governor came to be more and more the embodiment of the patriotic spirit of the State. His short, rotund, figure, once ridiculed, became beloved. The upper circles of society found him an agreeable guest. The chorus, still remembered in Massachusetts, made to rally the pro-slavery mobs

"Tell John Andrew
Tell John Andrew
Tell John Andrew
   John Brown's dead"

would now have brought him votes in any town in the state. There was no longer any question about his reelection. The state felt that he was enlisted for the war.

In 1862, when the first fine enthusiasm was over, when the tale of deaths and wounds, losses and defeats chilled the spirits and the delay of emancipation discouraged the most ardent, the governors of several northern states united in what has been called the Altoona Conference to urge upon the President the emancipation of the negroes and a more vigorous prosecution of the war. Andrew was a member of the Conference. By a singular coincidence President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation the day before the Conference met, but the governors went on to Washington, conferred with the President, and doubtless contributed something to that increased vigor which became apparent from then on. With emancipation secured there was one other thing that Andrew had at heart. This was to give the negro the full standing of a man by making him a soldier and admitting him to the army. He urged that the negroes be organized into separate corps and regiments. Nothing that he ever undertook appealed to him more powerfully and when he finally had the consent of the War Department and got his first negro regiment, the 54th, organized he felt it a great achievement. "I stand or fall," he declared, ~'as a man and a magistrate, with the rise and fall in history of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment." It was a great venture for, without some such test, one may doubt whether the negro would have achieved his citizenship in the United States. At the election of 1864 Andrew was reelected governor. The end of the war was now in sight. Andrew, absorbed with the problems which would come with peace, labored to establish the negro in his rights and to provide for cooperation between the North and the South. In his farewell message delivered in January 1866, he advocated a lenient and friendly policy toward the Southern states and reconstruction without retribution. When he retired from office, at the close of 1866, it became apparent that the war had worn him out. His friends had already noted that he had overdrawn his physical resources, and he had been warned to husband his strength. Through the greater part of 1867 he continued, however, to take an active interest in public affairs; he worked for reform in the usury laws and in the divorce law, and took a prominent position in opposing the principle of total prohibition. He resisted several minor attacks of ill health and worked on at his legal business, but finally, on October 29, he was stricken with apoplexy and died on the following day amid the general grief of the city.

[Henry Greenleaf Pearson, The Life of John A. Andrew (1904); Peleg W. Chandler, Memoir of Governor Andrew( 1880); Albert Gallatin Browne, Sketch of the Official Life of John A. Andrew (1868); A Memorial Volume Containing the Exercises of the Dedication of the Statue of John A. Andrew (1878); Elias Nason, Discourse on the Life and Character of the Hon. John Albion Andrew (1868); Samuel Burnham, "Hon. John Albion Andrew" in New England History and Genealogical Reg., January 1869; Moorfield Storey, Life of Charles Sumner (1900), pp. 52, 192, 209, 271, 295.]

W. B. P.


ANDREWS, Stephan Pearl, 1812-1886, C (Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 298-299; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 25-26)


ANTHONY, Daniel Read, 1824-1904, newspaper publisher, abolitionist, member Hicksite Quakers, opposed slavery, active in temperance and women’s rights movements, brother of Susan B. Anthony.  Publisher of the Leavenworth Times newspaper in Leavenworth, Kansas. Lieutenant Colonel, 7th Regiment, Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, 1861-1862.  Mayor, Leavenworth, Kansas, 1863. (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 169)


ANTHONY, Henry Bowen, 1815-1884, Republican, statesman, newspaper editor, Governor of Rhode Island, U.S. Senator 1859-1884, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 81-82; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 316-317; Anthony, Henry Bowen, A Memoir, 1885; Congressional Globe)

ANTHONY, HENRY BOWEN (April 1, 1815-September 2, 1884), journalist, politician, a descendant of John Anthony of Hampstead, England, who came to Boston in 1634 and removed to Rhode Island about 1640, was born at Coventry, Rhode Island. His father was William Anthony and his mother was Eliza Kinnicutt Greene. Both his father and his maternal grandfather, James Greene of Warwick, were Quakers. His father was a cotton manufacturer and the part of the town in which they lived was called Anthony. There the boy attended village school and the Friends' meeting-house. Most of his life was spent, however, in Providence, where he fitted for college at a private school and entered Brown University in 1829. He made a good, though not brilliant, record in college and graduated with his class in 1833, carrying with him a very definite leaning toward letters. Although he went into business, to which he gave five years, partly in Providence and partly in Savannah, Ga., literature remained his major interest. In 1837 he married Sarah Aborn, daughter of Christopher Rhodes. A year later, when he was twenty-three years old, he was invited by a kinsman who owned the Providence Journal to take the editorship during an interim of a few weeks. He exhibited such a surprising gift and aptitude for the editorial duty that what began as a mere stop-gap became permanent. So skilfully did he guide the fortunes of the paper and so general was the respect and influence it attained under his direction that he was soon seen to be indispensable. Thus it came about that he was in charge of the paper-the most influential journal in the state-in 1842 during the Dorr Rebellion, one of the crises in the modern history of the old commonwealth. During that time of turbulence and disorder, the newspaper office became the center and rallying-point of the conservative interests of the state and its editor rose to a position of exceptional authority. To Anthony the paper owed not only its political power but very largely also its excellent literary style. Examples of his skill in verse are the mock heroic poems, "The Dorriad" and "The Chepachet Campaign," satirizing Dorr and his partizans, which appeared in the Journal in 1843 (republished in The Dorr War, by Arthur M. Mowry, 1901). Throughout his life and even up to within a week or two of his death he continued to exercise a guiding influence over the Journal, writing paragraphs and articles which were marked by urbanity, charm, and a shrewd knowledge of men and affairs.

Naturally enough then, when in 1849 a conservative candidate was sought for the governorship, Anthony was named and elected governor of the state, was reelected in 1850 and was urged to run again in 1851, but declined. His administration as governor fulfilled the expectations of his friends and gave him a reputation both for talent and sagacity in the conduct of public affairs. It was, therefore, a matter of course that when he was nominated in 1858 for the Senate he was elected with little opposition. The atmosphere of the Senate was particularly congenial to Anthony's tastes and abilities. His personal charm and dignity, his knowledge of affairs, his acquaintance with public men, his natural ease and kindliness of manner, all fitted him to fill his part in the upper chamber with distinction and success. There he was chosen president pro tempore on many occasions, in 1869, 1870, 1871, and for the last time in 1884, when he declined to serve on the score of ill health. It was no wonder that he was returned by his loyal state time after time until he had become the "Father of the Senate"; he was still a member when he died, full of honors and greatly admired both by his associates and his constituents.

Anthony was one of the type of senators whose services lie rather in the exercise of judgment and practical wisdom than in any definite contribution either to law or practise. He was a member, however, of important committees: Claims, Naval Affairs, Mines and Mining, Post Office and Post Roads, and finally that of Public Printing, on which he served for more than twenty-two years and there labored to reduce the extravagance and waste, to restrict public printing to the legitimate demands of the various government departments, and to make the Congressional Record a faithful transcript of congressional proceedings. In these endeavors he was only partly successful; they were such desirable ends, however, that they have been pursued, and some of them attained, by others. Similarly as a member of the Committee on Naval Affairs, a post which he filled from 1863 to 1884, he exerted always a sound and moderating influence. He was conservative by constitution: he voted for the impeachment of Johnson, was a steadfast supporter of a protective tariff, and was no less firm in support of a sound currency. He brought to the Senate the character and attainments of a gentleman, a profound and sympathetic knowledge of the state he represented, and an urbanity and courtesy which made him a valued associate in the upper chamber.

[Henry Bowen Anthony, A Memorial (1885); George Frisbie Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903), vol. II; letters and papers of Justin S. Morrill.]

W.B.P.


ANTHONY, Susan Brownell, 1820-1906, American Anti-Slavery Society, reformer, abolitionist, orator, leader of the female suffrage movement, radical egalitarian, temperance movement leader, founded Women’s National Loyal League with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1863 to fight for cause of abolition, co-founded American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in 1866 to fight for universal suffrage.  (Anthony, 1954; Barry, 1988; Harper, 1899; Harper, 1998; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 169-170, 291, 465, 519; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 318-321; Harper, Ida Husted, 1899, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony; Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1885, Our Famous Women).

ANTHONY, SUSAN BROWNELL (February 15, 1820-March 13, 1906), reformer, was a descendant of John Anthony, Jr., who came to America from Hampstead, England, in 1634. She was born in Adams, Massachusetts, where her well-to-do Quaker father was a pioneer cotton manufacturer. The Anthony family had produced strong-minded women, not afraid to face the public, before Susan's day. Her father's mother had been given an exalted place on the high seat in the meeting, and his sister, Hannah, had been a Quaker preacher. Susan grew up in an atmosphere of independence and moral zeal. Daniel Anthony had married Lucy Read, passionately fond of music and dancing, in defiance of the meeting. Much to the annoyance of his patrons, he discontinued the sale of liquor at the store he conducted in conjunction with his mill. He permitted none but Quaker preachers to smoke or drink in his home; was so opposed to slavery that he tried to get cotton for his mills which had not been produced by slave labor; encouraged his daughters to be self-supporting, ignoring the criticism of his neighbors; and finally was "read out of meeting" for permitting the young people of the town to dance on the top floor of his house, instead of over the tavern, though his own children were allowed the role of spectators only. His remark when told that the men would not come to the "raising" of tenement houses he had decided to build, unless he furnished them with gin, had in it the same grim determination which his iron-willed daughter later displayed: "Then the houses will not be raised."

Susan was a precocious child, learning to read and write at the age of three, endowed with an unusual memory, and eager for knowledge. When she was six years old, the family moved to Battensville, New York. Here she attended the district school and later a school which her father established in his home for his own children and those of his neighbors. This training, supplemented by a year at Deborah Moulson's boarding-school at Hamilton, near Philadelphia, qualified her for good positions in the teaching profession, the best and last of which, head of the Female Department of Canajorarie Academy, she held from 1846 to 1849.

Her early letters reveal a straight-laced, prudish young woman, serious-minded, with very rigid moral standards, and prone to criticize her elders with more than the ordinary assurance of conceited youth. She writes to her uncle, rebuking him for drinking ale and wine at yearly meeting; and after commenting sharply upon President Van Buren's patronage of the theatre, and revelings in the tents of luxury and ''all-debasing wine," asks if there can be hope of less dissipation among the people, when one who practises such abominable vices " (in what is called a gentlemanly manner) is suffered to sit at the head of our Government." She was not without admirers of the other sex in those days, but there is no evidence that her passions were ever stirred. She never felt it her mission to be a home-maker. When nearing thirty she was in the family of a cousin when the latter gave birth to a child, and wrote home rather disgustedly that in her opinion there were some drawbacks to marriage which made a woman quite content to remain single. Later her views of amusements and life in general broadened, and she lost much of her priggishness. It was to reform, however, that she gave her heart, and in its service that she found an outlet for her emotions, pouring into it the devotion, loyalty, and self-sacrifice which most women give to their families.

Interest in the great issues of the day and a growing passion to join in the fight against injustice and vice had made her restless in the narrow confines of the school-room, and by 1850 she was back in the family home, now near Rochester, New York. It had become a rallying-place for reformers and about its table gathered such men as Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, Channing, and Frederick Douglass. Soon she became acquainted with Amelia Bloomer, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton with whom she formed a life-long alliance, which in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties did much to force the woman suffrage movement on to ultimate success. Her first public work was in behalf of temperance. In 1852 she was a delegate to a meeting held by the Sons of Temperance in Albany. Upon arising to speak on a motion, she was informed that "the sisters were not invited there to speak but to listen and learn." As a result of this treatment she and others organized the Woman's State Temperance Society of New York, the first of its kind ever formed. She continued her efforts for temperance in conventions and elsewhere, but all the time meeting violent prejudice against women's participation in public affairs, she became increasingly convinced that only through equal rights could women become effective workers for social betterment. She also attended teachers' conventions, where she demanded for women all the privileges enjoyed by men. She took a radical abolitionist stand, and in 1857-58 campaigned under the banner "No Union with Slaveholders." After the war she was one of the first to advocate negro suffrage. When the Fourteenth Amendment was under discussion, she attempted to have included a provision insuring the franchise to women as well as to male blacks but was unsuccessful. In 1852 with some reluctance she joined her friend Amelia Bloomer and others sti11 wearing the short skirt and Turkish trousers, known as the Bloomer costume. In about a year she abandoned it. "I found it a physical comfort," she said, "but a mental crucifixion. The attention of my audience was fixed upon my clothes instead of my words. I learn ed the lesson then that to be successful a person must attempt but one reform."

Any chronological record of Miss Anthony's life would be one of unending lecture tours and the direction of campaigns in one state after another. In 1868 in association with Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury she published a periodical known as The Revolution, radical and defiant in tone. "We’ve said at all times," Mrs. Stanton declares, "just what we thought, and advertized nothing we did not believe in" (Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1922, I, 215). in 1869 the National Woman Suffrage Association was organized to secure a sixteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution, enfranchising women. Mrs. Stanton was made president and Miss Anthony chairman of the executive committee. Owing to some division in sentiment, the American Woman Suffrage Association was formed the same year, with Henry Ward Beecher as president and Lucy Stone chairman of the executive committee. It worked chiefly to secure suffrage through amendments to state constitutions. In 1890 the two societies were merged under the name National American Woman Suffrage Association and Mrs. Stanton was elected president and Miss Anthony vice-president at large. In 1892 Miss Anthony was elected president and served until 1900, when she retired at the age of eighty.

In 1872, in a plan to test the legality of woman suffrage under the Fourteenth Amendment, she registered with fifteen other women and voted at the November elections in the city of Rochester. Two weeks later she was arrested for having violated the law. Her trial was postponed and she voted again in the city elections the following March. Since the trial of the United States vs. Susan B. Anthony was to be a jury trial, she and her associates spent the weeks and months preceding it in an intensive lecture campaign aimed to educate the voters from among whom the jury would have to be selected. She was most ably defended at the trial by Henry R. Selden and John Van Voorhis. At its conclusion Judge Ward Hunt delivered a written opinion, written before the trial had taken place, which directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty. In the face of Miss Anthony's counsels' objections to this questionable procedure, Judge Hunt refused to allow the jury to be polled and discharged them without permitting them to consult together. He then imposed a fine of $100 on Miss Anthony. She told him she would never pay a dollar of the penalty and she never did. Courts and laws meant nothing to her, if they conflicted with what she thought was right. She "would ignore all law to help the slave," she once declared, and "ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman."

Throughout the many years of Miss Anthony's strenuous career she encountered opposition of almost every kind. She met hisses and clamor, rotten eggs and vegetables, press comments that were vile and all but obscene, but sustained by an unshakable confidence in the justice of her cause, she never wavered, and before her death she was rewarded with respect and honor rarely bestowed upon woman, and had the satisfaction of seeing equal suffrage granted in four states, and a measure of suffrage granted in others. At international congresses of women in London and Berlin (1899 and 1904), her appearance called forth demonstrations of exceptional regard.

When she was about thirty-five she was described by a newspaper reporter as having "pleasing rather than pretty features, decidedly expressive countenance, rich brown hair very effectively and not at all elaborately arranged, neither too tall nor too short, too plump nor too thin-in brief one of those juste milieu persons, the perfection of common sense physically exhibited." In her later years her face was lined, angular, and somewhat austere, but lighted with the spiritual beauty which life-long devotion to high purposes often imparts. She was of the militant type, and being engaged in a de sperate fight, she not infrequently displayed some of the less pleasant characteristics which such warfare is likely to produce in a soldier. She had amazing physical vigor, was aggressive and bold. She spoke her mind with great frankness, arid occasionally used strong epithets, but no stronger than those hurled at her. There was little of the conciliatory or diplomatic in her disposition. As is often the case with those who are obsessed with one idea, she showed little appreciation for the complexity of social and personal problems, and had difficulty in being altogether fair to points of view different from her own. These, however, were the faults of the qualities which gave her power, and she ranks high among the notable array of reformers, male and female, of her day. She died in Rochester, New York, one month after reaching her eighty-sixth year, leaving her small fortune of $10,000 for the cause to which she had given her life.

[Material for this sketch has been found in Ida H. Harper's three-vol. work, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (vols. I, II, 1899; vol. III, 1908). These vols. contain much newspaper and mag. comment, giving a wide range of editorial opinion on her work and personality. See also M. A. De Wolfe Howe, Causes and Their Champions ( 1926); Don C. Seitz, Uncommon America (1925); Sherwood Eddy and Kirby Page, Makers of Freedom (1926); United States vs. Susan B. Anthony, in Blatchford, Reports of Cases in the Circuit Court, XI, 200-12. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More (1898), contains two chapters on Miss Anthony. With Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Matilda Gage, Miss Anthony prepared a History of Woman Suffrage, 3 vols. (1881-87), and in 1900, in conjunction with Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, she prepared a fourth vol., which closed the century.]

H. E. S.


APPLETON, General James, 1786-1862, temperance reformer, abolitionist leader, soldier, clergyman.  Leader of the anti-slavery Liberty Party. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 301, 405n12; Wiley, 1886; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 82; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 327) 

APPLETON, JAMES (February 14, 1785-August 25, 1862), reformer, was one of the first to propose state prohibition as a remedy for intemperance. He was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a descendant of Samuel Appleton, who came there from England in 1635. His father also bore the name Samuel. His mother, Mary, was the daughter of Reverend Timothy White of Haverhill, Massachusetts. He had only ordinary educational advantages, but possessed business ability and a gift for public speaking. Removing to Gloucester, Massachusetts, he engaged in the jewelry business and also kept a public house. Here, November 19, 1807 (Vital Records of Gloucester, Massachusetts; November 15, according to Waters's "Genealogy of the Ipswich Descendants of Samuel Appleton," in Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society, XV), he married Sarah, daughter of Reverend Daniel and Hannah Bowers Fuller, by whom he had ten children. Though a Federalist in politics, as soon as the government had committed itself to war with England in 1812 he volunteered for service in the field. As lieutenant-colonel of the Gloucester regiment, " he twice, at the engagements of Sandy Bay and of Gallup's Folly, in 1814, repelled attacks of the British fleet under Sir George Colyer upon the city and forts of Gloucester, for which service he was borne as of the same rank upon the rolls of the Regular Army of the United States. He subsequently was promoted Colonel and Brigadier- General of the First Brigade, Second Division, of the Massachusetts Line" ( The Diary of the Revd. Daniel Fuller, ed. by D. F. Appleton, 1894, pp. 5, 6). He represented Gloucester in the General Court in 1813 and 1814. In 1832 he prepared and presented to that body a petition asking for a law prohibiting sales of liquor in less quantities than thirty gallons. In reply to opposition, he wrote three letters, which were published in the Salem Gazette during February 1832. This pioneer attempt to secure state prohibition failed, and the following year he left Massachusetts for Portland, Maine. In 1836 he was elected a member of the legislature of that state and the following year he was chairman of a special committee appointed to consider the license system. Its report, which was written by him, was, according to Neal Dow [q.v.], "the first official document in the history of Maine in which prohibition is suggested as the true method of dealing with the liquor traffic" (Reminiscences, 1898, p. 243). In 1838 he was chairman of a similar committee which presented a bill in favor of prohibition and provided for the submission of the matter to popular vote. In the legislature of 1839 he was again chairman of the committee on license laws and sought, without success, to secure the passage of a prohibitory law.

His interest was not confined to temperance reform, however; he was also an ardent antislavery advocate. Among the tracts published by the New England Anti-Slavery Tract Association is one (No. 3) written by him on the Missouri Compromise. In 1842, 1843, and 1844 he was the candidate of the Liberty party for governor of Maine. In his later years he returned to Ipswich and lived on the ancestral farm, but continued his interest in public affairs. He was active in his support of war measures during 1861, but died without seeing the cause for which he had labored victorious. His portrait shows clear cut features, a high forehead, thick, waving hair, keen but kindly eyes with the suggestion of the dreamer in them, and a mouth and jaw indicative of grim determination. He is described as belonging "to the class of men known as fanatics. From business he turned to politics that he might encourage legislation to remedy a number of social ills. ... He indorsed Birney's views on slavery, advocated generous and systematic relief of the pauper and championed the cause of popular education. But his real hobby was temperance" (J. A. Krout, The Origins of Prohibition, 1925).

[Origin of the Maine Law and of Prohibitory Legislation, with a brief memoir of James Appleton, pub. by the National Temp. Society, New York, 1886-this contains the letters pub. in the Salem Gazette; John J. Babson, History of the Town of Gloucester (1860); Austin Willey, History of the Anti-Slavery Cause in State and Nation (1886); John G. Woolley and Wm. E. Johnson, Temperance Progress of the Century (1903); D. L. Colvin, Prohibition in the U. S. (1926).]

H. E. S.


ARMAT, Thomas (Armatt), abolitionist leader, Committee of Twenty-Four/Committee of Guardians, founding member, Electing Committee, Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1787  (Basker, 2005, pp. 92, 102; Nash, 1991, p. 129; Nathan, 1991)


ARNOLD, Isaac Newton, 1815-1884, lawyer, historian, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1860-1864, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Republican.  Introduced anti-slavery bill in Congress.  Served as an officer in the Union Army.  Active in Free Soil movement of 1848. Protested Fugitive Slave Law, October 1850. Outspoken opponent of slavery.  (Appletons’, 1888, p. 96; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 368-369; Congressional Globe)

ARNOLD, ISAAC NEWTON (November 30, 1815- April 24, 1884), lawyer, congressman, historian, was born at Hartwick, Otsego County, New York. He was the son of Dr. George Washington Arnold and his wife, Sophia M. Arnold, both born in Rhode Island. His grandfather was Thomas Arnold, a soldier of the Revolution. Isaac was educated at local schools. Thrown on his own resources at fifteen he taught school and studied law in the offices of Richard Cooper and Judge E. B. Morehouse at Cooperstown. In 1835 he was admitted to the bar; after a year's practise he came to Chicago in 1836, the year before its incorporation as a city (Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1884). Here he formed a law partnership with Mahlon D. Ogden, also a New Yorker, which lasted till 1847 (A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, I, 435-36). His legal practice, both criminal and civil, was large and important. In 1841 he was concerned in the case of Bronson vs. Kinzie decided by the United States Supreme Court (1 Howard, 3n) in accord with his contention that the state stay law (allowing relief from foreclosure if land did not bring two-thirds its appraised value at auction) was unconstitutional (Illinois State Historical Society Journal, vol. VII, no. 2, p. 25). As a Democratic politician he opposed repudiation of the state's indebtedness in 1842; he was one of the persons among whom is to be shared the credit for the plan that finally extricated the state from debt. He served in the General Assembly, 1842-45, where he was chairman of the house committee on finance. He was presidential elector for Polk in 1844.

Arnold took an active part in the Free-Soil movement of 1848, going as a delegate to the national and state conventions. He was one of the Chicago committee appointed to draw resolutions of protest against the Fugitive Slave Law in October, 1850. Seymour Currey, Chicago: Its History and Its Builders, 1912, I, 415). He was elected to the General Assembly in 1856 as a Republican. In 1860 he was elected to Congress and at once assumed a position of prominence. In December 1861, as chairman of the committee on defense of lakes and rivers, he pressed a measure for enlarging the Illinois and Michigan Canal to permit the passage of warships from the Mississippi to the Lakes. In this connection he was active in securing a National Canal Convention at Chicago in 1863. In January 1865 his measure finally passed the House but failed in the Senate (Arthur C. Cole, Era of the Civil War, 1919, pp, 354-56). In his second term he was chairman of the roads and canals committee (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, 1 Sess., p. 18). His record continued to be one of out-spoken hostility to slavery. On March 24, 1862, he introduced a bill to prohibit slavery in every place subject to national authority, which became a law June 19, 1862 (Ibid., 37 Congress, 2 Sess., p. 1340; App., p. 364). He made an able speech in support of the second confiscation act, May 23, 1862 (Ibid., 37 Congress, 2 Sess., App., p. 182). On February 15, 1864, he moved the amendment abolishing Slavery in the United States (Ibid., 38 Congress, 1 Sess., p. 659). He served as auditor of the treasury for the Post Office Department, 1865-66.

As his political career ended, his literary career began. In 1866 he published The History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery. In 1880 he published a Life of Benedict Arnold. At his death in 1884 he was on the point of finishing his Life of Abraham Lincoln. This is the best known of his historical works. Although frankly eulogistic, it was for some time the best biography available, and has of course to-day the value of a source. Arnold's literary style was clear, simple, and enjoyable. Compared with the standards of his time, his historical workmanship is generally competent. Arnold was one of the founders of the Chicago Historical Society and had procured its charter when a member of the General Assembly in 1857 (Currey, III, 218). He delivered the address dedicating its building, November 19, 1868, and on December 19, 1876, he was elected its president. A series of papers given by him before the Society has been published by it. He was twice married: first, to Catherine E. Dorrance of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, who died October 30, 1839, leaving one child; and second, to her sister, Harriet Augusta Dorrance, by whom he had nine children.

[In addition to the references given above, something is to be gleaned from Arnold's reminiscent addresses: Abraham Lincoln, paper read before the Royal Historical Society, London, June 16, 1881(Chicago, 1881); Addresses before Chicago Historical Society, November 19, 1868 (1877); W. B. Ogden; and Early Days in Chicago, paper read before Chicago Historical Society, December 20, 1881 (1882); Recollections of the Early Chicago and Illinois Bar, lecture before Chicago Bar Ass., June 10, 1880; Reminiscences of Lincoln and of Congress during the Rebellion, lecture before New York Genealogy and Biography Society, April 15, 1882; The Layman's Faith, paper read before the Chicago Philosophical Society, December 10, 1883. The Memorial Address by E. B. Washburne for the Chicago Historical Society, 1889, has to be used with caution due to Washburne's consistent inaccuracy. There is a good but brief sketch by John M. Palmer, in The Bench and Bar of Illinois, 1889, vol. I.]

T. C. P.


ASHLEY, James Mitchell, 1824-1896, Ohio, Underground Railroad activist. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Adamant opponent of slavery.  Member, Free Soil Party, 1848.  Joined Republican Party in 1854. (Dumond, 1961, p. 339; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 110; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 389-390; Congressional Globe)

ASHLEY, JAMES MITCHELL (November 14, 1824-September 16, 1896), congressman, counted ancestors among the early English settlers of Virginia- the name of Capt. John Ashley appearing in the Virginia Charter of 1609. For nearly two centuries the descendants of Capt. Ashley resided in and near Norfolk. One branch of the family drifted to the frontier of Pennsylvania, settling near Pittsburgh in the early years of the nineteenth century. James Mitchell, the oldest of several children of John C. and Mary Kilpatrick Ashley, was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania; shortly thereafter the family removed to Portsmouth, Ohio. Both his father and grandfather were itinerant ministers of the church founded by Alexander Campbell. He had no schooling, his early education being acquired at home, chiefly under the guidance of his mother. From his ninth to his fourteenth year he frequently accompanied his father, who preached in a circuit extending through the border counties of Kentucky and western Virginia. Here the boy glimpsed something of the system of slavery, and early came to detest it. At the age of sixteen, rebelling against the austere regulations established by his father for the government of his household, he ran away from home and secured employment as a cabin boy and later as a clerk upon an Ohio river steamboat. A still more deep-seated abhorrence of slavery was acquired through his experiences on the southern rivers. Time and again he saw negroes, with safe-conducts of passage, sold back into slavery; the cruel treatment of slaves on board; and the utter disregard of their persons all through the country. Abandoning his work on the river, Ashley wandered through a number of southern states, visiting, among other places, the Hermitage, an event which he subsequently asserted made a profound impression upon him. While in Virginia, his expressions in opposition to slavery were so violent that he was told to leave the state.

Shortly after his return to Ohio, Ashley entered the printing office of the Scioto Valley Republican (1841), and subsequently was employed in various printing offices until he became editor of the Democrat in Portsmouth, Ohio (1848). During his experience as an editor he studied law with Charles O. Tracy, under whom he prosecuted his studies until he was admitted to the bar (1849), shortly after which he relinquished his connection with the Democrat. The ensuing two years were passed in Ports mouth in the work of boat construction. In 1851 he was married to Emma J. Smith of Kentucky, and in the same year removed to Toledo, where he engaged for a few years in the. wholesale drug business.

He was by this time keenly interested in the political issues of the day. Hitherto a Democrat, his intense antagonism to slavery swept him into the Free-Soil party (1848) and shortly thereafter into the Republican party (1854). He assisted in the formation of the latter in the Toledo district, and was a delegate to the Republican National Convention at which John C. Fremont was nominated for the presidency (1856). Two years later he was himself nominated as the Republican candidate for Congress from his district and was elected. To this position he was consecutively reelected in 1860, 1862, 1864, and 1866. Among the more important measures introduced or advocated in the House by Ashley was that of minority representation, a bill being reported by him looking to the introduction of that principle in the territorial governments-his speech in support of his bill being the first on that subject made in Congress. During the extra session of July 1861 he prepared the first measure for the reconstruction of the southern states presented to Congress, and as chairman of the Committee on Territories, reported it to the House (March 12, 1862). The bill was tabled by a vote of 65 to 56, and the subject was not again revived at that session, but the ideas contained in the bill and the line of policy it outlined were embodied in the reconstruction measures finally adopted and carried into effect. In connection with Lot M. Morrill of Maine, Ashley drew up and had charge of the bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia (April 11, 1862). He introduced the first proposition to amend the Constitution of the United States, so as to abolish slavery (December 14, 1863), but the measure was at first defeated in the House. On a reconsideration Ashley succeeded in converting twenty-four border and northern Democrats and secured the passage of the measure (January 31, 1865). He considered this the greatest achievement of his life.

It was on the initiative of Ashley that the move for the impeachment of President Johnson was begun (January 7, 1867). Like many others of the extreme radicals, he dropped from political life after the trial and acquittal of the President. He was defeated in the ensuing fall election and left Congress March 3, 1869. He was appointed by President Grant territorial governor of Montana, but was removed within a year on account of his sharp criticisms of the President's policies. The final act of his political career was his active participation in the Liberal Republican convention of 1872 and his support of Greeley for the presidency in the ensuing campaign. Ashley's political principles were not formed by logical mental processes, but by sentiment aroused by personal experiences. Puritan in habit, suspicious, uncharitable of opposition and somewhat vain, he was a born radical. His personal courage, his hatred of oppression, and his love of liberty drew him into the emancipation cause-first for the negro and then, as he believed, by his warfare on Johnson, for the whole American people.

After his political career was over, he became interested in the possibility of a railroad extending from Toledo across to the Michigan Peninsula which would furnish an outlet for about 300 miles of country. He purchased valuable terminals at Toledo entirely on credit and proceeded to build the road north to Lake Michigan, which became the Toledo, Ann Arbor & Northern Michigan Railroad. He was its president from 1877 to 1893. This work illustrates perhaps better than any other the characteristic feature of his life, his pertinacity.

[Orations and Speeches by J. M. Ashley of Ohio (1894), ed. by Benjamin W. Arnett arid published by the Afro-American League of Tennessee, is the chief source of information. The Congressional Globe and the files of the Toledo Blade are indispensable sources for the period of Ashley's pol. career. His connection with reconstruction is detailed in "An Ohio Congressman in Reconstruction," a manuscript thesis prepared by his grand-daughter, Margaret Ashley Paddock, at Columbia University James G. Blaine's Twenty Years of Congress (1884) contains numerous estimates of Ashley's services from the viewpoint of a partisan Republican. Ashley's lib., containing his collection of private papers, was destroyed by fire during his lifetime.]

C. E. C.


ATKINSON, Edward, 1827-1905, industrial entrepreneur, economist, abolitionist, activist.  Opposed slavery as a supporter of the Free Soil Party.  Also a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which aided fugitive slaves.  Atkinson also supported John Brown’s efforts by supplying him rifles and ammunition for his raid on the US arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859.  Opposed Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt’s imperialist ambitions in the Philippines and in Cuba.  After 1898, became a full-time supporter of the American Anti-imperialist League.  (Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1900; Pease & Pease, 1972)



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.