Chi-Col: Child through Colwell

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


CHILD, David Lee, 1794-1874, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist, author, journalist.  Leader, manager, 1833-1840, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Child served as a manager and a member of the Executive Committee of the AASS, 1840-1843, Vice-President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1835-1836.  Published The Despotism of Freedom—or The Tyranny and Cruelty of American Republican Slaveholders.  Co-editor with his wife, Lydia, of The Anti-Slavery Standard.  (Dumond, 1961, p. 269; Mabee, 1970, pp. 193, 327; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 398, 399; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 603-604; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 65; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 165-166; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 4, p. 804; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 324)

CHILD, DAVID LEE (July 8, 1794-September 18, 1874), journalist, was born in West Boylston, Massachusetts, the son of Zachariah and Lydia (Bigelow) Child. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1817. The following year he became sub-master of the Boston Latin School. In 1820 he served as secretary of legation at Lisbon, Portugal. Later in Spain he engaged in the war against the French, saying that he felt it was always his duty to help secure and defend liberty. From then on he engaged in many struggles for freedom of various sorts. He returned to the United States in 1824 and began the study of law with his uncle, Tyler Bigelow, in Watertown, Massachusetts, being admitted to the Suffolk County bar in 1828. During the same year he was a member of the Massachusetts state legislature, edited the Massachusetts Journal, a leading Adams paper, and, in October, married Lydia Maria Francis [see Lydia Maria Francis Child], an author who later became prominent in the anti-slavery movement. Child was himself an early member of the anti-slavery society and in 1832 addressed a series of letters on the subject to Edward S. Abdy, an English philanthropist. He was a trustee of Noyes Academy at Canaan, New Hampshire, in 1834, and was instrumental in opening the institution to colored youths at that time. In 1836 he went to Belgium to study the beet-sugar industry. He returned and erected in Northampton, Massachusetts, the first beet-sugar factory in this country. The factory failed financially and was closed in 1844. But Child had proved the value of the commodity. He published a pamphlet in 1840 called Culture of the Beet, and Manufacture of Beet-sugar.

About 1843-44, he for a time assisted his wife in editing the National Anti-Slavery Standard in New York. The remainder of his life was spent in bettering conditions among the freed people and in writing on various subjects having to do with freedom. The best examples of his writing and of his political interests are the two pamphlets, The Texan Revolution (1843) and The Taking of Naboth's Vineyard (1845). He died in Wayland, Massachusetts.

[Information concerning Child is to be found in Professional and Industrial History of Suffolk County, Massachusetts (1894); Bench and Bar Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1895); Elias Child, Genealogy Child, Childs and Childe Families (1881); and Letters of Lydia Maria Child (1883). An account of Child's experiments with sugar-beets is given in F. S. Harris, The Sugar-Beet in America (1919).]

M. S.


CHILD, Lydia Maria Francis, 1802-1880, author, reformer, abolitionist, member Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society.  Wrote for the Liberty Bell.  Executive Committee, American Anti-Slavery Society.  Prolific writer and ardent abolitionist.  In 1840’s, edited National Anti-Slavery Standard newspaper.  Child published: Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), Romance of the Republic (1867), Authentic Accounts of American Slavery (1835), The Evils of Slavery, and the Cure of Slavery (1836), Anti-Slavery Catechism (1836), The Right Way, the Safe Way, Proved by Emancipation in the British West Indies and Elsewhere (1860), Freedmen’s Book (1865), and articles “The Patriarchal Institution” and “The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Law,” (1860), and edited Harriet Ann Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861).  (Drake, 1950, pp. 117, 176; Dumond, 1961, pp. 273, 281; Karcher, 1994; Mabee, 1970, pp. 37, 70, 108, 193, 320, 325, 359, 360; Meltzer, 1992; Meltzer & Holland, 1982; Nathan, 1991, p. 131; Pease, 1965, pp. 86-91; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 44, 199, 221-222, 398, 399, 519; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 97-98, 113-114, 185; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 603-604; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 67; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 167-170; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 4, p. 806; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 324-325)
Mrs. Child's numerous books, published during a period of half a century, include, besides the works already mentioned, “The Rebels, or Boston before the Revolution,” a novel containing an imaginary speech of James Otis, and a sermon by Whitefield, both of which were received by many people as genuine (Boston, 1822); “The First Settlers of New England” (1829); “The American Frugal Housewife,” a book of kitchen economy and directions (1829; 33d ed., 1855); “The Mother's Book,” “The Girl's Own Book,” and the “Coronal,” a collection of verses (1831); “The Ladies' Family Library,” a series of biographies (5 vols., 1832-'5); “Philothea,” a romance of Greece in the days of Pericles (1835); “Letters from New York,” written to the Boston “Courier” (2 vols., 1843-'5); “Flowers for Children” (3 vols., 1844-'6); “Fact and Fiction” (1846); “The Power of Kindness” (Philadelphia, 1851); “Isaac T. Hopper, a True Life” (1853); “The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages,” an ambitious work, showing great diligence, but containing much that is inaccurate (3 vols., New York, 1855); “Autumnal Leaves” (1856); “Looking Toward Sunset” (1864); the “Freedman's Book” (1865); “Miria, a Romance of the Republic” (1867); and “Aspirations of the World” (1878). A volume of Mrs. Child's letters, with an introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips, was published after her death (Boston, 1882). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 603-604. 

CHILD, LYDIA MARIA FRANCIS (February 11, 1802-October 20, 1880), author, abolitionist; was descended from Richard Francis, who settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636. Her paternal grandfather, a weaver, fought at Concord in 1775; her father, Convers Francis, a baker, of West Cambridge and Medford, Massachusetts, was a strong character, a reader, and a foe of slavery; her mother, Susannah Rand, had "a spirit busy in doing good." Lydia, youngest of six children, was born in Medford, where she attended the public schools and for one year a seminary; but her chief mental stimulus in youth came from her brother Convers, a Unitarian clergyman and later a professor in the Harvard Divinity School. As an author she was precocious, publishing two popular novels in 1824 and 1825-Hobomok, on early Salem and Plymouth, and The Rebels, or, Boston before the Revolution. From 1825 to 1828 she had a private school in Watertown, Massachusetts, and in 1826 started Juvenile Miscellany, a bi-monthly magazine. She married David Lee Child [q.v.], a Boston lawyer, in October 1828. They soon joined the abolitionists, and in 1833 Mrs. Child threw a bomb into the pro-slavery camps North and South, with An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans. The little book made many converts; Channing, Sumner, Higginson, and other prominent opponents of slavery, acknowledged its influence on them then or later. It also aroused intense hostility: the sale of Mrs. Child's other books fell off badly, and Juvenile Miscellany died in 1834; the Boston Atheneum cancelled her free membership. But she kept on undaunted, attacking slavery in work after work, and attending tumultuous abolition meetings; in old age she remembered "collaring and pulling away a man who was shaking his fist in Mr. Phillips's face at a Music Hall mob-and her surprise when he tumbled down." From 1841 to 1849 she, with for a time the assistance of her husband, edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard, a New York weekly newspaper. In 1852 they retired to a small farm she had inherited in Weyland, Massachusetts, henceforth their home. Their interest in public affairs remained as keen as ever: out of a modest income they gave liberally to the anti-slavery cause; and when John Brown lay wounded and in prison, after Harper's Ferry, Mrs. Child asked the governor for permission to come to Virginia and nurse him. The ensuing correspondence, including a fiery letter from a Southern lady, Mrs. Mason, and a calm survey of slavery by Mrs. Child, was published in 1860 in pamphlet form as Correspondence between Lydia Maria Child and Governor Wise and Mrs. Mason of Virginia, and reached a circulation of 300,000 copies. During the Civil War she was dissatisfied because the abolition of slavery was not made the prime issue, and even the Emancipation Proclamation disappointed her as "merely a war measure"; but after. Lincoln's reelection she wrote, "I have constantly gone on liking him better and better." Her later life was uneventful; she survived her husband six years, remaining intellectually alert to the end.

Mrs. Child had a wholesome diversity of interests, best shown by her vivacious private correspondence and by her Letters from New York (2 vols., 1843, 1845). "My natural inclinations," he said, "drew me much more strongly toward literature and the arts than toward reform." Beauty remained a life-long passion; ''I hang prisms in my windows," she wrote in old age, "to fill the room with rainbows." Her early novels, however, show a strong didactic bent; and The First Settlers of New England (1829), written before she became an abolitionist, contains the germs of her later ideas. At all events American literature lost little by her interest in reforms, for her creative gift was not great. Her stories and poems for children are notable only as pioneer work; some of her tales and sketches for adult readers have fanciful beauty or realistic force, but all lack the final touch; and even her later novels (Philothea, 1836, on the Age of Pericles; A Romance of the Republic, 1867, on slavery and the Civil War) are weak in structure and character-drawing. Mysticism and rationalism, which ran parallel in her nature, early freed her from accepted creeds. Although she never went wholly over into spiritualism, she believed in second sight and saw a profound dualism in all things. Her Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages (3 vols., 1855) lacks a basis of adequate scholarship, but was for its time a remarkable attempt to see Christianity in its relation to other religions. Her practical books show great good sense and some advanced ideas. The Frugal Housewife (1829), packed with useful information and shrewd hints to thrift, seems the work of a female Franklin; it went to a twentieth edition in seven years. The Mother's Book (1831) urged that parents frankly instruct their children on "delicate subjects." Mrs. Child's writings on slavery are compounds of emotional idealism, cool logic, historical and economical truth, and anthropological error. She assumes that negroes and whites differ merely in "complexion," and infers an ancient negro civilization from Homer's reference to "the blameless Ethiopians." The Freedmen's Book (1865) abounds in hopeful counsels of perfection, including a daily cold tub and rub. The Appeal sometimes pictures appalling cruelties without names of witnesses or details of time and place, and the chapter on the slave trade is irrelevant in a discussion of domestic slavery as it then was; yet the style is strong, the tone calm, and the arguments against the moral and economic evils of slavery unanswerable. The crushing reply to Mrs. Mason avoids the faults of the Appeal, and is drawn largely from the laws of the Southern states. The Right Way the Safe Way (1860) is a solid piece of work, based on detailed knowledge of emancipation in the British West Indies. The best parts of Mrs. Child's writings on slavery make credible Whittier's statement: "She was wise in counsel; and men like Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Salmon P. Chase, and Governor Andrew availed themselves of her foresight and sound judgment of men and measures."

[The chief sources of information about Mrs. Child are the following: Elias Child, Genealogy Child, Childs and Chi/de Families (1881); Letters of Lydia Maria Child (1883), with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier, Wendell Phillips's remarks at her funeral, a portrait of her at sixty-three, and a list of her works; Letters from New York (2 vols., 1843, 1845); a biographical sketch by T. W. Higginson in Contemporaries (1899), reprinted with a few changes from Eminent Women of the Age (1869); T. W. Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays (1898) and Letters and Journals (1921); G. T. Curtis, "Reminiscences of N. P. Willis and Lydia Maria Child," in Harper's Mag., October 1890. Estimates of her work and personality may be found in,-the Atlantic, December 1882, and the New York Nation, January 25, 1883. Her more important works, in addition to those named above, are the following: Biographies of Lady Russell and Madame Guion (1832); Biographies of Madame de Stael and Madame Roland (1832); Good Wives (1833); History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations (2 vols., 1835); The Oasis (1834), an anti-slavery miscellany; Authentic Anecdotes of American Slavery (1835); The Evils of Slavery and the Cure of Slavery (1836), in part a compilation of statements by Southerners; Fact and Fiction (1846), containing her best story, "The Children of Mount Ida"; Isaac T. Hopper (1853), life of a Quaker Abolitionist; Autumnal Leaves; Tales and Sketches in Prose and Rhyme (1857); Aspirations of the World (1878), selections from the religious books of the world, with introduction by Mrs. Child.]

W.C.B.


CLAFLIN, Jehiel C., abolitionist, West Brookfield, Vermont, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1855-1853.  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice President, 1841-1860.


CLAFLIN, William H., 1818-1903, Newton, Massachusetts, Church Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1859-62


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)

CLARK, DANIEL (October 24, 1809-January 2, 1891), politician, jurist, was the son of Benjamin and Elizabeth (Wiggin) Cl ark. He was born at Stratham, New Hampshire, and educated in the district school, Hampton Academy, and Dartmouth College, graduating from the latter in 1834. His father was a farmer and blacksmith and because of limited means, Daniel, like many other young men of that period, was obliged to pay for his own education by teaching school during the winter months. After graduation he studied law, was admitted to the bar, began practise at Epping, and in 1839 moved to Manchester. This town was about to enjoy a prolonged period of industrial development, and he soon acquired a considerable practise. For the rest of his life he was active in Manchester affairs, holding several local offices and trusteeships and between 1842 and 1855 serving five times as representative in the legislature, being in charge of the bill for the incorporation of the city in 1846. He was also active in various business enterprises and was for some years a director of the Amoskeag Corporation. Politically, he was a Whig, and when that party disintegrated he was one of the active organizers of the Republican party. In 1857 he was chosen to serve out the unexpired term of Senator James Bell and, being reelected for a full term, was for nine years one of the prominent figures in Washington affairs. He was an accomplished speaker and debater, ranked by S. S. Cox, a veteran member of the lower house, with Sumner, Fessenden, Seward, Trumbull, and other notables in "a galaxy of ability" (Union-Disunion-Reunion: Three Decades of Federal Legislation, 1885). Early in his senatorial career, in the course of the Kansas debate, he declared, "We have had enough of bowing down, and the people in my region have got sick of it" (Congressional Globe, 35 Congress, 1 Sess., App., p. 107). These words are the key to his subsequent course. He was an uncompromising foe of slavery and secession and his attitude in 1861 was criticized by many who believed that reconciliation was still possible. He was prominent throughout the war period and his service on the committees on finance, claims, and judiciary was especially important in view of their war-time responsibilities. In 1866 he failed to receive renomination, apparently largely because of New Hampshire's adherence to the doctrine of rotation in office. On July 27, 1866, President Johnson appointed him United States judge for the district of New Hampshire, although Gideon Welles remarked "On every Constitutional point that has been raised, Clark has opposed the President . . . and has been as mischievously hostile as any man in the Senate" (Diary, 19n, II, 565). Clark resigned from the Senate and spent the remainder of his life on the bench, declining at the age of seventy, because of excellent health, to take advantage of the provisions of the retirement act. He had an excellent standing as a jurist and frequently was called to sit in other courts on the New England circuit. His political activity was, of course, largely at an end but he served as president of the constitutional convention of 1876. He was married twice: on June 9, 1840, to Hannah W. Robbins, daughter of Maxcy Robbins of Stratham, who died in 1844; and on May 13, 1846, to Anne W., daughter of Henry Salter of Portsmouth.

[C. H. Bell, Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894); J.B. Clarke, Manchester (1875); I. W. Smith, Granite Missouri, July 1887; ]. 0. Lyford, Life of Edward H. Rollins (1906).]

W.A.R.


CLARK, John, 1758-1833, clergyman, born Inverness, Scotland. Anti-slavery Activist.


CLARK, John G., clergyman, anti-slavery activist, S. Kingston, Rhode Island, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1836-40.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 628)


CLARKE, JAMES FREEMAN (April 4, 1810-June 8, 1888), Unitarian clergyman, was named after his step-grandfather, Dr. James Freeman, minister of King's Chapel, Boston (1787-1835), who had married the widow of Samuel Clarke. His mother, Rebecca Parker Hull, was a daughter of General William Hull [q.v.]. His father, Samuel Clarke, seems to have been a "handy man," able to do many things passably but to make a living at none. Shortly after the birth of his son in Hanover, New Hampshire, he removed to Newton, Massachusetts, and established himself near the families of James Freeman and the Hulls so that although the boy was brought up in Dr. Freeman's household, there was scarcely any separation from his immediate family. His grandfather also took charge of his early education, kindling intellectual interests and teaching him right methods of study. He entered the Boston Latin School in 1821 and there prepared for Harvard, from which he graduated in the class of '29 celebrated in the poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes. After graduating from the Harvard Divinity School in 1833, and receiving ordination in Boston (July 21, 1833), he went directly to Louisville, Kentucky, where he was minister of a Unitarian church from August 4, 1833, to June 16, 1840. During his residence in Louisville he was editor from April 1836 to October 1839 of the Western Messenger in which appeared notable contributions from many of Clarke's eastern friends, including Dr. Channing and Emerson. Returning to Boston, he founded there a new Unitarian church modestly named The Church of the Disciples, of which he became pastor on February 28, 1841. The founding of this church made almost as much stir in Boston as that of the Brattie Street Church nearly a century and a half earlier and for similar reasons, the chief of which was its exceptional recognition of the power of the laity. The value of this innovation was signally shown during the period from August 11, 1850, to January 1, 1854, when notwithstanding the sale of the church property and the absence of the minister on account of ill health, the organization held together with occasional ser, vices, especially the communion services, conducted by lay members of the church. These years, broken by a trip abroad, were spent by Clarke in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he acted as minister of the local Unitarian church which had been founded in 1825 principally by Harm Jan Huidekoper whose daughter Anna he had married in August 1839. With restored health, he returned to Boston in 1854 and resumed his duties as minister of the Church of the Disciples. In this position he speedily won the full and unbroken confidence not only of his clerical colleagues, but also of the community which he served in various ways. He was a member of the State Board of Education (1863-69); trustee of the Boston Public Library (187g-S8); non-resident professor in the Harvard Divinity School (1867-71), and lecturer on ethnic religions (1876-77); member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College (1863-72, 1873-85, 1886- 88). In addition, he was active in behalf of temperance, anti-slavery, and woman suffrage. Such labor he refused to regard as "outside activity," deeming it rather his part, as minister of the church, of its due contribution to the life of the city. Dr. Clarke's most notable characteristic was a remarkable balance and wisdom. He was rightly numbered among the Transcendentalists, but his thought was simple and his style lucid. His Transcendentalism appeared chiefly in his confidence in the universality of truth and goodness among men, and in his earnest efforts to discover it in all persons, sects, and religions. A convinced and devout Christian, he studied appreciatively other religions also (Ten Great Religions, pt. I, 1871, pt. II, 1883); a loyal Unitarian, he was sympathetic with other denominations, aiming to give full credit to all that his fellow Christians of whatever name were contributing to human welfare. The same discriminating insight taught him to discern the best in individuals and to labor to free it from base entanglements. He was a wise, discriminating, sympathetic and irenic friend and teacher; quick to praise, slow to blame; more eager to cherish good than to crush evil; a rare combination of particular loyalties and universal sympathies. He was a prolific writer: sermons, newspaper and review articles streamed from his facile pen almost beyond enumeration. Besides Ten Great Religions, he published: The Christian Doctrine of Forgiveness of Sin (1852); The Christian Doctrine of Prayer (1854); Orthodoxy: Its Truths and Errors (1866); Common Sense in Religion (1874); Essentials and Non-Essentials in Religion (1878); Self-Culture (1882); Anti-Slavery Days (1884); The Problem of the Fourth Gospel (1886).

[The beginning of an Autobiography is contained in the first six chapters of las. Freeman Clarke (1891) by Edward Everett Hale. See also the sketch by Clarke's daughter Lilian Freeman Clarke, in Heralds of a Liberal Faith, III, 67-75; a memoir by Andrew Preston Peabody in Massachusetts History Society Proc., March 1889; tributes from friends and contemporaries in the Christian Reg., June 14, 1888.]

W.W.F.


CLARKE, Lewis G., 1815-1897, African American, anti-slavery lecturer, author, escaped slave.  Dictated his recollections of slavery to abolitionist Joseph C. Lovejoy in 1845.  Published as Narratives of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke… (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 100; American National Biography, 2002, Vol. 4, p. 979)


CLARKSON, Matthew, 1758-1825, Regent of the State University of New York, member of the New York Manumission Society.  Petitioned Congress against slavery on behalf of the New York Manumission Society.  Introduced bill to end slavery in New York Assembly. (Goodell, 1852, p. 95; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 160, 166; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, p. 166)

CLARKSON, MATTHEW (October 17, 1758- April 25, 1825), Revolutionary soldier, New York philanthropist, was the son of David and Elizabeth (French) Clarkson, and the great-grandson of Matthew Clarkson, who came from good family connections in England to New York in 1690, as secretary of the province. The descendants of the Secretary intermarried with leading provincial families and otherwise won a strong position in the mercantile and political affairs of the community. In the Revolutionary period they early took a strong patriotic stand, and young Matthew participated as a volunteer in the battle of Long Island. Later he was aide-de-camp to Arnold, was wounded at Fort Edward, and behaved with gallantry in the battle of Saratoga. (His likeness is among the figures in Trumbull's painting in the Capitol rotunda at Washington.) Following his chief to Philadelphia, he became involved in a heated newspaper controversy with Thomas Paine over the Silas Deane affair, his precise relationship to the matter in dispute being somewhat obscure. In the early part of 1779, owing to his refusal in disrespectful terms of a summons from the President and Executive Council of Pennsylvania, he received a reprimand from Congress, which body, however, at the same time granted his request for opportunity to serve in southern territory. He was attached to the staff of General Lincoln, and served with him until the end of the war, and also as assistant to the latter during his term as secretary of war. Clarkson's military career included later service as brigadier-general and then as major-general of New York state militia. Naturally he was called General Clarkson and was an early member of the Cincinnati. He was married twice: first, on May 24, 1785, to Mary Rutherford; second, on February 14, 1792, to Sarah Cornell. His life after retirement from active military service was that of a public-spirited citizen of means and leisure. He was a regent of the State University of New York; a member of the Assembly for one term (1789-90), during which he introduced a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in the state; United States marshal (1791-92); a member of the state Senate for two terms (1794 and 1795); one of the commissioners to build a new prison (1796---97); president of the New York Hospital (I 799); and president of the Bank of New York (1804-25). He was the Federalist candidate for the United States Senate in 1802, but was defeated on the joint ballot by DeWitt Clinton.

Aside from his military record perhaps the most characteristic aspect of his career concerns his connection with the numerous societies and "movements" for public improvement which were coming into existence in New York City in the half-century after independence. His integrity, his high social position, personal amiability, and ample means all combined to give him prominence in this relation. The long and extremely varied list of organizations in which he was a leading figure quite justifies DeWitt Clinton's remark: "Whenever a charitable or public-spirited institution was about to be established Clarkson's presence was deemed essential. His sanction became a passport to public approbation."

[W. W. Spooner, ed., Historic Families of America (1907), pp. 282-85; The Clarksons of New York (2 vols., privately printed, 1876); Journals Continental Congress, vol. XIII; Martha J. Lamb, History of City of New York (1881).]

C.W.S.


CLARKSON, Thomas, abolitionist (Basker, 2005, pp. 3, 57, 128, 132, 148, 162, 169 170, 241; Bruns, 1977, pp. 79, 145, 314; Goodell, 1852, pp. 56-59, 66, 355-360, 393, 444)


CLAY, Cassius Marcellus, 1810-1903, Madison County, Kentucky, anti-slavery political leader, emancipationist, large landowner, statesman, lawyer, diplomat, soldier, newspaper publisher. 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; 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)

CLAY, CASSIUS MARCELLUS (October 19, 1810--July 22, 1903), abolitionist, the youngest son of Green Clay [q.v.], and Sally (Lewis) Clay, was born on his father's estate, "White Hall," in Madison County, Kentucky. His ancestry was Scotch, English, and Welsh; and in him was so strange a mixture of manly vigor, unfaltering honesty, indiscreet pugnacity, and the wild spirit of the crusader, as to make him one of the most remarkable of the lesser figures in American history. When very young he fought his mother, his schoolmaster, and a slave companion; the day before his wedding he caned a rival in the streets of Louisville; and when ninety-three years old, suffering under the hallucination that people were plotting against his life, he converted his ancestral mansion into a fortified castle, protected by a cannon. His career was turbulent in politics, in the army, within the circle of his family, and in all his social and diplomatic relations. In 1841 he fought a duel in Louisville with Robert Wickliffe, Jr.; four years later he so mutilated with a bowie knife Sam M. Brown as to be indicted for mayhem; in 1850 he stabbed to death Cyrus Turner; and in his old age he shot and killed a negro. In all his early political campaigns he carried a bowie knife and two pistols.

Clay was given the best opportunities of his day for an education, first receiving instruction from Joshua Fry in Garrard County, and later under the same master at Danville. He was then sent to the Jesuit College of St. Joseph in Nelson County. He attended Transylvania University for a time, and in 1831 with letters of introduction to President Jackson and to the principal men of note in the East he entered the junior class in Yale College, where he was graduated the next year. He returned to Kentucky and studied law at Transylvania but never took out license to practise. Wealthy and. ambitious for a political career, he was elected to the state legislature from Madison County in 1835 and in 1837, being defeated in 1836 on his advocacy of internal improvements. He now moved to Lexington and in 1840 was elected to the legislature to represent Fayette County. The following year he again ran, contrary to the advice of his distant kinsman, Henry Clay, and was defeated on the question of slavery. Though his father had been a large slaveholder, Clay had early developed a bitter hatred toward the institution, and, inspired by William Lloyd Garrison whom he had heard at Yale College, this hatred became a crusading passion. In his defeat for the legislature he saw the blatant tyranny and implacable opposition of the slaveholders, and he resolved to rid Kentucky of the evil. In June 1845 he set up in Lexington a newspaper which he called the True American and began his campaign. Foreseeing trouble he fortified his office with two four-pounder cannon, Mexican lances, and rifles, and strategically placed a keg of powder to be set off against any attackers. In August a committee of sixty prominent Lexingtonians visited his establishment while he was absent, boxed up his equipment, and sent it to Cincinnati. He continued to publish his paper from this new location, and later, changing its name to the Examiner, he moved it to Louisville.

Although Clay had opposed the annexation of Texas, in 1846 he volunteered among the first of those who were to invade Mexico, believing that since his country was at war it was his duty to fight, and feeling that a military record would help him politically. He fought with bravery in a number of engagements and was taken prisoner at Encarnacion in January 1847. After many harrowing experiences he was set free, returning to Kentucky to share in a resolution of commendation by the legislature and to receive a sword presented by his fellow citizens. In politics he began a strong follower of Henry Clay, but, during the campaign of 1844, became estranged from him on the issue of abolitionism. In the next presidential campaign he supported Taylor from the beginning, and in 1849 he made a determined effort to build up an emancipation party in Kentucky by holding a convention in Frankfort and running for governor. In the election he received 3,621 votes, enough to defeat the Whig candidate. On the birth of the Republican party he joined it, voting for Fremont in 1856 and for Lincoln in 1860. In this latter year he had a considerable following for the vice-presidency. He was on terms of close friendship with Lincoln, and, having been led to understand that he might have the secretaryship of war, was greatly chagrined when he did not receive it. To pacify him Lincoln offered him the diplomatic post at Madrid, which he refused. Later he accepted the Russian post. On his way east he reached Washington in April, at the time when it was cut off and undefended. He quickly grasped the situation and raised 300 men for the protection of the city and government, for which service he might have received appointment as major-general in the Federal army had he not preferred to continue to Russia. In 1862 he was recalled and made a major-general, but he refused to fight until the government should abolish slavery in the seceded states. He returned to Kentucky in the fall of 1862 on a mission to the legislature, did some fighting, and left for Russia again in 1863, where he remained until 1869. He fell out with President Grant and joining the Liberal Republicans supported Greeley in 1872. Disagreeing with the policy of reconstruction, he supported Tilden in 1876, but in 1884 he was for Blaine. After returning from Russia he retired to his estate in Madison County and in his old age, a few weeks before his death, the Richmond court adjudged him a lunatic. He was married to Mary Jane Warfield of Lexington in 1832, but was divorced from her in 1878. On his final return from Russia he brought to his home a Russian boy, whom he named Launey Clay, refusing to disclose his parentage. Shortly before his death he married a young girl from whom he soon secured a divorce.

[A vivid account of Clay' s career is set forth in his Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay; Memoirs, Writings and Speeches (1886), volume I. A second volume was projected but never published. Biographical Memoranda Class of 1832 Yale College (1880) contains sketch "communicated by himself." In 1848 his speeches were brought out by Horace Greeley under the title of Speeches and Writings of C. M. Clay. All of Clay's papers prior to the Civil War were burned during the conflict. Incomplete sketches of him may be found in R. H. and L. R. Collins, History of Kentucky (1874), and Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky (1877). A short sketch is in Who's Who in America, 1901-02. An account of the last days of his life and an obituary appear in Lexington (Kentucky) Leader, July 6-8, 23, 1903. Files of his True American are preserved in the Lexington Public Library]

E. M. C.

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.


CLAY, Henry, 1777-1852, U.S. congressman, senator, secretary of state, See “Life of Henry Clay,” by George D. Prentice (Hartford, Connecticut, 1831); “Speeches,” collected by R. Chambers (Cincinnati, 1842); “Life and Speeches of Henry Clay,” by J. B. Swaim (New York, 1843); “Life of Henry Clay,” by Epes Sargent (1844, edited and completed by Horace Greeley, 1852); “Life and Speeches of Henry Clay,” by D. Mallory (1844; new ed., 1857); “Life and Times of Henry Clay,” by Reverend Calvin Colton (6 vols., containing speeches and correspondence, 1846-'57; revised ed., 1864); and “Henry Clay,” by Carl Schurz (2 vols., Boston, 1887). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I.

CLAY, HENRY (April 12, 1777-June 29, 1852), congressman, senator, secretary of state, was descended from English ancestors who came to Virginia shortly after the founding of Jamestown but did not rise to any position of importance in the colony. His father, John Clay, was a Baptist minister, who moved from Henrico County to the frontiers of Hanover County in search of a district more hospitable to the practise of his religion. His mother was Elizabeth Hudson, who came of a family of no greater prominence than the Clays. Henry Clay was born in the midst of the Revolution in a region overrun by war, in that part of Hanover County generally referred to as The Slashes. He was the fourth son, and next to the youngest child, in a family of eight-three daughters and five sons. Of these children only two sons besides Henry lived far beyond the age of maturity. His father died in 1781 leaving the family little more than the respectability of his name. As Henry was only four years old at the time the influence of his father could have affected him very little. To his mother he owed much. He always held her in affectionate remembrance. His formal education consisted of three years before the master of The Slashes log school, Peter Deacon, whom Clay always pleasantly recalled. In 1791 Clay's mother married Henry Watkins, a man who came to regard his step-children kindly and who took a particular interest in Henry. He moved the family to Richmond where he was a resident, and soon secured for Henry a position in a retail store kept by Richard Denny, where the young clerk remained for a year. Feeling that Henry's capacities recommended him for a higher position, his step-father secured work for him in the office of the clerk of the High Court of Chancery, and here Clay remained for the next four years, until 1796. Though somewhat ungainly in appearance, he attracted attention by his open countenance and industry, and thereby recommended himself to Chancellor George Wythe. who made him his amanuensis to copy the court's decisions when not busied in the clerk's office. In his contact with Wythe, Clay secured good counsel and intelligent direction of the reading which he had begun in Denny's store. All his surroundings and his proclivities suggested to him the 3tudy of law. This he began in 1796 in the office of Attorney-General Robert Brooke, and within a year he secured his license to practise. During this time he lived in the home of the Attorney-General and had unusual opportunities to meet the people of prominence in the Virginia capital. While his introduction to Richmond had been far more fortunate than he could have had reason to expect, he felt that conditions were settled there and competition too keen. The same lure that had drawn so many others to the new state of Kentucky also tempted him. Added to this was the fact that his mother was now living there, having left Virginia the year Kentucky became a state. In 1797 Clay moved to Lexington, the outstanding city of all the West in culture and influence. His reputation as an attorney-at-law was soon made and his clients became numerous. As a criminal lawyer, he came by common consent to have no equal in Kentucky. It has been repeatedly stated that no person was ever hanged in a trial where Clay appeared for the defense. He used every trick in argument and procedure in addition to his great skill as an orator. Infrequently he appeared as prosecutor for the state, once serving under protest for a short time as attorney for Fayette County, but by preference he usually acted for the defense. It was not long before the law became to him the means to a much more important end, the regulation of the political and constitutional relations of Kentucky. His first appearance in a political capacity was in 1798 when he followed George Nicholas in a denunciation of the sedition law before a great throng in Lexington. This speech, which was never forgotten by those who heard it, was a fitting introduction to his new constituents. In 1803 in a contest against Felix Grundy, he was elected to the legislature, where he continued until 1806. He had by this time become typically Western in his point of view, and when it seemed that the United States might at the last moment be cheated by Spain out of the prize of Louisiana, he became as greatly excited as any other Kentuckian over the possibility of marching on New Orleans. In this new community, so little acquainted with the sanctity of law and of established usages, Clay generally took a conservative stand. In 1804 when a fight was made to repeal the charter of the Kentucky Insurance Company in which banking powers had been secured by a stratagem, he championed the cause of the corporation by arguing that a contract was involved and could not be broken except by the agreement of both parties; and in 1807 when the animosity against […].

In the Missouri Compromise debate the dangers of a divided country first rudely shocked the nation, and propelled Clay into a new role, which he was to play thereafter. The essence of the struggle to him was not the extension or restriction of slavery, but the continuance of the Union of equal states. If Congress could lay restrictions on slavery in Missouri, its power might extend to any subject. Herein lay the fundamental danger to the Union. Through the compromise suggested by Senator Thomas, Clay saw the question practically settled, and in 1820 he returned to Kentucky to look after his private affairs, and to be absent from much of the session beginning in the fall. Trouble broke out anew when Missouri sought to exclude free negroes from her boundaries. Clay hastened back to Washington in January 1821 and succeeded in pushing through the House a compromise plan, substantially the same as that which Senator Eaton had introduced in the Senate. He returned to Kentucky at the end of the session, in March 1821, not to reappear in Congress until he should come as an avowed candidate for the presidency. His private affairs in Kentucky engaged his attention for the next two years, during which time he enjoyed the almost universal acclaim of Kentuckians. In 1822 a joint meeting of the legislature nominated him for the presidency, and other states soon followed. He was also reelected to Congress, where he served from 1823 to 1825, being again the choice of that body for speaker. He now set about consolidating a national program calculated to secure his election. It was during this period that he developed fully his American system of protective tariffs and internal improvements. The tariff bill of 1820 had., failed, but in 1824 he secured the passage of the highest protective tariff enacted up to that time. In the presidential election of 1824 he received the smallest number of votes cast for any of the four candidates and was thereby eliminated by the Constitution from those to be voted upon by the House, which body chooses the president when no one receives a majority of the electoral college. Clay had carried Kentucky by an overwhelming vote against Jackson, his nearest competitor, who had received a plurality in the nation. Jackson had grievously wounded the feelings of Kentucky in 1815 when he had accused the Kentucky troops at New Orleans of cowardice, but even so he was much more attractive to Kentuckians than Adams, whose enmity shown at Ghent was well known. The legislature instructed Clay to vote for Jackson when the House should take up the election of the president, instructions which Clay ignored by voting for Adams and effecting his election. For this rebellious conduct Clay suffered his first eclipse in Kentucky, temporary though it was. Jackson and his friends were furious, charged Clay with making a bargain with Adams, and when Clay accepted the secretaryship of state were irretrievably convinced of his duplicity. Clay and his friends labored throughout the rest of their lives to disprove this slander, but it dogged his tracks in every subsequent campaign. When he returned to Kentucky he found considerable hostility, but the warmth of the welcome extended by his friends soon convinced him of the solidarity of his position. He bitterly attacked Jackson, and repeatedly asked how the winning of a military victory and the possession of an imperious and dictatorial spirit could possibly be a recommendation for the civil leadership of the nation. Yet many of Clay's friends could never shake off the feeling that the alliance with Adams was a most unnatural one.

As secretary of state, Clay was thoroughly loyal throughout to the Administration. He served the full term and perhaps never spent a more miserable and uninteresting four years in all his life. He was by nature opposed to the routine of administrative work, finding his chief delight in the excitement of debate and parliamentary maneuvers. Much of the time he was ill, and but for his loyalty would have resigned. No problems of great importance in foreign affairs arose, though he made a host of minor commercial treaties. The best-known incident of his incumbency was the Pan-American Congress, in which he sought to have the United States participate. The enemies of the Administration started an acrimonious debate in Congress over the

If Clay had revived the idea of retiring to Ashland and settling down to the stock farming which he so much enjoyed, he was soon dispossessed of the thought, for his reception in Kentucky was, so vigorous as to constitute a mandate for the presidency in 1844. Enthusiasm for him was equally marked throughout the rest of the country. The. year he retired from the Senate, two years before the election, various states began to nominate him. He made a few trips out of Kentucky, notably one to the states north of the Ohio. In Dayton it was estimated that 100,000 people gathered to hear him. Long before 1844 it was conceded that Clay would be the Whig nominee, and it was no less an accepted fact in Clay's mind that Van Buren would receive the Democratic nomination. When Van Buren chanced to visit Ashland, the two prospective candidates appear to have agreed to eliminate the question of Texas from the campaign. Accordingly, on the same day in the latter part of April, after Clay had made a trip through the lower South, both he and Van Buren issued statements opposing immediate annexation (for Clay's letter, see Niles' Register,LXVI,152-53). A few days later Clay was nominated by acclamation in the Whig national convention. Van Buren, however, lost the Democratic nomination to Polk, as the Democrats were determined on expansion. The apparent enthusiasm of the country for annexation and the widespread impression that he was favoring the abolitionists, led Clay to restate his position in what came to be called the "Alabama letters." In these he declared that slavery was not involved one way or the other in the Texas question, and that he would be glad to see Texas annexed, if it could be done "without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just and fair terms" (Ibid., LXVI, 439). Owing to this ill-advised maneuver, Clay lost New York, and thereby the election, to Polk. "Never before or since has the -defeat of any man in this country brought forth such an exhibition of heartfelt grief from the educated and respectable classes of society as did this defeat of Clay" (James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States, 1902, I, 84).

Polk's success brought annexation, at the hands of Tyler, and war with Mexico. Clay felt that the declaration of war was an outrage, yet after war was declared he supported it. His favorite son, Henry, was killed at Buena Vista. Much concerned over the ultimate outcome of the war, Clay made a speech in Lexington on November 13, 1847, in which he called upon Congress to disclaim any intention of annexing Mexico and to announce the purposes of the war. During this period of retirement he made two trips to the East and was received with almost unbounded enthusiasm in New York, Philadelphia, and in other cities. Again the clamor began to arise for his nomination in 1848. Convinced of support, he announced his candidacy in April 1848. But there were many Whigs who felt that he could not be elected, and some of these were in Kentucky. A Kentucky Whig wrote John J. Crittenden, January 2, 1847, that "the Whig party cannot e:icist, or with any hope of success, so long as Mr. Clay continues his political aspirations" (Mrs. C. Coleman, Life of John J. Crittenden, 1871, I, 266). Crittenden's desertion brought to an end a long-standing friendship. General Zachary Taylor was nominated, and Clay, disconsolate because he did not control even the Kentucky delegation, felt that the Whig party had destroyed itself by its own act. The folly of nominating a military hero who had no qualifications for civil leadership had been repeated. Clay definitely refused to take part in the campaign.

After Taylor's election, when the problems growing out of the war and the sectional struggle had nearly driven the country to disunion, he returned to the Senate (1849) in a last effort to ward off disaster. Spurning Taylor's weak course, he set forth in detail his plan for gradual emancipation in the Pinde letter of 1849 and introduced in the Senate his well-known series of resolutions. In the debate in the Senate he made his greatest and last effort to save the Union, begging the radicals, in both North and South, to abandon a course which could mean only disruption. He particularly warned the South against secession, declaring that no such right existed and that 'he would advocate force in opposing it. Clay hoped that the compromise measures would definitely settle the sectional struggle; but to make doubly sure he with forty-four other members of Congress signed a pledge to oppose for public office anyone who did not accept the settlement. In the summer of 1851 he returned to Kentucky by way of Cuba, hoping the Southern climate would help a racking cough with which he was now afflicted, but he found no relief. In the fall he was back in Washington, determined, it seemed, to die in the service of his country. On the following June 29, death-closed his career. His remains were taken to Lexington by way of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, amid national mourning. He was buried in the Lexington cemetery.

No man in American public life has had more ardent supporters or more bitter enemies than Clay, and no one has depended more for his happiness on the friendship of the people. His mastery of Kentucky's emotions and reason was complete and lasting on every public question except that of slavery. Kentucky absorbed his strong Unionism but refused to adopt his plan of emancipation. Clay obtained much pleasure from his Ashland home with its six hundred acres and fifty slaves; but however often he might resolve to abandon public life, the importunities of his friends and his love of debate changed his mind. When his home was in danger of being sold for his debts, unknown friends throughout the country raised $50,000 with which they settled his obligations. He was not by nature a religious man, though he joined the Episcopal Church in later life (1847). He fought duels, but he afterward came strongly to oppose that method of vindicating ·honor. In common with his contemporaries, he played cards, was fond of horse-racing, and liked good liquors, though he did not drink to excess. Jn appearance he was tall, with a high forehead, gray eyes, and a large mouth. His voice was engaging, and in debate he employed every movement of his body with grace and skill, even ·using his snuff box to great advantage. His personal magnetism was remarkable; he seemed never to be without a proper word or expression, and always seemed to be perfectly at ease. Enthusiasm and warmth characterized his speaking, getting the best of his reason at times and leading him into untenable positions. His knowledge was not characterized by the profundity of Webster's, nor did he have the philosophical powers of Calhoun or the acquaintance with the classics which Adams and Sumner possessed. But in his understanding of human nature, in his ability to appeal to the common reason, and in his absolute fearlessness in stating his convictions, he was unexcelled by any of his contemporaries. He was married in 1799 to Lucretia Hart, a daughter of Col. Thomas Hart of Henderson's Transylvania Company, by whom he had eleven children-six daughters and five sons. All his daughters and one son died before him. Another son became insane from an .accident. Of the others, Thomas H. Clay was minister to Guatemala •under Lincoln and died in 1871; James B. Clay was charge d'affaires at Lisbon under ·an ·appointment from Taylor, was later elected to Congress, and died in 1863; and John M. Clay became a farm.er and was the last surviving member of the family, dying in 1887.

[The letters and papers of Henry Clay are voluminous. Many of them have been scattered among his descendants, but the largest single collection is in ·the Lib. of Congress Among his published letters and speeches are the following: Richard Chambers, ed., Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, in the (Congress of the U. S. (1842); Daniel Mallory, ed., Life and Speeches of Henry Clay (2 vols., 1843); Galvin Colton, ed., Private Correspondence of Henry Clay (1856); Works of Henry Clay (6 vols., 1856, repub., with additional, matter, in 7 vols., 1896),. and Monument to the Memory of Henry Clay (1857). The principal biographies of Clay are: Geo. D. Prentice, Biography of Henry Clay (1831); -Epes Sargent, Life and Public Service of Henry Clay (1842, repub. with additions, 1848); Cahrin Colton, Life and Times of Henry Clay (2 vols., 18 46); Calvin Colton, The Last S even Y ears of the Life of Henry Clay (1856); Carl Schurz, Henry Clay (2 vols., 1887); Thos. H. Clay and E. P. Oberholtzer, Henry Clay (1910); Jos. M. Rogers, The True Henry Clay (1902). An estimate of Clay's service as speaker of the House of Representatives is in M. P. Follett, The Speaker of the House of Representatives (1909) and H. B. Fuller, Speakers of the House (1909). The ancestry of Clay has been most fully set forth by Zachary F. Smith and Mrs. Mary Rogers Clay in The Clay Family (1899), being no. 14 of the Filson Club Publications.]

E.M.C.


COATES, Lindley, 1794-1856, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker.  Manager, 1833-1840, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Ardent abolitionist who helped escaped slaves.  Member of the Underground Railroad.  Petitioned Congress on November 19, 1835, to “Secure the rights of freedom to every human being residing within the constitutional jurisdiction of Congress, and [to] prohibit every species of traffic in the persons of men [i.e., the internal slave trade], which is as inconsistent in principle and inhuman in practice as the foreign slave trade.” (Drake, 1950, pp. 146, 149; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833)


COATES, Samuel, 1748-1830, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, merchant, director of the First Bank of the United States, member and delegate of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society (PAS), Committee of Twenty-Four (Basker, 2005, pp. 223, 224, 238, 240n15; Nash, 1991, p. 129)

COATES, SAMUEL (August 24, 1748-June 4, 1830), merchant, philanthropist, was more successful as a citizen than as a merchant. He was born in Philadelphia of an old Quaker family descended from Thomas Coates who emigrated from England probably after the year 1680. His father, also Samuel Coates, died when Samuel, Jr., was nine weeks old, and his mother, Mary Langdale Coates, allowed his uncle, John Reynell, to adopt him. He was given a good classical and business education and at nineteen was put in charge of a small commercial business which he handled so well that at the end of three years it was terminated so that he might enter into partnership with his uncle as a member of the firm of Reynell & Coates. His first wife, Lydia Saunders, whom he had married in 1775, died in 1789; and in 1791 he married Amy Hornor.

After the withdrawal of his uncle from active business life, Samuel Coates formed a partnership with his brother, Josiah Langdale Coates; but the brother withdrew to establish himself as a grocer, and after 1785 Samuel Coates was in business for himself. He prospered, but after he became interested in philanthropic enterprises he neglected his business and it dwindled away. When he finally paid all his debts and gave up his business he had but a small competence instead of a fortune.

One of his chief interests was the Pennsylvania Hospital. He was elected a manager in 1785 and president of the board of directors in 1812. He gave forty-one years of unremitting attention to the affairs of this hospital and during the fearful yellow-fever epidemic of 1793 was one of the few citizens of means who remained in the city to gather together the forces with which to combat the scourge. His portrait, by Sully, is still in the possession of this institution. For a period almost as long, 1786-1823, he gave his services to the body entitled. "The Overseers of the Public Schools, founded by charter in the town and county of Philadelphia," which was the ruling authority managing what were called "the Quaker Schools." In 1800 he was elected a director of the first Bank of the United States and was still a director at the time its affairs were wound up in 1812. He was under the average size, but of an athletic figure, with a large chest and head, and heavy hair. He was cheerful and sociable, genial and entertaining, fond of children, who were also fond of him. His death occurred in the house at the corner of Walnut and South Front Sts., which had been his place of business since 1791. [

Mary Coates, Family Memorials and Recollections (1885); Stephen N. Winslow, Biographies of Philadelphia Merchants (1864); Henry Simpson, Lives of Eminent Philadelphians (1859).]

E. Y.


COBB, SYLVANUS (July 17, 1798-October 31, 1866), Universalist clergyman, was the son of Ebenezer and Elizabeth Cobb, both descendants of Elder Henry Cobb who came to Plymouth on the second voyage of the Mayflower. The year before Sylvanus was born his parents went in an ox-wagon as pioneers to Norway, Maine. As a boy he cut hoop-poles at a cent each to provide himself with books and stationery. During the War of 1812 he early exhibited his journalistic and political tendencies by writing poetry and prose in support of the Republican or War party. The fir st Universalist Church in Maine was built in Norway and in his sixteenth year he espoused that faith. It was a controversial era when hostility to Universalist doctrine was strong and vigorous. When Cobb received his first certificate to teach school the "orthodox" preacher wrote a "P. S." that the young man was legally qualified but he could not consistently commit a child to the care of one of his religious sentiments. In 1820 the young man went to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to study with Reverend Sebastian Streeter preparatory to entering the Universalist ministry, to which he was ordained in Winthrop, Maine, June 28, 1821. While pastor at Winthrop and Waterville, he became the chief pioneer and missionary of Universalism in the state of Maine. The first Parish Church of Malden, Massachusetts, became Universalist instead of Unitarian by calling Cobb to its ministry in 1828. All the time he was at heart a journalist and he began to publish in Waltham, Massachusetts, The Christian Freeman and Family Visiter in 1839. In religion it stood for the Universalist faith and also for total abstinence and anti-slavery. Both were unpopular causes. He was accused of mixing politics and religion, as he had been accused in his pulpit. Already he had served two terms each in the Maine and Massachusetts legislatures, and in politics and reform he was always found with the advanced liberals. He became champion and confessor of the Universalist faith, and carried on his polemics with earnestness and ability. He reviewed in his paper Dr. Edward Beecher's Conflict of the Ages. Two great debates were also conducted in the Freeman, one with the orthodox Calvinist, Dr. Nehemiah Adams, on "The Scripturalness of Future Endless Punishment," and the other on "Human Destiny" with Reverend C. F. Hudson who supported the annihilationist theory. These were republished in book form. After twenty-three years he sold out the Freeman, which soon became the property of the Universalist Publishing House. While editing the paper he had also preached in Universalist churches in Waltham and East Boston. One of his constructive contributions was his Compend of Divinity (1846), a thorough and concise epitome of the Universalist doctrine, while his New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: with explanatory notes and practical observations (1864) shows his ability as a theologian. Standing well over six feet in height, broad shouldered, full chested, he had a commanding presence and a massive head. He had not the characteristics of a popular preacher, but rather strength and solidity of thought, closely knit and logical. Weight of argument was his chief weapon instead of brilliance or elegance of style. Severe in denunciation and condemnation of error or evil, he was kind of heart and of large charity. The last years of his life were spent in Boston where he died. He was married on September 10, 1822 to Eunice Hale Waite of Hallowell, Maine, by whom he had nine children, one of whom, Sylvanus Cobb [q.v.], was his father's biographer.

[The chief source is The Autobiography of the First Forty-One Years of the Life of Sylvanus Cobb, D.D.; to which is added a Memoir by his eldest son, Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. (1867). The Christian Freeman and Family Visiter also has much autobiographical material.]

T. C. R.


COCKE, John Hartwell, 1780-1866, reformer, soldier, temperance advocate, member of the American Colonization Party  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 672; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, p. 253)

COCKE, JOHN HARTWELL (September 19, 1780-July 1, 1866), planter, publicist, was born in Surry County, Virginia, son of John Hartwell and Elizabeth (Kennon) Cocke, and sixth in descent from Richard Cocke, who first appeared in Virginia from southern England in 1628. He inherited a fortune as well as refinement and native ability from his forebears, and after attending William and Mary College (1794-99), he chose the life of a country gentleman at "Bremo" in Fluvanna County, to which he removed about 1803. He married on December 25, 1802, Ann Blaus Barraud of Norfolk, by whom he had several children, among them Philip St. George Cocke [q.v.]. Progressive and prescient in all things, he promoted new agricultural methods, the founding of agricultural societies, the developing of waterways and steam navigation, and various public improvements. He attacked the practise of making tobacco the principal crop and published a monograph, Tobacco (1860), to prove it ethically and economically "the bane of Virginia husbandry." During the War of 1812 he rose in eighteen months from captain to brigadier- general, commanding the Virginia soldiery guarding Richmond, 1814-15, at Camps Carter and Holley on the Chickahominy River. "I find General Cocke universally respected," wrote his secretary, "and looked up to by the officers under his command-a striking instance of the triumph of talents and perseverance in the cause of duty" (A. C. Gordon, William Fitzhugh Gordon, 1909, p. 82). His conduct as a soldier brought him such reputation that his name was canvassed for governor in the General Assembly of 1814 until Cocke positively forbade its use (Bruce, post, I, 158). In religious and social movements his activities were unceasing and influential. He abetted Bible, Tract, and Sunday school societies, and served on the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Slavery he denounced as a curse to commonwealth and nation, predicting that Virginia would make no progress toward prosperity until it and tobacco tillage should be ended. From its organization in 1819 until his death he was senior vice-president of the American Colonization Society, formed to settle the slavery problem peaceably by colonizing the negroes of the South in Africa. He favored federal intervention and a constitutional amendment providing funds for this purpose; and in 1831 wrote of slavery as "the great cause of all the great evils of our land." Duelling and intemperance he likewise detested and warred against with cogent reasoning or acid satire. In a drinking age, his was the most insistent voice in his state demanding nation-wide prohibition; and when the American Temperance Union succeeded the United States Temperance Union in 1836, Cocke was elected president of the new society. A friend to popular education, he sponsored sounder primary and secondary school systems, but his greatest service lay in his efforts toward a state university, his share in its physical development, and his thirty-three years (1819-52) on its Board of Visitors. Without playing so conspicuous a part in founding the University of Virginia as did Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, Cocke's contribution was subordinate only to theirs. He cooperated with Jefferson on the important building committee, and, though disapproving of various particulars of Jefferson's architectural plan which contravened his economical an3 conservative bent, never interposed his objections; his suggestions were uniformly constructive, and his experience and practical counsel during the institution's infancy proved invaluable. His inordinate modesty and refusal to hold political office have helped undeservedly to obliterate his name from public memory. Although in his day he was widely known and though his erect figure and impressively determined countenance compelled respectful consideration, few realized the solidity of his talents and even enlightened contemporaries considered his attitude toward slavery, tobacco, and temperance extreme. Conscientious, tenacious of opinion, boldly independent, and devoid of partisanship, sectarian or sectional, he was impervious to the derision and contempt which his convictions occasionally provoked: he formed conclusions deliberately, and before his death saw established many of the causes which he had upheld against incisive opposition. Without being either a prig or a Puritan, he was a zealous reformer; yet even those who impugned his principles admired his sincerity, catholic benevolence, and alertness to civic responsibility. The causes which he supported indicate him to have been one of the most remarkable Virginians of his generation in power of foresight, a pioneer oi modern social reform.

[Little has been written about John Hartwell Cocke, the only adequate sketch of him being that in Philip A. Bruce, History of the University of Virginia (1920-22), I, 157-64. His correspondence in MSS., now in possession of the Cocke family of University, Virginia; the correspondence in MSS. of Wm. Cabell Rives, his aide-de-camp in the War of 1812, in the possession of the Rives family of Washington, D. C.; the correspondence in MSS. of Jos. C. Cabell, in the University of Virginia Library; and the reports and minutes of the University's Board of Visitors are the most fertile sources of information about him. For the Cocke genealogy, see Jas. C. Southall, "A Memoir of the Cocke Family," in the Virginia Mag. of History and Biography, vols. III, IV, and V. An editorial notice of Cocke was published in the Richmond Whig, July 4, 1866.]

A.C. G., Jr.


CODDING, Ichabod, 1811-1866, born in Bristol, New York, anti-slavery agent, commissioned in 1836.  Lectured against slavery.  (Blue, 2005, pp. 119, 120; Dumond, 1961, p. 186; Filler, 1960, pp. 152, 232, 247; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 673)


COFFIN, Joshua, 1792-1864, Tyngborough, PA, educator, author, ardent abolitionist, founder of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832.  He was its co-founder and first recording secretary.  Manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1834-1837. (Coffin, 1860; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, 675)

He published “The History of Ancient Newbury” (Boston, 1845), genealogies of the Woodman, Little, and Toppan families, and magazine articles. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 675.


COFFIN, Levi, 1798-1877, Newport, Indiana, philanthropist, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, conductor Underground Railroad, established Indiana Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends.  Active in Free Labor Movement, which encouraged people not to trade in goods produced by slave labor.  Helped start the Western Freedman’s Aid Commission.  Wrote Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, Reputed President of the Underground Railroad, Cincinnati, OH: Western Tract Society.  Helped three thousands slaves to freedom.  Coffin was a manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  (Drake, 1950, pp. 162, 165, 186, 187, 197; Dumond, 1961, pp. 90, 92; Mabee, 1970, pp. 141, 225, 273, 280, 283; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 75, 231-232, 488, 489; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 675; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936; pp.268-269, American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 177-178; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 148)The story of his life is told in “Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad” (Cincinnati, 1876). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 675.

COFFIN, LEVI (October 28, 1789-September 16, 1877), a leader in operations of the "Underground Railroad," was descended from Tristram Coffyn, who came to New England in 1642 and was one of the nine original purchasers from the Indians of the Island of Nantucket. Levi was born on a farm at New Garden, North Carolina, the youngest of the seven children of Levi and Prudence (Williams) Coffin. His mother's family was of Welsh descent. Both of his parents were Quakers. The boy, who was the only son, could not be spared from necessary work on the farm except for short intervals at the district school. He was mainly taught by his father at home. When he was twenty-one, he left for a session at a distant school. He then taught for a winter, attended school the following year, and taught at intervals for several years thereafter. In 1821, together with his cousin Vestal Coffin, he organized at New Garden a Sunday-school for negroes. This succeeded for a time but eventually the masters, becoming alarmed at Coffin's methods, kept their slaves at home, and the school was closed. On October 28, 1824, Coffin was married to Catharine White, a Quaker. Two years later, he moved to Newport (now Fountain City), Wayne County, Ind. a village of about twenty families where he was to live for more than twenty years. Here Coffin opened a store. Very soon after he came to Newport, he found that he was on a line of the Underground Railroad through which slaves often passed. Coffin let it be known that his house would be a depot and immediately fugitives began to arrive. When his neighbors saw his fearlessness and success, they began to help in clothing and sending the negroes on their way, but they would not take the risk of sheltering them. The Railroad was attended with heavy expenses. These Coffin could not have borne had he not been prosperous. He kept a team and wagon always ready to carry slaves. Sometimes one or two other wagons and teams were required. Journeys had to be made at night, often through deep mud and bad roads and along seldom traveled by-ways. A week seldom passed without his receiving passengers. Coffin was also at this time a member of a Committee on Concerns of People of Color to look after their educational interests, treasurer of a fund raised to sustain schools and aid the poor and destitute, and an active participant in the temperance movement. Almost twenty years after he had gone to Newport to live, he became interested in the free labor question. In 1847, he agreed to go experimentally to Cincinnati for five years and open a wholesale free-labor goods store. A Quaker Convention at Salem, Ind., had voted in 1846 to raise $3,000 to begin such a project. A year after the outbreak of the Civil War, Coffin began his work for the freedmen and devoted his entire time to this for the rest of his life. In May 1864 he went to England for this purpose, and an English Freedmen's Aid Society was formed. Over $100,000 in money, clothing, and other articles was forwarded in one year from England and the Continent. In 1867, Coffin was appointed delegate to the International Anti-Slavery Conference in Paris, which was held on August 26 and 27. The last ten years of his life were passed in retirement.

[Reminisces of Levi Coffin, Reputed President of the Underground R. R. (1876, 2nd ed., 1880); S. B. Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery (1896); W. H. Siebert, The Underground R. R. from Slavery to Freedom (1898); A Woman's Life-Work: Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland (1882); History Mag., September 1868; New England History and Geneal. Reg., October 1848, April, July 1870; American History Rec., January 1872, January, February 1873; Internal. Review, August 1880; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, September 17, 20, 1877; Cincinnati Enquirer, September 18, 1877.]

M. A.K.


COFFROTH, Alex, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Congressional Globe)


COLE, Cornelius, b. 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)


COLEMAN, Elihu, d. 1789, Nantucket, carpenter, Society of Friends, Quaker.  Early Quaker opponent of slavery.  Wrote pamphlet, “A Testimony Against that Anti-Christian Practice of Making Slaves of Men.”  Cole believed that slavery was un-Christian and against the precepts of the Golden Rule. (Bruns, 1977, pp. 39-45; Drake, 1950, pp. 34, 37-39, 49, 63; Locke, 1901, pp. 24, 25, 33; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 12)


COLES, Edward, 1786-1868, statesman, abolitionist, Governor of Illinois (elected 1822), member American Colonization Society.  Private secretary to President James Madison, 1809-1815.  Manumitted his slaves in 1819.  Worked with fellow abolitionist James Lemen to keep Illinois a free state.  Opposed pro-slavery group in Illinois state legislature. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 90, 92, 100-101; Locke, 1901, pp. 24, 25, 33; Ress, 2006; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 37, 233-234; Ress, 2006; Washburne, 1882; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 687; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 296; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 226)

COLES, EDWARD (December 15, 1786-July 7, 1868), abolitionist, governor of Illinois, was born on a plantation, "Enniscorthy," in Albemarle County, Virginia. His father, Col. John Coles, who was a slaveholder and of good family, had served in the Revolution and enjoyed the friendship of many of the foremost Virginia statesmen of the time. Edward was given an exceptional education and training, even for an aristocratic Virginian of that period. After being prepared by private tutors, he first attended Hampden Sidney College, and later William and Mary, where he failed to graduate, however, owing to a physical injury. From 1809 to 1815 he served as private secretary to President Madison and in 1816 he was sent by the President to Russia on a diplomatic mission. His European journey also afforded him opportunity for travel in Germany, France, and the British Isles. The trend of Coles's later career was determined by a strain of idealism in his character which led him early in life to champion the anti-slavery cause, on moral and humanitarian grounds. Upon the death of his father in 1808, he had fallen heir to a plantation and a number of slaves, but this did not alter his attitude. In 1814 he corresponded with Jefferson on the subject of slavery and a letter of Jefferson's, dated August 25, 1814, has become famous as one statement of the anti-slavery view-point (Washburne, Coles, Alvord ed., pp. 24-27). Being, as one of his friends expressed it, "an experimental philosopher," Coles determined to remove to free soil and emancipate his slaves. He had made two preliminary journeys to the Northwest, first in 1815 and again in 1818, and had decided to settle at Edwardsville, Illinois, the state having been admitted to the Union in 1818.

He set out in the spring of 1819, carrying his negroes with him. With an instinct for the dramatic, he informed them of their emancipation during the journey down the Ohio River. Upon arriving in Illinois, he executed for  deeds of emancipation and assisted his former slaves to make a new start in life. On March 5, 1819, he was appointed register of the Land Office at Edwardsville, a position which enabled him to extend his acquaintance among the people of the state. He is described at this time as "a young man of handsome, but somewhat awkward personal appearance, genteelly dressed, and of kind and agreeable manners" (Ibid., p. 49). In 1822, only three years after his arrival in the state, Coles was elected governor, though by a very narrow margin. His success may be attributed in part to the appearance of slavery in Illinois politics. Though nominally free territory, slavery virtually existed, and there was evidence of a desire to extend the institution. Coles naturally represented the forces opposed to this movement. In his first message to the Assembly, he urged the adoption of measures which would abolish slavery in fact as well as in name. The challenge was taken up by the pro-slavery faction, which passed a resolution calling for a referendum upon the question of holding a convention to amend the constitution. It was understood that one purpose of this move was to legalize slavery. A bitter struggle ensued, with Coles leading the anti-convention forces. In a letter to a friend he wrote at this time, "I assure you, I never before felt so deep an interest in any political question. It preys upon me to such a degree, that I shall not be happy or feel at ease until it is settled" (Ibid., p. 122). The convention project was decisively defeated at the polls in August of 1824, and the menace of slavery was averted. As governor, Coles was greatly interested in the furthering of internal improvements and in the promotion of agriculture. As early as 1819 he had taken the initiative in organizing the first state agricultural society. In national politics he was at first a Republican. In 1824 he favored Crawford for the presidency, but later he became an opponent of Jackson. Aside from his career as governor he met with little success in state politics, being defeated for the United States Senate in 1824 and for Congress in 1831. Apparently he did not find life in a frontier state congenial, for a few years after retiring from the governorship in 1826, he removed to Philadelphia, probably in the fall of 1832. There he passed the remainder of his life, years which were happy, prosperous, but uneventful from a political standpoint. On November 28, 1833, he was married to Sally Logan Roberts. He died in 1868 at the age of eighty-two, having witnessed the fulfilment of his life-long hope, though at the cost of civil war. In helping to prevent the extension of slavery into the Northwest, it is evident that he himself played no small part in the emancipation movement.

[The best account of Coles's life is Elihu B. Washburne's Sketch of Edward Coles (1882). It includes a full history of the convention struggle of 1824 and is valuable for the documents which it contains. This Sketch has been reprinted. along with additional documentary material, under the title "Governor Edward Coles," as vol. XV (1920) of the Colls. of the Illinois State Historical Lib., edited by C. W. Alvord. Some of Coles's correspondence as governor is contained in E. B. Greene and C. W. Alvord, Governors' Letter Books, 1818-1834 (1909), vol. IV of the Illinois Historical Colls. See also Solon J. Buck, Illinois in 1818 (1917), and Theodore C. Pease. The Frontier State, 1818-1848 {1918), the latter being vol. II of the Centennial History of Illinois. In the absence of any considerable body of manuscript material, early Illinois newspapers constitute one of the most valuable sources regarding his political activities.]

W. E. S-s.


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.  (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. 97)
See “Life of Colfax” by O. J. Hollister (New York, 1886).

COLFAX, SCHUYLER (March 23, 1823-January 13, 1885), vice-president of the United States, was born in New York City. His paternal grandfather, William Colfax, was commander of Washington's body-guard during the Revolutionary War (William Nelson, in the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 2 series, IV, 145-52). His maternal grandmother, Hester Schuyler, was a cousin of General Philip Schuyler [q.v.]. His father, Schuyler Colfax, who married (April 15, 1820) Hannah Stryker of New York, died October 30, 1822, and in 1834 his mother married George W. Matthews of Baltimore. In 1836 the family removed to New Carlisle, Ind., where Matthews, who became auditor of St. Joseph County in 1841, appointed his stepson deputy auditor at South Bend, an office which he held for eight years. Colfax found time to serve as assistant enrolling clerk of the state Senate (1842-44) and as correspondent of the Indiana State Journal (Indianapolis), and also studied law, but was never admitted to the bar. Having bought an interest in the South Bend Free Press in 1845, he changed the name of the paper to St. Joseph Valley Register, made it the Whig organ of northern Indiana, and retained his interest in it until shortly after he became speaker of the House of Representatives. His political activities began early. He made campaign speeches for Clay in 1844, was secretary of the Chicago Rivers and Harbors Convention in 1847, delegate to the Whig national convention of 1848, and sat in the state constitutional convention of 1850. In 1851 he was defeated as a Whig candidate for Congress, notwithstanding a unanimous nomination, but was a delegate to the Whig national convention of 1852. When the Republican party was formed he joined it, and took an active part in organizing the new party in Indiana. In December 1855, he entered the House of Representatives of the Thirty-fourth Congress (1855-57) as a Republican, and served continuously until the end of the Fortieth Congress (March 3, 1869). From the Thirty-eighth to the Fortieth Congress, inclusive (1863-69), he was speaker of the House. On June 21, 1856, he made a speech, of which more than a million copies were said to have been circulated, opposing the use of the army in Kansas until the laws of the Territory should have received congressional approval. His longest and most important service, prior to the speakership, was as chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, in which capacity he directed the reorganization and extension of the overland mail service to California. He was strongly urged for postmaster-general under Lincoln, but was passed over on the ground, as Lincoln wrote, that he was "a young man, is already in position, is running a brilliant career, and is sure of a bright future in any event" (Hollister, post, p. 175). On April 8, 1864, he left the speaker's chair to move the expulsion of Alexander Long of Ohio, who had spoken in favor of recognizing the Confederacy. The resolution was later changed to one of censure.

His position as speaker, together with his "advanced ideas on Negro suffrage" (W. A. Dunning, Reconstruction Political and Economic, 1907, p. 129), commended Colfax as a candidate for vice-president in 1868, and at the Chicago convention, after the fifth ballot, when he received 541 votes, his nomination was made unanimous (E. Stanwood, History of the Presidency, l, 321), and he was later elected. An offer of the secretaryship of state in August 1871 was declined. Consideration of his availability as a presidential candidate by the Liberal Republicans in 1872 aroused the opposition of administration leaders, and at the Philadelphia convention he was defeated for renomination on the first ballot, the vote standing 321½ for Colfax and 364½ for Henry Wilson (Ibid., I, 348). Shortly thereafter he declined an offer of the editorship of the New York Tribune. He was implicated in the Credit Mobilier scandal, the investigation showing that he had agreed to accept twenty shares of stock in the company and had received a considerable sum in dividends. His denial of the charge was not convincing, and in his examination before the committee "it is impossible to believe that he told the truth" (Rhodes, VII, 13-15). He escaped formal censure on the ground that his misconduct, if any, had been committed before he became vice-president, but although he claimed to have been "fully exonerated" (Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1928, p. 834), his political standing was ruined. His part in the Credit Mobilier affair was somewhat overshadowed by the disclosure that he had received in 1868 a campaign gift of $4,000 from a contractor who had supplied envelopes to the government while Colfax was chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads. He continued after his retirement to be in demand as a lecturer, and devoted much time to the Odd Fellows, of which order he had been a member since 1846. He died suddenly at Mankato, Minnesota, and was buried at South Bend. His first wife, Evelyn Clark of New York, whom he married October 10, 1844, died at Newport, Rhode Island, July 10, 1863. On November 18, 1868, he married Ellen W. Wade, a niece of Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio [q.v.]. [The chief authority, aside from the Journal of the House of Representatives, the Congressional Globe, and the reports of House committees, is O. J. Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax (1886), able and thorough but overfriendly. A. Y. Moore, The Life of Schuyler Colfax (1868), a campaign biography, is valuable for the texts of speeches, letters, newspaper comment, etc. The Poland and Wilson reports on the Credit Mobilier scandal form House Report No. 77, 42 Congress, 3 Sess.; their facts and findings are judiciously summarized and appraised in J. F. Rhodes, History of the U.S., VII (1906), ch. 40.)

W. M.


COLLAMER, Jacob, 1791-1865, lawyer, jurist.  U.S. Senator from Vermont.  U.S. Senator, 1854-1865.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, p. 689; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 300; Congressional Globe)

COLLAMER, JACOB (January 8, 1791-November 9, 1865), judge, United States senator, postmaster-general, was born in Troy, New York, third of the eight children of Samuel Collamer, member of an early Massachusetts family, and Elizabeth Van Ornum, of colonial Dutch descent. The family moved to Burlington, Vermont, when Jacob was about four. Here he prepared for college under members of the faculty, and graduated from the University of Vermont in 1810. At once he began the study of law at St. Albans, Vermont, under Mr. Langworthy and later under Benjamin Swift, afterward senator. His studies were interrupted by his being drafted into the detailed militia service in 1812. He served as lieutenant of artillery and as aide to General French, with whom he went to Plattsburg, arriving in the evening after the battle was over. Admitted to the bar in 1813 he practised at Randolph Center until he removed to Royalton in 1816. He married Mary N. Stone of St. Albans, daughter of Abijah Stone, on July 15, 1817. He served four terms in the legislature as representative of Royalton, and was one of the assistant judges of the supreme court of Vermont from 1833 until 1842 when he declined reelection. As delegate to the Vermont constitutional convention (1836) he actively supported the movement to substitute a state Senate for the old Governor's Council. "That amendment has been largely attributed to the ability and zeal with which he urged it" (Barrett, post). This year he moved to Woodstock, Vermont, his home for the rest of his life. His national career began in 1842 when, after a close and hotly contested election, he was chosen member of the House of Representatives for the 2nd Congressional District. Reelected in 1844 and 1846, he declined a fourth election. As representative he made speeches on the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, and the tariff, his address on "Wools and Woolens" attracting most attention. Recommended for a cabinet position by a legislative caucus, he became postmaster-general in the cabinet of President Taylor (1849). His service was short, for upon the death of President Taylor in July 1850 he resigned with the rest of the cabinet.

A few months after his return home, the Vermont legislature elected him, under the recently remodeled judicial system, circuit judge for the 2nd judicial circuit. In 1854, a candidate of the young Republican party as an anti-slavery Whig, he was elected senator. As a Republican he belonged to the conservative wing. In the Thirty-fourth Congress he served on the Committee on Territories under the chairmanship of Senator Douglas, and on March 12, 1856 made a vigorous minority report on the disorders in Kansas, defending the character of the free state leaders. He was one of three New England senators to vote against the tariff bill of 1857. In 1860 Vermont presented his name to the Republican convention for the presidential nomination, but after the first ballot, on which he received ten votes, his name was withdrawn. In the same year he was reelected to the Senate "with almost unprecedented unanimity." He and Fessenden refused to vote against the Crittenden compromise of the winter of 1861, though they did not vote for it. He drafted the bill, enacted July 13, 1861, which, according to Senator Sumner gave to the war for the suppression of the rebellion its first congressional sanction and invested the President with new powers" (Address of Senator Charles Sumner, December 14, 1865). On the problems of Reconstruction he held that Congress should control. While not an orator, and rarely speaking in the Senate, he was always listened to with attention, the logic of his arguments commanding respect. From June 1855 to October 1862 he was president the last-of the Vermont Medical College at Woodstock, in which he had lectured on medical law. He died at his home in Woodstock after a brief illness. Judge James Barrett, long his law partner, said of Collamer, "His mind was made up of a clear and ready perception, acuteness of discrimination, a facile faculty of analysis, an aptness and ease in rigid and simple logic, excellent commonsense, and withal a most tenacious memory of facts." [The chief source is the Memorial Address read by Judge Jas. Barrett before the Vermont Historical Society, October 20, 1868 (Rutland, 1868; Woodstock, 1868). Consult also Addresses on the Death of Hon. Jacob Collamer delivered in the Senate and House of Representatives, December 14, 1865 (1866) and Addresses on the Presentation of the Statue of Jacob Collamer of Vermont, by Jas. M. Tyler, Geo. B. Long, and Alexander H. Stephens, delivered in the House of Representatives February 15, 1881 (1881); and Henry Swan Dana, History of Woodstock, Vermont (1889).]

C.R.W.


COLLINS, Isaac, 1746-1817, born Delaware, Society of Friends, Quaker, printer, published anti-slavery literature in 1770s (Basker, 2005, pp. 55-56; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 691-692)


COLLINS, John Anderson, 1810-1879, abolitionist, social reformer.  General Agent and Vice President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.  Edited anti-slavery magazine, Monthly Garland.  (Filler, 1960, pp. 24, 110, 135; Mabee, 1970, pp. 76, 80, 81, 82, 88, 112, 114, 119, 120, 123, 124, 125, 212, 264, 394n30, 394n31, 398n13; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, pp. 307-308; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 253)

COLLINS, JOHN ANDERSON (fl. 1810- 1879), abolitionist and social reformer, was born at Manchester, Vermont, attended Middlebury College in his twenty-fifth year, and left it, without graduating, to enter Andover Theological Seminary. This was the period of the rising tide of sentiment against slavery. Feeling, both bitter and warm, with regard to the question ran high at Andover. Collins is said to have played a leading part in revealing the so-called "Clerical Plot" to the abolitionists. This incident probably had an influence in his ensuing abrupt departure from the seminary and his installation as general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. The Society sent him abroad to try to rouse sympathy for its work in England and to try to raise funds for carrying on propaganda. He carried letters of introduction from William Lloyd Garrison, commending him as "a free spirit, a zealous advocate" who had made large sacrifices for the cause. But his lot was no more easy than that of the other abolitionists. A group that included one particularly virulent clergyman went to great lengths to discredit him abroad, and on his return, accused him of importing "foreign gold to destroy the government" and of "disloyal and subversive propaganda."

From July 1840 to November 1841, Collins edited the Monthly Garland, a small magazine dealing with slavery, for which he wrote most of the material. Like many others of his enthusiastic temperament he was particularly attracted to the various Utopian doctrines newly imported from Europe, and he came to feel that the abolition of physical slavery was only a small part of a greater social reformation that was to free mankind. In 1843 he planned a series of "picnics" and the "hundred conventions" that were designed to rouse the country to the cause of the abolitionists. To the dismay of his backers, he began to follow the anti-slavery meetings with "constructive meetings" at which he preached a kind of Fourieristic doctrine. For reasons both diplomatic and conservative, he was reprimanded. He then decided to resign in order to devote himself to the founding of a commune. Garrison parted from him with regret. Collins, with two or three other enthusiasts, selected a farm at Skaneateles, New York, for the experiment, and he made a large part of the cash payment on the farm, giving his note for the rest. He then issued a call in the newspapers to others "of like mind" to join him, announcing a creed in which he denied all religious doctrines, denounced individual property, and advocated a social system founded on the negation of all force, admitting marriage only if accompanied by the right of easy divorce, and prescribing universal education and vegetarianism. This creed, which was somewhat modified later, aroused the usual stormy discussion far and wide. A group gathered about Collins, composed chiefly of those who saw an opportunity for free maintenance. The colony did not prosper, and Collins's disillusionment and disappointment were keen. In May 1846, he decided to liquidate. He next appears in California in 1849. In 1852, with John Wilson, he organized a company to mine the sands of the Klamath River. Many unfortunate investors lost all they had in the scheme. J. S. Hittell (History of City of San Francisco, 1878, p. 273) gives Collins credit for honestly believing in the plan. He was living in California as late as 1879 but he seems to have abandoned his schemes of philanthropy and social improvement (Noyes, History of American Socialisms).

[See the files of the Liberator; F. J. and W. P. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols., 1885-89; Edmund N. Leslie, History of Skaneateles and Vicinity (1882).]

K.H.A.


COLMAN, Lucy Newhall, 1817-1906, Rochester, New York, abolitionist.  Lectured against slavery in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois.  Helped and supported by Frederick Douglass.  (Sernett, 2002, pp. 55-56; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 313; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 260)

COLMAN, LUCY NEWHALL (July 26, 1817-January 18, 1906), abolitionist, lecturer, descended from Nicholas Danforth, an Englishman emigrating to New England in 1634, was born at Sturbridge, Massachusetts, the second of four daughters of Erastus and Hannah (Newhall) Danforth. Her mother was a descendant of John and Priscilla Alden. Her father, a fur-trader and blacksmith, was a prominent Universalist layman and she early entered that church; later, dissatisfied with the dogmas of all Christian churches, she became a Spiritualist. Her education in public schools was scanty; at the age of twelve, thrown on her own resources, she became a teacher. When eighteen she married John Mabrey Davis, who died of tuberculosis six years later. They lived in Boston, where Mrs. Davis supplemented her education through the cultural advantages there available. After her husband's death she taught in a girls' school in Philadelphia. In 1843 she married a railroad engineer, Luther N. Coleman (he apparently spelled his name thus although his widow later used the name Colman). In 1852 Coleman was killed in a railroad accident; the circumstances following upon this tragedy were such as to embitter his widow and intensify her sympathies with the cause of woman's rights. After much effort she secured a position as teacher of "the colored school" of Rochester, New York, at a meager salary. A year later, unaided, she accomplished its abolition, thereby removing educational discrimination against, the negroes of Rochester. In another position she publicly used her influence against corporal punishment in schools. A long-standing desire to strike at slavery led her to abandon teaching and to secure through friends appointments as an anti-slavery lecturer. She spoke in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio; endured various hardships in the crude homes and country hotels of ante-bellum days; attacked slavery always in vigorous, even violent language; defied social and religious conventions; exposed sham. Though encountering determined opposition-misrepresentation, insults, and grave perils-she escaped actual physical harm. She adopted a young colored woman for a time as a fellow traveler. Sometimes she mingled in her protests the wrongs of blacks and the wrongs suffered by woman. After the outbreak of the Civil War she became matron of the National Colored Orphan Asylum at Washington, where she substituted kind treatment and sanitation for mismanagement. She served as superintendent of certain colored schools supported by the New York Aid Society in the District of Columbia, instructing the pupils in morals and cleanliness. She secured interesting interviews for Sojourner Truth with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson. Later she returned to New York State, making her home after 1873 in Syracuse, where she was active in the Spiritualist Society and as a Freethinker. She joined the J. S. Mill Liberal League, becoming a contributor to the Truth Seeker. In appearance she was a small woman, whose face gave evidence of intelligence, independence, and determination. She died in Syracuse after a five years' illness, and was buried in Rochester.

[Sources for Mrs. Colman's career are her own Reminiscences (1891); John J. May, Danforth Genealogy (1902); Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, American Women (1897); Syracuse (New York) directories, 1873-1906.J

R.S.B.


COLVER, Nathaniel, 1794-1870, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist, clergyman, anti-slavery agent.  Baptist minister.  Lectured against slavery in New York State.  Counsellor, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1839-1840.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 188, 393n22; Goodell, 1852, pp. 505-506; “The Friend of Man,” March 27, 1837; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 699; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 324)

COLVER, NATHANIEL (May 10, 1794- September 25, 1870), Baptist clergyman, reformer, was born in Orwell, Vermont. His father and grandfather both bore the same name, and both were Baptist preachers and pioneer farmers, descendants of Edward Colver, who came to Massachusetts from England in 1635. His mother, Esther Dean, daughter of John and Thankful Dean, was also of early Colonial stock. When he was a year old his parents moved to northeastern New York, near what is now Champlain, and in 1810, to West Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The family was large and the boy was brought up under the toughening conditions of frontier life. Two winters' schooling comprised his education, and the only books in his home were the Bible, Psalm book, and speller. He learned the tanner's trade, joined the troops assembled to defend New York against the British in 1814, and, on August 27, 1815, married Sally Clark. Soon after he was converted and became a preacher. He was ordained in West Clarendon, Vermont, his first regular parish, in 1819, and for the next twenty years served small churches in Vermont and New York. His first wife died January 27, 1824, and January 26, 1825, at Plattsburg, New York, he married Mrs. Sarah A. Carter.

He had natural oratorical ability, derived probably from his mother whose family was noted for its public speakers, herself, it is said, a woman of unusual intellectual qualities. His mind was vigorous, and quick to acquire, and he possessed a ready wit and platform resourcefulness. From the start he drew large audiences. Inheriting through his paternal ancestors a restless, independent, fighting spirit, he naturally became a vigorous champion of reform. Having joined the Masons and finding that he disapproved of some of their principles and requirements, he repudiated the order in 1829, and thereafter opposed secret societies as wrong morally and dangerous politically. He was also active in the cause of temperance, and especially in behalf of abolition, to which he gave practically all his time in 1838 and a part of 1839, serving for a period as an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Addresses delivered in New England brought him to the attention of certain Boston Baptists who desired to establish a church with free seats, and particularly opposed to slavery and intemperance. Such a church, the First Free Baptist, later known as Tremont Temple, was organized, with Colver as minister. Here from 1839 to 1852 he had a notable pastorate, and acquired an enviable reputation as a preacher, being regarded as one of the attractions of the city. He was recognized also as one of the ablest advocates of abolition. John Quincy Adams said he was the best off-hand speaker he had ever heard. A delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention at London in 1840, he attracted favorable attention there. In a sermon published in 1850, The Fugitive Slave Bill, or God's Laws Paramount to the Laws of Men, he urged disobedience to the law as a sacred duty.

Pastorates in South Abington (Whitman), Massachusetts; Detroit; Cincinnati; and Chicago followed. He kept up his attacks upon slavery, and a sermon, preached in Cincinnati, December 11, 1859, "Slavery or Freedom Must Die." The Harper's Ferry Tragedy a Symptom of Disease in the Heart of the Nation, was published in 1860. Appreciating the need of theological education in the West, both in Cincinnati and Chicago, he gathered together groups of young men contemplating the ministry and instructed them. He was active in the establishment of the Chicago Baptist Theological Institute in 1865, the object of which was the creation of a theological seminary in connection with the first University of Chicago, and pending its opening he was appointed to give instruction in doctrinal and practical theology at the University. In 1867 he established at Richmond, Virginia, the Colver Institute for the training of colored ministers, which survives in the theological department of the Virginia Union University. An oil painting of Colver hangs in one of the halls in Tremont Temple, Boston; another in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, bearing the inscription "A Founder of the Divinity School."

[J. A. Smith, Memoir of Reverend Nathaniel Colver, D. D. (1873); F. L. Colver, Colver-Culver Genealogy (1910), from which some dates, differing from those given elsewhere, are taken; J. L. Rosenberger, Through Three Centuries (1922); T. W. Goodspeed, University of Chicago Biography Sketches, vol. I (1922).]

H.E.S.


COLWELL, Stephen, 1800-1872, philanthropist, author  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 700; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 327) Concealing his identity under the name of “Jonathan B. Wise,” he published “The Relative Position in our Industry of Foreign Commerce, Domestic Production, and Internal Trade” (Philadelphia, 1850). He was the author of “New Themes for the Protestant Clergy” (1851); “Polities for American Christians” (1852); “Hints to Laymen,” and “Charity and the Clergy” (1853); “Position of Christianity in the United States, in its Relation with our Political System and Religious Instruction in the Public Schools” (1855); “The South; a Letter from a Friend in the North with Reference to the Effects of Disunion upon Slavery” (1856). The same year he edited, with notes, “List's Treatise on National Economy.” His last and most important work is “The Ways and Means of Commercial Payment” (1858). Besides these publications in book-form, he was the author of a noteworthy article in the “Merchant's Magazine,” entitled “Money of Account” (1852), and another essay on the same subject in the “Banker’s Magazine” (1855). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 700.  

COLWELL, STEPHEN (March 25, 1800-January 15, 1871), political economist, was born in Brooke County, Virginia (now W. Virginia), and graduated from Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, at the age of nineteen. He studied Jaw under Judge Halleck, in Steubenville, Ohio, was admitted to the bar, and practised for seven years in St. Clairsville, Ohio, and then in Pittsburgh until 1836. In that year he gave up the practise of Jaw and became an iron manufacturer, first at Weymouth, New Jersey and later at Conshohocken on the outskirts of Philadelphia. For twenty-five years he had particular occasion to weigh the results of the tariff policy as it affected iron manufacturers, and this practical experience vitalized much of the writing on economics to which his legal training gave precision of thought and expression. In his studies pertaining to the technical side of the science, especially the treatment of the subject of money and exchanges, Colwell's view-point was that of the school of Henry C. Carey [q.v.]; he set forth always the advantage of protection to industry, and assailed the quantity theory of money. With him, however, economics was also a theory of benevolence. He was an active Presbyterian, and the close interrelation of his economics and his religion was signalized by his attacks upon current orthodoxy in both fields. His religion was infused with the guiding principle of human helpfulness; his strictures on the merely pious (in such works, for instance, as New Themes for the Protestant Clergy, 1851) drew sharp comment from his critics, though the course of years brought general acceptance of his contentions. He was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and of Princeton Theological Seminary. To the former institution he bequeathed his library of political economy, composed of upward of 6,000 items, almost half of them pamphlets separately bound. He coupled with this gift the condition that the University should found a chair of social science, but his family waived the condition. He secured the establishment at Princeton of a chair of Christian ethics; and was hopeful that this chair should develop and popularize the social implications of Christianity. His interests were many, and increased with his marked success in business. He was a director of the Camden and Atlantic, the Reading, and the Pennsylvania Central railroads. An active member of the Colonization Society, he strove to persuade the South that slavery was an unwise and unprofitable institution. During the Civil War he did his best to support the Union cause; he was active in the work of the Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission, guaran, teeing funds for the relief of the wounded and sick, and himself visiting the battle-fields and hospitals. He presided over the first formal meeting which led to the organization of the Union League. Afterward he gave generously of time and money to the Freedmen's Aid Society. His life was probably shortened by intensive work on the preparation in 1865 of six reports on the subjects of trade and taxes for the United States Revenue Commission, of which he was a member. He died in Philadelphia.

[Henry C. Carey, "A Memoir of Stephen Colwell," in Proc. American Philos. Society, XVII (1871-7 2), 195-209; this contains a list of Colwell' s writings : see also, obituary in Philadelphia Public Ledger, January 17, 1871.]

B.M.



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