Con-Cut: Conkling through Cutler

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


CONKLING, ROSCOE (October 30, 1829-April 18, 1888), senator, was born at Albany, New York, but lived most of his life in Utica, New York. His father was Alfred Conkling [q.v.]; his mother, Eliza Cockburn, was of Scotch extraction and was noted for her beauty. His older brother, Frederick, was congressman for a single term, and a colonel in the Civil War. The family removed to Auburn, New York, in 1839 and in 1842 Roscoe entered the Mount Washington Collegiate Institute in New York City. He went to Utica in 1846 to study law in the office of Spencer & Kuman, was admitted to the bar in 1850, and was immediately appointed district attorney of Albany. At the close of the term he entered into partnership with Thomas H. Walker of Utica. One of the great "spread eagle" orators of his day, before he was thirty years of age he was a familiar and valued figure at the Whig conventions of his county and state. He became mayor of Utica in 1858, was elected to Congress in the autumn of the sa me year, and represented his district at Washington, 1859-67, except for the single term 1863-65. He married in 1855 Julia, a sister of Horatio Seymour, Democratic governor of New York in 1853 and 1863. He remained temperate in a day when strong drink was a pervasive enemy of American men, he detested tobacco, and he built up his body by systematic exercise and boxing, so that he enhanced the dignity and impressiveness of a figure of which he was inordinately proud, and which his jocose critics described as the "finest torso" in public life. On a notable occasion soon after his entry into Congress, and not long after the attack on Sumner in the Senate, he stood up beside the crippled and sharp-tongued Thaddeus Stevens as a body-guard, and discouraged interference. He not only protected Stevens, but he agreed with him, becoming a sturdy War-Republican, and an advocate of vigorous repressive measures in the Reconstruction period. His ambitions in Congress and in the Republican party collided more than once with those of James G. Blaine, and produced a biting description by the latter, who jeered at Conkling's "haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, super-eminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut" (Congressional Globe, April 30, 1866, p. 2299). The words could not be forgotten.

The decision of William H. Seward, leader of the New York Republicans, to remain loyal to President Andrew Johnson, and to support the latter in his Reconstruction policy, caused a break in the party and gave opportunity for the appearance of a leader among the radical Republicans of the state. Conkling was elected senator in 1867, and in the following autumn dominated the Republican convention, establishing an ascendancy over Governor Reuben E. Fenton. In the next ten years, with the support of the federal patronage and the New York City "custom-house crowd," he became the almost undisputed leader of his party in the state, and an aspirant to greater things. He was reelected to the Senate in 1873 and 1879. In 1876 he was the favorite son of New York as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, in rivalry to James G. Blaine, but met with disappointment when Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio secured the nomination and became president in 1877. Conkling's intimacy with and support of President U. S. Grant, to which he owed much of his strength as leader of New York, had procured for him in 1873 an offer of the post of chief justice of the United States, to succeed Salmon P. Chase. He had declined the honor, recognizing that his talents were those of a partisan rather than of a judge. He was again later to be offered an appointment to the Supreme Court by his friend Chester A. Arthur, and was again to decline.

Conkling was a bitter opponent of President Hayes. He claimed to believe that the latter had no right to his position, he had reason to fear that the power of the Grant dynasty was broken, and he was outraged by Hayes's selection of a New Yorker whom he hated, William M. Evarts, as secretary of state. He regarded the New York patronage as his special preserve, and fought to defend it when the treasury department under John Sherman began to inquire into the management of the custom-house and the services therein of Chester A. Arthur and Alonzo B. Cornell [qq.v.], who were Conkling's chief assistants in the control of the party organization. He led the opposition to the desires of Hayes to separate civil service officials from the direction of party affairs, and his presence and spirit pervaded the New York Republican convention of September 1877, where the President was openly flouted. In substance he asserted the privilege of a senator to control the federal administration in his own state; and he denied to a president the right to select and direct his subordinates. The Tenure of Office Act, passed in 1867 to restrain Andrew Johnson, made it harder for the President to win his point; but eventually in 1879 Hayes had his way arid got rid of Conkling's friends. New York, however, remained loyal to its leader. Cornell was made governor, Conkling was triumphantly reelected to the Senate, and another of his lieutenants, Thomas C. Platt [q.v.], was chosen as the other senator in 1881. Arthur had meanwhile risen to greater rewards.

Disgusted with Hayes, and anxious for the return of the old order of politics, Conkling was a leader in the movement for the renomination of Grant in 1880. His success went only far enough to deadlock the Republican convention, and prevent the nomination of either Blaine or Sherman. Garfield, who was chosen after a long and destructive fight, represented the anti-Conkling or "Half-Breed" wing of the Republicans; and the selection of the "Stalwart," Arthur, for vice-president failed to heal the breach. It was only after much persuasion that Conkling ceased to sulk in the canvass of 1880, and gave any support to the ticket of Garfield and Arthur. His friends and he believed, that as the price of his final and lukewarm support, Garfield had made him sweeping promises of presidential patronage; but to this belief the selection of Blaine as secretary of state gave contradiction. Within a few days after the organization of the new administration, Conkling was again in opposition, and again over the right to control the jobs in the New York custom-house. He fought the confirmation of Garfield's appointees until defeat came to him in May 1881. He then resigned his Senate seat in protest, May 14, 1881, and induced his colleague to resign with him. He turned to the usually pliant legislature at Albany for vindication and reelection, but discovered that his power to dominate it had departed. Even the open support of Arthur, now vice-president, was in vain. For the remainder of his life, Conkling was outside of politics. He removed to New York City, and entered into the practise of his profession, where he made a large fortune and a great name. He died in the spring of 1888, as the result of over-exertion during a severe snow-storm. His personal character and integrity were never challenged; he was, said the New York Times (January 18, 1879), on the occasion of his third election to the senate, "a typical American statesman-a man by whose career and character the future will judge of the political standards of the present."

[Robt. G. Ingersoll, Memorial Address on Roscoe Conkling (1888), includes many obituary notices. There is a family biography by Conkling's nephew, Alfred R. Conkling, The Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, Orator, Statesman, and Advocate (1889). Many of the details of his career may be traced in De Alva S. Alexander, Political History of the State of New York (3 vols., 1906-09), but no one has yet assembled and evaluated the material upon his public life that fills the press from 1859 to 1881.]

F.L.P-n.


CONNESS, John, b. 1821.  Union Republican U.S. Senator from California.  U.S. Senator 1863-1869.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, p. 708; Congressional Globe)


CONWAY, Daniel Moncure, 1832-1907, abolitionist, clergyman, author, women’s rights advocate. Unitarian minister. (Drake, 1950, p. 175; Mabee, 1970, pp. 322, 329, 336, 343, 363-365, 366, 369, 372; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 711-712; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 364)

He was long the London correspondent of the Cincinnati “Commercial.” “The Rejected Stone, or Insurrection versus Resurrection in America,” first appeared under the pen-name “A Native of Virginia,” and attracted much attention before the authorship became known. “The Golden Hour” was a similar work. Mr. Conway was a frequent contributor to the daily liberal press in England, and has written extensively for magazines in that country and in the United States. A series of articles entitled “South Coast Saunterings in England” appeared in “Harper's Magazine” in 1868-'9. He has published in book form “Tracts for To-day” (Cincinnati, 1858); “The Rejected Stone” (Boston, 1861); “The Golden Hour” (1862); “Testimonies concerning Slavery” (London, 1865); “The Earthward Pilgrimage,” a moral and doctrinal allegory (London and New York, 1870); “Republican Superstitions,” a theoretical treatise on politics, in which he objects to the extensive powers conferred on the president of the United States by the Federal constitution, and advocates, with Louis Blanc, a single legislative chamber (London, 1872); “The Sacred Anthology,” a selection from the sages and sacred books of all ages (London and New York, 1873); “Idols and Ideals” (London and New York, 1877); “Demonology and Devil-Lore” (1879); “A Necklace of Stories” (London, 1880); “The Wandering Jew and the Pound of Flesh” (London and New York, 1881); “Thomas Carlyle” (1881). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 711-712.

CONWAY, MONCURE DANIEL (March 17, 1832-November 15, 1907), preacher, author, was born near Falmouth, Stafford County, Virginia, the son of Walker Peyton and Margaret E. Daniel Conway. Through his mother he was descended from the Moncures, and he was related to other distinguished Virginia families. His father was a slave-owner, but unlike most neighbors of equal prominence in the community was a devout Methodist, and Moncure was brought up in the strict traditions of that sect. After studying at Fredericksburg Academy he entered Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, as a sophomore at the age of fifteen, and four months later was advanced to the junior class. Here he was converted to Methodism, somewhat deliberately, as he would have us believe, since he knew that his family wished him to have the experience. After his graduation at the age of seventeen he studied law for a time, but the reading of Emerson turned his thoughts toward the ministry. He first entered a Methodist conference in Maryland and served two circuits there, travelling about with perhaps as odd a collection of books as Methodist preacher ever carried in his saddlebags: the Bible, Emerson's Essays, Watson's Theology, Carlyle's Latter Day Pamphlets, Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, the Methodist Discipline, and Coleridge's Aids to Reflection. The young circuit rider soon grew out of sympathy with some of the doctrines of his denomination, and at the age of twenty-one, much to the disappointment of his family, he entered Harvard Divinity School. While here he saw something of Emerson, and met most of the leaders of the Concord and Cambridge intellectual groups.

On his graduation from the Divinity School he became pas tor of the Unitarian Church in Washington. His views on slavery had changed as rapidly as his theological views-in one of his early writings he had maintained that the negro is not a man-and his outspoken anti-slavery utterances in the pulpit finally led to his dismissal from the Washington church in 1856. He was at once called to the First Congregational Church of Cincinnati. On June 1, 1858 he was married to Ellen Davis Dana, of Cincinnati, to whose influence he credits much of his accomplishment to her death in 1897. During his residence in Ohio he wrote on all sorts of subjects for all sorts of periodicals, including the Atlantic Monthly. Through the year 1860 he edited The Dial, a Monthly Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion-a journal for which he secured contributions from such diverse men as Emerson and W. D. Howells. In 1862 he removed to Concord, Massachusetts, and edited the Commonwealth (Boston), an anti-slavery paper with more literary tendencies than Garrison's Liberator. He had published several books and pamphlets dealing with the slavery question, and in 1863 he went to England to lecture in behalf of the North. Early the next year he accepted the pastorate of South Place Chapel, Finsbury, London, an ultra-liberal congregation; and he maintained this connection until 1884. In these years he traveled much and wrote much, even serving as correspondent from the front for the New York World during part of the Franco-Prussian War. Among other activities were researches in demonology, a subject on which he delivered a series of lectures before the Royal Institution. Conway early rejected all supernaturalism from his theology. His religious views continued to become more free and radical, and his political ideas were individual, if not erratic. He advocated a unicameral government, seeing grave evils in a president and a second chamber. He never admitted the wisdom of Lincoln's policies, maintaining that Lincoln was something of an apostate on the slavery question, that Virginia would not have seceded if it had not been for his unwise call for troops, and that he might have ended the struggle and slavery at once, without bloodshed, if he had issued an emancipation proclamation in 1861. His Autobiography, while not written in the tone of an apologia, shows how his extreme changes of opinion and some of these erratic views came naturally to a man of his ancestry, temperament, and experiences. In 1884 he resigned his London pastorate and returned to America, though he often visited Europe, and from 1892 to 1897 was again pastor of South Chapel. His later years were spent in study, writing, and travel. He died in Paris. Perhaps his most scholarly work is his Life of Thomas Paine (2 vols., 1892) and his edition of Paine's works (The Writings of Thomas Paine, 4 vols., 1894- 96). Wherever he was Conway came in contact with the leading men of the day-a fact that has led some critics to accuse him of tuft-hunting; but published correspondence seems to indicate that those who knew him valued his acquaintance. Among his more than seventy separately published books and pamphlets are several on slavery, on oriental religions, on demonology, two novels, lives of Paine, Hawthorne, Carlyle, Edmund Randolph, and others, his Autobiography, Memories and Experiences (1904) and his last important work, My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East (1906).

[The chief source of information concerning Conway is his Autobiography. Both the appearance of this work and the author's death called out many articles in reviews and magazines. The South Place Mag., vol. XIII, no. IV (London, 1908?) is a Conway memorial number. See also Edwin C. Walker, A Sketch and an Appreciation of Moncure Daniel Conway (1908). Addresses and Reprints (1909), a collection of some of his shorter works, contains a bibliography of over seventy titles of books and pamphlets. No bibliography of his contributions to periodicals has been compiled.]

W.B.C.


CONWAY, Martin Franklin, 1829-1882, Hartford County, Maryland.  U.S. Congressman, diplomat, abolitionist.  Supported Kansas Free-State Movement.  (Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress.) Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, pp. 363-364).

CONWAY, MARTIN FRANKLIN (November 19, 1827-February 15, 1882), free-state leader, first congressman from Kansas, was the son of Dr. W. D. Conway and Frances, his wife, who lived in Harford County, Maryland. He left school at the age of fourteen and went to Baltimore, where he learned the printer's trade. While working as a compositor he aided in founding the National Typographical Union, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He was married to Emily Dykes in June 1851. Three years later they removed to Kansas. As correspondent for the Baltimore Sun he reported conditions in the new territory for some time after his arrival. His letters attracted attention and he soon became one of the recognized leaders of the free-state movement. He was elected a member of the first territorial legislature but resigned without taking his seat. He took an active part in the Big Springs convention, September 5, 1855, which formulated the platform of the free-state party. A few weeks later he was elected a delegate to the Topeka constitutional convention and wrote the resolutions offered by that body. State officers were elected under this constitution, and Conway was chosen one of the supreme court justices of the territory. In 1858 he was elected a delegate to the Leavenworth constitutional convention of which he was made president. In 1859 he was nominated for representative in Congress by the Republicans and elected by a majority of 2,107 votes over John Halderman, his opponent. Kansas did not become a state until January 29, 1861, and the Congress to which he had been elected expired on March 4 following. He served during this short interval, being the first congressman from Kansas, was promptly renominated; and elected again in June 1861. Conway was dubbed "the silver tongued orator of the West" and "the Patrick Henry of Kansas" (Kansas Historical Collections, V, 45; X, 186). In the Thirty-seventh Congress he was noted for his radical utterances on the slavery question. Soon after the first session began he made a speech in which he declared that the paramount object of the federal government should be immediate and unconditional emancipation. Until such a policy should be adopted, he said, he would "not vote another dollar or man for the war." "Millions for freedom but not one cent for slavery," was one of his epigrams (Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Sess., pt. 1, p. 87). Failing to be renominated at the end of his term in the Thirty-seventh Congress, he retired to private life but kept up his interest in public affairs. In the struggle between President Johnson and Congress, he strongly supported the former. The President appointed him United States consul at Marseilles, France, in June 1866. After his term of service ended he made his home in Washington, D. C., where, on October 11, 1873, he fired three shots at former Senator Pomeroy, slightly wounding him. When arrested Conway said, "He ruined myself and family." The former Senator declared that there had never been any trouble between them. Undoubtedly Conway was becoming unbalanced; later his mind gave way entirely as a result of disappointed ambition, and he was confined in St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Insane, at Washington, where he died.

[D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (1886); Andreas, History of Kansas (1883); F. W. Blackmar, Cyclopedia of Kansas History (1912); The Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Sess., pt. 1; Kansas History Coll., vols. V (1896); VI (1900); VIII (1904); X (1908); XI (1910); XIII (1915); and XVI (1925).]

T.L.H.


COOPER, David, New Jersey, farmer, abolitionist, Society of Friends, pamphleteer, wrote, A Mite Cast into the Treasury: or, Observations on Slave Keeping, published 1772, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Petitioned Congress three times to abolish slavery, even lobbied President George Washington. Also wrote, A Serious Address to the Rulers of America, on the Inconsistency of their Conduct Respecting Slavery, Trenton, 1783.  (Basker, 2005, pp. ix, 31-77; Bruns, 1977, pp. 184-191, 440, 475; Dumond, 1961, pp. 24, 76; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 372; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 94, 152, 159)


COOPER, Peter, 1791-1883, New York anti-slavery activist, Native American rights advocate, industrialist, inventor, philanthropist. His various addresses and speeches were collected in a volume entitled “Ideas for a Science of Good Government, in Addresses, Letters, and Articles on a Strictly National Currency, Tariff, and Civil Service” (New York, 1883). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 730-732.        

COOPER, PETER (February 12, 1791-April 4, 1883), manufacturer, inventor, philanthropist, the son of John and Margaret (Campbell) Cooper, was born at Little Dock St., New York. The Cooper family was of English stock. Obadiah Cooper, Peter Cooper's great-great-grandfather, came to America and settled at Fishkill-on-Hudson in 1662. John Cooper, Peter's father, born about 1758, a lieutenant in the Continental Army, at the close of the war went into business, first in New York, later in Peekskill, Catskill, and Newburgh. He was successively a hatter, a brewer, a store-keeper, and a brick-maker-in all of which he was aided by his son Peter, who, by the time he was sixteen years old, was already a veteran in experience. Though the lad was lacking in formal education, for he had attended school for only a year, his varied training in affairs fitted him well for business success. At seventeen, he was apprenticed at twenty-five dollars a year and board to John Woodward, a New York coach-maker, who voluntarily paid him fifty at the end of the third year and seventy-five at the end of the fourth, and when his apprenticeship was over, offered to lend him money to start a business of his own. Peter declined the offer, and instead found employment, first in a manufactory of cloth-shearing machines, then as traveling salesman, and later as owner of a new cloth-shearing machine. He continued prosperously in this business until the close of the War of 1812, and, when peace was followed by smaller profits, he sold out and opened a retail grocery store at the corner of the Bowery and Rivington St. On December 18, 1813, being then twenty-two years of age, he married Sarah Bedell of Hempstead, a Huguenot, educated by the Moravians of Pennsylvania, with whom he lived happily for fifty-six years until her death in 1869.

Deciding that manufacturing was his field, Cooper bought a glue factory, together with a twenty-one-year lease of the ground on which it stood, near the site of the old Park Avenue Hotel. With this business he found his opportunity and was soon supplying the American market with American-made glue and isinglass which bettered the foreign imports. So complete was his success that he won a monopoly of the trade in this line, but he continued his frugal ways, and was, for many years, his own stoker, secretary, bookkeeper, executive, and salesman. Eventually the business outgrew even his energy, and he entrusted part of the direction to his son Edward and his son-in-law, Abram S. Hewitt [qq.v.]. If the glue factory was the foundation of his fortune, the bulk of the latter came originally from the iron works which he set up at Baltimore. There, in 1828, with two partners, he bought 3,000 acres of land within the city limits and erected the Canton Iron Works. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad upon whose success much of the value of this land depended, was on the verge of failure. The route followed by the few miles of track was so twisting and hilly that Stephenson, the English engineer, declared it impossible for an engine to run on it. Cooper was not dismayed. "I'll knock an engine together in six weeks, he said, "that will pull carriages ten miles an hour." The engine-the first steam locomotive built in America-was made, and, in spite of its diminutive size which gave it the nickname of "Tom Thumb" and the "Teakettle," actually pulled a load of over forty persons at more than ten miles an hour. On September 18, 1830, it raced with a noted horse from Riley's Tavern to Baltimore and would have won but for a leak in the boiler caused by excessive pressure.

The Canton Iron Works afforded a striking example of Cooper's good judgment and good fortune in business matters. When he sold the property in 1836 he accepted in payment stock of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad at forty-five dollars a share which he soon afterward sold for two hundred and thirty dollars. His interests now expanded rapidly, until within two decades they included a wire manufactory in Trenton, New Jersey, blast furnaces in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, a rolling mill and the old glue factory in New York, foundries at Ringwood, New Jersey, and Durham, Pennsylvania, and iron mines in northern New Jersey. In 1854, in his Trenton factory, the first structural iron for fireproof buildings was rolled-an achievement which contributed to the winning of the Bessemer Gold Medal awarded him in 1870 by the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain.

To Cooper belongs much of the credit for the final success of the New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company, which he served as president for twenty years, during which he was the chief supporter of Cyrus Field [q.v.]. His confidence in the ultimate success of the project never weakened notwithstanding repeated failures and many deficits which it fell to him to meet when every one else drew back. He became president, likewise, of the North American Telegraph Company which at one time owned or controlled more than half of the telegraph lines of the country. As an inventor, Cooper possessed genius which might have made him an earlier Edison had it been joined to the necessary technical training. His first invention was a washing machine, followed by a machine for mortising hubs, and others for propelling ferry-boats by compressed air, for utilizing the tide for power, and for moving canal barges by an endless chain run by water-power. He made use of gravity as a source of power in an endless chain of bucket in one of his mines.

It is, however, chiefly as a philanthropist that Cooper is remembered. During his service on the Board of Aldermen of New York, he was an early advocate of paid police and fire departments, sanitary water conditions and public schools. In the broader field of national politics, he supported the Greenback party and consented to run on its ticket for president in 1876, with, it would appear, little hope of election, in order to bring before the public his views on the currency. His greatest monument is the Cooper Union or Cooper Institute at Astor Place, New York City, which he founded in 1857-59 "for the advancement of science and art." It is unique in the combination it offers of the ideal and practical in education. Free courses are given in general science, chemistry, electricity, civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering as well as in art. There are also free lectures of a very high order and the Institute maintains an excellent reading-room and library service. Cooper died on April 4, 1883, and was sincerely mourned by the city which he had so well served. At a reception given in his honor in 1874, he said: "I have always recognized that the object of business is to make money in an honourable manner. I have endeavoured to remember that the object of life is to do good." To this creed he remained faithful.

[R. W. Raymond, Peter Cooper (1901); John Celivergos Zachos, Sketch of the Life and Opinions of Peter Cooper (1876); W. Scott, Peter Cooper, the Good Citizen (1888); Howard Carroll, Twelve Americans, Their Lives and Tim es (18S3); C. Edwards Lester, Life and Character of Peter Cooper (1883).)

W. B. P.


COPELAND, John Anthony, Jr., 1834-1859, free African American man with John Brown during his raid at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia; hanged with John Brown, December 1859 (see entry for John Brown).  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 480; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 269)


COPELAND, Oberlinites John, Jr., free African American man with John Brown during his raid at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859; hanged with John Brown, December 1859 (see entry for John Brown).  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407)


COPPOC, Barclay, Iowa, Society of Friends, Quaker, joined John Brown in his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, in 1859.  Escaped capture.  (See entry for John Brown).  (Drake, 1950, p. 192; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407)


COPPOC, Edwin, Iowa, Society of Friends, Quaker, joined John Brown in his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, in 1859.  Hanged with John Brown.  (See entry for John Brown).  (Drake, 1950, p. 192; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 327; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407)


CORNISH, Reverend Samuel Eli, 1795-1858, free African American, New York City and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, clergyman, publisher, editor, journalist. Presbyterian clergyman. Published The Colonization Scheme Considered and its Rejection by Colored People and A Remonstrance Against the Abuse of Blacks, 1826.  Co-editor, Freedom’s Journal, first African American newspaper.  Editor, The Colored American, 1837-1839.  Leader and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), Manager, AASS, 1834-1837.  In 1840, joined the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFASS).  Executive Committee, AFASS, 1840-1855. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 170, 328, 330; Mabee, 1970, pp. 51, 58, 93, 104, 129, 134, 150, 159, 190, 277, 278, 294, 398n20, 415n14, 415n15; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 38-39, 47; Sorin, 1971, pp. 82, 83, 90, 92-93; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 527)


CORWIN, Thomas, 1794-1865, statesman, U.S. Congressman, Governor of Ohio, U.S. Senator, Secretary of the Treasury, diplomat, opposed slavery.  (Mitchell, 2007, p. 33, 35, 160, 172, 173, 266n; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 403; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 751; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 457; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 549).  See the “Life and Speeches” of Thomas Corwin, edited by Isaac Strohn (Dayton. 1859).

CORWIN, THOMAS (July 29, 1794-December18, 1865), governor of Ohio, senator, secretary of the Treasury, traced his ancestry to Matthias Corwin who settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts, about 1634. When Matthias Corwin, a descendant of the first Matthias, settled at Lebanon, Ohio, in 1798, he had only $100 with which to buy a farm, but he possessed qualities of mind and character which brought him to the speakership of the state Assembly, and endowed his children with an excellent inheritance. His wife, Patience Halleck, is reputed to have been a person of marked intellectuality. Thomas, their fifth child, born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, early exhibited bookish tendencies which the father did little to encourage, less, it appears, through lack of sympathy than through lack of means. From his large family he selected an older son to be educated as a lawyer, leaving Thomas to acquire what learning he could by the diligent use of a scanty leisure and his brother's books. At twenty-one, Thomas began to read law and in due course was admitted to the bar. In 1822 he married Sarah Ross, daughter of a congressman, related on her mother's side to the Randolphs of Virginia. He was elected to the General Assembly in 1821, 1822, and 1829, and became a supporter, in national politics, of the Clay-Adams group, by this path passing into the Whig party. Following Jackson's election, Corwin's party put him forward in his home district, a community favorable to Jackson, as its strongest candidate for Congress, and elected him with one-fourth more votes than his opponent received. During a decade in Congress, a period of Democratic control, his speeches, although infrequent, made an excellent impression. Most notable of these was his reply to General Isaac Crary (February 15, 1840).

His canvass for governor in 1840 made him famous as a campaign orator. He won by a majority of 16,000, but was defeated in 1842, in consequence of party strife over matters for which he had slight responsibility, and he refused renomination in 1844. He campaigned actively for Clay, however, on the Texas issue. The Whigs lost the presidency, but, regaining control of the Ohio legislature, sent Corwin to the United States Senate. Here, during the Mexican War, he reached the climax of his career. Convinced that the war was waged for territory, he besought Webster and Crittenden to stand with him against further appropriations. When they failed him, he pursued his opposition alone, delivering a powerful speech on February 11, 1847, in which he denounced the war as unjust, and with prophetic vision as well as eloquence predicted the sectional conflict which would follow the acquisition of Mexican territory. A few radicals talked of him for the presidency, but most Whigs as well as Democrats regarded such sentiments uttered in actual time of war as traitorous. Petitions to the legislature, however, demanding that his resignation be required, brought forth as a committee report a resolution of confidence.

Taylor's death brought Fillmore to office and Corwin to the post of secretary of the Treasury; this he filled without distinction, retiring with his chief in 1853. As the slavery controversy developed, he reluctantly abandoned the Whig party, being elected to the House in 1858 as a Republican, although he did not wholly accept the party program. He advocated the abolition of slavery in the territories, but upheld the right of each new state to decide the slavery question for itself. After Lincoln's election, he earnestly sought means of allaying the fears of the South, and served as chairman of the House committee of thirty-three. As minister to Mexico during the critical years 1861-64, he filled acceptably his last public office. Returning to Washington, he opened a law office, but died only a few months later.

Corwin's face was remarkably expressive, and his voice, although neither deep nor powerful, was musical and far-reaching. As a lawyer he was brilliant rather than learned; politics diverted his attention from profound study. A natural wit, he came to believe that fun-making had hampered his career, but his brilliant satire seldom left a sting. Though not a church member, he was permanently influenced by the religious atmosphere in which he was reared. His speeches are saturated with Biblical allusions and quotations. His chief fault was laxity in financial affairs. He was careless in collecting fees, and during most of his life was handicapped by a burden of debt. After leaving the cabinet he was impoverished by an unfortunate investment in railway stocks. He suffered loss frequently through becoming surety. He was much loved, and nowhere more so than at home and by his neighbors, for he was kind and generous.

[See E. T. Corwin, Corwin Geneal. in the U. S. (1872); Josiah Morrow, Life and Speeches of Thos. Corwin (1896); Addison Peale Russell, Thos. Corwin, A Sketch (1882), a somewhat laudatory character study containing valuable anecdotal material. Some sidelights are provided by letters of Thos. Corwin to Wm. Greene, 1841-51, in "Selections from the Wm. Greene Papers," ed. by L. Belle Hamlin, in History and Philosophical Society of Ohio Quart. Pub., vol. XIII (1918). See also Speeches of Thos. Corwin with a Sketch of his Life (1859), ed. by Isaac Strohm; Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society Quart. Pub., vol. IX (1914). The Lib. of Congress has twelve volumes of Corwin Papers covering the years of Corwin's term as secretary of the Treasury.]

H. C.H.

—His brother, Moses B., b. in Bourbon county, Kentucky, 5 January, 1790; d. in Urbana, Ohio, 7 April, 1872, received a common-school education, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1812, and practised at Urbana. He was a member of the legislature in 1838-'9, and was elected as a whig to congress in 1848, against his son, John A., who was nominated as a Democrat. He was again elected in 1854.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 751


COVODE, John, 1808-1871, abolitionist.  U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania, serving 1855-1863, representing the 35th District and the Republican Party.  (Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress)

COVODE, JOHN (March 18, 1808-January 11, 1871), congressman, son of Jacob Covode and -- Updegraff, was the grandson of Garrett Covode, who was kidnapped on the streets of Amsterdam by a sea-captain and brought as a child to Philadelphia where he was sold as an indentured servant. John Covode received a scanty education in the public schools of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. After working for several years on his father's farm and serving an apprenticeship to a blacksmith, he found employment in a wooden-mill at Lockport. Of this mill he became owner in his early manhood and continued in the business of manufacturing for the remainder of his life, although from time to time he was interested in other business enterprises, such as the Pennsylvania Canal, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Westmoreland Coal Company. At his death he had a considerable fortune.

Through his conduct in his first public office, that of justice of the peace, Covode gained for himself the sobriquet, "Honest John," which clung to him all his life. He served two terms as a Whig in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and was twice a Whig candidate for the state Senate, being defeated both times. He was elected to the national House of Representatives as an anti-Masonic Whig in 1854 and reelected as a Republican in 1856. In this position he served continuously until 1863 when he declined the nomination. He reentered the House in 1867 and remained a member until his death.

In Congress he first became prominent in the spring of 1860 by reason of his chairmanship of the Covode Investigation Committee, appointed by the House on the adoption of Covode's resolution of March 5, 1860, to inquire into the alleged use of improper influence by President Buchanan in attempting to secure the passage of the Lecompton Bill (Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, I Sess., p. 997). In moving this investigation Covode was probably retaliating for a charge made by the President that bribery had been used in the Congressional elections in Pennsylvania in 1858; his pretext was the charge by two members of the House that the President had attempted to bribe and coerce them in the Lecompton affair (Ibid., p. 1017). Buchanan sent to the House a protest against this investigation so far as it related to himself, but the House disregarded the protest and the investigation proceeded. It resulted in a majority and a minority report (House Report 648, 36 Congress, 1 Sess.), but the House took no action on either. In all probability the investigation was meant to produce nothing more serious than ammunition to be used by the Republicans in the presidential campaign of 1860; Covode was a member of the Republican Executive Congressional Committee for this campaign.

During the war Covode was a strong supporter of Lincoln. In December 1861 he was appointed a member of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War and took an active part in its work until his retirement in 1863. In the summer of 1865 he was sent by the War Department into the South, "to look into matters connected with the interests of the government in the Mississippi valley." Upon his return President Johnson declined to accept his report, in which he urged the removal of Governor Wells of Louisiana and opposed the policy of withdrawing the troops from the South (Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866, pt. 4, p. 114). The President suggested that he file it with the War Department under whose authority he had been acting. From this time on Covode was an opponent of the President and upon his return to Congress steadily supported the congressional policy of reconstruction (Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 2 Sess., Appendix, p. 462). He introduced into the House the resolution calling for the impeachment of Johnson. The results of Covode's mission to the South do not appear to have been of any special importance nor does he appear to have exerted any considerable influence in Congress at any time during the Reconstruction period.

[Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of John Covode, delivered in the · House and Senate (1871); Congressional Globe; John M. Gresham, Biography and Historical Cyclopedia of Westmoreland County (1890); J. M. Boucher, History of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania (1906), vol. I; Biography Dir. American Congress (1928); Press (Philadelphia), January 12, 1871.]

R. S. C.


COWAN, Edgar, 1815-1885, lawyer.  U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania 1861-1867.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, p. 756; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 605; Congressional Globe)


COWLES, Betsy Mix, 1810-1876, educator, reformer, abolitionist.  Organized the Ashtabula County Female Anti-Slavery Society.  Worked closely with abolitionist leader Abby Kelley in the Western Anti-Slavery Society (WASS).  African American and women’s civil rights advocate.  (American National Biography, 2002)


COWLES, EDWIN (September 19, 1825-March 4, 1890), journalist, was born in Austinburg, Ohio. A Cowles, originally Coles or Cole, had come to Massachusetts in 1635, and a year later had joined the pioneer band that the Reverend Thomas Hooker led from Cambridge to Connecticut. In 1810, a descendant, Dr. Edwin Weed Cowles, settled at Austinburg, Ohio, among Connecticut neighbors who had been lured into the West. When Edwin, the son of Dr. Edwin Weed and Almira (Foote) Cowles, was seven years of age, the family took up its abode in Cleveland. Edwin's education was limited to a few years in the local schools and one at the Grand River Institute in Austinburg. At the age of fourteen, he entered a printer's office. Five years later (1844) he and T. H. Smead became partners in the printing business. In 1853, the partnership with Smead was dissolved and another formed with Joseph Medill and John C. Vaughn (Medill, Cowles & Company). The new organization published the Forest City Democrat, a Free-Soil Whig newspaper. In 1854, the name was changed to the Cleveland Leader. A year later Cowles became sole owner and shortly afterward editor as well. His enterprise rapidly grew to include both a morning and an evening daily newspaper.

His connection with political history was intimate. He was one of the founders of the Republican party. At the beginning of the Civil War he became an insistent advocate of coercion of the Southern states and immediate emancipation of the slaves. In 1861, Lincoln appointed him postmaster in Cleveland, an office he held five years. In 1876 and 1884, he was a delegate to the National Republican Convention. On the second occasion he was vice-president of the convention. He was a regular party man, loyal to Grant, and throughout his life a believer in Blaine. Finding that Blaine could not be nominated in 1876 and 1880, he threw his influence behind Ohio's favorite sons, Hayes and Garfield. Working all his life under a handicap of deafness that would have baffled a weaker personality, he was an editor of remarkable courage, unchangeable convictions, and relentless dogmatisms, and such qualities made his pen a power in northern Ohio for a generation.

He was married in 1849 to Elizabeth C. Hutchinson of Cayuga, New York. In his later years he aided his sons, Eugene and Alfred, in the development of new methods in electric smelting. The aluminum, carborundum, calcium carbide, and acetylene industries grew out of their work. A company was formed for the manufacture of such products and Edwin Cowles, who supplied most of the capital, was its president. His interests in this company kept him in Europe much of the last two years of his life.

[The chief sources are Cowles's newspapers, files of which are in the Western Reserve Historical Society The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Leader, and the New York Times, March 5, 1890, each published an estimate of his work. See also the Cleveland Weekly Leader and Herald, March 8, 1890; Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham, The Pioneer Families of Cleveland (1914), II, 394 ff. A History of Ashtabula County, Ohio (1878), contains a sketch prepared under Cowles's direction.]

E.J. B.


COWLES, Henry, 1803-1881, Austinburgh, Ohio, clergyman, educator, anti-slavery activist, reformer.  Manager, 1834-1836, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. (Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 757)          


COX, Abraham L., 1800-1864, New York, surgeon, opponent of slavery, abolitionist leader.  Founding member and recording secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1833-1836.  (Dumond, 1961, p. 218; Sorin, 1971, p. 32n; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I)


COX, Hannah Pierce [Pearce], 1797-1876, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, Underground Railroad activist. (Hersch, 1978; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 53, 246; Smedley, 1969; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 758; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 474)

COX, HANNAH PEIRCE (November 12, 1797- April 15, 1876), Quaker anti-slavery worker, daughter of Jacob and Hannah (Buffington) Peirce, was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Bayard Taylor praised the peace and beauty of its landscape and Whittier testified to its hospitable air of prosperity. Here she lived, her character influenced by her environment. Of Quaker stock, she was of the fifth generation of her family in America, George Peirce having come over from England with William Penn in 1684, and the Buffingtons also having been early Quaker colonists. In 1731 George Peirce had purchased land in East Marlborough township, Chester County, where seven generations of his family were to live. Jacob Peirce's farm, "Longwood," contained two hundred acres of rich soil and woodland. Prosperous, public-spirited, and intelligent, he built the first school-house in the neighborhood and the brick house where Hannah was born, lived, and died.

Hannah was early left fatherless, and her education was directed by her brother Jacob, " a man of fine intellect and a member of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences." She studied for a time at the Westtown Boarding School, developing a love of nature, sympathy for the oppressed, and positive ethical views. After a brief career as teacher she married, apparently in 1820 or 1821, J. Pennell, who soon afterward was killed in an accident. In 1823 she married John Cox, of near-by Willistown, a farmer and, like herself, a Friend of high character. Two sons and two daughters were born to them. Four years were passed in Willistown; Cox then purchased "Longwood," the Peirce homestead, which was thereafter their home. The Liberator and poems of Whittier's interested them in the antislavery movement; the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in 1838 quickened their zeal. Thenceforth Mrs. Cox labored unceasingly for the negro. Her husband and she conducted a station of the Underground Railroad, cooperating with Thomas Garrett at Wilmington, Delaware. Fugitive slaves were received, generously fed and clothed, and conducted northward by Cox or his sons, often with thrilling attendant incidents. The Coxes formed life-long friendships with Lundy, Garrison, Whittier, Lucretia Mott, and many other anti-slavery advocates who enjoyed their hospitality. From the anti-slavery interest ultimately sprang a liberal movement organized as "The Progressive Friends of 'Longwood.'" Many notable reformers, from as far as Boston, attended its yearly meeting; these Mrs. Cox and her husband gladly entertained, "Longwood" becoming a center of cultured effort for reform. At the Coxes' golden wedding, September 11, 1873, eighty-two guests were present and "The Golden Wedding of Longwood" was contributed by Whittier and "A Greeting from Europe" by Bayard Taylor. Mrs. Cox interested herself in current social movements for emancipation, temperance, peace, the abolition of capital punishment, and woman's betterment, exerting a strong influence on all whose lives touched hers. Garrison testified to her "motherly nature," her eager charity, her unpretentiousness.

[Phebe A. Hanaford, Daughters of America (1883); Kennett News, April 20, 1876; Historic Homes and Institutions and Geneal. and Personal Memoirs of Chester and Delaware Counties, Pennsylvania, II, 530-31; information from Mrs. Cox's grand-daughters, Mrs. W. W. Polk and Miss Isabelle Cox of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania]

R. S. B.

COX, JACOB DOLSON (October 27, 1828-August 8, 1900), Union general, governor of Ohio, secretary of the interior, author, was descended from one Michael Koch, who came from Hanover and settled in New York City in 1705. Jacob Dolson Cox, Sr., received his middle name from his mother, a member of a Dutch family of New York: his wife, Thedia R. Kenyon, was descended from Elder William Brewster and from the Allyns and Kenyons of Connecticut. To them was born, at Montreal, Jacob Dolson Cox, Jr., while the father, a building contractor, was engaged in the construction of the roof of the Church of Notre Dame. Returning to New York City soon after this event, the family suffered business reverses during the crisis of 1837. The boy's hope of obtaining a college education was impaired by the misfortune, and, under the state law, the alternative path to a lawyer's career, to which he aspired, was a seven years' clerkship in a law office. Entering upon such an apprenticeship in 1842, he changed his mind two years later, and went into the office of a banker and broker, where the shorter hours permitted him, with the aid of a friend, to pursue the study of mathematics and the classical languages. After two years more, through the influence of Reverend Charles G. Finney [q.v.], then professor of theology at Oberlin College, he was led to enter the preparatory department of that institution. Three years later (1849), while still an undergraduate, he married Helen, the daughter of Finney who was now president of the college. Graduating in 1851, Cox served for two years at Warren, Ohio, as superintendent of schools and principal of the high school, reading law at the same time, and beginning to practise in 1853.

Cox was at this time a Whig, but his Oberlin associations, his marriage, and other influences, combined to make him strongly anti-slavery in principle. He voted for Scott in 1852, but took a prominent part in bringing about the fusion of Whigs and Free-Soilers, and in 1855 was a delegate to the convention at Columbus which organized the Republican party in the state. A few years later his party friends, against his protest, nominated and elected him to the state Senate. Entering the Senate in 1859, he found there his friend James A. Garfield, and Governor-Elect Dennison, with whom he soon became intimate, this trio, together with Salmon P. Chase, then governor, forming a radical anti-slavery group.

With the outbreak of war in 1861, Cox's activity in organizing volunteers brought him a commission as brigadier-general of volunteers. During the summer he had a part in the Kanawha Valley campaign under McClellan, and a year later, in the Army of the Potomac, he participated in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam, commanding the 9th Corps at the former after the fall of General Reno. He was advanced to the rank of major-general on October 6, 1862, but the following April was reduced to his former rank because the number of major-generals permitted by law had been inadvertently exceeded. This bungling, which resulted in the promotion of less deserving officers, was a discouraging episode in his military career; but after repeated urging on the part of his superiors he was at length recommissioned in December 1864. During the winter of 1862- 63 he commanded the forces in West Virginia, and from April to December 1863 was in charge of the Ohio military district. During the Atlanta campaign he led a division of the 3rd Army Corps, and after the fall of Atlanta for a time commanded the entire corps. He took part in the battle of Nashville, and early in 1865 was sent into North Carolina to open communications. along the coast with Sherman, who was nearing the end of the march to the sea. On this expedition Cox defeated Bragg's troops and effected a junction with Sherman at Goldsboro.

After the war, while engaged in superintending the mustering out of the troops in Ohio, Cox was elected governor of the state. During the campaign in response to the inquiries of friends at Oberlin, he expressed himself as opposed to negro suffrage. He could not assume as they did, he wrote, that the suffrage, while whites and blacks dwelt in the same community, would cure all of the ills of the freedmen. Carrying these ideas further, he declared while governor, that the large groups of whites and blacks in the Southern states could never share political power, and that insistence upon it on the part of the colored people would bring about their ruin. As a remedy, he advocated the forcible segregation of the negroes, a plan which found little or no support. By such views, and by his indorsement of President Johnson's reconstruction policy, which he thought essentially the same as Lincoln's, he lost favor with his party, and was not renominated. He tried in vain to mediate between Johnson and the radical Republicans, and finally himself abandoned the President because of the latter 's obstinacy and pugnacity. In 1868 Cox declined Johnson's tender of the post of commissioner of Internal Revenue.

Upon Grant's accession, Cox accepted the office of secretary of the interior. He had become a prominent advocate of the new cause of civil-service reform, and in his own department he put the merit system into operation, resisting the efforts of the party spoilsmen to dictate appointments and to collect campaign assessments. He and Attorney-General Hoar were regarded by the Independent Republicans as the only strong men in Grant's cabinet. When Grant's extraordinary Santo Domingo embroglio forced Hoar from the cabinet-the story of which episode Cox gave to the public twenty-five years later (see Atlantic Monthly, August 1895)-Cox lost hope of maintaining his fight without the support of the President. Already he had clashed with Grant over the fraudulent claims of one McGarrahan to certain mineral lands, as well as over the Dominican situation and on October 5, 1870, he submitted his resignation. " My views of the necessity of reform in the civil service," he wrote, "have brought me more or less into collision with the plans of our active political managers, and my sense of duty has obliged me to oppose some of their methods of action" (New York Tribune, October 31, 1870).

The breach with Grant hurt Cox deeply. He held Grant's military talent in high esteem, and did not allow his judgment thereof to be affected by their difference (see, e. g., his review of Grant's Memoirs, in the Nation, February 25, 1886, July I, 1886); but in private conversation he permitted himself to criticize the President's course severely. Grant on his part, with his military instincts and experience, regarded Cox's independence of mind as a kind of insubordination. "The trouble was," as he put it, "that General Cox thought the Interior Department was the whole government, and that Cox was the Interior Department. I had to point out to him in very plain language that there were three controlling branches of the Government, and that I was the head of one of these and would so like to be considered by the Secretary of the Interior" (Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, p. 427). Progressive opinion supported Cox, and his political "martyrdom" undoubtedly hastened the triumph of the reform movement.

Upon leaving the cabinet the former secretary became conspicuously identified with the Liberal Republican movement, and was much talked of as its probable nominee for the presidency in 1872. At the Cincinnati convention, however, he was defeated by the more available Greeley. Meantime he had resumed the practise of law, at Cincinnati; but in 1873 he removed to Toledo to become president of the Wabash Railway. This position he gave up in turn upon being elected to Congress in 1876, from the 6th Ohio District, by an unprecedented majority.

He served but one term in Congress. He seems to have hoped to be able to do something to support President Hayes in his reform efforts, and his helplessness under existing political conditions probably discouraged him. At any rate he abandoned politics, even refraining thereafter from comment on political events, with the exception of a single speech during the Garfield campaign. Resuming his residence at Cincinnati, he became dean of the Cincinnati Law School (1881), a position which he held for the next sixteen years. During part of this time (1885-89) he also served as president of the University of Cincinnati. In addition to high repute as a lawyer, his reputation as a business man was enviable, and brought him in the middle nineties the tender of the post of railroad commissioner in New York City. This offer he declined, preferring to continue his connection with the Law School. In 1897 he declined President McKinley's offer of the Spanish mission, but in the same year he presented his library to Oberlin College and retired thither to write his Military Reminiscences. This work was barely completed and still unpublished when his death occurred, after a brief illness, while he was enjoying his customary summer outing along the coast of Maine, in company with a son.

Cox was tall, graceful, and well-proportioned, with erect, military bearing, and a frame denoting great physical strength. A man of many interests, he devoted much time in his later years to the study of microscopy, in which field he won international distinction. He was also a student of European cathedrals. His wide information, conversational gifts, and courteous manners made him an agreeable companion. The artistic genius of a son, Kenyon Cox [q.v.], doubtless bears witness to undeveloped talents of the father.

No small part of Cox's reputation rests upon his work as a writer. From 1874 until his death he was the Nation's military book critic. In addition to contributions to this and other journals, he wrote several books on military topics, the most important of which are: Atlanta, and The March to the Sea; Franklin and Nashville (volumes IX and X in the Campaigns of the Civil War series, 1882); The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 30, 1864 (1897); and Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (2 vols., 1900). He also contributed four chapters to M. F. Force's Life of General Sherman (1899). A work of less consequence is The Second Battle of Bull Run as Connected with the Fitz-John Porter Case (1882). Some critics of these books regard his attitude toward Rosecrans as unjust and not well informed, and his judgment in the Fitz John Porter case is open to question. In general, however, he is recognized as an elegant and forceful writer, of fine critical ability and impartial judgment, one of the foremost military historians of the country.

[The autobiographical nature of the Military Reminiscences makes it the chief source of information for Cox's life as a soldier. It contains a portrait. See also Bibliotheca Sacra, July 1901, pp. 436-68. J. R. Ewing, Public Services of Jacob Dolson Cox (1902), is a slight sketch of about twenty pages which contains some data not found elsewhere. Jas. Ford Rhodes touches the high points of Cox's civil career and appraises his personality in "Jacob D. Cox" (Historical Essays, 1909, pp. 183- 88). He tells the story of the cabinet controversy in History of the U. S. from the Compromise of 1850, VII (1910), 3-7. See also L.A. Coolidge, Ulysses S. Grant (1917); Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, His Life and Character (1898); Nation, August 9, 1901, p. 107. Estimates of Cox's writings may be found in the American History Review, III (1898), 578-80, and VI (1901), 602-06.]

H.C.H.


COX, Samuel Hanson, 1793-1880 New York, radical abolitionist leader, Presbyterian clergyman, orator. American Anti-Slavery Society. (Sorin, 1971, pp. 74, 114; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 481; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 630)

COX, SAMUEL HANSON (August 25, 1793- October 2, 1880), Presbyterian clergyman, educator, a man of brilliant but eccentric genius, was born in Rahway, New Jersey, the son of James Cox, member of a New York importing firm, and Elizabeth (Shepard) Cox. He was of Quaker ancestry, fifth in descent from Isaac Cox of Talbot County, Maryland, and received his early education privately and at a Friends' academy in Westtown near Philadelphia. In 1813, while studying law under William Halsey at Newark, New Jersey, the charm of Quakerism in which he had been nurtured "was dissolved by the unmystical verities of the Bible," and he joined the Presbyterian Church. His experiences at this period he describes at length in Quakerism not Christianity (1833), a discursive work of nearly seven hundred pages. He now turned to the study of theology, and, October 10, 1816, was licensed by the New York Presbytery. On July 1, 1817, he was ordained and installed pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Mendham, New Jersey. His other pastorates were at Spring Street Church (1820- 25) and Laight Street Church (1825-35), New York, and the First Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn (1837-54). He was married, April 7, 1817, to Abia Hyde Cleveland (1796-1865), by whom he had fifteen children, the eldest of whom, Arthur Cleveland Coxe [q.v.], became a bishop in the Episcopal Church. His second wife, whom he married November 16, 1869, was Anna Fosdick Bacon.

He was noted both for his peculiarities and for his gifts. His utterances, tinged with intellectual arrogance and interlarded with quotations from the Latin, a language he spoke fluently, reveal an amusing fondness for long and uncommon words. His learning was extensive, but his scholarship not profound. Strong sympathies and antipathies led him into extravagances. Nevertheless, his versatility, eloquence, wit, sincerity, and courage, gave him standing and influence. At the outset of his career he came into prominence through being refused an appointment by the Young Men's Missionary Society of New York, because of his Hopkinsian sentiments. In the sharp conflicts of 1836-38 which split the Presbyterian Church, he was one of the New School leaders, and he was moderator of the New School General Assembly in 1846. He was a founder of New York University, and during a thirty-six years' term as director of Union Theological Seminary did much to shape its policies. From 1835 to 1837 he was professor of sacred rhetoric and pastoral theology at Auburn Seminary, and from 1856 to 1863 the head of Ingham University, Le Roy, New York, an institution for young women. He died at Bronxville, New York.

Although at the anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, London, May 1833, he defended his country when attacked on the score of slavery, his early radical anti-slavery sentiments got him into trouble. His church and house were stoned, and in July 1835, he was hanged in effigy at Charleston along with Garrison and Arthur Tappan. For the London edition of William Jay's Slavery in America (1835), a work antagonistic to the Colonization Society he wrote a vigorous introduction. Later he modified his views, fought the attempted exclusion of slaveholders at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in London, 1846, and repudiated his former friendship for Frederick Douglass because of his behavior at a temperance convention they attended there (Liberator, November 20, 1846). Violently opposed both to intoxicants and to tobacco, he wrote a long introduction, addressed to John Quincy Adams, for Benjamin I. Lane's Mysteries of Tobacco (1851). He edited and brought down to date Archibald Bower's anti-Catholic History of the Popes in 1844-47. Interviews Memorable and Useful (1853) indirectly reveals many of his characteristics.

[General Cat. Auburn Theol. Sem. (1883); John Q. Adams, History of Auburn Theol. Sem. (1918); G. L. Prentiss, The Union Theo/. Sem., New York, History and Biography Sketches of its First Fifty Years (1889); J. L. Chamberlain, ed., Universities and Their Sons, New York University (1901); E. J. and H. G. Cleveland, Geneal. Cleveland and Cleaveland Families (1899), I, 515-20; W. P. and F. J. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison (1885- 89), I, 461,485; III, 165-66.]

H. E. S.


COXE, Tench, 1755-1824, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, political economist, abolitionist leader.  Founding member and secretary of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1787. (Basker, 2005, pp. 80, 81-85, 92, 101-102; Bruns, 1977, pp. 384, 510-512, 514; Nash, 1991, pp. 124-125, 141; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 762; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 488; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 636) His chief works are: " An Inquiry into the Principles for a Commercial System for the United States” (1787); “Examination of Lord Sheffield's Observations on the Commerce of the United Provinces” (1792); “View of the United States” (1787-'94). He wrote also on naval power, on encouragement of arts and manufactures, on the cost, trade, and manufacture of cotton, on the navigation act, and on arts and manufactures in the United States. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 762.

COXE, TENCH (May 22, 1755-July 16, 1824), political economist, was the son of William and Mary (Francis) Coxe and grandson of Col. Daniel Coxe [q.v.], colonial legislator and judge, and of Tench Francis [q.v.], attorney-general of the province of Pennsylvania. Tench Coxe, like his brother William [q.v.], was born in Philadelphia. He was educated at the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania, though he seems not to have graduated. He studied law, but instead of undertaking an independent practise entered his father's counting house, and in 1776 became a member of the firm of Coxe, Furman & Coxe. Friendly writers have said that it was the exigency of the business, of which he was left in complete charge, which made him neutral during the Revolution. Others declare that royalist sympathies made him resign from the militia and leave Philadelphia to join the British, returning in 1777 with the army under Howe, and that with Howe's withdrawal Coxe was arrested, paroled, and turned Whig. At any rate, he did not sacrifice the esteem of patriots, for he was a member of the Annapolis Convention of 1786 and of the Continental Congress in 1788. He supported the adoption of the Constitution in an able pamphlet, An Examination of the Constitution for the United States (1788), which was one of the earliest arguments to appear in its behalf, and marks its author in every way a Federalist. He was particularly anxious that the financial difficulties of the Confederation should be cured through adoption of the new instrument. He was made assistant secretary of the treasury in 1789 and became Commissioner of the Revenue in 1792. From the latter post Adams removed him in December 1797 (probably because of Wolcott's dissatisfaction with his subordinate, though no official reason was given), and Coxe altered allegiance again by joining the Republicans. In the campaign of 1800 he added to the Federalist discomfort, already acute through Hamilton's attack upon President Adams, by publishing a letter which he had received from Adams in 1792 openly insinuating that Charles and Thomas Pinckney, both Federalist leaders, were not to be trusted because under British influence. Federalists promptly branded Coxe a traitor to the party, whereupon Jefferson took him up, in 1803 appointing him Purveyor of Public Supplies, which office he held until it was abolished in 1812. Jefferson and Madison remained his friends, and the latter, in 1820 when Coxe was an old man, sought unavailingly to have Monroe give him preferment.

Coxe's shifts in politics were in marked contrast to his steadfastness in adherence to the economic policies which he believed would promote the prosperity of the new nation. Dealing in practicalities rather than in doctrine, he belonged to the nationalist group which later found its full expression in the works of Henry C. Carey [q.v.]. He resented the hardships of Britain's colonial policy, realized the necessity of close political union following the weakness of the Confederation, and was moved to action by the flooding of American markets with British goods when peace was concluded. His pamphlet, An Enquiry into the Principles on Which a Commercial System for the United States of America Should be Founded, read to a meeting in the house of Benjamin Franklin in 1787 and published in the same year, is a key to his views. While ever mindful of the claims of agriculture (which he calculated embraced seven-eighths of the country's wealth), he thought these would best be served by development of manufactures which would afford a home market for raw materials and foodstuffs. He believed a revenue tariff, combined with the natural advantages of the country, sufficient for the encouragement of American industry. He was unalterably opposed to commercial restrictions between the states. He urged confining importation to American bottoms and to ships of the country of origin. Coastwise trade, he held, should belong exclusively to American ship-owners. He early (1775) became a member of the United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufactures, and became president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (founded in 1787). He has been called the father of the American cotton industry because he was one of the first to urge on the South cultivation of cotton as a staple, and was active in the promotion of cotton manufacture. In 1787, two years before Samuel Slater's arrival, Coxe attempted, though without success, to have models of the Arkwright machinery brought to America by way of France. Early aware of the existence of coal in central and western Pennsylvania, and, apparently, of its future importance (see his View of the United States of America, 1794, pp. 70-71), in 1787 and 1793 he purchased extensive tracts of land in the coal areas, which he transmitted to his heirs. A grandson, Eckley B. Coxe [q.v.], educated to develop the coal lands, became one of the outstanding mining engineers of the United States.

Tench Coxe was married twice: first, to Catherine McCall of Philadelphia, who died without issue; and second, to Rebecca, daughter of Charles Coxe of New Jersey. He was a handsome, winning person, capable and versatile, high in the second rank of men of his day.

[See Henry Simpson, The Lives of Eminent Philadelphians (1859); Lorenzo Sabine, Biography Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (1864); Pennsylvania Mag. of History and Biography, vols. V (1881) and XVI (189.2); George S. White, Memoir of Samuel Slater (2nd ed., 1836); obituaries in Philadelphia papers: Franklin Gazette and National Gazette for July 16, 1824, and Paulson's American Daily Advertiser for July 17, 1824. There are numerous references to Coxe in the letters of Jefferson, Madison, and Adams. For his opinions see his View of the United States (1794), which is in effect a compilation of a number of his papers published during the years 1787- 94, and (also by Coxe) A Statement of the Arts and Manufactures of the U.S. for the Year 1810.]

B.M.


CRAFT, Ellen, 1827-1900, African American, author, former slave who escaped to freedom in 1848 with William Craft.  Wrote Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, 1860.  (Drake, 1950, pp. 137-138; Hersch, 1978; Mabee, 1970, pp. 285-286, 290, 302, 303, 316, 336; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 53, 246; Smedley, 1969, pp. 51, 184, 209, 246-247, 464, 489; Still, 1883; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 647; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 315)


CRAFT, William, c. 1826-1890, African American author, former slave who escaped to freedom in 1848 with Ellen Craft.  Wrote Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, 1860.  (Drake, 1950, pp. 137-138; Hersch, 1978; Mabee, 1970, pp. 285-286, 290, 302, 303, 316, 336; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 53, 246; Smedley, 1969, pp. 51, 184, 209, 246-247, 464, 489; Still, 1883; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 648; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 315)


CRANDALL, Phineas, abolitionist, Fall River, Massachusetts, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1834-36, 1839-1840.


CRANDALL, Prudence, 1803-1889, Canterbury, Connecticut, Society of Friends, Quaker, educator, abolitionist.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 211-217; Foner, 1984; Fuller, 1971; Goodell, 1852, pp. 393, 436; Mabee, 1970, pp. 148, 149, 150, 373; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 247-248; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 13, 89, 199, 203, 211, 223; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 768; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 192-193; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 667; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 307)

CRANDALL, PRUDENCE (September 3, 1803-January 28, 1889), educator and reformer, born at Hopkinton, Rhode Island, was of Quaker descent, the daughter of Pardon and Esther Crandall (J. N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island, vol. V, 1894). The family had a tinge of fanaticism in their blood and her younger brother was imprisoned for nearly a year in Georgetown, D. C., without trial, for spreading Abolitionist doctrines there. Prudence moved from Rhode Island and after a brief career as a teacher at Plainfield, settled at Canterbury, Connecticut, where in 1831 she opened a school for girls. A colored girl wished to attend and received Miss Crandall's permission. Immediately there were protests, whereupon Miss Crandall decided to keep a school for negroes only. A town meeting was held on March 9, 1833, to prevent her. She was denied opportunity to be heard in defense by counsel, although she offered to retire to a more secluded place if reimbursed for her preparatory expenses at Canterbury. The leader of the movement against her declared that no negro school should he established anywhere in Connecticut, but Miss Crandall continued firm in her resolution and opened her school. Disgraceful forms of intimidation were used against her. Her well was filled with refuse, physicians refused to attend the sick in her home, she was forbidden to enter the church, her house was attacked and narrowly escaped burning, and she was threatened with personal violence. Her opponents secured (May 24, 1833) the passage of an act in the state legislature making it illegal for any one to set up a school for colored people who were not inhabitants of the state without the consent of the selectmen of the town in which the school was to be located (Public Statute Laws of the State of Connecticut,, 1833, chap. ix). Under this law, she was arrested and imprisoned. By this time the case had attracted very wide attention in Abolitionist circles, the Reverend Samuel J. May and Arthur Tappan [qq.v.] took up her cause, eminent counsel were retained in her behalf, and a newspaper, the Unionist, of Brooklyn, Connecticut, edited by C. C. Burleigh [q.v.], was established to defend her. The first trial resulted in a divided jury but a new case was made up and she was tried a second time. Her counsel claimed that the law was unconstitutional, as negroes were citizens and it infringed that clause of the Federal Constitution which gave the "citizens of each state ... all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." The case, however, was decided against her. It was then appealed to the supreme court of Connecticut which reversed the decision of the lower court on the ground merely of insufficient evidence and dodged the real issue (see IO Connecticut 339). The supreme court decision was rendered in July 1834 and the next month Miss Crandall married the Reverend Calvin Philleo, a Baptist clergyman of Ithaca, New York. The project for educating colored girls in Connecticut was obviously hopeless, and the couple moved to Illinois. After her husband's death in 1874, Mrs. Philleo lived with her brother Hezekiah in southern Kansas, dying at Elk Falls in that state. She retained both her mental vigor and her great interest in the colored race until her death.

[A short pamphlet on Prudence Crandall was written by John C. Kimball during her life and privately printed in 1886. See also: S. J. May, Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict (1869); W. P. and F. J. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison (4 vols., 1885); J. C. Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage (1862), II, 46; Report of the Arguments of Counsel in the Case of Prudence Crandall (1834); Ellen D. Larned, History of Windham County, Connecticut, vol. II (1880). A portrait is at Cornell University.]

J. T.A.


CRAWFORD, James, 1810-1888, African American, escaped slave, Baptist clergyman, abolitionist leader. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 327)


CRESSON, Elliot, 1796-1854, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, philanthropist, supported American Colonization Society. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 7-8; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 540)

CRESSON, ELLIOTT (March 2, 1796-February20, 1854), Quaker merchant and philanthropist, was born in Philadelphia. A representative member of a family of successful merchants and valued citizens, he was in his generation noted more for the distribution of his wealth than for activities in attaining it. The family trace descent from Pierre Cresson, Huguenot refugee from France to Holland and later to New Amstel on the Delaware River in 1657. Elliott Cresson was the eldest son of John Elliott and Mary (Warder) Cresson, and was brought up in the influence of a Quaker home. He became a partner in Cresson, Wistar & Company at 133 Market St., Philadelphia, and resided at 30 Sansom St. (above Seventh) with his mother, who outlived him. Through the grave exterior of a "plain" Friend there could be seen in his countenance a character of kindly sympathy. From the teachings of the Society of Friends he had come to have an interest in the oppressed races, the American Indian and the negro, even thinking at one time of becoming a missionary to the Seminole Indians. His devotion, however, was chiefly given to the cause of colonization. He was one of the organizers, in 1834, of The Young Men's Colonization Society of Pennsylvania and a life member of the American Society for Colonizing the Poor People of Color of the United States. In addition to liberal gifts to the cause himself and helping to buy land for the colony at Bassa Cove, Liberia, he made a trip to New England in the winter of 1838-39 as agent of the American Colonization Society to raise funds and to arouse the spirit of colonization, which had become dormant in those regions (Alexander, post, p. 550). He made similar visits to the South and to England. His interests covered a wide range. In addition to gifts during his life and bequests to relatives by his will, he left to the American Sunday School Union, $50,000; to the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, $10,000; to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, $5,000; for a monument to William Penn, $10,000; for Episcopal missions, schools and college, at Port Cresson, Liberia, $10,000; to the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, $5,000; to the City of Philadelphia, for planting trees, $5,000; to the University of Pennsylvania, to endow a professorship in the fine arts, $5,000; for founding a Miners' School in Pennsylvania, $5,000; to the Pennsylvania Agricultural Society, $5,000; to the Protestant Episcopal Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia, $5,000; and to the Atheneum, Philadelphia, to the Widows' Asylum, Philadelphia, to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, to the House of Refuge, to the Colored Refuge, to the Refuge for Decayed Merchants and to the Pennsylvania Colonization Society, $1,000 each. He also left land valued at over $30,000 to found and support a home for aged, infirm or invalid gentlemen and merchants. Another line of interest is shown in his founding the Elliott Cresson medal, awarded annually by the Franklin Institute "for some discovery in the Arts and Sciences, or for the invention or improvement of some useful machine, or for some new process or combination of materials in manufacturing, or for ingenuity. skill or perfection in workmanship." [Colonial Families of Philadelphia, ed. by John W. Jordan, vol. II (1911); Archibald Alexander, History of Colonization on the West Coast of Africa (1846); Annual Reports of the American Colonization Society, esp. that for January 1855; African Repository, March 1854, p. 65; Henry Simpson, Lives of Eminent Philadelphians (1859).]

J.B.W.


CRESWELL, John Angel James, 1828-1891, statesman, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, 1863-1865.  U.S. Senator 1865-.  Supported the Union.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 8; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 541; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 726; Congressional Globe)

CRESWELL, JOHN ANGEL JAMES (November 18, 1828-December23, 1891), postmaster-general, was born at Port Deposit, Maryland. His father, John G. Creswell, was a Marylander of English ancestry, and his mother, Rebecca E. Webb, a Pennsylvanian, whose forebears were German and English, one of the latter being the famous Quaker missionary, Elizabeth Webb. Creswell received his advanced education at Dickinson College, graduating with honors in 1848. After studying law for two years, he was admitted to the Maryland bar, in 1850, and soon began to practise. Early in his career he married Hannah J. Richardson of Maryland, a woman of considerable wealth.

In politics, Creswell was a strong partisan. He first affiliated with the Whigs, then after that party broke up, was for a short period a Demo crat, and attended the Cincinnati convention which nominated Buchanan. After the Civil War opened, however, he became and remained a staunch and influential Republican. In the critical days of 1861 and 1862 Creswell filled his first public office, as loyalist member of the Maryland House of Delegates, and did much toward keeping the state in the Union. A year later, as assistant adjutant-general, he had charge of raising Maryland's quota of troops for the Northern army. From 1863 to 1865 he was a member of the national House of Representatives; but in March of the latter year he was elected to the Senate to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. In January 1865, after Maryland had freed its slaves, he made a strong impression by a speech in the House in favor of general emancipation. As senator, he stood for manhood suffrage, the compensation of loyal owners of drafted slaves, and strict enforcement of the Civil Rights Act.

Creswell 's most important public work was done as head of the Post Office Department, to which he was appointed by President Grant in March 1869. The country has had few, if any, abler postmasters-general. The changes made by him in the Department were sweeping, reformatory, and constructive. The cost of ocean transportation of letters to foreign countries was reduced from eight cents to two, and great increase in speed was secured by giving the carriage of the mails to the best and fastest steamers, four of which were to sail each week, and by advertising a month in advance the vessels selected; the pay to railroads for mail-carriage was rearranged on a fair basis; there was great increase in the number of railroad postal lines, postal clerks, and letter-carriers, and in the number of cities having free delivery of mail and money-order departments; one-cent postal cards were introduced; the system of letting out contracts for the internal carriage of the mails was so reformed as ultimately to do away with straw bidding and to secure fair competition among responsible bidders; the laws relating to the Post Office Department were codified, with a systematic classification of offenses against the postal laws; and postal treaties with foreign countries were completely revised. Creswell also denounced the franking system as the "mother of frauds," and secured its abolition, and he strongly urged the establishment of postal savings banks and a postal telegraph.

Pressure of private business led him to resign from the Post Office Department in July 1874, but he later accepted the position of United AT States counsel before the court of commissioners on the Alabama claims, and served until the court expired by law in December 1876. Thereafter, he spent most of his remaining years at Elkton, Maryland, where he had his home, and gave his attention to banking and the practise of law. Here, following two years of general ill health, he died of bronchial pneumonia.

[Journal of the Maryland House of Delegates, 1861-62; Congressional Globe, 1863-69; Reports of the Postmaster-General, 1869-74; Biography American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928); sketch in Biography Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland and the D. C. (1879), based, apparently, upon data furnished by Creswell himself. The short biography included in Sams and Riley, Bench and Bar of Maryland (1901), was founded upon the account given in the Biography Cyclopedia just mentioned. An editorial on Creswell's appointment as postmaster-general appears in the Baltimore (Weekly) Sun, March 6, 1869, and an obituary in the supplementary issue of the same paper for December 26, 1891.]

M. W. W.


CROTHERS, Samuel, 1783-1856, Greenfield, Ohio, abolitionist, clergyman, noted theologian.  Vice president, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Organized Paint Valley Abolitionist Society. Worked in Chillicothe Presbytery of Ohio.  Wrote articles against slavery in quarterly anti-slavery magazine.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 91-92, 135; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 21) See “Life and Writings of Samuel Crothers,” by Reverend A. Ritchie (Cincinnati 1857).


CROWE, John Finley, abolitionist, newspaper publisher, The Abolitionist Intelligencer, founded 1822, Shelby, Kentucky, and editor of the Missionary Magazine of the Kentucky Abolition Society.  Crowe and his associates were constantly under threat.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 95, 118; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 37)


CRUMMELL, Alexander, 1819-1898, African American, clergyman, professor, African nationalist, anti-slavery activist and lecturer.  Lectured in England against American slavery.  Supported colonization of Blacks to Africa.  Worked in New York office of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Correspondent for the Colored American.  (Rigsby, 1987; Wilson, 1989; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 820; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 366)


CUFFEE, Paul (Cuffe), 1759-1818, free Black, sea captain, author, A Brief Account of the Settlement and Present Situation of the Colony of Sierra Leone, 1812, Society of Friends from Massachusetts, Quaker, abolitionist, among the first Americans to colonize free Blacks in Africa (Drake, 1950, pp. 123-125; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 23, 24, 32, 164, 192, 568; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 26; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 585)

CUFFE, PAUL (January 17, 1759-September 9, 1817), negro seaman, was born at Cuttyhunk, on one of the Elizabeth Islands not far from New Bedford. He was the seventh of the ten children of Cuffe Slocum, a Massachusetts negro who had purchased his freedom, and of Ruth Moses, an Indian woman. When sixteen years of age he was a sailor on a whaling vessel. On his third voyage he was captured by the British and held in New York for three months. When released he repaired to Westport to engage in agriculture. He studied arithmetic and navigation, and after various unhappy experiences with small vessels, including the capture of his goods by pirates, he made a successful voyage, in 1795 launched a sixty-nine-ton vessel, the Ranger, and by 1806 owned one ship, two brigs, and several smaller vessels, besides property in houses and lands. As early as 1778 he had persuaded his brothers to drop their father's slave name, Slocum, and to take his Christian name, Cuffe, as their surname. In 1780 he and his brother John raised before the courts of Massachusetts the question of the denial of the suffrage to citizens who had to pay taxes. For the moment the two men were not successful, but their efforts helped toward the act of 1783 by which negroes acquired legal rights and privileges in Massachusetts; and especially did they assist in giving to New Bedford a tradition of just and equal treatment for all citizens. On February 25, 1783, Paul Cuffe was married to a young Indian woman, Alice Pequit. In 1797 he bought for $3,500 a farm on the Westport River where he built a public-school house and employed a teacher. In 1808 he was received into the membership of the Society of Friends of Westport; and he later assisted materially in the building of a new meeting-house. As early as 1788 he had been prominent in the suggestion of an exodus of negroes to Africa. On January 1, 1811, with a crew of nine negro seamen, he sailed in the Traveller from Westport for Sierra Leone. In Freetown he formed the Friendly Society, which looked toward further immigration from America. Returning to America, April 19, 1812, he planned to make a yearly trip to Sierra Leone. On December 10, 1815, with a total of nine families and thirty-eight persons he set forth, expending not less than $4,000 of his own funds in the venture. He was well received and hoped to do even more, but his health failed in 1817. Tall, well-formed, and athletic, he was a man of remarkable dignity, initiative, tact, and piety, and the unselfishness of his efforts impressed all who knew him. He left an estate of $20,000.

[H. N. Sherwood, "Paul Cuffe," in Journal of Negro History, April 1923, VIII, 153-232; Peter Williams, Discourse on the Death of Paul Cuffe (1817); Memoir of Capt. Paul Cuffee (York, England, 1812).]

B. B.


CUSHING, William, 1732-1810, lawyer, jurist, opponent of slavery, member of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, First Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed by George Washington, Acting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1794.  Wrote in the case Commonwealth v. Jennings, 1783, which abolished slavery in the state of Massachusetts.  Cushing wrote:  “As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that… has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws… a different idea has taken place with the people of America more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of Liberty, with which Heaven… has inspired all the human race.  And upon this ground our Constitution of Government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal—and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property—in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves… the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract.” (Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 24, 235; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 40; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 633; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 918)

CUSHING, WILLIAM (March 1, 1732-September 13, 1810), jurist, was born at Scituate, Massachusetts, the eldest son of John Cushing by his second wife, Mary Cotton. He was descended on both sides from the old office-holding oligarchy of provincial Massachusetts. His maternal grandfather, Josiah Cotton, schoolmaster, county judge, member of the General Court, and preacher to the Indians at Plymouth, was a grandson of the famous John Cotton, first minister of Boston. The Cushing family descended from Matthew Cushing, who settled at Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638, and was the ancestor in other lines of Thomas, Caleb, and Luther S. Cushing. William Cushing's grandfather and father both served as members of the Governor's Council and of the superior court, the highest law court of the Province. After graduating at Harvard in 1751 Cushing taught school for a year at Roxbury, Massachusetts, and then studied law in the office of the famous provincial lawyer, Jeremiah Gridley of Boston. Admitted to the bar in 1755, he practised in Scituate until the creation of the new county of Lincoln in the district of Maine in 1760 required the appointment of county officers. William Cushing received the posts of register of deeds and judge of probate, while his younger brother Charles was appointed sheriff. The brothers took up their residence at the new county seat, Pownalborough, now Dresden, on the Kennebec, where for the next twelve years Cushing was the only lawyer in a back-woods community, eight days' journey from Boston and sparsely settled by French and German immigrants. The only knowledge we have of him in these years is in connection with his professional appearances before the superior court at Falmouth, where he was often associated in cases with John Adams, who traveled the Maine circuit.

In 1771, John Cushing, William's father, resigned the post as judge of the superior court which he had held for twenty-three years, and William, returning to Massachusetts, became his successor (1772). The British crown determined to make the provincial courts independent of colonial opinion by paying the judges' salaries. In March 1774 the Massachusetts General Court voted the judges of the superior court salaries from the colonial treasury, and called on them to refuse the crown grant. Four judges, including Cushing, obeyed: Oliver, the Chief Justice, refused and was impeached. Cushing's attitude at this juncture is described by a contemporary: "He was a sensible, modest man, well acquainted with law, but remarkable for the secrecy of his opinions .... He readily resigned the royal stipend without any observations of his own; yet it was thought at the time that it was with a reluctance that his taciturnity could not conceal. By this silent address he retained the confidence of the court faction, nor was he less a favorite among the republicans" (Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, 1805, vol. I, p. n8). Nothing is more remarkable than the way in which Cushing, though holding high office, succeeded in remaining in the background during the pre-revolutionary struggle. In 1776, however, he drafted the instructions from his home town of Scituate in favor of independence.

In 1775 the revolutionary council of state, which took over the government of Massachusetts, reorganized the courts, retaining Cushing alone of the previous judges as a member of the new supreme judicial court. John Adams was appointed chief justice, but never took his seat, Cushing presiding in his absence as senior associate justice; and when Adams resigned in 1777. Cushing became chief justice, a post which he held for the next twelve years. The system of reporting the opinions of the courts not yet having been introduced, a few newspaper notices of charges to grand juries are the only record of Cushing's judicial labors in Massachusetts except in one important case. This was a criminal action tried at Worcester in 1783 against one Jennison for assault committed in attempting to repossess himself of a slave. Cushing charged the jury that the clause of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights of 1780, which declared that "all men are born free and equal," operated legally to abolish slavery in the state. During Shays's rebellion one of the objects of the malcontents was to prevent the sittings of the courts, and they attempted to obstruct the supreme judicial court at Springfield on September 29, 1786. It is probably of Cushing's behavior on this occasion that a record has been preserved : "The Chief Justice was applied to by a committee from the mob and entreated to yield to their wishes; he replied, that the law appointed the court to be held at that time, and it was their duty to hold it accordingly; and, followed by his Associates, he proceeded into the street. His countenance was blanched to paleness, but his step was firm. As he advanced, the crowd opened before him ... and the court was regularly opened" (Flanders, Lives and Times of the Chief Justices, II, 34).

Cushing was a member of the Convention of 1779 which framed the first state constitution of Massachusetts, and was vice-president of the state convention of 1788 which ratified the Federal Constitution. On the organization of the United States Supreme Court, he was the first associate justice appointed. During his twenty-one years on the Court, he delivered opinions, all of them brief, in nineteen cases, of which the most important are Chisholm vs. Georgia (2 Dallas, 419), Ware vs. Hylton (3 Dallas, 199), and Calder vs. Bull (3 Dallas, 386). In them he concurred with the majority of the judges and did not add to their exposition of the law. During the absence of Jay on his mission to England, Cushing acted as chief justice, and administered the oath to Washington at his second inauguration. In 1796 on Jay's resignation and after the Senate had rejected Rutledge as his successor, Washington commissioned Cushing as chief justice, but after keeping the commission a week he returned it, requesting to be excused on the ground of ill health. In 1794 his name had been presented by his friends as a candidate for governor of Massachusetts against Samuel Adams, and while he made no active canvass, he received 7,159 votes as against 14,465 for Adams.

The chief work of a Supreme Court justice during Cushing's service was to hold the federal circuit courts. This duty took Judge Cushing all over the country. "His travelling equipage was a four-wheeled phaeton, drawn by a pair of horses; which he drove. It was remarkable for its many ingenious arrangements (all of his contrivance) for carrying books, choice groceries, and other comforts. Mrs. Cushing always accompanied him, and generally read aloud while riding. His faithful servant, Prince, a jet-black negro whose parents had been slaves in the family . . . followed behind in a one-horse vehicle, with the baggage" (Flanders, op. cit., II, 38). Cushing was noted for the ceremoniousness of his deportment. He was the last American judge to wear the full-bottomed English judicial wig. "I very well remember," wrote one who had seen him, "the strong impression his appearance made upon my mind when I first saw him, as he was walking in a street in Portland. He was a man whose deportment surpassed all the ideas of personal dignity I had ever formed. His wig added much to the imposing effect" (J. D. Hopkins, Address to the Cumberland Bar, Portland, Me ., 1833, p. 44). He is said to have finally abandoned this wig in consequence of the unpleasant observation it attracted when he first held court in New York. The boys followed him in the street, but he was not conscious of the cause until a sailor, who came suddenly upon him, exclaimed, "My eye ! What a wig!" Cushing was of medium height and slender, with bright blue eyes and a prominent aquiline nose. His portrait was painted by Sharpless in 1799. His few letters which have been preserved display a playful wit not reflected in his public character. His manner is said to have been benign and cheerful, and his eloquence in addressing juries is universally commented on. Judge Cushing died at Scituate, September 13, 18m, without issue. In 1774 he had married Hannah Phillips of Middletown, Connecticut, who died in 1834 at the age of eighty.

[There is no biography of Cushing. The fullest account is in Henry Flanders, The Lives and Times of the Chie f Justices of Supreme Court of the U.S. (1858), vol. II, based on a manuscript sketch by Chas. Cushing Payne; the most recent account is a paper by Chief Justice Arthur P. Rugg in Yale Law Journal, December 1920, vol. XXX, pp. 128-44. Sam. Deane, History of Scituate, Massachusetts (1831) gives some details. For Cushing's life in Maine, sec articles in the Maine Historical Society Colls., 1 series, vol. VI, pp. 44-47, and 2 series, vol. I, pp. 301 ff., and 313-20. Sec also Jas. D. Hopkins, An Address to the Members of the Cumberland Bar (1833).]

J. D.


CUTLER, Hannah Tracy, 1815-1896, Becket, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Leader of the Temperance and women’s suffrage-rights movements, lecturer, educator, physician.  Helped found Women’s Anti-Slavery Society, member of the Free Soil Party, organizer of the Woman’s Kansas Aid Convention in 1856.  Served as President of the Western Union Aid Commission in Chicago, 1862-1864.  (Yellin, 1994, p. 58n40; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 40) She is the author of “Woman as she Was, Is, and Should be” (New York, 1846); “Phillipia, or a Woman's Question” (Dwight, Illinois, 1886); and “The Fortunes of Michael Doyle, or Home Rule for Ireland” (Chicago, 1886).



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