Gar-Ger: Gardner through Gerry

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


GARDNER, Charles W., 1782-1863, African American, Episcopal clergyman, abolitionist (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 590)


GARDNER, Eliza Ann, 1831-1922, African American, abolitionist.  (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 592)


GARDNER, Oliver, abolitionist, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1848-57


GARFIELD, James Abram, 1831-1881, lawyer, Union general.  Lt. Colonel, 42nd Regiment Ohio Volunteers.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Twentieth President of the United States.  (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 599-605; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 145; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 715; Congressional Globe).

GARFIELD, JAMES ABRAM (November 19, 1831-September 19, 1881), soldier, congressman, president of the United States, was the last of the chief executives to be born in the typical American environment of the log cabin. He was preceded by at least six Garfields born in America, his immigrant ancestor having come to Massachusetts Bay with Winthrop (E. G. Porter, in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XIX, 1882, p. 83). They were all "hungry for the horizon," and in successive generations they made the cabin and its attributes a part of the family inheritance (G. F. Hoar, Eulogy upon ... James Abram Garfield, 1882, p. 9). Abram Garfield, the father of James, was married in 1820 to Eliza Ballou, of old Rhode Island ancestry. He moved with his family to Ohio, and in 1827, when there were already three children, took a contract to be worked out in the construction of the Ohio Canal; but he abandoned this occupation and became a pioneer farmer in Cuyahoga County in time to welcome to his cabin his last child, James Abram, to become a member of the Disciples of Christ, and to die of a sudden "ague" in 1833. His widow became the man of the family and steered her children through poverty and uncertainty to an honored independence. It was a life of hardship for all of them, and Garfield knew every kind of frontier work, and nothing of that leisure and security that come from economic freedom. Before he was thirty he had scraped together an education, exhausted the intellectual offering of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College), joined the Disciples church, worked his way into and through Williams College with the class of 1856, and served as teacher and even principal of the Institute at Hiram Young for the position, he had as advantages nearly six feet of height, great breadth of shoulders, and a "round German-looking face," which he generally obscured with a heavy beard. He married, on November 11, 1858, Lucretia Rudolph, his childhood playmate, fellow student, and pupil. In the following year he was elected to the Ohio Senate as a Republican; and when in 1861 the crisis of the Civil War came he was a leader who upheld the right of the federal government to coerce a state.

His power of debate, already ripe, increased by his efforts as lay-preacher in his church, and his oratorical style, more florid than it was to be later in his life, made Garfield a useful agent in raising troops and stimulating enlistments. In the summer of 1861 he helped assemble a regiment, the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, that contained many of his Hiram students; and of this he became lieutenant-colonel, and then colonel. He had no military experience to warrant his appointment to a line command, but he possessed what was rare among citizen officers of the Civil War, a willingness to study and an ability to understand books. With a manual before him he made his recruits into soldiers; and he looked and acted his part so well that a few days after he and his regiment joined Major-General Don Carlos Buell in Kentucky he was given a brigade and was sent to the Big Sandy to confront Humphrey Marshall, a West Pointer commanding the Confederate army there (F. H. Mason, The Forty-Second Ohio Infantry: A History, 1876). At Middle Creek, on January 10, 1862, he won a victory that seemed important because of the scarcity of Union successes, and gained the rank of brigadier-general of volunteers. In April, with his new rank, he fought at Shiloh on the second day; and in the following winter he sat at Washington upon the famous court of inquiry in the Fitz-John Porter case (Senate Executive Document No. 37, 46 Congress, 1 Session). Bad health had brought him in from the field, but, his condition improving, he was reassigned to active duty and joined Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland early in 1863. Here, with an option before him, he chose to be chief of staff rather than to command a brigade; and in this capacity he served through the Chickamauga campaign, winning high praise from subsequent military historians because of his comprehension of the duties of a staff officer (Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, her Generals, and Soldiers, 1868). He organized a division of military information that was far ahead of prevailing American military practise. For five months the army of Rosecrans remained ai: Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It finally advanced, contrary to the almost unanimous judgment of its officers, chiefly because Rosecrans was convinced by Garfield of the wisdom of the action. In the engagement at Chickamauga that follow ed, on September 19, 20, 1863, Thomas was the hero and Rosecrans was discredited; while Garfield, chief of staff, gained wide repute for both courage and good sense. He was made a major-general of volunteers, dating from Chickamauga, as a reward; but he was through with fighting, as other opportunities had come to him. In December 1863, he took his seat in the Thirty-eighth Congress as representative from the 19th Ohio district.

The military successes of Garfield in the spring of 1862 made him a prominent political figure in northeastern Ohio, where anti-slavery radicalism had long maintained Joshua R. Giddings in Congress. Giddings had been displaced in 1858 by John Hutchins, whose retirement now was made easier by a new apportionment law passed after the census of 1860. Garfield, young and popular, nominated while he was in the service, was elected by a heavy majority. He did not take his seat until his military services had been rewarded by promotion; and it has been suggested that he surrendered his major-generalcy in December 1863 only because Lincoln believed that major-generals were easier to procure than Administration-Republican representatives. Eight times more, after 1862, Garfield came before the Republican convention of his district, sometimes after Democratic alterations in its boundaries had made Republican success highly doubtful, and once after the breath of scandal had endangered his future; every time he gained the nomination to succeed himself, and every time his people elected him to Congress. He was by nature a student, by training an orator, and by experience became a finished parliamentarian. His industry and his careful personal habits gave him other advantages, which he seized as they appeared. When Thaddeus Stevens passed off the stage of politics in 1868, James G. Blaine and Garfield knew they were ready to become the congressional leaders of their party (G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 1903, I, 239) ; and when, in 1876, Blaine was translated to the Senate, Garfield had no real rival in the House.

The committee assignments of Garfield indicate the development of his interests. He took an important place on the committee on military affairs when he appeared in 1863, for he was fresh from the battlefield and the war was yet to be won. In later sessions he served on the committee on appropriations and the committee on ways and means. He developed and trained an interest in public finance that was so sound as to endanger his political prospects. When the Northwest was carried away by the "Ohio" (greenback) idea, and advocated the issuance of irredeemable pa per money, Garfield stuck to the promise of a resumption of specie payments. He was too lukewarm on the subject of the protective tariff to· suit all of his Republican constituents, for northeastern Ohio contained many factories that were in a period of rapid expansion between the Civil War and the panic of 1873. But his independence of thought caused him le ss trouble than did two of the scandals of a period full of scandals. He was named in the memorandum book of Oakes Ames [q. v.] as one of the congressmen who had accepted stock in the Credit Mobilier Company. This Garfield denied, and the proof was far from being complete (House Report, No. 77, 42 Congress, 3 Session); yet the suspicion remained an available weapon for his enemies throughout his life. In the case of the DeGolyer paving contract there was no doubt about the underlying fact. He did accept a retaining fee for services rendered to a company ambitious to furnish the City of Washington with wooden-block pavement (Nation, July 1, 1880, p. 5). The interpretation placed upon the episode by his critics was that while a member of Congress he took pay from a company seeking favors from the government of the District; his answer was that he had no connection with the District government by which the paving award was to be made, and that his services were not to be differentiated from those which congressmen and senators were continually performing when they practised the profession of law in the federal courts. Both of these scandals were before his constituents when he appeared for reelection in 1874, but he surmounted them.

When the Republican party was thrown into the minority in the House after the election of 1874, Garfield and Blaine were its most effective leaders, and worked together with no more suspicions and jealousies than were to be expected. When the latter became senator from Maine in 1876, Garfield became the Republican candidate for speaker and was leader of the minority for the rest of his service in the House. He had taken an active part in the canvass for Hayes, and had gone to Louisiana as one of the "visiting statesmen" to watch the count of votes. He was active in framing the compromise legislation that settled the electoral contest, and served as a member of the electoral commission, where he voted for Hayes on every count. His natural desire to take John Sherman's place as senator from Ohio, when the latter went into the cabinet, was repressed at the request of Hayes who wanted him to remain as Republican leader in the House; but in 1880 there was no such obstruction and the legislature elected him to succeed Allen G. Thurman for the term of six years after 1881. His name, said the Milwaukee Sentinel (January 10, 1880), "is exceptionally clean for a man who has been engaged for twenty years in active politics." He never sat in the Senate. On the day that his term would otherwise have begun he was inaugurated as president of the United States.

At the time of Garfield's election to the Senate, John Sherman might easily have sought the post for himself, for he expected to be out of the cabinet after March 4, 1881. But Sherman desired the Republican presidential nomination of 1880, and efforts were made to induce Garfield to promise support in exchange for Sherman's support for the senatorship. Garfield seems to have refused to make a bargain, although he let it be known that his attitude towards Sherman's candidacy would be affected by Sherman's treatment of his. After his election he still declined to pledge support to Sherman, but on January 26, 1880, he wrote: "I have no doubt that a decisive majority of our party in Ohio favors the nomination of John Sherman. He has earned this recognition" (Cincinnati Gazette, January 28, 1880). As the spring advanced, the substantial unanimity of Ohio for Sherman brought Garfield into the movement. He went to the Chicago national convention as head of the delegation and manager for Sherman, and on the floor attained a commanding position because of the soundness of his case and the skill with which he managed it. Blaine and Grant were the leading rivals of Sherman for the nomination, and the "Stalwart" leaders who directed the fight for Grant took unsound positions in insisting upon the unit rule for state delegations, and upon the right of state conventions to instruct district delegates how they should vote. Garfield conducted the fight for the freedom of the delegate and blocked the paths of both Grant and Blaine but could not procure a majority for his own candidate. On the thirty-fifth ballot sixteen of the twenty Wisconsin votes were shifted to Garfield, and on the next roll call the nomination was made unanimous in a stampede. The Grant forces, led by Conkling, Cameron, and Logan, never forgave Garfield for his opposition; Blaine, who could not have been nominated, was grateful for the defeat of Grant; Sherman laid his failure to the stubbornness of Blaine and only late in life came to believe that Garfield had been disloyal to him. James Ford Rhodes agrees with Sherman's later opinion, writing that "apparently the thought of his [Garfield's] trust was overpowered by the conviction that the prize was his without the usual hard preliminary work" (History of the United States from Hayes to McKinley, 1877-1896, 1919, p. 126). But no evidence of importance has been produced to show that the management of Sherman's cause was anything but loyal; and historical proofs are incapable of determining whether under any circumstances it was ethical for the manager of Sherman to accept the nomination for himself.

In the canvass of 1880 the followers of Blaine and Sherman gave good support to the ticket, but those of Grant sulked, the leaders offering little more than a formal pledge of devotion to the party. Roscoe Conkling [q.v.], in particular, was outraged and held aloof. The nomination from his own following of Chester A. Arthur as vice-president gave him no pleasure. The selection of Marshall Jewell [q.v.] to be chairman of the national committee was an affront since Jewell had been summarily dismissed by Grant from the office of postmaster-general in 1876. On August 5 Garfield made a pilgrimage to New York to sit with a meeting of the national committee, in the hope that the New York wing of the party might be persuaded to help the ticket, but Conkling could not be induced even to meet him. He distrusted, says his nephew and biographer, "Garfield's imperfect memory of a private conversation" (A. R. Conkling, The Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, 1889, p. 6n). In September, however, Conkling, Cameron, and Grant finally decided to recognize the candidate and made a western trip; in connection with this, Grant presided and Conkling spoke at a rally in Garfield's old district at Warren, Ohio, and they paid a visit of formal courtesy to Garfield at his Mentor farm; What they said to the candidate and what he said to them played a large part in the later political controversy as the "Treaty of Mentor," but cannot be documented. Garfield at least wrote in his diary, "I had no private conversation with the party" (T. C. Smith, post, p. 1032). The "Stalwarts" later chose to say that he promised them "fair" treatment as the price of support; and they insisted throughout his presidency that it was for them to determine in what fair treatment consisted. The canvass progressed somewhat more smoothly after this. On October 20 a New York weekly, Truth, printed what pretended to be a letter from Garfield to one H. L. Morey in which he advocated the importation of cheap Oriental labor for employment in factories. The Democratic national committee gave wide circulation to this document, in spite of its instant denunciation as a fraud; and Hancock and English, the Democratic candidates, secured five of the six electoral votes of California, where the feeling against the Chinese was strong. But Garfield and Arthur nevertheless carried the country with a plurality of about 10,000 popular votes, and with 214 electoral votes, against 155.

Garfield resigned from the House early in November. He surrendered the Senate seat as well, thus enabling John Sherman to return in 1881 to his old post as senator from Ohio. The President- Elect remained at Mentor, entrenched behind his "snow works" (Cincinnati Gazette, November 16, December 13, 1880), keeping up the hard-wood fires in his grates, smoking his large, thick cigars, and listening with non-committal patience to every one who came to see him. All the political leaders came, Conkling as well as Blaine, but the major appointments were kept guarded until Garfield was ready to transmit them to the Senate after his inauguration on March 4, 1881. He attempted to build a conciliation cabinet, but the appointment of James G. Blaine at its head as secretary of state caused it to be regarded by the "Stalwart" element in the party as a triumph for him. Continuously from the moment when Garfield asked Blaine to take the post, he was the recipient of letters of counsel from the latter. Much of the advice was good and some of it was taken. For the treasury, Garfield, appreciating the usual western "jealousy of Eastern financial leadership" (Harper's Weekly, March 26, 1881, p. 194), selected Senator William Windom of Minnesota, whom Sherman guaranteed as faithful to sound money and hostile to monopolies. Robert T. Lincoln, secretary of war, was a Grant man before the convention of 1880, but was appointed chiefly because of the tradition that he represented. William H. Hunt, who began life as a Southern Whig, became secretary of the navy. The selection of Wayne MacVeagh of Philadelphia as attorney-general involved an interesting situation, since he was at once a vigorous anti-Cameronian in Pennsylvania politics, and a son-in-law of old Simon Cameron. MacVeagh was known as a reformer, and was angered when Garfield named for assistant attorney- general William E. Chandler, a warm partisan of Blaine. Chandler, however, failed of confirmation by the Senate. Thomas L. James of New York, a Conkling man, had been postmaster of New York City, and became postmaster-general with a suspicion already lodged in his mind that the postal service needed purification. Senator Samuel J. Kirkwood of Iowa took the Interior department.

The doubts that had kept the "Stalwarts" lukewarm during the canvass, and had impelled Conkling to minatory counsels after election, were intensified as the winter of 1881 advanced. On February 11, with Arthur in the chair and Grant among those present, a commemorative dinner was given at Delmonico's in New York to Stephen W. Dorsey [q.v.]; and at this it was made to appear that to him as secretary of the national committee was due the credit for the victory of the Garfield ticket. His sharp strategy in carrying Indiana was specially commended. But Garfield's recognition of the "Stalwarts" was less than they expected, or at least desired. On March 23 he sent to the Senate a long list of minor nominees, including men of his own choice for the difficult New York custom-house posts that had occasioned Hayes so much trouble. Conkling took this as an open declaration of war against his friends, and as a violation of pledges that had been given him as the price of his support. He relied upon "senatorial courtesy" to accomplish the rejection of the distasteful nominees, advancing once more the theory that had been fought out with Hayes, that federal appointments within a state must be personally acceptable to the senator from that state. Garfield met the issue with more stubbornness than he usually displayed, telling John Hay, "They may take him [Robertson, the nominee for collector of the port] out of the Senate head first or feet first; I will never withdraw him" (New York Tribune, January 11, 1882).

The political battle soon shifted to the Post-Office Department, where Garfield and James had inherited a corrupt situation of old standing. The practise had been allowed to develop whereby rings of contractors in Washington received as lowest bidders scores of "star routes"-where the mails were carried by stage or rider rather than by railroad or steamboat. They then sublet the actual performance to local carriers, whom they paid what the service was worth, and by collusion later secured an unwarranted increase in the compensation to themselves. Ex-Senator Dorsey was heavily involved in "star route" contracts, as was the second assistant postmaster-general, Thomas J. Brady, in whose office the compensations were arranged. An investigation of Brady's work was under way in 1880 when he had asked for a deficiency appropriation of about $1,700,000. It h ad for a time appeared that the attacks were only the usual Democratic nagging of a Republican administration; but James brought to Garfield a report from the field workers of the department that uncovered more scandal than could be denied or concealed. Brady was dismissed on April 20, 1881, and a list of ninety-three suspected "star routes" was given to the press (Annual Report of the Postmaster-General, 1881, pp. 467, 516). The dismissal of Brady and the incidental involvement of Dorsey in charges of fraud came while the Senate was delaying the confirmation of the appointees of March 23. Attempts were made to scare off the investigation, by suggestion s that Garfield knew all about the frauds, had connived at them, and had been aware that a share of the plunder had found its way to the Republican campaign fund which Dorsey had administered so skilfully the preceding summer. (Much of Dorsey's campaign correspondence was printed by him in the New York Herald, December 18, 1882.) The reply of Garfield to this intimidation was to direct the preparation of the cases to be brought against the conspirators, and to withdraw all other nominations for New York positions except those for the custom-house, so as to emphasize his determination to maintain the independence of the president in matters of appointment. On M ay 4, however, a letter written August 23, 1880, was made public (New York Herald, May 5, 1881), showing that Garfield had th en inquired of Jay A. Hubbell, chairman of the Republican congressional campaign committee, how the departments were doing, and expressed the hope that Brady would help as much as possible.

It had been easier for opponents of Garfield to delay action on his appointments because the control of the Senate was insecure for several weeks after the inauguration. Accordingly, the Republican caucus, anxious not to break with the President and not to lose the aid of the votes influenced by Conkling, proceeded slowly in determining party policy. The public reactions respecting the "star route" frauds, and party bosses, and the hobbling theory that underlay Conkling's demand, determined the outcome of the contest. When it became quite clear that Garfield would not surrender, the caucus agreed to confirm. Conkling, with his New York colleague as trailer, resigned his seat upon the issue, and appealed to the New York legislature for a vindication which he did not receive. The two New York vacancies again threw the control of the Senate in doubt, but they transferred the turmoil from Washington to Albany, and gave to Garfield a release from the excitement and pressure that he had been under for two months. He now allowed Blaine to show the hand of the administration in foreign matters, issuing a call for a conference of the American republics to meet in Washington in 1882, and taking up where Hayes and Evarts had left it the contention with England that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 was no longer adequate (Alice F. Tyler, The Foreign Policy of James G. Blaine, 1927, pp. 38-41, 165).

Before either of these matters could be pushed to a conclusion, there came an enforced hiatus in the administration. On July 2, while at the Washington railroad station en route for a northern trip and a visit to his college, Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, an erratic if not crazy lawyer and a disappointed office-seeker, who declared loudly that his was a political crime, that he was a "Stalwart" and wanted Arthur to be president. For eleven weeks Garfield was nursed at the White House, and then at Elberon, New Jersey, a summer resort where his family was in residence. The official bulletins from his physicians were numerous, but hardly revealed from day to day whether he was incapacitated or not, in the meaning of the Constitution. He never left his sick-bed, however; and on September 19, 1881, he died. The friends of the murdered President raised a handsome fund for the support of his widow and the five children who survived him. One of the latter, James Rudolph Garfield, was to have a distinguished career in politics, serving as secretary of the interior from 1907 to 1909; a second, Harry Augustus Garfield, became president of Williams College and United States fuel administrator during the World War.

Garfield's tragic death silenced the voice of criticism and gave the tone to many laudatory biographies. Not enough of his administration had been revealed for any estimate of it to be possible. He had failed to bring about the harmony that both good nature and selfish interest had urged him to attempt. Whether he could have managed to rule without "Stalwart" support is uncertain. Up to the moment of his accidental nomination for the presidency his career, to an unusual degree, resembles that of a typical successful parliamentary leader in a country possessing responsible government and the cabinet system. He would in England have been in line for Downing Street and the office of premier. In the United States such talents as his could obtain their chance ori.ly by accident.

[In addition to the Congressional Record, where the speeches of Garfield's Jong career are to be found, and to the newspapers which gave him abundant space, and to his obituaries, among which the address by James G. Blaine in the hall of the House of Representatives, February 27, 1882, Congressional Record, 47 Congress, 1 Session, p. 1465, is the most distinguished, there are many eulogistic biographies of the campaign type. Probably the best of these is Burke A. Hinsdale, The Republican Text-Book for the Campaign of 1880: A Full History of General James A. Garfield's Public Life (1880). Garfield's speeches were collected by Hinsdale and published as The Works of James Abram Garfield (2 volumes, 1882-83). The personal papers, which Garfield preserved in great number, were carefully arranged immediately after his death but were not worked over for nearly a generation, when they were entrusted to Prof. Theodore C. Smith, of Williams College. They include extensive diaries and a large collection of letters. The resulting biography by Professor Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield (2 volumes, 1925), one of the best presidential biographies in existence, is adequate for all reasonable needs.]

F. L. P-n.


GARNER, Peter M., 1809-1868, Pennsylvania, pioneer abolitionist, teacher, helped slaves escape. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 606)


GARNET, Henry Highland, 1815-1882, African American, abolitionist leader, clergyman, diplomat, publisher.  Member Liberty Party.  Former fugitive slave.  Published, The Past and Present Condition and Destiny of the Colored Race, 1848.  Publisher with William G. Allen of The National Watchman, Troy, New York, founded 1842.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 329-333; Mabee, 1970, pp. 57, 60, 61, 62, 64, 152, 255, 273, 294, 296, 325, 337, 338; Pasternak, 1995; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 33, 164, 192, 305-306, 329; Sernett, 2002, pp. 22, 67, 70-71, 116-117, 206, 209, 240; Sorin, 1971, pp. 89-92, 97, 113; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 606; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 154; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 332-333; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 735; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 608)

GARNET, HENRY HIGHLAND (1815- February 13, 1882), educator, clergyman, was the son of George and Henny or Henrietta Garnet, who later changed her name to Elizabeth. He was born a slave, at New Market, Kent County, Md., escaped from bondage in 1824, and subsequently made his way to New York, where he entered school in 1826. He was one of the persons of African blood on account of whose matriculation a mob broke up the academy at Canaan, N. H., in 1835. His education was continued, however, under Beriah Green [q.v.] at Oneida Institute, Whitestown, New York. The intelligent and versatile Presbyterian minister, Reverend Theodore S. Wright of New York, with whom Garnet established an acquaintance, probably became the dominant influence in directing him to the gospel ministry. After finishing his education, he divided his time between preaching and abolition agitation in the employ of the American Anti-Slavery Society. While he did not neglect the ministry, he viewed the anti-slavery platform as his important post of duty. He easily took rank among the foremost negro Abolitionists, and his fame spread throughout the country. He held this position until 1843, when he delivered before a national convention of the free people of color at Buffalo, New York, a radical address calling upon the slaves to rise and slay their masters. This utterance caused consternation in that body, and the frightened majority of the representatives voted not to endorse the sentiments expressed therein. The chief opposition to Garnet's appeal in the convention came from Frederick Douglass [q.v.], who was then rapidly coming to be the most influential leader of his race. He also opposed the establishment of a press to promote emancipation when it was urged by Garnet, although Douglass himself resorted to it later and became one of the most popular of anti-slavery editors. This convention marked the highest point reached in the leadership of Garnet and the beginning of his comparative decline as a result of the increasing fame of Douglass.

Garnet thereafter found more time to devote to Christian work. From 1843 to 1848 he served as pastor of the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church in Troy, New York, and in 1852 he was sent as a missionary to Jamaica by the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. A few years later, however, he returned to New York to assume the pastorate of the Shiloh Presbyterian Church made vacant by the death of the Rev. Theodore S. Wright. In 18(i4 he went to Washington as pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, where he did much for the relief of the distressed during the Civil War and later assisted Federal functionaries in working out their policy with respect to the freedmen. On February 12, 1865, he preached a sermon in the House of Representatives commemorating the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (A Memorial Discourse, 1865). Although he had strongly opposed colonization at the beginning of his career, near the close of his life he began to manifest much interest in Africa. In 1881 he was appointed minister to Liberia. He reached there on December 28, but died on February 13, of the following year. His wife was Julia Williams, whom he married in
1841.

[W. M. Brewer, "Henry Highland Garnet," in the Journal of Negro History, January 1928; S. W. Williams, History of th e Negro Race in America, vol. II (1883); C. G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (1922); H. H. Garnet, A Memorial Discourse (1865), with introduction by J. M. Smith, "Sketch of the Life and Labors of Reverend Henry Highland Garnet"; W. J. Simmons, Men of Mark (1887); Nat. Convention of Colored People; Proceedings (1847); New York Tribune, March 11, 1882.].

C.G.W.


GARRARD, James, 1749-1822, Governor of Kentucky 1796-1804, soldier, clergyman.  Tried unsuccessfully to exclude guarantees of the continuance of slavery from Kentucky State Constitution.  Opposed slavery as horrid evil. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 608; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 159; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 739)

GARRARD, JAMES (January 14, 1749-Ja n. 19, 1822), governor of Kentucky, Baptist clergyman, was a native of Stafford County, Virginia, a member of a family of considerable local importance. His father, William, was county-lieutenant of Stafford County, and James in 1781 held the rank of colonel with the Stafford county regiment of the Virginia militia (W. P. Palmer, Calendar of Virginia State Papers, II, 188{, 43). How much actual fighting the young Garrard said during the Revolution it is impossible to ascertain, but it is certain that his military life was interrupted by a year in the House of Delegates, 1779, when he represented Stafford County. In 1783, accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Mountjoy Garrard, whom he had married on December 20, 1769, and their seven children, he removed to Kentucky, where he settled on Stoner Creek in the present county of Bourbon, then Fayette. Here three years later he built his residence, "Mt. Lebanon," where he lived until his death. For many years after his removal to Kentucky Garrard's interests seemed to vacillate between religion and politics. He· had been a member of the Baptist Church in Virginia, and soon after coming to Kentucky he helped organize, in 1787, the Cooper's Run church near Mt. Lebanon. For ten years he was one of the ministers of this church, and seems to have been active not only in his work here but also in the organization of Baptist -congregations in other parts of Kentucky. In 1785 he was elected as representative of Fayette County in the Virginia House of Delegates. One apparent result of his second service in the Virginia legislature was the creation of Bourbon County out of Fayette and the establishment of Mt. Lebanon as the temporary county seat (W. E. Henning, The Statutes at Large, XII, 1823, 89--90). He also represented Fayette and then Bourbon County in the conventions which marked Kentucky's prolonged struggle for statehood, and was a member of the convention which made the first constitution, but he seems not to have played a leading part in any of these meetings.

In 1796 Garrard was one of four candidates for the governorship of Kentucky. He was chosen over Benjamin Logan by the electoral college on the second ballot, although Logan had received a plurality of the votes on the first. The doubtful constitutionality of this election caused considerable discontent and had its influence in bringing about a revision of the constitution a few years later (Charles Kerr, History of Kentucky, 1922, I, 316). Garrard's popularity with the Kentucky legislature was attested by the fact that his name was given to a newly created county; his popularity with the people was shown by his election as governor by popular vote at the conclusion of his first term in 1800. During his eight years as governor, however, he did not display unusual ability. As to Republican leader he followed Jefferson in denouncing the Alien and Sedition law),, and used his influence in securing the adoption of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. ln one of his messages to the legislature he brought considerable ridicule on himself by advocating an increase of importations up the Mississippi as a measure for remedying the defective paper currency in Kentucky.

While governor, Garrard fell very much under the influence of his secretary of state, Harry Toulmin, a Unitarian. He came to have very pronounced Unitarian views and succeeded in spreading his ideas in his own congregation at Cooper's Run. As a result he was dropped from the church and from the Baptist Association in 1803. This act closed Garrard's ministry, and closed also his connection with the Baptist Church. His fellow Baptists seem always to have deplored his political ambitions but never lost faith in his integrity. In fact his popularity throughout Kentucky seems to have been due more to his probity than to his ability. After 1804 Garrard lived quietly at his home without holding or seeking further office. Upon his death the Kentucky legislature erected a monument in his honor at Mt. Lebanon. He was survived by twelve children, one of whom, James, played a prominent part in Kentucky history and is often confused with his father.

[The records of Stafford County were destroyed by fire and consequently very little is 'known of the Virginia branch of the Garrard family. Garrard's official journals· and papers are preserved in the office of the secretary of state of Kentucky at Frankfort. For further reference see E. G. Swem and J. W . Williams, A Reg. of the Gen. Assembly of Virginia, 1776-1918 (1918); A. R. des Cognets, Governor Garrard, of Kentucky: His Descendants and Relatives (1898); Lewis and R.H. Collins, History of Kentucky (rev. ed., 1874), I, 366; Mann Butler, A History of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (1834), p. 295; J. H . Spencer, A History of Kentucky Baptists (1885), I, 133- 34; Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), January 31, 1822.

J E. L.


GARRETT, Thomas, 1789-1871, Wilmington, Delaware, abolitionist leader, Society of Friends, Quaker, member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, operator of the Underground Railroad, helped 2,700 Blacks escape to freedom, 1840-1860.  Vice President, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1843-1864.  Officer in the Delaware Abolition Society in 1827.  (Drake, 1950, pp. 185, 187; Dumond, 1961; McGowan, 1977; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 74, 306, 464, 488; Still, 1883; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 609; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 165)

GARRETT, THOMAS (August 21, 1789-January 25, 1871), Abolitionist, son of Thomas and Sarah Price Garrett, both Quakers, was born on a farm in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. In the early twenties, with his wife, Mary Sharpless, and their children, he moved to Wilmington, Del. There he set himself up as a hardware merchant and tool-maker. In 1827 his wife died and shortly afterward he was married to Rachel Mendenhall. During a pursuit to recover a free colored woman kidnapped from his father's home, he became convinced that his special mission was to help slaves escape. As early as 1818 he joined the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. In time his Wilmington home became widely known as a refuge for slaves. With the sentiment of a slave state bitterly hostile to him, with his house constantly under surveillance, with a ten-thousand dollar reward placed by Maryland for his arrest, it is a tribute to his shrewdness that he so long escaped the penalty of the law. Although scurrilously attacked in the press, threatened, and warned by friends to leave, he was not prosecuted until 1848 when certain slave-owners brought suit against him before Chief Justice Taney for assisting seven slaves to escape, and ultimately secured his conviction. The fine, because of his recent business reverses, swept away all his property but did not deter him from continuing his activities in behalf of the negroes. With the assistance of his friends, he was able to rebuild his business handsomely although he was then over sixty years of age. By the time the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued he had helped about 2,700 slaves to escape.

In April 1870 the negroes participated in the Wilmington celebration over the Fifteenth Amendment by drawing Thomas Garrett through the streets in an open barouche, heralded by a transparency labeled "Our Moses." Upon his death some months later several of his colored friends bore him on their shoulders to his resting-place in the Friends' burying-ground. He was interested in many reform movements; his last important public appearance was as presiding officer of a suffrage meeting. The dominating traits of his character were an utter fearlessness which overawed even his slave-holding enemies, an honesty so upright that he refused to allow his lawyer to misrepresent him in pleading for leniency, great resourcefulness in an emergency, and a genuine love for his fellow men.

[Delawarean (Dover), January 21, 1850; scrap-book of letters, clippings, etc., compiled by Helen S. Garrett; W. L. Garrison, "The New Reign of Terror in the Slaveholding States for 1859-60," Anti-Slavery Tracts, n.d., no. 4 (1860); W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (1898); R. C. Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania (1883); Wm. Still, The Underground Railroad (1872); U. S. Circuit Court (Delaware District), Docket, Equity and Law in the Court's Archives, Wilmington, 1846-48; Wilmington Daily Commercial, January 2s, 1871; Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of Slave Power in America.

E.L.


GARRISON, William Lloyd, 1805-1879, journalist, printer, abolitionist leader.  Founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  President and Member of the Executive Committee, AASS, 1843-1864.  Founder, editor, Liberator, weekly newspaper founded in 1831, published through December 1865.  Corresponding Secretary, 1840-1844, Counsellor, 844-1860, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.  (Drake, 1950, pp. 185, 187; Dumond, 1961, pp. 137, 167, 168, 169, 172, 173, 179, 182, 190, 273, 283, 286-287; Filler, 1960; Garrison, 1885-1889, 4 volumes; Goodell, 1852, 1852, pp. 396-397, 401, 405, 410, 419, 436, 455-456, 458-459, 460, 469, 512, 541; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Kraditor, 1969; Mabee, 1970, pp. 2, 8, 26, 28, 131, 149, 152, 376, 378, 398n15; Mayer, 1998; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 41-42, 106, 131, 152, 179, 208-209, 289, 307-309, 321, 378, 463; Sorin, 1971; Stewart, 1992; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 610-612; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 168; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 332-334; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 761; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 305-306; Merrill, Walter M. Against the Wind and Tide. 1963; Thomas, John L. The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison. 1963)

GARRISON, WILLIAM LLOYD (December 10, 1805-May 24, 1879), reformer, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the fourth child of _Abijah and Frances Maria (Lloyd) Garrison, who had emigrated to the United States from Nova Scotia early in the nineteenth century. His father, a sea-captain, was intemperate in his habits and deserted his family before Willi ;tm was three years old. Placed under the care of Deacon Ezekiel Bartlett, the boy had a meager schooling, and in 1818 was apprenticed for seven years to Ephraim W. Allen, editor of the Newburyport Herald, in the office of which he developed into an expert compositor and wrote anonymously for the paper. When his apprenticeship was completed, he became on March 22, 1826, editor of the local Free Press, in which he printed the earliest poems of John Greenleaf Whittier, who was to be his lifelong friend. After the Free Press failed, Garrison sought employment in Boston as. a journeyman printer, and in the spring of 1828, joined Nathaniel H. White in editing the National Philanthropist, devoted to the suppression "of intemperance and its kindred vices." It bore witness to his reforming propensities by attacking lotteries, Sabbath-breaking, and war. At this period he met Benjamin Lundy [q.v.], a Quaker, whose influence turned his attention to the evils of negro slavery. Soon Garrison went to Bennington, Vermont, to conduct the Journal of the Times, an Anti-Jackson organ. He return ed· in March 1829 to Boston, where, on Independence Day, in the Park Street Church, he delivered the first of his innumerable public addresses against slavery. Later in the summer he was in Baltimore, cooperating with Lundy in editing the weekly Genius of Universal Emancipation. Although Garrison was far from being the first American Abolitionist, he was one of the earliest to demand the "immediate and complete emancipation" of slaves; and it was to this movement that his energies, for the next thirty years, were to be principally devoted. In the Genius of Universal Emancipation he wrote more and more vehemently, until, having accused Francis Todd of engaging in the domestic slave-trade, he was sued for libel and found guilty. Unable to pay his fine, he was imprisoned for seven weeks in the Baltimore jail, being released on June 5, 1830, through the intervention of the philanthropist, Arthur Tappan. During the ensuing autumn he lectured in eastern cities, and finally, after issuing a prospectus, founded his famous periodical, the Liberator, "in a small chamber, friendless and unseen." He and his partner, Isaac Knapp, virtually without resources, printed the paper on a hand-press from borrowed type, and it appeared every Friday. The motto heading the first number, dated January 1, 1831, was "Our country is" the world-Our countrymen are mankind," and its leading article was a manifesto ending, "I am in earnest! will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--and I will be heard." The subscription price was only two dollars a year, but the circulation was never over 3,000, and there was usually an annual deficit.

Garrison was a philosophical non-resistant, trusting in peaceful means to attain his ends, but his pacifism was of a militant type. Unwilling to resort to the ballot, he voted but once in his lifetime, and he relied on the power of moral principles for the conversion of his opponents. He had no practical method for abolishing slavery, but confined himself to denouncing it as an institution. In his condemnation of slave-owners, he was irrepressible, uncompromising, and inflammatory, and even his supporter, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, did not try to defend him against the charge of "excessive harshness of language." In its early numbers the paper had a plain title; beginning with the seventeenth issue, however, it bore a rude cut of a slave auction near the national capitol, which goaded Southerners into a fury, and they threatened Garrison with bodily harm. But nothing could daunt him. Even when the state of Georgia set a reward of $5,000 for his arrest and conviction, he was imperturbable, and, without making any distinctions or admitting any explanations, continued to pour out a torrent of invective against, all those who had anything to do with slavery.

The need for effective organization was met in 1831 by the formation of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the constitution for which was drafted in part by Garrison. He was elected corresponding secretary and in 1832 became a salaried agent for spreading its doctrines. His Thoughts on African Colonization (1832) was a small but forceful pamphlet, undermining the work of the American Colonization Society, the plans for which he had formerly approved. In early May 1833 Garrison sailed for England to solicit funds for a manual-labor school for colored youth. He made many friends, including Daniel O'Connell and George Thompson. After an absence of nearly five months he landed in New York in season to attend unofficially a gathering called for organizing an anti-slavery society in that city. On December 4, 1833, in Philadelphia, he met with fifty or more delegates to form the American Anti-Slavery Society. Its declaration of principles, phrased largely by Garrison, announced that its members, rejecting "the use of all carnal weapons for deliverance from bondage," relied for the destruction of error only upon "the potency of truth." Although Garrison was elected foreign secretary, he soon resigned and would accept no other1important office in the society.

In 1835 the English Abolitionist, George Thompson, came to the United States on a lecture tour and was met in many places with enmity. On October 21, the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society held a meeting, at which a mob of several thousand persons assembled, expecting to tar-and-feather Thompson. The latter, however, had been warned, and the crowd, searching for a victim, seized Garrison, dragged him with a rope around his neck through the streets, and might have used him more roughly but for the courageous intervention of Mayor Theodore Lyman. Garrison spent the night in the Leverett Street jail and in the morning withdrew from the city for several weeks. Meanwhile the opposition to slavery was growing.

Efficient though he was as a propagandist, Garrison had a talent for antagonizing even his supporters. He was a natural autocrat who demanded from his followers implicit belief in all his views. "You exalt yourself too much," wrote Elizur Wright, one of his most loyal friends. He could not endure moderation, and in his self-righteous manner he was often very irritating. His wayward mind was so receptive of radical ideas, and he advocated reforms with such promiscuity that he was accused by his enemies of picking up "every infidel fanaticism afloat." Because of his desire to link abolitionism with other reform movements, he lost some of his influence with sincere anti-slavery people. The appearance of Sarah and Angelina Grimke as speakers at their meetings was distasteful to the more conservative Abolitionists, who did not favor woman's rights. The indifference of many clergymen to the slavery issue soon brought Garrison into open conflict with orthodox churches, which he characterized vividly as "cages of unclean birds, Augean stables of pollution." He eventually denied the plenary inspiration of the Bible and was conspicuously unorthodox. In November 1840 he attended a meeting of the "Friends of Universal Reform," described by Emerson as distinguished by "a great deal of confusion, eccentricity, and freak." He denounced theatres as "deep and powerful sources of evil," and he came out vigorously against the use of tobacco, capital punishment, and imprisonment for debt.

A decisive schism in the anti-slavery ranks developed over Garrison's opposition to concerted political action. The movement for the formation of a third party took shape ultimately in what was known as the "New Organization," and conflicting groups came to be known as the "Old Ogs," of which Garrison was still the leader, and the "New Ogs" (E. E. Hale, Memories of a Hundred Years, II, 1903, 129). Although Garrison for some years postponed defection, he could not prevent the nomination in 1839 of James G. Birney for president by the Liberty party. At a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in May 1840 in New York, Garrison and his adherents, coming from Boston in a specially chartered boat, packed the gathering and won a temporary victory. At the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, held the following June, in London, he refused to participate in the proceedings when he found that women were excluded.

At least as early as 1841, Garrison became a disunionist, and publicly called upon the North to secede from a compact which protected slavery. This appeal drew an emphatic protest from the American Anti-Slavery Society; but the Massachusetts organization, in January 1843, under pressure from Garrison, resolved that the United States Constitution was "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" and "should be annulled." Later in the same year Garrison was elected president of the American Anti-Slavery Society, which passed by a large majority an expression of di s union sentiments prepared by him. Actually, however, he was losing ground. Times were changing, and the fight against slavery was being carried on by more practical men. Garrison naturally disapproved of the annexation of Texas and of the Mexican War. In the summer and autumn of 1846, he was in England for a third visit, addressing reform gatherings. In August 1847 with the negro, Frederick Douglass, he took a lecture tour beyond the Alleghanies, meeting with some rowdyism, but debating night after night against defenders of the Union. In twenty-six days he spoke more than forty times. He was often exposed to wretched weather, and his health, never very good, was seriously impaired.

The compromise measures of 1850 were to Garrison a "hollow bargain for the North" (Swift, post, p. 276), and he condemned Webster's Seventh of March Speech as "indescribably base and wicked," "infamous," and "dishonorable." One consequence of Webster's utterance was a strong reaction against Garrison and the anti-slavery disunionists. At the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society on May 7, 1850, a disorderly mob headed by Isaiah Rynders interrupted the proceedings, but the coolness of Garrison averted bloodshed. In the following year the Society could not obtain the use of any suitable hall in New York and was obliged to seek a haven in Syracuse. Unable to secure declarations against slavery from Father Mathew, the Irish temperance advocate, and from Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, Garrison denounced them abusively.

On Independence Day in 1854, at Framingham, Massachusetts, Garrison, at an abolitionist gathering, publicly burned the Constitution of the United States, crying, "So perish all compromises with tyranny!" He did not favor the formation of the Republican party, but continued to urge the peaceful separation of the states. As a non-resistant, he could not justify John Brown's uprising. During the five years preceding the Civil War, he suffered much from a bronchial affection and from financial. troubles, which curtailed his activities considerably. When secession took place in 1860-61 Garrison welcomed the event as an opportunity for allowing the Southern states to reap the fruits of their folly, maintaining that any attempt to whip the South into subjection was "utterly chimerical." Toward Lincoln, Garrison was at first rather cold, and he criticized what he thought to be the President's uncertain policy; but he also prevented Abolition societies from openly condemning the administration. He soon recognized the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation of September 1862, and the meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in December 1863, at Philadelphia, produced a reconciliation between the two factions of Abolitionists.

After the conclusion of peace, in April 1865, Garrison went to Charleston, South Carolina, with the once execrated George Thompson for his stateroom companion. As the guest of the government he went to attend the ceremonies at the raising of the Stars and Stripes over Fort Sumter. In a brief address, he declared, "I hate slavery as I hate nothing else in this world. It is not only a crime, but the sum of all criminality." As he stood by the grave of Calhoun in the cemetery of St. Philip's Church, he laid a hand upon the tombstone and said solemnly, "Down into a deeper grave than this slavery has gone, and for it there is no resurrection."

In January 1865 Garrison had moved that the American Anti-Slavery Society dissolve, but his proposal was rejected. He did, however, decline a twenty-third term as its president, and was succeeded by Wendell Phillips. He felt that his great task had been accomplished; and, after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, he prepared a valedictory editorial for the Liberator, locked the form in type, and sent the final number to the press on December 29, 1865. The paper had been published continuously for exactly thirty-five years.

Garrison had married, on September 4, 1834, Helen Benson, daughter of a retired merchant of Brooklyn, Connecticut, and had settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in a house called "Freedom's Cottage." Seven children were born to them, of whom two died in infancy. In December 1863 Mrs. Garrison, whose systematic management and tactful ways had brought order into her husband's chaotic affairs, was stricken with paralysis and lived for several years more as a helpless invalid. A few months later, Garrison moved to a more retired residence on Highland Street, in Roxbury, where he found "port after stormy seas." Two painful accidents greatly hampered his physical activity, but he made in 1867 another voyage to England, where he was greeted as a hero. On his return, he became an intermittent contributor to the New York Independent. In 1868 a testimonial fund of more than $30,000 was raised among his admirers and presented to him. Although his vitality was diminished, he never ceased to be a crusader, and he fought unceasingly for prohibition, woman's suffrage, justice to the red man, and the elimination of prostitution. It seemed to be his mission to act as "an antidote to American complacency." On January 28, 1876, his wife died of pneumonia. In the next year, on his last visit to England, he was so enfeebled that he could appear only occasionally in public. On October 13, 1878, in the office of the Newburyport Herald, he set type for three of his sonnets on the sixtieth anniversary of the beginning of his apprenticeship as a printer. A disease of the kidneys soon prostrated him, and he died in New York, at the home of his daughter, Helen Garrison Villard. He was buried in the Forest Hills Cemetery, in Boston. In appearance he was slightly under six feet in height and erect in bearing. His spectacles, which he began to wear before he was twenty, relieved the sharpness of his face and gave him a mild and benevolent expression. Lowell wrote of him,

"There's Garrison, his features very benign for an incendiary."

As a speaker, he was described by Higginson as "usually monotonous, sometimes fatiguing, but always controlling." In his household he was cheerful, patient, and hospitable, but he was inclined to procrastinate and was always unsystematic. His sense of humor was not well developed. Although he suffered from chronic illness, he could endure long hours of drudgery, and he was rarely in low spirits. He cared little for nature, but he always enjoyed sacred music and wrote no small amount of verse, moralistic in tone, but highly imaginative. His Sonnets and other Poems was published in 1843.

Garrison was an extremist, incurably optimistic, often illogical, and extraordinarily persistent. Seldom has individuals m been more vehemently asserted than in his protests against social and moral orthodoxy. He was without perspective or a sense of proportion, and could be astonishingly credulous. He had implicit faith in pills and nostrums of all kinds, was keenly interested in phrenology, clairvoyance, and spiritualism, and was frequently deceived by charlatans. Opinion regarding him has differed widely. To some he has been the high-minded idealist who provided the chief impetus for the Abolition movement. By others he has been regarded as an impractical fanatic, who accomp1ished some good in a disagreeable way. His importance as a dominating figure in starting the campaign against slavery is conceded, but he inspired more than he led and the actual task of freeing the negro was carried through by better balanced leaders. He was a perplexing blend of contradictory qualities, of shrewdness and gullibility, of nobility and prejudice, who will be remembered chiefly for his courage in upholding a righteous cause when it was unpopular.

[The standard, although too extravagantly laudatory, life of Garrison, is Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of his Life Told by his Children (4 volumes, 1885-89). The best short biography is Lindsay Swift's Wm. Lloyd Garrison (1911), in the American Crisis Biographies. John Jay Chapman's Wm. Lloyd Garrison (1913) is so strongly eulogistic as to be useless for those desiring to form a fair estimate of Garrison's character. A complete file of the Liberator may be found in the Boston Athenaeum. Among other books to be consulted are Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (3 volumes, 1872-77); Oliver Johnson, Wm. Lloyd Garrison and his Times (1880); John J. Currier, Ould Newbury (1896), pp. 681-86; O. G. Villard, Some Newspapers and Newspaper-Men (1923), pp. 302-15; Gilbert Seldes, The Stammering Century (1928), pp. 239-47 ; Thos. W. Higginson, Contemporaries (1899), pp. 244-56.]

C.M.F.


GASTINE, Civique, 1793-1822, reformer, wrote anti-slavery literature, called for equality between Blacks and Whites (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 613-614)


GATCH, Philip (American National Biography, 2002, Vol. 8)


GATES, Seth Merrill, 1800-1877, abolitionist leader, lawyer, newspaper editor, U.S. Congressman, Whig Party, Western New York.  Anti-slavery political leader in House of Representatives.  (Dumond, 1961, p. 295; Mabee, 1970, p. 128; Sorin, 1971, p. 104; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 615-616)


GAY, Sydney Howard, 1814-1888, New York, NY, author, newspaper editor, abolitionist.  Member of the Garrisonian abolitionists.  Became traveling lecturing agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in 1842.  Gay was a member of the Executive Committee from 1844-1864 and Corresponding Secretary, 1846-1849.  Appointed editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard in 1844, published in New York.  Served until 1858, when he became an editor with the Tribune.  He was the wartime managing editor of the Tribune.  Ardent supporter of Lincoln and the Union.  (Mabee, 1970, p. 298; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 618-619; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 195; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 806)

GAY, SYDNEY HOWARD (May 22, 1814- June 25, 1888), journalist, author, the son of Ebenezer and Mary Alleyne (Otis) Gay, was born in Hingham, Mass. His mother was a niece of James Otis and his father a grandson of Reverend Ebenezer Gay [q.v.]: an ancestry which he said was the best part of himself. He entered Harvard College as a freshman in 1829, but poor health caused him to withdraw two years later. The degree of B.A. was conferred upon him, however, in 1833. After a period of idleness he entered the counting-house of Perkins & Company, in Boston, where he remained two years. He traveled in the West and then began the study of law in the office of his father in Hingham. A study of history and of ethics had turned his attention to slavery. Convinced that slavery was "absolutely and morally wrong," he gave up the law, for he could never take an oath to support a constitution which upheld the institution.

He went to Boston and became a member of that group of Abolitionists led by Garrison. "This handful of people," he said, "to the outside world a set of pestilent fanatics, were among themselves the most charming circle of cultivated men and women that it has ever been my lot to know." In 1842 he lectured for the American Anti-Slavery Society and the following year went to New York as editor of the American Anti-Slavery Standard. He married Elizabeth Neall in 1845. During this period he was an active agent of the "underground railroad." After an editorship of fourteen years, he decided that the anti-slavery cause no longer demanded all his attention and in 1857 he joined the staff of the New York Tribune. Appointed managing editor in 1862, he occupied that position until the summer of 1865 when broken health caused his resignation. During the war his services were of great value to the Union; Henry Wilson said that the man deserved well of his country who kept the Tribune a war paper in spite of Greeley. In 1867 he was asked to become managing editor of the Chicago Tribune; he accepted and remained in Chicago until the great fire of 1871. The following spring he returned to New York and from 1872 to 1874 was a member of the editorial staff of the New York Evening Post under William Cullen Bryant.

In 1874 Bryant, then eighty years old, was asked to undertake a history of the United States; to this he agreed with the understanding that Gay would be its author. Bryant's only contribution was a preface to the fir s t volume; he died before the second appeared, but the publishers, with little justification, retained his name. Though wanting a sense of proportion, the four volumes were based largely on research and were very readable. In 1884 Gay's James Madison, a severe though sympathetic study from the Federalist point of view, was published in the American Statesmen Series. He wrote the chapter on "Amerigo Vespucci" for Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America (vol. II, 1886), contributed occasionally to the Critic, and was engaged on a life of his friend Edmund Quincy, when he died of paralysis in 1888.

[Waldo Higginson, Memorials of the Class of 1833 of Harvard College (1883); "Hingham Genealogies," by Geo. Lincoln in vol. II of History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts (1893); F. L. Gay, John Gay of Dedham, Massachusetts, and Some of His Descendants (1879); Critic, June 30, 1888; Boston Post and New York Tribune for June 27, 1888.

F. M-n.


GEARY, John White, general, statesman, soldier.  Became territorial governor of Kansas on August 18, 1856.  Opposed slavery.  Defended state against pro-slavery “border ruffians” from Missouri.  As Governor, in 1857, he vetoed pro-slavery laws of legislature.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 620-621; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 203; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 819; U.S. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. Washington, DC: GPO, 1881-1901. Series 1; Warner, 1964.) 

GEARY, JOHN WHITE (December 30, 1819- February 8, 1873), soldier, territorial governor of Kansas, governor of Pennsylvania, was born near Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, the son of Richard and Margaret (White) Geary. His father, a descendant of a Shropshire family one of whose members had originally settled in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, had been an ironmaster, but he had failed at this business and had sought to support his family by keeping a school. When John was a student at Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, his father died, leaving him an accumulation of debts. He was forced to leave college, temporarily at least, and his career for the next few years was varied; he taught school, was a clerk in a store, studied civil engineering and law, was admitted to the bar, and went to Kentucky on a surveying expedition. While in the Blue-Grass state he was sufficiently successful in land speculation to pay off his father's debts. His engineering experience then brought him a position as assistant superintendent and engineer of the Allegheny Portage Railroad.

Geary had been interested in military affairs for more than ten years and when but sixteen had been appointed a lieutenant in the militia. At the outbreak of the Mexican War he was captain of the "American Highlanders" attached to the "Cambria Legion" and he and his comp any volunteered, joining the 2nd Pennsylvania Infantry at Pittsburgh, where he was elected lieutenant-colonel. The regiment arrived at Vera Cruz April 11, 1847, via New Orleans and the Lobos Islands and participated in Scott's advance to the city of Mexico. Since Colonel Roberts, commander of  the regiment, was in bad health much of the time, Geary h ad the responsibility of directing maneuvers. In the attack on Chapultepec he led the assault upon the fortress, and he was placed in charge of this work upon its capture. After the capture of the city he remained there on duty until the end of the war, being elected colonel of his regiment on the death of Roberts.

When President Polk was called upon to organize California he chose Geary to establish the postal service, and on January 22, 1849, appointed him postmaster of San Francisco and mail agent for the Pacific Coast. Geary and his wife, Margaret Ann Logan, whom he had married in 1843, arrived in San Francisco in April, but as President Polk had been succeeded by President Taylor, the new postmaster had hardly begun his service when his Whig successor arrived. He was not at a loss for employment, however, for within eight days he was elected "first alcalde" of San Francisco. Shortly the military governor, Brigadier-General Riley, appointed him "judge of first instance." Occupying these offices, he was the chief civil officer of the city, executive and judicial, and when American forms were adopted, in 1850, he became the first mayor. He was active in making California a free state and was chairman of the Democratic Territorial Committee. Since Mrs. Geary's health was failing, however, he returned with her to his Pennsylvania farm in 1852 and after her death the next year he remained in his old home.

Geary declined President Pierce's offer of the governorship of Utah, but when Kansas fell into anarchy he accepted the governorship of that territory. He was well qualified for the difficult post, for his whole person commanded respect. He was six feet five and a half inches tall, well built, and carried himself with military precision. Furthermore, he had been promised the full military support of the government. When he arrived in Kansas, September 9, 1856, he found a condition of virtual civil war, because the contending forces had been confident that the army bill would fail in Congress and thus make necessary the withdrawal of federal troops from the Territory. The bill had passed, however, and Geary's first act was to disband the pro-slavery militia which his immediate predecessor had called out. He then proceeded to substitute United States troops, organize his own militia, and arrest an irregular band of free-state sympathizers. Within three weeks marked by vigorous activity he could report "Peace now reigns in Kansas," in time to give this message sufficiently wide circulation to aid in Buchanan's election. Geary continued his vigorous activities as impartially as he could, endeavoring to protect Kansas from both factions. Becoming convinced that Lecompte the chief justice, Clarke the Indian agent, and Donalson the marshal, were flagrantly pro-slavery, he asked the President to remove them. Pierce did so and the enmity of the pro-slavery group focused itself upon the Governor. He got along fairly well, however, until the meeting of the legislature, January 12, 1857. This body was overwhelmingly pro-slavery and acted in open hostility to the Governor, automatically disregarding his vetoes. His life was threatened, a seeming attempt to assassinate him failed, and his secretary was beaten and then arrested for murder. Just as these things occurred, General Persifer F. Smith declared himself unable or unwilling to supply Geary with more troops, and a letter arrived from William L. Marcy, secretary of state, asking Geary to explain some discrepancies between his charges and Lecompte's reply; in the meantime as the Senate had not confirmed the appointment of Lecompte's successor, the judge was still serving. This cumulation of difficulties discouraged Geary, and on March 4 he resigned, straightway leaving the Territory and going to Washington to report to Buchanan.

Four years of retirement on his Westmoreland farm, during which he married Mrs. Mary (Church) Henderson in 1858, were broken by the guns of Sumter. When the news of that event reached Geary's locality he set up a recruiting office immediately and in a few days was made colonel of the 28th Pennsylvania. He was ordered to Harper’s Ferry, where on October 16, 1861, he was under fire at Bolivar Heights and was wounded. The next March he captured Leesburg, and shortly thereafter he was made brigadier- general. Badly wounded at Cedar Mountain, August 9, 1862, he had to return to his home for a while, but he was back in command of a division at Chancellorsville and distinguished himself at Gettysburg. In the fall of 1863 he was sent with the XII Corps under Hooker to join Grant in Tennessee and was active in the operations there culminating at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge; at Wauhatchie, October 28, 1863, he participated in a sharp engagement in which his son was killed. He accompanied Sherman on his famous march to the sea, was military governor of Savannah after its capture, and shortly before the end of the war was made major-general by brevet.

After the Civil War, Pennsylvania politics were marked by a struggle between Curtin and Cameron for control of the National Union or Republican party. Shrewdly realizing the advantages of Geary's military fame and his wide popularity, Cameron's forces made Geary, now a Republican, the party candidate for governor and elected him. He served two terms, from January 15, 1867, to January 21, 1873. Supremely self. confident, he pursued his downright, opinionated way and had many a battle with the legislature; of 9,242 bills passed he vetoed 390. He was active in trying to reduce the debt of the state and in safeguarding the treasury; toward the latter end he sought to promote a plan for lending state funds to private enterprise so that large balances might earn money for the state and not prove tempting to the treasurer. He sought in vain to persuade the legislature to adopt a more careful and orderly procedure, and successfully recommended the calling of a state constitutional convention. He advocated a general railroad law, the regulation of insurance, state control of gas companies, protection against accident in the mines, and safeguards for the public health, but on the other hand urged that taxes be shifted from business to land, especially because th is change would aid Pennsylvania business in its competition with that of other states. His headstrong and erratic course, often marred by violent fits of temper, won him a number of enemies, and he barely escaped defeat at the end of his first term, but the state machine and his own popularity, especially with the veterans, saved him. He acquired presidential ambitions as 1872 approached, and in the Labor Reform convention of that year he led on the first b allot but was defeated by David Davis. Within three weeks after his retirement from the governorship he was suddenly stricken and died.

[The most authoritative sketch of Geary is that in Lives of the Governors of Pennsylvania (1872), by Wm. C. Armor, who was closely associated with him. Memorial Addresses on the Death of Governor John W. Geary (1873) and In Memoriam (Philadelphia, 1873) contain some biographical material. His secretary, John H. Gihon, prepared an account, Governor Geary's Administration in Kans. (1857), which is largely a series of quotations from his official records. These are found completely published in Trans. Kans. State History Society, volumes IV and V (1890, 1896). See also A Sketch of the Early Life ... of Major General John W. Geary, Candidate of the National Union Party for Governor of Pennsylvania (1866) ; Inaugurals and Messages of General John W. Geary, 1867-73 (n.d.); Daily Patriot (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), February 10, 1873. His diary kept during the Mexican War, his scrap-books, and a few papers are in the possession of his family.]

R.F.N.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 620-621;

“GEARY, John White, soldier, b. near Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, 30 December, 1819; d. in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 8 February, 1873. His father was of Scotch-Irish descent. The son entered Jefferson college, but, on account of his father's loss of property and sudden death, was compelled to leave and contribute toward the support of the family. After teaching he became a clerk in a commercial house in Pittsburgh, and afterward studied mathematics, civil engineering, and law. He was admitted to the bar, but never practised his profession. After some employment as civil engineer in Kentucky, he was appointed assistant superintendent and engineer of the Alleghany Portage railroad. When war was declared with Mexico, in 1846, he became lieutenant-colonel of the 2d regiment of Pennsylvania volunteer infantry, and commanded his regiment at Chapultepec, where he was wounded, but resumed his command the same day at the attack on the Belen gate. For this service he was made first commander of the city of Mexico, and colonel of his regiment. He was appointed in 1849 to be first postmaster of San Francisco, with authority to establish the postal service throughout California. He was the first American alcalde of San Francisco, and a "judge of the first instance." These offices were of Mexican origin, the" alcalde" combining the authority of sheriff and probate judge with that of mayor, and the judge of the first instance presiding over a court with civil and criminal as well as admiralty jurisdiction. Col. Geary served until the new constitution abolished these offices. In 1850 he became the first mayor of San Francisco. He took a. leading part in the formation of the new constitution of California, and was chairman of the territorial Democratic committee. In 1852 he retired to his farm in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, and remained in private life until 1856, when he was appointed territorial governor of Kansas, which office he held one year. He then returned to Pennsylvania, and at the beginning of the civil war raised the 28th Pennsylvania volunteers. He commanded in several engagements, and won distinction at Bolivar Heights, where he was wounded. He occupied Leesburg, Virginia, in March, 1862, and routed General Hill. On 25 April, lS62, he received the commission of brigadier-general of U. S. volunteers. He was severely wounded in the arm at Cedar Mountain, 9 August, 1862, and in consequence could not take part in the battle of Antietam. At the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg he led the 2d division of the 12th corps. The corps to which General Geary's regiment was attached joined the Army of the Cumberland, under General Hooker's command, to aid in repairing the disaster at Chickamauga, and he took part in the battles of Wauhatchie and Lookout Mountain, in both of which he was distinguished. He commanded the 2d division of the 20th corps in Sherman's march to the sea, and was the first to enter Savannah after its evacuation, 22 December, 1864. In consideration of his services at Fort Jackson he was appointed military governor of Savannah, and in 1865 he was promoted to be major-general by brevet. He was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1866, and held this office until two weeks before his death. During his administration the debt of the commonwealth was reduced, an effort to take several millions from the sinking fund of the state bonds was prevented, a disturbance at Williamsport quelled, and a bureau of labor statistics established by the legislature, 12 April, 1872. Governor Geary possessed great powers of application and perception, force of will, and soundness of judgment, and was popular among his troops. The general assembly has erected a monument at his grave in Harrisburg. See “Governor Geary's Administration in Kansas," by John H. Gihon (Philadelphia, 1857).”  Source: Wilson, James Grant, & Fiske, John (Eds.). Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography. New York: Appleton, 1888, 1915.


GERARD, JAMES WATSON (1794-February 7, 1874), lawyer, philanthropist, was of Scotch and French descent. His father, William Gerard, born in Banff in the Highlands of Scotland, was a member of a French family which had fled thither to escape religious persecution. He emigrated about 1780 to New York City, where he married Christina Glass and became a prosperous merchant. There his son, James Watson Gerard, was born. The younger Gerard obtained his early education from private tutors. Entering Columbia College while yet a boy he graduated in 18rr, being third in his class and distinguishing himself in mathematics and the classics. On the outbreak of the War of 1812, he enlisted and served in one of the volunteer companies raised for the purpose of defending New York City. On the conclusion of the war he entered the office of George Griffin, one of the leading New York lawyers, and was admitted to the bar in 1816. He had read widely, and was instrumental in forming a debating society called the Forum, in whose discussions he, with Fessenden, Hoffman, and other brilliant juniors constantly participated. His first retainer was on behalf of a boy fourteen years old who was indicted for the theft of a canary, and the circumstances of the case-it being the accused's first offense-made so strong an impression upon him that he determined to take steps to assist in the reformation of junior offenders. He joined the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, and was a prime mover in the appointment of a special committee which investigated the subject of juvenile delinquency. He strongly advocated the creation of an asylum for youthful criminals where they would be safe from contamination by hardened convicts, and procured the incorporation, on March 29, 1824, of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, whose House of Refuge, built shortly, was the first institution of its kind in the country. As a member of the board of managers, Gerrard contributed powerfully to its successful operation. Though he was now enjoying an extensive practise at the bar, he continued to devote much of his time and means to social reform, identifying himself with all movements having for their object the amelioration of distress, the advancement of the best interests of the city, and efficient administration. Inter alia, he induced great reforms in the police system and was the first to advocate the wearing of uniforms by policemen. In 1854, having always been a consistent opponent of slavery, he took a leading part in the agitation against the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. His greatest services in his later years were rendered in the cause of popular education. For twenty years, first as a school trustee and later as inspector of the fifth school district, he was indefatigable in raising the standard of public educational training. Though on more than one occasion offered the position of commissioner of the Board of Education, he uniformly declined that and all other public office, maintaining that he could do more effective work as inspector than in any other capacity. After his retirement from legal practise in 1869 he devoted all his time to the improvement of educational methods.

As a lawyer, he had an uneventful career, distinguished only by a steady advancement to the headship of the New York bar. Industry and perseverance were his chief characteristics, but he was an advocate by instinct and became the leading jury lawyer of his time. Charles O'Conor said that "his powers of persuasion were marvellous." Indefatigable in the preparation of his cases, gifted with an intuitive knowledge of human nature, and knowing when to stop in addressing a jury, "he tried more causes than any other member of the profession and ... he tried them more successfully than any other. At nisi prius he was unrivalled" (Proceedings of the Bar, p. 8). He married on October 3, 1820, Elizabeth, daughter of Increase Sumner, chief justice of the supreme judicial court and governor of Massachusetts.

["Genealogical and Biographical Sketch of the Late James W. Gerard," by J. W. Gerard, Jr., in New York Genealogy and Biog. Record, July 1874; Proc. of the Bar of New York in Memory of James W. Gerard (1874); Prominent Families of New York (1897), ed. by L. H. Weeks; New York Times, February 8, 1874; New York Herald, February 10, 1874.]

H. W. H. K.


GERRY, Elbridge, 1744-1814, Massachusetts, statesman, founding father.  Member of the Constitutional Convention.  U.S. Congressman.  Supported and encouraged rights of citizens to petition Congress for redress of grievances against slavery.  (Dumond, 1961, p. 206; Locke, 1901, p. 140; Annals of Congress, 1 Congress, 2 Sess., pp. 1230, 1246; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 630-632; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 222; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 866)

GERRY, ELBRIDGE (July 17, 1744-November 23, 1814), statesman, was born at Marblehead, Massachusetts, third of the twelve children of Thomas and Elizabeth Gerry. His father was a native of Newton Abbot, Devonshire, who came to New England in 1730 as master of a vessel, married Elizabeth Greenleaf, the daughter of a Boston merchant, and settled at Marblehead, where he built up a mercantile business and became commander of the local fort. Elbridge Gerry entered Harvard College in 1758 and was placed twenty-ninth in a class of fifty-two, with which he graduated in 1762. He then joined his father and two elder brothers in business at Marblehead, shipping dried codfish to Barbados and Spanish ports in their own vessels, which returned with bills of exchange and Spanish goods. In May 1772 he was elected representative to the General Court, where he met Samuel Adams and fell completely under his influence. Their ample correspondence during the next two years shows that Adams regarded Gerry as a young man of parts who was worth encouraging in the cause; and Gerry developed an even keener scent than his master for tyranny. A town meeting was held at Marblehead on December 1, 1772, instigated by the circular letter and resolves of Adams's Boston Committee of Correspondence. Thomas Gerry was moderator of the meeting, Elbridge and Thomas Gerry, Jr., were on the committee that drafted the fiery resolves which were adopted, and all three were members of the local committee of correspondence then and there ap pointed.

Gerry was reelected to the General Court in May 1773, and promptly placed on the standing committee of correspondence. Early in 1774 his political activities were interrupted by a local brawl. A mob burnt to the ground an isolation hospital for smallpox which Gerry and other prominent citizens had built at their own expense; and public opinion protected the guilty parties from punishment. Gerry and the entire committee of correspondence resigned in disgust. When the Boston Port Bill began to be enforced, however, Marblehead became a leading port of entry for patriotic donations, and Gerry with Col. Azor Orne consented to see to the handling and forwarding of these stores to Boston (Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 4 series IV, 1858, pp. 27-226). In August 1774, Gerry was elected to an Essex County convention, and in October to the first Provincial Congress, which appointed him to the executive Committee of Safety. Reelected to the second Provincial Congress and reappointed to the second Committee of Safety early in 1775, he cooperated with Adams and Hancock in conducting measures of preparedness that bore fruit on the day of Lexington and Concord. During the evening of April 18, 1775, the Committee of Safety held a session at Menotomy (Arlington) on the road from Cambridge to Lexington. Gerry warned Hancock, who proceeded to Lexington after the meeting, that the British scouts were about. Gerry himself, however, went to bed in the Menotomy tavern, and just had time to escape into a cornfield in his nightclothes when a file of men from Lieut.-Col. Smith's detachment began to search the house (Allen French, The Day of Concord and Lexington, 1925, p. 102). In the session of the Provincial Congress after the fight, and continuously as member of the Committee of Safety and chairman of the Committee of Supply, Gerry took an active and important part in drafting a narrative of the "massacre," in raising troops, and in procuring all manner of munitions and supplies for the provincial army and materials for fortification. His mercantile connections and interests made this his natural assignment, and he prosecuted the work with energy, economy, and efficiency. On June 7 he was appointed to a committee "to consider the expediency of establishing a number of small armed vessels, to cruise on our sea coasts " (Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, LXXVII, 1927, p. 20), but on July II James Warren complained of Gerry's " want of faith and ardor" in not "setting up for a naval power" (Ibid., LXXII, 1917, p. Sr). Gerry later claimed the joint paternity with James Sullivan of an act of November 1, 1775, to issue letters of marque and establish prize courts; but he was not a member of the committee upon whose report the bill was based (Ibid., LXXVII, pp. 23- 25). He refused an appointment as admiralty judge of the province, and continued his important work in the supply department until January 25, 1776, when he left with John Adams for Philadelphia, as delegate to the second Continental Congress. The association thus formed developed into a firm friendship, although Gerry's character more resembled that of Jefferson, whom he first met on a visit to New York about 1764, and who also became his lifelong friend. Gerry, at thirty-one, was a spare, dapper little gentleman with pleasant manners, "rempli de petties finesses" according to a French observer (Farrand, post, III, 233), and a great favorite with the ladies. He had a broad forehead which was soon furrowed with care, a long nose and a habit of contracting his eyes which gave him an unnaturally stern expression. He took his seat in Congress on February 9, 1776, and on the 17th was appointed to the standing committee of five commonly called the Treasury Board, which had oversight of Continental finance until superseded by a new Board in 1779, to which Gerry refused election. He was frequently president of the old Board, and always one of its most industrious members, especially in the detailed examination of accounts. He was an early advocate of separation from "the prostituted Government of G. Britain" (Burnett, post, I, 468) and was present on July 4, 1776, but left Philadelphia, worn out by his labors, before the engrossed copy of the Declaration had been signed. On July 21 he wrote to the Adamses to subscribe his name to the document, but actually signed it himself after his return to Congress on September 3 (H. Friedenwald, The Declaration of Independence, 1904, pp. 141, 147). He also signed the Articles of Confederation.

Gerry continued to interest himself, both as a member of the committee on the commissary and as private merchant, in the important business of army supplies. He directed his brothers how to route their ships, informed them what commodities were needed, sent instructions about the manufacture of tents and gunpowder, shipped fish to Spain on Continental account, received army supplies in return, and stimulated his friends in Massachusetts to greater exertion (New-England Historical and Genealogical Register, July 1876, pp. 312-13). As the war continued, and many members of Congress retired, the value of Gerry's experience increased; and his faithful attendance when colleagues took vacations often gave him double duty. He was constitutionally jealous of standing armies and militarism, but was an early advocate of longest enlistments for a new model army. On the subject of pensions he vacillated. He was frequently appointed on committees to visit the army, and his correspondence with Washington was friendly, but he was also a supporter of Conway (Journals of Congress, October 3, 1777; April 10, 28, and June 11, 1778). In foreign policy he saw eye to eye with John Adams, opposed the French alliance and the consular convention of 1782, supported Arthur Lee, and desired the recall of Franklin whom he believed to be corrupted by France. Nevertheless, Gerry was an implacable enemy to England. As a Marblehead man, he naturally showed a keener interest in the fisheries than any of his colleagues. In the spring of 1779 he proposed, as a condition of peace, the retention of fishing rights on the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; but was forced to concede that fisheries should not be sine qua non.

Although a merchant himself and a furnisher of supplies, he frowned on profiteering. A delegate to the New Haven price-fixing convention of 1778, he endeavored to enforce on others and personally observed himself their schedule of fair prices. This subject led up to a quarrel between Gerry and Congress on a point of privilege. On February 19, 1780, Congress was debating an estimate of supplies to be furnished by the several states. Gerry moved to recommit that part of the report in order to reduce the Massachusetts quota and restore the price schedule to the 1778 level. Congress voted his motion out of order and refused to record the ayes and noes on the point of order. At this last denial, Gerry took great offense and declared that personal privilege and the rights of his state had been infringed. When satisfaction was not given, he returned to Boston arid laid his complaint before the state legislature. While endeavoring to obtain vindication or redress he absented himself from Congress, of which he was still nominally a member, for oven three years, during which he engaged successfully in trade and privateering (S. R. Gerry Manuscripts; Tucker Manuscripts, Harvard College Library, II, 214). In state politics he belonged to the anti-Hancock faction, and declined the Governor's appointment as justice of the peace lest he seem to condone the prevalent "idolatry." He also declined two appointments by the General Court to a vacancy in the state Senate, but served in the lower house. He was ever faithful to the Spartan ideals of 1776, extolled republican simplicity, and deplored, "Vanity, Vice and Folly" (S. Adams Manuscripts, January 8, 1781). He was liberal enough to declare the drama not inconsistent with republican virtue, but when the practical issue arose in Boston, Gerry yielded to the firm prohibition of stage plays by Samuel Adams.

Upon his return to Congress, Gerry was one of the oldest and most experienced members. After peace was concluded he exerted himself successfully to reduce the standing army, and unsuccessfully to abolish the Order of the Cincinnati, which he feared would usurp the powers of Congress. He paid considerable attention to the Northwest Territory, in which he was financially interested. On two occasions he took issue with his state. When Massachusetts refused to ratify the impost amendment on the ground that the grant of half-pay to officers violated ancestral principles, Gerry drafted a reply, pointing out that the country had pledged its faith to the officers three years before. On the second occasion he took the opposite line. In April 1784, he presented a report to Congress in which he declared that "unless the United States in Congress assembled, shall be vested with powers competent to the protection of commerce, they can never command reciprocal advantages in trade" (Journals of the American Congress, IV, 1823, p. 393). Yet when a year later Massachusetts formally made that suggestion, Gerry and his colleagues refused to lay it before Congress, on the ground that a convention on commerce would allow "the friends of an Aristocracy" to promote a change of government "which would require a Standing Army, and a numerous train of pensioners and placemen to prop and support its exalted administration" (C. R. King, The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, I, 1894, pp. 64-65). Gerry's last appearance in Congress was on November 2, 1785; in February or March 1786 he took his seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives to which he had been elected the previous spring.

Gerry's work in Congress was that of an industrious and conscientious business man. His colleagues appreciated his gentlemanliness, profited by his attention to detail, and never questioned his integrity: qualities which were conspicuous throughout his life. On the other hand, he frequently changed his mind, sometimes for personal reasons, and showed an "obstinacy that will risk great things to secure small ones" (The Works of John Adams, VIII, 1853, p. 549). He proved lacking in a sense of humor and showed an habitual suspicion of the motives of others. As an orator he was hesitating and laborious. It would have been better for his fame as for his fortune had he retired from public life and devoted himself to business at the end of the war, for he was of the considerable number of patriots who, though useful as agitators and organizers of victory, carried the "stern republicanism" of the 1770's into a period of different problems that required other qualities.

On January 12, 1786, Gerry married Ann Thompson, the daughter of a New York merchant. At the same time he retired from business with a comfortable fortune invested in government securities and real estate; and in May 1787 he purchased a confiscated Loyalist estate in Cambridge, later the "Elmwood" of James Russell Lowell. Shays's Rebellion drew him closely to other members of the merchant class. Completely reversing his attitude of the year before, he refused to attend the Annapolis Convention in 1786 on the ground that its competence
was too restricted; and he accepted an appointment to the Federal Convention of 1787. There he was one of the most experienced and active members but not among the most useful. He began as an advocate of a strong centralized national government, hut ended by opposing the Constitution because it did not square with theoretical republicanism. He combined aversion to democracy with jealousy of power, and solicitude for "the commercial and monied interest" with fear of tyranny. He made several freak proposals, such as limiting the army to two or three thousand men, and having the state governors elect the president; and there was much truth in a colleague's statement that he "objected to everything he did not propose" (Farrand, post, III, 104). The inconsistency of Gerry made a bad impression on his colleagues. He continually preached compromise in the Convention, but opposed the Constitution as "full of vices" (Ibid., II, 478). He was chairman of the committee that prepared the "great compromise" but disliked the compromise itself. He came out early in favor of the Virginia plan. Oliver Ellsworth accused him publicly of opposing ratification because his motion for redeeming the Continental currency failed. Gerry denied having made any such motion, and the journals bear him out; but he did propose that the federal government be required to discharge both federal and state debts at par (Ibid., II, 356). He publicly declared himself "not possessed of more of the securities than would, by the interest, pay his taxes" (Ibid., II, 413); but the treasury archives record sufficient government securities in Gerry's name to have yielded him about $3,500 a year (C. A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the U1iited States, 1913, p. 97), and he was writing his brother in 1786 about buying and selling government paper (S. R. Gerry Manuscripts). There seems no reason to doubt the sincerity of Gerry's fear that the Constitution would fail to secure liberty, but it is likely that he expected ratification to fail, when Anti-Federalists would naturally be -rewarded for their prescience. The list of objections which Gerry communicated to the state legislature on October 18, 1787, and which were published with augmentations as Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions. By a Columbian Patriot (1788), were wholly from the popular angle. The "Columbian Patriot," although not elected to the Massachusetts ratifying convention, was invited to take a seat there in order to answer questions. Abusing his guest privilege by proffering information unasked, he was declared out of order, took offense, and refused again to sit. Rufus King then robbed Gerry's published objections of much of their force, by showing that some of them applied equally well to the government of Massachusetts.

Gerry's policy regarding the Constitution cost him several friends and left him in a gloomy frame of mind, expecting a civil war and feeling ill-used by the public. On the other hand, his "stern republican" attitude appealed to the yeomanry. A meeting of Anti-Federalists brought forward his name for governor, but he polled only a slight vote, and Hancock was reelected. The next year came a new opportunity. Gerry was elected to Congress early in February 1739, at the second polling in his district, after declaring his intention to support the Constitution. He early distinguished himself by a long speech in favor of putting the treasury in commission, believing it unsafe in a republic for "a single officer to have the command of three or four millions of money." He observed that heads of departments were given "such amazing powers as would eventually end in the ruin of the Government" (Annals of Congress, 1 Congress, I Session, pp. 387, 389). The absence of a bill of rights had been one of Gerry's leading objections to the Constitution, and Samuel Adams wrote him that Congress ought not to adjourn before proposing one. Yet Gerry surprised his friends by declaring "the salvation of America depends upon the establishment of this Government, whether amended or not. ... It is necessary to establish an energetic Government" (Ibid., I Congress, 1 Session, p. 445). Gerry thereupon so vigorously supported Hamilton's reports on public credit, including the assumption of state debts, that he was considered a leading champion by the Federalists (W. P. and J. P. Cutler, Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Reverend Manasseh Cutler, D.D., 1888, I, 458--61) and gave his friend Jefferson some distress. Although one of his insuperable objections to the Constitution had been the implied power of Congress to create corporations, he spoke warmly in favor of the Bank charter, and subscribed for thirty shares of the United States Bank. In the Second Congress, to which Gerry was elected in opposition to Nathaniel Gorham, he was singularly silent. In 1793, having refused to stand for reelection, he retired to cultivate his farm and educate his "young and numerous family."

During his four years' retirement, Gerry began to suspect that the Federalists were aiming at tyranny and a British alliance. He voted for John Adams as presidential elector in 1797, but Wrote to James Monroe that his recall from Paris proved the existence of a "deep system ... to disgrace republicanism" (New-England Historical and Genealogical Register, October 1895, p. 436). President Adams appointed him a member of the famous "X. Y. Z. mission" on June 20, 1797, against the advice of his cabinet, because he trusted Gerry and wished a non-party man joined with Marshall and Pinckney. It was an unsuitable choice, because Gerry was so obsessed with the idea that war with France would lead to a British alliance and aristocracy that he was willing to go to almost any lengths in order to prevent a formal breach. Landing in Holland on September 18, 1797, Gerry joined his colleagues in Paris on October 4. Talleyrand, well acquainted with the new-comer's "known attachment to France and conciliatory disposition," decided to negotiate with him alone, and shelve his colleagues (Memoire of February 15, 1798, Archives des Affaires Etrangeres, Correspondence Politique, Etats: Unis, XLIX, 174). Gerry, when this was broached to him by Talleyrand, made the grave error of promising to keep this proposition and subsequent communications from the French minister a secret from his colleagues. By March 18, when Talleyrand made his propositions openly, he had practically detached Gerry from Pinckney and Marshall, so that when they decided to leave, Gerry determined to stay; and there was a painful scene between him and his colleagues before their departure. Gerry remained because Talleyrand persuaded him that France would declare war if he left, but he refused to negotiate without further powers. Yet his mere presence in Paris was everywhere misunderstood, and played Talleyrand's avowed game of preventing an inconvenient rupture while the privateering continued (Correspondance Diplomatique de Talleyrand: Le Ministere de Talleyrand sous le Directoire, 1891, edited by G. Pallain, p. 309). Gerry misjudged the situation both in France and at home. The Directory had no intention of declaring war, but made no better offers to Gerry than to his colleagues. The President, instead of sending Gerry full powers, published the "X. Y. Z. dispatches" and recalled him. On receiving this order, on May 12, 1798, Gerry at once asked for his passports, which he did not obtain until July 15, when Talleyrand had given up trying to inveigle him into a negotiation. Gerry later claimed that his presence in Paris prevented war, since he brought home the text of two conciliatory decrees on neutral trade which afforded the President a new basis of negotiation; but the Directory had other channels of communication, and the new decrees were occasioned by the news of the war fever in America, and a report of Victor du Pont (Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XLIX, 1916, pp. 63- 65).

Gerry sailed from Havre on August 8, and arrived at Boston on October 1, 1798. The Federalists by agreement snubbed him; but in conversation he advised every one to rally around the administration, and a wily unsigned letter from Jefferson, begging him to come out with a public vindication like Monroe’s (January 26, 1799, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition, X, 1903, pp. 74-86), remained unanswered for two years. Annoyed by Secretary Pickering's severe criticisms of his conduct, Gerry attempted to vindicate himself in two statements which he sent to the President, and which, by Adams's advice, he did not publish. His whole conduct on the "X. Y. Z. mission" was entirely honorable, but egregiously mistaken.

Henceforth Gerry was generally regarded in Federalist circles as a "Jacobin" and suffered the social ostracism that was the price of political heterodoxy in Massachusetts. The Republicans, on the contrary, regarded him as the man who showed up a Federalist hoax, and prevented war with France. They nominated him in 1800 for governor of Massachusetts. He gave the Federalists a close race, being the only Jeffersonian ever to carry Boston, but was defeated. Thrice more defeated and by increasing margins in 1801-03, he refused to run again, but as presidential elector on the winning ticket in 1804 had the pleasure of casting his vote for Jefferson. In 1810 the Republicans turned somewhat reluctantly to Gerry as a candidate for governor. He was then sixty-five years old, and not popular; he never made any pretense of loving the common people, and refused to attend caucuses as below his dignity. His opponent, Christopher Gore, had even stronger aristocratic traits, however, and Gerry was elected governor in April 1810. His first administration was uneventful. A bare Federalist majority in the Senate prevented the passage of reform legislation, and Gerry himself declined to remove Federalists from office, although a Republican council made a clean sweep possible. This moderation fairly earned him a reelection in April 1811, with a Republican majority in both houses. His second administration opened to the taste of his party, with an address castigating the Federalists as secessionists, rebels, and traitors. Apparently he had taken alarm at some Boston Federalists' resolutions threatening nullification of the Non-Intercourse Act. These "treasonable" resolves furnished a pretext if not a reason for purging the public service of Federalists. According to his biographer, Gerry's "reluctant share" in that proscription "caused him many of the most painful moments of his life" (Austin, post, II, 307), and several intended victims were spared by him; but on the other hand, additional places were created by reorganizing the judicial system. In his Thanksgiving Day proclamation of 1811, Gerry unwisely criticized Federalist clergymen, some of whom refused to read it. By the end of the year he was receiving a torrent of bitter criticism and invective, including an anonymous letter threatening to burn his house and tar-and-feather the owner, which he made the subject of a special message to the legislature. He also communicated a list of 253 newspaper libels on the government, and attempted to get the law of libel altered, so that contempt of the governor would be equivalent to contempt of court.

The measure that made his second administration immortal was the famous Gerrymander Bill of February II, 1812 (Acts of Massachusetts, V, 517, repealed June 16, 1813). This was a redistricting of the state in such a way as to give to the Republicans state senators in excess of their voting strength. The method was by no means new (E. C. Griffith, The Rise and Development of the Gerrymander, 1907, pp. 31-55), but had never been carried to such an extreme. Essex was divided into one compact two-member district including the stalwart Federalist towns, and an absurdly shaped three-member district running around the edge of the county, in which the heavy Republican vote of Marblehead was calculated to quench Federalist majorities in the eleven other towns. A map of Essex County was produced at a Federalist gathering, where Gilbert Stuart or Elkanan Tisdale sketched in head, wings, and claws on the grotesque district, remarking "That will do for a salamander," at which some wit exclaimed, "Gerrymander!" A popular caricature representing the district as a winged monster, with Gerry's profile against its back, gave wide currency to the name (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, October r892, pp. 374-83). The act worked so well that in the spring election of 1812, although 51,766 votes were cast for Federalist candidates for state senators as against 50,164 Republican votes, only eleven of the former party were elected, as against twenty-nine of the latter. But at the same election of April 1812 Ex-Governor Strong defeated Gerry by a majority of twelve hundred in a total vote of over one hundred thousand. A continuance of the moderate policy of Gerry's first administration would probably have kept Massachusetts in the nationalist and Republican column during the War of 1812, and saved the state from a policy that disgraced it in the eyes of the country.

Gerry's defeat, however, took him to Washington. On June 8, 1812, within two weeks of his leaving the governor's chair, the Republican congressional caucus nominated him for the vice-presidency, on the ticket with Madison. The notification reached Gerry on June 15, followed shortly by news of the declaration of war. He at once declared that the country had been too long at peace, and was "degenerating into a mere nation of traders" (Austin, post, p. 375). He became unduly alarmed over the truculent attitude of the Federalist press, urged the authorities to arrest the editors, and warned President Madison that the Federalists would seize the castle in Boston Harbor, welcome a British landing force, raise the standard of rebellion, and declare secession. The Madison-Gerry ticket was chosen in November though it failed by a large majority to carry Massachusetts. Vice-President Gerry took the oath of office at his Cambridge residence on March 4, 1813, and presided over the opening session of the Senate on May 24, when he made a warlike oration, predicting the speedy conquest of Canada. Although in his seventieth year and frail in health, he entered into the social life of Washington with great zest. Contrary to the usual practise, he did not relinquish his chair in the Senate at the encl of the session of 1813, lest the factious Senator William B. Giles [q.v.] become president pro tempore and consequently succeed to the presidency in the event of the death both of President Madison, who was severely ill at the time, and of Gerry himself (American Historical Review, October 1916, pp. 95-97). Some sixteen months later Gerry's death occurred. On the morning of November 23, 1814, proceeding to the Senate chamber in his carriage, he was seized with a hemorrhage of the lungs and died within twenty minutes.

Gerry had been well-to-do in 1800, but had since suffered severe losses, and left heavy debts 2 which consumed all his estate except the mansion house (Gerry-Townsend Manuscripts). Congress paid for his burial in the Congressional Cemetery, but the House rejected a bill introduced by Senator Christopher Gore and passed by the Senate, for paying the Vice-President's salary to his widow during the remainder of his term of office. Three sons and four daughters survived him. One son was provided for in the army, another in the navy, and a third, Elbridge Gerry, Jr., in the Boston custom-house. Mrs. Gerry lived until 1849, the last surviving widow of a "Signer."

[The Life of Elbridge Gerry (2 vols., 1828-29) by his son-in-law, Jas. T. Austin, is a useful work, but unduly reticent about portions of Gerry 's career. In S. E. Morison, "Elbridge Gerry, Gentleman-Democrat," New Eng. Quart., January 1929, pp. 6-33, will be found references for many statements made in this article; see also "Two Signers on Salaries and the Stage, 1789," Proc. Massachusetts History Society, October 1928-June 1929. Manuscript letters of Gerry are in many autograph collections, especially that of the Pennsylvania History Society A remnant of the family papers (Austin collection) is in the writer's possession; another is in the hands of Ex.-Sen. Peter G. Gerry; a third, the Gerry-Townsend MSS., in the New York Pub. Library; a manuscript Letter-Book of 1797 to 1803 is owned by Mrs. Townsend Phillips of New York. The Samuel Adams MSS. in the Bancroft Collection contain important 1.1npublished correspondence with Adams., Worthington C. Ford printed a number of Gerry’s letters to Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe in the New-Eng. History and Genealogy Reg., October 1895, January 1896; and a number of letters to his wife, mostly of 1813-14, in Proc. Massachusetts Historical Society, XLVII, 1914. The Samuel Russell Gerry MSS. in the Massachusetts Historical Society and the letter-books of S. R. and Thomas Gerry in the Marblehead Historical Society afford much information on Gerry 's commercial activities. The Chamberlain MSS. and general manuscript collections of the Boston Pub. Library contain records of the Provincial Congress Committee of Supplies and Gerry 's contract book of 1775-76. The Pickering MSS. in the Massachusetts Historical Society contain many letters by and about Gerry, and John Marshall's journal of the X. Y. Z. negotiation. See also Journals of the Continental Congress 1774-1789 (26 vols., 1906-28); E. C. Burnett, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, vols. I-IV (1921-28); Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (3 vols., 1927); American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. II (1832); The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775 (1838); and published writings of contemporary statesmen, especially John Adams and Rufus King.]

S. E. M.



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