Gre-Gur: Greeley through Gurley

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


GREELEY, Horace, 1811-1872, journalist, newspaper publisher, The New York Tribune. American Anti-Slavery Society. Major opponent of slavery. Co-founder, Liberal Republican Party in 1854.  Supporter of the Union.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 62, 110, 147-149, 159, 182, 253, 258, 262; Dumont, 1961, p. 352; Filler, 1960, pp. 6, 45, 56, 88, 112, 117, 163, 219, 237, 259; Greely, 1866; Greely, 1868; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 33, 54, 78, 81, 86, 96, 98, 116-117, 136, 138, 143, 146, 153, 154, 199, 204, 217-220, 227-229, 233; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 65, 67, 69, 141, 324, 476, 692-695; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 734-741; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 529; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 370-373; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 647)

GREELEY, HORACE (February 3, 1811-November 29, 1872), editor, political leader, was born at Amherst, New Hampshire, the third child of Zaccheus Greeley and Mary Woodburn his wife, the former being of English and the latter of Scotch-Irish stock. The father made a scanty living by farming and day labor, first at Amherst, later at Westhaven, Vermont, and finally in Erie County, Pennsylvania. Greeley's irregular schooling ended at fourteen, when he :was apprenticed to Amos Bliss, editor of the Northern Spectator at East Poultney, Vermont. But he was a precocious lad, who gained much from his mother's repetition of British traditions, ballads, and snatches of history, the family copies of Shakespeare, Campbell, and Byron, and the omnivorous reading possible in a newspaper office and the town library of East Poultney. When the Nor them Spectator died in June 1830, he walk ed most of the way to the Erie County home, and after a short stay with his still-struggling parents found employment as a printer at Jamestown and Lodi, New York, and Erie, Pennsylvania. Finding his prospects poor, he set out, with about twenty-five dollars and his personal possessions tied in his handkerchief, for New York City, where he arrived in August 1831. He was twenty years old, "tall, slender, pale, and plain," as he later described himself, with an "unmistakably rustic manner and address," and equipped with only "so much of the art of printing as a boy will usually learn in the office of a country newspaper" (Recollections, p. 84). Obtaining board and room for two dollars and a half a week, he sought work in vain for several weeks before accepting the eye-ruining job of setting up a New Testament in agate with notes in pearl.

A succession of employments, including some typesetting for the Evening Post, from which William Leggett discharged him because he wanted only "decent-looking men in the office," enabled Greeley to save a small sum, and in January 1833 to form a partnership with a printer named Francis V. Story, who when drowned the following July was succeeded by Jonas Winchester. During 1833-34 the firm printed from 54 Liberty St., two lottery organs called Sylvester's Bank Note and Exchange Manual and the Constitutionalist, and did a job-printing business. But Greeley was far more than a printer. His fingers itched for the pen, and he was shortly contributing paragraphs to the two journals and to newspapers. He soon gained reputation in press circles, and a dubious tradition states that James Gordon Bennett offered him a partnership in starting the Herald. One reason for distrusting the tradition is that Greeley and Winchester had already, on March 22, 1834, found ed a weekly literary and news journal called the New Yorker. This periodical, well pri11ted, avoiding political partisanship, containing full abstracts of foreign and domestic newspapers, and selected tales, reviews, and pieces of mu sic, was edited largely with shears; but there were original contributions by Greeley, R. W. Griswold, Park Benjamin, and Henry J. Raymond (F. L. Mott, History of American Magazines, 1741-1850, 1930, pp. 358-60). It gained steadily in circulation. At the end of one year it had 4,500 subscribers; at the end of three years, 9,500. But the "cash principle" not yet being applied to the magazine business, it still lo st money. Greeley suffered great mental anguish from his constant struggle with debt. "My embarrassments were sometimes dreadful," he wrote; "not that I f eared destitution, but the fear of involving my friends in my misfortunes was very bitter" (Parton, post, p. 172). He had married on July 5, 1836, Mary Youngs Cheney, who was born in Cornwall, Connecticut, but was a schoolteacher for a time in North Carolina. However great his worries over his magazine, it shortly gave him a wide reputation.

The failure of the New Yorker was fortunate for Greeley in that literary and non-partisan journalism was not his real forte. To add to his income he wrote constantly for the Daily Whig and other newspapers, and in 1838 accepted from Thurlow Weed, William H. Seward, and other Whig leaders the editors hip of a campaign weekly, the Jeffersonian. It ran for one year, obtained a circulation of 15,000 and exercised real influence. Greeley's salary of $1,000 was less important than the political friendships he formed. He struck Seward as " rather unmindful of social usages, yet singularly clear, original, and decided, in his political views and theories" (F. W. Seward, Autobiography of William H. Seward …with a Memoir of his Life, 1877, p. 395). In 1840 the Whig leaders called upon him to edit and publish another weekly. The result was the Log Cabin, begun May 2, which gained an unprecedented success. Of the first issue 48,000 copies were sold, and the circulation swiftly rose to almost 90,000. Greeley not only edited it and the New Yorker simultaneously, but made speeches, sat on committees, and helped manage the state campaign. He thought later that few men had contributed more to Harrison's victory than he (Recollections, p. 135). Ceasing after the election, the Log Cabin was revived on December 5, 1840, as a general political weekly, and continued till it and the New Yorker were merged in the Tribune. Greeley's apprenticeship was now completed.

Though in 1841 twelve dailies were published in New York City, no penny paper of Whig allegiance existed. Nor was there any newspaper standing midway between the sensational enterprise of Bennett's Herald and the staid correctness of Bryant's Evening Post. Greeley, now fully trusted by his party, with a large popular following and a varied practical experience, saw the opportunity. With a capital which he estimated at two thousand dollars, one-half in printing materials, and with one thousand dollars borrowed from James Coggeshall, he launched the New York Tribune on April 10, 1841. His object, he stated later, was to found "a journal removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand, and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the other" (Recollections, p. 137). For some days the prospect was dubious; his first week's receipts were ninety-two dollars, the expenses $525 (Ibid., p. 140). Then, thanks to the Tribune's sterling merits and the Sun's bitter attacks, subscriptions poured in rapidly. The paper began its fourth week with an edition of 6,000, and its seventh with 11,000, after which progress was slow, Success had been fairly assured when during July Greeley formed a partnership with a far more practical man, Thomas McElrath, who for ten years gave the establishment efficiency and system and Greeley entire independence. On September 20 the Log Cabin and New Yorker were merged into the weekly Tribune. Greeley, assisted with great ability by H. J. Raymond, labored tirelessly, his average day's writing in the early years according to Parton being three columns of close print. As funds accumulated, however, the staff was increased, till by 1846 the Tribune was the best all-round paper in the city, and Greeley had time for additional pursuits.

The Tribune set a new standard in American journalism by its combination of energy in newsgathering with good taste, high moral standards, and intellectual appeal. Police reports, scandals, dubious medical advertisements, and flippant personalities were barred from its pages; the editorials were vigorous but usually temperate ; the political news was the most exact in the city; book reviews and book-extracts were numerous; and as an inveterate lecturer Greeley gave generous space to lectures. The paper appealed to substantial and thoughtful people and when its price was raised, on April 11, 1842, to nine cents weekly or two cents daily it lost fewer than two hundred subscribers. Greeley stamped it with his individual and then highly radical views. He was an egalitarian who hated and feared all kinds of monopoly, landlordism, and class dominance. Believing that all American citizens should be free men politically and economically, he sought means of increasing this freedom. At first he turned to Fourierism. Through the influence of Albert Brisbane [q.v.], he not only allowed a Fourierist association to publish first daily and then tri-weekly articles on the front page of the Tribune (1842-44), but also advocated the formation of Phalanxes, conducted a newspaper debate on the subject with Raymond, (1846), and invested in the North American Phalanx at Red Bank, New Jersey. He espoused the agrarian movement for the free distribution of government lands to settlers as a guarantee against capitalist tyranny, attacked the railway land grants as fostering monopoly; assailed the heartlessness of corporations which exploited their workers, and in general inveighed against the fierce acquisitive competition of the day. Wage slavery in the forties distressed him as much as bond slavery. "How can I devote myself to a crusade against distant servitude," he wrote an anti-slavery convention in 1845, "when I discern its essence pervading my immediate community" (Tribune, June 20, 1845). Newspapers, he wrote, should be "as sensitive to oppression and degradation in the next street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan." His thinking seemed inconsistent when it included high-tariff doctrines, but he never favored protection as more than a temporary means to an end. "Protection is the shortest and best way to real Free Trade, he wrote in 1851 (Tribune, June 23, 1851). He opposed capital punishment, urged freedom of speech and of the mails for Abolitionists, advocated the restriction of liquor-selling, and supported cooperative shops and labor unions, himself becoming in 1850 first president of the New York Printers' Union. Though no believer in woman's suffrage, he sympathized with other parts of the woman's rights crusade.

Greeley's devotion to such social aims made the Tribune more than a mere financial success; it became a great popular teacher, champion, and moral leader, and a vehicle for the ideas and experiments of constructive democracy. It required an able and liberal staff, and he drew to the Nassau Street office a versatile group. Margaret Fuller was literary reviewer and special writer from 1844 to 1846, living for a time in Greeley's Turtle Bay home. Charles A. Dana joined Greeley in 1847, acting as city editor, foreign correspondent, and managing editor. Bayard Taylor, after contributing travel letters, became a staff member in 1848. George Ripley was made literary assistant in 1849, raising the literary department to high influence. In the fifties the staff included James S. Pike, Washington correspondent and editorial writer ; Solon Robinson, agricultural editor; W. H. Fry, music critic; C. T. Congdon and Richard Hildreth. To the energy of Dana, Pike, and the city editor, F. J. Ottarson, the paper owed its prompt and full intelligence. By 1854 it employed fourteen local reporters, twenty American correspondents, eighteen foreign correspondents, and a financial staff under George M. Snow (Parton, pp. 391-4u). During the late fifties the Tribune attained a national influence far surpassing that of any rival. Its total circulation on the eve of the Civil War, daily, weekly, and semi-weekly, was 287,750. This covered the whole country outside the South. The power of the paper was greater than even this circulation would indicate, for the weekly was the preeminent journal of the rural North, and one copy did service for many readers. As James Ford Rhodes has said, for great areas the Tribune was "a political bible." Many elements entered into its influence, but the greatest was the passionate moral earnestness of Greeley himself, his ability to interpret the deeper convictions of the Northern public, and the trenchant clarity and force of his editorials.

The effort which the Tribune had expended in the forties on numerous causes was concentrated in the fifties upon the Free-Soil movement. Greeley objected to slavery on both moral and economic grounds. At first he held mild views, but his opinions underwent a steady intensification. He opposed the Mexican War, indorsed the Wilmot Proviso, and in 1848 supported Zachary Taylor as the only candidate who could prevent Cass's election to the presidency. Two years later he showed coolness to the compromise measures, declaring to the South that he would let "the Union be a thousand times shivered rather than that we should aid you to plant slavery on free soil" (Tribune, February 20, 1850). The fight over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill aroused Greeley to his greatest eloquence. His editorial, "Is It a Fraud?" (February 15, 1854), was a magnificent answer to the Democratic claim that the measures of 1850 had involved a recognized repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He advocated "determined resistance" to the execution of the Kansas- Nebraska Act and assisted Gerrit Smith, Eli Thayer, and others in arming the Kansas Free-Soilers. He applauded forcible resistance to the Fugitive-Slave Act as the best method of obtaining its repeal (June 3, 1854). Having declared in 1852 that "if an anti-slavery Whig must give up his anti-slavery or his Whiggery, we choose to part with the latter," Greeley was among the first editors to join the Republican party, and attended the national organization meeting at Pittsburgh, February 22, 1856. He was disgusted with Seward because he failed to seize the leadership of the " uprising of the Free States" (Tribune, November 9, 1854), and warm in his advocacy of Fremont's candidacy for the presidency. In the critical year 1857 his union of moral fervor with shrewd practicality is seen at its best. Of the Dred Scott decision he said, it "is entitled to just so much moral weight as would be the judgment of a majority of those congregated in any Washington bar-room" (Tribune, March 7, 1857), and he praised John Brown while condemning his raid. He insisted, however, upon the importance of the Union, showing no patience with Garrison's secessionist views, and he strongly attacked Know-Nothingism. He sought only the attainable. In 1854 he had dissolved, through political pique, his alliance with Thurlow Weed and Seward, and in 1860 was a free agent. As a delegate from Oregon at the Republican National Convention he joined with the Blairs to defeat Seward by urging the nomination of Edward Bates of Missouri, but on the night before the balloting advised the Massachusetts delegates to support Lincoln.

In these decades Greeley's restless energy was expended in numerous directions, some ill-advised. Though not of rugged health, he seemed indefatigable, sleeping but five or six hours daily, writing much, traveling widely, making speeches, and attending political conferences. For three months in 1848-49 he was a member of Congress, where he introduced a homestead bill and aired the scandal of excessive mileage payments. During 1851 he was in Europe for three months, acting as juryman at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, testifying before a parliamentary committee, and hastily touring the Continent. On entering Italy his first observation was characteristic that the country badly needed subsoil ploughs. Revisiting Europe in 1855, he derived much amusement from a two days' incarceration on a debt charge in a Paris prison. In the summer of 1859 he made a journey to the Pacific Coast, toured California, and returned by way of Panama. These travels furnished material for newspaper letters and the volumes, Glances at Europe (1851) and An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in -----the Summer of 1859 (1860). In addition to these writings he published a volume of lectures called Hints Toward Reforms (1850), and edited a compilation from official records entitled History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension or Restriction in the United States (1856). For years he was a constant lecturer before lyceums, young men's associations, and rural groups, appearing in some winter seasons twice a week. Far less creditable was his thirst for political office. He would have welcomed reelection to Congress in 1850, would have stooped to take the lieutenant-governorship in 1854, and in 1861 was bitterly disappointed by his failure to secure Seward's seat in the United States Senate. In 1863, again a candidate for the Senate, he was again defeated by Thurlow Weed's opposition. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the House of Representatives in 1868 and 1870, and for the state comptrollership in 1869, but won a seat in the state constitutional convention of 1867. These political adventures by no means enhanced his dignity or influence.

Few Americans were more intimately in the public eye than he, and none commanded such a mixture of admiration with affectionate amusement. The oddity of his appearance, with his pink face of babylike mildness fringed by throat-whiskers, his broad-brimmed hat, white overcoat, crooked cravat, shapeless trousers, and white socks, his shambling gait and absent-minded manner, was exaggerated by every caricaturist. His squeaky voice and illegible handwriting became themes of familiar humor. His eccentricities of manner, which sometimes shocked precise men like Bryant, his naivete on many subjects, and his homely wisdom on others, appealed to the millions. Some of his phrases, like "Go West, young man," were universally current. By signing many editorials and by frequently appearing in public he gave his work a direct personal appeal unusual in journalism, and his private life was the subject of much curiosity. He cared nothing for money, and though in later years he received $10,000 annually, this and most of his Tribune stock slipped from him. His charities were endless, and some impostors received thousands of dollars from him (Proceedings at the Unveiling of a Memorial to Horace Greeley, 1915, p. 95). Buying in 1853 a fifty-four acre farm in Chappaqua, New York, he spent many week-ends there, interesting all Tribune readers in his swamp reclamation and crop experiments, and finally publishing What I Know of Farming (1871). Of the seven children born to him, only two daughters, Gabrielle and Ida, lived to maturity; the bereavements made Mrs. Greeley neurasthenic; her housekeeping was characterized by Margaret Fuller as "Castle Rackrent fashion"; and though Greeley's devotion never wavered, his home life was comfortless. He made and kept many friends, especially among women who, like the Cary sisters and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, valued him for his inner and not outer qualities.

The Civil War brought Greeley new tests of sagacity and firmness, which he failed to meet as creditably as he did all tests of courage and patriotism. · From the beginning he was accused of vacillation, though his position had more consistency than appeared on the surface. His primary demand was that no concessions be made to slavery. He sternly opposed the Crittenden Compromise, preferred disunion to any "complicity in slavery extension," and, once hostilities opened, regarded the extinction of slavery as an irrevocable object. His doctrine in 1861 was that if a real majority of Southerners wished to go from the Union they should be allowed to do so, but that the revolt was one of "a violent, unscrupulous, desperate minority, who have conspired to clutch power" (Recollections, p. 398; Tribune, November 9, 16, 1860; November 19, 1861). When war began he supported it with energy, though the unfortunate cry, "Forward to Richmond!" (June 28, 1861), was raised by Dana, not by Greeley. He quickly allied himself with the radical anti-slavery element led by Sumner, Stevens, and Chase, opposing the President's policy of conciliating the border states and demanding early emancipation. Though other newspapers accepted the modification of Fremont's emancipation order, Greeley did not, insisting that Congress or the President resort to a general liberation of slaves. His editorial on emancipation, "The question of the Day" (Tribune, December 11, 1861), declared that "rebels" should have been warned at the outset that they would lose their slaves, that they had no rights to consideration, and that t)1e Union could not "afford to repel the sympathies and reject the aid of Four Millions of Southern people." His rising impatience with Lincoln's policy culminated in his famous signed editorial, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" (August 20, 1862). This arraigned Lincoln as remiss in executing the Confiscation Act, as unduly influenced by "certain fossil politicians hailing from the Border Slave States" (the Blairs), and as offering a "mistaken deference to Rebel slavery." On September 24 the Tribune hailed Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as recreating a nation. Greeley's radicalism involved his journal in bitter warfare with not only the Democrats but also with the Seward-Weed moderates, and the fight, extended to state politics. In 1862 he was acclaimed the principal leader of New York Republicans, but his poor judgment of men and fluctuating principles caused him to lose influence in political circles (De A. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, III, 1909, p. 91).

Greeley's popular reputation and influence were injured in 1864 by his hesitation to support Lincoln and in 1864-65 by his peace activities. He favored postponing the Republican National Convention on the ground that the party was not united behind Lincoln (letter to New York Independent, February 25, 1864), and declared that Chase, Fremont, Ben Butler, or Grant would make as good a president, while the nomination of any of them would preserve the salutary one-term principle (Tribune, February 23, 1864). As late as August 18 he believed that Lincoln was already beaten, and wrote a friend that " we must have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow" (New York Sun, June 30, 1889). Not until September 6 did he state in the Tribune that "we fly the banner of Abraham Lincoln for the next Presidency," one dubious story asserting that this announcement followed Lincoln's private differ to appoint Greeley his next postmaster-general.

Even more ill-advised was Greeley's course in regard to peace. During 1863 he advocated mediation by a foreign power, and communicated on the subject with C. L. Vallandigham and the French minister, telling Raymond, " I'll drive Lincoln into it" (J. F. Rhodes, History of the Unite d States, 1893, IV, 222). In July 1864, he attempted to bring about direct peace negotiations. He wrote to Lincoln that he had learned that two emissaries from Jefferson Davis were in Canada with "full and complete powers for a peace"; declared that "our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country also longs for peace ; shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood"; and urged Lincoln to make a frank offer of peace (J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 1890, IX, 186). Lincoln shrewdly prevailed upon the reluctant Greeley to go to Niagara Falls to open the negotiations. Greeley exceeded his instructions, but found that the Confederates were without proper powers from their government and asked for further directions. When Lincoln thereupon closed the affair with the ultimatum that he would gladly consider any official proposition which embraced the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, Greeley sent him a reproachful letter, for he believed that the President should have left the door open (Greeley, The American Conflict: ... Its Causes, Incidents, and Results, II, 1866, p. 664). On August 9 he wrote Lincoln that if the "rebellion" could not be promptly crushed the nation faced "certain ruin," begging him to make a fresh peace effort, and making the astounding proposal that if peace could not be made, there be an armistice for one year, "each party to retain, unmolested, all it now holds," and the blockade of the South to be lifted (Nicolay and Hay, IX, 196-97). These and similar views, expressed publicly and privately, created a wide-spread feeling that Greeley's judgment and nerve were deplorably weak.

Greeley's radical political views extended to Reconstruction. Believing in full negro equality, he indorsed not only the Fourteenth but also the Fifteenth Amendment and favored the congressional policies. In 1866 he was again a lion of the state Republican convention, controlled by anti-Johnson radicals. But the intemperate zeal with which the Tribune supported Johnson's impeachment owed more to John Russell Young, the managing editor, than to Greeley, then absent on a final Western trip. Greeley was also liberal enough to favor general amnesty, and called, as in his fine speech at Richmond on May 14, 1867, for the erasure of all sectional antagonism. He seconded the movement this year for Jefferson Davis's release from Fortress Monroe, and on May 13 signed his bond in Richmond. Noisy attacks followed, thousands of subscribers to Greeley's two-volume compilation, The American Conflict, cancelled their orders, the weekly Tribune lost more than half its circulation, and an effort was made in the Union League Club to reprimand him. The Tribune rejoiced in Grant's election, and for two years supported him with uniform cordiality. But, because of his support of the one-term principle and for two other reasons, one rooted in disapproval of Grant's public policies and the other in New York state politics, Greeley steadily cooled toward Grant. As a leader of the Reuben E. Fenton wing in New York politics, he viewed with hostility the rise of the Conkling-Cornell machine under Grant's protection, and resented what he felt to be Grant's unfair apportionment of federal patronage. Conkling's defeat of the Greeley-Fenton group in the state convention of 1871 led to an open split. At the same time Greeley became convinced that the Grant administration was demoralized and corrupt, indifferent to civil-service reform, mistaken in its Santo-Dominican policy, and illiberal toward the South. On May 6, 1871, the Tribune expressed doubt of the wisdom of renominating Grant on September 15 declared flatly against renomination. When independent Republicans pressed the movement for a new party in the congressional session of 1871-72, Greeley encouraged them. He wrote a friend on March 13, 1872, that he would carry the fight against Grant to its bitter end, though "I know how many friends I shall alienate by it, and how it will injure the Tribune, of which so little is my own property that I hate to wreck it" (J. Benton, ed., Greeley on Lincoln, with Mr. Greeley's Letters to Charles A. Dana and a Lady Friend, 1893, p. 211). His career was approaching its tragic climax.

Before the Civil War the Tribune had been Horace Greeley; after the war there was no such close identity. The paper had become a great institution of which his control was but partial. Disbursements by 1871 exceeded a million dollars annually, the whole staff approached 500, and the stock was held by twenty proprietors (Greeley's anniversary article, Tribune, April 10, 1871). Both Greeley's influence and that of the Tribune diminished after the war; the rise of the Associated Press, the multiplication of good local newspapers, and the disappearance of the great slavery issue, reduced their power. Personal editorship was declining. But from time to time Greeley still wrote editorials with his old fire, in what E. L. Godkin called "an English style which, for vigor, terseness, clearness, and simplicity, has never been surpassed, except, perhaps, by Cobbett" (Rollo Ogden, Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin, 1907, I, 255).

As the Liberal Republican movement first developed, Greeley discouraged mention of his name for the presidency; but as the revolt spread and there seemed a likelihood of successful coalition with the Democrats, his lifelong desire for political advancement made him receptive. The reform element in the movement favored Charles Francis Adams or Lyman Trumbull; the politicians who were promoting a coalition favored David Davis or Greeley (A. K. McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, 1905, II, 334). When the convention met in Cincinnati on May 1, Greeley had astute supporters, notably Whitelaw Reid and William Dorsheimer, on the scene. The contest narrowed to a struggle between Adams and Greeley, the managers of the latter sprung an effective stampede, and to the consternation of Schurz and other reformers, Greeley was nominated, with B. Gratz Brown as associate. The convention refused to make either nomination unanimous and many delegates departed, feeling wit!) Samuel Bowles. that the ticket had been made by a combination of political idiots and political buccaneers (G. S. Merriam, The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, 1885, II, 212). Greeley was indorsed by a dispirited Democratic national convention at Philadelphia in July and some state coalitions were effected, but many Democrats bolted because of his former abuse of the party. The low-tariff element represented by the Nation was disaffected, while Schurz joined Greeley only after a reproachful correspondence with him. In an exceptionally abusive campaign, Greeley was attacked as a traitor, a fool, an ignoramus, and a crank, and was pilloried in merciless cartoons by Nast and others; he took the assaults much to heart, saying later that he sometimes doubted whether he was running for the presidency or the penitentiary. In answer to the "bloody-shirt" argument, he brought forward as his chief issue a plea for the reconciliation of North and South by the removal of all political disabilities and the union of both sections for common reforms. In his letter of acceptance he eloquently expounded the idea that both sides were "eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm" (Tribune, May 22, 1872). Retiring from his editorship, he made an active speaking campaign in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, his addresses to the huge crowds being notable for their intellectual strength (James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, II, 1886, p. 534). The October elections made it clear that he could not be successful in November. Yet the magnitude of the defeat was a surprise. Greeley carried only six border and Southern states and received only 2,834,125 of the popular vote against 3,597,13; cast for Grant. Among the chief factors in this disaster were the elaborate Republican organization, the distrust of Greeley by most financial interests, the impossibility of reconciling many Democrats, and the wide popular feeling that his judgment of both men and policies was hopelessly weak. Yet his candidacy had results of permanent value in actually doing much to close the "bloody chasm."

The tragedy of Greeley's death immediately followed the election. After his exhausting campaign tour he had watched with little sleep by the bedside of his wife, who died October 30. He was profoundly hurt by the feeling that he was "the worst beaten man who ever ran for high office." The final stroke came when, on returning to the Tribune, he found that the reins there had passed firmly into the hands of Whitelaw Reid, who had no intention of surrendering them, and that he had practically though not nominally lost the editorship which had been his lifelong pride (Charles A. Daria, "The Last Blow," N. Y; Sun, November 30, 1872). His mind and body both broke, and he died insane on November 29. A shocked nation paid him in death the tribute he had never received while living. His funeral in New York on December 4 was attended by the President, Vice-President, cabinet members, governors of three states, and an unequaled concourse of spectators. His failings were forgotten, while the services he had done the republic as its greatest editor, perhaps its greatest popular educator, and certainly one of its greatest moral leaders, were universally recalled.

[Greeley wrote an autobiography, Recollections of a Busy Life (1868; new eds., 1873, 1930), which offers not only a narrative of the main facts in his car!!er, but also a frank revelation of the forces which influenced his tastes and thought, and which is admirable in its simplicity and concreteness. The best biographies are: W. A. Linn, Horace Greeley: Founder and Editor of the New York Tribune (1903); James Parton, The Life of Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune (1855, 1869, 1872, etc.); and L. D. Ingersoll, The Life of Horace Greeley, Founder of the New York Tribune (1873). Some new facts are added in Don C. Seitz, Horace Greeley, Founder of the New York Tribune (1926). Among treatments from a special point of view are Chas. Southern, Horace Greeley and Other Pioneers of American Socialism (1892), and F. N. Zabriskie, Horace Greeley, the Editor (1890). An estimate of Greeley's place in the history of American thought may be found in Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, II, 1927, pp. 247-57. The recollections of associates may be found in C. T. Congdon, Reminiscences of a Journalist (1880); C. A. Dana, "Greeley as a Journalist," in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, A Library of Amer. Lit., VII (1889); and J.C. Derby, Fifty Years Among Authors, Books, and Publishers (1884). Lives of John Hay, C. A. Dana, and Whitelaw Reid, and E. D. Ross, The Liberal Republican Movement (1919) should also be consulted. The state of New York published in 1915 the Proc. at the Unveiling of a Memorial to Horace Greeley at Chappaqua, New York, February 3, I9I4- The files of the New York Tribune are indispensable to a study of his life.]

A. N.


GREEN, Beriah, 1795-1874, Whitesboro, New York, reformer, clergyman, abolitionist.  President, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Active supporter of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 17, 34-35; Dumond, 1961, pp. 159, 295; Goodell, 1852, pp. 395-396, 556; Green, 1836; Mabee, 1970, pp. 20, 21, 24, 25, 40, 45, 46, 109, 151, 152, 227, 252, 257, 363, 366, 369; Pease, 1965, pp. 182-191; Sernett, 2002, 36-39, 46, 55, 72, 78, 93-94, 99, 105-106, 108, 113, 116, 122, 125; Sorin, 1971, pp. 25, 60, 90, 96, 97, 130; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 742; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 539; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 480; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 326).

GREEN, BERIAH (March 24, 1795-May 4, 1874), reformer, was born at Preston, Connecticut, the eldest of six children of Beriah and Elizabeth (Smith) Green, who removed to Pawlet, Vermont, about 1810. He graduated from Middlebury College with the class of 1819, receiving valedictory honors, and went to Andover Seminary to prepare himself for the missionary service of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. To eke out his slender resources, he undertook to teach at Phillips (Andover) Academy. Within the year, however, his eyes and health began to fail, and he left the seminary. His health gradually returning, he married, January 21, 1821, Marcia Deming of Middlebury, Vermont, and for a short time afterward was in the service of the American Board on Long Island and at Lyme, Connecticut. Ordained on April 16, 1823, he became pastor of the Congregational church at Brandon, Vermont. Three years later, March 31, 1826, his wife died, leaving two children, and on August 30 of that year he married again, his second wife being Daraxa Foote, also of Middlebury, who with her seven children survived him. In 1829 he accepted a call to the distinctly "orthodox" church of Kennebunk, Maine, but the next year left to take the chair of sacred literature in the theological department of Western Reserve College. In Cleveland, Green's hostility to American slavery, first specifically awakened in 1822 and growing with his belief that the Christian doctrines should be more practically applied to everyday life, came to a crisis, and on four consecutive Sundays he preached in the college chapel sermons in which he "haled American slavery to the bar of the Christian religion." These powerful sermons attracted wide attention, and in December 1833 he was made president of the convention in Philadelphia at which the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed. The same year he accepted the presidency of the Oneida Institute at Whitesboro, New York. Here he attempted to maintain a school of high character where manual should be combined with mental labor, where Hebrew and the Greek scriptures should be substituted for the regular Greek and Latin classics, and where students of every color and nationality should mingle as equals. This pos1t10n he held until 1843, shortly before inadequacy of support forced the Institute to close. His interpretation of Calvinism proved to be so radically different from that of surrounding clergy that one after another of the orthodox pulpits were closed to him. For a time also his prominence as an Abolitionist told on his position and popularity. In 1837 the Presbyterian church in Whitesboro divided on the question of slavery, and the Abolitionist faction established a Congregational church, of which Green was pastor from 1843 to 1867. He published two volumes, The Miscellaneous Writings of Beriah Green (n.d., circa 1841) and Sermons and Other Discourses with Brief Biographical Hints (1860), as well as some thirty-five pamphlets, mostly on theological and abolitionist subjects, including The Martyr: A Discourse in Commemoration of the Murder of the Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy (1838) and Sketches of the Life and Writings of James Gillespie Birney (1844). Intellectually Green was a man of considerable originality. He had strong convictions, but an intensely practical character which probably was responsible in no small measure for the modification of his early theological views. His activities as an Abolitionist attest his moral courage. For the last twenty-five years of his life he lived in virtual retirement. He died suddenly in his eightieth year while speaking against the local liquor traffic in the Town Hall at Whitesboro.

[Autobiographical material in Green's Sermons and other Discourses (1860); pamphlet, Beriah Green (1874), by his son, S. W. Green; P. H. Fowler, History Sketch of Presbyterianism within the Bounds of the Synod of Central New York (1877); Fiftieth Anniversary of Whitestown Seminary, h1ne 20, 1878 (1878); reminiscences of Green in J. B. Grinnell, Men and Events of Forty Years (1891).]

W.R.W.


GREEN, FRANCES HARRIET WHIPPLE (September 1805-June 10, 1878), author, reformer, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt.

GREEN, FRANCES HARRIET WHIPPLE (September 1805-June 10, 1878), author, reformer, was born in Smithfield, R. I., the daughter of George Whipple. Her ancestors were among the earliest settlers in the state. She was educated in the district schools and later at a private school in Providence, giving evidence of a retentive memory and creative literary ability. By 1830 she had attracted considerable attention by her poetic contributions to Rhode Island papers, and had edited herself the Original, containing sketches of local interest, many of them her own. From 1830 on she devoted h er self to one cause after another, temperance, labor, suffrage, abolition, spiritualism, being "unfortunately for her personal comfort, ... ever on the unpopular side of every question in Rhode Island" (Rider, post, p. 30). In The Envoy, From Free Hearts to the Free (1840) and in Shah1nah in Pursuit of Freedom; or, The Branded Hand (1858) she attacked slavery. As editor and publisher of the Wampanoag and Operatives Journal of Fall River (1842-43), she turned her attention to the education, assistance, and encouragement of the female operatives in the manufacturing districts. Displaying an equal interest in the laboring classes was her novel The Mechanic (1841). In Might and Right, by a Rhode Islander (1844) she showed herself to have been a violent partisan of Thomas Dorr and an ardent supporter of his demands for a more liberal suffrage in Rhode Island. Perhaps her most popular work was the Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge (1838), followed by Elleanor's Second Book (1839), the actual story of a colored woman who had suffered from legal injustice. A student of botany all her life, she published, in collaboration with Joseph W. Congdon, a Primary Class-Book of Botany, enlarged and republished in 1855 under the title: Analytical Class-Book of Botany. In addition to the above works she contributed many articles to the serial publications of her day, and in these most of her poetry appeared. Of her verse, her best poem, according to Griswold, was Nanuntenoo, a Legend of the Narragansetts, of which three cantos were published in Philadelphia in 1848. "The Dwarf's Story," appearing in the Rhode Island Book (1841), Griswold describes as a "gloomy but passionate and powerful composition" (R. W. Griswold, The Female Poets of America, 1849, p. 123).

On July 1, 1842, Frances Whipple was married to Charles C. Green, an artist of Springfield, Massachusetts. This marriage proved unhappy, however, and in 1847 they were divorced. Shortly afterward Mrs. Green became interested in spiritualism, and for a time made her home with S. B. Brittan in New York City, contributing to his paper, the Univercoelum and Spiritual Philosopher, and assisting him in editing the Young People's Journal of Science, Literature and Art. Later she contributed to Brittan's spiritualist magazine, the Shekinah. About 1860 she removed to California where in 1861 she married William C. McDougall and, as Frances H. McDougall, made her last literary effort, Beyond the Veil (1878). She died in Oakland, Cal. Possessing "a disposition admirably tempered by thorough culture and mature reflection, a loving and hopeful philosophy of life-softened and sustained by every tender affection- she was yet invincible in her resistance of every form of evil" (Brittan, post).

[S. S. Rider, Bibliog. Memoirs of Three R. I. Authors (1880); S. B. Brittan, "Mrs. Frances H. Green M'Dougall," Banner of Light (Boston, Massachusetts), August 24, 1878; San Francisco Chronicle, June 11, 1878.]

W.R.W.


GREEN, Reverend Jacob, 1722-1790, anti-slavery activist, writer (Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 140, 144, 145; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 548)


GREEN, Shields, free African American man (former slave) with John Brown during his raid at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859; hanged with John Brown, 1859 (see entry for John Brown).  (Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 62, 63, 327; Sernett, 2002, pp. 210-212, 328n50)


GREENE, Anne Terry, abolitionist, fiancée and later wife of abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips (Yellin, 1994, p. 35)


GRELLET, STEPHEN (November 2, 1773-November 16, 1855), a recognized minister of the Society of Friends, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt.

GRELLET, STEPHEN (November 2, 1773-November 16, 1855), a recognized minister of the Society of Friends, whose missionary itineraries covered practically all of Europe and the United States and reached up into Canada, was born in Limoges, France, the fifth child of Gabriel Marc Antoine de Grellet and Susanne de Senamaud. As a youth in his native country he was known as Etienne de Grellet du Mabillier. His father was a wealthy manufacturer of porcelain and proprietor of iron works, one-time comptroller of the mint, and an intimate of Louis XVI. Etienne was taught by tutors and attended several colleges, but received his principal scholastic training at the College of the Oratorios, Lyons. He displayed keen religious sensibilities, but became skeptical regarding Roman Catholic dogmas. At the outbreak of the Revolution the family estates were confiscated, and his parents barely escaped the guillotine. Etienne and some of his brothers joined the royal forces in Germany, and in 1792 as a member of the King's Horse Guards, he entered France. Later he was made a prisoner of war and sentenced to be shot; but escaped to Amsterdam, from which place with his brother Joseph, he sailed for Demerara, South America, arriving in January 1793. Here they engaged in mercantile pursuits, but in 1795, upon a false report that a French fleet was approaching the coast, they fled to New York. By this time Etienne had become a disciple of Voltaire, but through associations formed in Newtown, Long Island, where he took up his residence, and the reading of William Penn's writings, he was converted to the beliefs and practises of the Friends. In the latter part of 1795 he went to Philadelphia and engaged in business. Here in the fall of 1796 he was formally received into the Society of Friends, and in March 1798 he was duly recorded as a minister of Christ by the Monthly Meeting of the North District, of which he was a member. During the yellow-fever epidemic of 1798, he visited the sick and dying, contracted the disease, and was so sick that his death was judged inevitable and actually reported. In 1799 he removed to New York and on January 11, 1804, married Rebecca Collins, daughter of Isaac and Rachel Collins of that city. From 1799 on, his career was a series of missionary and philanthropic journeys separated by intervals in which he was able to give sufficient attention to business to provide funds to support him in his far-reaching ministry. He combined the grace, courtesy, and affableness of a French noble with Quaker simplicity, gentleness, sagacity, and calm reliance upon the Divine guidance, and was cordially received by all classes. He served the lowly and stood unabashed before rulers, who listened with respect to his views and recommendations. He not only held religious meetings, but visited mines, hospitals, prisons, and asylums, and sought to ameliorate social conditions generally. His travels in the United States extended north to the Kennebec, south to New Orleans, and westward to Illinois. In the South he held meetings among the slaves, and talked of the wrongs of the slave-system with their masters. Visiting Canada, ne preached in his native tongue to Roman Catholics. He made four tours in Europe. The first (1807-08) was confined to France. The second (1811-14) included the British Isles, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. After ministering in Newgate, together with his friend, John Forster, he conferred with Elizabeth Fry and is credited with inspiring her work for the female prisoners there. He was received by the King of Bavaria, with whom he discussed the religious and social conditions of the kingdom, and in London after the "Peace of Paris," he vied with the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Russia for the spirit of peace in the future government of Europe. In 1816 he made a trip to Haiti, and upon his return interested English philanthropists in effecting social improvements there. On his third European tour (1818-20) he was joined in London by William Allen. Besides countries already traversed he visited Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, the Crimea, and Greece. Received by Alexander I of Russia, he reported the wretched conditions he had found in prisons and poorhouses. As a result of their discussion of educational methods, Scripture Lessons for Schools (1820), compiled by Grellet, Allen, and others, was adopted in Russia. He was also received by the Pope, to whom he suggested needed reforms. This third journey is commemorated by Whittier in his poem "The Christian Tourists" (Complete Poetical Works, 1900, p. 147). During 1831-34 he was again abroad. In his later years his activities were lessened by failing health. After 1823 with his wife and one daughter he made his home in Burlington, New Jersey, where just after the completion of his eighty-second year he died.

[Benj. See Bohm, Memoirs of the Life and Gospel Labours of Stephen Grellet (2 vols.; English edition, 1860, American, 1860, French, Un Quaker Francais, 1873), based on autobiographical material; Wm. Guest, Steph en Grellet (English edition, 1880, American, 1881, Japanese, 1887); Frances A. Budge, A Missionary Life: Stephen Grellet (1888); Cortlandt Van Rensselaer, The Fight, Faith and Crown (1856); A Testimony (of Burlington Monthly Meeting) Concerning Stephen Grellet (1856); Christian Observer (London), July 1862; London Review, April 1862; Eclectic Review (London), July 1863; R. M. Jones, The Later Periods of Quakerism (2 vols., 1921); Friends' Intelligencer, December 1, 1855; New York Tribune, November 19, 1855.]

H. E. S.


GREW, Henry, 1781-1862, Society of Friends, Quaker, clergyman, religious writer, reformer, abolitionist.  Daughters were Mary and Susan Grew, both abolitionists.  Active in abolition movements.  Member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.  Attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England, in June 1840.  (Yellin, 1994, pp. 71, 312, 333)


GREW, Mary, 1813-1896, abolitionist leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.  Leader of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.  Grew was an officer of the state branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Co-editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman.  Was active in the Free Produce Association.  In 1840, Grew and other women were elected as delegates at the World Anti-Slavery Convention.  They were, however, excluded from the floor.  After 1840, she was involved in women’s rights and other reform activities.  Daughter of abolitionist Henry Grew.  She was a stronger supporter and friend of prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.  (Van Broekhoven, 2002, p. 206; Yellin, 1994, pp. 43, 71-72, 76, 84-85, 163, 176-177, 301-302, 326)


GREW, Susan, abolitionist, leader of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, daughter of abolitionist Henry Grew (Van Broekhoven, 2002, p. 206; Yellin, 1994, pp. 71, 80)


GRIFFING, Charles Stockman Spooner, abolitionist leader, member Western Anti-Slavery Society.  Active in the Underground Railroad in Ohio.  Husband of Josephine Sophia White Griffing.  (American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 375-376)


GRIFFING, Josephine Sophia White, 1814-1872, Connecticut, abolitionist leader, women’s rights leader, active in Underground Railroad in Ohio, wife of Charles Stockman Spooner Griffing, also a strong abolitionist, member and agent for the Western Anti-Slavery Society, major writer for abolitionist paper The Anti-Slavery Bugle.  The Griffing home was a station on the Underground Railroad in Ohio.  Active in Women’s National Loyal League, which tried to outlaw slavery.  Agent for the National Freedman’s Relief Association of the District of Columbia.  (Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 375-376; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 574)

GRIFFING, JOSEPHINE SOPHIE WHITE (December 18, 1814-February 18, 1872), social reformer, born in Hebron, Conn., was the daughter of Joseph White, farmer, and maker of axes, a descendant of Peregrine White [q.v.], born on the Mayflower off Cape Cod. Her mother, Sophie White, was a sister of Samuel Lovett Waldo [q.v.], the artist, and a descendant of Peter Waldo, the founder of the English sect of the Waldenses. In her twenty-second year Josephine married at Hebron, Charles Stockman Spooner Griffing, a mechanic, and in 1842 they moved to Ohio. Interested in the problem of negro slavery and sympathetic with the work of the anti-slavery societies, she and her husband became active in the movement, lecturing and organizing in the West. Their home was a station on the Underground Railroad for slaves escaping to Canada. Hearing the pioneer lecturers on woman's suffrage, in 1848 she became an advocate of this new cause which seemed to her another important step toward freedom for the human race. Working incessantly for this double goal, she was frequently in danger of physical violence. Parker Pillsbury wrote that she "performed labor, made sacrifices, encountered sufferings at the west, not known, probably never will be known to the world" (Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, 1884, p. 487). Her work was particularly valuable because of her practical ability and imperturbable calm. Accompanied by her younger sister who gave a musical program, she coated her unpleasant doctrines with entertainment that made them more palatable to her backwoods audiences. It is in line with her character that when the Civil War came she should have been one of the earliest workers in the Loyal League and in the sanitary units, and one of the first, also, to recognize the dimensions of the problems presented by the freed slaves. In 1863 she went to Washington to urge federal aid for these people, advocating a most modern program of education for self-support, colonization on deserted plantations, and emergency relief- with temporary work to avoid pauperization. She labored unceasingly with members of the cabinet and of Congress for the establishment of a bureau to organize and direct her projects. With her daughter she served as a paid agent of the National Freedman's Relief Association of the District of Columbia, after it was organized in March 1863, distributing supplies, establishing industrial training centers, and convoying refugees North for employment. She was also an assistant commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau, for the establishment of which, in 1865, she had labored zealously. After the war, leaders of the woman's suffrage movement declared it unthinkable that the illiterate male negro should be enfranchised and not the intelligent white woman, and in 1867 Mrs. Griffing helped organize the Universal Franchise Association of the District of Columbia and became its president. She was also corresponding secretary of the National Woman's Suffrage Association and her sane work in Washington was most valuable in inspiring respect for her cause.

[Waldo Lincoln, Genealogy of the Waldo Family (1902); E. C. Stanton, S. B. Anthony, and M. J. Gage, History of Woman Suffrage (3 vols., 1881-87); I. H. Harper, Life of Susan B. Anthony (vols. I, II, 1899, vol. III, 1908); Evening Star (Washington), February 19, 1872; information from a nephew, Chas. J. Douglas, Boston.]

K. H. A.


GRIMES, James Wilson, 1816-1872, statesman, lawyer, governor of Iowa.  U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Governor of Iowa, 1854-1858.  Supported by Whigs and Free Soil Democrats.  Elected as Republican Senator in 1859.  Re-elected 1865. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 767; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 630; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 617; Congressional Globe).

GRIMES, JAMES WILSON (October 20, 1816- February 7, 1872), lawyer, legislator, governor of Iowa, and United States senator, was born at Deering, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, the youngest of eight children. His parents, John and Elizabeth (Wilson) Grimes, were intelligent, independent farmers of Scotch-Irish stock. He entered Dartmouth College in August 1832, at the age of sixteen, but left at the close of the first term of  his junior year, in February 1835. In 1845 he was awarded the degree of A.B. as of the class of 1836. After leaving college, he read law in the office of James Walker at Peterborough, New Hampshire, but shortly set forth to seek his fortune in the West. On May 15, 1836, he became a resident of Burlington, Iowa. Here he entered the profession of the law at the age of nineteen and soon became active in public life. In September of that year he acted as secretary of the commission which made two important treaties witl1 the Sac and Fox Indians. The following year he was appointed city solicitor. Elected in 1838 to the first Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Iowa, he served as chairman of the committee on judiciary. He served again in 1843 as a member of the sixth Legislative Assembly, and in 1852 as a member of the fourth General Assembly of the state, where he was a leader in the promotion of railroads. At this time he was listed as a farmer, being interested in stock-breeding and agriculture. He was a charter member of the Southern Iowa Horticultural Society, and for a time served as editor on the staff of the Iowa Farmer and Horticulturist. On November 9, 1846, he had married Elizabeth Sarah Nealley. In the practise of law he was associated with Henry W. Starr.

Grimes was a man of commanding presence. "Careless of appearance, and somewhat rough and ungainly in early life, he grew with years in suavity, and grace, and dignity of bearing." Always, "he abhorred pretension and indirection" (Salter, post, p. 390). He had been reared a Whig and later adhered to that party both from preference and from conviction. Nominated for the office of governor by the Whigs, he was elected on August 3, 1854, after an energetic and fatiguing campaign. He stood for the revision of the state constitution and the establishment of banks and advocated better schools, internal improvements, and the enactment of homestead laws which would give to foreign-born settlers the same rights as were granted to native-born. He upheld the inviolability of the Missouri Compromise; and in his inaugural address on December 9, 1854, made it plain that he would do everything in his power to combat the further spread of slavery. Placing "business above politics, and the state above his party," Grimes, with a sense of institutional values, helped to remake Iowa. While he was in office the constitution of the state was revised and the capital removed from Iowa City to Des Moines; the State University was located permanently at Iowa City; schools free to all children were placed on a public-tax basis; a prohibitory liquor law was enacted; a State Historical Society was established; and institutions were created for the care of the insane, the deaf and dumb, and the blind. By the year 1856 he regarded the old parties and old issues as dead; and in that year spoke with force and deep conviction in behalf of the new Republican party, declaring that the great issue before the country was the extension or non-extension of slavery into the territories. It has been said that he, more than any one else, "made Iowa Republican, and allied it with the loyal States" (Salte, post, p. II6).

On March 4, 1859, he first took his seat in the United States Senate. He was appointed to the committee on pensions and private land claims; and on January 24, 1861, became a member of the committee on naval affairs, of which he was chairman from December 8, 1864, until the end of his senatorial career. He was instrumental in keeping the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and was one of the first to recognize the necessity of an adequate fleet and the advantages of iron-clad ships. He was also chairman of the committee on the District of Columbia; and in the latter part of his senatorial career served on the committees on patents and the Patent Office, public buildings and grounds, and appropriations. He was associated with a group of men who during the Civil War created a detective service to sift;:mt disloyal persons in the public service and elsewhere.

During the impeachment trial of President Johnson in 1868, Grimes di splayed an integrity which cost him his political power and probably hastened his death. Though he considered many of the President's acts as highly deplorable, he did not believe that they constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors" and he seriously doubted the wisdom of a policy of impeachment. The strain of the trial brought on a stroke of paralysis, and when the time came for voting on the impeachment he had to be carried into the Senate chamber. He voted "Not guilty," while James Harlan [1820-1899, q.v.], the other senator from Iowa, voted "Guilty." One ballot the other way would have given a two-thirds majority, and the President would have been retired from office. A storm of political abuse broke upon Grimes; even the town of Burlington viewed his conduct with disfavor.

He returned to Congress when it reassembled in December 1868, but his spirit and strength were gone. In April 1869 he was ordered to Europe for a rest. There he suffered another stroke, and on August 11, sent to the governor of Iowa his resignation as senator, to take effect December 6. When he returned to America in September 1871, he found public sentiment once more in his favor. He died a few months later at his home in Burlington.

[B. F. Shambaugh, The Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of Iowa (7 vols., 1903-05). II, 3-112; collection of pamphlets from Grimes's library, in the library of the State Historical Society of Iowa; Wm. Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes (1876); Eli C. Christoferson, "The Life of James W. Grimes," MS. in the library of the State Historical Society of Iowa; G. T. Chapman, Sketches of the Alumni of Dartmouth College (1867); D. E. Clark, History of Senatorial Elections in Iowa (1912); Sioux City Daily Journal, February 9, 1872.

J B.F.S. ·


GRIMKE, ARCHIBALD HENRY (August 17, 1849-February 25, 1930), negro lawyer, author, publicist, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt.

GRIMKE, ARCHIBALD HENRY (August 17, 1849-February 25, 1930), negro lawyer, author, publicist, son of Henry Grimke of South Carolina and Nancy Weston, a beautiful family slave, was born near Charleston. When his father died, the child was entrusted to the guardianship of his white half-brother. After the Civil War, young Grimke, a boy of sixteen, went North and partly through his own efforts, partly with the help of friends, entered Lincoln University, receiving the degree of B.A. in 1870 and M.A. in 1872. With the aid of his aunt, Sarah Moore Grimke [q.v.], he then entered the Harvard Law School and took the LL.B. degree in 1874. The following year he was established in Boston and beginning to practise law. He very soon became a prominent figure in negro affairs, being made president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and later vice-president of the entire organization. On April 19, 1879, he married Sarah E. Stanley of Boston and, once fairly settled, began to develop his natural talent for writing and to contribute articles to the periodical press in the interests of the negro race. From 1883 to 1885 he was the editor of the Hub, a Boston paper devoted to colored welfare. This post offered him his opportunity to begin his lifelong crusade against race prejudice, race discrimination, and the double standard of sex morality, of which he himself had been a victim. In the early nineties he published the two biographies for which he is best known in the literary field: The Life of William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist (i891), and The Life of Charles Sumner, the Scholar in Politics (1892). In connection with these works he produced numerous pamphlets on the history of the anti-slavery movement and a series of special articles for the Boston Herald, the Boston Traveler, and for the Atlantic Monthly. At the same time he became increasingly active as a member of the American Negro Academy, under whose auspices most of his pamphlets and lectures were published, in agitating for a fully operative negro franchise.

In 1894 Grimke was appointed by President Cleveland American consul to Santo Domingo where he served until 1898. Upon his retirement,  in Boston, he turned with fresh zest to the question of the negro vote. In 1899 he addressed an open letter to President McKinley in which he stated the negro point of view with admirable clearness on behalf of the Colored National League. From this time forward, he devoted his best energies to writing and lecturing on the problems of the, negro race in connection with his work for the American Negro Academy, of which he was president from 1903 to 1916. In 1919, as a testimonial to his efforts in behalf of negro advancement, he received the Spingarn medal, the highest honor annually bestowed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People upon an American citizen of African descent. The body of Grimke's writings is considerable, typical of which are: Right on the Scaffold, or, The Martyrs of 1822 (1901), a sympathetic life of Telemaque (Denmark) Vesey, leader of the Charleston slave rising of 1822; The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments (1913), a protest against race-discrimination at the polls; "The Sex Question and Race Segregation," Papers of the American Negro Academy, 1915 (1916), an indictment of the double standard; The Ultimate Criminal (1915), a suggestive tractate on the influence of race discrimination upon negro crime; and The Shame of America, or, The Negro's Case Against the Republic (1924). In addition to his lifelong crusade on behalf of his race, Grimke found time for other and varied activities. He was trustee of the Estate of Emmeline Cushing for Negro Education, president of the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association, treasurer of the Committee of Twelve for Negro Advancement, member of the Authors' Club, London, and member of the American Social Science Association. He died at his home in Washington, where he had lived and worked since 1905.

["A Biog. Sketch of Archibald Grimke," by his daughter, Angelina W. Grimke, in Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life (New York), February 1925; Archibald H. Grimke (1930), by his brother, Francis J. Grimke; Atlantic Monthly, July 1904; Who's Who in America, 1924- 25; Who's Who of the Colored Race, 1915; Who's Who in Colored America, 1928--29; Journal of Negro History, April 1930; Washington Herald, February 27, 28, 1930; Washington Tribune, August 23, 1929, February 28, 1930.

J. E. M. H.


GRIMKÉ, Angelina Emily (1805-1879) (Mrs. Theodore Weld), Society of Friends, Quaker, reformer, radical abolitionist leader, feminist, author, orator; wrote An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, 1836, member Anti-Slavery Society of New York.  Sister of abolitionist leader Sarah Moore Grimké.  Married to noted abolitionist Theodore Weld.  ). [See GRIMKE, SARAH MOORE, 1792- 1873-]

(Barnes & Dumond, 1934; Ceplair, 1989; Drake, 1950, pp. 157-158, 173n; Dumond, 1961, pp. 90, 93, 185, 190-193, 195-196, 278-279; Lerner, 1967; Lumkin, 1974; Mabee, 1970, pp. 13, 28, 35, 36, 93, 129, 140, 188, 190, 191, 194, 213, 241, 266, 347, 348, 358, 376; Perry, 2001; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 44, 162, 173-174, 199, 289, 290, 308, 321-322, 416, 465, 511; Soderlund, 1985, p. 13; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 26-31, 36, 63, 70, 80, 97, 99, 100, 114, 122, 148; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 768; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 634; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 379-382; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 621; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 325; Barnes, Gilbert H., ed. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sara Grimké, 1822-1844, 2 Vols. 1934.)


GRIMKÉ, Sarah Moore, 1792-1873, Society of Friends, Quaker, reformer, radical abolitionist, feminist, orator, author, women’s rights advocate, political activist.  Wrote, An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, 1836.  Member of the Anti-Slavery Society of New York.  Sister of abolitionist leader Angelina Emily Grimké. 

(Birney, 1885; Ceplair, 1989; Drake, 1950, pp. 157-158; Dumond, 1961, pp. 190, 275; Lerner, 1967; Mabee, 1970, pp. 47, 92, 129, 141, 194, 266, 342; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 44, 162, 199, 290, 308, 322-323, 362, 416, 433, 465, 519; Soderlund, 1985, p. 13; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 26-31, 36, 63, 70, 80, 97, 99, 100, 114, 122, 148; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 768; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 635; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 379-382; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 627; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 325; Barnes, Gilbert H., ed. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sara Grimké, 1822-1844, 2 Vols. 1934.).

GRIMKE, SARAH MOORE (November 26, 1792- December 23, 1873) and her sister, Angelina Emily (February 20, 1805-0ct. 26, 1879), anti-slavery crusaders and advocates of woman's rights, were born in Charleston, South Carolina. Their parents, Judge John Faucheraud Grimke [q.v.] and Mary Smith Grimke, were wealthy, aristocratic, and conservative; but Sarah and Angelina early showed signs of dissatisfaction with their environment. Neither social gaiety nor the formalism of the Episcopal Church met their needs; and their tender, reflective natures made them question the institution of slavery. Sarah, the elder sister, greatly influenced Angelina in this revolt, though at the age of thirty Angelina was in advance of her more conservative sister. As a girl Sarah regretted the fact that her sex made it impossible for her to study the law. Contact with her father and her older brother, Thomas [q.v.], sharpened her mind and displeased her conscience. But it was her association with Quakers, met on a trip to Philadelphia when she was twenty-seven, that crystallized her discontent with her home. After many trying spiritual experiences, she returned North and became a Friend. Angelina, having experimented with Presbyterianism, followed her sister. Both, however, chafed under the discipline of the orthodox Philadelphia Friends, and Angelina, the more expansive and self-reliant, came especially to resent in them what seemed to her an equivocal attitude on slavery and Abolition. A life of modesty, economy, and charity seemed hollow when she longed for an opportunity to serve humanity. Nor did Sarah find peace; her sensitiveness and Jack of self-confidence made her life among the Quakers one of almost intolerable conflict and suffering.

In 1835 Angelina, after much reflection, determined to express her growing sympathy with Abolition and wrote to Garrison, encouraging him in his work. The letter, to her surprise, was published in the Liberator (September 19, 1835). Although Sarah and the Philadelphia Friends disapproved, Angelina, having turned the corner, could not go back. Eager to make a more positive contribution to the cause increasingly close to her heart, she wrote an Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836). In this thirty-six-page pamphlet she urged Southern women to speak and act against slavery, which she endeavored to prove contrary not only to the first charter of human rights given to Adam, but opposed to the Declaration of Independence, "The women of the South can overthrow this horrible system of oppression and cruelty, licentiousness and wrong," she wrote, urging them to use moral suasion in the cause of humanity and freedom. Anti-slavery agitators eagerly seized this eloquent and forceful appeal, enhanced in value by the fact that it came from the pen of one who knew the slave system intimately. In South Carolina, on the other hand, copies of the Appeal were publicly burned by postmasters, and its author was officially threatened with imprisonment if she returned to her native city.

After pondering for months, this shy, blue-eyed young woman, courteous and gentle in beating, took what seemed to her a momentous step. She decided to accept an invitation from the American Antislavery Society to address small groups of women in private parlors. After an inwa1 d struggle Sarah also determined to risk the disapprobation of the Friends, and henceforth the sisters were on intimate terms with Abolitionists and aided former slaves. Sarah, on her part, wrote an Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836). Two years later Angelina, in her Letters to Catherine E. Beecher in Reply to an Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism Addressed to A. E. Grimke (1838), denounced gradualism. It was at this time that the sisters persuaded their mother to apportion slaves to them as their share of the family estate, and these slaves they at once freed.

From addressing small groups of women it was a natural step to the lecture platform. At first the sisters, timid and self-conscious, spoke only to audiences of women, but as their reputation for earnestness and eloquence grew, it was impossible to keep men away. Their lectures in New England aroused great enthusiasm. The prejudice against the appearance of women on the lecture platform found many expressions; one was the famous "Pastoral Letter" issued by the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts, a tirade against women-preachers and women-reformers (Liberator, August 11, 1837). Whittier, though he defended "Carolina's high-souled daughters," at the same time urged them to confine their arguments to immediate emancipation (John Albree, ed., Whittier Correspondence, 1911, p. 265).

So great was the opposition to their speaking in public that the sisters felt compelled to defend woman's rights as well as Abolition, for in their minds the two causes were vitally connected. Not only the efforts made to suppress their testimony against slavery, but their belief that slavery weighed especially heavily on both the colored and white women of the South, led them openly to champion the cause of their sex. Sarah's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838) maintained that "the page of history 'teems with woman's wrongs" and that "it is wet with woman's tears." She indicted the unrighteous dominion exercised over women in the name of protection ; she entreated women to "arise in all the majesty of moral power ... and plant themselves, side by side, on the platform of human rights, with man, to whom they were designed to be companions, equals and helpers in every good word and work" (p. 45). Angelina, in her Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States (1837), strongly insisted on women's equal responsibilities for the nation's guilt and shame and on their interest in the public weal. Gradually many of, the opponents of slavery were won · over to the cause of woman's rights, and the introduction of the question into the anti-slavery agitation by the Grimkes was an important factor in the development of both causes.

On May 14, 1838, Angelina married the Abolitionist, Theodore Dwight Weld. They had one child, Charles Stuart. Since she suffered from ill health after marriage, which made the strain of public lectures seem unwise, she and her sister aided Mr. Weld in conducting a liberal school at Belleville, New Jersey. Later the family removed to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where both the sisters died. The latter part of their lives was marked by devotion to their work of teaching and by an indomitable interest in the causes to which both had contributed.

[Catherine H. Birney, The Grimke Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimke (1885); Theo. D. Weld, In Memory: Angelina Grimke Weld (1880), containing sketch of Sarah Moore Grimke; South Carolina. History and Genealogical Magazine, January 1906; E. C. Stanton and others, History of Woman Suffrage, volume I (1881); F. J. and W. P. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children (1885-89); Woman's Journal, January 3, 1874, November 1, 1879 ; Boston Transcript, October 28, 1879; Garrison MSS. in the Boston Public Library.]

M.E.C.


GRIMKE, THOMAS SMITH (September 26, 1786-Oct. 12, 1834), educator, reformer, brother of Sarah Moore and Angelina Emily Grimke, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt.

GRIMKE, THOMAS SMITH (September 26, 1786-0ct. 12, 1834), educator, reformer, brother of Sarah Moore and Angelina Emily Grimke [qq.v.], was born in Charleston, South Carolina., where his father, John Faucheraud Grimke [q.v.], was a wealthy and influential lawyer. His mother, Mary Smith, was a great-grand-daughter of the second landgrave of South Carolina, and her Puritan background partly explains her son's deep religious bent. After studying in the South, Thomas entered Yale College in the fall of 1805 and graduated in 1807. Although he desired to enter the ministry of the Episcopal Church, he yielded to his father's wishes and studied law in the office of Langdon Cheves. For a number of years his law partner was Robert Y. Hayne. He attained eminence at the bar and in politics, even though he often espoused unpopular causes. As a state senator (18 26-30), he supported the general government on the tariff question. During the nullification controversy he opposed, boldly and passionately, the state's preparations for military resistance and employed his logic and eloquence in behalf of the Union and of pe ace (To the People of the State of South-Carolina, 183 2). He was also a pioneer in the causes of temperance and world peace. In his Address on th e Truth, Dignity, Power and Beauty of the Princip1es of Peace (1832), and in a series of vigorous articles in the Calumet, the organ ot the American Peace Society, he took issue with the advocates of peace who admitted the Scriptural legality of war.

Grimke's educational theories were no less radical than his pacifism. He believed that education must "partake deeply and extensively of the vital spirit of American institutions." Though he was a distinguished classicist, mathematics and the classics found little place in his educational plan, which was essentially utilitarian and religious. As early as 1832 he advocated manual training in the schools and championed science because it prom0ted the substantial, practical improvement of the people. He also favored the higher education of women. Modern history and modern literature bulked large in his plans. He outlined and himself adopted a reformed orthography which omitted silent letters and emphasized consistency, justifying the system on the ground that it was appropriate for America and for democratic, mass education (Oration on American Education, 1835). His piety and his religious fervor were evidenced in his conviction that the Bible should be basic in every scheme of education, from the primary school to the university (An Essay on the Appropriate Use of the Bible, in Common Education, 1833). Grimke died while on his way to Columbus, Ohio, in the fall of 1834, and was buried in Columbus. He had married, on January 25, 1810, Sarah Daniel Drayton, by whom he had six sons. His family and friends were devoted to him because of his simplicity and gentleness of manner, his humility of heart, and his intellectual courage.

[In addition to the lectures and addresses mentioned, a small part of his total output, the volume entitled Reflections on the Character and Objects of all Science and Literature (1831) is representative. The best contemporary accounts of Grimke are to be found in the Calumet, January-February 1835, and in the American Annals of Educ. and Instruction, November 1835. The "Letter Book" of Wm. Watson, in the possession of Miss Elizabeth Dana, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, contains several important letters from Grimke. Consult also Catherine H. Birney, The Grimke Sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke (1885); C. B. Galbreath, "Thos. Smith Grimke," Ohio Archaeology and History Quart., July 1924; F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, volume VI (1912); the South Carolina History and Genealogical Magazine, January 1903; Charleston Courier, October 24, 1834; Southern Patriot (Charleston), October 27, 1834.]

M. E. C.


GRINNELL, Josiah Bushnell, 1821-1891, New Haven, Vermont, abolitionist, Republican Party co-founder, theologian, lawyer.  Founded First Congregational Church, Washington, DC, in 1851.  Founded town of Grinnell, Iowa.  Iowa State Senator, 1856-1860.  Congressman 1863-1867.  Supported radical abolitionist John Brown.  Advocated for use of colored troops in the Union Army.  As Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  (Mabee, 1970, p. 356; Payne, 1938; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 323-324; Schuchmann, 2003; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 1-2; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 4; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 634; Congressional Globe).

GRINNELL, JOSIAH BUSHNELL (December 22, 1821-March 31, 1891), Congregational clergyman, Abolitionist, and commonwealth builder, once described himself as a "pioneer, farmer, and radical." He was born in New Haven, Vt. His father, Myron Grinnell, was a descendant of French Huguenot ancestors who settled in Rhode Island prior to 1640; his mother, Catherine Hastings, was a daughter of a Scotch immigrant. His early life in New England was typical in that it accustomed him to toil, hardship, and moral ideas. When he was sixteen he taught a country school; later he graduated from Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, New York During the summer and fall of 1844 he was agent of the American Tract Society in Wisconsin. Graduating from Auburn Theological Seminary, Auburn, New York, in 1847, he became pastor of the Congregational church in Union Village, New York, where he remained till 1850. In 1851 he started the First Congregational Church of Washington, D. C., and there he delivered what is said to have been the first sermon against slavery ever heard in that city. Compelled to leave because of his views, he took a pastorate in New York City. While there, February 5, 1852, he married Julia Ann Chapin of Springfield, Massachusetts, and also formed a life-long friendship with Horace Greeley [q. v.]. Loss of voice necessitated a change of occupation, and Greeley made to him the remark, "Go West, young man, go West," which has since become historic. He went to Iowa in 1854 and purchase d six thousand acres in Poweshiek County. Here he and three others founded the town of Grinnell. A church was started with Grinnell as preacher and largely through his influence Grinnell University was planned. It was well under way when in 1859 Iowa College, founded in 1846 at Davenport by the "Iowa Band" of home missionaries, moved to Grinnell and absorbed it. The institution is now known as Grinnell College. The church and college attracted a high type of settler and the community took on a distinct New England atmosphere. It grew rapidly after 1863 when Grinnell used his influence as a director of the Rock Island Railroad to bring the road through the town.

As early as 1856 his interests and activities became state-wide. He attended the convention which organized the Republican party of Iowa and was chosen to write the address to the voters. The same year he was elected state senator on a platform of "No Liquor Shops; Free Schools for Iowa; No Nationalizing of Slavery" (Grinnell, post, p. 117). In the Senate he was chairman of the committee which secured the passage of the Free School Act of 1858 and was one of the sharpest critics of the doctrines involved in the Dred Scott Decision. He soon became known as perhaps the leading Abolitionist of the state, John Brown himself brought a band of escaped slaves to Grinnell's home in 1859, and there wrote part of his Virginia Proclamation. In 1860 Grinnell was a delegate to the convention which nominated Lincoln for president and two years later was himself elected congressman, serving from 1863 to 1867. A warm personal friend of Lincoln, he supported the Administration vigorously. In debate he was relentless toward the opposition, sparing neither sarcasm nor ridicule. He urged the use of colored soldiers in the war and was an ardent supporter of a high protective tariff. The war over, he opposed the readmission of the Southern states until they should give the vote to the black man. In 1867, he lost the Republican nomination for governor. Friendship for Greeley and a conviction of Grant's inadequacy led him to support the former for president in 1872. By so doing he put behind him promotion in his own party. He was a man of wide interests, however, and continued active in the life of his state. He had a pioneer's faith in its future and probably no one did more through speaking and writing to make Iowa known beyond its own borders.

He did much, also, for agricultural development. Wherever farmers were gathered, he urged higher standards in grain growing and stock breeding, and as a practical farmer he led the way by first introducing Devon cattle and Norman and Clydesdale horses into the state. These activities brought him recognition in many state organizations and the presidency of the American Agricultural Association (1885). He early recognized the significance of the railroad. As a builder, promoter, or director he was connected with a number of lines and acted as president and later receiver of the Central Railroad of Iowa. He always remained deeply interested in the church and in education. He served as trustee of Grinnell College for thirty years and was a liberal benefactor of the institution. When in 1882 the college and part of the town were destroyed by a tornado, he hurried East to raise funds. His energy, eloquence, and wide contact with public men never served him better, for he quickly raised forty thousand dollars. He died in 1891 just after having completed his autobiographical reminiscences.

[J. B. Grinnell, Men and Events of Forty Y ears (1891); T. O. Douglass, "The Builders of a Commonwealth," vol. II (MS., copies in libraries of Grinnell College and Univ. of Chicago), and The Pilgrims of Iowa (1911); J. L. Hill, Yankees (1923); Annals of Iowa., January 1896, July 1897, April, October 1907; Iowa State Register (Des Moines), April 2, 3, 1891.

J. C.E.P.


GRISWOLD, John Augustus, 1818-1872, manufacturer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York.  Mayor of Troy, NY, 1850.  Raised regiment for Union Army.  Supervised building of U.S.S. Monitor, the first ironclad Union Navy ship.  Elected U.S. Congressman 1862, served 1863-1869.  Opposed the Fugitive-Slave Act and Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. III, p. 3; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 4; Congressional Globe)

GRISWOLD, JOHN AUGUSTUS (November 11, 1818-October 31, 1872), manufacturer and congressman, the son of Chester and Abbey (Moulton) Griswold and a descendant of Edward Griswold who settled in Windsor, Conn., in 1639, was born in Nassau, New York. His father was at one time a member of the New York Assembly. Young Griswold entered the hardware house of Hart, Lesley & Warren, of Troy, New York, when he was seventeen but left at the end of a year to accept a position as book-keeper for C. H. & J. J. Merritt, cotton manufacturers. After establishing a whole sale and retail drug business, he became an agent for the Rensselaer Iron Works and, later, head of the Bessemer Steel Works, the Rensselaer Iron Works, and other blast furnaces.

As a substantial citizen, well-established socially through his marriage, September 14, 1843, with Elizabeth Hart, daughter of Richard P. Hart, Griswold was elected mayor of Troy on the Democratic ticket in 1855. In 1860 he was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress. Throughout his public career, he was an ardent supporter of the Union; after the fall of Fort Sumter he presided at a mass meeting to raise troops; and he later assisted in the organization of several regiments, one of which, the 21st New York, was known as the Griswold Light Cavalry. An early advocate of armored ships, he and John F. Winslow [q.v.] accepted a contract for a number of wooden vessels sheathed with metal. Griswold, with Winslow, and C. S. Bushnell, showed the Naval Board a model of Ericsson's Monitor, and, gaining the interest of President Lincoln, agreed to construct and deliver such a "floating battery" within one hundred days, on the understanding that they should assume the entire cost-approximately a quarter of a million dollars-in case the undertaking failed. The Monitor, begun in October 1861, was constructed at the plant of T. F. Howland, Greenpoint, Long Island, under Ericsson's direction, but the machinery, plates, and much of the other iron work were manufactured in Troy. The ship was launched on January 30, 1862. On March 9 it defeated the Merrimac. As a result of its success, Griswold and his associates built six more vessels of the same type. Their destructiveness affected materially the course of the war. On account of these patriotic activities, Griswold was elected to the Thirty- eighth Congress as a War Democrat. Since he voted for the repeal of the Fugitive-Slave Act, he was returned to the Thirty-ninth Congress only by Republican support. As a member of the Committee on Naval Affairs during his first two terms, he defended the conduct of the war, and in a speech delivered February 4, 1865 (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, 2 Session, p. 597), attacked the proposal to divide the responsibility of the Navy Department. Upon his reelection in 1866 he became a member of the committee on ways and means. In 1868 he was an unsuccessful candidate on the Republican ticket for the governorship of New York.

In 1864, in association with Erastus Corning, A. L. Holley [qq.v. ], Winslow, and Erastus Corning, Jr., Griswold secured control of the Bessemer patents in America. His firm, known after 1868 as John A. Griswold & Company, exerted a profound influence upon the development of the iron and steel industry in the United States. So general was the interest in the plants erected in Troy that the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science visited the city in 1870 to examine the works. After his defeat for the governorship and his withdrawal from public life, Griswold devoted himself to the proposition of his financial interests in Troy and to the cultural advancement of the city, in which his name has been perpetuated by various organizations.

[Invitation to the Members of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci. (n.d.); The Bessemer Steel Works and the Rensselaer Iron Works (1870), pub. by John A. Griswold & Company; The Navy in Congress (1865); F. B. Wheeler. John F. Winslow, LL.D., and the Monitor (1893); W. C. Church, The Life of John Ericsson (1890); J.M. Swank, History of the Manufacture of Iron in All Ages (1884); Biog. Dir. American Congress (1928); Monitor, September 1868; N. B. Sylvester, History of Rensselaer County, New York (1880); New York Tribune, November 1, 1872; Troy Times, November 1, 2, 4, 1872. ]

R. P. B-r.


GROSVENOR, Cyrus P., 1792-1879, Salem, Massachusetts, clergyman, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery agent, anti-slavery Baptist minister, educator.  Lectured on anti-slavery.  American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) Vice President, 1834-1835, Manager, 1839-1840, 1840-1841.  Member of the Liberty Party.  Leader of the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts and Connecticut.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 188, 285, 393n24; Putnam, 1893, p. 14, “Friend of Man,” October 6, 1836, May 10, 1837)


GRUBER, Reverend Jacob, clergyman.  Preached against slavery; called it a sin.  Gave sermon in Washington County, Maryland, on August 16, 1818.  He was indicted on grounds of sedition.  He was defended by attorney Rodger B. Tanney (later Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court).  He was defended on the principle of free speech.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 142-147; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 35, 472)


GUE, BENJAMIN F. (December 25, 1828-June 1, 1904), lieutenant-governor of Iowa, journalist, historical writer, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt.

GUE, BENJAMIN F. (December 25, 1828-June 1, 1904), lieutenant-governor of Iowa, journalist, historical writer, the eldest son of John and Catherine (Gurney) Gue, was born in Greene County, New York. His father was of French and his mother of English descent. In 1834 his parents removed to a farm near Farmington, in Ontario County, where he grew to manhood. His higher education was limited to two terms in the Canandaigua and West Bloomfield academies. When the family left the farm and separated in 1851, Benjamin went back to his native county where he taught school for one term. Caught by the spirit of the westward movement, he decided to go to the new state of Iowa and after a journey of three weeks he arrived at Davenport, March 22, 1852. On a quarter section of land, in the northwest corner of Scott County, on Rock Creek, he and a younger brother began farming with a plow, a wagon, and a team of horses. They prospered, bought more land, and soon each possessed a farm of his own. On November 12, 1855, Benjamin was married to Elizabeth R. Parker, a young woman who had been teaching school in the vicinity.

Although his parents were Friends, Gue became an active Unitarian, helped to establish the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, and was one of the founders of the Iowa Unitarian Association. From his Quaker abolitionist parents he early acquired a deep interest in the antislavery movement. It was this interest that drew him into politics and led him to serve as a delegate to the convention that met in Iowa City in February 1856 to organize the Republican party in Iowa. In 1857 he was elected to a seat in the lower house of the General Assembly, to which position he was reelected in 1859. In the legislature he took a leading interest in legislation for the establishment and support of the Iowa State Agricultural College (now the State College of Agriculture). Later (1866) he served as president of the board of trustees of this institution, and in the face of considerable opposition he secured the admission of women on an equality with men. In 1861 he was elected to a seat in the Iowa Senate, which place he held through two regular sessions and one extra session. President Lincoln appointed him postmaster at Fort Dodge in 1864; and in 1865 he was elected to the office of lieutenant-governor.

Gue began his journalistic career in 1864 as editor and publisher of the Fort Dodge Republican which he soon rechristened the Iowa North West. Republicanism, temperance, and woman's suffrage were the outstanding policies of his paper. In 1871 he assumed editorial control of the Iowa Homestead at Des Moines, and for a few months he was chief editor of the Daily State Journal. At this point his newspaper work was interrupted by his appointment (December 1872) to the office of United States pension agent for Iowa by President Grant. Eight years later he and his son acquired the Iowa Homestead by purchase. During this period of his editorship of the paper he took part in the Greenback movement and in 1883 indorsed every plank in the party's platform except the one "arraigning the republican party" (Des Moines Iowa Tribune, July 18, 1883). The latter part of his life he devoted to the writing of biographical and historical sketches which were printed in the Annals of Iowa and in the year before his death he published in four volumes a History of Iowa from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, designed to be "a cyclopedia of general information pertaining to Iowa." He died at Des Moines in his seventy-sixth year.

[Gue's History of Iowa, vol. IV, pp. II 1-12; E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers and Pub. Men of  Iowa (1916); C.R. Tuttle and D.S. Durrie, An Illustrated History of the State of Iowa (1876); Johnson Brigham, article in the Annals of Iowa, July 1904; Pioneer Lawmakers' Association of Iowa. Reunion of 1904 (1904); Reg. and Leader (Des Moines), June 2, 1904, Jan. 2, 1910. Gue had no middle name; he simply adopted an initial.]

B. F. S.


GURLEY, Ralph Randolph, 1797-1872, clergyman. Secretary, American Colonization Society.  Co-founder of Liberia.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 172, 199-200; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 163; Sorin, 1971, p. 30; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 13-14; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 56; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 731).


GURLEY, RALPH RANDOLPH (May 26, 1797-July 30, 1872), philanthropist, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt.

GURLEY, RALPH RANDOLPH (May 26, 1797-July 30, 1872), philanthropist, was born in Lebanon, Conn., fifth of the seven children of the Reverend John and Mary (Porter) Gurley. He entered Yale with the class of 1818 and before graduating was recognized among the first in his class. Upon leaving Yale he removed to Washington, D. C., where, in 1822, he became an agent of the American Colonization Society, and to this organization he devoted the rest of his life. He was successively agent, secretary, vice-president, and life director. His work as secretary was largely in Washington, where he looked after the correspondence, planned and outfitted the expeditions of the colonists, regulated the affairs of Liberia on the American side of the Atlantic, edited for twenty-five years the organ of the Society, the African Repository, and prepared for an even longer time its Annual Reports. Besides these duties he wrote for the press on colonization and lectured for the Society in North, West, and South. With the rise of the abolition movement his efforts in behalf of colonization increased, and he even invaded New England to debate publicly with several of the leading abolitionists. Later he crossed the Atlantic to urge the cause of colonization in England, where he engaged in spirited public debates at Egyptian Hall, London. His Mission to England (1841), published upon his return, "contains some of the best articles ever penned on the subject of African colonization" (African Repository, September 1872, p. 282). "During those years of bitter struggle, between 1830 and 1840, Gurley stands out as the great Colonizationist" (Fox, post, p. 74). He was "essentially a peacemaker and lover of the Union" (Ibid., p. 73); the more radical abolitionists considered him pro-slavery; but when the war came he sided with the North. His reputation as a controversialist was high, for he was "blessed with one of the mildest and gentlest of dispositions ... which was ... manifested in his placid smile, his mild, benevolent face and gentle manner, which charmed everyone" (African Repository, Zoe. cit.). In person he was tall, and, in the vigor of manhood, remarkably handsome. He thrice visited Liberia. In 1824 he was sent thither for the first time by the Society and the United States government to investigate charges made against Jehudi Ashmun [q.v.], who was unofficially acting as governor, and to straighten out existing difficulties in the colony. The latter task he performed satisfactorily, drawing up a "Plan for the Civil Government of Liberia" which was adopted by the people, accepted by the Society, and put into successful operation. His investigation completely vindicated Ashmun and contributed to Ashmun's first appointment as colonial agent for Liberia. Later Gurley became Ashmun's biographer, publishing Life of Jehudi Ashmun, Late Colonial Agent in Liberia, in 1835. In 1849 he again visited Liberia under instructions from the United States government, and upon his return made a report on the condition and prospects of the colony, which was printed. Upon the occasion of his final visit in 1867 he was warmly received by the people. Gurley was a licentiate of the Presbytery of the District of Columbia, and, although never ordained or installed over any church, preached widely, his services being eagerly sought for particularly among the colored churches. He also acted for a time as chaplain of the House of Representatives. Among the poor, and particularly among the negro poor, of Washington, his labors were abundant, and to save one negro family from separation he even sacrificed his own library and his home. He died in Washington only three months after the death of his wife, Eliza (McLellan) Gurley, who had come to that city as a bride nearly forty-five years before. Of their thirteen children but two survived their parents.

[Mason Noble, A Discourse Commemorative of the Life and Character of the Reverend Ralph Randolph Gurley (1872); Memorial of the Semi-Centennial Anniversary of the American Colonization Society (1867); E. L. Fox, The American Colonization Society, 1817-40 (1919); Fifty-sixth Ann. Report, American Colonization Society (1873).]

W. R.W.



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