Hah-Ham: Hahn through Hamlin

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


HAHN, Georg Michael Decker (November 24, 1830-March 15, 1886), the first Republican governor of Louisiana, congressman, editor, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt.

HAHN, GEORG MICHAEL DECKER (November 24, 1830-March 15, 1886), the first Republican governor of Louisiana, congressman, editor, was born at Klingenmunster in Bavaria, Germany, and when a small child was brought to the United States by his widowed mother, Margaretha Decker Hahn, along with four other children. After a short stay in New York, they settled in New Orleans about 1840. The next year the mother died of yellow fever. Young Michael attended the public schools of his adopted city, and after graduating from high school, entered the law office of Christian Roselius, a leading New Orleans lawyer, and at the same time attended lectures in the law department of the University of Louisiana (now Tulane University), from which he received the degree of LLB. in 1851. While a student he made a living by conducting a real-estate agency and by writing for newspapers. After completing his studies he immediately began the practice of his profession, combining with it the duties of a notary public. When barely twenty-two he was elected to the New Orleans school board, and soon became its president. In the days before the Civil War he was a Democrat, but independent in his political thinking. He was opposed to the Slidell wing of the party in Louisiana, opposed the nomination of Buchanan in 1856, and in 1860 supported Douglas for the presidency. Throughout the controversial fifties he was a bitter opponent of slavery, and in 1860-61 he was a member of a committee which canvassed the state against secession. He omitted the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy in renewing his oath as notary, and when Farragut's fleet arrived at New Orleans he hastened to pledge his allegiance to the United States government.

In December 1862 the two Louisiana congressional districts within the Union lines elected congressmen, and Hahn was chosen to represent the 2nd district, but, with the representative from the 1st district, he was not permitted to take his seat until February 1863. During his short stay in Washington he supported the war measures of President Lincoln and at the expiration of his term he was appointed prize commissioner at New Orleans. In 1864)le purchased the New Orleans Daily True Delta, which he edited for some time as a Republican newspaper-the first of two ventures in Republican journalism in New Orleans, for in 1867 he started the New Orleans Republican, which he conducted until 1871. In the election of February 22, 1864, he was chosen governor by the Free-State party, one of three groups participating in the election, and proceeded to carry out President Lincoln's mild reconstruction policy. He resigned the governor's office, March 4, 1865, having been elected to the United States Senate, but it seems he never pressed his claim to a senatorial seat because of his opposition to President Johnson's reconstruction policy. During a New Orleans riot, in 1866, he received a gunshot wound which made him a cripple for the rest of his life. In 1871 he gave up his New Orleans newspaper and retired to his sugar plantation in St. Charles Parish, where the following year he laid out the town of Hahnville. On February 15, 1872, he issued the first number of the St. Charles Herald, which he published until his death. He was chosen a representative to the state legislature, where he served for a time as speaker, and served also as district judge. In 1884 he was Republican nominee for Congress in the 2nd district of Louisiana, and, in a district usually Democratic, he was elected by 3,000 majority. Not long after he had entered upon his new duties he was found dead at his lodging place in Washington. Hahn was a scholarly man of much ability and was recognized for his integrity and devotion to principle. Because of this he was able to retain the respect of the people although affiliated with a party which was unpopular in the state. Said Congressman Blanchard of Louisiana: "Of all the leading Republicans of Louisiana he was one of the least objectionable."

[Addresses on the Life and Character of Michael Hahn ... Delivered in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, 49 Congress, I Session (1886); Maynier's La. Biographies, pt. I (1882), pp. 42-46; Mrs. Eugene Soniat, Biog. Sketches of Louisiana's Governors from D'Iberville to McEnery, by a Louisianaise (1885); J. R. Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in La. (through 1868) (1910); Ella Lonn, Reconstruction in La. After 1868 (1918); Alcee Fortier, A I-list. of La. (1904), vol. IV; Evening S tar (Washington, D. C.), March 15, 1886; Times-Democrat (New Orleans), March 16, 1886.]

M.J.W.


HALE, Edward Everett, 1822-1909, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman, Unitarian minister, writer, abolitionist leader.  Co-founder of the Freedman’s Aid Society in 1862, which aided African Americans.  (Adams, 1977; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 325-326; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 32-33, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 99; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 816)

HALE, EDWARD EVERETT (April 3, 1822- June 10, 1909), author, Unitarian minister, brother of Lucretia Peabody and Charles Hale [qq.v.], was born in Boston, the fourth of his parents' eight children, and died, at eighty-seven, in the house, in the Roxbury district of Boston, in which he had lived for forty years. His father, Nathan Hale [q.v.], was a nephew of the young American soldier of the same name whose story is a classic episode in the War of Independence. His mother, Sarah Preston Everett, was a sister of Edward Everett [q.v.]. He was fond of saying that he was "cradled in the sheets of a newspaper," and his father's long identification with the Boston Daily Advertiser, of which he acquired the ownership in 1814 and was editor for nearly fifty years thereafter, gave abundant color to the remark. When he was about eleven years old, his father suggested his translating, for publication in the Daily, an article from a French newspaper. It made no difference that he had never studied French. With the help of a sister and a dictionary he translated the article, which was duly printed (Life and Letters, 1917, I, 196). An easy-going journalistic attitude towards writing in general characterized much of his own work throughout life. At a dame school and the Boston Latin School he was made ready to enter Harvard College, as he did, at the age of thirteen. Looking upon school as a "necessary nuisance," he acquired much of his early education from the large, happy, and busy family of which he was a member. The young people made miniature railroad engines and printed books and periodicals of their own composition. Church-going and Sunday school, dancing lessons, frequent contacts with the most stimulating minds of the stirring, homogeneous community-all combined with the more definite processes of schooling to qualify the thirteen-year-old freshman for getting the best out of college. At Harvard he appears to have taken a healthy, all-round interest in the duties and pastimes of his course, gaining some mastery of the classics and English composition, and graduating in 1839, second in his class, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and class poet. At seventeen his formal education thus stood completed.

It had always been taken for granted that he would enter the Unitarian ministry. Without feeling any positive impulse in that direction, and with a marked disinclination to a formal course in theology, he devoted his first two years out of college to teaching in the Boston Latin School, wrote for the press, and pursued his studies for the ministry under private guidance. Before the end of 1842 he began to preach, and in April 1846 was ordained minister of the Church of the Unity in Worcester, Massachusetts. Ten years later he became minister of the South Congregational Church in Boston-his only other parish for the forty-three ensuing years through which he was to continue his active ministry.

A sketch of "Boston in the Forties"-in his New England Boyhood and Other Bits of Autobiography (1900)-helps one to account for the Hale of the fifties and thereafter. Here he depicted the ferments of the little city, of whose inhabitants Emerson was saying that "every man carries a revolution in his waist-coat pocket." What Hale himself said of the leaders in Boston at this time was that they "really believed that they could make the city of Boston the city of God, and they meant to do so," and that they were "men who knew that all things are possible to one who believes" (Ibid., p. 243).

Big of body and spirit, destined to grow, with his aspect of a shaggy prophet and his great, reverberating voice, into the very figure of a seer, Hale was precisely the man to put into action the prevailing beliefs of the Boston in which he came to maturity. Strongly Unitarian in his theological views, honored as a leader in his denomination, he was nevertheless concerned chiefly with the aspects of Christianity on which all could agree. The "New Civilization" for which he labored implied a general betterment of human relationships, social, political, personal. Before the Civil War he threw himself heartily into the work of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, writing a book on Kansas (spelled Kanzas) and Nebraska, and thus virtually beginning his long career of the service of causes through the printed word. As the war approached he drilled with a rifle corps in Boston-but felt, when the contest began, that he could be of most use at home. There he worked tellingly enough in the Sanitary Commission to win for his figure a conspicuous place on one of the bas-reliefs adorning the Soldiers' Monument on Boston Common. What was more important, he wrote at this time, "The Man Without a Country" (Atlantic Monthly, December 1863), one of the best short stories written by an American, and representing Hale at his best as a writer of fiction with a purpose.

The intended immediate purpose of "The Man Without a Country" was to influence an impending election. Its larger, long-continued service as a rarely effectual incentive to patriotism was unforeseen. In its blending of fact, none too thoroughly verified, with extravagant fiction, all narrated with a plausibility of detail clearly suggesting the influence of Defoe, it displays to the best advantage its author's method and manner. Four years earlier, in 1859, he h ad published in the Atlantic Monthly the s tory "My Double; and How He Undid Me," revealing him, equally at his best, in a distinctive vein of humor. These stories, with others, were included in his first volume of fiction, If, Yes, and Perhaps. Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations, with Some Bits of Fact (1868). His many subsequent books were, almost without exception, the work of a religious, humanitarian journalist, keenly perceptive of significances, historic and other, prodigal in illustrations from fact, but much le ss concerned with minor points of accuracy than with major considerations of meaning. "If a parable teaches its lesson," one can imagine his saying, "what matter if it does not tally at every point with the books of reference?" Especially in two of his books, Ten Times One is Ten (1871) and In His Name (1873), which he, though probably few others, counted his best, he gave the direction to far-reaching movements-the Lend a Hand movement, with its familiar motto of Hale's invention, "look up and not down, look forward and not back, look out and not in, lend a hand," and the I. H. N. and other clubs of organized good-will. Both of these stories appeared in Old and New, a monthly magazine which Hale edited from 1870 to 1875. This was a periodical of which one of his friends said that "it would have succeeded had there been anybody connected with it who wanted to make money." Through the press, daily, weekly, and monthly, Hale constantly poured himself forth, turning at times from prose to verse. In the vast bulk of his production three volumes-containing much of autobiography must be noted: A New England Boyhood (1893; reprinted in A New England Boyhood and Other Bits of Autobiography, 1900), lames Russell Lowell and His Friends (1899), and Memories of a Hundred Years (2 vols., 1902).

Two honors, one local, one national, were appropriate to the end of his career. When the twentieth century came in, it was Hale who was chosen to read the Ninetieth Psalm from the balcony of the Massachusetts State House to the great silent crowd that assembled on Boston Common during the final hour of December 31, 1900. The national honor was his election, at the end of 1903, as chaplain of the United States Senate. In these final years also he seized every occasion to urge, through speech and print, the cause of international peace. This was but the logical climax of a life-long work 'or the general wellbeing of mankind.

His domestic life was happy and spirited. On October 13, 1852, he married Emily Baldwin Perkins, of Hartford, Conn., a grand-daughter of Lyman Beecher [q.v.]. Travel, more often in America than in Europe, gave variety to the family routine of Boston in the winter and Matunuck, R. I., in the summer. Up to April in the last year of his life he performed the duties of his chaplaincy at Washington. Then he came back to Boston, where he died, June 10, 1909. His wife, with their one daughter and three of their seven sons, survived him.

[The three autobiographical volumes mentioned above provide many facts in the life of Hale. These are supplemented by the prefaces he wrote for the "Library Edition" of his works (Boston, 1898-1901). The Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, by Edward E. Hale, Jr. (2 vols., 1917), is the authoritative biography. The Philip Nolan of "The Man Without a Country" is not to be confused with the Philip Nolan [q.v.] of history, as Hale explained in "The Real Philip Nolan," Miss. Historical Society Pubs., IV (1901), 281-329.]

M.A. De W. H.


HALE, James T., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery


HALE, John Parker, 1806-1873, New Hampshire, lawyer, statesman, diplomat, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator.  Member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.  President of the Free Soil Party, 1852.  Elected to Congress in 1842, he opposed the 21st Rule suppressing anti-slavery petitions to Congress.  Refused to support the annexation of Texas in 1845.  Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1846, he was the first distinctively anti-slavery Senator.  Adamantly opposed slavery for his 16 years in office.  In 1851, served as Counsel in the trial of rescued slave Shadrach.  In 1852, he was nominated for President of the United States, representing the Free Soil Party.  As U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Blue, 2005, pp. 8, 35, 51-54, 74, 100-102, 121, 126, 152, 164, 170, 205, 220; Filler, 1960, pp. 187, 189, 213, 247; Goodell, 1852, p. 478; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 20, 28, 29, 33-37, 43-46, 51, 60, 63-65, 68, 72, 254n; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 50, 54, 298; Sorin, 1971, pp. 130, 132; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 33-34; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 105; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 862; Congressional Globe)

HALE, JOHN PARKER (March 31, 1806--November 19, 1873), lawyer, politician, diplomat, was born at Rochester, New Hampshire. He was descended from Robert Hale who settled in Charlestown, in Massachusetts, in 1632. His parents were John Parker and Lydia C. (O'Brien) Hale, the latter the daughter of an Irish refugee who had died in the American service during the Revolution. His father was a successful lawyer but his death in 1819 left the family in straitened circumstances and it was due to the courage and self-sacrifice of his mother that John was enabled to attend Phillips Exeter Academy and Bowdoin College, graduating from the latter in 1827. He then studied law  at Rochester and Dover, was admitted to the bar in 1830, and began practice at the latter town, maintaining residence there henceforth. When he left college he had gained a reputation for combined brilliance and laziness. In his profession he came to be known not as a learned, but as a "ready lawyer," possessed of tact and oratorical ability, and remarkably skilled in extricating himself from untenable positions (Bell, post, p. 417). He rose rapidly and made a reputation as a successful jury lawyer. It was doubtless due to this fact, as well as to his democratic principles, that he was an advocate of increasing the powers of the jury and making them judges of the Jaw as well as the fact.

Hale's political career began in 1832 with his election to the state legislature. In 1834 he was appointed United States district attorney and held office until removed by President Tyler in 1841. A year later he was elected to Congress. New Hampshire was a Democratic stronghold and Hale followed conventional doctrines. His early speeches have a somewhat demagogic tone, but he showed independence, and shortly before the end of his term, he proposed a limitation of the area open to slavery should Texas be added to the Union. His attitude on the Texas question finally led to a breach with the party when in January 1845 he addressed a letter to his constituent s denouncing annexation as promoting the interests of slavery and "eminently calculated to provoke the scorn of earth and the judgment of heaven" (Exeter
News-Letter, January 20, 1845). In a special convention, the Democrats on February 12 revoked his renomination and solemnly read him out of the party. With the backing of some loyal friends, he proceeded to organize an independent movement. As a result, the New Hampshire legislature in 1846 passed under control of a combination of Whigs and independent Democrats, which on June 9 elected the insurgent Hale to the United States Senate for a six-year term commencing March 4, 1847. It was the most notable anti-slavery success hitherto achieved.

For some time, until joined by Chase and Sumner, Hale occupied a most conspicuous place, and if excluded from all party councils and responsibilities, he was at least free to assail slavery without the restraint which party membership imposed. His most notable speech was probably the one delivered in reply to Webster's address of March 7, 1850, on the territorial question (Congressional Globe, 31 Congress, 1 Session, App. pp. 1054-65). His long speeches, however, are in general inferior to his brief extemporaneous utterances in the course of debate. A voiding the excesses of some anti-slavery advocates, good humored, witty, and eloquent, he was personally popular, although his sallies occasionally provoked outbursts of wrath among the Southern members. It was during his first term in the Senate that he secured the abolition of flogging in the navy, a reform which he had urged from the time of his appearance in the lower house. His further argument that discipline should be more intelligent and humane, that the navy should offer advantages to the ordinary seaman which would make service attractive to the best grade of young men, rewarding good conduct with promotion and better opportunities (Ibid., 32 Congress, 1 Session, p. 449), was decidedly in advance of his time. He constantly urged the abolition of the grog ration as well and this was finally brought about in 1862. He himself considered these reforms the outstanding accomplishments of his Senate career, and in deference to his opinion they are recorded on his monument in the State House yard at Concord. In addition to his anti-slavery activity in the Senate, Hale conducted various platform campaigns on the subject and was a well-known lecturer throughout the North. He also appeared as counsel in cases arising under the Fugitive-Slave law, including the famous Anthony Burns case involving Theodore Parker and other eminent Bostonians. His prominence in the anti-slavery cause led to his nomination for the presidency by the Liberty party in 1847, but he withdrew in favor of Van Buren when the Free-Soil party absorbed the Liberty party in 1848. In 1852 he accepted the nomination of the Free-Soilers and polled 150,000 votes.

On the expiration of his first term in the Senate Hale resumed legal practice and for a short time lived in New York. By 1855, however, the anti-slavery coalition again controlled the New Hampshire legislature and after a prolonged contest he was elected to serve out the unexpired term of Charles G. Atherton, deceased. Three years later he was reelected for a full term. He had become one of the most prominent Republicans in the country, although the influence of his earlier Democratic affiliations was still perceptible, and it was reported that the power of the national party leaders was exerted in his behalf, inasmuch as the legislature was reluctant to break the local precedents which favored rotation. This term, however, added little to his fame, although he was active on the floor and prominent in the adoption of the various measures which at last gave slavery its quietus. During the war he held the chairmanship of the committee on naval affairs. The standard of public morals had relaxed, and in naval matters, to quote Secretary Welles, there had developed a "debauched system of personal and party favoritism" (post, I, 482), especially pernicious in the services of construction and supply. There was a navy-yard in New Hampshire, and Hale was admittedly careless, easy going, accommodating, and not over careful as to the character of his professional and political associations. His friends, who have always insisted on his personal honesty, believed that he was imposed upon by unscrupulous and designing parties, and Secretary Welles, that he was trying to use his chairmanship for personal gain and political advantage. Senators Grimes and Foot both expressed disapproval of his conduct and in 1864 when he was a candidate for reelection the impression was abroad that the leaders in Washington would be glad to see his retirement. Late in 1863 an investigation disclosed that he had accepted a fee from one J. M. Hunt, convicted of fraud against the government, and had appeared on his behalf before the secretary of war. Although exonerated by the Senate judiciary committee of any violation of law, the fact that its report included a bill making such practice illegal in future (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, I Session, pp. 420, 460, 555) told heavily against him and undoubtedly contributed to a decisive defeat by the Republican caucus at Concord, June 9, 1864. His speech on the propose d bill (Ibid., pp. 559 ff.) does not indicate a keen sense of moral values and lends color to the comment of the Boston Daily Courier, January 1, 1864, that though he did not mean to be dishonest or dishonorable, "his perceptions were befogged by the atmosphere of fraud, corruption and crime surrounding him in the party to which he is attached."

In March 1865 Hale was appointed minister to Spain although he would have preferred the Paris legation. According to Sumner, "President Lincoln selected Hale out of general kindness and good-will to the ' lame ducks,' " and "wished to break his fall" (E. L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, vol. IV, 1893, p. 25 5). His training and temperament were not suited for such a post, and he was handicapped by ignorance of the language. As far as can be judged by the somewhat meager records in the Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs his services were not especially significant. In 1869 he became embroiled in a singularly bitter quarrel with H. J. Perry, secretary of the legation, and in addition to the personal questions involved, the minister was charged with serious moral delinquencies involving the Queen of Spain and with having abused his importation franchise. Hale admitted signing certain con1promising documents but pleaded that the secretary had laid them before him without explaining their contents which were in Spanish. He was recalled April 5, 1869, and took leave July 29. His strength had already begun to fail, having been seriously impaired by the famous National Hotel epidemic of 1857, and he spent some further time abroad in a vain que st for health. Returning to New Hampshire in June 1870, he suffered a paralytic stroke soon afterward and his la st years were spent in semi-invalidism. His wife was Lucy Lambert of South Berwick, Me.; his daughter, Lucy Lambert Hale, the wife of William Eaton Chandler [q.v.]. As a crusader in a humanitarian cause Hale ranked among the great men of the day, but his qualities were not those best calculated to produce constructive legislation or successful administration.

[The New Hampshire Historical Society has a considerable collection of letters and miscellaneous manuscripts relating to John P. Hale. Other sources include The Hale Statue (1892), published by the New Hampshire General Court; E. S. Stearns, Genealogy and Family Hist. of the State of New Hampshire (1908), III, 1044-49; I. W. Stuart, Life of Capt. Nathan Hale (2nd ed., 1856); C. H. Bell, Th e Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894), pp. 415-18; Diary of Gideon Welles (3 vols., 1911); G. W. Julian, "A Presidential Candidate of 1852," Century, October 1896; J. H. Ela, " Hon. John P. Hale," Granite Monthly, July 1880; Boston Transcript, New York Tribune, November 20, 1873; Independent Statesman (Concord, New Hampshire), November 27, 1873.]

W.A.R.  


HALE, Nathan (August 16, 1784-February 8, 1863), journalist, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2

HALE, NATHAN (August 16, 1784-February 8, 1863), journalist, born in Westhampton, Massachusetts, was of English ancestry, a descendant of Robert Hale who settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1632, and the son of Reverend Enoch and Octavia (Throop) Hale. Nathan Hale [q.v.], who was hanged as a spy by the British, was his uncle. After receiving his early education from his father, he entered Williams College, from which he received the degree of A.B. in 1804. For a short time he studied law in Troy, New York, and then went to Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire, where he taught mathematics until 1810, in which year he received the degree of A.M. from Dartmouth. Returning to his native state, he completed his law studies in Boston and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1810. In 1814 he abandoned the legal profession and began his long career in journalism. After a brief editorship of the Boston Weekly Messenger, in the spring of 1814 he purchased the Boston Daily Advertiser, the first daily newspaper to be established in that city, which he edited until 1854, when he retired from its active control. To him a newspaper was the means for swaying public opinion as well as for recording events. He applied this belief, however, only to the world of government, business, and political affairs, for he long excluded from his paper news and opinions of books, art, plays, and music. For many years he was a participant in politics and public affairs, taking sides upon all the great questions of the day, in city, state, and nation. He was one of the first American editors to introduce editorial articles as a regular feature, and a file of the Advertiser reflects his own political opinions and his attitude

towards all the great problems that contributed to the making of history during nearly fifty years. When it is said that the Advertiser was first Federalist, then Whig, and finally Republican, that it opposed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, it will be seen that Hale supported those parties in their successive incarnations and opposed all measures seeking to extend slavery or to establish it more firmly. His interest in all the leading local movements of his time was no le ss than his interest in national affairs. He was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1820 to 1822 inclusive, of the Senate from 1829 to 1830, and of two constitutional conventions. As acting chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Internal Improvements, he was an early advocate of the establishment and extension of railroads in New England, and he became the first president of the Boston & Worcester Railroad when it was organized in July 1831, holding that position until June 1849. His services as a railroad organizer give him high place in the hi story of American transportation. He was a leading spirit in other public enterprises, and among his contributions to the betterment of Boston was his work as chairman of the commission that established the Boston water system. His interests seem to have been widespread and in the forwarding of them all his newspaper was a powerful factor.

From time to time, moreover, he engaged in other journalistic undertakings. In 1815, as a member of the Anthology Club, he helped to found the North American Review; he was also one of the founders of the Christian Examiner, which first appeared in January 1824, and from 1840 to 1846 he published and edited the Monthly Chronicle. His series of stereotype maps of New England became a standard geographical authority, and were reprinted from time to time with the necessary additions and revisions. He also published the Journal of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates Chosen to Revise the Constitution of Massachusetts (1821), and many pamphlets on railroads, canals, and other practical schemes for public improvements. In 1816 he married Sarah Preston Everett, daughter of Judge Oliver Everett, and sister of Edward Everett [q.v.]. Their children were Lucretia Peabody, Charles, Edward Everett [qq.v.], Nathan, a journalist, and Susan, an artist. He was a member of the Brattle Square Church and a deacon there for many years.

[Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the U. S. from 1690 to 1872 (1873); Justin Winsor, The Memorial History of Boston (4 vols., 1881-83); S. A. Allibone, Critical Dir. of English Literature (1859); S. K. Lothrop, "Memoir of Hon. Nathan Hale, LL.D.," Proc. Massachusetts Historical Society, XVIII (1881), 270-79; Calvin Durfee, Williams Biog. Annals (1871), obituary in Boston Daily Advertiser, February 9, 1863.]

E. F. E.


HALE, Salma, 1787-1866, historian, congressman, abolitionist.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III)


HALL, Hiland (July 20, 1795-December 18, 1885), historian, jurist, and governor of Vermont, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2

HALL, HILAND (July 20, 1795-December 18, 1885), historian, jurist, and governor of Vermont, descended from John Hall, born in Kent, England, in 1584, who came to New England in 1633 and some five or six years later settled in Hartford, Conn., was born at Bennington, Vt. He was the oldest of the seven children of Nathaniel and Abigail (Hubbard) Hall. His youth was spent on his father's farm in Bennington. He was educated in the common schools of the locality supplemented by one term in the academy at Granville, New York, and by private study. He studied law, was admitted to the bar of Bennington County in December 1819, and settled down to the practice of his profession in his native town. He was a representative of his town in the legislature in 1827, clerk of the county court in 1828, and state attorney for the county from 1829 to 1831. In January 1833 he was elected to fill a vacancy in Congress and served till March 3, 1843.

In 1842 he declined to stand for reelection. During the next decade and a half he filled the offices of state bank commissioner, 1843-46, judge of the supreme court of Vermont, 1846-50, second comptroller of the treasury, 1850-51, and federal land commissioner for California, 1851-54. Up to this time he had been a member of the Whig party, but his anti-slavery principles led him in the middle fifties to identify himself with the rising Republican party. He was a member of th e Vermont delegation to the Republican National Convention in 1856, and was nominated as the Republican candidate for governor in 1858. He was elected by a substantial majority, and reelected for a second term in 1859. At the expiration of his second term as governor he retired from public life, except for a brief service as a member of the famous Peace Convention held on the eve of the Civil War. Notwithstanding the numerous offices he held, Hall is best known as a historian of his native state. From his early youth hi story and biography were his favorite studies, and he made the early history of Vermont his special field. In 1859 he became president of the Vermont Historical Society and held the office for six years. Later as chairman of the committee on printing and publication he brought about the publication of the first two volumes of the society's Proceedings. In 1868 he published his most important historical work, The History of Vermont, From Its Discovery to Its Admission into the Union in 1791. This is an excellent piece of historical research, based upon a careful study of the original documents and showing sound historical scholarship, although the Vermont sympathies of the author are evident in his treatment of New York's claim to juris diction over the Vermont settlements. Besides this work, Hall presented a number of carefully prepared papers before various historical societies, and contributed to historical periodicals.

He was married on October 27, 1818, to Dolly Tuttle Davis. They had eight children and lived to celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary. Hall died at the home of his son Charles, in Springfield, Massachusetts, in his ninety-first year.

[Two memoirs by Hall's son, Henry D. Hall, in New-Eng. History and Genealogical Reg., January 1887, and in A. M. Hemenway, Vermont Historical Gazetteer, vol. V (1891), pt. III (section relating to Bennington), pp. 83-96; W. H. Crockett, Vermont, V (1923), 112-13; M. D. Gilman, The Bibliog. of Vermont (1897); D. B. Hall, The Halls of New England (1883); Springfield Daily Republican, December 19, 1885; Burlington Free Press and Times, December 21, 1885.]

A.M. K.


HALL, Robert Bernard, 1812-1868, Episcopal clergyman, member of the Massachusetts State Senate, U.S. Congressman, 1855-1859, one of twelve founders of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston in 1832 and the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1832  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 43; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 315)


HALLOWELL, Mary Post, 1823-1913, suffragist, reformer, abolitionist  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 52)


HALLOWELL, Norwood Penrose, 1839-1914, Philadelphia, PA, abolitionist, soldier.  Deputy Commander of the all-Black 54th Massachusetts, Colonel Commander of the 55th Massachusetts.  Participated in the siege of Fort Wagner in Charleston Harbor.


HALLOWELL, Richard Price, 1835-1904, merchant, reformer, ardent abolitionist.  Follower of Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 52; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 160)

HALLOWELL, RICHARD PRICE (December 16, 1835-January 5, 1904), merchant, abolitionist, descended from John Hallowell who came from Nottinghamshire, England, to Pennsylvania in 1682 or 1683, was born in Philadelphia, the son of Morris Longstreth and Hannah Smith (Penrose) Hallowell. He was a member of the Society of Friends and attended Haverford School (later Haverford College) from 1849 to 1853. Hallowell was a wool commission-merchant during most of his active business life, first in Philadelphia, but after 1857 in Boston. On October 26, 1859, he married Anna Coffin Davis, the marriage taking place in the home near Philadelphia of the bride's grandparents, James and Lucretia Mott [qq.v.], of anti-slavery fame. His home after his marriage was at West Medford, Massachusetts. He was for a time a director of the National Bank of Commerce, Boston, a trustee of the Medford Savings Bank, a selectman of the town of Medford, vice-president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association, and treasurer of the Free Religious Association.

His religious and family connections made it natural for him to dedicate himself in early life to the anti-slavery cause. He broke his first business connection in Philadelphia because his firm dealt in slave-made products from the South. He joined the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and became an active leader in the anti-slavery agitation in Philadelphia and later in Boston. With others he went to Harper's Ferry in 1859 to receive the body of John Brown after the execution and escort it to North Elba, New York, for interment. Departing from the strict peace tenets of the Society of Friends, he became actively engaged early in the Civil War in recruiting for the famous colored regiments, the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteers. He was treasurer of the recruiting fund and later was engaged actively and successfully in securing proper remuneration for the members of these regiments. When feeling was running high on the slavery question he served occasionally as a member of an informal bodyguard for William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips at public meetings. After the Civil War he spent time and money for the uplift of the colored race and was especially interested in the establishment of schools for colored people in the South. He was a trustee of the Calhoun Colored School, Alabama, from its foundation until the time of his death, and was a manager of the Home for Aged Colored Women in Boston.

Apart from his business and philanthropic interests, Hallowell found time to indulge a taste for historical study. He had a good literary style, and became deeply interested in the early history of Quakerism in New England. In 1870 he published The Quakers in New England. His chief work, The Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts, which r a n through four editions between 1883 and 1887, is a virile defense of the Quakers, a story of their persecutions at the h ands of New England Puritans, and a criticism of their critics. A shorter work, The Pioneer Quakers (1886), is in the same tone but brings the story down to 1724, about fifty years beyond the limits of the earlier volume. His last publication was a pamphlet entitled Why the Negro Was Enfranchised (1903), containing two letters first printed in the Boston Herald, March 11 and 26, 1903.

[Medford Historical Reg., October 1904; Medford Mercury, January 8, 1904; Boston Transcript, January 5, 1904; Who's Who in America, 1903-05; Biog. Cat. of Matriculates of Haverford College, I833-I922 (1922); J.C. Rand, One of a Thousand (1890); W. P. Hallowell, Record of a Branch of the Hallowell Family (1893).]

R. W.K.


HALPINE, Charles Graham (November 20, 1829-August 3, 1868), journalist, poet, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2

HALPINE, CHARLES GRAHAM (November 20, 1829-August 3, 1868), journalist, poet, born at Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland, was the son of Nicholas John and Anne (Grehan) Halpine. His father, after a brilliant career at Trinity College, took orders in the Irish Church but devoted himself to literature. For many years, as editor of the Dublin Evening Mail, he was influential in Irish Protestant circles. The son matriculated at Trinity College at an early age and for a time studied medicine, then law, devoting his leisure to writing for the press. He finally went into journalism in Dublin but soon removed to London. The death of his father in impoverished circumstances and his own early marriage determined him, in 1851, to emigrate to America. Here he wrote advertisements in verse and became private secretary to P. T. Barnum. In 1852 he joined B. P. Shillaber in Boston as co-editor of the Carpet-Bag, a humorous weekly. After a few months he went to New York and became French translator for the New York Herald. He published anonymously Lyrics by the Letter H (1854), poems that had previously appeared in various newspapers, where, as Fitz-James O'Brien said in reviewing the volume, they ought to have remained. As Nicaraguan correspondent of the New York Times, he reported the filibustering expedition of William Walker and, after a short period as Washington correspondent, he became an associate editor of the Times. In 1857 he acquired an interest in the Leader and became its principal editor; through his political articles and sketches it rose rapidly in circulation and influence. Halpine actively interested himself in politics: in Dublin as a member of the "Young Ireland" group and in America, first as private secretary to Stephan A. Douglas and later as a member of the general committee of Tammany Hall. He successfully led the reform movement against Fernando Wood. He was versatile, impetuous, and of a tremendous and restless energy. His contributions to magazines and newspapers were clever and voluminous and brought him a large income. He was a member of a Bohemian group that included Fitz-Hugh Ludlow and Fitz-James O'Brien. He was a brilliant conversationalist; his stammer sometimes served his wit as when he announced that "Harriet Beseecher Be Stowe" had gone abroad to collect funds for the antislavery cause.

At the outbreak of the Civil War he joined the 69th Regiment as a lieutenant and was quickly promoted to the staff of General Hunter, with whom he remained the greater part of the war. He was brevetted lieutenant-colonel of volunteers June 5, 1864, for gallantry and distinguished services at the battle of Piedmont, and at the end of the war received the brevets of colonel and brigadier-general. Under assumed names he wrote effective letters of criticism to many vacillating and lukewarm editors of Northern newspapers. He prepared for Hunter's signature the first order for the enlistment of a negro regiment and overcame many of the objections of the Northern soldiers with his famous poem, "Sambo's Right to be Kilt." In his communications to the press written in the character of an ignorant Irish private, "Miles O'Reilly,"' he achieved a wide popularity in the North. Failing eyesight forced his retirement from the army, July 31, 1864. Having gained prominence as a reformer of municipal corruption, upon his return from the army he was invited by the Citizens Association to assume the editorship of the Citizen, the organ of reform. He built up the Democratic Union, an organization opposed to political corruption. Halpine had frequently held political offices, but in 1866 he ran against Tammany Hall and was elected register of the County and City of. New York. Miles O'Reilly His Book (1864) was immediately successful and was followed by Baked Meats of the Funeral (i866), which included his recollections of the war and miscellaneous essays. He died suddenly in 1868 from an overdose of chloroform taken to relieve insomnia.

[Poetical Works of Charles G. Halpine (1869), with biog. sketch and notes by Robt. B. Roosevelt; the Independent, February 12, 1903; New York Herald and Tribune August 4, 1868; Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, August 22, 1868; Horatio Bateman, Biographies of Two Hundred and Fifty Distinguished National Men (1871), I, 219; C. A. Read, The Cabinet of Irish Lit. (new ed., 1905), vol. III; Frederick Phisterer, New York in the War of the Rebellion (3rd ed., 1912).]

F. M.


HALSEY, Job Foster, 1800-1881, Allegheny Town, Pennsylvania, theologian.  Founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Manager, 1833-35, 1835-37 (Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 54)


HAMILTON, Alexander, 1757-1804, founding father, statesman, first Secretary of the Treasury, anti-slavery activist, second President of the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, founded in 1785.

(Zilversmit, 1967, p. 166; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 56-60; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 171; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 905)

HAMILTON, ALEXANDER (January 11, 1757- July 12, 1804), statesman, was born in the British colony of Nevis, one of the Leeward Islands. His family was good, his father being a Scottish merchant of St. Christopher, the fourth son of Alexander Hamilton of Grange in Ayrshire, and his mother Rachel Fawcett (Faucette), the daughter of a French Huguenot physician and planter of Nevis. She had been carefully educated, had made an unhappy marriage with a Danish landholder of St. Croix named John Michael Levine, had separated from him, and after meeting James Hamilton had made unavailing efforts to obtain complete freedom from her husband. Her union with Hamilton, though legally irregular, was on an irreproachable moral foundation, and she was socially recognized as his wife. But the home was not prosperous. James Hamilton's affairs, as his son later wrote, soon "went to wreck," and Rachel was living apart from him and dependent upon relatives in St. Croix when she died in 1768. Alexander Hamilton was thus practically an orphan at eleven, though his father survived until 1799. After receiving some desultory education from his mother and a Presbyterian clergyman at St. Croix, and learning to speak French fluently, at twelve he had to go to work in the general store of Nicholas Cruger in Christianstadt. From this position he was rescued by his intense ambition for a college education, his brilliancy (particularly demonstrated by a newspaper letter descriptive of a hurricane which swept St. Croix in 1772), and the generosity of his aunts. They sent him to New York in the fall of 1772. After some preliminary training at Francis Barber's grammar school at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, he entered King's College (now Columbia University) in the autumn of 1773. Already he had formed habits of persistent study which he retained throughout life, while his letters of the time display astonishing maturity.

The preliminaries of the Revolution interrupted Hamilton's college work and gave him opportunities for distinction which he seized with characteristic dash and address. Little weight need be attached to his statement that he temporarily inclined toward the royal side; from the time that he was a guest of William Livingston's at Elizabethtown he accepted the patriot views, and Robert Troup's story that it required a trip to Boston in 1774 to confirm his Whig opinions appears improbable. At a mass-meeting in "the Fields" (now City Hall Park) on July 6, 1774, he spoke against British measures, and at once.. began writing for Holt's New York Journal, or General Advertiser with a vigor which attracted attention. In December 1774, he contributed to the pamphlet war of the day A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress from the Calumnies of Their Enemies, in some 14,000 words, and when the Reverend Dr. Samuel Seabury replied, he continued the debate in The Farmer Refuted; or, a More Comprehensive and Impartial View of the Disputes Between Great Britain and the Colonies, this reaching 35,000 words. These anonymous pamphlets showed such grasp of the issues, so much knowledge of British and American government, and such argumentative power, that they were attributed to John Jay, and Dr. Myles Cooper of King's College was incredulous that a lad of seventeen could have written them. Hamilton's position was that of a moderate who loyally defended the King's sovereignty and the British connection but rejected the pretensions of Parliament. His conduct was as restrained as his pen, and there is evidence that he several times acted to allay mob excitement, once (November 26, 1775) protesting to John Jay when a party under Isaac Sears destroyed Rivington's press. But as the Revolutionary movement gained headway he was gladly borne into its full current. Robert Troup's statement that in 1775 Hamilton and he formed a volunteer company called "Hearts of Oak" is probably true; while early in 1776 he applied for the command of an artillery company authorized by the provincial Convention, was examined, and on March 14 received his commission. His skill in drilling his company attracted attention, and General Nathanael Greene is said to have been so impressed that he introduced Hamilton to Washington (G. W. P. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, 1859); it is certain that Lord Stirling made a fruitless effort to obtain him for his staff. During the summer and fall campaign he fought with Washington on Long Island, helped fortify Harlem Heights, commanded two guns at White Plains, and was in the New Jersey retreat, while that winter he shared in the descents upon Trenton and Princeton. Though he thirsted for military glory, promotion would have been slow. It was fortunate for him that Washington, doubtless impressed by the reputation of his pamphlets, made him a secretary, and (March 1, 1777) aide-de-camp, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. His true weapon was the pen.

As secretary and aide, Hamilton held a position of great responsibility, and his duties were by no means confined to giving literary assistance to Washington. He became a trusted adviser. Since Washington was not only commanding general but virtually secretary of war, an enormous amount of business passed through his headquarters, which Hamilton did much to organize and systematize; while he inevitably came to take minor decisions into his own hands. He complained of the labor, writing that it was hard "to have the mind always upon the stretch, scarce ever unbent, and no hours for recreation." But though he was allowed to take part in a few skirmishing expeditions, and on one of these was the officer who warned Congress to remove from Philadelphia to Lancaster, Washington wisely kept him at his desk. Intercourse with the General, correspondence with Congress and the states, and occasional military missions, gave him an unrivaled opportunity for learning the situation of the army and nation. It was a characteristic of Hamilton's genius that he should not only grasp a state of affairs with lightning speed, but be seized with a passionate desire to offer constructive remedies. Before he had been at headquarters a year he had drafted the first of a series of important reports on the defects of the military system and the best mode of improving it. Among these papers are the report of January 28, 1778, on the reorganization of the army; the report of May 5, 1778, on the work of the inspector- general's office; and the plan for this office as adopted by Congress on February 18, 1779. Hamilton also prepared a comprehensive set of military regulations which he laid before Washington. Meanwhile, he was giving attention not only to the management of the army but to the problem of invigorating the whole government, and in facing this his flair for bold political theorizing again awakened.

The growth of Hamilton's political ideas, and the extraordinary ripeness and incisiveness of his thought, are exhibited in his correspondence with a committee of the New York state convention (Gouverneur Morris, Robert Livingston, William Allison), and also with Robert Morris, James Sullivan, James Duane, and other leaders, the whole covering the years 1777-81. He was a stanch believer in representative government, then widely distrusted. In a letter of May 19, 1777, to Gouverneur Morris, he ascribed the supposed instability of democracies to the fact that most of them had really been "compound governments," with a partitioned authority, and declared that "a representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated, and the exercise of the legislative, executive, and judiciary authorities is vested in select persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will, in my opinion, be most likely to be happy, regular, and durable" (W arks, 1904, IX, 72). But he insisted from the first that his democracy should have a highly centralized authority, armed with powers for every exigency. He sent Robert Morris a 14,000-word letter (April 30, 1781) embodying a systematic treatise on finance as part of this strongly centralized system, and containing a proposal for a national bank; its financial ideas were defective, but as William Graham Sumner said, its statesmanship was superb. Writing to Duane (September 3, 1780), he vigorously exposed the defects of government under the Confederation, condemned the timidity, indecision, and dependence of Congress, and set forth a detailed plan for a revised form of government- a plan, it has been observed, almost  exactly paralleled in the very successful Swiss government of later days (H. J. Ford, Alexander Hamilton, 1920, p. 92). In this letter he made the first proposal for a constitutional convention, suggesting that Congress should call a representation of all the states, and that this body should grant to Congress "complete sovereignty in all that relates to war, peace, trade, finance"-much more power than it enjoys today, though Hamilton would have reserved all internal taxation to the states. This willingness to entrust to Congress vastly increased authority at a time of general disgust with its inefficiency, vacillation, and corruption, is another proof of Hamilton's political discernment. One secret of his success was his belief in the possibility of a rapid renovation of political instruments.

Meanwhile, Hamilton had allied himself with one of the richest and most influential families of New York by his marriage late in 1780 to Elizabeth, second daughter of General Philip Schuyler. "It is impossible to be happier than I am in a wife," he wrote in 1797, and he was always tenderly devoted to her (Works, 1904, X, 260; A. M. Hamilton, post, pp. 95 ff.). They had eight children, one of whom was James Alexander Hamilton [q.v.]; the first child, Philip, was born January 22, 1782. Hamilton had also detached himself from Washington's staff in a last attempt to gain military distinction. The excuse for this he found in a quarrel in February 1781, when Washington administered a reprimand to his aide because the latter kept him waiting for a few minutes. The manner in which Hamilton resented this entirely proper rebuke, his rejection of Washington's subsequent advances, and his private slurs upon Washington's abilities, do him grave discredit. Unfortunately it was far from the last example of his hastiness and irascibility. Through Washington's magnanimity he was appointed to head an infantry regiment in Lafayette's corps, and at the siege of Yorktown commanded a brilliant attack upon one of the two principal British redoubts. Returning to Albany as hostilities ended, he rented a house, took Robert Troup to live with him, and after less than five months' study was admitted to the bar. His intention, he wrote Lafayette, was "to throw away a few months more in public life, and then retire a simple citizen and good paterfamilias." The public service of which he spoke was a term in the Continental Congress, which he entered in November 1782, finding it the weak flywheel of a deplorably ramshackle government. Chafing at the feebleness he saw all about him, he did what little he could to arouse a greater vigor. His efforts included the composition of the spirited but impotent reply of Congress to the refusal of Rhode Island to consent to the five per cent. impost plan (December 16, 1782; Works, 1904, II, 179-223); the introduction that same winter of a resolution asserting the absolute necessity of "the establishment of permanent and adequate funds to operate generally throughout the United States, to be collected by Congress"; and letters to Washington somewhat officiously but shrewdly urging •him to preserve the confidence of the army for use in a possible crisis. He would have introduced resolutions calling for a constitutional convention if he had not foreseen their total failure.

Though Hamilton retired from Congress in 1783 to devote himself to the law, opening an office in New York at 58 Wall St., he continued to throw his energies into the movement for a stronger federal government. Part of his legal work involved a defense of federal authority against the excesses of state law. In the noted case of Rutgers vs. Waddington he maintained that the peace treaty between the United States and Great Britain overrode the laws of New York, and particularly the Trespass Act, under which the widow Rutgers had claimed arrears of rent from a Loyalist who had occupied her property during the Revolution; his masterly argument, of which only the long brief remains, carried the case in the mayor's court, though the legislature formally reaffirmed its authority. He was an alert spectator of the growing confusion of 1784-86, and eager for an opportunity to act. The commercial negotiations of Virginia and Maryland, and the call for a general commercial convention to meet at Annapolis in September 1786, furnished the opening he desired. He secured appointment as one of the two New York delegates to the Annapolis meeting; when it failed to reach an agreement, he saw the possibility of driving home the lesson that commercial harmony was impossible without political unity; and he secured the unanimous adoption of an address recommending that the states appoint commissioners to meet in Philadelphia the following May " to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall seem to them necessary to render the Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union, and to report an act for that purpose to the United States in Congress assembled." It was one of the most adroit and timely of all his strokes. The timidity of the other delegates made the terms of the call vague, but Hamilton unquestionably looked forward to the adoption of an entirely new Constitution.

In the legislature of 1787, in which the support of the New York business community gave him a seat, he led a spirited but mainly unsuccessful fight against the state laws which contravened the treaty with Great Britain. Late in the session, the bill for New York's complete adherence to the impost measure asked by Congress was brought up, and in its behalf Hamilton made one of his greatest speeches. "I well remember," Chancellor Kent later wrote oi the address, "how much it was admired, for the comprehensive views which it took of the state of the nation, the warm appeals which it made to the public patriotism, the imminent perils which it pointed out, and the absolute necessity which it showed of some such financial measure" (William Kent, Memoirs and Letters of James Kent, 1898, p. 297). He met defeat in the Assembly, 36 to 21, but he had aroused public sentiment. Seizing the day after the impost vote, he introduced a motion instructing the New York delegates in the Continental Congress to support a constitutional convention, and despite the efforts of Governor George Clinton's followers to weaken it, carried it in both houses. When the legislature named three delegates to the proposed convention, Hamilton as a federalist was offset by two anti-federalists, Robert Yates and John Lansing. Clinton and his powerful state-rights group took the most hostile attitude toward his labors, declaring that the Articles of Confederation required only slight amendment. But, as Hamilton gained the support of a solid body of merchants and other capitalists, he was able in increasing degree to place the anti-federalists upon the defensive.

Hamilton's role in the Constitutional Convention was not of the first importance; his role at home in New York was. Because of legal work his attendance in Philadelphia was irregular, his longest stay being from May 27 to June 29; his influence was lessened by the fact that Yates and Lansing could carry the state's vote against him; and his theories of centralization made him an object of distrust to many delegates. On June 18 he introduced his " propositions" for a Constitution, proposing that the senators and the chief executive serve during good behavior, that the governors of each state be appointed by the federal government, and that all state laws be strictly subordinate to national laws (Works, 1904, I, 347-69). Naturally they had little influence. During the debates he argued strongly in favor of the popular election of members of the House of Representatives, and in the contest between the small and large states supported the latter, though ready to compromise. At the close of the sessions he made a moving plea for unanimity in signing the Constitution, declaring that no true patriot could hesitate between it and the grave probability of anarchy and convulsion. Since Lansing and Yates had quit the convention, he signed alone for New York. Already (July 24) he had fired the first shot in a fierce war of newspaper essays over the Constitution, attacking Clinton for his hostility. The rejoinders were instant, and he exposed himself to misunderstanding when he signed several of his early articles "Caesar." But rising with characteristic ardor to the occasion, he carried the war into the enemy's camp by planning the "Federalist" series, the memorable first number of which he wrote in the cabin of a sloop while returning from legal work in Albany. Of this truly magnificent sequence of eighty-five expository and argumentative articles, publication of which began October 27, 1787, in the Independent Journal and continued for seven months, he wrote at lea st fifty-one alone, and three more in conjunction with Madison (E. G. Bourne and P. L. Ford, in American Historical Review, April, July 1897). By the printing of these papers he accomplished his first preeminent service in the adoption of the Constitution; the second lay in securing the adherence of New York. The state convention which met at Poughkeepsie in June 1788 was found to contain at first forty-six antifederalists or doubtful men to only nineteen assured federalists. "Two thirds of the convention and four sevenths of the people are against us," wrote Hamilton. But with Jay and Robert Livingston as lieutenants, he led a spectacularly effective fight on the floor of the convention. His opponents argued first for postponement, then for rejection, and then for conditional ratification, but Hamilton overthrew every one of their contentions. Fortunately for history, his irresistible speeches were reported with considerable fulness (Works, 1904, II, 3-99). The turning point came with his conversion of Melancthon Smith, and on July 26 the final vote showed a majority of three for the Constitution. This convention offers one of the few outstanding instances in American history of the decision of a deliberate body being changed by sheer power of sustained argument. In political management and general political contests Hamilton was one among several able leaders of his day, and was likely to err through passion or prejudice; but in parliamentary battle he was to have no real equal until the senatorial giants of the generation of Webster and Clay appeared.

The next task was to secure able and loyal officers for the new government, and Hamilton doubtless realized from the outset that he would be one of these. He sat again in the Continental Congress in February 1788, and introduced the ordinance fixing the dates and place for giving effect to the new government. By hard work in the state elections he also carried both branches of the legislature, and thus made it possible to send two federalists, Philip Schuyler and Rufus King, to the United States Senate. Nervous lest Washington refuse to become the first president, he wrote him an insistent letter. He was thus much in the foreground till the new government was organized in April 1789, and when Robert Morris proved unavailable for the Treasury Department, his selection for that post was universally expected. Commissioned on September 11, 1789, he spent the following year at work in New York, removing to Philadelphia in the fall of 1790.

Though he had no practical experience with the management of finances, his labors were marked by his usual rapidity. The organization of a collecting and disbursing force throughout the country had to be carried on simultaneously with the preparation of a plan for placing the public credit upon an adequate basis. No interest had been paid for years on the foreign loans, the domestic debt was heavily and generally regarded as of dubious validity, and paper emissions and partial repudiation had demoralized public opinion. Hamilton's report was ready when Congress met on January 4, 1790, but its delivery was delayed. He had hoped that he would be permitted to present his comprehensive and energetic scheme on the floor of the House, and labor there for its enactment, and he was deeply disappointed when, at the instance of Madison and others who feared his forensic talents, the representatives insisted that he report only in writing. He had to convert his brief for the speech into a written argument which he laid before the House on January 14 (W arks, 1904, II, 227- 89). Unquestionably this famous document is one of the greatest of his state papers, but its originality has often been exaggerated; he drew heavily upon features of the British financial system as it had been developed up to the time of Pitt (C. F. Dunbar, "Some Precedents Followed by Alexander Hamilton," Quarterly Journal of Economics, October 1888). Yet in its boldness, grasp, and courage the plan was admirable. Hamilton based his proposals upon the assumption that the government would completely and punctually meet its engagements. It is the opinion of an expert student that nine congressmen in ten had come to the capital with the expectation of scaling down the debt (Edward Channing, A History of the United States, IV, 1917, p. 69). But Hamilton argued at length against the general view that a discrimination should be made between the original holders of public securities and actual holders by purchase, many of the latter being speculators who had paid a small fraction of the face value; and he proved the impolicy as well as impracticability of such action. He also argued that the federal government should assume the debts contracted by the states during the war, these having been shouldered for the common cause of independence. His tabulation placed the foreign debt at slightly over $11,700,000, the domestic debt at slightly more than $42,000,000, and the state debts at approximately $25,000,000. Since the interest on these sums would be excessive, he propose d several alternative schemes for funding the debt on a basis that would postpone full interest charges, offering the creditors various options, including part payment in lands and in annuities. To provide the annual revenue of $2,240,000 that he estimated was required by the government, he proposed to levy both import duties and an excise.

Hamilton's plans met fierce opposition, Maclay of Pennsylvania characterizing them as "a monument of political absurdity"; it was argued that they played into the hands of a "corrupt squadron" of "gladiators" and "speculators." Madison argued stubbornly in favor of discrimination between the fir st holders and the later purchasers of public securities, but was defeated by a vote of 36 to 13. After a sharp debate the bill for the assumption of the state debts was temporarily beaten, but Hamilton finally carried it to success through his famous bargain with Jefferson and Madison for the location of the national capital. The funding and assumption measures, combined in one bill of a more rigid type than Hamilton's original proposals, became law on August 4, 1791. He immediately made use of these achievements to undertake further steps. On December 13, 1790, he presented to the House his plan for an excise on spirits; the next day he offered his elaborate plan for a national bank; and on January 28, 1791, he reported on the establishment of a mint (Works, 1904, II, 337-51; III, 388-443; IV, 3-58). All three proposals were accepted. The palpable ne ed for revenue carried the excise bill past bitter opposition; and the bank was established by a law of 1792, though not until Hamilton had clashed with Madison, Edmund Randolph, and Jefferson on the constitutionality of the measure, and had given the first exposition of the doctrine of implied powers to justify his position. As a cap stone for his financial and economic structure, he presented to Congress at the winter session of 1791-92 his report on manufactures, a cardinal feature of which was the proposal that protection be given to infant industries by either import duties or bounties. As the successive reports of the Secretary were studied, the scale of his ideas gradually became evident. He was not merely planning a fiscal system, but doing it in such a way as to strengthen the central government and develop the resources of the country, to stimulate trade and capitalistic enterprises, and to bring about a more symmetrical balance between agriculture and industry.

Unquestionably the secretaryship of the treasury represented the climax of Hamilton's career. Dealing with a field so complex and novel, he could not hope to avoid errors and his opponents have since made the most of some of them. Speculation in federal and state certificates of debt became a veritable mania, with general over-expansion, and ended in a panic and business depression. Hamilton miscalculated future interest rates, expecting them to fall though national growth caused them to rise. Not seeing how rapidly wealth would accumulate, he gave the debt too long a tenure. He has also been criticized for instituting a financial system that was too drastic and firm for the day and that placed an unwise strain upon the new government; even though disaster was avoided, he dangerously stimulated political pass ions, aroused an armed rebellion against the excise, and founded a protective system that has grown to exaggerated proportions. But the best vindication of his measures lies in their results, He created as from a void a firm public credit; he strengthened the government by not merely placing it on a sure financial foundation, but al so uniting great propertied interests behind it; and he gave the country a stable circulating medium, more adequate banking facilities, and important new industries. He saw the importance of what he called " energy in the administration" (Works, 1904, II, 57), and if only because he went further than any other member of the government in exercising the powers of the Constitution, he must rank as one of the boldest and most farsighted of the founders of the nation.

Hamilton's natural aggressiveness, his belief that he was the virtual premier of Washington's administration, which led to improper interferences with other departments, and his unnecessary offenses to the susceptibilities of Jefferson, Madison, and others, accentuated the party divisions which sprang naturally from differences in principles. Both he and Jefferson honestly believed that the policy of the other would tend to the destruction of the government and Constitution. They formed also a personal dislike; Hamilton wrote of Jefferson in 1792 that he was a man of "profound ambition and violent passions" (Ibid., IX, 535), while Jefferson assailed Hamilton in private and protested to Washington against the " corrupt squadron" of the Treasury Department (P. L. Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, VI, 1895, pp. 101-09). The struggle between the federalists and anti-federalists, between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians, was carried on by letters circulated among public men, by efforts on both sides to influence Washington, greatly distressing the latter, by congressional oratory, and by newspaper broadsides. It shortly reached a point of great bitterness, and perhaps proved the unwisdom of Washington's attempt to set up an amalgamation cabinet, representing opposite points of view. The President wrote both secretaries in an effort to moderate their feelings, but without success. Hamilton had encouraged John Fenno [q.v.] to establish the Gazette of the United States in New York in 1789, and to transfer it a year later to Philadelphia, while in October 1791 the National Gazette of Philip Freneau [q.v.] appeared under the patronage of Jefferson. Both were soon full of severe articles, with not a few personalities. The assaults on Hamilton culminated in a demand, planned by Jefferson and Madison but presented in the House by William Branch Giles, that he furnish full information concerning the loans which had been effected, their terms, and the application of the proceeds. The scarcely veiled charge of the Republicans was that Hamilton had taken funds raised in Europe, which should have been u:sed to pay debts there, and deposited them in the Bank of the United States in order to extend its "special items" and increase its profits. Giles was indiscreet enough to make still more serious charges. In a series of replies early in 1793, Hamilton completely vindicated himself and routed his accusers, and Giles's nine resolutions of censure were overwhelmingly defeated.

When the French revolutionary wars and the arrival of Genet (April 8, 1793) added fuel to the party flames, Hamilton succeeded in winning Washington to his stand that the administration should show a stricter neutrality between France and Great Britain than most of his party opponents desired. Genet, as Jefferson wished, was received without reservations, and Jefferson's view that the treaty of alliance with France was merely suspended instead of dead was also adopted; but Washington issued what amounted to a proclamation of neutrality and Hamilton followed it with strict instructions to the collectors of customs for enforcement. When the British minister demanded restitution of the British vessels captured by privateers which Genet had illegally fitted out in America, Hamilton's opinion that restitution should be made was adopted by Washington over Jefferson's protests. In this troubled period Hamilton maintained close relations with the British envoy. He succeeded also in having John J ay sent to London to negotiate a treaty covering the commercial and other disputes between Great Britain and the United States, and he carefully controlled Jay's work in the interests of his financial policy at home (S. F. Bemis, Jay's Treaty, 1923; for Hamilton's instructions to Jay, see Works, 1904, V, 121- 31). The breach between Jefferson and Hamilton grew steadily more open and embarrassing until Jefferson's resignation as secretary of state in December 1793, and Jefferson continued to try to discredit the Hamiltonian party by connecting it with speculation at home and British interests abroad. While it is commonly said that Hamilton enjoyed the decisive favor of Washington, there were points in foreign affairs upon which Washington rightly preferred Jefferson's counsel, and some upon which the three men had no real disagreement. Neutrality was a clearly defined American policy before Hamilton ever asserted it, and Jefferson had been fully committed to it. But in home affairs Hamilton's place was secure, and when the Whiskey Rebellion occurred in 1794 he played the chief role in its suppression, attending General Henry Lee's punitive force as a superintending official. He regarded the insurrection as an opportunity for the federal government to vindicate its strength. Soon afterward financial pressure, for his office paid only $3,500 a year, caused him to resign (January 31, 1795). Even after he left the cabinet, however, he did much to advise Washington, as in the recall of Monroe from France and the sending of C. C. Pinckney in his stead; and he assisted Washington to give final form to his Farewell Address (Horace Binney, An Inquiry into the Formation of Washington's Farewell Address, 1859).

Until his death, Hamilton remained out of civil office. His best work had all been done; his cruelest errors remained to be committed. When Jay returned home:with his treaty to meet a storm of criticism, Hamilton brought his p en into play in its behalf, writing two powerful series of newspaper articles signed "Camillus" and "Philo-Camillus." Their ability extorted from Jefferson a remarkable tribute. "Hamilton," he wrote to Madison, on September 21, 1795, "is really a colossus to the anti-republican party. Without numbers, he is an host within himself" (P. L. Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, VII, 1896, p. 32). Though he was the leader of his party in 1796, he showed no aspiration for the presidency, to which because of the hostility of the South his election would have been impossible. He returned with zest to his work at the New York bar of which he was regarded as the foremost member, and where his earnings shortly reached $12,000 a year. A great favorite with the merchants of the city, he was "employed in every important and especially in every commercial case" (Memoirs and Letters of James Kent, 1898, p. 317); of insurance business he had "an overwhelming share." He took delight in his leisure for domestic life, building for his large family in 1802-03 a new home, "The Grange," at what is now Amsterdam A venue and r41st-145th streets. Had he been discreet his pathway might have been fairly smooth, but discretion repeatedly failed him. In 1797 a baseless accusation against his honesty as secretary of the treasury, brought by Monroe and others, forced him to make public confession of his intrigue some years previous with a Mrs. Reynolds; an avowal which had the merit of a proud bravery, for it showed him willing to endure any personal humiliation rather than a slur on his public integrity. From the beginning of John Adams's administration he was on ill terms with the President, partly because of an old mutual dislike, and partly because in 1796 Hamilton had encouraged the Federalist electors to cast a unanimous vote for Adams's running-mate Thomas Pinckney, frankly declaring that he would rejoice if this gave Pinckney the presidency in place of Adams. Hamilton also attempted to maintain a steady influence over the acts of Timothy Pickering and Oliver Wolcott as secretaries of state and the treasury, and succeeded until the President discovered the connection and angrily reorganized his cabinet. To the end of his life Adams cherished resentment over this "intrigue," condemning Hamilton and Pickering (though not Wolcott) in the strongest terms. The natural ill-feeling between two men so unlike in temperament and principles resulted in a series of clashes. Hamilton and Adams disagreed upon the personnel of the diplomatic commission to be sent to France, the former resenting the appointment of Elbridge Gerry; they disagreed upon the Alien and Sedition Acts, which Hamilton with his usual shrewdness condemned as "violence without energy"; and upon the course which was to be pursued when the French Directory, in the X.Y.Z. Affair, outraged American feeling.

When war threatened with France in 1798, Hamilton again entertained dreams of military achievement. Following the passage of a law for raising a provisional army, Washington, who was to command it, suggested Hamilton's appointment as inspector-general with the rank of major-general, his plan being to make his old aide second in command. General Henry Knox forthwith raised the question of precedence, refusing to serve if the generals were ranked according to the order of Washington's published list. Adams acceded to this view, ordering the commissions to be dated to give Knox the first rank. Washington thereupon threatened to resign, and Adams reluctantly yielded. Commissioned as inspector-general on July 25, l798, Hamilton was busy for several months with plans for organizing a force of 50,000 and for offensive operations against Louisiana and the Floridas. He hoped to effect conquests upon an impressive scale. When suddenly Adams dissipated both the war cloud and these dreams of glory by his wise stroke in dispatching a new minister to France, Hamilton and his supporters were filled with angry consternation. With outward good grace, Hamilton advised his friends in the Senate that "the measure must go into effect with the additional idea of a commission of three," but his inward resentment was extreme. He realized that the French mission, rending the Federalist party in two, had struck it what would probably be its death-blow. A short time later he heard that Adams had accused him of being under British influence. After writing twice to the President and receiving no answer, he rashly gave way to his feelings. In what he called "a very belligerent humor," he wrote a letter harshly arraigning Adams as unfit for the presidency and letting out much confidential cabinet information. Against his friends' protests he circulated it widely, a copy was obtained by Aaron Burr, and the Republicans saw that it went through at least five printings during the year 1800 (Letter from Alexander Hamilton Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John, Adams, Esq., President of the United States, 1800). It was a blunder of the first magnitude, and represented so palpable a surrender to personal irritation that it was without excuse.

Yet, after this surrender to petty motives, Hamilton magnificently rose above them during the Jefferson-Burr contest for the presidency in the election of 1800-01, while three years later he was to perform a still more signal service for the Republic. When the Jefferson-Burr tie went to the House, he might have joined other Federalists in attempting to revenge themselves upon Jefferson by throwing the election to his rival, but believing that Burr was an ill-equipped and dangerous man, Hamilton cast his influence into the opposite scale. After Jefferson's election he necessarily played a minor part in national politics, though he watched public affairs alertly and in 1801 joined with some friends in founding the New York Evening Post to increase his influence. He trenchantly criticized Jefferson's first message, he supported the acquisition of Louisiana, and he occasionally wrote on other questions. The rising tide of disaffection with the Republican administration in certain New England circles, and the half-covert talk of secession there and in New York, found in him an immovable opponent. When in 1804 Burr again sought the governorship of New York, and it was suspected that if victorious he meant to join the New England malcontents in the formation of a Northern confederacy, Hamilton immediately took the offensive with his old dash. He succeeded in stemming the tide which had set in behind Burr's Independent and Federalist ticket, and the Republican candidate, Morgan Lewis, was easily elected. It was a brilliant achievement, scotching the best hopes of the secessionists. Burr's defeat left him thirsting for revenge, and he found his opportunity in a statement published by Dr. Charles D. Cooper, declaring that Hamilton had called Burr "dangerous" and had expressed privately "a still more despicable opinion of him." A challenge for a duel passed, and Hamilton lacked courage to defy public opinion by rejecting it, though he accepted with the utmost reluctance. The encounter took place on the early morning of July 11, 1804, under the Weehawken heights on the banks of the Hudson, and Hamilton fell mortally wounded at the fir st shot. He was carried back to the home of William Bayard at 80 Jane St., and after excruciating suffering died the next afternoon. It was the end of both a brilliant career and a dastardly plot against the Union. "The death of Hamilton and the Vice President's flight, with their accessories of summer-morning sunlight on rocky and wooded heights, tranquil river, and distant city, and behind all, their dark background of moral gloom, double treason, and political despair, still stand as the most dramatic moment in the early politics of the Union" (Henry Adams, History of the United States of America, 1890, II, p. 191).

Hamilton was below the middle height, being five feet seven inches tall, slender, remarkably erect, and quick and energetic in his movements. His complexion was clear and ruddy, his hair reddish brown, his eyes deep blue, and his whole countenance recognizably Scottish. It was often observed that his face had a double aspect, the eyes being intent and severe, the mouth kindly and winning. Few could resist his captivating traits, and even his enemies acknowledged the charm of his graceful person, frank manners, and lively conversation. He possessed a quick and powerful pride, which Gouverneur Morris somewhat unfairly called vanity. When at work, and he worked almost incessantly, he had a marvelous faculty of concentration; many observers spoke of his ability to reach conclusions as by a lightning flash-to divine them. "Hamilton avait divine l' Europe," said Talleyrand (Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor, 1876, I, 261). In his political activities he displayed a taste for intrigue, which he sometimes carried too far. His machinations against Adams in 1796, his confidential correspondence with the British minister while he sat in Washington's cabinet, his proposal to trick the Republicans in 1800 out of New York's presidential electors-a proposal which Governor Jay quietly set aside as one "which it would not become me to adopt"-can all be counted heavily against him. Apart from this, his character was of the highest stamp, while his patriotism was unquestioned. His power as an orator was the greatest of his time, but it was characteristic of him that he chose to exert it upon select bodies of influential men, not upon the multitude. His abilities as a political leader were surpassed by few, but again he chose to work upon and through small groups rather than upon the masses. His intellect was hard, incisive, and logical, but wanting in imagination and in subtlety.

Hamilton's political principles were clearly formed by the time he was twenty-five, were pursued unremittingly throughout his life, and have probably laid a clearer impress upon the Republic than those of any other single man. He did not believe in the people, but instead profoundly distrusted the political capacity of the common man, believing him too ignorant, selfish, and ill-controlled to be capable of wise self-government. "Take mankind in general, they are vicious, their passions may be operated upon," he said in the Federal Convention (Works, 1904, I, 408); and again he referred to the people as a "great beast." He recognized that the ideas and enthusiasms of the time made large concessions to popular and republican government necessary, but he strove to hold them within close bounds. The main instruments of power, he believed, should be kept in the hands of selected groups, comprising those with intelligence and education enough to govern, and those with property interests for government to protect. This implied a concentration of strength in the central government. His belief in a powerful federal authority, springing thus from his political philosophy, was confirmed and made aggressive by his observations of the evils of the Confederation, with its feebleness and its disintegrating emphasis on state rights. At the time of the Federal Convention he believed the complete extinction of all the states desirable but impossible (W or/ls, 1904, I, 397 ff.), and the plan which he actually brought forward would have reduced the states to shadows and have placed a tremendous authority in the hands of the federal executive. As a member of the cabinet, he wished to go beyond the words of the Constitution in invigorating the government, and hence proclaimed his doctrine of implied powers; a doctrine which, as developed under Marshall and since, has tremendously strengthened the national as compared with the state sovereignties. Accepting representative institutions, he perceived the necessity of creating an economic element devoted to a strong government and eager to uphold it for selfish as well as patriotic reasons, hence his funding measures and his views in the reports on the national credit and on manufactures. In the Federalist, which is a keen study in the economic interpretation of politics. he had remarked: "Every institution will grow and flourish in proportion to the quantity and extent of the means concentrated towards its formation and support"; as administrator he simply gave this principle application. He thought much of governmental strength, but little of liberty. He emphasized national wealth, power, and order, ang neglected local attachments and autonomy. He believed in governmental measures for helping whole classes to grow prosperous, but he paid no attention to the aspirations of the individual for greater happiness, opportunity, and wisdom. He was a hard, efficient realist, whose work was invaluable to the nation at the time it was done, but whose narrow aristocratic political ideas needed correction from the doctrines of Jefferson and Lincoln.

[There is still room for a biography of Hamilton making full use of his papers, which were purchased by the government in 1849 and are now in the Library of Congress History of the Republic of the U. S. of America, as Traced in the Writings of Alexander Hamilton (6 vols., 1857-60), by his son, John Church Hamilton, is a documentary life on an excessively grand scale. J. C. Hamilton also published a seven-volume edition of the Works (1850-51), which is supplemented rather than supplanted by the editions of Henry Cabot Lodge (9 vols., 1885-88; 12 vols., 1904). Two lives strongly biased in Hamilton's favor are Lodge, Alexander Hamilton (1882), and J. T. Morse, Life of Alexander Hamilton (1876). Still more partisan, and full of dubious if interesting theorizing, is F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on American Union (1906). More impartiality is shown in W. G. Sumner, Alexander Hamilton (1890); James Schouler, Alexander Hamilton (1901); and H. J. Ford's thoughtful but often inaccurate Alexander Hamilton (1920). In Claude G. Bowers, Jefferson and Hamilton (1925), and Francis W. Hirst, Life and Letters of Thomas Jefferson (1926), the point of view is frankly hostile to Hamilton. There is material of value in The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton (1910), by his grandson, Allan McLane Hamilton [q.v.], and there are interesting sidelights in E. S. Maclay, Journal of Wm. Maclay (1890). Hamilton's connections with journalism are treated in Allan Nevins, The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism (1922). For a study of the background, two books by Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913) and Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (1915), are invaluable. Gertrude Atherton, who published A Few of Hamilton's Letters (1903), put much original research into her historical novel upon him, The Conqueror (1902). Paul Leicester Ford compiled a Bibliotheca Hamiltoniana (1886) which should be brought down to date. Among articles on special phases of his work in technical journals may be cited the following: A. D. Morse, "Alexander Hamilton," Pol. Sci. Quart., March 1890; E. G. Bourne, "Alexander Hamilton and Adam Smith," Quart. Journal of Economics, April 1894; E. C. Lunt, "Hamilton as a Pol. Economist," Journal of Pol. Economy, June 1895; W. C. Ford, "Alexander Hamilton's Notes on the Federal Convention of 1787," American History Review, October 1904. See also the published writings of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.]

A. N.


HAMLIN, Hannibal, 1809-1891. Vice President of the United States, 1861-1865, under President Abraham Lincoln.  Congressman from Maine, 1843-1847.  U.S. Senator from Maine, 1848-1857, 1857-1861, and 1869-1881.  Governor of Maine, January-February 1857.  In February 1857, he resigned as Governor of Maine to return to the U.S. Senate.  In 1861, he was elected U.S. Vice President.  Was an adamant opponent of the extension of slavery into the new territories.  Supported the Wilmot Proviso and spoke against the compromise laws of 1850.  Strongly opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  Early founding member of the Republican Party.  Supported Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and creation of Black regiments for the Union Army. (Harry Draper Hunt (1969). Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Lincoln's first Vice-President. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-2142-3. Charles Eugene Hamlin (1899). The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin. Syracuse University Press.)

HAMLIN, HANNIBAL (August 27, 1809-July 4, 1891), vice-president, United States senator, the son of Cyrus and Anna (Livermore) Hamlin, was born at Paris Hill, Maine. He was a descendant in the fifth generation from James Hamlin who settled in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, about 1639. His father, a twin brother of Hannibal Hamlin, the father of Cyrus [q.v.], had studied medicine at Harvard, but after taking up land in Maine, combined farming with the practice of his profession and the holding of sundry local offices. Hannibal grew up in the wholesome environment of a good New England home and attended the village school and Hebron Academy in preparation for college. The latter project had to be abandoned, owing to family misfortunes, and after trying his hand at surveying, printing, and school teaching for a brief period, he decided to study law. He was fortunate in being able to enter the office of Fessenden & Deblois of Portland, the senior partner of which firm, Samuel Fessenden [q.v.], was at once the leading lawyer and the outstanding antislavery advocate of the state. Hamlin was admitted to the bar in 1833 and in the same year settled at Hampden, not far from Bangor. He acquired a considerable practice, but his pronounced talent for party work soon diverted his attention to a political career. As a Jacksonian Democrat, he represented Hampden in the legislature from 1836 to 1841 and again in 1847. He served as speaker for three terms, 1837, 1839- 40. The legislature, during his first five years of service, was an especially valuable training school, containing many members afterwards distinguished in state and national affairs and dealing with such important matters as the financial demoralization of 1837 and succeeding years, the Aroostook boundary embroglio, the abolitionist agitation, and the internal-improvement craze. Hamlin's attitude was usually cautious and conservative.

In 1842 he was elected to Congress and served without special distinction from March 4, 1843, to March 3, 1847. He had decided anti-slavery leanings but, like many of his contemporaries, regarded slavery as an institution beyond the legislative authority of the national government. It is to his credit, however, that he opposed the attempts of its supporters to suppress free discussion. The growing importance of this question eventually produced a serious schism in the Maine Democracy, and in 1848 Hamlin was elected to the United States Senate to serve the balance of the term of John Fairfield, deceased, by the anti-slavery wing of the party. He was reelected in 1851 for a full term. Although a popular campaign orator, he preferred, as he afterwards stated, to be "a working rather than a talking member" of the Senate. As chairman of the committee on commerce he was the author of important legislation dealing with steamboat licensing and inspection and ship-owners' liability. Though a supporter of Pierce in 1852, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the Democratic policy toward slavery, and in 1856 went over to the Republicans. His speech of June 12, 1856, in which he renounced his Democratic allegiance, was widely quoted for campaign purposes and was one of his most effective utterances (Congressional Globe, 34 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 1396-97). In the same year he was elected governor of Maine in an exciting contest which marked the beginning of a long period of Republican predominance. He served only a few weeks as governor, resigning from the Senate January 7, 1857, only to resign the governorship in the following month in order to begin a new term in the Senate. He became increasingly prominent in the anti-slavery contest, and the political needs of 1860 made him a logical running-mate for Lincoln. He again resigned from the Senate on January 17, 1861.

As vice-president during the Civil War, he presided over the Senate with dignity and ability, was on cordial terms with President Lincoln, and performed a great variety of wartime services for his former constituents in Maine. He was a strong advocate of emancipation and became identified with the "Radicals" of Congress . . : his nomination in 1860 had been due largely to party exigencies, his failure to receive a renomination in 1864 may be attributed to the same causes. After retirement from the vice-presidency, he served for about a year as collector of the port of Boston, resigning because of his disapproval of President Johnson's policy. After two years as president of a railroad company constructing a line from Bangor to Dover, he was reelected to the Senate, serving from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1881. He was associated with the Radical group in reconstruction matters, supported Republican principles in economic issues, and steadily maintained his hold on the party organization of his native state. He was an influential opponent of the third-term movement for Grant in the convention of 1880. After retirement from the Senate he served as minister to Spain for a brief period (1881-82), an appointment of obviously complimentary character, without diplomatic significance. He spent his last years in Bangor, enjoying a wide reputation as a political Nestor and one of the last surviving intimates of President Lincoln.

Hamlin is usually grouped with the members of that remarkable dynasty of Maine statesmen beginning with George Evans and ending with Eugene Hale, all of whom he knew and some of whose fortunes he undoubtedly influenced. As a party manager and leader he did not display the unflinching courage and determination of William Pitt Fessenden or Thomas B. Reed, nor that mastery of a wide field of legislation possessed by George Evans or Nelson Dingley. He had, however, a great fund of shrewd common sense and a gift of stating things in clear and understandable phrase. When as chairman of the committee on foreign relations he urged the acceptance of the Halifax fisheries award in the interest of international arbitration and when, on the floor of the Senate, he opposed the Chinese exclusion law as a violation of treaty obligations (Congressional Record, 45 Congress, 3 Session, pp. 1383-87), he displayed genuine statesmanship. It is also worth mention that if he quarreled with President Hayes over patronage and expressed his contempt for civil-service reform, he at least opposed the infamous "salary grab" and refused to take his share of the loot.

Personally Hamlin had many attractive qualities and retained the loyalty and affection of a host of supporters. Senator Henry L. Dawes, who knew him well, described him as "a born democrat," an interesting conversationalist, and an inveterate smoker and card player. He also mentioned as characteristic of the man that he wore "a black swallow-tailed coat, and ... clung to the old fashioned stock long after it had been discarded by the rest of mankind" (Century Magazine, July 1895). Hamlin had a stocky, powerful frame and great muscular strength. His complexion was so swarthy that in 1860 the story was successfully circulated among credulous Southerners that he had negro blood. He was a skillful fly fisherman and an expert rifle shot. He was twice married: on December 10, 1833, to Sarah Jane Emery, daughter of Judge Stephen A. Emery of Paris Hill, who died April 17, 1855, and on September 25, 1856, to Ellen Vesta Emery, a half-sister of his first wife. Charles Hamlin [q.v.] was his son.

[C. E. Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (1899), a biography by his grandson, exaggerates Hamlin's importance in national affairs, but is useful in its presentation of Maine party history and occasional documents of personal interest. See also H.F. Andrews, The Hamlin Family (1902), and Howard Carroll, Twelve Americans (1883).

The biographical literature of the period contains many references and the newspapers, probably because of Hamlin's association with Lincoln, published an unusually large amount of obituary material. See especially New York Tribune, July 5, 9, 10, 1891.]

W. A. R.



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