Har-Haz: Harlan through Hazard

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


HARLAN, James, 1820-1899, statesman.  Whig U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Elected Senator in 1855 representing Iowa.  Re-elected, served until 1865, when appointed Secretary of the Interior by President Lincoln.  Re-elected to Senate in 1866, served until 1873.  (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 83-84; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 269; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 10, p. 94; Congressional Globe)

HARLAN, JAMES (August 26, 1820-October 5, 1899), United States senator, secretary of the interior, was a product of the frontier, of its opportunity and of its limitations. He was descended from George Harland, a Quaker, who emigrated from the vicinity of Durham, England, to County Down, Ireland, and thence in 1687 to America, settling finally in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His parents, Silas and Mary (Conley) Harlan, natives of Pennsylvania and Maryland respectively, were married in Ohio and then joined the stream of western migration, locating in Clark County, Illinois, where he was born. Four years later the family removed to the "New Discovery" in Parke County, Ind., a typical clearing settlement. Monotonous toil was relieved chiefly by visits of Methodist circuit riders who made the Harlan home their "preaching place." The frontier youth supplemented his log-school instruction by books secured from a county library. After teaching district school he attended a local "seminary" and entered Indiana Asbury (later DePauw) University in 1841. College life was interspersed by a trip to Iowa and a term of school teaching in Missouri. As a student his interest in politics was already marked; he was an ardent Whig. In 1845, the year that he took his degree, he was married to Ann Eliza Peck.

The young couple, true to type, sought the pioneer life in Iowa where Harlan became principal of the Iowa City College. Almost immediately his long and stormy political career began. In the first state election, in 1847, he was chosen superintendent of public instruction on the Whig ticket, but the election was declared illegal and in the contest to fill the vacancy he was defeated by methods that he regarded as highly irregular. Following this unfortunate experience, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1850 and in the same year declined the Whig nomination for governor. Before full establishment in his new profession, he was called to head the Iowa Conference University (now Iowa Wesleyan), which he served as president from 1853 to 1855. Under most discouraging conditions, both financial and academic, he was laying the foundations of one of the earliest trans-Mississippi colleges when the Free-Soil agitation put an end to his educational activities and career.

From the beginnings of the Free-Soil movement Harlan had been an active promoter. Put forward by friends as the new party's candidate for the United States Senate he was elected, in 1855, by a rump legislature after one house had formally adjourned. This irregularity led to the vacating of his seat in January 1857. He was promptly returned by a sympathetic legislature and in 1860 was the unanimous Republican choice for a second term. During his first senatorial contest he built up a personal organization throughout the state which he utilized effectively in later contests. As senator he concentrated on Western measures, homesteads, college land grants, and especially the Pacific railroad act, which he personally directed. He gave loyal support to the war measures of the administration and was intimate with President Lincoln; his daughter later married Robert Todd Lincoln [q.v.]. At the beginning of Lincoln's second term Harlan became secretary of the interior. This position was the disastrous turning-point of his career. Departmental policies created bitter enmities and led to charges of improper appointments and of corruption in the disposal of Indian and railroad lands. These charges persisted, although, according to one of Harlan's biographers, "each of the accusations was fairly and squarely met by facts which were a matter of record, and proven to be without foundation" (Brigham, post, p. 250). The most notable of his many dismissals in pursuance of his policy of economy was that of Walt Whitman [q.v.] from a clerkship in the Indian Office (Ibid., p. 208). The reconstruction contest caused a break between Harlan and Johnson, and Harlan resigned his portfolio in July 1866.

Before leaving the cabinet he had been making plans for a return to the Senate, and he had so influential a following that he was elected in 1866, but at the cost of the friendship of Samuel J. Kirkwood and James W. Grimes [qq.v.]. Upon returning to the Senate he was definitely aligned with the radical administration group and his most notable acts were his support of Johnson's impeachment and his spirited defense of Grant's Santo Dominican policy. The growing cleavage in the party, which was to culminate in the Liberal Republican movement, was reflected in the Iowa senatorial contest in January 1872 in which Harlan's opponents combined so effectively that he was defeated by William B. Allison [q.v.]. This defeat ended his official career at a comparatively early age. Though candidate for senator and governor at various times, he was never again successful in an election. His only remaining official service was as a member of the second court of Alabama claims, 1882-86. He was an active member of the Methodist Church, and the support that he received from Iowa Methodists occasionally figured in political controversies. He was president of Iowa Wesleyan again for a short time in 1869-70. Tall, dignified, impressive looking, Harlan was strong of body and of will. He was a zealous partisan and a persistent fighter, tenacious of conviction whether based upon reason or prejudice.

[The Harlan papers, including autobiographical sketch of early years and a large correspondence, are in the possession of Harlan's daughter, Mrs. Robert Todd Lincoln, and were used and quoted extensively in Johnson Brigham, James Harlan (1913). See also Cong. Globe, 34-42 Congress; Report of the Sec. of the Interior, 1865; Diary of Gideon Welles (3 vols., 1911); D. E. Clark, History of Senatorial Elections in Iowa (1912); A.H. Harlan, Hist. and Genealogy of the Harlan Family (1914); Hist. Sketch and Alumni Record of Iowa Wesleyan Coll. (1917); E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers and Public Men of Iowa (1916); Christian Advocate, October 19, 1899; Iowa State Register (Des Moines), October 6, 1899.)

E. D.R.


HARPER, Frances Ellen Watkins, 1825-1911, African American, poet, writer, abolitionist, political activist. Wrote antislavery poetry. (Hughes, Meltzer, & Lincoln, 1968, p. 105; Yellin, 1994, pp. 97, 148, 153, 155-157, 295; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 5, p. 372)


HARRIMAN, Walter (April 8, 1817-July 25, 1884), soldier, governor of New Hampshire, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2

HARRIMAN, WALTER (April 8, 1817-July 25, 1884), soldier, governor of New Hampshire, was the son of Benjamin Evans and Hannah (Flanders) Harriman and was descended from Leonard Harriman who emigrated to America from Yorkshire, England, in 1638, and settled at Rowley, Massachusetts. He was born at Warner, New Hampshire. After attending the public schools and Hopkinton Academy he began at seventeen to teach school in Warner and continued in this occupation for about seven years, holding positions in Massachusetts and New Jersey, as well as in New Hampshire. He spent ten years in the ministry of the Universalist Church, first at Harvard, Massachusetts, after which he returned to Warner, New Hampshire, in 1845. Becoming interested in business, he left the ministry in 1851 and conducted a general store at Warner in partnership with John S. Pillsbury, afterward governor of Minnesota. In politics he was a Democrat with antislavery leanings, and beginning in 1848, he became an active political worker. In the following ten years he served two terms in the New Hampshire House and one in the Senate (1849, 1858, 1859); two terms as state treasurer (1853-55); and in 1856 was appointed by President Pierce member of a commission for the classification of Indian lands in Kansas.

In the spring of 1861 Harriman became editor and part owner of the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Democrat, which he renamed the Weekly Union, and gave vigorous and effective support to the war policy of the Lincoln administration, a service of great importance in view of the numerical strength of the Democratic party in the state. In August of the following year he was commissioned colonel of the 11th Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteers and shortly afterward left for Virginia with his command. He took part in the battle of Fredericksburg in December. In 1863 his regiment was moved west and with the exception of a few weeks when he temporarily resigned, he spent the year in various operations in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, including the siege of Vicksburg. In the spring of 1864 the regiment was again attached to the Army of the Potomac and at the battle of the Wilderness, Harriman was captured while leading an attack on the Confederate lines. He was exchanged a few months later, eventually resumed command of his regiment before Petersburg, and participated with credit in the closing operations. He took part in the grand review, was honored with a brevet brigadier-generalship, and was mustered out June 11, 1865.

While still in the field Harriman had maintained an interest in politics and in 1863 accepted a nomination for the governorship from the War Democrats, diverting sufficient votes to force the election into the legislature, where the Republicans, actually a popular minority, were able to elect the governor. This maneuver gained the lasting gratitude of the Republicans and practically ended his former party affiliations. While on furlough after his release in 1864 he was an active campaigner for the Lincoln ticket in the presidential election. On leaving the army he was immediately elected secretary of state for New Hampshire and served two years, and in 1867 and 1868 he was elected governor after closely contested campaigns. After the inauguration of Grant, he was appointed and for the next eight years served as naval officer for the port of Boston. Having established a residence in Concord in 1872, he retired to it in 1877 and spent the rest of his life there, serving a single term (1881) as representative in the legislature, but devoting more attention to writing than to active party work. He contributed frequently to various New England newspapers and journals and in 1879 published a History of Warner, New Hampshire, containing in the appendix another historical study: "The Boundaries of New Hampshire." His last work was a volume entitled Travels and Observations in the Orient, and a Hasty Flight in the Countries of Europe (1883). He was twice married. His first wife was Apphia K. Hoyt, to whom he was married in September 1841. After her death he was married, in October 1844, to Almira R. Andrews.

[Amos Hadley, Life of Walter Harriman with Selections from his Speeches and Writings (1888); "General Walter Harriman," Granite Monthly, October 1879; Leander W. Cogswell, A History of the Eleventh New Hampshire Regiment, Volunteer Infantry (1891); Otis F. R. Waite, New Hampshire in the Great Rebellion (1870); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); Concord Evening Monitor, July 25, 1884.]

W.A.R.


HARRIS, Ira, 1802-1875, jurist.  Republican U.S. Senator from New York.  Served as U.S. Senator from 1861-1867.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. III, p. 91; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 310; Congressional Globe)

HARRIS, IRA (May 31, 1802-December 2, 1875), jurist, was born in Charleston, Montgomery County, New York, the son of Frederic Waterman and Lucy (Hamilton) Harris. His father's ancestors came from England to Rhode Island; his mother was of Scotch descent. The family moved to Cortland County in 1808 and the boy worked on the farm until he was seventeen. He attended Homer Academy, then entered the junior class of Union College in 1822, graduating with honors two years later. He began the study of law at home but later he was received into the office of Ambrose Spencer [q.v.] in Albany and in 1827 he was admitted to the bar. He began his career in Albany, where his success at the bar was immediate. In time he was drawn into politics. He was elected to the Assembly, as a Whig, with Anti-Rent support, for the sessions of 1845 and 1846, was a member of the state constitutional convention in 1846, and in 1847 was a member of the state Senate. Later in 1847 he was elected to the state supreme court for the short term of four years. In 1851 he was reelected for a full term of eight years and in the same year became a member of the first faculty of the Albany Law School. In 1861, after a year in Europe, he was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican. He succeeded William H. Seward, defeating Horace Greeley and William M. Evarts. In the Senate he was a member of important committees and exercised considerable influence. Though he generally supported the administration and was a close friend of Charles Sumner, he was never an intense partisan and vigorously opposed the expulsion of Senator Jesse D. Bright, of Indiana, who had given a friend a letter of introduction to Jefferson Davis. While in Washington he lectured in the law school of Columbian College (later George Washington University). At the end of his term he was defeated in the Republican caucus by Roscoe Conkling but was chosen a delegate at large to the state constitutional convention the same year. During Harris' stay in Washington his connection with the Albany Law School had not been entirely broken. On returning to Albany he resumed his place on the faculty and continued to lecture almost up to the time of his death. His interest in education was intense. He was one of the founders of the Albany Medical College (1838), for many years a trustee of Vassar College and Union College, and trustee and chancellor of the University of Rochester (1850-75). Prominent also in Baptist affairs, he was for many years a deacon in Emmanuel Baptist Church in Albany and served as chairman of the American Baptist Missionary Union. He was an eloquent advocate, a graceful orator, and an excellent judge. For almost fifty years he was a prominent figure in Albany and gave lavishly of his time and energy to any movement to advance the intellectual and moral interests of the community. He was twice married: first, to Louisa Tubbs, who died May 17, 1845, and second, to Mrs. Pauline Penny Rathbone, who with two sons and four daughters survived him. His brother, Hamilton Harris (1820-1900), was a prominent lawyer and Republican politician in Albany.

[A. I. Parker, Landmarks of Albany County (1897); G. R. Howell and Jonathan Tenney, History of the County of Albany, New York (1886); Memorial of Ira Harris (Albany, 1876); Irving Browne, "The Albany Law School, " Green Bag, April 1890; D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, vol. II (1906); J. C. Cooley, Rathbone Genealogy (1898); Albany Argus, New York Tribune, December 3, 1875; Albany Law Journal, December 11, 1875.]

H. T.


HARRIS, William Logan (November 14, 1817-September 2, 1887), bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2

HARRIS, WILLIAM LOGAN (November 14, 1817-September 2, 1887), bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a descendant of James Harris who emigrated in 1725 from Somersetshire, England, to Essex County, New Jersey, was born on his father's farm near Mansfield, Ohio. His parents, James and Mary (Logan) Harris, were Presbyterians, but William, converted at a camp meeting when he was seventeen, became an earnest Methodist, and was moved to prepare for the ministry. He was encouraged in this ambition by his mother, but his father had died, and an uncle, who was virtually his guardian, wished to make a farmer out of him, and would give him no financial assistance. Supporting himself, however, he studied for two years in Norwalk Seminary, Norwalk, Ohio. With this meager education, in 1837 he was admitted on trial to the Michigan Conference, which then included northern Ohio, and embarked on his ministerial career. In 1839 he was ordained deacon, and in 1841, elder. On August 9, 1840, he married Anna Atwell. As a young preacher on circuits and at various stations he proved himself an effective evangelical speaker, and revivals invariably attended his ministry. His administrative ability and sound judgment, together with the fact that he was a person of method, thoroughness, and accuracy, brought him official positions in his denomination. From 1860 to 1872 he was assistant corresponding secretary of the Missionary Society. He was a member of all the General Conferences from 1856 to 1872 inclusive, and served as secretary of each. His work in this position was such that it came to be said that before Harris' time the Methodist Church never had a secretary. During the period when the question of the General Conference's powers with respect to excluding slave-holders from church membership was being hotly debated, Harris, in a series of articles in the Western Christian Advocate (later published under the title The Constitutional Powers of the General Conference, with Special Application to the Subject of Slaveholding, 1860), ably opposed the arguments of those who maintained that slave-holders had a constitutional right to membership. He took an important part in determining the action of the General Conference on the admission of missionary conferences, and in preparing the plan by which lay representation was introduced. In 1872 he was elected to the board of bishops, and immediately became its secretary. […]

[ T. L. Flood and J. W. Hamilton, Lives of Methodist Bishops (1882); S. J. H. Keifer, Genealogy and Biographical Sketches of the New Jersey Branch of the Harris Family (1888); Meth. Review (New York), January 1888; E.T. Nelson, Fifty Years of History of the Ohio Wesleyan University (1895); Christian Advocate (New York), September 8, 1887; J. M. Buckley, A History of Methodists in the U.S. (1896), American Church Historical Series; New York Tribune and other New York papers, September 3, 1887.]

H. E.S.


HARRISON, Benjamin, (August 20, 1833- March 13, 1901), twenty-third president of the United States. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2

HARRISON, BENJAMIN (August 20, 1833- March 13, 1901), twenty-third president of the United States, was descended from Benjamin Harrison, who came to Virginia from England and was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1642. The Harrisons belonged to the wealthy planter class and held the highest political positions in Virginia. The most prominent of the earlier members of the family was Benjamin Harrison [q.v.], signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor of Virginia. His son, William Henry Harrison [q.v.], established his home in Ohio on an extensive estate on the Ohio River just below Cincinnati; here he was residing in 1840 when elected president. On an adjoining farm lived his eldest son, John Scott Harrison, congressman for two terms. His second wife, Elizabeth Irwin, was the mother of Benjamin.

Private tutors and typical country schoolteachers prepared Benjamin Harrison for Farmer's College. He finished his college course with distinction in 1852 at Miami University. On October 20, 1853, he married a college friend, Caroline Lavinia Scott, daughter of Dr. John Scott, president of the Oxford Female Institute; to them two children, Russell and Mary, were born. From 1852 to 1854 he read law in the offices of Storer and Gwynne, prominent attorneys in Cincinnati. In 1854, he settled in Indianapolis, then a growing Western town, and by indefatigable industry forged gradually to the front of his profession. His active interest in politics began during the first year of his law practice, when the struggle over slavery was at white heat. Harrison at once gave the Republican party unswerving allegiance; to him, moral principles were at stake. He soon established an enviable reputation as a campaign speaker. In 1858 he served as secretary to the Republican state central committee of Indiana; he was elected city attorney in 1857, and in 1860 and 1864 reporter of the supreme court of Indiana. He found the compilation of ten volumes of Indiana Reports equivalent to a postgraduate law course, while the salary and royalties placed him on his feet financially.

He was paying for a modest home at the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1862, he helped raise the 70th Indiana Infantry and was appointed its colonel by Governor Oliver P. Morton. The regiment was hurried to Bowling Green, Kentucky, to assist in stopping Bragg, even though its colonel knew practically nothing of war and its rank and file knew less. Fortunately, it was given the prosaic duty of guarding the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. Two years of devotion to duty and study changed the untrained colonel into a seasoned brigade commander. Harrison soon became unpopular, however, because he insisted on turning raw recruits into disciplined soldiers. In 1864, his command was attached to Sherman's army and participated in the bloody battles of the Atlanta campaign, during much of which Harrison was in comm and of his brigade. His conduct won the praise of General Butterfield and a recommendation for promotion from General Hooker. After the capture of Atlanta, Harrison returned to Indiana at Governor Morton's request to help combat Copperhead influence in the political campaign of 1864. This service prevented his participation in the march through Georgia, but he rejoined his command in the Carolinas and led it in the grand review in Washington. On March 22, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-general "for ability and manifest energy and gallantry." Three years of war had fully matured him.

[…].

[Lew Wallace, Life of General Ben Harrison (1888) is the best of seven campaign biographies. A biography by A. T. Volwiler, utilizing the numerous Benjamin Harrison manuscripts in the Library of Congress, hitherto unexploited by historians, is in preparation. E. W. Halford, private secretary to Harrison while president, published articles in Century Magazine, June 1912; New York Christian Advocate, June 11, 18, and July 9, 1914; and Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, March 8--October 11, 1919. The Indianapolis Journal and Indianapolis Sentinel are invaluable for Harrison's life after 1854. See also Edward Stanwood, A History of the Presidency (1898); Wm. A. White, Masks in a Pageant (1928); articles in North American Review, June, October 1888, June 1892; New York Nation, July 19, 1888, March 21, 1901; From, July 1892; obituaries in Indianapolis Sentinel, Indianapolis Journal, and New York Times, March 14, 1901.]

A.T.V.


HARRISON, Henry Baldwin (September 11, 1821-October 29, 1901), governor of Connecticut, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2

HARRISON, HENRY BALDWIN (September 11, 1821-October 29, 1901), governor of Connecticut, the son of Ammi and Polly (Barney) Harrison, was born in New Haven. He prepared for college at the Lancasterian School there under John E. Lovell, its founder, and by private study with George A. Thacher, at that time a student in the Yale Divinity School. While he was a student Harrison taught for a time in the Lancasterian School. He entered Yale in 1842 and graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1846. After leaving college he studied law in the Yale Law School and in a New Haven law office. He was admitted to the bar in 1848 and began to practise in New Haven with Lucius G. Peck. Although he later was known especially as a corporation lawyer, he attracted attention in 1855 by his successful defense of a client charged with murder, on the then unusual plea of insanity. Active in politics, he was successively a Whig, a Free-Soiler, and a Republican. In 1854 he was elected to the state Senate on the Whig ticket. In the Senate he was chairman of the committee on corporations and a member of committees appointed to consider a revision of the statutes and to compile laws regarding education. He introduced the personal-liberty bill which was passed by this session of the General Assembly of Connecticut to nullify in the state the Fugitive-Slave Law passed by Congress. He was the Republican candidate for lieutenant-governor in 1856, but was defeated. In 1865 he was elected to the lower house of the Connecticut legislature as a representative of New Haven, and in this session was chairman of the committees on railroads and on federal relations. He advocated an amendment to the state constitution which would give the negro the ballot. He was again elected to represent New Haven in the legislature of 1873, and served as chairman of the committee on a constitutional convention the bill for which was defeated-and as a member of the judiciary committee. In 1874 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the governorship. Representing New Haven in the lower house of the state legislature for the third time in--1884, he was chosen speaker of the House. In that year he was again a candidate for governor. No candidate received a majority of the popular vote, though the Democrats had a plurality. In the joint convention of the legislature made necessary by this situation Harrison was elected, 164 to 91. He served for two years, beginning J an. 7, 1885. He was a member of Trinity Church (Episcopal), New Haven, and a member of the Yale Corporation, 1872-85, and, ex officio, 1885-87. He was married in 1856 to Mary Elizabeth Osborne, daughter of Thomas Burr Osborne. From this marriage there were no children. Harrison survived his wife. His death occurred in his eighty-first year at his home in New Haven.

[Journal of the Senate of the State of Connecticut, May Session, 1854; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Connecticut, May Session, 1865, May Session, 1873, January Session, 1884; New Haven Morning Journal and Courier, esp. October 30, 1901; New Haven Evening Register, October 29, 1901; Yale College Class of I846 (1871); Obit. Record Grads. Yale University, 1902; E. E. Atwater, History of the City of New Haven (1887); F. C. Norton, The Governors of Connecticut (1905).)

De F . V-S.


HARRISON, Thomas, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, co-founder and leader of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, founded 1775, Electing Committee, Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1787 (Basker, 2005, pp. 80, 92; Locke, 1901, pp. 133, 133n; Nash, 1991, pp. 80, 115, 117, 123-124, 130-131, 163)


HART, Reverend Levi, Connecticut, petitioned against slavery (Bruns, 1977, pp. 293, 340-348, 365-376; Locke, 1901, pp. 41, 41n2; Park, “Memoir of Samuel Hopkins,” in Hopkins’ Works, I, pp. 123, 125-126; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 107, 153, 156)


HASSAUREK, Friedrich (October 8, 1831- October 3, 1885), journalist, diplomat, and politician, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt.2

HASSAUREK, FRIEDRICH (October 8, 1831- October 3, 1885), journalist, diplomat, and politician, was born in Vienna, Austria. Franz Hassaurek, his father, was a wealthy merchant and litterateur who speculated disastrously and died impoverished in 1836. His mother, Johanna Abele, a sister of Baron Vincenz van Abele, then married Leopold Markbreit, who sent Friedrich to the Piaristen Gymnasium. The boy proved a quick student and was editing a school paper at the outbreak of the revolution of 1848. Imbued with radical ideas, he joined the Student Legion and was slightly wounded fighting the imperial troops. After the failure of the revolution, he fled to Cincinnati, Ohio. Arriving in April 1849, he wrote articles for the German-American press and soon was appointed assistant editor of the Ohio Staatszeitung with an intermittently paid salary of $3.50 a week. Within a year he was able to establish with $mo borrowed capital the weekly Hochwaechter, through which the adolescent editor proclaimed vehemently the socialistic views of the most radical and anticlerical German revolutionists. In it he published serially his novel: "Hierarchie mid Aristokratie" and waged a successful campaign against the fraudulent practices of agencies which were swindling German immigrants. Having become known as an impetuous and able public speaker in both German and English, he debated religious questions with Methodist ministers in 1852 and three years later successfully ran for the City Council as an Independent. Meanwhile, he had been studying law, and after his admission to the bar sold his newspaper. Almost at once he attracted attention as a lawyer by preventing the conviction for murder of Loeffler, an insane German criminal. Espousing ardently the anti-slavery cause, he organized the Republican party in Cincinnati, a Democratic stronghold, and by his brilliant oratory did much to attract to the new party the large German vote. A delegate to the Chicago convention which nominated Lincoln in 1860, he was rewarded by appointment in March 1861 as minister to Ecuador. At Quito he arranged the establishment of a mixed commission to settle the claims of both countries and served with distinction as American member. In 1864 he came home to campaign for Lincoln's reelection and obtain the exchange of his half-brother, who was in Libby Prison. Returning to Ecuador in March 1865, he resigned after a year to become editor and part-owner of the Tagliches Cincinnatier Volksblatt. He had now lo st his earlier socialistic beliefs and with great ardor opposed every policy which savored of paternalism, holding that the one essential function of government was the protection of private rights. Such views led him to criticize the Republican method of reconstructing the South, and in 1872 he joined the liberal movement which supported Greeley for the presidency. His backing of Tilden in 1876 caused a disagreement with the Republicans in control of the Volksblatt, and he retired from active editorship to spend a year traveling in Europe and writing delightful letters which the paper published. On his return he again became editor, and in disgust at both major parties conducted the paper on strictly non-partisan lines. In the hope of improving his broken health, he again went to Europe in 1882, accompanied by Eunice Marshall, his third wife, Though he still wrote steadily, his strength gradually failed until he died in Paris. A political orator and journalist of brilliant attainments, he was equally persuasive in English and German and possessed a sense of humor which made him especially popular as an after-dinner speaker. Out of his experience in Ecuador he wrote Four Years among Spanish Americans (1867; German translation, Dresden, 1887), a book full of accurate observation but lacking literary distinction. The same region provided local color for The Secret of the Andes (English edition 1879, German 1880), a fantastically sentimental and romantic novel. He also published an unimportant volume of Gedichte (1877).

[Armin Tenner, Cincinnati Sonst und Jetzt (1878); Max Burgheim, Cincinnati in Wort 1md Bild (1888); Memoirs of Gustave Koerner (2 vols,, 1909), ed, by T. J, McCormack; Das Ausland, December 14, 1885, p. 999; Foreign Relations of the U. S., 1862-66; Cincinnati Enquirer, September 20, October 4, October 20, 1885 and Tagliches Cincinnatier Volksblatt, October 4, 21-23, 1885.]

W.LW-t, Jr.


HASTINGS, Samuel Dexter (July 24, 1816-March 26, 1903), reformer, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2

HASTINGS, SAMUEL DEXTER (July 24, 1816-March 26, 1903), reformer, born at Leicester, Worcester County, Massachusetts, was the son of Simon and Elizabeth (McIntosh) Hastings and a lineal descendant of Thomas Hastings who emigrated from England in 1634 and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts. His early youth was spent in Boston; at the age of fourteen he moved to Philadelphia and there humbly began his mercantile career. Aided by a friend from Leicester, he was established in his own business at the age of twenty-one. During his sixteen years in Philadelphia he maintained a deep interest in social and religious questions. In 1835 he began his long connection with the anti-slavery movement that brought him into intimate association with William "Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and John G. "Whittier. He was one of the active founders of the Liberty party in Pennsylvania and at the age of twenty-four was chairman of the state central committee. On August 1, 1837, he married Margaretta Shubert and in 1846 moved to Walworth County in Wisconsin Territory. Two years later he was elected to the first state legislature by a large majority. In the first session he delivered a memorable speech against slavery and was the author of the resolutions which committed the new state to its opposition to the extension of the slave trade. He moved from Walworth County to La Crosse in 1852 and later to Trempealeau on the Mississippi. In 1856 he was returned to the legislature and the following year was elected treasurer of the state. He held this office for eight years, ably managing the state finances during the difficult period of the Civil War.

During his long career Hastings was a zealous foe of liquor and tobacco. He had spoken frequently, had encouraged legislation, and was an active member of many organizations to suppress these alleged evils. In the Sons of Temperance he became Grand Worthy Patriarch of Wisconsin and was six times elected Right Worthy Grand Templar, the highest office in the international order of Good Templars. In his youth he had been an ardent Presbyterian but withdrew from the church because of his anti-slavery views. He became prominent in the Congregational Church, was influential in establishing a free Congregational church in Philadelphia and, although remaining a layman, became moderator of the Wisconsin state convention. To this convention he made the remarkable address based on the text, "whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God," in which he effectively demonstrated that tobacco could not be used to the glory of God. He spoke for prohibition in nearly every state of the Union, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and six times crossed the Atlantic to further the cause. For many years he contributed to prohibition and anti-slavery papers and in 1883 edited the speeches of John B. Finch under the title, The People versus the Liquor Traffic. He was for many years a member of the executive committee and treasurer of the national Prohibition party. Honest men sometimes quarreled with his methods, but he was never troubled by doubts of the value of his ends or his means to them. Throughout a long and active life he labored indefatigably for two great purposes: the emancipation of the negroes of the South and the imposition of prohibition upon the English-speaking peoples of the world. He died at Evanston, Illinois.

[Trans. Wisconsin Academy Science, Arts; and Letters, 1903, pp. 686-90; international Good Templar, October 1889; Columbian Biographical Dict., Wisconsin, vol. (1895); Proc. Wisconsin Historical Society, vol. XIV, pt. 2 (1904); L. N. H. Buckminster, The Hastings Memorial (1866); Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), March 26, 27, 1903. ] (Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p.

F.M.


HAVEN, Gilbert, 1821-1880, abolitionist.  (Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2,

HAVEN, GILBERT (September 19, 1821-January 3, 1880), abolitionist, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born in Malden, Massachusetts, being the fifth of the ten children of Gilbert and Hannah (Burrill) Haven, of old New England stock. He was a cousin of Erastus Otis Haven [q.v.]. He attended Wesleyan Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, where he experienced a Methodist conversion; and Wesleyan University (B.A. 1846), where he was noted for his scholarship, his genial personality, his anti-slavery opinions, and his gift for leadership. After five years in Amenia (New York) Seminary, where he taught Greek and German and was for three years principal, he entered the Methodist Episcopal ministry in the New England Conference in 1851. During his early pastorate in Massachusetts he distinguished himself by his interest in public affairs, especially the moral questions that were involved in the political issues of the time. His sermons, and notably his articles in the religious and secular press, were vigorous expressions of fiery convictions on slavery, temperance, et cetera. At Lincoln's first call for troops he volunteered and was commissioned chaplain of the 8th Massachusetts on April 30, 1861.

After a year in Europe (1862) he returned to the ministry in Boston. He was now bent on securing for the freedmen the full fruits of emancipation. He advocated civil rights and absolute social equality, even to racial amalgamation. He resisted the wish of the bishops to send him South as a missionary because they limited his field to the blacks. From 1867 to 1872 as editor of Zion's Herald, the Boston Methodist weekly, he was a powerful ally of Charles Sumner and the radical Republicans, as well as a strong advocate of prohibition, woman's suffrage, and lay representation. He compelled the nation to take notice of him, while his own church echoed with his sayings-" Havenisms." In 1868 he was a member of the General Conference and mentioned for the episcopacy. In 1872 he was elected, to the dismay of conservatives and the rapturous delight of the negroes and radicals. His residence was fixed in Atlanta, Georgia. Socially ostracized and threatened with violence because he practised the racial equality which he preached, he energetically pressed the freedmen's claims, gave his own money and solicited gifts to found schools and colleges for them, and enlisted Northern college graduates to come South and teach the former slaves and their children. By his articles, sermons, and lectures he kept the North informed with regard to the Southern policy of repression, and fearlessly denounced the secret organizations which "murdered people for their opinions." He visited Mexico in 1873 with the Reverend William Butler, and cooperated with him in planting Methodism in the capital. In 1876 he "visited the Methodist missions in Liberia, where he contracted the African malaria which tormented him ever after. He finally succumbed on January 3, 1880, in Malden, Massachusetts, leaving a son and a daughter, both of whom became noted in religious work. His wife, Mary Ingraham, whom he married at Amenia, New York, in 1851, died in 1860. Bishop Haven was of medium height, compactly built, with ruddy face and red hair. His voice was unattractive and his delivery forced, but he carried his hearers and his readers with him by the strength and warmth of his own convictions. As a writer he was journalistic rather than literary. His publications were:
The Pilgrim's Wallet (1866); National Sermons (1869);
Father Taylor, the Sailor Preacher (1872), with Thomas Russell; Our Next Door Neighbor: A Winter in Mexico (1875); Christus Consolator (1893), with a preface and notes by his son; and pamphlets including: Parkerism (1860), Lay Representation in the Methodist Episcopal Church (1864), Te Deum Laudamus: the Cause and the Consequence of the Election of Abraham Lincoln (1860), The Uniter and Liberator of America (1865)-a memorial discourse on Lincoln, An Appeal to Our People for Our People (1875). Some years after his death there was published Heavenly Messenger (1890), which, it was alleged, was a communication from Haven through a spiritualist medium.

[Erastus Wentworth. Gilbert Haven: A Monograph (1880); George Prentice, The Life of Gilbert Haven (1883); Memorials of Gilbert Haven (1880), ed. by Wm. H. Daniels; T. L. Flood, "Gilbert Haven," in Lives of Methodist Bishops (1882), by T. L. Flood and J. W. Hamilton; Josiah Adams, The Genealogy of the Descendants of Richard Haven of Lynn, Massachusetts (1843) and Continuation of the Genealogy (1849); the Christian Advocate (New York), January 8, 1880.]

J. R. J.    


HAVILAND, Charles, Jr., New York, abolitionist.  Husband of noted abolitionist leader Laura Smith Haviland.  Helped organize the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society in Michigan in 1832.  Co-founded the Raisin Institute, a progressive racially integrated school.  Operated a station on the Underground Railroad.  (Danforth, 1961; Dumond, 1961, pp. 279-281; Haviland, 1882; Lindquist, 1999)


HAVILAND, Laura, New York, Society of Friends, Quaker, anti-slavery activist.  October 8, 1832, co-founded the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society in Lenawee County, Michigan Territory, with Elizabeth Chandler.  Founded the Raisin Institute.  Helped fugitive slaves.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 279, 401n18, 32; Haviland, 1882)


HAWLEY, Joseph Roswell, 1826-1905, statesman, clergyman, lawyer, editor, opponent of slavery, Union officer.  Member of the Free Soil Party.  Co-founder of the Republican Party.  Chairman of Connecticut Free Soil State Committee.  He opposed pro-slavery Know-Nothing Party and aided in anti-slavery organizing.  Helped organize and found the Republican Party in 1856.  In 1857, became editor of the Republican newspaper, Evening Press in Hartford.  Enlisted in the Union Army, rising to the rank of Brigadier General, commanding both a division and a brigade. 

(Appletons, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 123-124; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 421; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 10, p. 351)

HAWLEY, JOSEPH ROSWELL (October 31, 1826-March 18, 1905), editor, soldier, senator, was descended in the eighth generation from Joseph Hawley who came from England to Boston in 1629 and later settled in Stratford, Conn. Hawley's father, the Reverend Francis Hawley, a native of Farmington, Connecticut, married Mary McLeod of North Carolina and at Stewartville in the latter state Joseph was born. In 1837 the family returned to Connecticut and the boy received his early schooling at Hartford and at Cazenovia, New York. After graduating with honor from Hamilton College in the class of 1847, winning distinction as a speaker and debater, he taught school and read law. In 1850 he was admitted to the bar in Connecticut and secured enough clients to make a living. Drawn into the ranks of the anti-slavery crusaders, he was a delegate to the national convention of the Free-Soil party in 1852. Four years later he called the meeting of a hundred Connecticut citizens among whom was his friend, Gideon Welles [q.v.]-which organized the Republican party in the state. He took an active part in the Fremont campaign, developing a vigorous and epigrammatic style on the stump. In 1857 he abandoned his law practice for the editor's chair when he took charge of the Hartford Evening Press, the organ of the new party. Associated with him on the Press was a college chum and life-long friend, Charles Dudley Warner [q.v.].

While the telegraph was still bringing the reports of the bombardment of Fort Sumter to his newspaper office, Hawley drew up the paper for enlisting the first company of volunteers from his state. He followed this action with a rousing speech on the evening of April 17 before a memorable Hartford mass-meeting. On the following day he was mustered into the service with the rank of captain. On January 15, 1866, he returned to civil life, having been brevetted major-general of volunteers to date from September 28, 1865, "for gallant and meritorious services during the war." He saw service in thirteen "battles and actions," most of them along the eastern coast of the Confederacy. In the operations in Virginia in 1864, he served under Benjamin Butler [q.v.] and later under Terry. He was cited for meritorious conduct at the fir st battle of Bull Run and at the battle of Olustee, Fla., February 20, 1864. Twice during the war his ability as a speaker was capitalized when he was sent North on recruiting duty.

In the year of his discharge he was elected governor of Connecticut by a people anxious to honor war veterans. In 1867 he became editor of the Hartford Courant with which the Evening Press was merged. He liked speaking better than writing, however, and politics remained to the end of his life his primary interest. He was as much at home in the conservative Republican party after the war as he had been in the crusading group in the years preceding it. In 1868, when the proposal to pay government bonds in depreciated currency was gaining favor west of the Appalachians, he uttered, as President of the Republican National Convention, his most quoted political epigram, "Every bond, in letter and in spirit, must be as sacred as a soldier's grave" (Official Proceedings, post, p. 24). Two years later he opposed openly the political aspirations of his former chief, the then discredited Butler who was seeking office in Massachusetts. Butler retaliated with a speech in Springfield on Aug. 24, 1871, in which he accused Hawley, while under his command, of incompetency and hinted at cowardice. Hawley, always impulsive and at times irascible, lost no time in calling his former commanding officer a "liar and blackguard." The resulting controversy, in which Butler hedged, was widely discussed throughout the North with public opinion running strongly in Hawley's favor.

Between 1868 and 1881 Hawley was twice defeated for and thrice elected to the House of Representatives, where he served on committees on cl aims, banking and currency, military affairs, and appropriations. At the Republican National Convention of 1872 he was secretary of the committee on resolutions and in 1876 chairman of that committee, playing no small part in shaping the issues on which his party went before the electorate. He was president of the United States Centennial Commission and disclosed his Puritan heritage by causing the exposition to be closed on Sundays. From 1881 to within two weeks of his death he was United States senator from Connecticut. He was able but not conspicuous. He was a consistent protectionist and advocate of sound money. He did his most useful work as chairman of the Senate committee on civil service and on military affairs. In the latter capacity he had charge in the upper house of bills for increasing the coast defenses, providing for a volunteer army, and reorganizing the regular army which were made necessary by the Spanish-American emergency in 1898. Hawley was married twice: in 1855 to Harriet Ward Foote, who died in 1886, and subsequently to Edith Anne Horner, a native of England. He died in Washington, D. C.

[E. P. Parker, "Memorial Address," in Joint Report of the Commission on Memorials to Senators Orville Hitchcock Platt and Joseph Roswell Haw ley to the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut (1915); letters by Hawley as president of the Centennial Commission and scrapbooks kept by him in Connecticut State Library; Sen. Report 6947, 59 Congress, 2 Session; files of the Hartford Courant; War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), 1 series esp. II, 355, and XXXV (pt. 1), 289; Official Proceedings, National Republican Conventions, 1868-80 (1903); Springfield Republican, August 25, 1871; The Brilliant Military Record of Major General Hawley (pamphlet, n.d.), reprinted from the Hartford Courant at the time of the Butler controversy; E. S. Hawley, The Hawley Record (1890); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Evening Star (Washington), and Hartford Courant, March 18. 1905.]

R.H.G.


HAYES, Rutherford Birchard, 1822-1893, Delaware, Ohio,, 19th President of the United States, 1877-1881.  Governor of Ohio, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1865-1867, abolitionist, lawyer, soldier.  Defended fugitive slaves in pre-Civil War court cases.  His wife, Lucy, Webb, was also an abolitionist.  Early member of the Republican Party.  Served with distinction as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.  (Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography)

HAYES, RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD (October 4, 1822-January 17, 1893), president of the United States, was born at Delaware, Ohio, the posthumous son of Rutherford Hayes, a farmer, who had married Sophia Birchard in 1813. Both parents sprang from old New England families and through the paternal line he was descended from George Hayes who emigrated from Scotland as early as 1680 and settled in Windsor, Connecticut. The place of a father was taken for him by his uncle Sardis Birchard, a Vermonter by birth, who helped furnish means for his education. From the academy at Norwalk, Ohio, the boy was sent to the private school of Isaac Webb at Middletown, Connecticut. He dreamed of Yale, but the expense and lack of full preparation decided the family to send him to Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio. Here he displayed great earnestness. "I am determined,'' he wrote at eighteen, "from henceforth to use what means I have to acquire a character distinguished for energy, firmness, and perseverance" (Diary and Letters, I, 57). When graduated in 1842 he had obtained a fair literary training, good moral discipline, and a Middle-Western point of view that he would have missed at Yale. He had early made up his mind to the law, and some dull months in reading Blackstone and studying German in the office of Sparrow and Matthews in Columbus, Ohio, were followed by a year and a half in the Harvard Law School. Here he studied under Joseph Story and Simon Greenleaf, attended lectures by Jared Sparks, and was fired by glimpses of John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster. In addition, he found time to attend theatres, dabble in Latin and French, and read philosophy. The experience also had social value. He discovered that his chief defect was "boyish conduct" and that he needed "greater mildness and affability." Returning to Ohio, he was admitted to the bar on March 10, 1845, and began practice in Lower Sandusky (later Fremont), Sardis Birchard's home.

Lower Sandusky held Hayes for five leisurely years, spent over small cases, the English and French classics, and natural science, for he always had a roving intellectual taste. He considered volunteering for the Mexican War in order to benefit a bronchial affection, but gave up the plan on the advice of physicians (Ibid., I, 203-09). In the winter of 1848, however, he journeyed to Texas to visit a college classmate, Guy M. Bryan, studying plantations at close range, seeing the rough, lawless side of the frontier, and finding slavery a kindly rather than cruel system. Not returning till spring, he witnessed impassively the feverish gold rush to California. "There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold," he concluded. The value of this trip in enlarging his horizon was increased by steady later correspondence with Bryan. At the beginning of 1850 he opened his own law office in Cincinnati, still so poor that his first hotel bill worried him and he slept in his office to keep expenses at thirty dollars a month. But his business grew steadily and he sorely regretted "the waste of those five precious years at Sandusky." He also made friends rapidly and was keenly alive to the world about him. He joined the Literary Club of Cincinnati, helped it to entertain Emerson, saw Charlotte Cushman play "Meg Merrilies," heard Beecher and Edward Everett lecture and Jenny Lind sing, attended the Episcopal church, though his own views tended toward agnosticism, and joined the Sons of Temperance and Odd Fellows. In several criminal trials, notably that of one Nancy Farrer accused of murder, he distinguished himself by clever defenses (Eckenrode, post, p. 33). By the end of 1852 he had saved enough money to marry, on December 30, a boyhood sweetheart, Lucy Webb, whose attractiveness, shrewdness, and poise contributed much to his later success. By September 1854, largely through the generosity of his uncle (Diary and Letters, I, 469), he was able to move into his own $5,500 house, where two of his eight children were born.

In 1851 Hayes entered the local politics of Cincinnati, attending ward and county meetings, and making stump speeches. His Ohio associations had made him a Whig of the Thomas Corwin school, and he spoke for Winfield Scott in 1852. The struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill intensified his interest in public affairs; in 1855 he was a delegate to the state Republican convention; and in 1856 he supported Fremont, as he wrote, "hopefully, ardently, joyously," though he predicted defeat. Naturally cool of temperament, he refused to condemn slavery in the extreme terms used by other Free-Soilers, but strongly opposed its extension. In 1857 he was mentioned for Congress and in 1858 was elected city solicitor at a salary of $3,500 a year. In the campaign of 1860 he characteristically refused to grow excited, making only a few speeches for Lincoln and writing his uncle that "a wholesome contempt for Douglas, on account of his recent demagoguery, is the chief feeling I have" (Diary and Letters, I, 564). He hoped to see war averted, advocating conciliation, negotiation, and even compromise; but when the conflict began he could not be restrained. "I would prefer to go into it if I knew that I was to die or be killed in the course of it than to live through and after it without taking any part in it," he said (Ibid., II, 16). He made patriotic speeches, helped recruit men, and accepted the post of major (June 27, 1861) in the 23rd Ohio under Col. William S. Rosecrans [q.v.]. Serving first in western Virginia, he enjoyed the guerrilla fighting "as if it were a pleasure tour"; by the end of the year, now a lieutenant-colonel, he was in command of the regiment.

Hayes's military service was varied and capable but not distinguished. He acted for a time as judge-advocate, trying court-martial cases under General Jacob Cox and General Rosecrans; he fought under Fremont at the time of "Stonewall" Jackson's Valley Campaign, was ordered east as a part of General Cox's division in August 1862, was wounded in the arm at the battle of South Mountain the following month, and later was sent back to West Virginia for the winter. In July 1863 he was sent with the troops who administered to Morgan's raiders a sharp check near Gallipolis, Ohio. Later placed in command of General George Crook's first infantry brigade, he was with Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley during the campaign of 1864, fought well at Winchester, where his flags were the first to enter the town, and was at Cedar Creek when Sheridan defeated Early. From that time until the end of the war he was chiefly on garrison duty. Somewhat tardily, on October 19, 1864, he was commissioned brigadier-general, and on March 13, 1865, he was brevetted a major-general of volunteers.

Meanwhile, in July 1864, Hayes had been nominated for the House of Representatives from the 2nd Ohio (Cincinnati) district, but had wisely refused to take the stump, writing that "an officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress ought to be scalped" (Diary and Letters, II, 497). In October he was elected by a heavy majority. Resigning his commission in June 1865, he took his seat in December. In Congress he obeyed the Republican caucus on important questions and was hostile to the "rebel influences ... ruling the White House," but disapproved of the extreme radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens. When General Schenck proposed an amendment by which Southern representation would be based on suffrage, he suggested an educational test for the ballot. His best work was as chairman of the library commission, for he sponsored a bill shifting the Smithsonian Institution's collection of books to the Library of Congress, carried an appropriation of $100,000 to purchase Peter Force's collection of Americana, and developed the botanical gardens. He served his constituents well and gained the name of the soldier's friend. He was reelected in 1866, but his congressional career was brief. The Ohio Republicans needed him as candidate for governor, for Jacob Cox was unpopular in that office, and when nominated in June 1867 he resigned from Congress. An arduous campaign, in which Hayes made more than seventy speeches, ended in his election over Allen G. Thurman by the narrow majority of 2,983, though the proposed amendment to the state constitution for universal manhood suffrage, which he favored, was defeated by about 50,000 votes. A Democratic legislature sent Thurman to the Senate and thwarted the chief recommendations of Hayes. He was able, however, to carry through important prison reforms and a measure for the better supervision of charities. In 1869 a campaign for reelection against weakened opposition gave him a majority of about 7,500 and some measure of national prestige; and this time the Republicans gained control of the legislature. Hayes made a determined stand against extravagance and higher taxes, obtained reform s in the care of the insane, urge d the establishment of a state agricultural college, and denounced current abuses in railway management. He recognized the merit principle in his appointments, placing able Democrats in office; he combated election frauds; he helped create the geological survey of Ohio, and chose an accomplished scientist as its head; and he encouraged the preservation of historical records. As his reputation as a courageous administrator grew, some of his public addresses were widely reported and read. Urged in 1871 to stand for a third term, he refused to violate the unbroken precedent of the state.

An astute governor, Hayes was also a n astute politician. In 1872 he shrewdly rejected the suggestion that he seek election to the Senate as an opponent of the cold, unpopular, but able John Sherman. In that year, though sympathizing with many aims of the Liberal Republicans, of whom his friend Stanley Matthews was a leader, he refused to leave his party and campaigned vigorously for Grant. He was himself beaten for Congress because of the party split. Retiring to the "Spiegel Grove" estate near Fremont which his uncle Sardis Birchard had bequeathed him, he devoted himself to law, the real-estate business, and the promotion of public libraries. His successor as governor, General E. F. Noyes, was badly beaten by William Allen in 1873, while in 1874 the Democrats carried Ohio by 17,000 plurality and elected thirteen out of twenty congressmen. As Republican leaders sought his aid Haye's ambition awoke. In his diary, on April 14, 18 75, he wrote: "Several suggest that if elected governor now, I will stand well for the Presidency next year. How wild ! What a queer lot we are becoming !" None the less, he dreamed of the presidency. Nominated for governor by an overwhelming vote in the state convention of 1875, he opposed William Allen in a campaign which drew national attention and which brought in Carl Schurz and Oliver P. Morton to stump the state. His election by a majority of 5,544 was a triumph which made him a national figure. By virtue of his liberalism, taste for reform, war record, and loyalty to his party he was one of the distinctly "available" figures for the next presidential nomination, and he added to his reputation by another wise state administration.

Hayes was brought forward for the presidency by John Sherman and Garfield, with Ohio Republicans united behind him. In May 1876, he ingratiated himself with the Eastern reformers by a letter of sympathy for Richard H. Dana of Massachusetts, just rejected by the Senate for the mission to England (Diary and Letters, III, 318). His Ohio managers won a preliminary victory when they succeeded in having Cincinnati made the convention city, for the friendliness of the crowds and press counted heavily. The leading rival candidates were Blaine, Conkling, Bristow, and 0. P. Morton. For a time it seemed that Blaine might be named, but the refusal of the convention to ballot immediately after Robert G. Ingersoll's brilliant nominating speech destroyed his chances. Repeated conferences were held by the managers of the Hayes, Morton, and Bristow candidacies, with Stanley Matthews, who was ostensibly for Bristow but really for Hayes, in a key position. The result was that when Blaine made dangerous gains on the sixth ballot the opposing delegates united on Hayes, and on the next ballot nominated him with 384 votes against 351 for Blaine. Hayes had awaited the result calmly. Just before it came he wrote in his diary: "I have kept cool and unconcerned to a degree that surprises me. The same may be said of Lucy. I feel that defeat will be a great relief-a setting free from bondage. The great responsibility overpowers me" (Diary and Letters, III, 326). His nomination pleased the reformers under Schurz, Bristow, and G. W. Curtis, satisfied the practical politicians, was applauded by Civil War veterans, and did much to hold the recently chaotic Republican party together. In the vigorous campaign which followed Hayes benefited by the activities of an unexampled group of stump speakers-Blaine, Evarts, Sherman, Schurz, Bristow, Curtis, Ingersoll, Logan, Garfield, Harrison, and even Mark Twain (Eckenrode, post, p. 145). He himself played an inactive part, though late in October he visited the Centennial Exhibition for Ohio Day and inspired extraordinary interest. In October Hayes stated that the chances of his opponent, Tilden, appeared better than his. The first returns on November 7 seemed to show that the election was lost and he went to bed apparently in that belief.

His hopes revived when on November 8 Zachariah Chandler sent out his telegram "Hayes has 185 votes and is elected." That day, according to the Ohio State Journal of November 9, he "received those who called in his usual cordial manner, and was very unconcerned, while the greatest office on the American continent was trembling in the balance." When it became clear that the result hinged on contested returns from South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon, he was resolutely opposed to any attempt at a "compromise." At the outset he was dubious regarding Louisiana, but his misgivings were soon stilled by friends and party managers, and on December 6 he telegraphed Schurz: "I have no doubt that we are justly and legally entitled to the Presidency" (Diary and Letters, III, 386). His original demand was that the electoral votes be counted by the president of the Senate, but chiefly as a result of Schurz's arguments he consented to the creation of the Electoral Commission. When the composition of this body was decided he awaited the issue with confidence. There i s evidence that as the work of the Electoral Commission approached its close, especially after Louisiana's votes were counted for Hayes, Republican agents were in close touch with Southern Democrats who cared less about the presidency than the restoration of white rule in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. The speech of Charles Foster, representative from Hayes's former Cincinnati district, who on February 23, 1877, declared that it would be Hayes's policy to wipe out sectional lines and conciliate the South, was regarded as an olive branch from Hayes himself. In the conferences with Southerners in Washington, Foster, Stanley Matthews, Ex-Governor Wm. Dennison, and John Sherman were the chief representatives of Hayes. These meetings bore fruit in "the bargain," an agreement in the interests of party peace and sectional amity, dictated by powerful public considerations (P. L. Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential Election of 1876, 1906, pp. 271 ff.). Hayes even gave verbal assurances in his Ohio home. L. Q. C. Lamar wrote him on March 22, 1877: "It was understood that you meant to withdraw the troops from South Carolina and Louisiana .... Upon that subject we thought that you had made up your mind, and indeed you so declared to me" (Hayes Papers). Once the alliance between the Hayes forces and the Southern Democrats was cemented the end came quickly. On March 2 Hayes was awarded the presidency with 185 electors to Tilden's 184. Hayes had left for Washington the previous day, was entertained at dinner by President Grant on Saturday evening, March 3, and took the oath of office that night privately and on March 5 in public.

Hayes made his administration notable by his policy of Southern pacification, his attention to reform, and his insistence on a conservative treatment of financial questions. The choice of his cabinet indicated a partial break with the elder statesmen. Before leaving Ohio he had selected William M. Evarts for secretary of state, John Sherman for the treasury, and Carl Schurz for the interior. He had also considered nominating General Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate leader, as secretary of war, but encountered an opposition too fierce; he compromised by selecting Senator David M. Key, a former Confederate of Tennessee, to be postmaster-general. Though the "Stalwart" Republicans in the Senate showed their indignation by referring all the cabinet nominations to committees, public pressure forced a prompt confirmation. Hayes's first important measure was to carry out "the bargain" by withdrawing the Federal troops from the South. He called Wade Hampton and D. H. Chamberlain, rival claimants for the governorship of South Carolina, to Washington, discussed the situation with them, and on April 3 ordered the Secretary of War to end the military occupation of the South Carolina state house. An investigating commission was sent to Louisiana, it advised Hayes to remove the Federal soldiery, and orders to that effect were issued on April 20. For these steps he was fiercely attacked by Ben Wade, Garrison, Blaine, Wendell Phillips, and Ben Butler, and lost so many Republican machine' workers "that it could be said that within six weeks after his inauguration Hayes was without a party" (J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from Hayes to McKinley, 1919, p. 12; see also Letters of Mr. William E. Chandler Relative to the So-Called Southern Policy of President Hayes, 1878). But the wisdom of his course was shown by the immediate end of violence and the establishment of relative prosperity and contentment at the South. The restoration of full autonomy to the states was his greatest achievement, and one which Tilden could not have effected without arousing a far greater storm. Hayes continued to excite the hostility of the "Stalwarts," and particularly the New York faction under Conkling, by his measures of civil-service reform. He had declared in his inaugural that there must be such reform, that it must be "thorough, radical, and complete," and that it must comprehend appointment on the ground of ability alone, security of tenure, and exemption from the demands of partisan service. With Hayes's encouragement, Secretary Schurz at once reformed the interior department. Other department heads took similar action. Hayes had Secretary Sherman appoint an investigating committee under John Jay to examine the New York custom house, and he made the recommendations of this body the basis for a vigorous letter (May 26, 1877) forbidding partisan control of the revenue service, political assessments upon revenue officers, and any participation by such officers in the management of conventions, caucuses, or election campaigns. This order, which caused consternation, was reinforced by another letter on June 22, 1877. When Chester A. Arthur, collector at New York, and Alonzo B. Cornell, naval officer, defied these orders, Hayes asked for their resignations; and when they ignored his request, he appointed two men to take their places. The Senate, with Roscoe Conkling as leader, at first refused to confirm these nominations. But Hayes bided his time, presented two new names when the Senate reassembled in December 1878, and, by the skilful use of a letter from Secretary Sherman which thoroughly exposed the custom-house scandals, secured the needed confirmation.

Facing an unsatisfactory monetary situation, Hayes declared in his inaugural against "an irredeemable paper currency" and for "an early resumption of specie payments." His courage and skill were tested by a dangerous demand in both parties for repeal of the act for resumption of specie payments on January 1, 1879, and for the free and unlimited coinage of silver as a full legal tender. Bills for both purposes were carried in the House in the fall of 1877. Hayes met the threat by a vigorous discussion of the monetary question in his December message, insisting on resumption and on payment of the public debt in gold or its equivalent. His determined stand helped prevent the Senate from passing the bill to postpone resumption, but did not defeat the Bland-Allison Bill. He vetoed it on February 28, 1878, and, after it passed over his veto, urged in his message of December 1879 that Congress suspend the silver coinage. In 1880, pointing out that the market value of the silver dollar had declined to eighty-eight and a half cents, he vainly urged that the treasury be authorized to coin "silver dollars of equivalent value, as bullion, with gold dollars," instead of silver dollars of 412,½ grains. With his support, Secretary Sherman successfully effected resumption at the date fixed. The early part of the administration was marked by business distress and labor troubles. Hayes did not fully understand the social and economic problems of the time and did nothing to strike at the root of unrest, but he showed firmness in calling out federal troops to suppress the railroad riots of 1877. The latter years of his term saw a revival of business prosperity. He showed firmness also in vetoing a popular Chinese exclusion bill as a violation of the Burlingame treaty, and in combating congressional usurpation. He waged a successful struggle with Congress in 1879 over its action in tacking "riders" to two essential appropriation bill s, maintaining that this process was an effort to force the president into submission to Congress in a fashion not contemplated by the Constitution. Congress gave way and removed the riders. But Hayes remained unsuccessful in his attempts to persuade Congress to pass a permanent civil-service act. Little by little his hardworking habits, conscientiousness, system, and responsiveness to moral forces impressed the nation; the original Democratic bitterness decreased; and he became genuinely esteemed. Lucy Hayes, though ridiculed for her temperance rules, was even more generally liked.

Hayes firmly believed that a president could most effectively discharge his duties if he refused to entertain the idea of a second term; and in his letter accepting the nomination in 1876 he expressed an inflexible determination to serve but one term. He returned from Washington in March 1881 to "Spiegel Grove," where his modest house was enlarged into a mansion. Here he spent his remaining years, devoting much time to his extensive library, filling many engagements as a speaker, and enlisting in a variety of humanitarian causes. He was president of the National Prison Association from 1883 to the end of his life, was a member of the board of trustees of both the Peabody Education Fund and Slater Fund, and was interested in the Lake Mohonk conferences. The death of his wife in June 1889 was a heavy blow, but he remained active to the last. Exposure while attending a meeting of trustees of the state university hastened his end. His funeral was the occasion for a national tribute to his strong though not brilliant abilities, patriotic devotion, and zeal for common-sense reforms.

[An exceedingly full biographical record is presented in Chas. R. Williams, Life of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (2 vols., 1914); while there is a shorter, more incisive, and genuinely critical biography by H. J. Eckenrode, Rutherford B. Hayes, Statesman of Reunion (1930). A campaign life worthy of notice is William Dean Howells, Sketch of the Life and Character of Rutherford B. Hayes (1876). Special interest attaches to the conscientious Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, edited by C.R. Williams (S vols., 1922- 26). J. W. Burgess, The Administration of President Hayes (1916), is a eulogistic set of lectures; there is a better-balanced estimate by James Ford Rhodes in his Historical Essays (1909). Special aspects of Hayes's life are treated in Paul L. Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 (1906), and V. L. Shores, "The Hayes-Conkling Controversy, 1877-79," Smith Collected Studies in History, vol. IV (1919). Illuminating first-hand impressions of the administration are contained in both volumes of John Sherman's Recollections of Forty Years (1895), and James G. Blaine's Twenty Years of Congress, vol. II (1886). The Hayes Papers, with other material on his life, are housed in a memorial library at Fremont, Ohio.]

A. N.


HAYNES, Reverend Lemuel, 1753-1833, former slave, Revolutionary War veteran, early abolitionist, clergyman.  Wrote essay “Liberty Further Extended,” criticizing slavery in the United States, called slavery corrupt and sinful.  (Cooley, 1837; Newman, 1900; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 330-331; Saillant, 2003)


HAZARD, Rowland Gibson (Oct. 9, 1801-June 24, 1888), manufacturer, writer on philosophical subjects, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2

HAZARD, ROWLAND GIBSON (October 9, 1801-June 24, 1888), manufacturer, writer on philosophical subjects, the son of Rowland and Mary (Peace) Hazard, and a younger brother of Thomas Robinson Hazard [q.v.], was born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Rowland Hazard, his father, born also in South Kingstown, became engaged in foreign commerce as a member of the Charleston, South Carolina, firm of Hazard & Robinson (afterward Hazard & Ayrault), and married Mary Peace of that city. About the turn of the century he went back to South Kingstown and took up his residence at Peacedale, a name chosen by him to commemorate the family in which he had found his wife, and which celebrated too the charm of the Kingstown countryside. In 1802 he began at Peacedale the woolen industry which successive generations of the Hazard family carried on in the same place. Rowland Gibson, his third son, studied at the schools at Burlington, New Jersey, and Bristol, Pennsylvania, and at the Friends' School at Westtown, Chester County, Pennsylvania. When about eighteen he returned to South Kingstown, became associated with his elder brother Isaac Peace Hazard in the business at Peacedale, from which their father had now retired, and continued in it for nearly fifty years. He was a Free-Soiler and later a Republican, a member of the Pittsburgh convention of 1856, of the convention in the same year that nominated Fremont, of the convention in 1860 that nominated Lincoln, and of the convention of 1868 that nominated Grant. He aided the free-school movement and was an advocate of temperance reform. In 1851, 1854, and 1880, he was a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, and in 1866 a member of the state Senate. While in the General Assembly he worked for the suppression of lotteries and for the prevention of bribery in elections. His financial articles, written during the Civil War, gained for him a wide reputation. Some of them were collected and published as Our Resources (1864), which was republished in London, and several were translated into Dutch and published in Amsterdam. He performed notable service in Europe in the effort to sustain the national credit.

In 1866 Hazard retired from the business at Peacedale. Still possessed of the habit, or with the instinct born with him, of looking for general principles, and of applying the results of abstract thinking to practical ends, he engaged himself with problems of Reconstruction and other questions of the day. He helped to put the first railroad across the continent. As other demands lessened, he found time for study and writing, for travel, and for his philanthropies. With his son Rowland Hazard he e stablished the Hazard Professorship of Physics in Brown University. He was a trustee of Brown from 1869 to 1875, and a fellow from 1875 until his death in 1888. He married Caroline Newbold, daughter of John Newbold of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, September 25, 1828. Their two sons, Rowland John Newbold Hazard, were the third consecutive generation of Hazards to carry on the manufacture of woolen goods at Peacedale.

As a youth, Rowland Gibson Hazard had a certain precocity in mathematics. Before leaving school he discovered, it is said, an original and simple method of describing the hyperbola. In his maturer years his underlying interests were philosophical. When on his business trips, while traveling on packets and stage-coaches, on boats and trains, he made notes for later books. His first considerable publication, Language: Its Connexion with the Present Condition and Future Prospects of Man (1836), possibly had its inception in discussions with h s friend-and Poe's friend-Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, on the nature of poetry. The book attracted the attention of William Ellery Channing, who became intimate with him. Following the latter's death in 1842, Hazard wrote an Essay on the Philosophical Character of Channing, published in 1845. At some time prior to 1840, Channing suggested that Hazard should undertake a refutation of Jonathan Edwards on the Will. Hazard began to make notes and by 1843 had elaborated his main points only to lose all the material he had collected through a mishap to a Mississippi steamer on which he had taken passage to New Orleans. Fourteen years later he returned to the work and published it in 1864 under the title: Freedom of Mind in Willing; or Every Being That Wills a Creative First Cause. The book gained for Hazard the friendship of John Stuart Mill, who wrote to him: "I wish you had nothing to do but philosophize, for though I often do not agree with you, I see in everything you write a well-marked natural capacity for philosophy" (Freedom of Mind in Willing, ed. 1889, p. v). In 1864, while in Europe, he sought out Mill. His Two Letters on Causation and Freedom and Willing, Addressed to John Stuart Mill (1869) were the result of his conversations and correspondence with the British philosopher.

[Hazard's numerous writings, including several for the first time printed, were brought together by his grand-daughter, Caroline Hazard, and published under her editorship in four volumes in 1889. Each volume bears a separate title. Of these, the Essay 0n Language, and other Essays and Addresses contains a biographical preface by Miss Hazard, and Freedom of Mind in Willing contains an introductory essay by George P. Fisher on Hazard's philosophical writings. William Gammell's Life and Services of the Hon. Rowland Gibson Hazard, LL.D. (1888), contains a paper by President E. G. Robinson of Brown University on Hazard's philosophical writings and a bibliography of his works. Other sources include J. R. Cole, History of Washington and Kent Counties, Rhode Island (1889); The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Rhode Island (1881); Wm. R. Bagnall, The Textile Industries of the U. S. (1893); and the Providence Journal, June 25, 1888.]

W.A.S.


HAZARD, Thomas (“College Tom”), 1720-1798, Rhode Island, Society of Friends, Quaker, early abolitionist leader (Drake, 1950, pp. 50, 89, 97, 191; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 149; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 472; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 419-420)

HAZARD, THOMAS (September 15, 1720-August 26, 1798), Abolitionist, was called by the distinguishing name of "College Tom," since there were of this clan, according to one computation, thirty-two other Thomas Hazards contemporary with him. He was of the fifth generation from Thomas Hazard, progenitor of the Hazard family of Rhode Island and one of the nine founders of Newport in 1639. Robert Hazard, of the second generation, removed to that region of Rhode Island known as the Narragansett Country, with which the Rhode Island Hazards have been continuously identified. Life in the Narragansett Country was highly individualistic. The Hazards were wholly typical of it, "handing down and retaining certain peculiarities from generation to generation," such as "a peculiar decision of character, a certain amount of pride, and a pronounced independence, coupled with a slight amount of reserve" (W. P. Hazard, in T. R. Hazard's Recollections of Olden Times, 1879, p. 227). Physically they were strongly marked, being generally speaking of good stature and vigorous frame, and with a firmly set jaw. "College Tom," son of Robert and Sarah (Borden) Hazard, had the Hazard characteristics of mind and body. He studied at Yale College for several terms (whence his appellation) but did not graduate, it is said, because he could not reconcile his Quaker principles and collegiate honors (Wilkins Updike, History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island, 1847, p. 322). In 1742 he was admitted a freeman of the colony from South Kingstown and in the same year was married to his third cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Governor William and Martha (Potter) Robinson. Perhaps also in 1742, certainly before 1745-the year of his father's death-he had his memorable conversation with the Connecticut church deacon who told him that Quakers were not Christians because they held their fellow men in slavery. The idea was a novel one to the young man. In the region about him there was one negro slave to every two or three white men; his father, their friends and neighbor s were all slaveowners; and at least two of his connections imported negroes to be sold into slavery. Nevertheless, the words of the church deacon did their work; he took the view that slave-holding was an evil, and despite the arguments, even the threat of disinheritance by his father, he began cultivating his farm with free labor and to work against slavery--one of the fir st members of the Society of Friends to take the stand. At first he seems to have had but a single convert, his friend Jeremiah Austin, who had liberated the one slave he possessed, his sole inheritance from his father.

The movement in Rhode Island slowly grew till, in 1774, College Tom found himself a member of a committee of the Yearly Meeting which went to the General Assembly with a bill, passed by it, affirming personal freedom as the greatest of the rights which the inhabitants of America were then engaged in preserving, and prohibiting the importation of negroes into the colony. During the Revolution he was a member of the Meeting for Sufferings. In 1783 he was a member of the committee of the Yearly Meeting which brought to the General Assembly a petition for the abolition of slavery which was answered by an act to that end, adopted by the Assembly in February 1784. Shortly afterward, he was enrolled as one of the founders of the Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade, which saw the fruit of its endeavors in the act for its prevention, adopted by the Assembly in 1787. He was one of the incorporators in 1764 of Rhode Island College, later Brown University, and afterward assisted in the establishment of the Friends' School, later the Moses Brown School, in Providence. "In his latter days, to illustrate the deceitfulness of the human heart, he used to say ... he at last discovered that he himself had 'ruled South Kingstown monthly meeting forty years, in his own will, before he found it out'" (Recollections of Olden Times, p. 108).

[In addition to the books named in the text see Caroline Hazard, Thos. Hazard, son of Robt., Call'd College Tom (1893); Caroline E. Robinson, The Hazard Family of Rhode Island (1895); Rufus M. Jones, The Quakers in the American Colonies (1911); W. Dawson Johnston, "Slavery in Rhode Island," Rhode Island Historical Society Publications, n.s. II, no. 2 (1894); J. R. Brackett, "The Status of the Slave, 1775-89," in Essays in the Constitutional History of the U. S., 1775-89 (1889), ed. by J. F. Jameson; I. B. Richman, Rhode Island (1905).]

W. A. S.



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