Mac-May: Macomb through Maynard

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


MACOMB, Alexander, Washington, DC, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1833-41, soldier, commanding general U.S. Army,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2:

MACOMB, ALEXANDER (April 3, 1782- June 25, 1841), soldier, was born at Detroit. His paternal grandfather, John Macomb, had come to New York from Ireland as early as 1742; his father, Alexander Macomb, had built up a prosperous trading business at Detroit, which he did not relinquish until after the close of the Revolution. He then returned to New York, with his wife, Catharine Navarre, daughter of Robert de Navarre, a former French official at Detroit, and with their son, Alexander Macomb the younger. The boy was placed in school at an academy in Newark, New Jersey, where he received "the rudiments of a classical, mathematical, and French education." At the age of sixteen he was enrolled in a New York City main army at Plattsburg was ordered to Sacketts Harbor in August 1814, Macomb was left with about fifteen hundred regulars fit for duty, and such volunteers as could be mustered in the neighboring country, to confront an invading force of some fifteen thousand British veterans under Gov. Sir George Prevost (H. Adams, History of the United States, VIII, 1891, pp. 100-11). His position at Plattsburg had been strongly fortified under Izard's direction, and Macomb worked energetically to make it stronger and to give the British an exaggerated idea of his resources. His defense against the attack of September 11 was skilfully conducted, but the precipitate retreat of the British was probably due rather to the destruction of their fleet by Macdonough and the resulting danger to their communications than to the prowess of the small American army. Nevertheless, Macomb and his troops were signally honored by Congress and by the state and city of New York, and Macomb was given the brevet rank of major-general. After the close of the war Macomb was a member of a board which worked out the plan on which the army was reorganized. He was stationed for a short time in New York in command of the third military district and was then shifted to the fifth district with headquarters at Detroit. In 1821 he went to Washington as · head of the Corps of Engineers. On the death of General Jacob Brown in 1828, Macomb was designated to succeed him as senior major-general and commanding general of the United States army-a position which he filled until his death at Washington, June 25, 1841.

Among Macomb's official papers was a "Memoir on the Organization of the Army of the United States" (1826), in which he urged a plan for bringing the militia under more centralized control and better discipline (American. State Papers, Military Affairs, III, 1860, pp. 458-65). In a letter of January 27, 1829, replying to an inquiry of Secretary of War Peter B. Porter, he recommended the abolition of the whiskey ration in the army and should share in the credit for the general order issued the next year discontinuing that ancient practice (Ibid., IV, 1860, p. 84; Subject Index of the General Orders of the War Department, from January 1, 1809, to December 31, 1860, 1886, p. 180). His ability seems to have been primarily of the organizing, systematizing kind, which the army of his day greatly needed. Macomb was married, July 23; 1803, to his cousin, Catharine Macomb, of Belleville, New Jersey, who became the mother of a large family. After her death he was married in 1826 to Harriet (Balch) Wilson, a widow. His second wife took a lively part in the " Eaton war" in the first administration of Andrew Jackson-"more to his [Macomb's] amusement than annoyance," says Van Buren, " for he took such things lightly." Macomb was the author of A Treatise on Martial Law and Courts-Martial (1809) and The Practice of Courts Martial (1840), and edited Samuel Cooper's Tactics and Regulations for the Militia (1836).

[In addition to works cited above see Memoir of Alexander Macomb, the Maj. General Commanding the Army of the U. S., by Geo. H. Richards, Esq., Capt. of Macomb's Artillery in the Late War (1833), and the Daily National Intelligencer, June 28, 1841.]

J.W.P-t.  


MADISON, James, Virginia, American Colonization Society, U.S. President, 1833-37


MAHAN, Asa, 1799-1889, clergyman, abolitionist, president of Oberlin College 1835-1850

(Mabee, 1970, pp. 218, 403n25; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 176; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 208; Dumond, 1961, p. 165). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 208:

MAHAN, ASA (November 9, 1799-April 4, 1889), Congregational clergyman, college president, was born at Vernon, New York, the son of Capt. Samuel Mahan and his second wife, Anna Dana, of Worcester, Massachusetts. From his twelfth to his seventeenth year the family lived in western New York, then a pioneer region. Home missionaries from Connecticut were frequently entertained by the Mahans. The mother, who was intensely interested in religious subjects, would propound theological questions to the visitors, and the boy's "heart would leap," he tells us, at the prospect of the discussion. From his eighth year he was much given to religious thought, and as a youth accepted unhesitatingly the high Calvinistic system in which he was trained. When seventeen years old he was appointed to teach a winter school in a district near his home. It was arranged that his father should have the son's wages that winter, after which the latter should be free to apply his earnings to obtaining an education, which it was his consuming desire to secure. During this winter he passed through a period of agony over the question as to whether he was "one of the elect," from which condition he emerged into a free Christian experience, resulting in a radical modification of his Calvinism by the adoption of a doctrine of full moral freedom. Teaching school year after year during the winter months, he pursued his studies at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, graduating in 1824. Entering Andover Theological Seminary, he completed his course there in 1827. He was an active participant in the great revivals from 1824 to 1832. At New Brunswick, New Jersey, May 9, 1828, he married Mary H. Dix.

He was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church at Pittsford, New York, November 10, 1829. Having a naturally weak voice, he subjected it to a self-devised training until it became adequate to the most exacting requirements of public speaking. In 1831 he was called to the pastorate of th~ Sixth Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati. As trustee of the recently established Lane Theological Seminary, he dissented vigorously from the action of the trustees interdicting discussion of the question of slavery. In 1835 he was elected first president of Oberlin College, founded in 1833. Eighty of the Lane students followed him to Oberlin, which led to the establishment of a theological department in the college. For some months the president and his family lived in a log house, the first which had been built in the Oberlin colony.

Mahan threw himself with ardor into the work of the young college, did much speaking and preaching, and taught philosophy with enthusiasm, giving an enduring impetus to this study at Oberlin. In philosophy he was intuitionist of the Scottish "common sense" school. He shared student manual labor, including work on the highway (Autobiography, p. 275). His acceptance of the presidency of Oberlin he had made conditional upon its reception of students without discrimination as to color. He was, moreover, always proud of having been the first college president to give degrees to women on the same conditions as to men. A believer in fullest freedom of discussion, he was sometimes suspected of "a greater facility in conviction than in conciliation" (J. H. Fairchild, post, p. 278). He was an impressive figure, with solid frame and full-bearded face. His administration in the main was successful; but in 1850 he accepted a call to take the direction of Cleveland University, which friends of his were projecting. Since this enterprise did not succeed, in 1855 he resumed pastoral work, serving Congregational churches, at Jackson, Michigan (1855-57), and at Adrian, Michigan (1857-60). He was connected with Adrian College as professor and from 1860 to 1871 as president. His wife died in 1863 and in 1866 he married Mrs. Mary E. Chase. The later years of his long life he pas sed in England, preaching to large congregations, advocating Christian perfection, editing a monthly magazine, The Divine Life, and issuing volume after volume on philosophy and religion. He died at Eastbourne, England. His published works include Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection (1839), A System of Intellectual Philosophy (copyright 1845), Doctrine of the Will (1845), The True Believer; His Character, Duty and Privileges (1847), The Science of Moral Philosophy (1848), Election and Influence of the Holy Spirit (1851), Modern Mysteries Explained and Exposed (1855), The Science of Logic (1857), Science of Natural Theology (1867), Theism and Anti-Theism in Their Relations to Science (1872), The Phenomena of Spiritualism Scientifically Explained and Exposed (1875), A Critical History of the Late American War (1877), The System of Mental Philosophy (1882), A Critical History of Philosophy (1883), Autobiography, Intellectual, Moral and Spiritual (London, 1882).

[In addition to Mahan's Autobiography, see E. H. Fairchild, Historical Sketch of Oberlin College (1868); J. H. Fairchild, Oberlin, the Colony and the College (1883); D. L. Leonard, The Story of Oberlin (1898), Oberlin Review, April 30, 1889; The Times (London), April 10, 1889.]

E.D.E.


MANN, Horace, 1796-1859, educator, political leader, social reformer.  U.S. Congressman, Whig Party, from Massachusetts.  He filled former Congressman John Quincy Adams’ seat.  Co-founder of the Young Men’s Colonization Society in Boston.  Co-founded monthly paper, The Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom.  He defended the American Colonization Society and its policies against criticism by William Lloyd Garrison.  Opposed extension of slavery in territories annexed in the Mexican War of 1846.  Said, “I consider no evil as great as slavery...”  Argued against the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.  Reelected to Congress and served from April 1848 until March 1853.  

(Mabee, 1970, pp. 64, 157, 160, 168, 170, 171, 261, 294, 409n9; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 190-191; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 240; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 14, p. 424; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 204).

In the spring of 1848 Mann was elected to Congress as a Whig, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John Quincy Adams. His first speech in that body was in advocacy of its right and duty to exclude slavery from the territories, and in a letter in December of that year he said: "I think the country is to experience serious times. Interference with slavery will excite civil commotion in the south. But it is best to interfere. Now is the time to see whether the Union is a rope of sand or a band of steel." Again he said: "I consider no evil as great as slavery, and I would pass the Wilmot proviso whether the south rebel or not." During the first session he volunteered as counsel for Drayton and Sayres, who were indicted for stealing seventy-six slaves in the District of Columbia, and at the trial was engaged for twenty-one successive days in their defence. In 1850 he was engaged in a controversy with Daniel Webster in regard to the extension of slavery and the fugitive-slave law. Mann was defeated by a single vote at the ensuing nominating convention by Mr. Webster's supporters; but, on appealing to the people as an independent anti-slavery candidate, he was re-elected, serving from April, 1848, till March, 1853. In September, 1852, he was nominated for governor of Massachusetts by the Free-Soil Party, and the same day was chosen president of Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio. Failing in the election for governor, he accepted the presidency of the college, in which he continued until his death. He carried that institution through pecuniary and other difficulties, and satisfied himself of the practicality of co-education. His death was hastened by his untiring labors in his office. He published, besides his annual reports, his lectures on education, and his voluminous controversial writings, " A Few Thoughts for a Young Man" (Boston, 1850); "Slavery: Letters and Speeches" (1851); "Powers and Duties of Woman'' (1853); and "Sermons" (1861). See "Life of Horace Mann," by his wife (1865); "Life and Complete Works of Horace Mann " (2 vols., Cambridge, 1869); and "Thoughts selected from the Writings of Horace Mann " (1869). His lectures on education were translated into French by Eugene de Guer, under the title of "De l'importance de l'education dans une republique," with a preface and biographical sketch by Edouard R. L. Laboulaye (Paris, 1873).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 240:

MANN, HORACE (May 4, 1796-August 2, 1859), educator, one of five children of Thomas and Rebecca (Stanley) Mann, was born on the ancestral farm in the town of Franklin, Massachusetts, a descendant of William Mann, an early settler of Cambridge, M ass. From his father, who died of tuberculosis in 1809, Horace inherited a frail constitution and a susceptibility to this di s ease. His parents were people of meager education but of sterling character, and imparted to their children habits of industry and high ideals. Mann's childhood was an unhappy one passed in poverty, unremitting toil, repression, and fear. The studies and methods of the district school w ere stultifying, the school masters ignorant, and their discipline stern and terrifying. Still more terrifying were the Sunday sermons preached by the Reverend Nathaniel Emmons [q .v.], in which were pictured the eternal torments of those damned fo r the glory of God. Night after night the little lad, filled with grief and horror over the possible fate awaiting his loved ones, sobbed himself to sleep. Although Franklin possessed a town library, it brought little relief to the mind of the harrowed child, made up a s it was chiefly of old histories and theological works. Undoubtedly, the immediate influence of school, church, and town library upon this highly sensitive boy were repressive, if not injurious; nevertheless, to the spirit of revolt engendered by their defects can be traced directly many of the most important reform efforts of his later life.

The superiority of Mann's mental gifts was revealed in connection with his preparation for college. Up to the time he was sixteen, he had never attended school more than eight or ten weeks in any one year, and he did not begin preparing for college, until 1816. Then, in six months, under the direction of a n eccentric but brilliant itinerant teacher named Barrett, he completed a course of study which enabled him to enter the sophomore class of Brown University. Here he made a brilliant record, graduating with high honors in 1819. He now enter ed a law office in Wrentham, Massachusetts, but after a few months returned to Brown as a tutor in Latin and Greek. In 1821 he left Brown to enter the famous law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, and in 1823 was admitted to the bar of Norfolk County, Massachusetts. For fourteen years, fir st at Dedham, Massachusetts., and after 1833 at Boston, he practised with marked success. Meanwhile, he had begun his public career as a member of the Massachusetts state legislature, first serving in the House (1827-33), and then in the Senate (1833-37). During the last two years, he was president of the Senate, and as such signed the epoch-making education bill which became a law April 20, 1837. This bill provided for a state board of education, to consist of the governor, lieutenant-governor, and eight citizens to be appointed by the governor. It empowered the board of education to appoint and employ a secretary at an annual salary of $1,000 (increased in 1838 to $1,500), and to make annual reports to the state legislature.

It had been expected that the board would choose as its first secretary James G. Carter [q.v.], the framer of the bill, a man whose services to education undoubtedly eclipsed those of any other citizen of the state up to that time. The selection of Mann, largely through the influence of Edmund Dwight [q.v.], was, however, a matter of no greater surprise than Mann's acceptance, involving, as it did, his abandonment of a lucrative legal practice and the prospect of an alluring political career; but his reasons for acceptance are not difficult to discover. Though exceedingly successful, he had never been ardently enthusiastic about his profession; from early childhood he had been possessed with a consuming desire to do something for the benefit of mankind; he saw in the secretaryship, moreover, a means of combating the grief and despair which had held him in clutch ever since the death of his wife, Charlotte Messer, daughter of President Asa Messer [q.v.] of Brown University, whom he had married September 12, 1830, and who had died childless, August 1, 1832.

The educational situation awaiting the new secretary offered ample scope for his many talents. The school-district system legalized in 1789 had brought with it a multitude of evils, including disastrous decentralization, a decline in public interest, and a decrease of financial support. Free schools, the one-time glory of colonial Massachusetts, were now regarded with contempt by the well-to-do classes, who more and more patronized private schools. The effects of this attitude were everywhere evident in short school terms, dilapidated and unsanitary schoolhouses, untrained and underpaid teachers, and irrational methods of teaching. To remedy these conditions as far and as soon as possible was the task awaiting Mann. Clothed with almost no authority except to collect and disseminate information, he brought to his new duties such a degree of courage, vision, and wisdom that during the brief period of twelve years in which he held office, the Massachusetts school system was almost completely transformed. His first task was to arouse and to educate public opinion with reference to the purpose, value, and needs of public education. With this end in view, he organized annual educational conventions in every county for the benefit of teachers, school officials, and the public. He not only addressed these meetings himself, but pressed into service distinguished clergymen, lawyers, and college professors. Realizing that there was little hope of any improvement in the schools apart from the improvement of the teaching profession, he rapidly consummated plans which led to the establishment of teachers' institutes and normal ' schools. During the second year of his office, Edmund Dwight, through Mann, anonymously offered $10,000 to the state of Massachusetts for improving the · preparation of elementary teachers, provided the state would furnish a like amount. Dwight's gift and its conditions were accepted by the legislature, and within two years Massachusetts had established the first three state normal schools in the United States.

In 1838, with the avowed purpose of bringing about a better understanding of the problems of the public school, he started a semi-monthly magazine, the Common School Journal, which he edited for ten years. A far more important channel through which he disseminated a knowledge of existing conditions and needed reforms were the twelve annual reports which he prepared (1837-48) as secretary of the state board of education. Each contains not only the customary statistical data, but a presentation and discussion of school problems of crucial importance. The needs and remedies growing out of these problems are set forth with convincing clearness and with the fervor or a prophet and reformer.

The results of his labors were remarkable. When he became secretary, elementary men teachers were receiving an average-annual wage of $185, and women, $65; one-sixth of the children of the state were being educated in private schools and academies, and approximately one-third were without any educational opportunities whatsoever. In multitudes of districts the school term did not extend beyond two or three months. Under Mann's influence, a minimum school year of six months was established by an act passed in 1839. More than $2,000,000 was spent in providing better schoolhouses and equipment. Appropriations for public education were more than doubled. The proportion of private school expenditure to that of public schools decreased from seventy-five to thirty-six per cent. of total school costs. Salaries of public school masters were increased by sixty-two per cent. and those of women, by fifty-four per cent. The high-school law of 1827, largely a dead letter prior to his time; became effective, with the result that at least fifty new high schools were established during as secretaryship and opportunities for free public secondary education became widely distributed throughout the state. The professional training of teachers was placed on a firm basis, the elementary curriculum was enriched, and improved methods of instruction, including especially the Pestalozzian object methods and the word method of teaching reading, were introduced.

It was inevitable that Mann's aggressive efforts should sooner or later arouse bitter opposition. As a Unitarian, he contended that the Bible should be read in public schools, but without comment. He had scarcely entered upon his progressive educational program when one church after another began to charge him and the board of education with being responsible for creating a godless system of schools. With these charges came the demand that sectarian instruction, which had been excluded from the schools by an act of 1827, should be restored. Mann met these sectarian attacks with vigor, courage, and a final victory of great importance, not only to the schools of Massachusetts, but to the nation at large. Immediately after his marriage to his second wife, Mary Tyler (Peabody) Mann [q.v.], on May 1, 1843, he sailed for Europe with two purposes in mind: to recover his health, and to discover what America might learn from European schools. He spent five months studying educational conditions in England, Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, and Switzerland. His observations and conclusions, embodied in his seventh annual report, drew no comparison between the schools of the United States and those of European countries; nevertheless, his high commendation of German schools was interpreted by a considerable numb er of Boston school masters as implying a drastic criticism of their own professional preparation and practices. An acrimonious controversy ensued from which, however, Mann again came forth victorious.

In 1848 he resigned his secretaryship, having been elected to the United States House of Representatives as an anti-slavery Whig to succeed John Quincy Adams. Although allied with antislavery forces, Mann was not an abolitionist; nevertheless, he was eventually led into open conflict with Daniel Webster, whose friendship arid political support he had enjoyed up to this time. In 1852 he met defeat as the candidate of the Free-Soilers for the governorship of Massachusetts. He then accepted the presidency of the recently established Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio. Besides serving as president, he taught political economy, intellectual philosophy, moral phi1osophy, and natural theology. In 1859, owing to bad management, lack of funds; and internal dissensions, the -college was sold for debt and reorganized. Following his delivery of the baccalaureate address of that year, Mann, exhausted and broken by the anxieties and persecution amid which he had labored, retired to his home, where he died within a few weeks. He was survived by his wife and their three sons.

Mann espoused many other causes beside that of the common schools, notably the establishment of state. hospitals for the insane and the restriction of slavery, lotteries, and the liquor traffic. Essentially a Puritan without a theology, he denounced not only profanity and intemperance, but smoking and ballet dancing. His lasting place in American history rests, however, upon his services to public education. His influence in this field extended far beyond the boundaries of Massachusetts. Copies of his annual reports and other educational writings were widely disseminated throughout the United States with the result that one state after another sought and followed his advice. Owing to his efforts combined with those of other educational pioneers, there ensued a period so marked by educational progress and reform that it has ever since come to be known as the per1od of the common-school revival in the United States.

Among the many influences which played an important part in developi6g the character, philosophy, ideals, and aims of Horace Mann were the writings of Emerson and those of the Scotch philosopher and phrenologist, George Combe. Although Mann acquired from Combe a belief in phrenology, undoubtedly the greatest source of Combe's influence over him was the Scotch philosopher's unswerving faith in the unlimited improvability of the human race through education. The motivating principle of Mann's life was nowhere better or more clearly expressed than in the oft-quoted words with which I he closed his-last Commencement address at Antioch College: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." In addition to his twelve annual reports which are included in abbreviated form in Mary Mann's Life (post, volume III), and numerous articles in magazines, he published Lectures on Education (1845).

[Biographies and biographical sketches of Mann have been published in English, French, and Spanish. Of these the most important in English are: Life and Works of Horace Mann, ed. by Mary Tyler Peabody Mann (3 volumes, 1865-68), enlarged and ed. by G. C. Mann (5 volumes, 1891); B. A. Hinsdale, Horace Mann and the Common School Revival in the U. S. (1898); G. Compayre, Horace Mann and the Public School in the U.S. (tr. 1907); A. E. Winship, Horace Mann the Educator (1896). See also R. B. Culver, Horace Mann and Religion in the Massachusetts Public Schools (1929). For a genealogy of the Mann family, consult G. S. Mann, Mann Memorial; A Record of the Mann Family in America (1884). For bibliographies consult B. P. Mann, in Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1895-96 (1897), volume I, and B. A. Hinsdale, supra, pp; 311-19; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe]

F. H. S.


MARCY, William L., New York, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1837-40.


MARSH, George Perkins (March 15, 1801-July 23, 1882), lawyer, diplomat, and scholar,  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 

MARSH, GEORGE PERKINS (March 15, 1801-July 23, 1882), lawyer, diplomat, and scholar, a first cousin of James Marsh [q.v.], was born at Woodstock, Vermont. His father, Charles Marsh, an eminent lawyer, was a descendant of John Marsh who settled at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1636, and the son of Joseph Marsh, a former lieutenant-governor of Vermont; his mother, Susan (nee Perkins), at the time of her marriage to his father was the widow of Josias Lyndon Arnold. His ancestors on both sides belonged to the intellectual aristocracy of New England. Brought up in a family of Puritan restraint, George was a frail and serious child who played by preference with girls and almost ruined his eyesight when he was seven by too assiduous reading. Unable for long periods to use his eyes, he learned by listening to others read and entered Dartmouth College in 1816 having had only a few months of formal schooling. There he was recognized as the most brilliant scholar in his class. Studious almost to excess, he learned French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German in his spare time, yet a dry humor made him not unpopular with classmates. In 1820 he graduated with highest honors and immediately tried teaching, but finding it distasteful, studied law in his father's office. Admitted to the bar in 1825, he practised in Burlington, Vermont, where he not only became prominent in his profession but also found time to familiarize himself with the Scandinavian languages. On April 10, 1828, he married Harriet, daughter of Ozias Buell of Burlington, and her death in 1833, within a few days of that of the older of their two sons, was a crushing blow. Six years later he married Caroline, daughter of Benjamin Crane of Berkley, Massachusetts. Meanwhile his ability as a lawyer, business man, and scholar had been recognized, and in 1835 he was appointed by the governor to the supreme executive council of the state. In 1834 he was elected to Congress as a Whig, and during two successive terms proved himself a cogent if dry speaker in support of high tariff and in opposition to slavery and the Mexican War.

In 1849 President Taylor appointed him minister to Turkey, and at Constantinople his encyclopedic knowledge of languages was most useful. He cooperated with Sir Stratford Canning in aiding many refugees from the central European revolutions of 1848 and arranged for the departure of Kossuth and fifty compatriots on an American frigate. In the summer of 1852 he was sent to Athens, where the United States had no regular diplomatic representative, to investigate the ca se of Jonas King [q.v.], an American missionary imprisoned by the local authorities. After careful study of the copious evidence in modern Greek, Marsh found him the victim of unscrupulous and bigoted persecution and returned the next spring to demand redress. While the Greek government procrastinated, the minister was recalled to Constantinople by an acrimonious dispute over Martin Koszta, a Hungarian revolutionist half-naturalized in the United States and illegally seized in Smyrna by an Austrian naval commander. Instructed by John Porter Brown [q.v.], the American charge at Constantinople, Capt. Duncan N. Ingraham [q.v.] of the American sloop of war St. Louis had demanded the prisoner and cleared his ship for action to enforce compliance before the Austrian discreetly delivered him to the French consul. Marsh and the Austrian ambassador pointed out with equal correctness that both naval officers had flagrantly disregarded the sovereignty of Turkey, but the Porte did nothing, and excitement soon died down.

Recalled by a new administration in 1854, Marsh labored to mend his bankrupt fortunes, acted as railroad commissioner for the state of Vermont, and delivered at Columbia University and the Lowell Institute lectures on English philology and etymology which established his reputation as an outstanding authority in those fields. Having joined the Republican party in i856, he was sent by President Lincoln as the fir st United States minister to the new kingdom of Italy in 1860. This post he held for the remaining twenty-one years of his life, gaining great prestige with the Italian government through his obvious hone sty and sympathy with their aims, and building up a greater reputation as a scholar by his numerous reviews and encyclopedia articles. He died at Vallombrosa, near Florence, and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome.

A man of great personal dignity and reserve, Marsh was master of a punning humor and could turn a compliment prettily. with interests which ranged from comparative grammar to physiography and from the gathering of reptiles for the Smithsonian Institution to the collection of engravings, which were ultimately acquired by the Smithsonian, he was a sort of universal genius, a conscientious and erudite scholar in many fields. His early interest in Scandinavia resulted in the publication of A Compendious Grammar of the Old-Northern or Icelandic Language (1838), largely a compilation from the work of R. K. Rask; while another aspect of the same study showed itself in his preaching a gospel of old Teutonic simplicity and virtue, to which he attributed everything good in the English tradition (The Goths in New-England, 1843). His travels in the Near East inspired The Camel, His Organization, Habits, and Uses, Considered with Reference to His Introduction into the United States (1856). He was one of the early workers associated with the Oxford Dictionary (J. A. H. Murray, A New English Dictionary, volume I, 1888, Preface, p. v). His Lectures on the English Language (1860) and The Origin and History of the English Language (1862) were excellent philological and etymological works for their day but have since become antiquated. His Man and Nature, or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864; revised edition of 1874 entitled The Earth as Modified by Human Action), embodying the fruit of many years' acute observation during his extensive travels, has been called "the fountainhead of the conservation movement" (Lewis Mumford, The Brown Decades, 1931, p. 78). It was a pioneer effort "to suggest the possibility and the importance of the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of waste and exhausted regions" (Preface, quoted by Mumford, p. 75), and had a significant influence both at home and abroad.

[H. L. Koopman, Bibliog. of George Perkins Marsh (1892); Caroline Crane Marsh, Life and Letters of G. P. March (1888), projected as a two-volume work, only one volume published; S. G. Brown, A Discourse Commemorative of the Hon. George Perkins Marsh (1883); D. W. Marsh, Marsh Genealogy (1895); H. L. Mencken, The American Language (1919), pp. 8, 144; Proc. American Acad. Arts and Sci., volume XVIII (1883); Atti delta R. Accademia dei Lincei ... 1882-83 (3 series VII, 1883); the Nation (New York), July 27, August 3, October 12, 1882; New York Times, July 25, 1882.]

W. L. W., Jr.


MARTIN, JOHN ALEXANDER (March 10, 1839-October 2, 1889), journalist, Union military officer, and governor of Kansas,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 

MARTIN, JOHN ALEXANDER (March 10, 1839-October 2, 1889), journalist, Union military officer, and governor of Kansas, the son of James Martin and Jane Crawford, was born at Brownsville, Pennsylvania. He received his education in the common schools and in the printing office. Late in 1857 he went to Kansas and in February 1858, when he was not yet nineteen, he bought an Atchison newspaper, which he renamed Freedom's Champion (subsequently the Champion and still later the Atchison Champion). Within three years he was recognized as one of the political leaders of the younger generation in Kansas Territory, serving, among other positions of honor, as secretary of the Wyandotte constitutional convention and as state senator in the first state legislature. He resigned political office to become, October 27, 1861, lieutenant-colonel of the 8th Volunteer Infantry. On November 1 he was promoted to the rank of colonel, serving as provost-marshal of Nashville, Tennessee, and later as brigade-commander during the Chattanooga campaigns. He was mustered out November 17, 1864, and returned to the editorship of his newspaper. Martin had three ruling passions; the Old Soldier interest, the Republican party, and Kansas. During the period 1865-84 he was an active leader in the editorial organization of the state, and in the management of the affairs of the Republican party, local, state, and national. He was chairman of the Atchison county central committee, 1859-84, except during the war, a member of the state committee, beginning in 1870, and of the national committee almost continuously, beginning in 1868. He was secretary of the national committee during the early eighties and sponsored a plan for reapportioning representation in the national convention in order to recognize partially the growing Republican vote in the West.

Martin's major political ambition was the governorship of Kansas. He was elected in 1884 and reelected in 1886. Among the chief issues of his administration was the enforcement of the prohibition law. He had been an opponent of prohibition at the time of the adoption of the constitutional amendment of 1880, but by 1883 he indorsed it and was nominated and elected on a platform containing a prohibition plank. He was convinced by the experience of the state and especially of his home town of Atchison that "the saloon-keepers, as a rule, were a lot of shameless ingrates, who were not only opposed to prohibition, but to any and all restraint on their dirty business" (Martin to Sol Miller, December 4, 1885: Correspondence of the Governors of Kansas, Letterpress Books, personal, Vol. V, pp. 61-67). He felt that the only way to deal with them was to stand squarely on prohibition of the liquor traffic and thereby to eliminate its influence from politics. Prohibition under his administration became the settled policy of the Republican party in the state and of the state of Kansas. He advocated revision of legal procedure, the modification of the judicial system, both an enlargement and a reform in line with progressive practices adopted in some other states, and the codification of state law. He took great interest in penal reform, and was quite successful in dealing with railroad labor troubles, 1885-88. A state law providing for arbitration of labor disputes was enacted in 1886, and he urged the passage of a federal law in this field, as well as the federal licensing of locomotive engineers.

Martin's administration came in a period of unusual railroad building and of the settlement of the western part of the state. Local government units were induced by various means to issue excessive amounts of bonded indebtedness to finance railroad building. These practices were opposed by Martin, and he urged repeatedly, but without success, the adoption by both state and national governments of a program which might forestall the collapse of the boom in Kansas and elsewhere, and bring about a public control of big business. He advocated a comprehensive state corporation law designed to meet the abuses prevalent in the conduct of business, and attacked the monopoly question in its national aspect from the standpoint of the discriminative practices of the railroads: "They are monopolizing a dozen branches of business the coal trade, the grain trade, the elevator business, the express business, etc." (Martin to Senator John J. Ingalls, January 20, 1887: Correspondence of the Governors of Kansas, personal, Vol. IX, pp. 290-92). After four strenuous years as governor, he retired again to the editorship of his newspaper. He had married, on June 1, 1871, Ida Challiss, the daughter of Dr. W. L. and Mary (Harres) Challiss. In 1869 he published a Military History of the Eighth Kansas Veteran Volunteer Infantry, and in 1888 he printed, for private distribution, a volume of Addresses.

[The Wis. Historical Society Library has the most complete file of the Atchison Champion for the period of Martin's editorship. This file includes the years 1865-89. The Kansas State Historical Society Library has a file of the paper for 1858-63 and for 1876-89, together with some broken files for the middle years. The same library has his correspondence as governor, both the official and the confidential or personal files. This correspondence contains, in addition to state matters, information on such national matters as Indian defense, control of livestock diseases, quarantine for protection of public health, railroad labor strikes 1885, 1886, and 1888, national Republican party politics, press-association problems, and the National Soldiers' Homes. Except for the Civil War letters (in process of printing for private distribution) in possession of the family, all of Martin's correspondence prior to the governorship has been lost. Other sources include: D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (revised ed., 1886); W. E. Connelley, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans (1918), volume II; Trans. Kansas State Historical Society, volume IV (1890); the Evening Standard (Leavenworth), October 2, 1889; the Topeka Weekly Capital, October 3, 1889.)

J.C.M.


MARTIN, Luther, c. 1748-1826, Maryland, founding father, lawyer, opponent of slavery.  First Attorney General in the State of Maryland, Member of the Continental Congress, and Member of the Federal Convention.  Said of slavery that it is “inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution and dishonorable to the American character.”

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 233; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 343; Bruns, 1977, p. 522; Locke, 1901, p. 92; Mabee, 1970, p. 378; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 14, p. 605). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 343; 

MARTIN, LUTHER (c. 1748-July 10, 1826), first attorney-general of the State of Maryland, member of the Continental Congress, member of the Federal Convention, and an eminent lawyer, was born near New Brunswick, New Jersey. The date of his birth is generally given as February 9, and in some accounts is assigned to the year 1744. There is uncertainty also about the names of his parents, but it is probable that he was the third in a family of nine children of Benjamin Martin, a farmer, and his wife Hannah. His ancestors, who were of English stock, had been farmers in America for several generations. After attending the grammar school of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), he entered the college in 1762 and was graduated with honors in 1766. He went to Maryland to seek a position as teacher, and obtained a school at Queenstown, Queen Anne's County. Among his pupils were the children of Solomon Wright, a lawyer, in whose home he became a frequent visitor and whose library he was permitted to use. In 1769, after teaching nearly three years at Queenstown, Martin gave up his position and left for Somerset County, Maryland, to devote a year to the study of law with friends there. Shortly afterward, while making a brief visit in Queen Anne's County, he was served with five writs of attachment for debts; but Wright, acting as his attorney, succeeded in striking off the writs in the spring of 1770. In the summer of that year Martin left Somerset County to become superintendent of the grammar school at Onancock, Accomac County, Virginia. Here he served one year, continuing the study of law in the meantime. In 1771 he applied at Williamsburg for admission to the Virginia bar, was accepted, and in September qualified as an attorney in Accomac County. After practising a short time in Virginia, he decided to settle in Somerset County, Maryland, where his practice was lucrative until the outbreak of the Revolution.

In the fall of 1774 Martin was. named on the patriot committee of Somerset County, and in December was a delegate to the convention of the Province of Maryland at Annapolis. In 1777 he published a reply to the appeal issued from the British fleet by Lord Howe; and his address, To the Inhabitants of the Peninsula between the Delaware River and the Chesapeake to the Southward of the British Lines, was circulated in handbills. On February II, 1778, Martin was appointed by Gov. Thomas Johnson, upon the recommendation of Samuel Chase, as attorney- general of Maryland; and qualifying on May 20 he took up his residence in Baltimore. During the remaining years of the war he prosecuted the Loyalists with great vigor. In 1785 he was a delegate to the Continental Congress. He was also a delegate to the Federal Convention at Philadelphia, where he opposed the plan of a strong central government. Before the convention was over, he walked out with John Francis Mercer [q.v.] and returned home without signing the Constitution. He assailed the proposed form of government before the Maryland House of Delegates in 1787 in a speech which attracted wide attention. In 1788, as a member of the Maryland convention, he made a futile effort to prevent the ratification of the federal Constitution.

On December 25, 1783, Martin married Maria (sometimes referred to as Mary) Cresap, eldest daughter of Capt. Michael Cresap [q.v.], Maryland frontiersman. Cresap was charged with the murder of the family of the Indian chief, Logan; and Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, quoted Logan's speech. To defend Cresap's character, Martin published letters (1797-98) in the Baltimore newspapers in reply to Jefferson (John J. Jacob, A Biographical Sketch of the Life of the Late Capt. Michael Cresap, 1826). Jefferson refused to make any reply in the newspapers, holding that Martin's object was to gratify party passions (P. L. Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, volume VII, 1896, p. 137). Martin's domestic life was unhappy. His wife died young, leaving two daughters. He courted a wealthy client, the widow of Jonathan Hager, of Washington County, Maryland, but she married another man. (The letters of entreaty written by him to Mrs. Hager in 1800 and 1801 are in J. T. Scharf, History of Western Maryland, 1882, volume II, pp. 1013-15.) Martin's daughters married when very young, against his will, and both of the marriages ended tragically. Maria married Lawrence Keene, a naval officer, but soon separated from him and died insane. Eleonora eloped with Richard R. Keene (unrelated to Lawrence), son of a Queen Anne's County farmer, who had entered Martin's office in 1799 and became a member of the bar in 1801. Martin condemned Keene in a series of five pamphlets entitled Modern Gratitude, printed in 1801 and 1802. The son-in-law replied in a pamphlet of fifty printed pages, A Letter from Richard Raynal Keene to Luther Martin, Esq. (1802). Martin later became infatuated with the beautiful Theodosia Burr [q.v.], who was already married; his "idolatrous admiration" for her doubtless served to blind him to the faults of her father's character (W. H. Safford, The Blennerhassett Papers, 1861, p. 469).

Martin, now allied with the Federalist party because of his hatred of Jefferson, went to the aid of Justice Samuel Chase [q.v.] in the impeachment trial before the United States Senate in 1804. In 1805, after twenty-seven years of service, he resigned as attorney-general of Maryland. In 1807 he was one of the lawyers who came to the rescue of Aaron Burr at his trial for treason in Richmond, where he attacked the Administration with so much bitterness that President Jefferson in a letter dated June 19, 1807, wrote to George Hay, United States district attorney for Virginia: "Shall we move to commit L[uther] M[artin], as particeps criminis with Burr? Graybell will fix upon his misprision of treason at least And at any rate, his evidence will put down this unprincipled & impudent federal bull-dog, and add another proof that the most clamorous defenders of Burr are all his accomplices" (P. L. Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, volume IX, 1898, p. 58). After the trial, Burr, and Harman Blennerhassett were entertained by Martin in Baltimore; a mob threatened to do violence; but Martin's house was guarded by the police, and the mob spent the force of its indignation on the hanging of effigies (American Law Review, January 1867, p. 278). In 1813 Martin became chief judge of the court of oyer and terminer for the City and County of Baltimore and served in this office until the tribunal was abolished in 1816. In February 1818, forty years after the date of his first appointment, he was reappointed attorney-general of the state. His last important case was McCulloch vs: State of Maryland (4 Wheaton, 316), wherein as attorney-general of Maryland in 1819 he opposed Daniel Webster, William Pinkney, and William Wirt on the question of state rights, and Chief Justice Marshall held that a state tax on the Bank of the United States was unconstitutional. In 1820 Martin was incapacitated for active service by a stroke of paralysis, and although an assistant attorney-general was appointed he was obliged to resign in 1822. Always of a convivial disposition, he had become increasingly addicted to the use of intoxicants; his brilliant faculties had decayed and he now faced the world broken in health, worn out in mind, and financially destitute. His plight led the legislature to pass a resolution compelling every practitioner of law in the state to pay an annual license fee of five dollars to be turned over to trustees for the use of Martin (Acts of Maryland, December Session, 1821, Resolution No. 60). During the time the resolution was in effect only one protest was made against it; and it was repealed in 1823 before its constitutionality could be tested (Ibid., December Session, 1822, Resolution No. 16). Martin, wrecked by misfortunes, drunkenness, extravagance, and illness, was now welcomed into Burr's home in New York, where he was permitted to remain until the time of his death. He was buried in the Trinity Churchyard in New York.

Martin's chief faults were his intemperance and his improvidence in financial affairs. He was a stanch opponent of slavery, and was known for his generosity and his loyalty to his friends. While not a polished orator, he became a leader of the American bar because of his thoroughness and extraordinary memory. Blennerhassett, following Mercer, called him the "Thersites of the law." Chief Justice Taney said that Martin was "strong in his attachments, and ready to make any sacrifice for his friends" (Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, 1872, p. 68). He has been described as "the rollicking, witty, audacious Attorney-General of Maryland; drunken, generous, slovenly, grand; bull-dog of federalism, the notorious reprobate genius" (Henry Adams, John Randolph, 1882, p. 141). At the time of the Chase impeachment trial, Martin was "of medium height, broad-shouldered, near-sighted, absent-minded, shabbily attired, harsh 1of voice ... with a face crimsoned by the brandy which he continually imbibed" (A. J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall, volume III, 1919, p. 186).

[No definite biography of Luther Martin has been written. An autobiographical sketch of his early life is included in the last pamphlet of his Modern Gratitude (1802), in which he states that he was eighteen years old in 1766. On the other hand, an obituary in the New York Evening Post, July II, 1826, states that he died in his eighty-second year. An early sketch of his life, in The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, volume IV (1839), pp. 167-74, was followed by a sketch in American Law Review, January 1867, pp. 273-81; an article in Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland and D. C. (1879); "Luther Martin: The 'Federal Bull Dog,' " by H. P. Goddard, published by the Maryland Historical Society in Fund-Publication No. 24 (1887); and "Luther Martin," by E. L. Didier, in The Green Bag, April 1891. Later sketches include those by A. M. Gould, in W. D. Lewis, ed., Great American Lawyers, volume II (1907); H. H. Hagan, Eight Great American Lawyers (1923); T. C. Waters, in American Bar Assn. Journal, November, December 1928; and J. F. Essary, in Maryland in National Politics (1915), pp. 59- 78. An article, "The Influence of Luther Martin in the Making of the Constitution of the United States," by E. D. Obrecht, appeared in the Maryland Historical Magazine, September-December 1932.

Martin's address, The Genuine Information, Delivered to the  Legislature of the State of Maryland, Relative to the Proceedings of the General Convention, Lately Held at Philadelphia, published in 1788, is included in American Eloquence, edited by Frank Moore (1859), volume I, 373-400; and in Jonathan Elliot, The Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (2 ed., 1836); a different draft of the speech, from a MS. in the Library of Congress, appeared in the Maryland Historical Magazine, June 1910, pp. 139-50. Charles Warren, The Making of the Constitution (1928), p. 792, refers to newspaper letters of Martin. See also Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention (3 volumes, 1911); E. S. Delaplaine, The Life of Thomas Johnson (1927).]

E.S.D.


MARTINEAU, Harriet, 1802-1876, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), delegate of the (Garrisonian) Anti-Slavery Society, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society

(Dumond, 1961, p. 286; Mabee, 1970, p. 53; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 14, p. 613)


MARTYN, Grace, abolitionist, first director of the Ladies New York City Anti-Slavery Society (LNYCASS), founded New York City, 1835 (Yellin, 1994, p. 34)


MARTYN, Reverend J. H. (Yellin, 1994)


MARTYN, Sarah Towne Smith, 1805-1879, author, reformer, temperance activist, abolitionist

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 352; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 579-580). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 352; 

MARTYN, SARAH TOWNE SMITH (August 15, 1805-November 22, 1879), author, was born in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, the daughter of the Reverend Ethan and Bathsheba (Sanford) Smith, ' both descendants of seventeenth-century settlers in New England. Her early education was directed by her father, a scholarly clergyman, who, as a youth, had served in the Revolution, and afterward graduated from Dartmouth College. Under his tutelage she studied Greek and Hebrew and learned to translate readily from modern languages. She spent a brief period at a school for young ladies in New York City, where her considerable talent for music received some training. As she grew older she shared with her father his ardent interest in the temperance and anti-slavery movements. She was warmly sympathetic with Oberlin College in its early efforts and was invited to act as one of the first principals of its "female department." This honor she declined, feeling that her work lay in another direction. She was active in the Female Moral Reform Society of New York after 1836 and assisted in editing its journal, the Advocate of Moral Reform, until 1845, when dissension with. in the society caused her to secede from it with the disaffected minority. In March 1841 she married her brother-in-law, Job H. Martyn, a clergyman in New York City. She lived in New York until 1868, with the exception of three years (1850-53) spent in Waukesha, Wis., while her husband was in charge of a church in that place. Three sons and a daughter were born of this marriage, the eldest, William Carlos, becoming a well-known minister and writer.

After her marriage Mrs. Martyn continued her devotion to religious and reform movements. In 1842 she acted as editor for a few weeks of the Olive Plant and Ladies' Temperance Advocate. Following her separation from the Advocate of Moral Reform she was connected for a short time with a rival, the True Advocate. In April 1846 she began the publication of the White Banner, an undertaking that gave place the following month to the Ladies' Wreath, "a magazine devoted to literature, industry, and religion." This periodical she edited from 1846 to 1850, writing a large part of its decorous contents herself. In addition to these editorial ventures she wrote for the American Tract Society many unpretentious volumes designed for juvenile readers and a number of more ambitious works dealing with historical subjects. Among these are Margaret, the Pearl of Navarre (1867), The English Exile, or William Tyndale at Home and Abroad (1867), Daughters of the Cross (1868), and Women of the Bible (1868). She was known among the literati of New York as a gracious hostess in whose home well-known writers and reformers frequently assembled. After the death of her husband in 1868, she divided her time between New York and Connecticut, living with her children and sharing their interests. She died in New York City and was buried in Cheshire, Connecticut.

[New-Eng. Historical and Genealogy Registry, April 1847; J. Q. Bittinger, History of Haverhill, New Hampshire (1888); files of the Ladies' Wreath and of the Advocate of Moral Reform; obituary notices and personal information in possession of family; John S. Hart, A Manual of American Literature (1874).]


MARVIN, DUDLEY (May 29, 1786-June 25, 1852), congressman,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p.

MARVIN, DUDLEY (May 29, 1786-June 25, 1852), congressman, the son of Elisha and Elizabeth (Selden) Marvin, was born in Lyme, Connecticut, where his ancestor, Reinold Marvin who emigrated from Essex County, England, before 1638, finally settled and died. He attended the Colchester Academy in Connecticut and then followed the path of New England pioneers westward into New York and settled in Ontario County at Canandaigua. With a general education such as was afforded by a small New England academy of that time he studied law and was admitted to the bar, probably in 1811. At the outbreak of war with Great Britain the following year he took active military duty with the state militia and served as lieutenant. After peace had been declared he continued to take a prominent part in the militia, rising eventually to the rank of major-general. He was married on Jan. 31, 1818, to Mary Jepson Whalley, the daughter of Joseph and Hannah (Saltonstall) Whalley of Canandaigua. They had one child.

Marvin practised law successfully and was recognized as one of the ablest barristers in the western counties of the state. In 1822 he was elected to Congress, as an Adams Democrat, and was reelected in 1824 and in 1826. He came under the influence of Henry Clay's leadership and espoused the Whig cause. In Congress he advocated with distinction the dominant interests of the rising industrial power of the North, a protective tariff and the limitation of slavery. During his first term he became a member of the committee on manufactures and was an ardent advocate of a protective tariff. In the debate over the celebrated tariff of 1824 he defended against Southern opposition the cause of the Northern manufacturing interests, then slowly developing. He maintained that the tax that falls in the first instance upon the cotton planters "is paid back again by all other States, in the various proportions in which they are consumers of cotton" (Annals of Congress, 18 Congress, 1 Session, col. 1527). The fact that two-thirds of the cotton crop was consumed abroad did not in his mind disturb the logic of the Northern position. After completing his third term in Congress, he went to Maryland and to Virginia for a time and then removed to New York City to practise law there and in Brooklyn. About 1843 he again removed to the outlying districts of the state and settled in Ripley, Chautauqua County. In 1847 he returned to Congress as a Whig and served for one term. The stirring controversy over slavery in the territory newly acquired from Mexico brought him once more into the sectional debate. "It will not be denied," he asserted, "that the introduction of slavery equally excludes from a participation in the enjoyment of these acquisitions the free laboring men of the North" (Congressional Globe, 30 Congress, I Session, App., p. 1211). The right of the federal government to exclude slavery from the territories he declared to be derived from the sovereign rights of the nation, the territories having been acquired in the first pl ace "by the act of war-an act of sovereignty in which the respective sovereign States in the Union neither were nor could be known" (Ibid., p. 1209). The remainder of his life was spent in Ripley. He interested himself in community affairs, was active in the temperance movement, and in the Presbyterian Church.

[A. W. Young, History of Chautauqua County (1875); Biographical Directory American Cong. (1928); G. F. and W. T. R. Marvin, Descendants of Reinold and Matthew Marvin (1904) as authority for dates of birth and death.]

G.L.R.


MASON, CHARLES (October 24, 1804-February 25, 1882), jurist,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p.

MASON, CHARLES (October 24, 1804-February 25, 1882), jurist, was born in Pompey, Onondaga County, New York, the son of Chauncey and Esther (Dodge) Mason. He entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1825 and was graduated in 1829 at the head of his class, with Joseph E. Johnston and Robert E. Lee as classmates. For the next two years he was assistant professor of engineering at West Point. His interest in law, already manifest at West Point, led him to devote his whole time to its study. He read law in New York City, was admitted to the bar in June 1832, and began practice at Newburgh, New York. Within two years he returned to New York City, where he contributed to the Evening Post and during the temporary absence of its regular editor, William Cullen Bryant, served for a short period as acting editor. In 1836 he went West on a tour of observation and in April 1837, was appointed by Gov. Henry Dodge as an aide and as public prosecutor of Des Moines County in Wisconsin Territory. On August 1, he was married to Angelica Gear, of Berkshire, Massachusetts, the aunt of John Henry Gear [q.v.], and in November he established himself in Burlington.

When the new Territory of Iowa was organized in 1838, he was appointed chief justice of the supreme court. He was twice reappointed to this position and retained his seat for several months after the organization of the state of Iowa in December 1846. Among his notable decisions was the one relating to the legal status of the negro, Ralph (I Iowa Reports, 1). His view in this case was that a slave going into a free territory by the consent of his master was thereafter to be treated not as a fugitive and chattel but as a free man-a theory in conflict with a later pronouncement of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Dred Scott. In 1847 he was attorney for Iowa in the Iowa Missouri dispute that was submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States and decided in favor of Iowa (Annals of Iowa, October 1866-January 1867). As a member of the commission to draft the first code of the state, The Code of Iowa ... 1851 (1851), he exercised a marked influence on the laws of the state and subsequently on the codes of other states. In the interval between his work on the Iowa code commission and his election, in 1851, to the position of county judge of Des Moines County, he was in law partnership with Samuel R. Curtis and John W. Rankin at Keokuk. Appointed federal commissioner of patents in 1853, he laid down certain precedents that are followed by the agriculture department to the present time. He resigned this office in 1857 and became a member of the first Iowa state board of education. Two years thereafter he was legal adviser to Munn & Company in their pa tent agency, effecting, among other things, the extension of the Morse telegraph patent in the face of vigorous opposition.

Later he went to Washington, D. C., where he engaged in the practice of patent law. He was active in efforts to provide for the city of Washington a more efficient system of drainage and was able to draw upon his own knowledge of engineering for the plans. He declined the Democratic nomination for the governorship of Iowa in 1861, was defeated in 1863 for a position on the supreme court of Iowa, and in 1867 was defeated for the governorship. In 1864 he was chairman of the national central committee of his party and was a delegate to the nominating conventions of 1868 and 1872. He wrote various pamphlets on financial subjects, drainage, and sanitation. Among these were: Articles on the Currency (1858), A Plan for Specie Resumption (1874), and What Shall Be Done with the Surplus Funds of the Patent Office! (1870). The last years of his life were spent partly in Washington and partly in Iowa, where he continued his connections with the financial and industrial interests of the community. One of his three daughters, the wife of George Collier Remey [q.v.], survived him.

[Diaries in the possession of the historical department of Iowa; information from his grandson, Charles Mason Remey, Washington, D. C.; letter from Mason in E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers (1916); Iowa Historical Record, October 1893; Annals of Iowa, July-October 1864, July-October 1895, October 1896, January 1901, January 1902, April, October 1926, April 1929; J. C. Parish, Robert Lucas (1907); Walter Geer, The Geer Genealogy (1923); Iowa Journal of History and Politics, January 1914.]  

B. F. S.


MASON, George, 1725-1792, statesman.  Virginia Constitutionalist.  Slaveholder who himself opposed slavery on moral grounds.  Authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights.  Opposed the U.S. Constitution because of the stand on the issue of slavery.  Mason wrote: “Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.  They [slaves] prevent the immigration of whites, who really enrich and strengthen a country.  They produce a pernicious effect on manners.  Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.  They bring the judgment of heaven on a country.”  Mason did not sign the U.S. Constitution and stated during the Virginia Ratifying Convention debate: “Under the royal government, this evil was looked upon as a great oppression, and was one of the great causes of our separation from Great Britain.  Its exclusion has been a principal object of this state and most of the states in the Union.  The augmentation of slaves weakens the states; and such a trade is diabolical in itself and disgraceful to mankind… As much as I value a union of all the states, I would not admit the Southern States into the Union unless they agree to the discontinuance of this disgraceful trade, because it would bring weakness, and not strength, to the Union.”


(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 241-242, 721-722; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 361; Bruns, 1977, pp. 389, 522-523; Dumond, 1961, pp. 24, 28, 41; Locke, 1901, pp. 89f, 90n, 93; Mason, 2006, pp. 33-34, 250n140, 293-294n157; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 14, p. ) 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 361;

MASON, GEORGE (1725-October 7, 1792), planter, Revolutionary statesman, constitutionalist, was the fourth of his name and line in Virginia. The first American George Mason [q.v.], who probably emigrated from England soon after the battle of Worcester, settled in the Northern Neck on 900 acres near Pasbytanzy; he and his descendants added to this original grant so that when the fourth George Mason came of age and settled at Dogue's Neck, on the Potomac below Alexandria, he controlled some 5,000 acres in the region. Because of the death of his father, the third George Mason, when he was ten, the boy grew up under the guardianship of his mother, Ann (Thomson) Mason, and his uncle by marriage, John Mercer of "Marlborough," an exceptionally able lawyer. Mrs. Mason's account books show payments to private tutors during the years 1736-39, but Mason found his education in Mercer's library. It numbered upwards of 1,500 volumes, a third of them on law, and at the time of his guardianship Mercer was at work among them. This association accounts for the fact that while Mason was never licensed as an attorney he was called in as a notably competent counsel on questions of public law throughout his later life. On April 4, 1750, he married Anne Eilbeck of "Mattawoman," Charles County, Maryland; soon afterward, their portraits were painted by John Hesselius. In 1758 their new home, “Gunston Hall," begun in 1755, was completed; its architect was William Buckland, a skilled craftsman from Oxford whom Mason's younger brother Thomson brought back with him under indenture in 1754. In the course of the twenty years after their marriage, five sons and four daughters were born.

Mason persisted in regarding himself as a private gentleman, even during his most intensive periods of public service. Without the aid of a steward, he personally managed his large and practically self- sufficient plantation. He served a s trustee of the recently founded town of Alexandria from 1754 until its incorporation in 1779; Alexandria was also the seat of Fairfax County, and he was one of the gentlemen justices of the county court from his early manhood until his resignation in 1789. Parallel to the jurisdiction of the county ran that of the parish, which under the Establishment was vested with governmental duties in respect of the moral and charitable obligations of the community; Mason was a vestryman of Truro Parish from 1748 until 1785, serving as one of the overseers of the poor after relief became a lay function. As the executor of Daniel French, the original contractor, he supervise d the building of Pohick Church, some of whose details repeat the carvings at "Gunston." This triple experience in local government formed an important part of his political apprenticeship.  

Complementary to Mason's familiarity with the tidewater section of the colony was his association with the problems of the West. He became a member of the Ohio Company in 1752, and served as its treasurer until 1773. His initial interest in it was merely as a speculation, but as the company changed from a private economic venture into the lever which upset the political balance, first between French and British forces in the New World, and then, after the Peace of Paris, between Crown and Colony across the Alleghanies, the constitutional aspect of Virginia's claims to the Northwest Territory engaged his attention; when the Crown, in 1773, abrogated the Ohio Company's rights and regranted the area they covered to the Grand Company organized by a group of Pennsylvanians, Mason produced his first major state paper, Extracts from the Virginia Charters, with Some Remarks upon Them (1773, reprinted in Rowland, I, 393-414).

Prior to midsummer, 1775, Mason's part in the Revolution was in the wings of the public stage. Various reasons have been adduced for his reluctance to accept office; on the one hand his chronic ill-health, on the other the death of his wife early in 1773, leaving him, as he wrote in I775, with a sense of "the duty I owe to a poor little helpless family of orphans to whom I must now act the part of Father and Mother both" (Ibid., I, 198). It is true that after his marriage, on April II, 1780, to Sarah Brent he accepted a seat in the Federal Convention in Philadelphia (1787), but by far the most probable cause of his persistent refusals to serve was the low rating which he put upon human nature in committee; In 1759 he and Washington had served together in the House of Burgesses; at the end of his first term he withdrew with an opinion of that body which did not change when he went to take the place of the newly-elected Commander-in-chief in the July convention of 1775. Writing Washington on October 14, 1775, in regard to the session he said: "I never was in so disagreeable a situation and almost despaired of a cause which I saw so ill conducted ...Mere vexation and disgust threw me into such an ill state of health, that before the Convention rose, I was sometimes near fainting in the House. However, after some weeks the babblers were pretty well silenced, a few weighty members began to take the lead, several wholesome regulations were made" (Ibid., I, 210-11). Off-stage, however, Mason had played a highly important part ever since 1765, when, at the instance of - Washington and G. W. Fairfax, he contrived a method of replevying goods under distress for rent without the use of stamped paper. His open letter of June 6, 1766, to a committee of London merchants (Ibid., I, 381-89) tersely summarized the mood of the colonists in its balanced profession of loyalty and independence: they were ready wholeheartedly to welcome the repeal of the Stamp Act as an act of justice; that repeal was a favor they would never admit. When the Townshend duties revived the trade dispute, Mason prepared the resolutions which Washington presented to the dissolved House of Burgesses and which, adopted by them as a non-importation association, were passed on for subsequent approval by the Continental Congress. After the Boston Port Act brought matters to a head, he wrote the Fairfax Resolves of July 18, 1774 (Ibid., I, 418-27), stating a version of the constitutional position of the colonies visa- vis the Crown which was successively accepted by the county court in Fairfax, the Virginia convention in Williamsburg, and the Continental Congress in Philadelphia; some weeks later his plan for the organization of troops led to the creation of the Fairfax Independent Company of volunteers,

During the period in which he was writing these important papers, Mason was exerting a parallel influence on the consolidation of public opinion by word of mouth. Philip Mazzei, in his memoirs, and Edmund Randolph, in his manuscript history of Virginia, both emphasize this aspect of his effectiveness. Randolph said: "Among the numbers who in their small circles were propagating with activity the American doctrines, was George Mason in the shade of retirement. He extended their grasp upon the opinions and affections of those with whom he conversed. . . . He was behind none of the sons of Virginia in knowledge of her history and interest. At a glance he saw to the bottom of every proposition which affected her" (Quoted, Ibid., I, 178). Washington's diary bears witness to the frequency of his collaboration with Mason in the years before his departure to lead the army, and the letters o-f the three younger colleagues who succeeded him as the Virginia dynasty all testify specifically to the influence upon them of conversations at "Gunston Hall."

In 1775 Mason emerged from retirement as a member of the July convention, and served on the committee of safety which took over the executive powers vacated by the flight of Governor Dunmore. In 1776, as a member of the May convention, he achieved his outstanding contribution as a constitutionalist by framing the Declaration of Rights (reprint of original draft, Ibid., I, 433-36) and the major part of the constitution of Virginia. The former was drawn upon by Jefferson in the first part of the Declaration of Independence, was widely copied in the other colonies, became the basis for the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and had a considerable influence in France at the time of the French Revolution. The latter was notable as a pioneer, written "constitution," prepared with a view to permanence, and used by a commonwealth over a period of years. The years 1776-80 were occupied in implementing the various provisions of the two documents, with Mason in the forefront of legislative activity, closely collaborating with such men as Jefferson, Henry, and Wythe. He was a member of the committee of five entrusted with the revision of the laws, and while he resigned after the general plan had been agreed on, he continued to contribute his share of the new drafts, particularly those relating to the western lands. He was among the liberal churchmen who effected disestablishment. He was active in the organization of military affairs, particularly in the West. Mason's connection with the Northwest Territory is worthy of special note. His relation to George Rogers Clark was as close as that of father to son; he was one of Governor Henry's secret committee that authorized Clark's conquest, and it was to him that Clark sent his full account of the campaign. Since it was his Extracts from the Virginia Charters that had convinced Virginians of the western extent of their sovereignty, he was in some measure responsible for the fixing of the British-American boundary, in the treaty of 1783, at the Great Lakes rather than the Ohio, and it was he who sketched the plan out of which grew the cession by Virginia of her western lands to the United States, and Jefferson's ordinance for their government (Letter to Joseph Jones, July 27, 1780, Rowland, I, 360-67).

During the early eighties Mason was among those whom disgust at the conduct of public affairs drove into retirement; not until 1786 could he be again prevailed upon to go to the Assembly. His return to active life was motivated by his desire to prevent Virginia from indulging in a further orgy of inflation, and his growing conviction, in spite of his lifelong attachment to doctrine of state rights, that the Articles of Confederation were an inadequate basis for the central government. He was an active member of the Virginia delegation at the Mount Vernon meeting of 1785; he was appointed to but did not attend the Annapolis meeting of 1786 which grew out of it; in the debates at Philadelphia he was one of the five most frequent speakers. An examination of Madison's notes on the Federal Convention shows the extent of the constructive influence which Mason exerted on the Constitution. His decision not to sign the document was made during the last two weeks; until the final days of the convention he struggled for the inclusion of certain clauses and the exclusion of others which he regarded as respectively essential and iniquitous. In several instances his "Objections to the Federal Constitution" (reprinted in P. L. Ford, Pamphlets on the Constitution, 1888), on the basis of which he conducted his campaign against ratification in the Virginia convention of 1788, though negative in their immediate application, proved in the long run to have been well-founded. In two cases, his justification is written into the Constitution. His insistence on the necessity of a Bill of Rights bore fruit in the first ten amendments. The eleventh amendment, in 1798, testified to the correctness of his strictures on one part of the judiciary article, when his prophecy that suits would be brought against states was ridiculed by a young lawyer named John Marshall. In a third case his justification is written into general American history. Mason's outstanding reason for refusing to sign the Constitution was that it incorporated the compromise between the New England states and those of the extreme South on the tariff and the slave trade. His opposition to the institution of slavery was perhaps the most consistent feature of his public career. His first political paper opens with a paragraph on the advantage of settling land with free as contrasted with slave labor; his final speeches in the Richmond convention reiterate his opinion that "such a trade [in slaves] is diabolical in itself and disgraceful to mankind."

Mason's constructive proposals for the situation in which a century and a half of slave owning had left his community, proposals which run curiously parallel to the solution of the problem effected by the British Parliament in 1833, can be taken as illustrative of his general philosophical attitude. More than perhaps any other American statesman of the period, he represented the rationalist spirit, the Enlightenment in its American manifestation. He believed in the existence of a rule of right reason, and in the possibility of giving it concretion in terms of the problem at hand. He believed life, liberty, and the use of property to be central human rights. Applying those criteria to slavery, he favored manumission, so that one man's life should not be at the mercy of another, preceded by education, so that liberty might be given a positive content; at the same time he desired recognition of the property rights of the owner, so that the termination of an undesirable economy might take place without the confiscation of a large part of the community's capital. His conclusions were thorough, impersonal, convinced. They may stand as indicative of the mental fiber of Mason the gentleman, the representative of the Enlightenment, and the statesman.

[MS. materials include the George Mason Papers and other collections, and the Truro Parish Book in the Library of Congress; Mason letters in the Emmet Collection, New York Pub. Library; Minute Book of the Alexandria Trustees, City Hall, Alexandria, Virginia; Fairfax court records, Courthouse, Fairfax, Virginia K. M. Rowland, The Life of George Mason, 1725-1792 (2 volumes, 1892), reprints valuable correspondence, writings, and speeches. See also H. B. Grigsby, The Virginia Convention of 1776 (1855), and The History of the Virginia Federal Convention of 1788 (2 volumes, 1890-91); James Madison, reporter, The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 (1920), ed. by Gaillard Hunt and J. B. Scott; H. R. Connor, Gunston Hall, Fairfax County, Virginia (1930), the Monograph Series, No. 3, volume XVI; R. W. Moore, "George Mason, the Statesman," William and Mary College Quart., January 1933. Other items in Virginia publications may be located through the checklist prepared by E. G. Swem. A biography by Helen Hill is in manuscript.]

H.H.


MATTHEWS, Stanley, 1824-1889, lawyer, jurist, newspaper editor, anti-slavery activist, soldier and U.S. Senator.  Assistant editor of the anti-slavery newspaper, the Cincinnati Herald, the first abolitionist paper there.  Served in the Union Army, attaining the rank of Colonel, commanding both a regiment and a brigade. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV).


MATTISON, Hiram, 1811-1868, clergyman  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 262)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 423; 

MATTISON, HIRAM (February 8, 1811-November 24, 1868), Methodist Episcopal clergyman and reformer, was born at Norway, Herkimer County, New York, one of the twelve children of Solomon and Lydia W. Mattison. His parents, natives of New England, were poor, high-minded, and devoted Methodists. In his infancy the family removed to a wilderness farm near th e site of Oswego, New York. The boy's education was derived chiefly from his mother. He was of a serious and reflective temperament and displayed much mechanical ingenuity. At the age of twenty-four, after a transforming religious experience, he left the farm to become a Methodist minister in the Black River Conference (1836), although the weakness of his lungs several times interrupted his pastoral work. In 1840-41 he represented the American Bible Society in New Jersey, showing notable gifts as a preacher, but soon returned to northern New York, where he preached and edited an outspoken paper, the Primitive Christian (at first called Tracts for the Times, and later The Conservative). From 1846 to 1852 he was again disabled, but found congenial occupation in the study of astronomy, writing lectures and a school textbook, Elementary Astronomy (1847), revised as A High School Astronomy (1853), which achieved wide popularity. In 1850-51 he taught the subject in Falley Seminary, Fulton, New York. From 1852 to 1858 he served New York City churches (John Street and Trinity) as a supply pastor.

As a member of the General Conference in 1848, 1852, and 1856, he displayed power in debate. In the General Conference of 1856 he ardently but unsuccessfully advocated the exclusion of slave-holders from church membership. Transferring to a pastorate in Adams and Syracuse, New York, he continued to agitate the question of slave-holding, and, though defeated for membership in the General Conference of 1860, bombarded that body with petitions signed by 100,000 Methodists of Central New York and Great Britain praying the church to sever all connection with slavery. When that prayer was disregarded, he lost hope for his denomination, resigned from the Conference, and founded St. John's Independent Methodist Church in New York City. This body was denounced as a nest of abolitionists; his house was ransacked and his life threatened by the draft rioters in 1863. In 1864, however, when the Methodist Episcopal Church tardily took the action for which he had fought, he was welcomed back to its ministry, entering as a local preacher in August 1865 and being assigned to a Jersey City pastorate. Later he was admitted to Newark Conference. In Jersey City he became involved in a vigorous controversy with one Father Smarius, a Jesuit missioner, which led to his employment by the American and Foreign Christian Union (1868), to which he devoted the last of his failing energy, speaking, writing, and printing against "Romanism." His endeavor to rescue Mary Ann Smith, a convert alleged to have been abducted by Catholics to save her from Protestantism, used up his strength, and he died of pneumonia in Jersey City at the age of fifty-seven.

Mattison was by nature controversial, and he fought slavery, intemperance, and pernicious amusements as fiercely as he did "Romish superstitions and idolatries" and doctrines which he believed to be erroneous or heretical. He was twice married. His first wife, Melinda Griswold, died young, leaving four children. By his second wife, Elizabeth S. Morrison, who survived him, he had five children. Throughout his career he wrote much for publication in books, pamphlets, and church periodicals. Among his works were A Scriptural Defence of the Doctrine of the Trinity; or A Check to Modern Arianism (1846); Spirit Rappings Unveiled (1853); The Resurrection of the Dead (1864); Popular Amusements (1867); The Abduction of Mary Ann Smith (1868).

[Nicholas Vansant, Work Here, Rest Hereafter; or the Life and Character of Reverend Hiram Mattison (1870); Minutes of Ann. Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1869; Christian Advocate (New York), May 1856, May 1860, December 3, 1868; I, S. Bingham, "History of Black River Conference," in Minutes of Northern New York Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1878; L. C. Matlack, Anti-Slavery Struggle and Triumph in the Methodist Episcopal Church (1881); Daily Evening Times (Jersey City), November 25, 1868.]

J.R.J.


MATTOCKS, JOHN (March 4, 1777-August 14, 1847), congressman and governor, 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p.

MATTOCKS, JOHN (March 4, 1777-August 14, 1847), congressman and governor, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the youngest son of Samuel Mattocks. Originally a farmer, the father moved in 1778 to Tinmouth, Vermont, where he served in the state legislature, became a judge and chief justice of the Rutland county court, and was long state treasurer (1786-1801). At the age of fifteen, his son went to live with a married sister, Rebecca Miller, in Middlebury. Largely self-educated, he studied law first with Samuel Miller and later at Fairfield, with Judge Bates Turner, 'and was admitted to the bar in February 1797. In the same year, he opened an office at Danville, Caledonia County, Vermont, but moved three years later to Peacham, in the same county, where he was soon engrossed in politics.

In 1807 he was sent to the legislature, where, in all, he sat five terms-1807, 1815, 1816, 1823, and 1824. In 1820, he was elected to the national House of Representatives, and later served for two other terms-in 1825-27 and 1841-43. He was a vigorous opponent of negro slavery, and his most noteworthy appearance in debate was in a speech on the presentation of a petition for abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. He was chosen in 1832 as judge of the supreme court of Vermont, but resigned within a year. In 1843, running as a Whig, he was elected governor of Vermont, but declined a reelection. He was proud of the fact that he was never defeated for any office for which he was a candidate. While governor, he made an unsuccessful effort to establish Thanksgiving on December 25. The people at large objected to having New England Thanksgiving "disgraced by ... Popish nonsense," and Churchmen objected to Christmas being merged into a "Pumpkin pie Holiday" (Chandler, post, p. 37).

In 1806 he was made a director of the Vermont State Bank. During the War of 1812 he was a brigadier-general in the Vermont militia. He married, September 4, 1810, Esther Newell, of Peacham, who died, July 21, 1844, leaving three sons and one daughter. Of the sons, one became a clergyman, one an attorney, and one a physician.

Mattocks was perhaps best known as a lawyer. During nearly fifty years of practice, he became the most important figure at the Vermont bar. It was said that he was frequently engaged in every jury trial at a session of the county court and won every case. He adopted an easy, conversational manner, with no rhetorical flourishes, making his appeal mainly on the basis of common sense. He was a large and robust man, somewhat inclined to corpulency, and of a sanguine temperament. To his younger colleagues at the bar he was exceedingly kind and helpful. In his own time he was notorious, like Rufus Choate, for his crabbed and illegible handwriting. His witty stories and clever repartee were frequently quoted. He was an orthodox Congregationalist, of firm religious principles.

[W. H. Crockett, Vermont (1921), volume III; A. M. Hemenway, The Vermont Historical Gazetteer, volume I (1868); J. G. Ullery, Men of Vermont (1894); 0. P. Chandler, in Vermont Bar Assn. Constitution, Proceedings, Papers, and Addresses, 1886, volume II (1887); Vermont Patriot (Montpelier), August 26, 1847.]

C.M.F.


MAXWELL, WILLIAM (February 27, 1784-January 10, 1857), lawyer, college president, he was an active member of the Virginia Colonization Society.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p.

MAXWELL, WILLIAM (February 27, 1784-January 10, 1857), lawyer, college president, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of James and Helen (Calvert) Maxwell, natives of Scotland. The father was "general superintendent" of the Virginia fleet. William prepared for college chiefly under the tutorship of Reverend Israel B. Woodward of Wolcott, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale in 1802 at the age of eighteen. He studied law in Richmond, Virginia, and in 1808 was admitted to practice at the Norfolk bar. His brilliant talents soon gave him a leading position among the attorneys of Virginia and a reputation beyond the borders of the state. He was noted also for his keen wit and oratorical abilities. His readiness was remarkable; his addresses were never written; and if he was "knocked up at midnight and requested to speak, he would make a finer speech than anyone else could have done after deliberate preparation" (Grigsby, post, p. 39). Having literary tendencies, he published in 1812 a small volume entitled Poems. Although attributed to Maxwell, Letters from Virginia, a translation from the French issued anonymously in 1816, was probably the work of George Tucker. In 1827 Maxwell was elected editor of the New York Journal of Commerce, but he retained his home in Norfolk, and held th e position for only about a year. In 1828 he presented to his native town a lyceum for lectures and scientific experiments.

From 1830 to 1832 he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. Elected to the state Senate for an unexpired term, he was returned for the following term, serving in all from 1832 to 1838. During this period, 1835, he published his most ambitious library work, A Memoir of Reverend John H. Rice, D.D., valuable not only as a biography but also as a sidelight on Presbyterian history. In 1836 Hampden-Sidney College conferred on him the degree of LL.D., the third it had awarded in a period of more than sixty years. He was at the same time elected a trustee and in 1838, president of the college, a position which he held until 1844. While president he married Mary Robertson.

Upon his resignation he removed to Richmond where he practised and taught law. He was an active member of the Virginia Colonization Society and of the Virginia Bible Society. With others he reestablished the Virginia Historical Society, and from 1848 to 1853 was editor of the Virginia Historical Register. Of his many addresses, only one was published, An Oration on the Improvement of the People, a plea for better education in Virginia, delivered at the anniversary of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Hampden-Sidney, September 1826. An unpublished manuscript of his, now in the Virginia State Library, Richmond, "My Mother's · Memoirs," which records events of Revolutionary days, is of historical value. He died near Williamsburg, Virginia, and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond.

[F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches Graduates Yale College, volume V (19n); H. B. Grigsby, in Bull. of Hampden Sidney College, Jan. 1913; W. H. T. Squires, William. Maxwell, A Virginian of Ante-Bellum Days (n.d.), and article in Union Seminary Review, October 1918, supplemented and corrected by J. D. Eggleston, Ibid., January 1919; Southern Argus (Norfolk), January 15, 1857; Richmond Enquirer, January 16, 1857.]

J. D.E.


MAY, Reverend Samuel Joseph, 1797-1871, Connecticut, reformer, temperance advocate, clergyman, early advocate of women’s rights.  Unitarian minister.  Was an advocate for immediate, uncompensated emancipation of slaves.  Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, an officer of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.  May was opposed to both the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War.  He adamantly opposed both the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and actively advocated resistance to it.  Active in Underground Railroad in Syracuse, New York.  In 1851, he helped rescue a fugitive slave, Jerry McHenry, from the federal government.  Early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison.  In 1856, he joined the anti-slavery Republican Party, supporting John Frémont for the presidency of the United States. 

(Bruns, 1977, p. 456; Drake, 1950, p. 176; Dumond, 1961, pp. 182, 211-212, 273, 276; Filler, 1960, pp. 34, 44, 59, 65-66, 216; Mabee, 1970, pp. 12, 13, 20, 22-24, 26, 28, 29, 35, 37, 43-48, 78-79, 93, 124, 132, 149, 156, 168-170, 232, 272, 287, 289, 296, 300, 307, 308, 310, 359, 360, 368; Sernett, 2002, pp. 63, 102, 132, 134-144, 175, 176, 274-275, 312-313n39; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 273; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 447; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 585-586; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 313; May, Samuel Joseph. Memoir of Samuel Joseph May. Boston, 1873; May, Samuel Joseph, Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict. Boston, 1868; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 169.)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 447;

MAY, SAMUEL JOSEPH (September 12, 1797- July 1, 1871), Unitarian clergyman and reformer, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Col. Joseph May and Dorothy (Sewall) May, and brother of Abigail May who became the wife of Amos Bronson Alcott [q.v.]. His father was descended from John May of Mayfield, Sussex, who was admitted a freeman of Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1641; his mother was a descendant of Judge Samuel Sewall [q.v.]. Their home was a place where cheerful and practical piety was much in evidence. The father stanchly supported the rational teachings of Dr. James Freeman of King's Chapel, and May himself never felt anything but horror for "the heart-withering theology of .. . Calvin" (Brief Account, p. 6). After graduating from Harvard in 1817 and teaching in small schools, he read divinity under Norton and Ware in Cambridge, gladly adopting the liberal doctrines now known as Unitarian. For some months he assisted Dr. William Ellery Channing at his Boston church. In 1822 he was ordained, and three years later, June 1, 1825, he married Lucretia Flagge Coffin.

May's energetic life was spent in pastoral duties and in humanitarian services. As a pastor, he served churches at Brooklyn, Connecticut, 1822- 36; South Scituate, Massachusetts, 1836--42; and Syracuse, New York, 1845-67. He had small interest in expounding systematic theology, but an unflagging ambition to convert men to the life of personal righteous ness, marked by "the spirit of true goodness, active benevolence, stern integrity, moral courage." His gentle and cheerful nature did much to disarm the hostility of his orthodox critics. As a humanitarian, he worked ardently in the service of many reforming causes. He was a disciple of the venerable Noah Worcester in the movement for universal peace, writing and speaking much in its favor. He organized the Windham County (Connecticut) Peace Society in 1826, and twelve years later called the convention of the American Peace Society which gave birth to the New England Non-Resistance Society. This association was too extreme for May to support, however, although he was always a friend of peace. When the Civil War began, he modified his views somewhat, but could not bring himself to urge men to enlist. As an advocate of temperance, he persuaded many retailers to cease selling liquor, converted scores of persons to abstinence, drilled youngsters in a Cold Water Army, and preached effectively on the theme for a generation. But he preferred the pledge system and individual self control to prohibitory laws. In vigorous fashion, he championed equal rights for women, and wrote and spoke much in defense of his position. He cooperated heartily with Lucretia Mott [q.v.] and gave the public sentiment of the times a rude shock by inviting Angelina Grimke to occupy his pulpit and address his congregation on abolitionism. In his widely circulated sermon pamphlet, The Rights and Condition of Women (1846), he asserted that "if the people have the right of self-government, then I am unable to see why a half of the people have a right to govern the whole." He played a part in promoting the cause of efficient popular education and while at Brooklyn called a convention (May 1827) to discuss the improvement of the common-schools in Connecticut; later, at Horace Mann's earnest request, he served from 1842 till 1844 as principal of the Normal School at Lexington, Massachusetts. At all times he did much to soften the asperities of American educational practice. May took great pride in his service as an abolitionist. He knew Garrison well, attended the Philadelphia Convention of 1833, acted as general agent and secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society for more than a year, gave substantial aid to Prudence Crandall [q.v.] in her time of need, counseled resistance to the Fugitive-slave Law, and in 1851 took part in the public rescue of a slave. He helped negroes to reach Ca11ada, his house being a station on the Underground Railroad. Kindly and brave, with a rich fund of sympathy, he gave of himself without stint to so many humanitarian tasks, great and small, that he thoroughly earned Bronson Alcott's epithet: "the Lord's chore boy."

[May gave his collection of anti-slavery material to Cornell University. His literary remains consist of sermons, addresses, reports, etc., on humanitarian themes. Of special interest are his autobiographical discourse, A Brief Account of His Ministry (1867); and Some Recollections of Our Anti-slavery Conflict (1869). See also Samuel Joseph May (1871); Memoir of Samuel Joseph May (1873), prepared by G. B. Emerson, S. May, and T. J. Mumford; New-Eng. Historical and Genealogy Registry, April 1873; Autobiography of Andrew, Dickson White (2 volumes, 1905); Christian Register, July 8, 15, 1871; New York Times, July 3, 1871.]

F.M.


MAY, Samuel Jr., Leicester, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  American Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1849-1864, Corresponding Secretary, 1854-1860, Vice President, 1840-1848.  Counsellor, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.


MAYNARD, HORACE (August 30, 1814-May 3, 1882), U.S. Congressman and Unionist.  In 1857, he was elected as a candidate of the Whig and American parties and two years later was reelected. Fought against the withdrawal of Tennessee from the Union.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p.

MAYNARD, HORACE (August 30, 1814-May 3, 1882), congressman and Unionist, was the son of Ephraim and Diana Harriet (Cogswell) Maynard. Born in Westboro, Massachusetts, he was prepared for college at Millbury Academy and was graduated with high honors at Amherst College in 1838. He went immediately to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he had been appointed tutor in the preparatory department of East Tennessee College (now the University of Tennessee), and where he made his home for the remainder of his life. He was soon advanced to a professorship of mathematics. On August 30, 1840, he was married to Laura Ann Washburn, the daughter of Azel Washburn of Royalton, Vermont. They had seven children. In 1844 he deserted teaching for the practice of law and entered political life as a Whig. More than six feet tall, thin, straight, with a swarthy complexion, dark and piercing eyes, and long, black hair that fell to his shoulders, he was popularly supposed to have Indian blood in his veins and was commonly referred to as "the Narragansett." In his political campaigns he displayed oratorical powers and made effective use of invective and sarcasm. He was able and successful, but he never was an idol of the people. One explanation for this can perhaps be found in the fact that as a university professor he wrote an article in which he characterized the masses as "the common herd," with whom he desired "no fellowship" (Temple, post, p. 147). Certainly this was used to defeat him in his first campaign for a seat in Congress in 1853. Four years later, however, he was elected as a candidate of the Whig and American parties and two years later was reelected.

In 1860 he campaigned for the Bell and Everett ticket in Massachusetts and in Tennessee. In the following year, when secession threatened, he joined forces with Andrew Johnson, Thomas, A. R. Nelson, Oliver P. Temple, and William G. Brownlow to fight bitterly against the withdrawal of Tennessee from the Union. His section of the state, the eastern, remained loyal to the Union, however, and he was returned in the August election to a third term in the federal Congress. In Washington he was an ardent but unsuccessful advocate of immediately sending a federal army to the relief of the Unionists of East Tennessee. In 1863 he became attorney general of Tennessee under the military governorship of Andrew Johnson and held this office, much to the dislike of conservative Unionists, until the reestablishment of civil rule ender Governor Brownlow. He was then reelected to Congress and took his seat in the House, on July 24, 1866, when Tennessee was readmitted to representation in that body. Here he broke with his fellow Unionist of Civil War days, President Johnson, and aligned himself with the radical Republicans. Consequently, he was thoroughly hated by the conservatives of his state, who took advantage of the first opportunity to gerrymander his di strict. He refused to retire to private life, however, and as a candidate for Congress from the state at large in 1872 defeated his two Democratic opponents, Andrew Johnson and Benjamin F. Cheatham [qq.v.]. Two years later he was the Republican party's unsuccessful candidate for the governorship. In 1875 his long and able services to his party were rewarded by President Grant, who appointed him minister to Turkey. After five years in Constantinople he returned to the United States to succeed David M. Key as postmaster-general in the cabinet of President Hayes. In the following year he retired to private life.

[Vital Records of Westborough, Massachusetts (1903); James Park, Life and Services of Horace Maynard (1903); Report of the Proc. of the Numismatic and Antiquaria1 Society of Philadelphia ... 1882 (1883); 0. P. Temple, Notable Men of Tennessee (1912); Amherst College Biographical Record of the Graduates and Non-Graduates (1927); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), series 1, volumes VII, XVI (pt. 2), XX (part 2), series 2, volumes I, IV (1882-99); Knoxville Daily Chronicle, May 4-6, 1882.]

P. M. H.



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