McC-McM: McCormick through McMichael

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


McCORMICK, Richard Cunningham (May 23, 1832-June 2, 1901), journalist, politician, business man,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1:

McCORMICK, RICHARD CUNNINGHAM (May 23, 1832-June 2, 1901), journalist, politician, business man, was born in New York City, the eldest of the seven children of Richard Cunningham and Sarah Matilda (Decker) McCormick. He was of Scotch-Irish ancestry, a descendant of Hugh McCormick who emigrated from Londonderry to Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, before 1735. His father, a liberally educated man and for many years a journalist, gave him a classical education in the private schools of the city with a view to his entering Columbia College. His health, however, was not particularly good, and the family decided that it would be better for him to travel. He spent most of 1854 and 1855 in Europe and Asia. He was in the Crimea during the war and while there acted as correspondent for the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer and other New York journals. Later he published accounts of his travels and experiences in the Crimea under the titles A Visit to the Camp before Sevastopol (1855), and St. Paul's to St. Sophia (1860). Soon after his return to America he became editor of the Young Men's Magazine, holding the position from 1857 to 1859. During the same period he contributed to various periodicals and lectured frequently. In 1861-62 he was in Washington and with the Army of the Potomac as correspondent for the New York Evening Post and the Commercial Advertiser. His description of the battle of Bull Run was considered one of the best journalistic accounts printed.

On returning from Europe, McCormick had enthusiastically entered the movement for the formation of the Republican party. His anti-slavery opinions and the interest he had shown in 1856 secured him a prominent part in the campaign of 1860, when he became a member of the Republican state committee. During this campaign his friendship with both Lincoln and Seward began. In 1862 he was the defeated Republican nominee for the first congressional district of New York. Shortly after he was appointed chief clerk of the Department of Agriculture. In March 1863 he was appointed secretary of the newly organized Arizona Territory, an office which he held until April 10, 1866, when he was appointed governor. In 1869 he was elected territorial delegate to Congress and held the office through three successive terms, but he declined renomination in 1874.

When he went to Arizona he took with him a small printing outfit and started the Arizona Weekly Miner, a publication supposed by some to have been devoted to furthering his own political ambitions (Farish, post, III, p. 46). Whatever these were, his ambitions for Arizona were intelligently and earnestly put before the government and the people. During his terms as secretary and governor, he was continually active in urging the construction of roads and railroads in order to improve communication between Arizona and New Mexico and California, the development of agriculture along with mining, the development of an educational system, and the intelligent treatment of both the friendly and hostile indians in the territory. While in Congress, he spoke convincingly in favor of sharp and immediate punishment of the unnecessarily brutal Indians, such as the Apaches, and of the advisability of paying the friendly tribes on the reservations for work actually done instead of pauperizing them by gifts outright. He also advocated more government roads and surveys for the territory, restriction of wanton killing of the buffalo, conservation of the forests, and the development of irrigation. In 1876 he was appointed commissioner to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The following year he was offered the mission to Brazil and in 1879 that to Mexico, both of which he declined. In 1878 he was appointed commissioner general for the United States to the Paris Exposition. At the Exposition he was made a commander of the Legion of Honor. On returning to America, he retired from public life and entered business in New York, but resided at Jamaica, Long Island, where he served as president of the board of education and later as president of the local board of managers of the State Normal and Training School. He became interested in several western mining enterprises. From April 12, 1892, until his death he was a trustee of the Citizens' Savings Bank of New York. In 1886 he ran for Congress but was defeated by the Democratic candidate. In 1894 he ran again and was elected, but refused renomination on account of ill health. He died in Jamaica a few hours after he had suffered a stroke of apoplexy. He was twice married: on October 1, 1865, to Margaret G. Hunt, of Rahway, New Jersey, who died in 1867; and on November 11, 1873, to Elizabeth Thurman of Columbus, Ohio.

[T. E. Farish, History of Arizona (8 volumes, 1915-18); H. H. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico (1889); S. R. De Long, The History of Arizona (1905); R. E. Sloan, History of Arizona (1930), volume I; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); L. J. McCormick, Family Record and Biography (1896); Arizona Weekly Miner, 1864-69; Young Men's Magazine, 1857-59; the Evening Post (New York), July 22-24, 1861; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 3, 1901.] M. L.B.


MCCLURE, Alexander Kelly (January 9, 1828-June 6, 1909), editor, lawyer, legislator, supporter of the Whig and Republican Parties.

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

MCCLURE, ALEXANDER KELLY (January 9, 1828-June 6, 1909), editor, lawyer, legislator, son of Alexander and Isabella (Anderson) McClure, was born in Sherman's Valley, Perry County, Pennsylvania, of Scotch-Irish descent. He was reared on his father's farm, educated at home, and at the age of fifteen was apprenticed to a tanner. At the same time he learned the printing trade in the office of the Perry County Freeman, where he absorbed Whig political principles. In the late forties he edited and published the Juniata Sentinel at Mifflintown. In 1849 he was commissioned colonel on the staff of Governor Johnson, and in the following year he was appointed deputy United States marshal for Juniata County. In 1852 he became part owner of the Franklin Repository, published in Chambersburg, and shortly afterward he secured full control. Under his direction it became one of the influential newspapers in the state. After failing of election as the Whig candidate for auditor-general in 1853, he turned his attention to law. He was admitted to the bar in 1856 but continued to devote most of his time to the Repository. He took particular interest in the organization of the Republican party and was a member of the state convention that met in Pittsburgh in the summer of 1855. In 1860 he was a member of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Republican National Convention which was committed to Simon Cameron for the presidency. When it became evident that two-thirds of the delegates from the other states were in favor of William H. Seward, Curtin and McClure succeeded in switching the Pennsylvania vote from Cameron to Lincoln. McClure was elected chairman of the Republican state committee and in this office perfected a complete political organization in every city, county, township, and precinct in the state. Following a campaign of unprecedented aggressiveness Andrew G. Curtin was elected governor and later Lincoln swept the state by a large majority.

After a term in the state House of Representatives in 1858, McClure was elected in 1859 to the state Senate. There he was spokesman for Pennsylvania's war governor, and as chairman of the Senate committee on military affairs he was active in support of both state and federal governments for the preservation of the Union. In 1865 he was again in the House of Representatives. At the request of President Lincoln, he accepted a commission as assistant adjutant-general of the army and placed seventeen regiments in the field. In 1868 he became a resident of Philadelphia. He opened a law office and immediately became active in civic affairs. He was a delegate-at-large to the Republican National Convention that nominated General Grant in 1868. Differing with the dominant Republican leadership in 1872 he became chairman of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Liberal Republican national convention which nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency. He gave further evidence of political independence by running as a Citizen's candidate, with Democratic indorsement, for the state Senate in the West Philadelphia district; and after a bitter contest was sworn in. In 1874 he was the Citizen's-Democratic candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, making his canvass upon charges of gross corruption in the city administration, but he was defeated. In response to a demand for a newspaper to support the independent forces in Philadelphia, McClure in conjunction with Frank McLaughin on March 13, 1875, established the Times which became a well-known newspaper in the country. McClure was a man of impressive appearance and was in demand as a speaker on public occasions. He was twice married, first to Matilda s: Gray, on February 10, 1852; and second to Cora M. Gratz, on March 19, 1879. His later years we're largely devoted to literary work, his books including Three Thousand Miles through the Rocky Mountains (1869); The South: Its Industrial, Financial and Political Condition (1886); Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times (1892); Our Presidents and How We Make Them (1900); To the Pacific and Mexico (1901); Col. Alexander K. McClure's Recollections of a Half Century (1902); and Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania (2 volumes, 1905). He edited Famous American Statesmen and Orators (6 volumes, 1902).

[In addition to McClure's books see: Encyclopedia of Contemporary Biography of Pennsylvania (1893), volume III; H. H. Hain, History of Perry County, Pa. (1922); Who's Who in  America, 1908--09; J. A. McClure, The McClure Family (1914); the Press (Philadelphia), June 7, 1909.]

L. C. P.


MCCLURG, Joseph Washington, 1818-1900, lawyer, legislator, soldier.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri.  Served in Congress December 1863-1868.  Elected Governor of Missouri in 1868.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Though opposed to slavery in principle, he did not liberate the slaves which his wife had inherited until shortly before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. In the House of Representatives he became an ardent disciple of Thaddeus Stevens [q.v.], one the leaders of radical Republicanism and emancipation.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 91; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 597; Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 597;

MCCLURG, JOSEPH WASHINGTON (February 22, 1818-December 2, 1900), congressman, governor of Missouri, a first cousin of A. C. McClurg [q.v.], was born in St. Louis County, Missouri. His grandfather, Joseph, came to the United States from Ireland as a refugee in 1798, his family, including Joseph Washington McClurg's father, also named Joseph, following later. The second Joseph married Mary Brotherton, a native of St. Louis County, Missouri. Their son, orphaned at an early age, was reared by relatives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended school in Xenia; Ohio, and for two years (1833-3.5) was a student at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He then taught for a year or more in Louisiana and Mississippi; later he was admitted to the bar in Texas and practised law there. From 1841 to 1844 he was deputy sheriff of St. Louis County, having married in the former year Mary C. Johnson. In 1849 he was living in Hazelwood, Missouri, at which time he joined the California gold seekers, in charge of a caravan of twenty-four ox teams. Back in Missouri again in 1852, McClurg, with two partners, established a large wholesale and retail mercantile business at Linn Creek, which was increasingly prosperous.

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War he immediately took a strong stand for the Union. He organized, equipped (to considerable financial loss), and commanded a home-guard unit, called the Osage Regiment of Missouri Volunteers. Later, he became colonel of the 8th Cavalry, Missouri Militia, but resigned this position in 1862 when he was elected to Congress, in which he served practically three full terms. Though opposed to slavery in principle, he did not liberate the slaves which his wife had inherited until shortly before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Of great significance for his future political career was the fact that in the House he became an ardent disciple bf Thaddeus Stevens [q.v.], the bell-weather of radicalism. Moreover, his bitter attacks upon his congressional colleague, Francis P. Blair [q.v.], a leading conservative Unionist, endeared him to the hearts of all Missouri radicals. In 1868 McClurg resigned his seat in the House to run for governor of Missouri on the Radical Republican ticket.

Because of the military and strictly partisan enforcement of the noted test oath and registry law, enacted by the legislature in 1865-66, McClurg was elected by a majority of nearly 20,000. During the campaign, at the polls, and throughout his administration, the spirit and the principles of Thaddeus Stevens and the carpetbaggers were logically and proudly set forth in the public utterances and policies of McClurg and his advisers. Their aim was not only to disfranchise the "rebels," but also so to control the election machinery as to render the loyal Union Democrats and the Liberal Republicans powerless. The St. Louis Dispatch, in an admittedly partisan broadside (July 17, 1868), asserted that "McClurg is the embodiment of all that is narrow, bigoted, revengeful, and ignorant in the Radical party." If he was ignorant, it was only in the sense that he did -not comprehend the shortsightedness of the radical policies. He was, in fact, less a leader than a follower. Such radicals as Charles D. Drake [q.v.] and others long since forgotten really dominated the party of which McClurg was the nominal head. The controversies relating to negro and white suffrage claimed the major share of his attention during the two years he was in office. With the test oath and the registry law on the shelf in 1870, he was overwhelmingly defeated for the governorship. The memory of the proscriptions which he sponsored was largely responsible for the fact that Missouri remained in the Democratic column for over thirty years.

After his term as governor he lived at Linn Creek and engaged in various business enterprises. In 1885 he moved to Lebanon, where he lived until his death, except for the years 1889 to 1893, when he was register of the Federal Land Office at Springfield.

[General Catalog of the Graduates and Former Students of Miami University, I809-I909 (n.d.); G. G. Avery and F. C. Shoemaker, The Messages and Proclamations of The Governors ... of Missouri, volume IV (1924); T. S. Barclay, "The Liberal Republican Movement in Missouri," Missouri Historical Review, October 1925-October 19, 1926; Pictorial and Genealogy Record of Greene County, Missouri (1893); History of Laclede and Camden Counties, Missouri (1889); Kansas City Times, September 4, 1870; St. Louis Dispatch, July 17, 1868; St. Joseph Herald, December 10, 1869; Columbia Statesman, July 24, 1868; New York Times, April 24, 1872; Booneville Weekly Eagle, May 21, 1870; Missouri Democrat, October 1, 1869; Jefferson City Peoples' Tribune, September 7, 1870; St. Louis Globe-Democrat and St. Louis Republic, December 3, 1900; Booneville Weekly Advertiser, December 21, 1900.]

H.E.N.


MCCRUMMELL, James, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833

(Dumond, 1961, p. 329; Mabee, 1970, p. 21; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 161; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833)


MCDILL, James Wilson (Mar. 4, 1834-Feb. 28, 1894), representative, senator, amber of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the son of Frances (Wilson) and John McDill, who was a graduate of Miami University and a United Presbyterian mini was born in Monroe, Ohio. He was taken by his parents to Hanover, Ind., where his father died in 1840. He added the preparatory department of Hanover College in 1844 and 1845. In that year his mother went back to Ohio to live at South Salem with her father, the Rev. Robert G. Wilson, who had been a Presbyterian minister at Chilicothe and president of Ohio University at Athens. Here the boy profited by the teaching of his grandfather and attended Salem Academy. In 1853 he graduated from Miami University. After a year of teaching in Jefferson Academy at Kossuth, Des Moines County, Iowa, he studied law in the office of Samuel Galloway [q.v.] at Columbus, Ohio, and was admitted to the bar in 1856. The next year he began practice in Afton, Iowa, and, in August 1857, was married to Narcissa Fullenwider. They had five children. He went to Iowa when pioneer conditions still prevailed and when Eastern settlers led by James Grimes were turning the state from Democracy to Republicanism on the slavery issue. In this movement, as friend and admirer of Grimes, he played his part and has left a vivid picture of the period and its leaders in "The Making of Iowa," which was published in the Iowa Historical Record for October 1891. He became judge of Union County and during the war held minor federal offices in Washington, D. C. Returning to Iowa in 1866, he practised law in Afton, which remained his home until his removal to Creston in 1885. After presiding over the circuit and district courts he was a member of Congress from 1873 to 1877, where he did useful service on the committees on the Pacific railroad and on public lands.

Declining a third term he hoped to return to the practice of law, but a new factor in Iowa politics soon brought him into public service again. Ever since their construction the railroads had been regulated only by the common law. Their officials regarded them "from a purely proprietary standpoint" (Report, post, II, p. 944), and grave abuses had developed. Impelled by the Grange and similar organizations, Iowa in 1874 had passed a law fixing a maximum tariff and forbidding discriminations. The law was sustained by the courts, but it lacked provision for effective enforcement. In consequence there was substituted in 1878 a board of railroad commissioners empowered to supervise the roads, investigate all alleged violations of state laws, and modify unreasonable charges. Governor Gear desired a strong commission and appointed McDill one of the Board. After filling out Samuel J. Kirkwood's unexpired term in the Senate, which extended to March 4, 1883, he was reappointed to the railroad commission for another three years. In 1885 a committee, with Shelby M. Cullom [q.v.] as chairman, was appointed in the United States Senate to investigate the regulation of freight and passenger transportation. As an Iowa commissioner, McDill testified that the chief objection to the Iowa method of regulation was that the commission lacked power to enforce its decisions. He maintained that the only method by which there could be any intelligent and sufficient control would be through a federal commission authorized to lower rates when too high, while the right of appeal to the courts was reserved to the railroads only after they had complied with the orders of the commission (Ibid., II, pp. 948-50). The result of this investigation was the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, to which McDill was appointed in 1892 by President Harrison. He died at Creston, while serving in this capacity. As a man he was unpretentious, deliberate in thought and action. As a lawyer he was regarded as a safe counselor, who always tried his cases on law and evidence. On the bench he was fair and approachable though not lacking in dignity. He exercised great care in considering cases and measures and had the confidence of his associates.

["Report on Interstate Commerce, with Testimony, and Establishment Recommended," Sen. Rept. 46, 49 Congress, I Session (1886), pt. II; E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers and Public Men of Early Iowa (1916); B. F. Gue, History of Iowa (copyright 1903), volumes II, III, IV; Biographical and Historical Record of Ringgold and Union Counties, Iowa (1887); L: S. Evans, A Standard History of Ross County, Ohio (1917), volume I; Illustrated Centennial Sketches, Map and Directory of Union County, Iowa (1876); A. M. Antrobus, History of Des Moines County, Iowa (1915), volume II, p. 534; General Catalog of the Graduates and Former Students of Miami University (1910?); Iowa State Register (Des Moines), March I, 1894; information from McDill's daughter, Mrs. Elmer Bradford, Watkins, Colo.]

C. E. P.


MCDOUGALL, Francis Harriet Whipple Green, 1805-1878, author, poet, reformer, abolitionist. Women’s rights advocate, labor rights activist.


(American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 558-559; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 542)


MCELRATH, Thomas (May 1, 1807-June 6, 1888), publisher, partner of Horace Greeley in the publication of the New York Tribune.  He was also among those who protested against the action of Congress in resolving to table without debate, printing, or reference, all petitions regarding slavery.

MCELRATH, THOMAS (May 1, 1807-June 6, 1888), publisher, partner of Horace Greeley in the publication of the New York Tribune, was born at Williamsport, Pennsylvania. After an early apprenticeship on the Harrisburg Chronicle, he pushed on to Philadelphia, finding employment in a book-printing establishment. He later returned to Williamsport and studied law. Equipped now for a struggle with fortune, he went to New York City, where he was employed as proof-reader and head salesman by the Methodist Book Concern, and subsequently he engaged on his own account in the publication of school books and religious works. In 1828 he was admitted to the bar, formed a partnership with William Bloomfield and Charles P. Daly, and entered upon a lucrative practice. In 1833 he was married to Elizabeth Price of New York City. His ability and attractive personal qualities brought him advancement. Elected as a Whig to the New York Assembly, he won attention by a minority report on the petition for removing the state capital from Albany to Utica, his report closing with a recommendation to transfer the seat of government to New York. During the same session he presented for the judiciary committee an adverse report on a petition for the abolishment of capital punishment. He was also among those who protested against the action of Congress in resolving to table without debate, printing, or reference, all petitions affecting slavery.

In 1841 McElrath became business manager of the New York Tribune, then in its uncertain infancy. On July 31 Horace Greeley made this terse announcement over his name: "The principal Editorial charge of the paper will still rest with the subscriber; while the entire business management of the concern henceforth devolves upon his partner." McElrath declared "his hearty concurrence in the principles, Political and Moral" on which the Tribune had been conducted. Surveying this combination of sanctum and counting-room, James Parton, in his life of Greeley, exclaimed: "Oh ! that every Greeley could find his McElrath and blessed is the McElrath that finds his Greeley!" (post, p. 162). Although the business manager did not share every enthusiasm of his partner's flaming pen, the steady course of the Tribune as a publishing concern insured a constant enlargement of its influence and prosperity. When muscular men of the "bloody sixth" ward, in resentment of plain language, swore to wreck the Tribune building, McElrath did his share to put the office in a state of defense. When he withdrew from the Tribune in 1857, to become corresponding secretary of the American Institute, the paper had risen to a position of social and political leadership.

McElrath had numerous official trusts. He was a master of chancery for New York City in 1840; state director of the Bank of America in 1841; New York alderman in 1845-46; appraiser-general of the New York district in 1861, by appointment of President Lincoln; custom-house officer in 1866; United States commissioner to the Paris Exposition in 1867; commissioner to the Vienna Exposition in 1873 and superintendent of American exhibitions; general executive officer of the New York state commission at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876; and commissioner of the World's Fair in New York in 1884. In 1864 he had resumed the post of publisher of the Tribune and was associated with Greeley in the publication of works issued by the firm. He himself was the author of a standard work of reference, A Dictionary of Words and Phrases Used in Commerce (1871).

[James Parton, The Life of Horace Greeley (1889); Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the U. S. from 1690 to 1872 (1873): J. C. Derby, Fifty Years Among Authors, Books, and Publishers (1864); New York Tribune, June 7, 1888.)

R. E. D.


MCKAYE, James, abolitionist, member American Freedman’s Inquiry Commission, U.S. War Department, 1863. 

(Rodriguez, 2007, p. 165; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV)


MCKIM, James Miller, 1810-1874, reformer, abolitionist.  Anti-slavery agent, American Anti-Slavery Society. Lectured on anti-slavery in Pennsylvania.  Publishing agent, Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.  Editor, Pennsylvania Freeman.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 136; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 103; Dumond, 1961, pp. 188, 393n26; Mabee, 1970, pp. 202, 269, 273, 289, 303, 305, 342, 421n14; Yellin, 1994, pp. 76, 161-162, 162n, 168, 287; Friend of Man, February 1, 1837; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 115). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 103;

MCKIM, JAMES MILLER (November 14, 1810- June 13, 1874), anti-slavery leader, born at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was the grandson of James McKim who came in 1774 from the north of Ireland to Carlisle and there married Hannah Mcllvaine; he was the son of James McKim (1779-1831) and Catharine Miller (1783-1831), the latter of German descent. Graduating at Dickinson College at the age of eighteen (1828), he studied for a few weeks in 1831 at Princeton Theological Seminary and attended Andover Theological Seminary (1832-33). After ordination by the Wilmington Presbytery in October 1835, he was settled as the first pastor of the Presbyterian church at Womelsdorf, Berks County, Pennsylvania, virtually a home-missionary field rather than the foreign field to which he aspired. William Lloyd Garrison's attack on the American Colonization Society led McKim into the movement for the immediate emancipation of the slaves, and in 1833 he represented a Carlisle negro constituency in the Philadelphia convention at which the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed. Being the youngest delegate, he attracted the attention of the leaders, among them Lucretia Mott. His "New School" theology had already closed orthodox Presbyterian doors; his talks against slavery in Carlisle and elsewhere, together with the permanent conversion of the entire membership of his church to the anti-slavery cause, brought him into antagonism with the prevailing public sentiment. Drawn into association and cooperation with James and Lucretia Mott, McKim resigned his charge and, in a letter explaining the growth of his religious convictions, withdrew from the ministry. He became one of the "seventy" gathered from all professions, whom the eloquence of Theodore D. Weld inspired to spread the gospel of emancipation. His stipend of eight dollars a week laid him open to the charge of being bought by "British gold."

In 1838-39 the name of James M. McKim appears on the rolls of the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania. On October 1, 1840, he married Sarah Allibone Speakman (1813-1891), great-grand-daughter of Thomas Speakman, who came in 1712 from Reading, Berks, England, and settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania. She was a Quaker beauty who used her feminine attractions to further the anti-slavery cause. They had two children, Charles Follen [q.v.] and Lucy, who married Wendell Phillips Garrison; their adopted daughter, McKim's niece, became Garrison's second wife. The McKims found their service mainly in the protection of fugitive-slaves, and in systematic resistance to legalized slave-hunts and slave-captures. William Still wrote from fourteen years' companionship: "James Miller McKim, as one of the earliest, most faithful, and ablest abolitionists in Pennsylvania, occupied a position of influence, labor and usefulness, scarcely second to Mr. Garrison" (Underground Railroad, p. 655). At the time of his marriage McKim was publishing agent of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, in Philadelphia; he succeeded John Greenleaf Whittier as editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman; then as corresponding secretary he had a share in all the anti-slavery work both local and national. These duties were particularly arduous by reason of the fact that, to use his own expression, the Fugitive-slave Law had "turned Southeastern Pennsylvania into another Guinea Coast" (Still, p. 580).

In 1859 McKim and his wife accompanied Mrs. John Brown to Harpers Ferry to take leave of her husband and receive his body. In the winter of 1862 McKim started the Philadelphia Port Royal Relief Committee to provide for the wants of ten thousand slaves suddenly liberated, and the report on his visit to the Sea Islands of South Carolina was used in America and in Europe as the basis of operations (The Freed Men of South Carolina, 1862). He urged the enlistment of colored men as soldiers and had part in creating Camp William Penn, which added eleven regiments to the Union army. In 1863 he became corresponding secretary of the Pennsylvania Freedmen's Relief Association, traveling through the South to establish schools and through the North to organize public sentiment. In 1865 he removed to New York as the corresponding secretary of the American Freedman's Union Commission, which he helped to organize with the aim of promoting education among the blacks. On his motion the Commission disbanded (July 1, 1869), its work having been accomplished. In 1865 he raised a portion of the capital required to found The Nation, with which -his son-in-law Wendell Phillips Garrison was so long connected, first as literary editor and finally as editor-in-charge.

McKim established the family home at Llewellyn Park, Orange, New Jersey, where he died June 13, 1874.

[William Still, The Underground Railroad (1872); Charles Moore, The Life and Times of Charles Follen McKim (1929); W. L. Garrison, Jr., In Memoriam: Sarah A. McKim (1891), including genealogies; New York Tribune, June 15, 16, 1874.]

C. M.


MCKIM, Sarah J., abolitionist, Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

(Yellin, 1994, pp. 73, 76). 


MCLEAN, John, 1785-1861, Morris County, New Jersey, jurist, attorney.  U.S. Supreme Court Justice, January 1830-.  Dissented against the majority of Justices on the Dred Scott case, stating that slavery was sanctioned only by local laws.  Free Soil and later Republican Party candidate for President of the U.S. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 144; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 127; Longacre, James B. & James Herring, National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans.  Philadelphia: American Academy of Fine Arts, 1834-1839)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

McLEAN, John, jurist, born in Morris County, New Jersey, 11 March, 1785; died in Cincinnati, Ohio, 4 April, 1861. In 1789 his father, a poor man with a large family, moved to the west and settled, first at Morgantown, Virginia, subsequently at Nicholasville, Kentucky, and finally, in 1799, on a farm in Warren County, Ohio. Young McLean worked on the farm that his father had cleared till he was sixteen years old, then received private instruction in the classics for two years, and at the age of eighteen went to Cincinnati to study law, and, while acquiring his profession, supported himself by writing in the office of the clerk of the county. In the autumn of 1807 he was admitted to the bar, and began practice at Lebanon. In October, 1812. he was elected to Congress from his district, which then included Cincinnati, by the Democratic Party, defeating two competitors in an exciting contest, and was re-elected by the unanimous vote of the district in 1814. He supported the Madison administration, originated the law to indemnify individuals for the loss of property in the public service, and introduced an inquiry as to pensioning the widows of fallen officers and soldiers. He declined a nomination to the U. S. Senate in 1815. and in 1816 was elected judge of the supreme court of the state, which office he held till 1822, when President Monroe appointed him commissioner of the general land-office. In July, 1823, he was appointed Postmaster-General, and by his energetic administration introduced order, efficiency, and economy into that department. The salary of the office was raised from $4,000 to $6,000 by an almost unanimous vote of both houses of Congress during his administration. He was continued in the office by President John Q. Adams, and was asked to remain by General Jackson in 1829, but declined, because he differed with the president on the question of official appointments and removals. President Jackson then tendered him in succession the War and the Navy Departments, and, on his declining both, appointed him an associate justice of the U. S. Supreme Court. He entered upon his duties in January, 1830. His charges to grand juries while on circuit were distinguished for ability and eloquence. In December, 1838, he delivered a charge in regard to aiding or favoring "unlawful military combinations by our citizens against any foreign government with whom we are at peace," with special reference to the Canadian insurrection and its American abettors. The most celebrated of his opinions was that in the Dred Scott Case, dissenting from the decision of the court as given by Chief-Justice Taney, and enunciating the doctrine that slavery was contrary to right and had its origin in power, and that in this country it was sustained only by local law. He was long identified with the party that opposed the extension of slavery, and his name was before the Free-soil Convention at Buffalo in 1848 as a candidate for nomination as president. In the Republican National Convention at Philadelphia in 1856 he received 196 votes for the same office to 359 for John C. Fremont. In the Republican Convention at Chicago in 1860 he also received several votes. He published " Reports of the United States Circuit Court" (6 vols., 1829-'55); a " Eulogy on James Monroe" (1831); and several addresses. John's son. Nathaniel Collins, soldier, born in Warren County, Ohio, 2 February, 1815. was graduated at Augusta College. Kentucky, in 1832, studied for a year or two longer at Harvard, and took his degree at the law-school there in 1838. He married a daughter of Judge Jacob Burnet the same year, and began practice in Cincinnati, where he attained success at the bar. He entered the National Army on 11 January, 1862, as colonel of the 75th Ohio Volunteers, being commissioned brigadier-general on 29 November, 1862, and resigned on 20 April, 1865.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 144.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 127;

McLEAN, JOHN (March 11, 1785-April 4, 1861), congressman, postmaster-general, jurist, was born in Morris County, New Jersey, the son of Fergus and Sophia (Blackford) McLean. His parents came to America from Ireland, the father being descended from the Scottish clan of McLean. A weaver by trade, he became a farmer, but having a large family and being limited in means, he soon decided to go West. In 1789 the family moved to Morgantown, Virginia, then to Jessamine, near Nicholasville, Kentucky, thence to Maysville, Kentucky, and finally, in 1799, settled on a farm near Lebanon, in what is now Warren County, Ohio. During these wanderings young McLean's education suffered. He attended school as opportunity offered and as the pressing needs of the family permitted. Determined to get further instruction, he worked for wages and at sixteen was able to hire private tutors. Two years later he went to Cincinnati, where he was formally indentured for two years to the clerk of the Hamilton County court. By working part of the day in the office he was able to support himself. Meanwhile, he read law with Arthur St. Clair, one of the best counselors in the West, and the son of General St. Clair. He also joined a debating club, in which he acquired facility of expression.

In 1807 he was admitted to the bar. The same year he married Rebecca Edwards and moved to Lebanon, where he founded the Western Star, a weekly newspaper. Commencing to practise in Lebanon, he soon won recognition by his industry and scrupulous care. In October 1812 he was elected as a War Democrat to Congress from the Cincinnati district, which then included Warren County. He was reelected in 1814 "by the unanimous vote of all the electors who took part in the election. Not only did no one vote against him, but also no one who voted for any office at the election, refrained from voting for him" (Force, post, 271-72). He vigorously sponsored the war with England and advocated bills to indemnify persons for property lost in the public service, to grant pensions to officers and soldiers, and to pay congressmen a salary of $1500 per annum instead of the per diem allowance. In 1815 he declined to be a candidate for the United States Senate. The following year he resigned his seat in Congress to become judge of the supreme court of Ohio, to which office he had been elected by the state legislature. He remained upon the bench until 1822, when President Monroe appointed him commissioner of the land office. The next year he was made postmaster-general, and in the direction of this office he acquired a national reputation as an able administrator. Heretofore, this branch of the public service had been inefficient and disorganized. Under his management contractors were held to their agreements and incompetent and unfaithful officials were removed. He was reappointed by President John Q. Adams and, it is claimed, used his official position to work against the reelection of his superior (Bassett, post, II, 412, 413). McLean was not in sympathy with President Jackson's policy as to removals, and, after declining the portfolios of secretary of war and secretary of the navy, he was nominated by Jackson to be associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. His appointment was confirmed by the Senate on March 7, 1829. "It is a good and satisfactory appointment," wrote Joseph Story, "but was, in fact, produced by other causes than his fitness or our advantage. The truth is ... he told the new President, that he would not form a part of the new Cabinet, or remain in office, if he was compelled to make removals upon political grounds" (W. W. Story, post, I, 564). He was assigned to the seventh circuit, which then included the districts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio; later, the districts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. He took his seat in January 1830 and served until his death. On the bench he was dignified, courteous, painstaking, fearless, and able. Not until his health began to fail, two years before his death, was he absent a single day from his duties. He was not a great judge but his decisions on the circuit were seldom reversed and he was not often in the minority in the Supreme Court. In the celebrated Dred Scott case he dissented from the majority of the court and rendered an opinion of his own, which defined his position upon the slavery question (19 Howard, 558, 559). He held that slavery had its origin merely in force and was contrary to right, being sustained only by local law.

During his term on the bench he was frequently mentioned as a possible candidate for the presidency. He maintained that a judge was under no obligation to refrain from the discussion of political affairs and steadfastly defended the propriety of his candidacy. He declined the nomination in the Anti-Masonic Convention of 1831, and was proposed as a candidate by the Ohio legislature in 1836. His name was considered by the convention of "Free Democracy" in 1848 and was before the whig Convention in 1852. In the Republican Convention of 1856 he received 196 votes, and, although seventy-five years of age, he still hoped for the nomination in the Republican Convention of 1860.

His first wife, by whom he had four daughters and three sons, died in December 1840, and three years later he married Sarah Bella Garrard, widow of Colonel Jephtha D. Garrard and the youngest daughter of Israel Ludlow.

[M. F. Force, in Memorial Biographies of the New-England Historical Genealogical Society, volume IV (1885); Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in U.S. History (1922); W.W. Story, Life and Letters of Joseph Story (1851); J. S. Bassett, Andrew Jackson (1911); B. P. Poor, Perley's Reminiscences (1886); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); 66 U. S. Reports (1 Black), 8-13; F. H. Hodder, "Some Phases of the Dred Scott Case," in Miss. Valley History Review, June 1929; Cincinnati Commercial, April 5, 1861; Cincinnati Gazette, April 5, 1861.]

R.C.M.


MCLEOD, Alexander, 1774-1833, New York, anti-slavery activist, clergyman.  Presbyterian minister. Wrote, “Negro Slavery Unjustifiable, A Discourse by Alexander McLeod,” A.M., Pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Congregation in the City of New York New York, 1802.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 145; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 131; Baird, “Collection of Acts,” p. 818; Dumond, 1961, pp. 80, 87, 348; Locke, 1901, pp. 45, 90; Mason, 2006, pp. 14, 133, 231, 261-262n12). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 131;

McLEOD, ALEXANDER (June 12, 1774- February 17, 1833), Reformed Presbyterian clergyman, author, and editor, was the son of Reverend Neil McLeod, pastor of two Scottish Established Church parishes on Mull island of the Hebrides, on which isle Alexander was born. Dr. Samuel Johnson refers to the "elegance of conversation, and strength of judgment" of the elder McLeod, by whom the lexicographer was entertained when he visited Mull (A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775, p. 357). The father having died when Alexander was five years old, care of the boy fell to the mother, Margaret McLeod, daughter of Reverend Archibald McLean, McLeod's predecessor in the parishes. Before he was seven Alexander had mastered his Latin Grammar and had determined to enter the ministry. His mother died when he was about fifteen.

In 1792 he emigrated to the United States and for a time taught Greek at Schenectady, New York. He entered Union College in 1796, and was graduated with high honor two years later. During his first year in the United States, through the influence of Reverend James McKinney, who had arrived from Ireland in 1793, McLeod had united with the Reformed Presbyterian Church. After theological studies under McKinney, he was licensed to preach in 1799. The following year he was called to be pastor at Coldenham, near Newburgh, New York, and also of the First Reformed Presbyterian Church, New York City. When he objected to the Coldenham call because among its signers were several slave-owners, the presbytery formally forbade communicant membership to slave-holders. A revised call was accepted, but the New York parish grew so rapidly that the young man soon gave all his time to it, and he remained connected with it until his death. Within a few years he was recognized as ·a leader in his denomination, and as. one of America's foremost pulpit orators.

McLeod entered the controversy with the Episcopal Church regarding validity of presbyterial ordination of ministers when, in 1806, he published his Ecclesiastical Catechism. In 1814 his Lectures upon the Principal Prophecies of the Revelation appeared; and in 1816, The Life and Power of True Godliness, which like his Catechism was well received in both America and Great Britain. Among his other publications was a sermon in opposition to slavery, Negro Slavery Unjustifiable (1802), which pointed toward his active aid, some years afterwards, in organizing the American Colonization Society. His Scriptural View of the Character, Causes and Ends of the Present War (1815) accorded with his vigorous defense of the government's war policy. When his synod founded the Christian Expositor, a monthly, McLeod became its editor, continuing as such nearly two years. He frequently contributed to the Christian Magazine, edited by John M. Mason and John B. Romeyn. He was a member of the New York City Historical Society, and helped organize the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews and also the New York Society for Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. Having been in poor health for a long time, he died of heart disease in his fifty-ninth year.

McLeod was a fearless defender of human liberty, whether individual, civic, or religious. Naturally impetuous, lie disciplined himself to restraint and was dignified and urbane in manner. In the pulpit, however, he ordinarily followed his calm and reasoned exposition with an application the eloquence of which was vehement, impassioned, and unconfined. One of his distinguished contemporaries characterized his preaching as that of "a mountain torrent, full of foam, but sending off pure water into a thousand pools." In 1805 he married Maria Anne, daughter of John Agnew.

[W. B. Sprague, Annals American Pulpit, volume IX (1869); S. N. Rowan, Tribute to the Memory of Alexander McLeod, D. D. (1833); R. E. Thompson, A History of the Presbyterian Churches in the U.S. (1895); S. B. Wylie, Memoir of Alexander McLeod, D. D. (1855); New York Standard, February 19, 1833.]

P. P. F.


MCMICHAEL, Morton (October 20, 1807- January 6;-1879), editor, mayor of Philadelphia, supporter of the Republican Party.

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

MCMICHAEL, MORTON (October 20, 1807- January 6;- 1879), editor, mayor of Philadelphia, was born in Bordentown, New Jersey, and educated in the local schools. His family had come to America from the north of Ireland; his father, John McMichael (1777-1846), was employed on the estate of Joseph Bonaparte; his mother was Hannah Maria Masters. Upon the removal of his parents to Philadelphia, McMichael continued his education there. The statement sometimes made that he attended the University of Pennsylvania is apparently an error. He read law with David Paul Brown and was admitted to the bar in 1827. He was already active in journalism, having become editor of the Saturday Evening Post the previous year. In 1831 he resigned this position to become editor-in-chief of the newly established Saturday Courier. The same year he married Mary, daughter of Daniel Estell of Philadelphia, by whom he had eight children. About this time he began his political career as a police magistrate, displaying early his power of leadership by dispersing a mob in the slavery riot of 1837 and preventing the burning of a negro orphanage. For a number of years he was an alderman and in 1836 was active on the commission for school reform in the city.

The division of his activities between politics and journalism continued throughout his life. He entered upon his career as a newspaper publisher in 1836, when with Louis A. Godey and Joseph C. Neal [qq.v.] he started the Saturday News and Literary Gazette. Eight years later he associated himself with Neal in editing Neals Saturday Gazette. From 1842 to 1846 he was one of the editors of Godey's Lady's Book. In 1847 he became joint owner, with George R. Graham [q.v.], of the Philadelphia North American, which in July of the same year absorbed the United States Gazette. Robert Montgomery Bird [q.v.] joined the enterprise at this time. After the withdrawal of Graham in 1848 and the death of Bird in 1854, McMichael became sole owner. He retained his interest in the paper until his death and by a vigorous and progressive editorial policy succeeded in making it the leading Whig journal of the country. During these early years his activity in publishing brought him into intimate association with Leland, Boker, Poe, Richard Penn Smith, and other well-known literary men then in the city. He contributed to the magazines and other occasional publications, and one of his poems was highly praised by Poe in Graham's Magazine (December 1841).

From 1843 to 1846 he was sheriff of Philadelphia, again displaying unusual vigor and courage in ending the anti-Catholic or "Native American" riots of 1844. Always active in the cause of civic betterment, he lent his support and that of his paper to the hotly contested movement for the consolidation of various independent districts of Philadelphia under one government, and was in no small measure responsible for the ultimate passage of the Consolidation Act of 1854. As early as 1858 he was mentioned as a possible candidate for mayor and eight years later was elected to that office, filling it from 1866 to 1869. During the Civil War, in which two of his sons served with distinction, he was one of the founders of the Union League, and later became its fourth president (1870-74). When the Fairmount Park Commission was formed in 1867 he was made president and was reelected repeatedly until his death. He declined the appointment as minister to Great Britain tendered him by President Grant, on the ground that he could not afford to support the office with the proper dignity. In 1872 he was temporary chairman of the Republican National Convention which renominated Grant for president, and at this time was considered for the vice-presidency. He was a delegate at large to the fourth constitutional convention of Pennsylvania in 1873. After a trip to Europe (1874) he was appointed, in 1875, to the board of managers of the Centennial Exposition: In 1876 he declined, on account of ill health, the chairmanship of the Republican National Convention at Cincinnati. In 1877 he was awarded the degree of LL.D. by the University of Pennsylvania.

Although the only public offices McMichael ever held were in Philadelphia, his influence was wide. By concerning himself with issues and refusing to tolerate personal abuse, he did much to improve the tone of the newspaper press. He was a brilliant speaker and hardly a function in Philadelphia passed without finding him its presiding officer or the orator of the occasion. He died in Philadelphia, and was buried in North Laurel Hill Cemetery.

[North American, January 7, 8, and Public Ledger (Philadelphia), January 7, 9, 1879; J. T. Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia (1884); In re Morton McMichael (privately printed, 1921), ed. by Albert Mordell; J. W. Forney, Memorial Address upon the Character and Public Services of Morton McMichael (1879) and Anecdotes of Public Men, volume II (1881); F. L. Mott, A History of American Magazines (1930); Paulson's American Daily Advertiser, April 28, 1831.]

A. C. B.



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