Swa-Szo: Swain through Szold

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


SWAIN, James Barrett (July 30, 1820- May 27, 1895), journalist, established the Free State Advocate (1856) and the Albany Statesman (1857) in support of Republican presidential candidate John C. Fremont, both short-lived publications. In 1860 he was again representing the New York Times, in Washington.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 234:

SWAIN, JAMES BARRETT (July 30, 1820- May 27, 1895), journalist, was the son of Joseph and Jerusha (Everts) Swain of New York City and a descendant of Jeremiah Swain who was living in Charlestown, Massachusetts, as early as 1638. After the usual schooling and apprenticeship, his newspaper work was begun on the ephemeral Harrison organ, The Log Cabin, published by Horace Greeley in 1840. While running a private printing establishment in the succeeding years, he found time to publish The Life and Speeches of Henry Clay (Greeley & McElrath, 1843), the "Life" consisting of an unimportant memoir in the first volume. After this he was successively owner of the Hudson River Chronicle (1844-49), a small sheet published at Sing Sing; assistant on Greeley's New York Tribune; independent printer; city editor on the fledgling New York Times (1852); then the Times correspondent at Albany, writing under the name of Leo. From 1855 to 1857 he turned for the moment to the very different occupation of state railroad commissioner-one of three-but meanwhile found time to establish the Free State
Advocate (1856) and the Albany Statesman (1857) in the interests of Fremont, both short-lived publications. In 1860 he was again representing the Times, in Washington. One of his real accomplishments in the newspaper field was the introduction of the correspondent system, extensively used before the day of the great newsgathering agencies.

Caught in the tide of war, he received an appointment as second lieutenant, and later as first, with authority to raise a regiment of cavalry. By May 1862, the ranks of "Scotts 900," as he called it, officially known as the 11th New York, were filled, and, newly commissioned colonel (April 30), he conducted it to Camp Relief at Meridian Hill, Washington, named in honor of his wife, Relief Davis Swain, whom he had married in 1842. One of his sons, Chellis, was a lieutenant under him. Odd jobs, such as guard duty and reconnoitering were about all the regiment or its detachments were permitted, and on Feb. 12, 1864, for obscure reasons, Swain was dismissed, the regiment moving to the Gulf under another command. In 1866 this dismissal was revoked, and he was given honorable discharge (Frederick Phisterer, New York in the War of the Rebellion, 1st ed., 1890, pp. 73 and 311; 3rd ed., 1912, II, 958).

On his return home, he was appointed in 1865 engineer-in-chief on the staff of Governor Reuben S. Fenton [q.v.]. This appointment led to a rather bizarre adventure in rapid. transit development. A welter of visionary suggestions were in the air, and after unsuccessful projects, first in 1866, and then with the Tweed group in 1871, Swain applied in 1872 for a charter for the Metropolitan Transit Company, which, after a struggle, he secured, with a stock authorization of five million dollars. His scheme provided for "a three deck highway .... The lowest level ... to be a subway for freight, the next a slightly depressed road for passenger traffic, and the third ... an elevated structure from which passenger cars would hang suspended and be drawn by horses driven on the road below" (Walker, post, p. 103). The service was to extend from the Battery to Harlem River, with side lines. Though he was unsuccessful in soliciting capital with which to realize this dream, his wants were nevertheless supplied by the prosaic po sit ions of weigher in the New York Custom House, 1867-71; Senate reporter for the New York Tribune and clerk of one of the Assembly committees in 1872. His fluctuating and varied life was rounded out by a return to his comfortable, four-page, Republican sheet, the Hudson River Chronicle, which he revived in 1876 and which ceased publication with his death.

[Obituary notices in the New York Tribune and New York Times, May 28, 1895; W. C. Swain, Swain and Allied Families (1896); T. W. Smith, The Story of a Cavalry Regiment, "Scotts 900" (1897); J. B. Walker, Fifty Years of Rapid Transit (1918); U. S. Official Register, 1871; New York Senate and Assembly journals, 1872; J. T. Scharf, History of Westchester County, New York (1886), volume II.]

C. W. G.


SWALLOW, Silas Comfort (March S, 1839-August 13, 1930), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, reformer.  Twice during the Civil War, in 1862 and 1863, he served for brief periods in the Pennsylvania Emergency Volunteers. Throughout the war his religious work was seriously handicapped by his outspoken anti-slavery- pronouncements and his support of the Union cause in a region where a considerable pro-slavery and anti-War sentiment prevailed. On one occasion his church was padlocked by disgruntled members.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 233-234:

SWALLOW, SILAS COMFORT (March S, 1839-August 13, 1930), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, reformer, Prohibition candidate for president, was born near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the son of George and Sarah Swallow. Because of the illness of his father, he assumed the management of the farm at the age of fourteen. By diligent labor and the practice of economy he obtained sufficient money to enter Wyoming Seminary at Kingston, Pennsylvania. After his graduation he taught a country school for five years, and then began the study of law in the office of Volney B. Maxwell of Wilkes-Barre. Before his admission to the bar, however, he decided to enter the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and after pursuing theological studies in the Susquehanna Seminary, Binghamton, New York, was admitted on trial by the East Baltimore Conference of his church in 1863. He began preaching on a circuit in central Pennsylvania at a salary of $100 a year. Twice during the Civil War, in 1862 and 1863, he served for brief periods in the Pennsylvania Emergency Volunteers. Throughout the war his religious work was seriously handicapped by his outspoken anti-slavery- pronouncements and his support of the Union cause in a region where a considerable pro-slavery and anti-War sentiment prevailed. On one occasion his church was padlocked by disgruntled members. He married Rebecca Louisa Robins of Elysburg, Pennsylvania, January 20, 1866, was ordained elder the following year, and during the next two decades served many pastoral charges in central Pennsylvania. Between 1892 and 1905 he was superintendent of the Methodist Book Rooms in Harrisburg and editor of the Pennsylvania Methodist and of the short-lived Church Forum.

From early manhood Swallow was an earnest advocate of moral and spiritual discipline which rivaled that of the Puritans of the seventeenth century. From the time when in 1864 he threw his tobacco box "over the house" and took a solemn vow that tobacco should never again enter his lips unless to save his life, "and then only on the written prescription of two full-fledged physicians," and when, two years later, on his honeymoon trip to Philadelphia he walked out of the only theatre which he had ever entered because John S. Clark in She Stoops to Conquer said "I'll be d-d," he was an uncompromising enemy in both word and action of the use of tobacco and liquor in all forms, of dancing, of roller-skating, and of secular amusements in general. The militant attitude which he assumed in his condemnation of these diversions made him many bitter enemies and involved him in a large number of personal controversies. During the late nineties he made the Republican machine in Pennsylvania a target for his thrusts. His persistent attacks upon prominent politicians resulted in the filing of charges of libel against him on several occasions and the divided allegiance of many Methodist ministers, who sought to divorce religion and politics. The controversy in the church reached an acute stage in the fall of 1901, when he was suspended from all ministerial duties and church privileges until the next annual meeting of the Central Pennsylvania Conference at Bellefonte, in March 1902. Although this body failed to sustain the charges of […].


SWAN, Caleb, Dr., abolitionist, Underground Railroad activist, Easton, Massachusetts. Anti-slavery co-founding member of the Free-Soil Party established in 1848.   

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 4 “Coalition in Massachusetts. Election of Mr. Sumner,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.) 


SWAN, James, 1754-1830, anti-slavery writer, financial agent.   Published anti-slavery tract called, “A Dissuasion to Great Britain and the Colonies, From the Slave-Trade to Africa, 1773.”

(Bruns, 1977, pp. 261, 428; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 99-100;

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 234). 

SWAN, JAMES (1754-July 31, 1830), financier, agent of the French Republic, was born in Fifes hire, Scotland. Emigrating to Boston in 1765, he became a clerk in a counting-house near Faneuil Hall. He early found his place among the radically patriotic youth of the city and became a member of the Sons of Liberty. He was a participant in the Boston Tea Party and was wounded twice at the battle of Bunker Hill. He attained the rank of major by the close of the Revolution and was later made a colonel. Married to Hepzibah Clarke of Boston (intention signified, October 3, 1776), Swan abandoned active service and became a placeman, serving as secretary to the Massachusetts Board of War in 1777, as a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1778, and th en as adjutant-general of the commonwealth. He used an inheritance of his wife to live lavishly, to invest in Loyalist properties confiscated by the commonwealth, and to speculate in lands in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky. In 1786 he purchased the Burnt Coat group of islands lying off the east coast of Maine, the largest of which bears his name.

Heavily in debt by 1787, Swan went to France to recuperate his fortunes. Assisted by his constant friend, Lafayette, he obtained remunerative contracts to furnish the French marine with naval stores and salt meat provisions, and in 1795 was able to make another profitable deal by which he gained control of the remainder of -the United States debt to France, amounting to $2,024,899.93. Successful in gaining the appointment as agent of the French Republic, he outwitted his banking competitors, among whom were the American speculators, Gouverneur Morris and Robert Morris [qq.v.], the Boston banker, Daniel Parker, and the powerful bankers of the United States government at Amsterdam, Willink, Van Staphorst, and Hubbard, by his scheme for commuting the debt. By the congressional act of March 3, 1795, it was made possible for American debt obligations to France to be exchanged for 4½ and 5½ per cent. United States domestic stock issued under authority of this act. Acting both as agent of the French Republic and as broker, Swan accepted American debt obligations from France in payment for supplies furnished or to be furnished the French marine, and in turn exchanged these for American domestic stock on which the interest rate was one-half per cent. higher. On June 15, 1795, the arrangement was closed, and the American foreign debt to France was transformed into a domestic one. Swan returned to the United States the better to direct these transactions and remained until 1798. Going back to France he engaged in further mercantile ventures which met with only varying success, and in 1808 he was cast into a debtor's prison in Paris where he died on July 31, 1830. Though he lived in some comfort on a stipend from his wife, he refused to have what he considered an unjust debt paid by her. His wife, son, and three daughters--one of them the wife of William Sullivan [q.v.]-remained in the United States during his twenty-two years of imprisonment. Swan published A Dissuasion to Great-Britain and the Colonies, from the Slave-Trade to Africa (1773), National Arithmetick: or, Observations on the Finances of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1786), and Causes Qui Se Sont Apposees aux Progres du Commerce entre la France et les Etats-Unis de L’Amerique (Paris, 1790).

[Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, I series, volume XIII (1875), pp. 209-10, 2 series, volume IV (1889), pp. 46 ff.; Dispatches, France, volumes I- III, Illa, and Miscellaneous Letters (1789-1800), MSS. in State Dept. Archives; French Archives Photostats, Affaires Etrangeres. Correspondance Politique Etats-Unis, volumes XVIII-XXII, and the William Short Papers, Library of Congress; S. F. Bemis, in Current History, March 1926; H. W. Small, A History of Swan's Island, Me. (1898). ]

R.L-F.


SWAN, Joseph Rockwell, 1802-1884, jurist, legal writer, judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, ardent abolitionist.  Overrode court judgment in U.S. District Court of a negro prisoner convicted of violation of the Fugitive Slave Law.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 234; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 184). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 234-235:

SWAN, JOSEPH ROCKWELL (December 28, 1802-December 18, 1884), jurist, legal writer, was born at Westernville, Oneida County, New York, a descendant of John Swan, who resided successively in Stow and Lunenburg, Massachusetts, and Peterborough, New Hampshire, where he died about the time of the American Revolution. Joseph's parents, Jonathan and Sarah (Rockwell) Swan, were Quakers, the former a merchant. About 1813 the family moved to Aurora, New York, where the youth received his academic training and began the study of law. In 1824 he entered the law office of his uncle, Gustavus Swan, at Columbus, Ohio. Soon afterward he was admitted to the bar. From 1830 to 1835 he was prosecuting attorney of Franklin County, and in 1834 he was elected by the General Assembly a judge of the common pleas court; in 1841 he was reelected. At the end of his term he returned to the practice of law in Columbus in partnership with John W. Andrews. In 1854 he was elected a judge of the supreme court of Ohio. He was an ardent abolitionist and his election by an unprecedented majority was due to a coalition of the anti-slavery element of all parties. He served on this court but one term (to November 1859) and, though he lived twenty-five years longer, he never again accepted a judicial office or engaged in active practice, but devoted his time to wide reading, particularly in the field of seventeenth-century English history to extensive writing, and to civic and business enterprises. He also rendered much aid to legislative committees, which habitually called on him for help in drafting important legislation.

For one whose tenure on the supreme court bench had been so brief he enjoyed a high reputation as a judge. "He probably held as high a place in the estimation of the Bench, the Bar and the Public as has ever been reached by any one of the many distinguished men who have adorned our judicial history" ("In Memoriam," post, p. vi). The explanation for this great reputation is found in his opinion in a single case, Ex parte Bushnell (9 Ohio State, 78). It was sought in this case under a writ of habeas corpus issued from the supreme court of Ohio to override a judgment of the district court of the United States and to discharge from jail a prisoner who had been convicted and sentenced by that court for a violation of one of the sections of the Fugitive Slave Law. Governor Salmon P. Chase declared that if the prisoner were discharged the armed forces of the state would be used to prevent his reimprisonment by the federal government. Swan as chief justice cast the deciding vote in the court, which held that the state could not interfere with the actions of the federal courts within the limits of their constitutional power and that the application for the prisoner's discharge should be denied. Swan wrote the opinion, which has become a classic and given him a reputation for great judicial and moral courage. As a result of this opinion the Republican party then in state convention refused to renominate him. Nevertheless, he was later three times offered appointment to the supreme court to fill vacancies, and once, a nomination by the Republican party.

It is upon his work as a legal writer, however, that his fame most depends. He was author of The Practice in Civil Actions and Proceedings at Law in Ohio, and Precedents in Pleading (2 volumes, 1845, 1850), and Commentaries on Pleading under the Ohio Code, with Precedents of Petitions (1861). The latter work was largely responsible for the acceptance of a broad interpretation of the civil code, in the spirit of the code itself and not in the technical spirit of the common law. He made four general revisions of Ohio statutes (1841, 1854, 1860, 1868). The book which gave him his greatest renown, however, was published as early as 1837. It was entitled A Treatise on the Law Relating to the Powers and Duties of Justices of the Peace ... in the State of Ohio, and has been called "probably the most useful book ever published in Ohio" (Andrews, post, p. ix). Swan himself prepared twelve editions and up to 1930 twenty-seven editions had appeared.

Swan held many important positions other than judicial. In 1850 he was elected a member of the constitutional convention, at which he was recognized as one of its most influential members. He also served as general solicitor of the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, St. Louis Railroad Company (1869-79) and president of the Columbus & Xenia Railway. He was married in 1833 to Hannah R. Andrews of Rochester, New York, who died in 1876. His own death occurred in Columbus, Ohio. He was survived by three sons and two daughters.

[A. L. Priest, "John Swan ... and Descendants" (typescript, Library of Congress, 1934); J. W. Andrews, "Joseph Rockwell Swan-An American," Columbus Dispatch, December 19, 1884, reproduced in later editions of Swan's Treatise; "In Memoriam," 42 Ohio State Reports; G. I. Reed, Bench and Bar of Ohio (1897); Ohio State Bar Association Reports, volume V (1885); Ohio Law Journal, December 27, 1884; Ohio State Journal (Columbus), December 20, 1884; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 19, 1884.]

A.H.T.


SWAYNE, Noah Haynes, 1804-1884, lawyer, jurist, anti-slavery activist.  Represented former slaves in fugitive slave cases.  Appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as a justice to the U. S. Supreme Court. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 5-6). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 239-240:

SWAYNE, NOAH HAYNES (December 7, 1804- June 8, 1884), jurist, was born in Frederick County, Virginia. He was of Quaker ancestry, being a descendant of Francis Swayne who came with his family to America in 1710 and settled near Philadelphia. Noah was the youngest of nine children of Joshua Swayne, who died in 1808; his mother was Rebecca, daughter of John and Ann Smith of Chester County, Pennsylvania. At the age of thirteen he was sent to the Quaker academy of Jacob l\1endenhall at Waterford, Virginia. Two years later he began the study of medicine with an apothecary and physician at Alexandria, but abandoned it upon the death of his teacher. Turning next to the law, he entered the office of John Scott and Francis Brooks at Warrenton, Virginia. Admitted to the bar in 1823, he immediately moved to Ohio on account of his opposition to slavery. Here he located for one year at Zanesville and then moved to Coshocton, where he began practice. His success was immediate. In 1826 he was appointed prosecuting attorney for Coshocton County and in 1829 was elected as a Jeffersonian Democrat to the state legislature. In 1830 he was appointed by President Jackson United States attorney for the district of Ohio, which position he held for nine years, making his home in Columbus, where he remained until his appointment to the United States Supreme Court. In 1832 he married Sarah Ann Wager of Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). His wife owned slaves, but, sharing his views as to the evils of slavery, she emancipated them.

During the more than thirty years he practised in Columbus he took high rank at the Ohio bar and was employed in many important cases in both the state and federal courts. One of his noted efforts was his defense, in 1853, before the United States circuit court in Columbus, of William Rossane and others who were accused of the burning of the steamboat Martha Washington for the fraudulent purpose of procuring insurance. Aside from his practice during this period he was a member of a state fund commission charged at a critical period in the finances of the state with the management of the state debt; a member of a commission to settle a dispute between Ohio and Michigan over the state boundary; and a member of still another commission to study the need of a state institution for the care of the blind.

On January 21, 1862, President Lincoln appointed him a justice of the United States Supreme Court, and the appointment was confirmed on January 24. The reason for his appointment is a little difficult to determine. He had had no judicial experience and though prominent as a lawyer in central Ohio was not a national figure. Justice McLean, whom he was to succeed, was a close friend and had expressed the hope that Swayne would be his successor. His appointment was strongly urged by Governor Dennison of Ohio and by the entire Ohio delegation in Congress, including Senators B. F. Wade and John Sherman. There seems to be no basis for the persistent tradition that President Lincoln got the names of J. R. Swan [q.v.] and Swayne confused and really meant to appoint the former, who had become a national figure on account of his great opinion in the Ex parte Bushnell case (9 Ohio, 77).

His career of nineteen years was altogether satisfactory, though not brilliant. Two other appointees of Lincoln, Samuel F. Miller and Stephen J. Field [qq.v.], surpassed him in influence and reputation. His most noteworthy opinions were those given in the cases of Gelpcke vs. City of Dubuque (68 U.S., 175) and Springer vs. U. S. (102 U. S., 586). In the former case he took issue with Miller, arguing that though it was the general practice of the Supreme Court to follow the latest adjudications of state courts in construing the laws and constitutions of the states, this practice could not be followed when it would result in a sacrifice of justice. This decision had much to do in establishing the doctrine set forth in Swift vs. Tyson to the effect that in the interpretation of contracts and other instruments of a commercial nature, the true interpretation is to be sought not in the discussions of the local tribunals, but in the general principles and doctrines of commercial jurisprudence (41 U. S., 2). In Springer vs. U. S. (102 U. S., 586), he wrote an able opinion upholding the constitutionality of a federal income tax, an opinion overruled in the later "Income Tax Cases," but still believed by many able lawyers to be the correct interpretation of the Constitution. During the time he sat on the bench he was the most nationalistic-minded member of the court. In his dissents in the famous cases of Texas vs. White (74 U.S., 700) and Hepburn vs. Griswold (75 U. S., 603) and in the Slaughter House Cases (83 U.S., 36), he stood for a more nationalistic position that even the Supreme Court as then constituted was willing to sustain. Possessed of a robust health, during his entire service he was present at practically every session and conference of the court. "He came," said Chief Justice Waite, "from a large ... practice at the Bar, and brought with him an unusual familiarity with adjudged cases, and settled habits of labor and research. As might be expected, he soon became one of the most useful members of the Court, and took an active and leading part in all its work" (103 U.S. Reports, xii).

On January 25, 1881, at the age of seventy-six, he retired from the bench under the authority of the federal' statute. For a year he served in Washington but after the death of his wife moved to New York City, where a son, Wager Swayne [q.v.], was engaged in the practice of law. Here he died, survived by four sons and one daughter. He was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, D. C.

[N. W. Swayne, The Descendants of Francis Swayne (1921); American Law Reverend, July-August 1884; Ohio Stat e Bar Association Reports, volume V (1885); 103 U. S. Reports, ix-xii; 118 U.S. Reports, 699-700; H. L. Carson, The Supreme Court of the U. S.: Its H ist. (1892), volume II; The Biographical Cyclopedia ... of the State of Ohio, volume V (n.d.); lvfr. Justice Swayne (n.d.), pamphlet prepared by his sons; New York Tribune and Evening Star (Washington), June 10, 1884.]

A.H. T.


SWAYNE, Wager (November 10, 1834-December18, 1902), soldier and lawyer, selected by General Oliver O. Howard, then organizing the Freedmen's Bureau, as an assistant commissioner in charge of the bureau's operations in Alabama. His service in Alabama with the Freedmen's Bureau continued until January 1868, and was especially marked by the establishment of numerous schools.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 240-241:

SWAYNE, WAGER (November 10, 1834-December18, 1902), soldier and lawyer, was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Noah Haynes Swayne [q.v.] and Sarah Ann (Wager). He was graduated at Yale in 1856, after losing a year on account of serious illness, and at the Cincinnati Law School in 1859. Having been admitted to the Ohio bar he commenced the practice of law in partnership with his father, then a leading attorney in Columbus and later as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

On August 31, 1861, he entered the army as major, 43rd Ohio Infantry, and was promoted lieutenant- colonel, December 14, 1861. Until February 1862 the regiment was in training in Ohio. It then joined the army under Pope and took part in the actions at New Madrid and Island No. 10 which opened the upper Mississippi. Later it was present at the siege of Corinth; in the battle of Corinth, October 4, 1862, Swayne, already known as an efficient regimental commander, displayed such distinguished courage in the face of threatened panic among the troops, that upon General D. S. Stanley's urgent recommendation he received the award of the medal of honor, the highest American decoration for heroism in action. On October 18, 1862, he was promoted colonel. He commanded a brigade of the XVI Corps, Army of the Tennessee, in the Atlanta campaign, the march to the sea, and the campaign of the Carolinas, attracting favorable notice from General O. O. Howard [q. v.], a circumstance which had important consequences later. He was in action at Resaca, Dallas, Kenesaw, and Atlanta. At Rivers Bridge, South Carolina., he received a shell wound, February 2, 1865, which caused the amputation of his right leg. He was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers in April, with rank from March 8, 1865.

Later in that year he was selected by General Howard, then organizing the Freedmen's Bureau, as an assistant commissioner in charge of the bureau's operations in Alabama; he was also in military command, and in order that he might have appropriate rank was appointed, in May 1866, major-general of volunteers, with commission dated back to June 20, 1865. He was not finally mustered out of the volunteer army until September 1, 1867. Meanwhile, he had been appointed, July 28, 1866, colonel in the regular army, for the newly organized 45th Infantry. His service in Alabama with the Freedmen's Bureau continued until January 1868, and was especially marked by the establishment of numerous schools, some of which are still in existence. He married Ellen, daughter of Alfred Harris of Louisville, December 22, 1868. The drastic reduction of the regular army in 1870 required the removal of all officers suffering from any form of physical disability, and Swayne was accordingly placed on the retired list in July.

He took up the practice of law in Toledo, in partnership with John R. Osborn, also serving for some years as a member of the board of education. In 1881 he removed to New York, where, in partnership with John F. Dillon [q.v.] and others, he continued to practise law until shortly before his death. His firm acted as counsel for the Associated Press, the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Wabash Railway, and other important corporations. A distinguished lawyer and a success ful commander of troops, Swayne was also a most public-spirited citizen, always interested in philanthropic activities, particularly church and educational work.

[N. W. Swayne, The Descendants of Francis Swayne and Others (1921); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); F. B. Heitman, Historical Register and Directory U. S. Army (1903), volume I; G. M. Dodge, in Loyal Legion, Commandery of New York, Circular No. 10 (1903); Obit. Record Graduates Yale University, 1903; O. O. Howard, Autobiography (1907), volume II; Bureau of Refugees and Freedmen: Report of the Assistant Commissioner for Alabama (1866, 1867); The Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio of the Nineteenth Century (1876); Who's Who in America, 1899-1900; New York Times, December 19, 1902.]

T.M.S.


SWIFT, Zephaniah, 1759-1823, jurist, U.S. Congressman 1793-1797, anti-slavery activist. Swift stood forth as an ardent opponent of slavery with the publication of An Oration on Domestic Slavery, Delivered at the North Meeting-House in Hartford (1791) in which America is described as "the only christian country where domestic slavery is tolerated in any considerable degree ... " (p. II).

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 12; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 250-251; Dumond, 1961, pp. 47, 47n6; Locke, 1901, pp. 92, 103n, 168; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 212). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 250-251:

SWIFT, ZEPHANIAH (February 27, 1759-September 27, 1823), Connecticut jurist, was born in Wareham, Massachusetts, the son of Roland, a descendant of William Swyft, who emigrated from England to America before 1638 and settled in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and his wife, Mary Dexter.. In childhood, he moved with his parents to Lebanon, Connecticut, where he was reared and schooled, partly by the famed Master Tisdale. Enrolling in a remarkable class which included Joel Barlow, Uriah Tracy, and Oliver Wolcott [qq.v.], he was graduated from Yale College with both the baccalaureate and master's degrees (1778, 1781). Thereupon, he read and actually studied law, and on admission to the bar established a practice in the town of Windham, Connecticut. Despite his lack of a military record, he was elected a representative to the general assembly, 1787-93, serving as clerk of the lower house for four sessions, and as speaker in 1792. As a Federalist, he sat for two terms in the lower house of Congress, 1793-97, and then returned to his practice and to the study of law. In 1800, as secretary to Oliver Ellsworth [q.v.] on his mission to France, his provincial outlook was greatly broadened and yet his national patriotism was intensified. On his return he was elected to the state council of the general assembly.

In the meantime, Swift stood forth as a stout opponent of slavery with the publication of An Oration on Domestic Slavery, Delivered at the North Meeting-House in Hartford (1791) in which America is described as "the only christian country where domestic slavery is tolerated in any considerable degree ... " (p. II). Two years later he published The Correspondent; Containing the Publications in the Windham Herald Relative to the Result of the Ecclesiastical Council, Holden 1792, Respecting the Reverend Oliver Dodge which resulted in a war of pamphlets with the Reverend Moses C. Welch. This was followed by A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut in two volumes (1795, 1796), the first American law text. It displayed a thoughtful philosophy of government as well as a thorough presentation of the constitutional and working government of the state.

Elected by the general assembly, he commenced in 1801 a long term on the superior court. A moderate Federalist and a free-thinker in a Christian community, Swift escaped the usual Republican abuse although he was a supporter of the standing order and a firm upholder of the independence of the judiciary. He became chief justice of the court but after he sponsored the Hartford Convention and became a party to its deliberations, he was bracketed with the state rulers who must be dethroned, and, in 1819, after the completion of the Republican-Tolerationist revolution he ceased to be chief justice.

Honored for his service and political orthodoxy by Yale and Middlebury colleges, Swift retired to his legal researches. As far as Connecticut was concerned, a eulogist was quite correct in the appraisal: "No other individual has done so much towards reducing the laws to an intelligible system adapted to our habits and condition" (see Dexter, post). In 1810 he published a Digest of the Law of Evidence, in Civil and Criminal Cases; And a Treatise on Bills of Exchange, and Promissory Notes, and in 1816 he printed A Vindication of the Calling of the Special Superior Court, at Middletown .. . for the Trial of Peter Lung which arraigned legislative interference with the judiciary and defended his own conduct as chief justice. In his retirement, broken only by two years in the general assembly, 1820-22, he published a Digest of the Laws of the State of Connecticut (1822-23), of which the second volume came out posthumously. As this work was used rathe r generally throughout the country in legal instruction and as a guide for courts, it further increased the indebtedness of bench and bar to Connecticut's leading judicial scholar. After the death of his first wife, Jerusha Watrous, of Colchester, in 1792, he was married on March 14, 1795, to Lucretia Webb, the daughter of Captain Nathaniel Webb, of Windham. A son by his first wife died in infancy. Of the seven children of the second the most distinguished was Mary A. Swift, author of First Lessons on Natural Philosophy for Children (2 volumes, 1833-1836). Swift died while visiting a son in Warren, Ohio, and was buried there.

[G. H. Swift, Wm. Swyft of Sandwitch and Some of His Descendants (1900); S. E. Baldwin, "Zephaniah Swift," Great American Lawyers, volume II (1907); F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, volume IV (1907); E. D. Larned, History of Windham County, Connecticut, volume II (1880); Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, April 1887; memoir in Swift's Digest of the Laws of the State of Connecticut, volume II (1823); R. J. Purcell, Connecticut in Transition (1918); Encyclopedia of Connecticut Biography (1917), vol. I; Biographical Directory of the American Congress (1928); American Historical Review, July 1934; American Mercury (Hartford), Connecticut Courant, October 14, 1823.]

R.J.P.


SWISSHELM, James

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 32; Blue, 2005, pp. 8, 140-143, 149, 153-154)


SWISSHELM, Jane Grey Cannon, 1815-1884, abolitionist leader, women’s rights advocate, journalist, reformer.  Free Soil Party.  Liberty Party.  Republican Party activist.  Established Saturday Visitor, an abolition and women’s rights newspaper. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 13; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 253; Blue, 2005, pp. 8-9, 50, 138-160, 268, 269; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 21, p. 217; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 316 Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition.  Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Volume 2, pp. 668-670). 

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

SWISSHELM, Jane Grey, born  near Pittsburg, Pa., 6 September, 1815;died  in Swissvale, Pa., 22 July, 1884. When she was eight years of age her father, James Cannon, died, leaving a family in straitened circumstances. The daughter worked at manual labor and teaching till she was twenty-one, when she married James Swisshelm, who several years afterward obtained a divorce on the ground of desertion. Two years later she removed with her husband to Louisville, Ky. In this city she became an outspoken opponent of slavery, and her first written attack upon the system appeared in the Louisville “Journal” in 1842. She also wrote articles favoring abolition and woman's rights in the “Spirit of Liberty,” of Pittsburg, for about four years. In 1848 she established the Pittsburg “Saturday Visitor,” a strong abolition and woman's rights paper, which, in 1856, was merged with the weekly edition of the Pittsburg “Journal.” In 1857 she went to St. Cloud, Minn., and established the St. Cloud “Visitor.” Her bold utterances caused a mob to destroy her office and its contents, and to throw her printing-press into the river. But she soon began to publish the St. Cloud “Democrat.” When Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the presidency, she spoke and wrote in his behalf and for the principles of which he was the representative. When the civil war began and nurses were wanted at the front, she was one of the first to respond. After the battle of the Wilderness she had charge of 182 badly wounded men at Fredericksburg for five days, without surgeon or assistant, and saved them all. She was a prolific writer for newspapers and magazines, and published “Letters to Country Girls” (New York, 1853), and an autobiography entitled “Half of a Century” (1881). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 253:

SWISSHELM, JANE GREY CANNON (December 6, 1815-July 22, 1884), reformer and editor, was the daughter of Thomas and Mary (Scott) Cannon, Scotch-Irish Covenanters of Pittsburgh, Pa. She spent her youth in the new settlement of Wilkinsburg, to which her parents removed soon after she was born. At the age of three she began attending school; by the time she was t en she was aiding her widowed mother in earning a living; at fourteen she became active in the anti-slavery cause; before her fifteenth birthday she took charge of the only school in the village. After six years of teaching she married, November 18, 1836, James Swisshelm, a young farmer of the neighborhood. In 1838 she accompanied him to Louisville, Kentucky, where he attempted, unsuccessfully, to establish a business, and she earned what she could as seamstress and teacher. Her hatred of slavery became an absorbing passion during this sojourn. Returning to Pennsylvania, she took charge of a seminary at Butler in 1840, and began to use her pen in defense of the rights of married women. Two years later she rejoined her husband on a farm, which she named Swissvale, near Pittsburgh. In the midst of domestic duties she continued to write, supplying stories and verses to the Dollar Newspaper and to Neal's Saturday Gazette. At the same time she contributed to the Spirit of Liberty, the Pittsburgh Gazette, and to the Daily Commercial Journal racy, vehemently written articles on abolition and the property rights of women.

In 1847 she used a legacy from her mother to establish the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter (sic), a political and literary weekly, advocating abolition, temperance, and woman's suffrage, the first number of which appeared on December 20. She edited this paper with such spirited audacity that she became widely known for her powers of denunciation. "Beware of sister Jane," contemporary editors said to each other. Most notable among her attacks was one that she published in 1850 upon Daniel Webster's private life. This, she loved to believe, ruined his chances for becoming president. In 1853 she publish ed a volume called Letters to Country Girls, compiled from articles in the Visiter. In 1857 she sold her paper, separated permanently from her husband- who secured a divorce from her on the ground of desertion a few years late r-and, accompanied by her only child, took up her residence in Minnesota. The following year she began the St. Cloud Visiter. A libel suit ended this publication in a few months. She at once established the St. Cloud Democrat, a Republican paper, which she conducted in her usual intrepid, intensely personal manner until 1863. During this time she lectured frequently throughout the state on political subjects.

In the midst of the Civil War she went to Washington, DC., and while doing clerical work in a government office and assisting in a war hospital contributed to the New York Tribune and to the St. Cloud Democrat. During this period she became a warm personal friend of Mrs. Lincoln. In the course of Andrew Johnson's administration she started a radical paper called the Reconstructionist. In this she attacked the President with such violence that in 1866 he dismissed her from the government service. Returning to Swissvale, she made that place her home for the rest of her life. In 1880 she published Half a Century, an entertaining account of her life to the year 1865. Her extreme individualism made her a free lance in all her undertakings. She never worked happily in reform organizations, preferring always to forge her own thunderbolts. Her firm convictions, her powers of sarcasm, her stinging yet often humorous invective, and her homely, vigorous style made her a trenchant journalist.

[In addition to Half a Century, see L. B. Shippee, "Jane Grey Swisshelm: Agitator," Miss. Valley Historical Review, December 1920; Minn. Historical Society Collections, volume XII (1908); S. J, Fisher, "Reminiscences of Jane Grey Swisshelm," Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, July 1921; B. M. Stearns, "Reform Periodicals and Female Reformers," American Historical Review, July 1932; A. J. Larsen, Crusader and Feminist: Letters of Jane Grey Swisshelm, 1858-1865 (1934); New York Times, July 23, 1884.]

B. M. S.  


SWITZLER, William Franklin (March 16, 1819-May 24, 1906), journalist, historian, and politician.  An was an ardent Whig editorially. He served three terms in the Missouri legislature, being elected in 1846, 1848, and 1856, and supported progressive and anti-slavery measures. During the Civil War he was so strong a Unionist that a guerrilla band threatened his life.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 254-255:

SWITZLER, WILLIAM FRANKLIN (March 16, 1819-May 24, 1906), journalist, historian, and politician, first of two sons of Simeon and Elizabeth (Cornelius) Switzler, was born on a farm in Fayette County, Kentucky. His father was a native of Virginia, his mother of Kentucky, and his paternal grandparents of Switzerland. His family moved to Fayette, Missouri, in 1826, and William began his schooling in a log house. Later his father bought a farm near Franklin, Missouri, on which the boy grew up. He supplemented his training at Mount Forest Academy by omnivorous reading, including law, which he practised three years. In 1841 he became editor of the oldest Missouri newspaper outside of St. Louis, the Columbia Patriot, then a whig weekly (founded at Franklin in 1819 as the Missouri Intelligencer); this he purchased in December 1842 and renamed the Missouri Statesman. An ardent Whig editorially, he nevertheless saw that Democratic news was faithfully reported. So well known were his remarkable memory and his insistence on accuracy that citation of the Statesman was freely accepted as proof. He served three terms in the Missouri legislature, being elected in 1846, 1848, and 1856, and supported progressive and anti-slavery measures. During the Civil War he was so strong a Unionist that a guerrilla band threatened his life. Although he served as delegate to the National Constitutional Union Convention (Democratic) in Baltimore in 1860, Lincoln appointed him secretary of state in the provisional government in Arkansas two years later. But the appointment did not alter his politics, and in 1864 he supported George Brinton McClellan [q. v.]. Democratic candidate for national representative in 1866 and 1868, he each time unsuccessfully contested the election of his opponent. He contended that Democratic voters had been disfranchised by the Missouri constitution of 1865, which he was chosen to help frame and whose adoption he vigorously opposed. He was also a delegate to the state constitutional convention of 1875 and drafted the section on education. He edited the Statesman until 1885, when President Cleveland appointed him chief of the bureau of statistics in the Treasury Department. For short periods he also edited newspapers in St. Joseph and Chillicothe, Missouri, and from 1893 to 1898, the Missouri Democrat at Boonville.

Switzler was one of the best informed men of his time on the history of his state. His publications include the Early History of Missouri (1872), the section on history in C. R. Barns's The Commonwealth of Missouri (1877), Switzler's Illustrated History of Missouri (1879), History of Boone County, Missouri (1882), and History of Statistics and Their Value (1888). He also contributed to H. L. Conard's Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri (1906). His last years he spent writing a history of the University of Missouri. A founder of the first circulating library in Columbia, head of the lyceum there in the 1840's, and sponsor of its first brass band, he was in his last decade still working for local improvements. In 1849 he helped lead a movement opening the way for the founding of Christian College (1851), of which he was a trustee for many years, and the Baptist (later Stephens) College (1856). He was a good public speaker, and his bearded face was a familiar sight at fairs, dedications of covered bridges, and Fourth of July celebrations. He was a Presbyterian and a vigorous temperance leader. In his latter years he enjoyed the editorial rivalry of Edwin William Stephens [q.v.]. Survived by two sons and a daughter, Switzler died of the infirmities of age in his eighty-seventh year in Columbia. His wife, Mary Jane Royall, bf Columbia, whom he married August 31, 1843, died in 1879. He left his mark as the dean of Missouri journalists, and three years after his death the first building of the School of Journalism of the University of Missouri was named in his honor.

[N. T. Gentry, in Missouri Historical Rev., January 1930; H. L. Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri (1906); Kansas City Star, February 4, 1900; obituaries in St. Louis Post Dispatch and Colombia Daily Tribune, May 24, and in Kansas City Journal, May 25, 1906; House Miscellaneous Documents 14, 41 Congress, 2 Session; information from Switzler's daughter, Mrs. J. S. Branham, and F. C. Shoemaker, both of Columbia, Missouri.]

I. D.


SZOLD, Benjamin (November 15, 1829-July 31, 1902), rabbi. During the Civil War he stood out boldly against slavery in the face popular opinion in Maryland.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 262:

SZOLD, BENJAMIN (November 15, 1829-July 31, 1902), rabbi, was born at Nemiskert, County of Neutra, Hungary, the son of Baruch Szold, a farmer, and Chaile (Endler). His was the only Jewish family in the village. Early left an orphan, he was brought up by his uncles. He received his training in Hebrew and rabbinics from private tutors (becoming Morenu at the early age of fourteen), and later, at the Presburg Talmudical College. His studies in Vienna were cut short by the r evolution. For the next five years he acted as tutor in private families. He gained his academic knowledge at Frankel's Rabbinical Seminary and the University at Breslau, Silesia. On August 10, 1859, at Cziffer, near Tirnova, he married Sophie Schaar, who survived him, together with four of the eight children that were born to them. The last eight years of his life were beclouded by a painful ailment, but he retained his mental vigor to the end. He died at Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.

While a student, he officiated in synagogues at Brieg, Silesia (1857), and at Stockholm, Sweden (1858). The latter position he surrendered to Dr. Lewisohn who had received a call from the Congregation Oheb Shalom of Baltimore, Maryland, and he went to Baltimore in Lewisohn's stead. Arriving in the United States on September 21, 1859, he served that congregation until 1892, when he was elected rabbi emeritus. He steered it away from extreme reform tendencies, and prepared for it the more traditional prayer book Abodat Yisrael (1863), with a German translation. New editions appeared in 1864, 1865 (with an English translation), and, revised jointly by himself, Marcus Jastrow [q.v.], and Henry Hochheimer, in 1871 and subsequently. Under his saintly influence his congregation soon became known for its strict observance of the Sabbath. He aided in establishing charitable institutions of Baltimore, and devoted himself to helping Russian Jewish refugees. He was a convinced Zionist long before Herzl organized the Zionist movement. During the Civil War he stood out boldly against slavery in the face of excited popular opinion in Maryland. On one occasion, having been unable to induce either General Meade or President Lincoln to pardon a deserter, in reckless protest he held the hand of the condemned soldier while the firing squad of twelve muskets fired the volley which ended the man's life.

Besides writing a number of unpublished studies in the Bible and the Talmud, Szold published The Book of Job with a New Commentary (1886), which shows marked originality, especially in the attention paid to the exegetic value of the masoretic accents. He was the author of some textbooks, minor publications, and a commentary on the eleventh chapter of Daniel for G. A. Kohut's Semitic Studies in Memory of Reverend Dr. Alexander Kohut (1897); he also edited Michael Heilprin's Bibelkritische Notizen (1893). He was outstanding in scholarship, forceful in his natural eloquence, moderate in his religious views, sharing neither orthodox rigidity nor reform's radicalism. His sweet and sincere humanity made him a champion of the unfortunate, and won for him the esteem of Jew and Gentile alike.

[Jewish Comment (Baltimore), November 17, 1899, August 1, 8, October 3, 1902; Jewish Exponent (Philadelphia) and American Hebrew (New York.), August 8, 1902; The Jewish Encyclopedia (ed. 1925), volume XI; Year Book of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, volume XIII (copyright 1904); Deborah (Cincinnati), volume II (1902); Peter Wiernik, History of the Jews in America (1931); Emanuel Hertz, Abraham Lincoln: The Tribute of the Synagogue (1927); Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, volume XXXIII (1869); Sun (Baltimore), August 1, 1902.]

D. de S. P.



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