U: Underwood through Usher

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


UNDERWOOD, Francis Henry, born 1825.  “He went to Massachusetts in 1850, and took an active part in the anti-slavery cause. He was clerk of the Massachusetts Senate in 1852, and afterward literary adviser of the publishing-house of Phillips, Sampson, and Company. He conceived the idea of uniting the literary force of the north to the Free-Soil movement by means of a magazine, and after several years of effort was the means of securing the eminent writers that made the fame of the "Atlantic Monthly." He assisted in the management of that magazine for two years”. 

(L. M. Underwood, The Underwood Families of America (2 volumes, 1913); Amherst College Biographical Record (1927); J. T. Trowbridge, "The Author of Quabbin," Atlantic Monthly, January 1895; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 209-210. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1 pp. 112-113.)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

UNDERWOOD, Francis Henry, author, born in Enfield, Massachusetts, 12 January, 1825. He was educated partly at Amherst, then taught in Kentucky, read law, and was admitted to the bar. He returned to Massachusetts in 1850, and thenceforward took an active part in the anti-slavery cause. He was clerk of the Massachusetts Senate in 1852, and afterward literary adviser of the publishing-house of Phillips, Sampson, and Company. He conceived the idea of uniting the literary force of the north to the Free-Soil movement by means of a magazine, and after several years of effort was the means of securing the eminent writers that made the fame of the "Atlantic Monthly." He assisted in the management of that magazine for two years, until the firm with which he was connected came to an end. He was then (1859) elected clerk of the superior court in Boston, which post he held for eleven years, when he resigned and entered private business, chiefly to obtain more leisure for literary work. His studies have been mainly in English literature, but his writings cover a wide field. He served for thirteen years in the school board of Boston. In 1885 he was appointed U. S. consul at Glasgow, Scotland. His lectures on "American Men of Letters" and his occasional speeches, such as that before the Glasgow Ayrshire society "On the Memory of Burns," have been much admired. In 1888 the University of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of LL. D. His works include a " Hand-Book of English Literature" (Boston. 1871); "Hand Book of American Literature" (1872); "Cloud Pictures." a series of imaginative stories, chiefly musical (1872); "Lord of Himself," a novel of old times in Kentucky (1874); "Man Proposes," a novel (1880); " The True Story of Exodus, an abridgment of the work by Brugsch-Bey (1880); and biographical sketches of Longfellow (1882), Lowell (1882), and Whittier (1883). Dr. Underwood is engaged upon an elaborate popular history of English literature. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 209-210. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1 pp. 112-113:

UNDERWOOD, FRANCIS HENRY (January 12, 1825-August 7, 1894), author, lawyer, and United States consul, was the son of Roswell Underwood, a farmer of Enfield, Massachusetts, and Phoebe (Hall) Underwood. He was probably a descendant of Joseph Underwood who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1637. In spite of extreme poverty he managed to prepare himself for college and entered Amherst with the class of 1847. After one year, however, he left college to teach school in Kentucky, declining the offer of an uncle to pay the expenses of his education on condition that he become a minister. In the South he studied law, was admitted to the bar (1847), and married, in Taylorsville, Kentucky, May 18, 1848, Louisa Maria Wood. His original antipathy to slavery was increased by what he saw of the institution, and he returned to Massachusetts in 1850 an ardent advocate of Free Soil principles. After twelve months of private law practice in Webster, Massachusetts, he was appointed clerk of the state Senate for the session of 1852. Political feeling in the North had been roused by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, but had not yet taken form. Underwood succeeded in interesting John Punchard Jewett [q.v.], the publisher of Uncle Toni's Cabin, in a scheme for establishing a magazine which should enlist the literary forces of New England in a crusade against slavery. He secured the cooperation of a distinguished list of contributors and was ready to launch the new venture in December 1853. But at the last moment the publishers declined to proceed and the whole scheme had to be temporarily abandoned.

Underwood next entered the publishing house of Phillips, Sampson & Company, Boston, as literary editor, and for some time devoted himself to extending his acquaintance among Boston and Cambridge authors. He then revived the project of a magazine. The cautious Phillips was slow to accept the proposal, but Underwood's efforts were warmly seconded by William Lee, a junior member of the firm, and by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Their united persuasions at length overcame the publisher's reluctance. On May 5, 1857, occurred the memorable dinner at the Parker House when Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Longfellow, John Lothrop Motley, and James E. Cabot joined Phillips and Underwood in discussing plans for the yet unnamed magazine. In consequence of this and several succeeding dinners Underwood, who naturally expected to act as editor, was sent abroad to solicit contributions from British authors. He returned in midsummer to find the success of the project imperiled by the financial panic of 1857. Realizing at once that the prestige of James Russell Lowell [q.v.] as editor would strengthen the undertaking, Underwood, "without a suggestion from any person," nominated his friend for the position, and Lowell accepted. At the same time Holmes christened the new publication the Atlantic Monthly. The first number appeared under the date of November 1857, and almost at once the magazine assumed the lead among American periodicals. Underwood's connection with th e enterprise that he had projected and brought into being lasted only two years, during which time he loyally performed the routine work of assistant editor, sifting all contributions and making up numbers subject to Lowell's approval. In 1859 both Phillips and Sampson died, their firm was dissolved, and the Atlantic became the property of Ticknor & Fields. Underwood, to his deep regret, was not retained by the new proprietors. After leaving the Atlantic he was elected (1859) clerk of the Superior Criminal Court of Boston. Social, literary, and civic affairs occupied much of his time. He was an original member and second president of the Papyrus Club, and for ten years served on the Boston school committee. To secure leisure for more sustained literary work he resigned his clerkship in 1866 and engaged in private business ventures, some of which proved to be unfortunate. Meanwhile he wrote manuals of English and American literature; Cloud-Pictures (1872), a volume of short stories; Lord of Himself (187 4), Man Proposes (1885), and Doctor Gray's Quest (1895), novels; and biographies of Longfellow, Lowell, and Whittier. His wife, by whom he had had five children, died in 1882. By appointment of President Cleveland (confirmed, April 28, 1886) Underwood succeeded Francis Brett Harte [q.v.] as United States consul at Glasgow. He was recalled when the Democrats went out of office, but returned to Scotland (appointment confirmed, September 2, 1893) at the beginning of Cleveland's second term, this time to be consul at Leith. He died in Edinburgh. Underwood's life abroad brought him many friend ships and new distinctions, including an honorary LL.D. from the University of Glasgow. He also found consolation in a young Scotch wife, Frances Findlay of Callendar, near Glasgow. In the interval between his consulships he wrote his best book, Quabbin, the Story of a Small Town (1893), a pleasantly discursive account of Enfield as he remembered it from his boyhood. Nevertheless, his last years were not entirely happy. He was painfully conscious that he had not won the recognition that his industry, talent, and genial nature deserved. Always it had been his fate to play a secondary role, contributing much to the fame of others but gaining little credit for himself. As Francis Parkman lucidly pointed out to him, he was " neither a Harvard man nor a humbug" and so, being both unassuming and unsupported, a victim of his own merit.

[L. M. Underwood, The Underwood Families of America (2 volumes, 1913); Amherst College Biographical Record (1927); J. T. Trowbridge, "The Author of Quabbin," Atlantic Monthly, January 1895; Bliss Perry, "The Editor Who Was Never the Editor," Park-Street Papers (1908); M.A. De W. Howe, The Atlantic Monthly and Its Makers (1919); obituary in Times (London), August 9, 1894; scrapbook of newspaper clippings relating to Underwood's years in Scotland in the Jones Library, Amherst.]

G. F. W.   


UNDERWOOD, John Curtiss (March 14, 1809-December 7, 1873), jurist. A Free-Soiler in politics, Underwood was a delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1856, and during the ensuing campaign incurred such unpopularity by his utterances on the subject of slavery that he removed from Virginia. In 1860 he was a delegate to the convention which nominated Lincoln, in behalf of whose candidacy he stumped New England and the Middle States. On January 25, 1864, he was appointed judge of the district court of Virginia, in which capacity he asserted the right of the United States to confiscate property of "persons in rebellion," and advocated extension and protection of negro civic rights.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 113-114:

UNDERWOOD, JOHN CURTISS (March 14, 1809-December 7, 1873), jurist, was the son of John and Mary (Curtiss) Underwood of Litchfield, Herkimer County, New York. On his father's side he was a direct descendant of William Underwood, who came from England to Concord, Massachusetts, probably prior to 1640, and in 1652 moved to Chelmsford. One of William's descendants, Parker Underwood, removed from Chelmsford to Litchfield, where his grandson, John Curtiss Underwood, was subsequently born and reared. He was graduated from Hamilton College in 1832. While there he became one of the founders of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. After his graduation he went to Virginia; obtained employment as a tutor; began the study of law; and later returned to Herkimer County to begin practice. On October 24, 1839, he married Maria Gloria Jackson of Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia)-a double cousin of "Stonewall" Jackson, and a member of the family in which Underwood had formerly served as tutor. The couple soon acquired about eight hundred acres of land in Clarke County, established their home there, and sought to introduce dairying into that portion of Virginia (Underwood Families, post, I, 364- 77). Three children were born to them.

A Free-Soiler in politics, Underwood was a delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1856, and during the ensuing campaign incurred such unpopularity by his utterances on the subject of slavery that he removed from Virginia. In 1860 he was a delegate to the convention which nominated Lincoln, in behalf of whose candidacy he stumped New England and the Middle States. After the election he was nominated as United States consul to Callao, Peru, the nomination being confirmed July 26, 1861. On July 25, however, Lincoln nominated him fifth auditor of the Treasury and the appointment was confirmed on August 1. On January 25, 1864, he was appointed judge of the district court of Virginia, in which capacity he asserted the right of the United States to confiscate property of "persons in rebellion," and advocated extension and protection of negro civic rights. The most noteworthy case with which he was connected was that of Jefferson Davis. At the session of the grand jury held at Norfolk in May 1866, at which Davis was indicted for treason, Underwood delivered a charge of some length and severity. The session adjourned to meet in Richmond on June 5, and local feeling was running so high that there was speculation a s to whether Underwood would risk assassination by appearing. He was prese nt at the appointed time, however, and in another charge to the grand jury scathingly denounced the press and many residents of Richmond. Later, he refused to admit Davis to bail, on the ground that he was a military prisoner, and not, in consequence, within the power of the civil authorities (New York Herald, May 12, June 6, 7, 12, 1866).

When the drastic Reconstruction acts of March 1867 were applied to Virginia, Underwood was chosen delegate to, and president of, the constitutional convention which assembled at Richmond, December 3, 1867. This convention drew up what came to be known as the "Underwood Constitution" (Underwood Families, I, 376). Certain of its provisions, subsequently eliminated by popular vote on ratification in 1869, would have placed the government "based on such a constitution, in the hands of negroes, 'scalawags' and 'carpet-bag' adventurers" (Burgess, post, p. 227). With its proscriptive features removed, however, the constitution proved to be satisfactory, and remained the organic law of Virginia from 1869 until 1902.

Underwood eventually acquired several thousand acres of land. To a portion of this he obtained title at the close of the war by methods which evoked widespread criticism, involved him in litigation, and even caused him to be subjected to physical assault. His death from apoplexy occurred at his residence in Washington, D. C.

[L. M. Underwood, The Underwood Families of America (1913); New York Herald, May 12, June 6, 7, 12, 1866, December 9, 1873; New York Times, May 12, June 6, 8, 1866, November 12, December 9, 1873; The Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Virginia (1868); J. W. Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution (1902); H. J. Eckenrode, The Political History of Virginia During the Reconstruction (1904); R. F. Nichols, "U. S. vs. Jefferson Davis," American Historical Review, January 1926.]

R. W. I.


UPHAM, Charles Wentworth (May 4, 1802-June 15, 1875), Unitarian clergyman, congressman, and historian of the Salem witchcraft delusion,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 121-122:

UPHAM, CHARLES WENTWORTH (May 4, 1802-June 15, 1875), Unitarian clergyman, congressman, and historian of the Salem witchcraft delusion, was born in St. John, New Brunswick, the son of Joshua and Mary (Chandler) Upham. He was a descendant of John Upham who emigrated from England to Weymouth, Massachusetts, in 1635. Joshua Upham, a native of Brookfield, Massachusetts, a graduate of Harvard, and a Loyalist during the American Revolution, had served in the British army during the war, and at its close had emigrated to New Brunswick, where he held the office of judge of the supreme court until his death in 1808. Charles attended school in St. John, and at the age of twelve he was apprenticed to an apothecary. In 1816 he went to Boston to work for his cousin, Phineas Upham, a merchant; but this benevolent kinsman, soon perceiving that the boy's inclination was for study rather than business, placed him under the tutelage of Deacon Samuel Steele, and in 1817 sent him to Harvard College. Upham amply justified his kinsman's aid by graduating in 1821, second in his class. He next spent three years in the Cambridge Divinity School, and on December 8, 1824, was ordained as associate pastor of the First Church (Unitarian) of Salem. Here he served until 1844-twelve years as the colleague of the Reverend John Prince-when, suffering from a bronchial ailment, he resigned.

During his career as clergyman, he distinguished himself as a learned champion of Unitarianism. In his discourse Principles of the Reformation (1826), he urged the necessity of advancing beyond the religious beliefs of the Pilgrim fathers. In 1833-34 he engaged in an extended controversy with the Reverend George B. Cheever [q.v.] in the columns of the Salem Gazette. on the subject of Unitarian versus Trinitarian principles. Upham's chief proposition, in the support of which he displayed a formidable knowledge of the history and literature of the Reformation, was that Ralph Cudworth, who had been quoted by Cheever in defense of the Trini" Nathaniel Hawthorne's Removal from the Salem Custom House," Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, April 1917; Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, 1885, I, 339, 438). Pyncheon, in the words of Henry James, is "a superb, full-blown hypocrite, a large-based, full-nurtured Pharisee" (Hawthorne, 1879, p. 124). This portrait, however, contains elements of caricature, and, like many other famous satirical sketches, it is doubtless unfair to its prototype. Upham was apparently held in high esteem by many of his contemporaries. He numbered Edward Everett among his friends, and Emerson, his classmate at Harvard, referred to his "frank and attractive" manners, and his large "repertory of men and events" (Ellis, Memoir, post, p. 12). He died in Salem. On March 29, 1826, he married Ann Susan, daughter of the Reverend Abiel Holmes [q.v.] of Cambridge, and sister of Oliver Wendell Holmes; they had fourteen children, all but three of whom died either in infancy or in early life.

[F. K. Upham, The Descendants of John Upham of Massachusetts (1892); G. E. Ellis, An Address .. at the Funeral Services of Charles W. Upham (1875), and Memoir of Charles Wentworth Upham (1877); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); S. A. Eliot, Heralds of a Liberal Faith (1910), volumes I, II; Salem Gazette, June 18, 1875; Boston Transcript, June 15, 1875.]  

R.S.


UPHAM, Thomas Cogswell (January 30, 1799-April 2, 1872), teacher, meta physician, and author. He was actively interested in the social reforms of the day, was an earnest and liberal patron of the colonization of negroes, a strong supporter of the temperance movement, and one of the earliest American advocates of international peace. 

(F. K. Upham, The Descendants of John Upham (1892); A. S. Packard, Address on the Life and Character of Thomas C. Upham, D.D. (1873).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 123-124:

UPHAM, THOMAS COGSWELL (January 30, 1799-April 2, 1872), teacher, meta physician, and author, was born at Deerfield, New Hampshire, a member of a distinguished family descended from John Upham who settled in Weymouth, Massachusetts, in 1635. His father, Nathaniel Upham, served in Congress; one brother, Nathaniel, was a judge of the supreme court of New Hampshire; another, Francis, a well-known professor of mental philosophy at Rutgers Female College, New York. His mother was Judith Cogswell, daughter of Thomas Cogswell, of Gilmanton, New Hampshire. Upham graduated from Dartmouth College in 1818, and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1821. He made there such an outstanding record for indefatigable study and scholarship that he became tutor in Hebrew under Prof. Moses Stuart [q.v.]; and in 1823 he published an excellent translation, Jahn's Biblical Archaeology, from the Latin of Johann Jahn, with additions and corrections. From 1823 to 1824 he served as associate pastor of the Congregational Church at Rochester, New Hampshire. In 1824 he was chosen professor of mental and moral philosophy at Bowdoin College, which chair he held until his retirement in 1867. His remaining years were spent in study and writing at Kennebunkport, Maine, and later in New York City, where he died.

At Bowdoin he was one of the best known teachers in a rather distinguished faculty. Although he came to his professorship from a pastorate, he soon gave up preaching and public speaking, and made his strong religious influence felt in the classroom, in small groups of students, and with individuals. He was actively interested in the social reforms of the day, was an earnest and liberal patron of the colonization of negroes, a strong supporter of the temperance movement, and one of the earliest American advocates of international peace, collaborating with William Ladd [q.v.] and writing one of the essays published in Prize Essays on a Congress of Nations (1840). In 1852 he spent a year in European and Eastern travel, publishing in 1855 Letters Aesthetic, Social, and Journal, Written from Europe, Egypt, and Palestine. He also served Bowdoin well in practical affairs, at one time raising by his own efforts the then surprisingly large sum of nearly $70,000. Yet it is as an author in his chosen field of mental philosophy that Upham was best known. Brought to Bowdoin to oppose the doctrines of Kant and his school, he found himself after long effort unable to refute the teachings of the German metaphysician, an\f was on the point of resigning his professorship when suddenly he conceived a distinction between the intellect, the sensibilities, and the will which he embodied in his A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will (1834), his outstanding work. This has been called "one of the first original and comprehensive contributions of American scholarship to modern psychology" (Foster, post, p. 249). This work and in succeeding volume, Outlines of Imperfect and Disordered Mental Action (1840), made him t4 be regarded more as a psychologist than a theologian, and did much to liberate American philosophy and theology from the thraldom of the elder Jonathan Edwards [q.v.]. A bibliography of Upham's works contains more than sixty items, and includes, in addition to philosophical treatises, a religious classic, Principles of the Interior or Hidden Life (1843), and some books of verse, notably American Cottage Life (1851), first published anonymously about 1828 as Domestic and Religious Offering.

In character and appearance, Upham was distinctly of the academic type of the early nineteenth century. Modest, retiring, very reserved, almost secretive, absent-minded, kindly, with remarkable self-control, he was "in the best sense a quietest [sic], and seemed ... to have attained to a high state of repose in God'' (Packard, post, p. 21). Having no children, he and his wife, Phebe Lord, whom he married on May 18, 1825, and whose portrait by Gilbert Stuart in the Bowdoin Art Museum reveals an unusual loveliness 0f person and character, adopted several children, and made their home, in the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was received there on her arrival in Brunswick, "delightful ... a beautiful pattern of a Christian family, a beautiful exemplification of religion" (Hatch, post, p. 60).

[F. K. Upham, The Descendants of John Upham (1892); A. S. Packard, Address on the Life and Character of Thomas C. Upham, D.D. (1873); L. C. Hatch, The History of Bowdoin College (1927); F. H. Foster, A Genetic History of New England Theology (1907); death notice in New York Times, April 3, 1872; letters and newspaper articles in Bowdoin College library]

K. C. M. S.  


USHER, John Palmer (January 9, 1816---April 13, 1889), lawyer, secretary of the interior in Lincoln's cabinet. When the Republican party was founded in 1854, Usher became an active supporter of its principles.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt.1, pp. 134-135:

USHER, JOHN PALMER (January 9, 1816---April 13, 1889), lawyer, secretary of the interior in Lincoln's cabinet, was descended from a young English Puritan, Hezekiah Usher, who settled in Boston, Massachusetts, about the middle of the seventeenth century, becoming a bookseller and later a selectman. Among his descendants were John Usher who became lieutenant-governor of New Hampshire in 1692 and Dr. Nathaniel Usher, who with his wife, Lucy (Palmer), lived in Brookfield, Madison County, New York, when their son, John Palmer, was born. After receiving a common-school education Usher studied law in the office of Henry Bennett of New Berlin, New York, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. A year later he moved to Terre Haute, Indiana, and began the practice of his profession. He rode the circuit, and was sometimes engaged with Abraham Lincoln in the argument of cases. In 1850-51 he served in the Indiana legislature.

When the Republican party was organized in 1854, Usher became an active supporter of its principles and in 1856 was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress. He was appointed attorney-general of Indiana in November 1861, but four months later resigned to accept the position of assistant secretary of the interior at Washington. In January 1863 he was appointed head of that department, following the resignation of Caleb B. Smith [q.v.]. In his first report he called special attention to the benefits of the new homestead law, remarking that in less than a year after it went into operation almost a million and a half acres had been taken up. He recommended a small tax on the net profits of gold and silver mines, larger Indian reservations, also larger appropriations-with a policy guided by justice and humanity-for these wards of the nation. His last report contained a comprehensive statement concerning public lands, which, he said, had included about one fifth of the entire country and had been the cause of about one fourth of all the laws passed by Congress to that date.

When the Civil War closed Usher decided to retire from political life and resume the practice of law in one of the growing Western states. He accordingly resigned as secretary of the interior on May 15, 1865, and removed with his family to Lawrence, Kansas, where he accepted appointment as chief counsel for the Union Pacific Railroad-a position which he held to the end of his life. He represented the company in much important litigation in both state and federal courts. Usher's only writings were his two reports (1863, 1864) as secretary of the interior (Executive Document No. 1, volume III, 38 Congress, 1 Session &; and House Executive Document No. 1, pt. 5, 38 Congress, 2 Session) and a chapter in Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln (1886), edited by A. T. Rice; but in 1925 Nelson H. Loomis published President Lincoln's Cabinet, by Honorable John P. Usher, a pamphlet containing the substance of an after-dinner speech delivered in 1887 together with a newspaper interview. On January 26, 1844, Usher married Margaret Patterson; they had four sons. He died in a hospital in Philadelphia.

[Usher kept no diary and preserved no papers. President Lincoln's Cabinet (1925) contains an authoritative biography by N. H. Loomis. See also Kansas State Historical Society Colls., volume XII (1912); C. W. Taylor, The Bench and Bar of Indiana (1895); E. P. Usher, A Memorial Sketch of Roland Greene Usher (1895), containing a genealogy; Lawrence Daily Journal, April 14, 1889; Lawrence Evening Tribune, April 15, 1889; Topeka Capital-Commonwealth, April 16, 1889. Important facts have also been obtained from a son, the late Samuel C. Usher.]

T. L. H.



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