Ant-Aye: Anthony through Ayers

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


ANTHONY, Daniel Read, 1824-1904, newspaper publisher, abolitionist, member Hicksite Quakers, opposed slavery, active in temperance and women’s rights movements, brother of Susan B. Anthony.  Publisher of the Leavenworth Times newspaper in Leavenworth, Kansas. Lieutenant Colonel, 7th Regiment, Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, 1861-1862.  Mayor, Leavenworth, Kansas, 1863.

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 169)


ANTHONY, Henry Bowen, 1815-1884, Republican, statesman, newspaper editor, Governor of Rhode Island, U.S. Senator 1859-1884, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 81-82; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 316-317; Anthony, Henry Bowen, A Memoir, 1885; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 316-317:

ANTHONY, HENRY BOWEN (April 1, 1815-September 2, 1884), journalist, politician, a descendant of John Anthony of Hampstead, England, who came to Boston in 1634 and removed to Rhode Island about 1640, was born at Coventry, Rhode Island. His father was William Anthony and his mother was Eliza Kinnicutt Greene. Both his father and his maternal grandfather, James Greene of Warwick, were Quakers. His father was a cotton manufacturer and the part of the town in which they lived was called Anthony. There the boy attended village school and the Friends' meeting-house. Most of his life was spent, however, in Providence, where he fitted for college at a private school and entered Brown University in 1829. He made a good, though not brilliant, record in college and graduated with his class in 1833, carrying with him a very definite leaning toward letters. Although he went into business, to which he gave five years, partly in Providence and partly in Savannah, Georgia, literature remained his major interest. In 1837 he married Sarah Aborn, daughter of Christopher Rhodes. A year later, when he was twenty-three years old, he was invited by a kinsman who owned the Providence Journal to take the editorship during an interim of a few weeks. He exhibited such a surprising gift and aptitude for the editorial duty that what began as a mere stop-gap became permanent. So skilfully did he guide the fortunes of the paper and so general was the respect and influence it attained under his direction that he was soon seen to be indispensable. Thus it came about that he was in charge of the paper-the most influential journal in the state-in 1842 during the Dorr Rebellion, one of the crises in the modern history of the old commonwealth. During that time of turbulence and disorder, the newspaper office became the center and rallying-point of the conservative interests of the state and its editor rose to a position of exceptional authority. To Anthony the paper owed not only its political power but very largely also its excellent literary style. Examples of his skill in verse are the mock heroic poems, "The Dorriad" and "The Chepachet Campaign," satirizing Dorr and his partizans, which appeared in the Journal in 1843 (republished in The Dorr War, by Arthur M. Mowry, 1901). Throughout his life and even up to within a week or two of his death he continued to exercise a guiding influence over the Journal, writing paragraphs and articles which were marked by urbanity, charm, and a shrewd knowledge of men and affairs.

Naturally enough then, when in 1849 a conservative candidate was sought for the governorship, Anthony was named and elected governor of the state, was reelected in 1850 and was urged to run again in 1851, but declined. His administration as governor fulfilled the expectations of his friends and gave him a reputation both for talent and sagacity in the conduct of public affairs. It was, therefore, a matter of course that when he was nominated in 1858 for the Senate he was elected with little opposition. The atmosphere of the Senate was particularly congenial to Anthony's tastes and abilities. His personal charm and dignity, his knowledge of affairs, his acquaintance with public men, his natural ease and kindliness of manner, all fitted him to fill his part in the upper chamber with distinction and success. There he was chosen president pro tempore on many occasions, in 1869, 1870, 1871, and for the last time in 1884, when he declined to serve on the score of ill health. It was no wonder that he was returned by his loyal state time after time until he had become the "Father of the Senate"; he was still a member when he died, full of honors and greatly admired both by his associates and his constituents.

Anthony was one of the type of senators whose services lie rather in the exercise of judgment and practical wisdom than in any definite contribution either to law or practise. He was a member, however, of important committees: Claims, Naval Affairs, Mines and Mining, Post Office and Post Roads, and finally that of Public Printing, on which he served for more than twenty-two years and there labored to reduce the extravagance and waste, to restrict public printing to the legitimate demands of the various government departments, and to make the Congressional Record a faithful transcript of congressional proceedings. In these endeavors he was only partly successful; they were such desirable ends, however, that they have been pursued, and some of them attained, by others. Similarly as a member of the Committee on Naval Affairs, a post which he filled from 1863 to 1884, he exerted always a sound and moderating influence. He was conservative by constitution: he voted for the impeachment of Johnson, was a steadfast supporter of a protective tariff, and was no less firm in support of a sound currency. He brought to the Senate the character and attainments of a gentleman, a profound and sympathetic knowledge of the state he represented, and an urbanity and courtesy which made him a valued associate in the upper chamber.

[Henry Bowen Anthony, A Memorial (1885); George Frisbie Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903), Volume II; letters and papers of Justin S. Morrill.]

W.B.P.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume I, pp. 81-82;

ANTHONY, Henry Bowen, statesman, born of Quaker parents, in Coventry, Rhode Island, 1 April, 1815; died in Providence, 2 Sept., 1884. He was descended in a direct line from John Anthony, who came from England about 1640 and settled on the island of Rhode Island. He was graduated at Brown University in 1833, and devoted himself to literary pursuits. He became editor of the Providence "Journal" in 1838, and in 1840 was admitted into partnership, the paper being published under the name of Knowles, Vose & Anthony till the death of Mr. Vose in 1848, when it was continued under the name of Knowles & Anthony till 1 January, 1863, when it became Knowles, Anthony & Danielson.  Mr. .Anthony gave himself up to his newspaper with all the energy and enthusiasm of his nature. No amount of work staggered him; early and late he was in his office, and for many years he had around him a brilliant circle of young men. He early developed poetical taste, and there are several pieces of merit that bear his name. His mind was quick and accurate, and he had a wonderful memory; and his editorial labors contributed largely to the growth of the art of journalism in New England. He had many offers to go to other cities and take charge of newspapers, but declined them all. In 1837 he married Sally Rhodes (daughter of the late Christopher Rhodes, of Pawtuxet), who died in 1854. In 1849, and again in 1850, he was elected governor of Rhode Island. .As a whig at the first election he had a majority of 1,556; at the second, fewer than 1,000 votes were cast against him. He declined a third election, and gave himself once more entirely to his editorial work. This continued till 1859, when he was elected, as a republican, to the U. S. senate, where he remained by reelections till his death. During his service in the senate he still contributed largely to his paper. Three times he was elected president protem. of the senate—in March, 1863, in March, 1871, and in January, 1884; but the last time his failing health prevented him from accepting. He was exceedingly popular in Washington, and often spoken of as "the handsome senator." He served on many important committees, and was twice the chairman of the committee on printing, his practical knowledge of that subject enabling him to introduce many reforms in the government printing. He was at different times a member of the committees on claims, on naval affairs, on mines and mining, and on post-offices and post-roads. On the trial of President Johnson he voted for impeachment. He was not a frequent or brilliant speaker in the senate, but always talked to the point, and commanded attention. He shone more as a writer than as a speaker. His memorial and historical addresses were models of composition. .A volume of these addresses, printed privately in 1875, contains a tribute to Stephen .A. Douglas, delivered 9 July. 1861; one to John R. Thompson, 4 Dec., 1862; one to William P. Fessenden, 14 Dec., 1869; and three different addresses on Charles Sumner-the first on the announcement of his death in the senate; the second when Mr. Anthony, as one of the committee appointed by the senate, gave up the body of Mr. Sumner to the governor of Massachusetts; and the third when Mr. Boutwell presented in the senate resolutions of respect for Mr. Sumner's memory. Mr. Anthony also spoke in the senate on the death of William .A. Buckingham, and on 21 January, 1876, delivered a short address on the death of Henry Wilson, vice-president of the United States. When the statues of General Greene and Roger Williams were presented to congress by the state of Rhode Island, Mr. Anthony made the addresses, and he also made a short address at the presentation of the statues of Trumbull and Sherman. One of his best efforts was .when he introduced the bill providing for repairing and protecting the monument erected in Newport, Rhode Island, to the memory of the chevalier de Tiernay, commander of the French naval forces sent out in 1780 to aid the American revolution. Mr. Anthony had a warm and affectionate nature, genial manner, a commanding figure, and was a perfect specimen of a man. In his last days, with manly courage, he calmly waited for the end. As soon as his death was known, Gov. Bourn and Mayor Doyle issued proclamations to that effect, and called upon the people to attend the funeral, which took place from the first Congregational church in Providence on Saturday, 6 Sept. It was the largest funeral ever known in Rhode Island. Mr. Anthony bequeathed a portion of his library, known as the "Harris Collection of American Poetry," to Brown university. It consists of about 6,000 volumes, mostly small books, and many of them exceedingly rare. It was begun half a century ago by the late Albert G. Greene, continued by Caleb Fiske Harris, and, after his death, completed by his kinsman, the late senator. The Rev. Dr. J. C. Stockbridge, a member of the board of trustees of the university, is preparing an annotated catalogue of the collection. (Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume I, pp. 81-82)


ANTHONY, Susan Brownell, 1820-1906, American Anti-Slavery Society, reformer, abolitionist, orator, leader of the female suffrage movement, radical egalitarian, temperance movement leader, founded Women’s National Loyal League with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1863 to fight for cause of abolition, co-founded American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in 1866 to fight for universal suffrage. 

(Anthony, 1954; Barry, 1988; Harper, 1899; Harper, 1998; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 169-170, 291, 465, 519; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 318-321; Harper, Ida Husted, 1899, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony; Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1885, Our Famous Women).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 318-321:

ANTHONY, SUSAN BROWNELL (February 15, 1820-March 13, 1906), reformer, was a descendant of John Anthony, Jr., who came to America from Hampstead, England, in 1634. She was born in Adams, Massachusetts, where her well-to-do Quaker father was a pioneer cotton manufacturer. The Anthony family had produced strong-minded women, not afraid to face the public, before Susan's day. Her father's mother had been given an exalted place on the high seat in the meeting, and his sister, Hannah, had been a Quaker preacher. Susan grew up in an atmosphere of independence and moral zeal. Daniel Anthony had married Lucy Read, passionately fond of music and dancing, in defiance of the meeting. Much to the annoyance of his patrons, he discontinued the sale of liquor at the store he conducted in conjunction with his mill. He permitted none but Quaker preachers to smoke or drink in his home; was so opposed to slavery that he tried to get cotton for his mills which had not been produced by slave labor; encouraged his daughters to be self-supporting, ignoring the criticism of his neighbors; and finally was "read out of meeting" for permitting the young people of the town to dance on the top floor of his house, instead of over the tavern, though his own children were allowed the role of spectators only. His remark when told that the men would not come to the "raising" of tenement houses he had decided to build, unless he furnished them with gin, had in it the same grim determination which his iron-willed daughter later displayed: "Then the houses will not be raised."

Susan was a precocious child, learning to read and write at the age of three, endowed with an unusual memory, and eager for knowledge. When she was six years old, the family moved to Battensville, New York. Here she attended the district school and later a school which her father established in his home for his own children and those of his neighbors. This training, supplemented by a year at Deborah Moulson's boarding-school at Hamilton, near Philadelphia, qualified her for good positions in the teaching profession, the best and last of which, head of the Female Department of Canajorarie Academy, she held from 1846 to 1849.

Her early letters reveal a straight-laced, prudish young woman, serious-minded, with very rigid moral standards, and prone to criticize her elders with more than the ordinary assurance of conceited youth. She writes to her uncle, rebuking him for drinking ale and wine at yearly meeting; and after commenting sharply upon President Van Buren's patronage of the theatre, and revelings in the tents of luxury and ''all-debasing wine," asks if there can be hope of less dissipation among the people, when one who practises such abominable vices " (in what is called a gentlemanly manner) is suffered to sit at the head of our Government." She was not without admirers of the other sex in those days, but there is no evidence that her passions were ever stirred. She never felt it her mission to be a home-maker. When nearing thirty she was in the family of a cousin when the latter gave birth to a child, and wrote home rather disgustedly that in her opinion there were some drawbacks to marriage which made a woman quite content to remain single. Later her views of amusements and life in general broadened, and she lost much of her priggishness. It was to reform, however, that she gave her heart, and in its service that she found an outlet for her emotions, pouring into it the devotion, loyalty, and self-sacrifice which most women give to their families.

Interest in the great issues of the day and a growing passion to join in the fight against injustice and vice had made her restless in the narrow confines of the school-room, and by 1850 she was back in the family home, now near Rochester, New York. It had become a rallying-place for reformers and about its table gathered such men as Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, Channing, and Frederick Douglass. Soon she became acquainted with Amelia Bloomer, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton with whom she formed a life-long alliance, which in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties did much to force the woman suffrage movement on to ultimate success. Her first public work was in behalf of temperance. In 1852 she was a delegate to a meeting held by the Sons of Temperance in Albany. Upon arising to speak on a motion, she was informed that "the sisters were not invited there to speak but to listen and learn." As a result of this treatment she and others organized the Woman's State Temperance Society of New York, the first of its kind ever formed. She continued her efforts for temperance in conventions and elsewhere, but all the time meeting violent prejudice against women's participation in public affairs, she became increasingly convinced that only through equal rights could women become effective workers for social betterment. She also attended teachers' conventions, where she demanded for women all the privileges enjoyed by men. She took a radical abolitionist stand, and in 1857-58 campaigned under the banner "No Union with Slaveholders." After the war she was one of the first to advocate negro suffrage. When the Fourteenth Amendment was under discussion, she attempted to have included a provision insuring the franchise to women as well as to male blacks but was unsuccessful. In 1852 with some reluctance she joined her friend Amelia Bloomer and others sti11 wearing the short skirt and Turkish trousers, known as the Bloomer costume. In about a year she abandoned it. "I found it a physical comfort," she said, "but a mental crucifixion. The attention of my audience was fixed upon my clothes instead of my words. I learn ed the lesson then that to be successful a person must attempt but one reform."

Any chronological record of Miss Anthony's life would be one of unending lecture tours and the direction of campaigns in one state after another. In 1868 in association with Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury she published a periodical known as The Revolution, radical and defiant in tone. "We’ve said at all times," Mrs. Stanton declares, "just what we thought, and advertized nothing we did not believe in" (Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1922, I, 215). in 1869 the National Woman Suffrage Association was organized to secure a sixteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution, enfranchising women. Mrs. Stanton was made president and Miss Anthony chairman of the executive committee. Owing to some division in sentiment, the American Woman Suffrage Association was formed the same year, with Henry Ward Beecher as president and Lucy Stone chairman of the executive committee. It worked chiefly to secure suffrage through amendments to state constitutions. In 1890 the two societies were merged under the name National American Woman Suffrage Association and Mrs. Stanton was elected president and Miss Anthony vice-president at large. In 1892 Miss Anthony was elected president and served until 1900, when she retired at the age of eighty.

In 1872, in a plan to test the legality of woman suffrage under the Fourteenth Amendment, she registered with fifteen other women and voted at the November elections in the city of Rochester. Two weeks later she was arrested for having violated the law. Her trial was postponed and she voted again in the city elections the following March. Since the trial of the United States vs. Susan B. Anthony was to be a jury trial, she and her associates spent the weeks and months preceding it in an intensive lecture campaign aimed to educate the voters from among whom the jury would have to be selected. She was most ably defended at the trial by Henry R. Selden and John Van Voorhis. At its conclusion Judge Ward Hunt delivered a written opinion, written before the trial had taken place, which directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty. In the face of Miss Anthony's counsels' objections to this questionable procedure, Judge Hunt refused to allow the jury to be polled and discharged them without permitting them to consult together. He then imposed a fine of $100 on Miss Anthony. She told him she would never pay a dollar of the penalty and she never did. Courts and laws meant nothing to her, if they conflicted with what she thought was right. She "would ignore all law to help the slave," she once declared, and "ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman."

Throughout the many years of Miss Anthony's strenuous career she encountered opposition of almost every kind. She met hisses and clamor, rotten eggs and vegetables, press comments that were vile and all but obscene, but sustained by an unshakable confidence in the justice of her cause, she never wavered, and before her death she was rewarded with respect and honor rarely bestowed upon woman, and had the satisfaction of seeing equal suffrage granted in four states, and a measure of suffrage granted in others. At international congresses of women in London and Berlin (1899 and 1904), her appearance called forth demonstrations of exceptional regard.

When she was about thirty-five she was described by a newspaper reporter as having "pleasing rather than pretty features, decidedly expressive countenance, rich brown hair very effectively and not at all elaborately arranged, neither too tall nor too short, too plump nor too thin-in brief one of those juste milieu persons, the perfection of common sense physically exhibited." In her later years her face was lined, angular, and somewhat austere, but lighted with the spiritual beauty which life-long devotion to high purposes often imparts. She was of the militant type, and being engaged in a de sperate fight, she not infrequently displayed some of the less pleasant characteristics which such warfare is likely to produce in a soldier. She had amazing physical vigor, was aggressive and bold. She spoke her mind with great frankness, arid occasionally used strong epithets, but no stronger than those hurled at her. There was little of the conciliatory or diplomatic in her disposition. As is often the case with those who are obsessed with one idea, she showed little appreciation for the complexity of social and personal problems, and had difficulty in being altogether fair to points of view different from her own. These, however, were the faults of the qualities which gave her power, and she ranks high among the notable array of reformers, male and female, of her day. She died in Rochester, New York, one month after reaching her eighty-sixth year, leaving her small fortune of $10,000 for the cause to which she had given her life.

[Material for this sketch has been found in Ida H. Harper's three-volume work, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (volumes I, II, 1899; Volume III, 1908). These volumes contain much newspaper and mag. comment, giving a wide range of editorial opinion on her work and personality. See also M. A. De Wolfe Howe, Causes and Their Champions (1926); Don C. Seitz, Uncommon America (1925); Sherwood Eddy and Kirby Page, Makers of Freedom (1926); United States vs. Susan B. Anthony, in Blatchford, Reports of Cases in the Circuit Court, XI, 200-12. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More (1898), contains two chapters on Miss Anthony. With Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Matilda Gage, Miss Anthony prepared a History of Woman Suffrage, 3 volumes (1881-87), and in 1900, in conjunction with Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, she prepared a fourth Volume, which closed the century.]

H. E. S.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 82;

ANTHONY, Susan Brownell, reformer, born in South Adams, Massachusetts, 15 February, 1820. Daniel Anthony, her father, a cotton manufacturer, was a liberal Quaker, who educated his daughters with the idea of self-support, and employed skilful teachers in his own house. After completing her education at a Friends' boarding-school in Philadelphia, she taught in New York state from 1835 to 1850. Her father removed in 1826 to Washington county, New York., and in 1846 settled at Rochester. Miss Anthony first spoke in public in 1847, and from that time took part in the temperance movement, organizing societies and lecturing. In 1851 she called a temperance convention in Albany, after being refused admission to a previous convention on account of her sex. In 1852 the Woman's New York State Temperance Society was organized. Through her exertions, and those of Mrs. E. C. Stanton, women came to be admitted to educational and other conventions with the right to speak, vote, and serve on committees. About 1857 she became prominent among the agitators for the abolition of slavery. In 1858 she made a report, in a teachers' convention at Troy, in favor of the co-education of the sexes. Her energies have been chiefly directed to securing equal civil rights for women. In 1854-'55 she held conventions in each county of New York in the cause of female suffrage, and since then she has addressed annual appeals and petitions to the legislature. She was active in securing the passage of the act of the New York legislature of 1860, giving to married women the possession of their earnings, the guardianship of their children, etc. During the war she devoted herself to the women's loyal league, which petitioned congress in favor of the 13th amendment. In 1860 she started a petition in favor of leaving out the word “male” in the 14th amendment, and worked with the national woman suffrage association to induce congress to secure to her sex, the right of voting. In 1867 she went to Kansas with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone, and there obtained 9,000 votes in favor of woman suffrage. In 1868, with the cooperation of Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, and with the assistance of George F. Train, she began, in New York city, the publication of a weekly paper called “The Revolutionist,” devoted to the emancipation of women. In 1872 Miss Anthony cast ballots at the state and congressional election in Rochester, in order to test the application of the 14th and 15th amendments of the U. S. constitution. She was indicted for illegal voting, and was fined by Justice Hunt, but, in accordance with her defiant declaration, never paid the penalty. Between 1870 and 1880 she lectured in all the northern and several of the southern states more than one hundred times a year. In 1881 she wrote, with the assistance of her co-editors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, “The History of Woman Suffrage” in two volumes. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 82.


APLIN, William, Providence, Rhode Island, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-1842


APPLETON, General James, 1786-1862, temperance reformer, abolitionist leader, soldier, clergyman.  Leader of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 301, 405n12; Wiley, 1886; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York: Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 82; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, p. 327)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, p. 327 

APPLETON, JAMES (February 14, 1785-August 25, 1862), reformer, was one of the first to propose state prohibition as a remedy for intemperance. He was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a descendant of Samuel Appleton, who came there from England in 1635. His father also bore the name Samuel. His mother, Mary, was the daughter of Reverend Timothy White of Haverhill, Massachusetts. He had only ordinary educational advantages, but possessed business ability and a gift for public speaking. Removing to Gloucester, Massachusetts, he engaged in the jewelry business and also kept a public house. Here, November 19, 1807 (Vital Records of Gloucester, Massachusetts; November 15, according to Waters's "Genealogy of the Ipswich Descendants of Samuel Appleton," in Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society, XV), he married Sarah, daughter of Reverend Daniel and Hannah Bowers Fuller, by whom he had ten children. Though a Federalist in politics, as soon as the government had committed itself to war with England in 1812 he volunteered for service in the field. As lieutenant-colonel of the Gloucester regiment, " he twice, at the engagements of Sandy Bay and of Gallup's Folly, in 1814, repelled attacks of the British fleet under Sir George Colyer upon the city and forts of Gloucester, for which service he was borne as of the same rank upon the rolls of the Regular Army of the United States. He subsequently was promoted Colonel and Brigadier- General of the First Brigade, Second Division, of the Massachusetts Line" (The Diary of the Revd. Daniel Fuller, ed. by D. F. Appleton, 1894, pp. 5, 6). He represented Gloucester in the General Court in 1813 and 1814. In 1832 he prepared and presented to that body a petition asking for a law prohibiting sales of liquor in less quantities than thirty gallons. In reply to opposition, he wrote three letters, which were published in the Salem Gazette during February 1832. This pioneer attempt to secure state prohibition failed, and the following year he left Massachusetts for Portland, Maine. In 1836 he was elected a member of the legislature of that state and the following year he was chairman of a special committee appointed to consider the license system. Its report, which was written by him, was, according to Neal Dow [q.v.], "the first official document in the history of Maine in which prohibition is suggested as the true method of dealing with the liquor traffic" (Reminiscences, 1898, p. 243). In 1838 he was chairman of a similar committee which presented a bill in favor of prohibition and provided for the submission of the matter to popular vote. In the legislature of 1839 he was again chairman of the committee on license laws and sought, without success, to secure the passage of a prohibitory law.

His interest was not confined to temperance reform, however; he was also an ardent antislavery advocate. Among the tracts published by the New England Anti-Slavery Tract Association is one (No. 3) written by him on the Missouri Compromise. In 1842, 1843, and 1844 he was the candidate of the Liberty party for governor of Maine. In his later years he returned to Ipswich and lived on the ancestral farm, but continued his interest in public affairs. He was active in his support of war measures during 1861, but died without seeing the cause for which he had labored victorious. His portrait shows clear cut features, a high forehead, thick, waving hair, keen but kindly eyes with the suggestion of the dreamer in them, and a mouth and jaw indicative of grim determination. He is described as belonging "to the class of men known as fanatics. From business he turned to politics that he might encourage legislation to remedy a number of social ills. ... He indorsed Birney's views on slavery, advocated generous and systematic relief of the pauper and championed the cause of popular education. But his real hobby was temperance" (J. A. Krout, The Origins of Prohibition, 1925).

[Origin of the Maine Law and of Prohibitory Legislation, with a brief memoir of James Appleton, pub. by the National Temp. Society, New York, 1886-this contains the letters pub. in the Salem Gazette; John J. Babson, History of the Town of Gloucester (1860); Austin Willey, History of the Anti-Slavery Cause in State and Nation (1886); John G. Woolley and Wm. E. Johnson, Temperance Progress of the Century (1903); D. L. Colvin, Prohibition in the U. S. (1926).]

H. E. S.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 82.

APPLETON, James, temperance reformer, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, 14 February, 1786; died there, 25 August, 1862. When a young man he was elected to the legislature of his native state, and during the war with Great Britain he served as a colonel of Massachusetts militia, and after the close of the war was made a brigadier-general. During his subsequent residence at Portland, Maine, he was elected to the legislature in 1836-'37, but he returned finally to his native town, where he died. By his speeches and publications he exercised great influence upon public sentiment in favor of abolition and total abstinence. In his report to the Maine legislature in 1837 he was the first to expound the principle embodied in the Maine law. See his “Life,” by S. H. Gay. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 82.


ARCHER, Samuel, 1771-1839?, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, merchant, importer.  Philadelphia auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 39)


ARCHIBALD, James, Lawrence, Kansas, abolitionist.  Father of abolitionist Julia A. Holmes.  Active in the Underground Railroad.


ARMAT, Thomas (Armatt), abolitionist leader, Committee of Twenty-Four/Committee of Guardians, founding member, Electing Committee, Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1787 

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 92, 102; Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 129; Nathan, 1991)
 

ARMSTRONG, General Samuel Chapman, 1839-1893, American Missionary Association (AMA).

(Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 73, 166, 506, 507)


ARNOLD, Isaac Newton, 1815-1884, lawyer, historian, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1860-1864, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Republican.  Introduced anti-slavery bill in Congress.  Served as an officer in the Union Army.  Active in Free Soil movement of 1848. Protested Fugitive Slave Law, October 1850. Outspoken opponent of slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, p. 96; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 368-369; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 368-369:

ARNOLD, ISAAC NEWTON (November 30, 1815- April 24, 1884), lawyer, congressman, historian, was born at Hartwick, Otsego County, New York. He was the son of Dr. George Washington Arnold and his wife, Sophia M. Arnold, both born in Rhode Island. His grandfather was Thomas Arnold, a soldier of the Revolution. Isaac was educated at local schools. Thrown on his own resources at fifteen he taught school and studied law in the offices of Richard Cooper and Judge E. B. Morehouse at Cooperstown. In 1835 he was admitted to the bar; after a year's practise he came to Chicago in 1836, the year before its incorporation as a city (Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1884). Here he formed a law partnership with Mahlon D. Ogden, also a New Yorker, which lasted till 1847 (A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, I, 435-36). His legal practice, both criminal and civil, was large and important. In 1841 he was concerned in the case of Bronson vs. Kinzie decided by the United States Supreme Court (1 Howard, 3n) in accord with his contention that the state stay law (allowing relief from foreclosure if land did not bring two-thirds its appraised value at auction) was unconstitutional (Illinois State Historical Society Journal, Volume VII, no. 2, p. 25). As a Democratic politician he opposed repudiation of the state's indebtedness in 1842; he was one of the persons among whom is to be shared the credit for the plan that finally extricated the state from debt. He served in the General Assembly, 1842-45, where he was chairman of the house committee on finance. He was presidential elector for Polk in 1844.

Arnold took an active part in the Free-Soil movement of 1848, going as a delegate to the national and state conventions. He was one of the Chicago committee appointed to draw resolutions of protest against the Fugitive Slave Law in October, 1850. Seymour Currey, Chicago: Its History and Its Builders, 1912, I, 415). He was elected to the General Assembly in 1856 as a Republican. In 1860 he was elected to Congress and at once assumed a position of prominence. In December 1861, as chairman of the committee on defense of lakes and rivers, he pressed a measure for enlarging the Illinois and Michigan Canal to permit the passage of warships from the Mississippi to the Lakes. In this connection he was active in securing a National Canal Convention at Chicago in 1863. In January 1865 his measure finally passed the House but failed in the Senate (Arthur C. Cole, Era of the Civil War, 1919, pp, 354-56). In his second term he was chairman of the roads and canals committee (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, 1 Session, p. 18). His record continued to be one of out-spoken hostility to slavery. On March 24, 1862, he introduced a bill to prohibit slavery in every place subject to national authority, which became a law June 19, 1862 (Ibid., 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 1340; App., p. 364). He made an able speech in support of the second confiscation act, May 23, 1862 (Ibid., 37 Congress, 2 Session, App., p. 182). On February 15, 1864, he moved the amendment abolishing Slavery in the United States (Ibid., 38 Congress, 1 Session, p. 659). He served as auditor of the treasury for the Post Office Department, 1865-66.

As his political career ended, his literary career began. In 1866 he published The History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery. In 1880 he published a Life of Benedict Arnold. At his death in 1884 he was on the point of finishing his Life of Abraham Lincoln. This is the best known of his historical works. Although frankly eulogistic, it was for some time the best biography available, and has of course to-day the value of a source. Arnold's literary style was clear, simple, and enjoyable. Compared with the standards of his time, his historical workmanship is generally competent. Arnold was one of the founders of the Chicago Historical Society and had procured its charter when a member of the General Assembly in 1857 (Currey, III, 218). He delivered the address dedicating its building, November 19, 1868, and on December 19, 1876, he was elected its president. A series of papers given by him before the Society has been published by it. He was twice married: first, to Catherine E. Dorrance of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, who died October 30, 1839, leaving one child; and second, to her sister, Harriet Augusta Dorrance, by whom he had nine children.

[In addition to the references given above, something is to be gleaned from Arnold's reminiscent addresses: Abraham Lincoln, paper read before the Royal Historical Society, London, June 16, 1881(Chicago, 1881); Addresses before Chicago Historical Society, November 19, 1868 (1877); W. B. Ogden; and Early Days in Chicago, paper read before Chicago Historical Society, December 20, 1881 (1882); Recollections of the Early Chicago and Illinois Bar, lecture before Chicago Bar Ass., June 10, 1880; Reminiscences of Lincoln and of Congress during the Rebellion, lecture before New York Genealogy and Biography Society, April 15, 1882; The Layman's Faith, paper read before the Chicago Philosophical Society, December 10, 1883. The Memorial Address by E. B. Washburne for the Chicago Historical Society, 1889, has to be used with caution due to Washburne's consistent inaccuracy. There is a good but brief sketch by John M. Palmer, in The Bench and Bar of Illinois, 1889, Volume I.]

T. C. P.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. p. 96;

ARNOLD, Isaac Newton, lawyer, born in Hartwick, Otsego county, New York., 30 November, 1815; died in Chicago, 24 April, 1884. His father, Dr. George W. Arnold, was a native of Rhode Island, whence he removed to western New York in 1800. After attending the district and select schools, Isaac Arnold was thrown on his own resources at the age of fifteen. For several years he taught school a part of each year, earning enough to study law, and at the age of twenty was admitted to the bar. In 1836 he removed to Chicago, where he spent the rest of his life, and was prominent as a lawyer and in politics. He was elected city clerk of Chicago in 1837, and, beginning in 1843, served several terms in the legislature. The state was then heavily in debt, and Mr. Arnold became the acknowledged champion of those who were opposed to repudiation. In 1844 he was a presidential elector, and in 1860 was elected to congress as a republican, serving two terms. At the battle of Bull Run he acted as volunteer aide to Colonel Hunter, and did good service in caring for the wounded. While in congress he was chairman of the committee on the defences and fortifications of the great lakes and rivers, and afterward chairman of the committee on manufactures, serving also as member of the committee on roads and canals. He voted for the bill abolishing slavery in the district of Columbia, and in March, 1862, he introduced a bill prohibiting slavery in every place under national control. This bill was passed on 19 June, 1862, after much resistance, and on 15 February, 1864, Mr. Arnold introduced in the house of representatives a resolution, which was passed, declaring that the constitution of the United States should be so amended as to abolish slavery. His ablest speech in congress was on the confiscation bill, and was made 2 May, 1862. In 1865 President Johnson appointed him sixth auditor to the U. S. treasury. Mr. Arnold was an admirable public speaker, and delivered addresses before various literary societies, both at home and abroad. Ha had been intimate with Abraham Lincoln for many years before Mr. Lincoln's election to the presidency, and in 1866 he published a biography of him (new ed., rewritten and enlarged, Chicago, 1885). This was followed in 1879 by a “Life of Benedict Arnold,” which, while acknowledging the enormity of Arnold's treason, vindicates and praises him in other respects. The author claimed no relationship with the subject of his work. His life of Lincoln is valuable for the clearness with which it shows the historical relations of the president to the great events of his administration; and the author's death is said to have been caused, in part, by his persistent labor in completing his last revision of this work. Mr. Arnold was for many years president of the Chicago historical society, and Hon. E. B. Washburne delivered an address on his life before the society, 21 October, 1884 (Chicago, 1884). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 96.


ARTHUR, William, Hinesburgh, Vermont, abolitionist, manager, 1833-1836, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

(Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)


ASHBY, William, Newburyport, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1849-1850; 1852-1860


ASHLEY, James Mitchell, 1824-1896, Ohio, Underground Railroad activist. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Adamant opponent of slavery.  Member, Free Soil Party, 1848.  Joined Republican Party in 1854.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 339; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 110; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 389-390; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 389-390:

ASHLEY, JAMES MITCHELL (November 14, 1824-September 16, 1896), congressman, counted ancestors among the early English settlers of Virginia- the name of Captain John Ashley appearing in the Virginia Charter of 1609. For nearly two centuries the descendants of Captain Ashley resided in and near Norfolk. One branch of the family drifted to the frontier of Pennsylvania, settling near Pittsburgh in the early years of the nineteenth century. James Mitchell, the oldest of several children of John C. and Mary Kilpatrick Ashley, was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania; shortly thereafter the family removed to Portsmouth, Ohio. Both his father and grandfather were itinerant ministers of the church founded by Alexander Campbell. He had no schooling, his early education being acquired at home, chiefly under the guidance of his mother. From his ninth to his fourteenth year he frequently accompanied his father, who preached in a circuit extending through the border counties of Kentucky and western Virginia. Here the boy glimpsed something of the system of slavery, and early came to detest it. At the age of sixteen, rebelling against the austere regulations established by his father for the government of his household, he ran away from home and secured employment as a cabin boy and later as a clerk upon an Ohio river steamboat. A still more deep-seated abhorrence of slavery was acquired through his experiences on the southern rivers. Time and again he saw negroes, with safe-conducts of passage, sold back into slavery; the cruel treatment of slaves on board; and the utter disregard of their persons all through the country. Abandoning his work on the river, Ashley wandered through a number of southern states, visiting, among other places, the Hermitage, an event which he subsequently asserted made a profound impression upon him. While in Virginia, his expressions in opposition to slavery were so violent that he was told to leave the state.

Shortly after his return to Ohio, Ashley entered the printing office of the Scioto Valley Republican (1841), and subsequently was employed in various printing offices until he became editor of the Democrat in Portsmouth, Ohio (1848). During his experience as an editor he studied law with Charles O. Tracy, under whom he prosecuted his studies until he was admitted to the bar (1849), shortly after which he relinquished his connection with the Democrat. The ensuing two years were passed in Ports mouth in the work of boat construction. In 1851 he was married to Emma J. Smith of Kentucky, and in the same year removed to Toledo, where he engaged for a few years in the. wholesale drug business.

He was by this time keenly interested in the political issues of the day. Hitherto a Democrat, his intense antagonism to slavery swept him into the Free-Soil party (1848) and shortly thereafter into the Republican party (1854). He assisted in the formation of the latter in the Toledo district, and was a delegate to the Republican National Convention at which John C. Fremont was nominated for the presidency (1856). Two years later he was himself nominated as the Republican candidate for Congress from his district and was elected. To this position he was consecutively reelected in 1860, 1862, 1864, and 1866. Among the more important measures introduced or advocated in the House by Ashley was that of minority representation, a bill being reported by him looking to the introduction of that principle in the territorial governments-his speech in support of his bill being the first on that subject made in Congress. During the extra session of July 1861 he prepared the first measure for the reconstruction of the southern states presented to Congress, and as chairman of the Committee on Territories, reported it to the House (March 12, 1862). The bill was tabled by a vote of 65 to 56, and the subject was not again revived at that session, but the ideas contained in the bill and the line of policy it outlined were embodied in the reconstruction measures finally adopted and carried into effect. In connection with Lot M. Morrill of Maine, Ashley drew up and had charge of the bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia (April 11, 1862). He introduced the first proposition to amend the Constitution of the United States, so as to abolish slavery (December 14, 1863), but the measure was at first defeated in the House. On a reconsideration Ashley succeeded in converting twenty-four border and northern Democrats and secured the passage of the measure (January 31, 1865). He considered this the greatest achievement of his life.

It was on the initiative of Ashley that the move for the impeachment of President Johnson was begun (January 7, 1867). Like many others of the extreme radicals, he dropped from political life after the trial and acquittal of the President. He was defeated in the ensuing fall election and left Congress March 3, 1869. He was appointed by President Grant territorial governor of Montana, but was removed within a year on account of his sharp criticisms of the President's policies. The final act of his political career was his active participation in the Liberal Republican convention of 1872 and his support of Greeley for the presidency in the ensuing campaign. Ashley's political principles were not formed by logical mental processes, but by sentiment aroused by personal experiences. Puritan in habit, suspicious, uncharitable of opposition and somewhat vain, he was a born radical. His personal courage, his hatred of oppression, and his love of liberty drew him into the emancipation cause-first for the negro and then, as he believed, by his warfare on Johnson, for the whole American people.

After his political career was over, he became interested in the possibility of a railroad extending from Toledo across to the Michigan Peninsula which would furnish an outlet for about 300 miles of country. He purchased valuable terminals at Toledo entirely on credit and proceeded to build the road north to Lake Michigan, which became the Toledo, Ann Arbor & Northern Michigan Railroad. He was its president from 1877 to 1893. This work illustrates perhaps better than any other the characteristic feature of his life, his pertinacity.

[Orations and Speeches by J. M. Ashley of Ohio (1894), ed. by Benjamin W. Arnett arid published by the Afro-American League of Tennessee, is the chief source of information. The Congressional Globe and the files of the Toledo Blade are indispensable sources for the period of Ashley's pol. career. His connection with reconstruction is detailed in "An Ohio Congressman in Reconstruction," a manuscript thesis prepared by his grand-daughter, Margaret Ashley Paddock, at Columbia University James G. Blaine's Twenty Years of Congress (1884) contains numerous estimates of Ashley's services from the viewpoint of a partisan Republican. Ashley's lib., containing his collection of private papers, was destroyed by fire during his lifetime.]

C. E. C.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 110;

ASHLEY, James Monroe, congressman, born near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 14 November, 1824. His education was acquired while a clerk on boats on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Later he worked in printing-offices, and became editor of the “Dispatch,” and afterward of the “Democrat,” at Portsmouth, Ohio. He then studied law, and was admitted to the bar of Ohio in 1849, but never practised. Subsequently he settled in Toledo, where he became interested in the wholesale drug business. He was elected to congress as a republican in 1859, and was reelected four times, serving continuously from 5 December, 1859, till 3 March, 1869. He was for four terms chairman of the committee on territories, and it was under his supervision that the territories of Arizona, Idaho, and Montana were organized. He was nominated for the 41st congress, but was defeated, and in 1869 was appointed governor of Montana. In 1866 he was a delegate to the loyalist convention held in Philadelphia. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 110.


ASHMUN, George, 1870-1823, Massachusetts, statesman, lawyer, Congressman. 

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 111:

ASHMUN, George, statesman, born in Blandford, Massachusetts, 25 December, 1804; died in Springfield, Massachusetts, 17 July, 1870. He was graduated at Yale in 1823, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1828 at Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1833, 1835, 1836, and 1841 he was elected a member of the lower branch of the Massachusetts legislature, and during the last term he was speaker of the house. He was a state senator in '38-'9. He was elected to congress in 1845, and served continuously until 1851, being a member of the committees on the judiciary, Indian affairs, and rules. He was a great admirer of Daniel Webster, and although he did not follow the latter in his abandonment of the Wilmot proviso, defended him in the ensuing quarrels; his replies to Charles J. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, and Charles Allen, of Massachusetts, when they assailed Webster with personal and political bitterness, were among the strongest efforts of his career in congress. Subsequent to his retirement from political life he devoted his attention to the practice of his profession. In 1860 he was president of the Chicago convention that nominated Lincoln for president. It is said to have been through his influence that in 1861 Senator Douglas, of Illinois, was won over to the support of the administration, and the results of a subsequent interview at the White house between Lincoln, Douglas, and Ashmun, were of great importance to the country. In 1866 he was chosen a delegate to the national union convention, held in Philadelphia, but he took no part in its deliberations. He was also for some time a director of the Union Pacific railroad. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I.


ASHMUN, Jehudi, 1794-1828, Washington, DC, educator, editor, missionary.  Published, The African Intelligencer, a paper for the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 111; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, p. 394; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 73-74, 94-95, 101, 150-162). 

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 111;

ASHMUN, Jehudi, missionary, born in Champlain, New York, in April, 1794; died  in Boston, Massachusetts, 25 August, 1828. He was graduated at the university of Vermont in 1816, taught for a short time in the Maine charity school, prepared for the Congregational ministry, and became a professor in the Bangor theological seminary. Removing to the District of Columbia, he united with the Protestant Episcopal church and became editor of the “Theological Repertory,” a monthly magazine published in the interest of that church. His true mission was inaugurated when he became agent of the colonization society, and took charge of a reënforcement for the colony at Liberia, on the western coast of Africa. He sailed 19 June, 1822, and found the colony in a wretched state of disorder and demoralization, and apparently on the point of extinction through incursions of the neighboring savages. With extraordinary energy and ability he undertook the task of reorganization. In November he was attacked by a force of savages, whose numbers he estimated at 800. With only 35 men and boys to help him, he repelled the attack, which was renewed by still greater numbers a few days later, with a like result. He displayed remarkable personal valor throughout these encounters, and when, six years later, his health compelled him to leave Africa, he had established a comparatively prosperous colony 1,200 strong. He died almost immediately after his arrival in the United States. He was author of “Memoirs of Samuel Bacon” (Washington, 1822), and of many contributions to the “African Repository.” His life was written by R. R. Gurley (New York, 1839). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


ASHTON, Henry, colonel, soldier.  Manager and Vice President of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 208)


ATKINSON, Edward, 1827-1905, industrial entrepreneur, economist, abolitionist, activist.  Opposed slavery as a supporter of the Free Soil Party.  Also a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which aided fugitive slaves.  Atkinson also supported John Brown’s efforts by supplying him rifles and ammunition for his raid on the US arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859.  Opposed Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt’s imperialist ambitions in the Philippines and in Cuba.  After 1898, became a full-time supporter of the American Anti-imperialist League. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1900; Pease & Pease, 1972)

Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1900, Volume I, p. 114;

ATKINSON, Edward, economist, born in Brookline, Massachusetts, 10 February, 1827. His education was obtained principally at private schools, and his reputation has been made by the numerous pamphlets and papers that he has contributed to current literature on economic topics. The subjects treated embrace such general topics as banking, competition, cotton, free trade, mechanical arts, and protection. The most important of his addresses are “Banking,” delivered at Saratoga in 1880 before the American Bankers' Association; “Insufficiency of Economic Legislation,” delivered before the American Social Science Association; “What makes the Rate of Wages,” before the British Association for the Advancement of Science; address to the chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics at their convention in Boston in 1885; vice-presidential address on the “Application of Science to the Production and Consumption of Food,” before the American association for the advancement of science, in 1885; and “Prevention of Loss by Fire,” before the millers of the west, in 1885. His pamphlets and books include the following: “Cheap Cotton by Free Labor” (Boston, 1861); “The Collection of Revenue” (1866); “Argument for the Conditional Reform of the Legal-Tender Act” (1874); “Our National Domain” (1879); “Labor and Capital-Allies, not Enemies” (New York, 1880); “The Fire Engineer, the Architect, and the Underwriter” (Boston, 1880); “The Railroads of the United States” (1880); “Cotton Manufacturers of the United States” (1880); “Addresses at Atlanta, Georgia, on the International Exposition” (New York, 1881); “What is a Bank” (1881); “Right Methods of Preventing Fires in Mills” (Boston, 1881); “The Railway and the Farmer” (New York, 1881); “The Influence of Boston Capital upon Manufactures,” in “Memorial History of Boston” (Boston, 1882); and “The Distribution of Products” (New York, 1885). In 1886 he began the preparation of a series of monographs on economic questions for periodical publication. Through his efforts was established the Boston manufacturers' mutual fire insurance company, an association consisting of a number of manufacturers who, for their mutual protection, adopted rules and regulations for the economical and judicious management of their plants. He has invented an improved cooking-stove, called the “Aladdin Cooker.” Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 114.  


ATKINSON, Elizabeth, abolitionist, Rochester Female Anti-Slavery Society (RFASS), Rochester, New York

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 26)


ATKINSON, George, Mullica Hills, New Jersey, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1848-52, Vice-President, 1850-54


ATKINSON, John, New Jersey, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1842-48


ATKINSON, William, Petersburg, Virginia, Resident Agent for the American Colonization Society.  Worked with Secretary Gurley. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 109-179)


ATLEE, Dr. Edwin A., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker. Vice president, 1833-1836,  and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Free Produce Society, Pennsylvania, abolitionist. 

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 118, 140; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)


AVERY, Courtland, abolitionist, agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 185)


AYCRIGG, John B., Paramus, New Jersey, American Colonization Society, Director, 1839-1840. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)


Ayres, Eli, Dr., Baltimore, Maryland.  Agent of the American Colonization Society.  Went to Africa on its second expedition to establish a colony there. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 8, 11, 18, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 51, 54; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 62-68 passim, 85, 86, 87, 90-91, 111)


AYERS, N. S., New York, American Abolition Society

(Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855)



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

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.