Bab-Bal: Babbit through Ballou

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.


BABBIT, W. D., Minnesota, American Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1857-59

Babcock, James Francis, journalist, born in Connecticut in 1809; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 18 June, 1874. He began newspaper work at an early age, and in 1830 became editor of the New Haven " Palladium," which soon began to issue a daily edition and which he conducted for thirty-one years. He controlled the nominations of the Whig Party for many years, and, though hostile to the Free-Soil Party at its inception, he finally gave it a hearty welcome in 1854. He retained his prestige with the Republican Party for some years, took an active part in furthering the national cause during the war, and, shortly after his resignation as editor of the " Palladium," was appointed, by President Lincoln, collector of the port of New Haven. He retained that office under President Johnson, whose policy he supported; and, after the rupture between the president and the Republicans, Mr. Babcock acted with the Democratic Party, and, after an angry and excited contest, was nominated by them for Congress, but was defeated by the Republican nominee. He was elected by the Democrats to the state legislature in 1873. The legislature of 1874 elected him judge of the Police Court of New Haven.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Volume I, p. 125.


BACON, Joseph N., Newton, Massachusetts, Church Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1861-64


BACON, Reverend Leonard 1802-1881, clergyman, newspaper editor, author, abolitionist leader.  Bacon edited an antislavery newspaper that supported the Free Soil movement. Original supporter of the American Colonization Society in New England.  Editor of the Christian Spectator, 1826-1838.  He later edited the Journal of Freedom.  Abraham Lincoln read and was influenced by Bacon’s writing on Colonization.  Aided the Amistad captives during their trial.  Bacon, with Lyman Beecher and William Fiske, founded the American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race, which was supported by abolitionist Arthur Tappan.  In 1843, helped establish The New Englander, where he wrote many anti-slavery articles.   In 1848 Leonard Bacon  was one of the founders and the senior editor of the Independent, which asserted as a motto, "We stand for free soil.” 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 129-130; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 77-79, 119-120, 126, 127, 130-131, 134, 161, 204, 205, 231)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1,

BACON, LEONARD (February 19, 1802-December 24, 1881), Congregational clergyman, was born at Detroit, Michigan, the son of Reverend David Bacon [q.v.] and Alice (Parks) Bacon. In his sixth year the family removed to Tallmadge, Ohio, and one of the boy's first memories was of a school exhibition in the neighboring town of Hudson in which he and John Brown, later of Harper's Ferry fame, conducted a dialogue. At the age of ten, after his missionary father's defeat and poverty-stricken return to Connecticut, the boy was put under the care of an uncle, whose name he bore, in Hartford. So well was he trained at the Hartford Grammar School that at fifteen he entered the sophomore class of Yale College. Although maintaining a good rank, he fell below the expectations of his classmates, and, at the end of the course (1820), one of them, Theodore D. Woolsey, reproved him because "he had not studied enough and was in danger of hurting himself by superficial reading." This warning and a maturing sense of responsibility so influenced his habits in Andover Theological Seminary, which he entered in the autumn of 1820, that upon graduation he was assigned the principal address. On September 28, 1824, he was ordained as an evangelist by the Hartford North Consociation; it being his intention to go as a missionary to the Western frontier. The next day brought a letter from the ecclesiastical society of the First Church of New Haven, asking him to supply their vacant pulpit. After preaching fourteen sermons he was called by the society with a vote of 68 to 20 to become its minister at a salary of $1,000. He was installed over this noted church on March 9, 1825, when he was twenty-three years of age. The young man was rather appalled by the weight of his responsibilities. In the pews before him sat Noah Webster, the lexicographer, James Hillhouse, senator, Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, and many of the faculty of the college. The congregation was accustomed to a high order of ministerial ability. His immediate predecessor was Nathaniel W. Taylor, whose sermons were an intellectual event; before him, Moses Stuart, distinguished for scholarship and effective speech, had been the pastor. Evidently Leonard Bacon did not at first fulfil the hopes of his parish, for after some months a committee waited upon him, intimating that his sermons were not worthy of the high place he held. His answer was, "Gentlemen, they shall be made worthy." With the years he grew in power and gained hold upon the affections of his people. They were proud of his unusual influence in the city, of the commanding position he occupied in Congregational councils, and of the reputation which extended beyond the boundaries of the denomination. He was the sole and active pastor of the First Church for forty-one years, and pastor emeritus until his death. When it became known that he was leaving the active ministry the corporation of Yale offered him a chair in the Divinity School, and he was acting professor of revealed theology from 1866 to 1871, when he became lecturer on church polity and American church history, holding this position until his death in his eightieth year. He was twice married: in July 1825, to Lucy Johnson of Johnstown, New York, and in June 1847, to Catherine E. Terry of Hartford, Connecticut. Fourteen children were born to him.

Bacon was not primarily a great preacher. Although his sermons were always solid and dignified, they could be on ordinary Sabbaths very dull. But no occasion of unusual significance found him unequal to his task. As a theologian he was in sympathy with the system of thought known as the "New Haven School," yet he held his convictions in a spirit of abundant charity. His style in writing was the clear expression of a practical understanding, glowing with moral earnestness. At times it was made graceful by phrases of rare felicity. A gift of genuine poetic sentiment found expression in several hymns used in the churches of his order. The one beginning

"O God, beneath Thy guiding hand,"

written in 1838 for the second centennial of New Haven and of his church, sprang into immediate popularity and has secured a permanent place in American hymnology.

A natural controversialist, he was never so completely awake and self-possessed as in public debate with no moment available for preparation. Yet he fought as a champion, not as a gladiator. He engaged in no warfare which did not engage his conscience. "He inherited in large measure," wrote a friend, "the old Puritan zeal for making things straight in this crooked world, for compelling magistrates to rule justly, and for beating down the upholders of demoralizing institutions and customs." Yet he was a controversialist who sought to quell controversy. Two theological battles convulsed the Congregational churches of Connecticut during the early years of his ministry. The first was the famous Taylor-Tyler dispute on certain doctrines concerning man's freedom of choice. After the conflict had become so bitter that the followers of Dr. Tyler founded a new theological seminary at East Windsor, since removed to Hartford, Bacon wrote an Appeal to the Congregational Minister of Connecticut against a Division (1840), in which he showed that the two warring factions agreed on twenty-six points; as these more than covered the essential tenets of the Christian religion, he urged that, although the differences might be of importance to the science of theology, they afforded no occasion for brethren to renounce each other. The next pronounced disquiet grew out of the revolutionary teachings of Horace Bushnell [q.v.]. In 1847 Bushnell published his Christian Nurture in which he rejected the prevalent view of the necessity of conscious conversion and advanced the opinion that a child in a Christian household should "grow up a Christian," be trained in the Christian faith, and at the proper time be received into the church without experiencing a dramatic conversion. This was followed in 1849 by a still more unsettling book entitled God in Christ, in which was advanced what has since become known as the "moral influence" theory of the Atonement, in opposition to the prevailing substitutionary or governmental explanation. Bushnell, fiercely attacked, was defended by the Hartford Central Association. So intense was the feeling that fifty-one ministers petitioned the General Association of the state to exclude the Hartford Association from fellowship. Bacon, though not holding Bushnell's views, was influential in passing an ambiguous or mollifying resolution which prevented a division. If he was regarded as the most formidable polemical writer and speaker in the American Congregationalism of his day, he was equally distinguished for the soundness of his judgment. During the Beecher Tilton controversy, a council of churches called by Beecher's opponents in 1874 chose Bacon as moderator, while a later council held in Plymouth Church in 1876, the largest advisory council of its kind ever convened, also elected him moderator.

Perhaps Bacon's chief service to his denomination was his work in arousing Congregationalism to self-consciousness and confidence in its polity. In his early ministry the churches of this order were in a slough of self-distrust. A form of semi-presbyterianism was common among them, and a "Plan of Union," entered into with Presbyterianism, hindered Congregational polity from entering into the developing West. Bacon, as one of the editors of the Christian Spectator from 1826 to 1838, as one of the founders and editor for a score of years of the New Englander, by his speeches at conventions and his influence in national missionary societies, and by his historical studies, did more than any other to awaken the churches of this faith to the value of their heritage. In 1839 he published Thirteen Historical Bacon Discourses, but his most elaborate and permanent work, The Genesis of the New England Churches (1874), was the fruit of his old age. In this he told the story of the beginnings of Congregationalism in England, its establishment at Plymouth, Massachusetts, and its struggle until success was assured. It is worthy of note that this successor of John Davenport was much more in sympathy with the principles and polity of the Pilgrims than with those of the Puritans.

Bacon's most conspicuous claim for remembrance rests on his leadership in the anti-slavery cause. In his student days at Andover he wrote a report On the Black Population of the United States (1823) which was extensively circulated in New England, and its severest passages quoted even in Richmond. On going to New Haven he organized a society for the improvement of the colored people of that city. With Garrison and the extreme abolitionists he had no sympathy, and he received from them malignant attacks. In 1846 he published a volume entitled Slavery Discussed in Occasional Essays. This fell into the hands of a comparatively unknown lawyer in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. A statement in the preface made a profound impression on the future emancipator: "If that form of government, that system of social order is not wrong,-if those laws of the southern states, by virtue of which slavery exists there and is what it is, are not wrong, nothing is wrong." The sentiment reappeared in Lincoln's famous declaration, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." In 1848 the name of Leonard Bacon appears as one of the founders and the senior editor of the Independent, which asserted as a motto, "We stand for free soil.” Bitter opposition resulted from his anti-slavery work, even in his own church, but looking back on that epoch, he said:  "I make no complaint-all reproaches, all insults endured in a conflict with so gigantic a wickedness against God and man, are to be received and remembered, not as injuries but a s honors." During the Civi1 War he was a steadfast supporter of the administration.

In appearance Bacon was of slight and sinewy frame, with a massive head, bushy hair and beard, a face suggestive of thought and intense energy, blue-gray eyes, lips mobile for wit, yet set in firmness, the whole figure denoting a man of vital force expressing itself in intellectual strength.

[Williston Walker, Ten New England Leaders(1901); Leonard Bacon, Pastor of the First Church in New Haven (1882); S. A. W. Duffield, English Hymns (1866); Congregation Year Book 1882, pp. 18-21; New Haven Evening Register, December 24, 1881.]

C.A. D-c:

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 129-130:

BACON, Leonard, clergyman, born in Detroit, Mich., 19 February, 1802; died  in New Haven, Connecticut, 24 December, 1881. He was graduated at Yale in 1820, and studied theology at Andover. In March, 1825, he was ordained pastor of the 1st church in New Haven, and continued in this office until his death—fifty-seven years. From 1866, being relieved of the main burden of pastoral work, he occupied the chair of didactic theology in Yale until 1871, and thereafter was lecturer on ecclesiastical polity and American church history. He was a representative of the liberal orthodoxy and historic polity of the ancient New England churches. His life was incessantly occupied in the discussion of questions bearing on the interests of humanity and religion. Probably no subject of serious importance that came into general notice during his long career escaped his earnest and active attention. A public question which absorbed much of his thought after 1823 was that of slavery. His constant position was that of resistance to slavery on the one hand, and of resistance to the extravagances of certain abolitionists on the other; and he thought himself well rewarded for forty years of debate, in which, as he was wont to say of himself, quoting the language of Baxter, that, “where others had had one enemy he had had two,” when he learned that Abraham Lincoln referred to his volume on slavery as the source of his own clear and sober convictions on that subject. He was a strong supporter of the union throughout the civil war, and took active part in the various constitutional, economical, and moral discussions to which it gave rise. He was influential in securing the repeal of the “omnibus clause” in the Connecticut divorce law. In March, 1874, he was moderator of the council that rebuked Henry Ward Beecher's society for irregularly expelling Theodore Tilton, and in February, 1876, of the advisory council called by the Plymouth society. During his later years he was, by general consent, regarded as the foremost man among American Congregationalists. He became known in oral debate, in which he excelled, by his books, and preeminently by his contributions to the periodical press. From 1826 till 1838 he was one of the editors of the “Christian Spectator.” In 1843 he aided in establishing “The New Englander” review, to which he continued to contribute copiously until his death. In that publication appeared many articles from his pen denouncing, on religious and political grounds, the policy of the government in respect to slavery. With Drs. Storrs and Thompson he founded the “Independent” in 1847, and continued with them in the editorship of it for sixteen years. He had great delight in historical studies, especially in the history of the Puritans, both in England and in America. Besides innumerable pamphlets and reviews, He published “Select Works of Richard Baxter,” with a biography (1830); “Manual for Young Church-Members” (1833); “Thirteen Historical Discourses” on the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the 1st church in New Haven (1839); “Views and Reviews; an Appeal against. Division” (1840); “Slavery Discussed in Occasional Essays” (1846); “Christian Self-Culture” (1862); “Four Commemorative Discourses” (1866); “Genesis of the New England Churches” (1874); “Sketch of Reverend David Bacon” (1876); and “Three Civic Orations for New Haven” (1879). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BACON, Samuel, 1782-1820, Sturbridge, Massachusetts, lawyer, clergyman, soldier, editor.  Agent for the American Colonization society.  He later became an employee of the U.S. government. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 132; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 56-63 passim) 

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 132:

BACON, Samuel, clergyman, born in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, 22 July, 1781; died  in Kent, Cape Shilling, Africa, 3 May, 1820. He was graduated at Harvard in 1808, and then studied law, which he subsequently practised in Pennsylvania. For a time he edited the “Worcester Ægis,” and later the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, “Hive,” and then was ordained in the Protestant Episcopal ministry. In 1819 he was appointed by the U. S. government one of three agents to colonize Africa with negroes, under the auspices of the American colonization society. The expedition sailed for Sierra Leone, reaching that port on 9 March, 1820, and a settlement was made at Campelar, on the Sherboro river. Here his two associates died, and he in declining health was removed to Kent, where his last days were spent. See “Memoirs of Reverend Samuel Bacon,” by Jehudi Ashmun (1822).  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BAER, Abraham, Stark County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1835-39


BAILEY, Francis, abolitionist, 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; Nathan, 1991)


BAILEY, Gamaliel, 1807-1859, Maryland, abolitionist leader, journalist, newspaper publisher and editor.  Publisher and editor of National Era (founded 1847), of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.  Co-founded Cincinnati Anti-Slavery Society in 1835.  Corresponding Secretary, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. Assistant and Co-Editor, The Abolitionist newspaper.  Member of the Liberty Party. Publisher of Liberty Party paper, the Philanthropist, in Ohio.  Published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1851-1852.  Published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1851-1852.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 21, 25-26, 28, 30, 34, 52, 55, 67, 148-149, 166, 192, 202, 223, 248; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 163, 223, 264, 301; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 78, 150, 194-195, 245, 252; Harrold, 1995; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 4, 5, 14, 23, 24, 26, 27, 44, 46, 54, 61, 63, 69, 88-89, 91, 103, 106; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 50, 185; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 136; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 496-497; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 1, p. 881; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 496-497:

BAILEY, GAMALIEL (December 3, 1807-June 5, 1859), journalist, anti-slavery agitator, was born at Mount Holly, New Jersey., the son of Reverend Gamaliel Bailey, a Methodist clergyman. Soon after his son's birth, his father removed to Philadelphia, where the boy, after attending private schools, entered the Jefferson Medical College, graduating in 1827. For a few months he taught in a New Jersey country school. Then, suffering in health, he shipped before the mast on a trading vessel bound for China. At Canton so much sickness developed among the sailors that he became temporarily ship's surgeon. On returning to America he opened a physician's office, but was soon installed as editor, in Baltimore, of the Methodist Protestant, the short-lived organ of the sect so styled-an unusual appointment considering that Bailey had then no experience in writing and was not a church-member. This position soon failing him, he departed to St. Louis to join an expedition to Oregon, only to find the venture a fraud. Practically penniless, he walked back to Cincinnati. Here a severe epidemic of cholera broke out soon after his arrival (1831), and through friendly influence he became physician in charge of the "Hospital for Strangers," where by his heroic work he gained favorable introduction to the city. In 1833 he married Margaret Lucy Shands of Virginia. In 1834 occurred the Lane Seminary debates on slavery, which immediately enlisted the interest of Bailey, who was lecturing there on physiology. After due reflection he became an ardent abolitionist and associated himself (1836) with J. G. Birney in editing the Cincinnati Philanthropist, the first anti-slavery organ in the West. A year later Bailey became sole editor and proprietor. The influence of his pen in the ensuing years is evidenced by the fact that his office was thrice mobbed; on one occasion printing outfit and building were entirely destroyed but three weeks later new presses were turning out the Cincinnati Philanthropist as usual-a remarkable accomplishment for that time. The third assault (1843) was suppressed by the police and a reaction in Bailey's favor followed; on the strength of this he launched a daily, the Herald. When the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society decided to publish a national periodical in Washington he was the logical choice for editor-in-chief. Disposing of his Cincinnati journals, he assumed his new duties at the nation's capital in January, 1847, and for twelve years efficiently served the Anti-Slavery cause through the National Era, a weekly journal, of which during the Fremont campaign of 1856 Bailey issued a daily edition at considerable personal sacrifice. In 1848 he again faced a mob, which for three days threatened his printing-plant and even his house, the rioters erroneously assuming his connection with the escape of certain slaves. His conduct at this time was thoroughly characteristic. Unarmed he appeared at the door of his house, and calmly entered on a frank statement of his innocence of the charge preferred and his right as an American citizen to complete freedom of utterance. His angry auditors yielded to his persuasive logic and, as he finished his appeal, dispersed. He was not molested again.

The career of the Era was remarkably successful. Whittier, Theodore Parker, Mrs. Southworth, Grace Greenwood, and particularly Mrs. Stowe, with Uncle Tom's Cabin, were contributors, but the directing mind and will were Bailey's. He exerted a wide moral and political influence for the Anti-Slavery movement, the more so because, besides integrity, good business judgment, and determination, he possessed literary ability and a fair-minded tolerance that compelled the respect even of opponents. He condemned the Know-Nothing movement, though it cost him money and friends.

Physically he was delicate-looking, but possessed a good physique, with well-shaped head, intellectual face, and magnetic manner. Political and social Washington flocked to the gatherings at the Bailey home, where the charm and wit of host, hostess, and guests added friends to their cause. In 1853 his health necessitated a trip to Europe, and in 1859, again ill, he embarked on a second voyage thither. He died at sea but his body was brought back to Washington for burial.

[The Atlantic Monthly, June 1866, XVII, pp. 743-51, contains an anonymous article "A Pioneer Editor," dealing with Bailey's career. A more intimate sketch is "An American Salon," by Grace Greenwood, in the Cosmopolitan, February 1890, VIII, 437-47. The files of the National Era (1847-59) reflect the mind and heart of the man. His obituary appeared in the issue of June 30, 1859, and an account of his funeral in that of July 7, 1859, with a tribute by Whittier entitled "Gamaliel Bailey."]

R.S.B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 136;

BAILEY, Gamaliel, journalist, born in Mount Holly, New Jersey, 3 December, 1807; died  at sea, 5 June, 1859. He studied medicine in Philadelphia, and after obtaining his degree in 1828 sailed as a ship's doctor to China. He began his editorial career in the office of the “Methodist Protestant” in Baltimore, but in 1831 he removed to Cincinnati, where he served as hospital physician during the cholera epidemic. His sympathies being excited on the occasion of the expulsion of a number of students on account of anti-slavery views from Lane seminary, he became an active agitator against slavery, and in 1836 he associated himself with James G. Birney in the conduct of the “Cincinnati Philanthropist,” the earliest anti-slavery newspaper in the west, of which in 1837 he became sole editor. Twice in that year, and again in 1841, the printing-office was sacked by a mob. He issued the paper regularly until after the presidential election of 1844, when he was selected to direct the publication of a new abolitionist organ at Washington. The first number of the “National Era,” published under the auspices of the American and foreign anti-slavery society, appeared 1 January, 1847. In 1848 an angry mob laid siege to the office for three days, and finally separated under the influence of an eloquent harangue by the editor. The “Era,” in which “Uncle Tom's Cabin” originally appeared, ably presented the opinions of the anti-slavery party. Dr. Bailey died while on a voyage to Europe for his health.   Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 136.


BAILEY, John, New Bedford, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1849-50, 52-60-


BAILEY, Joseph, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’, 1888; Congressional Globe; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)


BAILEY, Kiah, Hardwich, Vermont, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1837-39


BAILEY, Wesley, New York, abolitionist leader

(Sorin, 1971)


BAILEY, William S., newspaper editor of the Newport News in Newport, Kentucky.  In the 1850s, his newspaper office was wrecked and his home burned down by angry mobs.  Opposed slavery and said, “The system of slavery enslaves all who labor for an honest living.”


BAIRD, Absalom, 1824-1905, abolitionist leader, Union Soldier, Washington Society, abolitionist.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, p. 504;   Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p.; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 507-508;  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, p. 225;)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 507-508:

BAIRD, ABSALOM (August 20, 1824-June 14, 1905), Union soldier, was born at Washington, Pennsylvania, the son of William and Nancy (Mitchell) Baird. His father was a distinguished member of the Pennsylvania bar and his grandfather, Dr. Absalom Baird, a surgeon in the Revolutionary army. His great-grandfather, Lieut. John Baird, participated in the Forbes expedition against the French and Indians at Fort Duquesne in 1758. Upon graduation from Washington College, Absalom Baird studied law but the threatened rupture between the United States and Mexico induced him to seek admission to the United States Military Academy in 1845, in order to prepare himself for the war that was impending. He was graduated in 1849 and assigned to the artillery. Three years campaigning against the Seminole Indians were succeeded by six years as instructor at West Point and these by duty in Texas, a frontier then distinctly unfriendly.

Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, Baird was appointed captain and assistant adjutant-general, and when McDowell's army marched into Virginia accompanied it as adjutant-general of Tyler's division, participating in the engagement at Blackburn's Ford and in the battle of Bull Run. Returning to the War Department he was promoted, November 12, 1861, to major and assistant inspector-general and during the winter gained an understanding of volunteers that later proved invaluable. When, in the spring of 1862, McClellan's army moved to the Peninsula, Baird forsook his desk for the remainder of the war. As inspector-general and chief of staff, 4th corps, he took an active part in the operations at Yorktown and Williamsburg. For his services he was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, April 28, 1862, and ordered to Kentucky, where he participated with his brigade in the capture of Cumberland Gap in June and later was directed to organize a division in General Gordon Granger's Army of Kentucky. This organization he pushed with restless energy and, in a month, the division moved to central Kentucky, to guard that section against Confederate cavalry raids until January 1863. As part of Rosecrans's army during the eight months following, Baird's division engaged in minor operations near Franklin and Shelbyville, Tennessee. At the request of General George H. Thomas, commanding the 14th corps, Baird was transferred to that corps in August 1863.

At this time, which marks the beginning of his distinguished military service, Baird was in the prime of life, active, energetic, ambitious; a just commander, a strict disciplinarian, and an aggressive fighter. With the 1st division he crossed the Tennessee River and the mountains and gained contact with Bragg's army on September 11. On September 19, the first day of the battle of Chickamauga, his division was heavily engaged and suffered severe losses. On September 20, it was on the left of Thomas's corps and of the Union army. To obtain possession of the roads to Chattanooga, in the rear of the Union army, the Confederates during the forenoon launched three powerful attacks against Baird's division, all of which were repulsed, the last largely through his personal exertions. The fighting continued ceaselessly throughout the afternoon, and when Thomas, at nightfall, retired to Rossville Gap, Baird's division was the last to leave the field, having suffered greater losses than any other division engaged except Brannan's. For his gallantry and steadfast courage Baird was brevetted lieutenant-colonel in the regular army, and both Rosecrans and Thomas recommended his promotion to major- general of volunteers. In the battle of Chattanooga which followed, his division, on November 25, as part of Thomas's corps, stormed Missionary Ridge in superb style. For this he was brevetted colonel in the regular army and again recommended for promotion to major-general by Grant and Thomas. A winter spent in outpost duty and skirmishing with the enemy was followed by participation in Sherman's Atlanta campaign, during which Baird's division was under fire nearly every day from May to August 1864. At the battle of Jonesboro he personally conducted a successful charge by one of his brigades against the enemy's entrenchments. For this he was awarded a medal of honor and for services rendered in the campaign Sherman recommended his promotion to major-general. He accompanied Sherman on his march to Savannah, where he received his brevet as major-general of volunteers, September 1, 1864, and again through the Carolinas until Johnston surrendered.

After the war Baird served as assistant commissioner in the Freedman's Bureau until September 1866, when he was discharged from the volunteer service and reverted to his permanent grade of major and assistant inspector-general. Shortly thereafter he received his brevets as brigadier-general and major-general in the regular army. He was promoted successively lieutenant-colonel and, in September 1885, brigadier-general and inspector-general. About the War Department the impressive dignity of his manner, his long white mustache, and the high beaver hat he favored, made him a notable figure. In 1887 he attended the maneuvers of the French army and received from the French Government the decoration of commander of the Legion of Honor. Retired for age on August 20, 1888, he died near Relay, Maryland., June 14, 1905, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

[Old Files Section, A.G. O.; Official Records, see Index; G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register, Volume II; Files Historical Section, Army War College.]

C. A.B.


BAIRD, Robert, Reverend, 1798-1863, Princeton, New Jersey, clergyman.  Officer, New Jersey auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.  In 1862 he vindicated in London before large audiences the cause of the union against secession with vigorous eloquence.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. ; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 507-508;  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, p. 225; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 55). 

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 142-143;

BAIRD, Robert, clergyman, born in Fayette county, Pennsylvania, 6 October, 1798; died  in Yonkers, New York, 15 March, 1863. He was graduated at Jefferson college, Pennsylvania, in 1818, and taught a year at Bellefont, where he began his career as a newspaper writer. He studied theology at Princeton, 1819-'22, and taught an academy there for five years, preaching occasionally. In 1827 he became agent in New Jersey for the American Bible society, engaged in the distribution of Bibles among the poor, and also labored among the destitute churches of the Presbyterian denomination as an agent of the New Jersey missionary society. In 1829 he became agent for the American Sunday-school union, and travelled extensively for the society. In 1835 he went to Europe, where he remained eight years, devoting himself to the promotion of Protestant Christianity in southern Europe, and subsequently to the advocacy of temperance reform in northern Europe. On the formation of the foreign evangelical society, since merged in the American and foreign Christian union, he became its agent and corresponding secretary. In 1842 he published “A View of Religion in America” in Glasgow. In 1843 he returned home, and for three years engaged in promoting the spread of Protestantism in Europe. In 1846 he visited Europe to attend the world's temperance convention in Stockholm and the meeting of the evangelical alliance in London, and on his return he delivered a series of lectures on the “Continent of Europe.” In 1862 he vindicated in London before large audiences the cause of the union against secession with vigorous eloquence. Among his other published works are a “View of the Valley of the Mississippi” (1832); “History of the Temperance Societies” (1836); “Visit to Northern Europe” (1841); “Protestantism in Italy” (Boston, 1845); “Impressions and Experiences of the West Indies and North America in 1849 (Philadelphia, 1850), revised, with a supplement, in 1855; “History of the Albigenses, Waldenses, and Vaudois.” French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Finnish, and Russian translations were made of the “History of the Temperance Societies,” and French, German, Dutch, and Swedish translations of the “View of Religion in America.” See “Life of the Reverend R. Baird,” by H.M. Baird (New York, 1865). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BAKER, Hilary, abolitionist, officer of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, reorganized April 23, 1787

(Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 124)


BAKER, Samuel, Dr., Maryland, professor.  Manager and charter member of the Maryland State Colonization Society. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, p. 20)


BALCH, Hezekiah, 1741-1810, abolitionist, clergyman, educator.  Co-founder, Tusculum College, originally Greenville College.  Taught abolitionist Evangelicalism in Eastern Tennessee in the 1830s, which became part of the early abolitionist movement in the state. 

(Balch, 1897; Balch, 1907; Sprague, 1857; Temple, 1912)


BALCH, Stephen B., Georgetown, DC, American Colonization Society, Founding officer and Board of Managers, 1816, Manager, 1833-1834. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 26, 28, 30)


BALDWIN, Augustus, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

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


BALDWIN, Ebenezer, Reverend, anti-slavery writer

(Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, p. 107)


BALDWIN, Jesse G., Middletown, Connecticut, abolitionist, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1840-41


BALDWIN, John Denison, 1809-1883, journalist, clergyman, Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1863-1867, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Editor of the anti-slavery journal, Republican in Hartford, Connecticut.  Owner, editor of Free-Soil Charter Oak at Hartford, Connecticut.  In 1852 became editor of the Commonwealth in Boston.  Supported negro causes.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 148-149; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, p. 537; 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, p. 537:

BALDWIN, JOHN DENISON (September 28, 1809-July 8, 1883), journalist, was descended from a Buckinghamshire county family through the emigrant, John Baldwin, who arrived in Stonington, Connecticut, in 1664. Five generations later, at North Stonington, John Denison Baldwin was born, eldest son of Daniel and Hannah (Stanton) Baldwin. Daniel Baldwin was a large land owner, who, suffering reverses, removed, when John was seven, to Chenango County, New York, at that time a wilderness. Here John toiled on the farm until, after another seven years, the family. returned to North Stonington where he was able to attend the village school. At seventeen he was studying at Yale, while supporting himself by public-school teaching. Unable to complete his college course, he began the study of law, then entered Yale Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1834. Ordained in the same year, he became pastor of the Congregational Church at West Woodstock, Connecticut, until 1837. Later he held pastorates at North Branford and North Killingly. As a preacher he is said to have shown sagacity and public spirit. Eager for further education, he studied French, German, and especially archeology. While at North Branford he published The Story of Raymond Hill and Other Poems (1847), which exhibit melancholy beauty and a moral purpose.

From North Killingly he was elected by the Free-Soil party, which he helped to organize in Connecticut, to the legislature, where he sponsored the law establishing the state's first normal school (1850). Reaching the conviction that his services would be more usefully employed in journalism, he abandoned the ministry in 1849 to become owner and editor of the Free-Soil Charter Oak at Hartford. Three years later he removed to Boston, becoming editor of the daily and weekly Commonwealth. Sumner, Henry Wilson, and Theodore Parker were frequent visitors to his office and became life-long friends. In 1859 he embraced the opportunity to purchase, with his sons, the Worcester Spy, which he made one of the leading newspapers of the state. Identifying himself now with the Republican party, he was influential, as a delegate to the convention of 1860, in securing the nomination of Hannibal Hamlin for vice-president. As a party counsellor, Baldwin was always highly valued for his knowledge of men and his political sagacity regarding the effects of measures. He was elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress (1862), and was twice reelected, becoming a member of committees on expenditures, public buildings, and library. He made notable speeches on state sovereignty and treason, on reconstruction, and in defense of the negro. His efforts-unfortunately premature-for international copyright, won gratitude from authors. Of Baldwin's two works Prehistoric Nations (1869) and Ancient America (1872), the first sets forth a now wholly discredited theory of the derivation of Western civilization from the Cushites of Arabia, while the second, a popular presentation of American aboriginal peoples, is rated as among the best books of its class then written. Baldwin later published several volumes on his own ancestry, besides contributing to the Baldwin Genealogy. His most influential work, however, was through the Spy. Here his industry, business capacity, and literary ability had full play and gave the paper wide influence through the state and beyond. Republicans knew it as the "Worcester County Bible," Democrats dubbed it "The Lying Spy." Baldwin's retentive memory afforded wide range of facts, and his direct, forcible, sincere words were always animated by high ideals. A journal's mission, he believed, was the exercise of an influence for right principles and movements; even news was subordinate. Though not a rapid writer, he was a diligent one, making frequent archaeological and kindred contributions to magazines. In later years he largely withdrew from active editorial work on the Spy, enjoying in retirement his family and books. He was married in 1832 to Lemira Hathaway of Dighton, Massachusetts, by whom he had four children, two daughters who died in early life and two sons, John Stanton and Charles Clinton, who survived him and carried on the Spy. He died in Worcester, Massachusetts.

[Sketches of Baldwin's career are given in his own Record of the Descendants of John Baldwin, of Stonington, Connecticut (1880); The Baldwin Genealogy (1881), ed. by C. C. Baldwin; S. E. Staples, Memorial of John Denison Baldwin (1884); Western Reserve Historical Tract 65 (in Volume II); Commemorative Biography Rec. of Tolland and Windham Counties, Connecticut (1903);_ Historical Homes and Institutions and Genealogy and Personal Memoirs of Worcester Co., Massachusetts (1907), ed. by E. B. Crane, Volume I; Charles Nutt, History of Worcester and Its People (1919), Volume IV; extended obituary in the Worcester Daily Spy, July 9, 1883; an unpublished autobiography in the possession of his grandson, Mr. Robert S. Baldwin of Worcester.]

R.S.B.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume I, pp. 148-149;

BALDWIN, John Denison, journalist, born in North Stonington, Connecticut, 28 September, 1809; died  in Worcester, Massachusetts, 8 July, 1883. He supported himself from the age of fourteen, pursued academical, legal, and theological studies in New Haven, and received the honorary degree of master of arts from Yale college. He was licensed to preach in 1833, was pastor of a church in North Branford, Connecticut, for several years, and made a special study of archaeology. He became editor of the “Republican,” an anti-slavery journal, published in Hartford, and subsequently of the “Commonwealth,” published in Boston. From 1859 he owned and edited the “Worcester Spy.” He was elected to congress in 1863, and reelected twice. He published “Raymond Hill,” a collection of poems (Boston, 184 7); “Prehistoric Nations” (New York, 1869, and “Ancient America” (1872). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 148-149.


BALDWIN, John, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS), founded 1775, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

(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, p. 80)


BALDWIN, Mathias William, 1795-1866, abolitionist, American inventor, machinery manufacturer, industrialist.  Founder, Baldwin Locomotive Works.  Founder, Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.  Strong supporter of the abolition movement in the United States. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888; Brown, 1995; Kelly, 1946; Westing, 1966).

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

BALDWIN, MATTHIAS WILLIAM  (November 10, 1795-September 7, 1866), manufacturer and philanthropist, was an important figure in the development of the locomotive in America. He was the youngest of five children born to William Baldwin, a carriage maker in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. The father died when the boy was four years old, the large property which he h ad accumulated was imprudently lost by his executors, and the family was left to enjoy the doubtful. blessings of honorable poverty. Through his mother's efforts, Matthias received a fair schooling, and was then apprenticed to Woolworth Brothers, manufacturing jewelers of Philadelphia, where he eventually became the best workman in their shop. At twenty-four, he set up for himself, but six years later abandoned the jewelry business, deciding that he "could not spend his life making gew-gaws"-especially since the national depression of 1825 made it no longer even financially profitable. He now entered into partnership with one David Mason in a constantly expanding manufacturing business, first producing engravers' and book-makers' tools, next adding hydraulic presses, then copper rolls for printing calico from a steel matrix and forms for new continuous calico color printing; finally in 1827 he constructed a six-horse-power noiseless stationary engine, and the firm began to build engines for sale. At this time, however, Mason became alarmed at these unceasing innovations and withdrew from the business, leaving his more enterprising partner to continue his increasingly successful career alone.

On April 25, 1831, Baldwin exhibited in Peale's Museum a dummy locomotive and two cars, improved from an imported English model and running upon a circular track built for the purpose. He then constructed for the Philadelphia & Germantown Railroad one of the first American locomotives to be actually employed in transportation; he made tools especially designed for the work, and brought his task to completion within six months. The resulting engine, christened "Old Ironsides," was partially of iron and partially of wood, weighed six tons, moved twenty-eight miles an hour, and drew thirty tons. It ran between Philadelphia and Germantown in fair weather-"On rainy days horses will be attached" (advertisement, Paulson's American Daily Advertiser, November 26, 1832). During the next ten years, Baldwin constructed many stationary engines and ten more locomotives, introducing continual improvements; after that time he devoted all his energy to locomotives alone. The business prospered, he moved his headquarters from Minor St. to Broad and Hamilton Sts., and successfully weathered several panics, notably that of 1837-40. In 1854 Matthew Baird [q.v.] bought an interest in the Baldwin works and became a partner, continuing so until Baldwin's death. A temporary boycott in the South shortly before the war, due to Baldwin's activities on behalf of the colored people, was compensated by the number of engines sold to the Government after hostilities began. Over 1,500 locomotives had been built by his company when Baldwin died in 1866. With remarkable persistence, although suffering great pain, he attended to his business until within a few days of his death.

Baldwin's interests, however, were by no means confined exclusively to business. As early as 1824 he had aided in the foundation of Franklin Institute for the betterment of labor. About 1826 he underwent religious conversion, became a Sunday-school superintendent, and for the next thirty-five years conducted a Bible class (Reverend George Duffield, Jr., American Presbyterian, September 27, 1866). In 1827 he married Sarah C. Baldwin (remotely related), by whom he had one son and two daughters. His home life was never extravagant, while he came to devote more than $50,000 a year to charities. In 1835 he founded a school for colored children, and hired the teachers for two years; at about the same time he contributed to the support of the colored evangelist, Pompey Hunt. To the Civil War Christian Commission his company appropriated ten per cent of its yearly income. He donated about $50,000 for seven churches and chapels in Philadelphia. He was for many years county and city prison inspector, attended the state constitutional convention in 1837, and was a member of the legislature in 1854. Fond of music and art, he visited Europe in 1860 to purchase pictures for his beautiful residence in Wissinoming, Frankford, a suburb of Philadelphia. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Horticultural Society, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Music Fund Society. In appearance he was athletic, being an expert archer and enthusiastic horseback rider; the benevolent expression of his face was heightened in later years by his white hair and beard. He practised total abstinence and was reluctant to use the grapes from his country estate even for medicinal wine. His speech was shrewd and concise, his views decided and positive. Doubt was foreign to his nature.

[Memorial of Matthias W. Baldwin (1867) with tributes by Reverend Wolcott Calkins, Reverend Daniel S. Miller, Joseph R. Chandler, and Franklin Peale; records 'of the Franklin Institute, 1832-66, giving detailed accounts of locomotive improvements; address before the American Philosophical Society, December 7, 1866, by Franklin Peale; article by Joseph R, Chandler, North American U. S. Gazette, September 14, 1866; brief account of Baldwin's philanthropies, Reverend Llewellyn Pratt, American Presbyterian, December 22, 1864; press notice of "Old Ironsides," Paulson's American Daily Advertiser, November 24, 1832; portr., World's Work, July 1924.]

F.H.D.
E.S.B.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. p. 149;

BALDWIN, Matthias William, manufacturer, born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, 10 December, 1795; died  in Philadelphia, 7 September, 1866. Having a natural inclination for mechanical contrivances, he was apprenticed at the age of sixteen to a firm of jewellers in Frankford, Pa. On the expiration of his service he became a journeyman, and in 1819 he established his own business. While thus occupied he devised and patented a process for plating with gold, which has since been universally adopted. He then undertook the manufacture of book-binders' tools and calico-printers' rolls, and his factory was the first to render this country independent of foreign supply. About 1828 his attention was directed to the manufacture of steam-engines, and at this time he constructed a five-horse-power engine, which was employed in his own works. The commendations that the new engine received induced him to enter into the manufacture of stationary engines, and his business became extensive and profitable. In the latter part of 1830 he was permitted to see a locomotive which had just been received from England, and after four months' labor he succeeded in producing a beautiful model, which was exhibited in Philadelphia. His first locomotive, called the “Ironsides,” was made for the Philadelphia and Germantown railway, and was placed on the road 23 November, 1832. It was a success, and “Paulson's American Advertiser” of that period contains the following notice: “The locomotive-engine, built by M. W. Baldwin, of this city, will depart daily, when the weather is fair, with a train of passenger-cars. On rainy days horses will be attached.” During the next three years he received orders for nine or ten locomotives, and in 1835 he moved to the corner of Broad and Hamilton streets. His inventions and improvements in the construction of locomotives are very numerous, and among these perhaps the most important was the flexible truck locomotive, patented in August, 1842. His works have acquired a world-wide reputation, and his locomotives have been sent to nearly every foreign country. It is estimated that over 1,500 locomotives left these works completed prior to his death. Mr. Baldwin was a member of the constitutional convention of 1837, and in 1853 of the state legislature. He was also for several years president of the Horticultural Society of Philadelphia. An extended sketch of his life, by the Reverend Wolcott Calkins, has been privately printed. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 149. 


BALDWIN, Roger Sherman, 1793-1863, New Haven, Connecticut, lawyer, jurist, statesman, U.S. Senator.  Lead counsel, with John Quincy Adams, for the slaves of the Amistad ship.  Strong supporter of the Lincoln and the abolition movement in the United States. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 542-543)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 542-543:

BALDWIN, ROGER SHERMAN (January 4, 1793-February 19, 1863), lawyer, senator, governor of Connecticut, was the son of Simeon Baldwin [q.v.] and Rebecca Sherman, daughter of Roger Sherman [q.v.]. He prepared for college first with a teacher in New Canaan, and later at the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, under his cousin, Henry Sherman. Even as a boy he was scholarly and had read Virgil to a considerable extent before he was ten. He entered Yale when fourteen years of age and was graduated in 1811. He studied law in New Haven for a time, probably in his father's office, and then entered the Litchfield Law School. When he finished his course Judge Gould wrote to Judge Simeon Baldwin, "I restore your son, somewhat improved, as I hope and believe. At any rate, no student from our office ever passed a better examination." He was admitted to the bar of Connecticut in 1814 and began practise by himself in New Haven. Politically he rose step by step, being successively member of the common council of New Haven, alderman of New Haven, member of the Connecticut Senate, member of the Connecticut General Assembly, and in 1844 and 1845 governor of Connecticut. In 1847 he was appointed by Governor Bissell to fill the vacancy in the United States Senate caused by the death of Jabez W. Huntington. The following year he was elected by the General Assembly of Connecticut to complete Senator Huntington's unexpired term, which ended in 1851. In 1860 he was one of the electors of the president for the state at large when Lincoln was elected.

In spite of holding high political office, Baldwin's greatest fame was as a lawyer. His name was in every volume of the Connecticut Reports for forty-seven years. He was active in the movement for the abolition of slavery, making speeches on the subject at various times. One of his first cases was a writ of habeas corpus for the release of a negro seized as a fugitive slave, who had escaped from the service of Henry Clay. Perhaps his most noted case was that of the captives of the Amistad. Some negroes captured in Africa were sold to Cubans who started to take them by vessel to Guanaja. They were badly treated and on the second night killed the captain and the cook and attempted to force the Cubans to take them back to Africa. The Cubans managed to bring the boat to the north shore of Long Island, where a government vessel took possession. The negroes were arrested on a charge of murder and piracy. The government vessel libeled the Amistad, her cargo and slaves to recover salvage. The Cubans demanded the return of the slaves. A group of persons interested in abolition took up the defense of the slaves. The case went to the United States Supreme Court. Seth P. Staples, Theodore Sedgwick, and John Quincy Adams were associated with Roger Sherman Baldwin for the defense, which was successful. The decision (United States vs. Libellants of the Amistad, 1841, 15 Peters 518) gave the Africans absolute freedom.

Baldwin was a Whig and helped to organize the Republican party, to which he was loyal but only in so far as he believed in its principles. When he was in the United States Senate he desired reelection. In the General Assembly was a bare Whig majority, but two or three declined to vote for him because they believed his opinions did not exactly accord with certain party principles as they understood them. A written statement from him would have removed the opposition, but this he refused to give, because he did not wish to be in the position of an office-seeker and believed that members of the Senate should not be bound by pledges of any sort. He was not reelected. He was eminent in the Senate at a time when Webster, Clay, Benton, Calhoun, and Seward were members. One of his best speeches was on the compromise measures of 1850, especially the Fugitive Slave Law. Another spirited speech was a reply to the Senator from Virginia who compared the Revolutionary history of Connecticut and Virginia in an offensive manner. His last public service was as a delegate from Connecticut to the National Peace Conference --at Washington in 1861. He was the state's representative on the Resolutions Committee, which was the most important of the committees. In his later life he resumed practise and had important and lucrative cases. He was frequently in the Federal courts and was often asked for written opinions on difficult questions. He has been considered, by many, the ablest lawyer that Connecticut ever produced. Tall and erect, at sixty-nine he still walked with a firm step. Until the last few years of his life he always wore a full-dress suit of black with the occasional substitution of a blue coat with gilt buttons and buff waistcoat. He was married in 1820 to Emily Perkins, by whom he had six sons and three daughters.

[The most complete accounts of Baldwin's life are found in the article by his son, Simeon Eben Baldwin [q.v.], in W. L. Lewis, Great American Lawyers (1908), III,,193, and in W. S. Dutton, An Address at the Funeral of Hon. Roger Sherman Baldwin (1863). Other sketches of his life are in F. B. Dexter, Yale Biographies and Annals, 1805-15, series 6 (1912), p.369; New Haven Journal-Courier, February 21, 1863; Dwight Loomis and J. G. Calhoun, Judicial and Civil History of Connecticut (1875), p. 252; N. C. Osborn, I-fist. of Connecticut in Monographic Form (1925), III, 230. For other information see Catalog of the Officers and Graduates of Yale 1701-1924; New Haven Colony Historical Society Papers, IV; New York Genealogy and Biography Rec., XLII, 43; B. W. Dwight, History of the Descendants of John Dwight of Dedham, Massachusetts (1874), II, uo8; F. B. Perkins, Perkins Family of Connecticut (1860), pp. 3, 40, 79, 80; Chas. C. Baldwin, Baldwin  from 1500 to 1881 (1881), I, 278, 285; Wm. Prescott, Prescott Memorial (1870), pp. 121-23, 172-74; John Quincy Adams, Memoirs, ed. by Chas. Francis Adams (1876), X, 287,358,360, 395, 401,429, 430.

J M.E.M.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 149-150;

BALDWIN, Roger Sherman, jurist, born in New Haven, Connecticut, 4 January, 1793; died  there, 19 February, 1863. He affords an admirable instance of all that is best in the intellectual and moral life of New England. By descent and education he was of genuine Puritan stock. His father, Simeon Baldwin, was descended from one of the original New Haven colonists, and his mother was the daughter of Roger Sherman, a signer of the declaration of independence, both families being from the earliest times identified with the cause of civil and religious liberty. Roger Sherman Baldwin entered Yale at the age of fourteen, and was graduated with high honors in 1811. Beginning his legal studies in his father's office, he finished them in the then famous law school of Judges Reeve and Gould, at Litchfield, Connecticut. By the time that he was ready for admission to the bar, in 1814, he had developed a mastery of the principles of law that was considered very remarkable in so young a man. His habits of concentration, his command of pure and elegant English, the precision and definiteness of his methods, soon brought him into prominence in his profession, and at a comparatively early age he attained distinction at the bar. His preference was for cases involving the great principles of jurisprudence rather than those that depended upon appeals to the feelings of jurymen. Nevertheless, he commanded rare success as a jury lawyer, being gifted with a certain dignified and lofty eloquence that carried conviction and sustained the current belief that he would not undertake the defence of a cause of whose justice he was not personally convinced. One of the most famous cases in which he was engaged was that of the “Amistad captives” (1839), now well-nigh forgotten, but which assumed international importance at the time. A shipload of slaves, bound to Cuba, had gained possession of the vessel. They were encountered adrift on the high seas by an American vessel and brought into New York, where they were cared for. The Spanish authorities, claimed them as the property of Spanish subjects, and the anti-slavery party at the north, then becoming a formidable element in national politics, interested itself in their behalf. The case was first tried in a Connecticut district court, decided against the Spanish claim, and carried to the supreme court of the United States. The venerable John Quincy Adams and Mr. Baldwin were associated as counsel, the latter practically conducting the case. His plea on this occasion showed such a grasp of the legal technicalities involved, that such men as Chancellor Kent rated him with the leading jurists of the time. After serving his own state in assembly and senate (1837-'41), he was elected governor in 1844, and reëlected for the following term. In 1847 he was appointed to fill the unexpired term of Jabez W. Huntington as U. S. senator. He at once took a leading place among the statesmen of the period, was reëlected for a second term, and always advocated the cause of equal rights for all during the heated controversies preceding the outbreak of the civil war. In 1860 he was one of the two electors “at large” for the choice of Mr. Lincoln, and in 1860 was appointed by Governor Buckingham a member of the “peace congress” of 1861, consisting of five delegates from each state, who, it was hoped, would devise a basis of amicable settlement of the differences between north and south. In his opening address, John Tyler, of Virginia, president of the congress, said: “Connecticut is here, and she comes, I doubt not, in the spirit of Roger Sherman, whose name, with our very children, has become a household word, and who was in life the embodiment of that sound, practical sense which befits the great law-giver and constructor of governments.” The labors of the congress came to naught, owing mainly to the precipitancy with which some of the southern states passed ordinances of secession. This was the last public service undertaken by Mr. Baldwin other than the personal assistance which every patriotic citizen lent to his country during the early years of civil war. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BALDWIN, Simeon, Judge, 1761-1851, New Haven, Connecticut.  Member of the American Colonization Society committee in New Haven.  Secretary of the Connecticut Society for the Promotion and Freedom and for the Relief of Persons Holden in Bondage. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 47; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 149; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 86)


BALL, Charles, born 1780, escaped slave, wrote Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, 1837, a pre-Civil War slave narrative.

(Mason, 2006, p. 169; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 185-186, 428, 574-575)


BALL, Lucy, Boston, Massachusetts, leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 199; 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, pp. 45, 56-57, 56n, 57n, 60-61, 63-64n, 263, 280)


BALL, Martha Violet, leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society.

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 199; 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, pp. 45, 56-57n, 60-61, 63-64n, 263, 280)


BALL, Mason, Amherst, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1836-38


BALLARD, Charles, Worcester, Massachusetts, Church Anti-Slavery Society, Executive, Committee, 1859


BALLARD, James, Bennington, Vermont, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1834-35, Manager, 1835-37


BALLOU, Adin, 1803-1890, Universalist and Unitarian, clergyman, reformer, temperance proponent, advocate of pacifism, writer, founder of Hopedale Community, opposed slavery.  President of the New England Non-Resistance Society.  Supporter of abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison.  Anti-slavery lecturer in Pennsylvania and New York, 1846-1848.  Vice President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1838-1840, 1840-1860. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 556-557; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 48-50; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 2, p. 83)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 1, pp. 556-557:

BALLOU, ADIN (April 23, 1803-August 5, 1890), Universalist clergyman, reformer, founder of the Hopedale Community, was descended in the sixth generation from Maturin Ballou, American pioneer of an Anglo-Norman family, who shared with Roger Williams in the proprietorship of Providence Plantations in 1646. He was born at Cumberland, Rhode Island, the son of Ariel and Edilda (Tower) Ballou. Seventh of eight children, the boy received an elementary education in Cumberland and near-by schools and a farmer boy's training in hard work. The first excited an irrepressible eagerness for knowledge, the second developed personal responsibility, faithfulness, and self-reliance. Ariel Ballou disapproved his son's earnest desire to enter Brown University, and at seventeen the boy's schooling ceased; but he remained a life-long student. His religious nature asserted itself when he was twelve, and he joined a church of the "Christian Connection" in Cumberland; when eighteen, following what he believed a supernatural call to the ministry, he announced at a religious service his intention to preach at the village church the following Sunday; this he did so acceptably that it led to similar efforts elsewhere, and to his acceptance into fellowship in September 1821. Soon afterward he published an attack on certain Universalist tenets, but further study brought about a change of views and his expulsion from the Christian Church. The Universalists received him gladly, and during 1823 he preached successively in Mendon, Bellingham, Medway, and Boston. In 1824 he was over the Universalist society in Milford, in 1827 over the Prince St. association in New York, and in 1828 back in Milford again. This was a period when the Universalists, although agreed on the central tenet of universal salvation, were much divided on the question whether there is no further punishment or punishment of a limited duration. Ballou, believing strongly that the interests of morality were imperiled by the denial of all future punishment-in this opposing his more celebrated kinsman, Hosea Ballou, editor of the Universalist Magazine-and feeling that his coreligionists tended to neglect the practical moral problems of this life, decided to withdraw from the denomination. In 1831 he joined with seven other clergymen to form the "Massachusetts Association of Universal Restorationists," whose doctrines he expounded in the Independent Messenger (1831-39). The organization never recruited more than thirty-one ministers and was dissolved in 1841, but Ballou's writings exercised considerable influence on both Universalist and Unitarian thought.

Meanwhile he began to seek a practical outlet for his increasingly radical social views. The outstanding evils of his age, he had come to believe, were war, slavery, and intemperance. The Hopedale Community was his definite protest. This was the first of the Utopian enterprises, such as Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and the Oneida Community, that marked the decade 1840-50. Independently of other movements, Ballou and thirty-one others banded themselves, January 1841, in a joint-stock organization whose object was "to establish an order of human society based on the sublime ideas of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, as taught and illustrated in the Gospel of Jesus Christ" (Hopedale Community, p. 1). The members bound themselves to abstain from murder, hatred, unchastity, use of liquor as a beverage, and all participation in military or civic activities, including the vote. Each pledged himself "through divine assistance, to promote the holiness and happiness of all mankind."

Hopedale Community, so called from its founders' sanguine expectations, began with a capital of $4,000; 250 acres in the town of Milford were purchased (afterward increased to about 600). Despite some untoward circumstances, the Community prospered for a number of years. All sorts of "queer" persons flocked into it; many withdrew when they found their will could not be law; a few were expelled. With Ballou as president the saner minds held the organization within bounds. Farm work, road-making, building, and various industrial enterprises were carried on. The Practical Christian, edited by Ballou, was printed. Religious services were held regularly in the community chapel. A school and a considerable library were established.

In 1852 Ebenezer D. Draper became the second Community president, Ballou desiring to devote himself to the organization of a "Practical Christian Republic" with constituent communities, and to elucidating his principles in Practical Christian Socialism (1854). In 1856 Hopedale's membership h ad reached no and the Community joint-stock property $40,000; but discovery that liabilities exceeded resources caused Ebenezer and George Draper, owning three-fourths of the Community stock, to withdraw this from the enterprise. They invested it instead in the Hopedale Manufacturing Company, attained wealth, and gradually transformed the town from a community of idealists into a modern manufacturing center. The Community lingered on as a moral association until 1868, when it was merged with the Hopedale Parish (Unitarian), of which Ballou remained pastor until 1880. Ballou believed the basic cause of Hopedale Community's failure to be moral rather than financial-a lack of whole souled consecration. The germ of failure lay also in its material ambitions. Individual capacity for industry, after being encouraged, shrank from subjection to community supervision. During the Civil War Ballou maintained his courageous stand of non-resistance. He spent his la ter years in pastoral and voluminous literary labors; a powerful and persuasive speaker, his writings, though vigorous, were heavy.

Ballou married, 1822, Abigail Sayles of Smithfield, Rhode Island, who died at Milford, 1829; in 1830 he married Lucy Hunt of Milford. His daughter Abigail and her husband, W. S. Heywood, were active in Hopedale Community affairs, as was also his promising son, Adin Augustus, until his untimely death at the age of nineteen. Physically, Ballou is reported to have been a man of commanding bodily presence, with large, well-balanced head and radiant face. A statue of him was erected at Hopedale in 1900. Too independent to be a follower, by his aggressive personality, boldness of thought, and confidence in his ow n mission, he was destined to be a leader of separatist movements.

The more important of his works are: Memoir of Adin Augustus Ballou (1853); Practical Christian Socialism (1854); Primitive Christianity and its Corruptions (1870); History of the Town of Milford (1882); An Elaborate History and Genealogy of the Ballous in America (1888); Autobiography (1896) and History of the Hopedale Community (1897), both edited by his son-in-law, W. S. Heywood.

[G. L. Cary, "Adin Ballou and the Hopedale Community," New World, December 1898; L. G. Wilson, " Hopedale and Its Founder," New England Magazine, April 1891; obituaries in the Milford (Massachusetts) Journal August 6, 1890, and in the Boston Journal and Boston Herald, August 6, 1890; In Memoriam, Reverend Adin Ballou, a sermon by C. A. Staples, August 24, 1890 (Boston, 1890); Ballou's correspondence with Tolstoi, Arena, December 1890.]

R. S.B.



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.