Bla-Bol: Blackburn through Bolles

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.


BLACKBURN, Gideon, 1772-1838, Virginia, clergyman, abolitionist.  Strong supporter of the American Colonization Society. Went to Illinois in 1833.  Assisted Elijah P. Lovejoy in organizing Illinois Anti-Slavery Society.  Founded Blackburn College at Carlinville, Illinois. Established school for Cherokee Indians. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 91, 92, 135, 198-199; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 272; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936 Volume 1, Pt. 2, p. 314; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 139).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936 Volume 1, Pt. 2, p. 314:

BLACKBURN, GIDEON (August 27, 1772- August 23, 1838), Presbyterian clergyman, missionary to the Indians, was born in Augusta County; Virginia, the son of Robert Blackburn. In his boyhood his family moved to eastern Tennessee where he attended Martin Academy and studied for the ministry under Dr. Robert Henderson. In 1792 he was licensed to preach by the Abingdon Presbytery and began his ministry by holding services for some soldiers whom he had accompanied on an expedition against the Indians. Soon he established the New Providence Church and was given charge of another ten miles distant. On October 3, 1793, he married Grizzel Blackburn, a distant cousin, by whom he had eleven children. His most notable work was the establishment of a mission to the Cherokee Indians. When he was unable to interest his own presbytery in the subject, he took his plea to the General Assembly, which, in 1803, voted $200 for the support of the work. Blackburn collected additional funds on the outside and having secured the approval of President Adams and the Secretary of War, opened a school for the Cherokee children in 1804. A teacher was employed, and Blackburn had general supervision in addition to his regular church services. This work he continued until 1810, by which time the hardships of the frontier had so undermined his health and the demands of the mission work so strained his finances that he felt compelled to resign. During the next twenty-three years he continued his teaching and preaching, was president of Harpeth Academy, and of Centre College, served as pastor of churches in Louisville and Versailles, Kentucky, and did much itinerant preaching. He is described as "the best type of backwoods eloquence” a commanding figure, above average height, with strongly marked features and flowing black locks.

Because of his success as a money raiser he was invited, in 1833, to go to Illinois by some persons interested in education in that region, and in 1835 was given the task of raising funds for Illinois College. Later he conceived a unique plan for raising an endowment for a school at Carlinville, Illinois. The government was placing large tracts of land on the market and Blackburn offered to enter lands for friends of the cause at the rate of two dollars an acre. After paying the $1.25 per acre to the government, twenty-five cents was to go to him for his services and fifty cents for lands for the school. In this way he raised funds to enter a little over 16,656 acres for the institution. In the following year, 1838, he died. The institution he planned for was not opened until 1857. Beginning as a primary school, it later became Blackburn Theological Seminary and, when the theological courses were discontinued, Blackburn College.

[Sketches in W. B. Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit, Volume IV (1858), and E. H. Gillett's History of the Presbyt. Church iii the U.S. (1864). In the Panoplist, June, July, and December 1807 and February, March, May, and December 1808, are letters from Blackburn describing his mission Blackburn work. For endowment plan see Blackburn College Bulletin, 1915.]

B.R.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 272:

BLACKBURN, Gideon, clergyman, born in Augusta county, Virginia, 27 August, 1772; died  in Carlinville, Illinois, 23 August, 1838. He was educated at Martin academy, Washington county, Tennessee, licensed to preach by Abingdon presbytery in 1795, and settled many years at Marysville, Tennessee. He was minister of Franklin, Tennessee, in 1811-'3, and of Louisville, Kentucky, in 1823-'7. He passed the last forty years of his life in the western states, in preaching, organizing churches, and, from 1803 to 1809, during a part of each year, in his mission to the Cherokees, establishing a school at Hywassee. He established a school in Tennessee in 1806, and from 1827 till 1830 was president of Center college, Kentucky. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 272.


BLACKBURN, William Jasper, born 1820.  Editor, Blackburn’s Homer Iliad, in Homer, Louisiana.  Published editorials against the assault in the Senate against Charles Sumner, who was opposed to slavery.  Published pro-Union newspaper during the Civil War. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 272-273)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 272-273:

BLACKBURN, William Jasper, editor, born in Randolph county, Arkansas, 24 July, 1820. He was early left an orphan, and received his education in public schools, also studying during the years 1838-'9 in Jackson College, Columbia, Tennessee; after which he became a printer, and worked in various offices in Arkansas and Louisiana. Later he settled in Homer, La., where he established “Blackburn's Homer Iliad,” in which he editorially condemned the assault on Charles Sumner by Preston S. Brooks, being the only southern editor that denounced that action. Although born in a slave state, he was always opposed to slavery, and his office was twice mobbed therefor. The “Iliad” was the only loyal paper published during the civil war in the gulf states. He was a member of the constitutional convention of Louisiana convened in 1867, and was elected as a republican to congress, serving from 17 July, 1868, till 3 March, 1869. From 1872 till 1876 he was a member of the Louisiana state senate. Subsequently he removed to Little Rock, Arkansas, and became owner and editor of the Little Rock “Republican.” He received the nomination of the republicans for the state senate, but failed to secure his seat, though he claimed to have been elected by 2,000 majority. Mr. Blackburn is known as an occasional writer of verse. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 272-273.


BLACKFORD, Mary Berkeley Minor, Fredericksburg, Virginia.  Active supporter of the American Colonization Society, along with her husband, newspaper publisher William Blackford.  Freed some of her slaves for colonization to Africa. 

(Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2005, pp. 39, 51, 60, 101; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 110)


BLACKFORD, William Maxwell, Fredericksburg, Virginia, newspaper publisher.  Owner of the newspaper, Arena, which endorsed  and sponsored the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 109-157, 179)


BLACKSTONE, Dr., Athens, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1838-39


BLACKWELL, Antoinette Louisa, 1825-1921, abolitionist, reformer.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 271; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 319-320; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 82-83)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 319-320:

BLACKWELL, ANTOINETTE LOUISA BROWN (May 20, 1825-November 5, 1921), reformer, was born in Henrietta, Monroe County, New York, the daughter of Joseph and Abby (Morse) Brown, both of New England descent. At the age of nine she joined the Congregational Church and soon was speaking publicly in meetings; at sixteen she was teaching school; later she attended Oberlin College, completing the literary course in 1847 and the theological course in 1850. Refused a ministerial license, because of her sex, she preached wherever churches, of any creed, would receive her until in 1852 she became the regular pastor of the Congregational Church in South Butler, New York. She had already joined the movements for abolition, prohibition, and woman's rights-three reforms which, however illogically, usually drew the same supporters. Her efforts at first were devoted mainly to harmonizing these reforms with the teachings of the Bible, but theological difficulties grew upon her until she resigned her pastorate in 1854 and, eventually, became a Unitarian. In the summer of 1853 she came into national prominence when although a regularly authorized delegate to the World's Temperance Convention in New York City she was refused permission to speak; her "unwomanly conduct" in striving quietly for three hours to be heard, amid a tumultous group of angry, shouting men, was severely criticized by many newspapers, although Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune succinctly characterized the convention's achievements toward temperance as consisting in " First Day-Crowding a woman off the platform; Second Day-Gagging her; Third Day-Voting that she shall stay gagged" (New York Daily Tribune, September 9, 1853).

Miss Brown was married on January 24, 1856, to Dr. Samuel C. Blackwell, brother of Elizabeth Blackwell and Henry Brown Blackwell [qq.v.]. She became the mother of six children. During the early years of the Civil War she was prominent in the movement for the immediate emancipation of the slaves and until the end of her life remained active in the causes of woman suffrage and prohibition. A very effective speaker, she habitually devoted her eloquence to the presentation and support of particular resolutions rather than to mere general inspiration. Although far from unemotional, her appeal was mainly to the reason, and to considerations of practise. The same qualities appeared in her numerous books: Shadows of Our Social System (1855); Studies in General Science (1869); A Market Woman (1870); The Island Neighbors (1871); The Sexes Throughout Nature (1875); The Physical Basis of Immortality (1876); The Philosophy of Individuality (1893); Sea Drift; or Tribute to the Ocean (1902); The Making of the Universe (1914); The Social Side of Mind and Action (1915).

[Who's Who in America, 1899-1921; Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, A Woman of the Century (1893), later included in their Portraits and Biographies of Prominent American Women (1901); History of Woman Suffrage, ed. by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, I (1881), 119, 152, 186, 449 (portrait), 473, 524, 553, 624, 723, 862; II (1882), 723,862; obituary in Newark Evening News, November 5, 1921.]

E. S. B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 274:

BLACKWELL, Antoinette Louisa Brown, author and minister, born in Henrietta, Monroe county, New York, 20 May, 1825. When sixteen years old she taught school, and then, after attending Henrietta academy, went to Oberlin, where she was graduated in 1847. She spent her vacations in teaching and in the study of Hebrew and Greek. In the winter of 1844 she taught in the academy at Rochester, New York, where she delivered her first lecture. After graduation she entered upon a course of theological study at Oberlin, and completed it in 1850. When she asked for the license to preach, usually given to the theological students, it was refused; but she preached frequently on her own responsibility. The four years following her graduation were spent in study, preaching, and in lecturing on literary subjects, temperance, and the abolition of slavery. At the woman's rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850, Miss Brown was one of the speakers, and she has since been prominent in the movement. In 1853 she was regularly ordained pastor of the orthodox Congregational church of South Butler and Savannah, Wayne county, New York, but gave up her charge in 1854 on account of ill health and doctrinal doubts. In 1855 she investigated the character and causes of vice in New York city, and published, in a New York journal, a series of sketches entitled “Shadows of our Social System.” In 1856 she married Samuel C. Blackwell, brother of Elizabeth Blackwell. They have six children, and now live in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Mrs. Blackwell still preaches occasionally, and has become a Unitarian. She is the author of “Studies in General Science” (New York, 1869); “The Market Woman”: “The Island Neighbors” (1871); “The Sexes Throughout Nature” (1875); and “The Physical Basis of Immortality” (1876). She has in preparation (1886) “The Many and the One.” Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 274.


BLACKWELL, Elizabeth, 1821-1910, Bristol, England, abolitionist, physician.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 320-321:

BLACKWELL, ELIZABETH (February 3, 1821- May 31, 1910), the first woman doctor of medicine of modern times, was born in Bristol, England, one of nine children of Samuel Blackwell, a sugar refiner, and his wife, Hannah Lane. Henry Brown Blackwell [q.v.] was her younger brother; another brother, Samuel, was to become the husband of Antoinette Louisa (Brown) Blackwell [q.v.]. At the age of twelve (August 1832), she sailed with her family in the merchant ship Cosmos from Bristol to New York, where the family remained for six years and then moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. Elizabeth had attended local schools at Bristol and New York, but her formal education was cut short by the death of her father (1838) a few months after reaching Ohio. This calamity left the family unprovided for, and consequently when twenty-one (1842) Elizabeth began to teach school, her first position being in Henderson, Kentucky, but her ardent antipathy to slavery caused her after a year to seek another post. In 1844 she first thought of studying medicine, and during the next year, while. supporting herself by teaching at Asheville, North Carolina, she began to read medical works, and in 1847 continued her medical studies under the guidance of Dr. Samuel H. Dickson, professor at Charleston Medical College. The problem of securing entry into a medical school proved difficult; she was refused at Philadelphia and New York, but in October 1847 the Geneva Medical School of Western New York accepted her application. Through tact and dignity she succeeded in overcoming the prejudice of undergraduates and instructors, but in the world at large she was regarded "as either mad or bad." She received her M.D. in 1849, which led to much comment in the public press both in America and abroad (see Punch, XVI, 226, 1849). After graduation she sailed immediately for England and was courteously received, but she regarded the opportunities on the Continent as more favorable and accordingly went to Paris, where, on June 30, 1849, she entered La Maternite and had six months of obstetrical experience in that institution. A purulent ophthalmia contracted at the end of her service there caused her to lose the sight of one eye, which put an end to the surgical aspirations which she had previously entertained. She then studied at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London and was permitted to practise in all branches of medicine except, ironically enough, gynecology and pediatrics. At this time she received congratulations from Florence Nightingale, Lady Byron, the Herschels, Faraday, and others of note. She returned to New York in 1850 to practise, and, on encountering prejudice, opened a private dispensary of her own which later (May 1857) became incorporated into the New York Infirmary and College for Women, a hospital entirely conducted by women. In this venture she was joined by her sister, Emily, who had also become qualified in medicine, and by Marie Zakrzewska, and they were supported by the Quakers of New York. During the Civil War, Dr. Blackwell was active in the organization of a unit of field nurses which did much to win sympathy for the feministic movement in medicine. In 1869 she decided to settle permanently in England where, as in America, she aimed to secure free and equal entrance of women into the medical profession. Later (1875) she became professor of gynecology in the London School of Medicine for Women which had just been established, and continued her activities there until 1907 when she became enfeebled following an accident in Scotland. She had taken a house in Hastings where she died, May 31, 1910. She was buried at Kilmun, Argyllshire. An excellent portrait of her hangs in the London School of Medicine for Women.

Dr. Blackwell was an active writer and her works had a wide circulation. The Laws of Life (New York, 1852) was reissued in London in 1859 and again in 1871. She was active in public health, and several of her popular Lectures" How to Keep a Household in Health" (1870), The Laws of Life with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls (1852), The Religion of Health (1871), and Counsel to Parents (1879)---did much to arouse popular interest in the subject. She wrote extensively also on problems of sex and moral education of the young. Her other writings are listed in the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon-General's Library and in the Dictionary of National Biography.

[Elizabeth Blackwell, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women; Autobiographical Sketches (London, 1895); The Times (London), June 2, 1910; New York Evening Post, June 1, 1910; Mesnard, Miss E. Blackwell et les femmes medecins (Paris, 1889); Frances Hays, Women of the Day (London, 1885); Brit. Medical Journal, 1910, I, 1523; Delaware State Medic. Journal, 1916, VII, 3-24; Lancet (London, 1910), I, 1657; Medic. Magazine (London), IX, II7-25; Medic. Record (New York), LXXVII, 1016; Woman's Medic. Journal (Cincinnati), XX, 155, 174, 188, 208.]

J.F.F.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp.274-275:

BLACKWELL, Elizabeth, physician, born in Bristol, England, in 1821. Her father emigrated with his family in 1832, and settled in New York, but removed in 1838 to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he died a few months afterward, leaving a widow and nine children almost destitute. Elizabeth, then seventeen years old, opened a school in connection with two elder sisters, and conducted it successfully for several years. A friend now suggested that she should study medicine, and she resolved to become a physician. At first she pursued her studies in private, with some help from Dr. John Dixon, of Asheville, North Carolina, in whose family she was governess for a year. She then continued her studies in Charleston, South Carolina, supporting herself by teaching music, and after that in Philadelphia, under Dr. Allen and Dr. Warrington. She now made formal application to the medical schools of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston for admission as a student, but in each instance the request was denied, although several professors avowed interest in her undertaking. Rejecting advice to adopt an assumed name and male attire, she persevered in her attempt, and after several more refusals was finally admitted to the medical school at Geneva, New York, where she took her degree of M. D. in regular course in January, 1849. During her connection with the college, when not in attendance there upon lectures, she pursued a course of clinical study in Blockley hospital, Philadelphia. After graduation she went to Paris, and remained there six months, devoting herself to the study and practice of midwifery. The next autumn she was admitted as a physician to walk the hospital of St. Bartholomew in London, and after nearly a year spent there she returned to New York, and began practice in 1851. In 1854, with her sister, Dr. Emily Blackwell, she organized the New York infirmary for women and children. In 1859 she revisited England, and delivered in London and other cities a course of lectures on the necessity of medical education for women. In 1861, having returned to New York, she held, with Dr. Emily Blackwell, a meeting in the parlors of the infirmary, at which the first steps were taken toward organizing the women's central relief association for sending nurses and medical supplies for the wounded soldiers during the civil war. In 1867 the two sisters organized the women's medical college of the New York infirmary, in which Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell held the chair of hygiene and Dr. Emily Blackwell the chair of obstetrics and diseases of women. In 1869, leaving Dr. Emily in. charge of their joint work, Dr. Elizabeth returned to London and practised there for several years, taking an active part in organizing the women's medical college, in which she was elected professor of the diseases of women. She also took part in forming in England the national health society, and the society for repealing the contagious-diseases acts. Besides several health tracts, she has published “Laws of Life, or the Physical Education of Girls” (Philadelphia, 1852), and “Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of their Children” (1879), which has been translated into French.


BLACKWELL, Samuel Charles, 1823-1901, England, abolitionist, husband of abolitionist Antoinette Brown, brother of Elizabeth Blackwell.


BLAGDON, George W., Boston, Massachusetts.  Supporter of the American Colonization Society.  Raised funds for the Society in Boston. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 214)


BLAIN, John, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1834-37


BLAINE, James Gillespie, 1830-1893, statesman.  Founding member of the Republican Party.  Member of Congress 1862-1880.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 275-280; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 322-329; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 275-280:

BLAINE, James Gillespie, statesman, born in West Brownsville, Washington county, Pennsylvania, 31 January, 1830. He is the second son of Ephraim L. Blaine and Maria Gillespie. On his father's side he inherited the hardy and energetic qualities of the Scotch-Irish blood. His great-grandfather, Ephraim Blaine, born 1741; died  1804, bore an honorable part in the revolutionary struggle, was an officer of the Pennsylvania line, a trusted friend of Washington, and during the last four years of the war served as the commissary-general of the northern department of his command. Possessed of ample means, he drew largely from his own private purse and enlisted the contributions of various friends for the maintenance of the army through the severe and memorable winter at Valley Forge. From the Cumberland valley, where his ancestors had early settled and had been among the founders of Carlisle, Mr. Blaine's father removed to Washington county in 1818. He had inherited what was a fortune in those days, and had large landed possessions in western Pennsylvania; but their mineral wealth had not then been developed, and though relieved from poverty he was not endowed with affluence, and a large family made a heavy drain on his means. He was a man of liberal education, and had travelled in Europe and South America before settling down in western Pennsylvania, where he served as prothonotary. Mr. Blaine's mother, a woman of superior intelligence and force of character, was a devout Catholic; but her son has adhered to the Presbyterian convictions and communion of his paternal Scotch-Irish ancestry. The early education of Mr. Blaine was sedulously cultivated. He had the advantage of excellent teachers at his own home, and for a part of the year 1841 he was at school in Lancaster, Ohio, where he lived in the family of his relative, Thomas Ewing, then secretary of the treasury. In association with Thomas Ewing, Jr., afterward a member of congress, young Blaine began his preparation for college under the instruction of a thoroughly trained Englishman. William Lyons, brother of Lord Lyons, and at the age of thirteen he entered Washington college in his native county, where he was graduated in 1847. It is said that when nine years old he was able to recite Plutarch's lives. He had a marked taste for historical studies, and excelled in literature and mathematics. In the literary society he displayed the political aptitude and capacity that distinguished his subsequent career. Some time after graduation he became a teacher in the western military institute, at Blue Lick Springs, Kentucky. Here he formed the acquaintance of Miss Harriet Stanwood, of Maine, who was connected with a seminary for young ladies at the neighboring town of Millersburg, and to whom within a few months he was married. He soon returned to Pennsylvania, where, after some study of the law, he became a teacher in the Pennsylvania institution for the blind at Philadelphia. The instruction was chiefly oral. The young teacher had charge of the higher classes in literature and science, and the principal has left a record that his “brilliant mental powers were exactly qualified to enlighten and instruct the interesting minds before him.” After an association of two years with this institution, he removed in 1854 to Augusta, Maine, where he has since made his home. Purchasing a half interest in the Kennebec “Journal,” he became its editor, his ready faculty and trenchant writing being peculiarly adapted to this field. He speedily made his impress, and within three years was a master spirit in the politics of the state.
He engaged in the movement for the formation of the republican party with all his energy, and his earnest and incisive discussion of the rising conflict between freedom and slavery attracted wide attention. In 1856 he was a delegate to the first republican national convention, which nominated General Frémont for the presidency. His report at a public meeting on his return home, where he spoke at the outset with hesitation and embarrassment, and advanced to confident and fervid utterance, first illustrated his capacity on the platform and gave him standing as a public speaker. The next year he broadened his journalistic work by taking the editorship of the Portland “Advertiser”; but his editorial service ended when his parliamentary career began. In 1858 he was elected to the legislature, remaining a member through successive annual re-elections for four years, and serving the last two as speaker. At the beginning of the civil war Mr. Blaine gained distinction not only for his parliamentary skill, but for his forensic power in the debates that grew out of that crisis. The same year that he was elected to the legislature he became chairman of the state committee, a position which he continued to hold uninterruptedly for twenty years, and in which he led in shaping and directing every political campaign of his party in Maine.
In 1862 Mr. Blaine was elected to congress, where in one branch or the other he served for eighteen years. To the house he was chosen for seven successive terms. His growth in position and influence was rapid and unbroken. In his earlier years he made few elaborate addresses. During his first term his only extended speech was an argument in favor of the assumption of the state war debts by the general government, and in demonstration of the ability of the north to carry the war to a successful conclusion. But he gradually took an active part in the running discussions, and soon acquired high repute as a facile and effective debater. For this form of contention his ready resources and alert faculties were singularly fitted. He was bold in attack, quick in repartee, and apt in illustration. His close study of political history, his accurate knowledge of the record and relations of public men, and his unfailing memory, gave him great advantages. As a member of the committee on post-offices, he was largely instrumental in securing the introduction of the system of postal cars. He earnestly sustained all measures for the vigorous prosecution of the war, but sought to make them judicious and practical. In this spirit he supported the bill for a draft, but opposed absolute conscription. He contended that it should be relieved by provisions for commutation and substitution, and urged that an inexorable draft had never been resorted to but once, even under the absolutism of Napoleon. At the same time he enforced the duty of sustaining and strengthening the armies in the field by using all the resources of the nation, and strongly advocated the enrolment act. The measures for the reconstruction of the states that had been in rebellion largely engrossed the attention of congress from 1865 till 1869, and Mr. Blaine bore a prominent part in their discussion and in the work of framing them. The basis of representation upon which the states should be readmitted was the first question to be determined, Thaddeus Stevens, chairman of the committee on reconstruction, had proposed that representation should be apportioned according to the number of legal voters. Mr. Blaine strenuously objected to this proposition, and urged that population, instead of voters, should be the basis. He submitted a constitutional amendment providing that “representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which shall be included within this union according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by taking the whole number of persons, except those whose political rights or privileges are denied or abridged by the constitution of any state on account of race or color.” He advocated this plan on the ground that, while the other basis of voters would accomplish the object of preventing the south from securing representation for the blacks unless the blacks were made voters, yet it would make a radical change in the apportionment for the northern states where the ratio of voters to population differed very widely in different sections, varying from a minimum of 19 per cent. to a maximum of 58 per cent. The result of the discussion was a general abandonment of the theory that apportionment should be based on voters, and the 14th amendment to the constitution, as finally adopted, embodied Mr. Blaine's proposition in substance.
On 6 February, 1867, Mr. Stevens reported the reconstruction bill. It divided the states lately in rebellion into five military districts, and practically established military government therein. The civil tribunals were made subject to military control. While the majority evinced a readiness to accept the bill, Mr. Blaine declared his unwillingness to support any measure that would place the south under military government, if it did not at the same time prescribe the methods by which the people of a state could by their own action reëstablish civil government. He accordingly proposed an amendment providing that when any one of the late so-called confederate states should assent to the 14th amendment to the constitution and should establish equal and impartial suffrage without regard to race or color, and when congress should approve its action, it should be entitled to representation, and the provisions for military government should become inoperative. This proposition came to be known as the Blaine amendment. In advocating it, Mr. Blaine expressed the belief that the true interpretation of the election of 1866 was that, in addition to the proposed constitutional amendment—the 14th—impartial suffrage should be the basis of reconstruction, and he urged the wisdom of declaring the terms at once. The application of the previous question ruled out the Blaine amendment, but it was renewed in the senate and finally carried through both branches, and under it reconstruction was completed.
The theory that the public debt should be paid in greenbacks developed great strength in the summer of 1867 while Mr. Blaine was absent in Europe. On his return at the opening of the next session he made an extended speech against the doctrine, and was the first man in congress to give utterance to this opposition. The long unsettled question of protecting naturalized American citizens while abroad attracted special attention at this time. Costello, Warren, Burke, and other Irish-Americans had been arrested in England, on the charge of complicity in Fenian plots. Costello had made a speech in 1865 in New York, which was regarded as treasonable by the British government, and he was treated as a British subject and tried under an old law on this accusation. His plea of American citizenship was overruled, and he was convicted and sentenced to sixteen years' penal servitude. Mr. Blaine, who, with other American statesmen, resisted the English doctrine of perpetual allegiance, and maintained that a naturalized American was entitled to the same protection abroad that would be given to a native American, took active part in pressing these questions upon public attention, and, as the result of the agitation, Costello was released. The discussion of these cases led to the treaty of 1870, in which Great Britain abandoned the doctrine of “once a subject always a subject,” and accepted the American principle of equal rights and protection for adopted and for native citizens. Mr. Blaine was chosen speaker of the house of representatives in 1869, and served by successive reëlections for six years. His administration of the speakership is commonly regarded as one of the most brilliant and successful in the annals of the house. He had rare aptitude and equipment for the duties of presiding officer; and his complete mastery of parliamentary law, his dexterity and physical endurance, his rapid despatch of business, and his firm and impartial spirit, were recognized on all sides. 'Though necessarily exercising a powerful influence upon the course of legislation, he seldom left the chair to mingle in the contests of the floor. On one of those rare occasions, in March, 1871, he had a sharp tilt with General Butler, who had criticised him for being the author of the resolution providing for an investigation into alleged outrages perpetrated upon loyal citizens of the south, and for being chiefly instrumental in securing its adoption by the republican caucus. The political revulsion of 1874 placed the democrats in control of the house, and Mr. Blaine became the leader of the minority. The session preceding the presidential contest of 1876 was a period of stormy and vehement contention. A general amnesty bill was brought forward, removing the political disabilities of participants in the rebellion which had been imposed by the 14th amendment to the constitution. Mr. Blaine moved to amend by making an exception of Jefferson Davis, and supported the proposition in an impassioned speech. After asserting the great magnanimity of the government, and pointing out how far amnesty had already been carried, he defined the ground of his proposed exception. The reason was, not that Davis was the chief of the confederacy, but that, as Mr. Blaine affirmed, he was the author, “knowingly, deliberately, guiltily, and wilfully, of the gigantic murders and crimes of Andersonville.” In fiery words Mr. Blaine proceeded to declare that no military atrocities in history had exceeded those for which Davis was thus responsible. His outburst naturally produced deep excitement in the house and throughout the country. If Mr. Blaine's object as a political leader was to arouse partisan feeling and activity preparatory to the presidential struggle, he succeeded. An acrid debate followed. Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia, assumed the lead on the other side, and not only defended Davis against the accusations, which he pronounced unfounded, but preferred similar charges against the treatment of southern prisoners in the north. In reply, Mr. Blaine turned upon Mr. Hill with the citation of a resolution introduced by him in the confederate senate, providing that every soldier or officer of the United States captured on the soil of the confederate states should be presumed to have come with intent to incite insurrection, and should suffer the penalty of death. This episode arrested universal attention, and gave Mr. Blaine a still stronger hold as a leader of his party.
He now became the subject of a violent personal assault. Charges were circulated that he had received $64,000 from the Union Pacific railroad company for some undefined services. On 24 April, 1876, he rose to a personal explanation in the house and made his answer. He produced letters from the officers of the company and from the bankers who were said to have negotiated the draft, in which they declared that there had never been any such transaction, and that Mr. Blaine had never received a dollar from the company. Mr. Blaine proceeded to add that the charge had reappeared in the form of an assertion that he had received bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith railroad as a gratuity, and that these bonds had been sold through the Union Pacific company for his benefit. To this he responded that he never had any such bonds except at the market price, and that, instead of deriving any profit from them, he had incurred a large pecuniary loss. A few days later another charge was made to the effect that he had received as a gift certain bonds of the Kansas Pacific railroad, and had been a party to a suit concerning them in the courts of Kansas. To this he answered by producing evidence that his name had been confounded with that of a brother, who was one of the early settlers of Kansas, and who had bought stock in the Kansas Pacific before Mr. Blaine had even been nominated for congress.

On 2 May a resolution was adopted in the house to investigate an alleged purchase by the Union Pacific railroad company, at an excessive price, of certain bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith railroad. It soon became evident that the investigation was aimed at Mr. Blaine. An extended business correspondence on his part with Warren Fisher, of Boston, running through years and relating to various transactions, had fallen into the hands of a clerk named Mulligan, and it was alleged that the production of this correspondence would confirm the imputations against Mr. Blaine. When Mulligan was summoned to Washington, Mr. Blaine possessed himself of the letters, together with a memorandum that contained a full index and abstract. On 5 June he rose to a personal explanation, and, after denying the power of the house to compel the production of his private papers, and his willingness to go to any extremity in defence of his rights, he declared his purpose to reserve nothing. Holding up the letters he exclaimed: “Thank God, I am not ashamed to show them. There is the very original package. And with some sense of humiliation, with a mortification I do not attempt to conceal, with a sense of outrage which I think any man in my position would feel, I invite the confidence of forty-four millions of my countrymen, while I read those letters from this desk.” The demonstration closed with a dramatic scene. Josiah Caldwell, one of the originators of the Little Rock and Fort Smith railroad, who had full knowledge of the whole transaction, was travelling in Europe, and both sides were seeking to communicate with him. After finishing the reading of the letters, Mr. Blaine turned to the chairman of the committee and demanded to know whether he had received any despatch from Mr. Caldwell. Receiving an evasive answer, Mr. Blaine asserted, as within his own knowledge, that the chairman had received such a despatch, “completely and absolutely exonerating me from this charge, and you have suppressed it.” A profound sensation was created, and General Garfield said: “I have been a long time in congress, and never saw such a scene in the house.”

The republican national convention was now at hand, and Mr. Blaine was the most prominent candidate for the presidential nomination. He had a larger body of enthusiastic friends than any other leader of his party, and the stirring events of the past few months had intensified their devotion. On 11 June, the Sunday preceding the convention, just as he was entering church at Washington, he was prostrated with the extreme heat, and his illness for a time created wide apprehension. The advocates of his nomination, however, remained unshaken in their support. On the first ballot he received 285 votes out of a total of 754, the remainder being divided among Senator Morton, Sec. Bristow, Senator Conkling, Governor Hayes, and several others. On the seventh ballot his vote rose to 351, lacking only 28 of a majority, but a union of the supporters of all the other candidates gave Governor Hayes 384 and secured his nomination. Immediately after the convention, on the resignation of Senator Morrill to accept the secretaryship of the treasury, Mr. Blaine was appointed senator to fill the unexpired term, and in the following winter he was chosen by the legislature for the full ensuing term. In the senate he engaged in the discussion of current questions. He opposed the creation of the electoral commission for the settlement of the disputed presidential election of 1876, on the ground that congress did not itself possess the power that it proposed to confer on the commission. He held that President Hayes's southern policy surrendered too much of what had been gained through reconstruction, and contended that the validity of his own title involved the maintenance of the state governments in South Carolina and Louisiana, which rested on the same popular vote. On the currency question he always assumed a pronounced position. While still a member of the house, in February, 1876, he had made an elaborate speech on the national finances and against any perpetuation of an irredeemable paper currency, and soon after entering the senate, when the subject was brought forward, he took strong ground against the deterioration of the silver coinage. He strenuously opposed the Bland bill, and, when its passage was seen to be inevitable, sought to amend it by providing that the dollar should contain 425 grains of standard silver, instead of 412½ grains. He favored a bi-metallic currency, and equally resisted the adoption of the single gold standard and the depreciation of silver. Measures for the development and protection of American shipping early engaged his attention. In 1878 he advocated the establishment of a line of mail steamers to Brazil, and unhesitatingly urged the application of a subsidy to this object. On frequent occasions he recurred to the subject, contending that Great. Britain and France had built up their commerce by liberal aid to steamship lines, and that a similar policy would produce similar results here. He argued that congress had endowed the railroad system with $500,000,000 of money, which had produced $5,000,000,000 to the country, and that the policy ought not to stop when it reached the sea.

In March, 1879, congress was deeply agitated by a conflict over the appropriation bills. The democrats, being in control of both houses, had refused to pass the necessary measures for the support of the government unless accompanied by a proviso prohibiting the presence of troops at any place where an election was being held. The republicans resisted this attempt, and, in consequence of the failure of the bills at the regular session, the president was compelled to call an extra session. Mr. Blaine was among the foremost in the senate in defending the executive prerogative and in opposing what he denounced as legislative coercion. Be pointed out how few troops there were in all the states of the south, and said: “I take no risk in stating, I make bold to declare, that this issue on the troops being a false one, being one without foundation, conceals the true issue, which is simply to get rid of the federal presence at federal elections, to get rid of the civil power of the United States in the election of representatives to the congress of the United States.” He proceeded to characterize the proposition to withhold appropriations except upon the condition of executive compliance as revolutionary, saying: “I call it the audacity of revolution for any senator or representative, or any caucus of senators or representatives, to get together and say: ‘We will have this legislation, or we will stop the great departments of the government.’” The resistance was unsuccessful, and the army appropriation bill finally passed with the proviso. Mr. Blaine at all times defended the sanctity of the ballot, and in December, 1878, pending a resolution presented by himself for an inquiry into certain alleged frauds in the south, made a powerful plea as to the injustice wrought by a denial of the franchise to the blacks. When the attempt was made to override the plain result of the election of 1879 in Maine, and to set up a state government in defiance of the popular vote, Mr. Blaine took charge of the effort to establish the rightful government, and through his vigorous measures the scheme of usurpation was defeated and abandoned. On the Chinese question he early declared himself decidedly in favor of restricting their immigration. In a speech on 14 February, 1879, when the subject came before the senate, he argued that there were only two courses: that the Chinese must be excluded or fully admitted into the family of citizens; that the latter was as impracticable as it was dangerous; that they could not be assimilated with our people or institutions; and that it was a duty to protect the free laborer of America against the servile laborer of China.
As the presidential convention of 1880 approached, it was apparent that Mr. Blaine retained the same support that had adhered to him so tenaciously four years before. The contest developed into an earnest and prolonged struggle between his friends and those who advocated a third term for General Grant. The convention, one of the most memorable in American history, lasted through six days, and there were thirty-six ballots. On the first the vote stood: Grant 304, Blaine 284, Sherman 93, Edmunds 34, Washburne 30, Windom 10, Garfield 1. On the final ballot the friends of Blaine and Sherman united on General Garfield, who received 399 votes to 306 for Grant, and was nominated. On his election, Mr. Blaine was tendered and accepted the office of secretary of state. He remained at the head of the department less than ten months, and his effective administration was practically limited by the assassination of President Garfield to four. Within that period, however, he began several important undertakings. His foreign policy had two principal objects. The first was to secure and preserve peace throughout this continent. The second was to cultivate close commercial relations and increase our trade with the various countries of North and South America. The accomplishment of the first object was preliminary and essential to the attainment of the second, and, in order to promote it, he projected a peace congress to be held at Washington, to which all the independent powers of North and South America were to be invited. His plan contemplated the cultivation of such a friendly understanding on the part of the powers as would permanently avert the horrors of war either through the influence of pacific counsels or the acceptance of impartial arbitration. Incidentally, it assumed that the assembling of their representatives at Washington would open the way to such relations as would inure to the commercial advantage of this country. The project, though already determined, was delayed by the fatal shot at Garfield, and the letter of invitation was finally issued on 29 November, 1881, fixing 24 November, 1882, as the date for the proposed congress. On 19 December Mr. Blaine retired from the cabinet, and within three weeks his successor had reversed his policy and the plan was abandoned, after the invitation had been accepted by all the American powers except two.
When Mr. Blaine entered the department of state, war was raging between Chili and Peru, and he sought to exercise the good offices of our government, first, for the restoration of peace, and, second, to mitigate the consequences of the crushing defeat sustained by Peru. Other efforts failing, he despatched William Henry Trescott on a special mission to offer the friendly services of the United States; but this attempt, like the one for the peace congress, was interrupted and frustrated by his retirement from the department. His brief service was also signalized by an important correspondence with the British government concerning the modification of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. The Colombian republic had proposed to the European powers that they should unite in guaranteeing the neutrality of the Panama canal. On 24 June Mr. Blaine issued a circular letter declaring the objection of this government to any such concerted action, and asserting the prior and paramount rights and obligations of this country. He pointed out that the United States had entered into a guarantee by the treaty of 1846 with the republic of New Grenada—now Colombia; that this country had a supreme interest in watching over any highway between the two coasts; and that any agreement among European powers to supersede this guarantee and impair our exclusive rights would be regarded as an indication of unfriendly feeling. In this connection he made formal proposal to the British government for the abrogation of certain clauses of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, which were not in harmony with the rights of the United States as secured by the convention with the Colombian republic. He urged that the treaty, by prohibiting the use of land forces and of fortifications, without any protection against superior naval power, practically conceded to Great Britain the control of any interoceanic canal that might be constructed across the isthmus, and he proposed that every part of the treaty which forbids the United States fortifying the canal and holding the political control of it in conjunction with the country in which it is located should be cancelled. To the answer of the British government that the treaty was an engagement which should be maintained and respected, Mr. Blaine replied that it could not be regarded as a conclusive determination of the question; that since its adoption it had been the subject of repeated negotiations between the two countries; that the British government had itself proposed to refer its doubtful clauses to arbitration; and that it had long been recognized as a source of increasing embarrassment. Throughout the correspondence Mr. Blaine insisted in the firmest tone that “it is the fixed purpose of the United States to consider the isthmus canal question as an American question, to be dealt with and decided by the American governments.”

Upon the retirement of Mr. Blaine from the state department in December, 1881, he was, for the first time in twenty-three years, out of public station. He soon entered upon the composition of an elaborate historical work entitled “Twenty Years of Congress,” of which the first 200 pages give a succinct review of the earlier political history of the country, followed by a more detailed narrative of the eventful period from Lincoln to Garfield. The first volume was published in April, 1884, and the second in January, 1886 (Norwich, Connecticut). The work had a very wide sale, and secured general approval for its impartial spirit and brilliant style. When the republican national convention of 1884 met at Chicago, it was clear that Mr. Blaine had lost none of his hold upon the enthusiasm of his party. On the first ballot he received 334½ votes, President Arthur 278, Senator Edmunds 93, Senator Logan 63½, and the rest were scattering. His vote kept gaining till the fourth ballot, when he received 541 out of a total of 813 and was nominated. The canvass that followed was one of peculiar bitterness. Mr. Blaine took the stump in Ohio, Indiana, New York, and other states, and in a series of remarkable speeches, chiefly devoted to upholding the policy of protection to American industry, deepened the popular impression of his intellectual power. The election turned upon the result in New York, which was lost to Mr. Blaine by 1,047 votes, whereupon he promptly resumed the work upon his history, which had been interrupted by the canvass. After the result had been determined, he made, at his home in Augusta, a speech in which he arraigned the democratic party for carrying the election by suppressing the republican vote in the southern states, and cited the figures of the returns to show that, on an average, only one half or one third as many votes had been cast for each presidential elector or member of congress elected in the south as for each elected in the north. This speech had a startling effect, and attracted universal attention, though Mr. Blaine had set forth the same thing in a speech in congress as long before as 11 December, 1878, when he said:
“The issue raised before the country is not one of mere sentiment for the rights of the negro; though far distant be the day when the rights of any American citizen, however black or however poor, shall form the mere dust of the balance in any controversy! . . . The issue has taken a far wider range, one of portentous magnitude; and that is, whether the white voter of the north shall be equal to the white voter of the south in shaping the policy and fixing the destiny of this country; or whether, to put it still more boldly, the white man who fought in the ranks of the union army shall have as weighty and influential a vote in the government of the republic as the white man who fought in the ranks of the rebel army. . . . In Iowa and Wisconsin it takes 132,000 white population to send a representative to congress; but in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, every 60,000 white people send a representative.”

Mr. Blaine took an active part in the Maine canvass of 1886, opening it, 24 August, in a speech at Sebago Lake devoted chiefly to the questions of the fisheries, the tariff, and the third-party prohibition movement. The fishery controversy had acquired renewed interest and importance from recent seizures of American fishing-vessels on the Canadian coast, and Mr. Blaine reviewed its history at length, and sharply criticised the attitude and action of the administration. He presented the issue of protection against free-trade as the foremost one between the two parties; and, with regard to prohibition, insisted that there was no warrant or reason for a third-party movement in Maine, because the republican party had enacted and enforced a prohibitory law. His succeeding speeches, continued throughout the canvass, followed the same line. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 275-280.  


BLAIR, Arba, New York, abolitionist leader.

(Sorin, 1971)


BLAIR, FRANCIS PRESTON (February 19, 1821-July 9, 1875), Union soldier, statesman, anti-slavery activist, member of the Free-Soil Party.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 319-320:

BLAIR, FRANCIS PRESTON (February 19, 1821-July 9, 1875), Union soldier, statesman was born at Lexington, Kentucky, the third and youngest son of Francis Preston Blair [q.v.]. While a child he was taken to Washington, D. C., by his father and there he attended a select school. As a young man he contributed to the editorial columns of the Globe, edited by his father, who took great pride in educating his son for a political career. Blair graduated at Princeton (1841) and then entered the law school at Transylvania University. After graduating there, and upon admission to the bar at Lexington, Kentucky, he went to practise with his brother, Montgomery [q.v.] in St. Louis (1842). Three years of intense study and practise of law injured his health. While he was seeking rest and recreation in the Rocky Mountains the Mexican War broke out; consequently, he joined a company of Americans which was commanded by George Bent. When General Kearny took New Mexico Blair was appointed attorney-general for the territory.

Upon returning from the West Blair was married on September 8, 1847, to Appoline Alexander of Woodford County, Kentucky, and resumed his law practise in St. Louis. Having pronounced views on the extension of slavery he established a Free-Soil paper, the Barnburner, to further the interests of the cause in Missouri. He organized and led the Free-Soil party in that state and voted for Van Buren in 1848. Henry Clay found supporters in him, his father, and Montgomery, for his Compromise of 1850. Though a slave owner, Blair denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a violation of the Missouri Compromise, and his views on slavery, so clearly and forcefully expressed, marked him as a character dangerous to slave interests. Two terms in the Missouri legislature (1852-56) gave him opportunity to express his Free-Soilism and prepare himself for Congress. He was like Thomas Hart Benton in his methods, although in 1856 he refused Benton's request to retract some of his public statements on slavery. Benton was defeated for governor of Missouri in that year, while Blair, who voted for Fremont, was the only Free-Soiler elected to Congress from a slave state. In his first speech in Congress he warned the South that slavery was bound to die. He urged the South to adopt the policy of gradual emancipation by deportation and colonization. He was defeated for reelection to Congress (1858). In 1859 he published an argumentative "address" on colonization, entitled, The Destiny of the Races on This Continent.

The years 1858 to 1861 were eventful years for Blair. He opposed the extension of slavery on the basis that it was an economic hindrance to the development of the West, as well as socially and morally wrong. His family connections, his brilliance, his ability as an extemporaneous speaker, and his courageous frank manner, made him one of the popular orators of the day. As a speaker he was in demand in Minnesota and Vermont where he campaigned for the Republicans, in Illinois where he hoped to ruin the political fortunes of Douglas, and in Missouri where he battled against the "Nullificationists" and Benton's old enemies, especially the "Fayette Clique." He organized the Union party in Missouri and largely transformed it into the Republican party; in the latter he became the "leading spirit and chief adviser" in his own state. Like his father, he was a constitutionalist and an unyielding unionist. He was a Democrat-Republican who used parties merely as a means to an end.

The speeches and letters of Blair indicate that he feared a coming catastrophe long before the Civil War. The spectre of "Nullification" haunted him. He tried in vain to convert Northern men to his scheme of colonization. He supported Edward Bates for the presidential nomination through fear of secession early in the campaign of 1860, but he turned to Lincoln on the third ballot in the Chicago convention. After the convention few men labored as faithfully as he in the campaign. Consequently, he was ready to act quickly and decisively when civil war loomed. He organized the "Wide Awakes" in St. Louis, had men secretly drilled, secured ammunition and arms, kept himself informed of movements at Washington, and as a friend and supporter stood well in Lincoln's favor.

Blair was elected to Congress in 1860. In the spring of 1861 he determined to save Missouri for the Union. After much political maneuvering and "Home Guards" organizing, he and General Lyon marshalled their forces sufficiently to compel the surrender of Camp Jackson, a camp of state militia sympathetic with the Confederacy. It was a play of Blair and his Unconditional Unionists against Governor Jackson and his confederates, who desired to carry Missouri into the Confederacy. The capture of Camp Jackson drove thousands of Missourians into the Confederate cause, but the issue was now sharply drawn in the state; the United States arsenal at St. Louis was saved, and the state remained Unionist. Blair was offered a brigadier-generalship but refused in order to avoid political complications in Missouri.

In the Thirty-seventh Congress, as chairman of the Committee on Military Defense, Blair's policy was to crush the rebellion as quickly as men and money could do it. His policy included the acceptance of all volunteer troops for service, government control of railroads and telegraph lines, and the construction of a ship canal from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River for commercial and military purposes. He caused Fremont to be sent to Missouri to command the forces in that region but soon became disgusted with Fremont's policy, criticized him, and was, in turn, arrested and imprisoned by him. Blair's father and brother attempted unsuccessfully to stop the quarrel. For this and other reasons Lincoln removed Fremont. Blair's enemies in Missouri increased in number, particularly while he was in the army. In 1862, when the Union cause looked dark, an appeal was made to Blair to raise troops and lead them to the front. He immediately raised seven regiments, received the appointment of brigadier-general, and saw his first hard fighting at Vicksburg where he showed bravery and leadership. He was in many engagements, was raised to the rank of major-general, and completed his military career with Sherman on the march through the South. As commander of the 15th and 17th Corps, respectively, he received the praises of Generals Sherman and Grant. Blair was considerate of his officers and men and was popular among them. While in the army he made his own opinions and the wishes of General Sherman known to his brother, the Postmaster General, who in turn communicated the information to the President. In 1864 Blair was recalled from the battlefield to help organize Congress and to defend Lincoln's plan of reconstruction. On February S and 27, 1864, he made two provocative speeches: one defending the President's policy; the other, against Secretary Chase and the Radicals whom he derisively called Jacobins. A storm of condemnation from the Radicals fell on his head. Chase threatened to resign, and Blair returned to his command.

When the war closed Blair was financially ruined as he had spent much of his private means in support of the Union. His attempt to retrieve his lost fortune on a cotton plantation in Mississippi failed. He then turned his attention to politics in Missouri where a set of Radical Republicans had gained control within the party. He opposed the registry laws, test oaths, the policy of sending carpet-baggers to the South, and the disfranchisement of the whites and the enfranchisement of the negroes. He wished to allow the states to return to the Union to work out their own problems if they recognized abolition as an accomplished fact and swore allegiance to the Constitution. President Johnson nominated Blair for collector of internal revenue at St. Louis, and then to the Austrian mission, only to see the Senate refuse to confirm his appointment in each case. Blair was then appointed as commissioner on the Pacific Railroad but Grant removed him as soon as he became president. The Radicals in Missouri caused Blair to defend the conservatives and ex-Confederates. He began his work of reorganization of the Democratic party in 1865, supported Johnson in 1866, and received the nomination for vice-president with Seymour in 1868. In the latter year his public utterances and his notorious "Broadhead Letter," addressed to J. O. Broadhead, declaring that it would be the duty of the Democratic candidate if elected to abolish the Reconstruction governments, gave the opposition an opportunity to distort Blair's meaning when he advanced his plan of reconstruction. He maintained that the Constitution had been perverted. To restore it, he would have the people, by their mandate expressed at the polls, declare the acts of the Radical Congress "null and void"; compel the army to undo its usurpations of power in the South; disperse the carpet-bag governments; allow the whites to reorganize their own governments and elect senators and representatives. After the Democratic defeat in 1868 he cooperated with the Liberal Republicans, secured election as representative to the Missouri legislature; and was, by that body, chosen United States senator. He helped to secure the nomination of Horace Greeley for president (1872), and through cooperation with the Liberal Republicans saw the Radicals ousted from power in Missouri. He was defeated for reelection to the United States Senate in 1873. During the same year Blair was stricken with paralysis, never to recover. He was generous to a fault, cordial, and seldom held a personal grudge against a political enemy. His scathing denunciations of his political opponents antagonized them but his faculty for remembering names and his sociability endeared him to many people. He was nominally state superintendent of insurance when he died. His friends erected a fitting monument to his memory in Forrest Park (St. Louis) and Missouri placed his statue in the United States Capitol.

[The chief sources are the Blair Papers (unpublished). Two biographies of a political and biased nature are: Jas. Dabney McCabe (Edward Martin), The Life and Public Services of Horatio Seymour Together with a Complete and Authentic Life of Francis P. Blair, Jr. (1868); David Goodman Croly, Seymour and Blair: Their Lives and Services (1868). A manuscript copy of a sketch of the life of Blair, presumably written by Montgomery Blair, is in the Blair Papers. Short sketches exist by Wm. Van Ness Bay, in Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri (1878); Augustus C. Rogers, Sketches of Representative Men North and South (1874); Chas. P. Johnson, "Personal Recollections of Missouri's Statesmen" in Proc. Missouri History Society, January 22, 1903; and John Fiske, The Mississippi Valley in the Civil War (1900). The best account of Blair's services in Missouri during the early part of the Civil War is found in General Nathaniel Lyon and Missouri in 1861 (1866) by Jas. Peckham.]

W.E.S.


BLAIR, Jacob B., 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)


BLAIR, Montgomery, 1813-1883, statesman, attorney, jurist, abolitionist, Postmaster General of the United States. After joining the American party he left it because of its silence on slavery and became a Democratic" Republican in the Republican party. His prestige was greatly increased among anti-slavery people when he became counsel for Dred Scott. His sense of fairness led him to help secure a defense attorney for John Brown after the Harper's Ferry incident.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 282; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, p. 340),

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 339-340:

BLAIR, MONTGOMERY (May 10, 1813- July 27, 1883), lawyer, statesman, eldest son of Francis Preston Blair, Sr. [q.v.], was reared in Franklin County, Kentucky, amidst the scenes of political strife between "relief" and "anti-relief" and "Old" and "New Court" factions. The schools of Kentucky gave him his early education. He was appointed by President Jackson to West Point in 1831; after his graduation in 1835 he received a lieutenancy in the army in time to serve in the Seminole War. The next year he resigned his commission in order to study law in Transylvania University. He settled in St. Louis in 1837 as the protege of Thomas Hart Benton. After practising law two years he was appointed United States district attorney for Missouri, only to be removed for political reasons by President Tyler. He served in St. Louis as mayor (1842-43) and as judge of the court of common pleas (1845-49). In 1849 he resigned to resume his law practise. In 1853 he moved to Maryland where he practised law chiefly before the Supreme Court of the United States. President Pierce made him the first solicitor for the court of claims of the United States (1855) but President Buchanan dismissed him because of his pronounced views on slavery. He was a Free-Soiler in principle, believed slavery could be peaceably settled, generally held the political views of border statesmen, and had sympathy with the interests of the West. After joining the American party he left it because of its silence on slavery and became a Democratic" Republican in the Republican party. His prestige was greatly increased among anti-slavery people when he became counsel for Dred Scott. His sense of fairness led him to help secure a defense attorney for John Brown after the Harper's Ferry incident. He was a delegate to the Democratic national conventions in 1844, 1848, and 1852. In 1860 he presided at the state Republican convention at Baltimore and attended the Chicago national convention as a delegate from Maryland. Because of his services to the Republican party, his family connections, and his political views and experiences he was made postmaster general in Lincoln's cabinet, where he belonged to the Bates-Welles-Blair group. He strongly urged the reënforcement of Southern forts, particularly Fort Sumter, which he believed could be held against the Confederates, and threatened to resign if that fort were not reenforced. Without being obsequious he was a staunch supporter of Lincoln. He strongly opposed Secretary Chase's views, befriended McClellan, and insisted from the beginning of the incident that the seizure of Mason and Slidell was illegal. In his own department he organized the postal system for the army, introduced compulsory payment of postage and free delivery in cities, improved the registry system, established the railway post-office, organized the postal draft plan which his successor put into operation, stopped the franking privileges of postmasters, and was instrumental in bringing about the Postal Union Convention at Paris (1863). In the Union national convention (1864) the Radicals succeeded in passing a resolution which virtually demanded the dismissal of Blair from the cabinet. The President, after a fair assurance of victory at the polls, bowed to political expediency and requested Blair's resignation, which was cheerfully given. Blair continued, however, to work loyally for Lincoln. After the assassination of Lincoln, Blair advised Johnson to dismiss the old and appoint a new cabinet. He sought moderation for the South, asserting and believing that Lincoln's plan of reconstruction was just and best. He decried the disfranchisement of the Southern whites and enfranchisement of the negroes. His views brought him into conflict with those held by the radical reconstructionists. He drifted back to the Democratic party, where he supported Seymour in 1868 and Greeley in 1872, and championed Tilden's cause in 1876. With the financial aid of W. W. Corcoran he established a newspaper, the Union (Washington, D. C.), to uphold Tilden's claims to the Presidency. As Tilden's counsel he appeared before the Electoral Commission. He declared Tilden represented "the one issue" reform. Being elected to the Maryland House of Delegates (1878) and immediately made chairman of the judiciary committee, Blair proposed the resolution which denied the right of President Hayes to office. Though honest in his belief that Hayes was illegally chosen president, he aroused the intense enmity of many people by his method of agitating the question. He unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1882. Blair was tall and spare, clean-shaven, with light hair and bluish-grey eyes. His speech was slow, his voice calm. Few men were more courteous and genial than he, but he was temperamentally combative and obstinate when he thought he was right. Though deeply religious he held anti-ritualistic sentiments. As a lawyer he used persuasive argument which was the result of research and logical reasoning. While he had strong prejudices, he was shrewd, frank, and thoroughly honest. He was twice married: to a Miss Buckner of Virginia, who died in 1844, and to a daughter of Judge Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire. He was an inveterate worker and died while engaged in writing a life of Andrew Jackson.

[The Blair Papers (unpublished); Levi Woodbury Papers (unpublished); "Montgomery Blair" in Maryland in National Politics (1915) by Jesse Frederick Essary; "Montgomery Blair" in Sketches of Representative Men North and South (1872), ed. by Augustus C. Rogers; "The Public Career of Montgomery Blair, Particularly with Reference to His Services as Postmaster General of the United States" by Madison Davis in the Records of the Columbia Historical Society, XIII (1910), 126-61; Diary of Gideon Welles (1911); J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln (10 volumes, 1890).]

W.E.S.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 282:

BLAIR, Montgomery, statesman, born in Franklin county, Kentucky, 10 May, 1813; died  in Silver Spring, Maryland, 27 July, 1883. He was a son of Francis P. Blair, Sr., was graduated at West Point in 1835, and, after serving in the Seminole war, resigned his commission on 20 May, 1836. He then studied law, and, after his admission to the bar in 1839, began practice in St. Louis. He was appointed U. S. district attorney for Missouri, and in 1842 was elected mayor of St. Louis. He was raised to the bench as judge of the court of common pleas in 1843, but resigned in 1849. He removed to Maryland in 1852, and in 1855 was appointed U. S. solicitor in the court of claims. He was removed from this office by President Buchanan in 1858, having left the democratic party on the repeal of the Missouri compromise. In 1857 he acted as counsel for the plaintiff in the celebrated Dred Scott case. He presided over the Maryland republican convention in 1860, and in 1861 was appointed postmaster-general by President Lincoln. It is said that he alone of Mr. Lincoln's cabinet opposed the surrender of Fort Sumter, and held his resignation upon the issue. As postmaster-general he prohibited the sending of disloyal papers through the mails, and introduced various reforms, such as money-orders, free delivery in cities, and postal railroad cars. In 1864 Mr. Blair, who was not altogether in accord with the policy of the administration, told the president that he would resign whenever the latter thought it necessary, and on 23 September Mr. Lincoln, in a friendly letter, accepted his offer. After this Mr. Blair acted with the democratic party, and in 1876-'7 vigorously attacked Mr. Hayes's title to the office of president. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 282.


BLAISDELL, James, J., Lebanon, New Hampshire, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-40.


BLAISDELL, Timothy K., Haverhill, New Hampshire, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1838-39, 1840-42.


BLAKE, James H., Member of the Memorial Committee and Founding Manager of the American Colonization Society in Washington, DC, 1816. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 258n14)


BLAKESLEY, J. M., anti-slavery agent.  Founded 15 anti-slavery societies in Chataqua and Erie Counties in New York. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 186, 392n21; Friend of Man, February 1, 1837, May 10, 1837, March 21, 1838)


BLANCHARD, Jonathan, 1811-1892, clergyman, educator, abolitionist, theologian, lecturer.  Worked for more than thirty years for the abolition of slavery.  Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  President of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, 1845-1858.  President, Illinois Institute.  Vice president, World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, England, 1843. 

(Bailey, J.W., Knox College, 1860;  Blanchard Papers, Wheaton College Library, Wheaton, Illinois; Blanchard Jonathan, and Rice, N.L. [1846], 1870; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 186; Kilby, 1959; Maas, 2003; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 196-197; Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Volume 1, pt. 2, pp. 350-351)

Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Volume 1, pt. 2, pp. 350-351:

BLANCHARD, JONATHAN (January 19, 18nMay 14, 1892), Presbyterian clergyman, college president, the son of Jonathan and Mary (Lovel) Blanchard, was born in the little town of Rockingham, Vermont, of pure English ancestry. His early education was obtained in the common schools of the town and from private instructors. He was a school-teacher at the age of fourteen and entered Middlebury College at the age of seventeen, graduating in 1832, when he was twenty-one years old. For two years he taught at Plattsburg Academy and afterwards studied at Andover and at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. In the latter city he was ordained pastor of the Sixth Presbyterian Church in September 1838. From the beginning Blanchard was a strong temperance advocate and in 1834, at the age of twenty-three, he became a violent abolitionist. In 184 3 he attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London and was elected American vice-president of that body. On his return from England he delivered a series of spirited lectures on the wrongs of Ireland. In spite of the fact that Cincinnati was almost as strongly pro-slavery as any southern community, he never hesitated to attack that institution in sermons, in articles, and in private conversation (see A Debate on Slavery ... Between the Reverend I. Blanchard and N. L. Rice, 1846). Almost as violent was his hatred of secret societies and especially of the Masonic order. This, too, he attacked in every way and at every opportunity. As the Civil War approached he more and more coupled Masonry and slavery and declared that the Masonic order was concerned in the attempt at disunion. During his Cincinnati pastorate he founded and edited a church paper later known as the Herald and Presbyter. In 1845 he was elected president of Knox College, at Galesburg, Illinois, and held that position until 1857. Under his administration the financial condition of the college was greatly improved and the number of students practically doubled. Blanchard's outspoken attitude on many subjects, however, brought him into frequent controversies, and the later years of his administration were full of strife and difficulty. After resigning the presidency he served for a year as acting president and teacher, at the same time conducting the Christian Era which he had founded. In 1860 he took the presidency of Wheaton College, at Wheaton, Illinois. While there he published Freemasonry Illustrated (1879) and founded and edited the Christian Cynosure. He became president emeritus in 1882 and died on May 14, 1892. He was married in 1838 to Mary Avery Bent, by whom he had twelve children, five sons and seven daughters. One son, Charles Albert, succeeded his father as president of Wheaton College, and died on December 20, 1925.

J. W. Bailey, Knox College (1860); Rufus Blanchard, History of Du Page County, Illinois (1882), pp. 174 ff.; T. S. Pearson, Catalog of Graduates of Middlebury College; Chicago Tribune, May 15, 1892.

J A. B.


BLEAKLEY, John, abolitionist, Committee of Twenty-Four/Committee of Employ, the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery (PAS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

(Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 129)


BLEEKER, Harmanus, 1779-1849, Albany, New York, attorney, U.S. congressman.  Founder and officer of the Albany auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 291-292; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 81, 129)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 291-292:

BLEECKER, Harmanus, lawyer, born in Albany, New York, 19 October, 1779; died  there, 19 July, 1849. He studied at Union, but before the completion of his course was admitted to the bar in Albany, where he practised many years as a partner of Theodore Sedgwick. Afterward he was elected to congress as a federalist, serving from 4 November, 1811, till 3 March, 1813. His career in congress was memorable for his opposition to the war of 1812. From 1822 till 1834 he was a regent of the University of the State of New York. In 1839 he was appointed chargé d’affaires at the Hague, where he remained until 1842, when he returned to Albany, New York. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BLEEKER, Leonard, New York, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1834-35.


BLISS, Abel, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-40.


BLISS, Philemon, 1813-1889, lawyer, U.S. congressman, 1854, Chief Justice, Dakota Territory in 1861, elected Supreme Court of Missouri, 1868.  Helped found anti-slavery  Free Soil Party.  Agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). 

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, p. 76; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 165; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, pp. 375-376)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, pp. 375-376:

BLISS, PHILEMON (July 28, 1814-August 24, 1889), congressman, jurist, was born in North Canton, Connecticut, of early Puritan stock through both parents, Asahel and Lydia (Griswold) Bliss. The family moved to Whitestown, New York, in 1821, where Philemon attended the local academy and Oneida Institute, but lack of funds compelled him to withdraw from Hamilton College in his sophomore year, and ill health cut short his training in a local law office. He began the active practise of law at Elyria, Ohio, in 1841, and two years later married Martha W. Sharp. His public career began in 1849 with his election by the Ohio legislature as judge of the 14th judicial district where he served until 1852. Of Federalist and Whig antecedents, he had campaigned actively for Clay in 1844, but his pronounced anti-slavery views carried him into the Free-Soil party in 1848 and later into the Republican. In 1854 he was elected to Congress from a formerly Democratic district and was reelected in 1856. His dislike of controversy and his weak voice-he struggled all his life against bronchial and pulmonary weakness-unfitted him for debate, but his set speeches are able statements of the advanced anti-slavery, anti-state-sovereignty views. In 1861 he accepted an appointment as chief justice of Dakota Territory, hoping that the drier climate would relieve his throat trouble. Two years later he resigned, and coming to Missouri with improved health, in 1864, he brought his family to St. Joseph. Here he served as probate judge and as a member of the county court of Buchanan County; in 1867 he was appointed a curator of the state university, serving until 1872 and taking an active part in its reorganization. In 1868 he was elected to the state supreme court for a four-year term on the Radical or Republican ticket, and won the respect and confidence of all parties in a time of great political bitterness. The dominance of the Democratic party after 1872 ended his political career. In that year the curators of the university appointed him first dean of the newly created department of law, which position he held until his death in 1889. He died at St. Paul, Minnesota, whither he had gone for his health, and he was buried at Columbia, Missouri.

While a man of decided convictions and unquestioned intellectual courage-he was a lifelong Republican in a state and community intensely Democratic-he had an essentially judicial and peaceful temperament. In spite of his lifelong struggle against physical weakness and his retiring disposition, he gave a great and well recognized service in the training of the postbellum generation of lawyers, and in the restoration and advancement of the standards of the legal profession in Missouri. His sound legal knowledge is evidenced by his Treatise upon the Law of Pleading under the Codes of Civil Procedure '': (1870), a text nationally used and frequently revised until superseded by the modern case method.

[J. H. Bliss, Genealogy of the Bliss Family in America (1881); The Bench and Bar of St. Louis (1884), pp, 376-79; W. F. Switzler, "History of the University of Missouri" (MSS.).]

J. V.


BLOOMFIELD, Dr. Joseph, 1753-1823, New Jersey, abolitionist lawyer, soldier, political leader, member and delegate, New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.

(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. 223-225, 239n7; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 86, 92; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 175-176, 185; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, p. 385)


BLOSS, William Clough, 1795-1863, abolitionist leader, reformer, temperance advocate.  Early abolitionist leader in Rochester, New York, area.  Founded abolitionist newspaper, Rights of Man, in 1834.  Petitioned U.S. Congress to end slavery in Washington, DC.  Early supporter of women’s rights and African American civil rights.  Activist in aiding fugitive slaves in the Underground Railroad.  manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1843-1845. 

(American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 3, p. 54)


BLOW, Henry Taylor, 1817-1875, statesman, diplomat.  Active in pre-Civil War anti-slavery movement.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1863-1867, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 297; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, pp. 391-392; 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. 2, pp. 391-392:

BLOW, HENRY TAYLOR (July 15, 1817-September 11, 1875), capitalist, diplomat, congressman, was the son of Peter and Elizabeth (Taylor) Blow. When he was thirteen, his father, a Virginia planter of moderate circumstances, migrated to the West and settled in St. Louis. Henry enjoyed the best educational advantages of the time and locality and graduated with distinction from St. Louis University. He commenced the study of law but abandoned it in order to enter business with his brother-in-law. In the economic transformation of St. Louis from a frontier town to an industrial and commercial center, Blow was an important figure. He was a pioneer in the lead and lead-products business and was instrumental in the opening and development of the large lead mines of southwestern Missouri. He was also president of the Iron Mountain Railroad. The educational and cultural interests of St. Louis came soon to realize that in Blow they had a devoted friend and generous supporter; that he was, in every sense, a public-spirited citizen. In common with many of the leading business men of the city, he was a Whig. In 1854 he was persuaded to become a candidate for the state Senate and was easily elected. Here he became one of the party leaders in the turbulent sessions of the following four years when factionalism was at its height. As chairman of the important committee on banks and corporations, Blow represented adequately and effectively the commercial and financial interests of St. Louis, which were conservative. He had opposed since 1854 the extension of slavery and with the final disappearance of the Whig party, he became, successively, an American and a "black" Republican. Together with Blair, Brown, and others of similar views, Blow supported the Free-Soil movement and helped to organize the Republican party in Missouri. He was a delegate to the national convention of 1860. Laboring tirelessly to keep Missouri in the Union, in the early and critical months of the war he was active in the raising and equipping of troops for the support of the government. Lincoln appointed him minister to Venezuela in 1861 but he returned in 1862 to become a Republican candidate for Congress as a "charcoal," that is, a Republican who favored the immediate and uncompensated emancipation of the slaves in Missouri. He was elected, and was reelected in 1864. His congressional career was marked by close application to committee work and to conferences; he rarely spoke on the floor of the House and took little part in the acrimonious debates which marked the early days of reconstruction. As a member of the joint committee on reconstruction, he supported the policies of Stevens during the first session of Congress in 1866, but during the second he was a follower of the more conservative John A. Bingham. He was singularly free from those bitter personal and political animosities which were dominant during the reconstruction period, especially in the border states. As a business man he was concerned with the restoration and rehabilitation of St. Louis and her markets. He retired from public life in 1867 and devoted himself to the development of his mining properties. Because of his thorough knowledge of the important interests involved, Blow was prevailed upon to accept in 1869 the appointment as minister to Brazil, a position which he held for two years and in which he did much to further closer relations between the two countries, before returning to St. Louis to his numerous business interests. With the reorganization of the District of Columbia government in 1874, Blow reluctantly accepted an appointment on the new board of commissioners and assisted in the reconstruction of the District. He announced his definite retirement from politics in 1875, and died suddenly on September15 of that year. He was married to Minerva, daughter of Colonel Thornton Grimsley of St. Louis.

[The chief facts concerning Blow's political career can be found in the files of the Missouri Republican, the Missouri Democrat, and the Missouri Statesman during the years he was in public life. The Congressional Record for the 39th and 40th Congresses is useful for the years 1863-67. Blow's work on the joint committee on reconstruction is appraised in B. B. Kendrick, Journal of the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction (1914). There are general accounts of his life in W. B. Stevens, "Lincoln and Missouri," Missouri History Review, X, 6J ff., and S. B. Harding, "Missouri Party Struggles in the Civil War Period," Annual Report, American Historical Ass., 1900; H. L. Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri (1901), I, 305-06.

J.T.S.B.


Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 297:

BLOW, Henry T., statesman, born in Southampton county, Virginia, 15 July, 1817; died  in Saratoga, New York, 11 September, 1875. He went to Missouri in 1830, and was graduated at St. Louis university. He then engaged in the drug business and in lead-mining, in which he was successful. Before the civil war he took a prominent part in the anti-slavery movement, and served four years in the state senate. In 1861 he was appointed minister to Venezuela, but resigned in less than a year. He was a republican member of congress from 1863 till 1867, and served on the committee of ways and means. He was minister to Brazil from 1869 till 1871, and was appointed one of the commissioners of the District of Columbia in 1874. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 297.


BOLES, Harper, Dalton, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1839-40.


BOLLES, William, New London, Connecticut, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-42, 1843-46.



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.