Bur-Buz: Burchard through Buzby

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.


BURCHARD, Charles, 1810-1879, New York, Wisconsin, political leader, opposed slavery.  Member of the Whig and Liberty Parties.  Major in the Civil War.


BURDICK, Alfred B., Westerly, Rhode Island, abolitionist.  American Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1855-59.


BURDICK, Stephen, New York, abolitionist.  American Abolition Society.

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


BURGESS, Daniel, Hartford, Connecticut, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-41, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1841-43


BURGESS, Dyer, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-37, Vice-President, 1837-39


BURGESS, Ebenezer, Burlington, Vermont, educator.  Agent of the American Colonization Society.  Went to Africa to found colony.  (Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 41-47, 54, 59, 156)


BURLEIGH, Charles Calistus, 1810-1878, Connecticut, radical abolitionist.  Leader of the Pennsylvania Free Produce Association.  Lectured extensively on evils of slavery.  Officer, American Anti-Slavery Society.  Edited Pennsylvania Freeman paper of the Eastern Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.  Active in temperance, peace and women’s rights movements. 

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 171; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 186, 265, 273; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 34, 35, 66, 298, 368; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 172-177; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 455; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 284; Burleigh, “Slavery and the North” [Anti-Slavery Tract No. 10], New York, 1855, pp. 2-3, 8-10; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 3, p. 959; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II, New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 320)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 284:

BURLEIGH, CHARLES CALISTUS (November 3, 1810-June 13, 1878), abolitionist, was a son of Rinaldo and Lydia (Bradford) Burleigh, and a member of a family of reformers. Born in Plainfield, Connecticut, he received his schooling at Plainfield Academy, and while continuing to help with the work of his father's farm, began the study of law. But early in 1833 an attack on the Connecticut "Black Law" which he had published in the Genius of Temperance attracted the attention of the Reverend Samuel J. May [q.v.], through whose instrumentality he became editor of Arthur Tappan's new paper the Unionist, published at Brooklyn, Connecticut, in defense of Prudence Crandall [q.v.] and her negro school. Burleigh later assisted by his brother, William Henry [q.v.],--edited the Unionist for some two years during which he won a reputation for fearless and forceful writing. He had continued his study of law, and in January 1835 was admitted to the bar, but again the Reverend S. J. May and the call of reform intervened, and Burleigh turned his back on a professional career to become agent and lecturer for the Middlesex Anti-Slavery Society. In the same year he was in the company of William Lloyd Garrison when the latter was mobbed in Boston, wrote the account of the mob published in the Liberator (October 24, 1835), and helped conduct that journal during Garrison's absence from the city. His name appeared frequently in the Liberator thereafter, and his long thin figure, "flowing beard and ringlets and eccentric costume" (Garrison, III, 298) became familiar on lecture platforms throughout the northeastern states. In 1838 he was a witness of another mob when Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia was burned. At this time and for some years he was editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, after 1844 the regular organ of the Eastern Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. As a member of the business committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society he introduced at the meeting in 1840 a resolution stating that the constitution of the society should not be interpreted as requiring members either to exercise or refuse to exercise their political votes; this resolution led to the repudiation by the society of both Harrison and Van Buren as candidates for the presidency. In 1859 Burleigh succeeded Sydney H. Gays corresponding secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and in that capacity prepared its twenty-seventh annual report, published under the title, The Anti-Slavery History of the John Brown Year (1861). He also prepared the introduction to Reception of George Thompson in Great Britain (1836); and an appendix to Discussion on American Slavery between George Thompson, Esq., and Reverend Robert J. Breckinridge (1836); and was the author of Slavery and the North (Anti-Slavery Tracts, No. 10, 1855); and an address, extracts from which appeared in No Slave-Hunting in the Old Bay State (Anti-Slavery Tracts, new series, No. 13, 1859).

Burleigh's zeal in the anti-slavery cause led him indirectly into another crusade. Twice jailed in West Chester, Pennsylvania, for selling anti-slavery literature on Sunday, he plunged into Anti-Sabbatarianism, joining with others in a call for a convention, held in New York in March 1848, at which he was prominent among the speakers. He also dabbled from time to time in other reforms: opposed capital punishment in a pamphlet, Thoughts on the Death Penalty (1845) and on the platform in Philadelphia (A Defence of Capital Punishment by Elder Frederick Plummer in a Discussion of Six Evenings with Charles Burleigh, 1846); and supported woman suffrage, notably by his speeches in the conventions at Cleveland and New York in 1853 and at the first annual meeting of the American Equal Rights Association at New York in May 1867 (Susan B. Anthony and others, History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-82, I, 148,549, II, 194). He later followed his brother William Henry into the field of temperance reform (Centennial Temperance Volume, 1877, p. 83).

Burleigh's personal appearance, his eccentricity of dress and manner, were against him, in the opinion of Samuel J. May, who nevertheless reckoned Burleigh among his ablest associates, characterizing him as "a single-minded, pure-hearted, conscientious, self-sacrificing man," who often "delighted and astonished his hearers by the brilliancy of his rhetoric and the surpassing beauty of his imagery" (May, p. 66). The son of William Lloyd Garrison said that as a close debater Burleigh "was easily first of all the abolition orators" (Garrison, IV, 319). During his later years he made his home at Northampton, Massachusetts, where he died in 1878 from injuries received in a railroad accident at Florence, Massachusetts. On October 24, 1842, he had married Gertrude Kimber of Chester County, Pennsylvania, who bore him three children.

[Chas. Burleigh. Genealogy of the Burley or Burleigh Family of America (1880); Ellen D. Larned, History of Windham County, Connecticut, Volume II (1880), p. 497; Samuel J. May, Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict (1869); W. P. and F. J. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison (18S5-89); J. T. Scharf and T. Westcott, History of Phi/a. (1884), III, 2015; files of the Liberator (Boston); obituary in Boston Transcript, June 14, 1878.]

E. R. D.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 455;

BURLEIGH, Charles C., abolitionist, born in Plainfield, Connecticut, 10 November, 1810; died in Florence, Massachusetts, 14 June, 1878. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar of Windham county, Connecticut, but soon became interested in the anti-slavery movement, in which he attained high distinction as an orator and an earnest worker. He, with his brother, edited an abolitionist newspaper called “The Unionist,” the publisher being Miss Prudence Crandall (q. v.), who was indicted for keeping a colored school in Connecticut. He rendered efficient service to Mr. Garrison in Boston in protecting him from the violence of the mob in 1835, and was one of the speakers in Pennsylvania hall, in Philadelphia, when that building was burned by a mob in 1838. He was one of the earliest advocates of women's rights and of liberalism in religion, as he was also of temperance principles, in behalf of which he spoke frequently. For fifteen years he was resident speaker of the free Congregational society in Florence, Massachusetts, and for one year preached in Bloomington, Illinois. He was the author of “Thoughts on the Death Penalty” (1845), and a tract on the Sabbath, which advanced anti-Sabbatarian views. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 455.


BURLEIGH, Gertrude, abolitionist, Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 73)


BURLEIGH, William Henry, 1812-1871, Connecticut, journalist.  Active in temperance, peace and women’s rights movements.  Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society. Editor of the anti-slavery newspapers Christian Freeman, newspaper of the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, and the Charter Oak.  Leader of the Liberty Party.  In 1836, he was appointed a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  In 1840-1841, Burleigh was a Manager of the AASS.  As a result of his protesting the war against Mexico, which he felt was being fought for the “slave power,” Burleigh was attacked by mobs and barely escaped being hurt. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 186, 265, 273, 301; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 455; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 286; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 3, p. 961)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 286:

BURLEIGH, WILLIAM HENRY (February 2, 1812-March 18, 1871), journalist, reformer, was the fourth of the six sons of Rinaldo Burleigh, a Yale graduate and a classical teacher until failing sight forced him to retire, and his wife Lydia Bradford, a descendant of Governor William Bradford. He was born at Woodstock, Connecticut, but spent most of his boyhood on his father's farm at Plainfield, Connecticut, where he early became a sharer in the family responsibilities, which meant hard work and few recreations. His education was received at the district. school and the Plainfield Academy, of which his father was in charge until William was eleven. Winter schooling and summer work alternated for a number of years: He was apprenticed to a dyer, then to a printer, in order that he might quickly become self-supporting. In 1830 he became a journeyman on the Stonington Phenix, where he was soon setting up articles of his own composition. In 1832 he was printer and contributor to the Schenectady (New York) Cabinet and in 1833 assisted his brother, Charles Calistus Burleigh [q.v.], in editing the Unionist, Brooklyn, Connecticut, a paper founded to support Prudence Crandall's colored school in which William Burleigh also taught for a time. He was married to Harriet Adelia Frink of Stonington, Connecticut, by whom he had seven children. He early felt interest in reform causes, especially anti-slavery, temperance, peace, and woman suffrage, and in 1836 began lecturing for the American Anti-Slavery Society. At about the same time he was editor of the Literary Journal, Schenectady, but left that in 1837 to become editor of the Christian Witness and afterward the Temperance Banner, in Pittsburgh. In 1843 he went to Hartford at the invitation of the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, to take charge of its organ, the Christian Freeman, afterward the Charter Oak. In 1849 he was employed by the New York State Temperance Society, with headquarters at Albany and Syracuse, as corresponding secretary, lecturer, and editor of the Prohibitionist. He remained in this position until 1855, when he was appointed harbor master of the port of New York and went to live in Brooklyn. Later he was made a port warden, but in 1870 was displaced for a Democrat. His first wife died in 1864 and in 1865 he married Mrs. Celia Burr of Troy, a teacher, prominent in woman suffrage work, and afterward a Unitarian minister. Burleigh's fiery tilts against the evils of his day often made life hard for himself and his family. He denounced the Mexican War, as waged in the interest of the slave power, and for this and on other occasions narrowly escaped mob violence. Yet he really disliked controversy and preferred purely literary work. Poetry was the form he chose for personal literary expression, apart from editorial and lecture composition. A volume of Poems was published in 1841 and enlarged editions appeared in 1845 and 1850. After his death his wife collected these poems in a new edition (1871). His poetry is not without beauty and vigor and shows his longing for the quiet, studious life which, because of his goading conscience, he was never able to enjoy. This conscience also dictated a certain amount of propaganda verse, such as The Rum Fiend and Other Poems (1871). His picture, taken shortly before his death, shows a worn, kindly face, with high cheek bones, unusually alert dark eyes, heavy, drooping, white mustache, and white hair worn long and brushed straight back. He was brought up by his parents a strict Presbyterian but later became a Unitarian. He died in Brooklyn, New York, as a result of what were called epileptic attacks, and his funeral was held at the Second Unitarian Church, where Samuel Longfellow had preached and where John White Chadwick was then pastor. His old friend John G. Whittier visited him shortly before his death.

[The chief source of information about Burleigh is the memoir by his wife Celia Burleigh, which forms the preface to his collected Poems (1871). A long obituary appeared in the New York Tribune, March 20, 1871, and an obituary notice in the New York Times, March 19, 1871. See also Chas. Burleigh, The Genealogy of the Burley or Burleigh Family of America (1880), p. 141.)

S.G.B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 455:

BURLEIGH, William Henry, journalist, born in Woodstock, Connecticut, 2 February, 1812; died in Brooklyn, New York, 18 March, 1871. He was a lineal descendant, on his mother's side, of Governor Bradford. His father, a graduate of Yale in 1803, had been a popular and successful teacher, but in 1827 became totally blind. William, who had been bred on a farm and educated principally by his father, was now apprenticed to a clothier and afterward to a village printer. He contributed to the columns of the newspaper it was a part of his duty to print, not in written communications, but by setting up his articles without the intervention of writing. From the autumn of 1832 till 1835 he was almost constantly engaged in editorial duties and in charge of papers advocating one or all of the great reforms then agitating the public mind—anti-slavery, temperance, and peace. Though naturally one of the most genial and amiable of men, Mr. Burleigh was stern in his adherence to principle. In 1836 he added to his editorial duties the labor of lecturing in behalf of the American anti-slavery society, and defending their views. For a time he had charge of the “Literary Journal” in Schenectady, then became in 1837 editor of the Pittsburg “Temperance Banner,” afterward called the “Christian Witness,” the organ of the western Pennsylvania anti-slavery society. In 1843 he was invited to Hartford by the executive committee of the Connecticut anti-slavery society, and took charge of its organ, the “Christian Freeman,” which soon became the “Charter Oak,” a vigorously edited and brilliant defender of the anti-slavery and temperance reforms. Mr. Burleigh afterward took charge of the Washington “Banner.” He struck trenchant blows at popular vices and political depravity in his papers, and received his reward more than once in mob violence. But while he deemed this heroic defence of unpopular doctrines a duty, and maintained it with unfaltering heart, he disliked controversy, and, whenever he could command the means for it, he would establish a purely literary paper, which, though generally short-lived, always contained gems of poetry and prose from his prolific pen, and avoided controversial topics. In 1850 he disposed of the “Charter Oak” to the free-soilers, the nucleus of the republican party, and removed to Syracuse, and subsequently to Albany, New York, to be the general agent and lecturer of the New York state temperance society and-editor of the “Prohibitionist.” When in 1855 Governor Clark offered him, unsolicited, the place of harbor-master of the port of New York, he accepted it and removed to Brooklyn. For the next fifteen years he was either harbor-master or port-warden, but found time for much literary and some political labor. In the political campaigns he was in demand as a speaker, and his thorough knowledge of all the questions before the people, together with his eloquence, made him popular. He was also in request as a lyceum lecturer, especially on anti-slavery subjects. A collection of his poems was published in 1841, followed by enlarged editions in 1845 and 1850. A part of these were after his death published, with a memoir by his widow (Boston, 1871).—His wife, Celia, reformer, born in Cazenovia, New York, in 1825; died in Syracuse, 26 July, 1875. She was a teacher, and in 1844 married C. B. Kellum and removed with him to Cincinnati. She was divorced from him, and in 1851 married Charles Channey Burr; was again divorced, and in 1865 married Mr. Burleigh. She was the first president of the Woman’s club, Brooklyn, and took an active part in advocating woman suffrage and other reform movements. After Mr. Burleigh's death she prepared herself for the ministry, and was pastor of a Unitarian church in Brooklyn, Connecticut, until 1873; but failing health compelled her to resign in October, 1871, when she went to the water-cure establishment of Dr. Jackson in Danville, New York. Mrs. Burleigh had a wide reputation as an able writer and an eloquent speaker. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 455.


BURLEY, Alice, African American, abolitionist

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 58n40)


BURLING, William, born 1678, Flushing, Long Island, Society of Friends, Quaker.  Tried to have fellow Quakers give up slaveholding.  He called it a sin.  Wrote tracts against slavery, circa 1718. 

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, p. 120; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 34, 36-37, 107)


BURLINGAME, Anson, Anson, 1820-1870, New Berlin, New York, diplomat, lawyer, orator. Massachusetts State Senator, elected 1852.  Republican United States Congressman, elected in 1855 and served 3 terms.  Burlingame was a member of the Free Soil Party and an early co-founder of the Republican Party in Massachusetts.  Anti-slavery activist in the House of Representatives.  He delivered a speech in reprimand of Senator Preston Brooks after he assaulted Senator Sumner on the Senate floor. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 456-457; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 289; Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, pp. 308, 336, 491-493).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

BURLINGAME, Anson, diplomatist, born in New Berlin, Chenango county, New York, 14 November, 1820; died in St. Petersburg, Russia, 23 February, 1870. He was the descendant of a family who were among the early settlers of Rhode Island. His father, a farmer, removed, when Anson was three years old, to a farm in Seneca county, Ohio, where they lived for ten years, and in 1833 again removed to Detroit, and after two years more to a farm at Branch, Mich. In 1837 Anson was admitted to the University of Michigan, and six years later went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and entered the law-school of Harvard university, where he was graduated in 1846. He began the practice of the law in Boston, and a year or two later became an active member and a popular orator of the free-soil party, then recently formed. In the political campaign of 1848 he acquired a wide reputation as a public speaker in behalf of the election of Van Buren and Adams. In 1849-'50 he visited Europe. In 1852 he was elected to the Massachusetts senate, and in 1853 he served as a member of the state constitutional convention, to which he was elected by the town of Northborough, though he resided in Cambridge. He joined the American party on its formation in 1854, and in that year was elected by it to the 34th congress. In the following year he co-operated in the formation of the republican party, to which he ever afterward steadily adhered. In congress he bore himself with courage and address, and was recognized as one of the ablest debaters on the anti-slavery side of the house. For the severe terms in which he denounced the assault committed by Preston S. Brooks upon Senator Sumner, in 1856, he was challenged by Brooks. He promptly accepted the challenge, and named rifles as the weapons, and Navy island, just above Niagara Falls, as the place. To the latter proposition Mr. Brooks demurred, alleging that, in order to meet his opponent in Canada, in the then excited state of public feeling, he would have to expose himself to popular violence in passing through “the enemy's country,” as he called the northern states. The matter fell through, but the manner in which Mr. Burlingame had conducted himself greatly raised him in the estimation of his friends and of his party; and on his return to Boston, at the end of his term, he was received with distinguished honors. He was re-elected to the 35th and 36th congresses; but failing, after an animated and close contest, to be returned to the 37th, his legislative career ended in March, 1861. He was immediately appointed by President Lincoln minister to Austria; but that government declined to receive, in a diplomatic capacity, a man who had spoken often and eloquently in favor of Hungarian independence, and had moved in congress the recognition of Sardinia as a first-class power. He was then sent as minister to China. In 1865 he returned to the United States with the intention of resigning his office; but the secretary of state urged him to resume his functions for the purpose of carrying out important projects and negotiations that he had initiated. To this he finally consented. When, in 1867, he announced his intention of returning home, Prince Kung, regent of the empire, offered to appoint him special envoy to the United States and the great European powers, for the purpose of framing treaties of amity with those nations—an honor never before conferred on a foreigner. This place Mr. Burlingame accepted, and, at the head of a numerous mission, he arrived in the United States in March, 1868. On 28 July supplementary articles to the treaty of 1858 were signed at Washington, and soon afterward ratified by the Chinese government. These articles, afterward known as “The Burlingame Treaty,” marked the first official acceptance by China of the principles of international law, and provided, in general, that the privileges enjoyed by western nations under that law—the right of eminent domain, the right of appointing consuls at the ports of the United States, and the power of the government to grant or withhold commercial privileges and immunities at their own discretion, subject to treaty—should be secured to China; that nation undertaking to observe the corresponding obligations prescribed by international law toward other peoples. Special provisions also stipulated for entire liberty of conscience and worship for Americans in China, and Chinese in America; for joint efforts against the cooly trade; for the enjoyment by Chinese in America and Americans in China of all rights in respect to travel and residence accorded to citizens of the most favored nation; for similar reciprocal rights in the matter of the public educational institutions of the two countries, and for the right of establishing schools by citizens of either country in the other. The concluding article disclaims, on the part of the United States, the right of interference with the domestic administration of China in the matter of railroads, telegraphs, and internal improvements, but agrees that the United States will furnish assistance in these points on proper conditions, when requested by the Chinese government. From America Mr. Burlingame proceeded in the latter part of 1868 to England, and thence to France (1869), Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and Prussia, in all of which countries he was favorably received, and in all of which, but France, to which he intended returning, he negotiated important treaties or articles of agreement. He reached St. Petersburg early in 1870, and had just entered upon the business of his mission when he died of pneumonia, after an illness of only a few days. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BURNET, Jacob, 1770-1853, born in Newark, New Jersey, Cincinnati, Ohio, jurist, lawyer, college president.  Ohio Supreme Court Justice.  Vice-President, 1836-1841, American Colonization Society (ACS).  Member and first President of the Cincinnati auxiliary of the ACS. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 458; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 294; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 138-140

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 458:

BURNET, Jacob, jurist, born in Newark, New Jersey, 22 February, 1770; died in Cincinnati, Ohio, 10 May, 1853, was graduated at Princeton in 1791, studied law in the office of Judge Boudinot, and was admitted to the bar in 1796. The same year he removed to Ohio, where he became distinguished as a lawyer and was a leading citizen in the new settlement of Cincinnati. In 1799 he was appointed to the legislative council of the territory, continuing a member of that body, in which he took the most prominent part in the preparation of legislative measures, until the formation of a state government. In 1812 he was a member of the state legislature, a judge of the supreme court of Ohio in 1821-'8, and in 1828-'31 U. S. senator. He was chosen by the legislature of Kentucky a commissioner to adjust certain territorial disputes with Virginia. He took part in the establishment of the Lancastrian academy in Cincinnati, and was one of the founders of the Cincinnati college, and its first president, and was active in reorganizing the Medical college of Ohio. He was a delegate to the Harrisburg convention in 1839, and was mainly instrumental in securing the nomination of Harrison to the presidency. He was the first president of the Colonization society of Cincinnati. His efforts to alleviate the distress felt by purchasers of western lands, on account of indebtedness to the government which they were unable to discharge, resulted in an act of congress granting relief to the entire west, extricating the settlers from serious financial distress. The debt due to the government amounted to $22,000,000, exceeding the volume of currency in circulation in the west, and threatening both farmers and speculators with bankruptcy. The people of the southwest were in the same situation; all the banks had suspended payment, and forcible resistance was threatened if the government should attempt to dispossess the settlers. Judge Burnett drew up a memorial to congress, proposing a release of back interest and permission to settlers to relinquish as much of the land entered as they were unable to pay for. The memorial was generally approved by the inhabitants of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and in 1821 congress granted relief in the form desired. In 1830 Judge Burnett secured the revocation of the forfeiture of the congressional land-grant to the state of Ohio for the extension of the Miami canal, and an additional grant that emboldened the legislature of Ohio to carry out the work. He published “Notes on the Early Settlement of the Northwestern Territory” (New York, 1847). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BURNS, Anthony, c. 1830-1862, fugitive slave, abolitionist, clergyman. 

(Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp.308-312, 324, 373, 418n31; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. lxxviii-lxxix, 251; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 56, 212-213, 303, 415, 477-478; Stevens, 1856; Von Frank, 1998; Boston Slave Riot and the Trial of Anthony Burns, 1854; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 404, 460; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 308)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 308:

BURNS, ANTHONY (May 31, 1834-July 27, 1862), fugitive slave, was born in Stafford County, Virginia. It is said, but without certainty, that his father, who died where the child was very young, had been a freeman and had come from the North. Certainly the boy from the beginning showed unusual independence and character. At six, in return for little services he did them, he learned the alphabet from white children with whom he was thrown in contact. He was converted while a youth to the Baptist faith and two years later became a "slave preacher." As a young man he was sent to take a position in Richmond, for which his master was to be paid. A transfer of positions left him free to escape, and in February 1854 he fled from Richmond on a vessel on which he had a friend. On May 24, he was arrested in Boston on the charge of theft. The excitement in Boston during the following week was said to have been without parallel since the days of the Revolution. The abolitionists and the woman suffragists were holding anniversary conventions at the time, but people poured in also from neighboring suburbs. A mass meeting two days after the arrest was addressed by Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker. An attack was made on the Court House, in which one of the deputy marshals was killed. President Pierce and the Mayor of Boston brought together military forces to prevent a second attack. Burns was defended by R. H. Dana and others, but without success. He had been immediately identified by his master. To prevent his release, he was taken down State St. between armed troops. The Grand Jury was charged by Judge B. R. Curtis to indict Parker, Wendell Phillips, and Higginson for their Faneuil Hall talks on "obstructing the process of the United States," but the indictments were quashed on technical grounds. The cost to the United States of sending this one fugitive back to Virginia was $100,- 000. A sum of money had been raised to purchase Burns's freedom but this was not possible at the time. A few months later he fell into the hands of a friendly master, who sold him to individuals in Boston interested in setting him free. He attended the preparatory department of Oberlin College, 1855-56, and is supposed to have attended Fremont Academy, 1856-57. From 1857 to 1862, through the generosity of a Boston woman, he was able to study at Oberlin College. For a short time in 1860 he was in charge of a colored Baptist church in Indianapolis, but was forced to leave. Later he went to Canada, and became pastor of the Zion Baptist Church at St. Catherines, where he died.

[Boston Slave Riot and Trial of Anthony Burns (1854); C. E. Stevens, Anthony Burns, A History (1856); M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves (1891); Wm. Lloyd Garrison, The Story of His Life, Told by His Children (1885-89); the Liberator, June, July 1854, August 22, 1862; Fred Landon, "Anthony Burns in Canada," in Ontario History Society Papers and Records, Volume XXII (1925).]

M.A.K.


Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 404, 460:

BURNS, Anthony, fugitive slave, born in Virginia about 1830; died in St. Catharines, Canada, 27 July, 1862. He effected his escape from slavery in Virginia, and was at work in Boston in the winter of 1853-'4. On 23 May, 1854, the U. S. house of representatives passed the Kansas-Nebraska bill repealing the Missouri compromise, and permitting the extension of negro slavery, which had been restricted since 1820. The news caused great indignation throughout the free states, especially in Boston, where the anti-slavery party had its headquarters. Just at this crisis Burns was arrested by U.S. Marshal Watson Freeman, under the provisions of the fugitive-slave act, on a warrant sworn out by Charles F. Suttle. He was confined in the Boston court-house under a strong guard, and on 25 May was taken before U. S. Commissioner Loring for examination. Through the efforts of Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker, an adjournment was secured to 27 May, and in the mean time a mass-meeting was called at Faneuil hall, and the U.S. marshal summoned a large posse of extra deputies, who were armed and stationed in and about the court-house to guard against an expected attempt at the rescue of Burns. The meeting at Faneuil hall was addressed by the most prominent men of Boston, and could hardly be restrained from adjourning in a body to storm the court-house. While this assembly was in session, a premature attempt to rescue Burns was made under the leadership of Thomas W. Higginson. A door of the courthouse was battered in, one of the deputies was killed in the fight, and Colonel Higginson and others of the assailants were wounded. A call for re-enforcements was sent to Faneuil hall, but in the confusion it never reached the chairman. On the next day the examination was held before Commissioner Loring, Richard H. Dana and Charles M. Ellis appearing for the prisoner. The evidence showed that Burns was amenable under the law, and his surrender to his master was ordered. When the decision was made known, many houses were draped in black, and the state of popular feeling was such that the government directed that the prisoner be sent to Virginia on board the revenue cutter “Morris.” He was escorted to the wharf by a strong guard, through streets packed with excited crowds. At the wharf the tumult seemed about to culminate in riot, when the Reverend Daniel Foster (who was killed in action early in the civil war) exclaimed, “Let us pray!” and silence fell upon the multitude, who stood with uncovered heads, while Burns was hurried on board the cutter. A more impressively dramatic ending, or one more characteristic of an excited but law-abiding and God-fearing New England community, could hardly be conceived for this famous case. Burns afterward studied at Oberlin college, and eventually became a Baptist minister, and settled in Canada, where, during the closing years of his life, he presided over a congregation of his own color. See “Anthony Burns, A History,” by C. E. Stevens (Boston, 1854). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 460.


BURR, AARON (February 6, 1756-September 14, 1836), Revolutionary soldier, lawyer, United States senator, and third vice-president of the United States.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 4; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, pp. 314-321; Jas. Parton, The Life and Times of Aaron Burr (1858) Aaron Burr, His Personal and Political Relations with Thos. Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton (1902) The Aaron Burr Conspiracy (1903) and Henry Adams, History of the U.S., volumes II and III (1889-90).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, pp. 314-321:

BURR, AARON (February 6, 1756-September 14, 1836), Revolutionary soldier, lawyer, United States senator, and third vice-president of the United States, came of an ancestry remarkable as well for its ecclesiastical eminence as for its intellectual vigor. His father was Aaron Burr [q.v.], scholar, theologian, and second president of the College of New Jersey; his mother was Esther Edwards, daughter of Jonathan Edwards [q.v.], the greatest of the New England divines. Burr and his sister Sarah, or "Sally," were born at Newark, New Jersey, where for some years the elder Burr had acted as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. Shortly after the birth of his son, however, he moved to Princeton, where he died in September 1757. After the death of Burr's mother and of her parents within a few months, a maternal uncle, Timothy Edwards, became guardian of the children, essaying to rear them in the family tradition. Tapping Reeve, who subsequently became judge of the supreme court of Connecticut, and a famous preceptor in law, served for a time as their tutor and later married Sally Burr (Davis, post, I, 25, 26).

From all accounts Burr was an attractive boy, fair of face, sprightly and merry, but not readily submissive to the discipline of his austere uncle. There was always in him a certain independence and audacity of spirit that carried him over or around artificial barriers. Yet he could apply himself to the task that engaged his interest. He prepared for college as a matter of course, ambition here coinciding with the wishes of his family; and he entered the sophomore class of the College of New Jersey at the age of thirteen. Tradition has it that he was a brilliant student but dissipated. Brilliant he was in whatever enlisted his interest, but Parton doubts that he was guilty of serious dereliction in these early years, arguing that part of his dissipation in college was "merely a dissipation of mind in multifarious reading." Be this as it may, Burr graduated with distinction at the age of sixteen. He is described as a youth of winning presence, rather short in stature but graceful in manner, who made friends easily among both sexes. A fondness for adventure and intrigue, however, gave a certain instability to his character, and a degree of waywardness to his life. He hesitated for a time over the choice of a career. During his college course a revival that had stirred many of his mates had awakened his curiosity and led him to consult the president of the college. That conservative mentor, John Witherspoon [q.v.], expressed disbelief in revivals, and thus reassured, Burr did not yield to the zealous expostulations of his fellows. Some months later, however, motivated by curiosity fully as much as by a pious desire to follow in the footsteps of his fathers, he entered upon the study of theology. But his curiosity was too much for his teacher, and in 1774 he left theology for law.

Less than a year later, the clash at Lexington summoned him to arms. After a few weeks with the motley host that beleaguered Boston, he joined the expedition against Quebec. On the difficult march thither, in the unsuccessful attack on the city (during which he is credited with an attempt to rescue the body of the commander, Montgomery), and during the gloomy winter that followed, he showed marked soldierly qualities. In the spring of 1776, having served Arnold as staff officer with the rank of captain, he was sent to New York. Here he served with the rank of major in the official household of General Washington, but Burr's want of regard for military decorum, and perhaps occasional impertinence, antagonized his chief, and the intimacy of a few weeks led only to mutual dislike and distrust. Transferred to the staff of General Putnam, Burr gave a good account of himself in the battle of Long Island and in the evacuation of New York-and had time to indulge in one of his numerous amatory intrigues. In July 1777 he was appointed lieutenant-colonel in the Continental line and assigned to a regiment stationed in Orange County, New York, and as its virtual commander established a commendable reputation for discipline and daring.

Throughout his life Burr displayed an unfortunate tendency to follow impulses which were prompted by personal likes or dislikes, as, for example, at Valley Forge where he narrowly missed inclusion in the notorious "Conway Cabal," and again at Monmouth where he suffered a repulse - a misfortune that led him to sympathize openly with General Charles Lee. Following Monmouth, he spent the winter on patrol duty with his regiment in Westchester County, New York, where he maintained his reputation for vigilance and discipline. The hardships of this service, plus the exertions of the previous summer's campaign, eventually forced him to resign from the army in March 1779 (Ibid., I, ch. V-XI).

He desired to enter upon professional training at once, but ill health forced a long wait. In the fall of 1780 he took up the study of law at Raritan, New Jersey, with William Paterson, an older friend of college days, but later transferred to an office in Haverstraw, New York. By means of this transfer and through the favor of Judge Robert Yates, of the state supreme court, he hastened his training and early in 1782 was licensed as attorney and counselor-at-law. In preparing for a profession Burr, as usual, had preferred to follow his own bent and was not averse to short cuts (Parton, post, 130-34).

In July 1782, he married Mrs. Theodosia (Bartow) Prevost, some ten years his senior, the widow of a former British officer. Though possessed of little fortune and of no great beauty, she was a woman of charm and intellectual vigor, and despite the disparity in their ages, her invalidism, and his exacting temperament, their twelve years of married life were apparently stimulating to both. Burr has been charged with more than one intrigue before his marriage and with many more after his wife's death, but he seems to have been true to her, if not as passionately devoted to her as she was to him, and he was an affectionate and zealous parent to their one daughter, Theodosia [q.v.]. His circle of stimulating regard included his stepsons, Frederick and Bartow Prevost, and numerous proteges, who, like his daughter, were always his devoted admirers.

In the fall of 1783 Burr moved to New York. Here he soon shared with Alexander Hamilton the pick of legal practise and for six years stuck closely to the law. In pleading he was noted for clarity and conciseness of utterance. He never ranted nor lost his temper, but as a contemporary noted, "He is more remarkable for dexterity than sound judgment or logic." Burr's practise brought him a substantial income which he tried to increase by extensive speculations. Generosity as well as self-indulgence made an incurable spendthrift of him. His carelessness in money matters was often a cause of grief to clients as well as to friends.

Burr's attempts to enter politics during his early residence in New York were uniformly unsuccessful. His professional rival, Hamilton, was the leader of one group, and Governor George Clinton, who headed the opposing forces, at first made no bid for his support. But in September 1789 Clinton made him his attorney-general. From that office, after participating in a questionable deal in state lands, he was transferred, in 1791, to the United States Senate. He owed his elevation to his own finesse in fusing the Clinton and Livingston factions in opposition to the financial plans of Hamilton. The coalition defeated the latter's father-in-law, General Philip Schuyler, and thereby gained for Burr Hamilton's persistent enmity.

During his term as senator (1791-97) Burr was twice mentioned for the governorship and in 1797 received thirty electoral votes for president. He took his membership seriously, applied himself to routine tasks, did nothing unseemly, and accomplished nothing of great repute. He attracted public attention and gained some worthwhile friends, including Gallatin and Jackson, but was not really accepted by either of the major party groups then being formed. He was defeated for reelection to the Senate but in April 1797 was elected to the state Assembly. Here he introduced a measure to choose presidential electors by separate districts and was influential in the passage of a bill to aid the Holland Land Company in which he himself had a financial interest (Paul D. Evans, The Holland Land Company, 1924, pp. 180, 212-13). These measures, coupled with efforts in obtaining a charter for the Manhattan Company, a banking corporation disguised as a water company, led to his defeat in April 1799.

For some years past Burr had been gathering about himself a band of enthusiastic young helpers, who by letter urged their leader's claims to high office and directed operations at "Martling's Long Room," where met St. Tammany's Society. Burr did not openly affiliate with the mechanics and small householder5 who largely made up this organization but through henchmen kept informed of their activities and around them built up his political machine. With this, he proposed to make himself a power in local politics and force Jefferson and his associates to recognize his leadership. He first secured his election to the state assembly from Orange County and then in New York City brought about the selection of a strong legislative ticket headed by Clinton, Brockholst Livingston, and his own friend, General Horatio Gates. With this coalition ticket and using the "Martling Men" as a nucleus, he definitely listed and organized the voters of the city and in April 1800 roundly defeated Hamilton. The city returned a Republican delegation which gave that party control of the legislature by a narrow majority, and thus assured it the entire vote of New York in the electoral college. Then through a. clever by-play, Burr procured his own indorsement for vice-president (American Historical Review, VIII, 512) and later journeyed to Philadelphia and secured from the Republican members of Congress a pledge to support him equally with Jefferson.

Owing to this agreement Burr tied with Jefferson for the presidency, each receiving seventy- three votes. The Federalists; who controlled a slight majority in the House of Representatives, determined to vote for him rather than Jefferson. Burr at once disclaimed competition for the office and his letter to that effect was published (Davis, II, 75). He also wrote a vigorous disclaimer to one of the Virginia group (Burr to John Taylor, December 18, 1800, manuscript in the Pennsylvania Historical Society). Later he kept quiet, in part, perhaps, because he learned that his local party associates were preparing to repudiate him and that Jefferson favored them rather than himself in the prospective division of patronage (P. L. Ford, ed., Writings of Thomas Jefferson, VIII, 102). He issued no more disclaimers, but apparently repelled all direct attempts of the Federalists to bargain with him. "Had Burr done anything for himself," wrote one of them in the midst of the balloting to break the tie, "he would long ere this have been president" (Davis, II, u3), and that, too, we may add, despite the bitter secret opposition of Hamilton. But he did nothing and on the thirty-sixth ballot the Federalists permitted the election of his rival. The share of patronage accorded to him was not wholly satisfactory but he helped in the reelection of Governor Clinton and presided over the convention that in 1801 amended the state constitution. He alienated both Republicans and Federalists by his vote when the Senate was evenly divided over the Judiciary Act and further antagonized the Republicans by taking part in the Federalist celebration of Washington's birthday. He was also attacked for suppressing a lengthy scurrilous pamphlet against the administration of John Adams. From this the editors who directed it passed to the more serious charge that Burr had intrigued with the Federalists to supplant Jefferson. Then followed two years of unstinted newspaper abuse. A pamphlet by Van Ness in rejoinder gave the presidential group a pretext for finding another running mate. Accordingly, at the party caucus on February 25, 1804 George Clinton replaced Burr on the Republican ticket.

Burr's friends in the New York legislature had already nominated him on February 18 for the governorship. In this contest there was some prospect of receiving Federalist aid through those New England leaders who were looking forward to a Northern confederacy. Burr refused to commit himself to their disunion schemes, but in spite of his attitude and Hamilton's renewed opposition, the rank and file of the Federalists voted for him and helped him carry the city and some outlying counties. Nevertheless, the regular Republican candidate, Morgan Lewis, supported by the Clinton and Livingston factions and countenanced by Jefferson and Hamilton, defeated him by a heavy majority.

Following this contest came the fatal duel with Hamilton. For fifteen years in contests for the Senate, the presidency, and the governorship the latter had filled his private correspondence with invective against Burr's public and private character. Their personal relations during all this time had generally been friendly. Now Burr regarded himself for the third time as the peculiar victim of Hamilton's malevolence. "These things," he significantly stated in the correspondence that preceded the fatal encounter, "must have an end." In the course of the campaign there had been published three compromising letters in which Hamilton was represented as stating publicly that Burr was a "dangerous man and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government." This ill-considered remark ended with reference to a "still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton had expressed of Mr. Burr" (Wandell and Minnegerode, I, 274). These statements provoked Burr's challenge. They must be interpreted in connection with Hamilton's long-continued secret abuse, which the other had certainly not repaid in kind. The correspondence that preceded the duel favors Burr. His demands were peremptory, and Hamilton's replies were evasive. As the latter was unwilling to repudiate his previous harsh judgments, he reluctantly accepted the challenge (Davis, II, ch. XXI). In addition to settling past grievances, however, Burr may have wished to forestall further unwelcome rivalry, either in a possible Northern confederacy or on the Southwestern border. The latter was the more probable field, for both Burr and Hamilton cherished the ambition to lead an army thither in an effort to free the Spanish colonies. Viewed in this light the duel with Hamilton may be regarded as the opening move in the "Conspiracy," as well as the lurid finale to Burr's local political career. The meeting itself took place on the morning of July 11, 1804, at Weehawken, New Jersey, a circumstance that permitted two states to bring indictments against the survivor. Each man fired a single shot; Hamilton fell mortally wounded and died the next day. Burr fled, first to Philadelphia and thence southward, while his enemies took revenge on his heavily encumbered property and reputation.

Burr's journey was not an aimless one. Both before and after the duel he had conferred with General James Wilkinson [q.v.], a friend of long standing who had just come northward from New Orleans. The two had evidently agreed upon a plan of action in case war should break out with Spain. As a preliminary step Burr was to visit East Florida; but much to the relief of his prospective hosts, a series of destructive tempests prevented him from reaching his destination (East Florida Papers, Casa Yrujo to Enrique White, August 12; Burr to White, September 22, 1804). Apparently he saw enough to convince him that the way to Mexico did not lie in that direction. Before leaving Philadelphia he had requested the British minister, Anthony Merry, to aid financially and otherwise in bringing about the separation of the Western states from the Union. This proposal was distinctly treasonable, but Burr probably never seriously intended to carry it out. Wilkinson may have told him how successfully he had used the lure of separatism with the Spaniards and had suggested that Burr approach Merry with a similar proposal. Merry readily listened to the project, which was broached to him through an intermediary, but his superiors refused to countenance it (H. Adams, II, 395).

At the next session of Congress, 1804-05, it fell to Burr's lot to preside over the impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase of the Supreme Court. Because Jefferson was anxious. to have the latter removed, the administration leaders showed the retiring vice-president unusual attention and gave two of his family connections and his friend Wilkinson lucrative territorial appointments (Beveridge, Marshall, II, 182). Nevertheless Burr conducted the trial "with the dignity and impartiality of an archangel, but with the rigor of a devil," and at the end his most bitter critics commended his rulings and also gave him a genera f vote of appreciation for the "impartiality, dignity and ability with which he had presided over their deliberations" (Plumer, 312; Adams, Memoirs, I, 365; Annals of Congress, 8 Congress, 2 Session, col. 72). This vote followed his valedictory address to the Senate on March 2, a remarkable address that moved some of the senators to tears.

During this winter in Washington, Wilkinson and Burr frequently conferred over maps of the Floridas, Louisiana, and adjacent regions. Their purpose may be inferred from a letter of John Adair to the former, which ends thus: "Mexico glitters in our Eyes-the word is all we wait for" (Julius W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1812, 1925, p. 62). Burr accordingly planned to journey westward with Wilkinson when the other went to take over his new post in St. Louis. But other projects besides the invasion of Mexico occupied Burr's attention. There was the possibility of being returned to Congress from one of the western districts, or of obtaining a territorial appointment. Moreover he and a number of his friends were concerned in a dubious project to construct a canal around the falls of the Ohio. Inspired by these various possibilities Burr left Washington in the middle of March 18o5 on his westward journey. His first stop was at Philadelphia, where he brought his separatist project once more to Merry's attention, reinforced it with reference to discontent among the French Creoles of Louisiana, and definitely asked for a half million loan and the use of a British fleet at the mouth of the Mississippi. Merry could only transmit these proposals to his government.

In this westward journey Burr touched all the important river towns of the Mississippi Valley from Pittsburgh to New Orleans and coursed over the connecting trails. He everywhere received marked public attentions while his movements continually provoked surmise and inquiry. In the Creole capital his faith in the invasion of Mexico was confirmed by the so-called " Mexican Association"-a loose aggregation of persons that vaguely planned to make that country independent. Press reports spoke of his appointment as governor of Orleans in place of W. C. C. Claiborne and mentioned other projects of pecuniary or political character. But if his journey had any purpose aside from putting himself in touch with those who would be helpful in case of war with Spain, it was apparently a failure. He had aroused in many quarters an unfortunate suspicion as to his own motives and loyalty, which the Spanish minister, Casa Yrujo, fully cognizant of his proposals to Merry, took care to disseminate widely.

Burr passed the following winter and spring in the East. He tried to interest Jefferson in giving him a diplomatic appointment but the President told him that the country had lost confidence in him. Then he sought to persuade either the British or the Spanish minister, or both, to finance his inchoate western plans. When Merry could report no response from his superiors, the conspirators-for Ex-Senator Jonathan Dayton [q.v.] of New Jersey was now actively associated with Burr-approached Casa Yrujo for ready funds and future pensions. The attempt to persuade Spain to finance an expedition that might be aimed at her own colonies came to nothing (Mc Caleb, ch. III).

Early in 1806 Burr asked a dissatisfied and idle friend, Commodore Thomas Truxtun [q.v.], to command a phantom naval contingent. Truxtun later testified that Burr's statements to him were wholly concerned with Mexico, but when he learned that the government was not immediately behind the undertaking he refused to entertain Burr's offer (Pickering Papers, January and February 1807). Far different was the testimony of William Eaton [q.v.], an adventurer then also unemployed, who had both a claim and a grudge against the administration. He later testified-when assured that his claim would be paid-that Burr mentioned in addition to the above invasion, a hare-brained plot to seize the president and cabinet and establish himself as dictator in Washington, or, failing in this, to loot bank and arsenal, seize vessels in the navy yard, and sail for New Orleans, where the independence of the West was to be proclaimed. Burr occasionally gave evidence of mental aberration, but uttered nothing like this drivel.

Unable to get money elsewhere, Burr next approached his friends and family connections. His plan was to take over a part interest in the Bastrop grant, lying on the Washita River, and convey thither young men who might serve as settlers in peace and soldiers in war. To this plan his supporters in New York, his son-in-law, and friends in Kentucky ultimately contributed the modest sums with which he contracted for the building of boats, the gathering of provisions, and for making the first payment on the contract.

Burr and his associates had hoped that the administration would be forced into a war with Spain. When instead it resorted to diplomacy under the "Two Million Act"-an appropriation for the purchase of the Floridas-and when the death of the younger Pitt early in 1806 removed all hope of aid from England, they fell back upon the prospect of hostilities being provoked along the border. Dayton tried to stimulate Wilkinson to precipitate a clash, by warning him that he was to be supplanted in the army, and Burr sent a longer cipher letter to the same effect (Adams, III, 252-55; McCaleb, 73-75).

In the first week in August 1806, Burr again started westward. The simultaneous advance of the Spaniards east of the Sabine seemed to promise a belated chance to realize his dream of conquest, but rumors of the last twelve months had done their work and suspicion everywhere greeted him. Alarming reports of his movements began to rain in on Washington. Harman Blennerhassett [q.v.], a wealthy expatriated Irishman living near Marietta, helped Burr finance the Bastrop speculation, provided for gathering and transporting settlers thither, and also contributed to a local paper a series of articles which frankly discussed the probability of a separation of the Western states from the Union. The cause now became publicly associated with Western separatism and on this basis Burr was twice arraigned before a federal grand jury in Kentucky. Thanks in part to his own frank bearing, he was triumphantly cleared on both occasions. Nevertheless the reiterated charges were now working out their natural result. Jefferson and his advisers were finally convinced that something serious was afoot and late in October had sent an observer on Burr's trail; and on November 27, after receiving alarming communications from Wilkinson, who had made a border settlement with the Spaniards and was preparing to betray Burr, the President issued a proclamation, announcing that a group was illegally plotting an expedition against Spain and warning all citizens not to participate.

Following the two arraignments in Kentucky, Burr went to Nashville and then late in December to the mouth of the Cumberland, where his followers joined him. Hostile manifestations had driven these presumptive settlers from the rendezvous at Blennerhassett Island. With the opening of the new year Burr with his modest array of nine boats and some sixty men recruited at the various stopping points, was on the Mississippi, totally ignorant of the hostile reception that his whilom friend and confederate Wilkinson was preparing for him. That general was now in New Orleans, intriguing to apprehend Burr and his Washita colonists and to send the former eastward as a tangible exhibit of his charges. Burr first learned of this meditated treachery, when on January 10, 1807, he reached the settlements in Mississippi Territory. He immediately submitted to the authorities, was indicted before another federal jury, and was again triumphantly acquitted. This fiasco added to Burr's popularity, but the judge refused to release him from bond. Burr suspected with only too much truth, that Wilkinson was planning to kidnap him and bring him before a pretended court martial, and, after vain attempts to change the court decision, he fled toward Mobile. When within a few miles of the border, he was detected, apprehended, and within a few days was being escorted back to the region he had shortly before renounced forever.

On March 30, 1807, Burr was brought before Chief Justice Marshall in the United States Circuit Court of the district of Virginia for a preliminary examination. After three days of discussion by counsel and deliberation by the court, he was held for a misdemeanor in organizing an expedition against Spanish territory. The question of treason was left for a grand jury to determine, and it proved difficult to select that tribunal. The panel finally obtained consisted of fourteen Republicans and two Federalists headed by John Randolph as foreman. The trial formally began on May 22, 1807. Burr was present with an array of distinguished counsel, and was faced by others, able but distinctly inferior to his own. The audience was generally hostile to the prisoner. The rulings of the court and the influence of the President-unseen but distinctly felt through his constant communication with the district attorney-determined that the proceedings should take on a political character. These were delayed at first by the absence of Wilkinson. Finally, after the General reached Richmond and gave his testimony-upon which he himself narrowly escaped indictment-the grand jury established a charge of treason against Burr. This was based largely upon a mistaken interpretation of Marshall's previous ruling in the hearing of J. Erich Bollman and Samuel Swartwout [qq.v.], Burr's luckless messengers to Wilkinson, who by falling into the General's hands had experienced something of the treatment he had reserved for Burr. The outcome of the trial depended largely upon the article of the Constitution defining treason. Marshall ruled that "levying war" as there mentioned could only be established by an overt act in which the accused actually participated. The assemblage on Blennerhassett's Island was selected to meet this requirement. It was definitely shown that Burr was not present, nor near enough to affect actual proceedings. The theory of "constructive treason" which would have made him "contributory" to that assemblage and equally guilty with those who were present, was rejected. Hence it was impossible to establish the "overt act" necessary to convict. This failure meant the exclusion of much testimony as to collateral events, which, indeed, was mostly hearsay. The jury, on September 1, basing its decision on the "evidence submitted," acquitted Burr and his associates of treason. Jefferson urged the district attorney to press the charge of misdemeanor against him but upon this charge also the jury decided in his favor. Burr and Blennerhassett, however, were remanded to trial in the district court of Ohio, but the prisoners did not appear within the state nor did the government press the suit further.

Late in October 1807 Burr was free but no less a fugitive. In Baltimore a mob hanged him in effigy along with Blennerhassett, Marshall, and Luther Martin, his chief defender, while he and the faithful Swartwout fled to Philadelphia, where numerous creditors besieged him. In June 1808 he sailed for England, still hopefully pursuing his plan to revolutionize Mexico. In England he became acquainted with many of the leaders of thought and letters-notable among them Jeremy Bentham and William Godwin-but failed, through the interference of the American minister and consuls, to gain official support, and was later ordered to leave, perhaps on the request of the Spanish junta, then allied with England (Parton, p. 535).

He spent several months in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, and in February 1810 went to Paris, hoping to lay before Napoleon his projects for freeing the Spanish colonies and Louisiana and inciting war between the United States and England which should result in the acquisition of Canada by France. In March he presented to the Ministry of Relations Exterieures, through an affable young deputy, M. Roux, several memoranda embodying his schemes. In one of the wildest of these (Archives Nationales, no. 37, post) he stated that the people of the United States were discontented with their form of government, but the majority would oppose a.. change. However, he continued, there is "a third party, superior in talent and in energy; they desire something grand and stable, something which in giving occupation to active spirits will assure the tranquillity of reasonable men. This party has a recognized head; they ask only to follow him and obey him." This head was Burr himself, who, as the ministry evidently inferred (Archives Nationales, no. 36, post) "inclines toward monarchy" and was ready to use the 40,- 000 sailors that he had represented as idle on account of the embargo, "to overthrow the republican government. The declaration of war against the English would follow this change." Another proposal according to an anonymous report (December 10, 1811, Madison Papers, New York Public Library), was to bring about a reconciliation between England and France, and to use their combined forces against the United States. These proposals reached the chief of the foreign office who forwarded them to the Emperor with the comment that Mr. Burr apparently could initiate nothing except in Florida or Louisiana and that "he could not be employed without giving great offense to the United States" (Archives Nationales, no. 106, post). Burr, continuing to call upon M. Roux and trying to obtain the interest of other officials, was constantly met by the statement that there was no reply from the Emperor, and after four or five months he abandoned his effort to be heard.. His attention then was given to getting a passport so that he might return to the United States and to Theodosia, but for one whole year his requests were persistently refused, by the French officials and by the American consul and charge d'affaires. He fell into dire poverty--even pawning one after another the books and "pretty things" he had bought for Theodosia and his grandson-but his buoyant spirit remained unchecked, hopefully considering various expedients to gain ready cash or possibly a fortune. In July 1811 he was at last granted his passport, but the French ship on which he sailed was captured and taken to England, he was detained there, and it was not until May 1812 that he reached the United States.

He had little difficulty in reestablishing his legal practise in New York, but before he had been at home two months he received news of the death of his grandson. In December of the same year Theodosia, sailing from Charleston harbor, was lost at sea. For more than a score of years he survived these crushing blows. During the greater part of this period he had a good law practise, but never abandoned his ingrained amatory habits or his carelessness in money matters. He also kept his interest in the Spanish colonies but when asked to take part in their struggle for independence, was unable to accept (Davis, II, 142-45). In July 1833, when he was seventy-seven, he married the widow of Stephen Jumel [q.v.], some twenty years his junior. After four months of domestic wrangling over finances, for Burr threatened to run through her substantial property, his wife brought suit for divorce in July 1834. The decree confirming her request bore the date of his death. The latter occurred at Port Richmond, Staten Island, on September 14, 1836 (Wandell and Minnegerode, II, 323-40). To the bitter experiences of his later years as to the ephemeral successes of his earlier life he had presented the same unruffled serenity that had so often disarmed opponents and captivated followers. Shortly before his death he had again protested that he had never designed the separation of the West from the Union.

[The most important printed sources for Burr are Matthew L. Davis, Memoirs of Aaron Burr (2 volumes, 1836-37) and The Private Journal of Aaron Burr During His Residence of Four Years in Europe (2 volumes, 1838, repr. 1903, from the MS. in library of Wm. K. Bixby of St. Louis, Missouri). The printed works of many of Burr's contemporaries are important, especially those of Jefferson (Ford, ed.), Hamilton, and King. For the trial consult "Reports of the Trials of Colonel Aaron Burr," reported by David Robertson (2 volumes, 1808); Annals of Congress, 9 Congress, 2 Session, 1008-19, and 10 Congress, 1 Session, 385-778; and American State Papers Misc. (1834), I, 468- 645. Jas. Wilkinson, Memoirs of My Own Times (1816) is necessary but unreliable. For events in Mississippi and Orleans territories the most significant source is Dunbar Rowland (ed.), Letter Books of Wm. C. C. Claiborne, volumes I-III (1916). For nearly a score of years contemporary newspapers contained frequent references to Burr's political career, some items of which under the names of Jas. Cheetham and W. P. Van Ness appeared also in pamphlet form. Casual but important references to Burr occur in E. S. Brown (ed.), Wm. Plumer's Memorandum (1923), and in C. F. Adams (ed.), Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Volume I (1874). The manuscript sources are also valuable. Of chief importance are the Papers of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, in the Library of Congress, and the Papers of Harry Innes, Volume XVIII, Papers in Relation to Burr's Conspiracy, and the East Florida Papers, in the same repository. The Papers of Jas. Wilkinson in the Chicago Historical Society, the Durrett Papers in the University of Chicago, the Pickering Papers in the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the collections of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and of the Louisiana Historical Society are also worthy of attention. For material in Spanish the Bexar Archives in the University of Texas and the general archives in Mexico City, Madrid, and Seville are especially important. Some MSS. relating to Burr were discovered by Dr. Waldo G. Leland in the Archives Nationales: AF iv, 1681 A, Nos. 36-40 and Nos. 106, 107,110,114,115.

Among the earlier biographies Jas. Parton, The Life and Times of Aaron Burr (1858) is a sympathetic account. The most recent life, S. H. Wandell and Meade Minnegerode, Aaron Burr (1925), is a sprightly narrative that is often too favorable to its subject. It is, however, based on much patient and long continued investigation by the first-named author. Isaac Jenkinson, Aaron Burr, His Personal and Political Relations with Thos. Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton (1902) is likewise an overly favorable interpretation of some disputed phases of his career. W. F. McCaleb, The Aaron Burr Conspiracy (1903) and Henry Adams, History of the U.S., volumes II and III (1889-90), present opposing views of the conspiracy, of which that of the former is the more substantial and convincing. A. J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall (1916-19), Volume III, ch. VI-IX is the best account of the trial at Richmond. Edward Channing, History of the U.S., Volume IV (1917), is excellent for bibliographic references and John B. McMaster, History of the People of the U.S. (1891), Volume III, presents an unfavorable summary of the events of the conspiracy.]

I. J.C.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 465-467:

BURR, Aaron, statesman, born in Newark, New Jersey, 6 February, 1756; died on Staten Island, New York, 14 September, 1836. His mother was Esther Edwards, the flower of the remarkable family to which she belonged, celebrated for her beauty as well as for her superior intellect and devout piety. In the truest sense, Aaron Burr was well born. Jonathan Edwards, his grandfather, illustrious as divine and metaphysician, had been elected to succeed his son-in-law as president of Princeton, but died of a fever, resulting from inoculation for small-pox, before he had fairly entered upon his work. Mrs. Burr, his daughter, died of a similar disease sixteen days later. The infant Aaron and his sister Sarah, left doubly orphaned, were placed in charge of their uncle, the Rev, Timothy Edwards, of Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth), New Jersey. A handsome fortune having been bequeathed to them by their father, their education was conducted in a liberal manner; a private tutor was provided, Tapping Reeve, who afterward married his pupil, Sarah Burr, and became judge of the supreme court of Connecticut. A bright, mischievous boy, and difficult to control, Aaron was still sufficiently studious to be prepared to enter Princeton at the age of eleven, though he was not admitted on account of his extreme youth. He was very small, but strikingly handsome, with fine black eyes and the engaging ways that became a fascination in his maturer life. In 1769 he was allowed as a favor to enter the sophomore class, though only in his thirteenth year. He was a fairly diligent student and an extensive reader, and was graduated with distinction in September, 1772. Stories of wild dissipation during his college course are probably exaggerations. Just before his graduation the college was profoundly stirred by religious excitement, and young Burr, who confessed that he was moved by the revival, resorted to Dr. Witherspoon, the president, for advice. The doctor quieted his anxiety by telling him that the excitement was fanatical. Not entirely satisfied, he went in the autumn of the next year to live for a while in the family of the famous theologian, Dr. Bellamy, of Bethlehem, Connecticut, with the ostensible purpose of settling his mind with regard to the claims of Christianity. The result was a great surprise to his friends, if not to himself; he deliberately rejected the gospel and adopted the infidelity then so rife in Europe and America. The form of unbelief accepted by him was that of Lord Chesterfield, along with his lordship's peculiar views of morality. Here is probably the key to a comprehension of Burr's entire life. He resolved to be a “perfect man of the world,” according to the Chesterfieldian code. Most of the next year (1774) he passed in Litchfield, Connecticut, where he began the study of the law under Tapping Reeve, who had married his sister. At the beginning of the revolution, in 1775, Burr hastened to join the patriot army near Boston. He had a genuine passion for military life, and was singularly qualified to excel as a soldier. Here, fretted by inaction, he resolved to accompany Colonel Benedict Arnold in his expedition to Quebec. Against the expostulations of all his friends and the commands of his uncle, Timothy, he persisted in his determination. Out of the memorable hardships and disasters of that expedition young Burr came back with the rank of major and a brilliant reputation for courage and ability. Soon after his return he became a member of General Washington's family. From some cause the place did not please him, and after about six weeks he withdrew from Washington's table and accepted an appointment as aide to General Putnam. This incident was extremely unfortunate for him. During their brief association Burr contracted prejudices against Washington which grew into deep dislike, and Washington got impressions of Burr that ripened into settled distrust. In July, 1777, Burr was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, with the command of his regiment, the colonel preferring to remain at home. In September, while occupying the house near Ramapo Pass, of which a representation is here given, he defeated the enemy near Hackensack and drove them back to Paulus Hook. At Monmouth he distinguished himself at the head of a brigade. While Burr's command lay in Orange county, New York, he became acquainted with Mrs. Theodosia Prevost, an intelligent and accomplished lady living at Paramus, widow of an English officer who had recently died in the West Indies. She was ten years his senior and had two sons. In March, 1779, after four years of service, he resigned his commission on account of broken health. In the autumn of 1780, his health having improved, Burr resumed the study of law, first with Judge Patterson, of New Jersey, and afterward with Thomas Smith, of Haverstraw, New York. On 17 April, 1782, he was admitted to the bar in Albany, the rule that required three years spent in study having been in his case relaxed on account of his service as a soldier. Now, at the age of twenty-six, he took an office in Albany and almost immediately commanded a large practice. Being at last in a condition to warrant this step, he married Mrs. Prevost, 2 July, 1782, and at once began housekeeping in Albany in handsome style. In the first year of his marriage his daughter, Theodosia, was born, the only child of this union. In the latter part of the next year, just after the British had evacuated the city, he returned to New York and devoted himself to his profession for eight years, having during that period twice served as a member of the New York legislature. He stood among the leaders of the bar, with no rival but Alexander Hamilton. Obtaining possession of Richmond Hill, a fine New York mansion with ample grounds, he dispensed a liberal hospitality. Talleyrand, Volney, and Louis Philippe were among his guests. In 1788, just after the adoption of the constitution, Burr entered the arena of politics as a candidate of the anti-federal party, though he was not distinctly identified with those who nominated him, and soon afterward he was appointed by Governor Clinton attorney-general, an office which he held for two years. In 1791 he was elected to the U. S. senate over General Philip Schuyler, to the great surprise of the country and the keen disappointment of Hamilton, Schuyler's son-in-law. The federalists had a majority in the legislature, and Schuyler was one of the pillars of the federal party. The triumph of Burr under these circumstances was mysterious. For six years he served in the senate with conspicuous ability, acting steadily with the republican party. Mrs. Burr died of cancer in 1794. Among the last words he ever spoke was this testimony to the wife of his youth: “The mother of my Theo was the best woman and finest lady I have ever known.” After her death the education of his daughter engrossed a large share of his attention. In 1797 the tables turned, and his defeated antagonist, General Schuyler, was almost unanimously elected to his seat in the senate. Burr was shortly afterward made a member of the New York assembly. Into the presidential contest of 1800 he entered with all his energy. The republicans triumphed; but between the two highest candidates there was a tie, each receiving seventy-three votes, which threw the election into house of representatives. In connection with this affair, Burr was charged with intriguing to defeat the public will and have himself chosen to the first office, instead of Jefferson. After a fierce struggle of seven days, the house elected Jefferson president and Burr vice-president. He was then forty-five years old and at the top-of his fortune. His daughter had made a highly satisfactory marriage, and his pecuniary prospects were improved. In 1801, just before entering upon his duties as vice-president, he was a member of a convention of the state of New York for revising its constitution, and was made chairman by unanimous vote. But a great change was at hand. Near the close of his term of office as vice-president, Burr, finding himself under a cloud with his party, sought to recover his popularity by being a candidate for the governorship of New York, but was defeated by Morgan Lewis. In this contest Alexander Hamilton had put forth his utmost energies against Burr. Though the relations of these political leaders had remained outwardly friendly, they had and long been rivals, and Hamilton had not hesitated to express in private his distrust of Burr, and to balk several of his ambitious projects. In the gubernatorial canvass Hamilton had written concerning his rival in a very severe manner, and some of his expressions having got into the newspapers, Burr immediately fastened upon them as ground for a challenge. A long correspondence ensued, in which Hamilton vainly sought to avoid extremities. At length the challenge was accepted, and the parties met on the bank of the Hudson, at Weehawken, New Jersey, at seven o'clock A. M., 7 July, 1804. At the first fire Hamilton fell mortally wounded. But Burr's shot was more fatal to himself than to his foe; he left that “field of honor” a ruined man. The tragedy aroused an unprecedented excitement, before which Burr felt it wise to fly. The coroner's inquest having returned a verdict of murder, he escaped to South Carolina and took refuge in the home of his daughter.  Though an indictment for murder was obtained against him, the excitement subsided, and he was left unmolested. After a season he ventured to Washington, and completed his term of service as vice-president. Though his political prospects were now blasted and his name execrated, his bold and resolute spirit did not break. Courage and fortitude were the cardinal virtues of his moral code, and his restless mind was already employed with new and vast projects. Early in 1805 he turned his course toward the great west, then a new world. From Pittsburg he floated in a boat, specially built for him, down to New Orleans, stopping at many points, and often receiving enthusiastic attention. After some time spent in the southwest, he slowly returned to Washington, where he sought from the president an appointment suitable to his dignity. Foiled in this effort, he turned more earnestly to his mysterious western projects. His purpose seems to have been to collect a body of followers and conquer Texas—perhaps Mexico—establishing there a republic of which he should be the head. With this he associated the hope that the western states, ultimately falling away from the union, would cast in their lot with him, making New Orleans the capital of the new nation. As a rendezvous and refuge for his followers, he actually bought a vast tract of land on Washita river, for which the sum of $40,000 was to be paid. It was a wild scheme, and, if not technically treasonable, was so near to it as to make him a public enemy. Events had advanced rapidly, and Burr's plans were nearly ripe for execution, when the president, who had not been ignorant of what was maturing, issued a proclamation, 27 0ct., 1806, denouncing the enterprise and warning the people against it. The project immediately collapsed. On 14 January, 1807, Burr was arrested in Mississippi territory, and, having escaped, was again arrested in Alabama, whence he was conveyed to Richmond, Virginia. Here was held the memorable trial for treason, beginning 22 May, 1807, and lasting, with some interruptions, for six months. In the array of distinguished counsel, William Wirt was pre-eminent for the prosecution and Luther Martin for the defence. Burr himself took an active part in the case. On 1 September the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on the indictment for treason, and some time afterward the prisoner was acquitted, on technical grounds, of the charge of misdemeanor. Though Burr was now free, his good name was not restored by the issue of the trial, and he soon sailed for England, still animated by new schemes and hopes. After various adventures in that country, he was expelled as an “embarrassing” person, and went to Sweden. Having spent some time in Copenhagen and various cities of Germany, he reached Paris in February, 1810. Here, kept under government surveillance, and refused permission to return to the United States, he was reduced to the severest pecuniary straits. Returning again to England, he was obliged to remain there in desperate extremities for a year and a half. At last he got away in the ship “Aurora,” and reached Boston in May, 1812. Disguised under the name of Arnot, as well as with wig, whiskers, and strange garments, the returning exile entered the city in a most humiliating plight. The government prosecutions still hung over his head, and some of his creditors had executions against him, which might throw him into a prison. He ventured to New York, however, reaching that place four years after leaving it. He soon opened an office in Nassau street, old friends rallied around him, and the future began to brighten somewhat, when he was stunned by the information that his only grandchild, Theodosia's son, aged eleven, was dead. A still more crushing blow soon came. The daughter, who was his idol, perished at sea while on a voyage from Charleston to New York in January, 1813. Burr was now fifty-seven years old. Shunned by society, though with a considerable practice, he lived on for twenty-three years. At the age of seventy-eight he married Madame Jumel, widow of a French merchant, who had a considerable fortune. The union soon proved unhappy, owing to Burr's reckless use of his wife's money, and they finally separated, though not divorced. In his last days Burr was dependent on the charity of a Scotch woman, a friend of former years, for a home. He died at Port Richmond, Staten Island, and his remains lie, according to his request, in the cemetery at Princeton, near those of his honored father and grandfather. In person, Burr was small, often being spoken of as “little Burr,” but his appearance and manners were fascinating. In his case the finest gifts of nature and fortune were spoiled by unsound moral principles and the absence of all genuine convictions. His habits were licentious. He was a master of intrigue, though to little purpose. He was a respectable lawyer and speaker, but lacked the qualities of a statesman. Dauntless resolution and cool self-possession never forsook him. On the morning of his duel with Hamilton he was found by a friend in a sound sleep. Though a skeptic, he was not a scoffer. In his last hours he said of the holy Scriptures: “They are the most perfect system of truth the world has ever seen.” Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.


BURR, David I., Virginia, businessman.  Member and active supporter of the Richmond auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 109-189)


Burr, James, American abolitionist.  Aided fugitive slaves in Missouri.  He was caught, tried and convicted.  Sentenced to prison. Worked with abolitionists George Thompson and Alanson Work. 

(Sinha, 2016, p. 393-394)


BURRIS, Samuel D., 1808-1869, African American anti-slavery activist.  Aided fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 2, p. 412)


BURRITT, Elihu, 1810-1879, reformer, free produce activist, advocate of compensated emancipation.

(Burritt, 1856, pp. 11-18, 30-33; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 350; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 4, 195, 202, 203, 236, 257, 327, 329, 334, 340, 343, 363, 365, 366, 369, 372, 378, 420n1; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 200-205, 427; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume 1, p. 469; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 328)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 328:

BURRITT, ELIHU (December 8, 1810-March 6, 1879), "The Learned Blacksmith," reformer, linguist, was born in New Britain, Connecticut. Named after his father, an eccentric shoemaker and farmer, he also derived from him an enthusiasm for impracticable ventures. From his mother, Elizabeth Hinsdale, who bore nine other children, he learned self-denial and whole-hearted devotion to the ideal of service. If, as a child, he tried to persuade her to borrow fewer sermons and more histories from the meager church library, he nevertheless made her deep religious feelings his own. Neither the district school nor a term at his brother's boarding-school satisfied his appetite for knowledge, and hence he imagined and solved quaint problems of mental arithmetic and learned Greek verbs while blowing the bellows at the smithy where he was an apprentice. At the age of twenty-seven he made in his Journal this entry, a typical one: "June 19, Sixty lines of Hebrew; thirty pages of French; ten pages of Cuvier's Theory of the Earth; eight lines of Syriac; ten lines of Danish; ten ditto Bohemian; nine ditto of Polish; fifteen names of stars; ten hours' forging." Overwork undermined the health of this narrow-chested, stout-handed youth, and for his entire life he paid the price in acute suffering. Awkward as he was, and in spite of excessive shyness, his clear blue eyes, his broad, sloping forehead, and his fine mouth compelled sympathy. With scarce a dollar in his pocket he set out from his native village in the year 1837 seeking work and a chance to further his self-education. Worcester, Massachusetts, offered both His attainments in all the European and several Asiatic languages reached the ear of Governor Edward Everett, who referred to them in an address and offered him the advantages of Harvard, which Burritt refused. Although chagrined at such undesired publicity, he did, however, bring himself to accept lecture invitations.

While preparing a lecture on "the anatomy of the earth," he was so struck by the unity and interdependency of its parts that he ended by writing a plea for international peace. Into that cause, which had just lost its chief apostle by the death of William Ladd in 1841, Burritt now threw himself heart and soul. With the help of a business partner he founded at Worcester, in 1844, a weekly newspaper, the Christian Citizen. This truly international pacifist publication dragged Burritt deeply into debt before, in 1851, he was forced to abandon it.

During the Oregon crisis, when Burritt was also editing the Advocate of Peace and Universal Brotherhood, he besieged Congress with peace propaganda and cooperated with Friends in Manchester, England, in a picturesque exchange of "Friendly Addresses" between British and American cities, merchants, ministers, and laborers. According to Burritt eight hundred newspapers printed these "Friendly Addresses" (Advocate of Peace and Universal Brotherhood, February 1846, p. 56). He himself carried the "Friendly Address" from Edinburgh, with its impressive list of signatures, to Washington, where Calhoun and other senators expressed much interest in this "popular handshaking" across the Atlantic (Burritt, Manuscript Journal, March 31, 1851).

This cooperation with British friends of peace Jed Burritt to cross the Atlantic in June 1846, and during that autumn he formed there the League of Universal Brotherhood. By 1850 this "world peace society" had, through his efforts, twenty thousand British and as many American signatures to its pledge of complete abstinence from all war. It sponsored a "Friendly Address" movement between British and French cities when war seemed imminent in 1852, Burritt personally delivering the friendly interchange of opinion to appropriate municipal official s in France. He also induced the League to sponsor "The Olive Leaf Mission," through which peace propaganda was inserted in forty influential Continental newspapers. This work was financed by woman Leaguers whom Burritt organized into sewing circles. Between 1850 and 1856 he estimated that the Olive Leaves reached monthly one million European readers.

Almost single-handed this enthusiast organized in 1848 the Brussels Peace Congress, which inaugurated the series held in the following years at Paris, Frankfort, London, Manchester, and Edinburgh. Burritt's Journals exhibit incredible activity which included traveling widely in Germany to enlist delegates and soliciting and gaining the cooperation of Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and distinguished French economists and philanthropists. To bring the American peace movement into this truly international peace organization, Burritt in 1850 organized eighteen state peace conventions, with the result that forty Americans attended the Frankfort Congress that year. These peace congresses wort increasing attention from the European and British press, and Burritt's name was celebrated in popular periodicals like those of Douglas Jerrold, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Chambers, and ridiculed in Blackwood's and the influential London Times. At each Congress Burritt ably pied for such a Congress and Court of Nations as William Ladd had advocated.

The Crimean War interrupted this European peace work, and Burritt devoted more time to the related scheme of cheap international postage, and to plans for preventing civil war in his own country. Urging by pen and lecture the utilization of the public domain for compensated emancipation, he also organized a convention to stimulate interest in this plan, and during one winter traveled 10,000 miles from Maine to Iowa in its behalf.

Burritt, who had identified himself with the thoroughgoing anti-war group, opposed the Civil War on pacifist grounds, but he was appointed by Lincoln in 1863 as consular agent at Birmingham. In several volumes he described industrial and rural England with insight, vigor, and charm. From 1870 until his death in 1879 he lived in New Britain, devoting himself to the improvement of a few stony acres of land, to writing, and to teaching languages. He never married, but his entire life was rich in friendships.

Almost uniquely in the America of his generation, Burritt was capable of thinking in international terms. Deprecating sectarianism, he found solace in Quaker meetings and the Anglican ritual as well as in his own Congregationalism. His sympathies with free trade and labor were intelligent and realistic. Only two years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto (1848) he was advocating, in Olive Leaves printed in the German press, a strike of the workers of the world against war as the only alternative to a Congress and Court of Nations. In his numerous writings in behalf of peace he used statistical evidence skilfully, though his chief appeal was to the brotherhood of man. This maker of horseshoes and a Sanscrit grammar endured the most irksome poverty and physical suffering in order to devote himself to the greatest value he found in life, "the capacity and space of labouring for humanity."

[The chief sources of information about Elihu Burritt are his manuscript Journals, 28 volumes (1837- 60) in the Library of the Inst. of New Britain, Connecticut, and his newspaper, the Christian Citizen, Worcester, Massachusetts. (1844- 5), a complete file of which is in the American Antiquarian Society. A small portion of the Journals was included in the uncritical compilation of Chas. Northend, Elihu Burritt: A Memorial Volume containing a Sketch of His Life and Labors (1879). Of Burritt's sixteen published volumes the most characteristic are, Sparks from the Anvil (1846); Thoughts of Things at Home and Abroad, with a Memoir by Mary Howitt (1854); Lectures and Speeches (1866); Wall, from London to John O'Groat's (1864); and Ten Minute Talks (1873).]

M.E.C.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography,  1888, Volume 1, p. 469:

BURRITT, Elihu, reformer, born in New Britain, Connecticut, 8 December, 1810; died there, 9 March, 1879. He was the son of a shoemaker, was educated in the common schools of his native place, and in 1828, after his father's death, was apprenticed to a blacksmith. The stories of the old revolutionary soldiers who came to his father's house had given him a desire to know more of books, and, when his apprenticeship was ended, he studied Latin, French, and mathematics with his brother, the principal of a small boarding-school. He attempted to perform the duties of a teacher as a means of support, but poor health prevented success. He returned to his forge, still continuing his studies, often watching the castings in his furnace with a Greek grammar in his hand. After beginning the study of Hebrew, he thought of going to sea and using his wages to buy oriental books at the first port, but gave up this plan, and, going to Worcester, Massachusetts, resumed work at the anvil and the study of languages, for which the antiquarian library there gave him special facilities. Here he translated all the Icelandic sagas relating to the discovery of America, and obtained the name of the “learned blacksmith.” In 1839 he published for a year a monthly periodical to teach French, called “The Literary Gemini.” Mr. Burritt made his first public appearance in 1841 as a lecturer maintaining the doctrine that all mental attainments are the result of persistent study and effort. In 1842 he established the “Christian Citizen” at Worcester, a weekly journal, devoted to anti-slavery, peace, temperance, and self-culture. Four years later he went to Europe, and during a visit of three years devoted himself to co-operation with the English peace advocates. During this time also he developed the basis of an international association known as the League of universal brotherhood, which aimed at the abolition of war and the promotion of fraternal relations and feelings between different countries. At this time he was proprietor and editor of the “Peace Advocate,” and published a periodical tract, the “Bond of Brotherhood.” He was prominent in organizing the first peace congress, and took part in two subsequent congresses, in 1849 and 1850. In 1852 he became editor of the “Citizen of the World,” Philadelphia, in which he urged the compensated emancipation of southern slaves. His disappointment at the failure of his project was great. He had advocated it clearly and forcibly, and to its advancement had devoted all his time and resources, living at times almost in poverty. Mr. Burritt then retired to a small farm which he owned at New Britain. He made a brief visit to England in 1863, and during the following two years he published three new books and several volumes of general writings. He was appointed U. S. consul at Birmingham in 1865, returned to America in 1870, and spent the remainder of his days in his native village. He published “Sparks from the Anvil” (London, 1848); “Miscellaneous Writings” (1850); “Olive Leaves” (1853); “Thoughts of Things at Home and Abroad” (Boston, 1854); “Hand-Book of the Nations” (New York, 1856); “A Walk from John O'Groat's to Land's End” (London, 1864); “The Mission of Great Sufferings” (1867); “Walks in the Black Country” (1868); “Lectures and Speeches” (1869); “Ten Minute Talks” (1873); and “Chips from Many Blocks” (1878). See “Life of Elihu Burritt,” by Charles Northend (New York, 1879). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.


BUSH, Abigail Norton, c. 1810 - c. 1899, abolitionist, radical reformer, women’s rights activist, member of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society.  Active in Rochester, New York.  Wife of radical abolitionist Henry Bush.  President of the Women’s Rights Convention in Rochester, New York, in 1848.


BUSH, Alice, African American, abolitionist.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 58n40)


BUSH, Henry, manufacturer, abolitionist, brother of Obadiah Newcomb Bush, married to abolitionist Abigail Norton Bush.


BUSH, Obadiah Newcomb, 1797-1851, New York, educator, businessman, abolitionist.  Vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Member of the Underground Railroad.  Brother of Henry Bush.


BUSH, Oren N., Rochester, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-40


BUSTEED, Richard, lawyer, jurist, Union general, anti-slavery advocate.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 476)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 476:

BUSTEED, Richard, lawyer, born in Cavan, Ireland, 16 February, 1822. His father, George Washington Busteed, was a Dublin barrister, and at one time held a colonel's commission in the British army. In 1829 the elder Busteed was appointed chief secretary of the island of St. Lucia, but his zeal in the cause of emancipation led to his removal from office, and, after returning to Ireland, he emigrated to London, Canada, where he established a paper called “The True Patriot.” Richard began work on this paper as a type-setter, mid afterward accompanied his father to Cincinnati, Ohio, to Hartford, Connecticut, and finally to New York, where he worked on the “Commercial Advertiser.” At this time he was licensed as a local preacher in the Methodist church. After a visit to Ireland for his health in 1840, he began the study of law, and was admitted to the bar in 1846. His management of the defence in several celebrated extradition cases soon made his reputation, and he became a successful lawyer. In 1856 he was elected corporation counsel of New York city, holding the office till 1859, and in the presidential campaign of 1860 he was a supporter of Douglas, and a bitter opponent of Lincoln, but after the attack on Sumter he became a strong union man. On 7 August, 1862, he was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers by President Lincoln, and assigned to duty, first in New York and then in Washington. In December, 1862, he took command of a brigade at Yorktown, Virginia. General Busteed's course in support of the administration, and on the slavery question, had raised against him many enemies, who determined to prevent his confirmation. The five colonels of his brigade sent a joint letter to the senate, testifying to the improvement in discipline made by their commands under him. His name, however, was not sent to that body for confirmation, as on 10 March, 1863, he sent his resignation to the president. On 17 September, 1863, General Busteed was appointed by President Lincoln to be U. S. district judge for Alabama. He was unanimously confirmed by the senate on 20 January, 1864, and in the autumn of 1865 he opened the court. He decided that the test-oath prescribed by congress was unconstitutional, so far as it applied to attorneys practising before U. S. courts, and this decision was followed by judges in other states, the supreme court afterward delivering a similar opinion. In November, 1865, Judge Busteed had a controversy with the U. S. military authorities in Alabama, which excited great interest, and involved important questions relating to the suspension of the habeas corpus act. In 1874 he resigned and resumed the practice of law in New York city. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 476.


BUSTILL, Joseph Cassey, 1822-1895, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist.  African American conductor on the Underground Railroad.


BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, (December 14, 1795-November 8, 1858) layer, politician, Member Free-Soil Party.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, pp. 356-357)


BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (November 5, 1818-January 11, 1893), Union soldier, U. S. congressman, governor of Massachusetts. Republican member of the U.S. Congress.  Founding member and officer of the Albany auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.   As Union General, he refused to return runaway slaves to Southerners at Fort Monroe.  This led to a federal policy of calling enslaved individuals who fled to Union lines contraband of war.  “The problem of how to deal with slaves fleeing from Confederate owners to the Union lines he solved by declaring these slaves contraband; and the term "Contraband" clung to them throughout the war.” 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, pp. 357-359; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 81, 129, 178, 224).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, pp. 357-359:

BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (November 5, 1818-January 11, 1893), Union soldier, congressman, governor of Massachusetts, was born at Deerfield, New Hampshire. His family was largely of Scotch-Irish stock, settled on the New England frontier before the Revolution. His father, John, was captain of dragoons under Jackson at New Orleans, traded in the West Indies, and held a privateer's commission from Bolivar. His mother was Charlotte Ellison, of the Londonderry (New Hampshire) Cilleys, or Seelyes. After Captain Butler's death she ultimately settled, in 1828, at Lowell, Massachusetts, running one of the famous factory boarding houses there.

Benjamin was sent to Waterbury (now Colby) College in Maine to continue the family Baptist Calvinism; but he rejected Calvinism altogether. He graduated in 1838, and returned to Lowell where he taught school and studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1840 and began a successful practise which continued until his death. At first he was chiefly occupied with criminal cases in which he built up a reputation for remarkable quickness of wit, resourcefulness, and mastery of all the defensive devices of the law. His practise gradually extended so that he maintained offices in both Boston and Lowell. He was shrewd in investment, and in spite of rather lavish expenditures built up a fortune. On May 16, 1844, he married Sarah Hildreth, an actress. Their daughter Blanche married Adelbert Ames, who during the period of Reconstruction was senator from Mississippi, and governor of that state. After the Civil War, Butler maintained residences at Lowell, Washington, and on the New England coast. He was interested in yachting, and at one time owned the famous cup-winner America.

Butler early entered politics, as a Democrat, being elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853, and the Senate in 1859. He was an effective public speaker. His method, which seems to have been instinctive with him, was to draw attack upon himself, and then confute his assailants. He made friends of labor and of the Roman Catholic element in his home di strict, whose support he always retained. In the legislature he stood for a ten-hour day, and for compensation for the burning of the Ursuline Convent. He took great pains to be in the intimate councils of his party, but was seldom trusted by the party leaders. His talent for biting epigrams, and his picturesque controversies made him one of the most widely known men in politics from 1860 till his death. In the national Democratic convention of 1860 he advocated a renewal of the Cincinnati platform, opposed Douglas, and voted to nominate Jefferson Davis. With Caleb Cushing and other seceders from the adjourned Baltimore meeting he joined in putting forward Breckinridge and Lane. It was characteristic ot him that in thus supporting the Southern candidate, he advanced as his reason for leaving the Douglas convention the fact that the reopening of the slave-trade had there been discussed. As was the case with so many Northern supporters of Breckinridge, Butler was a strong Andrew Jackson Unionist. He had always been interested in military affairs, and to the confusion of the Republican majority in Massachusetts had been elected brigadier-general of militia. At the news of the firing on Fort Sumter he was promptly and dramatically ready, with men and money, and left Boston for Washington with his regiment on April 17, 1861.

Thereupon began one of the most astounding careers of the war. Butler was, until Grant took control, as much a news item as any man except Lincoln. He did many things so clever, as to be almost brilliant. He moved in a continual atmosphere of controversy which gradually widened from local quarrels with Governor Andrew of Massachusetts until it included most of the governments of the world; in which controversies he was sometimes right. He expected the war to advance his political fortunes and the financial fortunes of his family and friends. His belief in the Union and in his own ability were both strong and sincere. He had hopes of the Unionist presidential nomination in 1864. A thorn in the side of those in authority, his position as a Democrat fighting for the Union and his prominence in the public eye, made it impossible to ignore or effectively to discipline him.

At the beginning of the war, his relief of blockaded Washington by landing at Annapolis with the 8th Massachusetts, and by repairing the railroad from that point, was splendidly accomplished. Probably because of his Southern connections, he was chosen to occupy Baltimore, which he did on May 13, 1861, peacefully, with but 900 troops. On May 16 he was nominated major-general of volunteers. His next command was at Fortress Monroe. Here he admirably administered the extraordinary provisions necessary for increased numbers. The problem of how to deal with slaves fleeing from Confederate owners to the Union lines he solved by declaring these slaves contraband; and the term "Contraband" clung to them throughout the war. He undertook a military expedition which ended disastrously in the battle of Big Bethel. On August 8, 1861, he was replaced by the venerable General Wool. He was then given command of the military forces in a joint military and naval attack on the forts at Hatteras Inlet, and took possession of them on August 27 and 28. He then returned to Massachusetts with authority to enlist troops; which led to a conflict with the state authorities. His plan was to use his independent command to reduce the peninsula of eastern Virginia, but he was attached instead to the expedition against New Orleans, again commanding the land forces. On May 1, 1862, he entered the city, which lay under the guns of the fleet. He was assigned the difficult task of the military government of this hostile population.

Butler's administration of New Orleans is the most controversial portion of his career. It is at least evident that he preserved the peace and effectively governed the city, improving sanitation, and doing other useful things. It is equally evident that his conduct of affairs was high-handed. Ignoring the United States government, he assumed full financial control, collecting taxes, and expending monies. He hung William Mumford for hauling down the United States flag. He seized $800,000 in bullion belonging to Southern owners, which had been left in charge of the French consul; thereby bringing upon the United States government protests from practically all the governments of Europe. A portion of the bullion was not turned over to the United States government until the whole country had become excited over its fate. Still more sensational was his Order No. 28. It certainly was true that the women of New Orleans had rendered themselves unpleasant to the occupying troops. To meet this situation Butler ordered that  "When any female shall, by word, or gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." To the international storm of indignation which this aroused, it could only be replied that no violence was intended. In addition to these overt acts, there hangs about Butler's administration a cloud of suspicion of financial irregularity, popularly characterized in the tradition that he stole the spoons from the house he occupied. That corruption was rampant there can be no doubt. It seems that his brother was implicated. In so far as General Butler is concerned the historian must be content to recognize that if he were guilty, he was certainly too clever to leave proofs behind; a cleverness somewhat unfortunate for him, if he were indeed not guilty. On December 16, 1862, he was removed.

In 1863 he was given command of the districts of eastern Virginia and North Carolina, and was put in command of the Army of the James, consisting of two corps. In this position Grant, the next year, used him as commissioner for the exchange of prisoners, perhaps hoping (it being contrary to Grant's policy to exchange) that the Confederate commander would refuse to recognize him, as President Davis had issued a proclamation declaring that his conduct at New Orleans had placed him outside the rules of war. Butler, however, conducted some exchanges, and forced the Confederacy to recognize the military status of the United States negro troops. He encouraged trade in his districts, almost violating the orders of the government. Having made an independent advance, this resulted in the bottling of his army at Bermuda Hundred, where they remained blocked by a greatly inferior number of Confederates. In November 1864 he was sent to New York to preserve order during the election, riots being anticipated. His adroitness and his popularity with the Democrats prevented all disorders; if any were indeed brewing. On January 7, 1865, he was ordered by Grant to return to Lowell.

He had by this time become identified with the Radical element among the Republicans. In the elections of 1866 he was elected to Congress, as a Republican, serving until 1875. He lived at Washington lavishly, the Radicals were the dominant element, and he became prominent among them. In the management of the Johnson impeachment for the House of Representatives he was, owing to the feebleness of Thaddeus Stevens, the most impressive figure. After Stevens's death in 1868 he seems to have aspired to succeed him as Radical chief, taking a drastic stand on all questions of reconstruction as they came up during the Grant administration. At this stage, his influence with Grant seems to have been strong. In the Democratic wave of 1875 he lost his seat

In. the meantime he h ad been having difficulties with the ruling element in the Republican party in his own state. He was hardly more hated in Louisiana than by the conservative elements of both parties in Massachusetts, because of his radical proposals, his unconventionality, and their questioning of his honesty. This hostility he took as a challenge, and determined to become governor of the Bay State. In 1871 he ran for the Republican nomination for governor, and was defeated. In 1872 he ran again, and was again defeated. After his defeat for Congress in 1875 he actively took up the cause of the Greenbacks, which indeed he had supported from the beginning. In 1878 he was again elected to Congress, as an independent Greenbacker. In the same year he ran for the governorship, with the support of the Greenbackers and a portion of the Democrats. Defeated, he ran again in 1879, as Democratic candidate, but there was a split in the party, and again he was defeated. In 1880 he attended the national Democratic convention and supported General Hancock, who received the nomination. In 1882 he at length succeeded in obtaining the undivided support of the Democratic party of his state, and had the advantage of the general reaction against the Republicans. His persistency, also, appealed to many, who felt that he was unduly attacked and should have a chance. He was elected, alone of his ticket, by a majority of 14,000. His position gave him no power, as in Massachusetts no executive steps could be taken without the assent of the council, which was controlled, as were both Houses of the legislature, by his opponents. He attacked the administration of the charitable institutions of the state, especially the Tewkesbury State Almshouse; but the investigation which he instigated led to no results. He characteristically attended with full military escort the Commencement at Harvard, after that institution had decided to break its tradition and not award a degree to the governor of the commonwealth. His drastic Thanksgiving proclamation created a scandal, until he pointed out that it was copied complete from that of Christopher Gore in 1810, with the addition of an admonition to the clergy to abstain from political discussion. In 1883 he was defeated for reelection. In 1884 he was an avowed candidate for the presidency. He was nominated on May 14, by a new party called Anti-Monopoly, demanding national control of interstate commerce and the eight-hour day. On May 28 he was nominated by the National [Greenback] party. He was a delegate to the Democratic convention, where he sought to control the platform and secure the nomination; but was defeated. In the election he received 175,370 votes, scattered in all but nine states, and most numerous in Michigan, where he received 42,243. This was his last political activity. He died at Washington, January 11, 1893.

[Butler's autobiography, Butler's Book, 2 volumes (1892), is entertaining and valuable as a reflection of the man.

The Private and Official Correspondence of General Benj. F. Butler, during the Period of the Civil War, 5 volumes (1917), is a fascinating collection of all varieties of material, but not complete with respect to any. His speeches and public letters outside of Congress have not been collected, and exist scattered in newspapers and pamphlets. He is constantly referred to in the letters and reminiscences of the men of his time. There is no standard life. Among the sketches are:  

Blanche B. Ames, The Butler Ancestry of General Benj. Franklin Butler (1895); Jas. Parton, General Butler in New Orleans (1864); Edward Pierrepont, Review of Defence of General Butler Before the House of Representatives, in Relation to the New Orleans Gold (1865); Life and Public Services of Major-General Butler (1864); J. F. McLaughlin, The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and the Spoiler of Silver Spoons, Dubbed LL.D. by Pasquino (1868); M. M. Pomeroy, Life and Public Services of Benjamin F. Butler (1879); T. A. Bland, Life of Benjamin F. Butler (1879); Record of Benj. F. Butler Compiled from the Original Sources (1883).
For Butler's military career see also the Official Records (Army).]

C.R.F.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 477-478:

BUTLER, Benjamin Franklin, lawyer, born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, 5 November, 1818. He is the son of Captain John Butler, who served under Jackson at New Orleans. He was graduated at Waterville college (now Colby university), Maine, in 1838, was admitted to the bar in 1840, began practice at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1841, and has since had a high reputation as a lawyer, especially in criminal cases. He early took a prominent part in politics on the democratic side, and was elected a member of the Massachusetts house of representatives in 1853, and of the state senate in 1859. In 1860 he was a delegate to the democratic national convention that met at Charleston. When a portion of the delegates reassembled at Baltimore, Mr. Butler, after taking part in the opening debates mid votes, announced that a majority of the delegates from Massachusetts would not further participate in the deliberations of the convention, on the ground that there had been a withdrawal in part of the majority of the states; and further, he added, “upon the ground that I would not sit in a convention where the African slave-trade, which is piracy by the laws of my country, is approvingly advocated.” In the same year he was the unsuccessful democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts. At the time of President Lincoln's call for troops in April, 1861, he held the commission of brigadier-general of militia. On the 17th of that month he marched to Annapolis with the 8th Massachusetts regiment, and was placed in command of the district of Annapolis, in which the city of Baltimore was included. On 13 May, 1861, he entered Baltimore at the head of 900 men, occupied the city without opposition, and on 16 May was made a major-general, and assigned to the command of Fort Monroe and the department of eastern Virginia. While he was here, some slaves that had come within his lines were demanded by their masters; but he refused to deliver them up on the ground that they were contraband of war; hence arose the designation of “contrabands,” often applied to slaves during the war. In August he captured Forts Hatteras and Clark on the coast of North Carolina. He then returned to Massachusetts to recruit an expedition for the gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi. On 23 March, 1862, the expedition reached Ship island, and on 17 April went up the Mississippi. The fleet under Farragut having passed the forts, 24 April, and virtually captured New Orleans, General Butler took possession of the city on 1 May. His administration of affairs was marked by great vigor. He instituted strict sanitary regulations, armed the free colored men, and compelled rich secessionists to contribute toward the support of the poor of the city. His course in hanging William Mumford for hauling down the U. S. flag from the mint, and in issuing “Order No. 28,” intended to prevent women from insulting soldiers, excited strong resentment, not only in the south, but in the north and abroad, and in December, 1862, Jefferson Davis issued a proclamation declaring him an outlaw. On 10 May, 1862, General Butler seized about $800,000 which had been deposited in the office of the Dutch consul, claiming that arms for the confederates were to be bought with it. This action was protested against by all the foreign consuls, and the government at Washington, after an investigation, ordered the return of the money. On 16 December, 1862, General Butler was recalled, as he believes, at the instigation of Louis Napoleon, who supposed the general to be hostile to his Mexican schemes. Near the close of 1863 he was placed in command of the department of Virginia and North Carolina, and his force was afterward designated as the Army of the James. In October, 1864, there being apprehensions of trouble in New York during the election, General Butler was sent there with a force to insure quiet. In December he conducted an ineffectual expedition against Fort Fisher, near Wilmington, North Carolina, and soon afterward was removed from command by General Grant. He then returned to his residence in Massachusetts. In 1866 he was elected by the republicans a member of congress, where he remained till 1879, with the exception of the term for 1875-'7. He was the most active of the managers appointed in 1868 by the house of representatives to conduct the impeachment of President Johnson. He was the unsuccessful republican nominee for governor of Massachusetts in 1871; and in 1878 and 1879, having changed his politics, was the candidate of the independent greenback party and of one wing of the democrats for the same office, but was again defeated. In 1882 the democrats united upon him as their candidate, and he was elected, though the rest of the state ticket was defeated. During his administration, he made a charge of gross mismanagement against the authorities of the Tewksbury almshouse; but, after a long investigation, a committee of the legislature decided that it was not sustained. In 1883 he was renominated, but was defeated. In 1884 he was the candidate of the greenback and anti-monopolist parties for the presidency, and received 133,825 votes. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.


BUTLER, J., Waterbury, Vermont, abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1834, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

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


BUTLER, Ovid, 1801-1881, lawyer, newspaper publisher, university founder, abolitionist.  Founded abolitionist newspaper, Free Soil Banner, in 1849. Helped found Northwestern Christian University in 1855.  It was later renamed Butler University.


BUTLER, Pardee, 1816-1888, Kansas, farmer, clergyman, abolitionist.  He was a victim of a pro-slavery mob in Kansas in August 1855, and a Republican Party organizer in Kansas in May-June 1856.


BUZBY, Samuel, Delaware, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-40.



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.