Cox-Cri: Cox through Crittenden

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.


COX, Abby Ann, New York City, 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. 41)


COX, Abraham, 1800-1864, New York, surgeon, opponent of slavery, abolitionist leader.  Founding member and recording secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1833-1836. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 218; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 32n; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I:

COX, Abraham Siddon, surgeon, born in New York in 1800; died at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, 29 July, 1864. He had been for many years one of the most eminent medical practitioners of New York city. At the beginning of the war he became a surgeon in the army, and at the time of his death was surgeon-in-chief of the 1st division, 20th corps, Army of the Cumberland. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I.


COX, Gershom A., Reverend, clergyman, abolitionist, Maine.  Founder and first Vice President of the Portland Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.


COX, Hannah Pierce [Pearce], 1797-1876, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, Underground Railroad activist.

(Hersch, 1978; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 53, 246; Smedley, 1969; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 758; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 474)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 474:

COX, HANNAH PEIRCE (November 12, 1797- April 15, 1876), Quaker anti-slavery worker, daughter of Jacob and Hannah (Buffington) Peirce, was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Bayard Taylor praised the peace and beauty of its landscape and Whittier testified to its hospitable air of prosperity. Here she lived, her character influenced by her environment. Of Quaker stock, she was of the fifth generation of her family in America, George Peirce having come over from England with William Penn in 1684, and the Buffingtons also having been early Quaker colonists. In 1731 George Peirce had purchased land in East Marlborough township, Chester County, where seven generations of his family were to live. Jacob Peirce's farm, "Longwood," contained two hundred acres of rich soil and woodland. Prosperous, public-spirited, and intelligent, he built the first school-house in the neighborhood and the brick house where Hannah was born, lived, and died.

Hannah was early left fatherless, and her education was directed by her brother Jacob, " a man of fine intellect and a member of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences." She studied for a time at the Westtown Boarding School, developing a love of nature, sympathy for the oppressed, and positive ethical views. After a brief career as teacher she married, apparently in 1820 or 1821, J. Pennell, who soon afterward was killed in an accident. In 1823 she married John Cox, of near-by Willistown, a farmer and, like herself, a Friend of high character. Two sons and two daughters were born to them. Four years were passed in Willistown; Cox then purchased "Longwood," the Peirce homestead, which was thereafter their home. The Liberator and poems of Whittier's interested them in the antislavery movement; the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in 1838 quickened their zeal. Thenceforth Mrs. Cox labored unceasingly for the negro. Her husband and she conducted a station of the Underground Railroad, cooperating with Thomas Garrett at Wilmington, Delaware. Fugitive slaves were received, generously fed and clothed, and conducted northward by Cox or his sons, often with thrilling attendant incidents. The Coxes formed life-long friendships with Lundy, Garrison, Whittier, Lucretia Mott, and many other anti-slavery advocates who enjoyed their hospitality. From the anti-slavery interest ultimately sprang a liberal movement organized as "The Progressive Friends of 'Longwood.'" Many notable reformers, from as far as Boston, attended its yearly meeting; these Mrs. Cox and her husband gladly entertained, "Longwood" becoming a center of cultured effort for reform. At the Coxes' golden wedding, September 11, 1873, eighty-two guests were present and "The Golden Wedding of Longwood" was contributed by Whittier and "A Greeting from Europe" by Bayard Taylor. Mrs. Cox interested herself in current social movements for emancipation, temperance, peace, the abolition of capital punishment, and woman's betterment, exerting a strong influence on all whose lives touched hers. Garrison testified to her "motherly nature," her eager charity, her unpretentiousness.

[Phebe A. Hanaford, Daughters of America (1883); Kennett News, April 20, 1876; Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogy and Personal Memoirs of Chester and Delaware Counties, Pennsylvania, II, 530-531 information from Mrs. Cox's grand-daughters, Mrs. W. W. Polk and Miss Isabelle Cox of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania]

R. S. B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 758:

COX, Hannah, abolitionist, born in Longwood, near Philadelphia, in 1796; died there, 15 April, 1876. She joined the first movement in favor of emancipation, being a co-laborer with Benjamin Lundy, Garrison, Lucretia Mott, and John G. Whittier. For years she and her husband, who survived her in his 91st year, received fugitive slaves. Their golden wedding was celebrated in 1873, when poems were sent by Whittier and Bayard Taylor. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 758.


COX, JACOB DOLSON (October 27, 1828-August 8, 1900), Union general, governor of Ohio, secretary of the interior, author.  

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 476-478) 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 476-478:

COX, JACOB DOLSON (October 27, 1828-August 8, 1900), Union general, governor of Ohio, secretary of the interior, author.  was descended from one Michael Koch, who came from Hanover and settled in New York City in 1705. Jacob Dolson Cox, Sr., received his middle name from his mother, a member of a Dutch family of New York: his wife, Thedia R. Kenyon, was descended from Elder William Brewster and from the Allyns and Kenyons of Connecticut. To them was born, at Montreal, Jacob Dolson Cox, Jr., while the father, a building contractor, was engaged in the construction of the roof of the Church of Notre Dame. Returning to New York City soon after this event, the family suffered business reverses during the crisis of 1837. The boy's hope of obtaining a college education was impaired by the misfortune, and, under the state law, the alternative path to a lawyer's career, to which he aspired, was a seven years' clerkship in a law office. Entering upon such an apprenticeship in 1842, he changed his mind two years later, and went into the office of a banker and broker, where the shorter hours permitted him, with the aid of a friend, to pursue the study of mathematics and the classical languages. After two years more, through the influence of Reverend Charles G. Finney [q.v.], then professor of theology at Oberlin College, he was led to enter the preparatory department of that institution. Three years later (1849), while still an undergraduate, he married Helen, the daughter of Finney who was now president of the college. Graduating in 1851, Cox served for two years at Warren, Ohio, as superintendent of schools and principal of the high school, reading law at the same time, and beginning to practise in 1853.

Cox was at this time a Whig, but his Oberlin associations, his marriage, and other influences, combined to make him strongly anti-slavery in principle. He voted for Scott in 1852, but took a prominent part in bringing about the fusion of Whigs and Free-Soilers, and in 1855 was a delegate to the convention at Columbus which organized the Republican party in the state. A few years later his party friends, against his protest, nominated and elected him to the state Senate. Entering the Senate in 1859, he found there his friend James A. Garfield, and Governor-Elect Dennison, with whom he soon became intimate, this trio, together with Salmon P. Chase, then governor, forming a radical anti-slavery group.

With the outbreak of war in 1861, Cox's activity in organizing volunteers brought him a commission as brigadier-general of volunteers. During the summer he had a part in the Kanawha Valley campaign under McClellan, and a year later, in the Army of the Potomac, he participated in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam, commanding the 9th Corps at the former after the fall of General Reno. He was advanced to the rank of major-general on October 6, 1862, but the following April was reduced to his former rank because the number of major-generals permitted by law had been inadvertently exceeded. This bungling, which resulted in the promotion of less deserving officers, was a discouraging episode in his military career; but after repeated urging on the part of his superiors he was at length recommissioned in December 1864. During the winter of 1862- 63 he commanded the forces in West Virginia, and from April to December 1863 was in charge of the Ohio military district. During the Atlanta campaign he led a division of the 3rd Army Corps, and after the fall of Atlanta for a time commanded the entire corps. He took part in the battle of Nashville, and early in 1865 was sent into North Carolina to open communications. along the coast with Sherman, who was nearing the end of the march to the sea. On this expedition Cox defeated Bragg's troops and effected a junction with Sherman at Goldsboro.

After the war, while engaged in superintending the mustering out of the troops in Ohio, Cox was elected governor of the state. During the campaign in response to the inquiries of friends at Oberlin, he expressed himself as opposed to negro suffrage. He could not assume as they did, he wrote, that the suffrage, while whites and blacks dwelt in the same community, would cure all of the ills of the freedmen. Carrying these ideas further, he declared while governor, that the large groups of whites and blacks in the Southern states could never share political power, and that insistence upon it on the part of the colored people would bring about their ruin. As a remedy, he advocated the forcible segregation of the negroes, a plan which found little or no support. By such views, and by his indorsement of President Johnson's reconstruction policy, which he thought essentially the same as Lincoln's, he lost favor with his party, and was not renominated. He tried in vain to mediate between Johnson and the radical Republicans, and finally himself abandoned the President because of the latter 's obstinacy and pugnacity. In 1868 Cox declined Johnson's tender of the post of commissioner of Internal Revenue.

Upon Grant's accession, Cox accepted the office of secretary of the interior. He had become a prominent advocate of the new cause of civil-service reform, and in his own department he put the merit system into operation, resisting the efforts of the party spoilsmen to dictate appointments and to collect campaign assessments. He and Attorney-General Hoar were regarded by the Independent Republicans as the only strong men in Grant's cabinet. When Grant's extraordinary Santo Domingo embroglio forced Hoar from the cabinet-the story of which episode Cox gave to the public twenty-five years later (see Atlantic Monthly, August 1895)-Cox lost hope of maintaining his fight without the support of the President. Already he had clashed with Grant over the fraudulent claims of one McGarrahan to certain mineral lands, as well as over the Dominican situation and on October 5, 1870, he submitted his resignation. " My views of the necessity of reform in the civil service," he wrote, "have brought me more or less into collision with the plans of our active political managers, and my sense of duty has obliged me to oppose some of their methods of action" (New York Tribune, October 31, 1870).

The breach with Grant hurt Cox deeply. He held Grant's military talent in high esteem, and did not allow his judgment thereof to be affected by their difference (see, e. g., his review of Grant's Memoirs, in the Nation, February 25, 1886, July I, 1886); but in private conversation he permitted himself to criticize the President's course severely. Grant on his part, with his military instincts and experience, regarded Cox's independence of mind as a kind of insubordination. "The trouble was," as he put it, "that General Cox thought the Interior Department was the whole government, and that Cox was the Interior Department. I had to point out to him in very plain language that there were three controlling branches of the Government, and that I was the head of one of these and would so like to be considered by the Secretary of the Interior" (Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, p. 427). Progressive opinion supported Cox, and his political "martyrdom" undoubtedly hastened the triumph of the reform movement.

Upon leaving the cabinet the former secretary became conspicuously identified with the Liberal Republican movement, and was much talked of as its probable nominee for the presidency in 1872. At the Cincinnati convention, however, he was defeated by the more available Greeley. Meantime he had resumed the practise of law, at Cincinnati; but in 1873 he removed to Toledo to become president of the Wabash Railway. This position he gave up in turn upon being elected to Congress in 1876, from the 6th Ohio District, by an unprecedented majority.

He served but one term in Congress. He seems to have hoped to be able to do something to support President Hayes in his reform efforts, and his helplessness under existing political conditions probably discouraged him. At any rate he abandoned politics, even refraining thereafter from comment on political events, with the exception of a single speech during the Garfield campaign. Resuming his residence at Cincinnati, he became dean of the Cincinnati Law School (1881), a position which he held for the next sixteen years. During part of this time (1885-89) he also served as president of the University of Cincinnati. In addition to high repute as a lawyer, his reputation as a business man was enviable, and brought him in the middle nineties the tender of the post of railroad commissioner in New York City. This offer he declined, preferring to continue his connection with the Law School. In 1897 he declined President McKinley's offer of the Spanish mission, but in the same year he presented his library to Oberlin College and retired thither to write his Military Reminiscences. This work was barely completed and still unpublished when his death occurred, after a brief illness, while he was enjoying his customary summer outing along the coast of Maine, in company with a son.

Cox was tall, graceful, and well-proportioned, with erect, military bearing, and a frame denoting great physical strength. A man of many interests, he devoted much time in his later years to the study of microscopy, in which field he won international distinction. He was also a student of European cathedrals. His wide information, conversational gifts, and courteous manners made him an agreeable companion. The artistic genius of a son, Kenyon Cox [q.v.], doubtless bears witness to undeveloped talents of the father.

No small part of Cox's reputation rests upon his work as a writer. From 1874 until his death he was the Nation's military book critic. In addition to contributions to this and other journals, he wrote several books on military topics, the most important of which are: Atlanta, and The March to the Sea; Franklin and Nashville (volumes IX and X in the Campaigns of the Civil War series, 1882); The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 30, 1864 (1897); and Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (2 volumes, 1900). He also contributed four chapters to M. F. Force's Life of General Sherman (1899). A work of less consequence is The Second Battle of Bull Run as Connected with the Fitz-John Porter Case (1882). Some critics of these books regard his attitude toward Rosecrans as unjust and not well informed, and his judgment in the Fitz John Porter case is open to question. In general, however, he is recognized as an elegant and forceful writer, of fine critical ability and impartial judgment, one of the foremost military historians of the country.

[The autobiographical nature of the Military Reminiscences makes it the chief source of information for Cox's life as a soldier. It contains a portrait. See also Bibliotheca Sacra, July 1901, pp. 436-68. J. R. Ewing, Public Services of Jacob Dolson Cox (1902), is a slight sketch of about twenty pages which contains some data not found elsewhere. Jas. Ford Rhodes touches the high points of Cox's civil career and appraises his personality in "Jacob D. Cox" (Historical Essays, 1909, pp. 183- 88). He tells the story of the cabinet controversy in History of the U. S. from the Compromise of 1850, VII (1910), 3-7. See also L.A. Coolidge, Ulysses S. Grant (1917); Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, His Life and Character (1898); Nation, August 9, 1901, p. 107. Estimates of Cox's writings may be found in the American History Review, III (1898), 578-80, and VI (1901), 602-06.]

H.C.H.


COX, John, Pennsylvania, Underground Railroad activist, abolitionist.

(Hersch, 1978; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 53, 246; Smedley, 1969)


COX, Samuel Hanson, 1793-1880 New York, radical abolitionist leader, Presbyterian clergyman, orator. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 74, 114; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 228Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 481; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 5, p. 630)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 481:

COX, SAMUEL HANSON (August 25, 1793- October 2, 1880), Presbyterian clergyman, educator, a man of brilliant but eccentric genius, was born in Rahway, New Jersey, the son of James Cox, member of a New York importing firm, and Elizabeth (Shepard) Cox. He was of Quaker ancestry, fifth in descent from Isaac Cox of Talbot County, Maryland, and received his early education privately and at a Friends' academy in Westtown near Philadelphia. In 1813, while studying law under William Halsey at Newark, New Jersey, the charm of Quakerism in which he had been nurtured "was dissolved by the unmystical verities of the Bible," and he joined the Presbyterian Church. His experiences at this period he describes at length in Quakerism not Christianity (1833), a discursive work of nearly seven hundred pages. He now turned to the study of theology, and, October 10, 1816, was licensed by the New York Presbytery. On July 1, 1817, he was ordained and installed pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Mendham, New Jersey. His other pastorates were at Spring Street Church (1820- 25) and Laight Street Church (1825-35), New York, and the First Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn (1837-54). He was married, April 7, 1817, to Abia Hyde Cleveland (1796-1865), by whom he had fifteen children, the eldest of whom, Arthur Cleveland Coxe [q.v.], became a bishop in the Episcopal Church. His second wife, whom he married November 16, 1869, was Anna Fosdick Bacon.

He was noted both for his peculiarities and for his gifts. His utterances, tinged with intellectual arrogance and interlarded with quotations from the Latin, a language he spoke fluently, reveal an amusing fondness for long and uncommon words. His learning was extensive, but his scholarship not profound. Strong sympathies and antipathies led him into extravagances. Nevertheless, his versatility, eloquence, wit, sincerity, and courage, gave him standing and influence. At the outset of his career he came into prominence through being refused an appointment by the Young Men's Missionary Society of New York, because of his Hopkinsian sentiments. In the sharp conflicts of 1836-38 which split the Presbyterian Church, he was one of the New School leaders, and he was moderator of the New School General Assembly in 1846. He was a founder of New York University, and during a thirty-six years' term as director of Union Theological Seminary did much to shape its policies. From 1835 to 1837 he was professor of sacred rhetoric and pastoral theology at Auburn Seminary, and from 1856 to 1863 the head of Ingham University, Le Roy, New York, an institution for young women. He died at Bronxville, New York.

Although at the anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, London, May 1833, he defended his country when attacked on the score of slavery, his early radical anti-slavery sentiments got him into trouble. His church and house were stoned, and in July 1835, he was hanged in effigy at Charleston along with Garrison and Arthur Tappan. For the London edition of William Jay's Slavery in America (1835), a work antagonistic to the Colonization Society he wrote a vigorous introduction. Later he modified his views, fought the attempted exclusion of slaveholders at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in London, 1846, and repudiated his former friendship for Frederick Douglass because of his behavior at a temperance convention they attended there (Liberator, November 20, 1846). Violently opposed both to intoxicants and to tobacco, he wrote a long introduction, addressed to John Quincy Adams, for Benjamin I. Lane's Mysteries of Tobacco (1851). He edited and brought down to date Archibald Bower's anti-Catholic History of the Popes in 1844-47. Interviews Memorable and Useful (1853) indirectly reveals many of his characteristics.

[General Catalog Auburn Theol. Seminary (1883); John Q. Adams, History of Auburn Theol. Seminary (1918); G. L. Prentiss, The Union Theological Seminary, New York, History and Biography Sketches of its First Fifty Years (1889); J. L. Chamberlain, ed., Universities and Their Sons, New York University (1901); E. J. and H. G. Cleveland, Geneal. Cleveland and Cleaveland Families (1899), I, 515-20; W. P. and F. J. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison (1885- 89), I, 461,485; III, 165-66.]

H. E. S.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 760:

COX, Samuel Hanson, clergyman, born in Rahway, New Jersey, 25 August, 1793; died in Bronxville, Westchester county, New York, 2 October, 1881. His father, who at the time of his death, in 1801, was engaged in mercantile enterprises in New York city, was descended from a family that in the 17th century settled on the eastern shore of Maryland, where the name, diversely spelled, has been long connected with the Quakers of Talbot county. By intermarriages with other families of the peninsula, this connection was rendered nominal at different periods; but, as the father of Dr. Cox had maintained his relations with the society, he received his academic education at their high-school or college at Westtown, near Philadelphia. He also received private instruction in Philadelphia, and was a law-student in Newark, New Jersey, in 1812, when, with Southard, Frelinghuysen, and others that became eminent, he organized a volunteer corps of riflemen, which occasionally served in the war, notably at Fort Green, L. I. He studied theology in Philadelphia under Dr. Wilson, a distinguished Presbyterian clergyman. The degree of M. A. was conferred upon him by Princeton, and that of D. D. by Williams. He was ordained in 1817, and accepted the pastorate of Mendham, Morris county, New Jersey. In 1821 he removed to New York as pastor of the Presbyterian church in Spring street, and thence to Laight street in 1825. His congregation here was largely composed of wealthy merchants. He took a leading part in the foundation of the University of the city of New York and in literary conventions, one of which was presided over by John Quincy Adams, called to aid in its organization. He was appointed to open the instructions of the university with the late Dr. McIlvaine, afterward bishop of Ohio, and delivered one of the two memorable courses of lectures in the winter of 1831-'2, his department being that of moral philosophy. During the cholera season of the latter year he remained at his post until stricken down by the disease. In impaired health Dr. Cox went to Europe in 1833, where a speech, delivered at the anniversary of the British and foreign Bible society in London, gained him distinction and opened the way to honors and attentions in Europe. The anti-slavery sentiment then predominant in England made a great impression on Dr. Cox, and he publicly defended his country, when it was gratuitously assailed on that point, and delivered a celebrated sermon against slavery, soon after his return, which, though moderate in tone, drew upon him a great share of the violence with which the agitators were then visited. He was never identified with their extreme measures, and afterward took a leading conservative position in all questions connected with the south, which for a long time disturbed the Presbyterian church. In recognition of this service to the counsels of his brethren, he received the degree of LL. D. from a southern college. In other questions his theological standing was with the new school, of which he was a prominent champion. In the order and discipline of his church, however, he maintained the highest and most thorough old-school position. He was elected professor of pastoral theology in the Theological seminary at Auburn in 1834, but in 1837 became pastor of the 1st Presbyterian congregation in Brooklyn, L. I., where he built a new church in Henry street. In 1845 Dr. Cox attended the Evangelical alliance in London. In 1852, his health declining, he visited Nassau, but with so little good effect that, against the remonstrances of his people and the most liberal proposals on their part, he resigned his charge, and retired to a pleasant property, which they enabled him to purchase, at Owego, New York. He considered his career as a pastor at an end, but frequently delivered lectures and appeared in pulpits in New York for several years subsequently. He was for many years professor of ecclesiastical history in the Union theological seminary of New York. His contributions to periodicals and journalistic literature were numerous. His work on “Quakerism” (1833) is in part an autobiography. In connection with the duties of his chair, he edited Bower's “History of the Popes” (New York, 1847). He also presided for a time over the Ladies' college at Le Roy, New York. For the last twelve years of his life he lived in retirement in Westchester county. Although much criticised for personal eccentricities, he was generally recognized as a man of high character and commanding talents, of great boldness in expressing his strong convictions, and of singular power as an orator. Dr. Cox was the eldest of three sons, all of whom attained professional eminence. JAMES died prematurely in Philadelphia in 1830. ABRAHAM LIDON, after a brilliant practice in New York, where he became professor of surgery in the medical college now connected with the New York university, of which he was one of the founders, died in the service of his country near Chattanooga in 1863. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888. 


COXE, John D., abolitionist leader, founding member of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1787.

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 92, 102; Bruns, 1977, p. 514)


COXE, Richard S., Washington, DC, American Colonization Society, Manager, 1833-34, Executive Committee, 1840-1841. 

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


COXE, Tench, 1755-1824, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, political economist, abolitionist leader.  Founding member and secretary of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1787.

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 80, 81-85, 92, 101-102; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 384, 510-512, 514; Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 124-125, 141; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 762; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 488; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 5, p. 636) His chief works are: " An Inquiry into the Principles for a Commercial System for the United States” (1787); “Examination of Lord Sheffield's Observations on the Commerce of the United Provinces” (1792); “View of the United States” (1787-'94). He wrote also on naval power, on encouragement of arts and manufactures, on the cost, trade, and manufacture of cotton, on the navigation act, and on arts and manufactures in the United States. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 762.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 488:

COXE, TENCH (May 22, 1755-July 16, 1824), political economist, was the son of William and Mary (Francis) Coxe and grandson of Colonel Daniel Coxe [q.v.], colonial legislator and judge, and of Tench Francis [q.v.], attorney-general of the province of Pennsylvania. Tench Coxe, like his brother William [q.v.], was born in Philadelphia. He was educated at the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania, though he seems not to have graduated. He studied law, but instead of undertaking an independent practise entered his father's counting house, and in 1776 became a member of the firm of Coxe, Furman & Coxe. Friendly writers have said that it was the exigency of the business, of which he was left in complete charge, which made him neutral during the Revolution. Others declare that royalist sympathies made him resign from the militia and leave Philadelphia to join the British, returning in 1777 with the army under Howe, and that with Howe's withdrawal Coxe was arrested, paroled, and turned Whig. At any rate, he did not sacrifice the esteem of patriots, for he was a member of the Annapolis Convention of 1786 and of the Continental Congress in 1788. He supported the adoption of the Constitution in an able pamphlet, An Examination of the Constitution for the United States (1788), which was one of the earliest arguments to appear in its behalf, and marks its author in every way a Federalist. He was particularly anxious that the financial difficulties of the Confederation should be cured through adoption of the new instrument. He was made assistant secretary of the treasury in 1789 and became Commissioner of the Revenue in 1792. From the latter post Adams removed him in December 1797 (probably because of Wolcott's dissatisfaction with his subordinate, though no official reason was given), and Coxe altered allegiance again by joining the Republicans. In the campaign of 1800 he added to the Federalist discomfort, already acute through Hamilton's attack upon President Adams, by publishing a letter which he had received from Adams in 1792 openly insinuating that Charles and Thomas Pinckney, both Federalist leaders, were not to be trusted because under British influence. Federalists promptly branded Coxe a traitor to the party, whereupon Jefferson took him up, in 1803 appointing him Purveyor of Public Supplies, which office he held until it was abolished in 1812. Jefferson and Madison remained his friends, and the latter, in 1820 when Coxe was an old man, sought unavailingly to have Monroe give him preferment.

Coxe's shifts in politics were in marked contrast to his steadfastness in adherence to the economic policies which he believed would promote the prosperity of the new nation. Dealing in practicalities rather than in doctrine, he belonged to the nationalist group which later found its full expression in the works of Henry C. Carey [q.v.]. He resented the hardships of Britain's colonial policy, realized the necessity of close political union following the weakness of the Confederation, and was moved to action by the flooding of American markets with British goods when peace was concluded. His pamphlet, An Enquiry into the Principles on Which a Commercial System for the United States of America Should be Founded, read to a meeting in the house of Benjamin Franklin in 1787 and published in the same year, is a key to his views. While ever mindful of the claims of agriculture (which he calculated embraced seven-eighths of the country's wealth), he thought these would best be served by development of manufactures which would afford a home market for raw materials and foodstuffs. He believed a revenue tariff, combined with the natural advantages of the country, sufficient for the encouragement of American industry. He was unalterably opposed to commercial restrictions between the states. He urged confining importation to American bottoms and to ships of the country of origin. Coastwise trade, he held, should belong exclusively to American ship-owners. He early (1775) became a member of the United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufactures, and became president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (founded in 1787). He has been called the father of the American cotton industry because he was one of the first to urge on the South cultivation of cotton as a staple, and was active in the promotion of cotton manufacture. In 1787, two years before Samuel Slater's arrival, Coxe attempted, though without success, to have models of the Arkwright machinery brought to America by way of France. Early aware of the existence of coal in central and western Pennsylvania, and, apparently, of its future importance (see his View of the United States of America, 1794, pp. 70-71), in 1787 and 1793 he purchased extensive tracts of land in the coal areas, which he transmitted to his heirs. A grandson, Eckley B. Coxe [q.v.], educated to develop the coal lands, became one of the outstanding mining engineers of the United States.

Tench Coxe was married twice: first, to Catherine McCall of Philadelphia, who died without issue; and second, to Rebecca, daughter of Charles Coxe of New Jersey. He was a handsome, winning person, capable and versatile, high in the second rank of men of his day.

[See Henry Simpson, The Lives of Eminent Philadelphians (1859); Lorenzo Sabine, Biography Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (1864); Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, volumes V (1881) and XVI (189.2); George S. White, Memoir of Samuel Slater (2nd ed., 1836); obituaries in Philadelphia papers: Franklin Gazette and National Gazette for July 16, 1824, and Paulson's American Daily Advertiser for July 17, 1824. There are numerous references to Coxe in the letters of Jefferson, Madison, and Adams. For his opinions see his View of the United States (1794), which is in effect a compilation of a number of his papers published during the years 1787- 94, and (also by Coxe) A Statement of the Arts and Manufactures of the U.S. for the Year 1810.]

B.M.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 762:

COXE, Tench, political economist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 22 May, 1755; died there, 17 July, 1824. His mother was a daughter of Tench Francis. His father came of a family well known in American affairs. One ancestor was a proprietor of the province of West Jersey, and sent out the first ship that ever entered the Mississippi from the gulf. Another wrote “A Description of the Province of Carolana,” and drew that scheme for the union of the colonies against French aggression which Franklin copied in the “Albany Plan.” Tench received his education in the Philadelphia schools, and intended to study law; but his father determined to make him a merchant, and he was placed in the counting-house of Coxe & Furman, becoming a partner at the age of twenty-one. Those were the times that tried men's souls, and the boy proved unequal to the trial. In 1776 he resigned from the militia, turned royalist, left the city to join the British, and came back in 1777 with the army under Howe. When Howe left, Coxe was arrested and paroled. He now turned whig, and began a long political career. In 1786 he was sent to the Annapolis convention, and in 1788 to the Continental congress. He next became a federalist, and was made assistant secretary of the treasury in 1789, and commissioner of the revenue in 1792; but from this place Adams removed him. He then turned republican, and in the canvass of 1800 published Adams's famous letter to him regarding Pinckney. For this he was reviled by the federalists as a renegade, a tory, and a British guide, and was rewarded by Jefferson in 1803 with the place of purveyor of public supplies, which he held till 1812. In 1804 Coxe organized and led a party at Philadelphia opposed to the election to congress of Michael Lieb, and this brought him again into public notice. Though a republican, he was for three months daily abused by the “Aurora”; was called a tory, a Federal rat, a British guide who had entered Philadelphia in 1777 with laurel in his hat, and his party was nicknamed the “quids.” The term is commonly supposed to have been first applied to the little band led by John Randolph in 1806, but this is a mistake. The claims of Tench Coxe to remembrance are his labors in behalf of American manufactures, and his statistical writings on political economy. He deserves, indeed, to be called the father of the American cotton industry. He it was who first attempted to bring an Arkwright machine to the United States, and first urged the people of the south to give their time to raising cotton. His speech before the delegates of the constitutional convention is in the “American Museum” of September, 1787. His treasury papers are in the “American State Papers” (vol. i., Finance). His chief works are: " An Inquiry into the Principles for a Commercial System for the United States” (1787); “Examination of Lord Sheffield's Observations on the Commerce of the United Provinces” (1792); “View of the United States” (1787-'94). He wrote also on naval power, on encouragement of arts and manufactures, on the cost, trade, and manufacture of cotton, on the navigation act, and on arts and manufactures in the United States. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 762. 


COXE, William, Jr., New Jersey, abolitionist, member, delegate, The New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, founded 1793

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 223, 224, 227, 239n6)


CRAFT, Ellen, 1827-1900, African American, author, former slave who escaped to freedom in 1848 with William Craft.  Wrote Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, 1860. 

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 137-138; Hersch, 1978; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 285-286, 290, 302, 303, 316, 336; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 53, 246; Smedley, 1969, pp. 51, 184, 209, 246-247, 464, 489; Still, 1883; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 5, p. 647; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 3, p. 315)

Chapter: “Workings of the Fugitive Slave Act,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

Sometimes, however, this monotony of gloom was relieved by some pleasant episode, in which the heroism and strategy of the pursued were crowned with success, and the selfish purposes of the pursuer were foiled. Of this character were the escape of William and Ellen Crafts of Georgia, and the unsuccessful attempt to arrest and return them to bondage. Ellen, whose complexion was very light, dressed herself in male attire, and personated a young planter, afflicted with consumptive tendencies, on his way north to obtain medical advice. William was a negro, without admixture of blood; and he acted the part of a family servant, greatly devoted to his young master. They took the public routes, mingled with the passengers, and arrived safely in Massachusetts, where they were cordially welcomed by the friends of the slave. The slave-hunter not only failed in his attempt, but the attempt itself to arrest them, which was made in October, 1850, excited the deepest interest, raised up for them friends, and procured for them aid, which resulted in the discomfiture of their pursuers and in their escape to England. And not only did they escape, but those who sought their re-enslavement became the objects of such uncomfortable notoriety in Boston that they were followed in the streets, pointed out as slave-hunters, waited upon at their hotel, and advised to leave while they were unmolested.

Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, learning that Hughes and Knight were in the city in pursuit of the fugitives, informed Mrs. George S. Hillard -- a friend of not only the Crafts, but of fugitives generally -- of the fact. She at once communicated the facts to them. Crafts armed and barricaded himself in his shop, declaring that he would never be taken alive. Ellen was taken out of the city to the home of Ellis Gray Loring. But, fearing that she would not be safe there from the kid nappers, Theodore Parker took her to his own home and kept her there until the slave-hunters had left the city. Mr. Parker armed himself and put his house in a state of defence. “For two weeks," he said,” I wrote my sermons with a sword in the open drawer under my inkstand, and a pistol in the flap of the desk, loaded and ready, with a cap on the nipple." Before William Crafts fled from the United States to England they were married by Mr. Parker according to the laws of Massachusetts. He gave William a sword, and told him of his “manly duty” "to defend the life and liberty of Ellen," and gave them both a Bible to be “a symbol of their spiritual culture."

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 325-326.


CRAFT, William, c. 1826-1890, African American author, former slave who escaped to freedom in 1848 with Ellen Craft.  Wrote Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, 1860. 

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 137-138; Hersch, 1978; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 285-286, 290, 302, 303, 316, 336; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 53, 246; Smedley, 1969, pp. 51, 184, 209, 246-247, 464, 489; Still, 1883; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 5, p. 648; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 3, p. 315)


CRANCH, William, Judge, 1769-1855, jurist.  Manager of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 767-768; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 501; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 208)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 767-768:

CRANCH, William, jurist, born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, 17 July, 1769; died in Washington, 1 September, 1855. His father, Richard, a native of England, was for many years a member of the Massachusetts legislature, was a judge of the court of common pleas, and the author of “Views of the Prophecies concerning Anti-Christ.” William was graduated at Harvard in 1829, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in July, 1790. After practising for three years in the courts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in October, 1794, he removed to Washington. In 1801 President Adams appointed him junior assistant judge of the circuit court of the District of Columbia. In 1805 President Jefferson made him chief justice of the same court, an office that he held till 1855. During that period but two of his decisions were overruled by the U. S. supreme court. Among the last services imposed upon him by congress was the final hearing of patent causes after an appeal from the commissioner of patents. He published nine volumes of reports of the U. S. supreme court, and six volumes of reports of the circuit court of the District of Columbia (1801 to 1841). He also prepared a code of laws for the district, published a memoir of John Adams (1827), and in 1831 an address on temperance. He was a member of the academy of arts and    Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


CRANDALL, Phineas, abolitionist, Fall River, Massachusetts, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1834-36, 1839-1840.


CRANDALL, Prudence, 1803-1889, Canterbury, Connecticut, Society of Friends, Quaker, educator, abolitionist. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 211-217; Foner, 1984; Fuller, 1971; Goodell, 1852, pp. 393, 436; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 148, 149, 150, 373; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 247-248; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 13, 89, 199, 203, 211, 223; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 768; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 192-193; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 5, p. 667; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 307; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 503-504;)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 503-504:

CRANDALL, PRUDENCE (September 3, 1803-January 28, 1889), educator and reformer, born at Hopkinton, Rhode Island, was of Quaker descent, the daughter of Pardon and Esther Crandall (J. N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island, Volume V, 1894). The family had a tinge of fanaticism in their blood and her younger brother was imprisoned for nearly a year in Georgetown, D. C., without trial, for spreading Abolitionist doctrines there. Prudence moved from Rhode Island and after a brief career as a teacher at Plainfield, settled at Canterbury, Connecticut, where in 1831 she opened a school for girls. A colored girl wished to attend and received Miss Crandall's permission. Immediately there were protests, whereupon Miss Crandall decided to keep a school for negroes only. A town meeting was held on March 9, 1833, to prevent her. She was denied opportunity to be heard in defense by counsel, although she offered to retire to a more secluded place if reimbursed for her preparatory expenses at Canterbury. The leader of the movement against her declared that no negro school should he established anywhere in Connecticut, but Miss Crandall continued firm in her resolution and opened her school. Disgraceful forms of intimidation were used against her. Her well was filled with refuse, physicians refused to attend the sick in her home, she was forbidden to enter the church, her house was attacked and narrowly escaped burning, and she was threatened with personal violence. Her opponents secured (May 24, 1833) the passage of an act in the state legislature making it illegal for any one to set up a school for colored people who were not inhabitants of the state without the consent of the selectmen of the town in which the school was to be located (Public Statute Laws of the State of Connecticut,, 1833, chap. ix). Under this law, she was arrested and imprisoned. By this time the case had attracted very wide attention in Abolitionist circles, the Reverend Samuel J. May and Arthur Tappan [qq.v.] took up her cause, eminent counsel were retained in her behalf, and a newspaper, the Unionist, of Brooklyn, Connecticut, edited by C. C. Burleigh [q.v.], was established to defend her. The first trial resulted in a divided jury but a new case was made up and she was tried a second time. Her counsel claimed that the law was unconstitutional, as negroes were citizens and it infringed that clause of the Federal Constitution which gave the "citizens of each state ... all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." The case, however, was decided against her. It was then appealed to the supreme court of Connecticut which reversed the decision of the lower court on the ground merely of insufficient evidence and dodged the real issue (see IO Connecticut 339). The supreme court decision was rendered in July 1834 and the next month Miss Crandall married the Reverend Calvin Philleo, a Baptist clergyman of Ithaca, New York. The project for educating colored girls in Connecticut was obviously hopeless, and the couple moved to Illinois. After her husband's death in 1874, Mrs. Philleo lived with her brother Hezekiah in southern Kansas, dying at Elk Falls in that state. She retained both her mental vigor and her great interest in the colored race until her death.

[A short pamphlet on Prudence Crandall was written by John C. Kimball during her life and privately printed in 1886. See also: S. J. May, Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict (1869); W. P. and F. J. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison (4 volumes, 1885); J. C. Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage (1862), II, 46; Report of the Arguments of Counsel in the Case of Prudence Crandall (1834); Ellen D. Larned, History of Windham County, Connecticut, Volume II (1880). A portrait is at Cornell University.]

J. T.A.


CRANDALL, Prudence, 1803-1889, Canterbury, Connecticut, Society of Friends, Quaker, educator, abolitionist. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 211-217; Foner, 1984; Fuller, 1971; Goodell, 1852, pp. 393, 436; Mabee, 1970, pp. 148, 149, 150, 373; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 247-248; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 13, 89, 199, 203, 211, 223; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 768; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 192-193; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 5, p. 667; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 307)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 768:

CRANDALL, Prudence, educator, born in Hopkinton, Rhode Island, 3 September, 1803. She was educated at the Friends' boarding-school in Providence, and in 1831, under the patronage of residents of the town, established the Canterbury, Connecticut, boarding-school. In 1833 her school had become one of the best of its kind in the state. At this time Miss Crandall admitted a young negro girl as a pupil, and thereby incurred the displeasure of nearly all her former patrons, who threatened to withdraw their daughters from her care. Opposition strengthened her decision to educate the oppressed race, and, after consultation with several of the anti-slavery leaders, she issued a circular announcing that on the first Monday of April, 1833, she would open a school “for the reception of young ladies and little misses of color.” “Terms, $25 per quarter, one half paid in advance.” In the list of references are the names of Arthur Tappan, Samuel J. May, William Lloyd Garrison, and Arnold Buffum. The circular was first published in the “Liberator” of 2 March, 1833. In Canterbury there was great indignation, and several public meetings were held. Messrs. May and Buffum appeared on behalf of Miss Crandall, but were denied a hearing on the ground that they were interlopers. The town pledged itself to oppose the school, and a petition was sent to the legislature, praying for an act prohibiting private schools for non-resident colored persons. Such an act was passed in May; but in the mean time, in spite of all opposition, Miss Crandall had opened her school, and began her work with a respectable number of pupils. She was arrested and imprisoned under the new law, and in August and October was twice brought to trial. She was convicted, and the case was then carried up to the supreme court of errors, where judgment was reversed on a technicality in July, 1834. Pending this decision, Miss Crandall was the object of persecutions of the most annoying description. The term “boycott,” not then known, best describes the measures that were taken to compel the suspension of her school. Finally her house was set on fire and the building so damaged by a mob that it was, deemed best to abandon the undertaking. Such was the beginning of the higher education for colored people in New England. After the breaking up of her school, she married the Reverend Calvin Philleo, a Baptist clergyman, who died in 1876. They lived at various places in New York and Illinois, and she now (1886) resides in Elk Falls, Kansas. Miss Crandall's portrait was painted by Francis Alexander in 1838, for the American anti-slavery society, and became the property of Samuel J. May, who gave it to Cornell university, in the library of which it is still preserved. The illustration presented above is from that portrait. Her life has been written by the Reverend John C. Kimball (a pamphlet, printed privately, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 768.

Chapter: “Hostility to Colored Schools: Miss Crandall's School Suppressed,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872:

Miss Prudence Crandall, a member of the Society of Friends had established a good reputation as a teacher in Plainfield, Connecticut. In the autumn of 1832, invited by several prominent citizens, she purchased a large house in the village of Canterbury, and established a school for young ladies in the higher branches of education. A few mol1ths after comme11cing her: school, she admitted Sarah Harris, a colored girl, a member of the village church. She had attended the district school, and desired, to use her own words, '' to get a little more learning, enough to teach colored children! Although she had been a classmate of some of Miss Crandall's pupils in the district school, objection was soon raised to her remaining in this institution, and remonstrances were made by several patrons of the new school against her continuance, though some of them belonged to the same church, and though they knew nothing to her discredit, except that she belonged to the proscribed race. But their prejudices against color and their pride of caste were aroused, and they were resolved it should never be said that their daughters "went to school with a nigger." Miss Crandall had invested all her property in the building, and had incurred something of a debt besides; and the alternative presented to her of dismissing that colored girl or losing her white pupils was a sore trial. She, however, met the issue bravely, grandly, and in the spirit of self -abnegation and devotion to principle, leaving the event with God.

Having determined on her course, she advertised that at the commencement of her next term, her school would be opened for young ladies and little misses of color, and others who might wish to attend. The people of Canterbury, on learning the fact, were greatly enraged and thrown into intense excitement. A town meeting was called on the 9th of March, before the term began, to adopt measures to avert or abate the threatened" nuisance." In the meantime Miss Crandall was grossly insulted and slandered. Reverend Samuel J. May, then a pastor in the neighboring town of Brooklyn, George W. Benson, and Arnold Buffum, president and agent of the New England Antislavery Society, were com missioned by her to represent her cause at the town meeting. At the meeting resolutions were introduced protesting against the opening of such a school, and suggesting the appointment of the selectmen to wait upon Miss Crandall and persuade her, if possible, to relinquish the project. Andrew T. Judson, a Democratic politician, afterward a member of Congress and judge of the District Court of the United States, resided on Canterbury Green, in a house adjoining the building of the school; and this Democrat was horrified that a school for negro girls was to be opened near his mansion. Confessedly a leader in this mean and cruel crusade against that noble woman and her benevolent design, he, addressed the meeting in a strain of bitter and relentless hostility, and avowed his determined purpose to defeat it.

When he closed, Mr. Buffum and Mr. May presented a letter to the moderator from Miss Crandall, requesting that they might be heard in her behalf. But Judson and others sprang to their feet, and with clenched fists admonished them to be silent. They were not permitted to speak, and she was thus denied even the courtesy of a hearing. And yet these gentlemen went to the meeting ready to agree with the people of the town, if they would repay to Miss Crandall what they had advised her to give for the house and allow her time to remove, that she would transfer her school to some more retired part of the town and vicinity. But the meeting would hear nothing, and adjourned with the purpose to crush the enterprise with or without law.

Notwithstanding, however, this opposition, the school was opened with some fifteen or twenty pupils. Then commenced the most disgraceful persecutions. Her pupils were insulted whenever they appeared in the village, the stores were closed against her and them, her well was filled with filth, and her house was repeatedly assailed. An attempt was made under the Vagrant Act to drive her young pupils from the town; but, on Mr. May and other Brooklyn citizens giving bonds to the amount of ten thousand dollars, that scheme was abandoned. Baffled in their attempts, Mr. Judson and the town authorities repaired to the legislature and secured the passage of a law providing that no person should establish in that State any school or other literary institution for the education of colored persons who were not inhabitants of the State, nor harbor or board any colored person not an inhabitant of the State for that purpose, without the consent in writing from the selectmen of the town in which such school or institution might be instituted. This act, disgraceful alike in its passage and provisions, was received by the inhabitants of Canterbury and vicinity with firing of cannon, ringing of bells, and other demonstrations of general rejoicing. 

A few days after its passage, Mr. May and George W. Benson visited Miss Crandall, to advise with her in regard to that inhuman arid wicked enactment by which a woman might be fined and imprisoned for giving instruction to colored children. After consultation, it was determined, should she be prosecuted, that she should remain in the hands of those with whom the hideous act originated. On the 27th of June Miss Crandall was arrested, brought before two justices of the peace, and committed to take her trial at the next term of the county court, in the month of August. Mr. May and his friends were informed that she was in the hands of the sheriff, and would be committed to jail unless bonds were given for her appearance. According to agreement, however, the bonds were not given, and the responsibility was thrown upon the framers of that infamous statute of giving the required sureties themselves, or of committing an unoffending woman to jail. A man had recently been confined in the jail for the murder of his wife. The jailer, at the request of Mr. May, had his cell put in order for her comfortable reception, should she be sent there. The sheriff and jailer saw and felt that her incarceration would bring dishonor upon the State and deep disgrace upon her persecutors, and they lingered, in the hope that something might be done to avert the disagreeable alternative.

But she and her friends remained firm. When night came, that brave and devoted woman was delivered into the hands of the jailer, and led into the cell from which a murderer had: just passed to execution. Her friends retired, and she remained in the prison till the morning, when the required bonds were given. The intelligence of these proceedings went over the country, exciting no small amount of feeling in all, and in the better portion of the community intense indignation at the inhuman law and the scandalous proceedings that preceded and led to its enactment. Arthur Tappan, with characteristic promptness and generosity, wrote at once to Mr. May, indorsing his conduct, authorizing him to spare no reasonable cost in her defence, employ the ablest counsel, and consider him responsible for the expense. Accordingly, Hon. William W. Ellsworth, Hon. Calvin Goddard, and Hon. Henry Strong, eminent members of the Connecticut bar, were retained. These distinguished lawyers expressed the opinion that the law was clearly unconstitutional, and would be so pronounced by a competent judicial tribunal.

But the persecution against Miss Crandall went on. Even physicians refused to attend the sick of her family. The trustees of the church forbade her to come with any of her family into the house of the Lord. But her friends stood by her with unfaltering devotion. Arthur Tappan left his pressing business, visited her, and was deeply affected by her heroism and the courage and trust with which she inspired her pupils. To Mr. May he said: "The cause of the whole oppressed race of our country is to be much affected by the decision of this question. You are almost helpless without the press. You must issue a paper, publish it largely, send it to all persons whom you know in the county and State, and to all the principal newspapers throughout the country. Many will E1ubscribe for it and contribute largely to its support, and I will pay whatever it may cost." Thus encouraged and supported by the deep sympathy, large-hearted benevolence, and sagacious counsel of Mr. Tappan, Mr. May commenced the publication of a paper called the “Unionist " Charles C. Burleigh, then living with his parents in the neighboring town of Plainfield, assisting them on their farm, and at the same time pursuing his legal studies, was sought out and made its editor. Mr. Burleigh thus commenced his antislavery career, which he pursued with earnest fidelity to the end of the system he helped to destroy. By common consent, his talents and forensic abilities were acknowledged to be of a high order. None ever doubted his conscientiousness; though many regretted certain idiosyncrasies of mind and manner, which unquestionably impaired somewhat his usefulness, as they marred the general symmetry of his character.

On the 23d of August, 1833, the trial of Miss Crandall for the crime of teaching a school for colored girls was commenced in the court of Windham County, Judge Joseph Eaton presiding. Mr. Judson, her persecutor and prosecutor, took the lead. He denied that colored persons were citizens in the States where they were not enfranchised, and he insolently inquired why a man should be educated who could not be a freeman.  She was defended with signal ability. Though Judge Eaton charged that he regarded the law as constitutional, the jury failed to return a verdict for conviction. It was understood that seven were for it, and five were for acquittal.
Foiled in this attempt to procure conviction, and impatient of delay, the prosecutors of the suit, refusing to wait for the December term of the same court, commenced a new trial before Judge Daggett, of the Supreme Court. The judge, a native of Massachusetts, had risen rapidly in his profession, had served in the United States Senate, and was then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut. He was known to have little sympathy with the colored people, and to have been an advocate of the new law. Of course, no great surprise was felt at his adverse decision. In an elaborate opinion, he maintained the constitutionality of the law, and declared that he was not aware that free blacks were styled citizens in the laws of Congress, or of any of the States. The jury rendered a verdict against Miss Crandall, and her counsel at once, filed a bill of exceptions and appealed the case. Before the highest tribunal her cause was argued in July, 1834. That court, however, decided that the case ought to be quashed for legal informality, and tamely evaded the constitutional question by declaring it “unnecessary for the court to come to any decision on the question as to the constitutionality of the law."

Soon after this failure an unsuccessful attempt was made to burn Miss Crandall's house. In spite, however, of persecutions, insults, imprisonments, and the attempt to destroy her dwelling, this brave woman struggled on in her work of disinterested benevolence. But her enemies were determined and implacable. On the 9th of September, near the hour of midnight, her house was assaulted with clubs, doors and windows were broken in, and the building left nearly untenantable. Her few friends, having been invited to look up on the scene of desolation, and deeming further effort unavailing, if not perilous to life and limb, advised the abandonment of the enterprise. Acting upon this advice, the heroic lady, who had breasted and braved the violence of the mob and the undisguised intolerance of the community for seventeen months, disbanded her school, and sent twenty young girls to their homes, whose only offence, their enemies being judges, was the color of their skin and their strong desire to learn. Mr. May states that when he gave that advice the words blistered his lips and his bosom glowed with indignation. “I felt ashamed," he said, "of Canterbury, ashamed of Connecticut, ashamed of my country, ashamed of my color."

It is in the light of such facts that the deep degradation and demoralization reached by even the New England of those days appears, when not only the demands of humanity and religion were resisted, but the peculiar claims of womanhood and childhood were rudely and roughly ignored. A lonely and, from all that appears, a lovely woman of culture and character, at the head of a seminary of learning, yields to the importunity of a colored girl of seventeen to get a little more learning, that she may teach the children of her race, encounters the rough hostility of the whole community, with hardly a dissenting voice in the church or out of it, and is compelled to accept the cruel alternative of turning her back, or of relinquishing the patronage of those on the faith in whom she embarked her all and ventured on the enterprise. The scene shifts.

A new act in the drama, a real tragedy, without its blood, opens. The same brave woman, true to her convictions and deaf to the claims of selfish fear and interest, appears upon the stage with twenty young girls, coming up from as many lonely homes of a proscribed people, anxious to learn. To aid them, to educate twenty immortal minds for their high mission on earth, she not only sacrifices position and popular favor, but bows beneath the crushing weight of public obloquy, and hazards, not to say sacrifices, her pecuniary means without reserve. And what had the public of Canterbury and Connecticut for such sublime devotion to principle, for such heroic self-sacrifice? Social ostracism, personal insult, exclusion from God's house, a criminal trial, conviction and incarceration in a murderer's cell! Nor was this the work of unprincipled politicians and fellows of the baser sort alone. The town and its church, the county and its court, the State and its legislature, all joined in this dark business and contributed to this sad result.

Do questions rush to the lip? How could such things happen? How could there be philanthropy, or piety, or even common honesty and humanity, or anything but barbarism, in a community which could enact or tolerate such scenes? And yet there may have been for perfect consistency is a "jewel" rarely found, an exotic which seldom blooms on earth.

And yet these facts are both a puzzle and a mortification, antagonistic alike to the doctrines of the Decalogue and of the Declaration of Independence. So intensely unchristian, barbarous, and despotic, they provoke, if they do not entirely justify, the severe criticisms against both the Christianity and republicanism not only of those but of later days. For these facts were but representative of much that was then taking place throughout the country, and which afterward transpired.

These scenes of Canterbury were hardly more disgraceful than those which were witnessed twenty years later in Boston, at the rendition of Anthony Burns. Andrew T. Judson, commanding the silence of the committee appearing in behalf of Miss Crandall, in that old meeting-house at Canterbury, was no more an instrument of the Slave Power than was Mr. Webster, years afterward, demanding from the steps of the Revere House, in Boston, that the citizens of New England should "learn to conquer their prejudices." The trustees of that church, excluding Prudence Crandall and her pupils from the house of God, were hardly more obnoxious to just condemnation than were the Fugitive Slave Act discourses and "South Side Views" of subsequent years. They all reveal the sad truth that the virus of slavery was coursing through the veins of the body politic, destroying its healthy action, weakening its powers of reason and conscience, so that the language of the prophet seems not too strong: “The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint."

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 1.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 240-247.


CRANE, William, 1790-1866, Richmond, Virginia, merchant, philanthropist.  Active supporter of the American Colonization Society in the Richmond auxiliary.  Created the Richmond African Baptist Ministry Society as a part of the Richmond Baptist Foreign Ministry Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 1; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 109, 128)

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

CRANE, William, merchant, born in Newark, New Jersey, 6 May, 1790; died in Baltimore, Maryland, 28 September, 1866. In Richmond, Virginia, where he resided from 1811 till 1834, he was distinguished for his zeal in promoting the religious welfare of the colored people. He was the founder of the Richmond African Baptist missionary society which sent out Lott Cary to Liberia, and he taught the first school for blacks in Richmond, and was one of the originators of Richmond college, giving to it $1,000. His benefactions to other religious objects were large. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


CRAVATH, Erastas Milo, 1833-1900, Homer, New York, clergyman, educator, abolitionist, Union Army soldier.  Field agent for the American Missionary Association (AMA), 1865.  Established schools for former slaves.  Co-founder of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee in 1866.


CRAWFORD, James, 1810-1888, African American, escaped slave, Baptist clergyman, abolitionist leader.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 3, p. 327)


CRAWFORD, William Harris, 1772-1834, Georgia, statesman, U.S. Congressman from Georgia.  Vice-President, 1833-35, of the American Colonization Society.  Member, Milledgeville auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2005, p. 14; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 6; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 527; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 71)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

CRAWFORD, William Harris, statesman, born in Amherst county, Virginia, 24 February, 1772; died in Elbert county, Georgia, 15 September, 1834. His father, who was in reduced circumstances, removed first to South Carolina and then to Columbia county, Georgia. After teaching school at Augusta the boy studied law, began practice at Lexington in 1799, and was one of the compilers of the first digest of the laws of Georgia. He became a member of the state senate in 1802, and in 1807 was chosen U. S. senator to fill a vacancy. The political excitement of the period led him to engage in two duels, in one of which his opponent fell, and in the second of which he was himself wounded. He was re-elected in 1811, acquiesced in the policy of a U. S. bank, and in 1812 was chosen president pro tem. of the senate. He was at first opposed to the war with Great Britain, but eventually gave it his support; and in 1813, having declined the place of secretary of war, accepted that of minister to France, where he formed a personal intimacy with Lafayette. In 1816, on the retirement of Mr. Dallas, he was appointed secretary of the treasury. He was prominently urged as a candidate for the presidency, but remained at the head of the treasury department, where he adhered to the views of Mr. Jefferson, and opposed the federal policy in regard to internal improvements, then supported by a considerable section of his own party. This position on the great question of the time subjected him to virulent hostility from opponents of his own party; and Mr. Calhoun, who was one of these opponents, became a dangerous rival for the democratic nomination for the presidency, to succeed Monroe. Crawford, however, as the choice of the Virginia party, and the representative of the views of Jefferson, secured the nomination of a congressional caucus in February, 1824; and in the election that followed he received the electoral votes of Virginia and Georgia, with scattering votes from New York, Maryland, and Delaware—in all, 41. No choice having been made by the electoral college, the election reverted to the house of representatives, where John Quincy Adams was elected over Jackson and Crawford, through the influence of Henry Clay, the fourth candidate before the people, who brought his friends to the support of Adams. The result was also due, in a measure, to the confirmed ill health of Mr. Crawford, and perhaps to imputations brought against his conduct of the treasury department. These charges he promptly refuted, and a committee that included Daniel Webster and John Randolph unanimously declared them to be unfounded. But his health rendered it impossible for him to continue in public life; and, although he recovered his strength partially, he took no part after this date in politics. Returning to Georgia, he became circuit judge, which office he continued to fill with great efficiency, by successive elections in 1828 and 1831, until nearly the end of his life.  He had no connection with the nullification movement, to which he was opposed; and his last days were spent in retirement.  Personally he was a man of conspicuous social gifts, and admirable conversationalist, religious in his views and feelings, and a supporter of Baptist convictions.  At his home he dispensed a hearty republican hospitality, and his name is eminent among the illustrious citizens of Georgia.
Source: Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

WILLIAM HARRIS CRAWFORD was born in Nelson County, Virginia, 24th February, 1772. In 1779, his father, Joel Crawford, removed with his family to Stevens’ Creek, Edgefield District, South Carolina, about thirty miles above Augusta. The next winter, the British troops having taken Savannah and Augusta, Mr. Crawford returned north over Broad River, into Chester District. Soon after South Carolina was overrun by the British, he was seized and thrown into Camden jail as a rebel. Here he remained the greater part of the summer, and was released on some of his neighbors becoming his security. In 1783 he removed into Georgia, and settled on Kiokee Creek, Columbia County.

The disturbances of the country had an unfavorable influence upon its schools. The advantages for educating its youth were at best very meagre. Young CRAWFORD went to school a few months while his parents resided in South Carolina, and discovered such capacity for receiving instruction, as determined his father, when permanently settled in Georgia, to send him to Scotland, and give him a thorough education. He made arrangements with a Scotch merchant in Augusta, for supplying his son with funds during his residence at the University; but the merchant, in a fit of derangement, having attempted to cut his own throat, Mr. Crawford thought it unsafe to entrust him with funds and with the superintendence of his son. Having abandoned the idea of sending him abroad, he put him to school in the country, and gave him the best English education he could, and in 1788 set him to teaching school. Before this year expired, his father died, and the disease then prevalent in the country (probably small-pox) swept away most of the valuable servants of the family, and reduced them to very narrow circumstances. To aid his mother in supporting a large and almost helpless family, young CRAWFORD taught school, more or less, for three or four years. In 1794 the Reverend Dr. Waddel opened a Latin school in Columbia, called Carmel Academy. The desire of obtaining a classical education, which had been lost sight of since his father’s death, now revived, and Mr. CRAWFORD entered the Academy, and remained in it two years, studying the usual Latin and Greek authors, philosophy, and the French language. The last year he was usher in the school, and received for his services one third of the tuition money. In this situation he remained until April 1796, and made the best possible use of his opportunities. In that month, this obscure usher, not dreaming of politics, but still anxious to increase his stock of useful learning, with a hope finally to obtain a profession, bent his way to Augusta, there to fling himself in the way of fortune’s gambols, and to receive whatever the sportings of her fancy might turn up to all unknown but bold adventurer. His means were, however, perfectly inadequate to the objects he had in view. He obtained a situation in the Richmond Academy, where he remained in the double character of student and instructor until the year 1798, when he was appointed Rector of that institution. During his residence in Augusta he studied law, to the practice of which he was admitted in the course of that year. He was a self-taught law scholar. It may be remarked, that while he was engaged in his scholastic and professional studies, he supported a character for the most exemplary morality and prudence, and was a most indefatigable, close, and laborious student.

Mr. CRAWFORD was a man considerably above ordinary height, large, muscular, and well-proportioned. His head and face were remarkably striking, and impressed the beholder at once with the belief that he must possess more than ordinary powers of intellect. His complexion was fair, and, until late in life, ruddy. His features were strong and regular. When at rest, they indicated great firmness and perseverance of character. When he smiled, an engaging benignity overspread his whole countenance. His eyes, before they were affected by his protracted illness at Washington, were clear blue, mild, though radiant. Those who never made his acquaintance until his return to Georgia, will be apt to consider this description of his person overwrought, while those who knew him in the prime of life will hardly think it does him justice. His deportment was affable, his step firm, his gait erect and manly, but not ostentatious, indicating courage and independence.

His manners, though free from stiffness and hauteur, were never very graceful. They were such, however, as to make all about him feel easy. There was in him a certain consciousness of superior mind, as has been said of another, which could not always be repressed nor withdrawn from observation. He was at all times a man of decided feelings—warm in his attachments, and vehement, in his resentments. He was prompt to repel insults, and equally prompt to forgive whenever an appeal was made to his clemency. No personal labor was too great to be endured, if by it he could elevate modest merit from poverty to comfort, or advance the interests and honor of his friends. No child of distress ever made an unsuccessful appeal to his charity. His rule was to give something in every case, but to regulate the amount by the necessities which urged the call.

Few men have felt such perfect contempt for show and display as Mr. CRAWFORD. His dress was always plain, and never at all in his way. Indeed, he gave himself no care whatever about what he should wear. At the age of thirty-two, after a seven years’ engagement, which had been suspended by his poverty, he married Susannah Girardin, of Augusta, who still survives, and who resides at Woodlawn, his country-seat, where he settled in 1804, and where he resided from that period to the day of his death, except when engaged in the public service. After marriage, he referred the subject of dress to Mrs. Crawford, who was as plain and unaffected in her taste as himself. Though his situation in public life often required him, out of respect to the customs of the country, and to avoid the charge of eccentricity, to keep up a style and equipage of unwonted splendor, it was manifest that his heart was not in it; nor does any one, at all acquainted with the man, believe for a moment, that his opposition to these things proceeded from penuriousness, or any kindred sentiment. He was a man of unquestioned liberality. He was seldom known to ask the price of any thing, and never considered any thing dear that added to the pleasure and comfort of himself or family. At an early age he imbibed the sentiment, that dandyism and intellectuality were antagonistic traits of character; and he was heard to say, a short time before his death, that amidst an extensive acquaintance with men of distinction in this country and in Europe, he had seen but two dandies who were men of genius. Modest virtue, sound sense, and stern integrity were the surest passports to his esteem. With these, a poor man was a prince in his affections; without them, a prince was the poorest of all beings.

Mr. CRAWFORD'S house has often been styled “Liberty Hall” by those familiar with the unrestrained mirthfulness, hilarity, and social glee which marked his fireside; and the perfect freedom with which every child, from the eldest to the youngest, expressed his or her opinion upon the topics suggested by the moment, whether those topics referred to men or measures. His children were always encouraged to act out their respective characters precisely as they were, and the actions and sentiments of each were, always a fair subject of commendation, or good-humored ridicule by the rest. They criticised the opinions and conduct of the father, with the same freedom as those of each other, and he acknowledged his errors or argued his defence with the same kind spirit and good temper as distinguished his course towards them in every other case. The family government was one of the best specimens of democracy the world has ever seen. There was nothing like faction in the establishment. According to the last census, before marriage and emigration commenced, the population was ten, consisting of father and mother and eight children, of whom five are sons and three daughters. Suffrage on all questions was universal, extending to male and female. Freedom of speech and equal rights were felt and acknowledged to be the birthright of each. Knowledge was a common stock, to which each felt a peculiar pleasure in contributing according as opportunity enabled him. When afflictions or misfortunes came, each bore a share in the common burden. When health and prosperity returned, each became emulous of heightening the common joy. Chess, drafts, and other games, involving calculation and judgment, and plays which called for rapid thought, quick perception, and ready answers, formed sources of in-door amusements. Those requiring vigor of nerve and agility of muscle were performed upon the green. In all these sports upon the green and in the house, Mr. CRAWFORD was, even down to his last days, the companion of his children; delighting them often by taking part himself. Though the disease of which he suffered so much while at Washington deprived him of his activity, his zeal for the gratification of his children, and his delight in contributing all he could to their happiness, knew no abatement. As a husband, he was kind, affectionate, and devoted. He was never ostentatious in his attachments to any one, always evincing his regard more by substantial beneficence than by words. No parent was ever better beloved of his children than he. His home instructions were of incalculable advantage to them. He never contented himself with merely sending them to schools of highest arid best repute, but made a personal examination of them almost every day, that he might see and know for himself how they progressed and how they were taught. He was in the habit of drawing them around him in a class, and requiring them to read with him. On these occasions, the Bible was his chief class-book, and Job and Psalms his favorite portions. The attention and instructions here mentioned were faithfully accorded during the whole time of his cabinet service at Washington, except during his extreme illness. After his return from Georgia, and his partial recovery from his disease, he still kept up an intimate acquaintance with the progress of his younger children, and the manner of their instruction at school; though his general debility prevented his being so indefatigable as he had been. At no time of his life did he ever lose sight of the importance of storing the minds of his children with virtuous principles. The strict observance of truth, the maintenance of honor, generosity, and integrity of character, he never ceased to enjoin upon them as indispensable to respectability and happiness.

It is not within the knowledge of any of his children that he was ever guilty of profane swearing. He never made a profession of religion, but was a decided believer in Christianity, a life member of the American Bible Society, a Vice-President of the American Colonization Society, and a regular contributor to the support of the gospel.

Though Mr. CRAWFORD’S strides to political preferment were long and unusually rapid, as will be seen in the course of this sketch, they were not free from those difficulties and embarrassments which have often beset the way of those who have aspired to places of high honor and distinction. In all ages of the world, men of low minds and corrupt hearts have so far controlled popular sentiment, as to infuse into it principles, which, when subjected to the tests of enlightened wisdom, sound ethics, and the highest and best dictates of refined humanity, must, without hesitation, be pronounced erroneous. The history of man evinces that no order of intelligence on earth has, at all times hitherto, been sufficiently strong, successfully to oppose those practices which have been the legitimate result of such principles. Thus much must be conceded of those mortal conflicts which spring from the law of honor, as exhibited in the opinions, and enforced by the examples, of some of the most illustrious statesmen and patriots of this country and Europe. That the subject of this notice was, in the commencement of his career, himself imbued with this philosophy, (this false philosophy,) and that he gave a practical illustration of his faith upon two occasions, it were useless to deny or conceal. It is believed, however, that he ever afterwards looked upon this part of his history with deep and poignant regret. The only affair[1] of this kind, with which he was afterwards connected, was one not of his own, and in which he consented to act as second, only that he might restore peace between the parties. This he did most effectually, and by his course in the matter seemed the abiding confidence of all concerned.

In the spring of 1799, Mr. CRAWFORD removed into Oglethorpe County; and without money or patron commenced the practice of law, in what was then called the Western, now the Northern Circuit of Georgia. Such were his perseverance, industry, and talents, that he soon attracted the notice of that distinguished statesman and sound jurist, Peter Early, then at the head of his profession in the Up Country, and to whom he became warm and ardently attached. His great professional zeal, that always made his client’s cause his own, his unremitted attention to business, his punctuality and promptness in its despatch, his undisguised frankness and official sincerity, disdaining the little artifices and over-reaching craft of the profession, combined with a dignity which, springing from self-respect alone, was entirely unmingled with affectation, his honesty and irreproachable moral character, accompanied with manners the most plain, simple, and accessible, secured for him a public and private reputation seldom equalled, and never surpassed in any country. His most prominent virtue was a bold and lofty ingenuousness of mind; in any intercourse whatever with him it was his most striking trait, and yet it was far from being studied. He never engaged, by a smooth and flexible manner, either in the utterance of his sentiments or the tendency of his address: in the first he was polite and unassuming, though confident and decided; in the latter he was easy without ostentation, and commanding without arrogance. In the court-house, as well as at home, the blind veneration and respectful awe, by no means inconsiderable, which were usually paid to the graces and proud carriage of person, the fascinating richness and gaiety of apparel, and the splendor of equipage, he neither claimed nor desired; brought up and educated altogether free from such vain allurements, he never suffered his native strength of mind and unaffected manly simplicity to yield in the slightest degree to their influence. After Mr. Early went to Congress in 1802, Mr. CRAWFORD might fairly be said to stand at the head of the bar in his circuit.

As a lawyer, he was courteous and liberal. As a speaker, not so much distinguished for fluency or elegance of style, as clearness of illustration and cogency of argument. In a conversation with the writer during his judicial service, he said he did not remember to have lost a case at the bar in which he had had the concluding speech. As a pleader, he was exceedingly neat and accurate. His hand-writing was large, plain, elegant, and free. He left nothing to be supplied by the clerk; and his opposing counsel might see at the first glance the complaint or defence of his client, set forth with a convincing clearness that created a feeling in advance that it must be just. His speeches were always short, rarely exceeding half an hour in any case. He had the faculty of seizing at once upon all the strong points of a case, and presenting each in its natural order with a simplicity, brevity, perspicuity and force, which told with unfailing effect upon the minds of the court and jury. He was always armed with such discrimination as enabled him to detect the least flaw in the argument of his adversary, and no fallacy was allowed to pass unexposed. No incident connected with the testimony, which could be wielded to the advantage of his client or against his opponent, ever escaped the tenacity of his memory. His social intercourse with the members of the profession, whom he considered worthy of his respect, was unrestrained; and many and loud were the roars of laughter that succeeded his well-told anecdotes. His presence was an effectual antidote to dulness; his mirth was irresistible. Stupid, indeed, was the man who could not yield some sparks of intellect when brought into social intercourse with him. Although he left society largely in arrears to him of the score of contribution to social enjoyment, no man was easier pleased, none felt a livelier sympathy in the interests and feelings of others.

Oglethorpe called him four years to represent her in the Legislature, and during that period she found in him a faithful respresentative. Many laws, now of force in the State, bear the impress of his wisdom as a legislator. It was as a member of the Legislature of Georgia that he laid the foundation for that extensive and permanent popularity as a politician which he ever afterwards enjoyed. In 1807 he was elected to the Senate of the United States, to supply the vacancy occasioned by the death of the great, and good, and highly-gifted Abraham Baldwin; and re-elected in 1811 without opposition. On entering the Senate of the United States, Mr. CRAWFORD came in immediate collision with that veteran debater, the Honorable William B. Giles of Virginia. The very creditable manner in which he sustained himself in that contest, won for him, in the outset, a high reputation for talents, which he retained as long as he continued to be a member of that body. Most of those who were numbered in the republican ranks in 1810 and later, even up to 1812, were somewhat distrustful of the navy as a means of national defence, and opposed its considerable enlargement. A very current sentiment of those days was, that the navy was but too well calculated to embroil us with other nations. It will be remembered that the reduction of the navy was a prominent feature in Mr. Jefferson’s administration. It must be confessed that Mr. CRAWFORD participated in this opinion to a considerable extent. But, in common with most of his political friends and associates, its brilliant achievements during the last war, won him over to a more favorable opinion of that department of the public service. In fact, he became a strong advocate of the navy. After the peace, in 1815, one of the first measures adopted, was an act of Congress for the increase of the navy, and an annual appropriation of $1,000,000 to that object. In this measure nine tenths of both houses concurred, and the wisdom and propriety of it received Mr. CRAWFORD’S hearty acquiescence. Shortly after, in one of his reports, he styles the navy “an essential means of national defence.” In all questions of appropriation he was the uncompromising advocate of the rule, that the objects and places of expenditure should be distinct and specific, so as to leave as little as possible to executive discretion. He was a warm and decided advocate for an early resort to arms, to redress the injuries and indignities heaped upon this country by Great Britain, and which laid the foundation for the last war. This is manifest from his votes in the Senate upon every question leading to a declaration of war throughout the years 1811 and 1812.

He voted for the bill authorizing fifty thousand volunteers to be received by the President—for increasing the army twenty-five thousand—for an act concerning the navy, fitting out certain frigates; and was friendly to the passage of an act for increasing the navy, passed 2d January 1813, by which the building of four seventy-fours and six forty-four gun frigates was authorized. His vote is to be found recorded for the passage of the law by which war was declared, and uniformly against every proposition for its modification. He was then President, pro tempore, of the Senate; and had been elevated to that distinguished station during the session of Congress in which the war was declared, and at a time when no man of equivocal political opinions, or doubtful sentiments, on the question of peace or war, would have been, by a decidedly republican Senate, placed in that dignified office. This will readily account for Mr. CRAWFORD’S not having made a speech in favor of a declaration of war; he was the presiding officer of the Senate, and had been so more than four months; and by the peculiar rule of that body could not, without leaving the station to which he had been called, participate in debate.

The embargo, and the bank, formed two other questions of grave import and high national excitement during his senatorial career. His course upon both was prompt, fearless, and independent. The former he opposed in the teeth of a popular and powerful administration; to the latter he gave a vigorous support, though unqualified opposition to it upon constitutional grounds was at that day, as it still is, one of the tests of republican discipleship. It is known, however, to his intimate friends, that the careful perusal of the secret debates of the convention which framed the constitution, and the debates upon the adoption of that instrument by the States, produced a change in his opinion upon the constitutionality of the bank.

In 1813, after declining the office of Secretary of War, tendered him by President Madison, he was sent minister to the Court of St. Cloud.

The Argus, in which he sailed, under the command of Captain Allen, entered the port of L’Orient the 11th of July, 1813, being twenty-one days from New-York.
What he did during his two years’ residence at Paris, is already a matter of recorded history. It is enough to say, in this place, that his official notes evinced the clearest understanding of the questions pending between the two governments, and in them the rights of this country are set forth in the strongest and most imposing light, and pressed upon the empire, and afterwards upon the crown, with a force of logic, a confident boldness, and ceaseless vigilance, worthy of such a cause. During his stay at Paris he was the confidential friend and correspondent of our eminently distinguished negotiators for peace at Ghent.

Among the most pleasing incidents connected with his residence in Paris, was the acquaintance he formed with the hero of two hemispheres, the illustrious La Fayette. It would seem from the letters of this great and good man, which Mr. CRAWFROD has preserved with more than his usual care, that their acquaintance ripened into the strongest personal friendship; and that their intercourse was of the most confidential character. In these letters the politics of France are discussed with an unsuspecting freedom on the part of the General, and often with an unsparing severity, rarely surpassed in the interchange of opinions between sworn friends in the freest government on earth. To Mr. CRAWFORD’S auspices he principally confided the direction and management of his patents to the land granted him by Congress, in Louisiana, as a small return for his unparalleled sacrifices in the cause of freedom, his timely and efficient aid, and his brilliant achievements in our revolutionary struggle. This correspondence was sustained on both sides with undiminished confidence and cordiality so long as the General lived.

On his return from France in 1815, he found that he had been appointed Secretary of War, in which department he served but a few months. In October following he was made Secretary of the Treasury by Mr. Madison, and was that winter strongly solicited to allow his name to be put in nomination for the Presidency. But he promptly declined, saying that he was young enough to wait, and advised his friends to nominate and support Mr. Monroe. A caucus was held, in which Mr. Monroe received but a small majority of votes as the nominee over Mr. CRAWFORD, though he had so positively declined to allow his name to be run. A number of his strongest and most intimate friends refused to attend the caucus, resolving, as he would not allow them to vote for him, they would vote for no one else. It has often been confidently asserted by a great number of experienced politicians of that day, that if he had permitted his name to be put in nomination at that time, he might have been elected with perfect ease. This, of course, was a calculation founded on the signs of the times, a conclusion which may have been brought about as much by the propulsive power of strong political attachments, as by calm and dispassionate reasoning upon the course of events and the aspect of affairs. They knew that Mr. CRAWFORD could have been nominated without difficulty. The event showed the influence of such a nomination, as it resulted in the election of Mr. Monroe.

In 1817 Mr. CRAWFORD was re-appointed to the office of Secretary of the Treasury by Mr. Monroe, and continued in that office till 1825, when he declined its acceptance under Mr. Adams’s administration. Much of the period during which Mr. CRAWFORD acted as Secretary of the Treasury, times were very doubtful—our domestic relations embarrassed—pecuniary difficulties pressing upon the people—home and foreign commerce fluctuating—commercial capital deranged—a public debt to be managed, and, above all, a miserably depreciated and ruined currency had to be dealt with. The political essayists of those days agreed that it required ceaseless vigilance and profound ability to preserve the national estate from bankruptcy. But the public credit was never better at any period of the republic than during his administration of the affairs of the Treasury. The national debt was faithfully discharged, and the burdens of government upon the people were for the most part light and inconsiderable. At the time of greatest difficulty the estimated and actual receipts of the Treasury only varied ten per cent., while the estimates of his distinguished predecessors had varied from seventeen to twenty-one per cent. But perhaps the best evidence of his fidelity, zeal, and ability as cabinet officer in this department, was the length of time he served, the unbounded confidence reposed in him by Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe during the whole period of his service; the great interest manifested for his retention in that office by Mr. Gallatin; and Mr. J. Q. Adams’s opinion of his merit, as evinced in his tendering him that office during his administration. Such men are rarely deceived in their estimate of character and qualifications.

Many believe that Mr. CRAWFORD would have been chosen President in 1825, instead of Mr. Adams, if at the time of his election his health had not been so bad as to induce the belief that he could not survive his disease. He received an honorable vote from the electoral colleges. Whether his defeat were the result of illness or other cause, those who know his family, know that the prospect of retreating into private life, and of enjoying without interruption the society of the father, was hailed as a joyous era in the family history. If it were asserted that Mr. CRAWFORD himself experienced a secret gratification at the result, so far as he was concerned, and so far as his happiness was involved, few would credit the declaration. And yet none would doubt its truth who knew the facts. All believed that the atmosphere of Washington nourished the disease which was wasting his remaining strength and threatening his life; and under such circumstances, the honors of the presidency were as the small dust of the balance compared with the prospect of his restoration of health.

In 1827, after the death of Judge Dooly, Mr. CRAWFORD was appointed by Governor Troup, without solicitation, Judge of the Northern Circuit of Georgia. In 1828 the Legislature elected him to the same office without opposition. Three years after he was a candidate for re-election; and though he had an opponent whose plans for his defeat were well concocted, he obtained his election on the first balloting.

One effect of Mr. CRAWFORD’S long and distressing illness, to which allusion has been so often made, was, that it entailed upon him considerably more excitability of temper than he had ever before manifested. He used occasionally to exhibit this new trait of character, which was the offspring of disease, while upon the bench. His greatest annoyance was, what he called a “silly speech;” and though such speeches were of rare occurrence at the bar in his circuit, yet they did sometimes come out, and when they did, the Judge’s patience was sure to suffer. Nevertheless he was considered able, upright, and impartial. His distinguishing trait, as a Judge, was, that he would not be tied down to the strict technicalities of law when they would work a manifest injustice to either of the parties litigant. In such a case he would say, “Summum jus is sometimes summa injuria, and I must so construe the rule as to do the parties substantial justice.” Those of his decisions which were made with deliberation, are considered as high authority as those of any Judge the State has ever had. The case of the State vs. Tassels may be mentioned as one of the most important which came before him while upon the bench. It did not originate in his circuit; but having been referred to all the Judges, he was appointed by the rest to write out the opinion. If any should still believe the slander that his mind was made imbecile by his illness at Washington, let him read its refutation in that decision.

He was in the active discharge of the duties of Judge of the Northern Circuit when he died. He set out on his way to Court on Saturday, and was taken sick that night at the house of a friend, and died at 2 o’clock the succeeding Monday morning, being the 15th September, l834. His physicians were of the opinion that his disease was an affection of the heart. He died apparently without pain or fever. He sleeps at Woodlawn, under a plain mound of earth, without tombstone or inscription; and no one near him but a little grandson of two years old, who had preceded him by about fifteen months.
Source: National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 1839, Volume 4.


CRESSON, Elliot, 1796-1854, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, philanthropist, supported American Colonization Society.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 7-8; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 540; Staudenraus, 1961, pp. 125, 128, 193, 240, 189-190, 216-218, 224, 234, 238-239;)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 540:

CRESSON, ELLIOTT (March 2, 1796-February20, 1854), Quaker merchant and philanthropist, was born in Philadelphia. A representative member of a family of successful merchants and valued citizens, he was in his generation noted more for the distribution of his wealth than for activities in attaining it. The family trace descent from Pierre Cresson, Huguenot refugee from France to Holland and later to New Amstel on the Delaware River in 1657. Elliott Cresson was the eldest son of John Elliott and Mary (Warder) Cresson, and was brought up in the influence of a Quaker home. He became a partner in Cresson, Wistar & Company at 133 Market St., Philadelphia, and resided at 30 Sansom St. (above Seventh) with his mother, who outlived him. Through the grave exterior of a "plain" Friend there could be seen in his countenance a character of kindly sympathy. From the teachings of the Society of Friends he had come to have an interest in the oppressed races, the American Indian and the negro, even thinking at one time of becoming a missionary to the Seminole Indians. His devotion, however, was chiefly given to the cause of colonization. He was one of the organizers, in 1834, of The Young Men's Colonization Society of Pennsylvania and a life member of the American Society for Colonizing the Poor People of Color of the United States. In addition to liberal gifts to the cause himself and helping to buy land for the colony at Bassa Cove, Liberia, he made a trip to New England in the winter of 1838-39 as agent of the American Colonization Society to raise funds and to arouse the spirit of colonization, which had become dormant in those regions (Alexander, post, p. 550). He made similar visits to the South and to England. His interests covered a wide range. In addition to gifts during his life and bequests to relatives by his will, he left to the American Sunday School Union, $50,000; to the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, $10,000; to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, $5,000; for a monument to William Penn, $10,000; for Episcopal missions, schools and college, at Port Cresson, Liberia, $10,000; to the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, $5,000; to the City of Philadelphia, for planting trees, $5,000; to the University of Pennsylvania, to endow a professorship in the fine arts, $5,000; for founding a Miners' School in Pennsylvania, $5,000; to the Pennsylvania Agricultural Society, $5,000; to the Protestant Episcopal Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia, $5,000; and to the Atheneum, Philadelphia, to the Widows' Asylum, Philadelphia, to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, to the House of Refuge, to the Colored Refuge, to the Refuge for Decayed Merchants and to the Pennsylvania Colonization Society, $1,000 each. He also left land valued at over $30,000 to found and support a home for aged, infirm or invalid gentlemen and merchants. Another line of interest is shown in his founding the Elliott Cresson medal, awarded annually by the Franklin Institute "for some discovery in the Arts and Sciences, or for the invention or improvement of some useful machine, or for some new process or combination of materials in manufacturing, or for ingenuity. skill or perfection in workmanship."

[Colonial Families of Philadelphia, ed. by John W. Jordan, Volume II (1911); Archibald Alexander, History of Colonization on the West Coast of Africa (1846); Annual Reports of the American Colonization Society, esp. that for January 1855; African Repository, March 1854, p. 65; Henry Simpson, Lives of Eminent Philadelphians (1859).]

J.B.W.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 7-8:

CRESSON, Elliott, philanthropist, born in Philadelphia, 2 March, 1796; died there, 20 February, 1854. He was a member of the Society of Friends, became a successful merchant in Philadelphia, and devoted his attention to benevolent objects, especially the promotion of the welfare of the Indians and negroes in the United States. He conceived the intention of becoming a missionary among the Seminoles of Florida, but afterward gave his mind to the scheme of colonizing American negroes in Africa, engaged in establishing the first colony of liberated slaves at Bassa Cove, on the Grain coast, became president of the Colonization society, and labored as its agent in New England in the winter of 1838-'9, in the southern states in 1839-'40, and in Great Britain in 1840-'2 and 1850-'3. He left in his will $122,000 to various benevolent institutions, and a lot, valued at $30,000, for a home for superannuated merchants and gentlemen. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 7-8.


CRESWELL, John Angel James, 1828-1891, statesman, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, 1863-1865.  U.S. Senator 1865-.  Supported the Union.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  From 1863 to 1865 he was a member of the national House of Representatives; but in March of the latter year he was elected to the Senate to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. In January 1865, after Maryland had freed its slaves, he made a strong impression by a speech in the House in favor of general emancipation. As senator, he stood for manhood suffrage, the compensation of loyal owners of drafted slaves, and strict enforcement of the Civil Rights Act.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 8; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 541; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 5, p. 726; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 541;

CRESWELL, JOHN ANGEL JAMES (November 18, 1828-December23, 1891), postmaster-general, was born at Port Deposit, Maryland. His father, John G. Creswell, was a Marylander of English ancestry, and his mother, Rebecca E. Webb, a Pennsylvanian, whose forebears were German and English, one of the latter being the famous Quaker missionary, Elizabeth Webb. Creswell received his advanced education at Dickinson College, graduating with honors in 1848. After studying law for two years, he was admitted to the Maryland bar, in 1850, and soon began to practise. Early in his career he married Hannah J. Richardson of Maryland, a woman of considerable wealth.

In politics, Creswell was a strong partisan. He first affiliated with the Whigs, then after that party broke up, was for a short period a Demo crat, and attended the Cincinnati convention which nominated Buchanan. After the Civil War opened, however, he became and remained a staunch and influential Republican. In the critical days of 1861 and 1862 Creswell filled his first public office, as loyalist member of the Maryland House of Delegates, and did much toward keeping the state in the Union. A year later, as assistant adjutant-general, he had charge of raising Maryland's quota of troops for the Northern army. From 1863 to 1865 he was a member of the national House of Representatives; but in March of the latter year he was elected to the Senate to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. In January 1865, after Maryland had freed its slaves, he made a strong impression by a speech in the House in favor of general emancipation. As senator, he stood for manhood suffrage, the compensation of loyal owners of drafted slaves, and strict enforcement of the Civil Rights Act.

Creswell 's most important public work was done as head of the Post Office Department, to which he was appointed by President Grant in March 1869. The country has had few, if any, abler postmasters-general. The changes made by him in the Department were sweeping, reformatory, and constructive. The cost of ocean transportation of letters to foreign countries was reduced from eight cents to two, and great increase in speed was secured by giving the carriage of the mails to the best and fastest steamers, four of which were to sail each week, and by advertising a month in advance the vessels selected; the pay to railroads for mail-carriage was rearranged on a fair basis; there was great increase in the number of railroad postal lines, postal clerks, and letter-carriers, and in the number of cities having free delivery of mail and money-order departments; one-cent postal cards were introduced; the system of letting out contracts for the internal carriage of the mails was so reformed as ultimately to do away with straw bidding and to secure fair competition among responsible bidders; the laws relating to the Post Office Department were codified, with a systematic classification of offenses against the postal laws; and postal treaties with foreign countries were completely revised. Creswell also denounced the franking system as the "mother of frauds," and secured its abolition, and he strongly urged the establishment of postal savings banks and a postal telegraph.

Pressure of private business led him to resign from the Post Office Department in July 1874, but he later accepted the position of United AT States counsel before the court of commissioners on the Alabama claims, and served until the court expired by law in December 1876. Thereafter, he spent most of his remaining years at Elkton, Maryland, where he had his home, and gave his attention to banking and the practise of law. Here, following two years of general ill health, he died of bronchial pneumonia.

[Journal of the Maryland House of Delegates, 1861-62; Congressional Globe, 1863-69; Reports of the Postmaster-General, 1869-74; Biography American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928); sketch in Biography Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland and the D. C. (1879), based, apparently, upon data furnished by Creswell himself. The short biography included in Sams and Riley, Bench and Bar of Maryland (1901), was founded upon the account given in the Biography Cyclopedia just mentioned. An editorial on Creswell's appointment as postmaster-general appears in the Baltimore (Weekly) Sun, March 6, 1869, and an obituary in the supplementary issue of the same paper for December 26, 1891.]

M. W. W.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume II, p. 8;

CRESWELL, John A. J., statesman, born in Port Deposit, Cecil county, Maryland, 18 November, 1828. He was graduated at Dickinson college, Pennsylvania, in 1848, studied law, and was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1850. He was a member of the state legislature in 1860 and 1862, and assistant adjutant-general for Maryland in 1862-'3. He was elected to congress, and served from 7 December, 1863, till 3 March, 1865; and, having distinguished himself as an earnest friend of the Union, was elected as a republican to the U. S. senate in March, 1865, to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. On 22 February, 1866, he delivered, at the request of the House of representatives, a memorable eulogy of his friend and colleague, Henry Winter Davis. He was a delegate to the Baltimore convention of 1864, the Philadelphia loyalists' convention of 1866, the Border states convention held in Baltimore in 1867, and the Chicago republican convention of 1868. In May, 1868, he was elected secretary of the U. S. senate, but declined. On 5 March, 1869, he was appointed by President Grant postmaster-general of the United States, and served till 3 July, 1874. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 8.


CRITTENDEN, John J., Frankfort, Kentucky, American Colonization Society, Director, 1837-41

[1] Eppes and Randolph.

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.