Dag-Day: Daggett through Dayton

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.


DAGGETT, Aaron S., 1837-1938, Maine, Civil War Union general, abolitionist.


DAGGETT, David, 1764-1851, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. Senator, jurist, Mayor of New Haven.  Supporter of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 53; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 26; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 72)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 53:

DAGGETT, David, jurist, born in Attleborough, Massachusetts, 31 December, 1764; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 12 April, 1851. He was graduated at Yale in 1783, studied and practised law in New Haven, became state's attorney in 1811, mayor of the city in 1828, and held other local offices. From 1791 till 1813 he was a member of the Connecticut legislature, serving in 1794 as speaker, and from 1797 till 1804 and 1809 till 1813 as a member of the council or upper house. He voted as a presidential elector for Charles C. Pinckney in 1804 and 1808, and for De Witt Clinton in 1812. He was elected a U. S. senator in the place of Chauncey Goodrich, who resigned, and served from 24 May, 1813, till 3 March, 1819, when he returned to his extensive practice at the bar in Connecticut. From 1826 till 1832 he was a judge of the Connecticut supreme court, and then chief judge till 1834, when he reached the age of seventy years, and was retired under the statute. He became an instructor in the New Haven law-school in 1824, and was professor of jurisprudence from 1826 until he was compelled by the infirmities of age to resign the chair. A sketch of his life by the Reverend Samuel W. S. Dutton, D. D., appeared in 1851. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


DAILY, Samuel Gordon, 1823-1866, abolitionist.  Member of the Nebraska Territorial House of Representatives.  U.S. Congressman.

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


DALE, Richard, 1756-1826, retired naval officer, merchant, importer.  Member of the Philadelphia auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 56; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 32; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 39, 72)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 56:

DALE, Richard, naval officer, born near Norfolk, Virginia, 6 November, 1756; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 26 February, 1826. He entered the merchant service at the age of twelve, and at nineteen commanded a ship. In 1776 he became a lieutenant in the Virginia navy, and was soon afterward captured and confined in a prison-ship at Norfolk, where some royalist school-mates persuaded him to embark on an English cruiser against the vessels of his state. He was wounded in an engagement with an American flotilla, and, while confined to his bed in Norfolk, resolved “never again to put himself in the way of the bullets of his own countrymen.” After the Declaration of Independence he became a midshipman on the American brig “Lexington,” which was captured on the coast of France by the English cutter “Alert” in 1777. Dale was thrown into Mill prison, at Plymouth, with the rest of the officers and crew of the “Lexington,” on a charge of high treason, but escaped, with many of his fellow prisoners, in February, 1778, was recaptured, escaped again, disguised as a British naval officer, and reached France, where he joined John Paul Jones's squadron as master's mate. Jones soon made him first lieutenant of the “Bon Homme Richard,” and in that capacity he fought with distinction in the famous battle with the “Serapis,” on 23 September, 1779, and received a severe splinter wound. After the sinking of the “Bon Homme Richard” in that engagement, Dale served with Jones in the “Alliance,” and afterward in the “Ariel.” He returned to Philadelphia on 28 February, 1781, was placed on the list of lieutenants in the navy, and joined the “Trumbull,” which was captured in August of that year by the “Iris” and the “Monk.” Dale received his third wound in the engagement. He was exchanged in November, obtained leave of absence, and served on letters of marque and in the merchant service till the close of the war. He was appointed captain in 1794, but, with the exception of a short cruise in the “Ganges,” during the troubles with France, was not in active service till 1801, when he was given command of a squadron and ordered to the Mediterranean during the hostilities with Tripoli. Although he was greatly hampered by his instructions, so that no serious enterprise could be attempted, he prevented the Tripolitans from making any captures during his command. He returned to the United States in April, 1802, and was again ordered to the Mediterranean, but, becoming dissatisfied, he resigned his commission on 17 December, and, having gained a competency, spent the rest of his life in retirement. Dale enjoyed the distinction of having been praised by Lord Nelson, who, after critically watching the seamanship of the commodore's squadron, said that there was in the handling of those trans-Atlantic ships a nucleus of trouble for the navy of Great Britain. The prediction was soon verified. Two of Com. Dale's sons held commissions in the navy.  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


DALTON, Thomas, 1794-1883, free African American, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Leader, Massachusetts General Colored Association.  Leader, New England Anti-Slavery Society.  Wife was Lucy Dalton.  Organized anti-slavery conventions with abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.


DANA, Charles Anderson,  1819-1897 New Hampshire, newspaper editor, author, government official, anti-slavery activist and abolitionist leader.  Proprietor and managing editor of the New York Tribune.  As editor, he had the Tribune actively advocate for the anti-slavery cause.  He supported Greeley's opposition to the expansion of slavery. The Tribune became one of the leading newspapers promoting anti-slavery, and the Union during the Civil War. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 64-65; Wilson, J. H., Life of Charles A. Dana. New York, 1907; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, pp. 49-52)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, pp. 49-52:

DANA, CHARLES ANDERSON (August 8, 1819-October 17, 1897), newspaper editor, was born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, a descendant of Jacob, eldest son of Richard Dana who in 1640 was a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had few early advantages beyond the good blood of Puritan ancestors. His father, Anderson Dana, a country storekeeper, failed in business and removed to upper New York, where he became a farmer; his mother, Ann Denison, died when he was nine. Sent to Buffalo at the age of twelve to clerk in the general. store of an uncle, he was thrown entirely upon his own resources at eighteen, when the panic of 1837 ruined his employer. While a boy on the farm he had studied Latin on his own initiative; he used his evenings in Buffalo to read widely, become familiar with the Latin classics, and begin the study of Greek. He joined a literary society there called the Coffee Club, and delivered before it a youthful lecture on early English poetry which was much admired. Thus prepared by his own efforts, he was able to matriculate at Harvard without conditions in the fall of 1839, and took high rank in his first college term. Despite one long absence for teaching school he had begun his junior year in 1841, when his eyesight became impaired by over study and he returned to Buffalo. Twenty years later he received from Harvard an honorary A.B., as of the class of 1843. About the time he left college, George Ripley [q.v. ] was launching the Brook Farm enterprise, which Dana, with an idealistic enthusiasm then characteristic of him, hastened to join. He was engaged to teach German, Greek, or anything else, and to work on the Farm, while in view of his storekeeping experience he was made one of the managing trustees. For the next five years he remained at Brook Farm, placing in it what slender capital he could, and proselytizing earnestly for it. With characteristic energy he taught, sang bass in the choir, wrote essays and poems for the Dial and the Harbinger, and delivered lectures. According to T. W. Higginson, he was the best all-round man at the Farm. He opposed its conversion into a "Phalanx" as demanded by Fourierist ideas, but after this was effected he remained stanchly loyal to the organization (Lindsay Swift, Brook Farm, 1900). In a lecture of 1895 at the University of Michigan he paid a warm tribute to the charm of life at the Far!1), and the value of his association there with Ripley, Hawthorne, George W. Curtis, Margaret Fuller, and others.

Dana's writings for the Harbinger had so fixed his attention upon journalism that when a disastrous fire terminated the Brook Farm experiment in 1846 he naturally turned to that field. A slight previous connection with the Boston Daily Chronotype enabled him at once to become its assistant editor. The paper was too poor to pay much, and its strong Congregationalism repelled Dana, who had now progressed far in Unitarian liberalism. In the absence of the editor he made the Chronotype come out "mighty strong against hell," so that his superior later had to write a letter of explanation to every Congregational minister in the state. Within the year Dana used his acquaintance with Greeley to obtain the city editorship of the New York Tribune, at the munificent wage of first ten and later fourteen dollars a week. For the next fifteen years he devoted himself to the paper, and soon stood second in its office to Greeley alone. Outwardly this period of subeditorship was uneventful. Its first years were broken by a long trip (1848-9) to Europe, where Dana supported himself by contributing no fewer than five letters a week to as many journals in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. He could not have gone abroad at a more instructive moment, for he witnessed the uprisings in Paris and Berlin at close range. His experiences did more than acquaint him with European affairs. They swept away many of his idealistic illusions, gave him an insight into the selfishness and chicanery of politicians, and helped lay the foundation for his subsequent cynicism. Later, as managing editor, he had little time for travel, but found leisure to edit an American edition of H. J. Meyer's Universum (1852), and to compile The Household Book of Poetry (1857), which in successive editions commanded an enormous sale. A trip which Dana made with W. H. Appleton to the opening of the Chicago & Rock Island Rail Road resulted in plans for an American Cyclopedia in sixteen volumes under the editorship of himself and George Ripley. The first volume appeared in 1858, and despite the interruption of the war, the work was completed in six years. Two editions of it sold more than three million copies (Grant Overton, Portrait of a Publisher, 1925, p. 45).

Dana's years on the Tribune gave him experience in two directions. As a writer he became the master of a compressed, sententious style, sometimes epigrammatic, and increasingly tinged by cynicism. His principles were largely, though by no means completely, liberal. He took up Kossuth's cause with ardor, advocated a railway to the Pacific, and ably seconded Greeley's opposition to the expansion of slavery, though he had little use for the Abolitionists. He believed in a high protective tariff, and opposed labor unions formed to conduct strikes, arguing that the workers' true remedy for unfair industrial conditions lay in a cooperative industrial effort. His hostility to militant labor persisted throughout his life, and gave many of his utterances on industrial questions an illiberal and even reactionary tendency. In editorial management Dana soon made himself an expert. Frequently, as during Greeley's European trips in 1851 and 1855-56, he was in sole charge. He then decided the entire contents of the paper; edited everything, even Greeley's contributions, with iron hand; and took the initiative in important business changes.

In the events leading up to the Civil-War Dana and Greeley acted with substantial harmony, and there is no question that Dana acquiesced in Greeley's willingness to let the erring sisters depart in peace. But, though the words were written by a subordinate, Dana was responsible for the Tribune's disastrous war cry, "Forward to Richmond!" which Greeley opposed. This was the first serious token of a divergence in views and temper which rapidly became intolerable. Dana was too aggressive and positive in dealing with both civil and military policy to suit Greeley. The result was that, after Greeley had acted rather shiftily, Dana's resignation was demanded and accepted (March 28, 1862), with a promise of six months' salary. This virtual dismissal was a blessing in disguise. After declining the suggestion that he take a diplomatic post or a place with the Treasury (Wilson, pp. 182-83), he at once entered the service of the War Department, where Secretary Stanton was eager to repay him for editorial support.

The best part of Dana's war service was performed as a special commissioner at Grant's headquarters, nominally to investigate the pay-service, but actually to report daily on military oper;1tions and thus enable the Administration to 111easure accurately Grant's capacities. During the Vicksburg campaign his observations were equally valuable to the Washington officials and to Grant himself. Dana instantly perceived the general's high qualities, he increased Lincoln's faith in him, set Stanton right regarding the jealous McClernand, and by his daily dispatches relieved Grant of much irksome letter- writing. Of Sherman's military genius Dana also formed a high opinion. Made assistant secretary of war after the fall of Vicksburg, he was sent to report upon the movements of Rosecrans against Bragg. His judgment was not in all regards unerring, but he was right in urging the removal of Rosecrans. Later with Grant and Sherman at Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge, he again proved an excellent advocate for these men. During 1864 he alternated desk service in Washington with field service in Virginia, and formed impressions of Lincoln, the cabinet members, and some leading congressmen which enabled him long afterward to give pungent sketches of them in his Recollections of the Civil War (1898). On July 1, 1865, he resigned and immediately left the capital.

Dana's acquisition of the New York Sun, which marked the opening of the most significant part of his career, occurred at the close of 1867. It was preceded by an abortive journalistic venture in Chicago, where he became editor of an unsuccessful paper called the Republican (Recollections, p. 290). When this sheet began to fail, he secured capital for the founding of a newspaper in New York, his associates including W. M. Evarts, Roscoe Conkling, Alonzo Cornell, Cyrus W. Field and A. A. Low. A fortunate chance enabling him to purchase the Sun for $175,000, he assumed its editorship cm January 25, 1868, with an announcement of policy which has become a journalistic classic. After declaring that the Sun would be independent of party, would advocate the speedy restoration of the South, and would support Grant for the presidency, he summed up its new spirit in a single sentence:  "It will study condensation, clearness, point, and will endeavor to present its daily photograph of the whole world's doings in the most luminous and lively manner." Imbued with this spirit, the Sun at once achieved a new success.

In his capacity as leader of public opinion, Dana was frequently perverse, cynical, and reactionary, and more than once affected by personal resentments. He broke sharply with Grant, and after 1869 attacked his administration more fiercely than did any other New York daily. Yet in 1872, while making the cry "Turn the rascals out" ring through the country and assailing Grant almost scurrilously, he gave only a cynical quasi-support to the Liberal Republican party, whose candidate he contemptuously called "Dr. Greeley." In 1876 the Sun opposed Hayes, whom it later branded as a receiver of stolen goods and a fraudulent president. Four years later it relentlessly attacked Garfield, whom it described as a participant in the Credit Mobilier frauds, the Boss Shepherd thefts, and the back-pay grab; yet at the same time it treated Hancock with ill-veiled condescension, speaking of him as "a good man, weighing two hundred and fifty pounds." The most remarkable exhibition of Dana's political perversity was his unremitting enmity to Cleveland, which grew out of an unworthy bit of personal pique, the failure of Cleveland to keep a supposed promise to appoint Franklin Bartlett, son of Dana's friend W. O. Bartlett, to a post connected with the state judiciary. Dana at the same time declared that sooner than join in making Blaine president, he would quit work and burn his pen. The consequence was that in 1884 he had to support B. F. Butler and his Greenback ticket, which polled a farcically small vote in New York. In his social and economic opinions of these years Dana showed the same perversity, accompanied sometimes by an impudent levity. He denounced the reformed civil service as "a German bureaucratic system," advocated the annexation of Cuba, Santo Domingo, and if possible Canada, and abused Cleveland for his conciliatory foreign policy, demanding the resignation of Secretary Bayard for negotiating the fisheries treaty with England. He declared that the McKinley Act was the most scientific and valuable tariff the country ever had. Dana's hostility toward labor unions cropped out in the great railway strike of 1878; and later he urged that labor organizations be placed under precisely as stringent governmental regulation as affected the trusts. In New York City the Sun supported some of the worst figures in Tammany, and opposed some of the best reform movements.

As a news editor, however, Dana at once took a very high place. The Civil War had tended to exalt news at the expense of editorials. Dana approved of this, declaring that "if the newspaper has not the news, it may have everything else, yet it will be comparatively unsuccessful." Under him the Sun's news-pages were characterized by conciseness, cleverness, and sparkle of style. Discarding conventional standards of news importance and emphasizing human interest, he taught the staff that a good story on the Sunday crowd at Coney Island might be worth more space than a column on the Carlist War or a lecture by Huxley. The Sun gave prominence to crime in its "daily photograph," and specialized in eye-catching headlines. The enterprise of the reporters obtained many scoops, and the foreign and domestic correspondence of the paper attained such excellence that when in 1897 a long-standing quarrel with the Associated Press came to a head, Dana's managing editor, Chester S. Lord, was able to organize over-night a comprehensive news service of his own. Though sternly excluding fine writing, the Sun insisted upon vividness, and made generous room for clever brief essays. The paper was at all costs bright, witty, and enjoyable. As a result it became the "newspaper man's newspaper," and attracted to its staff a singularly brilliant roster of writers. Indeed, one of Dana's titles to fame as an editor is that he gave opportunity and advancement to such editorial writers as E.P. Mitchell, and such news writers as Julian Ralph, David Graham Phillips, Jacob Riis, and Richard Harding Davis. He mingled constantly with the staff, encouraging, suggesting, and praising frequently, while chiding rarely and gently.

Dana was a man of wide intellectual and esthetic interests, which in later life he had leisure and money to indulge. He took quiet pride in learning the chief European tongues, living and dead, his last two trips abroad being for the purpose of perfecting his Russian. He liked to conduct private classes in Dante or Icelandic; he h ad a valuable collection of Chinese porcelains; and at his home on Dosoris Island in Long Island Sound he grew a remarkable variety of foreign trees, shrubs, and flowers. He prided himself on being a connoisseur of wines, though he seldom did more than taste them. Though much interested in politics, he preferred to make his friends among literary people, musicians, and artists. Married, March 2, 1846, to Eunice Macdaniel, he was devoted to wife and children. He had the faculty of endearing himself to close newspaper associates, but he never forgave a grudge or a slight.

[Jas. H. Wilson, Life of Chas. A. Dana (1907), is uncritically eulogistic and emphasizes his war services. Chas. A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War (1898), a graphic and honest work, throwing some light on his years upon the Tribune, should be supplemented by The Art of Newspaper Making (1895), and Eastern Journeys (1898). See also Frank M. O' Brien, The Story of the Sun (1918); Edw. P. Mitchell, Memoirs of an Editor (1924); Chester S. Lord, The Young Men and Journalism (1922); Willard G. Bleyer, Main Currents in the History of American Journalism (1927); Henry Watterson, Marse Henry: An Autobiography (1919); Oswald G. Villard, Some Newspapers and Newspapermen (1923); J. J. Dana, Memoranda of Some of the Descendants of Richard Dana (1865); and biographies of Greeley. The Sun published no obituary. Magazine material is voluminous, but must be used with care.]

A.N.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 64-65:

DANA, Charles Anderson, editor, born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, 8 August, 1819. He is a descendant of Jacob, eldest son of Richard Dana, progenitor of most of those who bear the name in the United States. His boyhood was spent in Buffalo, New York, where he worked in a store until he was eighteen years old. At that age he first studied the Latin grammar, and prepared himself for college, entering Harvard in 1839, but after two years a serious trouble with his eyesight compelled him to leave. He received an honorable dismissal, and was afterward given his bachelor's and master's degrees. In 1842 he became a member of the Brook Farm association for agriculture and education, being associated with George and Sophia Ripley, George William Curtis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Parker, William Henry Channing, John Sullivan Dwight, Margaret Fuller, and other philosophers more or less directly concerned in the remarkable attempt to realize at Roxbury a high ideal of social and intellectual life. One of the survivors of Brook Farm speaks of Mr. Dana as the only man of affairs connected with that unitarian, humanitarian, and socialistic experiment. His earliest newspaper experience was gained in the management of the “Harbinger,” which was devoted to social reform and general literature. After about two years of editorial work on Elizur Wright's Boston “Chronotype,” a daily newspaper, Mr. Dana joined the staff of the New York “Tribune” in 1847. The next year he spent eight months in Europe, and after his return he became one of the proprietors and the managing editor of the “Tribune,” a post which he held until 1 April, 1862. The extraordinary influence and circulation attained by that newspaper during the ten years preceding the civil war was in a degree due to the development of Mr. Dana's genius for journalism. This remark applies not only to the making of the “Tribune” as a newspaper, but also to the management of its staff of writers, and to the steadiness of its policy as the leading organ of anti-slavery sentiment. The great struggle of the “Tribune” under Greeley and Dana was not so much for the overthrow of slavery where it already existed as against the further spread of the institution over unoccupied territory, and the acquisition of slave-holding countries outside of the Union. It was not less firm in its resistance of the designs of the slave-holding interest than wise in its attitude toward the extremists and impracticables at the north. In the “Tribune's” opposition to the attempt to break down the Missouri compromise and to carry slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and in the development and organization of that popular sentiment which gave birth to the Republican party and led to the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Mr. Dana bore no unimportant part. Writing of the political situation in 1854, Henry Wilson says, in his “Rise and Fall of the Slave Power”: “At the outset, Mr. Greeley was hopeless and seemed disinclined to enter the contest. He told his associates that he would not restrain them, but, as for himself, he had no heart for the strife. They were more hopeful; and Richard Hildreth, the historian, Charles A. Dana, the veteran journalist, James S. Pike, and other able writers, opened and continued a powerful opposition in its columns, and did very much to rally and reassure the friends of freedom and to nerve them for the fight.” In 1861 Mr. Dana went to Albany to advance the cause of Mr. Greeley as a candidate for the U. S. senate, and nearly succeeded in nominating him. The caucus was about equally divided between Mr. Greeley's friends and those of Mr. Evarts, while Ira Harris had a few votes which held the balance of power, and, at the instigation of Thurlow Weed, the supporters of Mr. Evarts went over to Judge Harris. During the first year of the war the ideas of Mr. Greeley and those of Mr. Dana in regard to the proper conduct of military operations were somewhat at variance; and this disagreement resulted in the resignation of Mr. Dana, after fifteen years' service on the “Tribune.” He was at once employed by Secretary Stanton in special work of importance for the war department, and in 1863 was appointed assistant secretary of war, which office he held until after the surrender of Lee. His duties as the representative of the civil authority at the scene of military operations brought him into close personal relations with Mr. Stanton and Mr. Lincoln, who were accustomed to depend much upon his accurate perception and just estimates of men and measures for information of the actual state of affairs at the front. At the time when General Grant's character and probable usefulness were unknown quantities, Mr. Dana's confidence in Grant's military ability probably did much to defeat the powerful effort then making to break down the rising commander. Of this critical period General Sherman remarks in his “Memoirs”: “One day early in April, 1863, I was up at Grant's headquarters [at Vicksburg], and we talked over all these things with absolute freedom. Charles A. Dana, assistant secretary of war, was there, and Wilson, Rawlins, Frank Blair, McPherson, etc. We all knew, what was notorious, that General McClernand was intriguing against General Grant, in hopes to regain command of the whole expedition, and that others were raising clamor against Grant in the newspapers of the north. Even Mr. Lincoln and General Halleck seemed to be shaken; but at no instant did we (his personal friends) slacken in our loyalty to him.” Mr. Dana was in the saddle at the front much of the time during the campaigns of northern Mississippi and Vicksburg, the rescue of Chattanooga, and the marches and battles of Virginia in 1864 and 1865. After the war his services were sought by the proprietors of the Chicago “Republican,” a new daily, which failed through causes not within the editor's control. Returning to New York, he organized in 1867 the stock company that now owns the “Sun” newspaper, and became its editor. The first number of the “Sun” issued by Mr. Dana appeared on 27 January, 1868, and for nearly twenty years he has been actively and continuously engaged in the management of that successful journal, and solely, responsible for its conduct. He made the “Sun” a democratic newspaper, independent and outspoken in the expression of its opinions respecting the affairs of either party. His criticisms of civil maladministration during General Grant's terms as president led to a notable attempt on the part of that administration, in July, 1873, to take him from New York on a charge of libel, to be tried without a jury in a Washington police court. Application was made to the U. S. district court in New York for a warrant of removal; but in a memorable decision Judge Blatchford, now a justice of the supreme court of the United States, refused the warrant, holding the proposed form of trial to be unconstitutional. Perhaps to a greater extent than in the case of any other conspicuous journalist, Mr. Dana's personality is identified in the public mind with the newspaper that he edits. He has recorded no theories of journalism other than those of common sense and human interest. He is impatient of prolixity, cant, and the conventional standards of news importance. Mr. Dana's first book was a volume of stories translated from the German, entitled “The Black Ant” (New York and Leipsic, 1848). In 1855 he planned and edited, with George Ripley, the “New American Cyclopaedia.” The original edition was completed in 1863. It has since been thoroughly revised and issued in a new edition under the title of “The American Cyclopaedia” (16 vols., New York, 1873-'6). With General James H. Wilson he wrote a “Life of Ulysses S. Grant” (Springfield, 1868). His “Household Book of Poetry, a collection of the best minor poems of the English language,” was first published in 1857, and has passed through many editions, the latest, thoroughly revised, being that of 1884. He has also edited, with Rossiter Johnson, “Fifty Perfect Poems” (New York, 1883). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.


DANA, Richard Henry, Jr., 1815-1882, author, lawyer, anti-slavery activist.  Co-founder of the Free Soil Party and delegate to its convention in Buffalo, New York, in 1848.  He was the lawyer who represented the Fugitive Slave Shadrack in Boston in 1851 and Anthony Burns in Boston in 1854.  Wrote Two Years Before the Mast (1840). 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 71-72; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, pp. 60-61).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, pp. 60-61:

DANA, RICHARD HENRY (August 1, 1815- January 6, 1882), author, lawyer, the son of Richard Henry Dana [q.v.] and Ruth Charlotte (Smith) Dana, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Solely as the writer of a remarkable first-hand account of sea adventure he has a permanent place in American literature; he was also one of the most active and influential lawyers of his day. Entering Harvard College in 1831, he gave up his studies two years later because of eye trouble resulting from measles, and on August 14, 1834 set sail on a voyage around Cape Horn to California as a common sailor on the brig Pilgrim. Two years later, a robust young man of twenty-one, he reached Boston on the ship Alert. Joining the senior class at Harvard in December 1836, he was graduated the following June, ranking at the head of his class for that year. He became instructor in elocution at Harvard in 1839-40, under Edward T. Channing, and  in 1866-68 he was a lecturer in the Harvard Law School. His Two Years Before the Mast (1840), published the year of his admission to the bar, was written from notes made during his voyage, and is a lively, fresh, and unconventional narrative. His definite and successful purpose in it was to give an account of sea life from the point of view of the forecastle, and to secure justice for the sailor. "In it," he wrote, "I have adhered closely to fact in every particular, and endeavored to give everything its true character." The book immediately became popular both in this country and in England, and has since been reprinted in many editions, including one in French attributed to James Fenimore Cooper.

His youthful taste of the salt of the sea had given him a liking for the law of the sea, and he immediately began to specialize in admiralty cases. His manual, The Seaman's Friend (1841), became at once a standard work on maritime law, being reprinted in England as The Seaman's Manual. Early becoming interested in both the political and social aspects of slavery, he was one of the founders of the Free-Soil party, was a delegate to the convention at Buffalo in 1848, and took personal part in its campaigns, as he did also in the later campaigns of the Republican party. In 1853 he was a member of the convention for the revision of the constitution of Massachusetts, taking a leading part in the debates. Although he did not become an Abolitionist, his political and legal activities involved him deeply in the anti-slavery movement. He was attorney for the defense of the persons involved in the rescue of the negro Shadrach in Boston in 1851, and in the Anthony Burns rendition case in 1854. Serving for five years, from April 1861 to September 1866, as United States attorney for the district of Massachusetts, he succeeded in persuading the Democratic Supreme Court of the United States to sustain the power of blockade and the taking of neutral vessels as prizes during the blockade by the Federal government. In 1867-68, with William M. Evarts, he was counsel for the United States in the proceedings against Jefferson Davis for treason. In 1877 he was senior counsel for the United States before the Fisheries Commission at Halifax. In his many years of practise he was alway, the advocate, working mainly in the courts and paying little attention to the business of the office, which he disliked and left largely to his partner. He laboriously prepared all his cases himself with indefatigable zeal.

Possibly because of Dana's inability to mingle with the throng and his unwillingness to descend to machine politics, he did not realize upon his political ambitions. Among the disappointments he suffered were his defeat by Benjamin F. Butler in a contest for a seat in Congress in 1868, and his failure to be confirmed by the Senate when he was appointed minister to England in 1876 by President Grant, who had named him without consulting the leaders of his party. Failing to attain high public office, he determined to give his later years to the intensive study of his favorite subject, international law, and to the preparation of an authoritative work upon it. As early as 1866, his edition of Henry Wheaton's Elements of International Law was accepted as an authority. An enthusiastic traveler, he visited England in 1856 and 1866, and met the great political and social leaders of the kingdom. The literary result of one of his trips was a book entitled To Cuba and Back (1859). He made a journey round the world in 1859-60, and in 1878 he went to Europe for rest, pleasure, and further study of the problems of international law. While in Rome, before he had written his projected work, !1e died suddenly of pneumonia, and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, where lie the remains of Keats and Shelley. He married Sarah Watson of Hartford, Connecticut, August 25, 1841, and was survived by her and their six children, in whose religious and literary education he had taken great interest. He was a man of distinguished and dignified manner, with a certain formality that did not encourage intimacy.

[Chas. Francis Adams, Richard Henry Dana, A Biography, 2 volumes (1890); E. W. Emerson. The Early Years of the Saturday Club (1918); tribute of the bar, American Law Review, XVI (1882), 253; remarks by Rt. Reverend Wm. Lawrence, Bliss Perry, Moorfield Storey, and Joseph H. Choate, Cambridge Historical Society Pubs., no. X (1917); valuable information from the family.]

E. F. E.


DANE, Nathan, 1752-1835, jurist, anti-slavery activist, delegate to the Continental Congress, 1785-1788, Massachusetts, framed Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

(Appletons, 1888, Volume II, p. 72; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 63; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 93, 158n; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 6, p. 76) He published “A General Abridgment and Digest of American Law” (9 volumes, Boston, 1823-‘9), and “Appendix” (1830). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 72.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 63:

DANE, NATHAN (December 29, 1752-February 15, 1835), lawyer, statesman, was a descendant of John Dane of Berkhamstead and Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England, who settled at Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1638 and subsequently became a freeman of Roxbury. Fourth in the direct line from him, Daniel Dane, a farmer, married Abigail Burnham and resided at Ipswich, where their son, Nathan, was born. His life, until he was twenty, was spent on the farm, his education being obtained at the common schools. In 1772, however, he determined to attempt a college course, and having prepared himself privately in eight months, entered Harvard College in 1774, where he graduated in 1778 with high honors. He then read law in the office of Judge William Wetmore of Salem, at the same time teaching school at Beverly, Massachusetts. In November 1779 he was married to Mrs. Mary Brown. On his admission to the bar in 1782 he commenced practise at Beverly, being in the same year elected a representative of that town in the General Court of Massachusetts. His ability was early recognized; he was reelected in three successive years, and in 1785 was elected a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress. In the proceedings of this body he took an active part, serving on important committees and displaying great assiduity in the performance of his duties. He was reelected in 1786 and 1787. In the latter year the chief subject for consideration before the Congress was the organization and government of the territory lying northwest of the Ohio River, respecting which he took a memorable part. He assisted in drafting the Ordinance for the Government of the Northwest Territory, and, after reporting it to Congress, on his own initiative prepared and moved the addition of an article reading "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory" (Indiana Historical Society Publications, no. 1, 1897, p. 69). The Ordinance as thus amended was adopted without further change. He opposed the new Federal Constitution as finally drafted, and at the ensuing election for the state convention to consider its ratification, was an unsuccessful candidate. On retiring from Congress he resumed his law practise at Beverly, but in 1790 was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. He was reëlected in 1793, being the same year appointed a judge of the court of common pleas for Essex County, which position he resigned without taking his seat on the bench. In 1795 he was appointed a commissioner to revise the laws of the Commonwealth. He was reelected annually to the Massachusetts Senate from 1793 to 1798 (Fleet's Register and Pocket Almanac, 1794- 99), but the last mentioned year was the last occasion upon which he was a member of the legislature, an increasing deafness rendering it difficult for him to participate in public assemblages. He continued, however, to assist in the work of statute revision and, in 1812, with Prescott and Story, composed the commission appointed to revise and publish the Massachusetts Colonial and Provincial laws. He was also in that year presidential elector, and in 1814 made his last public appearance, at the Hartford Convention, though subsequently he was chosen as delegate from Beverly to the constitutional convention of 1820, it being known at the time that he would be unable to attend. He had now become almost entirely deaf, and, withdrawing from practise, devoted his time to completing two works upon which he had been engaged continuously for upward of thirty years. One of these, "A Moral and Political Survey of America," composed of a lengthy series of essays, was never published. The other, a General Abridgment and Digest of American Law, with Occasional Notes and Comments, was published in eight volumes in 1823, a supplementary volume appearing in 1829. This work was important as being the first comprehensive compendium of law to be prepared and printed on this continent, and displayed not only his great legal attainments but a meticulous attention to detail and a methodical labor which. was characteristic of everything which he undertook. His outstanding characteristics were industry, directness and simplicity. "He was uniformly prompt, punctual and systematic. He had a particular time and a particular way for doing everything." Always a student, during the last twenty years of his life he never spent less than twelve and often fourteen hours a day in his library. He possessed a singularly well-balanced judgment, a great forethought, and was totally devoid of temperament. Of his powers as a speaker, there is little information, but it may be confidently surmised that his extraordinary influence with his contemporaries was due more to the matter than the manner of his utterances, and that his intellectual endowments more than compensated for his lack of popular attributes. He was a benefactor of Harvard Law School, to which he gave in his lifetime $15,000, the fruits of which were the establishment of the Dane Professorship of Law and the founding of Dane Hall. He died at Beverly, in his eighty-third year.

[Details of Dane's ancestry are contained in J. W. Dean, "A Pedigree of the Dane Family," published on John Dane, A Declaration of Remarkable Providences in the Course of My Life (1854). Much the best review of his life and achievements appeared in Green Bag, III, 548. See also A. P. Peabody, Harvard Graduates Whom I Have Known (1890), p.12; E. M. Stone, History of Beverly (1843), p. 135; Proc. Massachusetts Historical Society, X (1869), 475; Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, XIII (1889), 309; J. A. Barrett, Evolution of the Ordinance of 1787 (1891). Date of birth given in tombstone inscription published in Stone's History of Beverly is December 27, 1752; most accounts, however, including that by Stone, give December 29.]

H. W. H. K.

Appletons, 1888, Volume II, p. 72:

DANE, Nathan, jurist, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, 27 December, 1752; died in Beverly, Massachusetts, 15 February, 1835. He was graduated at Harvard in 1778, and, after studying law, was admitted to its practice and settled in Beverly. His acquirements made him a safe and able counsellor, and with his large and diversified experience he became one of the most prominent lawyers of New England. He entered at once into political life, and from 1782 till 1785 was a member of the Massachusetts legislature. In 1785 he was a delegate to the continental congress, and was continued as such by re-election until 1788. During his career in the national legislature he rendered much efficient service by his work on committees, and was the framer of the celebrated ordinance passed by congress in 1787 for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio. It was adopted without a single alteration, and contains the emphatic statement “that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.” He also incorporated in this ordinance a prohibition against all laws impairing the obligation of contracts, which the convention that formed the constitution of the United States a few months afterward extended to all the states of the Union by making it a part of that constitution. In 1790 he was elected to the Massachusetts senate, and again elected in 1794 and 1796. He was appointed judge of the court of common pleas for Essex county in 1794, but, after taking the oath of office, almost immediately resigned, and in 1795 was appointed a commissioner to revise the laws of the state. In 1811 he was delegated to revise and publish the charters that had been granted in Massachusetts, and in 1812 was selected to make a new publication of the statutes. During the same year he was chosen a presidential elector. He was a delegate to the Hartford convention in 1814, and also to the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1820, but declined serving on account of deafness. For fifty years he devoted his Sundays to theological studies, excepting during the hours of public worship, reading generally the Scriptures in their original languages. In 1829 he gave $10,000, which he increased by $5,000 in 1831, for the foundation of the Dane professorship of law in Harvard law-school, requesting that his friend, Judge Joseph Story, should occupy the chair, which he did until his death. He published “A General Abridgment and Digest of American Law” (9 vols., Boston, 1823-‘9), and “Appendix” (1830). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 72.


DANFORTH, Joshua Nobel, Reverend, 1798-1861, clergyman.  Agent for the American Colonization Society in New York and New England, 1834-1838.  He established a headquarters office in Boston.  He organized numerous auxiliaries and recruited notable members, such as Herman Humphrey, President of Amherst College, and noted historian, George Bancroft.  His assistants were Reverend Charles Walker and Reverend Cyril Pearl. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 73; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 196-197, 201-202, 204, 209-210, 227)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 73:

DANFORTH, Joshua Noble, clergyman, born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1 April, 1798; died in New Castle, Del, 14 November, 1861. He was graduated at Williams in 1818, and spent two years at the Princeton theological seminary. After being ordained by the New Brunswick presbytery, on 30 November, 1825, he was installed pastor of the church in New Castle, Delaware, where he remained until 1828, when he accepted a call to Washington. In 1832-'4 he was agent of the American colonization society, from 1834 till 1838 pastor of the Congregational church in Lee, Massachusetts, and then for fifteen years in charge of the 2d Presbyterian church in Alexandria, Virginia. In 1860 he again accepted an agency for the American colonization society. Dr. Danforth received in 1855 the degree of D. D. from Delaware college. He contributed largely to the religious and secular press, and wrote “Gleanings and Groupings from a Pastor's Portfolio” (New York, 1852).  Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


DANGERFIELD, Newby, free African American man with John Brown during his raid at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859; hanged with John Brown, 1859 (see entry for John Brown).


DANIEL, Peter Vivian, 1784-1860, Virginia, lawyer, jurist, political leader.  Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.  Supported colonization and the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 75; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 69; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 179)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 75:

DANIEL, Peter Vivian, jurist, born in Stafford county, Virginia, 24 April, 1784; died in Richmond, Virginia, 30 June, 1860. His father, Travers Daniel, was a son of Peter Daniel, who married a daughter of Raleigh Travers, of the Virginia house of burgesses. The residence of Travers Daniel, Crow’s Nest, near the mouth of Potomac creek, was celebrated for its hospitalities, and the family bore an important part in public affairs. Peter Vivian was graduated at Princeton in 1805, and studied law in the office of Edmund Randolph (of Washington’s cabinet), whose daughter, Lucy Nelson Randolph, he married in 1811. He was chosen a member of the privy council of Virginia in 1812, and served part of the time as lieutenant-governor of the state until 1835. In 1836 he was appointed by President Van Buren to be judge of the district circuit court of Virginia, and was raised to the supreme court, 3 March, 1841, to succeed Mr. Justice Barbour. Judge Daniel was a democrat, and a personal as well as political friend of President Jackson. He was a gentleman of fine taste in literature, possessed musical accomplishments, and his judicial opinions are marked by care and clearness. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


DANIELS, Edward, 1828-1916, Boston, Massachusetts, geologist, educator, abolitionist, Union officer in the Civil War.


DARGAN, Edmund Strother, 1805-1879, legislator, jurist.

(American National Biography, 2002, Volume 6, p. 103; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 74)


DARLING, Joshua, New Hampshire, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1837-1841. 

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


DAVENPORT, Franklin, 1755-1832, abolitionist, soldier, New Jersey legislature, U.S. Senator 1789-1799, U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey 1799-1801, member and delegate of the New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, founded 1793, nephew of Benjamin Franklin. 

(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, 239n9; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 82).

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 82:

DAVENPORT, Franklin, senator, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died in Woodbury, New Jersey, about 1829. He received an academic education, and, after studying law, was admitted to the bar, and practised in Woodbury. During the Revolutionary war he served as captain of the artillery in Colonel Newcomb's New Jersey brigade, and for some time was under Colonel Samuel Smith in Fort Mifflin. He was a colonel in the New Jersey line during the whiskey insurrection in 1794, and marched with the troops to Pittsburg. Subsequently he became the first surrogate of Gloucester county, and was appointed U. S. senator to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of John Rutherford, serving from 19 December, 1798, till 3 March, 1799. He was then sent to congress, and served through the entire term from 2 December, 1799, till March, 1801. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 82.


DAVIDSON, William B., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Co-founder and officer of the Philadelphia Society of the American Colonization Society in October 1826. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 125)


DAVIS, Asa, abolitionist, Washington County, Ohio, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1852-54.


DAVIS, David Brion, abolitionist, officer of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, reorganized April 23, 1787

(Bruns, 1977, p. 487; Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 124; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 14-17)


DAVIS, Edward M., abolitionist, Pennsylvania, American Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1842-44, Vice-President, 1848-64.


DAVIS, Elnathan, abolitionist, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-1847.


DAVIS, Eunice, Boston, Massachusetts, African American, abolitionist, leader, board member, Boston Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 56, 58n40)


DAVIS, George T., abolitionist, Greenfield, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-40, 1840-41.


DAVIS, Gustavus F., abolitionist, Hartford, Connecticut.  Vice president, 1834-1836, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. 

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


DAVIS, Henry Winter, 1817-1865, statesman, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 3rd District of Maryland, 1854, 1856, 1858, 1863-1865.  Anti-slavery activist in Congress.  Supported enlistment of African Americans in Union Army.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 97-98; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 119; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 6, p. 198; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe) He published a book entitled the “War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century” (Baltimore, 1853). His collected speeches, together with a eulogy by his colleague, John A. J. Cresswell, were published in New York in 1867.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 119:

DAVIS, HENRY WINTER (August 16, 1817- December 30, 1865), politician, statesman, was the son of Reverend Henry Lyon Davis, president of St. John's College (Maryland), an ardent Federalist and Episcopalian, and Jane (Brown) Winter, a cultured woman with aristocratic connections in the town of Annapolis. During the campaign of 1828 Davis's father was removed from his position by the partisans of Jackson on the board of trustees of the college, and set adrift under circumstances which greatly influenced the career of Henry Winter Davis. After a strenuous course at Kenyon College (Ohio), young Davis procured, after much delay and difficulty, the meager funds necessary to enable him to study law at the University of Virginia. He left the University in June 1840 with some knowledge of law, mainly Coke on Littleton, and began his career at Alexandria, Virginia, a handsome man of twenty-three, six feet tall, and of aristocratic bearing and manner. Here he quickly won an enviable reputation, obtained a good income from his profession, and on October 30, 1845, married Constance C. Gardiner, daughter of a prominent citizen of the town. After her death, he married, on January 26, 1857, Nancy Morris of Baltimore, whither he had moved in 1849. Attaching himself to the Whig party, Davis appeared on the platform as a speaker with Robert Winthrop and Horace Greeley in the unhappy campaign of General Winfield Scott for the presidency in 1852. In 1855 he was chosen to a seat in Congress where he immediately took a prominent place among the leaders of the Know-Nothing party. The hot disputes about Kansas left him unmoved, nor did the ardent campaign of 1856 budge him from his steady conservatism. He supported Fillmore, and endeavored to hold his neutral position from 1856 to 1860. But the decline of the Know-Nothing party and the break between Douglas and Buchanan compelled him to take sides. On the last clay of January 1860, after a deadlock of seven weeks, he cast his vote for William Pennington, Republican candidate for speaker. This enabled the new party to organize the House and to prepare more effectively for the presidential campaign already opened. The decision made Davis a national character, but the legislature of Maryland repudiated his action by a vote of 62 to 1. From that clay to his death every public act of Davis was a matter of immediate concern to the country. He was for a moment candidate for the Republican nomination for the vice-presidency, and thought of himself from that time forward as a suitable candidate for the presidency. He was guided by an overweening ambition, but his abilities as a statesman and an orator were acknowledged to be extraordinary. In his district he was both hated and loved beyond all other public men and his campaigns for reelection were violent and bloody. Notwithstanding his vote for the Republicans in January 1860, he was the guiding spirit of the Bell and Everett party in Maryland; and he procured the nomination of Thomas H. Hicks [q.v.], Unionist, for governor. His purpose was not to defeat the Republican party in Maryland, but the regular Democrats, with Breckinridge as their candidate. Bell and Everett won; Hicks likewise was successful.

Davis, serving the balance of his term in the House of Representatives during the critical winter of 1860-61, keenly desired to sit in the new cabinet. But Montgomery Blair, a member of perhaps the most influential family in the country and the leader of a forlorn hope of Republicans in Maryland, was chosen. Davis was alone and without a party, for the Union party was rapidly disintegrating. On February 7, when the Confederacy was just raising its head in Montgomery and the leading Republicans of the North were acquiescing in the secession movement, Davis in one of the important speeches of his life asserted that in Maryland they did not recognize the right of secession and that they would not be dragged from the Union (Congressional Globe, Appendix, 36 Congress, 2 Session). But Governor Hicks and the people of Maryland did recognize the right of Southerners to secede and they seemed about to take legislative action in that direction. Davis said later that but for his activity Lincoln would have been inaugurated in some Pennsylvania village. He wrote a public letter to the New York Tribune urging that th e Federal forts in Maryland be placed in the hands of Union men. Then he simply announced himself as a candidate for a seat in the House of Representatives. It was the 15th of April. Four days later the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was attacked in Baltimore. One of the most spectacular and bitter of political contests ensued, with Davis everywhere the militant leader of the Unionists. On June 13 his opponent, Henry May, a Southern sympathizer, was elected by a vote of 8,335 to 6,287.

It was a decisive defeat, but Davis became even better known to the country, traveled widely, and spoke often for the Union. However, either his chagrin at the presence of Montgomery Blair in Lincoln's cabinet or the President's open violation of many of the sacred traditions of the country led him into opposition. He could hardly contain himself when he thought of the procedure in the many courts martial of the day, or of the thousands of men in prison without proved offense. To him the habeas corpus was sacred beyond a question. Before a very hostile Brooklyn audience, early in November, he bitterly arraigned the President and all about him. There are few instances of a speaker's attaining such complete mastery over his audience as Davis did on that occasion. Nor did he-ever cease to oppose most of the President's policies. He was not arrested or imprisoned, however, and in the hotly contested election of 1863 he was returned to the House, where he was at once made chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. He then became and remained a close friend and ally of Thaddeus Stevens, chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means. It was at the moment when Lincoln sent to Congress his program of reconstruction, known as the Louisiana Plan. Davis ranged himself at once on the side of the opposition, attacking upon every possible occasion the " usurpations" of the President, and ridiculing unmercifully the foreign policy of Seward, the management of the navy by Gideon Welles, the conduct of General Frank P. Blair as an army commander, and the unrelenting campaign of Montgomery Blair against himself in Maryland. In a little while the great majority of the House hung upon his words and followed him implicitly. He was more the master of that body than Thaddeus Stevens himself.

The most important of Davis's campaigns in the House of Representatives began early il1 the session and culminated in a victory over the President in spite of all that Seward, Welles, and the Blairs could do. Instead of reporting a reconstruction bill such as Lincoln suggested, Davis wrote and substituted a measure of his own. The President would leave the reconstructed states to abolish slavery themselves; Davis would compel immediate emancipation. The President would allow ten per cent of the voters to set up a new state government; Davis would require a majority. The President would proscribe only a few of the leading Confederates; Davis would proscribe a vast number. The President said nothing about repudiating Southern debts; Davis would compel repudiation of all Southern war debts, state and Confederate. His was a policy of "thorough," like that of the Cromwellians in England. Davis's principal speech in support of his drastic plan was made on March 22, 1864, when the supporters of the President and the rising radical opposition were engaged in the bitterest warfare. He denied the right of the President to reconstruct a state and considered the Emancipation Proclamation as invalid until approved by Congress. He claimed all power for Congress and wished so to reconstruct the Southern states, when they were completely beaten and utterly helpless, that no court could ever undo the work. The Davis bill passed the House and the Senate by large majorities. When at last, after his renomination and the adjournment of Congress, Lincoln pocket vetoed the measure, Davis was beside himself with rage. He took the extreme risk of a violent attack upon the nominee of his party at a moment when' few thoughtful men had any real hope of complete success in the war. In July, conferences of leading Republicans were held in New York. Davis took part. In the spirit of these troubled men, Davis wrote the famous Wade-Davis manifesto which appeared in the leading papers on August 8, 1864. In this document he reviewed the history of the congressional plan of reconstruction and ridiculed the President's plan in unmerciful language (Speeches and Addresses of Henry Winter Davis, pp. 415-426).

It is said that Davis never entered the White House during Lincoln's incumbency and that this manifesto brought the relations of the two men, as well as of the opposing groups in the Republican party, to the necessity of some understanding. The presidential election was pending and the people of the North had plainly lost heart. Davis was in Baltimore waging his campaign for reelection, while Seward, Weed, Welles, and the rest were fighting in Washington and elsewhere for the success of their chief. On July 1, Chase resigned and gave up his open fight on the President. On September 4, the news of victory at Atlanta reached Washington. Early in September, Montgomery Blair ceased his war upon Davis and offered his resignation. Before the end of September, Davis called at the White House and henceforth made speeches on behalf of the President. Lincoln was reelected and Chase took his seat as chief justice, but the ambitious chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations was defeated in his district.

When Congress met, however, in December 1864, Davis, now a "lame duck," was the most popular man in it. He fought through the short session, saw Andrew Johnson inaugurated with more than wonted pleasure, and, after the death of Lincoln, went to Chicago to make another of his great speeches: He attacked Johnson as he had attacked Lincoln, and outlined once more the program of congressional reconstruction which was indorsed by Charles Sumner at Worcester on September 14 and readopted by Congress the next year. Davis, still only forty-eight years old, looked forward to the day when he might sit in the coveted White House, mean while impeaching Andrew Johnson, as he must have sought the impeachment of Lincoln if the latter had lived. A private citizen of extraordinary prestige, he returned to Washington in December 1865, and with his mere presence at the door of the House of Representatives broke up the session. Exposed to inclement weather during the holidays, he took cold. This developed into pneumonia and on December 30 he died.

[There has never been an adequate study of Davis's career, though Bernard C. Steiner, The Life of Henry Winter Davis (1916), offers a brief review of the main facts and incidents. J. A. J. Creswell's sketch of Davis's life is published as an introduction to The Speeches and Addresses Delivered in the Congress of the U.S. and on Several Public Occasions, by Henry Winter Davis (1867). Gideon Welles and Adam Gurowski make frequent mention of him in their diaries.]

W.E.D.


DAVIS, Henry Winter, 1817-1865, statesman, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 3rd District of Maryland, 1854, 1856, 1858, 1863-1865.  Anti-slavery activist in Congress.  Supported enlistment of African Americans in Union Army.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume II, pp. 97-98; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 119; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 6, p. 198; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 97-98:

DAVIS, Henry Winter, statesman, born in Annapolis, Maryland, 16 August, 1817; died in Baltimore, 30 December, 1865. His father, Reverend Henry Lyon Davis, of the Protestant Episcopal church, was the president of St. John's college, at Annapolis, and rector of St. Ann's parish. He lost both offices on account of his Federal politics, and removed to Wilmington, Delaware, leaving his son with Elizabeth Brown Winter, an aunt, who possessed a noble character, and was rigid in her system of training children. The boy afterward went to Wilmington, and was instructed under his father's supervision. In l827 the family returned to Maryland and settled in Anne Arundel county. Here Henry Winter became much attached to field-sports, and gave little promise of scholarly attainments. He roamed about the country, always attended by one of his father's slaves, with an old fowling-piece upon his shoulder, burning much powder and returning with a small amount of game. The insight into slavery that he thus gained affected him strongly. He said, in after years: “My familiar association with the slaves, while a boy, gave me great insight into their feelings and views. They spoke with freedom before a boy what they would have repressed before a man. They were far from indifferent to their condition; they felt wronged, and sighed for freedom. They were attached to my father, and loved me, yet they habitually spoke of the day when God would deliver them.” He was educated in Alexandria, and at Kenyon college, where he was graduated in 1837. His father died in that year, leaving a few slaves to be divided between himself and his sister, but he would not allow them to be sold, although he might have pursued his studies with ease and comfort. Rather than do this he obtained a tutorship, and, notwithstanding these arduous tasks, read the course of law in the University of Virginia, which he entered in 1839. The expenses of his legal studies were defrayed with the proceeds of some land that his aunt had sold for the purpose. He began practice in Alexandria, Virginia, but first attained celebrity in the Episcopal convention of Maryland by his defence of Dr. H. V. D. Johns against the accusation of Bishop Whittingham for having violated the canon of the Episcopal church in consenting to officiate in the Methodist Episcopal church. In 1850 he removed to Baltimore, where he held a high social and professional position. He was a prominent whig, and known as the brilliant orator and controversialist of the Scott canvass in 1852. He was elected a member of congress for the 3d district of Maryland (part of Baltimore) in 1854, and re-elected in 1856, serving on the committee of ways and means. After the dissolution of the whig party he joined the American or Know-nothing party. He was re-elected to congress in 1858, and in 1859 voted for Mr. Pennington, the republican candidate for speaker, thus drawing upon himself much abuse and reproach. The legislature of Maryland “decorated him with its censure,” as he expressed it on the floor of the house; but he declared to his constituents that, if they would not allow their representative to exercise his private judgment as to what were the best interests of the state, “You may send a slave to congress, but you can not send me.” After the attack on the 6th Massachusetts regiment in Baltimore in 1861, Mr. Davis published a card announcing himself as an “unconditional union” candidate for congress, and conducted his canvass almost alone amid a storm of reproach and abuse, being defeated, but receiving about 6,000 votes. When Mr. Lincoln was nominated in 1860, Mr. Davis was offered the nomination for vice-president, but declined it; and when the question of his appointment to the cabinet was agitated, he urged the selection of John A. Gilmer in his stead. He was again in congress in 1863-'5, and served as chairman of the committee on foreign affairs. Although representing a slave state, Mr. Davis was conspicuous for unswerving fidelity to the Union and advocacy of emancipation. He heartily supported the administration, but deprecated the assumption of extraordinary powers by the executive, and denounced congress as cowardly for not authorizing by statute what it expected that department to do. He early favored the enlistment of negroes in the army, and said, “The best deed of emancipation is a musket on the shoulder.” In the summer of 1865 he made a speech in Chicago in favor of negro suffrage. Mr. Davis was denounced by politicians as impractical. He used to say that he who compromised a moral principle was a scoundrel, but that he who would not compromise a political measure was a fool. Mr. Davis possessed an unusually fine library, and was gifted with a good memory and a brilliant mind, which was united with many personal advantages. Inheriting force and scholarship from his father, he had received also a share of his mother's milder qualities, which won many friends, although, to the public, he seemed stern and dictatorial. At his death congress set apart a day for the commemoration of his public services, an honor never before paid to an ex-member of congress. He published a book entitled the “War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century” (Baltimore, 1853). His collected speeches, together with a eulogy by his colleague, John A. J. Cresswell, were published in New York in 1867. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 97-98.


DAVIS, John, 1787-1854, Northborough, Massachusetts, lawyer, statesman, four-term U.S. Congressman, Governor of Massachusetts, U.S. Senator, 1835-1841.  Opposed the war with Mexico and introduction of slavery in U.S. territories.  Supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the Compromise Acts of 1850. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 103-104; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p.133)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 103-104:

DAVIS, John, statesman, born in Northborough, Massachusetts, 13 January, 1787; died in Worcester, Massachusetts, 19 April, 1854. He was graduated at Yale with honor in 1812, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1815, and practised with success in Worcester. He was elected to congress as a whig in 1824, and re-elected for the four succeeding terms, sitting from December, 1825, till January, 1834, and taking a leading part as a protectionist in opposing Henry Clay's compromise tariff bill of 1833, and in all transactions relating to finance and commerce. He resigned his seat on being elected governor of Massachusetts. At the conclusion of his term as governor he was sent to the U.S. senate, and served from 7 December, 1835, till January, 1841, when he resigned to accept the governorship a second time. In the senate he was a strong opponent of the administrations of Jackson and Van Buren, and took a conspicuous part in the debates as an advocate of protection for American industry, replying to the free-trade arguments of southern statesmen in speeches that were considered extremely clear expositions of the protective theories. A declaration in one of his speeches, that James Buchanan was in favor of reducing the wages of American workingmen to ten cents a day, was the origin of the epithet “ten-cent Jimmy,” which was applied to that statesman by his political opponents for several years. A short speech against the sub-treasury, delivered in 1840, was printed during the presidential canvass of that year as an electioneering pamphlet, of which more than a million copies were distributed. He was again elected U. S. senator, and served from 24 March, 1845, till 3 March, 1853, but declined a re-election, and died suddenly at his home. He protested vigorously against the war with Mexico. In the controversy that followed, over the introduction of slavery into the U. S. territories, he earnestly advocated its exclusion. The Wilmot proviso received his support, but the compromise acts of 1850 encountered his decided opposition. He enjoyed the respect and confidence of his constituents in an unusual degree, and established a reputation for high principles that gained for him the popular appellation of “honest John Davis.”—His wife, who was a sister of George Bancroft, the historian, died in Worcester, Massachusetts, 24 January, 1872, at the age of eighty years.  Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


DAVIS, Patten, abolitionist, West Randolph, Vermont, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1848-64, Vice, President, 1849-55.


DAVIS, Paulina Kellogg Wright, 1813-1876, abolitionist, feminist, women’s rights activist, reformer.  Davis was married to abolitionist Francis Wright.  They served on the executive committee of the Central New York Anti-Slavery Society.  Their house was attacked by an angry mob for their anti-slavery activities.  After the death of her husband, she re-married, to anti-slavery Democrat Thomas Davis, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1852.  In May 1850, in Boston, Davis and other women’s rights activists planned and organized the first national women’s rights convention. 

(American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 214-216; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 6, p. 216; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 106; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, pp. 141-142)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, pp. 141-142:

DAVIS, PAULINA KELLOGG WRIGHT (August 7, 1813-August 24, 1876), editor, suffragist, was born in Bloomfield, New York, daughter of Captain Ebenezer and Polly (Saxton) Kellogg. Both parents were very conservative in their views and their associates. When Paulina was seven years old she was left an orphan and was subsequently adopted by an aunt in Le Roy, New York, where she received her education. Her aunt was an unyielding Puritan and the child was under constant restraint, which probably accounts for her later advocacy of freedom and personal rights. Religion was part of her daily routine, and upon leaving school she decided to become a missionary to the Sandwich Islands. This idea was abandoned in 1833 when she married Francis Wright, a merchant of wealth and position in Utica, New York. The Wrights took an active part in the anti-slavery convention held in Utica in 1835. Mr. Wright died during that year. Mrs. Wright had spent much of her leisure time in studying anatomy and physiology, and in 1844 she began lecturing on the subject to groups of women. She imported from Paris the first known femme modele in this country. Its use in her lectures brought much unfavorable comment. Her early efforts, however, helped to open the medical profession to women. She contributed many articles to the Woman's Advocate and McDowell's Journal. In 1849 she married Thomas Davis of Providence, Rhode Island. When he was elected to Congress in 1853, she went with him to Washington. There she was badly received by the women, who considered her knowledge and work unbecoming to her sex. In February 1853, she established the Una, the first distinctively woman's rights paper published in this country, which she continued for nearly three years at h er own expense. The paper expressed the broadest view of individual freedom. In 1859 she visited Europe and spent a year in travel, giving her leisure time to picture galleries and the study of art. On her return she continued her activities in behalf of woman suffrage. She took charge of the arrangements for the meeting of the National Woman Suffrage Movement held in New York in 1870. At the opening session she gave a report of the history and progress of the movement during the preceding twenty years (published as A History of the National Woman's Rights Movement, 1871). In 1871, with h er niece and an adopted daughter, she visited Europe, where she took up seriously the study of art, under the direction of Carl Marko, of Florence, Italy. In 1874 her health failed and she returned to the United States. Most of her remaining time was spent as an invalid at her home in Providence, Rhode Island, where she died in 1876.

[An obituary of Paulina Davis appears in the Woman's Journal, September 2, 1 876. See also Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others, History of Woman Suffrage (1881), I, 283-89; Timothy Hopkin s, The Kelloggs in the Old World and the New (1903).]

M.S.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 106:

DAVIS, Paulina (WRIGHT), reformer, born in Bloomfield, New York, 7 August, 1813; died in Providence, Rhode Island, 24 August, 1876. She married Francis Wright, of Utica, New York, in 1833, and after his death became in 1849 the wife of Thomas Davis, of Providence, Rhode Island, who was a member of congress in 1853-'5. For thirty-five years she labored zealously to promote the rights of women, established “The Una,” the first woman-suffrage paper, wrote a history of woman-suffrage reform, and gave lectures in the principal cities of the United States. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 214-216.


DAVIS, Thomas, 1806-1895, North Providence, Rhode Island, manufacturer, Member of U.S. House of Representatives, 1853-1855, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1848-52.  Disapproved of the Missouri Compromise.


DAVIS, Thomas T., 1810-1872, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1862 and 1864 from Syracuse, New York.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 97; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 97:

DAVIS, Thomas T., lawyer, born in Middlebury, Vt., 22 August, 1810; died in Syracuse, New York, 2 May, 1872, was graduated at Hamilton college in 1831. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar of Syracuse in 1833. He was counsel for the principal manufacturing establishments of that city, and took an active interest in railroad and mining enterprises. In 1862 he was elected to congress, and re-elected in 1864. After that date he resided in Syracuse, devoting himself to his law practice. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 97.


DAVIS, Timothy, Framingham, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1857-60-.


DAWES, Henry Laurens, 1816-1903, Massachusetts, judge, U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts.  Served in Congress 1857-1873. U.S. Senator 1875-1893.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 107; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, pp. 149-150; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 6, p. 250; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, pp. 149-150:

DAWES, HENRY LAURENS (October 30, 1816-February 5, 1903), congressman, senator, was born in Cummington, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, the son of Mitchell and Mercy (Burgess) Dawes. After graduating from Yale College in 1839, he taught school for a few months, gaining meanwhile some newspaper experience writing editorials for the Greenfield Gazette and Courier and the North Adams Transcript. Admitted to the bar in 1842, he opened an office in North Adams, but moved later to Pittsfield, where, in 1848, he began his long political career by being chosen to the Massachusetts lower house, of which he was a member in 1848, 1849, and 1852. He sat for one term (1850) in the state Senate, and he was an active participant in the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1853. For some years (1853-57) he was United States attorney for the western district of Massachusetts. He married, on May 1, 1844, Electa Allen Sanderson (1822-1901), daughter of Chester Sanderson, of Ashfield, Massachusetts.

Dawes came into national prominence in 1857, when he was elected to the Thirty-fifth Congress from the Berkshire district of Massachusetts; and he sat in the House of Representatives term after term until 1875, growing steadily in influence until he was recognized as perhaps its most useful and reliable member. His colleague, George F. Hoar, wrote of Dawes, "There has never been, within my experience, a greater power than his on the floor of the House" (Autobiography, I, 203). At first appointed only to the Committee on Revolutionary Claims, he became chairman in succession of the two most important House committees, Appropriations (1869) and Ways and Means (1871). He was also for ten years chairman of the Committee on Elections. There was very little law-making of this period in which he was not consulted. He was a consistent advocate of a protectionist policy and was himself the author of important tariff measures, including the wool and woolen tariff of 1868 which he wrote conjointly with Bingham of Ohio. Manufacturers of textiles in New England depended upon him as their champion when legislation affecting them was introduced. He was responsible for the establishment of the Fish Commission, and, in 1869, at the suggestion of Prof. Cleveland Abbe [q.v.], he initiated a plan for a daily weather bulletin, which was to collect and compare weather reports from all sections of the country, and which soon became the United States Weather Bureau. He was chairman, in 1872, of a House committee for investigating the so-called "Sanborn Contracts." In 1869 he was a candidate for speaker, but was defeated by James G. Blaine.

In 1875 Dawes was elected to succeed William B. Washburn as United States senator from Massachusetts and served three consecutive terms, retiring in 1892. As a member of the Committee on Buildings and Grounds, he proposed and carried through a bill under which the Washington Monument, left unfinished since 1856 because of lack of funds, was finally completed and dedicated in 1885. His most enduring work, however, was accomplished as chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs. A faithful and intelligent friend of the red men, he did his utmost to make their lot a happy one, and Edward Everett Hale said of him, "While he held the reins, nobody talked of dishonor in our dealings with the Indians." He was the author of the Dawes Act of 1887, which opened the way for granting land within the reservations to individual Indians, and citizenship to those competent to manage their own affairs. It was his influence which created a system of Indian education and placed the Indians under the protection of the federal criminal laws. After his retirement from the Senate, he visited Indian Territory in 1895, as the head of the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, designated by Congress to secure the voluntary consent of the Indians to the abandonment of tribal relations. His report was widely discussed.

Senator Hoar once declared that Dawes had "proved himself fit for every position in our Republican army except that of trumpeter." In appearance, he was a shrewd-looking Yankee, with high cheek-bones and a gray beard. He was a man of simple tastes, without any showy qualities, and he never sought popular applause. Without any gift of eloquent speech, he confined himself always to a dignified and lucid presentation of his case; but he worked more often in the committee rooms than on the floor of the House or the Senate. Although he influenced legislation upon which millions of dollars depended, he never accumulated a fortune, and his probity was unquestioned. During his last months in the Senate, Dawes was troubled by an increasing deafness, which prevented him from seeking another term. Upon his formal retirement, after thirty-six years of continuous service in Congress, he was tendered a farewell banquet by his associates. In his old age, he became the " Sage of Pittsfield," where he died in his eighty-seventh year.

[There is no extended biography of Dawes, but ample material upon him is to be found in newspapers and magazines of the period. See G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (2 volumes, 1903); Bio. Dir. American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928); Obituary Record Graduates Yale University (1910); Outlook, February 14, 1903; Boston Transcript, February S, 1903.]

C. M. F.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 107:

DAWES, Henry Laurens, statesman, born in Cummington, Massachusetts, 30 October, 1816. He was graduated at Yale in 1839, became a teacher, and edited the Greenfield “Gazette,” and subsequently the Adams “Transcript.” He was admitted to the bar in 1842, and served in the legislature from 1848 till 1850, when he became a member of the state senate. He was a member of the Constitutional convention in 1853, and attorney for the western district of Massachusetts, continuing until 1857, when he was elected to congress, and served as a member of the committee on Revolutionary claims. He remained in congress by successive re-elections until 1878. In 1866 he was a delegate to the Loyalists' convention in Philadelphia, and in 1875 he succeeded Charles Sumner in the senate, and was re-elected in 1881 and 1887. He has been chairman of the committee on ways and means, has served on committee on public buildings and grounds, and inaugurated the measure by which the completion of the Washington monument was undertaken. He is the author of many tariff measures, and assisted in the construction of the wool and woollen tariff of 1868, which was the basis of all wool and woollens from that time until 1883. He is also a member of the committees on approbations, civil service, fisheries, Revolutionary claims, and Indian and naval affairs. He was appointed on a special committee to investigate the Indian disturbances in the Indian territory, upon which he made a valuable report. The entire system of Indian education due to legislation was created by Mr. Dawes. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 107.


DAWES, William, abolitionist. Attended World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840.  Supporter of Oberlin College.


DAWKINS, Horace H., free African American.  President, Geneva Colored Anti-Slavery Society, New York, founded 1836.

(Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, p. 64)


DAY, George T., Providence, Rhode Island, Church Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1859-64


DAY, Jeremiah, 1773-1867, New Haven, Connecticut, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1833-1841.  President of Yale College. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 111-112; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 161; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 72)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 111-112:

DAY, Jeremiah, educator, born in New Preston, Connecticut, 3 August, 1773; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 22 August, 1867. He was graduated at Yale with high honor in 1795. When Dr. Dwight was appointed president of that college, Mr. Day was invited to be his successor as head-master in Greenfield school, where he remained one year. The following year he became a tutor at Williams, where he remained until 1798, when he was offered a similar place at Yale. He began to preach as a candidate for the ministry, but before taking charge of any parish was elected to the professorship of mathematics and natural philosophy at Yale, in 1801, but was not able to enter upon these new duties until 1803. He was made president of Yale in 1817, which office he held until his resignation in 1846. Having previously studied theology, Dr. Day was ordained the same day that he was inaugurated president. In 1817 he received the degree of LL. D. from Middlebury, in 1818 the degree of D. D. from Union, and the latter also from Harvard in 1831. His learning and talents, united with kindness of heart and soundness of judgment, secured the respect of his pupils as well as their affection. He published an “Algebra” in 1814, which passed through numerous editions, the latest of which was issued in 1852, by the joint labors of himself and Prof. Stanley. He wrote also “Mensuration of Superficies and Solids” (1814); “An Examination of President Edwards's Inquiry as to the Freedom of the Will” (1814); “Plane Trigonometry” (1815); “Navigation and Surveying” (1817); “An Inquiry on the Self-determining Power of the Will, or Contingent Volition” (1838; 2d ed., 1849); and occasional sermons. He contributed papers to the “American Journal of Science and Arts,” the “New Englander,” and other periodicals. An address commemorative of his life and services was delivered by President Woolsey (1867). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


DAY, William Howard, 1825-1900, African American anti-slavery advocate, writer, orator, printer.  Husband of abolitionist Lucy Stanton Sessions, who published the abolitionist newspaper, Aliened American.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 10, p. 154)


DAYTON, William Lewis, 1807-1864, lawyer, statesman, diplomat, U.S. Senator.  Member of the Free Soil Whig Party.  Opposed slavery and its expansion into the new territories.  Opposed the Fugitive Slave bill of 1850.  Supported the admission of California as a free state and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.  First vice presidential nominee of Republican Party in 1856, on the ticket with John C. Frémont.  Lost the election to James Buchanan. 

(Goodell, 1852, p. 570; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 59; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 113; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, pp. 166-167; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 6, p. 280)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, pp. 166-167:

DAYTON, WILLIAM LEWIS (February 17, 1807-December 1, 1864), lawyer, politician, diplomat, great-grandson of Eli as Dayton [q.v.], was born at Baskingridge, New Jersey, his .father, Joel, being a mechanic who educated two sons to law and one to medicine. His mother, Nancy, daughter of Edward and Nancy (Crowell) Lewis, was a grand-daughter of Edward Lewis, a commissary of Washington's army. After finishing at the local academy under Dr. Brownlee, he was graduated from Princeton in 1825, taught school at Pluckemin, and read law with Peter D. Vroom at Somerville, being admitted to the bar in May term 1830. Despite feeble health and slowly maturing powers, his " large mind and strong common sense" (J. P. Bradley, post, 75) made Dayton a master of common law. Settling at Freehold, New Jersey, he attracted attention in November 1833 by persuading the court to quash certain indictments (L. Q. C. Elmer, post, 375), and became the leading lawyer there. Elected to the legislative council in 1837, as a Whig, he was chosen one of two new associate justices of the state supreme court on February 28, 1838. He decided the important case of Freeholders vs. Strader (3 Harrison, 110) but resigned in 1841, against friendly protests, to practise law in Trenton, the salary of a justice ($2,000) being too small to support his growing family. On July 2, 1842, Governor William Pennington appointed him United States senator for the unexpired term of S. L. Southard, and the legislature chose him for the full term to March 4, 1851. He resolutely defended his right to independence of action in the face of legislative instructions, insisting (December 1843) that, "if the legislature of New Jersey go further than to advise me of their wishes ... they usurp a power which does not belong to them" (Bradley, post, p. 85).

An independent Whig, he urged protection for home markets and industrial independence (speech of April 1844), and opposed the tariff of 1846. Favoring arbitration of the Northwestern claims, he thought statehood for Oregon undesirable and improbable. He voted against the treaty for the annexation of Texas (June 8, 1844), warning his Newark constituents that the annexation would mean the repeal of a protective tariff and four more slave states (speech of February 24, 1845). Although he protested against the Mexican War, " he invariably voted the necessary measures to sustain the executive in its prosecution" (Bradley, p. 99). He opposed the extension of slavery but voted for the ratification of the Mexican Treaty.

Following the policy of the new administration he opposed the compromise measures of 1850, especially the Fugitive-Slave Act, and lost his seat in the Senate to Commodore Robert Field Stockton, Democrat. Resuming law practise at Trenton, he was "almost invariably employed on one side or the other of every" important cause" (Bradley, post, 114). With Chancellor Green, S. G. Potts, and P. D. Vroom he had compiled the New Jersey revised statutes of 1847. He served as attorney-general of New Jersey 1857-61, and as such acted as prosecutor in the famous Donnelly murder case (2 Dutcher, 463, 601). His speech at the "Fusion Convention" in Trenton, May 28, 1856, resulted in his being nominated for vice-president on the ticket with Fremont, though many of his friends desired him to have first place, and in the Republican convention of 1860 his state supported him, on the first three ballots, for the presidential nomination (C. M. Knapp, New Jersey Politics During the Period of the Civil War and Reconstruction, 1924). In 1861 he was appointed minister to France. Not knowing French, quite unversed in diplomacy, he yet established the best of relations with Louis Napoleon's government, with diplomatic colleagues, and with the press. He wore court dress since "he had not come to France to make a point with the government about buttons" (Elmer, post, p. 391) and gained the entire confidence of the Emperor whom he had "frequently met during his residence in New Jersey" (Galignani's Messenger, Paris, December 5, 1864). Keeping both governments advised on innumerable topics, he was able to avert French intervention, to stop Confederate use of French ports, to prevent construction of six Southern war vessels, to intern the Rappahannock, and to force the Alabama out to meet the Kearsarge. His long letter on the war, November 16, 1862, to Drouyn de Buys, produced gratifying results (Seward to Dayton, January 9, 1863, see Executive Document No. 38, 37 Congress, 3 Session). Seward came to have much confidence in him, and referred to his "approved discretion" (Seward to Dayton, February 8, 1864). Dayton died abruptly at 9 p. m., December 1, 1864, of apoplexy, leaving an estate of over $100,000. His wife, Margaret Elmendorf Van Der Veer, whom he married May 22, 1833, bore him five sons and two daughters. Their married life was entirely happy. He had no enemies. At his funeral John Bigelow said of Dayton, "He could not act falsely."

[T. P. Bradley, "A Memoir of the Life and Character of Hon. Wm. L. Dayton," in Proc. New Jersey Historical Society, series 23, IV, 69-118; L. Q. C. Elmer, The Constitution and Govt. of the Province and State of New Jersey ... with Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar (1872), pp. 372-96; genealogy in Lewis Letter (Lisle, New York), November December 1889, pp. 135, 138; obituaries in many newspapers.]

W.L.W-y

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 113:

DAYTON, William Lewis, statesman, born in Baskingridge, New Jersey, 17 February, 1807; died in Paris, France, 1 December, 1864. He was graduated at Princeton in 1825, and received the degree of LL. D. from that college in 1857. He studied law in Litchfield, Connecticut, and was admitted to the bar in 1830, beginning his practice in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1837 he was elected to the state council (as the senate was then called), being made chairman of the judiciary committee. He became associate judge of the supreme court of the state in 1838, and in 1842 was appointed to fill a vacancy in the U. S. senate. His appointment was confirmed by the legislature in 1845, and he was also elected for the whole term. In the senate debates on the Oregon question, the tariff, annexation of Texas, and the Mexican war, he took the position of a free-soil whig. He was the friend and adviser of President Taylor, and opposed the fugitive-slave bill, but advocated the admission of California as a free state, and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In 1856 he was nominated by the newly formed republican party for vice-president. In March, 1857, he was made attorney-general for the state of New Jersey, and held that office until 1861, when President Lincoln appointed him minister to France, where he remained until his death. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 113.



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.