Eam-Ell: Eames through Ellsworth

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.


EAMES, James H., abolitionist, Providence, Rhode Island, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1836-40.


EARLE, Edward, abolitionist, Worcester, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-41.


Earle, John Milton, 1794-1874, Leicester, Massachusetts, businessman, abolitionist, statesman, political leader, newspaper publisher, pioneer and leader in the anti-slavery/abolitionist movement.  Member of Whig and Free Soil parties.  Husband of abolitionist Sarah H. Earle. 

(Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 347).


EARLE, Mary, abolitionist, Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 80, 8n, 84).


EARLE, Phoebe, abolitionist, Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 80)


EARLE, Thomas, 1796-1849, Worcester, Massachusetts, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist leader, journalist, lawyer, political leader, member Liberty Party, Philadelphia, PA.  Edited Pennsylvania Freeman.  Petitioned Congress to amend U.S. Constitution to compensate slaveholders in the South who freed their slaves. Earle joined the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1820, and in 1821 was a Delegate to the American Convention of Abolition Societies.  As a lawyer, he represented the Society in defense of African Americans.   Vice presidential candidate for abolitionist Liberty Party. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1839-1840. He actively supported Black suffrage.

(Bonner, 1948; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 149; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 297; Goodell, 1852, p. 471; Pennsylvania Freeman, April 23, 1840; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 288-289; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 597; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 7, p. 231)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 1, p. 597:

EARLE, THOMAS (April 21, 1796--July 14, 1849), lawyer, was the son of Pliny Earle [q.v.], a manufacturer of wool-carding machinery, and Patience (Buffum) Earle, who resided at Leicester, Massachusetts. After attending the common schools and Leicester Academy, he passed several years in his father's employ, but as business was not prosperous he went to Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1816, where he became a clerk in a store. In 1817 he remove d to Philadelphia, and engaged in the commission business there for six years. He had no liking or capacity for a mercantile career, however, and in 1824 commenced the study of law. Meantime, in July 1820, he had married Mary Hussey of Nantucket, Massachusetts. On his being admitted as an attorney, April 2, 1825, he opened a law office in Philadelphia, at the same time engaging in literary and political work. His journalistic abilities were quickly recognized and he became editor successively of the Columbian Observer and The Standard. In the course of his legal studies he discovered that the Constitution of Pennsylvania was extremely defective and needed amendment. This he urged in the local newspapers, but it was not until he had acquired a proprietary interest in The Mechanics' Free Press and Reform Advocate and devoted its columns to the subject, that the public became aroused. His continued agitation at length procured the calling of the constitutional convention of 1837, to which he was a delegate. He took a leading part in its deliberations and many of the amendments which he advocated were accepted and embodied in the new constitution. Two reforms, however, which he ardently advocated, the democratization of the judiciary, and the extension of the suffrage to colored people, were rejected after long and acrimonious debate. His views on the franchise procured for him the lasting displeasure of a large section of the Democratic party, thereby destroying all chances of future political preferment. In 1840 at a convention of "Friends of Immediate Emancipation" held at Albany, New York, he was selected as candidate of the Liberty party for vice-president of the United States with James G. Birney [q.v.] for president, but he was repudiated by the abolitionists in whose name the Liberty party had made the nomination, and his name did not appear upon the ticket. He had been all his life an avowed opponent of slavery, and for a time was editor of The Pennsylvanian, the anti-slavery newspaper in the state. Henceforth, he took no active part in public affairs, but devoted himself to literary pursuits. He had in his earlier days published an Essay on Penal Law in Pennsylvania (1827) and a pamphlet, The Right of States to Alter or Annul Charters (1823). These were followed by his Treatise on Railroads and Internal Communications (1830), the first book written in the United States on this subject. His last completed work was The Life, Travels and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy (1847). He was an excellent linguist, well acquainted with French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and during his later years was engaged on the compilation of a "Grammatical Dictionary of the French and the English Languages" and a translation of Sismondi's Italian Republics, both of which were unfinished at his death.

[Pliny Earle, The Earle Family (1888); J. T. Scharf and T. Westcott, History of Philadelphia 1609-1884 (1884); North American and U. S. Gazette (Philadelphia), July 16, 1849; American Courier (Philadelphia), July 21, 1849.]

H. W. H. K.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 288-289:

EARLE, Thomas, lawyer, born in Leicester, Massachusetts, 21 April, 1796; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 14 July, 1849, was educated at Leicester academy. In 1817 he removed to Philadelphia, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits for a few years, but subsequently studied law and practised his profession. He became distinguished also as a journalist, editing in succession the “Columbian Observer,” “Standard,” “Pennsylvanian,” and “Mechanics’ Free Press and Reform Advocate.” In 1837 he took an active part in calling the Constitutional convention of Pennsylvania, of which he was a prominent member, and it is supposed that he made the original draft of the new constitution. He lost his popularity with the Democratic party by advocating the extension of the right of suffrage to negroes. He was the candidate of the liberty party for vice-president in 1840, but the nomination was repudiated by the abolitionists, whom that party was supposed to represent. Mr. Earle subsequently took little part in political affairs. He devoted his time principally to literary work, and published an “Essay on Penal Law”; an “Essay on the Rights of States to Alter and to Annul their Charters”; “Treatise on Railroads and Internal Communications” (1830); and a “Life of Benjamin Lundy.” At the time of his death he was engaged in a translation of Sismondi's “Italian Republics,” and in the compilation of a “Grammatical Dictionary of the French and the English Languages.” Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 288-289.


EARLE, William B., abolitionist, Worcester, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1841-51.


EASTON, Joshua, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1835-36


EASTON, Reverend Hosea, 1787-1837, African American, clergyman, author, abolitionist.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 4, p. 185)


EAYRE, J.H., Boston, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1839-.


EAYRS, Joseph, Boston, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1837-40.


ECKLEY, Ephraim R., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

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


EDDY, John S., abolitionist, Providence, Rhode Island, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1840-43.


EDDY, Morton, S. Bridgewater, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1839-40, 41-42, 43-44-.


EDDY, Nathaniel, Middleboro, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1837-40.


EDERTON, Sidney, 1818-1900, U.S. Congressman from Ohio, Chief Justice of the Idaho Territorial Supreme Court, and Territorial Governor of Montana, abolitionist.  Delegate to the Free Soil Convention in Buffalo, 1848.  Delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1856.  Elected to the U.S. Congress in 1858.  He served two terms. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 20; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 20:

EDGERTON, SIDNEY (August 17, 1818-July 19, 1900), Abolitionist, congressman, first territorial governor of Montana, was born in New York of old New England ancestry. His parents were Amos and Zerviah (Graham) Edgerton. His father died while Sidney was an infant, and the boy h ad to educate himself. He studied and taught and in1844 went to Akron, Ohio, w here he again taught school and studied law. In 1846 he graduated from the Cincinnati Law School. Beginning his public life as an Abolition is  he was a delegate to the Free-Soil Convention of 1848, and continued his fight on slavery during the years following. In 1856 he was delegate to the first Republican National Convention. Elected to Congress in 1858, he served two terms. His efforts were directed toward the abolition of slavery in the territories, in the District of Columbia, and on the public property of the Unite d States. As a Union man he felt the need of holding the West to the East. He was an ardent advocate of a transcontinental railroad and voted for every measure which he thought would promote its construction.

When the territory of Idaho was organized, March 3, 1863, President Lincoln offered the position of chief justice to Edgerton. He took office at Bannack in eastern Idaho (now in Montana) and the he remained in char g e of the eastern judicial district of the territory. This assignment was distasteful to him for he felt that as chief  justice he should have a district nearer the capital. The court had no marshal and no power to enforce its decisions. With bands of road agents infesting the country, Edgerton gave his approval of the vigilantes who were trying to exterminate them. The co unties east of the Bitter Root Mountains, dissatisfied with their connection with Idaho, sent Edgerton to Washington to work for a separate territory. He was well acquainted with James M. Ashley, chairman of the House committee on territories, with other congressmen, and with Lincoln. Following the approval of the act forming Montana (May 26, 1864), Lincoln appointed Edgerton governor, legal provision for a temporary government being made May 27. His territory had been overrun by bandits and the majority of its population were opposed to the Union. It was his work to organize government among a hostile people and establish obedience to law. With firmness and tact he undertook the task and during the year of his administration made progress. He foresaw in Montana a great commonwealth and he urged the building of roads and the founding of schools. He was unable to conclude his program, since the succession of Johnson to the presidency led to his resignation.

Edgerton was a man of unusual intellect, pleasing personality, and notable oratorical ability. He had great courage and frankness. He was an Abolitionist when abolition was unpopular, and an agnostic among a people thoroughly devoted to Christianity. He married Mary Wright in 1849 and to them were born eight children. After 1865 he devoted himself to the practise of law, but he did not lose interest in public affairs. When Mark Hanna invited him as a member of the first Republican Convention to sit in the one of 1900, Edgerton declined, stating that there was little in common between the principles held by him and the "fore ordained work" of the latter convention (Great Falls News, July 5, 1900).

[Wilbur F. Sanders, "Life of Governor Sidney Edgerton," in Rocky Mountain Magazine, February 1901, and Martha Edgerton Plassmann, "Biography Sketch of Sidney Edgerton, in Contributions to the Historical Society of Mont. III (1900), are sympathetic but fair. See also Biography Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928).]

P. C. P.


EDMUNDSON, William, Society of Friends, Quaker, Germantown, Pennsylvania, early Quaker opponent of slavery

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 8-10, 14-15, 37, 51; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 7, 432)


EDWARDS, Bela Bates, 1802-1852, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman, editor.  Member of the Young Men’s Colonization Society in Boston.  Defended the American Colonization Society and colonization as a means to end slavery. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 307; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 27; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 133, 210)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 307:

EDWARDS, Bela Bates, clergyman, another great-grandson of Samuel, mentioned in the preceding sketch, born in Southampton, Massachusetts, 4 July, 1802; died in Athens, Georgia, 20 April, 1852. He was graduated at Amherst in 1824, and at Andover in 1830. He was licensed to preach in the latter year, but was never ordained. After serving as tutor at Amherst, he acted as assistant secretary of the American education society in 1828-'33. He edited the “American Quarterly Register” in 1828-'42; the “American Quarterly Observer,” which he founded, in 1833-'5, the “American Biblical Repository,” with which the latter was united, in 1835-'8; and the “Bibliotheca Sacra” in 1844-'52. He was appointed professor of Hebrew in Andover theological seminary in 1837, received the degree of D. D. from Dartmouth in 1844, and in 1848 was elected associate professor of sacred literature. During his twenty-four years of editorial labor he issued thirty-one octavo volumes of the periodicals with which he was connected. His work in connection with the “Quarterly Register” was especially valuable. He designed to make it a storehouse of facts for present and future generations, and it contains indispensable materials for the historian. In the pages of the other periodicals named, Dr. Edwards’s contributions were chiefly criticisms of current (especially biblical) literature and disquisitions on the science of education. While occupied with his labors in this field he published several works, among which are the “Eclectic Reader” (1835); “Biography of Self-Taught Men” (1831); “Memoir of Henry Martin,” with an introductory essay (1831); “Memoirs of E. Cornelius” (1833); a volume on the “Epistle to the Galatians”; and the “Missionary Gazetteer” (1832). He was also a frequent contributor to the religions press, and wrote various pamphlets and the more important portions of several books in collaboration with Profs. Sears, Felton, and Park. Among the latter are “Selections from German Literature” and “Classical Studies.” He was also associated with Samuel H. Taylor in the translation of Kühner’s Greek Grammar.” In 1845 he was compelled to visit Florida for his health, and on his return sailed for Europe, where he spent a year. In 1851 he was again compelled to go south, and was residing there the following winter, when he died. He was an ideal editor and professor, uniting great erudition and a sound judgment with a deep, earnest, and uniform piety. A selection from his sermons and addresses, with a memoir by Prof. Edwards A. Park, was published in Boston in 1853. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


EDWARDS, Cyrus, 1893-1877, Illinois, lawyer.  Actively supported the American Colonization Society in Illinois.  (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 306; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 143)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 306:

EDWARDS, Cyrus, lawyer, born in Montgomery county, Maryland, 17 Jan, 1793; died in Upper Alton, Illinois, in September, 1877. In the early history of Illinois he was one of its most prominent and useful citizens. He was frequently elected to the legislature, and was especially conspicuous as a friend of education. He was active in originating the State normal school at Bloomington, and was for thirty-five years president of the board of trustees of Shurtleff college, to which institution he gave real estate valued at $10,000, besides other generous donations. He received the degree of LL. D. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


EDWARDS, John B., New York, abolitionist leader.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 102)


EDWARDS, Dr. Reverend Jonathon, 1745-1801, clergyman, anti-slavery activist, college president.  Wrote, The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade, 1791.  Son of noted theologian, Jonathan Edwards. 

(Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 290, 293-302, 317, 340; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 47, 345; Goodell, 1852, pp. 28, 92, 111, 127, 130; 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. 41, 90, 103, 183, 186, 187, 191; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 107, 153; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 311-312; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 37; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 7, p. 334)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 37:

EDWARDS, JONATHAN (May 26, 1745-August 1, 1801), theologian, the second son of his more celebrated father of the same name, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. At the age of six he went with his father to Stockbridge and lived there among the Mohican Indians, to whom his father was missionary, and learned their language. In January 1758, his father moved with his family to Princeton, New Jersey, to become president of the College of New Jersey, but died in the following March, his wife, the noted Sarah (Pierpont) Edwards, dying in October of the same year. Thus orphaned, the son was enabled by friends to prepare for the college at Princeton, from which he graduated in 1765. During his course he had a deep religious experience, and made profession of his faith. For a year after graduation he studied theology with his father's friend, Joseph Bellamy [q.v.], at Bethlehem, Connecticut, and for another year preached here and there. He then accepted a tutorship at Princeton. After two years of teaching he became, in January 1769, pastor of the White Haven Church of New Haven, Connecticut. The year after his settlement he married Mary Porter, who was drowned in 1782. In December 1783, he married Mercy Sabin.

"In person," says his grandson, "Dr. Edwards was slender, erect, and somewhat above the ordinary stature. His complexion was dark; his features bold and prominent; his hair raven black; his eye keen, piercing and intelligent to a remarkable degree." The portrait prefixed to his Works indicates that his features and expression were harsh and severe; yet he was a man of tender feelings, generous to the poor, with a special interest in the negroes and a hatred of slavery and the slave-trade. His experience in his first pastorate was not unlike that of his father, for he was unable to heal the divisions that existed at the time of his coming, and two years later the church split on the same issue of the Halfway Covenant which had made trouble for his father at Northampton. The particular point in question was whether the children of those who were not members of the church should be baptized, a practise to which both the Edwards were opposed. The larger part of his church remained under his pastorate for a number of years, but there came a new access of dissatisfaction owing to the Revolution and to the growth of liberal opinions among his people, and the church dwindled, so that in January 1795 he was dismissed from his charge, on the ground that the church was no longer able to maintain a pastor, though it bore witness to his high character and ability. A year later he became pastor at Colebrook, Connecticut, where he was able to give time to literary work. After some three years at Colebrook, he accepted the presidency of Union College, Schenectady, New York, but, as in his father's case at Princeton, his presidency was short; for he died only two years after taking up the work. Like his father he preached on the first Sunday of the year of his death from the text, "This year thou shalt die."

The similarity of his career to that of his father corresponds to a similarity in their mental qualities. Both were silent and reserved men, somewhat morbidly religious, and devoted to the development of doctrine by the keenest and most uncompromising logic, though not without personal tenderness of feeling. Yet their doctrine, for all its severity, had in it an important progressive element, not generally appreciated as such, which later contributed largely to the more humane teachings known as "progressive orthodoxy." The father took a great step forward by maintaining, in opposition to the older Calvinism, that men could repent if they would, though the will itself was determined from above. The particular contribution of the son to the "improvements" on the older Calvinism was the "governmental" theory of the atonement, as opposed to the previous "satisfaction" theory. This newer theory was not entirely original with him, but gained acceptance mainly through his presentation of it. It declared that the sacrificial sufferings of Christ were not to be understood either as the payment of a debt due to God, or as the infliction on Christ of precisely those sufferings which would otherwise have been endured by those who were forgiven for his sake; they were rather the demonstration, by means of a willing victim, of the moral government of the world, whereby God could without inconsistency forgive freely such as repented and put their trust in Christ. This theory was based on a conception of God as a benevolent moral governor, rather than as an arbitrary sovereign, developed by the elder Edwards. Two important consequences were drawn by the son and his fellow-workers from these conclusions: first, that Christ died for all men and not simply for the elect; second, that neither the sin of Adam nor the righteousness of Christ were imputed to men, moral qualities not being thus transferable. These points, along with the declaration of the ability of men to repent formed the distinctive characteristics of the New England Theology over against the older "Triangle" of inability, imputation, and limited atonement.

In addition to his discussion of the atonement, Edwards published a defense of eternal punishment and also a defense of his father's theory of the will, a treatise on the Mohican language, and a number of short theological articles. He also edited a number of his father's manuscripts for publication. He lacked the imagination and originality of the elder Edwards, but he had a powerful mind, and gave a great impulse to the development of a more progressive type of thought in theology.

[The chief sources of information are the memoir by his grandson, Tryon Edwards, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, D.D., Late President of Union College, with a Memoir of his Life (2 volumes, 1842); and the funeral sermon in the collected edition of his Works (2 volumes, 1850). For a discussion of his theological thought, see F. H. Foster, A Genetic History of the New England Theology (1907). See also Wm. B. Sprague, Annals American Pulpit, Volume I (1857), p. 653.]

B. W. B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 311-312:

EDWARDS, Jonathan, Jr., theologian, second son of Jonathan, Sr., born in Northampton, Massachusetts, 26 May, 1745; died in Schenectady, New York, 1 August, 1801. When he was six years old the family removed to Stockbridge, at that time almost solely inhabited by Indians. Here he became so proficient in the Indian language as to surpass in the thoroughness of his scholarship all other Anglo-Americans of that day. As it was his father's wish that he should become a missionary to the aborigines, he was sent, in 1755, to the Reverend Gideon Hawley, who was stationed on the Susquehanna river, to learn the dialect of the Oneidas. In consequence of the breaking out of war between England and France, in which the colonies were involved, young Edwards remained there only six months, and acquired but an imperfect knowledge of the language. The death of his father, soon followed by that of his mother, and their removal to Princeton, New Jersey, materially changed his plans. Although left with insufficient means to complete his education, he determined to go forward, and, with the aid of friends, entered the grammar-school at Princeton in February, 1760. The following year he matriculated at the College of New Jersey, at which institution he was graduated in 1765. He Began the study of theology under the Reverend Joseph Bellamy, D. D., and received a licence to preach from the Association of Litchfield county, Connecticut, In 1766. In 1767 he was appointed tutor at Princeton, where he remained for two years, till he became, in January, 1769, pastor of the society at White Haven, Connecticut. Several members of his Church were advocates of the “half-way covenant,” while he, like his father, decidedly opposed it. His pastorate was also disturbed by the reaction among the New England churches that followed the extravagances that accompanied the “great awakening” of 1740-'2, and by the demoralizing influences of the Revolutionary war. The result of these untoward circumstances was a dismissal from his charge, 19 May, 1795, for the ostensible reason that the society was unable to support a minister. In 1796 he was called to the church in Colebrook, Litchfield county, Connecticut. Here, in a retired country parish, he found opportunity to pursue his favorite theological and metaphysical inquiries, and would have been willing to spend the remainder of his days there; but he was called, in the summer of 1799, to the presidency of the then recently established college at Schenectady, New York. He was warmly welcomed by both students and citizens, and the talent for government that he subsequently displayed surprised even those who knew him best, his discipline being mild and affectionately parental; but he died the second summer after his inauguration. He received the degree of D. D. from the College of New Jersey in 1785. His career resembled that of his distinguished father in so many particulars that the coincidence has attracted universal attention. They bore the same name, and were distinguished scholars and divines. Both were tutors for equal periods in the colleges where they were respectively educated. Both, after being settled in the ministry, were dismissed on account of their doctrinal opinions, and were again settled in retired places, where they had leisure to prepare and publish their works. Both were called from the discharge of these duties to be presidents of colleges, and both died shortly after inauguration, one in the fifty-fifth and the other in the fifty-seventh year of his age, each having preached on the first Sabbath of the year from the text, “This year thou shalt die.” Nor was this resemblance confined merely to outward circumstances; intellectually the two men were much alike. Dr. Emmons is reported to have said that “the father had more reason than the son; yet the son was a better reasoner than the father”; and Dr. Samuel Miller, of Princeton, remarked that “the son greatly resembled his venerable father in metaphysical acuteness, ardent piety, and the purest exemplariness of Christian deportment.” The younger Edwards devoted a large portion of his life to the study and interpretation of his father's writings. He was thus well fitted to edit the latter's works, and did prepare for the press the “History of the Work of Redemption,” two volumes of sermons, and two volumes of “Miscellaneous Observations on Important Theological Subjects.” In 1797 Dr. Edwards published “A Dissertation concerning Liberty and Necessity,” which is, perhaps, the fairest exposition extant of the father's “theory of the will.” He also printed numerous articles in the “New York Theological Magazine” under the signatures “I” and “O” and many sermons in which his views were carefully elaborated. Among the latter may be mentioned three discourses “On the Necessity of the Atonement and its Consistency with Free Grace in Forgiveness” (1785). They have been frequently republished, and form the basis of what is now known as the “Edwardean theory of the atonement.” Dr. Edwards also ranked high as a philologist, and his “Observations on the Language of the Muhhekaneew Indians,” etc., elicited the enthusiastic praises of Humboldt. Nearly all his published writings were reprinted in two octavo volumes, edited, with a memoir, by Tryon Edwards (Andover, 1842). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 311-312.


EELLS, Samuel, 1810-1842, New York, abolitionist, philosopher, essayist, lawyer.  Law partner of abolitionist Salmon P. Chase.


EGGLESTON, Nathaniel, abolitionist, Brooklyn, New York, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1853-52.


EINHORN, Rabbi David, 1809-1879 Bavaria, abolitionist, rabbi.  His attacks on slavery, though these were launched in German, a language which he regarded as the official tongue of reform Judaism in America, they drew down on him the angry resentment of some of his fellow citizens, and a few nights after April 19, 1861, the night of the Baltimore riot, he had to flee the city under guard to avoid attack from a mob.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 319; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 65)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 65:

EINHORN, DAVID (November 10, 1809-November 2, 1879), rabbi, son of Maier and Karoline Einhorn, was born in Dispeck, Bavaria. He received a traditionally intensive Jewish education in the school of the village of his birth and in the Talmudic Academy of Furth. After an abrupt plunge from this circumscribed, compact, and medieval scholastic world into the comparative liberalism of the Universities of Erlangen, Wurzburg, and Munich, he emerged a religious radical. For ten years his frankly avowed views debarred him from an appointment as rabbi in Germany. When he was appointed rabbi in 1842, he found himself in constant opposition to the opinions and practises of the orthodox majority of his flock. This led in 1851 to his leaving Germany for Pesth, Hungary. There a reactionary government, confusing religious with political liberalism, closed his temple two months after he had taken office.

There being little prospect in Europe for a rabbi of his radical religious ideas, he turned his eyes to the United States. After four years of waiting, during which he published his system of Jewish theology, Das Prinzip des Mosaismus und dessen Verhaeltnis zum Heidenthum und Rabbinischen Iudenthum (Leipzig, 1854), he sailed for America in 1855, to become the religious leader of the Har Sinai Synagogue in Baltimore. There his unwavering moral courage and loyalty to the truth as he saw it were notably shown in his attacks on slavery. Though these were launched in German, a language which he regarded as the official tongue of reform Judaism in America, they drew down on him the angry resentment of some of his fellow citizens, and a few nights after April 19, 1861, the night of the Baltimore riot, he had to flee the city under guard to avoid attack from the mob. His congregation would have welcomed him back on condition that he did not refer in the pulpit to the subject of slavery, but he refused all compromise and settled in Philadelphia, where he was soon elected rabbi of Keneseth Israel Congregation. His stand against slavery led to his election as an honorary member of the Union League Club of Philadelphia. In 1866 he was called to New York, as minister of Congregation Adath Jeshurun, merged in 1874 with an orthodox congregation under the new name of Congregation Beth El, where he officiated until he retired from active service in July 1879. Four months later he died.

His literary output in America was considerable. In 1856 he founded Sinai, a monthly German magazine devoted to reform Judaism. He issued this for seven years until, as he wrote, "it died in the battle against slavery." Through this organ he waged vigorous controversy with some of his colleagues, both orthodox and reform. In 1856 he published Olath Tammid, a reform modification of the traditional Jewish prayer book, with a German translation. This subsequently became the basis of the Union Prayer Book, the official liturgy of reform Judaism in America. Ten years later, in Philadelphia, he published Ner Tamid, Die Lehre des Judenthums dargestellt fur Schule und Haus. A collected volume of his sermons was published in 1880 by his son-in-law, Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler. (In 1844 Einhorn married Julie Henrietta Ochs, of a prominent family in Kreuznach.) He was a leading figure at the Philadelphia Conference of Reform Rabbis in 1869 and at several Jewish Reform conferences in Germany.

As his writings consistently show, he was essentially a theologian, forthright and unyielding in the opinions which he expressed with ardent eloquence. His appreciation of Judaism was rationalizing rather than romantic, universal rather than national. As with most of the other early leaders of reform Judaism in America, who were born and trained in Germany, his religious revolt reflected the liberal politico-cultural ideology current in the newly awakening Germany of the early nineteenth century. By his forceful application of this ideology in the domain of Judaism, David Einhorn became the leading theologian of the reform Judaism of his generation in the United States.

[Besides Einhorn's own works mentioned above, see David Einhorn Memorial Volume (1911), by Kaufmann Kohler, containing a biography by Kohler, reprinted from the Year Book of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, XIX (1909), 215-70, and a memorial oration by Emil G. Hirsch; Pubs. of the American Jewish Historical Society, No. 5 (1897), 147-52; Adolf Brull, Dr. David Einhorn und seine Bedeutung  fur das Judentum (Frankfurt, 1882); David Philipson, The Reform Movement in Judaism (1907); Jacob Voorsanger, The Chronicles of Emmanu-El (1900); Jos. Leiser, American Judaism (1925); F. de Sola Mendes, "America, Judaism" in Jewish Encyclopedia (1901), Volume I.]

D. de S.P.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 317:

EINHORN, David, born in Dispeck, Bavaria, 10 November, 1809; died in New York city, 2 November, 1879. He was educated at the rabbinical school of Fuerth, and subsequently at the universities of Munich and Wurzburg. Espousing the cause of radical reform in Judaism, he was chosen rabbi at Hopstadter, and afterward chief rabbi of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He was called to Pesth in 1851, where his advanced views met with such opposition that his temple was closed by the Austrian government. In 1855 Dr. Einhorn was invited to assume charge of a Hebrew congregation in Baltimore, Maryland, and during his incumbency published a prayer-book, which has a wide circulation in the United States, and also a German magazine, “Sinai,” devoted to interests of radical reform. In 1861 he was such a staunch Unionist that his Baltimore pastorate was exchanged for one in Philadelphia. In 1866 Dr. Einhorn removed to New York, where he held a rabbinical position till his death. A collection of his addresses has been issued in German. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 317.


ELA, David H., Boston, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1839-40.


ELDER, Peter Percival, 1823-1914, political leader, businessman, newspaperman, abolitionist.  Went to Kansas in 1857 to support the Free State Movement.  Elected state senator in 1859. 

(Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Chicago, 1912, Volume III, pt. 2)


ELDRED, William, New York, American Abolition Society.

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


ELIOT, Thomas Dawes, 1808-1870, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts, 1854-1855, 1859-1869.  Founder of the Republican Party from Massachusetts.  Opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill as a member of Congress.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Active in the Free-Soil Party. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 325; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II, p. 325:

ELIOT, Thomas Dawes, Congressman, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 20 March, 1808; died in New Bedford, Massachusetts, 12 June, 1870. He was graduated at Columbian College, Washington, D. C, in 1825, studied law in Washington and New Bedford, and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. After being a member of both houses of the legislature, he was elected to Congress as a Whig, to fill the unexpired term of Zeno Scudder, serving from 17 April, 1854, till 3 March, 1855, and making an eloquent speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which was published (Washington, 1854). He was prominent in the Free-Soil convention at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1855, and on the dissolution of the Whig Party was active among the founders of the Republican Party in Massachusetts, he declined its nomination for attorney-general in 1857, but was afterward elected to Congress again for five successive terms, serving from 1859 till 1869. Mr. Eliot took an active part in the proceedings of the house, particularly in the legislation on the protection and welfare of the Negroes.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 325.


ELIOT, William Greenleaf, 1811-1887, educator, clergyman, opponent of slavery.  Active in Sanitary Commission in the Civil War. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 325)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 325:

ELIOT, William Greenleaf, educator, born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, 5 August, 1811; died at Pass Christian, Miss., 23 January, 1887. His great-grandfather was brother to the great-grandfather of Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard. He was graduated at Columbian college, Washington, D. C., in 1831, and at Harvard divinity-school in 1834. In the latter year he was ordained pastor of the Church of the Messiah (Unitarian) in St. Louis, Missouri, a place which he held until 1872. During all this time he was energetically employed in improving the condition and advancing the interests of the public schools of St. Louis. A man of untiring energy and rare administrative ability, he was engaged in all sorts of public and philanthropic enterprises, and has probably done more for the advancement of St. Louis and all the southwest than any other man that has lived in that section. He was always a bold and outspoken opponent of slavery. In 1861 he was found among the small band of resolute men who assisted Gens. Nathaniel Lyon and Francis P. Blair in preserving Missouri to the Union; and during the war he was active in the western sanitary commission. In 1872 he was chosen to succeed Dr. Chauvenet as chancellor of Washington university in St. Louis, and held the office until his death. He has published a “Manual of Prayer” (Boston, 1851); “Discourses on the Doctrines of Christianity” (Boston, 1852; 22d ed., 1886); “Lectures to Young Men” (1853; 11th ed., 1882); “Lectures to Young Women” (1853; 13th ed., enlarged, with the title “Home Life and Influence,” St. Louis, 1880); “The Unity of God” (Boston, 1854); “Early Religious Education” (1855); “The Discipline of Sorrow” (1855); “The Story of Archer Alexander, from Slavery to Freedom” (Boston, 1885); and a great number of pamphlets, tracts, discourses, and review articles. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.


ELLERY, William, 1727-1820, founding father, signer of the Declaration of Independence.  Supported Rufus King in trying to abolish slavery in the country. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 326; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 86)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 326:

ELLERY, William, signer of the Declaration of Independence, born in Newport, Rhode Island, 22 December, 1727; died there, 15 February, 1820. His father, of the same name, was graduated at Harvard in 1722, became a successful merchant in Newport, served successively as judge, senator, and lieutenant-governor of the colony, and died in 1764. The younger William received his early education mostly from his father, and was graduated at Harvard in 1747. He married in 1750, engaged in business in Newport, and was for some time naval officer of Rhode Island. He began the practice of law in Newport in 1770, having served for two years previous as clerk of one of the courts. He was an active patriot, and in May, 1776, was chosen the colleague of Stephen Hopkins, as delegate to the Continental congress, and took his seat on the 14th of that month. He became an influential member of that body, serving on the committee to consider the ways and means of establishing expresses between the continental posts, on those on the treasury and on marine affairs, and on the special committee for purchasing clothing for the army. During this session he signed the Declaration of Independence, and he was accustomed in later years to relate with great vivacity the incidents connected with that event. “I was determined,” he said, “to see how they all looked as they signed what might be their death-warrant. I placed myself beside the secretary, Charles Thomson, and eyed each closely as he affixed his name to the document. Undaunted resolution was displayed in every countenance.” Mr. Ellery continued a member of the congress till 1786, with the exception of the years 1780 and 1782, and, overcoming his natural diffidence, became a ready debater. He was a member of important committees, but did especially good service on the board of admiralty, where he had much influence, and probably originated the plan of fitting out fire-ships at Newport. During the British occupation of Rhode Island, Mr. Ellery's house was burned and much of his other property injured. In 1779 he was a member of a committee to arrange some diplomatic difficulties among the American commissioners to Europe, and was chairman of a committee to consider means of relieving the distress brought upon the Rhode Islanders by the British occupation. In 1782 he presented to congress a plan for organizing a department of foreign affairs. In 1785 he actively supported Rufus King in his effort to abolish slavery throughout the country, seconding King's resolution to that effect. He was appointed commissioner of the continental loan-office for Rhode Island in 1786, was for a short period chief justice of the Rhode Island superior court, and from 1790 till his death was collector of Newport, being retained in the office in spite of frequent and frank avowals of political differences with several administrations. Mr. Ellery was of moderate stature, with a large head and impressive features. He was fond of study and literature, and was highly esteemed for his social qualities, being intimate with all the distinguished men of his time. He retained the full use of his faculties to the close of his long life, and died holding in his hand a copy of Cicero's “De Officiis,” which he had been reading. See a biography of Ellery by his grandson, Edward T. Channing, in Sparks's “American Biography,” vol. vi., and Goodrich's “Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence.” Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888.


ELLES, Oliver J., abolitionist, W. Cornwall, Vermont, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-37, 1837-39, 1840-42.


ELLIOT, Samuel Mackenzie, 1811-1857, physician, abolitionist leader, Union Army officer.  Active in the New York abolition movement.


ELLIS, John Millott, 1831-1894, anti-slavery advocate, clergyman, educator.  Proponent of emancipation of enslaved individuals during the Civil War.


ELLIS, William H., abolitionist, New Jersey, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1841-42.


ELLSWORTH, Harry Leavitt, 1791-1858, Hartford, Connecticut, American Colonization Society, Executive Committee, 1840-1841.  Son of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth.  President of the Aetna Life Insurance Company. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 110; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 72, 86)


ELLSWORTH, Oliver, 1745-1807, founding father, statesman, lawyer, chief justice, political leader, opponent of slavery.  Was a drafter of the United States Constitution.  United States Senator from Connecticut, 1789-1796.  Third Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1796-1800.  Ellsworth argued before the Continental Convention against the foreign slave trade.  In order to gain Southern support for the passage of the Constitution, he endorsed the Three-Fifths Compromise on the Enumeration of Slaves. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 335-336; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, pp. 111-115)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, pp. 111-115:

ELLSWORTH, OLIVER (April 29, 1745- November 26, 1807), statesman, chief justice, the second son of Captain David and Jemima (Leavitt) Ellsworth, was born in Windsor, Connecticut, to which town his great-grandfather Josiah Ellsworth had come from Yorkshire, England, about the middle of the seventeenth century. Of his childhood practically nothing of certainty is known. His father, who had set his heart upon Oliver's becoming a minister, gave him the best that the time had to offer in the way of an education. Prepared for college by the Reverend Joseph Bellamy of Bethlehem, he entered Yale in 1762, only to leave that institution for Princeton at the end of his sophomore year. Tradition has perpetuated many stories to account for his leaving Yale, some of which would indicate that his departure was not altogether voluntary;. the one sure bit of information concerning it is found in President Clap's journal (July 27, 1764), "Oliver Ellsworth and Waightstill Avery, at the desire of their respective parents, were dismissed from being members of this college" (Brown, post, p. 16). Whatever the cause of the episode, it apparently produced no permanent ill-feeling. All of Ellsworth's sons who grew up were graduated from Yale, he himself was afterwards a fellow of the corporation, and in 1790 the college conferred upon him the degree of LL.D.-as did Princeton and Dartmouth in 1797. After two years at Princeton, Oliver, now a B.A., returned home and took up the study of theology with the Reverend John Smalley of New Britain. This study did not long continue, however, for within a year he turned to law. For the next four years he studied that subject, doing some teaching in the interval, and being admitted to the bar in 1771. The following year he married Abigail Wolcott of East Windsor.

Legal business came to him so slowly at first that he found it necessary to support himself by farming and even wood-chopping, financial aid from his father apparently having ceased when he definitely gave up fitting himself for the ministry. Too poor to keep a horse, on days when the court was sitting he was forced to walk from his farm to Hartford and back, a round trip of twenty miles. During the first three years of his practise the returns from his profession, by his own admission, amounted to only three pounds Connecticut currency per annum (Henry Flanders; The Lives and Times of the Chief Justices, 1858, 2 series, p. 62). In 1775, after having already represented Windsor in the General Assembly, he moved to Hartford. From this time his rise at the bar was exceptionally rapid. Noah Webster, who in 1779 came to Ellsworth's office to study law, said that he then had usually from one thousand to fifteen hundred cases on his list, and that there was hardly a case tried in which Ellsworth did not represent one side or the other. This large practise, coupled with the general success of his advocacy, brought him recognition as one of the leaders of the Connecticut bar, and enabled him to lay the foundation of what, by shrewd and careful management, became a large fortune. His position made it inevitable that he should be connected with the courts of his state in ways other than merely as a lawyer. He was appointed state's attorney for Hartford County in 1777, and three years later became a member of the Governor's Council. In 1784 this Council was constituted a supreme court of errors of which Ellsworth, by virtue of his office, became one of the judges. Shortly thereafter he was made a judge of the superior court, in which position he continued to serve for the next four years, his resignation from the Council and the office of state's attorney taking place in 1785. It is indicative of the high regard in which he continued to hold the judicial offices of his native state, that after his return from France, he should have been willing again to accept a place on the Governor's Council, and that in the last year of his life, after having already been chief justice of the United States, he should have consented to act as the first chief justice of the new state supreme court of appeals-a consent which ill health forced him to withdraw before he had ever actually entered upon the duties of the office.

Ellsworth was connected with the revolutionary activities of his state almost from the beginning. Shortly after the outbreak of open hostilities in Massachusetts, Connecticut had instituted her Committee of the Pay Table, a commission of five to supervise the expenditures rendered necessary by the state's war measures. Ellsworth was one of the five. Early in 1776 he was sent to General Washington at Cambridge to seek repayment of the money Connecticut had advanced to her men in the Continental Army; later in the same year he was intrusted with a similar mission to General Schuyler in an attempt to recover other moneys which the state had paid to troops employed in Canada. In 1779 he was chosen a member of the important Council of Safety which, with the governor, was in practical control of all military measures. As early as 1777 the General Assembly had appointed him one of the delegates to represent the state in the Continental Congress; chosen annually, he continued to serve in that capacity for six years, declining a further appointment in 1783. Long before he had even started for Philadelphia, Congress had made him one of a committee of five to investigate the failure of the Rhode Island expedition. The day after he took his seat in Congress (October 8, 1778) he was named a member of the committee on marine affairs. Hardly more than two weeks later he was appointed to the committee on appeals, which listened to appeals brought from the Admiralty courts of the various states, and which "was always composed of the ablest lawyers in the House" (Van Santvoord, post, p. 202). Ellsworth became a member of the committee just in time to sit upon the hearing of the appeal in the noted case of Gideon Olmstead and the British sloop Active. Details of his activity in the Congress are obscure. In a general way we know that he was a hard worker, able and conscientious, and that he continued to serve on one committee or another as long as his term lasted. Thus in 1780 he was on the committee appointed to consider the best method of carrying out Washington's plan of supplying the army by requisitions of specific articles laid on the different states. With Hamilton and Madison for colleagues he served on two committees, one of which was concerned with the matter of neutrality agreements, and the other of which was so broad in its scope that its work practically amounted to a consideration of a permanent system of administration. Towards the end of his last term, when the unpaid and mutinous soldiers surrounded the building in which the Congress was sitting, he served with Hamilton and Peters on the committee sent by that body to urge upon the executive council of Pennsylvania the calling out of the state militia.

When Connecticut finally decided to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention, Ellsworth, Roger Sherman, and William S. Johnson were selected to represent the state. The part played by this delegation as a whole in the business of the Convention, especially in the matter of the so-called "Connecticut compromise," is clear enough; the exact influence and importance of the individual members is not so clear. By one writer or another each of the three delegates has been given the credit for having brought about the compromise. Ellsworth's motion that "the rule of suffrage in the 2nd branch be the same with that established by the articles of confederation" (Farrand, post, I, 468), undoubtedly started the discussion that preceded the compromise, and during the debate he seems to have borne the brunt of the attack of the large-state men; but the accuracy of the statement that "to the resolute efforts and persevering energy of Oliver Ellsworth, more than to any other man in the Convention, is the country indebted for the final compromise of the Constitution which gave to each state an equality of representation in the Senate" (Van Santvoord, post, pp. 226-27), may well be questioned. Though it is extremely difficult to gauge the influence of Ellsworth or of any other one man in the Convention, he unquestionably took an active part. His amendment to substitute the words "United States" for the word "national" in a certain resolution then under consideration (G. Hunt and J. B. Scott, The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, 1920, 131-32) seems to have fixed the title which was thereafter used in the Convention to designate the government. He objected to the payment of representatives out of the federal treasury and proposed payment by the states. He favored the three fifths ratio in counting slaves as a basis of both taxation and representation; strangely enough, also, he stood out against the abolition of the foreign slave-trade. He was one of the committee of five, of which Rutledge was the chairman, which prepared for the Convention the fir st official draft of a constitution. His work for the new Constitution did not end at Philadelphia. In the convention which met at Hartford in January 1788 to consider its acceptance or rejection by Connecticut, he spared no effort in explaining it and urging its adoption. His " Letters of a Landholder," printed in the Connecticut Courant and the American Mercury (November 1787- March 1788) and widely circulated, were written with the same object of ratification in view.

Chosen by Connecticut as one of its first two senators under the Constitution, he represented his st ate in the United States Senate for a period of seven years, resigning from that body in the spring of 1796 after he had been appointed chief justice. It was in the Senate that the capabilities of Ellsworth appeared to their best advantage. For the work of organization and of practical detail made necessary by the newness of the government, he seems to have been peculiarly fitted. There can be no question as to the predominant position he enjoyed in the Senate; meager as the details are, they are sufficient to show him as an outstanding figure. A hundred years later the memory of his prestige was still alive in Senate traditions-"If we may trust the traditions that have come down from the time of the Administrations of Washington and Adams, when the Senate sat with closed doors, none of them

[Webster, Clay, Calhoun] ever acquired the authority wielded by the profound sagacity of Ellsworth" (G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 1903, Volume II, p. 45) Among other things he reported the first set of Senate rules and considered a plan for printing the journals; he reported back from conference the first twelve amendments to the Constitution which Congress submitted to the states; he framed the measure which admitted North Carolina, and devised the non-intercourse act that forced Rhode Island into the Union; he reported a bill for the government of the territory of the United States south of the Ohio; he drew up the first bill regulating the consular service; he was on the committees to which were referred Hamilton's plans for funding the national debt and for the incorporation of a bank of the United States, both of which he vigorously seconded. Undoubtedly his most important single piece of work was done in connection with his chairmanship of the committee appointed to bring in a bill organizing the federal judiciary. "That the Judiciary Bill which came from this Committee was, to a large extent, drafted by Ellsworth is now well established" (Warren, post, p. 59). Sections 10 to 23 of the original draft bill are in his handwriting; Maclay of Pennsylvania, himself one of the committee, records that "this vile bill is a child of his, and he defends it with the care of a parent" (E. S. Maclay, The Journal of Willia1n Maclay, 1890, pp. 91-92); Madison also, in two different letters, assigns it to Ellsworth (Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Volume IV, 1865, pp. 220- 21,428). All in all, his work in the Senate made him, as John Adams later said, "the firmest pillar of his [Washington's] whole administration" (C. F. Adams, The Works of John Adams, Volume X, 1856,p. II2).

Ellsworth was commissioned chief justice of the United States (March 4, 1796) after the Senate had refused to confirm the previous appointment of Rutledge, and after Cushing, the senior associate judge, had declined the honor. For about three years and a half he was actively engaged in the duties of his office, which at that time included the arduous task of riding the federal circuits. His short term of office, coupled with the fact that he was immediately followed by the great Marshall, has been advanced by some of his biographers as the reason for his failure to take a higher rank among the chief justices. The real reason would seem to lie elsewhere. Our available sources of information unite in presenting him as a great lawyer; but neither his reported opinions nor the weight of other evidence justify us in calling him a great judge. His decisions, neither many nor long as they have come down to us, are marked by strong common sense, but hardly by great legal learning. He himself seems to have been conscious of his lack of this latter quality, as also of the inadequacy of his previous training and preparation for his new position, and "he accordingly took a severe course of study and reading" (Brown, post, p. 242). He was primarily the advocate rather than the jurist, a champion of the cause he happened to be supporting. This characteristic, which undoubtedly contributed much to his success at the bar, and which showed to very great advantage in his work in the Congress, in the Convention, and in the Senate, could hardly be brought to bear in purely judicial business.

The last notable public service that Ellsworth performed was as commissioner to France in 1799-1800. The mission began inauspiciously, and resulted in no more than partial success. There was decided opposition to it at home because of the harsh treatment which France had recently accorded Pinckney and his associates. Ellsworth, even if he did not share the popular resentment, at least manifested no enthusiasm towards President Adams's new attempt to come to an understanding with France. Reluctantly, and merely "from the necessity of preventing a greater evil," he accepted his commission (February 1799); yet he dreaded the mission and did what he could to postpone it. Consequently it was not until November 3 that he and his colleague Willi am R. Davie [q. v.] left Newport on the frigate United States, to join William Vans Murray [q.v.] in France. After a boisterous passage of more than three weeks they put into Lisbon, rested there a fortnight, and then again set sail, only to be driven off the course by storms and obliged to land near Corunna in Spain. Thence they proceeded overland to Paris, which they did not reach until March 2, 1800. The hardships suffered by Ellsworth during these four months permanently affected his health (Geo. Gibbs, Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, 1846, II, 434). It was thought by some of his friends in America that his mind also had been impaired by his physical breakdown, and that this was the reason why no better terms were secured in the French convention (Ibid., pp. 460,461, 463). After protracted negotiations with Napoleon which lasted into October, the American ministers were obliged to accept an agreement which conformed to neither their earlier hopes nor their instructions. Ellsworth himself was far from satisfied with it, though he regarded it as sufficient in that it kept the United States out of a not improbable war with France (Ibid., p. 463). When Davie and Oliver Ellsworth, Jr., who had been his father's secretary at Paris, and who now bore the latter's resignation of his office of chief justice, left England for America toward the end of October, Ellsworth himself was unable to accompany them. Through the winter he remained in England, traveling by easy stages from pl ace to place, and making an ineffectual effort to regain his health. He left England in March, landed at Boston, where he rested for a few days, and then proceeded to his home in Windsor and, as far as national affairs were concerned, into retirement.

Timothy Dwight describes Ellsworth as "tall, dignified, and commanding" (Travels; in New England and New York, Volume I, 1821, p. 302). "He was particular as to his personal appearance, and never hurried a t his toil et" (H. R. Stiles, History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Volume II, 1892,p.217). By the judgment of his fellows he was a good, and at times a brilliant, conversationalist; yet unlike almost all of his contemporaries in similar stations he was not given to voluminous correspondence. He had an insistent habit of talking to himself, even in the presence of others. His one vice was the taking of snuff, a practise to which he was greatly addicted. It is related by his daughter that "when he was more than ordinarily engaged in thinking, or in writing, he would take out his box at frequent intervals and go through the form of taking a pinch, and would then drop most of the snuff in little piles on the carpet near him. His family sometimes judged of the intensity and depth of his meditations by the number of these piles of snuff around his chair" (Ibid., p. 218). Naturally moderate and conservative, he nevertheless at times manifested a tenacity of purpose that bordered on obstinacy. Aaron Burr said of him, "If Ellsworth had happened to spell the name of the Deity with two d's, it would have taken the Senate three weeks to expunge the superfluous letter" (Brown, post, p. 225). Deeply religious, he was throughout his life not only active in the work of his own (Congregational) church, but he also kept up a lively intellectual interest in religious and theological questions, to, the study of which he turned more and more after his retirement. He had always been free from the bigotry of Puritan New England; his sufferings and illness did not make him an ascetic. In h is very last years, after he had "begun to die" as he wrote one of his friends, agriculture as well as theology occupied his mind, and he published regularly in the Connecticut Courant the "Farmer's Repository," a very practical column on agricultural topics. He was a politician as well as a statesman, and at times was not averse to using the methods of politicians to accomplish his purposes. It is on this basis that his seeming connection with an alleged plot to break up the Union can be explained (G. Hunt, Disunion Sentiment in Congress in 1794, 1905; Brown, post, pp. 228-- 30).

[In addition to the works already named, see Wm. G. Brown, The Life of Oliver Ellsworth (1905); G. Van Santvoord, Sketches of the Lives and Judicial Services of the Chief-Justices (1845); Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (3 volumes, 1911); Charles Warren, "New Light on the History of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789," in Harvard Law Review, November 1923. In the letters, diaries, autobiographies and other writings of many of the contemporary statesmen there is much scattered material on Ellsworth. A number of his own unpublished letters and papers are in existence, some in the New York Public Library, and others in the possession of several of his descendants. A list of these descendants with their addresses will be found in A Memorial of the Opening of the Ellsworth Homestead, a booklet issued by the Connecticut D. A. R. in 1907. The printed decisions of Ellsworth are in Kirby, Connecticut Reports, and in Dallas, U.S. Reports.]

G. K.W.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 335-336:

ELLSWORTH, Oliver, jurist, born in Windsor, Connecticut, 29 April, 1745; died there, 26 November, 1807. He entered Yale in 1762. but afterward went to Princeton, where he was graduated in 1766 with high rank as a scholar. After a year's study of theology he abandoned it for the law, and was admitted to the bar of Hartford county in 1771. He married in the following year, and for three years divided his attention between farming and practice. Becoming states' attorney in 1775, he sold his farm, removed to Hartford, and soon acquired a larger and more remunerative practice than any other member of the Connecticut bar. As a Whig he was chosen, at the outbreak of the Revolution, to represent Windsor in the general assembly, was one of the committee of four, called “the Pay-table,” that managed all the military finances of the colony, and in October, 1778, took his seat as a delegate to the Continental congress, where he served on the marine committee (acting as a board of admiralty) and the committee of appeals. By yearly election, from 1780 till 1784, he was a member of the governor's council, in which he held unrivalled influence, and in June, 1783, left his seat in congress and, although re-elected, declined to serve. In 1784 he declined the appointment of commissioner of the treasury, tendered by congress, but accepted a legislative assignment as judge of the Connecticut superior court, which he held until made a member of the Federal convention at Philadelphia in May, 1787. Here he was conspicuous in advocacy of the rights of the individual states, and it was on his motion that the words “National government” were expunged from the constitution and the words “Government of the United States” substituted. His name was not affixed to that document, because pressing domestic considerations compelled his return home as soon as all of the provisions of the constitution had been completed; but his force and energy were successful the next year in securing its ratification, against much opposition, in the Connecticut state convention. When the new government was organized at New York in 1789, he was one of the senators from Connecticut, and was chairman of the committee for organizing the U. S. judiciary, the original bill, in his own handwriting, passing with but slight alterations, and its provisions being still in force. His watchfulness over the public expenditures earned for him the title of “the Cerberus of the Treasury,” and his abilities were strenuously exercised in building up the financial credit of the government, and for the encouragement and protection of manufactures. John Adams spoke of him as “the finest pillar of Washington's whole administration,” and he was, by common consent, the Federalist leader in the senate. The mission of John Jay to England in 1794 was suggested by him, and by his influence Jay's treaty, though strenuously opposed in the house of representatives, was defended and approved by the senate. In March, 1796, he was appointed chief justice of the U. S. supreme court, and served with distinguished ability till 1799, when President Adams, on the recommendation of the senate, appointed him, with Patrick Henry and Governor William R. Davie, an extraordinary commission to negotiate with France, the relations between which nation and the United States were then severely strained. On reaching Paris, 2 March, 1800, they found Napoleon Bonaparte at the head of the new republic, and soon concluded a satisfactory adjustment of all disputes. The negotiations and discussions were conducted almost exclusively by Judge Ellsworth, and secured all the points most essential to the securing of peace, including a recognition from France of the rights of neutral vessels, and an indemnity for depredations on American commerce. Ill health preventing his immediate return, Mr. Ellsworth sent home his resignation as chief justice and visited England, where, while trying the mineral springs at Bath and elsewhere, he became the recipient of marked attention from the court and from leading public men, as well as from the English bench and bar. After his return to his home in April, 1801, his impaired health decided him to remain free from the cares of public life, but in 1802 he was again elected a member of the governor's council, which acted as a supreme court of errors, being the final court of appeals in Connecticut from all inferior courts of state jurisdiction. In May, 1807, on a reorganization of the state judiciary, he was appointed chief justice of the supreme court, but failing health compelled his resignation within a few months, and he died soon afterward. His extraordinary endowments, accomplishments as an advocate, integrity as a judge, patriotism as a legislator and ambassador, and sincerity as a Christian, were fitly complemented by a fine personal presence and by manners at once plain, unaffected, and social, yet tinctured with a courtliness and dignity which impressed all with whom he came in contact. In 1790 Yale, and in 1797 both Dartmouth and Princeton, conferred on him the degree of LL. D. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 335-336.

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

No country has been so distinguished as our own by the number and prominence of its self-made men. In science, they have been her pioneers, disarming even the lightning of its terror; in prosperity, they have been the guardians of her dearest treasures; in the hour of danger they have gathered, as the Macedonian phalanx, to her side.

The subject of this memoir was not born in obscurity, or compelled to struggle with poverty and ignorance on his passage to renown. Yet he was strictly of that number who, in the “baptism of fame, have given themselves their own name;” and for whom industry and internal resource have stood in the place of parentage and of patrimony.

He sprang, as have many of our mightiest and noblest, from the hardy yeomanry of New England. If he was indebted to education for his greatness, he was still more indebted to patient labor; as the firmly-rooted oak owes less to culture, than to its power of enduring those changes of climate which roughen its trunk but reveal its energy.

OLIVER ELLSWORTH was born in Windsor, one of the most anciently settled towns in Connecticut, on the 29th of April, 1745, of respectable parents, inured to the pursuits of agriculture. From them he derived the virtues of industry, economy, and integrity, which were incorporated with the elements of his character. He derived also physical benefits from a system of nurture which rejected all luxurious indulgence. Of him it might be said, as it was of Chief Justice Marshall, that “his health was invigorated by the athletic exercises to which his father inured him.” Perhaps, also, from some sternness of parental discipline, which was often a feature of these early times, his mind drew a portion of its Spartan firmness. His boyhood was so divided between agricultural toils and classical studies, as to impress the invaluable lessons of the worth of time and the necessity of application.

At the age of seventeen he entered Yale College, whence he afterwards removed to Princeton, and received there his honorary degree at the completion of his twenty-first year. It is not known that his academic course exhibited any remarkable superiority. Precocity was not a feature of his mind. The slow ripening of its powers betokened a deep root and long-continued harvest.

After terminating his collegiate studies, he engaged in the instruction of youth, that most honorable employment to which so many of our greatest men have for a time devoted themselves. Though surrounded by gay companions, he was enabled to resist their influence, and make choice of that piety which was to be his guide on the slippery heights of honor, and his strength amid the feebleness of hoary hairs. It laid its strong foundation at that momentous period when youth is most tempted to contend with the restrictions of morality and to forget God. His clear-sighted and majestic mind acknowledged the truth of revelation, and humbled itself at the foot of the cross with child-like simplicity. His public profession of a Christian’s faith, made when religion was less fashionable than it is at present, gave proof of that fearless integrity in duty which is an element of true greatness. He had a predilection for Theology, and made respectable progress in its preparatory studies; but ultimately decided on the profession of law.

His marriage was early in life, and the result of mutual attachment. The lady, who was of the highly-respected family of the Wolcotts, by her unwearied and judicious attention to domestic care, left his mind at liberty for higher departments. They became the parents of nine children, six of whom still survive, connected with the aristocracy of their native State.

At the commencement of his household establishment, he found himself thrown upon his own resources. A farm of wild land in the parish of Wintonbury, and an axe, were the gifts of his father, with the understanding that they completed his full moiety of the paternal estate. But as the shield given by the Spartan mothers to their sons, with the charge, “return with it or return upon it,” enkindled an indomitable courage; so the consciousness of entire self-dependence awoke a spirit which was to conquer all obstacles. In those rough preliminary toils, by which land is cleared and subjected to cultivation, he performed the service of a day-laborer, and at night pursued those studies by which his future eminence was to be attained. The materials with which the fences of his farm were to be constructed he wrought with his own hands from the trees that grew upon it, nor remitted this branch of labor until it was completely enclosed. With hands swollen by unaccustomed effort, and painful from the wounds of thorns with which he contended, he came every morning during the session of the courts, to Hartford, returning at night to take charge of his cattle, and to sustain the imperative duties of an agriculturist. In this union of differing and difficult professions he evinced great mental vigor and physical endurance. It is impossible to view the future Chief Justice of the United States at this period of his existence without peculiar and touching interest. At dawn, like Cincinnatus, at his plough, and at eve laying his hand on the mighty fabric of jurisprudence, as if, like the chosen people, he followed the “pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.”

It would seem that no ambition of distinction had at this time stimulated his career. Perhaps his mind was not fully aware of its own Herculean powers. Its moving principle had been the simple consciousness of duty,—a desire to provide for a growing family, and to be found faithful in the stewardship of entrusted time and talents.

During a period of extreme exertion, while sustaining a difficult cause at the bar in Hartford, he received a new incentive—the voice of praise. “Who is that young man? He speaks well.” These were the words of a stranger. They sank into his heart. As he went homeward, he ruminated upon them. “He speaks well.” It was a new idea to him. Vanity was not inherent to an intellect of his order, but the sweetness of merited praise came when it began to be needed as an encouragement on its arduous course. Of this incident he spoke, even in his latest years, to his children. It would be interesting, were it possible to discover who thus touched with electric spark that mighty mind, and aided in developing its latent force.

The increase of his business imposed the necessity of a removal to Hartford. There he received the lucrative office of States’ attorney, and was yearly elected representative to the general assembly. At the commencement of the war of the Revolution he took firm ground in favor of the independence of the country. He even went out with the militia of the county when incursions were made by the enemy into his native State. This he did, not from any complacency in military life, but to show his approbation of the cause for which resistance was hazarded. In 1777 he was chosen a delegate to Congress; in 1784 a Judge of the Superior Court of Connecticut; and in 1789 a senator of the United States, under their new confederation. His talents as a man, and his learning as a jurist, were now put in strict requisition for the public good. The system of policy which he advocated was dignified and consistent. Avoidance of useless expenditure, prompt execution of the laws, an open and severe simplicity, were its distinguishing features. The regimen that promotes the health of republics was well understood by him. It was the same which, as an individual, he had pursued with safety and success.

His mind had the capacity of intense and stern application. Never was this more folly tested than during those seven years when he filled a seat in the senate of the United States. So deep was his love of country, that when any important point, involving her interests, was in discussion, he has been known to pass the whole night traversing his chamber, and repelling sleep, until he had possessed himself of the subject in all its bearings. With such forgetfulness of self did he tax his energies, that after the termination of such questions he would be left exhausted, as after some extreme physical exertion.

It was remarked, that from these labors in the senate his mind evidently gained breadth and expansion. As the period of his continuance there extended beyond his fiftieth year, an argument is thus obtained to disprove the theory that rigidity settles upon intellect as upon the muscles, and that age may limit its improvement as easily as to chain the limbs from their elastic play.

In the spring of 1796 he received the appointment of Chief Justice of the United States. It was the universal suffrage of the nation that there was in him a fitness for the high honor of a place in that body, which, like the ancient Ephori, lifted the supremacy of the law above all other symbols of earthly majesty. In the discharge of the duties of this elevated station he displayed an immoveable patience, and a judgment of men and things matured by long experience. His clear conceptions of right and wrong were never confused by a heated imagination or morbid feelings. He was slow in arriving at the truth, but in his decisions inflexible. His impartiality won the confidence of all; and throughout his whole judicial career, his integrity remained untarnished and above suspicion.

It was with reluctance that the nation saw him about to be withdrawn from a post where she was hourly deriving benefits from his wisdom, to assume the office of ambassador to France. But a crisis in our political intercourse with that kingdom, involving danger of hostilities, required peculiar skill in negotiation, and he was appointed, in conjunction with Governor Davie of North Carolina, and the Hon. William V. Murray, then resident minister at the Hague. This was a nomination which he would not have desired; and though his patriotism induced him to acquiesce, it was at an expense of health from which he never fully recovered. Physical infirmities, which before his departure had revealed themselves, became confirmed by the hardships of a protracted voyage and the fatigues of foreign travel, into incurable diseases.

It was at the close of the year 1799 that he took passage to Europe. He found the government of France, then under the consulship of Bonaparte, unsettled and fluctuating. Duplicity and intrigue gave coloring to its diplomacy. His upright mind, severe in rectitude, found there little congeniality. Its earnestness for the right, and its strict morality, were even marked as traits of imbecility, by a cabinet whose pole-star was expediency.

After concluding the business entrusted to him, he passed over into England, and experienced high gratification from a view of that glorious island, and an acquaintance with its illustrious men. He was accompanied on his travels in Europe by his eldest son, a promising youth, whose unremitting devotion to his collegiate studies had seriously impaired his health. It was difficult, even by the excitement and novelty of foreign cities, to divert his attention from books. He received, therefore, but slight benefit from change of scene; and his death, which took place soon after his return, while making trial of the more genial climate of the West Indies, was a deep affliction to the affectionate father.

An incident connected with his return from Europe, shows the place that religion habitually held in his soul. He had resigned the office of Chief Justice of the United States, that he might devote the remainder of his life to that retirement and domestic tranquillity from which he had been so long an exile. His arrival at his home was therefore anticipated with an eagerness proportioned to his long absence, and to the cheering hope of retaining him there. At his beautiful mansion in Windsor all was joyful expectancy. His children listened to the echo of every approaching wheel, and saddened at perceiving that it had not brought their father. At length his own carriage was indeed descried. The whole family group hastened forth to welcome him. Wife, and son, and daughter, and servant born in his house, were there. It was a thrilling moment. The profound statesman, whose wealth and fame had been purchased by no sacrifice of virtue, wearied with those services which had rendered his name illustrious, was coming to share the repose of his native shades, and to be parted from them no more. He alighted from his carriage. But he spoke not to his wife. He returned not the embrace of his children. He glanced not even at his twin boys, the youngest of that beloved circle. Leaning over his gate, and covering his face, he first silently breathed a prayer of gratitude to that Being who gave him once more to see his habitation in safety and in peace. He took not the full cup of joy that was pressed to his lips until it had been hallowed by devotion, until he had humbly, yet openly, acknowledged the God who had “led him all his life long, to that day.

His resolution to abstain from all public service in future, he found it impossible perfectly to preserve. The urgent solicitations of the people, combining with a patriotism which never slumbered, induced him, in 1802, to accept the office of member of the Council of Connecticut, in which he continued till his death. In 1807 he received the appointment of Chief Justice of his native State; but his increasing infirmities led him to decline the offered honor.

The leisure to which he had been for many years a stranger, enabled him to cultivate domestic enjoyment, and to recur, as an occasional amusement, to agricultural occupation. His ardent affections found delight in the society of his children. The love of children had always been one of his prominent traits of character. From the chicanery and selfishness of mankind, he turned with renewed pleasure to their simplicity. It was remarked of him in early life, that when deeply engaged in those absorbing studies which afterwards won for him fortune and renown, he daily spent some time in caressing his neighbor’s children. He even seemed disappointed when any circumstance prevented this accustomed intercourse. Though there were long periods in which he was compelled to seclude himself from the pleasures of the domestic circle, yet he would sometimes permit his own little ones to enter his study when occupied in the severest toils of thought, and draw pictures for their amusement. “I like to indulge them in this way,” he observed; “and when it is necessary to deny them, I send them to their mother.”

As they advanced in age, their improvement, and the formation of their habits, were felt by him in their full importance. The incalculable worth of time, the duty of industry, the folly of extravagance, the necessity of rectitude and piety, were impressed both by precept and example. In his letters, when absent from them, his rules for conduct and principle were expressed with striking adaptation to their difference of age or character. His family letters, notwithstanding the magnitude and pressure of public business, were exhibitions of correct and beautiful chirography. In one of these, addressed to his wife, while a senator in the first Congress convened at New-York, in 1789, he says:—

“The family in which I live have no white children. But I often amuse myself with a colored one about the size of our little daughter, who peeps into my door now and then, with a long story, which I cannot more than half understand. Our two sons I sometimes fancy that I pick out among the little boys playing at marbles in the street. Our eldest daughter is, I trust, alternately employed, between her book and her wheel. You must teach her what is useful, the world will teach her enough of what is not. The nameless little one I am hardly enough acquainted with to have much idea of; yet I think she occupies a corner of my heart, especially when I consider her at your breast.”

Alluding to the death of an infant, several years after the event had taken place, he says, in a letter to his wife:—“He who bore your countenance and my name—the world has never been the same to me since his death.”

These traits of household tenderness are peculiarly delightful in great men. Perhaps we unconsciously associate with them some idea of sternness, and are cheered when we find them linked to our common nature by its gentler sympathies. In tracing to their familiar sources the warm current of his affections, we find that neither the toils of an absorbing profession, the tumults of political life, nor the cares of greatness, made him insensible to the enjoyments of the fireside, indifferent to the innocent sports of infancy, or regardless of the humble happiness of childhood.

His long intercourse with, men of education and rank created no contempt for the rustic society and conversation of a retired country village. He knew how to demean himself to men of low degree. His was that simple moral greatness, which never fears to demean itself by association with inferiors. He especially pitied those in a state of servitude. He treated them with a kindness and sympathy that won their confidence without diminishing their respect. He felt that in a republic the grades of distinction ought not to be jealously defined. His dignity had no need of the petty props of haughtiness and reserve.

Mingled with his, high intellectual endowments, was a clear and direct common sense. This kept him from mistake in the every-day affairs of life, where sometimes the greatest men have been so much at a loss, as to subject themselves to the scoffs of the vulgar, and even to bring greatness into disrepute among the multitude. He was thoroughly and practically acquainted with many of those details which wealth seldom understands and often despises. This was remarked with wonder during his tour through the southern States. There, in the court-yard of a public house, when the stage-coach had sustained same injury, the inquiry was once made, “Who is that gentleman who understands every thing, and is eloquent about a coach-wheel?” “The Chief Justice of the United States,” was the reply.

His example before his household was calculated to impress the importance of that religion which he revered and loved. Guests occasionally present at their morning and evening devotions, were solemnized by the fervor and sublimity of his prayers. He inculcated on all under his roof a reverence for the sabbath; and was in the habit of gathering them around him, and reading them a sermon, in addition to the public worship of the day. During the changes of an eventful life, the fluctuations of revolution, the interruptions incidental to high office, the gaiety of the court of France, and the desultory habits imposed by foreign travel, he never overlooked the sacred obligation of the sabbath, or shunned to give infidelity a “reason for the hope that was in him.”

As he approached the close of life, the Inspired Volume, which had from youth been his guide and counsellor, became more and more dear. Like a new book, it revealed to him unknown treasures. It was both affecting and sublime, to see one who had attained such eminence in the knowledge of human laws, sitting at the feet of the Supreme Lawgiver with the docility of a child. Day and night, while he stood on the verge of a higher existence, did his soul, disengaging itself from earthly things, search the scriptures of truth with solemnity and delight. His last illness was sustained with the fortitude of a Christian; and his death took place on the 26th of November, 1807, in the sixty-third year of his age.

In contemplating his elevated character, we are struck with the prominence of high and inflexible rectitude, and of that patriotism which, forgetful of self, firmly endured toil and sustained privation. What was said of his excellent friend, Roger Sherman, might with equal propriety be affirmed of him—that his “actions, whether public or private, were attended by the secret interrogatory, what course is right? and that he never once propounded to himself the question, will it be popular?” He has also been heard to assert, that in youth he took Sherman for his model; and the elder President Adams remarked, in his sententious manner, that “this was praise enough for both.” Let it also be added, as a part of the fame of Judge ELLSWORTH, that his pure principles, and the wisdom which regulated his political course, won for him both the praise and friendship of Washington.

The structure of his mind was lofty and well-balanced. His eloquence rested on the basis of the reasoning powers. It aimed not to dazzle, but to convince. It has been pronounced deficient in the graces of imagination. But the devotion with which he embraced that majestic and severe science, which takes cognizance of man in his capacity of “impeding or being impeded;” which demands dexterity to untwist thespider-web of invention, strength to strike and wisdom to arrest those ideas of justice which come “only as the lightning flash amid the storm of human passions,” scarcely comports with the play of fancy or the luxury of leisure. The department of imagination was therefore in him uncultivated. Thought, accustomed, like the laborer, to split the “unwedgeable and knotty oak,” could not stoop to trim the vine or to train the flower. In his mind the sentiment of the beautiful was overpowered by combinations derived from the useful and the just. But the truth that philosophy seeks, and the faith that Christianity imposes, held ever their high places in his soul.

We perceive in him a predominance of those virtues which give permanence to republics—indefatigable industry, opposition to luxury and extravagance, contempt of show and pretension, inflexible integrity, respect for men of low degree, love of country, and fear of God. His was the intellectual and moral power that would have arrested heterogeneous and fluctuating particles, and settled them into order and durability.

Educate a race with his principles and habits, and let them determine the question, whether a republic is a form of government intrinsically and necessarily perishable.

The name of OLIVER ELLSWORTH, by every succeeding generation in this land of freedom, should be held venerable and dear; coupled with the memory of our early liberties, and with the virtues that preserve them.

It will not be inapposite to close this brief sketch with the inscription on his monument, from the pen of his valued friend, the late Chauncey Goodrich, Governor of the State of Connecticut:

To the Memory of
OLIVER ELLSWORTH, LL.D.
An assistant in the Council, and
a Judge of the Superior Court
of the State of Connecticut;
A member of the Convention which formed,
and of the State Convention of Connecticut which adopted
the Constitution of the United States:
Senator, and Chief Justice of the United States:
One of the Envoys Extraordinary, and
Ministers Plenipotentiary,
who made the Convention of 1801,
between the United States and the French Republic.
Amiable and exemplary
in all the relations of the domestic, social, and Christian character.
Pre-eminently useful
in all the elevated offices he sustained;
Whose great talents,
under the guidance of inflexible integrity,
consummate wisdom,
and enlightened zeal,
employed in his country’s cause and service,
placed him among the first of the illustrious statesmen
who achieved the Independence,
and established the Government of the American Republic;
reflecting lustre
on the character of his native State,
and of the United States.
Born at Windsor, on the 29th of April, 1745:
and there died,
on the 26th of November, 1807.
Conjugal affection and filial piety
have erected this monument.

Source: National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 1839, Volume 4.



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.