Fon-Fow: Fonerdon through Fowler

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.


FONERDON, Adam, Maryland, abolitionist, member and delegate of the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of Free Negroes, and Others, Unlawfully Held in Bondage, founded 1789. 

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


FOOT, Charles E., Michigan, Vice president of the Liberty League, 1848.

(Rodriguez, 2007, p. 51)


FOOT, Solomon (November 19, 1802-March 28, 1866), lawyer, politician.  U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator.  Opposed war with Mexico.  Opposed slavery and its extension into new territories.  Founding member of the Republican Party.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 495; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, pp. 498-499:

FOOT, SOLOMON (November 19, 1802-March 28, 1866), lawyer, politician, son of Solomon and Betsey (Crossett) Foot, was born at Cornwall, Vt. His father, a physician, died while he was still a child, but in spite of many difficulties and privations he secured an education, graduating at Middlebury College in 1826. For five years following graduation he engaged in teaching, most of the time as principal of Castleton Seminary, interrupted by one year (1827-28) as tutor at the University of Vermont. He studied law in the meantime, was admitted to the bar in 1831, and established himself in practise at Rutland. Though an able lawyer his early and long continued activity in public affairs prevented his attaining real prominence at the bar. In 1833 he was elected to the legislature as representative of Rutland. He was reelected in 1835, 1837, 1838, and 1847, and in each of the last three terms served as speaker. In the latter capacity, declared Senator Poland, "he first displayed that almost wonderful aptitude and capacity as the presiding officer of a deliberative assembly, which afterward made him so celebrated throughout the nation" (Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, 1 Session, p. 1908). He was a member of the constitutional convention of 1836 and prosecuting attorney of Rutland County from 1836 to 1842.

He was an active Whig and as such was elected to Congress in 1842, serving two terms until 1847 when he declined a renomination and returned to his legal practise. His service in the House was without special interest or distinction but he was strongly opposed to the Mexican policy of the administration and denounced the war which resulted. In 1850 he was elected to the United States Senate and served until his death sixteen years later, being at that time the senior member in point of continuous service. His opposition to the extension of slavery led him to join the new Republican organization when the Whig party finally disintegrated. During his first term in the Senate he also served for a year (1854-55) as president of the Brunswick & Florida Railroad Company, visiting England in connection with the sale of its securities and the purchase of material.

Foot was not distinguished as an orator and most of his remarks are brief and pointed interjections in the course of debate. His speech of March 20, 1858, on the proposed admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution (Congressional Globe, 35 Congress, 1 Session, App., pp. 153-58) shows, however, that he was capable of sustained argument and close reasoning, had he wished to devote himself to long set addresses. It was as a presiding officer that he appears to have made the deepest impression on his contemporaries. He was president pro tempore throughout most of the Thirty-sixth Congress and all of the Thirty-seventh, besides being often called on to preside when the regular incumbents were not available. "He was perhaps more frequently called to the ... chair than any other Senator," said J. B. Grinnell of Iowa, who also declares that his services had left a permanent impress on the parliamentary decorum and methods of the Senate (Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, 1 Session, p. 1924). In parliamentary law Charles Sumner testified, "he excelled and was master of us all." Fessenden, Reverdy Johnson, and others paid similar tribute to his fine presence, fairness, courage, and dignity in the chair as well as to the personal qualities which made him one of the most popular members of the upper chamber. When his death was announced, the splenetic Gideon Welles, never given to flattery of his associates, and usually suspicious of senators in particular, wrote in his diary (Diary of Gideon Welles, 19n, II, 466) that he had been a firm friend of the Navy Department, was "pater senatus and much loved and respected." His most notable committee service was rendered as chairman of the committee on public buildings and grounds, in which capacity he was able, in spite of the stringency of the Civil War, to push forward the completion of the Capitol. Judged by occasional remarks in the course of debate on appropriation bills, he appears to have had certain ideals as to the future development of the government property in Washington not altogether common at that time. He was twice married: July 9, 1839, to Emily Fay; and April 2, 1844, to Mary Ann (Hodges) Dana. He died in Washington, D. C.

[Geo. F. Edmunds, in Addresses Delivered before the Vt. Historical Society, October 16, 1866 (1866); N. Seaver, A Discourse delivered at the Funeral of Hon. Solomon Foot (1866); L. Matthews, History of the Town of Cornwall, Vt. (1862); N. Goodwin, The Foote Family (1849); G. W. Benedict, in Hours at Home (New York), July 1866; W. H. Crockett, Vermont, V (1923), 368-69; Proc. Vt. Historical Society for the Years 1919-1920 (1921); Daily Morning Chronicle (Washington, D. C.), March 29, 30, April 2, 1866; Rutland Daily Herald, March 29-April 2, 1866; Burlington Times, March 31, April 7, 1866; Vt. Watchman & State Journal (Montpelier), April 6, 1866.)

W.A.R.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 495:

FOOT, Solomon, senator, born in Cornwall, Addison county, Vt., 19 November, 1802; died in Washington, D. C., 28 March, 1866. He was graduated at Middlebury in 1826, was principal of Castleton, Vt., seminary in 1826-'8, tutor in Vermont university in 1827, and in 1828-'31 held the chair of natural philosophy in the Vermont academy of medicine, Castleton. He was admitted to the bar in the latter year, and began practice in Rutland, where he lived until his death. He was a member of the legislature in 1833, 1836-'8, and 1847, speaker of the house in 1837-'8 and 1847, delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1836, and state attorney for Rutland in 1836-'42. He was then elected to congress as a Whig, and served from 1843 till 1847. He was an unsuccessful candidate for clerk of the house in 1849, was then chosen U. S. senator from Vermont, and served from 1851 till his death, becoming a Republican in 1854. He was chairman of important committees, and was president pro tempore of the senate during a part of the 36th congress and the whole of the 37th. Senator Foot was prominent in debate, and took an active part in the discussions on the admission of Kansas to the Union in 1858. He was chosen president of the Brunswick and Florida railroad company about 1854, and visited England to negotiate the bonds of the company. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 495.


FOOTE, Charles C., Michigan, American Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1856-59.


FOOTE, Hiram, 1808-1889, abolitionist, agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), Hartford, Connecticut.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 185)


FOOTE, J. A., Cleveland, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1837-39


FORBES, Abner, Vermont, general, soldier.  Officer, Vermont auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1835-38. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 76)


FORBES, John Murray (February 23, 1813- October 12, 1898), a businessman.  Industrial entrepreneur, abolitionist, philanthropist, American railroad magnate.  President of the Michigan Central Railroad and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.  Opposed the introduction of slavery into Kansas and supplied money and weapons to the cause.  Forbes was an elector for Abraham Lincoln in 1860. 

(Hughes, Sarah Forbes, ed. Life and Recollections of John Murray Forbes. Houghton, Mifflin, 1899.  Pearson, Henry. An American Railroad Builder: John Murray Forbes. Houghton, Mifflin, 1911.  Pease & Pease, 1972).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, pp. 506-507:

FORBES, JOHN MURRAY (February 23, 1813- October 12, 1898), a businessman, and also an active participant in public affairs, was born in Bordeaux, France, the son of Ralph Bennet and Margaret Perkins Forbes of Boston, Massachusetts, and grandson of Reverend John Forbes [q. v.] rector at St. Augustine in East Florida. At the age of fifteen he entered the counting-house of his uncles in Boston, and presently went to Canton, China, to represent them. During seven years in the Orient he gave evidence of unusual business abilities; and when he returned to America at the age of twenty-four, he had accumulated a fortune sufficient to enable him to take a position of importance in the commercial world. During the next nine years his investments on land and sea prospered, and in 1846 he turned his attention to railroad building and management in the West.

A group of capitalists, of whom he was the prime mover, purchased the unfinished Michigan Central Railroad from the State for $2,000,000, carried it to Lake Michigan, and then to Chicago, at the same time supplying funds for the connecting link between Detroit and Buffalo through Ontario. He next financed and put in operation the roads from Chicago to the Mississippi River and across Iowa, which formed the nucleus of what later became the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy system, and he was also responsible for the building of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad in Missouri. During the period of the Civil War and the years immediately following, his attention was given chiefly to public affairs; but in consequence of the panic of 1873 and of the necessity for effecting a change in the management of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, he became again the leading spirit in the direction of its affairs, occupying the position of president for two or three years, ending in 1881. He brought to the problems of railroad-building energy, courage, sound business judgment, integrity, and a broad view of the relation of the railroads to the public interest. Through the force of his personality the roads in which he was interested acquired a character and stability which distinguished them sharply from most of the railroads of that day.

His important public service began at the outset of the Civil War, when he became the most active helper of Governor John A. Andrew in putting the State of Massachusetts on a war footing. Of his many activities perhaps the most distinctive was the help which he rendered in the organization of its negro regiments. At Washington his knowledge of maritime affairs made him particularly helpful to the Navy Department. In 1863 he was sent unofficially to England to purchase, if possible, the ships known as the Laird rams, which were then being built for the Confederacy; and later he himself, with a few others, built a cruiser, larger than the Confederate Alabama, which he intended to sell to the government at cost. He organized the Loyal Publication Society, an effective bureau for propaganda; he was constantly consulted by officials in all branches of the government; he was untiring in giving suggestions and practical help on many matters of moment. His intense desire that the war should be prosecuted vigorously made him chafe at Lincoln's "slowness"; and he often made use of friends who had Lincoln's ear to put before him policies, such as the arming of the blacks, which he believed essential to Northern success. He was known to be disinterested, and his influence and accomplishment were great in proportion; furthermore, he consistently maintained the policy of keeping himself in the background and letting the credit for his actions go to others. After the war he was for some years a member of the national executive committee of the Republican party; but in 1884, as a protest against the nomination of James G. Blaine, he left the party and voted for Cleveland.

On February 8, 1834, Forbes was married to Sarah Hathaway of New Bedford. Of their six children the oldest son, William Hathaway, became president of the Bell Telephone Company. His summer home, from 1857, was the island of Naushon at the entrance of Buzzard's Bay, and he made the place memorable by the simple yet generous hospitality that he exercised and the distinguished men and women who were his guests. It is Forbes's quality as host that is the theme of Ralph Waldo Emerson's well-known characterization of him in Letters and Social Aims (Riverside Edition, p. 101). "Never was such force, good meaning, good sense, good action, combined with such domestic lovely behavior, such modesty and persistent preference for others. Wherever he moved he was the benefactor. It is of course that he should ride well, shoot well, sail well, keep house well, administer affairs well; but he was the best talker, also, in the company. . . . Yet I said to myself, How little this man suspects, with his sympathy for men and his respect for lettered and scientific people, that he is not likely, in any company, to meet a man superior to himself. And I think this is a good country that can bear such a creature as he is." [Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes (2 volumes, 1899); Henry Greenleaf Pearson, An American Railroad Builder, John Murray Forbes (1911). Three volumes of Letters and three of Reminiscences, privately printed, contain abundant biographical details and reveal Forbes as a remarkably vigorous and racy writer.]

H. G. P.


FORD, Gordon Lester (December 16, 1823- November 14, 1891), lawyer, bibliophile.  One of the earliest advocates of the abolition of slavery, he was largely instrumental in founding the Brooklyn Union in 1863.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, pp. 514-515:

FORD, GORDON LESTER (December 16, 1823- November 14, 1891), lawyer, bibliophile, tracing his American ancestry from Andrew Ford, an Englishman who emigrated to Weymouth, Massachusetts, in 1654, was the son of Lester and Eliza (Burnham) Ford. He was born at Lebanon, Connecticut. At the age of eleven he was sent to New York to enter the employ of his mother's brother, Gordon Burnham, a successful merchant. After this time his only schooling consisted of two term s in one of the city's night-schools. Even at that early age, he showed an innate aptitude for business and bookkeeping, and subsequently became accountant for the firm later well known as H. B. Claflin & Company. During these earlier years he lived with the family of the Quaker, John Gray, imbibing from such association many of the traits of that sect which he exhibited throughout his life. When still a young man, he entered the office of the United States marshal, studied law in his leisure moments, and was admitted to the New York County bar in 1850. He never seriously practised his profession, however, but devoted himself to business enterprise, in which he was uniformly successful. In 1852 he became president of the New London, Willimantic & Palmer Railroad, which position he held till 1856, when, soon after his marriage, he retired, and after a year or two in the suburbs of New York, made his home in Brooklyn. He speedily became identified with the leading institutions of that city. One of the earliest advocates of the abolition of slavery, he was largely instrumental in founding the Brooklyn Union in 1863. Appointed United States collector of internal revenue for the third collection district in 1869, he was removed in 1872 because he refused to allow political assessments for campaign purposes. Hitherto a stanch Republican, he now associated himself with the Liberal Republicans and was one of the Brooklyn delegates to the Cincinnati convention of May 1873, at which Horace Greeley was nominated for the presidency, though Ford himself actively supported Charles Francis Adams. In 1873 he became business manager of the New York Tribune, continuing in that position till 1881. Two years later he was elected president of the Brooklyn, Flatbush & Coney Island Railroad, but held the position for only a few months, retiring in order to devote himself to his private business affairs. He was heavily interested in Brooklyn commercial and financial institutions, particularly in the Peoples, Franklin and Hamilton Trust companies, and had with great prescience invested in real estate prior to the expansion of the city. From the first he associated himself with all movements aiming at the promotion of intellectual and artistic progress of the city. He was one of the founders of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Brooklyn Art Association, to both of which he gave much time and service. The Brooklyn Library, the Long Island Historical Society, and the Hamilton Club, organized in 1882 to take the place of the Hamilton Literary Association of Brooklyn, are also institutions with which he was intimately associated.

Throughout his life he was an enthusiastic, yet discriminating collector of books and manuscripts, relating principally to the history of America. His collection became the most valuable private library in America and before his death, the choicest collection of Americana in the world, containing 50,000 volumes, nearly 100,- 000 manuscripts, and autographic matter valued then at $100,000 (Bulletin of the New York Public Library, III, 1899, p. 52). He married Emily Ellsworth, daughter of Prof. William C. Fowler of Amherst, Massachusetts, and grand-daughter of Noah Webster. Eight children were born to them, two of whom, Paul Leicester Ford [q.v.] and Worthington Chauncey Ford, inherited their father's literary and historical interests. Gordon Lester Ford's only literary production was a foreword to Websteriana, a Catalogue of Books by Noah Webster (1882), though he superintended the publication of a number of volumes of original and previously unpublished material from his collection. In 1899 his entire library was presented to the New York Public Library by his sons in memory of their father.

[Obituary notice in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 14, 1891; E. R. Ford, Ford Genealogy (1916), pp. 12-13; private information.]

H. W. H. K.


FORD, Lewis, abolitionist, Abington, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1855-58.


FOREST, David M., founding charter member of the American Colonization Society, Washington, DC, December 1816. 

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


FORMAN, E., charter member of the American Colonization Society, Washington, DC, December 1816. 

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


FORNEY, John Wien (September 30, 1817- December 9, 1881), Philadelphia journalist, Republican party supporter.  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, pp. 526-527:

FORNEY, JOHN WIEN (September 30, 1817- December 9, 1881), Philadelphia journalist, was born at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, of German descent, the son of Peter and Margaret (Wien) Forney. His brief schooling was terminated when at thirteen he went to work in a store. Three years later he became an apprentice in the printing-office of the Lancaster Journal. When he was twenty he became editor and part owner of a dying newspaper, the Lancaster Intelligencer, and in two years brought it to sufficient prosperity to enable him to unite it with the Journal and to marry Elizabeth Mathilda Reitzel in 1840. As a Democratic editor Forney attached himself at the outset of his career to the political fortunes of James Buchanan, whose presidential ambitions he made the means of his own advance locally and nationally. When Buchanan became secretary of state in 1845, President Polk appointed Forney deputy surveyor of the port of Philadelphia. This plum enabled its recipient to sell out at Lancaster and remove to Philadelphia, where in partnership with A. Boyd Hamilton he became editor and proprietor of the Pennsylvanian.

After the defeat of the Democrats in 1848, he sought election as clerk of the House of Representatives, but in spite of Buchanan's aid he failed to secure the position until 1851. He rendered active service in the campaign of 1852 and then became an editorial writer for the Washington Daily Union, the paper that enjoyed the executive patronage. In 1854 he was admitted to partnership in this paper and aided his partner A. O. P. Nicholson in obtaining the lucrative printing contracts of the House of Representatives. Meantime, he had become involved in a journalistic feud with a Virginia newspaper rival, Beverly Tucker of the Washington Sentinel, in which the powerful Virginia Democrats sided with Tucker. Forney resented also what he considered Southern persecution of his friend Governor Reeder in his Kansas difficulties. Finally, his friendship for Buchanan when Pierce was seeking renomination made his situation more than ever impossible, so in 1856 he relinquished his share in the Union, after presiding over the House of Representatives most successfully during the strenuous scenes of the two months' struggle for the speakership in 1855-56. This release left him free to devote himself to his great ambition, Buchanan's nomination and election as president.

Then came the question: what was to be the reward for his twenty years' loyalty? Both Buchanan and Forney agreed that he should have the Union with the fortune that came from the congressional printing. But Forney's enemies blocked this move. Then Forney desired to be senator from Pennsylvania; but Cameron defeated him, in spite of the fact that President Buchanan's influence gained the caucus nomination for him. Buchanan then offered him his choice of the Liverpool consulship or the naval office at Philadelphia; but Forney was committed to other men for these posts, and Mrs. Forney, who was in an unfortunate state of health, was bitterly opposed to his accepting either position. The twenty years of loyalty soon melted into distrust and dissatisfaction. Forney decided to go back to Philadelphia journalism, and there established the Press ostensibly in support of Buchanan in August 1857. Buchanan, however, could not or would not aid him with public printing. When Walker came back from Kansas and Douglas opened fire upon the Buchanan administration, Forney joined forces with them; by 1860 he had become a Republican and had resumed his old position as clerk of the House; a year later he became secretary of the Senate and continued in that position until 1868.

In 1861 Forney founded the Sunday Morning Chronicle, and on November 3, 1862, he began publishing a daily edition (the Daily Morning Chronicle), at the suggestion, it was afterward said, of President Lincoln, who feared the influence in the Army of the Potomac of the New York Tribune, which was critical of the administration (see Sunday Chronicle, December 11, 1881). At all events, with the Chronicle and the Press, Forney actively supported the Lincoln administration. He also supported President Johnson at first, but when the radicals began their warfare upon the administration Forney followed them and Andrew Johnson had no more virulent critic than Forney's Chronicle. During Grant's administration Forney sold out his Washington paper (1870) and went back to Philadelphia. Here he became collector of the port (1871) but retired within a year. The remaining ten years of his life were spent in journalism, Havel, and lecturing. In 1878 he founded and edited at Philadelphia a weekly magazine called Progress. Once more he changed his political allegiance, becoming a Democrat and writing The Life and Military Career of Winfield Scott Hancock (1880) as a campaign biography. He also wrote Anecdotes of Public Men (2 volumes, 1873-81) and The New Nobility (1881). Throughout his life he had proved to be enterprising and energetic but emotional and unstable, sentimental in his loyalties, bitter in his hates. He possessed an unusually accurate instinct for winning causes, but in spite of his ability to support the victors, he generally had enemies sufficiently powerful to prevent his obtaining much profit from his foresight.

[Forty Years of American Journalism: Retirement of Mr. J. W. Forney from the Philadelphia "Press" (1877); Alex. Harris, Biographical History of Lancaster County (1872); Philadelphia Press, December 10, 12, 13, 1881; Philadelphia Record and Philadelphia Public Ledger, December 10, 1881; Washington Sunday Chronicle, December 11, 1881; Progress (Philadelphia) December 17, 1881; Printers' Circular (Philadelphia), December 1881. A large and revealing collection of Forney's letters is to be found in the Jeremiah S. Black Papers, Library of Congress, and in the Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania H. O. Folker, Sketches of the Forney Family (1911), gives the name of Forney's mother as Wein, but the cemetery record gives Wien for his middle name.]

R. F. N.


FORREST, John R., Vermont, American Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1856-58.


FORTEN, Charlotte, 1837-1914, free African American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, women’s rights activist, writer, intellectual

FORTEN, Charlotte, see GRIMKÉ, Charlotte Forten “Lottie”

(Billington, 1953; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 105, 161, 162, 308; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 289, 410, 416, 482; Stevenson, 1988; 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. 69, 94, 98-99, 116, 116n, 164)


FORTEN, James, Jr., Philadelphia, PA, African American, abolitionist, son of James Forten, Sr.  American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1843-1844. 

(Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 233-240)


FORTEN, James, Sr., 1766-1842, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, businessman, social reformer, free African American community leader, led abolitionist group. Co-founder of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Organized first African American Masonic Lodge in 1797. Petitioned Congress to pass law to end slavery and the changing of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793.  Opposed Pennsylvania Senate bill that would restrict Black settlement in the state.  Supported temperance and women’s rights movements. American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice President, 1834-1835, Manager, 1835-1840. 

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 296-317; Billington, 1953; Douty, 1968; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 170-171, 328, 340; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 93, 104, 105, 161, 308; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 34, 105, 290; Winch, 2002; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 305-306; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 536; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 8, p. 276; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 4, p. 446)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 536:

FORTEN, JAMES (September 2, 1766-March 4, 1842), sail-maker, was descended from people who had lived in Pennsylvania for several generations. His father, Thomas Forten, died when he was but seven years old. James attended in Philadelphia the school of the Quaker Abolitionist, Anthony Benezet, but left in 1775, when he was not more than nine years of age, and went to work to help his mother. At fourteen he entered the service of the colonial navy, in the Royal Louis, commanded by Captain Decatur, and was among those captured by the British ship Amphion. It happened, however, that the commander's son was on board, who exacted from his father the promise that James should not be forced to enlist in the English service. This pleased the young negro, for he feared being sold into slavery in the West Indies. In course of time he was transferred to a prison ship lying near New York, and he remained there through a raging pestilence until the prisoners were exchanged. Another voyage then took him to London for a year. On his return to Philadelphia he was apprenticed to Robert Bridges, a sail-maker, and in his twentieth year he became foreman of the working force. He afterwards became owner of the sail-loft, and about this time married the woman who became the mother of his eight children. Prospering in business, he ultimately won a considerable fortune.

In 1814, with Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, Forten secured 2,500 negro volunteers to protect the city of Philadelphia. His establishment was near the water, and at different times not less than seven persons were saved from drowning by his promptness and efficiency. Under date of May 9, 1821, the Humane Society of Philadelphia gave him a formal certificate of appreciation for having rescued four of these persons. In his mature life Forten was keenly interested in the welfare of the negro people, and in 1817 presided over a meeting in Bethel Church called to oppose the designs of the American Colonization Society. In his business he refused to furnish rigging to the owners of slave-vessels. He was also interested in the work of the temperance and the peace societies, and defended woman's rights. His success in business and his philanthropic spirit made him easily one of the foremost negroes in the country in his time. He commanded the highest respect in Philadelphia, and his funeral was attended by a vast throng of people.

[Robt. Purvis, Remarks on the Life and Character of las. Forten (1842); L. Maria Child, The Freedmen's Book (1865); Wm. Lloyd Garrison: The Story of his Life Told by his Children (4 volumes, 1885-89), passim; B. T. Washington, The Story of the Negro (1909).)

B. B.


FORTEN, Margaretta, 1808-1875, free African American, officer, Female Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia, daughter of James Forten. 

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 416; Winch, 2002; 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. 7, 79, 75, 115-116, 164, 237; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 4, p. 447)


FORTEN, Robert Bridges, 1813-1864, African American.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 4, p. 449)


FORTEN, Robert, free African American, abolitionist, social activist, son of James Forten, father of Charlotte Forten.

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 288; Winch, 2002)


FORTEN, Sarah Louisa, free African American, Female Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia.

(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. 7, 98, 103-104, 114-116, 206)


FOSTER, Abby Kelley, 1810-1887, Worcester, Massachusetts, reformer, orator, abolitionist leader, women’s rights activist, temperance reformer, member Massachusetts and American Anti-Slavery Societies, co-founded abolitionist paper, Anti-Slavery Bugle in Ohio. Activist in the Underground Railroad.  As a pioneer Abigail Kelley performed important services for her cause. She was a leader in the radical Abolitionist group, and became a well-known figure throughout the North. She was in a favorable position while attacking the evils of slavery to point out the serious legal, economic, and political disabilities of women.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 158; Sterling, 1991; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 281; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 42, 77, 199, 213, 224, 266, 300, 323, 328, 329, 336; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 162, 169, 290-291, 465; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 42, 49, 63, 73, 149, 189-191, 210-211, 214, 216; 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. 19, 26, 27, 31, 43, 148-149, 154, 170, 173, 175, 176, 223, 231-248, 267-268, 280-281, 286, 288, 289, 292, 294, 296, 332; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 515; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 542; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 308-310; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 8, p. 289; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 323-324; Sterling, Dorothy. Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Antislavery. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991.)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 542:

FOSTER, ABIGAIL KELLEY (January 15, 1810-January 14, 1887), Abolitionist and woman's rights advocate, was the daughter of Wing and Diana (Daniels) Kelley of Pelham, Mass; She was of Irish-Quaker descent, and James Russell Lowell in the well-known "Letter from Boston" (Pennsylvania Freeman, January 1847), in which he describes the Abolitionist leaders, refers to her as "A Judith, there, turned Quakeress." Abby Kelley, as she was usually called by contemporaries and subsequent writers, became a teacher at Worcester, Millbury, and Lynn. While teaching in the Friends School in the last-named town she was impressed by Garrison's attack on slavery and in 1837 abandoned teaching for the lecture platform, giving her services gratuitously to the anti-slavery cause. She conducted a campaign in Massachusetts in company with Angelina Grimke and is reported to be the first Massachusetts woman to have regularly addressed mixed audiences. The latter innovation was the source of much scandal to her contemporaries. She was denounced by the clergy as a menace to public morals, and her meetings were occasionally broken up by mobs. For some years she endured an incredible amount of insult and abuse. (For a typical instance occurring in Connecticut, see L A. Coolidge, Orville H. Platt, 1910, pp. 5-7.) In 1839 the American Anti-Slavery Society indorsed the right of women to speak on its platform, but a year later her appointment to its executive committee caused a serious split in the organization. Her presence as a delegate at the world anti-slavery convention at London in 1840, and its refusal to recognize women delegates, caused an equally serious disturbance.

As a pioneer Abigail Kelley performed important services for her cause. She was a leader in the radical Abolitionist group, and became a well-known figure throughout the North. She was in a favorable position while attacking the evils of slavery to point out the serious legal, economic, and political disabilities of women. After 1850 she was more prominent as an advocate of woman's rights than as an anti-slavery leader; and she took a prominent part, with her husband, Stephen Symonds Foster [q.v.], whom she married December 31, 1845, in most of the woman's rights conventions for the next twenty years. Her appearance at the anniversary convention of 1880, together with Lucy Stone, as the only surviving leaders of the famous gathering of thirty years before, attracted great attention. The woman's rights movement had become fairly respectable by 1880, and had attracted many who would have shrunk from the hardships of pioneering. Her remark in the convention of 1851, in reply to some disparagement of the Abolitionists, that "bloody feet have worn smooth the paths by which you came up hither," is both poignant and significant. She was fearless in denouncing the conservatism of the church and clergy, and repeatedly declared that they must shoulder much of the responsibility for the wrongs of women. She was probably somewhat less extreme than her husband in both her religious and political views but was nevertheless a decided radical in both. In addition to her work in the woman's rights cause she was active in support of prohibition and minor humanitarian interests. She is described by those who knew her as an attractive, kindly person with unassuming manners, and a good housekeeper. On the platform she was an effective speaker for many years but her voice finally gave out from overuse. She was an invalid in her last years.

[Harriet H. Robinson, Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement (1881); Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805-79: The Story of his Life Told by his Children (1885-89); Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others, History of Woman Suffrage (3 volumes, 1881-87); Lillie B. C. Wyman, "Reminiscences of Two Abolitionists," in New England Magazine, January 1903; obituary articles in the Nation (New York), January 20, 1887, and Boston Daily Advertiser, January 15, 1887.]

W.A.R.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 515:

FOSTER, Abby Kelley, reformer, born in Pelham, Massachusetts, 15 January, 1811; died in Worcester, Massachusetts, 14 January, 1887. Her parents, who were descendants of Irish Quakers, removed to Worcester while she was an infant. Her education was finished at the Friends' school in Providence, Rhode Island, after which she taught for several years in Worcester and Millbury, and in a Friends' school in Lynn, Massachusetts. She resigned her post about 1837, and began lecturing as an anti-slavery advocate, being the first woman to address mixed audiences in favor of abolition. Though sincere in her convictions and womanly in her delivery, she suffered many indignities in Connecticut during her lectures, While speaking in Pennsylvania, she met Stephen S. Foster, whom she married in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, 21 December, 1845. The two continued their public addresses, and on one tour in Ohio Mrs. Foster spoke every day for six weeks. They settled on a farm near Worcester, which was their home up to the time of Mr. Foster's death. About 1850 Mrs. Foster began to be actively interested in the cause of woman suffrage, making many speeches in its advocacy, and that of prohibition. She took an extreme view of these questions, and in argument was pronounced and aggressive. Alike in their belief regarding woman suffrage and their protests against taxation without representation, both Mr. and Mrs. Foster refused to pay taxes on their home estate because the wife was not permitted to vote, and this resolution was followed by the sale of the home for two consecutive years, but it was bought in by friends, and finally redeemed by Mr. Foster. Mrs. Foster's last public work was an effort made to raise funds to defray the expenses of securing the adoption of the 15th amendment in the doubtful states. In June, 1886, she attended an anti-slavery reception in Boston. The day preceding her fatal illness she finished a sketch of her husband for this work. Personally Mrs. Foster was amiable and unassuming, but never lacked the courage to proclaim and defend her advanced opinions. James Russell Lowell pays this tribute to Mrs. Foster:           
“A Judith there, turned Quakeress,       
  Sits Abby in her modest dress.           
  No nobler gift of heart or brain.         
  No life more white from spot or stain,          
  Was e'er on freedom's altar lain          
  Than hers—the simple Quaker maid.”

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 515.


FOSTER, Charles, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Executive Committee, 1844-45.


FOSTER, Henry Allen, born 1800, Cazenovia, New York, U.S. Congressman and Senator.  Vice-President, American Colonization Society, 1838-41. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 511; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 511:

FOSTER, Henry Allen, senator, born in Hartford, Connecticut, 7 May, 1800. He removed to Cazenovia, New York, in early life, and, after receiving a common school education, entered the law office of David B. Johnson, and was admitted to the bar in 1822. He was a member of the state senate from 1831 till 1834, and again from 1841 till 1844. He was a representative in congress from 1837 till 1839, having been elected as a Democrat, and in 1844 was appointed United States senator in place of Silas Wright, Jr., serving till 1847. From 1863 till 1869 he held the office of judge of the fifth district of the supreme court. He has resided for many years in Rome, New York.  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


FOSTER, John Watson (March 2, 1836- November 15, 1917), lawyer, soldier, editor, diplomat, secretary of state, professor.  When the Civil War broke out Foster's zeal for the anti-slavery cause and for the Union led him to enlist. Governor Morton sent him a commission as major. For his share in the capture of Fort Donelson he was promoted lieutenant-colonel, and for his meritorious service at Shiloh he was made a colonel.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 551-552:

FOSTER, JOHN WATSON (March 2, 1836-November 15, 1917), lawyer, soldier, editor, diplomat, secretary of state, professor,  was born in Pike County, Ind., where his father, Matthew Watson Foster, was a successful farmer. His mother, Eleanor Johnson, came of a Virginia family. Foster attended the University of Indiana (RA. 1855), where through study and in debate he developed the anti-slavery convictions implanted by his father. After a year at the Harvard Law School he spent another year in a law office in Cincinnati before he associated himself in the practise of law at Evansville with Conrad Baker, one of the ablest lawyers of Indiana. In 1859 he married Mary Parke McFerson who received repeatedly in his writings tributes for her counsel, assistance, and affection. When the Civil War broke out Foster's zeal for the anti-slavery cause and for the Union led him to enlist. Governor Morton sent him a commission as major. For his share in the capture of Fort Donelson he was promoted lieutenant-colonel, and for his meritorious service at Shiloh he was made a colonel. He commanded a brigade of cavalry in Burnside's expedition into East Tennessee and was the first to occupy Knoxville in 1863. He learned to know Grant, Sherman, and Thomas. Foster states in his Memoirs that his military life enlarged his knowledge of men and gave him a fuller self-confidence.

After the war Foster became editor of the Evansville Daily Journal, the most influential paper in Southern Indiana. In 1872, he served as chairman of the Republican state committee. As such he was instrumental in bringing about the reelection of Oliver P. Morton to the United States Senate and of General Grant to the presidency. The next year President Grant designated him as minister to Mexico. He served there during the transition from the Lerdo to the Diaz regime and under trying circumstances succeeded in making himself highly agreeable to the Mexican government.

Early in 1880, President Hayes transferred him to St. Petersburg. He remained there a year and had little to do except to attend ceremonies and to plead for leniency in the treatment of American Jews. He returned to Washington and set up in the practise of law. In 1883, President Arthur offered him the appointment as minister to Spain. Foster accepted. He negotiated a reciprocity treaty affecting the trade with Cuba, but the treaty failed to meet the approval of the Senate. During Cleveland's first administration Foster practised law. Harrison appointed him on a special mission to Madrid to negotiate another reciprocity treaty. This treaty became effective and for two years greatly facilitated American trade with Cuba and Porto Rico.

During the latter part of Harrison's administration Foster became the agent for the United States in the Bering Sea or fur-seal arbitration. Two unexpected events weakened the case of the United States. As a part of the transfer of Alaska, Russia had delivered to the Department of State a mass of archives in the Russian language. These were reputed to show-and Foster so believed-that Russia had exercised exclusive territorial jurisdiction over Beri1ig Sea. Foster employed one I van Petroff to select the pertinent documents and to translate them. Petroff furnished the translations to support the American contention. Copies of the documents and their translation occupied a prominent place in the case. Several weeks after their submission to counsel for Great Britain a clerk in the Department of State, William C. Mayo, discovered discrepancies. Petroff confronted with the evidence admitted his guilt. Foster promptly informed the British legation in Washington of the circumstances of the case and explained to the British agent how the perfidy had been imposed upon him. The second untoward event occurred during the oral arguments before the tribunal at Paris. Russia had supported the stand taken by the United States for the protection of the fur seals. On June 21, 1893, Sir Richard Webster asked permission to read a document which had been laid before Parliament. Russia had conceded to Great Britain that seals could be taken anywhere outside a zone of thirty miles around the Russian islands on the Asiatic side of Bering Sea. The United States lost the case on all points with the exception that the tribunal allowed a prohibited zone of sixty miles around the Pribilof Islands.

For about eight months during 1892 and 1893 and partly overlapping the period of the fur-seal arbitration Foster served as secretary of state. As such he negotiated a treaty of annexation with the Republic of Hawaii. This negotiation took place so shortly after the establishment of the republic under the domination of American citizens there and under such questionable circumstances that when Cleveland succeeded to the presidency he withdrew the treaty from the Senate. Another important event in his term was the Baltimore incident. Captain W. S. Schley of the Baltimore in Santiago harbor, Chile, had given shore leave to a number  of sailors and officers. Whatever the cause may have been, a fight ensued in which two sailors were killed and seventeen wounded. Foster called attention to the fact that reparation was due the injured and the dependents of those who had been killed. Chile proposed arbitration. Foster replied that inasmuch as questions of national honor were involved a frank and friendly offer of voluntary compensation would be accepted as a proof of good-will. Thereupon Chile offered $75,000 in gold which was accepted as satisfactory.

At the close of the Chino-Japanese War, December 1894, the Chinese foreign office invited Foster, then a private citizen, to join the Chinese commissioners in the negotiation of peace with Japan. He accepted, and performed a creditable service in bringing about an agreement between Li Hung Chang and Marquis Ito. Later, in 1907, Foster represented China at the Second Hague Conference. In 1903 Great Britain and the United States agreed to arbitrate their differences about the Alaska-Canadian boundary. The United States designated Foster as agent to take charge of the preparation of the case. Greatly to his credit the tribunal sustained substantially his arguments and conclusions. As a lawyer in Washington Foster represented various governments, notably the Mexican. Probably the most important case concerned the Weil and La Abra claims of over a million dollars, which had been awarded to the United States by a claims commission. Foster found and proved that the award had been obtained through fraud. Through his efforts Mexico was reimbursed for payments made on these claims.

Foster delivered numerous lectures on various phases of international relations which found their way later into periodicals and pamphlets. He was especially interested in foreign missions and in arbitration. His courses at George Washington University comprised the salient features of American diplomatic history from 1776 to 1876, the rules and procedure of diplomatic intercourse, which developed into the best book of its kind written by an American, and an outline of the relations of the United States with the Orient. Included in his printed works, which are marked by a good perspective, a restrained and apt use of anecdote, optimism, and a clear and readable style, are the following: A Century of American Diplomacy, 1776-1876 (1900); American Diplomacy in the Orient (1903); Arbitration and the Hague Court (1904); The Practise of Diplomacy (1906); and War Stories for my Grandchildren (1918).

[Foster wrote his own biography in Diplomatic Memoirs (2 volumes, 1909), He describes accurately and with human interest the events in which he took part and the men and women whom he met. The volumes for the appropriate years of the foreign relations of the United States contain a record of his official work as minister to various countries and as secretary of state. See also Wm. R. Castle. Jr., in American Secretaries of State and their Diplomacy, Volume VIII (1928); Jose L. Suarez, Mr. John W. Foster (Buenos Aires, 1918); New York Times, November 16, Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), November 15, 1917.]

C.E.H.


FOSTER, Lafayette Sabine, 1806-1880, statesman, Connecticut State Representative, Mayor of Norwich, Connecticut, U.S. Senator 1854-1867, Republican Party, opposed to slavery.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 512-513; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 553; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe; Memorial Sketch of Lafayette S. Foster (privately printed, Boston; 1881); F. C. Pierce, Foster Genealogy (1889); F. M. Caulkins, History of Norwich, Connecticut (1866)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 553:

FOSTER, LAFAYETTE SABINE (November 22, 1806-September 19, 1880), Connecticut editor, judge, United States senator, was the eldest son of Daniel and Welthea Ladd Foster. His father, a descendant of Miles Standish, had been a captain in the Revolutionary War. Lafayette was born in Franklin, near Norwich, Connecticut. The family had slender means, and when he reached college age he was obliged to support himself. He attended Brown University, graduating with high honors in 1828. The following year he taught in an academy in Queen Annes County, Maryland, and then began the study of law in the office of Calvin Goddard of Norwich, who had been an active Federalist politician, and member of the Hartford Convention of 1814. In 1831 he was admitted to the New London County bar. Two years later he opened a law office in Hampton, in Windham County, but in 1835 returned to Norwich, which became his home thereafter. In 1835 he became editor of the Norwich Republican, a Whig journal (Caulkins, Norwich, pp. 582-83). On October 2, 1837, he married Joanna, daughter of James Lanman of Norwich, judge and United States senator. After her death in 1859, he married, October 4, 1860, Martha Lyman of Northampton, Massachusetts. Two daughters and a son were born of the first marriage, but all of them died in childhood.

There were no children from the second marriage. Foster became interested in politics early in his career. He first represented Norwich in the General Assembly in 1839. He was reelected in 1840, from 1846 to 1849 served three years in succession, and later served two single terms, in 1854 and 1870. Four times he was speaker of the House of Representatives. In the state elections of 1850 and 1851 Foster was the unsuccessful Whig candidate for governor. During 1851 and 1852 he was mayor of Norwich. In 1854 he was chosen United States senator, subsequently holding that position twelve years, from 1855 to 1867. While in the Senate he spoke frequently but his chief distinction was his election as president pro tempore of the Senate. In 1866 he failed to receive the Republican caucus nomination for a third senatorial term, presumably because his opinions were too conservative. In 1870 he became a judge of the Connecticut superior court, and served until 1876. He supported Horace Greeley for president in 1872. Later he was nominated for national representative by a combination of Democrats and liberal Republicans, but was not elected. In 1878 he served on a commission studying a simplification of legal procedure in Connecticut, and during 1878-79 he was a member of a commission to settle a boundary dispute with the state of New York. In appearance, Foster, was slight and unimpressive, his expression being grave and serious. He possessed, nevertheless, both humor and caustic wit, with which he frequently enlivened the otherwise dull sessions of legislative assemblies wherein he spent so much of his life.

[Memorial Sketch of Lafayette S. Foster (privately printed, Boston; 1881); F. C. Pierce, Foster Genealogy (1889); F. M. Caulkins, History of Norwich, Connecticut (1866); D. Loomis and J. G. Calhoun, Judicial and Civil History of Connecticut (1895); "Brown University Necrology for 1880-1881," printed in Providence Daily Journal, June 15, 1881; Hartford Daily Courant, September 21, 1880.]

J.M.M.


Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume II, pp. 512-513:

FOSTER, Lafayette Sabine, statesman, born in Franklin, Connecticut, 22 November, 1806; died in Norwich, Connecticut, 19 September, 1880. His father, Captain Daniel, was an officer of the Revolution, who was descended on his mother's side from Miles Standish, and served with distinction at the battles of White Plains, Stillwater, and Saratoga. The son earned the means for his education by teaching, was graduated with the first honors at Brown in 1828, studied law, and was admitted to the bar at Centreville, Maryland, while conducting an academy there in 1830. He returned to Connecticut, completed his legal studies in the office of Calvin Goddard, who had been his first preceptor, was admitted to the Connecticut bar in November, 1831, and opened an office in Hampton in 1833, but in 1834 settled at Norwich. He took an active interest in politics from the outset of his professional life. was the editor of the Norwich “Republican,” a Whig journal, in 1835, and in 1839 and 1840 was elected to the legislature. He was again elected in 1846 and the two succeeding years, and was chosen speaker. In 1851 he received the degree of LL. D. from Brown university. In 1851-'2 he was mayor of Norwich. He was twice defeated as the Whig candidate for governor, and in 1854 was again sent to the assembly, chosen speaker, and elected to the U. S. senate on 19 May, 1854, by the votes of the Whigs and Free-soilers. Though opposed by conviction to slavery, he resisted the efforts to form a Free-soil party until the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. He delivered a notable speech in the senate on 25 June. 1856, against the repeal of the Missouri compromise, and opposed the Lecompton constitution for Kansas in 1858. He was a member of the Republican party from its organization in 1856, and in 1860 was again elected to the senate. In December, 1860, he spoke in approval of the Powell resolution to inquire into the distracted state of the country, though he was one of the few who at that time believed that the southern leaders would force a disruption of the Union, and was in favor of resisting the extension of slavery beyond the limits recognized in the constitution, even at the cost of civil war. Mr. Foster was intimately connected with the administration, and was often a spokesman of Mr. Lincoln's views. On 11 March, 1861, he moved the expulsion of Senator Lewis T. Wigfall, of Texas. In 1863 he advocated an appropriation for the gradual manumission of slaves in Missouri. In 1864, on the question of the repeal of the fugitive slave act, he spoke in favor of preserving the earlier law of 1793, and thereby incurred the reproaches of the radical members of his party. He also opposed the bill granting the voting franchise to colored citizens of the District of Columbia without an educational qualification. He served on the committees on Indian affairs and land claims, and was chairman of the committee on pensions, and during the civil war of that on foreign relations. In 1865 he was chosen president of the senate pro tempore. After Andrew Johnson became president, Mr. Foster was acting vice-president of the United States. During the subsequent recess he travelled on the plains as member of a special commission to investigate the condition of the Indians. His senatorial term of office expired in March, 1867, and he was succeeded by Benjamin F. Wade in the office of vice-president. On account of his moderate and conservative course in the senate his re-election was opposed by a majority of the Republicans in the Connecticut legislature, and he withdrew his name, though he was urged to stand as an independent candidate, and was assured of the support of the Democrats. He declined the professorship of law at Yale in 1869, but after his retirement from the bench in 1876 delivered a course of lectures on “Parliamentary Law and Methods of Legislation.” In 1870 he again represented the town of Norwich in the assembly, and was chosen speaker. He resigned in June of that year in order to take his seat on the bench of the supreme court, having been elected by a nearly unanimous vote of both branches of the legislature. His most noteworthy opinion was that in the case of Kirtland against Hotchkiss, in which he differed from the decision of the majority of the court (afterward confirmed by the U. S. supreme court) in holding that railroad bonds could not be taxed by the state of Connecticut when the property mortgaged was situated in Illinois. In 1872 he joined the Liberal Republicans and supported Horace Greeley as a candidate for the presidency. In 1874 he was defeated as a Democratic candidate for congress. He was a judge of the Connecticut superior court from 1870 till 1876, when he was retired, having reached the age of seventy years, and resumed the practice of law. In 1878-'9 he was a commissioner from Connecticut to settle the disputed boundary question with New York, and afterward one of the three commissioners to negotiate with the New York authorities for the purchase of Fisher's Island. He was also a member of the commission appointed in 1878 to devise simpler rules and forms of legal procedure for the state courts. By his will he endowed a professorship of English law at Yale, bequeathed his library to the town of Norwich, and gave his home for the free academy there. See “Memorial Sketch” (printed privately, Boston, 1881). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 512-513.


FOSTER, Newall A., abolitionist, Portland, Maine, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1845-53.


FOSTER, S. H., New York, American Abolition Society.

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


FOSTER, Stephen Symonds, 1809-1881, divinity student, radical abolitionist, women’s rights activist.  Founded New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society.  Manager, 1843-1845, American Anti-Slavery Society.  Husband of abolitionist and women’s rights activist Abby Kelly Foster.  Their home was a station on the Underground Railroad.  Wrote, The Brotherhood of Thieves; Or a True Picture of the American Church and Clergy, in 1843, an anti-slavery book.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 158, 176-177; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 223, 250, 251, 262, 266, 270, 272, 279, 297, 323, 324, 327, 329, 378, 394n24, 419n8; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 134-142, 474-479; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 169, 290; Stevens, 1843; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 514-515; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 558; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 8, p. 307).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 558:

FOSTER, STEPHEN SYMONDS (November 17, 1809-September 8, 1881), Abolitionist, reformer, son of Asa and Sarah (Morrill) Foster, was born at Canterbury, New Hampshire. His father's family had long been prominent in this vicinity and several of its members had been active in New Hampshire politics. He was the ninth child in a family of thirteen and at an early age became accustomed to hard work on the farm. He then learned the trade of carpenter and builder, but becoming interested in the religious life, decided to prepare himself for the ministry. In his early twenties he entered Dartmouth College and graduated in 1838. While an undergraduate he was attracted by the growing anti-slavery movement, which at that time had many supporters at. Dartmouth. Such a crusade had a strong appeal for a man of his humanitarian instincts. He had formulated a creed of his own, based largely on the Sermon on the Mount, and regardless of resultant complications in every-day life, endeavored to govern himself thereby. While at Dartmouth he served a jail sentence rather than perform militia duty, and incidentally, started an agitation which eventually produced drastic reforms in the wretched prison system of rural New England.

On leaving college he entered Union Theological Seminary but his stay at the institution was brief. He had already been assailed by doubt as to whether the churches were genuine upholders of Christian principles, and when the seminary refused accommodations for a meeting protesting against the government's course in the Northeastern Boundary embroglio, he dropped his studies, and soon after severed connections with the church and organized religion in general.' For some years he made a precarious living as an anti-slavery lecturer, and one of his associates, Parker Pillsbury [q.v.], has left a vivid record of the hardships, discouragements, and persecutions Foster encountered while campaigning in New Hampshire. He was associated with the extremist group, was a close friend of Garrison, and probably second only to the latter in influence and activity in the early years of the agitation. Like Garrison he denounced the Constitution and was ready to dissolve the Union. He accompanied his colleague on several lecture tours and became equally well known as an agitator, not only in New England, but throughout the Northern states. Eventually he settled on a farm near Worcester but continued to appear as a public speaker and lecturer.

Foster grasped one essential principle, namely, that "slavery is an American and not a Southern institution." Business, politics, and religion were, he believed, committed to the maintenance of the status quo. He detested the attitude of religious bodies especially and, about 1841, adopted the expedient of visiting various churches, interrupting services with a polite request for a hearing on the slavery issue. He was repeatedly ejected, several times prosecuted, and more than once roughly handled by offended worshipers, but he attracted attention to the cause which could hardly have been gained by more decorous methods. His career as lecturer was exciting, at least in the earlier years. Fearless, resolute, and gifted with an unusual command of denunciatory language, he was repeatedly jeered and pelted by unfriendly audiences. He wrote occasional newspaper articles but only one production of note. This pamphlet, The Brotherhood of Thieves; or a True Picture of the American Church and Clergy (1843), one of the most vitriolic works of the anti-slavery era, passed through more than twenty editions and was widely circulated. He remained with the extremists throughout the long contest over slavery but became interested in sundry other reform movements. Besides advocating woman suffrage, he was a temperance worker, an advocate of world peace, and an energetic supporter of the rights of labor. His refusal to pay taxes because women were denied the suffrage more than once forced his friends to bid in his farm at sheriff's sale. On December 31, 1845, he married a kindred spirit, Abigail Kelley [q.v.], Abolitionist lecturer and pioneer in the woman's rights movement.

Foster was a successful farmer and his property near Worcester was one of the best managed and most productive in the district. His contemporaries describe him as of rugged features, rather ungainly in general appearance, his hands hard and gnarled with labor, but he possessed a wonderful voice. Despite the vehemence of his platform manners he is said to have been gentle and kindly in his personal relations. He seems to have suffered from an overdeveloped logical sense -and a complete lack of humor. Probably Wendell Phillips made as fair an estimate of Foster's work as might be given when at his funeral he declared: "It needed something to shake New England and stun it into listening. He was the man, and offered himself for the martyrdom."

[J. K. Lord, History of Dartmouth College (1909); J. O. Lyford, History of the Town of Canterbury, New Hampshire (1912); Lillie B. C. Wyman, "Reminiscences of Two Abolitionists," New England Magazine, January 1903; Parker Pillsbury, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles (1883); Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805-79: The Story of his Life Told by his Children (1885-89); History of Woman Suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda J. Gage, eds. (3 volumes, 1881-87); Parker Pillsbury, Memoir in the Granite Monthly, August 1882; The Nation, September 15, 1881; Boston Daily Advertiser, September 9, 10, 1881; Worcester Daily Spy, September 9, 1881.

W. A. R  

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 514-515:

FOSTER, Stephen Symonds, abolitionist, born in Canterbury, New Hampshire, 17 November, 1809; died near Worcester, Massachusetts, 8 September, 1881. He learned the carpenter's trade, then studied with the intention of becoming a minister, was graduated at Dartmouth in 1838, and studied theology in the Union theological seminary, New York; but, because he was precluded from advocating abolition in the pulpit, he deserted that profession in order to engage in the anti-slavery contest. He was an earnest orator, a master of denunciation and invective, and was frequently the victim of mob violence. He is described in one of Lowell's anti-slavery poems as “A kind of maddened John the Baptist, To whom the harshest word comes aptest, Who, struck by stone or brick ill starred, Hurls back an epithet as hard, Which, deadlier than stone or brick, Has a propensity to stick." While in the theological seminary he induced some of his classmates to join with him in a meeting to protest against the warlike preparations then going on, arising from the dispute with Great Britain over the northeastern boundary. The refusal of the faculty to allow the chapel to be used for such a meeting made him dissatisfied with the churches because they countenanced war, and when he became an anti-slavery agitator of the moral-force school, instead of a Congregational minister, he directed his attacks chiefly against the church and the clergy, because they upheld slavery. Since the people of the New England towns could not be induced to attend anti-slavery lectures, he was accustomed to attend church meetings and claim there a hearing for the enslaved, and was often expelled by force, and several times imprisoned for disturbing public worship. Other abolitionists adopted the same plan of agitation, which was very effective. He lived for many years on a farm in the suburbs of Worcester. He published articles in periodicals on the slavery question, and in 1843 a pamphlet entitled “The Brotherhood of Thieves, a True Picture of the American Church and Clergy,” in the form of a letter to Nathaniel Barney, a reprint of which was issued by Parker Pillsbury (Concord, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 514-515.


FOSTER, Theodore, Michigan, Methodist clergyman, abolitionist.  Co-editor and publisher of the Signal of Liberty with Guy Beckley, the newspaper of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society, representing the Liberty Party. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 187; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


FOULKE, William Parker, 1816-1865, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, lawyer, prison reformer, pamphleteer, philanthropist, abolitionist.  Foulke was a member and vice president of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society.


FOWLER, Bathsheba, African American, abolitionist

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


FOWLER, JOSEPH SMITH (August 31, 1820-April 1, 1902), U.S. senator. He had been opposed to slavery since childhood, and he did not believe in the right of secession, but he had lived long enough in the South to be sympathetic with the Southern people, and would doubtless have remained there if it had not been for Davis's "forty day" proclamation, which caused him to move with his family to Springfield, Illinois.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, pp. 565-565:

FOWLER, JOSEPH SMITH (August 31, 1820-April 1, 1902), senator, was born in Steubenville, Ohio, the son of James and Sarah (Atkinson) Fowler, both natives of Maryland. He attended country schools for a time and then began to teach in Shelby County, Kentucky. Later he returned to Ohio, and in 1843 was graduated from Franklin College at New Athens. At Bowling Green, Kentucky, he again taught school and at the same time studied law, and in 1845 became professor of mathematics at Franklin College, Davidson County, Tennessee, where he remained for four years. On November 12, 1846, he married Maria Louisa Embry of Tennessee. His occupation and whereabouts in the years following 1849 are not known, but in 1856 he was made president of Howard Female Institute at Gallatin, Tennessee, and remained there until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. He had been opposed to slavery since childhood, and he did not believe in the right of secession, but he had lived long enough in the South to be sympathetic with the Southern people, and would doubtless have remained there if it had not been for Davis's "forty day" proclamation, which caused him to move with his family to Springfield, Illinois. In 1862 he returned to Nashville, and Johnson made him state comptroller in the military government. He was an efficient officer, and was prominent in the work of reconstruction, particularly in relation to the abolition of slavery. In May 1865 he was elected United States senator but was denied his seat until July 1866. In Tennessee he had been on intimate terms with Johnson, but he differed with him as to Reconstruction, was one of the signers of the call for the Southern Loyalists' convention in 1866, and attended as a delegate. In the Senate he voted for most of the radical measures, including the reconstruction acts, although he did not approve of the provision for military government. He served faithfully but without any special distinction on many committees, and frequently participated in debate. Judging from the reports, he was an effective speaker. He was of average ability only, but was distinctly levelheaded. He was radical, but was inclined to be liberal. When Johnson removed Stanton, Fowler, like Henderson, declined to vote for the resolution declaring the removal an illegal act. He watched the House during the process of impeachment and was horrified at its dangerous passion, which he thought likely to precipitate a revolution. When impeachment had first been attempted, he had thought the President impeachable, but as time passed he had found that opinion "based on falsehood," and that Johnson was being attacked for pursuing Lincoln's policy. He then saw in the impeachment plan a plot contrived by leaders "neither numerous nor marked for their prudence, wisdom, or patriotism, ... mere politicians, thrown to the surface through the disjointed times," bent on "keeping alive the embers of the departing revolution," and with "more of sectional prejudice ... than of patriotism" (Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 2 Session, p. 4508). His attitude was soon made clear to the radicals who attempted to coerce him by threats and slander, but he quietly ignored them and voted "Not Guilty," with the quiet statement, "I acted for my country and posterity in obedience to the will of God." He filed a strong opinion, joined with Henderson and Ross in refusing to vote for the resolution of thanks to Stanton, and in July excoriated B. F. Butler for his report on the charges of corruption. In spite of his radical advocacy of negro suffrage, he voted against the Fifteenth Amendment, believing it wiser to move more slowly, and thinking that female suffrage should be included. He retired from the Senate in 1871 and returned to Tennessee. He supported Grant in 1868, but by 1872 was utterly disgusted with his administration and was an elector at large on the Greeley ticket. After some years he moved to Washington and remained there practising law until his death.

[Who's Who in America, 1901-02; Biographical Dir. American Congress (1928); Congressional Globe, 39-41 Congresses; Proceedings in the Trial of Andrew Johnson (1868); E.G. Ross, History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (1896); D. M. DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903); Washington Post and Washington Evening Star, April 2, 1902.]

J.G.de R.H.


FOWLER, Orin, 1791-1852, Lebanon, Connecticut, clergyman.  Free-Soil U.S. Congressman, temperance activist, strong opponent of slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 517; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 565; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

FOWLER, Orin, clergyman, born in Lebanon, Connecticut, 29 July, 1791; died in Washington, D. C., 3 September, 1852. He was graduated at Yale in 1815, studied theology under President Dwight, taught in the academy in Fairfield, Connecticut, for a year, was licensed to preach on 14 October, 1817, made a missionary tour in the Mississippi valley in 1818, and in 1819 was settled over a Congregational Church in Plainfield, Connecticut. He was dismissed by this society in 1831, but was immediately called to a church in Fall River, of which he remained pastor until he entered Congress. In 1841 he delivered three discourses containing a history of Fall River since 1620, and an account of the boundary dispute between Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He was appointed by a committee of citizens to defend the interests of the town before the boundary commissioners, published a series of articles on the subject in the Boston “Atlas,” and was elected in 1847 to the state senate, where he secured the rejection of the decision of the boundary commission by a unanimous vote. His constituents were so pleased with his ability as a legislator that they elected him in 1848 as a Free-Soil Whig to the National House of Representatives, and re-elected him for the following term. He was an advocate of temperance laws, and a strong opponent of slavery. In March, 1850, he replied to Daniel Webster's speech in justification of the Fugitive-Slave Law. He was the author of a “Disquisition on the Evils attending the Use of Tobacco” (1833), and “Lectures on the Mode and Subjects of Baptism” (1835). His “History of Fall River, with notices of Freeborn and Tiverton,” was republished in 1862 (Fall River). Appletons’ Cycolpædia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 517.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 3, Pt. 2, p. 565:

FOWLER, ORIN (July 29, 1791-September 3, 1852), Congregational clergyman, congressman, was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, the son of Captain Amos and Rebecca (Dewey) Fowler. He was the oldest boy and the sixth child in a family of twelve. Prepared for college by his pastor, Reverend William B. Ripley, he entered Williams in 18u, but remained there for only one term. After further study at Bacon Academy, Colchester, Connecticut, he became a member of the sophomore class at Yale, graduating in 1815. For a short time he was preceptor of the academy in Fairfield, Connecticut, relinquishing the position in order to devote himself to a course in theology under Reverend Heman Humphrey [q.v.] of that town. On October 14, 1817, he was licensed to preach by the Association of the Western District of Fairfield County; and on June 3, 1818, at Farming ton, . Connecticut, he was ordained by the North Association of Hartford County with a view to missionary work in the West. After a year spent chiefly in Indiana he returned to Connecticut. To the Christian Spectator, August and September 1819, he contributed "Remarks on the State of Indiana." He was installed as pastor of the Congregational church, Plainfield, Connecticut, on March 1, 1820. The following year, October 16, he married Amaryllis, daughter of John H. Payson of Pomfret, Connecticut. After a pastorate of nearly eleven years, having incurred the ill will of some of his parishioners who professed to believe reports derogatory to his character, he was dismissed by the Windham Association of Ministers, January 27, 1831, although a public investigation had revealed nothing affecting his standing as a Christian minister. On July 7, 1831, he became pastor of the Congregational church in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Reference to a long-standing dispute over the boundary-line between Massachusetts and Rhode Island in a series of discourses published under the title An Historical Sketch of Fall River from 1620 to the Present Time (1841) launched him on a political career. His fellow townsmen made him one of a committee to represent them before boundary commissioners of the two states. Their decision was displeasing to the town; and Fowler defended its position under the pseudonym "Plymouth Colony" in articles appearing in the Boston Daily Atlas between September 17 and October 18, 1847. As a result of these, on October 20, 1847, the Whig convention of Bristol County nominated him to the state Senate and he was elected. Here he was influential in causing the commissioners' report to be rejected by Massachusetts. His career in the legislature brought about his election to Congress in 1848 as a Free-Soil Whig, and the following year he took up his residence in Washington, although he was not formally dismissed from his church until May 1850. He was reelected for a second term, but died in Washington, September 3, 1852. He was an opponent of slavery and an advocate of temperance laws and cheap postage. "His strength in the House consisted not so much in eloquence and readiness of debate as in diligent research and knowledge of facts." Besides several speeches his publications include a sermon preached at the ordination of Israel G. Rose, March 9, 1825, entitled The Duty of Distinction in Preaching Explained and Enforced (1825); The Mode and Subjects of Baptism (1835), and A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco (1833, 1835, 1842).

[W. B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, II (1857); F . B . Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, VI (1912); Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe, 32 Congress, 2 Session, p. 28].

H.E.S.

FOWLER, Thomas, Cincinnati, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-36.



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.