Gib-Goo: Gibbons through Goodyear

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.


GIBBONS, Abby (Abigail) Hopper, 1801-1893, Society of Friends, Quaker, women’s prison reformer, abolitionist, philanthropist, daughter of Isaac and Sarah Hopper.  Gibbins was a member of the Executive Committee from 1841-1844.  American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) and  the Manhattan Anti-Slavery Society.  She and her husband James Sloan Gibbons were devoted Abolitionists and they made their home a refuge for escaping slaves.

(Emerson, 1897; 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. 43n41; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 636; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 237; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 347-348; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 8, p. 906)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 237:

GIBBONS, ABIGAIL HOPPER (December 7, 1801-January 16, 1893), philanthropist, Abolitionist, prison-reformer, the third child of Isaac Tatem Hopper [q.v.] and Sarah Tatum, was born in Philadelphia. Being the child of Quaker parents, she was a birthright member of the Society of Friends, and at the "Separation" in 1827, she threw in her lot with the Hicksite branch. She was carefully educated at home and in the Quaker day-schools of the period. When about twenty years old she set up a school of her own in Philadelphia for the elementary education of the children of Friends, in which she continued to teach for ten years. In 1830 she moved to New York and became the head of a Friends' School in that city.

She was married in the Friends' Meeting-House, New York City, February 14, 1833, to James Sloan Gibbons [q.v.] of Philadelphia, a native of Wilmington, Delaware. After their marriage they lived in Philadelphia until 1835 when they moved to New York City, which became their permanent residence. Both were devoted Abolitionists and they made their home a refuge for escaping slaves. They also identified themselves completely with all the lines of humanitarian work which were carried on by Mrs. Gibbons's father. Both Isaac Hopper and James Sloan Gibbons were disowned as members of the Society of Friends in 1842 by the New York Monthly Meeting, of the Hicksite branch, on account of their antislavery activities, whereupon Mrs. Gibbons went to the same meeting in June of that year and publicly read her resignation of membership, and resignations in behalf of four of her minor children, giving her reasons for withdrawal from the religious Society in which she had been born. Until her death, however, she remained loyal to the ideals and the way of life of the Quakers.

Becoming interested in some homeless German children in her neighborhood, she set about the establishment of an industrial school which she conducted for twelve years. She worked for a large part of her life to improve the conditions of the poor, the crippled, and the blind children in the city poor-house at West Farms, now Randalls Island, and as a major interest took up the work of prison reform, in which her father had been a prime mover. She made weekly visits to the Tombs and became the wise helper and counselor of the noted matron of that period, Flora Foster. She brought to this work tender sympathy balanced by sound judgment, and rare talent for administration and management. When the Civil War began, she offered herself as nurse and helper in the camps and hospitals, and served with few intermissions from 1861 to 1865. During the anti-draft riots, her home in New York was one of those picked out by the mob for destruction. The house was completely sacked and many papers and articles of great value were destroyed. As soon as the war was over, she helped to start a "Labor and Aid Society" to assist the returning soldiers to find employment and new opportunity. She assisted in establishing the Protestant Asylum for Infants, and was president of the New York Committee for the Prevention of State Regulation of Vice. Her most important humanitarian work, however, was done through the Women's Prison Association, of which she was for many years the efficient president. A "Home" was established by the Association in which discharged prisoners could live while they were finding their way back to normal life again. It was through her efforts also, that provision was made for arrested women to be searched by persons of their own sex. With much right can she be called "the Elizabeth Fry of America."

[S. H. Emerson, Life of Abby Hopper Gibbons: Told Chiefly Through her Correspondence (2 volumes, 1896); L. M. Child, Isaac T. Hopper, A True Life (1853); R. P. Tatum, Tatum Narrati11e 1626-1925 (1925); Charities Reverend, May 1893; Friends' Intelligence, and Journal, January 28, I893; Boston Evening Transcript, January 21, 1893; New York Times, January 17, 18, 1893; New York Tribune, January 19, 1893.]

R.M.J.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 636:

GIBBONS, Abigail Hopper, philanthropist, born in Philadelphia, 7 December, 1801, is a daughter of Isaac T. Hopper, the Quaker philanthropist. After teaching in Philadelphia and New York, she married Mr. Gibbons in 1833, and in 1836 removed to New York with him. In 1845 Mrs. Gibbons aided her father in forming the Women's prison association, and in founding homes for discharged prisoners, and frequently visited the various prisons in and about New York. She was the principal founder of the Isaac T. Hopper home, and for twelve years was president of a German industrial school for street children, the attendance at which increased in four months from 7 to nearly 200. Throughout the war Mrs. Gibbons gave efficient aid in hospital and camp, often at personal risk, and in 1863, during the draft riots, her house was one of the first to be sacked by the mob, owing to the well-known anti-slavery sentiments of herself and her husband. The attention of the rioters was first called to the house by some one who pointed it out as the residence of Horace Greeley, After the war she planned and organized a Labor and aid association for the widows and orphans of soldiers. She aided in establishing the New York infant asylum in 1871, and the New York diet kitchen in 1873, and has been one of the active managers of both these institutions. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 636.


GIBBONS, Henry, abolitionist, Wilmington, Delaware, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-40, Vice-President, 1840-43.

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

GIBBONS, Henry, physician, born in Wilmington, Delaware, 20 September, 1808; died there, 5 November, 1884, was graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1829, practised in Wilmington till 1841, and then in Philadelphia, where he was professor of the principles and practice of medicine in the Philadelphia college of medicine. He removed in 1850 to San Francisco, California, where he became, in 1861, professor of materia medica in the medical college of the Pacific (now Cooper medical college), being transferred to the chair of the principles and practice of medicine in 1868. He was president of the California state board of health from its establishment in 1873 till his death, and edited the “Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal” for twenty years. Dr. Gibbons was a founder of the California academy of sciences. He published a prize essay on “Tobacco” and several addresses and essays. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II.


GIBBONS, James Sloan, 1810-1892, Philadelphia, PA, New York, NY, Society of Friends, Quaker, merchant, abolitionist, philanthropist.  Member of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839-1840, 1840-1844.  Married to abolitionist Abigale Hooper.  Their home was a refuge for escaped slaves. Gibbons was one of the chief supporters of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. At one time he mortgaged his furniture in order to keep the paper alive.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 160, 162, 198; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 636; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 242)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 242:

GIBBONS, JAMES SLOAN (July 1, 1810- October 17, 1892), Abolitionist, author, was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the son of William [q. v. ] and Rebecca (Donaldson) Gibbons. His father was for years the Nestor of Delaware physicians and was an influential member of the Society of Friends. Respect for learning, so und business judgment, deep religious feeling, Quakers simplicity of manners, and sympathy for the poor and the oppressed were all part of the family tradition. After attending a Friends' school, Gibbons became a dry-goods merchant in Philadelphia, prospered, became known as an opponent of negro slavery, and in 1833 married Abigail Hopper, daughter of Isaac Tatem Hopper [q. v.],  the Quaker philanthropist. In 1835 he moved to New York. There he was one of the organizers of the Ocean Bank and of the Broadway Bank and was cashier of the former for many years. He wrote frequently for magazines and newspapers on banking and finance and was the author of The Banks of New York, their Dealers, the Clearing House, and the Panic of 1857 (1859), a clear and readable explanation of contemporary banking practise, and The Public Debt of the United States (1867), in which he advocated a substantial reduction in federal taxes. Under the pseudonym of Robert Morris he published a pamphlet on the Organization of the Public Debt and a Plan for the Relief of the Treasury (1863), in which his chief proposal was a 20 per cent export tax on gold, and a volume of didactic essays entitled Courtship and Matrimony, with Other Sketches from Scenes and Experiences in Social Life (1879); but as ap author he is remembered only for his war song, "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong," which appeared first in the New York Evening Post of July 16, 1862, had won immense popularity by reason of its swinging lines and its patriotic and sentimental appeal. Gibbons took a prominent part in the work of the American Anti-Slavery Society and was one of the chief supporters of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. At one time he mortgaged his furniture in order to keep the paper alive. For their connection with this paper he and his father-in-law, together with Charles Marriott, were disowned in 1842 by the New York Meeting of Friends, but until his health failed two years before his death Gibbons continued to attend the Friends' meetings. He is said to have begun the movement that resulted in Arbor Day. During the draft riots of July 13-16, 1863, his house on Lamartine Place was sacked by the mob, his papers destroyed, and his own life endangered. His wife, Abigail Hopper Gibbons [q.v.], who was nine years his senior, was his partner in all his philanthropic work. She, with two of their six children, survived him.

[Narrative of the Proceedings of the Monthly Meeting of New-York nid their Subsequent Confirmation by the Quarterly and Y early Meetings in the Case of Isaac T. Hoppe r (privately printed, 1843); W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison: The Story of his Life Told by his Children (1885); New York Evening Post, October 18, 1892; New York Daily Tribune, October 19, 1892; Friends' Intelligencer and Journal, October (Tenth Month) 29, 1892; S. H. Emerson, Life of Abby Hopper Gibbons (2 volumes, 1896).]

G. H. G.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 636:

GIBBONS, James Sloan, merchant, born in Wilmington, Delaware, 1 July, 1810, was educated in private schools in his native city, and in early life removed to Philadelphia, where he became a merchant. He came to New York in 1835, and has since been connected with banks and finance in that city. He has contributed to various literary and financial periodicals, and has published “The Banks of New York, their Dealers, the Clearing-House, and the Panic of 1857” (New York, 1858), and “The Public Debt of the United States” (1867). His song, “We are coming, Father Abraham,” was very popular during the civil war. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 636.


GIBBONS, William, abolitionist, Wilmington, Delaware, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1834-37.


GIBBS, Josiah Willard, Sr., 1790-1861, New Haven, Connecticut, abolitionist, philologist, author. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 630; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 247).

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 630:

GIBBS, Josiah Willard, philologist, born in Salem, Massachusetts, 30 April, 1790; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 25 March, 1861. He was graduated at Yale in 1809, and from 1811 till 1815 was connected with the college as tutor. Subsequently he spent some years at Andover, where he devoted himself to the study of Hebrew and biblical literature, producing at this time some of his most important works. In 1824 he was called to New Haven, and became professor of sacred literature in the theological school of Yale college, which chair he retained until his death. He also held the office of librarian from 1824 till 1843, and in 1853 received the degree of LL. D. from Princeton. Prof. Gibbs was a constant contributor of articles on points of biblical criticism, archæology and philological science to the “Christian Spectator,” “Biblical Repository,” “New Englander,” and the “American Journal of Science.” He was particularly fond of grammatical and philological studies, and attained a high reputation for thoroughness and accuracy in them. His work appears in several of the most important philological books published during the century, and among others in the revised edition of Webster's “Unabridged Dictionary” and Prof. William C. Fowler's “English Language in its Elements and its Forms” (New York, 1850). For some years he was one of the publishing committee of the American oriental society. Prof. Gibbs published a translation of Storr's “Historical Sense of the New Testament” (Boston, 1817); a translation of Gesenius's “Hebrew Lexicon of the Old Testament” (Andover, 1824; London, 1827); an abridged form of Gesenius's “Manual Hebrew and English Lexicon” (1828); “Philological Studies with English Illustrations” (New Haven, 1856); “A New Latin Analyst” (1859); and “Teutonic Etymology” (1860).  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


GIBBS, Leonard, abolitionist, New York, New York, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1841-46.


GIBBS, Mifflin Wistar

(American National Biography, 2002, Volume 8)


GIDDINGS, Howard, abolitionist.


GIDDINGS, Joshua Reed, 1795-1865, lawyer, statesman, U.S. Congressman, Whig from Ohio, elected in 1838. First abolitionist elected to House of Representatives. Worked to eliminate “gag rule,” which prohibited anti-slavery petitions. Served until 1859.  Leader and founder of the Republican Party. Argued that slavery in territories and District of Columbia was unlawful.  Active in Underground Railroad.  Was censured by the House of Representatives for his opposition to slavery.  Supported admission of Florida as a free state.  Opposed annexation of Texas and the war against the Seminoles in Florida.  Opposed Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and against further expansion of slavery into the new territories acquired during the Mexican War of 1846.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 69, 84, 86, 100, 163, 165, 188, 199, 201, 202, 216, 218-220, 221, 224, 245; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 243-245, 302, 339, 368; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 103, 145, 186, 224, 247, 258, 264, 268; 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. 64, 175; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 56, 63, 261, 305, 306; Miller, 1996; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 6, 23-26, 32-33, 45, 48-49, 54-55, 60, 61, 63, 65, 69-72, 131, 136, 162-163, 166-167; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 411-417; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 45, 47-49, 56, 173, 305, 316-318; Stewart, 1970; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 641-642; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 260; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 8, p. 946)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 260:

GIDDINGS, JOSHUA REED (October 6, 1795- May 27, 1864), Abolitionist, was for twenty years a militant anti-slavery congressman from the Western Reserve of Ohio. His relentless attacks on slaveholders, marked by exaggeration and bitterness, and his severe, uncompromising attitude were in a large measure the inheritance of a pioneer, provincial ancestry. George Giddings emigrated from St. Albans, Hertfordshire,  England, to Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1635. His descendants moved in succession to Lyme and to Hartland, Connecticut, and then to Tioga Point (now Athens), in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. Here Joshua Reed Giddings was born, the youngest of the children of Joshua and Elizabeth (Pease) Giddings. When he was six weeks old the family moved to Canandaigua, New York, only to move again ten years later to Ashtabula County, Ohio. His father had made large purchases of land, and the family was forced to toil long hours to carry the debt and wrest a living from the soil. The boy found little time to attend school. In the War of 1812 he enlisted as a substitute for his brother and saw a short service against the Indians in northwestern Ohio. For several years thereafter he divided his time between teaching school and farm work, interrupted by nine months' private study of mathematics and Latin in the home of a country parson. On September 24, 1819, he was married to Laura Waters, daughter of Abner Waters, an emigrant from Connecticut. He studied law in the office of Elisha Whittlesey at Canfield, Ohio, in 1821 was admitted to the bar, and then engaged in an eminently successful general practise at Jefferson, Ohio, until 1838. Meanwhile, in 1826, he served one term in the Ohio House of Representatives.

In 1838 Giddings was elected to the federal House of Representatives as a Whig. He threw himself into John Quincy Adams's struggle over the right of Congress to receive anti-slavery petitions, and in the early years of his incumbency he carried on a crusade in Congress for freedom of debate on all matters touching slavery and for a denial of the power of the federal government to tax the people of the free states for the support of slavery. He vigorously opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War in the belief that they were conspiracies to extend the institution. For attempting during the negotiations with Great Britain over the Creole case to put the House of Representatives on record as opposed to any federal measures in defense of the coastwise slave-trade, he was censured in resolutions which passed by a vote of 125 to 69. He resigned his seat in Congress in order to appeal to his constituents, and was triumphantly reelected.

President Polk's compromise with Great Britain over the Oregon boundary seemed to Giddings an attempt to avoid a war which might threaten the life of slavery. With the nomination of Taylor in 1848 he broke definitely with the Whigs and joined the Free-Soil party. In 1854, upon the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he joined the Republicans. By this time he had formulated an anti-slavery program which included the dedication of all national territories to freedom, opposition to disunion, and the use of the war powers of the President, if war came, to emancipate the slaves of the Southern states. Lincoln was his messmate in Washington in 1847-48, and a careful student of his speeches in Congress (Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1928, II, 19). Thus it may be that Giddings's greatest influence upon the course of American history was exerted in the evolution of Lincoln's ideas, or at least in the preparation of public opinion for Lincoln's leadership. Owing to a breakdown of his health in April 1858, Giddings was not renominated in his congressional district in the following campaign. He took an active part in the Republican convention of 1860, however, as he had in the convention of 1856, and in 1861 President Lincoln appointed him consul-general to Canada, at which post he served for the remainder of his life. Following his death in Montreal he was buried in Jefferson, Ohio. In addition to his printed speeches and essays he left two published works: The Exiles of Florida (1858), and The History of the Rebellion (1864). If a man is to be known by the company he keeps, Giddings should be associated politically with John Quincy Adams, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and John G. Palfrey. His severe attitude toward those who did not share his views regarding slavery was a result of a moral earnestness and an inflexible purpose. In private life he revealed quite different traits. He loved sports, music, and children, and his letters to his own children reveal a charming understanding, sympathy, and mutual confidence.

[The Life of Joshua R. Giddings (1892), by Geo. W. Julian, a son-in-law, is the best biography, though written with obvious bias. Part of the extensive Giddings correspondence has been preserved in the Library of Congress; part is in the possession of the Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society at Columbus, Ohio. For Giddings's attitude on slavery the best printed sources are his Speeches in Congress (1853) and the series of articles, later reprinted in the Julian biography, which first appeared in 1843 in the Western Reserve Chronicle over the name Pacificus. His annual addresses to his constituents were published in the Ashtabula Sentinel. For further reference see M. S. Giddings, The Giddings Family (1882); and the article by B. R. Long in the Ohio Archeological and Historical Quarterly, January 1919.]

E. J. B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 641-642:

GIDDINGS, Joshua Reed, statesman, born in Athens, Bradford county, Pennsylvania, 6 October, 1795; died in Montreal, Canada, 27 May, 1864. His parents removed to Canandaigua, New York, and in 1806 to Ashtabula county, Ohio, where the boy worked on his father's farm, and by devoting his evenings to hard study made up somewhat for his limited educational advantages. In 1812 he enlisted in a regiment commanded by Colonel Richard Hayes, being the youngest member, and was in an expedition sent to the peninsula north of Sandusky bay. There, 29 September, 1812, twenty-two men, of whom he was one, had a skirmish with Indians, in which six of the soldiers were killed and six wounded. Mr. Giddings afterward erected a monument there to the memory of his fallen comrades. After the war he became a teacher, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1820. He was elected to the Ohio legislature in 1826, served one term, and declined a re-election. In 1838 'he was elected, as a Whig, to congress, where he had hardly taken his seat before he became prominent as an advocate of the right of petition, and the abolition of slavery and the domestic slave-trade. He had been known as an active abolitionist before his election. His first attempt to discuss the subject on the floor of congress, 11 February, 1839, was thwarted by the gag rule; but two years later, 9 February, 1841, he delivered a notable speech on the war with the Indians in which he maintained that the contest was waged solely in the interest of slavery, the object being to enslave the Maroons of that state, who were affiliated with the Seminoles, and break up the asylums for fugitives. This subject he set forth more elaborately years afterward in his “Exiles of Florida” (Columbus, Ohio, 1858; new ed., New York, 1863). In the autumn of 1841 the “Creole” sailed from Virginia for Louisiana with a cargo of slaves, who got possession of the vessel, ran into the British port of Nassau, N. P., and, in accordance with British law, were set free. In the excitement that followed, Daniel Webster, secretary of state, wrote to Edward Everett, U.S. minister at London saying that the government would demand indemnification for the owners of the slaves. Thereupon Mr. Giddings, 21 March, 1842, offered in the house of representatives a series of resolutions in which it was declared that, as slavery was an abridgment of a natural right, it had no force beyond the territorial jurisdiction that created it; that when an American vessel was not in the waters of any state it was under the jurisdiction of the United States alone, which had no authority to hold slaves; that the mutineers of the “Creole” had only their natural right to liberty, and any attempt to re-enslave them would be unconstitutional and dishonorable. So much excitement created by these resolutions that Mr. Giddings, on the advice of his friends, withdrew them, but said he would present them again at some future time. The house then, on motion of John Minor Botts, of Virginia, passed a resolution of (125 to 69), and by means of the previous question denied Mr. Giddings an opportunity to speak in his own defence. He at once resigned seat and appealed to his constituents, who re-elected him by a large majority. In the discussion of the “Amistad” case (see CINQUE), Mr. Giddings took the same ground as in the similar case of the “Creole,” and in a speech a few years later boldly maintained that to treat a human being as property was a crime. In 1843 he united with John Quincy Adams and seventeen other members of congress in issuing an address to the people of the country, declaring that the annexation of Texas “would be identical with dissolution”; and in the same year he published, under the pen-name of “Pacificus,” a notable series of political essays. A year later he and Mr. Adams presented a report discussing a memorial from the Massachusetts legislature, in which they declared that the liberties of the American people were founded on the truths of Christianity. On the Oregon question, he held that the claim of the United States to the whole territory was just, and should be enforced, but predicted that the Polk administration would not keep the promise on which it had been elected—expressed in the motto “Fifty-four forty, or fight”—and his prediction was fulfilled. In 1847 he refused to vote for Robert C. Winthrop, the candidate of his party for speaker of the house, on the ground that his position on the slavery question was not satisfactory; and the next year, for the same reason, he declined to support the candidacy of General Taylor for the presidency, and acted with the Free-soil party. In 1849, with eight other congressmen, he refused to support any candidate for the speakership who would not pledge himself so to appoint the standing committees that petitions on the subject of slavery could obtain a fair consideration; and the consequence was the defeat of Mr. Winthrop and the election of Howell Cobb, the Democratic candidate. Mr. Giddings opposed the compromise measures of 1850, which included the fugitive-slave law, and the repeal of the Missouri compromise, taking a prominent part in the debates. In 1850, being charged with wrongfully taking important papers from the post-office, he demanded an investigation, and was exonerated by a committee that was composed chiefly of his political opponents. It was shown that the charge was the work of a conspiracy. In 1856, and again in 1858, he suddenly became unconscious, and fell while addressing the house. His congressional career of twenty years continuous service ended on 4 March, 1859, when he declined another nomination. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed him U. S. consul-general in Canada, which office he held until the time of his death. One who knew him personally writes: “He was about six feet one-inch in height, broad-shouldered, of very stalwart build, and was considered the most muscular man on the floor of the house. Whenever he spoke he was listened to with great attention by the whole house, the members frequently gathering around him. He had several affrays on the floor, but invariably came out ahead. On one occasion he was challenged by a southern member, and promptly accepted, selecting as the weapons two raw-hides. The combatants were to have their left hands tied together by the thumbs, and at a signal castigate each other till one cried enough. A look at Mr. Giddings's stalwart frame influenced the southerner to back out.” Mr. Giddings published a volume of his speeches (Boston, 1853), and wrote “The Rebellion: its Authors and Causes,” a history of the anti-slavery struggle in congress, which was issued posthumously (New York, 1864). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 641-642.

Chapter: “Coastwise Slave-Trade. - Demands upon the British Government - Censure of Mr. Giddings,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

The British government was assured by Mr. Webster that the case was one " calling loudly for redress"; that the " Creole" was passing from one port to another of the United States, on a voyage " perfectly lawful,'' with persons bound to service belonging to American citizens, and recognized as property by the Constitution of the United States and in those States in which slavery existed; that the slaves rose, murdered one man, and that the " mutineers and murderers " took the vessel into a British port. He declared that it was the plain and obvious duty of the authorities of Nassau to assist in restoring to the master and crew their vessel, and in enabling them to resume their voyage and to take with them the mutineers and murderers to their own country to answer for their crimes. This extraordinary position and claim were laid before the British government; but all efforts to secure compensation for the slaves, or the surrender of the men who had asserted and maintained their own liberty, were unavailing. England declined to act the ignoble part of a slave-catcher for the slave-traffickers of the United States.

Mr. Giddings, then a member of the House of Representatives, was so impressed with the positions of the President and Senate, that he deemed it to be a duty he owed to his country to combat them. He drew up a series of resolutions, setting forth that prior to the adoption of the Constitution each State exercised full and perfect jurisdiction over slaves in its own territory; that by the adoption of the Constitution no part of that jurisdiction was delegated to the Federal government; that by the Constitution each State surrendered to the Federal government complete jurisdiction over commerce and navigation; that slavery, being an abridgment of the natural rights of men, could exist only by positive municipal law; that, when a ship belonging to a citizen of any State left the waters of the United States and entered upon the high seas, the persons on board became amenable to the laws of the United States; that when the brig " Creole " left Virginia the slavery laws of that State ceased to have jurisdiction over the persons on board; that in resuming their natural rights they violated no law of the United States, nor incurred any legal penalties; that all attempts to gain possession of or to re-enslave these persons were unauthorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States; that all attempts to exert the influence of the nation in favor of the coastwise slave-trade was subversive of the rights of the people of the free States, unauthorized by the Constitution, and prejudicial to the national character.
These resolutions were submitted to the consideration of Mr. Adams. He avowed his readiness to support them, excepting the one denying the right of the Federal government to abolish slavery in the States. He held that the national government, in case of insurrection or war, might, under the war-power, abolish slavery, and, with statesmanlike sagacity and a wise forecast of possible contingencies, which subsequent events proved to be near at hand, he did not wish to give a vote that would be quoted by the friends of slavery as a denial of that power; " but," he added, " I will cheerfully sustain all but that which denies this right to the Federal government.''
When, on the 21st of March, the State of Ohio was called, Mr. Giddings introduced these resolutions, and gave notice that he would call them up for" consideration the next day. The reading of the resolutions attracted profound attention, and created much excitement. Mr. Ward, a Democratic member from New York, proposed to bring the House to an immediate vote by demanding the previous question, Remarking that the resolutions were too important to be adopted or rejected without consideration, Mr. Everett of Vermont moved to lay them on the table; but his motion was defeated by a large majority. Mr. Holmes of South Carolina; rising under great excitement, remarked: "There are certain topics, like certain places, of which it might be said, ' Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' “The House, by the large vote of one hundred and twenty-two to sixty-one, sustained the previous question. Mr. Everett asked to be excused from voting. As the subject was very important, and would probably come before the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which he was a member, he did not desire to express an opinion until he had examined it. He was a gentleman of high character, ripe age, large experience, and of much influence with his party and in the House. Usually moderate and cautious, on this occasion he seemed to be influenced by the excitement around him, and expressed his “utter abhorrence of the firebrand course of the gentleman from Ohio.'' Mr. Fessenden, then a young and rising member of the House from Maine, thought the resolutions were too important to be voted upon without greater deliberation. Mr. Cushing, then understood to be a special friend of the President and an exponent of his views, after reading the resolutions at the clerk's table, said: “They appear to be a British argument on a great question between the British and American governments, and constitute an approximation to treason on which I intend to vote ' No.'"
At the request of Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Giddings withdrew the resolutions, remarking that they would be published, and gentlemen would have time to examine them with care, and would present them the next day, when the resolutions would be in order. Mr. Botts then rose and, remarking that the withdrawal of the resolutions did not excuse their presentation, submitted a preamble and resolution; the first setting forth that Mr. Giddings, had presented a series of resolutions touching the most important interest connected with a large portion of the Union, then a subject of negotiation with the government of Great Britain of the most delicate nature, the result of which " might involve those nations and perhaps the civilized world in war," in which mutiny and murder were justified and approved in terms shocking all sense of law, order, and humanity; and the latter declaring that this House holds that "the conduct of the said member is altogether inconsistent and unwarranted, and deserving the severest condemnation of the people of this country, and of this body in particular." Objection being made to the consideration of the resolution, Mr. Botts moved a suspension of the rules, but was not sustained by a vote of the House.

As Ohio was still under the call for resolutions, under the rule, Mr. Weller, a Democratic member from that State, adopted Mr. Botts's resolution as his own, offered it, and called for the previous question. Several members questioned the propriety of ordering the previous question; but Mr. Weller, who was a Democrat of the most intense proslavery type, persisted in demanding it. The Speaker, Mr. White of Kentucky, decided that on a question of privilege the previous question could not cut off a member from his defence. Mr. Fillmore appealed from the decision; and the House overruled the Speaker by a large majority, and adjourned.
Thus arraigned for a conscientious discharge of public duty, Mr. Giddings spent the entire night and the forenoon of the next day in preparing for his defence. Calling at the residence of Mr. Adams, for the purpose of consultation, he found, he says," the aged patriot laboring under great distress." He expressed to Mr. Giddings the fear that no defence would be permitted; that the question would be taken without debate, and the vote of censure passed. Mr. Giddings anticipated the vote of censure; but he suggested that the reflections of the night would convince members of “the impropriety of condemning a man unheard." To this suggestion Mr. Adams made the discriminating and suggestive reply: "You are not as familiar with the slaveholding character as I am. Slaveholders act from impulse, not from reflection. They act together from interest, and have no dread of the displeasure of their constituents when they act for slavery."

On the assembling of the House, the Speaker remarked that the first business was on seconding the demand for the previous question. Mr. Weller said he would withdraw his demand for the previous question if Mr. Giddings would proceed with his defence, with the understanding that it should be called when he closed. But, Mr. Giddings refusing to make any terms to secure what he deemed to be his constitutional right, the previous question was ordered by seven majority. Mr. Weller then moved the suspension of the rules, to allow Mr. Giddings to make his defence; but the Speaker pronounced the motion out of order. To the suggestion of Mr. Adams that while the previous question cut off other members it ought not to apply to the member accused, the Speaker replied that the House had decided that the previous question applied to cases of privilege, and the privilege of one was the privilege of all.

The motion was made to hear Mr. Giddings by unanimous consent, and it was announced that such consent had been given. Mr. Giddings then said:" Mr. Speaker, I stand before the House in a peculiar position." Mr. Cooper of Georgia then objected to his proceeding, and he took his seat. Members gathered around Mr. Cooper, and persuaded him to withdraw his objection; but it was renewed by Mr. Calhoun of Massachusetts, who declared that he would not see a member of the House speak under such circumstances.
Mr. Giddings states that when he rose to speak he had intended to say: “It is proposed to pass a vote of censure upon me, substantially for the reason that I differ in opinion from a majority of the members. The vote is about to be taken without giving me an opportunity to be heard. It were idle for me to say I am ignorant of the disposition of a majority of the members to pass a vote of censure. I have been violently assailed in a personal manner, but have had no opportunity of being heard in reply. Nor do I ask for any favor at the hands of gentlemen; but, in the name of an insulted constituency, in behalf of one of the States of this Union, in behalf of the people of these States and of our Federal Constitution, I demand a hearing in the ordinary mode of proceeding. I accept no other privilege. I will receive no other courtesy."

The House, by a vote of one hundred and twenty-five to sixty-nine, adopted the vote of censure. Mr. Giddings then rose and, taking formal leave of the Speaker and officers of the House, retired from the hall. As he reached the front door he met Mr. Clay and Mr. Crittenden. Mr. Giddings states that "as Mr. Clay extended to me his hand he thanked me for the firmness with which I had met the outrage perpetrated upon me, and declared that no man would ever doubt my perfect right to state my own views, particularly while the Executive and the Senate were expressing theirs." Mr. Giddings immediately resigned, returned to Ohio, issued an address to the people of his district, was re-elected by a largely increased majority, and in five weeks took his seat in the House, “clothed with instructions from the people of his district to re-present his resolutions, and maintain to the extent of his power the doctrine which they asserted." He received a warm greeting from the friends of the freedom of debate, who had bravely stood by him in his time of trial.

The action of the House of Representatives, thus signally rebuked by Mr. Giddings's constituents, was also condemned by public meetings, whose proceedings were presented to Congress. Even some Democratic papers, among them the New York "Evening Post,'' asserted the right of Mr. Giddings to present his resolutions. And William C. Bryant, its accomplished editor, declared that if he was a resident of Mr. Giddings's district he would use every honorable means to secure his re-election. This action of the people produced most marked effects upon Congress. The majority who censured Mr. Giddings, fearing if the resolutions were again introduced they would be compelled to vote upon the principles embodied in them, voted, during the remainder of the session, when by the rules resolutions might be presented, to proceed to other business. Finding he could not present the resolutions, he reasserted and vindicated the principles embodied in them in an able and effective speech, which was listened to without interruption. Indeed; notwithstanding all their bluster and arrogant pretension, there seemed from that time a marked falling-off in their zeal, and a manifest disposition to desist from claims they had just declared their purpose to press even to and beyond the very verge of war. And this, notwithstanding the significant fact that the British ministry had not only refused the indemnity so clamorously demanded, but declined to deliver up Madison Washington and his compeers of the " Creole's" brave "nineteen," stigmatized by members of Congress as " murderers and mutineers."  When Lord Ashburton was charged with the mission of settling all questions of difference between the two nations, the British government especially instructed him to hold no correspondence on points pertaining to this controversy.
This sudden change of tactics of Southern members not only appears in marked contrast with their previous violent demonstrations, but provokes no very flattering estimate of the course of those Northern senators who had not a single vote to cast against the resolutions of Mr. Calhoun, which defiantly demanded what even the South itself found it convenient to forget. Indeed, that absence of a single negative that unbroken silence, spoke louder than words. Trumpet-tongued it proclaimed the vassalage of the nation to the Slave Power, and the ignoble and cruel bondage under which the parties and public men of those days were held. It revealed the humiliating fact that they were obliged to smother their convictions and ignore the claims of truth, and were compelled to take the weightiest questions of government and those of national importance from the high court of reason and conscience into the secret conclave of party cabals, inspired by the spirit of slavery and under the discipline of the plantation. If the time ever comes when "things” shall be "what they seem," and conscience and candor shall take the place of mere policy and pretension, it will be regarded as among the marvels of history that men acting from such motives in their public capacity should ever exhibit anything honorable and hearty in their personal and social relations, or that a representation acquiescing and participating in such an administration of public affairs could be anything but demoralized and debauched in the personnel of which it was composed.

Mr. Giddings had been appointed, by the Speaker, chairman of the Committee on Claims, a position he held at the time of his resignation, when another was appointed for the remainder of the session. At the beginning of the next session, an unavailing effort was made by Southern members to induce the Speaker not to reappoint Mr. Giddings to this important post. Mr. White, a personal friend of Mr. Clay, and among the most liberal of Southern statesmen, had pronounced the vote of censure an outrage, and without hesitation made Mr. Giddings chairman again of the committee. Consisting of nine members, it was composed of four Northern and two Southern Whigs, one Southern and two Northern Democrats. The three Democrats and two Southern Whigs had given their votes for the censure, and they deemed it a humiliation to sit with him as chairman. They accordingly determined to revive an old rule of the House, which had practically become obsolete, authorizing the committees to choose their own chairmen. A member of the committee apprised Mr. Giddings of this purpose, and advised him to resign. Having, however, acted according to the dictates of his conscience, he chose to abide the result. Mr. Arnold, a slaveholding Whig of Tennessee, refusing to support a scheme which he styled an outrage on a member because he was opposed to slavery, the project fell through and Mr. Giddings was permitted to retain his position.
But Mr. Giddings's earnest and outspoken fidelity to principle and to the cause of human rights often involved him in conflicts and exposed him to personal dangers, which well-illustrated at once the coarse brutality and domineering violence of the slave-masters and the rough road they were called to travel who dared to question their supremacy and oppose their policy. A somewhat marked example occurred near the close of the session in 1845. For the purpose of exhibiting the rascality of slaveholding demands, and the guilty subserviency and complicity of the government in yielding to those demands, he referred to the treaty of Indian Spring, by which, after paying the slaveholders of Georgia the sum of $109,000 for slaves who had escaped to Florida, it added the sum of $141,000 as compensation demanded for " the off spring which the females would have borne to their masters had they remained in bondage." And, said Mr. Giddings, Congress actually paid that sum” for children who were never born, but who might have been if their parents had remained faithful slaves." 

Mr. Giddings's characterization of these outrageous and indecent demands and of this utterly indefensible policy greatly nettled the Southern members. Mr. Black of Georgia, in a towering passion, poured forth a torrent of coarse invectives and insinuations. He charged that Mr. Giddings had been interested in the horses and wagon lost by Mr. Torrey in his attempt to aid escaping fugitives; that Torrey died in the penitentiary; that the member of Ohio ought to be there; and, if Congress could decide the question, that would be his doom. With low-minded impertinence, he advised him to return to his constituents to “inquire if he had a character," asserting that he had none in that hall. To this gross assault Mr. Giddings replied with becoming dignity and force. Alluding to the policy which would throw around all executive and congressional action in behalf of slavery the shield "of perpetual silence," he said he did not hold the member from Georgia so much responsible as he did "the more respectable members" who stood around him, for the display of that " brutal coarseness which nothing but the moral putridity of slavery could encourage.", What he had said, he contended, were historic facts that could not be disproved. To the personal assault he should make no other reply than that he stood there clothed with the confidence of an intelligent constituency, while his antagonist, alluding to Mr. Black's failure to secure a re-election, had been discarded.  

Of course, language so direct and severe did but fan to a fiercer flame the fire that was already raging, and a collision seemed inevitable. Mr. Black, approaching Mr. Giddings with an uplifted cane, said: “If you repeat those words I will knock you down." The latter repeating them, the former was seized by his friends and borne from the hall. Mr. Dawson of Louisiana, who on a previous occasion had attempted to assault him, approaching him and, cocking his pistol, profanely exclaimed: " I ‘ll shoot him; by G-d I 'll shoot him ' " At the same moment, Mr. Causin of Maryland placed himself in front of Mr. Dawson, with his right hand upon his weapon concealed in his bosom. At this juncture four members from the Democratic side took their position by the side of the member from Louisiana, each man putting his hand in his pocket and apparently grasping his weapon. At the same moment Mr. Rayner of North Carolina, Mr. Hudson of Massachusetts, and Mr. Foot of Vermont, came to Mr. Giddings's rescue, who, thus confronted and thus supported, continued his speech. Dawson stood fronting him till its close, and Causin remained facing the latter until he returned to the Democratic side. Thus demoralized and imbruted seemed the men, even those high in station, who assumed to be the champions of slavery and its policy. Upon such men moral considerations were lost. The only forces they ever respected were those of physical power.

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 1.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 446-455.


GIDDINGS, Lura Maria, abolitionist, member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Daughter of Joshua Reed Giddings. 

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, p. 183)


GIDDINGS, Salmon, Missouri, clergyman, pioneer missionary, member of the Colonization Society.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 642-643).

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 642-643:

GIDDINGS, Salmon, clergyman, born in Hartland, Connecticut, 2 March, 1782; died in St. Louis, Missouri, 1 February, 1828. He was graduated at Williams in 1811, studied theology at Andover seminary, and was ordained to the ministry in 1814. In 1814-'5 he was tutor at Williams, and occasionally preached among the neighboring Congregational churches. Deciding to become a missionary, he set out on horseback, in December, 1815, for St. Louis, which was then regarded as in the far west. He reached the city in April, 1816, assembled a small congregation, and became the pioneer missionary of the Presbyterian church to the country west of the Mississippi. In 1816 Mr. Giddings organized a Presbyterian church at Bellevue settlement, eighty miles southwest of St. Louis, and during the next ten years formed eleven other congregations—five in Missouri, and six in Illinois. In the spring of 1822 he explored Nebraska and Kansas territories, preparatory to establishing missions among the Indians. On this tour of many weeks, without white companions, and hundreds of miles from any white settlement, he visited several Indian nations, held councils with their chiefs, and was received with hospitality. In 1826 Mr. Giddings was installed pastor of the 1st Presbyterian church in St. Louis. He was an active member of the first Bible, Sunday-school, and tract societies of Missouri, and of the first colonization society in that state. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 642-643.


GIFFORD, Josiah, abolitionist, Sandwich, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1841-47.


GILBERT, Abijah, 1806-1881, New York, advocate of abolitionism.  Member of the Whig and Republican Parties.  U.S. Senator from Florida, 1869-1875. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 644:

GILBERT, Abijah, senator, born in Gilbertsville, Otsego county, New York, 18 June, 1806; died there, 23 November, 1881. His grandfather, Abijah, settled in Otsego (then Montgomery) county in 1787, and his father, Joseph, was engaged there in manufacturing and other business. The son entered Hamilton college, but did not complete his course, owing to illness. He engaged in mercantile pursuits in the country, and afterward in New York city, but retired in 1850. In politics he was a strong Whig, and afterward a Republican, and was an early advocate of the abolition of slavery. After the civil war he removed to St. Augustine, Florida, and took an active part in the reconstruction of the state. He was elected to the U. S. senate as a Republican, and served from 1869 till 1875, after which he retired to private life, continuing to reside in St. Augustine till just before his death. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 644.


GILBERT, Elias S., Iowa, American Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1856-59.


GILBERT, Mary, Boston, Massachusetts, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS). 

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 61)


GILBERT, Timothy, 1797-1865, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist, religious organizer, businessman.  Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1846-, Manager, 1850, Executive Committee, 1850.  Member American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention.  His home was a station on the Underground Railroad in Boston, MA.


GILCHRIST, Archibald, abolitionist, Vermont, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1851-53.


GILDERSLEEVE, Wm. C., Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Church Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1861-64.


GILLELAND, James, Red Oak, Ohio, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-40.


GILLET, Eliphalet, Hallowell, Maine.  Regional agent for the American Colonization Society and Secretary of the Maine Missionary Society.  Brother-in-law of Ralph Gurley. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 131)


GILLET, Jason, New York, American Abolition Society.

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


Gillette, Francis, 1807-1879, Windsor, Connecticut, anti-slavery political leader, activist.  U.S. Senator, Free Soil Party, co-founder of the Republican Party.  Opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in the Senate in 1854. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 652; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 290).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

GILLETTE, Francis, senator, born in Windsor, now Bloomfield, Hartford County, Connecticut, 14 December, 1807: died in Hartford, Connecticut, 30 September, 1879. He was graduated at Yale in 1829 with the valedictory, and then studied law with Governor William W. Ellsworth. Failing health compelled him to relinquish this pursuit, and he settled in Bloomfield as a farmer. In 1882 and again in 1836 he was sent to the legislature, where he gained notice in 1838 by his anti-slavery speech advocating the striking out of the word "white" from the state constitution. In 1841 he was nominated against his own will for the office of governor by the Liberty Party, and during the twelve following years frequently received a similar nomination from the Liberty and Free-Soil parties. He was elected by a coalition between the Whigs, temperance men, and Free-Soilers, in 1854, to fill the vacancy in the U. S. Senate caused by the resignation of Truman Smith, and served from 25 May, 1854, till 3 March, 1855. Mr. Gillette was active in the formation of the Republican Party, and was for several years a silent partner in the "Evening Press," the first distinctive organ of that party. He was active in the cause of education throughout his life, was a coadjutor of Dr. Henry Barnard from 1838 till 1842, one of the first trustees of the State Normal School, and for many years its president. Mr. Gillette took interest in agricultural matters, was an advocate of total abstinence, and delivered lectures and addresses on both subjects. He moved to Hartford in 1852, and passed the latter part of his life in that city.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 652.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 290:

GILLETTE, FRANCIS (December 14, 1807-September 30, 1879), statesman, was a descendant of Jonathan Gillett, who settled in Windsor, Connecticut, about 1636. Francis Gillet (or Gillette as he signed himself) was born in Bloomfield, then a part of Windsor, the son of Ashbel and Achsah (Francis) Gillet. When he was six years old his father died. Between the boy and his stepfather there was no sympathy, a situation which embittered his formative years. Gillette received his preparatory education at Ashfield, Massachusetts, where his mother was then living, and was graduated from Yale College in 1829. He was an excellent student, the unanimous choice of his classmates for valedictorian, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1834 he married Eliza Daggett Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker. He had begun the study of law, but because of ill health, was obliged to abandon it and take up the life of a farmer on the family estate in Windsor. There he remained until 1852 when he purchased a farm in Hartford. Twice he was sent to the Connecticut House of Representatives, in 1832 from Windsor and in 1838 from Bloomfield. As a member of the Assembly, he identified himself with the anti-slavery group. In 1838, supporting an amendment to erase the word "white" from the state constitution, he professed to find "the length of the nose" as valid a qualification as color for political rights (Columbian Register, New Haven, May 26, 1838).

In 1841 he became the first candidate of the Liberty party for governor. Repeatedly, during the twelve years following, he received the Abolitionist or Free-Soil nominations and was as often defeated. In 1854, however, his long association with minority parties bore fruit, when a coalition of Whigs, Free-Soilers, and temperance men elected him United States senator to complete the unexpired term of Truman Smith. He reached Washington barely in time to vote against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. During his brief stay in the Senate (May 24, 1854-March 3, 1855), he delivered one formal speech on the slavery issue (Congressional Globe, 33 Congress, l Session, pp. 1616-18). In Connecticut he was actively interested in the formation of the Republican party, whose first organ, the Hartford Evening Press, knew him as a silent partner. To the temperance movement, as well as the anti-slavery crusade, he lent his vigorous support. He was an incorporator of the American Temperance Life Insurance Company, now the Phoenix Mutual. He devoted his efforts, also, to the cause of education, and gave sympathy and cooperation to Henry Barnard [q.v.], who was laboring to reform the Connecticut schools. When the State Normal School was established in 1849, Gillette became chairman of the Board of Trustees and held that office until 1865. He embodied qualities common to many New Englanders of his day, a reforming spirit and a passion for minority causes. His interest in abolition, temperance, and education, though sometimes a bit combative, was sincere and unselfish (Hartford Courant, October l, 1879), and he was the antithesis of the professional politician and office-seeker.

[H. R. Stiles, The History and Geneals. of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut, volume II (1892), contains the Gillet genealogy and a long biographical footnote on Francis Gillette (p. 293). See also J . H. Trumbull. Memorial History of Hartford County (1886), I, 516, 611, II, ch. iii; Obituary Record Graduates Yale College, 2 series (1880); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); obituary in Hartford Courant, October 1, 1879.]

D. E. O.


GILLETT, H. S., Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1838-39.


GILLILAND, James, born 1761, South Carolina, Presbyterian clergyman, vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, anti-slavery activist, censured and silenced for speaking for slave emancipation in 1796.  Moved to Brown County, Ohio, in 1805.  Pastor, Red Oak Church, with mixed race congregation.  Known as “Father Gilliland.” 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 91, 134-135; 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, p. 90)


GILLINGHAM, Lucas, abolitionist, New Jersey, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1842-47.


GILMAN, Winthrop Sargent, 1808-1884, banker, abolitionist sympathizer.  Aided abolitionist Elijah Parrish Lovejoy.  Hid his printing press.


GILMER, Thomas Walker, 1802-1844, Virginia, statesman, lawyer, Governor of Virginia, U.S. Congressman.  Member of the American Colonization Society (ACS) and Secretary of the Albemarle, Virginia, auxiliary of the ACS.  Worked with William Broadnax in March 1833 to get state appropriation for support of the ACS.  It appropriated $18,000 a year for five years. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 657; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 308; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 107, 183-184)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 657:

GILMER, Thomas Walker, statesman, born in Virginia; died near Washington, D. C., 28 February, 1844. He studied law, practised in Charlottesville, Virginia, and served for many years in the state legislature, for two sessions as speaker. In 1840-'1 he was governor of Virginia. In 1841 he entered congress, and, although he had been elected as a Whig, sustained President Tyler's vetoes. He was re-elected as a Democrat in 1842 by a close vote. His competitor, William L. Goggin, contested the result without success. On 15 February, 1844, he was appointed by President Tyler secretary of the navy, and resigned his seat in congress on 18 February to enter on the duties of the office, but ten days later was killed by the bursting of a gun on board the United States steamer “Princeton.” Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


GINNINGS, Dorus, free African American, founded Free African Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1787.


GLOUCESTER, John, 1776-1822, African American, founder of African American Presbyterians, abolitionist.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 5, p. 61)


GLOVER, Joshua, fugitive slave.


GLOVER, Samuel Taylor (March 9, 1813-January 22, 1884), lawyer.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt.

GLOVER, SAMUEL TAYLOR (March 9, 1813-January 22, 1884), lawyer, the son of Turner Fales and Mary A. Gilmore, was born in Boston, Massachusetts Although destined for college, he deserted his preparations for it and entered business, to become at twenty-five the head of a new firm which conducted a shipping and cotton business in New York City. Apparently his career was very successful, for in 1857 he retired from business with a competency. The Civil War found him relatively unemployed and in possession of a knowledge of Southern conditions which he had derived from his frequent business trips to that region. His facile command of language completed the background of his literary qualifications. His first venture was the Continental  Monthly, a periodical devoted to anti-slavery propaganda. Although its publication gave Gilmore a great deal of rather flatulent self-satisfaction, it was suspended after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Meanwhile his flood of books had begun. The first, Among the Pines (1862), professed to be a true picture of life in the Southern states. It was followed rapidly by six other rather colorless volumes, the last of which, On the Border, appeared in 1867. During these years also, Gilmore contributed random articles to the New York Tribune.

It was logical that Greeley and Gilmore should cherish the same implacable distrust of Lincoln. In 1863 Gilmore was therefore an understandable choice as an emissary to General Rosecrans to determine whether he was a candidate whom the Tribune might support for the presidential nomination in the following year. It was on this journey that Gilmore met James F. Jaquess [ q. v.], the Methodist parson-colonel who wanted to go to Richmond and convert Jefferson Davis to peace. Almost against his will, Gilmore became associated with this zealous project. At Rosecrans's request, he went to Washington, outlined Jaquess's hopes to Lincoln, and aided the Colonel in obtaining a furlough for his purpose. This visit was not without other result, for it converted Gilmore into an admirer of the President.

When the Jaquess mission failed, Gilmore was too busy writing and lecturing to devote his attention immediately to remedies, but in April 1864 he interviewed Lincoln, and according to his own stories, he persuaded the President to permit a second attempt. Although neither Jaquess nor Gilmore could carry credentials as representatives, Lincoln drew up a statement of peace terms to guide their conversation. These included the perpetual abolition of slavery and the immediate recognition of the supremacy of the Union. In return for this surrender, Lincoln proposed a compensation to the slaveholders of $500,000,000, the restoration of the states to the Union with all their rights, and an amnesty to those engaged in the rebellion. Finally in the first part of July, Gilmore and Jaquess were passed through the lines and transported to Richmond. Once there it was difficult to secure an interview with Jefferson Davis because they were wholly unaccredited, but they finally persuaded or deceived the Confederate President into a willingness to see them, and on the evening of July 17 the conference took place in the old Customhouse.

Gilmore's later narratives of the prelude to this interview conceal by flippancy and the dimness of recollection the motive which led to the dispatch of the mission. Probably both Lincoln and he hoped that it would produce some statement of Confederate war aims so extreme that it could be used in the North to stem the growing clamor of the peace partisans. Ii such were their hopes, they were not disappointed. Davis vigorously denied that slavery was the barrier to a reconciliation between the nations, insisting rather that the point at issue was the right to self-government. When the interview was over, Gilmore was apprehensive that they would not be allowed to return, but on July 21, he made his report to President Lincoln in safety. It now remained to get the news before the public. Under the pseudonym "Edmund Kirke," Gilmore published a card on July 22, in the Boston Transcript, containing the high lights of Davis's ultimatum, and followed it with a longer account in the September and December issues of the Atlantic Monthly. With Jaquess, he visited some northern governors, and the two made several speeches to secure further publicity. It is not unlikely that the results of the mission had some minor influence upon the presidential campaign of 1864.

After the war, Gilmore married Laura Edmonds, the daughter of Judge John W. Edmonds of New York. His fortune was so diminished that he reentered business in 1873, but in spite of this employment, he kept himself in practise with incidental writing. In 1880 he published The Life of James A. Garfield, a campaign biography which had an extensive sale, and in 1881, with Lyman Abbott, he edited The Gospel History. In 1883 he was able again to retire and devote his time solely to writing and lecturing. His chief interest in both fields was history diluted for popular consumption. Although he gave a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute, most of his addresses seem to have been delivered to societies interested in genealogy or local history. Of his later literary productions, John Servier as a Commonwealth-Builder (1887) is typical. He died at Glens Falls, New York.

[J. R. Gilmore, Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War (1808), and "A Suppressed Chapter of History," Atlantic Monthly, April 1887; Official Records (Army), 1 series XL (pt. 3); Official Records (Navy), 2 series III; E. C. Kirkland, The Peacemakers of I864 (1927); Literary World, November 14, 1885; Boston Transcript, Albany Evening Journal, November 17. 1903; Outlook, November 28, 1903. The Glens Falls Times, November 7, 1903, states that Gilmore was survived by his second wife. Possibly his first wife was Amelia Harris, whose marriage to a James R. Gilmore was noted in the Boston Transcript, August 1, 1851.]

E.C.K.


GLOVER, Samuel Taylor (March 9, 1813-January 22, 1884), lawyer.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1pp. 332-333:

GLOVER, SAMUEL TAYLOR (March 9, 1813-January 22, 1884), lawyer, was of Virginia stock. The son of John and Fanny (Taylor) Glover, he was a descendant of Richard Glover who came from England in 1635, settled in Virginia, and became a wealthy planter. About 1825 John Glover moved with his family from Virginia to Harrodsburg, Mercer County, Kentucky. His son's youth was spent on a farm, but he also received an academic education, graduating at Bardstown College with highest honors. He had taken up the study of law in his spare moments and in 1835 moved to Knox County, where he was admitted to practise. Two years later, however, he went to Missouri, was admitted to the bar of that state, and settled at Palmyra, Marion County. This was the center of the 2nd judicial district and he soon acquired an extensive clientele in Marion and the adjoining counties and became the undisputed leader of the district bar. In 1849, desiring a larger field of opportunities, he once more moved, this time to St. Louis, where he practised until his death. He confined himself to his profession taking little part in public or municipal affairs, until the emergence of the slavery question. He had identified himself with the emancipation policy from his youth up, despite the overwhelming preponderance of pro-slavery sentiment in the states where he had lived, and in 1860 he was a prominent supporter of Edward Bates [q.v.] in his candidature for the Republican nomination for president at the Chicago convention of that year. The situation was tense in St. Louis for some months prior to and after the outbreak of the Civil War. Glover was appointed a member of the "Committee of Safety" at a mass meeting which adopted the platform of "unalterable fidelity to the Union under all circumstances," and he took a leading part in the events which retained Missouri within the Union. After the close of the war he gave a signal example of adherence to principle by refusing to take the oath of loyalty which the Constitution of 1865 required, inter alia, of all lawyers. He was indicted for practising without having taken the oath, and demurred to the indictment on the ground that the provisions respecting oaths were unconstitutional. His contention was sustained (The Murphy and Glover Test Oath Cases, 41 Missouri, 339). Thereafter he abstained from participation in politics-emerging on only one occasion when his name was unsuccessfully placed before the Democratic caucus in connection with the United States Senate-and confined himself to his law practise, becoming the recognized head of the St. Louis bar. He was preeminent as counsel, the Reports showing that during his career he was retained in thirty cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, thirty-five cases in the court of appeals, and no less than 410 in the Missouri supreme court. Well versed in the law of real property and crimes, an expert in commercial law, and esteemed the best constitutional lawyer of his time in the West, he was noted in court for his clear forcible arguments and his infinite resourcefulness. Fluent of speech, he was capable of rising to real eloquence, though owing to a nervousness which he could never overcome, he often weakened his addresses by stammering. Another serious defect was an infirmity of temper which occasionally became uncontrollable. His failure to achieve more success in public life may be ascribed to a lack of magnetism which precluded him from ever becoming a popular politician. To his intimate friends he could unbend and on such occasions he would shine by his brilliance and geniality, but to the crowd he appeared cold and his forgetfulness of names and faces was apt to be embarrassing. He was married on June 28, 1843, to Mildred Ann Buckner, a native of Louisville, Kentucky.

[Anna Glover, Glover  Memorials and Geneals. (1867); History of the Bench and Bar of Missouri (1898), ed. by A. J. D. Stewart, p. 120. Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri (1901), ed. by H. L. Conard, III, 65; American Law Review, January-February 1884; and Proc. Fourth Annual Meeting Missouri Bar Assn. (1884), p. 125.]

H.W.H.K.


GODDING, Alvah, abolitionist, Winchester, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-41.


GODWIN, Parke (February 25, 1816-January 7, 1904), editor, author, he became first a Free-Soil Democrat, then a Republican. During the presidential campaign of 1860 he was active both in writing and in speaking. His faith in Lincoln was unwavering.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1pp. 351-352:

GODWIN, PARKE (February 25, 1816-January 7, 1904), editor, author, the son of Abraham and Martha (Parke) Godwin, was born in Paterson (originally Totowa or Totawa), New Jersey, where his family had been of some prominence. His great-grandfather, Abraham Godwin, had kept a tavern in or near Totowa in the middle of the eighteenth century (William Nelson, History of the Old Dutch Church at Totowa, 1892, p. 27) and with three sons, one of them Parke's grandfather, had fought in the Revolution. His father had served as a lieutenant in the War of 1812. Something of his early family history is embodied in The First Settlers of Totawa, which he printed privately in 1892. He was graduated from Princeton in 1834, read law at Paterson, and went to Louisville, Kentucky, where he was admitted to the bar and opened a law office. Before acquiring a practise he returned to New York City, being, according to one account, too much disturbed by the presence of slavery to remain. In a New York boarding house in 1836 he met William Cullen Bryant and began an acquaintance that Jeri to both professional and personal relations hips. Bryant offered him a position on the New York Evening Post, a journal with which Godwin was intermittently connected for forty-five years; and on May 12, 1842, he was married to Bryant's eldest daughter, Fanny. He contributed articles, largely on economic and social subjects, to J. L. O'Sullivan's United States Magazine and Democratic Review. He was one of the New Yorkers who sympathized with the social movements being advocated in New England during the early forties, especially Brook Farm. Though never a resident, he is said to have given this venture hearty support, and to have written the first address in favor of "association "; and he later edited the Harbinger, organ of the disciples of Fourier, who became increasingly important in the movement. He also published Democracy, Constructive and Pacific, and A Popular View of the Doctrines of Fourier (both 1844). He always retained his idealism, although, when he died, the fact that he had been prominent in these transcendental experiments full sixty years before appealed to the imagination and probably led commentators to lay undue stress upon this part of his career. In politics he became first a Free-Soil Democrat, then a Republican. During the presidential campaign of 1860 he was active both in writing and in speaking. His faith in Lincoln was unwavering, and from a once famous interview with the President he brought back to doubting New York Republicans the personal message that an emancipation proclamation was being delayed only until a favorable moment.

In 1853 he became associated with C. S. Briggs and George William Curtis in the editorship of the newly founded and short-lived Putnam's Monthly Magazine. His volume of Political Essays (1856) was gathered from his contributions to Putnam's. Besides his work for the journals mentioned, and others, he compiled a Hand-Book of Universal Biography (1852), later revised as The Cyclopaedia of Biography (1866, 1878). He projected a history of France, of which only the first volume, bringing the narrative to 843 A.D., was published (1860). He also edited the works of William Cullen Bryant (4 volumes, 1883-84), and accompanied them with a biography (2 volumes, 1883). He was in demand as a speaker on memorial occasions, and his Commemorative Addresses (1895) contains his utterances on G. W. Curtis, Edwin Booth, Bryant, and others. Evidence of his general literary interests may be found in his translations, made during the transcendental period, of the first part of The Autobiography of Goethe (2 volumes, 1846-47), which he edited, and Zschokke's Tales (2 volumes, 1845); in Vala, A Mythological Tale (1851) associated with the life of Jennie Lind; and in A New Study of the Sonnets of Shakespeare (1900), published when he was eighty-four years old. Out of the Past (1870) was a collection of literary and critical papers contributed to various journals the first as early as 1839. A similar collection of political and social papers, promised in the preface of this volume, seems never to have been issued.

Godwin acquired a financial interest in the New York Evening Post in 1860. Both before and after that date he was close to Bryant in the editorial conduct of the paper. After the death of Bryant in 1878 he became editor-in-chief. Differences of opinion as to policies had long existed between Bryant and Godwin on the one hand, and Henderson, business manager and half owner, on the other; and a controversy that had smouldered while the veteran editor lived became active at his death. After three somewhat troubled years of editorship, Godwin closed his connection with the Post in 1881, when the paper was sold to the Villard interests. He soon became editor of the Commercial Advertiser, a position that he held until he retired from active routine duties. The list of his books and the known amount of his journalistic work would seem sufficient to refute the charge of laziness made by some of his acquaintances; though it must be remembered that his active career covered a period of nearly seventy years. Godin's hair and beard are said to have become snowy white at a comparatively early age, and in his impressive portraits both appear as profuse as those of his distinguished father-in-law. A public- spirited citizen, member of many social and civic organizations, a patron of the opera and of other arts, he was long a familiar and a notable figure in New York, and in his later years seemed the most important if not the sole remaining link between the twentieth century and the literary past of Irving, Cooper, Willis, Poe, and their contemporaries.

[See Who's Who in America, 1903-05; obituary notice in the New York Evening Post, January 7, 1904; Allan Nevins, The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism (1922); Wm. Nelson and C. A. Schriner, History of Paterson and its Environs, II (1920), 65-67; Eugene Benson, "Parke Godwin, of the Evening Post," Galaxy, February 1869; W. W. Clayton, History of Bergen and Passaic Counties, New Jersey (1882), p. 524.]

W. B. C.


GOLDSBOROUGH, Charles, 1765-1834, Annapolis, Maryland, statesman, U. S. Congressman, Governor of Maryland, 1818-1819.  Member of the Annapolis auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p 672; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 365; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 70)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p 672:

GOLDSBOROUGH, Charles, statesman, born in Maryland in 1760; died in Shoals, Maryland, 13 December, 1834. He served in congress as a Federalist from 2 December, 1805, to 3 March, 1817, and was governor of Maryland in 1818-'19. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


GOLDSBOROUGH, Robert Henry, 1780-1836, New Easton, Maryland.  Charter founding member of the American Colonization Society in Washington, DC, in 1816.  Democratic U.S. Senator from Maine, 1813-1819, 1835-1836. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 673; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 27, 258n14)


GOOCH, Daniel W., 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)


GOODELL, Reverend William, 1792-1878, New York City, reformer, temperance activist, radical abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1839, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Published anti-slavery newspaper, The Investigator, founded 1829 in Providence, Rhode Island; merged with the National Philanthropist the same year.  Wrote Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 1852. Co-founder of the New York Anti-Slavery Society, 1833.  Editor of The Emancipator, and The Friend of Man, in Utica, New York, the paper of the New York Anti-Slavery Society.  Co-founded the Anti-Slavery Liberty Party in 1840.  Was its nominee for President in 1852 and 1860.  In 1850, edited American Jubilee, later called The Radical Abolitionist.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 19, 20, 23, 25, 32, 34, 50, 53, 54, 101; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 177; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 167, 182, 264-265, 295; Goodell, 1852; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 48, 107, 187, 228, 246, 249, 252, 300, 333, 341, 387n11, 388n27; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 1, 7, 22, 29, 31, 35, 46, 63, 64, 71, 72, 162-163, 199, 225, 257n; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 411-417; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 411-417; Van Broekhoven, 2001, pp. 30-31, 35-36, 87; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 384; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 236).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 384:

GOODELL, WILLIAM (October 25, 1792-February 14, 1878), reformer, was born in Coventry, Chenango County, New York, where his parents, Frederic and Rhoda (Guernsey) Goodell, were among the first settlers. He was descended from Robert Goodell, or Goodale, who settled at Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1634. Delicate in childhood, he spent much of his time indoors with his mother, who encouraged his interest in literature, particularly poetry, and in composition. Shortly after her death, in his eleventh year, he went to live with his grandmother Goodell in Pomfret, Connecticut. Here he remained five years, attending the common school, working on the farm, and enjoying the use of two large libraries. Important in his intellectual and moral development was the influence of his grandmother, a strong-minded woman with advanced ideas on some of the social evils of her day. William hoped for a college education, but was disappointed, and at eighteen, his health much improved, he entered the employ of a mercantile firm in Providence, Rhode Island. On January 1, 1817, he sailed as supercargo in a ship bond for East Indian, Chinese, and European markets. Returning to the United States in 1819, he reentered business in Providence, Wilmington, North Carolina, and Alexandria, Virginia. On July 4, 1823, he married Clarissa C. Cady, daughter of Josiah Cady of Providence. Upon the failure of his commercial venture in Alexandria, he found employment in New York City where he was active in promoting the Mercantile Library Association, of which he became a director in 1827. In that year he gave up business and removed to Providence to become editor of a reform weekly, the Investigator and General Intelligencer, which soon drifted into temperance reform. In 1829 this paper became connected with the National Philanthropist of Boston and in 1830 was removed to New York, where, as the Genius of Temperance, it continued to assail various evils. To arouse interest and gain subscriptions, Goodell was frequently forced into the lecture field. During these same years he also published the Female Advocate to further the movement for the moral reform of unfortunate women, as well as the Youth's Temperance Lecturer, one of the earliest temperance papers for children. In 1833 he helped to organize the American Anti-Slavery Society and began to publish the Emancipator, in the name of C. W. Denison. In 1834 the paper, appearing under Goodell's name, became the Society's organ. Two years later he spoke effectively before the Massachusetts legislature in behalf of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and against the appeal of certain Southern states for legislation restraining the anti-slavery agitators. The same year (1836) he took charge of an anti-slavery paper in Utica, New York, the Friend of Man, which he edited for six years in Utica and Whitesboro. Here he also published for a year the monthly Anti-Slavery Lecturer and began (1842) the Christian Investigator. Meantime he lectured widely and, in 1840, helped organize the Liberty Party. In 1843 he was induced to set up in Honeoye, New York, his ideal church, based upon temperance, anti-slavery, and church union principles. He entered the ministry without seeking or desiring formal ordination, and was very successful, being "a man of tender and exquisitely sympathetic nature." In 1847, feeling that the Liberty Party's program of opposition to slavery was too narrow, he left that party to found the Liberty League, which, with a platform of opposition to slavery, tariffs, land monopoly, the liquor traffic, war, and secret societies, nominated Gerrit Smith for president. While at Honeoye, Goodell wrote extensively on slavery, notably Views Upon American Constitutional Law, in its Bearing Upon American Slavery (1844), The Democracy of Christianity (2 volumes, 1849), Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A History of the Great Struggle in Both Hemispheres (1852), and The American Slave Code, in Theory and Practice (1853). In 1854 he settled in New York to edit the American Jubilee, later the Radical Abolitionist, which, enlarged and published as the weekly Principia, continued until abolition was effected. Unlike Garrison, Goodell thought it possible under the Constitution to do away with slavery and was a believer in both the Constitution and the Union. Following the war, he wrote for reform and religious papers, and occasionally preached. In 1869 he was among the organizers of the National Prohibition Party. The next year he removed to Janesville, Wisconsin, to be near his two daughters, and there he passed the remaining years of his life, retaining to the end an active interest in religion and reform.

[In Memoriam, William Goodell, Born in Coventry, New York, October 25th, 1792. Died in Janesville, Wisconsin, February 14th, 1878 (1878); The U. S. Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men: Wisconsin Volunteer (1877), pp. 193-95; Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (1872), I, 232 ff., 408-21, 555; W. P. and F. J. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison (4 volumes, 1885-89), I, 91; obituary in Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), February 18, 1878.]

W.R.W.


GOODHUE, Jonathan, 1783-1848, New York, merchant-trader, officer of the New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 679; 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. 679:

GOODHUE, Jonathan, merchant, born in Salem, Massachusetts, 21 June, 1783; died in New York city in 1848, received a liberal education, and at the age of fifteen entered the counting-room of John Norris, of Salem, who was extensively engaged in trade with Europe and the West Indies. After two voyages as supercargo, Mr. Goodhue established himself in business in New York city in 1807. The long embargo, and the subsequent war with England, were unfavorable to his business, and on receipt of the news of the conclusion of peace he despatched an express to Boston, with instructions to proclaim the tidings in every town on the route. After this period Mr. Goodhue became a prosperous merchant. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


GOODLOE, Daniel Reaves, 1814-1902, associate editor and editor of anti-slavery newspaper, The National Era, in Washington, DC, the newspaper of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.  Worked, with abolitionist leader Gamaliel Bailey.  Goodloe also wrote for the New York Tribune.  He was a friend of Horace Greeley and Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Goodloe wrote Inquiry into the Causes Which Have Retarded the Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in the Southern States: In Which the Question of Slavery is Considered in a Politico-Economical Point of View.  By a Carolinian. [1846]. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 265; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 63, 116, 122, 152, 156, 240, 261, 263-264; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 39, 162)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 390:

GOODLOE, DANIEL REAVES (May 28, 1814-January 18, 1902), Abolitionist, author, was born in Louisburg, North Carolina, the son of Dr. Kemp Strother and Mary Reaves (Jones) Goodloe. He attended a local academy for some years and was then apprenticed to a printer in Oxford, North Carolina. True to the adage, he never thereafter got far away from printer's ink, beginning his journalistic career as soon as he reached his majority by publishing the Examiner in Oxford. It soon failed and he went to Tennessee and attended a school in Mount Pleasant. In 1836 he volunteered for service against the Creek Indians in Alabama. They soon made peace and his company then volunteered for the Seminole War and served in Florida. The pension Goodloe later received for this service supported him in his old age. Returning !o North Carolina, he studied law under Robert B. Gilliam and was admitted to the bar but was unsuccessful in practise. He was offered a nomination to the legislature but declined because he was out of harmony with the people of the state on the subject of slavery, and finally in 1844 drifted to Washington where Senator Willie P. Mangum secured for him a position with the Whig Standard, of which he shortly became editor. That soon failed, and he edited the Georgetown Advocate and later the Christian Statesman until 1852 when he was made assistant editor of the National Era, an anti-slavery paper established in 1847 to advocate the principles of the Liberty party. When Gamaliel Bailey, the founder and editor, died, Goodloe succeeded him and held the position until the outbreak of the war caused the collapse of the paper. Into its columns he brought writers of distinction, such as Grace Greenwood, Mary Mapes Dodge, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Southworth.

While he was still an apprentice, his reading in the Richmond Whig and Richmond Examiner, both advocates of emancipation in Virginia, of the debates on the subject, had converted him to anti-slavery views; and he quickly became a full-fledged Abolitionist. In 1844 he published in the New-York American an anti-slavery article, the first of a considerable number which came from his pen. After the suspension of the National Era he was Washington correspondent for the New York Times until 1862, when President Lincoln appointed him chairman of the commission to carry out the compensation provision of the act emancipating slaves in the District of Columbia. From the close of 186.3 he did editorial work on the Washington Chronicle, and later in 1865 President Johnson appointed him United States marshal for North Carolina. He supported Johnson's policy of restoration until 1866 when he became convinced that it was not sufficiently drastic. He accordingly signed the call for the Southern Loyalist convention, and, advocating congressional reconstruction, joined in the organization of the Republican party in the state in 1867. He was violently opposed, however, to the proscriptive tendencies or the Carpet-baggers and of certain native leaders, such as Holden, whom he disliked and distrusted, and he soon parted company with them. In 1868 he bitterly opposed the ratification of the "Carpet-bag" constitution and was an independent candidate for governor against Holden. Later he went again to Washington where he was a free-lance writer, but finally returned to Louisburg, North Carolina. He suffered a stroke of apoplexy in 1900 but survived it two years. He died in Warrenton, North Carolina, and is buried there.

Goodloe's most important writings include the New-York American article of 1844, later published as a pamphlet entitled, Inquiry into the Causes which have Retarded the Accumulation of Wealth . . . in the Southern States (1846); The South and the North: Being a Reply to a Lecture ... by Ellwood Fisher (1849); Is it Expedient to Introduce Slavery into Kansas? (1855); The Southern Platform (1858); Federalism Unmasked (1860); Emancipation and the War (1861); "Resources and Industrial Condition of the Southern States" in Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, 1865 (1866); Letter of Daniel R. Goodloe to Hon. Charles Sumner on the Situation of A ff airs in North Carolina (1868); The Marshalship in North Carolina (1869); The Birth of the Republic (1889); and A History of the Demonetization of Silver (1890). He wrote (Bassett, post, p. 56) the history of Reconstruction in North Carolina which appeared without credit in Samuel S. ("Sunset") Cox's Three Decades of Federal Legislation (1885). During 1894-95 he wrote a series of articles on the same subject for the Raleigh News and Observer. A close friend of Greeley and Raymond, he wrote constantly for the New York Tribune and the New York Times. Goodloe was attractive and genial, generous to a fault, unswervingly courageous, charitable, and tender-hearted. He had a genius for friendship and held the affection and confidence even of political enemies.

[J. S. Bassett, "Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina," Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies in History and Pol. Sci., series XVI, no. 6 (1898); S. B. Weeks in Southern Historical Assn. Pubs., Volume II (1898); News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina), January 26, 1902.]

J. G. de R. H.


GOODNOW, Isaac Tichenor (January 17, 1814-March 20, 1894), educator, Kansas pioneer. Birney was  outspoken in his opposition to the extension of slavery, and in 1854 he became interested in the support of the New England Emigrant Aid Company to send Free-Soil colonists to Kansas.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1 pp. 394-395:

GOODNOW, ISAAC TICHENOR (January 17, 1814-March 20, 1894), educator, Kansas pioneer, was born in Whitingham, Vt., the son of William and Sybil (Arms) Goodnow. He attended the local schools and at the age of fourteen became a merchant's clerk. At twenty he entered the Wesleyan Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, for four years of study, and then (1838) became professor of natural sciences at the Academy. On August 28, 1838, he was married to Ellen D. Denison. In 1848 he accepted a position as professor of natural sciences at the Providence Conference Seminary and moved from Wilbraham to East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Since 1840, when he had voted for James G. Birney, he had been outspoken in his opposition to the extension of slavery, and in 1854 he became vitally interested in the project of the New England Emigrant Aid Company to send Free-Soil colonists to Kansas. Resigning his professorship, he devoted himself for several months to raising a company of some 200 emigrants, who left Boston in March 1855 and founded the town of Manhattan, Kansas. Goodnow was a member of the committee which selected the townsite. He was one of the representatives of Manhattan in the Free-State convention held at Lawrence in August 1855, and in April 1858 was a member of the convention which drew up the Leavenworth Constitution. In 1857 he had returned to the East to solicit funds for the establishment of a Methodist church in Manhattan, and secured $4,000. Encouraged by this success, he took a leading part, together with his brother-in-law, Joseph Denison, and Washington Marlatt, in the founding of Bluemont Central College. In the interest of this institution Goodnow again visited the East, and raised $15,000 in cash and a library of some two thousand miscellaneous volumes. The college was chartered by the territorial legislature in 1858 and the cornerstone laid at Manhattan in 1859. Goodnow was elected to the first state legislature, in November 1861, and secured the passage of a bill locating the state university at Manhattan. The bill was vetoed by Governor Charles Robinson, however, and the university established at Lawrence, but a year later, when the Morrill Act made possible the establishment of a state agricultural college, the offer by the trustees of Bluemont Central College of their building, land, and equipment as the nucleus for such a school, was accepted, and in September 1863 the Kansas State Agricultural College was opened at Manhattan. In 1862 and again in 1864 Goodnow was elected state superintendent of public instruction, in which capacity he was ex officio a regent of the Agricultural College. In 1866 he was made agent to dispose of some 82,000 acres of land belonging to the college, and before 1873, when he relinquished the office, had sold about 42,000 acres. He was subsequently appointed land commissioner of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway, which office he held for seven years. During that time he sold land amounting to more than $1,500,000. The last ten or twelve years of his life he spent quietly at his home near Manhattan, where he died.

[J. D. Waters, Columbian  History of the Kansas State Agric. College (1893); Industrialist (pub. by the State Agric. College), March 24, 1894; Portrait and Biographical Album of Washington, Clay, and Riley Counties, Kansas (1 890); Trans. Kansas State Historical Society, volumes IV (1890), V (1896), 141-42; W. E. Connelley, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, IV (1918), 1853- 54; D. L. Wilder, Annals of Kansas (1876); J. D. Baldwin and Wm. Clift, A Record of the Descendants of Captain George Denison (1881); E. W. Arms, A Genealogy Record of the Arms Family (1877); David Sherman, History of the Wesleyan Acad. at Wilbraham, Massachusetts (1893); obituaries in Central Christian Advocate, April 11, 1894, Zion's Herald, April 4, 1894.]

M. S.


GOODRICH, Joseph, 1800-1867, businessman, politician, abolitionist.  Active in local Underground Railroad.


GOODWIN, E. W., New York, abolitionist leader.

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


GOODYEAR, George, Ashburnham, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1836-40.



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.