Mid-Mit: Middleton through Miter

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.


MIDDLETON, Jonathan, New York, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-1837.


MIFFLIN, Warner, 1745-1798, Virginia, Elder of the Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist leader.  Mifflin inherited slaves through his marriage.  He came to oppose slavery and manumitted his slaves in October 1774 and January 1775.  He encouraged his fellow Quakers to free their slaves.  Delegate of the Delaware Abolition Society.  Lobbied to pass 1782 Virginia law for private manumission of slaves.  Lifelong opponent of slavery.  Called for immediate emancipation.  Mifflin opposed Gag Resolutions in Congress to submit anti-slavery petitions.  He lobbied the U.S. Congress and the state legislatures of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina in opposition to slavery.  Wrote A Serious Expostulation with the Members of the House of Representatives of the United States. 

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 75-76, 93, 95, 105, 107-108, 112-113; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 20, 76; Sinha, 2016, pp. 85-86, 91-92, 95, 106, 121-122; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 319-320; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 608)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 608-609:

MIFFLIN, WARNER (October 21, 1745-October 16, 1798), Quaker reformer, son of Daniel and Mary (Warner) Mifflin, was born in Accomac County, Virginia, whither his grandfather, Edward, had removed from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a descendant of John Mifflin who emigrated from 'Wiltshire, England, sometime before 1680 and finally settled at "Fountain Green," now a part of Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. On May 14, 1767, warner married Elizabeth Johns, of Maryland, by whom he had nine children, and on October 9, 1788, Ann Emlen, of Philadelphia, by whom he had three. During most of his mature life he lived on his farm, "Chestnut Grove," near Camden, Delaware. (Justice, post, pp. 16-19).

He was a man of mild manner, always charitably inclined, yet of intense convictions. As early as 1775 he was arguing against "the pernicious use of ardent spirits." During the American Revolution he adhered to the Quaker peace principles and shared in  the obloquy thereby entailed. He refused to have the least part in supporting the war, even to the use of Continental paper money. Consequently, he was dubbed a Tory, and his patriot neighbors made serious threats against him. While General Howe was in Philadelphia and General Washington on the outskirts of the city, Mifflin was one of a committee of six appointed by the Friends' Yearly Meeting in 1777 to visit both commanders-in-chief and present printed copies of the "Testimonies" against participation in war. They went without passports through the lines of both armies and accomplished their mission.

When he was fourteen years old, on his father's plantation in Virginia, one of the younger slaves, talking with him in the fields, had convinced him of the injustice of the slave system. He soon determined never to be a slave-holder. Later, however, he came into possession of several slaves through his first wife and from his father and mother. After a period of indecision, in 1774-75 he manumitted all his slaves (Justice, p. 39). Supersensitive to the promptings of conscience, he even paid them for their services after the age of twenty-one years. Thereafter, he traveled much in Quaker communities urging Friends to free their slaves. In the same cause he appeared before various legislative bodies including, in 1782, that of Virginia, where a law was passed in May of that year removing the former prohibitions against the private manumission of slaves (W. W. Hening, Statutes at Large, volume XI, 1823, p. 39). Between 1783 and 1797 he helped to draw up, or to present to the Congress of the United States various petitions against slavery and the slave trade. One, dated 1789, helped to start an important debate on the powers of Congress over slavery and the slave trade under the new Constitution. In 1793 he published over his own name, A Serious Expostulation with the Members of the House of Representatives of the United States (Philadelphia 1793 and various reprints), in which he presented with no little force the anti-slavery case. In 1796, his motives and methods having been attacked by his opponents, he published in Philadelphia The Defence of Warner Mifflin against Aspersions Cast on Him on Account of his Endeavors to Promote Righteousness, Mercy and Peace, among Mankind. In this pamphlet he sketched the activities of his life and defended his stand on such subjects as slavery, peace, and temperance.

In 1798 he attended the Yearly Meeting of Friends held in Philadelphia and at that time, apparently, contracted the yellow fever which was then so prevalent in that city. He died of the disease soon after returning to his home in Delaware, aged about fifty-three years.

[The most accessible and fullest source of information is Hilda Justice, Life and Ancestry of Warner Mifflin (1905), containing reprints of Quaker records and other important documentary material; the most important manuscript Quaker records for the period are at 304 Arch Street, Philadelphia; about a dozen letters by Mifflin are in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The most reliable of contemporary accounts of Mifflin's life are his own memoir in Defence of Warner Mifflin, cited above, and a "Testimony" by his friend George Churchman, in Friends' Miscellaneous, June 1832. See also J. H. Merrill, Memoranda Relating to the Mifflin Family (privately printed, 1890).]

R.W.K.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 319-320:

MIFFLIN, Warner, reformer, born in Accomac county, Virginia, 21 October, 1745; died near Camden, Del., 16 October, 1798, was the son of Daniel Mifflin, a planter and slave-owner, and the only Quaker within sixty miles of his plantation. The son early cherished an interest in behalf of the slaves. In giving an account of his conversion to anti-slavery views, he writes of himself: “About the fourteenth year of my age a circumstance occurred that tended to open the way for the reception of those impressions which have since been sealed with indelible clearness on my understanding. Being in the field with my father's slaves, a young man among them questioned me whether I thought it could be right that they should be toiling in order to raise me, and that I might be sent to school, and by and by their children must do so for mine. Some little irritation at first took place in my feelings, but his reasoning so impressed me as never to be erased from my mind. Before I arrived at the age of manhood I determined never to be a slave-owner.” Nevertheless, he did become the owner of slaves—some on his marriage through his wife's inheritance, and others from among his father's, who followed him to his plantation in Delaware, whither the son had removed and settled. Finally, determining that he would “be excluded from happiness if he continued in this breach of the divine law,” he freed all his slaves in 1774 and 1775, and his father followed the example. The son, on the day fixed for the emancipation of his slaves, called them one after another into his room and informed them of his purpose to give them their freedom, and this is the conversation that passed with one of them: “Well, my friend James,” said he, “how old art thou?” “I am twenty-nine and a half years, master.” “Thou should’st have been free, as thy white brethren are, at twenty-one. Religion and humanity enjoin me this day to give thee thy liberty; and justice requires me to pay thee for eight years and a half service, at the rate of ninety-one pounds, twelve shillings, and sixpence, owing to thee; but thou art young and healthy; thou had’st better work for thy living; my intention is to give thee a bond for it, bearing interest at seven and a half per cent. Thou hast now no master but God and the laws.” From this time until his death his efforts to bring about emancipation were untiring. Through his labors most of the members of his society liberated their slaves. He was an elder of the Society of Friends, and travelled from state to state preaching his anti-slavery doctrines among his people, and in the course of his life visited all the yearly meetings on the continent. He was much encouraged in his work by the words of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. Referring to these, he writes: “Seeing this was the very substance of the doctrine I had been concerned to promulgate for years, I became animated with hope that if the representatives were men, and inculcated these views among the people generally, a blessing to this nation would accompany these endeavors.” In l782 he appeared before the legislature of Virginia, and was instrumental in having a law enacted that admitted of emancipation, to which law may be attributed the liberation of several thousand negroes. In 1783 he presented a memorial to congress respecting the African slave-trade, and he subsequently visited, in the furtherance of his work, the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. In 1791 he presented his noted “Memorial to the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives of the United States” on the subject of slavery, and, on account of some reflections that were cast on him, he published a short time afterward his serious expostulations with the house of representatives in relation to the principles of liberty and the inconsistency and cruelty of the slave-trade and slavery. These essays show the undaunted firmness and zeal of the writer, his cogent reasoning and powerful appeals to the understanding and the heart. From conviction he was against war, and on principle opposed the Revolution. On the day of the battle of Germantown he was attending the yearly meeting of the Quakers at Philadelphia, and the room in which they were assembled was darkened by the smoke of the battle. At this meeting the Friends renewed their “testimony” against the spirit of war, and chose Mifflin to undertake the service of communicating it to General Washington and General Howe. To perform this duty, he had to walk in blood and among the dead bodies of those that had fallen in the fight. In his conversation with Washington he said: “I am opposed to the Revolution and to all changes of government which occasion war and bloodshed.” After Washington was elected president, Mifflin visited him in New York, and in the course of the interview the president, recollecting an assertion of Mifflin’s at Germantown, said: “Mr. Mifflin, will you please tell me on what principle you were opposed to the Revolution?” “Yes, Friend Washington, upon the principle that I should be opposed to a change in the present government. All that was ever gained by revolution is not an adequate compensation for the poor mangled soldiers, for the loss of life or limb.” To which Washington replied: “I honor your sentiments; there is more in that than mankind have generally considered.” With reference to Mifflin, Brissot, in his '”New Travels in the United States of America” (London, 1792), says: “I was sick, and Warner Mifflin came to me. It is he that first freed all his slaves; it is he who, without a passport, traversed the British army and spoke to General Howe with so much firmness and dignity; it is he who, fearing not the effects of the general hatred against the Quakers, went, at the risk of being treated as a spy, to present himself to General Washington, to justify to him the conduct of the Quakers; it is he that, amid the furies of war, equally a friend to the French, the English, and the Americans, carried succor to those who were suffering. Well! this angel of peace came to see me.” Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 319-320  


MILES, George, Westminster, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1845-1860.


MILES, Mary E., African American, abolitionist, from Boston, Massachusetts.  Wife of abolitionist Henry Bibb.  Published with husband the anti-slavery journal Voice of the Fugitive.

(Gates, 2013, Volume 1, p. 533)


MILLARD, David, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-1841.


MILLER, Daniel, Jr., Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, member of the Association of Friends for Advocating the Cause of the Slave.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 154)


MILLER, Elizabeth Smith, 1822-1911, feminist dress reformer, abolitionist.  Active in women’s suffrage and rights.  Originated bloomer costume for women. 

(American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 15, p. 479; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 587-589; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936)


MILLER, Jonathan Peckham, 1797-1847, Montpelier, Vermont, reformer, and anti-slavery advocate.  Manager, 1834-1837, American Anti-Slavery Society.  He served in the Vermont legislature, and in 1833 initiated the anti-slavery movement in the legislature by introducing a resolution calling upon the Vermont representatives in Congress to urge the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Miller devoted much of his energy and money to the anti-slavery cause, lecturing throughout the state. In 1840, as one of the two Vermont delegates, he attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London where he took a prominent part in the debates.   

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 328; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 632)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 632-633:

MILLER, JONATHAN PECKHAM (February 24, 1796-February 17, 1847), Greek sympathizer and anti-slavery advocate, was born in Randolph, Vermont the son of Heman and Deimia (Walbridge) Miller (Vital Records, Office of the Secretary of State, Montpelier, Vermont). Upon his father's death in 1799 he was taken in charge by an uncle, Jonathan Peckham, and on the latter's death, about 1805, by Captain John Granger of Randolph. In 1813, having completed his common-school education, young Miller went to Woodstock, Vermont, to learn the tanner's trade, but ill health soon caused him to return to the Granger home where he remained for the next four years. A love of adventure and military life, as well as patriotism, led him to join the town volunteers under Captain Libbeus Egerton who marched to repel the British invasion that ended at Plattsburg. The Randolph forces arrived too late, however, to take part in the fighting. In 1817, he enlisted as a private in the United States army, in which he served for two years, being stationed on the northern frontier. A recurrence of ill health then caused his return to Randolph, where he attended the local academy and fitted for college. In the fall of 1821 he entered Dartmouth, but a few weeks later removed to the University of Vermont, where he pursued his studies until May 24, 1824, when fire destroyed the college buildings. Rather than wait to finish his college course at Vermont, or transfer elsewhere, he now determined to offer his services to the Greek revolutionists, inspired, no doubt, by his classical studies, by the wave of sympathy for Greece then at its height in western Europe and the United States, and by his own spirit of adventure. From Governor Van Ness he secured a letter introducing him to the Greek Association of Boston, which in turn gave him letters to the Greek government at Missolonghi, as well as $300 for his expenses.

He sailed for Malta August 21, 1824, and from there made his way to Missolonghi, where he reported to Dr. Mayer and General George Jarvis, on whose staff he became a colonel in the Greek service. During the next two years Miller's military exploits won for him the name of "The American Dare Devil." He was among those who took part in the valiant but futile defense of Missolonghi, escaping in the last sortie. A few months later he returned to the United States to lecture throughout the northern and middle states in the Greek cause. In February 1827, he returned to Greece as principal agent of the New York Greek Committee. In this service he spent about a year, turning over to the Greeks food and clothing to the value of more than $75,000. On returning to America, he published The Condition of Greece in 1827 and 1828 (1828), being his journal as kept by order of the Greek Committee. At this time he brought back with him a Greek youth, Lucas Miltiades, whom he adopted and educated. He also brought to the United States the sword worn by Lord Byron in Greece, now in the possession of the Vermont Historical Society.

After his second return from Greece, he settled in Montpelier, Vermont, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and opened a law office in company with Nicholas Baylies. For three years, 1831, 1832, and 1833, he served in the Vermont legislature, and in 1833 initiated the anti-slavery movement in the legislature by introducing a resolution calling upon the Vermont representatives in Congress to urge the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. From this time on, Miller devoted much of his energy and money to the anti-slavery cause, lecturing throughout the state. In 1840, as one of the two Vermont delegates, he attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London where he took a prominent part in the debates.

As a public speaker, he was off-hand, bold and earnest. His private life was characterized by a fearless utterance of opinion and a straightforward, unstudied frankness. To these qualities he added a vigorous physical constitution and a soldierly bearing that some thought bordered on roughness. As a citizen he was public-spirited and benevolent. Samuel Gridley Howe [q.v.], with whom Miller was closely associated, describes him as "rather superficially than well educated, with an immense deal of good common sense, an acute mind, but self-opinionated, and bigoted in religion, which he reads and argues about rather to confirm his belief than to examine the subject" (Richards, post, p. 120). He died prematurely in Montpelier as the result of an accidental injury to his spine, leaving a wife and one child. He had married Sarah Arms, daughter of Captain Jonathan Arms, on June 26, 1828.

[Material for the above was drawn in part from the sketch of Colonel Miller's life found in D. P. Thompson, History of the Town of Montpelier (1860); the same sketch appears in A. M. Hemenway, Vermont Historical Gazetteer, volume IV (1882), p. 457. For further light on Miller's Greek adventure consult his Condition of Greece in I827 and I828 (1828) mentioned above, and Letters from Greece (1825) by Miller and others. See also L. E. Richards, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe: The Greek Revolution (1906); M. A. Cline, American Attitude toward the Greek War of Independence (1930); E. M. Earle, "American Interest in the Greek Cause 1821-r'827," in American Historical Review, October 1927; Vermont Patriot (Montpelier), February 18, 1847.]

W. R. W.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 328:

MILLER, Jonathan P., reformer, born in Randolph, Vermont, in 1797; died in Montpelier in 1847. He was educated at the University of Vermont and became a lawyer. In 1824 he went to Greece as a volunteer, and after the siege and fall of Missolonghi in April, 1826, he returned to Vermont and lectured through New York and the New England states for the benefit of the Greek cause. At the solicitation of the Boston and New York Greek committee Colonel Miller went to Greece a second time as their general agent, and distributed several cargoes of provisions and clothing to the suffering Greeks, returning to Montpelier, Vermont, in 1827. He introduced anti-slavery resolutions into the Vermont legislature in 1833. He was a delegate from his state to the world's anti-slavery convention in London in 1840, and from that time until his death gave a large part of his time and fortune to the furtherance of the anti-slavery cause. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 328.


MILLER, Samuel Freeman, 1816-1890, lawyer, jurist, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Supported emancipation.  Leader of the Republican Party.  Appointed by Abraham Lincoln as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume IV, pp. 328-329; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 637; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 15, p. 516; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 637-640:

MILLER, SAMUEL FREEMAN (April 5, 1816-October 13, 1890), associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, was born at Richmond in the blue-grass region of Kentucky. His father, Frederick Miller, was a Pennsylvania German who had gone west in 1812. His mother was Patsy Freeman, whose family had emigrated from North Carolina. In 1836, without formal education, Miller entered the medical department of Transylvania University, at Lexington. He attended lectures for one year and then settled at Barbourville," county seat of Knox County, on the road leading down from Cumberland Gap. The autumn of 1837 found him back at Transylvania, where on March 9, 1838, he was "examined c1nd received" for the degree of M.D. For the next twelve years he practised medicine in the mountain community about Barbourville. Here he married Lucy Ballinger, whose family was locally prominent. In the spring of 1837 the young men of the town formed a debating society. From the start Miller was its most active member. Here current political questions were threshed out, and Miller came to recognize that he had a flair for statecraft. He became a justice of the peace and a member of the county court. Surreptitiously he studied law, and on March 22, 1847, he was admitted to the bar of Knox County.

Like most of his neighbors, Miller was a Whig. He favored the gradual abolition of slavery in Kentucky, and aspired, unsuccessfully, to membership in the constitutional convention of 1849 where slavery was to be a leading issue. When the peculiar institution was fastened more firmly upon the state, he decided to seek a more congenial sphere of action. In 1850 with his wife and children he moved to Keokuk, Iowa, and formed the law partnership of Reeves & Miller. Shortly afterward he was left a widower, and in 1857, his partner having died, he was married to the latter's widow, Elizabeth (Winter) Reeves. While his practice was increasing he found time to engage in the organization of the Republican party, and in projects for building plank roads and railroads. He was a candidate for the nomination for governor in 1861. During the early months of the war he drew upon his meager resources to advance funds to meet the state's unforeseen needs. In 1862 President Lincoln was under the necessity of making nominations for the Supreme Court. To him a sound view on public questions was a better recommendation than profundity of legal learning, and Miller was actively supported by the Iowa delegation, which circulated a recommendation among the members of both houses of Congress, and by the lawyers of several western states. On July 16, 1862, he was nominated and unanimously confirmed as an associate justice. He was at the time the chairman of the district Republican committee at Keokuk.

The development in power and authority of this self-made jurist is interesting. His training had been woefully unsystematic but was such as tended to develop independence of judgment and capacity for hard thinking. In later years he came to recognize the superiority in education and training enjoyed by leading eastern jurists. Yet with a certain self-satisfaction he insisted that it was "from some western prairie town ... that future Marshalls and Mansfields shall arise and give new impulses and add new honor to the profession of the law" (Albany Law Journal, July 5, 1879, p. 29). His first term was Taney's last but one, and though Miller had cherished a hatred of the author of the Dred Scott opinion, the newest and the eldest of the justices parted fast friends. Throughout the war and reconstruction no judge was more stanch than Miller in the support of national authority. When in Ex parte Garland (4 Wallace, 333) the Court held that the requirement of a test oath of former loyalty from lawyers, teachers, and ministers amounted to an ex post facto law and a bill of attainder, Miller and the other Republicans argued that the measure was constitutional and proper. He was with the majority in the Legal Tender Cases (12 Wallace, 457) when by the advent of Justices Strong and Bradley this feature of the war program was narrowly saved from judicial repudiation.

A characteristic opinion is that in Crandall vs. Nevada (6 Wallace, 35). The legislature had imposed a tax on every person leaving the state. The Court was unanimous in holding the tax unconstitutional. Miller, as its spokesman, relied upon the broadest considerations of policy: "The people of these United States constitute one nation. They have a government in which all of them are deeply interested .... That government has a right to call to this point [the capital] any or all of its citizens to aid in its service .... The citizen also has correlative rights. He has the right to come to the seat of government to assert any claim he may have upon that government, or to transact any business he may have with it." Thus the tax was objectionable in that it conflicted with these implications of the nature of the union and of federal citizenship. In Loan Association vs. Topeka (20 Wallace, 655), a question of great contemporary importance was raised: Might a state or municipality grant public funds to aid a private enterprise? Miller approached the problem not in the light of constitutional provisions, but of his conception of natural law. "It must be conceded that there are ... rights in every free government beyond the control of the State. A government which recognized no such rights, which held the lives, the liberty, and the property of its citizens subject at all times to the absolute disposition and unlimited control of even the most democratic depository of power, is after all but a despotism . . . . There are limitations on such [public] power which grow out of the essential nature of all free governments. Implied reservations of individual rights, without which the social compact could not exist, and which are respected by all governments entitled to the name .... There can be no lawful tax which is not laid for a public purpose."

A courageous and emphatic dissent was that in Gelpcke vs. City of Dubuque (1 Wallace, 175) in Miller's second year on the bench. The city had issued bonds for the purchase of railroad stock, under the authority of a state law which had been held good at the time of the issue. Subsequently the state supreme court reversed itself and held the statute ultra vires. A foreign bondholder brought suit on the bonds in the federal courts. Would the Supreme Court, as in most other cases, accept the jurisprudence of the state court as the rule of decision ? The mischief seemed so great that the majority upheld the validity of the bonds. Two of Miller's deepest convictions united in compelling his dissent. First, he was always opposed to any tendency to allow a state to grant away its taxing power. Time and again in the next twenty years he dissented on this score. Then again, though a nationalist, he was impressed with the importance of maintaining an ample autonomy for state governments. He was strong in his belief that it was not the function of federal courts to sit in judgment on state courts expounding state law.

The latter conviction appears more maturely in the Slaughter House Cases (16 Wallace, 36). The Carpet-bag government of Louisiana granted a monopoly of the slaughtering business at New Orleans. Rival butchers contended that this action abridged their privileges and immunities as citizens of the United States and was a denial of due process of law and equal protection of the laws. Thus the Fourteenth Amendment came to receive its fir st authoritative construction at the hands of the Court. A majority of five, speaking through Miller, started from the proposition that there is a distinction between those rights which inhere in state citizenship and those which inhere in federal citizenship. It was only the latter with which the new amendment dealt. The monopoly might deny the plaintiffs some right conferred by the state constitution; but no federal privilege or immunity had been abridged. To hold otherwise, said Miller,. "would constitute this court a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States." The argument on due process and equal protection of the laws was briefly answered with the prophecy that "we doubt very much whether any action of a State not directed by way of discrimination against the negroes as a class ... will ever be held to come within the purview of this provision."

This was not a scholastic discussion of state rights: it signified that the majority of the Court refused to read into the words of a Reconstruction amendment a promise of federal protection of vested property rights against the exertions of state power. Thus the nationalizing purposes of some of the Radical Republican authors of the amendment were frustrated. In the long run Miller's effort was somewhat unsuccessful, for those implications which he severed from the "privileges and immunities" clause were later grafted on to the "due process" clause of the same amendment.

Miller was more concerned with the practical result of a decision than with its doctrinal basis. Mere precedents were unimpressive aside from the authority of the judges who made them. He was disposed to let no technicalities stand in the way of what seemed right or just. Thus in United States vs. Lee (106 U. S., 196) he held that "no man in this country is so high that he is above the law," adding that, notwithstanding a government's immunity to suit, an action of ejectment may be maintained against an officer who holds the possession of property under an invalid title claimed by the United States. In the case involving a federal marshal who was being held for the killing of a citizen who had attacked Justice Field on circuit (In re Neagle, 135 U. S., 1), Miller held that it is an obligation of the President, fairly inferrible from the Constitution, to protect federal judges, and that the marshal had been acting in pursuance of "a law" of the United States, and was therefore entitled to be liberated on a writ of habeas corpus from the custody of the state authorities. Notwithstanding this tendency to view legal questions in the large, Miller could, on occasion, engage in minute hair-splitting (Kring vs. Missouri, 107 U.S., 221; Medley, Petitioner, 134 U.S., 160). Of the nobility and generosity of Miller's nature there is ample evidence. Yet he felt that he was, as Chief Justice Chase said, "beyond question, the dominant personality . . . upon the bench" (Strong, post, p. 247). With this confidence came a certain blunt impatience with lesser minds and with futile arguments. The reference to him as "that damned old Hippopotamus" by one attorney in his circuit court was not unnatural (Gregory, post, p. 60). Miller was anxious to accelerate the administration of justice, and advocated a curtailment of the appellate jurisdiction of the Court (United States Jurist, January 1872, Western Jurist, February 1872). He never achieved the chief justiceship, though he was more than once considered for the position.

On the bench Miller retained his interest in the Republican party. He was one of the majority in the Electoral Commission of 1876. Yet he was content to rely upon his judicial labors to win his name immortality, and unlike Chase and Field refrained from gazing toward the presidency. Yet he would have been quite willing to become a compromise candidate if the convention of 1884 had become deadlocked. In stature he was tall and massive. He looked, dressed, and acted the part of a great magistrate. He enjoyed good living and bright company. In the midst of this satisfying life he found no opportunity to save money and died almost penniless. He was in active service on the supreme bench and as circuit justice until the day of his death, which occurred at his residence in Washington. During his tenure of office he participated in more than five thousand decisions of the Court. In more than six hundred cases he was its spokesman. Of 478 cases which required a construction of the federal Constitution, he was the organ of the Court in almost twice the normal quota for one justice.

[See C. N. Gregory, Samuel Freeman Miller (1907); Horace Stern. "Samuel Freeman Miller, 1816-1890," in W. D. Lewis, Great American Lawyers, volume VI (1909); Henry Strong, "Justice Samuel Freeman Miller," in Annals of Iowa, January 1894; Proceedings of the Bench and Bar of the Supreme Court of the U. S. in Memoriam-Samuel F. Miller (1891); Mississippi Valley Historical Review, March 1931; Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in U. S. History (1922), volume III; the Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), October 14, 1890. Information as to certain facts was supplied for this sketch by members of Miller's family. In 1891 a series of Lectures on the Constitution by Miller was posthumously published.]

C. F.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 328-329:

MILLER, Samuel Freeman, jurist, born in Richmond, Kentucky, 5 April, 1816. He was graduated at the medical department of Transylvania university, Kentucky, in 1838, practised for a short time, and afterward became a lawyer. He was strongly in favor of emancipation, and did much to further that cause, and, although he took no part in politics, the course of public affairs induced him to remove in 1850 from Kentucky to Iowa, where he became a leader of the Republican party. He was offered and declined numerous offices, and devoted himself to his profession, in which he took high rank. In 1862 he was appointed by President Lincoln associate justice of the U. S. supreme court, which office he still (1888) occupies. He was the orator at the constitutional centennial celebration at Philadelphia.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 328-329.


MILLIGAN, James, Rygate, Vermont, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1834-1837.


MILLISACK, Jacob, Leesburg, Ohio, abolitionist.  American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1852-1864.


MILLS, Samuel John, April 21, 1783-June 16, 1818, Torrington, Connecticut, Congregational clergyman.  Founded schools for African American children.  Member of the American Colonization Society (ACS).  Went to Africa on behalf of the ACS to found colony. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 333; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 15-16; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 18-19, 28, 37-47 passim, 156)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 15-16:

MILLS, SAMUEL JOHN (April 21, 1783-June 16, 1818), Congregational clergyman, was the son of Samuel John and Esther (Robbins) Mills. His father was long pastor of the church at Torringford, Connecticut, in which town the younger Samuel was born. His original purpose was to be a farmer, but his religious experiences finally impelled him to enter the ministry. He became much concerned about his spiritual welfare in the revival of 1798, and for two years thereafter felt convinced that he would go to hell. In the autumn of 1801, however, his mother's piety enabled him to rejoice in God's perfections without considering his own future destiny, and he afterwards realized that this was his conversion. Immediately the idea came to him of going abroad to preach the gospel to the heathen, the first time probably that such an enterprise had been seriously considered in the United States.

Accordingly, in 1801, he sold a farm which had been bequeathed to him by his grandmother, and entered Morris Academy, Litchfield. In 1806 he became a student at Williams College, where, during his fir st year, he was a leader in a religious revival. He proposed to several of his friends that they should become foreign missionaries and secured from them a favorable response. Graduating in 1809, he spent a few months at Yale, in the hope of enlisting supporters of the missionary project there, but his stay was fruitless save for his discovery of Henry Obookiah, a native of the Sandwich Islands, who had recently found his way to New Haven. Early in 1810 he proceeded to Andover Theological Seminary taking Obookiah with him; Obookiah was converted soon afterwards, and his conversion resulted in the foundation a few years later of the Foreign Mission School at Cornwall, Massachusetts. While in the seminary Mills talked about missions incessantly. In June 1810, he and three of his friends presented a paper to the General Association of Massachusetts, in which they declared their desire to go as missionaries to the heathen and asked for counsel. As a result the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was formed, which in 1812 sent out ten missionaries to Calcutta, and by 1820 had eighty-one missionaries under its charge.

On his graduation from Andover in 1812, Mills was licensed to preach and was sent by the Connecticut and Massachusetts Home Missionary societies on a tour of the country beyond the Alleghanies, from Cincinnati to New Orleans, in company with John F. Schermerhorn; in 1814-15 he made a second and more extensive journey with Daniel Smith. They preached the gospel, distributed Bibles and tracts, promoted the formation of Bible societies, and collected information about the religious and moral condition of the inhabitants. They endured great hardships and were sometimes in danger of their lives from starvation, Indians, and flooded rivers. In collaboration with Schermerhorn he published in 1814. A Correct View of That Part of the United States Which Lies West of the Allegany Mountains. With Regard to, Religion and Morals, and with Smith, in 1815, part of a Missionary Tour through That Part of the United States Which Lies West of the Allegany Mountains. On June 21, 1815, Mills was ordained at Newburyport, Massachusetts. During the next t wo years he resided at Albany, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington; and in these years he was the instigator and the chief organizer of the American Bible Society, of the United Foreign Missionary Society (formed by the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed churches), and of a school for training negro preachers. He also spent some months visiting the poor in the city of New York, and distributing Bibles and tracts. He planned a missionary tour of South America, and hop ed finally to accompany Obookiah to the Sandwich Islands.

He became particularly interested in the negroes, however, and when the American Colonization Society was formed in 1817 he at once offered his services. With Ebenezer Burgess he was dispatched to Africa to find suitable territory for purchase. They set out for England in November and were almost wrecked in a storm in which their ship was deserted by the captain, but finally made port at St. Malo. After consulting with the leaders of the English antislavery movement they sailed in February 1818 for Sierra Leone, where they spent three months negotiating with a number of native chiefs, and selecting territory for the future colony of Liberia. On the return voyage, begun May 22, 1818, Mills caught a chill, died of fever, and was buried at sea.

Few men with such slender natural endowments have accomplished more. He was quite undistinguished as a scholar, writer, or preacher; he was slow of tongue, inert in manner, and unimpressive in personality. Nevertheless, he was a good judge of men, and had considerable ability a s an organizer. His unquenchable ardor and tireless energy made him the father of foreign missionary work in the United States, and the chief creator of four important philanthropic institutions.

[Samuel Orcutt, History of Torrington, Connecticut (1878); Calvin Durfee, Williams Biographical Annals (1871); General Catalog Theological Seminary, Andover, Massachusetts, 1808-1908 (n.d.); Gardiner Spring, Memoirs of the Reverend Samuel J. Mills (1820); W. B. Sprague, Annals American Pulpit, volume II (1857); E. G. Stryker, Missionary Annals: A Story of One Short Life (copyright 1888); T. C. Richards, Samuel. Mills, Missionary Pathfinder, Pioneer, and Promoter (1906); Connecticut Courant (Hartford), September 8, 1818; Connecticut Journal (New Haven), September 22, 1818.]

H.B.P.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 333:

MILLS, Samuel John, clergyman, born in Torringford, Connecticut, 21 April,1783; died at sea, 16 June, 1818, was graduated at Williams in 1809, and at Andover theological seminary in 1812. While in college he determined to devote his life to missionary work, and in 1810 addresses that he and several of his classmates made before the General association of Massachusetts resulted in the formation of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions. During 1812-'13 he was exploring agent of the Massachusetts and Connecticut missionary societies in the west and southwest, and in 1814-'15 missionary and Bible agent in the southwest. While in New Orleans during the early part of 1815 he was unable to purchase a single Bible in that city, and, in consequence, he procured a supply in both the French and English languages, and distributed many. Finding that seventy or eighty thousand families at the south and west were destitute of a Bible, he suggested the formation of a national society. His efforts contributed to the establishment of the American Bible society in May, 1816, and meanwhile, on 21 June, 1815, he was ordained. Subsequently the education of the colored people claimed his attention, and in 1816 the synod of New York and New Jersey established a school for the education of young men of color that wished to be preachers and teachers of their race. After the school was established Mr. Mills became its agent in the middle states, and was successful in obtaining funds for its support. The American colonization society was founded on 1 January, 1817, and Mr. Mills was chosen to explore in its behalf the coast of western Africa, and select the most eligible site for a settlement. He reached Africa in March, 1818, spent two months on that continent, and began his homeward voyage in May. Mr. Mills was called the “Father of foreign mission work in Christian America.” He published an account of his two visits to the south (Andover, 1815). See “Memoirs of the Reverend Samuel J. Mills,” by Gardner Spring (New York, 1854). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


MILNOR, James, 1773-1844, Pennsylvania, New York, opponent of slavery, lawyer, clergyman.  Member of U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, 1811-1813.  Milnor was an officer in the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in 1798.  Member of New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 334; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 40)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 334:

MILNOR, James, clergyman, born in Philadelphia, 20 June, 1773; died in New York city, 8 April, 1844. His parents were members of the Society of Friends. He entered the University of Pennsylvania, but, owing to family embarrassments, was not graduated. He began the study of law in 1789, in Philadelphia, and was admitted to the bar in 1794. He began practice in Norristown, Pennsylvania, but removed to Philadelphia in 1797, where he soon obtained a large practice. In 1805 he entered political life. He was elected a member of the select council of his native city, re-elected for three years in 1807, and became president of the council in 1808. He was then chosen a member of congress, serving from 4 November, 1811, till 3 March, 1813, and, being strongly Federalist in his principles, opposed the second war with Great Britain, in 1812. Soon after returning home he became a candidate for orders in the Protestant Episcopal church. While studying for the ministry he busied himself effectively as catechist and lay reader. He was made deacon, 14 August, 1814, and priest, 27 August, 1815, by Bishop White. He was elected assistant minister in St. Peter's and the United churches, Philadelphia, in 1814, but two years later he accepted the rectorship of St. George's church, New York city, where he remained until his death. He received the degree of D. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1819. He visited Europe in 1830 as delegate to the British and Foreign Bible society. His remaining years were spent in parochial work and in aiding the various charitable institutions in Philadelphia. Dr. Milnor's publications were “Oration on Masonry,” before the Grand lodge of Pennsylvania (1811); “Thanksgiving-Day Sermon” (1817); “A Plea for the American Colonization Society” (New York, 1826); “Sermon on the Death of De Witt Clinton, Governor of New York” (New York, 1828); and “A Charitable Judgment of the Opinions and Conduct of Others Recommended,” which was delivered on the Sunday before his death (1844). See a “Memoir,” by the Reverend John S. Stone, D.D. (New York, 1855). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV.


MINER, Alonzo Ames (August 17, 1814- June 14, 1895), Universalist clergyman, president of Tufts College. In 1843, he was drawn into the anti-slavery movement and threw himself into the effort to free the slaves. His love for the church, however, was so strong that he found a double battle on his hands, for he was also opposed to the extreme reformers such as Garrison who advocated "Come-Outism" to church, members. His debates on this subject attracted large crowds.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 21-22:

MINER, ALONZO AMES (August 17, 1814- June 14, 1895), Universalist clergyman, president of Tufts College, was born in Lempster, a small village in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, the second of the five children of Benajah Ames and Amanda (Carey) Miner. He was a descendant of Thomas Miner (or Minor) who emigrated to Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1629, removed to Hingham in 1636, and later joined the voyager Winthrop's colony at New London, Connecticut. Alonzo's parents had rebelled against the strict Calvinism of their time, thus becoming marked people in their community. The boy therefore grew up in the atmosphere of theological debate and early acquired an intense interest in all the issues of his day. His education was somewhat irregular and informal, due partly to the lack of advantages in the sparsely populated country, and more to the fact that a serious accident made him a semi-invalid in his early years. He attended schools in Lempster, Hopkinton, Lebanon, and Franklin, New Hampshire, and in Cavendish, Vermont. Much of his study, however, was carried on alone, with the advice and direction of clergymen.

At the age of twenty he was taken into partnership by the principal of the school at Chester, Vermont, and a year later he was called to become head of the academy at Unity, New York, where he remained for four years. On August 24, 1836, he married Maria S. Perley, whom he had known since childhood, and who now became preceptress at the academy. There were no children. Teaching, however, was only a stepping-stone to his chosen life work. When he was twenty-five years of age, he became a Universalist preacher, conducting services in various small rural communities in the neighborhood, and in 1839 he was ordained.

His first full-time pastorate was in Methuen, Massachusetts, where he quickly earned a name for himself as a public defender of his faith by engaging in frequent debates with orthodox preachers. From Methuen, he was called to a pastorate in Lowell, Massachusetts. Here he became a public man in the ordinary sense of the term, for he began championing public causes and soon found himself in the midst of great discussions and struggles. First, he became a passionate upholder of the temperance movement, taking the extreme stand of absolute abstinence, which in those days was unpopular, and pleading that the church should espouse the cause. Next, in 1843, he was drawn into the anti-slavery movement and threw himself with characteristic abandon into the effort to free the slaves. His love for, the church, however, was so strong that he found a double battle on his hands, for he was also opposed to the extreme reformers such as Garrison who advocated "Come-Outism" to church, members. His debates on this subject attracted large crowds and gave him this reputation as a good logician and fearless fighter. In 1848, he was called to the pastorate of the School Street Church, the Second Universalist Society of Boston, as an associate of Hosea Ballou, 1771-1852 [q.v.]. With this church he remained for forty-three years, rounding out a life of distinguished service in many fields.

In 1862, he became president of Tufts College, largely because the college was in financial difficulties, and because his administrative genius, it was believed, would be adequate to the need. He served without salary, devoting heroic efforts to raising money, teaching classes, and carrying on his work as minister of the church. Through his contacts with men of means and influence, he was able finally to pull the college through its crisis, not only adding largely to the endowment, but also increasing its equipment and faculty. He resigned from the presidency of the college in 1874, and resumed his full-time connection with the church, maintaining, however, his interest in educational institutions, serving as trustee of the college, and being active in promoting the development of Dean Academy in Massachusetts and Goddard Seminary in Vermont. He died in Boston, after a short illness, in his eighty-first year.

[L. L. Selleck, One Branch of the Miner Family (1928); G. H. Emerson, Life of Alonzo Ames Miner (1896); A. B. Start, History of Tufts College (1896); G. H. Emerson, in Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men (1882), ed. by J.B. Clarke; Boston Daily Advertiser, June 15, 1895.]

C.R.S.


MINER, Charles (February 1, 1780-October 26, 1865), editor, U.S. congressman. He was opposed to slavery, and on May 13, 1826, offered a series of resolutions in the House of Representatives in favor of its abolition in the District of Columbia and its eventual extinction in the United States. These were not favorably received by the House, but he persistently pressed the question throughout the term of his service.

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

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 22-23:

MINER, CHARLES (February 1, 1780-October 26, 1865), editor, congressman, the son of Seth and Anna (Charlton) Miner and a descendant of Thomas Miner (or Minor) who came to Massachusetts from Somersetshire about 1629, was born in Norwich, Conn . His father was a printer, and after attending the schools near his home Charles worked for some time at his father's trade in New London. During the winter of 1798-99 he studied surveying, and on February 8, 1799, set out for the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania to take charge of preparing his father's lands, held under the Connecticut claim, for settlement. In 1802 he joined his brother Asher at Wilkes-Barre in publishing the Luzerne Federalist and Susquehanna fo intelligencer.

In 1804 Charles Miner bought his brother's interest, becoming sole proprietor of the paper, which he published until 1809 and again in 1810-11. On February 1, 1811, he began the publication of a new journal, the Gleaner and Luzerne Intelligencer, which gained a considerable reputation and became something of a political power. During these years he wrote a series of humorous sketches for the columns of his paper, later collected in book form under the title Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe (1815). In one of them, "Who'll Turn Grindstone?", which appeared in the Luzerne Federalist, September 7, 1810, he originated the phrase "to have an axe to grind," which has since come to have a very definite meaning in American speech. He also wrote and published "The Ballad of James Bird," which was circulated widely. In May 1806 he was chosen a member of the first borough council of Wilkes-Barre and in October 1807 was elected a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in which he served till 1809. He was elected again in 1812.

In 1816 he sold the Gleaner and went to Philadelphia to become editor and part owner of the True American, a daily paper. The next year, unable to stand city life, he returned to Wilkes Barre, and in July 1817 bought the Chester and Delaware Federalist at West Chester, Pennsylvania, to which place he removed his family. He soon changed this paper's name to the Village Record, m1der which title it was for years one of the best-known provincial weeklies in the United States. He was elected as a Federalist representative from Pennsylvania to the Nineteenth and Twentieth congresses (March 4, 1825-March 3, 1829) but was not a candidate for reelection in 1828 because of increasing deafness and the need of his services at home. He resumed the post of editor and publisher of the Village Record but in 1832 sold the paper and returned to Wilkes Barre, retiring to private life. During the next few years he spent a great deal of time and effort in writing his History of Wyoming (1845), a standard work dealing with the massacre of July 3, 1778, and the long-disputed land claims of Connecticut and Pennsylvania. It was based on original investigations and interviews with old residents.

While in Congress he became the close personal friend of the leading men of the times, including President Adams, Henry Clay, and others, who continued to correspond with him on political questions after his retirement. He was opposed to slavery, and on May 13, 1826, offered a series of resolutions in the House of Representatives in favor of its abolition in the District of Columbia and its eventual extinction in the United States. These were not favorably received by the House, but he persistently pressed the question throughout the term of his service. He endeavored to popularize silk-growing in the United States, was one of the first to plant mulberry trees and to undertake the raising of silk worms, and drew up and introduced into Congress the first resolutions on silk-culture. He was an early promoter of the anthracite coal trade in Pennsylvania and of canals as a part of internal improvement. With three others he leased the Mauch Chunk mine from the Lehigh Coal Mine Company, and in 1814 was a member of the firm of Hillhouse, Miner & Cist which was responsible for sending the first boatload of anthracite down the Schuylkill River to Philadelphia. Although this first load was very hard to sell, Miner through his writings did much to introduce anthracite and popularize its use. He married Letitia Wright on January 16, 1804, and was the father of ten children, of whom only three survived him. One of his daughters was the mother of Charlton T. Lewis [q.v.]. He died at his home, "The Retreat," near Wilkes-Barre, at the age of eighty-five. Although he was a man of varied activities his reputation rests upon the fact that he was one of the most original and influential of the Pennsylvania editors of the first part of the nineteenth century.

[C. F. and E . M . T. Richardson, Charles Miner: A Pennsylvania Pioneer (1916); J. T. Sharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia (1884), I, 578; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); O. J. Harvey, A History of Lodge No. 61, F. and A. M., Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania (1897); Proceedings and Collections, Wyoming Historical and Geo. Society, 1922, volume XVIII (1923).]

J.H.F.


MINER, Myrtilla, 1815-1864, New York, educator, philanthropist, abolitionist.  Opened Normal School for Colored Girls in Washington, DC, in 1851.  Minor was opposed to slavery. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 336; Encyclopedia Britannica; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 23-24)
 
Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 23-24:
 
MINER, MYRTILLA (March 4, 1815-December 17, 1864), promoter of negro education, was born in Brookfield, New York, to which place her father's family had come from Norwich, Connecticut. That portion of New York State was then a wilderness, the Miners were very poor, and there were no educational opportunities for the children. Myrtilla, though physically frail, was possessed by a desire for learning. She disliked house and farm work and, after teaching herself to read, borrowed books, or purchased them with money earned by picking hops. She wrote naively and with no satisfactory result to Hon. William H. Seward, governor of New York, asking for advice about securing an education. At fifteen, she was teaching a country school, which she was soon obliged to leave because of "spinal trouble." Recovering partially, she secured admission to a school in Clinton, New York, promising to pay her expenses when she was able to teach. Often ill, she studied in bed and after a year secured a position in a public school of Rochester, New York. From there she went to a school in Providence, Rhode Island, and then to Newton Institute, a school for planters' daughters at Whitesville, Miss. The milder climate benefited her health but her first sight of negro slavery shocked her profoundly. She came to believe that in education lay the salvation of the negro, and asked for permission to instruct the slaves on one of the plantations, but was told that it was a criminal offense in Mississippi to teach a slave to read. After two years there, she returned North, very ill again. During her illness she made a vow that if she recovered he would devote herself to the cause of the slaves.

When she regained a measure of health, without money or influence, she determined to start a normal school for colored girls in Washington, D. C., a stronghold of aristocratic, pro-slavery feeling, Frederick Douglass [q.v.], negro philanthropist, whom she consulted, knowing the difficulties, discouraged her. She begged money, paper, almost anything, and on December 3, 1851, in a small apartment, opened her normal school for free colored girls. The school had six students at the start, fifteen after a month, forty after two months. With her teaching, she carried on a continuous campaign for funds. In 1853, through the kindness of Thomas Williamson and Samuel Rhoads of the Society of Friends of Philadelphia, who loaned $2,000 and consented to act as trustees, and of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who gave $1,000 of her earnings from Uncle Toni's Cabin, she was able to purchase for $4,000 three acres between N Street and New Hampshire Avenue, with a small house, barn, and orchard. In March 1854 the school was moved to this location, which was then on the outskirts of the city. The house was often attacked and threatened, but a high fence, a dog, and the sight of the mistress and her assistant practising with a revolver in the yard warned off intruders. By 1856 the school was placed under trustees, one of whom was Johns Hopkins [q.v.]. Printed solicitations for funds aroused public antagonism and Walter Lenox, a former mayor of Washington, wrote an article, which appeared in the National Intelligencer (May 6, 1857), attacking the school and all attempts at negro education as aids in the abolition movement. The institution was several times under other management, or temporarily closed, on account of Miss Miner's poor health.

In 1861 she went to California, where she supported herself by practising clairvoyance and magnetic healing. An accident in which she was thrown from a carriage was followed by symptoms of tuberculosis, to which she was probably always predisposed. She returned to Washington by steamer, arriving there only a few days before her death, which occurred at the home of her friend, Mrs. Nancy M. Johnson. Her funeral was conducted by Reverend "William Henry Channing [q.v.] of the Unitarian Church and she was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown. Her work did not lapse, however; on March 3, 1863, Congress incorporated the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in the District of Columbia. In 1871 it was joined with Howard University, but separated in 1876, and in 1879 as the Miner Normal School (now Miner Teachers' College) it became part of the public school system of the District.

[E. M. O'Connor, Myrtilla Miner, A Memoir (1885); G. S. Wormley, "Myrtilla Miner,'" in Journal of Negro History, October 1920; Washington Daily Times, December 20, 1864, Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, December 19, 1864.]

S. G. B.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 336:

MINER, Myrtilla, philanthropist, born in Brookfield, Madison county, New York, 4 March, 1815; died in Washington, D. C., 17 December, 1864. She began teaching when fifteen years of age, and was afterward employed in a school for the education of planters' daughters in Whitesville, Wilkinson county, Mississippi. She remained there two years, became familiar with the evils of slavery, and determined to devote her life to the elevation of the negro race. She decided to found a normal school for free colored girls in Washington, although she had but $100 with which to meet expenses. On 3 December, 1851, the school was opened in a small apartment with six pupils. During the second month the number of pupils increased to forty, and in 1853 a permanent location for the school with increased accommodation was purchased for $4,300, Harriet Beecher Stowe contributing $1,000 from the proceeds of the sale of “Uncle Tom's Cabin.” Thenceforth the school was a great success. In 1860 indications of approaching civil war led to the temporary abandonment of the school, and in 1861 Miss Miner went to California for the benefit of her health, but met with an accident there and returned to die in Washington. While she was absent in California in 1863, congress passed an act for the incorporation of her normal school. She had suffered severe persecution in consequence of her efforts to elevate the colored people. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


MINES, John, Leesburg, Frederick County, Virginia, clergyman.  Pastor, Leesburg Presbyterian Church.  Member, Frederick auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 70)


MINKINS, Shadrach


MINTURN, Robert Bowne (November 16, 1805-January 9, 1866), merchant. Minturn was  whig and later a Republican and was first president of the Union League Club.  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 32-33:

MINTURN, ROBERT BOWNE (November 16, 1805-January 9, 1866), merchant, was born to the purple in New York social and commercial circles and went even farther in both fields, winning general respect for his philanthropic as well as his business success. His grandfather, the elder "William Minturn, had moved a profitable business from Newport to New York. His father, William Minturn, Jr., who married Sarah Bowne, was a partner in the firm of Minturn, Champlin & Company, which was prominent until its failure at the close of the War of 1812. Robert was forced to go into business at thirteen upon the death of his father. In 1825 he became the partner of Charles Green, whom he had served as clerk, and in 1829 he entered the counting- house of Fish, Grinnell & Company, a connection probably traceable to the marriage of his sister Sarah to Henry Grinnell in 1822. This firm had been established about 1815 by Preserved Fish and Joseph Grinnell [qq.v.] from New Bedford. Starting as commission merchants for whale oil, the firm expanded into the management of transatlantic packets, ship owning, and general commerce. By 1832 the two original partners retired and the firm was reorganized as Grinnell, Minturn & Company, Minturn joining with Joseph Grinnell's younger brothers, Moses Hicks and Henry [qq.v.].

Under its new name the firm attained a secure position as one of the greatest of the New York commercial houses, ranking with the Griswolds, Rowlands, and Lows. "All is fish that gets into their nets," wrote Scoville about 1860 (post, I, I p. 100). In Latin America they were behind the Howlands, though their Cuban business was so extensive that Minturn sent his son to Spain to learn the language. In China they competed successfully with the houses of Griswold and Low which virtually specialized in that trade. They did a great deal of business with England and extended their influence into almost all parts of the world. They seem to have shared with the Welds of Boston the honor of being the greatest American ship-owners of the day. Their blue and white or red and white swallowtail house flags flew over more than fifty vessels, including regular packet lines to Liverpool and London as well as some of the finest dippers of the day. They owned the North Wind and Sea Serpent and above all, the greatest of the clippers, Donald McKay's Flying Cloud.

Minturn's fortune was estimated at $200,000 as early as 1846. He and his partners were more public spirited than many of the other New York merchants of the day. He himself served as commissioner of emigration to improve the condition of the incoming foreigners and was instrumental in founding the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and St. Luke's Hospital. His wife was Anna Mary Wendell, the daughter of John Lansing Wendell of Albany, whom he married on June 2, 1835. She has been credited with the idea of establishing Central Park and he supported her in the project. At first a Whig, Minturn was later a Republican and was first president of the Union League Club. He has been described, like others of his family, as dark, tall, and handsome. George William Curtis pictured him as "gentle, just and generous; modest, humane and sagacious; his sense of responsibility growing with his increasing fortune, until his devoted life was that of a humble almoner of the Divine bounty" (Harper's Weekly, January 27, 1866). He died suddenly of paralysis at his New York home.

[The sources for Minturn's biography are fragmentary. See R. B. Minturn, Jr., Memoir of Robert Bowne Minturn (1871); J. A. Scoville, The Old Merchants of New York City (4 volumes, 1863-66); The Diary of Philip Hone (2 volumes, 1927), ed. by Allan Nevins; Henry Hall, America's Successful Men of Affairs, volume I (1895); L. H. Weeks, Prominent Families of New York, volume I (1897); F. G. Griswold, The House Flags of the Merchants of New York, I800-I800 (1926); 0. T. Howe and F. C. Matthews, American Clipper Ships (2 volumes, 1927); M. Y. Beach, Wealth and Pedigree of the Wealthy Citizens of New York (1846); New York Times, New York Tribune, January 10, 1866.]

R. G. A.


MITCHELL, Daniel, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1847-1853.


MITCHELL, James, Reverend, clergyman.  Traveling agent for the American Colonization Society in the 1840s.  He represented Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  Organized new state auxiliaries. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 242)


MITCHELL, Levi, New York, American Abolition Society.

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


MITCHELL, P. J., Justice of the New York Supreme Court.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 317, 407n6)


MITCHELL, Robert Byington, 1823-1882, lawyer, political leader, Union soldier.  Member of the Kansas Territorial Legislature, 1857-1858.  Active in Free State anti-slavery movement in Kansas in 1856.  Colonel, 2nd Kansas Volunteers.  Commander 13th U.S. Army Division.  Fought in Battle of Perryville.  1865-1867 Governor of New Mexico. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 346; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 60-61; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 15, p. 625).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 60-61:

MITCHELL, ROBERT BYINGTON (April 4, 1823 -January 26, 1882), soldier, governor of New Mexico Territory, was born in Mansfield. Richland County, Ohio, of Scotch-Irish parents. Whether he graduated at Kenyon College, Ohio, or Washington College, Pennsylvania, is a controverted matter; neither school has a record of his attendance. He studied law in the office of John K. Miller at Mount Vernon, Ohio, was admitted to the bar, and began practice at Mansfield. In the Mexican War he served as first lieutenant in the 2nd Ohio Infantry. Later he resumed the practice of law, and in 1855 was elected Democratic mayor of Mount Gilead. In the same year he was married to Jennie, daughter of Henry St. John of Tiffin, Ohio.

A business trip to Kansas Territory in 1855 convinced Mitchell that it offered opportunities for advancement; accordingly in October 1856 he migrated thither and settled at Paris, Linn County. Throughout the Kansas struggle he was a conservative, law-and-order Free-State man. He was elected to the lower house of the territorial legislature in 1857 and was reelected a year later. In 1858 he was a delegate to the Leavenworth constitutional convention. The following year he was appointed treasurer of the territory, serving until it became a state in 1861. When the Republican party supplanted the Free-State organization in 1859, he returned to the Democratic party, and was appointed delegate to the Charleston convention in 1860.

After brief service as adjutant on the staff of Governor Charles Robinson [q.v.], Mitchell was commissioned colonel of the 2nd Kansas Volunteer Infantry. At the battle of Wilson's Creek he was severely wounded, but recovered and was transferred to a cavalry regiment. On April 8, 1862, President Lincoln commissioned him brigadier-general, and at the battle of Perryville, Kentucky, he commanded the 9th Division. He was then stationed at Nashville for several months. As chief of cavalry in the Army of the Cumberland he made commendable contributions to Union successes in southeastern Tennessee in 1863. Severe wounds incapacitated him temporarily for field service, and Secretary Stanton ordered him to Washington for court-martial duty. Early in 1864 he was assigned to the district of Nebraska-Territory in the department of Kansas. A year later he was transferred to the district of North Kansas, and when the two divisions of the state were combined, June 28, 1865, he was appointed to the command. Throughout the war he had the reputation of being a shrewd and energetic commander.

Late in 1865 President Johnson nominated Mitchell to be governor of New Mexico Territory. The nomination was confirmed January 15, 1866, and he took office on the 16th of the following July. He soon quarreled with the legislature and his removal was requested. He was accused of making a vacancy appointment of delegate to Congress, of remaining in Washington during an entire session of the assembly, of removing officials appointed by the secretary during his absence, and of usurpation of power. In 1868 the organic act was amended to abrogate the governor's absolute veto. Mitchell relinquished the office in 1869 and returned to Kansas. In 1872 he was nominated for Congress by Liberal Republicans and Democrats, but was defeated. Subsequently, he removed to Washington, D. C., where he died.

[A sketch of his career, published in the La Cygne Weekly Journal, April 26, May 3, 1895, was reprinted in Kansas Historical Collections, XVI (1923-25); material relating to his Civil War career is in War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); for resolutions of the New Mexico legislature consult House Misc. Docs. 64 and 94, 40 Congress, 2 Session See also D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (1886); H. H. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mex. (1889); R. E. Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mex. History, volume II (1912); Harper's Weekly, April 4, 1863; Evening Star (Washington), January 28, 1882.]

W. H. S-n.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 346:

MITCHELL, Robert B., lawyer, born in Richland county, Ohio, 4 April, 1823; died in Washington, D. C., 26 January, 1882. He was educated at Washington college, Pennsylvania, and then studied law. During the Mexican war he served in the Ohio volunteers as 1st lieutenant, and on its conclusion he resumed the practice of his profession. In 1856 he moved to Kansas, and took an active part with the free-state men in their struggle with the pro-slavery party. He was a member of the territorial legislature in 1857-'8, and treasurer in 1858-'61. At the beginning of the civil war he was made colonel of the 2d Kansas volunteers, and was severely wounded at the battle of Wilson's Creek. On his recovery he raised a regiment of cavalry, and was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers on 8 April, 1862. He was given command of the 13th division of General Don Carlos Buell's army, and participated in the battle of Perryville. During 1865-'7 he was governor of New Mexico, and, after completing his term of office, settled in Washington, D. C., where he remained until his death. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 346.


MITCHILL, Samuel Latham, LLD, medical doctor, lawyer, Member of Congress from New York.  Opposed slavery as member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

(Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 93, 146; Annals of Congress; Longacre, James B. & James Herring, National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans.  Philadelphia: American Academy of Fine Arts, 1834-1839)

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

"Omnium scientiarum circulis mire se implicantem.” BRUCKER.

THE medical profession, distinguished, as it has been in all ages, by the learning and talents of its members, is destined, we trust, to receive new honors in this free republic of the United States. Less conspicuous in the public eye than the juris consult, less imposing in private life than the teacher of religion, the physician has yet risen, in the enlightened nations of England and France, to a parity at least with his rival brethren; though these last have been largely supported by fiscal patronage, and strengthened by governmental authority. In bringing about this revolution, much is due to the great events which have signalized the history of the present generation-still more to the enlightened spirit of the age. It was the boast of the late illustrious emperor of France, that during his administration of its government, the road to public honors and rewards was equally open to every member of the senate. By this liberal policy, not only each individual assumed his natural rank, but each class of society rose to its natural importance. The perfect liberality of our institutions, both national and social, and the freedom of access to every situation in life to the humblest individual, have produced among us a universal spirit of ambition, which brings forward the talents of all to the public service. The distinguished character, whose life and services these pages are designed briefly to sketch, is a striking instance of the truth of these remarks. Under an absolute government he had been only an eminent physician; under our more liberal system, he was besides an important actor in its national concerns. 

Samuel Latham Mitchill was born in North Hempstead, (Plandome,) Queens county, Long Island, New York, on the 20th of August, 1764. In this village his father, Robert Mitchill, of English descent, was an industrious farmer of the society of Friends. He died in 1789, leaving behind him six sons and two daughters, most of whom he lived to see reputably settled in life. Agricultural pursuits became for the most part their occupation, and industry and economy were the characteristics common to them all. In the subject of this memoir, who was the third son, were early remarkable those habits of observation and reflection, which were destined to elevate him to an enviable distinction among his contemporaries. Fortunately for mankind, his talents and laudable ambition met a discerning and liberal patron in his maternal uncle, Dr. Samuel Latham, a skilful and intelligent medical practitioner in his native village. The resources of this gentleman happily enabled him to enter upon and complete that system of education, which the limited income and numerous family of his parents of necessity denied. Of this uncle he always spoke with becoming gratitude and ardent affection. At an early age he was placed under the direction of Dr. Leonard Cut- ting, a graduated scholar of the university of Cambridge; England; whom an attachment to the principles of liberty had induced to visit our shores, and in whom the polished habits of the gentleman were happily blended with a profound and extensive erudition. With this excellent instruct.er he continued for several years, and with him acquired an intimate acquaintance with classical literature, which constituted one of the favorite amusements of his leisure hours throughout his subsequent life. It is due to this kind preceptor to state, that he early predicted the future eminence of his pupil, and contributed by his praise and direction to its fulfilment. After acquiring a partial knowledge of the elementary principles of medicine with Dr. Latham, he removed to the city of New York in 1780, and became a pupil of Dr. Samuel Bard, with whom he continued about three years. The condition of New York was at this period little favorable to intellectual cultivation. The humble institutions which the pious and enlightened liberality of our fathers had erected to letters were appropriated to arms, scholastic exercises suspended, and their professors dispersed. The state had been long struggling with its unnatural parent, and the efforts of patriotism for a time  superseded the pursuits of science and literature. King's now Columbia college, had become a military hospital, its chambers occupied by the sick and wounded soldiers of the British army; and the New York hospital converted into a barracks by the enemy, who then held possession of the city. Notwithstanding these unpropitious circumstances, he continued his medical studies, and had free access to the circles who visited the house of his medical preceptor.

In the twentieth year of his age, Mr. Mitchill was happily enabled to avail himself of the advantages held out by the university of Edinburgh, at that time adorned by the talents of Cullen, Black, and Monro. Here students from all parts of the civilized world repaired, as to the most able seat of medical learning then in Europe; and of nearly a thousand youths, many of whom have risen to the first distinctions in science and letters) the talents and diligence of Mitchill acquired for him general applause, and an undivided esteem and regard. The late Sir James Macintosh and Thomas Addis Emmet; who have since acquired such eminence in other pursuits, were among his friends and compeers; and we have the testimony of the last named excellent individual, that no student of the university exhibited greater tokens of promise. After a residence of about four years, at the end of which, in 1786, he received the honors of the profession, he made a short excursion into England and France, and returned. to his native country, then rapidly recovering from the disastrous effects of the revolutionary contest.

On his return to his native state, Dr. Mitchill, with a consequent interruption to his medical studies, devoted a portion of his time to acquire a knowledge of the laws and constitution of his country, under the direction of Robert Yates, at that time chief justice of the state of New York. The result was a fixed and unalterable attachment in him to those principles which, triumphantly asserted at Saratoga and Yorktown, and since embodied in the constitution of the United States, became the corner-stone of new institutions, sacred to the rights and best interests of mankind. By the influence of the chief justice, he was employed in the commission for holding' a treaty with the Iroquois Indians, and was present at the adjustment made at Fort Stanwix, 1788, in which 'the right to a large portion of the western district was purchased for the benefit of the government. During this period, he extensively explored the frontiers of New York and Canada, and seems also to have been engaged in various matters of a political character. His experiments on the mineral waters of Saratoga, which he subsequently re-investigated, appear to have contributed to the extensive celebrity which those waters have since obtained. 

His appointment to the chair of chemistry and agriculture in Columbia college, marks the confidence of his friends in his abilities; and from this school he first made known to his countrymen the new theory of chemistry recently matured by the genius of Lavoisier and his associates. The admirable nomenclature, the scientific arrangement of this system, together with its brilliant results, form an era in chemical philosophy, and an important chapter in the history of the human mind. The doctor was wont to repeat with much complacency this happy commencement of his professorial career. He was, however, far from adopting all the principles of Lavoisier; and in a memoir published shortly after, he presented a modified system, which involved him in a controversy with the celebrated Priestley, then recently arrived on our shores. It is to the honor of these distinguished individuals, that the disputation was conducted with mutual courtesy, and ended in a personal friendship, which terminated only with the life of the great founder of pneumatic chemistry.

From his connection with many of the chief officers of the state government, and particularly with Chancellor Livingston and Simeon De Witt, originated the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, and the Useful Arts. Before this body he delivered their first public address; which made its appearance in the first volume of their Transactions. This-society, which consisted of the members of both houses of the legislature, and of such other individuals as interested themselves in agricultural pursuits, was incorporated at his instance and has proved by its various publications a valuable aid in unfolding the native resources of the commonwealth. His mineralogical survey of the state of New York, undertaken in 1796, under the direction of this institution, forms a memorable event in his career, and first laid the basis of his reputation with the philosophers of Europe, which continued from this time thenceforth to increase. This report was probably the first attempt in mineralogical study in America, and led the way to the more ample investigations of Maclure, Godon, Cleaveland, Dana, Van Rensselaer, and others. It has often been referred to with approbation by the scavans of Europe. [1] He contributed at times local sketches of a like character of different parts of the country to various scientific journals; and it has furnished occasion of regret that so competent an observer had not more fully prosecuted these meritorious researches. Throughout his life he was a persistent believer in the Wernerian hypothesis, and contended that the most luminous evidences of its truth were found in the formations of the western hemisphere.

The New York Medical Repository originated in 1797, under the editorial career of Samuel L. Mitchill, in connection with Dr. Edward Miller and Elihu H. Smith. Of this journal he was the chief editor for more than sixteen years, during the greater part of which period it was the general vehicle of science in the new world. It was enriched from time to time with the ample treasures of his knowledge, and with ingenious speculations in almost every branch of philosophy. The critical department was for the most part conducted with urbanity and good feeling. Few writers, whose works were subjected to its critical ordeal, could fairly complain of its decisions; and though a strenuous advocate for certain theories, and firm in gladiatorial controversy, its pages were seldom marked by want of candor or undeserved censure. It was the first periodical work of a scientific description that appeared in the United States.

In 1807, the act of the legislature empowering the regents of the university to establish a college of physicians and surgeons in the city of New York took effect; and upon the organization of this school, Dr. Mitchill was appointed the professor of chemistry, which, however, his public duties obliged him to resign. In the following year, he was elected to the chair of natural history, in the same institution. In this science, so congenial to his taste and habits, and in which he was acknowledged to be without a rival among his countrymen, he delivered courses of instruction for twelve successive years, with eminent success. Of these lectures, which embraced the extensive regions of mineralogical, botanical, and zoological inquiry, he published an outline, which exhibited a compass of thought, and a capacity for generalization, for which he was little accredited by the censorious.

The reorganization of the college in 1820 occasioned a new disposition of professorships, when Dr. Mitchill was commissioned by the regents as professor of materia medica and botany. In this capacity he continued his professorial labors until 1826, when, with his colleagues, he resigned all connection with an institution, the interests of which he had promoted nearly twenty years. The gradual and steady success of this school of medicine, in opposition to a powerful rival, is an honorable evidence of the talents and well directed efforts of its teachers. It may be sufficient to observe, that it opened in 1807 with fifty-three students; that for a while there existed in the city two other institutions, which at length yielded to its superiority; and that for several years it was attended by two hundred students. Difficulties haying at length arisen between the trustees and the professors, the latter withdrew in a body from an institution, which, under their exertions, had been elevated to rivals ship with the oldest medical school in the country. In common with his colleagues, he received, upon his resignation, the thanks of the regents of the university, for the faithful and able manner in which he had discharged his duties as instructor and lecturer in the college. In the new college, which was immediately thereafter formed, under the name of Rutgers Medical College, Dr. Mitchill was appointed to the office of vice president.

The political career of Dr. Mitchill, which began as early as 1790, as a representative in the state legislature from his native county of Queens, was scarcely less brilliant or less beneficial to his fellow-citizens than his services in the cause of science and philosophy; and his name, as a member of the legislature, and representative and senator in the national congress, is honorably associated with many of the most conspicuous and important public transactions. Adopting the views of those who construe most strictly the powers conferred upon the general government by the constitution, he for the most part acted with those who were designated by the name of the republican, in opposition to the federal, party. His courtesy and amenity of manners were always conspicuous; and though a leading member at a period of exasperated political feeling, he. abstained from every species of intolerance towards his political opponents, without forfeiting his popularity with his political friends. It is with pleasure we record the name of Dr. Mitchill among those who first gave impulse and activity to that splendid system of internal improvement, which has given renown to New York, and rendered her a brilliant example to her sister states. We refer to the statute of her legislature in 1798, which conferred on Chancellor Livingston the exclusive right to navigate by steam the waters of New York. This bill owed much to the zeal and assiduity of Dr. Mitchill, arrayed against a host of scoffing and sneering opponents. The projected attempt was at this time unsuccessful, but by the united exertions of Livingston and Fulton, eventuated in those magnificent efforts in steam navigation, which have changed the internal commerce of nations.

In the congress of the United States, both as representative and senator, the bills for reducing the required term of residence for foreigners from fourteen to five years, on modified quarantine and health laws, on salt duties, were a few among the many subjects which called forth a happy display of his varied information and persuasive elocution. His knowledge of the political relations of the American confederation, and familiarity with its statistics, rendered him at all times a most useful member, both in the house and in committee: those who expected to see in him the mere abstract philosopher, were delighted to find in him the highest social qualities, and a research which scarcely any subject of human inquiry had eluded.

In 1799, Dr. Mitchill was united in matrimony to the daughter of Samuel Akerly, Mrs. Catharine Cock, his amiable partner and lamenting survivor. In the domestic relations of life, as husband, brother, and friend, his zeal and affection were exemplary and disinterested.
Dr. Mitchell derived from nature a hardy and robust constitution, but occasionally labored under a bronchial affection, to which he acquired a predisposition, from an attack of inflammation in early life. He died after a short but severe illness, in the 67th year of his age, on the 7th of September, 1831, at his residence in the city of. New York. His funeral was honored by the attendance of a large and respectable body of his fellow citizens.
Dr. Mitchill was member of innumerable scientific societies. Of the Lyceum of Natural History, of New York, he was the. founder, and for many years its president. He enriched its annals with many contributions, and still further displayed his zeal in behalf of his favorite pursuit, by a donation to them of a large portion of his valuable cabinet.

Of his numerous writings, a large part relates to subjects of transient interest, or of technical science. These we shall neither attempt to enumerate nor to characterize. Among his most elaborate productions are, his Addresses before the State Agricultural Society, his correspondence with Priestley, his Chart of Chemical Nomenclature, his Introduction to Darwin's Zoonomia, his paper on the alkaline properties of the water of the ocean, in the American Philosophical Transactions; his Discourse before the New York Historical Society on the Botanical History of North and South America; a paper on the fishes that inhabit the waters of New York, in the Transactions of the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York; his Appendix to Cuvier's Theory of the Earth; his Biographical Discourses on Dr. Bard and on Thomas A. Emmet.

As a lecturer, simple, plain, and didactic, he arrested the attention of his auditors by his ample and ready knowledge of his subject, and by a fund of apt and characteristic anecdotes. In his excursions through different sections of the United States, and during his residence at Washington, lie had become intimately acquainted with many of the more interesting portions of our country, and with the various character of our countrymen; and no small part of the interest of his lectures consisted in reminiscences connected with these circumstances of his life.

Reference has been already made to his early attainments in the literature of Greece and Rome; evidences, indeed, of classical taste were to be found in almost all his compositions, both written and oral; and he had been known and acknowledged as one of our most eminent writers, had he not become still more conspicuous as an adept in natural curiosities. That vivacious and fertile imagination, which was usefully occupied with the bones of the mastodon and the Wernerian formation, might have illustrated and illuminated the paths of literature. We refer for the evidences of this opinion to his admirable discourse before the New York Horticultural Society, which the scholar may consult for 'the beauty of its style, and the agriculturist for the useful lessons it imparts.

For about twenty years, Dr. Mitchill acted as one of the physicians of the New York Hospital; and his diligence and attention to the duties this office imposed, when not called from the city by other obligations; were marked and exemplary. Nor was he deficient, notwithstanding his multifarious pursuits, in the practical knowledge of disease. Those who were accustomed to regard him as a mere theorist, be personal intercourse perceived in him the acute clinical observer of the different phases of disease. Like Darwin and Cullen, he judiciously, when at the bed-side, rejected speculations, and trusted to observation and experience as the only safe guides.
In assigning to Dr. Mitchill an eminent rank among the cultivators of natural science, we are fully warranted by the authority of those who have preeminently excelled in this branch of knowledge. The illustrious Cuvier, both in his lectures and in his printed writings, referred to him in terms of signal approbation. More recently the ornithologist Audubon has bestowed on him the tribute of his applause. Let it be recollected, that his knowledge was acquired not among the facilities of a royal or imperial cabinet, but amid the fatigues of travel, and while resident among a population little disposed to speculative investigation, or to regard his pursuits with favor or reward. Though justly deemed the Nestor of American science, he bore the honors which thickened around him meekly, if not unobtrusively, and ever showed himself ready to aid the diligent inquirer by counsel and encouragement. It has happened to few men to pass through life with less of censure, or with a more fixed and unchanged approbation.

Source: Longacre, James B. & James Herring, National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans.  Philadelphia: American Academy of Fine Arts, 1834-1839


MITCHELL, Warren G., New York, American Abolition Society.

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


MITER, John, abolitionist.  Agent and Manager, 1833-1837, of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  Worked in Newark, New Jersey, area. 

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

[1] See Volncy's View of the United States.

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.