O: O’Connor through Owen

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.


O'CONNOR, William Douglas (January 2, 1832-May 9, 1889), journalist, author, civil servant, friend and champion of Walt Whitman. O'Connor was gaining a reputation as a journalist and literary man when he was summarily dismissed from the Post for writing too favorably about John Brown of Osawatomie. His rejoinder, concocted in his enforced leisure, was a vivid, vehement Abolitionist novel, Harrington (1860).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 619-620:

O'CONNOR, WILLIAM DOUGLAS (January 2, 1832-May 9, 1889), journalist, author, civil servant, friend and champion of Walt Whitman, was born in Boston and was of Irish stock with an admixture of Scotch. In his youth he read widely in several literatures and studied art, intending to make it his career, but on coming of age he turned journalist and was employed on the Boston Commonwealth in 1853 and on the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, 1854-59. In 1856 he married Ellen M. Tarr of Boston, whose sympathy and helpfulness were his lifelong good fortune. Their happiness was marred only by the death of their two children. O'Connor was gaining a reputation a s a journalist and literary man when he was summarily dismissed from the Post for writing too favorably about John Brown of Osawatomie. His rejoinder, concocted in his enforced leisure, was a vivid, vehement Abolitionist novel, Harrington (1860), which is still readable. The rest of his life he spent in the government service in Washington as corresponding clerk of the Light House Board, 1861- 73; chief clerk, 1873-74; librarian of the Treasury Department, 1874-75; clerk in the Revenue Marine Division (with which the Life Saving Service was connected), 1875-78; and assistant general superintendent of the Life Saving Service, 1878-79. He wrote the annual reports of the Service, giving to them, and especially to the narrative portions, a literary quality seldom encounter ed in such documents. Years later Sumner Increase Kimball [q. v.] published a volume of extracts from them, Heroes of the Storm (1904), as a tribute to his old friend and adjutant.

The most significant episode in O'Connor's life was his friend ship with Walt Whitman, which began with a casual meeting in the office of Thayer & Eldridge, publishers, in Boston, in June 1860. When the poet came to Washington, penniless and friendless, in December 18 (52, it was O'Connor who came to his assistance, gave him shelter, and found him employment. Or all his services to Whitman, the most famous was the publication of The Good Gray Poet (1866), an eloquent philippic against James Harlan [q.v.], who, as secretary of the interior, had dismissed the poet from his clerkship. In "The Carpenter" (Putnam’s Magazine, January 1868) O'Connor made his friend the hero of a tale in which he appears, unnamed, as a mystic savior of mankind. After O'Connor's death three of his stories were republished, with a preface by Whitman, as Three Tales: The Ghost, The Brazen Android, The Carpenter (1892). Of his poems the most ambitious was "To Fanny" (Atlantic Monthly, February 1871), remarkable for its metrical finesse.

O'Connor was strikingly handsome, graceful, and magnetic, and had the highly combustible temperament of a romantic Irishman of genius: eloquent, high-minded, impetuous, and chivalrous. As the result of a dispute over the merits of negro suffrage, Whitman and he quarreled and were partially estranged from 1872 to 1882; but when Whitman was again in need of a defender O'Connor was at his side, and their friend ship remained close until the end. O 'Connor was also an ardent Baconian and the author of two pamphlets on the subject: Hamlet's Notebook (18 86) and Mr. Donnelly's Reviewers (1889). In Washington his home was the meeting place of a group of intellectuals that included John Burroughs, Spencer Fullerton Baird, and other men of note. He died in Washington, of paralysis, after a long illness.

[Appletons' Annual Cyclopedia, 1889; Ellen M. Calder (Mrs. W. D. O'Connor), "Personal Recollections of Walt Whitman," Atlantic Monthly, June 1907; S. I. Kimball 's introduction to  Heroes of the Storm (1904); Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden (3 volumes, 1906-14); W. S. Kennedy, The Fight of a Book for the World (1926); Clara Barrus, Whitman and Burroughs, Comrades (1931); Evening Star (Washington), May 10, 1889.]

G. H. G.


O’KELLY, James, 1735-1826, Virginia, North Carolina, Methodist clergyman, opponent of slavery.  Wrote anti-slavery work, Essay on Negro Slavery. 

(Kilbore, 1963)


O’NEILL, Charles, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

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


OAKES, William, Ipswich, Massachusetts, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1834-1837.


ODELL, Moses Fowler, 1818-1866, Brooklyn, New York, statesman.  Fusion Democratic, later War Democratic, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York.  Congressman 1861-1865.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 556; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928) 


ODIORNE, James C., Boston, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Treasurer, 1835-36.


OGDEN, William Butler, 1805-1877, Chicago, former mayor of Chicago, entrepreneur, railroad president.  Anti-slavery member of the Free Soil Party. In 1860 he was  elected as a Republican to the Illinois State Senate. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, p. 644: A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago (3 volumes, 1884-86); I. N. Arnold, Wm. B. Ogden and Early Days in Chicago (Fergus History Series, no. 17, 1882); The Biographical Encyclopedia of Illinois of the Nineteenth Century (1875); D. W. Wood, ed., Chicago and its Distinguished Citizens (1881))

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, p. 644-645:

OGDEN, WILLIAM BUTLER (June 15, 1805-August 3, 1877), railroad executive, was born in Walton, Delaware County, New York, the son of Abraham and Abigail (Weed) Ogden and a descendant of John Ogden who settled in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, in 1664. He was educated in the public schools and planned to study law, but when he was only fifteen his father suffered a paralytic stroke and the boy was compelled to devote himself to the management of his father's interests, which consisted of property in what was then an undeveloped country. William devoted himself to the improvement and sale of this land, and in this work showed the executive and financial ability which marked his later career. In 1834 he was elected to the New York legislature on a platform advocating the construction of the New York & Erie Railroad by state aid, which was obtained in 1835. In that year, Charles Butler, a New York capitalist, who had married Ogden's sister, urged his brother- in-law to move to Chicago to take charge of his real-estate interests there. Accordingly, Ogden went to Chicago and laid out a tract for subdivision. With characteristic energy he held an auction at which he sold one-third of the property for more than one hundred thousand dollars or enough to cover the original cost. He then established a land and trust agency and made purchases of land on his own account; in 1843 he formed a partnership with William E. Jones. His success in business and the rise in the value of his real estate later created for him a large fortune.

When Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 Ogden was elected its first mayor on the Democratic ticket. The population of the town was only 4,179, and the first problem was the improvement of the streets, which were in a bad condition, and the building of bridges to connect the three parts of the city. After his term as mayor Ogden served many years on the city council and was instrumental in having bridges and many miles of improved streets built. Ogden avenue was named after him. He next devoted himself to the construction of railways east and west from Chicago. One of the first roads projected was the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad which was to run to the then important lead mines. A charter was obtained in 1836 but the panic of the following year prevented the continuation of work, though the charter was kept alive. In 1846 Ogden was elected president of the company. By 1849 the road was built with strap rails to the Des Plaines River, a distance of ten miles, and in April of that year the first locomotive started west from Chicago on the line. Thereafter Ogden devoted himself entirely to railroad development. In 1853 he was chosen one of the directors of the Pittsburg, Ft. Wayne & Chicago Railroad Company, and when the road was made insolvent by the panic of 1857 he was appointed general receiver in 1859 and restored it. He presided over the National Pacific Railway Convention of 1850, held to advocate the building of a transcontinental railroad. In 1857 he became president of the Chicago, St. Paul & Fond-du-Lac Railroad, which later became part of the Chicago & Northwestern. He logically became president of the latter road in 1859 and continued in that office until 1868. When the Union Pacific was organized Ogden was elected its first president in 1862 in order to give prestige to the project. But subscriptions to the needed $2,000,000 capital were not forthcoming until Congress doubled the land grant, when the military character of the road was emphasized by the election in 1863 of General J. A. Dix to the presidency. Ogden also served as president of the Illinois & Wisconsin Railroad, of the Buffalo & Mississippi, and of the Wisconsin & Superior Land Grant Railroad.

Ogden's executive ability was called into service in many lines of civic enterprise. He was the first president of Rush Medical College, a charter member of the Chicago Historical Society, and president of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago. When the Merchants Loan & Trust Company was organized in 1857 he was one of its first directors when the slavery question arose he allied himself with the Free-Soil party and in 1860 was elected by the Republicans to the Illinois Senate, but he split with the party over the Emancipation Proclamation and retired from politics. In 1866 he purchased an estate at Fordham Heights, just outside of New York City, where he made his home until his death. Late in life, on February 9, 1875, he married Maryanne Arnot, daughter of John and Mary (Tuttle) Arnot, of Elmira, New York. He was a man of commanding presence, whose most striking characteristic was his self-reliance. He contributed liberally to educational and charitable institutions, and his name was given to the Ogden Graduate School of Science at the University of Chicago which a bequest from his estate helped to found.

[References to Ogden's life and services are found in a great many scattered references, of which the following are the best: A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago (3 volumes, 1884-86); I. N. Arnold, Wm. B. Ogden and Early Days in Chicago (Fergus History Series, no. 17, 1882); The Biographical Encyclopedia of Illinois of the Nineteenth Century (1875); D. W. Wood, ed., Chicago and its Distinguished Citizens (1881); Yesterday and Today: A History of the Chicago and North Western Railway System (3rd ed., 1910); T. W. Goodspeed, The University of Chicago Biographical Sketches, volume I (1922).]

E. L. B.


OGLESBY, Richard James (July 25, 1824-April 24, 1899), governor of Illinois and senator. His father was a farmer, owned a few slaves, and was a member of the Kentucky legislature. In 1833 his parents, two brothers, and a sister died of the cholera and the family property was sold, including the slaves. He maintained that it was the sale of these slaves, especially of Uncle Tim, whom he later bought and freed, that made him an abolitionist.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 648-649)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 1, pp. 648-649:

OGLESBY, RICHARD JAMES (July 25, 1824-April 24, 1899), governor of Illinois and senator, was born in Oldham County, Kentucky, the son of Jacob and Isabella (Watson) Oglesby. His father was a farmer, owned a few slaves, and was a member of the Kentucky legislature. In 1833 his parents, two brothers, and a sister died of the cholera and the family property was sold, including the slaves. He maintained that it was the sale of these slaves, especially of Uncle Tim, whom he later bought and freed, that made him an abolitionist. An uncle took the orphaned boy to Decatur, Illinois, where he attended the district school a few months before he began his struggle for a livelihood as farmer, rope-maker, and carpenter. He studied law in the office of Silas W. Robbins of Springfield, was admitted to the bar in 1845, and practised his profession at Sullivan, III., until the outbreak of the Mexican War. During the war he served as first lieutenant in the 4th Illinois Volunteers, participating in the battles of Vera Cruz and Cerro Gordo. After the war he resumed his law practice and attended a course of lectures at the law school in Louisville. In 1849 he went to California to dig for gold and returned to his profession at Decatur in 1851. Five years later he went abroad for twenty months' travel in Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land.

On his return to Decatur he entered politics. He had been a Whig and had served as a Scott elector in 1852 but joined the Republican party upon its formation. In 1858 he ran for Congress on the Republican ticket and was defeated by only a small majority in a strong Democratic district. In 1860 he was elected to the state Senate, but he served only one term, resigning at the outbreak of the Civil War to become colonel of the 8th Illinois Volunteers. He served as brigade commander under Grant at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson and was severely wounded at the battle of Corinth. In April 1863 he returned to the army and was promoted to the rank of major-general. He resigned in May 1864. In November 1864 he was elected governor of Illinois on the Republican ticket. He was an ardent advocate of Lincoln's war policies; however, later he denounced Johnson bitterly and sent a formal demand to Washington for action against him. During his administration, Illinois ratified the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Amendments and repealed her "Black Laws." Further enactments provided for a home for the children of deceased soldiers, a school for the feeble-minded, the location of the Illinois industrial college at Urbana, and the construction of a southern Illinois penitentiary. At the end of his term he returned to his law practice, but in 1872 he was again the Republican nominee for governor, the party realizing that he was the only Republican who could carry the state. There was an understanding, however, that the lieutenant-governor should succeed to the governorship immediately after inauguration and that Oglesby in turn should receive election to the United States Senate. A few days after his inauguration, therefore, he was elected to succeed Lyman Trumbull. As senator, he served as chairman of the committee on public lands and on the committees of Indian affairs, pensions, and civil service. As a member of the pensions committee, he was an earnest champion of the soldiers' interests. He retired at the end of his term in the Senate. In 1884 the Republican party nominated him governor by acclamation, and he was elected, the first man in Illinois to receive that honor three times. During this administration his general policies were carried out in laws providing for a soldiers' and sailors' home, a home for juvenile delinquents, and the creation of various pension funds. In 1889 he retired to his home at "Oglehurst," Elkhart, III. In 1891 he was nominated for the Senate, but he failed of election.

The last years of his life were spent in comparative quiet. He was married twice: to Anna White in 1859 and, after her death in 1868, to Emma (Gillet) Keyes in 1873. He was a fine looking man with a bluff, friendly manner that appealed to the people. This, added to his wit and good humor, his sincerity and enthusiasm, and his ability to speak to the people in the vernacular, made him an excellent stump speaker, and as such he acquired considerable fame. He believed in the people and in their ability to govern themselves; in return, he was dearly beloved by them, to whom he was known as ''Uncle Dick."

[Correspondence in possession of Illinois State Historical Library, Urbana, and of his son, John G. Oglesby, Elkhart; J. M. Johns, Personal Recollections of Early Decatur (1912); The Bench and Bar of Illinois, ed. by J. M. Palmer (1899), volume II; The Biographical Encyclopedia of Illinois, ed. by Charles Robsen (1875); G. B. Raum, History of Illinois Republicanism (1900); John Moses, Illinois, Historical and Statistical, volume II (1892); A. C. Cole, The Era of the Civil War (1919); E. L. Bogart, The Industrial State (1920); Illinois State Register (Springfield), April 25, 1899.]

E. B. E.


OLDEN, Charles Smith (February 19, 1799-April 7, 1876), War time governor of New Jersey. In 1859 an opposition group, composed of Republicans, Whigs, and National Americans, unanimously nominated him for the governorship, to run against the Democratic candidate, E. R. V. Wright.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, pt. 2 pp. 11-12)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, pt. 2 pp. 11-12:

OLDEN, CHARLES SMITH (February 19, 1799-April 7, 1876), governor of New Jersey, was a quiet, unpretentious Quaker who, after a successful career in business, was drawn into politics by those who respected his sagacity and honesty. He was the son of Hart and Temperance (Smith) Olden and was born on the family farm at Stony Brook near Princeton, New Jersey, originally purchased in 1696 by his ancestor, William Olden, who had come from England some time earlier. This farm had been the scene of the major action of the Revolutionary battle of Princeton. Charles began his education in Princeton and was continuing it at the Lawrenceville school nearby when, at fifteen, he gave up school to assist his father in running the little general store in Princeton. He was soon given an opening in the larger business of Matthew Newkirk in Philadelphia. Then, from 1826 to 1832, he engaged in business at New Orleans so successfully that he was able to return to Princeton, purchase part of the family farm, erect a fine house, and settle down to the life of a gentleman farmer. That was his chief occupation for the remainder of his life, though he became a director of the Trenton Banking Company in 1842. Upon his return to Princeton from the South, he married Phoebe Ann Smith. They had no children of their own but adopted a daughter.

Modest and retiring, he did not seek political office, but in 1844 he was persuaded to run for a seat in the state Senate from Mercer County. He won the election and held the position for six years. In 1859 an opposition group, composed of Republicans, Whigs, and National Americans, unanimously nominated him for the governorship, to run against the Democratic candidate, E. R. V. Wright. He was no orator, but he was popular with the farmers of the state and won the election by a close margin. His inaugural address indicated a desire to accomplish several reforms, particularly in connection with the state prison and the treatment of the insane. These were overshadowed, however, by the Civil War. Working quietly but incessantly, he tried to inject life into the obsolete state military system and obtain funds for the almost empty state treasury. A strong Union man, he cooperated in every possible way with the federal government. Though he had no formal legal training, he was a judge of the New Jersey court of errors and appeals and a member of the court of pardons from 1868 until his resignation in 1873. He was also a riparian commissioner from 1869 to 1875 and served as head of the New Jersey electors in the presidential election of 1872. He was treasurer of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) from 1845 until 1869 and was a trustee of Princeton from 1863 to 1875. He rendered the college a great service when, in 1866, he wrote a letter outlining Princeton's needs to his old school friend, John C. Green [q.v.]. He died at Princeton and was buried in the old Friend's burying ground not far from his home.

[Manuscript "Personal Reminiscences" of C. P. Smith in New Jersey State Library, Trenton; J. F. Hageman, History of Princeton and Its Institutions (1879), I; Genealogical and Personal Memorial of Mercer County, New Jersey (1907), ed. by F. B. Lee, volume II; John MacLean, History of the College of New Jersey (1877), volume I; General Catalog of Princeton (1908); C. M. Knapp, New Jersey Politics (1924); Beecher's Magazine, April 1871.]

R.G.A.


OLDDEN, John, abolitionist leader, Acting Committee, the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1787.

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, p. 92).


OLIN, Stephen (March 2, 1797-August 16, 1851), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, educator. He endeavored to prevent the schism in the Church and was a member of the committee appointed to find a basis of agreement for the pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups. Buckley states that "the only speech delivered in the General Conference of 1844 which exhibited a full comprehension and just estimate of all sides of the subject was that of Stephen Olin who was as familiar with the North as with the South" (J.M. Buckley, post, II, 119). Olin voted for the Finley resolution which requested Bishop Andrew to desist from episcopal duties until he had freed himself from all connection with slavery.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, pt. 2 pp. 13-14).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, pt. 2 pp. 13-14:

OLIN, STEPHEN (March 2, 1797-August 16, 1851), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, educator, son of Henry and Lois (Richardson) Olin, was born in Leicester, Vermont. His father was a lawyer and a prominent political figure in that state. As a student in Middlebury College, Olin won high scholastic honors and was valedictorian of the class of 1820. He secured these honors, however, at the expense of his health. Close application to his studies and lack of physical exercise so undermined his constitution that the rest of his life was a continual struggle with disease. He had intended to enter the legal profession but in 1820, hoping to benefit by the climate, he went to South Carolina, where he became an instrt1ctor in Tabernacle Academy. While there he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church and in 1824 was admitted on trial to the South Carolina Conference. From January to July 1824 he served as junior preacher in Charleston, South Carolina, but the rigorous life of the early Methodist itinerancy proved too strenuous for him, and he was soon forced to retire from the active ministry. In 1826, while recuperating at Madison Springs, Georgia, he was elected professor of ethics and belles-lettres in Franklin College, Athens, Georgia, which position he held from 1827 to 1833. On November 20, 1828, he was ordained elder by Bishop William McKendree [q.v.].

In March 1834 he became president of Randolph- Macon College, then located in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, but by 1837 his health was again depleted, and he spent the next three years recuperating in Europe and the Holy Land. Returning to America in 1840, his health partially restored, he accepted in 1842 the presidency of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. This office he held until his death in 1851. As president of two pioneer Methodist colleges, he did much to arouse his denomination to its educational task. By his official visits to the annual Conferences and by his articles in the Christian Advocate and Journal he did much to enlist the support of both clergy and laity to the early educational program of Methodism. He was one of the few Methodists prior to 1850 who championed the cause of theological education.

As a delegate to the General Conference of 1844 from the New York Conference, which opposed slavery, Olin found himself in a peculiar position, for during his stay in the South he had owned slaves. He endeavored to prevent the schism in the Church and was a member of the committee appointed to find a basis of agreement for the pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups. Buckley states that "the only speech delivered in the General Conference of 1844 which exhibited a full comprehension and just estimate of all sides of the subject was that of Stephen Olin who was as familiar with the North as with the South" (J.M. Buckley, post, II, 119). Although Olin voted for the Finley resolution which requested Bishop Andrew to desist from episcopal duties until he had freed himself from all connection with slavery, yet, immediately after the adjournment of the Conference, he became the leader in the movement for securing fraternal relations between the two branches of Episcopal Methodism. He was vitally interested, also, in fostering a closer friendship among the various Protestant denominations, and was instrumental in organizing the Evangelical Alliance. In 1846 he represented the New York and New England conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church at the meeting of the Alliance in London.

In addition to his many contributions to Methodist periodicals, he published in 1843, Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land (2 volumes). After his death two volumes of his manuscript sermons and addresses were published under the title, The Works of Stephen Olin (1852). In 1853 The Life and Letters of Stephen Olin appeared. Other posthumous publications of his include: Youthful Piety (1853); Greece and the Golden Horn (1854); College Life; Its Theory and Practice (1867). Olin was married twice: first, April 10, 1827, to Mary Ann Eliza Bostick of Milledgeville, Georgia, who died in Naples, Italy, May 7, 1839; second, at Rhinebeck, New York, October 18, 1843, to Julia M. Lynch. A son born to them in 1847 died in youth.

[Matthew Simpson, Cyclopedia of Methodism (1881); J. M. Buckley, A History of Methodism in the U. S. (2 volumes, 1897); J. M'Clintock, "Stephen Olin," in Methodist Quarterly Review, January 1854; R. Irby, History of Randolph Macon College, Virginia (copyright 1898); Methodist Quarterly Review, October 1851; Hartford Daily Courant, August 18, 1851.]

P.N.G.


ONDERDONK, Bishop, Episcopal bishop, New York, abolitionist.


OPDYKE, George, mayor of New York city. He was a member of the Buffalo Free-Soil Convention in 1848, and was a candidate for Congress on the Free-Soil ticket in New Jersey.  He was a delegate to the National Republican Convention in 1860, and was instrumental in the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. He was mayor of New York in 1862-'3, and was energetic in sustaining the National government, in raising and equipping Union troops.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, pt. 2 pp. 45-46; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 583).

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

OPDYKE, George, mayor of New York, born in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, in 1805; died in New York City, 12 June, 1880. His ancestor, Gysbert, was an early settler of New York State. George went to the west at eighteen years of age and settled in Cleveland, Ohio, but afterward moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, and, returning to the north in 1832, engaged in business in New York City, where he subsequently established the banking-house of George Opdyke and Company. He was a member of the Buffalo Free-Soil Convention in 1848, served on its committee on resolutions, and was a candidate for Congress on the Free-Soil ticket in New Jersey, and while in the legislature in 1858 he was zealous in protecting the franchises of New York City from spoliation. He was a delegate to the National Republican Convention in 1860, and was instrumental in the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. He was mayor of New York in 1862-'3, and was energetic in sustaining the National government, in raising and equipping troops, and did much to prevent commercial panics. He served in the New York Constitutional Convention in 1867-'8, in the New York Constitutional Commission in 1872-5, was a member of the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1858-80, and its vice-president in 1867-75. He published a "Treatise on Political Economy," in which he took advanced views against the economic evils of slavery, and in favor of inconvertible paper money and free trade (New York, 1851); "Report on the Currency " (1858; and " Official Documents. Addresses, etc." (1866).  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 583.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, pt. 2 pp. 45-46:

OPDYKE, GEORGE (December 7, 1805-June 12, 1880), merchant, municipal reformer, publicist, was born in Kingwood Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey. He was a son of George and Mary (Stout) Opdycke and a descendant of Louris Jansen Opdycke, who emigrated from Holland to New Netherland prior to 1653. He attended a country school, became a teacher at the age of sixteen, and clerk in a store at Baptistown, New Jersey, at the age of eighteen. In 1825 he borrowed $500 and in company with another youth went to Cleveland, Ohio, where they established a store. The venture proved only moderately profitable, and the next year they sold their business and sought a more promising location. At New Orleans, learning that clothing was being sold at a profit of one hundred per cent., they set up a store and began manufacturing their own stock. The demand for clothing soon outran the capacity of the plant. Opdyke, seeking a greater source of merchandise, went to New York in 1832 and established probably the first important clothing factory in the city. He also engaged in the retail business there and later opened branch stores at Memphis, Tennessee, and at Charles ton, South Carolina. He made and sold principally rough clothing for plantation hands. In 1846 he placed the business in charge of his brother-in-law, John D. Scott, and turned his attention to importing and selling drygoods at wholesale. Both enterprises prospered, and by 1853 Opdyke was a millionaire. During the Civil War he manufactured uniforms and arms for the Federal government. In 1869, having retired from merchandising, he established the banking house of George Opdyke & Company, which successfully withstood the panic of 1873, though with considerable loss to the fortune of the founder.

Opdyke's Southern experiences convinced him that slavery was an economic evil, not to be extended under any circumstances. In 1848 he began an active political career as a delegate to the convention of the Free-Soil party at Buffalo, and as an unsuccessful candidate for Congress. In 1854 he became a Republican. He was a member of the New York Assembly, 1859; mayor of New York, 1862-63; member of the state constitutional convention, 1867-68; and of the constitutional commission, 1872-73. In politics he was independent, acting always on the principle that the people should have strong, honest, and efficient government. In the Assembly he effectively opposed attempts to grant franchises against the interests of New York City. He attended the Republican National Convention, 1860, and opposed the nomination of Seward because he thought him too closely associated with the Republican boss, Thurlow Weed. As mayor, he vetoed a great number of ordinances designed to grant special favors. His annual message, 1863, contained proposals of many reforms, some of which have been adopted, while others still remain on the program of the municipal reformer. He recommended an increase in the powers of the mayor, and the abolition of state commissions and of county governments which overlapped city governments. He looked forward to a greater city of "Manhattan" which would include New York, Brooklyn, and their environs.

The most severe test of his administration occurred during the draft riots in July 1863. The city had been stripped of troops to repel Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania. The police were under the control of a state commission. Under the laws and the charter the mayor's powers were moral rather than legal. Opdyke obtained the cooperation of the police commission and the soldiers and marines in the harbor forts, issued proclamations calling citizens to arms, and exerted efforts to restore order without compromising with the rioters. In the midst of the disorders the common council passed an ordinance appropriating $2,500,000 to pay the commutation of the men drafted. Opdyke vetoed it because it tended to nullify a federal law, and to put a price upon the rioters' abstaining from further violence. His own claim against the city for heavy property losses during the riots led Weed to assert that Opdyke had overcharged the city, and also the federal government, in connection with clothing contracts. An unfortunate and indecisive libel suit resulted.

Opdyke also gained some prominence as an economist. His Treatise on Political Economy (1851) was designed as an American reply to John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy. In it Opdyke expressed his opinion that fiat money was desirable if issued in limited amounts. In a later Report on the Currency (1858) he proposed taxing bank notes of small denominations out of existence and advocated the issuance by the national government of gold certificates. These recommendations were subsequently adopted, though not in the form desired by Opdyke. He protested against the over issuance of greenbacks during the war but afterward recommended that the volume of currency be not reduced too quickly. In appearance Opdyke was tall and slender; in manner, gracious. He was a confidant of many leaders in national affairs and a friend of many distinguished scholars and authors. He was married, on September 26, 1829, to Elizabeth Hall Stryker of New Jersey. She with their six children survived him.

[Official Documents, Addresses, Etc., of Geo. Opdyke, during the Years I862 and I863 (1866); C. W. Opdyke, The Opdyke, Genealogy (1889); C. M. Depew, I795- I 895: One Hundred Y ears of American Commerce (1895), volume II; The Great Libel Case: Geo. Opdyke agent Thurlow Weed (1865); the New York Herald and New York Tribune, June 13, 1880.]

E. C. S.


ORDWAY, Abigail, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), Boston, Massachusetts.

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


ORR, Isaac, Reverend, Bedford, New Hampshire, clergyman, educator, author.  General agent and Secretary for the American Colonization Society in Albany, New York.  Traveled Philadelphia to Portland, Maine. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 593; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 129-130, 133, 189-190)


ORTH, Godlove Stein, 1817-1882, lawyer, diplomat.  Member of the anti-slavery faction of the Whig Party.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana.  U.S. Congressman December 1863-March 1871, December 1873-March 1875.  Voted for Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, establishing citizenship, due process and equal protections, and establishing voting rights for African Americans.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 594-595; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 60-61; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 16, p. 772; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 60-61:

ORTH, GODLOVE STEIN (April 22, 1817-December 16, 1882), politician, congressman, was born near Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a descendant of Balthazel Orth who is said to have emigrated to Pennsylvania with the Moravian leader Zinzendorf in 1742. After attending the local schools and Pennsylvania College, Gettysburg, he entered the law office of James Cooper. In 1839 he moved to Lafayette, Indiana, and was admitted to the bar. The following year, in October, he married Sarah Elizabeth Miller of Gettysburg. In the campaign of 1840 he made his debut a s a political speaker, stumping Indiana for Harris on. This activity brought him prominence, and in 1843 the Whigs elected him to the state Senate, where he served until 1848. In 1845, as a result of discord in the Loco Foco ranks, he was elected president of the Senate. His name was presented as a candidate for the gubernatorial nomination in 1846, but he withdrew in favor of Joseph Marshall. Although he thought the nomination of Taylor on the Whig ticket a mistaken political move, he served as a presidential elector for Taylor and stumped northern Indiana. His wife died in 1849 and on August 28, 1850, he marri ed Mary A. Ayers of Lafayette. After the enactment of the Compromise Measures of 1850, like many anti-slavery Whigs, he joined the Know-Nothings, but in 1852 campaigned for Scott. He was president of the Indiana Know-Nothing Council for 1854-55, subsequently joined the People' s party of Indiana, and out of this helped organize the Republican party in the state.

In 1861, Governor O. P. Morton [ q.v.] appointed him one of the five Indiana representatives to the Peace Conference in Washington. Prejudiced before going, he returned convinced that conflict was inevitable and advised preparation for war. When Governor Morton called for volunteers in July 1862, Orth reported in Indianapolis twenty-four hours la ter as elected captain of some two hundred men. The danger of invasion over, the company was mustered out, August 20, 1862. In this year Orth was elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress. He served continuously through the Forty-first, but was not a candidate for reelection in 1870. In Congress he urged vigorous prosecution of the war and later, stringent reconstruction measures. He voted for the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, opposing the later anti-Chinese legislation as contrary to the latter. Holding at first a position halfway between the Radicals and Johnson, he slowly gravitated toward the extreme Radicals when he became convinced that Johnson was as unwilling to compromise as they. Following the war, his interest turned to foreign affairs. In 1866 he began a fight for recognition of the right of expatriation. Two years la ter he undertook the management of the House legislation looking toward the annexation of Santo Domingo, but opposed the recognition of Cuban belligerency a s unprofitable. In 1868, also, he framed the Orth Bill which made certain changes in the diplomatic and consular services. In the Forty-first Congress he was one of th e small group who brought about the election 6f James G. Blaine to the speakership. He was recommended in 1871 for appointment as United States minister at Berlin, but it was decided to continue George Bancroft in that post, and Orth was offered, but refused, the commissionership of internal revenue. He was returned to the Forty-third Congress but was not a candidate in 1874. In March 1875, after declining the mission to Brazil, he was appointed minister to Austria-Hungary, but resigned in May 1876 to accept the Republican nomination for the governorship of Indiana. Party discord, however, caused him to withdraw in favor of Benjamin Harrison. .In 1878 he reentered politics and was elected to the Forty-sixth Congress. Reelected two years later, he died, at Lafayette, Indiana, before the expiration of his term. Orth recognized the necessity of machinery in politics, and never hesitated to sacrifice principle for party solidarity. No unpopular legislation ever received his vote.

[W. H. Barnes, History of the Thirty-ninth Congress of the U.S. (1867), and The Fortieth Congress of the U.S., volume II (1870); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); S. M. Cullom, Fifty Years of Public Service (1911); Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of Godlove S. Orth, 47 Congress, 2 Session (1883); C. B. Stover and C. W, Beachem, The Alumni Record of Gettysburg College (1932); Indianapolis Sentinel, December 17, 1882; manuscript letters of Orth in the Indiana State Library; records in the Adjt.-General's Office, Indianapolis; papers in the William H. English Collection, University of Chicago Library]

J.L.N.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 594-595:  

ORTH, Godlove Stoner, statesman, born near Lebanon, Lebanon county, Pennsylvania, 22 April, 1817; died in Lafayette, Ind., 16 December, 1882. He was a descendant of Balthazer Orth, a German, who in 1742 purchased of John Thomas and Richard Penn, the proprietors of Pennsylvania, 282 acres of land in Lebanon county, whereon the birthplace of Godlove Orth was soon afterward built and still stands. His Christian name is a translation of the German Gottlieb, which was borne by many of his ancestors. He was educated at Pennsylvania college, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1839, and began to practise in Indiana. He was a member of the senate of that state from 1842 till 1848, and served one year as its presiding officer. In the latter year he was presidential elector on the Taylor and Fillmore ticket. He represented Indiana in the Peace conference of 1861. The part that he took in its debates gave him a wide reputation, and his definitions of “state rights” and “state sovereignty” have been quoted by Hermann von Holst with approval. In 1862, when a call was made for men to defend Indiana from threatened invasion, he organized a company in two hours, and was made captain and placed in command of the U. S. ram “Horner,” in which he cruised in the Ohio river, and did much to restore order on the borders of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. He was elected and re-elected to congress as a Republican, serving from 7 December, 1863, till 3 March, 1871. Two years later he was chosen a member of the 43d congress, and served from 1 December, 1873, till 3 March, 1875. During his long congressional career he was the chairman and member of many important committees. He urged the vigorous prosecution of the war, and voted for the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution. After his return to congress in 1866 he began to labor to secure from European governments the recognition of the right of expatriation, and lived to see it recognized in the treaties of the United States with most of the other powers. In 1868, at the request of the administration, he undertook the management of the legislation that looked to the annexation of Santo Domingo. At the same session he framed the “Orth bill,” which reorganized the diplomatic and consular system, and much of which is still in force. Early in 1871 a recommendation, urging his appointment as minister to Berlin, was signed by every member of the U. S. senate and house of representatives, and President Grant at one time intended to comply with the request, but circumstances arose that rendered the retention of George Bancroft desirable. Mr. Orth soon afterward declined the office of commissioner of internal revenue. In 1876 he was the Republican candidate for governor, but withdrew from the canvass. He had frequently been a member of the congressional committee on foreign affairs, and in March, 1875, was appointed minister to Austria, after declining the mission to Brazil. He returned to the United States in 1877, and was again elected to congress, serving from 18 March, 1879, until his death. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 594-595.  


ORTON, Philo A., New York, abolitionist leader.

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


OSBORN, Charles, 1775-1850, Kentucky and Mt. Pleasant, Ripley, Ohio, farmer, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist, opponent of colonization.  Publisher of The Philanthropist, founded 1817.  With John Rankin, organized the Manumission Society of Tennessee in 1815.  Founder of anti-slavery newspaper, Manumission Intelligencer, in 1819.  

(Drake, 1950, pp. 128, 162, 165; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 95, 136; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 66-67; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 621-623). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 66-67:

OSBORN, CHARLES (August 21, 1775-December 29, 1850), abolitionist, the grandson of Matthew Osborn who emigrated from England probably to Delaware, and the son of David and Margaret (Stout) Osborn, was born in Guilford County, North Carolina. About 1794 he removed to Knox County, Tennessee, where he became a Quaker preacher. As an active minister from 1806 to 1840 he traveled thousands of miles visiting and preaching in nearly every Quaker meeting throughout the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. He lived in Jefferson County, Tennessee, Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and from 1819 to 1842 in Wayne County, Indiana, excepting the years from 1827 to 1830 that he spent in Warren and Clinton counties, Ohio. In 1842 he removed to Cass County, Michigan, and in 1848 to Porter County, Indiana, where he died. On January II, 1798, he married Sarah Newman, who died on August 10, 1812, leaving seven children, and on September 26, 1813, he married Hannah Swain, who bore him nine children.

Endowed by his Quaker environment with a reforming spirit and influenced by the privations of a semi-pioneer life, he maintained with courage and ability his moral, religious, and antislavery convictions. In December 1814, at the house of his father-in-law, Elihu Swain, he began his career as an anti-slavery leader by laying the foundations for the Tennessee Manumission Society, whose organization he did not, however, complete until the next February at Lostcreek Meeting House. In 1816 he founded similar societies in Guilford County, North Carolina. While at Mount Pleasant, Ohio, he publish ed the Philanthropist, from August 29, 1817, to October 8, 1818, a paper partially devoted to anti-slavery agitation. It has been asserted that he himself, and, through him, the manumission societies and Philanthropist were the earliest advocates of immediate emancipation. This assertion cannot be substantiated. The societies definitely advocated gradual emancipation. His own strong moral and religious convictions did not include demands for immediate emancipation until his affiliation with Garrisonian abolition about 1832. Through the Philanthropist he denounced the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States, afterward the American Colonization Society, as a specious device of slaveholders to protect slavery, expatriate free negroes, and thwart other emancipation schemes. Following Quaker tradition he long opposed the use of products of slave labor, considering them stolen goods because slaves' labor was stolen by their masters. His exhortations resulted in the formation on January 22, 1842, of the Free Produce Association of Wayne County, Indiana, and the establishment of a propagandist newspaper, the Free Labor Advocate and Anti-Slavery Chronicle. When the conservatives, who, only mildly abolitionist, believed in confining anti-slavery activity to their own religious organization, gained control over the Indiana Yearly Meeting, which before 1842 was dominated by the active abolitionist radicals, they removed him and others from the Meeting for Sufferings, a governing committee of the Church, on which he had served for years. This was a severe and unexpected blow to him. Bitterly lamenting the conservatives' position, he participated prominently in the secession of 2,000 radicals who formed the Indiana Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends in February 1843. He continued his interest in the later activities of the seceders and died condemning the Fugitive-slave Law. After his death, in 1854 the Church published The Journal of that Faithful Servant of Christ, Charles Osborn.

[Minutes of the Manumission Society of North Carolina, in the Guilford College Library; minutes of Indiana Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends in Earlham College Library; Emancipator, pub. by Elihu Embree, April 30, May 31, 1820; Walter Edgerton, A History of the Separation in Indiana Yearly Meeting (1856); Levi Coffin, Reminiscences (1876); History of Wayne County, Indiana (1884), volume II; G. W. Julian, "The Rank of Charles Osborn as an Anti-Slavery Pioneer," Indiana Historical Society Pubs., volume II, no. 6 (1891); S. B. Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery (1896); P. M. Sherrill, "Quakers and North Carolina Manumission Society," Trinity College Historical Society Papers, X (1914); A. E. Martin, "Anti-Slavery Society in Tennessee," Tennessee Historical Magazine, December 1915.]

R.A.K.


OSBORN, Thomas Andrew (October 26, 1836-February 4, 1898), lawyer, statesman, diplomat.  He was a Republican and a Free-Stater in Kansas. In 1862 he was elected president pro tempore of the Senate, though one of its youngest members.  In the same year, 1862, he was elected lieutenant-governor of Kansas.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 70-71:

OSBORN, THOMAS ANDREW (October 26, 1836-February 4, 1898), lawyer, statesman, diplomat, was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania, the son of Carpenter and Elizabeth (Morris) Osborn. He was apprenticed to a Meadville printer and earned enough money to attend the preparatory department of Allegheny College (1855-57). He also had a few months of legal study in the office of Judge Derickson of Meadville in 1856. In 1857 he traveled westward to Pontiac, Michigan, where his career was officially launched by his admission to the bar just after his twenty-first birthday. In November of the same year he turned westward again and settled in Kansas. He first found work as a compositor in the office of the Kansas Herald of Freedom in Lawrence, and as acting editor during the absence of the owner. In the spring of 1858 he opened a law office in Elwood and in the same year was elected attorney of Doniphan County. His winning personality, energy, and ability had by this time been demonstrated to such a degree that in 1859 he took his seat as senator from Doniphan County in the first legislature of the new state of Kansas. He was a Republican and a Free-Stater. In 1862 he was elected president pro tempore of the Senate, though one of its youngest members, and presided with conspicuous ability at the impeachment of Governor Charles Robinson. In the same year, 1862, he was elected lieutenant-governor of Kansas. In 1864 President Lincoln appointed him United States marshal, but political differences caused his removal by President Johnson in 1867.

In the election of 1872 Osborn was made governor of Kansas, and the following year he began his two eventful terms in that office. Three major crises arose, each of which he met with characteristic ability. His efficient relief measures during the "Grasshopper Year" of 1874 earned him the admiration and gratitude of the people of Kansas. The threat of a serious Indian uprising on the southern border of the state was successfully overcome by moderate but determined action. The discovery in 1875 of misconduct in the use of funds by the state treasurer was followed by prompt measures which averted what might have become a serious financial crisis. Under his administration the settlement of Kansas made great progress and many new counties were organized. In 1877, after having unsuccessfully campaigned for a seat in the United States Senate, Osborn was appointed minister to Chile by President Hayes. During his residence at Santiago, Chile became involved in war with Peru and Bolivia. Osborn's attempts to effect a peaceful settlement between the countries were appreciated but futile. With the help of Thomas Ogden Osborn [q.v.], American minister to Argentina, however, he was instrumental in settling the long-standing Patagonian boundary dispute, for which he received the public thanks of the government of Chile. In 1881 he was appointed minister to Brazil by President Garfield. While no sensational event marked his residence at Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian government showed its appreciation of his four years of service by bestowing upon him the highest honor that could be given a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Rose.

Returning to Kansas Osborn resumed his business and political interests. In 1888 he headed the Kansas delegation at the Republican National Convention. The same year he was elected state senator from Shawnee County and held office for two terms. He engaged in extensive business activities, including banking, real-estate, mining, investments, and railroads. He was a director of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad from 1894 until his death. In 1870 he married Julia Delahay, daughter of Judge Mark W. Delahay of Leavenworth, Kansas. They had one son. Osborn died suddenly in 1898, while on a visit to his old home in Meadville.

[Charles S. Gleed, "Thomas A. Osborn," Trans. Kansas State Historical Society, volume VI (1900); W. E. Connelley, ed., A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans (1918), volume II; C. R. Tuttle, A New Centennial History of the State of Kansas (1876); Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S., 1878-82; Message of the President of the U. S., Transmitting Papers Relating to the War in South America and Attempts to Bring About a Peace (1882); D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas, 1854-1885 (1886); the Topeka Daily Capital, February 5, 1898.]

I.L. T.


OSGOOD, Samuel, Springfield, Massachusetts, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1837-1840.


OSTRANDER, R. N., New York, American Abolition Society.

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


OTEY, James Hervey, Bishop, 1800-1863, Tennessee, clergyman.  Vice-President of the American Colonization Society, 1840-1841. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 604; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 90; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 604:

OTEY, James Hervey, P. E. bishop, born in Liberty, Bedford county, Virginia, 27 January, 1800; died in Memphis, Tennessee, 23 April, 1863. His father, Isaac Otey, was a farmer in easy circumstances, and frequently represented his county in the house of burgesses. James was one of the younger children in a family of twelve. He early evinced a love of study and of general reading, and, after attending an excellent school in his native county, was sent in his seventeenth year to the University of North Carolina, where he was graduated in 1820. He received honors in belles-lettres, and was immediately appointed tutor in Latin and Greek. In 1823 he took charge of a school in Warrenton, North Carolina. There his attention was turned to the ministry, and he was ordained both deacon and priest in the Protestant Episcopal church by Bishop Ravenscroft. In 1827 he removed to Tennessee and settled in the town of Franklin, but he changed his residence to Columbia in 1835, and finally to Memphis. On 14 January, 1834, he was consecrated bishop of Tennessee. Next to the duties of his episcopate the bishop's heart was most engaged with the work of Christian education. It seemed to be a passionate desire with him to establish in the southwest a large institution in which religion should go hand-in-hand with every lesson of a secular character, and young men be prepared for the ministry. Accordingly, after establishing, with the assistance of Reverend Leonidas Polk, a school for girls, called the “Columbia Institute,” he devoted a great part of his laborious life to the realization of his ideal. For full thirty years (1827-'57) he failed not, in public and in private, by night and by day, to keep this subject before the people of the southern states, until the successful establishment of the University of the south at Suwanee, Tennessee, in which he was also aided by Bishop Leonidas Polk. The life of Bishop Otey was one of hard and unceasing labor. He lived to see the few scattered members of his church in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, as well as Tennessee, organized into dioceses and in successful operation. He was known throughout the south and southwest as the Good Bishop. Though he was strongly opposed to secession, he wrote a letter to the secretary of state, remonstrating against coercion. The reply to this letter changed his views on the subject, and he declined to attend the general convention of his church in the seceding states that was held in Georgia soon afterward. In person the bishop was of a commanding stature, being six feet and two inches in height, and of fitting proportions. He published many addresses, sermons, and charges, and a volume containing the “Unity of the Church” and other discourses (Vicksburg, 1852). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


OTIS, Harrison Gray (October 8, 1765- October 28, 1848), statesman. As mayor of Boston he refused to interfere with William Lloyd Garrison. He however, did denounce the abolitionist movement, which he foretold would bring about a division of the Union, but refused to countenance any suppression of free speech on slavery in his city.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 98-100:

OTIS, HARRISON GRAY (October 8, 1765- October 28, 1848), statesman, was born in Boston, the eldest child of Samuel Allyne and Elizabeth (Gray) Otis. His father was brother to James Otis and Mercy Otis Warren [qq.v.], and the youngest child of Colonel James Otis of Barnstable, Massachusetts. His mother was the daughter of Harrison Gray (1711-94), treasurer of the province of Massachusetts Bay, and a refugee Loyalist in the Revolution. " Harry" Otis, as he was always call ed by his friends, inherited the winning personality, charming manners, and full-blooded enjoyment of life that have characterized the Otis family for two hundred years, and which marked him off from the somewhat austere and inflexible type of New England political leader. He also developed a brilliant if somewhat facile intellect. His education at the Boston Latin School was interrupted by the siege of Boston. Entering Harvard College in 1779, he graduated first in the class of 1783 and in later years received the usual appointment to the Harvard corporation and board of overseers that are awarded to successful alumni. His father, a merchant who had speculated heavily during the war, went bankrupt after its close. Harry read law with Judge John Lowell [ q.v. ] and was admitted to the Boston bar in 1786. The same year he commanded a volunteer infantry company during Shays's Rebellion, but did not see action; and made a reputation as an orator when takin g his master's degree at Harvard.

Otis never relinquished his hold of local public affairs. He was thrice elected mayor of Boston (1829-31), and he acquired some notoriety by refusing to interfere with William Lloyd Garrison. He greatly deprecated and publicly denounced the abolitionist movement, which he foretold would bring about a division of the Union, but refused to countenance any suppression of free speech on slavery. In the 1820's Otis became a considerable owner of manufacturing stock, and a convert to protection, although he had been instrumental in defeating the Baldwin tariff of 1820. After flirting with the Jacksonian party he became a stout Whig, and a supporter of Henry Clay. Always an enemy to democracy, he firmly believed that the country was going to the dogs. In 1848, in his eighty-third year, Otis published a pungent letter against the "fifteen gallon" temperance law, and another (Boston Atlas, October 2, 1848), in all the verve of his youthful style, in favor of General Taylor. Old age and debility prostrated him, and before the presidential campaign was over, he died at his Boston residence on October 28, 1848.

[S. E. Morison, The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765-I848 (2 volumes, 1913), with portraits and bibliography; Pubs. Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XIV (1913), 329-50; Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, XLVIII (1915), 343-51; LX (1927), 24-31, 3 24-30; W. A. Otis, A Genealogical and Historical Memoir of the Otis Family in America (1924); Great Georgian Houses of America (1933), pub. for the benefit of the Architect's Emergency Committee; obituary in Boston Daily Advertiser, October 30, 1848.]

S. E. M.


OTIS, James, 1725-1783, statesman, founding father, Otis wrote in The Rights of the British Colonist Asserted and Proved: “The Colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black”

(Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 103-105; Drake, 1950, pp. 71, 85; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 19; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 19, 96, 372; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 605-607; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 101-105; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 16, p. 838). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 101-105:

OTIS, JAMES (February 5, 1725-May 23, 1783), politician and publicist, came of a Glastonbury yeoman's family that emigrated to Massachusetts about 1631. His grandfather, John Otis (1657-1727), moved to Barnstable, commanded the militia of that county, served as judge for twenty-five years, and as councilor of the province for nineteen years. John's son James (1702- 78), generally called Colonel Otis, a self-educated lawyer, married Mary Allyne of Pilgrim stock; James Otis, born in his grandfather's house at the Great Marshes, West Barnstable, was the eldest of their thirteen children. He was prepared for Harvard by the local minister, graduated with the class of 1743, studied law under Jeremiah Gridley [q.v.], was admitted in 1748 to the bar of Plymouth County, and two years later moved to Boston. In the Spring of 1755 he married Ruth, the well-dowered daughter of Captain Nathaniel Cunningham, a Boston merchant. There were three children, a son and two daughters. Blackburn's portrait of Otis painted in 1755 shows a strong but plump and pleasant countenance, with shrewd, narrow-lidded eyes, giving no hint of the inner flame that eventually consumed him.

By painstaking study Otis became learned in the common, civil, and admiralty law; and his interest in the theory of law was coeval with his interest in the law itself. An enthusiastic student of the ancient classics, he published The Rudiments of Latin Prosody ... and the Principles of Harmony in Poetic and Prosaic Composition (1760); another treatise, on Greek prosody, remained in manuscript and was destroyed with his other papers. He was also an avid reader of classical English literature, and of ancient and modern works on political theory. As a barrister his mind was supple, his apprehension quick, his pleading, brilliant and captivating; following the superior court circuit, he became known in all parts of the province. Thomas Hutchinson [q.v.] admitted "that he never knew fairer or more noble conduct in a pleader, than in Otis," who disdained technicalities and "defended his causes solely on their broad and substantial foundations" (Tudor, post, p. 36). Enemies later described him as a smugglers' attorney; actually, he acted as king's attorney in the absence of the attorney general in 1754 (Josiah Quincy, Jr., Reports, I, 402, note); and later, Governor Pownall appointed him king's advocate general of the vice-admiralty court at Boston.

In 1760, Pitt ordered the Sugar Act of 1733 to be strictly enforced. The royal customs collectors applied to the superior court of the province for writs of assistance, in order to help them in search of evidence of violation. Otis, in his official capacity, was expected to argue for the writs. Instead, he resigned his lucrative office and undertook, for Boston merchants, to oppose the issuance. Unfortunately the circumstances were such as to cause his motives to be questioned. Governor Shirley had promised to appoint Colonel Otis to the superior bench, and asked Francis Bernard [q.v.], who became governor in August 1760, to make the promise good. The elder Otis was now speaker of the House, and leader of the bar in the three southern counties; he had great influence over the rural members of the House, and both as member from Barnstable and as colonel of the county militia had cooperated loyally with the administration during the war. On September l1, Chief Justice Stephen Sewall died. Colonel Otis at once bespoke Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson's influence to be appointed junior associate justice, supposing the chief justiceship filled from the court itself. James Otis' account (Boston Gazette, April 4, 1763) differs from Hutchinson's, written many years later (The History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, III, 86; P. 0. Hutchinson, The Diary and Letters of ... Thomas Hutchinson, I, 1883, pp. 65-66) as to what assurances were given; but Hutchinson was appointed chief justice November 13, 1760. One rumor had it that James Otis then declared "that he would set the province in flames, if he perished by the fire"; another, that he declaimed from the Aeneid, "Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo!" Both stories were flatly denied by Otis; and, as John Adams pointed out, he had resigned an office far more lucrative than the one his father wanted; but the Loyalists always believed that his entire political course, and indeed the Revolution in Massachusetts, arose out of frustrated family ambition (Hutchinson, History, III, 88). Otis certainly felt that Hutchinson and Bernard had "double-crossed" him, and that they were endeavoring to accumulate the chief offices in the province.

In February 1761, Otis and Oxenbridge Thacher argued the illegality of writs of assistance before the full bench of the superior court, in the Council chamber at the Old State House, Boston. The picturesque scene was vividly described by John Adams in 1817 (Works, X, 247) to Otis' biographer: "Otis was a flame of fire! ... he hurried away every thing before him. American independence was then and there born; the seeds of patriots and heroes were then and there sown . . . " But exactly what Otis said cannot now be recovered with any exactness. John Adams' notes taken on the occasion contain these significant sentences: "An act against the Constitution is void; an act against national equity is void; and if an act of Parliament should be made, in the very words of this petition, it would be void. The executive Courts must pass such acts into disuse . . . . Reason of the common law to control an act of Parliament" (W arks, II, 522). The phrase, "Taxation without representation is tyranny," which was not germane to the issue, app ears only in Adams' final expansion of his notes, made about 1820 (Tudor, post, p. 77). Otis and Thacher lost their case. But in 1766, Otis' position was sustained by Attorney General de Grey, who ruled that the act of Parliament in question did not authorize the issuance of writs of assistance in the Colonies (Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, LVIII, 1925, pp. 22, 71-73). The significance of Otis' speech, however, lies in his harking back to the constitutional doctrines of Coke and Sir Matthew Hale, invoking a fundamental law embodying the principles of natural law, and superior to acts of Parliament; a doctrine upon which colonial publicists leant during the next twenty-five years, which was embodied in the federal and state constitutions, and which in its final form became the American doctrine of judicial supremacy.

In May 1761, two months after this speech, Otis was chosen one of the four representatives of Boston to the General Court, the provincial legislature. His father was the same year reelected speaker of the House. Hutchinson (History, III, 166) credits the two with marshalling the old town and country parties into a popular bloc against the crown officials. In the session of 1761-62, they opposed the administration on sundry questions involving privilege, but promoted a grant of Mount Desert Island to Governor Bernard; this last was really a logrolling device to get royal consent to establishing new townships in that part of Maine (W. O. Sawtelle, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXIV, 1923, pp. 203-04). Otis was moderately interested in other new townships, but not those.

In his first political pamphlet, A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives (1762), Otis made a brief exposition of the rights of Englishmen, and defended his party's policy vigorously. Scurrilously abused as "Bluster" in the Boston Evening Post, February 14, 1763, he lashed back savagely in the Boston Gazette for February 28, March 28, and April 4, 1763. Yet, in the midst of these altercations, he struck a high note of patriotism in a Faneuil Hall speech as moderator of Boston town meeting. He extolled the British Constitution and the King; declared "Every British Subject in America is, of Common Right, by Acts of Parliament, and by the laws of God and Nature, entitled to all the essential Privileges of Britons"; that attempts to stretch the royal prerogative were responsible for whatever unpleasantness had occurred; that "the true Interests of Great Britain and her Plantations are mutual; and what God in his Providence has united, let no man dare attempt to pull assunder" (Boston Gazette, March 21, 1763). On other occasions, the vehemence of Otis' language distressed even his friends (John Adams,  Works, II, 142-44); and this conduct was the more wondered at because James was normally good-humored and sociable, like all his family. Friends and foes alike agreed that from 1761 to 1769 Otis was the political leader of Massachusetts Bay, although Samuel Adams was probably more popular in Boston. Otis was also active in local organizations like the "Sons of Liberty," and the "Corkass," which met in Tom Dawes' attic and made up a slate of candidates and measures for the town meeting (Boston Evening Post, March 14, 21, 1763).

An appearance of coalition between Otis and Hutchinson in 1763-64, as John Adams remembered (Works X, 295-96), "well nigh destroyed Otis' popularity and influence forever"; and when on February 1, 1764, Governor Bernard appointed Colonel Otis chief justice of the common pleas and judge of probate in Barnstable County, many assumed that the family had sold out. Adams declares that only the revival of attacks saved Otis from defeat in the spring election; but an examination of the newspaper files proves that he was not opposed in 1764. The next year, when he was scurrilously attacked in the Evening Post (especially in Samuel Waterhouse's ditty "Jemmibullero," May 13, 1765, in which he is called, among other things, a "rackoon" and a "filthy scunk") he almost failed of reelection. In the meantime, to counteract the new Sugar or Revenue Act of 1764, Otis wrote The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, published at Boston July 23, 1764, and reprinted in London the next year. "One of the earliest and ablest pamphlets written from the natural law point of view" (C.H. Mcllwain, The American Revolution, 1923, p. 153), the Rights is a closely reasoned statement of the constitutional position of the colonies in the single commonwealth that Otis believed the British Empire to be. In it were developed the principles recorded in his writs of assistance argument, principles to which Otis remained faithful while he kept his reason. The "wavering" or "retreat" often referred to in secondary accounts is found neither in his writings nor his recorded speeches.

The House adopted Otis' doctrine as its own, and on June 14, 1764, he was appointed chairman of a committee of the General Court to correspond with other colonial assemblies. The proposed Stamp Act soon overshadowed the Sugar Act. The Stamp Act Congress was summoned by a circular letter of invitation to the other colonies, adopted by the Massachusetts House on motion of Otis, who was appointed one of the three Massachusetts delegates. A few days afterward came the news of Patrick Henry's Virginia resolves, which Otis thought treasonable, but which temporarily took the leadership of public sentiment out of his hands, fomenting riots at Boston that summer. Otis much preferred "dutiful and loyal Addresses to his Majesty and his Parliament, who alone under God can extricate the Colonies from the painful Scenes of Tumult, Confusion, & Distress" (to Henry Sherburne, November 26, 1765, Stamp Act Manuscripts, Library of Congress). The Congress met at New York on October 7. On this, Otis' second and last journey outside New England, he met other colonial leaders such as Thomas McKean [q.v.], who later referred to him as "the boldest and best speaker" (John Adams, Works, X, 60), and John Dickinson [q.v.], who carried on a friendly correspondence with Otis for several years, and through him published the "Letters from a Farmer" and Liberty Song in Boston (Mercy 0. Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, 1805, volume I, 412-14; Warren Adams Letters, I, 1917, pp. 3-7). Otis served on one of the three committees of the Congress, which adopted his constitutional doctrine, while rejecting colonial representation in Parliament, which Otis had proposed in his Rights of the Colonies. It seems probable that Otis' colleagues persuaded him that representation would not help the colonies, for he did not mention it thereafter (Hutchinson to Franklin, January 6, 1766, Bancroft Manuscripts, New York Public Library).

Having failed to persuade Governor Bernard to let the courts function without stamped paper until the act was repealed, Otis and his lawyer friends had plenty of leisure. In the "Monday Night Club" of politicians, Otis was "fiery and feverous; his imagination flames, his passions blaze" (John Adams, Works, II, 162-63). But he also belonged to the "Sodalitas," a law club that met under Gridley's presidency to study and discuss ancient law; and John Rowe notes Otis' presence at sundry private dinners, public banquets, coffee-house reunions, tea parties, and country-house assemblies (Anne R. Cunningham, Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 1903). In the same year, he published three pamphlets. One of these, Considerations on behalf of, the Colonists, in a Letter to a Noble Lord, was a reply to Soame Jenyns' defence of the Stamp Act. A Vindication of the British Colonies, and Brief Remarks on the Defence of the Halifax Libel on the British-American Colonies, were replies to Martin Howard's Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax, and its sequel. The first, dated September 4, 1765, was a lively discussion of "virtual" representation. Otis declared that Jenyns' reasoning could as well prove the whole globe, as America, represented in the House of Commons; if Manchester and Birmingham were not represented, they ought to be. His greatest indignation was reserved for Howard's statement that the admission of colonial representation would defile the "purity" and destroy the "beauty and symmetry" of the House of Commons (Vindication, p. 28). He challenged the justice of suppressing colonial manufactures (Considerations, p. 22), and pointed out the exploitation inherent in the imperial system (pp. 29-30). But he still stoutly maintained that Parliament had "an undoubted power, authority, and jurisdiction, over the whole" (Ibid., pp. 9, 13, 36). In Brief Remarks, he made a furious attack on his critics.

Otis' pamphlets probably had more influence in America and England, before 1774, than those of any other American except John Dickinson. They laid a broad basis for American political theory on natural law. Otis avoided the two imp asses into which several of his contemporaries stepped the distinction between external and internal taxation, and the sanctity of colonial charters. But in advocating colonial representation, he took a false turning himself. He had not the foresight to perceive a federal solution: an imperimn in imperio was to him " the greatest of all political solicisms" (Vindication, p. 18). Nor did he face the choice between submiss ion and revolution. If Parliament's sovereign authority was not recognized " the colonies would be independent, which none but rebels, fool s, or madmen, will contend for ... were these colonies left to themselves, to-morrow, America would be a meer shambles of blood and confusion ... " (Ibid., pp. 21-22). Neither in theory nor in tastes was Otis a democrat; his often vituperative language arose from his own hot passions, not from any catering to popularity.

At the spring election of 1766, Samuel Adams, whose qualities were needed to temper Otis' rashness and turbulence, and the Hampshire Cato, Joseph Hawley [q. v.], were elected with him to the General Court. During the next two years, this triumvirate directed the majority in the House of Representatives. Otis generally prepared the rough draft of the state papers that issued from that body, while Adams did the smoothing and revision. When the General Court met, it refused to reelect Chief Justice Hutchinson and his Oliver associates to the Council, and James Otis was chosen speaker of the House. Governor Bernard negatived both this election and that of six councilors, including Colonel Otis. During the next two years, no opportunity was neglected by the triumvirate to put the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor in a hole; and Otis spent so much time on public affairs that his law practice was almost completely neglected.

When news of the Townshend Act arrived, Otis was prompt to denounce an incitement to violence which had been posted on the Boston "liberty tree." Presiding over a town meeting that very day (November 20, 1767), he declared that " no possible circumstances" could justify " tumults and disorders, either to our consciences before God, or legally before men" (Richard Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, 1865, pp. 38-39, notes). Otis also presided over the town meeting on October 28 that launched the non-importation movement. The Massachusetts circular letter, adopted by the House on February II, 1768, was the joint product of Otis and Samuel Adams (John Adams, Works, X, 367). They triumphed when the House vote d not to rescind 92 to 17, on June 30, 1768. This spirited defiance did more to unite the colonies than any measure since the Stamp Act. The Massachusetts "92" became another such talisman as No. 45 of the North Briton.

The sloop Liberty case, the news that Otis and Adams were threatened with trial for treason in England, and th at troops were being sent to Bost on, followed in quick succession. Yet Otis still continued to oppose direct action. He organized and moderated the town meeting of September 12-13, 1768, which quashed proposals of resistance to the landing of troops, and called a convention at Faneuil Hall ten days later. Otis, to the dismay of Adams, refused at first to take his seat in this convention, kept Adams quiet when he did appear, and doubtless showed his hand in the mild resolution s that the convention passed (W. V. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, 1865, volume I, 216-18; Hutchinson, History, III, 205-06). Considering his repeated efforts to prevent violence, it is not surprising that Otis' irritable nature was stirred to a frenzy of resentment when the publication of some intercepted letters showed that Bernard, and the commissioners of the customs, had been writing home that the was a malignant incendiary. On September 4, 1769, he posted these officials in the Boston Gazette as liars. The next evening he entered the British Coffee House at the site of 60 State St., where John Robinson and other crown officers were seated. A brawl ensued in which Robinson struck Otis a severe blow on the head with a cutlass or hanger. Otis was finally rescued by outsiders. He sued Robinson and obtained a verdict of £2000 damages; Governor Hutchinson, who was delighted at what he termed "a very decent drubbing," was planning "to steer this whole business" so as to get Robinson off and reward him with promotion, when Otis, on receiving an apology from Robinson's attorney, released all damages beyond court costs, lawyers' fees, and physicians' bills, which amounted to 112 pounds 10s 8d (Tudor, post, pp. 360-62, 503-06; Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, XL VII, 1914, p. 209; Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XI, 1910, pp. 5-7; Massachusetts Archives, XXV, 437-38, XXVI, 375; papers of the case in Suffolk County Court Files, 102, 135).

Robinson's assault finished Otis' career. It is true that for several years his conduct at times had given people cause to doubt his sanity (Evening Post, February 14, 1763, p. 2; Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, IV, 1870, p. 53), and an offensive garrulity had been growing on him. His family life was unhappy Mrs. Otis, "beautiful, placid and formal" (Tudor, p. 20) was a high Tory. But the crack on his head permanently unhinged his reason. "He rambles and wanders like a ship without a helm," noted John Adams in January 1770 (Works, II, 226); in February he was " raving mad," broke windows in the Old State House, fired guns from his window (John Rowe, Diary, pp. 199, 201), called on Governor Hutchinson, and craved his protection on the king's highway. He did not stand for election in 1770, but seemed so completely restored in 1771 as to be chosen once more, and for the last time; his course at that session was conciliatory. But by September he was as distracted as ever, and began to drink heavily (Massachusetts Archives, XXVII, 228, 246- 47); and in December 1771 the probate court, on representation that James Otis was non compas mentis, appointed his younger brother Samuel A. Otis guardian (American Law Review, July 1869, p. 664). He enjoyed several lucid intervals later; but none of his political opinions recorded subsequent to his injury are important.

After 1771 Otis led a quiet life, well cared for by friends and relatives. On June 17, 1775, he borrowed a gun, and rushed among the flying bullets on Bunker Hill, but returned unscathed (Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, XII, 1873, p. 69). Only fire from heaven could release his fiery soul; death came, as he had always wished it to come, by a stroke of lightning, as he was watching a summer thunderstorm in the Isaac Osgood farmhouse at Andover, on May 23, 1783.

[In addition to the pamphlets mentioned in the text, Otis probably wrote the political introduction to the 1764 edition of William Wood's New England's Prospect (see Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, VI, 1863, p. 250). All the political pamphlets are reprinted with an introduction by C. F. Mullett in The University of Missouri Studies, IV, nos. 3, 4, July, October 1929. The best discussion of their doctrine is in B. F. Wright, Jr., American Interpretations of Natural Law (1931). For bibliography of various versions of the writs of assistance speech, see Edward Channing, A History of the U.S., III (1912), 5, notes. Many cases in which Otis was an attorney are reported, and the legality of writs of assistance discussed by Horace Gray, with illustrative documents, in Josiah Quincy, Jr., Reports of Cases .. . in the Superior Court of Judicature of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, I (1865), pp. 395-540; but see an opinion by Attorney General de Grey, printed by G. G. Wolkins in Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, LVIII (1925), 71-73. Otis contributed many articles, signed and unsigned, to the Boston Gazette between 1761 and 1769; answers or attacks may be found in the Boston Evening Post. He destroyed all his papers before his death and as he corresponded little, very few of his letter are in existence. The Otis MSS. and Otis Papers at th e Massachusetts Historical Society are mainly law papers of his father, and, contain but a few personal letters. John Adams' "Diary," and his letters to William Tudor about Otis are in C. F. Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, volumes II (1850) and X (1856). Thomas Hutchinson, as he once promised Otis (Massachusetts Archives, XXVI, 86), was "revenged of him" in The History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, III (1828); the more vituperative and gossipy "Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion" written by Peter Oliver in 1781 (Egerton MSS., British Museum; copies in Massachusetts Historical Society and Library of Congress) is amusing, but adds little save invective to Hutchinson. Many of the latter's contemporary comments in his correspondence (Massachusetts Archives, XXV-XXVI; Bancroft MSS., New York Public Library), are printed in J. K. Hosmer, The Life of Thomas Hutchinson (1896). Other unfavorable comments may be found in the Bernard and Chalmers Papers among the Sparks MSS. in the Harvard College Library William Tudor, The Life of James Otis (1823), is the only biography, and J. H. Ellis, "James Otis," American Law Review, July 1869, pp. 641-65, the only article, worth mentioning. Richard Frothingham, The Rise of the Republic (1st ed., 1872), and J. G. Palfrey, History of New England, volume V (1890), contain the fullest account of Massachusetts politics in the period when Otis was active. The portraits of Otis and his wife, painted in 1755 by Joseph Blackburn, are owned by Mrs. Charles F. Russell, and usually exhibited in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The best reproductions are in the Catalogue entitled Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Loan Exhibition of One Hundred Colonial Portraits, published by that Museum in 1930. See also W. A. Otis, A Genealogical and History Memoir of the Otis Family in America (1924); W. H. Whitmore, A Massachusetts Civil List for the Colonial and Provincial Periods (1870).]

S.E.M.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 605-607:

OTIS, James, statesman, born in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, 5 February, 1725; died in Andover, Massachusetts, 23 May, 1783. He was descended in the fifth generation from John Otis, one of the first settlers of Hingham. This John Otis came with his family from Hingham, in Norfolk, England, in June, 1635. His grandson, John, born in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1657, removed to Barnstable, where he died, 30 November, 1727. He was for eighteen years colonel of militia, for twenty years representative, for twenty-one years member of the council, for thirteen chief justice of common pleas, and judge of probate. Two of his sons, John and James, were known in public life. John was representative for Barnstable, and afterward for several years a member of the council until his death in 1756. James, born in Barnstable in 1702, became eminent at the bar. Like his father, he was colonel of militia, justice of common pleas, and judge of probate, and was for some time a member of the council. He married Mary Allyne, or Alleyne, of Wethersfield, Connecticut, daughter of Joseph Allyne, of Plymouth. Of their thirteen children, several died in infancy. The eldest son, James, the subject of this sketch, was fitted for college under the care of the Reverend Jonathan Russell, of Barnstable, and was graduated at Harvard in 1743. After two years spent in the study of general literature he began the study of law in 1745 in the office of Jeremiah Gridley, who was then one of the most distinguished lawyers in this country. In 1748 he began the practice of law at Plymouth, but soon found that the scanty business of such a place did not afford sufficient scope for his powers. He removed to Boston in 1750, and soon rose to the foremost rank in his profession. His business became very lucrative, and he won a reputation for extraordinary eloquence, while his learning and integrity were held in high and well-deserved esteem. It was in those days noted as remarkable that he was once called as far as Halifax in the dead of winter to act as counsel for three men accused of piracy. He procured the acquittal of his clients, and received the largest fee that had ever been paid to a Massachusetts lawyer. Until this time he continued his literary studies, and in 1760 published “Rudiments of Latin Prosody,” which was used as a text-book at Harvard. A similar work on Greek prosody remained in manuscript until it was lost, along with many others of his papers. Early in 1755 Mr. Otis married Miss Ruth Cunningham, daughter of a Boston merchant. Of their three children, the only son, James, died at the age of eighteen; the elder daughter, Elizabeth, married Captain Brown, of the British army, and ended her days in England; the younger, Mary, married Benjamin, eldest son of the distinguished General Lincoln. Mr. Otis seems always to have lived happily with his wife, but she failed to sympathize with him in his political career, and remained herself a stanch loyalist until her death, 15 November, 1789. 
His public career began in 1761. On the death of Chief-Justice Sewall in 1760, Governor Bernard appointed Thomas Hutchinson to succeed him. James Otis, the father, had set his heart upon obtaining this place, and both father and son were extremely angry at the appointment of Hutchinson. The latter, who was a very fair-minded man and seldom attributed unworthy motives to political opponents, neverthele ss declares in his “History of Massachusetts Bay” that chagrin and disappointment had much to do with the course of opposition to government which the Otises soon followed. The charge deserves to be mentioned, because it is reiterated by Gordon, who sided with the patriots, but it is easy to push such personal explanations altogether too far. No doubt the feeling may have served to give an edge to the eloquence with which Mr. Otis attacked the ministry; but his political attitude was too plainly based on common sense, and on a perception of the real merits of the questions then at issue, to need any other explanation. On the accession of George III. it was decided to enforce the navigation acts, which for a long time American shipmasters and merchants had habitually evaded. One of the revenue officers in Boston petitioned the superior court for “writs of assistance,” which were general search-warrants, allowing officials of the custom-house to enter houses or shops in quest of smuggled goods, but without specifying either houses or goods. There can be little doubt that the issue of such search-warrants was strictly legal. They had been authorized by a statute of Charles II., and two statutes of William III. had expressly extended to custom-house officers in America the same privileges that they enjoyed in England. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the issue of such warrants in general terms and without most sedulous provisions against arbitrary abuse was liable to result in a most odious form of oppression. It contravened the great principle that an Englishman's house is his castle, and it was not difficult to show that men of English blood and speech could be counted on to resist such a measure. The conduct of Mr. Otis on this occasion is an adequate answer to the charge that his conduct was determined by personal considerations. He then held the crown office of advocate-general, with an ample salary and prospects of high favor from government. When the revenue officers called upon him, in view of his position, to defend their cause, he resigned his office and at once undertook to act as counsel for the merchants of Boston in their protest against the issue of the writs. A large fee was offered him, but he refused it. “In such a cause,” said he, “I despise all fees.” The case was tried in the council chamber at the east end of the old town-hall, or what is now known as the “Old State-House,” at the head of State street, in Boston. Chief-Justice Hutchinson presided, and Gridley argued the case for the writs in a most powerful and learned speech. The reply of Otis, which took five hours in the delivery, was probably one of the greatest speeches of modern times. It went beyond the particular legal question immediately at issue, and took up the whole question of the constitutional relations between the colonies and the mother country. At the bottom of this, as of all the disputes that led to the Revolution, lay the ultimate question whether Americans were bound to yield obedience to laws that they had no share in making. This question, and the spirit that answered it flatly and doggedly in the negative, were heard like an undertone pervading all the arguments in Otis's wonderful speech, and it was because of this that John Adams, who was present, afterward declared that on that day “the child Independence was born.” No doubt the argument must have gone far in furnishing weapons for the popular leaders in the contest that was impending. Hutchinson reserved his decision until advice could be had from the law-officers of the crown in London; and when next term he was instructed by them to grant the writs, this result added fresh impetus to the spirit that Otis's eloquence had aroused. At the ensuing election, in May, 1761, Mr. Otis was chosen representative, and in the following year he opposed the motion for granting a sum of money to make good the expenses of a naval expedition to the northeast, which Governor Bernard had made upon his own responsibility. When taken to task for this conduct, Mr. Otis justified himself in a pamphlet entitled “The Rights of the Colonies Vindicated” (1764). In this masterly argument the author planted himself squarely upon the ground that in all questions relating to the expenditure of public money the rights of a colonial legislature were as sacred as the rights of the house of commons. In June, 1765, Mr. Otis moved that a congress of delegates from all the colonies be called together to consider what should be done about the stamp-act. In that famous congress which met in October in New York he was a delegate and one of the committee for preparing an address to parliament. In 1767, when elected speaker of the Massachusetts assembly, he was negatived by Governor Bernard. On the news of Charles Townshend's revenue acts, the assembly prepared a circular letter to be sent to all the colonies, inviting concerted resistance. The king was greatly offended at this, and instructions were sent to Bernard to dismiss the assembly unless it should rescind its circular letter. In the debate upon this royal order Otis made a fiery speech, in which he used the expression: “We are asked to rescind, are we? Let Great Britain rescind her measures, or the colonies are lost to her forever.” 

In the summer of 1769 he got into a controversy with some revenue officers, and attacked them in the Boston “Gazette.” A few evenings afterward, while sitting in the British coffee-house, he was assaulted by one Robinson, a commissioner of customs, supported by several army or navy officers. Mr. Otis was savagely beaten, and received a sword-cut in the head, from the effects of which he never recovered. He had already shown some symptoms of mental disease, but from this time he rapidly grew worse until his reason forsook him. He brought suit against Robinson, who was assessed in £2,000 damages for the assault; but when the penitent officer made a written apology and begged pardon for his irreparable offence, Mr. Otis refused to take a penny. With this lamentable affair his public career may be said to have ended, for, although in 1771 he was again chosen to the legislature, and was sometimes afterward seen in court or in town-meeting, he was unable to take part in public business. In June, 1775, he was living, harmlessly insane, at the house of his sister, Mercy Warren, at Watertown. When he heard the rumor of battle on the 17th, he stole quietly away, borrowed a musket at some farm-house by the roadside, and joined the minute-men, who were marching to the aid of the troops on Bunker Hill. He took an active part in that battle, and after it was over made his way home again toward midnight. The last years of his life were spent in Andover. Early in 1778, in a lucid interval, he went to Boston and argued a case in the common pleas, but found himself unequal to such exertion, and after a short interval returned to Andover. Six weeks after his return, as he was standing in his front doorway in a thunder-shower, leaning on his cane and talking to his family, he was struck by lightning and instantly killed. It was afterward remarked that he had been heard to express a wish that he might die in such a way. He was a man of powerful intelligence, with great command of language and a most impressive delivery, but his judgment was often unsound, and his mental workings were so fitful and spasmodic that it was not always easy to tell what course he was likely to pursue. For such prolonged, systematic, and cool-headed work as that of Samuel Adams he was by nature unfit, but the impulse that he gave to the current of events cannot be regarded as other than powerful. His fame will rest chiefly upon the single tremendous speech of 1761, followed by the admirable pamphlet of 1764. His biography has been ably written by William Tudor (Boston, 1823).


OWEN, Robert Dale, 1801-1877, author, abolitionist, diplomat, reformer.  Member of the American Freedman’s Inquiry Commission and the U.S. War Department, 1863.  Democratic Congressman from Indiana.  Anti-slavery and women’s rights activist.  Strong advocate of wartime emancipation of slaves.  Wrote “The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the African Race” (Philadelphia, 1864), of which Secretary Salmon P. Chace wrote that it “had more effect in deciding the president to make the [Emancipation] Proclamation than all other communications combined.” 

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 165, 397; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 615-616; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 118-120; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 16, p. 861). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 118-120:

OWEN, ROBERT DALE (November 9, 1801- June 24, 1877), social reformer, author, elder brother of David Dale Owen [q.v.], was born at Glasgow, Scotland, the eldest son of Robert Owen [see Dictionary of National Biography] and Ann Caroline (Dale) Owen. His mother was the daughter of David Dale, proprietor of the cotton-mills at New Lanark, where Robert Owen was beginning to put into practice his theory of social reform. Robert Dale Owen's whole life, most of it spent in the United States, was shaped by his father's influence. Possessed of much of his father's gift for original and liberal thought in social matters, he added to it a practicality and, after a time, a patience of his own. He was instructed in the New Lanark school and by private tutors until the age of eighteen, when he went for four years to the progressive institution of Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg at Hofwyl, Switzerland. There he gained "a belief which existing abuses cannot shake nor worldly scepticism destroy, an abiding faith in human virtue and in social progress" (Threading My Way, p. 175). On his return to his father's cotton-mill community, he took charge of the school, of which he wrote the only comprehensive description (An Outline of the System of Education at New Lanark, 1824), and when his father was absent he managed the factories. In November 1825 he came to the United States with his father, the two proceeding early the next year to New Harmony, Indiana, where the elder Owen had determined to begin an experiment in social reform through cooperation and rational education. Robert Dale Owen eagerly volunteered for manual work, but finding himself physically unfit for it, was glad to teach the school and edit the New Harmony Gazette. His editorial utterances reflected his enthusiasm for the adventure, but later in life he described the colonists as a "heterogeneous collection of radicals, enthusiastic devotees of principle, honest latitudinarians and lazy theorists, with a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in" (Threading My Way, p. 286).

No sooner had the New Harmony experiment failed, in the spring of 1827, than he was destined for another disappointment. At New Harmony he had come under the influence of Frances Wright [q.v.], ten years his senior and a vigorous personality. In 1825 she had founded Nashoba, near Memphis, Tennessee, a community devoted to gradual emancipation of slaves. Owen now went with her to the colony, but finding it in a declining way, he accompanied her to Europe, where he met Lafayette, Godwin, Bentham, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. He was much drawn to the last, and in later life wished he had come under her gentle persuasion rather than the driving force of Frances Wright. On his return to America, after an unprofitable visit to Nashoba he went back to New Harmony to continue the Gazette, whither Miss Wright soon followed him. He now engaged with her for two years in the work of the "Free Enquirers," a coterie opposed to organized religion (particularly the evangelical ' sects with their revivals), and advocating liberal divorce laws, widespread industrial education, and a more nearly equal distribution of wealth. In June 1829 he left New Harmony and took up residence with others of the inner circle in New York. Here he devoted most of his time to editing the Free Enquirer, which was the old New Harmony Gazette rechristened. He was active in the autumn of this year in forming the "Association for the Protection of Industry and for the Promotion of National Education," his creed for which was belief in "a National System of Equal, Republican, Protective, Practical Education, the sole regenerator of a profligate age." This association was successful in 1829-30 in ousting the agrarians under Thomas Skidmore (author of The Rights of Man to Property, 1829) from the councils of the New York Working Men's Party and substituting a program of public education for their dream of equal division of property; but the workers finally repudiated the leadership of the Free Enquirers.

The work which Owen did in New York (promoting of lectures, educational and health centers, and free-thinking publications), corresponded closely to the propaganda activities of his father, whom he joined in England in 1832. For six months father and son were co-editors of The Crisis; then the son returned to New Harmony and began the most useful part of his career. He served three terms in the Indiana legislature (1836-38) and gave effect to his educational policies by securing for the public schools one-half of the state's allocation of surplus funds of the federal government. He was elected to Congress in 1842 as a Democrat, and served two terms (1843-47), but was defeated for a third. In 1844 he introduced a resolution requesting the President to notify Great Britain of the termination of the joint occupation of Oregon; this measure became the basis for the solution of the Oregon boundary dispute. In 1845 he introduced the bill under which the Smithsonian Institution was constituted, and as a member of the organization committee of the regents he insisted that the work of the Institution should include popular dissemination of scientific knowledge as well as investigation. His versatility was apparent in his service as chairman of the building committee, and he tri ed to make his experience available to others by publishing Hints on Public Architecture (1849). In the Indiana constitutional convention of 1850, and in the legislature the next year, he successfully advocated property rights for married women and liberality in divorce laws; his views on the latter subject: involved him later in a debate with. Horace. Greely [q.v.]  in the New York Tribune, afterwards widely circulated in pamphlet form (Divorce: Being a Correspondence between Horace Greeley and Robert Dale Owen, 1860). President Pierce appointed him charge d'affaires at Naples in 1853, and two years later made him minister. In Italy he embraced Spiritualism, and worked to give the cult a scientific basis for its beliefs. His books, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1860) and The Debatable Land between This World and the Next (1872), show a strange mixture of credulousness and suspicion.

When he returned to America in 1858 he became one of the leading advocates of emancipation. He was commissioned by the governor of Indiana to purchase arms in Europe for the state troops (May 30, 1861- February 6, 1863). His letter to the President, September 17, 1862, published with letters to Chase and Stanton in a pamphlet, The Policy of Emancipation (1863), was credited by Secretary Chase with having "had more influence on him [Lincoln] than any other document which reached him on the subject" (Lockwood, post, p. 371). In 1863 the Secretary of War appointed Owen chairman of a committee to investigate the condition of the freedmen, out of which study grew his volume, The Wrong of Slavery (1864), an understanding treatment of the whole institution. In The Future of the  North West (1863) he protested vigorously again st the scheme, put forward in Indiana and the North west, of reconstructing the Union by leaving out New England. He was opposed to the immediate enfranchisement of the negro, advocating a p1an whereby the suffrage should be granted freedmen after a period of ten years. Besides the publications mentioned, he was the author of Pocahontas: A Historical Drama (1837); Beyond the Breakers (1870), a novel; and many pamphlets on questions of public interest. In 1873-75 he contributed a number of autobiographical articles to the At1antic Monthly. The first of these (January-November 1873), covering his first twenty-seven years, were published in book form under the title, Threading My Way (1874). He was twice married: on April 12, 1832, to Mary Jane Robinson, who died in 1871, and on June 23, 1876, to Lottie Walton Kellogg. He died at his summer home on Lake George, New York, following a period of mental derangement.

[Robert Dale Owen, Threading My Way (1874), Supplemented by articles in the Atlantic Monthly, February, June, July, November, December 1874, January, June 1875; G. B. Lockwood, The New Harmony li1ovcnient (1905); Frank Podmore. Robert Owen: A Biography (2 volumes, 1906):  A. H. Estabrook, "The Family Hi story of Robert Owen," Indiana Magazine of History, March 1923; L. M. Sears, "Robert Dale Owen as a Mystic," Ibid., March 1928; "Robert Dale Owen and Indiana's Common School Fund," Ibid., March 1929; Caroline Dale Snedeker, The Town of the Fearless (1931); W. R. Waterman, Frances Wright (1924); Indianapolis Journal, June 27, Indianapolis Sentinel, June 26, 1877.]

B. M.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 615-616:

OWEN, Robert Dale, author, born in Glasgow, Scotland, 9 November, 1800; died at his summer residence on Lake George, New York, 17 June, 1877, was educated under private tutors at home, and in 1820 was sent to Emanuel von Fellenberg's school at Hofwyl, near Berne, Switzerland, where he remained three years. In 1825 he came to the United States and aided his father in his efforts to found the colony at New Harmony, Ind. On the failure of that experiment he returned to Europe, and there spent some time in study, but returned to this country in 1827 and became a citizen. In November, 1828, he began in New York, with Frances Wright, the publication of “The Free Inquirer,” a weekly paper, devoted to the promulgation of pronounced socialistic ideas and the denial of the supernatural origin of Christianity. This journal was continued until 1832, when he returned to New Harmony. He was elected to the legislature of Indiana in 1835, and sat for three terms, during which, largely owing to his influence, one half of that part of the surplus revenue of the United States that had been appropriated to the state of Indiana was devoted to the support of public schools. He was sent to congress as a Democrat in 1843, and served twice, but was defeated for a third term. Mr. Owen, in January, 1844, introduced in congress a joint resolution relative to the occupation of Oregon, which, though it failed at that session, passed during the next, and became the basis of the settlement of the northwestern boundary that was effected in 1846. He also introduced in December, 1845, the bill under which the Smithsonian institution was organized, and was made chairman of the select committee on that subject, having as a colleague John Quincy Adams, who had made two unsuccessful attempts in former sessions to procure action in the matter. He was afterward appointed one of the regents of the Smithsonian, as well as chairman of its building committee. His speeches in congress on the Oregon question, the tariff, and the annexation of Texas had a wide circulation. In 1850 he was chosen a member of the convention that assembled to remodel the constitution of Indiana, and was made chairman of its committee on rights and privileges, and then chairman of its revision committee. He was a member of the legislature in 1851, was again made chairman of the committee on revision, and was the author of a bill that secured to widows and married women independent rights of property. On the enactment of this measure, the women of Indiana presented him with a testimonial “in acknowledgment of his true and noble advocacy of their independent rights.” In 1853 he was appointed chargé d'affaires at Naples, and he was raised to the grade of minister in 1855, remaining as such until 1858, in the meanwhile negotiating two valuable treaties with the Neapolitan government. After his return to the United States he devoted himself to various public interests, and in 1860 he discussed with Horace Greeley, in the columns of the New York “Tribune,” the subject of divorce. This discussion, reprinted in pamphlet-form, had a circulation of 60,000 copies. In 1862 he served on a commission relative to, ordnance and ordnance stores, and audited claims that amounted to $49,500,000, and in 1863 he was chairman of a commission that was appointed by the secretary of war to examine the condition of the recently emancipated freedmen of the United States. The results of his observations were published as “The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the African Race in the United States” (Philadelphia, 1864). In 1863 he published an address to the citizens of Indiana, showing the disastrous consequence that would follow from the success of the effort of certain politicians to reconstruct the Union with New England left out. The Union league of New York published 50,000 copies of this letter, and the Union league of Philadelphia an additional 25,000. During the civil war he further wrote and published a letter to the president, one to the secretary of war, one to the secretary of the treasury, and another to the secretary of state, advocating the policy of emancipation as a measure that was sanctioned alike by the laws of war and by the dictates of humanity. Sec. Chase wrote that his letter to Lincoln “had more effect in deciding the president to make his proclamation than all the other communications combined.” Mr. Owen was a believer in spiritualism, and was one of its foremost advocates in the United States. In 1872 he received the degree of LL.D. from the University of Indiana. He published “Outlines of the System of Education at New Lanark” (Glasgow, 1824); “Moral Physiology” (New York, 1831); “Popular Tracts” (1831); “Discussion with Origen Bachelor on the Personality of God and the Authority of the Bible” (1832); “Pocahontas: A Drama” (1837); “Hints on Public Architecture” (1849); “A Treatise on the Construction of Plank-Roads” (1856); “Footprints on the Boundary of Another World” (Philadelphia, 1859); “Beyond the Breakers” (1870); “Debatable Land Between this World and the Next” (New York, 1872); and “Threading My Way,” an autobiography (1874). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 615-616.



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.