Rub-Ryl: Rublee through Ryland

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.


RUBLEE, Horace (August 19, 1829-October 19, 1896), editor and diplomat. His political activities began with the movement against the extension of slavery that led to the birth of the Republican party. At the first state convention of that party, held in Madison on July 13, 1854, Rublee was one of the secretaries.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 213-214:

RUBLEE, HORACE (August 19, 1829-October 19, 1896), editor and diplomat, was born in Berkshire, Franklin County, Vermont, the son of Alvah and Martha (Kent) Rublee. Attracted by reports of rich farming land in the Middle West, his father journeyed to Wisconsin in 1839 and settled at Sheboygan, where his family joined him the following year. The boy's early education was obtained in the district schools of Vermont and Wisconsin. Lacking the rugged physique necessary for his father's occupations, lumbering and farming, he taught school near his home until, at the age of twenty, he decided to go to college. In 1850 he entered the University of Wisconsin, then in its first year as a preparatory school, housed in one. small building, with a faculty of one teacher. While attending the university he supported himself by setting type on one of the Madison newspapers, but his constitution was not equal to the strain of study and work, and he was compelled to withdraw from college on account of poor health. Returning to his home in Sheboygan, he again taught in a district school. He began his newspaper work by reporting the sessions of the state legislature during 1852 and 1853 for the Wisconsin Argus, a Democratic weekly paper that published a daily edition while the legislature was in session. In the spring of 1853, during the temporary absence of its editor, Rublee became editorial writer on the Wisconsin State Journal, a Madison daily, established the previous year by David Atwood [q.v.]. The following year Rublee bought a half-interest in the paper, which he retained until he went abroad in the diplomatic service fifteen years later.

His political activities began with the movement against the extension of slavery that led to the birth of the Republican party. At the first state convention of that party, held in Madison on July 13, 1854, Rublee was one of the secretaries. During 1856-57 he was state librarian. In 1856 or 1857 he married Kate Hopkins of Washington County, New York, one of whose brothers, James C. Hopkins [q.v.], became United States judge for the western district of Wisconsin. From 1859 to 1869, Rublee served as chairman of the Wisconsin Republican state committee, and in 1868 was a delegate to the Republican National Convention that nominated General Grant for the presidency.

President Grant appointed him minister to Switzerland in 1869, a post that he held for seven years. Studious in his tastes, he acquired a considerable knowledge of the German language and literature during his residence in Switzerland. After resigning his diplomatic position, he returned to Wisconsin in 1877 and again became chairman of the Republican state committee. When the Republican state convention adopted a weak plank on "Greenbackism," Rublee, as chairman of the state committee with the support of some of the other Republican leaders, issued an address to the Republican voters demanding the resumption of specie payments. He carried the Republicans to victory on this issue.

During 1877 he contributed articles to the Evening Wisconsin, the leading Republican evening newspaper in Milwaukee. He went to Boston in 1879 to act as temporary editor of the Daily Advertiser, but, although urged to remain. in journalism in the East, soon decided to return to Wisconsin. In 1881 he organized a company to purchase the Daily Milwaukee News, a Democratic morning paper. With Rublee, a stanch Republican, as editor, its name was changed to the Republican and News. The following year the company bought the Milwaukee Sentinel, then the oldest as well as the most important morning paper in the state. It was in his connection with the Sentinel, from 1883 until he died in 1896, that Rublee won distinction as editor and editorial writer. He made it more than a party organ; it was the leading newspaper of the commonwealth, and his editorials were quoted by other newspapers both within and without the state. At his death he was survived by two sons. 

[A. M. Thomson, A Political History of Wisconsin (1902); The Columbian Biographical Dictionary ... Wisconsin Volume (1895); H.P. Myrick, in Proceedings Wisconsin Press Association, 1897; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S., 1870-76; Milwaukee Sentinel and Milwaukee Journal, October 19, 1896.]

W. G. B.


RUFFNER, Henry (January 16, 1790-December17, 1861), Presbyterian clergyman, educator, author, his Address to the People of West Virginia ... Showing that Slavery is Injurious to the Public Welfare, and that it May be Gradually Abolished, Without Detriment to the Rights and Interests of Slaveholders, by a Slaveholder of West Virginia (1847). In it he argued for confinement of slavery to the region east of the Blue Ridge and its gradual abolition there on broad grounds of public policy. This "Ruffner Pamphlet" became important politically, especially in 1859.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 217-218:

RUFFNER, HENRY (January 16, 1790-December17, 1861), Presbyterian clergyman, educator, author, was born in Shenandoah County, Virginia, son of David and Ann (Brumbach) Ruffner. Having come to the Valley in 1739, the Ruffners a German-Swiss people, big-bodied and heavy fisted-moved on in 1796 to the wild Kanawha country, where, also, they bought land, started manufacturing, and helped build schools and churches. Prepared at Dr. McElhenney's Academy nearby, Henry, in 1813, graduated from Washington College, Lexington, Virginia. After a year of theology and a year of travel he was licensed to preach and returned for mission work in the Kanawha country. On March 31, 1819, he married Sarah; daughter of Captain William Lyle, a farmer living near Lexington.

For thirty years thereafter he was identified with Washington College, first as teacher (thrice acting as president), and then (1836-48) as president and teacher. Under him the school took on the characteristics of a modern college, especially architecturally, though competition with the new Virginia Military Academy kept its numbers small. Meantime, his unusual energy was finding other outlets. From 1819 to 1831 he preached regularly at the Timber Ridge Church. At the educational convention in Lexington in 1842 he was the moving spirit and submitted "'the most valuable document' on general education issued in Virginia since the early days of Thomas Jefferson, viz, an elaborate plan for the organization of an entire educational system of public instruction' " (Ambler, post, p. 277, quoting the United States Commissioner of Education). From 1840 to 1847 he was preparing "The Early History of Washington College" (Washing ton and Lee Historical Papers, volume I, 1890), in which appear his views on "the general management of literary institutions and the subject of liberal education." Out of a debate in the Franklin Literary Society of Lexington on the advisability of dividing Virginia into two states at the Blue Ridge, grew his Address to the People of West Virginia ... Showing that Slavery is Injurious to the Public Welfare, and that it May be Gradually Abolished, Without Detriment to the Rights and Interests of Slaveholders, by a Slaveholder of West Virginia (1847). In it he argued for confinement of slavery to the region east of the Blue Ridge and its gradual abolition there on broad grounds of public policy. This "Ruffner Pamphlet" became important politically, especially in 1859.

With the reluctant consent of the trustees, Ruffner left Washington College in 1848 for the Kanawha mountains. There he hoped to recover fortune and health at farming and mining; but after a few years he returned to preaching, this time in what is now Malden, West Virginia. Meanwhile, as "literary recreations," he had written and published "Judith Bensaddi," a romance which appeared in revised form in the Southern Literary Messenger, July 1839, with the statement that the first version had been published in a Philadelphia periodical ten years before; two Calvinistic treatises, A Discourse on the Duration of Future Punishment (1823) and Against Universalism (1833); and The Fathers of the Desert (2 volumes, 1850). As an exponent of its energy and hard sense and of its views on slavery and education, ante-helium western Virginia had no better representative than Henry Ruffner. Two of his four children survived him, one of whom was William Henry Ruffner [q.v.].

[William Henry Ruffner, "History of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University," in Washington and Lee History Papers, nos. 5, 6 (1895, 1904), a continuation of Henry Ruffner's Early History of Washington College; C. H. Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia (1910); Southern Lit. Messenger, December 1838, January-April 1839, containing his "Cincinnati Address" and his "Notes on a Tour from Virginia to Tennessee .... 1838."]

C. C. P.


RUGGLES, David, 1810-1849, New York, free African American, journalist, publisher, editor, anti-slavery activist and abolitionist leader.  Agent for Emancipator and Journal of Public Morals of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Founded Mirror of Liberty, first Black magazine.  Active in the New York Committee of Vigilance and the Underground Railroad, which aided fugitive slaves.  Advocate of Free Produce movement.  Wrote pamphlet, “The Extinguisher.”  Contributed articles to abolitionist newspapers, The Emancipator and The Liberator. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 340; Hodges, 2010; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 84-85, 107-108, 113-114, 278, 285, 397n1, 398n20, 415n16; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 45; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 34, 84n, 87, 113; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 9, p. 624)


RUSH, Christopher, New York, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1834-1837.  Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1841-1851.


RUSH, Dr. Benjamin, 1746-1813, Pennsylvania, founding father of the United States, physician, author, humanitarian, educator, opponent of slavery.  Wrote “An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America Upon Slave Keeping,” an anti-slavery pamphlet published in 1773.  Secretary and member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 1787.  Rush wrote: “Slavery is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it.  All of the vices which are charged upon the negroes in the southern colonies and West Indies… are the genuine offspring of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove they [African Americans] were not intended by Providence for it.”  

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 33, 80, 81, 92, 101, 217, 223-228, 240, 308, 316; 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. 79, 224-246, 269, 304-306, 325, 358, 376, 384, 491, 510, 514; Drake, 1950, pp. 85, 94, 115, 119; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 20, 52-53, 87; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 48, 52, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 270; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 21, 25-26, 156, 253, 456; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 90, 94-95, 169, 224-225; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 349; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 227-231; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 707-710; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 72). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 227-230:

RUSH, BENJAMIN (December 24, 1745 o.s.-April 19, 1813), physician, patriot, humanitarian, was born on a plantation near Philadelphia, in the agricultural community of Byberry, the fourth of the seven children of John and Susanna (Hall) Harvey Rush. He was descended from John Rush, a yeoman from Oxfordshire, who came to Byberry in 1683. His father, a gunsmith and farmer, died when Benjamin was but five years old. At eight he was sent to school with an uncle by marriage, Samuel Finley [q.v.], and then to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), where he received the A.B. degree in 1760. Upon returning to Philadelphia Rush first thought of studying law, but changed his mind in favor of medicine. He was a student under Dr. John Redman from 1761 to 1766 and, in addition to this apprenticeship, attended the first lectures of Dr. William Shippen and Dr. John Morgan in the College of Philadelphia.

During these years he displayed an interest in public affairs, was swayed by Whitefield's preaching, and aroused to youthful patriotism by the Stamp Act controversy; but revivals and politics were forgotten in the zest of professional adventure. On Dr. Redman's advice, he sailed in I766 to complete his medical education at the University of Edinburgh. There he sat under such masters as Monro, Secundus, Joseph Black, and John Gregory, and became the friend and disciple of the great William Cullen. He also found time in the society of fellow students to doubt and debate all things, and so became something of a republican and a philosopher as well as a physician. He received his doctor's degree in June 1768, and immediately went to London for further training in St. Thomas's Hospital. In London he was on friendly terms with Benjamin Franklin, in whose society he learned, among many things, the art of being agreeable.

After a short visit to Paris, Rush returned to Philadelphia in 1769, and at once began to practise medicine. Although he claimed to be without influential friends, he had already arranged an appointment as professor of chemistry in the College of Philadelphia, the first such chair established in the colonies. While holding it Rush published the first American text in that subject, A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry (1770, reissued 1773). His practice grew, at first largely among the poor; but within five years he had a very fair income. Rush attracted attention by his unusual ability and training, and also as the practitioner of a new "system." Instead of that of the famous Dr. Hermann Boerhaave, he preached the system of his master, Cullen, with such a scorn for the "old school" that he alienated many of his colleagues. He began writing almost at once, and in 1772 published anonymously one of the first American works on personal hygiene, Sermons to Gentlemen upon Temperance and Exercise (London, 1772).

Meanwhile he had become a member of the American Philosophical Society and cultivated other than purely professional interests. In 1773 he published An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-keeping, and in 1774 helped to organize the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Maintaining his interest in the quarrel between the colonies and the mother country, he wrote articles for the local press, and associated with such patriot leaders as Thomas Paine, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. When war began he offered his services in the patriot cause. While waiting for action, he was married, on January II, 1776, to Julia Stockton, eldest daughter of Richard Stockton of Princeton. In June he was elected to the Provincial Conference, in which he was a leader in declaring for independence, and a month later was made a member of the Continental Congress. He thus became a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

In April 1777 he was appointed surgeon-general of the armies of the Middle Department. Finding the medical service in a deplorable condition he protested to General Washington, accusing Dr. Shippen, the director general, of maladministration. Washington referred the matter to Congress, which decided in favor of Shippen, and Rush resigned in consequence. Washington's defeats near Philadelphia, in addition to his own personal experiences, now led Rush to question the general's ability; and caused him to be associated indirectly with the Conway Cabal (Rush Manuscripts, XXIX, 136, Ridgway Library). He finally wrote an anonymous letter, to Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia, urging that Washington be replaced by Gates or Conway. Henry forwarded this to Washington, who recognized Rush's excellent hand and accused him of personal disloyalty. (Rush's letter, dated Yorktown, January 12, 1778, is printed in John Marshall, The Life of Washington, 2 ed., 1832, volume I, note 12, pp. 29, 30.)

This affair ended Rush's military career, and he returned to his practice in Philadelphia. In the new University of the State of Pennsylvania, opened in 1778, he began to deliver lectures in 1780. In 1783, he became a member of the staff of the Pennsylvania Hospital and served in that capacity for the rest of his life. Here he saw something of the needs of the sick and the poor, and this aroused again his interest in social reform. Stirred, moreover, by the idealism of the Revolution, he now became a sponsor of the various ameliorative movements which were to remould America in the ensuing century. He established the first free dispensary in the country (1786), became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (1803), condemned public and capital punishments, and demanded real "penitentiaries" by way of prison reform. His advocacy of temperance was so effective that he has been formally recognized as the "instaurator" of the American temperance movement. His republican enthusiasm led him to favor an improved education for girls, a comprehensive system of schools culminating in a national university, and a theory of education which gave greater freedom to children and encouraged their training in science and utilitarian subjects rather than in the traditional disciplines. Practising what he preached, he persuaded the Presbyterians to found Dickinson College (1783), and served as one of its trustees. Most of his essays on social reform appeared in magazines of Philadelphia, and were later collected and published in 1798 under the title of Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical. While these were extravagantly praised by contemporaries as masterpieces of prose, they have long since been subjected to a similarly extreme neglect by American readers.

For a brief period in 1787, Rush once more resorted to the newspapers in the cause of nationalism, this time to urge the acceptance of the new federal Constitution. As a result he was elected to the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, in which he and James Wilson led the successful movement for adoption. In 1789 these two men inaugurated a campaign which secured for the state a more liberal and effective constitution- the last achievement of Rush's political career. His only direct reward was a later appointment by President Adams as treasurer of the United States Mint (1797-1813). After 1789 Rush devoted himself primarily to his profession. The College of Philadelphia, now reestablished, was merged in 1791 with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to form the University of Pennsylvania. Since the medical faculties of both schools were retained, there was some shifting of academic chairs. Rush had succeeded, upon the death of Dr. Morgan in 1789, to the chair of theory and practice in the college; in January I 792 he became professor of the institutes of medicine and clinical practice in the new university, and in 1796 succeeded Dr. Adam Kuhn as professor of theory and practice as well. In addition to the university connection, he was associated with those who organized the Philadelphia College of Physicians in 1787, although he resigned from this body in the course of the first yellow-fever controversy.

Three aspects of Rush's medical work deserve attention: his "system" of theory and practice; his specific contributions to medical science; and his influence as a teacher. He had inherited from Cullen a complicated nosology, a distrust of natural healing powers, and a corresponding confidence in the use of special remedies for each species of disease. He probably also acquired from Cullen, as well as from the general medical philosophy of the day, the view that all theory should be organized, on rational principles, into a "system" that would make practice simple and intelligent (William Cullen, First Lines of the Practice of Physic, 1796, pp. 9-52). Cullen had urged that each generation formulate new systems, in order to keep pace with advancing scientific knowledge; and during the eighties two of his ablest pupils, John Brown of Edinburgh and Rush, began to take him at his word. It happened that Cullen's pathology had emphasized the role of the nervous system and nervous energy, rather than the old conceptions concerning the humors and solids. Exaggerating this point, Brown concluded that all diseases were due either to an excess or to a lack of nervous stimulation, and thus indicated either "depleting" or stimulating remedies (John Brown, The Elements of Medicine, 1788, passim). This view soon had a wide following in Europe, and Rush in America was so impressed that he decided to carry "Brunonianism" one step further to its logical conclusion. It is impossible to describe his system briefly without over-simplification, but the essential principle was the reduction of Brown's two types of disease to one. All diseases, he decided, were due to one "proximate" cause, a state of excessive excitability or spasm in the blood vessels, and hence in most cases called for the one treatment of "depletion" through bleeding and purging. Thus, as he himself declared, there was after all but one disease and one type of treatment (Manuscript Lectures on the Practice of Physic, 1796, I, Lecture No. 31, University of Pennsylvania Library). This conception was so simple, and so completely the antithesis of the nosology in which he had been trained, that it came to hold for his speculative mind all the fascination of an ultimate panacea. It was, literally, too good to be true, but he confidently proclaimed it when the initial volume of his Medical Inquiries and Observations was published in 1789.

The system was soon pronounced fanciful by various critics, who also declared that its author's fondness for depletion led him to dangerous extremes in practice. He seems to have averaged about ten ounces in ordinary bleedings, but often took more, and was actually willing to remove as much as four-fifths of all the blood in the body (Medical Inquiries and Observations, 3 ed., 1809, volume IV, 353). Rush scorned the first criticism on the ground that reasoning and deduction were essentials in scientific method, and claimed that his treatment succeeded in practice. The real test of this claim seemed to have come in the epidemic of yellow fever which descended upon Philadelphia in 1793. Rush worked with desperation and devotion for three months, while several thousand of his fellow citizens, including members of his own household, died of the "yellow monster." His treatment, he declared, was practically always effective when employed promptly. But the only supporting data he offered were aggressive and dogmatic assertions as to his diagnoses and cures. He wrote a justly famous account of the epidemic as a whole, but failed to keep an exact record of his own cases. In a word, while correct in his view that hypotheses have their place in medicine, he was largely blind to his obligation to check them against the facts. Vital statistics of a sort were already available but he did not use them. The way was thus open for a lay critic, William Cobbett, to point out the correlation between the increasing employment of Rush's treatment and the increasing mortality rate--the more bleeding, the more deaths! The doctor's system, Cobbett observed, is "one of the great discoveries ... which have contributed to the depopulation of the earth" (The Rush-Light, New York, February 28, 1800, p. 49). The pamphleteer's motives were not above suspicion, and Rush's treatment was not the only variable involved; yet it was indeed impossible to reconcile his claims with the stark fact of the mortality tables. He was not guilty of deliberate misrepresentation, but rather the victim of  a certain credulity about diagnoses and cures which characterized much of his work.

The epidemic had several immediate effects, so far as Rush was concerned. His view that its "remote" cause was unsanitary conditions antagonized many citizens, and particularly those doctors who ascribed the disease to importation and contagion. Both this issue and that relating to treatments, were taken into the newspapers, and Rush again found himself the center of controversy. Nevertheless, his published accounts of the epidemic, and of those which followed it, won for him recognition by several European governments and learned societies. The chief essay is An Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever, as it Appeared in the City of Philadelphia, in the Year 1793 (1794).

It has been remarked that Rush was an observant man, but not a good observer. His shortcomings as a systematic observer have been noted; it remains to point out that he was indeed an observant man in special fields of medicine. There is reason to believe that he was the pioneer worker in experimental physiology in the United States. He was the first American to write on cholera infantum, and the first to recognize focal infection in the teeth. He was probably the first to advocate the study of veterinary medicine. His repudiation of current nosology was valuable, in that he strove to reduce the confusion of treatments associated therewith-he favored purging the materia medica as well as  his patients. Most notable were his contributions to psychiatry, made while working with the insane at the Pennsylvania Hospital, where he inculcated a scientific and fairly humane attitude toward this class of patients. His famous work, Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812) shows some appreciation of what would today be known as mental healing and even of psycho-analysis. He was, finally, the first medical man in the country to achieve a general literary reputation.

Rush, therefore, was probably the best-known American physician of his day, though his reputation as a scientist was exaggerated because of his popularity as a teacher. He was hated by his enemies, but there is overwhelming evidence that he was admired by his students to a degree rare in the history of any of the professions His classes grew ever larger, and his fame spread throughout the country, especially in the South and West. His son James declared that while before 1790 Rush's classes numbered from sixteen to forty-five annually, by 1812 he had had 2872 in his medical classes, and, including private students, 3000 in his lifetime (cited by Goodman, post, pp. 132, 162). No wonder he contributed, more than any other one man, to the establishment of Philadelphia as the leading American center of medical training during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Rush was well and active until a few days before his death on April 19, 1813. He was buried in Christ's Church graveyard in Philadelphia and here his wife was buried thirty-five years later. Of his thirteen children six sons, among them James and Richard Rush [qq.v.], and three daughters survived him. He died a professing Christian, but without strict denominational attachments. He was at various times a member of the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian churches, accepted the Universalists' view of salvation, and has been claimed by the Unitarians. In fact his education so broadened his mind as to destroy any spirit of denominationalism, without weakening a generally pious outlook which was the result of early training. His piety, however, was complacent and inconsistent at times; and his occasional use of theological arguments in medical reasoning was a survival of medievalism in method entirely foreign to his abler contemporaries. The truth is that Rush had an able and versatile, but not a fundamentally critical mind.

[The majority of Rush's manuscripts are in the Ridgway Branch of the Philadelphia Library Co.; others are in the Pennsylvania Historical Society, the University of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia College of Physicians, the Girard Estate, the N Y. Academy of Medicine, the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and in the private possession of Mr. Lynford Biddle of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. Important printed sources are: E. C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, volumes I-III (1921-1926), containing selections from his diary and correspondence; A Memorial Containing Travels through Life or Sundry Incidents in the Life of Dr. Benjamin Rush Written by, Himself (1905); H. G. Good, Benjamin Rush and His Services to American Education (1918); sketches in various collections of American medical biography, of which the most detailed is that by Samuel. Jackson in S. D. Gross, ed., Lives of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons of the Nineteenth Century (1861), pp. 2-85; and the most reliable, 'that by Francis Packard, in H. A Kelly and W L. Burrage, eds., Dictionary of American Medical Biography (1928); the favorable essay of David Ramsay, An Eulogium upon Benjamin Rush, M.D. (1813); the critical essay by Victor Robinson, "The Myth of Benjamin Rush," Medical Life, September 1929, volume XXXVI, pp. 445-48. A list of Rush's publications and a general bibliography are in Good, pp, 259-75; and an almost complete list is in the Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, U.S. A., XII (1891), pp. 398-400. N. G. Goodman, Benjamin Rush, Physician and Citizen, 1746- 1813 (1934), the latest and most complete study, is well documented and contains an excellent bibliography. A death notice appeared in Poulson's American Daily Advertiser, April 21, 1813.]

R.H. S-k.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 349:

RUSH, Benjamin, signer of the Declaration of Independence, born in Byberry township, Pennsylvania, 24 December, 1745; died in Philadelphia, 19 April, 1813. His ancestor, John, who was a captain of horse in Cromwell's army, emigrated to this country in 1683, and left a large number of descendants. Benjamin's father died when the son was six years old. His earliest instructor was his uncle, Reverend Samuel Finley, subsequently president of Princeton, who prepared him for that college. He was graduated in 1760, and subsequently in the medical department of the University of Edinburgh in 1768, after studying under Dr. John Redman, of Philadelphia. He also attended medical lectures in England and in Paris, where he enjoyed the friendship of Benjamin Franklin, who advanced the means of paying his expenses. In August, 1769, he returned to the United States and settled in Philadelphia, where he was elected professor of chemistry in the City medical college. In 1771 he published essays on slavery, temperance, and health, and in 1774 he delivered the annual oration before the Philosophical society on the “Natural History of Medicine among the Indians of North America.” He early engaged in pre-Revolutionary movements, and wrote constantly for the press on colonial rights. He was a member of the provincial conference of Pennsylvania, and chairman of the committee that reported that it had become expedient for congress to declare independence, and surgeon to the Pennsylvania navy from 17 September, 1775, to 1 July, 1776. He was then elected to the latter body, and on 4 July, 1776, signed the declaration. He married Julia, a daughter of Richard Stockton, the same year, was appointed surgeon-general of the middle department in April, 1777, and in July became physician-general. Although in constant attendance on the wounded in the battles of Trenton, Princeton, the Brandy wine, Germantown, and in the sickness at Valley Forge, he found time to write four long public letters to the people of Pennsylvania, in which he commented severely on the articles of confederation of 1776, and urged a revision on the ground of the dangers of giving legislative powers to a single house. In February, 1778, he resigned his military office on account of wrongs that had been done to the soldiers in regard to the hospital stores, and a coldness between himself and General Washington, but, though he was without means at that time, he refused all compensation for his service in the army. He then returned to Philadelphia, resumed his practice and duties as professor, and for twenty-nine years was surgeon to the Pennsylvania hospital, and port physician to Philadelphia in 1790-'3. He was a founder of Dickinson college and the Philadelphia dispensary, and was largely interested in the establishment of public schools, concerning which he published an address, and in the founding of the College of physicians, of which he was one of the first censors. He was a member of the State convention that ratified the constitution of the United States in 1787, and of that for forming a state constitution in the same year, in which he endeavored to procure the incorporation of his views on public schools, and a penal code on which he had previously written essays. After that service he retired from political life. While in occupation of the chair of chemistry in Philadelphia medical college, he was elected to that of the theory and practice of medicine, to which was added the professorship of the institutes and practice of medicine and clinical practice in 1791, and that of the practice of physic in 1797, all of which he held until his death. During the epidemic of yellow fever in 1793 he rendered good service, visiting from 100 to 120 patients daily, but his bold and original practice made him enemies, and a paper edited by William Cobbett, called “Peter Porcupine’s Gazette,” was so violent in its attacks upon him that it was prosecuted, and a jury rendered a verdict of $5,000 damages, which Dr. Rush distributed among the poor. His practice during the epidemic convinced him that yellow fever is not contagious, and he was the first to proclaim that the disease is indigenous. From 1799 till his death he was treasurer of the U. S. mint. “His name,” says Dr. Thomas Young, “was familiar to the medical world as the Sydenham of America. His accurate observations and correct discrimination of epidemic diseases well entitled him to this distinction, while in the original energy of his reasoning he far exceeded his prototype.” He was a member of nearly every medical, literary, and benevolent institution in this country, and of many foreign societies, and for his replies to their queries on the subject of yellow fever received a medal from the king of Prussia in 1805, and gifts medal from the king of Prussia in 1805, and gifts from other crowned heads. He succeeded Benjamin Franklin as president of the Pennsylvania society for the abolition of slavery, was president of the Philadelphia medical society, vice-president and a founder of the Philadelphia Bible society, advocating the use of the Scriptures as a textbook in the public schools, an originator of the American philosophical society, of which he was a vice-president in 1799-1800. He taught, more clearly than any other physician of his day, to distinguish diseases and their effects, gave great impulse to the study of medicine in this country, and made Philadelphia the centre of that scienec in the United States, more than 2,250 students having attended his lectures during his professorship in the Medical college of Philadelphia. Yale gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1812. His publications include “Medical Inquiries and Observations” (5 vols., Philadelphia, 1789-'98; 3d ed., 4 vols., 1809); “Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical” (1798; 2d ed., 1806); “Sixteen Introductory Lectures” (1811); and “Diseases of the Mind” (1812; 5th ed., 1835). He also edited several medical works. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 349.

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

BENJAMIN RUSH was born on his father's farm, in Byberry township, Philadelphia county, on the 24th day of December, 1745. His great-grandfather, John Rush, commanded a troop of horse in the army of Oliver Cromwell, and on the restoration of the monarchy, emigrated to Pennsylvania, .in 1683. He had been personally known to the Protector. One day, seeing his horse come into the camp without him, Cromwell supposed he had been killed, and lamented him, by saying "he had not left a better officer behind him." The Bible, watch, and sword, which he owned, are still in the possession of his descendants in Pennsylvania. He settled on the farm already mentioned, and died at the age of about eighty. No lengthened account of the parentage of Dr. Rush, is deemed necessary to a brief narrative like the present. His ancestors were plain and peaceful farmers, known in their neighborhood for their integrity and industry. Having lost his father, John Rush, in his early childhood, the care of his education devolved upon his mother, whose strength of mind and good principles proved fully adequate to the trust. His veneration for this parent knew no intermission during her long life. She died under his roof at the age of eighty; and of the illustrious individuals whom she lived to see that, roof often shelter, none received from its owner more constant kindness and scrupulous attention than herself. To the judicious care she bestowed on him in his youth, he always attributed the useful aims and the many blessings of his life. Having been taught by her the rudiments of the English language, she sent him, at the age of nine years, to a grammar-school at Nottingham, in Maryland, at that time under the direction of her sister's husband, the Reverend Dr. Findley, afterwards president of the college at Princeton, in New Jersey. Here lie rapidly advanced in the studies prescribed to him; and from the pious precepts and example of his instructor, and, perhaps, the primitive innocence of the secluded country in which he lived, he imbibed in childhood that veneration for religion which he cherished to the end of his days.

Having finished his preparatory course of the Latin and Greek languages, he was sent in the fourteenth year of his age to Princeton college, then under the presidency of the Reverend Mr. Davies, a man distinguished for his piety and uncommon eloquence. He received at this institution the degree of Bachelor of Arts, in 1760, before he had completed his fifteenth year. He next commenced the study of medicine in Philadelphia, under the direction of Dr. John Redman, an eminent physician, who was a kind and useful instructor to him, and whose attention he requited by faithful and untiring service. He relates, himself, that during the whole of the six years of his pupilage under Dr. Redman, he could enumerate not more than two days of interruption from business. This was an earnest of that regularity and indefatigable application which characterized his whole life. During the period of his apprenticeship, he studied with eager attention the writings of Hippocrates, Sydenham, and Boerhave, and translated the aphorisms of the former, from Greek into English. He also began to keep a note-book of remarkable occurrences, the plan of which he afterwards improved and continued through life. From a part of this record, written in the seventeenth year of his age, is derived the only account of the yellow fever, as it appeared in Philadelphia, in 1762, which has descended to posterity.

In 1766, having passed through the elementary studies in medicine, and being intent on acquiring further advantages for his destined profession, he \vent to Edinburgh, at that time the most esteemed medical school of Europe, where, after attending for two years the pnblic lectures and hospitals in that capital, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. His thesis, by the custom of the school, was written in the Latin language, and its title was " De concoctione ciborum in ventriculo." He adventured, in his own person, several experiments in support of his arguments, both revolting and perilous. These arguments displayed abilities rare even among the distinguished pupils and rivals by whom he was surrounded. The style was correct and elegant; Dr. Ramsay, [1] who was among the best classical scholars of our country, and who knew Dr. Rush well, says, of this thesis, that " it was written in classical Latin," and adds, " I have reason to believe without the help of a grinder, (teachers of Latin, then frequently employed for such purposes,) for it bears the characteristic marks of the peculiar style of its author." We are somewhat minute on this point, because it is connected with another, often referred to in Dr. Rush's history-his alleged disparagement of the learned languages. He ranked them among the general accomplishments of a liberal education; and having, according to his ingenious and forcible essay upon the subject, spent too many years in their acquisition, he continued in after life his familiarity with them, perhaps from the desire, by which he happily says in the same essay men are sometimes influenced, of reviving, by reading the classics, the agreeable ideas of the early and innocent part of their lives. Dr. Rush's objections to the engrossing instruction of youth in the Latin and Greek languages, have been often and elaborately questioned; but whilst his arguments upon the subject continue to be read, their vigor, and fertility in illustration, will always be impressive to the candid, if they convince not the opposing reader.

Whilst a student at Edinburgh, Dr. Rush was commissioned by the trustees of Princeton college, to negotiate with Dr. "Witherspoon, of Paisley, in Scotland, his acceptance of the presidency of their institution. His efforts and address in the fulfilment of this trust, were successful; he gained in Dr. Witherspoon a constant friend, and for the college, the advantage of a principal eminent in science and literature. He was, whilst in Scotland, ardent in his pursuit of knowledge; and was careful and fortunate in making friends, who improved his mind, and strengthened his virtues. An accidental acquaintance, formed whilst attending the same medical class with the eldest son of the earl of Leven, made him an approved intimate in the family of that pious and respected peer. The letters written in after years by this individual and the different members of his family to Dr. Rush, prove the uncommon and affectionate impression he made upon them. We allude to this intimacy, because, though anticipating a little the order of our narrative, it is connected with an interesting incident in the life of Dr. Rush. It happened to him a few years after, and during the war of the American revolution, to recognize among the British officers slain on the battle-field at Princeton, the dead body of one of the sons of this earl of Leven, the Honorable Captain William Leslie, who, in common with his elder brother, had shared Dr. Rush's fond regard whilst at Edinburgh. On the person of the deceased officer was found a letter to Dr. Rush, who, being then in the medical staff of General Washington, was the first to discover his deceased friend among the slaughtered of the vanquished enemy. Dr. Rush had Captain Leslie's remains conveyed to Pluckamin, in New Jersey; where he gave them an honorable grave and a recording tomb. A few years ago, a friend of the family of this officer came to this country, on purpose to erect a befitting monument to his memory; "but when he reached his grave, he saw," says a modern British publication, wherein further interesting details of the occurrence are given, that ''the work was already done. Believing that no monument he could erect, no honors he could pay, would be equal to those rendered by the spontaneous act of a generous foe-nothing remained but to drop a tear to the memory of the unfortunate Leslie, and another of gratitude to his generous eulogist."

From Edinburgh, Dr. Rush went to London, where he passed the winter of 1768, attending the hospitals and medical lectures of that metropolis. Dr. Letsome of Great Britain, in his "Recollections of Dr. Rush," relates an anecdote of him whilst in London, which is creditable to his fervor of patriotism and vigor of speech; it is in the following words: " At that time there was generating great commotion in the American colonies, and a disposition to revolt from the mother country was very generally manifested. In London, several disputing societies were formed for the discussion of the question of the propriety of American resistance. A political orator warmly inveighed against the spirit of what was deemed rebellion, and observed, that "if the Americans possessed cannon, they had not even a ball to fire." These reflections called up Dr. Rush, (then a student of medicine in London,) who said in his reply, that "if the Americans possessed no cannon balls, they could supply the deficiency by digging up the skulls of those ancestors who had courted expatriation from the old hemisphere, under the vivid hope of enjoying more ample freedom in the new."

The succeeding summer he devoted to his improvement in Paris, and returned, in the autumn of the same year, to his native country. He fixed his residence at Philadelphia, and at once began the practice of his profession, where he was soon established in business as a physician. 
In 1769, he was elected professor of chemistry in the college of Philadelphia. In 1789, he succeeded in the same institution to the chair of the theory and practice of medicine; vacated by the death of Dr. John Morgan. In 1791, the college having been elevated to the University of Pennsylvania, he was elected in this latter establishment professor of the institutes and practice of medicine and of clinical practice. In 1796, he received, on the resignation of Dr. Kuhn, the additional professorship of the practice of physic, which he held with the two preceding branches, though they required much laborious application, until the end of his life.
As a lecturer, Dr. Rush's manner was most agreeable and impressive. His talent for public speaking enabled him, by frequent extemporaneous elucidation, to relieve and enliven the details of the science which he taught. His lectures were nightly retouched and enhanced from the full stores of his observation and retentive memory. The zealous student hung on his accents whilst he spoke; 1and the loiterer was accustomed to watch for his varieties, his fervor, and his persuasiveness. When Dr. Rush began to lecture in the University of Pennsylvania, his medical class in that institution consisted of about twenty students: in the winter of 1812-13, at the last course he delivered, they amounted to four hundred and thirty. It is estimated that during his life he had given instruction to more than two thousand pupils, who propagated his principles and improvements in the science of medicine throughout the United States, and, in a few instances, to South America, the West Indies, and Europe. He was for many years one of the physicians of the Pennsylvania hospital, and contributed much to the usefulness of that institution, by his wise suggestions and ardent exertions in its behalf.

The medical career of Dr. Rush was like that of other successful practitioners, until the appearance of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, in 1793. This event exhibits the most busy scene of his professional life; by its trials, he acquired his most valuable reputation. This disease, as we have already remarked, appeared in Philadelphia, in 1762, and returned after a lapse of thirty-one years with frightful violence and fatality. It commenced the first week in August, and ended towards the close of October. The city was deserted by nearly all those whom wealth or health enabled to flee. The rank grass sprung up from the untrodden pavements; and the dying crawled from their sick-beds, and breathed their last in vain implorations after their abandoning kindred and friends. Dr. Rush was among those who staid to witness and to help in this awful calamity; and in one of the volumes of his lectures, has given a deeply interesting account of it. At one time, when not less than six thousand persons were prostrated with the disease, three practitioners only remained to administer to their necessities. From the 8th to the 15th of September, he visited and prescribed for about one hundred and twenty patients daily. His house was thronged by multitudes imploring his assistance. He was constrained by more pressing duty to fly himself from many of these, and even to drive through the streets with such speed as might secure him from interruption, or place him beyond the cries of his wretched petitioners. His sense of duty, his charity, and the force of that precept which he often used to inculcate in his lectures, "to dispute every inch of ground with death," were the incentives to his fearless conduct during that memorable pestilence. Had the love of pecuniary gain actuated him, the wealth he might have amassed from known instances of its offers, is almost incalculable. An opulent citizen tendered him a deed for one of his best houses in Market street, if he would attend his son who was lying ill. A captain of a vessel once took from his purse twenty pounds, offering them to him if he would pay his wife a single visit. A patient whom he had cured, directed, in his first feelings of gratitude, his desk to be opened, in which large sums were heaped, requesting that he would take a part or, if he pleased, the whole as his compensation. It need scarcely be added, that where it was in his power to attend the patient, he would only receive his regular professional charge. When the illustrious Zimmerman heard of the services of Dr. Rush during the yellow fever of '93, he wrote to a friend this enthusiastic praise: "Sa conduite a merite que non seulement la ville de Philadelphie, mais l'lmmanite entiere, lui eleve une statue." But Dr. Rush, himself, artlessly gave the best encomium on his services at this period, in a dream. Its moral makes it worthy of record, and calls to mind the classic authority of the divine origin of such visions. He was attacked with this same epidemic, and his life was despaired of; he providentially recovered, and whilst convalescent, told a friend who was watching at his bedside, that he thought in the sleep from which he had just awoke, a vast crowd of persons assembled before his front door, and besought him to come and visit their respective sick friends. True to his impressions from previous and trying days, he dreamed that he resisted their intreaties, and somewhat impatiently was about to turn from them and hurry into his carriage, when a poor woman ran forward to him, and, with outstretched hands, said, "O doctor! don't turn away from the poor! You were doomed to die of the yellow fever; but the prayers of the poor were heard by heaven, and have saved your life!" This dream may have increased his fondness for Boerhave's immortal sentiment, that "the poor were his best patients, for God was their paymaster."
The services of Dr. Rush, before and during the war of the revolution, were conspicuous and valuable. He wrote indefatigably in favor of American independence; and, along with John Adams, he persuaded Thomas Paine to undertake with his pen the defence of the colonies. He suggested to Paine the words "Common Sense," as the title of his first political paper. In June, 1776, he was a member of the provincial conference which met in Philadelphia, and on the 23d of that month moved the appointment of a committee to draft an address expressive of the sense of the conference respecting the independence, of the American colonies. Dr. Rush, who, with James Smith and Thomas McKean, had been appointed for this purpose, the next day reported a declaration, which was adopted in the conference, and presented to the American congress the day after. This declaration, similar even in its phraseology, anticipated almost the whole of the Declaration of Independence. It may be found, together with the preceding facts, in the first volume of the Journal of the house of representatives of Pennsylvania. Immediately after this, he was chosen a member of the American congress of '76, and on the 4th day of July, in that year, signed the memorable charter of his country's freedom.

In 1777, he was appointed for the middle department, physician-general of the military hospitals; and, as such, attended his wounded countrymen at the battles of Princeton and Brandywine. In 1787, he was a member of the convention of Pennsylvania for the adoption of the federal constitution. In a letter to a friend in a distant state, dated in October of the same year, he says, "The new federal government will be adopted by our state. It is a masterpiece of human wisdom, and happily accommodated to the present state of society. I now look forward to a golden age. The new constitution realizes every hope of the patriot, and rewards every toil of the hero. My fellow-citizens insist on putting me in the state convention, which will meet on the last Tuesday in next month. Will my mind bear such numerous, complicated, and opposite studies and occupations? I love my country ardently, and have not been idle in promoting her interests during the session of the convention. Every thing published in all our papers, except 'The Foreign Spectator,' during the whole summer, was the effusion of my federal principles. Since the convention has risen, I have been followed by many writers who have great merit. I enclose you some of my paragraphs from Hall and Seller's paper, to be republished in your state." When this convention adjourned, and the plan of the federal constitution was published, he was actively engaged at frequent meetings with the members of the legislature, in fixing the outlines of a new form of state government. 
After the establishment of the federal government, he withdrew altogether from public life and political occupations; devoting himself exclusively to the duties of his profession, its cheerful studies, and its social services. Although the history of his country, and the brief allusion we have made to it, enroll Dr. Rush amongst its pure and efficient patriots, it is as a skilful, humane, and accomplished healer of diseases, that he is to this day most vividly remembered; it is as a medical and moral writer, who so often "adorned" what he "touched," that his memory comes frequently and gratefully to an after age.

Dr. Rush was a public writer for forty-nine years, from the nineteenth to the sixty-eighth year of his age and a public teacher of medicine, from the age of twenty-four, to the end of his life. The brief limit of his present biography, allows but a general notice of the system of medicine which he taught. It differed materially from those of Hoffman, Cullen, and Brown. His chief medical principle was to attend to the state of the system, under every circumstance of age, idiosyncrasy, epidemic, and climate, and prescribe accordingly. He rejected the nosological classification of diseases, upon the ground that they comprehended under their nomenclature an aggregate of variable phenomena, for which remedies varying according to the symptoms of the patient, rather than uniform rules of practice, were to be preferred. He was assured of the efficacy of this system, by an experience, which, in extensive and successful contention with disease, could not have been surpassed. Time, with its proverbial discernment, has adopted his improvements in medicine as familiar truths, and rewards him who taught them with its lasting honor. He also first believed in and promulgated the domestic origin of the yellow fever, a doctrine greatly opposed by his medical contemporaries, and the community in which he lived. Time, in this instance also, has affixed to his opinion the seal of its practical truth. Dr. Chirvin, who, by the direction of the French government, lately collected the opinions of the medical profession in America as to the contagion of the yellow fever, ascertained the ratio of non-contagionists to be five hundred and sixty-seven, to twenty-eight contagionists.

The space allotted to the present biographical notice of Dr. Rush, will not allow a full enumeration of his printed works. The principal of these are, Medical Inquiries and Observations, in four volumes; a volume of Essays, literary, moral, and philosophical; a volume of Lectures, introductory, for the most part, to his course of lectures on the institutes and practice of medicine. He wrote an Inquiry into the effect of public punishments upon criminals and upon society; and soon afterwards, an Essay on the consistency of capital punishments with reason and revelation. His "Inquiry into the effects of ardent spirits upon the body and mind,': is written with all the force of his genius and knowledge. It was published in the form of a pamphlet, and distributed gratuitously among the poor. "Except,'' says one of his biographers, "Dr. Franklin's Way to Wealth, no small publication ever had a more extensive circulation, or did more good." His Essay on the influence of physical causes on the moral faculty, "has been,'' says the same authority, "universally admired as one of the most profound productions of modern times." The last work of Dr. Rush was "Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind," "which," it has been said, " were all his other writings lost, would keep alive the memory of his usefulness." It has been pronounced at once a metaphysical treatise on human understanding; a physiological theory of organic and thinking life; a book of the best maxims to promote wisdom and happiness; in fine, a collection of classical, polite, poetical, and sound literature." He received, during his life, various testimonials of his meritorious services. The board of health of Philadelphia, gave him a massive piece of plate for his gratuitous attendance on the poor, during the epidemic of 1793. In 1805, he received from the king of Prussia a gold medal for his replies to queries on the yellow fever. In 1807, the queen of Etruria presented him with a similar medal for a paper upon the same subject, written at her request. In 1811, he received a diamond ring of great value from the emperor of Russia, as a proof of that monarch's estimation of his medical character and writings. Through the cordiality of a friend, the latter gift was noticed with approbation in the newspapers of the day, and it is remembered that its notoriety gave positive annoyance to the honored and modest subject of it. He was a member of many foreign literary and scientific societies; and for the last sixteen years of his life, was treasurer of the mint of the United States.

Dr. Rush's social qualities were founded in the kindness of his heart, and brightene4 by the polish that his intellect was constantly receiving. The sick found in him their friend and enlivener, as well as their physician. Superior minds sought him for pleasure and for profit. And at the mind of his inferiors, he hesitated not to knock for admission; for all of these, he believed, had something within, however small, that was worth his surveying. He was prompt to discern and assist the efforts of struggling merit, and was emphatically the friend of young men. His religious principles were practical and fervent, they were fostered by the purity and humility of his heart, in deeds of kindness and "good will to men," and in unabating reverence to the word and the ministers of God. To a friend who once asked him if he was not almost tired of promoting new societies he replied, "there is one more I wish to see established, and that is a Bible society." The term was practically unknown in this country, when he thus used it.

In January, 1776, he was married to Julia, the eldest daughter of Richard Stockton, of New Jersey, a member of the American congress of that year. The father and son-in-law were soon doubly united by the enduring national instrument to which they both set their names. Of this marriage, a widow and large family survived him,
Dr. Rush, in person, was above the. middle size, slender, and well proportioned. His forehead was prominent and finely shaped, his eyes blue and very expressive; the rest of his features were regular and comely. All his biographers have described his appearance as dignified and pleasing.

In the undiminished vigor of his mental faculties, in the fullest season of his activity, prosperity, and value, he was seized with an epidemic, termed typhus fever, then prevalent in Philadelphia, and died in that city, after a few days' illness, on the 19th of April, 1813, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. The community regretted his death as a public and serious, loss; and the poor-they who had always been his care, and whom he remembered in his dying words expressed into his house to touch his coffin ere it was laid in the earth. He was buried in Christ's Church graveyard; and with an imagination that foresaw so much, he has, in one of his lectures, spoken prophetically of his own tomb. "Medicine without principles," says he, "is a humble art, and a degrading profession. It reduces the physician to a level with the cook and the nurse, who administer to the appetites and the weakness of sick people. But directed by principles, it imparts the highest elevation to the intellectual and moral condition of man. In spite, therefore, of the obloquy with which they have been treated, let us resolve to cultivate them as long as we live. This, gentlemen, is my determination as long as I am able to totter to this chair; and if a tombstone be afforded after my death to rescue my humble name for a few years from oblivion, I ask no further addition to it, than that I was an advocate for principles in medicine.'" His wish has been fulfilled. A few months ago, the writer of the foregoing sketch saw on Dr. Rush's plain and grass-trodden tomb, the words of this desired "addition," traced by the pencil of some unknown pupil, friend, or admirer.

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


RUSH, Richard, 1780-1859, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, statesman, diplomat.  Founding member, 1816, and Vice-President, 1833-1840, of the American Colonization Society.  Son of abolitionist Benjamin Rush. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 350; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 231; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 30)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 350:

RUSH, Richard, statesman. born in Philadelphia, 29 August, 1780; died there, 30 July, 1859, was graduated at Princeton in 1797, and admitted to the bar of Philadelphia in 1800, and early in his career won distinction by his defence of William Duane, editor of the “Aurora,” on a charge of libelling Governor Thomas McKean. He became solicitor of the guardians of the poor of Philadelphia in 1810, and attorney-general of Pennsylvania in 1811, comptroller of the U. S. treasury in November of the same year, and in 1814-'17 was U. S. attorney-general. He became temporary U. S. secretary of state in 1817, and was then appointed minister to England, where he remained till 1825, negotiating several important treaties, especially that of 1818 with Lord Castlereagh respecting the fisheries, the north west boundary-line, conflicting claims beyond the Rocky mountains, and the slaves of American citizens that were carried off on British ships, contrary to the treaty of Ghent. He was recalled in 1825 to accept the portfolio of the treasury which had been offered him by President Adams, and in 1828 he was a candidate for the vice-presidency on the ticket with Mr. Adams. In 1829 he negotiated in Holland a loan for the corporations of Washington, Georgetown, D. C., and Alexandria, Virginia. He was a commissioner to adjust a boundary dispute between Ohio and Michigan in 1835, and in 1836 was appointed by President Jackson a commissioner to obtain the legacy of James Smithson (q. v.), which he left to found the Smithsonian institution. The case was then pending in the English chancery court, and in August, 1838, Mr. Rush returned with the amount, $508,318.46. He was minister to France in 1847-'51, and in 1848 was the first of the ministers at that court to recognize the new republic, acting in advance of instruction from his government. Mr. Rush began his literary career in 1812, when he was a member of the Madison cabinet, by writing vigorous articles in defence of the second war with England. His relations with John Quincy Adams were intimate, and affected his whole career. He became an anti-Mason in 1831, in 1834 wrote a powerful report against the Bank of the United States, and ever afterward co-operated with the Democratic party. He was a member of the American philosophical society. His publications include “Codification of the Laws of the United States” (5 vols., Philadelphia, 1815); “Narrative of a Residence at the Court of London from 1817 till 1825” (London, 1833); a second volume of the same work, “Comprising Incidents, Official and Personal, from 1819 till 1825” (1845; 3d ed., under the title of the “Court of London from 1819 till 1825, with Notes by the Author's Nephew,” 1873); “Washington in Domestic Life,” which consists of personal letters from Washington to his private secretary, Colonel Tobias Lear, and some personal recollections (1857); and a volume of “Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic, and Miscellaneous, including a Glance at the Court and Government of Louis Philippe, and the French Revolution of 1848,” published by his sons (1860). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


RUSSELL, George W., Worcester, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1836-37.


RUSSELL, Philemon R., West Boylston.  Manager, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. 

(Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)


RUSSWURM, John Brown, 1799-1851, African American, anti-slavery newspaper editor.  Co-editor of Freedom’s Journal, with Samuel Cornish.  Became senior editor in 1827.  Freedom’s Journal was the first newspaper in the United States to be owned, edited and published by African Americans.  Later, editor of Rights of All.  Russwurm originally supported colonization and he emigrated to Liberia in 1829.  From 1830-1834, he was Colonial Secretary.  There he published the Liberia Herald.  He was Governor of the Maryland Colony from 1836 until his death in 1851.  The Maryland Colony was founded by the Maryland State Colonization Society. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 50-52, 90-91, 114, 122-125, 127-130, 132-134, 136-137, 141-145, 152, 165; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 329; Sagarin, 1970; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 253-254; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 117.). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 253:

RUSSWURM, JOHN BROWN (October 1, 1799-June 17, 1851), first superintendent of public schools in Liberia and governor of the Colony of Maryland, was born at Port Antonio, Jamaica. He was the son of a white American and a colored woman. When his father left the island, he put the boy in school in Canada. The father afterward married a white woman in Maine, who learned of the existence of the boy, then called John Brown. She insisted that he join the family and assume his father's name. After the death of the father and her remarriage, she still cared carefully for the boy. He was sent to school in Maine and eventually entered Bowdoin College, where he graduated in 1826. He was reported by his classmates to have been a young man of sound intelligence, a great reader with a special fondness for history and politics (Cleaveland, post, p. 354). He was probably the first person of acknowledged African descent to finish an American college course. He settled in New York City, where in 1827 he established one of the first colored papers in the United States, Freedom's Journal. His paper espoused the abolitionists' cause and opposed emigration to Africa; but after a time he changed his mind and said: "We consider it mere waste of words to talk of ever enjoying citizenship in this country" (African Repository, December 1851, p. 357).

Thereupon, he emigrated to Liberia in 1829 to become superintendent of public schools and to carry on trade. From 1830 to 1834 he acted as colonial secretary, editing and publishing at the same time the Liberia Herald. In 1836 he was appointed governor of the Maryland Colony at Cape Palmas, a position he held until his death in 1851. The Maryland Colony was established under the auspices of the Maryland State Colonization Society. The territory there was obtained through James Hall, a friend and schoolmate of Russwurm. The president of the society bore the testimony as to how well Russwurm discharged his difficult duty in averting the perils of the surrounding savage tribes, in quieting the controversies of civilized and angry white men, and resisting unreasonable popular clamor among the colonists (Cleaveland, post, pp. 353-54). Although the Maryland Colony was distinct from Liberia, Russwurm worked in careful collaboration with Joseph J. Roberts [q. v.] of Liberia and was instrumental in the final union of the two colonies. Even before an actual union, they acted together in foreign affairs and established a common customs tariff. Russwurm encouraged agriculture and trade, built a stone jail that could also be used as a fort, took a census in 1843, and established a court with presiding justices. He married a daughter of Lieutenant-Governor McGill of Monrovia and at his death in 1851 left four children.

[African Repository, esp. July 1846, November, December 1851; Nehemiah Cleaveland and A. S. Packard, Hist, of Bowdoin College (1882); General Catalog of Bowdoin College (1912); Archibald Alexander, A History of Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa (1846); H. H. Johnston, Liberia (1906), volume I; W. E. B. Du Bois, "The College-bred Negro," Atlanta University Pubs., no. 5 (1900).]

W E. B. D-B.


RUST, Richard Sutton (September 12, 1815- December 22, 1906), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, educator.  He entered Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and was expelled with several students who refused to resign from an anti-slavery society. He then became a student at Canaan, New Hampshire, an academy which admitted negroes. When local opposition closed this, he went to Wilbraham Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and from there to Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, from which he received the degree of A.B. in 1841. While a student he earned money by giving anti-slavery lectures.  In 1859, he was made president of Wilberforce University, a school for negroes, serving until it was sold to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1863. During the Civil War he became early member of the Contraband Relief Association, later the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 253-254:

RUST, RICHARD SUTTON (September 12, 1815- December 22, 1906), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, educator, was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, the son of Nathaniel Rust, Jr., and his second wife, Mary (Sutton) Kimball. He was descended from Henry Rust who emigrated from England and settled in Hingham, Massachusetts, as early as 1635. Richard's father, a cordwainer and dealer in boots and shoes, died when the boy was but six years old; his mother, when he was nine. He tried working on an uncle's farm, then cabinetmaking, but, eager for an education, he bought back a part of his time of apprenticeship and entered Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. Expelled with several students who refused to resign from an anti-slavery society, he became a student at Canaan, New Hampshire, in an academy which admitted negroes. When local opposition closed this, he went to Wilbraham Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and from there to Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, from which he received the degree of A.B. in 1841. While a student he earned money by giving anti-slavery lectures. He was received into the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church on trial in 1844, and ordained elder in 1846. During a pastorate in Worcester, Massachusetts, he founded and edited The American Pulpit (1845-48), a collection of sermons including a few of his own. Transferred to the New Hampshire Conference in 1846, he became principal of the New Hampshire Conference Seminary (now Tilton School) and state school commissioner. He made some improvements in the school system, but soon returned to preaching. In 1841 he married Sarah A. Hubbard; after her death he married, in 1875, Elizabeth A. Lownes.

Rust's early concern for the negro became his dominating interest. Transferred to the Cincinnati Conference in 1859, he was made president of Wilberforce University, a school for negroes, serving until it was sold to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1863. For the next two years he was president of Wesleyan Female College, Cincinnati. He shared the intense local interest in the early Contraband Relief Association, later the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission, of which he became corresponding secretary in 1865. When, finally, the many relief societies were united into the American Freedman’s Union Commission, Rust became a member of the western branch of the executive committee. He soon grew dissatisfied with the work of this large, undenominational body, however, for he was sectarian in his interests, violently prejudiced against the "Romanists," and insisted that the mission of the teacher sent to the South was to evangelize as well as educate. He therefore helped to organize the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, at Cincinnati, in 1866, served as its general field agent for two years, and then as corresponding secretary for over twenty years. He vigorously directed and helped in the work of securing funds, overseeing schools in operation and suggesting improvements, selecting sites for new schools, planning buildings, and keeping the needs of the society constantly before the laity. One of these schools, Rust University at Holly Springs, Mississippi, was renamed for him. It was estimated in 1882 that the teachers sent out from these institutions had taught more than three-fourths of a million children. When, in 1892, he finally retired, he was still alert, impressive though grizzled in appearance, and forceful in address. He died in Cincinnati in his ninety-second year. His publications include: Freedom's Gifts: or Sentiments of the Free (1840), a compilation, including two contributions of his own; Met hod of Introducing Religion into Common Schools (n.d.); and The Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal, Church (1880); he also edited and contributed to Isaac W. Wiley, Late Bishop of the M. E. Church, a Monograph (1885).

[J. M. Buckley, A History of Methodists in the U. S. (1896); A. D. Rust, Record of the Rust Family Embracing the Descendants of Henry Rust (privately printed, 1891); Matthew Simpson, ed., Cyclopedia of Methodism (5th ed., 1882); The Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio of the Nineteenth Century (1876); Annual Catalog, Rust University, 1889- 90; Wiley College Announcements, I924-25; Alumni Record of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut (1921); American Freedman, April 1866.]

H. R. S.


RUTGERS, Henry, 1745-1830, New York, real estate magnate, philanthropist, colonel.  Founding officer, Vice President, 1816, officer, New York auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.  Namesake of Rutgers University.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 355; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 255; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 30, 40, 80)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 355.


RYCRAFT, John, rescued fugitive slaves Joshua Glover from jail in Wisconsin in 1854.  He was arrested, tried and convicted under provisions of the Federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.  His conviction was overturned in Wisconsin Supreme Court, 1854-1855.


RYLAND, Robert (March 14, 1805-April23, 1899), Baptist clergyman, educator.  In addition to his college work, he labored among the negroes of Richmond, serving as pastor of the First African Church from 1841 to 1865, during which time nearly four thousand members were added to the church roll. The catechism he wrote for his unlettered members required only two answers, "yes" or "no," with a passage of scripture to be memorized to support the answer. Many of the leaders of the negroes in Richmond in the early decades of their struggle up from slavery gratefully acknowledged their indebtedness to him.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 272-273:

RYLAND, ROBERT (March 14, 1805-April23, 1899), Baptist clergyman, educator, was the son of Josiah and Catharine (Peachey) Ryland of "Farmington,'' King and Queen County, Virginia. From 1820 to 1823 he was a student at Humanity Hall Academy, conducted by Peter Nelson in Hanover County, and in 1826 he was graduated from Columbian College, Washington, D. C. Entering the Baptist ministry, he accepted a call to the Second Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. When, in 1832, the Baptists established at Richmond the Virginia Baptist Seminary to educate young men for the ministry, he was placed in charge. No detail of direction was too minute for his watchful care. He recruited likely students as he drove through the state, combining the mission of preacher and teacher. When the Seminary was chartered as Richmond College in 1840, he was made president and continued to direct its affairs with fidelity to two principles he had adopted-to keep the college out of debt and to make no educational claims that he was not able to substantiate. When the Civil War interrupted its logical development, the faculty, student body, buildings, and endowment attested his successful and constructive leadership.

In addition to his college work, he labored among the negroes of Richmond, serving as pastor of the First African Church from 1841 to 1865, during which time nearly four thousand members were added to the church roll. The catechism he wrote for his unlettered members required only two answers, "yes" or "no," with a passage of scripture to be memorized to support the answer. Many of the leaders of the negroes in Richmond in the early decades of their struggle up from slavery had been taught their standards in life by him and gratefully acknowledged their indebtedness. When the war was over, he resigned in the belief that the church would prefer a preacher of the negro race, an arrangement not hitherto permitted under Virginia law.

Before the war, in an address published under the title The American Union (1857), he had advised against the defense of slavery as right in the abstract, though he saw in the institution a means used by God to teach the negroes the Christian religion. He favored colonization in Africa, was opposed to disunion, counseled compromise on the part of the South, and recommended abstinence from all agitation on the subject of the "peculiar institution." He supported the Confederacy, however; devoted his time and resources to the care of wounded soldiers; invested his own savings in the Confederate cause, and advised the investment of the endowment funds of Richmond College in Confederate bonds. In 1866, feeling that younger minds should direct the affairs of a college to serve the new generation,  he resigned the presidency of Richmond College: Subsequently he accepted a position to teach in the National Theological School for negro preachers in Richmond, and  was connected, also, with the Richmond Female Institute, a Baptist school for girls. In 1868 he moved to Kentucky to become president of the Shelbyville Female College, served a similar institution at Lexington (1871-78), and another at New Castle (1878-81). He spent succeeding years with a daughter in Lexington, and in 1893, when nearly ninety years old, became chaplain of Southwest Virginia Institute, at Bristol, acting in that capacity for four years.

His published books and pamphlets include Baptism for the Remission of Sins (1836); A Scripture Catechism for the Instruction of Children and Servants (1848); Lect1tres on the Apocalypse (1857); The Virginia Baptist Educational Society: The Society-The Seminary-The College (1891); and "A Sketch of the Life of the Late Reverend Robert Baylor Semple," in the Virginia Baptist Preacher (Richmond), April 1852. His first wife, whom he married in 1830, was Josephine, daughter of Thomas Norvell of Richmond; she died in 1846, and he later married Betty Presley Thornton, daughter of Anthony and Ann Thornton of Caroline County. There were four children by the first marriage and three by the second.

[Papers and letters of Ryland are in the possession of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, University of Richmond; his Virginia Baptist Etc. Society: the Society: the Seminary-the College, with intro. by C H. Ryland, gives an account of his services as president of Richmond College; see also, H. A. Tupper, The First Century of the First Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia (1880); G. B. Taylor, Virginia Baptist Ministers (4 series, 1913); M. C. A. Cabell, Sketches and Recollections of Lynchburg (1858); Times (Richmond), April 25, 1899; G. B. Taylor, Life and Times of James B. Taylor (copyright 1872).]

M. H. W.


RYLAND, William, Washington, DC, American Colonization Society, Manager, 1833-1834. 

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

[1] In the present sketch of the life of Dr. Rush, we are indebted to Dr. Ramsay's Eulogium upon him, as well as to the memoir of him in the Biography of the signers to the Declaration of Independence, for various details which those excellent productions have made familiar to the public; in several instances, the phraseology of their recitals has been necessarily and willingly adopted.

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.