Ste: Stearns through Stewart

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.


STEARNS, Frank Preston, 1846-1917, writer, abolitionist.  Worked with abolitionist leader Elizur Wright.  Member of and active in American Anti-Slavery Society. 

(Stearns, 1907)


STEARNS, George Luther, 1809-1867, Medford, Massachusetts, merchant, industrialist, Free Soil supporter, abolitionist.  Chief supporter of the Emigrant Aid Company which financed anti-slavery settlers in the Kansas Territory.  Founded the Nation, Commonwealth, and Right of Way newspapers.  Member of the “Secret Six” who secretly financially supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859.  Recruited African Americans for the all-Black 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiments, U.S. Army. 

(Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, p. 268; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 207, 327, 338; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 655; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 543). 

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 655:

STEARNS, George Luther, merchant, born in Medford, Massachusetts, 8 January, 1809; died in New York, 9 April, 1867. His father, Luther, was a teacher of reputation. In early life his son engaged in the business of ship-chandlery, and after a prosperous career undertook the manufacture of sheet and pipe-lead, doing business in Boston and residing in Medford. He identified himself with the anti-slavery cause, became a Free-Soiler in 1848, aided John Brown in Kansas, and supported him till his death. Soon after the opening of the Civil War Mr. Stearns advocated the enlistment of Negroes in the National Army. The 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments, and the 5th Cavalry (colored), were largely recruited through his instrumentality. He was commissioned major through the recommendation of Secretary of War Stanton, and was of great service to the National cause by enlisting Negroes for the volunteer service in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Tennessee. He was the founder of the “Commonwealth” and “Right of Way” newspapers for the dissemination of his ideas. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 655.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 543:

STEARNS, GEORGE LUTHER (January 8, 1809-April 9, 1867),. Free-Soiler, was born in Medford, Massachusetts, the eldest son of Luther and Mary (Hall) Stearns and the descendant of Charles Stearns who became a freeman of Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1646. Such formal education as the boy received was in a preparatory school for boys established by his father, a physician. At the age of fifteen he began his business career in Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1827 entered a ship chandlery firm in Boston. and in 1835 returned to Medford to manufacture linseed oil and to marry, on January 31, 1836, Mary Ann Train. He became a Unitarian and was prominent in church activities. After the death of his wife in 1840, he reentered business in Boston, at first with a ship-chandlery company but later, very successfully, as a manufacturer of lead pipe. By 1840 he felt strongly enough on the subject of slavery to support James G. Birney and the Liberty party. His marriage, on October 12, 1843, to Mary Elizabeth Preston probably furthered his interest in the anti-slavery cause for his wife was a niece of Lydia Maria Child [q.v.]. In 1848, as a Conscience Whig, he liberally supported the Free-soil campaign with his money. He was greatly disturbed by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 and is known to have aided at least one slave to escape. He was among the leaders in the movement that put Charles Sumner in the federal Senate, and later, as a member of the famous Bird Club, he played a considerable part in the rise of the Republican party in Massachusetts, becoming particularly interested in the political fortunes of his friend John A. Andrew.

He was in the group that, in 1856, raised a subscription to equip the free state forces in Kansas with Sharpe's rifles. The subsequently successful operations of the Kansas committee of Massachusetts, of which he became chairman, were largely due to the willingness with which he contributed his time and money. In 1857 he met John Brown and made him the committee's agent to receive the arms and ammunition for the defense of Kansas and also aided in purchasing a farm for the Brown family at North Elba, New York Indeed, from this time on Stearns practically put his purse at Brown's disposal. That he ever appreciated Brown's responsibility for the murders on the Potawatomi is doubtful, but in March 1858 Brown confided to him the general outline of his proposed raid into Virginia, an enterprise that Stearns approved, as did S. G. Howe, Theodore Parker, T. W. Higginson and Franklin B. Sanborn [qq.v.]. These five men constituted an informal committee in Massachusetts to aid Brown in whatever attack he might make on slavery. Stearns acted as treasurer for the enterprise in New England. Gerrit Smith of New York and Martin F. Conway of Kansas were also in the secret. Stearns, however, does not appear to have known just when and where Brown proposed to strike, and the blow at Harpers Ferry took him by surprise. On learning of Brown's capture he authorized two prominent Kansas jayhawkers to go to Brown's relief if they thought they could effect his rescue. Stearns himself, becoming somewhat apprehensive of the attitude of the Federal government, fled with Howe to Canada. He soon returned, however, and appeared before the Mason committee of the Senate that was investigating the Brown conspiracy. No further action was taken by the government respecting Stearns.

During the Civil War, upon Governor Andrew's authorization he recruited many negro soldiers for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiments, especially from the middle and western states. So satisfactory were his efforts that in the summer of 1863 Secretary Stanton commissioned him as major with headquarters in Philadelphia and directed him to recruit colored regiments for the Federal government. A few months later he was sent to Nashville, where he successfully continued his work until a misunderstanding with Stanton led him to resign from the army early in 1864. In 1865 he established the Right Way, a paper that supported radical Republican policies, particularly negro suffrage, and attained a circulation of 60,000, largely at his expense. He died of pneumonia while on a business trip to New York.

[F. P. Stearns, The Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns (1907) and Cambridge Sketches (1905); O. G Villard, John Brown (1910); J. F. Rhodes, History of the U.S., volume II (1892); Sen. Report, No. 278, 36 Congress, 1 Session (1860); A. S. Van Wagenen, Genealogy and Memoirs of Charles and Nathaniel Stearns, and Their Descendants (1901).]

W.R.W.  


STEARNS, Oliver (July 3, 1807-July 18, 1885), Unitarian clergyman and theologian.  As a minister Stearns won distinction by a profundity of thought matured in studious seclusion and by the ethical passion of his anti-slavery utterances. One of the earlier of his publications was The Gospel as Applied to the Fugitive Slave Law (1851).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 546-547:

STEARNS, OLIVER (July 3, 1807-July 18, 1885), Unitarian clergyman and theologian, born in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, was through his father, Major Thomas Stearns, descended from Isaac Stearns, who was admitted freeman of Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1631. Through his mother, Priscilla, daughter of Hon. Charles Cushing of Hingham, Massachusetts, he was a descendant of Charles Chauncy [q.v.], the second president of Harvard College. He was a nephew of Asahel Stearns [q.v.], and uncle of Luther Stearns Cushing [q.v.]. educated in the Lunenburg district school with added tutoring from the local clergyman and a term in the academy at New Ipswich, New Hampshire, he entered Harvard College at the age of fifteen and graduated in 1826, ranking second in his class. After a year of teaching in a private school in Jamaica Plain, he was influenced by William Ellery Channing [q.v.] to enter the Harvard Divinity School, combining study there with the office, for two years, of tutor in mathematics in the college. Graduating in 1830, he was ordained pastor of the Second Congregational Society (Unitarian), Northampton, Massachusetts, and remained there until April 1, 1839, when, on account of ill health, he resigned. Unable, because of his health, to accept a call to Newburyport, he later became pastor of the Third Congregational Society in Hingham, Massachusetts, where he was installed in April 1840, and where he remained sixteen years. As a minister Stearns won distinction by a profundity of thought matured in studious seclusion and by the ethical passion of his anti-slavery utterances. One of the earlier of his infrequent publications was The Gospel as Applied to the Fugitive Slave Law (1851). There were occasions when irritated listeners walked out while he was preaching. 

During his Hingham pastorate he developed a theological method reconciling the older Unitarian thought with the newer Transcendentalism, and he found his truer vocation when, in 1856, he became president of the Meadville Theological School, Meadville, Pennsylvania. His eminent success in that office led in 1863 to his appointment to the Parkman Professorship of pulpit eloquence and pastoral care in the Harvard Divinity School, in succession to Convers Francis [q.v.], and to a lectureship in Christian theology in succession to George E. Ellis [q.v.]. Here, in association with Frederic Hedge and James Freeman Clarke [qq.v. ], he modernized the older Unitarian tradition of the school. When President Eliot reorganized the school in 1870, Stearns was given the office of dean, and under the title of Parkman Professor of Theology, taught systematic theology and ethics. In 1878, aged seventy-one, he resigned, and lived in retirement in Cambridge until his death: On May 14, 1832, he was married to Mary Blood, daughter of Hon. Thomas H. and Mary (Sawyer) Blood of Sterling, Massachusetts; she died on June 10, 1871, and on July 2, 1872, he married Mrs. Augusta Hannah (Carey) Bailey. By his first wife he had six sons and two daughters.

Stearns was probably the first theologian in America to profess belief in evolution as a cosmic law, even before Herbert Spencer's adoption of the idea, though his own interest was in establishing a theory of historical development for Christian thought. His purpose was to unite the old dependence on Biblical revelation with the Transcendentalist reliance on present intuition, and at the same time, to find a relative justification of doctrines elaborated in stages of Christian history. After a preliminary effort in "Peace Through Conflict" (Monthly Religious Magazine, November 1851) he published further articles (Christian Examiner, September 1853, September 1856), in which he asserted that this progressive development is a story of intuitive reason interpreting revelation, with a safeguard against private aberration by the intention to seek truth in the light of the Holy Catholic Church. This development is more than a human process. The divine is immanent in it. Man's growing spiritual experience is an "evolution of the divine life through human nature." In support of this view, in 1856 he adopted from Earth and Man (1849), by Arnold Guyot [q.v.], the formulation due to von Baer, that "in the evolution of nature, the point of departure is a homogeneous unit, that the progress is diversification, that the end is an organic or harmonic unit" (Christian Examiner, September 1856, p. 174). The same law, Stearns held, governed the history "not only of Christian theology, but of that Christian life which gives theology the law of its form and the sap of its growth" (Ibid.). In his Meadville instruction, he af plied this thought with imperfect consistency and with a version of Christian beginnings now supplanted by modern criticism. In his Harvard period, ever receptive to new currents of thought, he assimilated. some of that criticism, as is evidenced in a paper dealing with the Messianic consciousness of Jesus ("The Aim and Hope of Jesus," Christianity and Modern Thought, 1872), the last of his rare publications.

[A. S. Van Wagenen, Genealogy and Memoirs of Isaac Stearns and His Descendants (1901); A. P.. Peabody, Harvard Reminiscences (1888); Unitarian Review, October 1885; Christian Register, July 30, 1885; S. A. Eliot, Heralds of a Liberal Faith (1910), volume III; F. A. Christie, The Makers of the Meadville Theological School; 1927); Boston Transcript, July 20, 22, 1885.]

F.A.C.


STEARNS, Robert Edwards Carter (February 1, 1827-July 27, 1909), naturalist. As acting editor of the Pacific Methodist he strongly upheld the Union cause in the Civil War and exerted an influence in California, which was significant.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 547-548:

STEARNS, ROBERT EDWARDS CARTER (February 1, 1827-July 27, 1909), naturalist; was born in Boston, Massachusetts; the son of Charles and Sarah (Carter) Stearns. His paternal grandfather was the Reverend Charles Stearns of Lincoln, mentioned by Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, and his first American ancestor was Charles Stearns who became a freeman at Watertown in 1646. His love of nature, intense from childhood, was fortunately appreciated and shared by his father and the two were frequently tramping and hunting companions. His education in the Boston public schools, often interrupted by poor health, was followed by mercantile training, but his artistic bent led him, in 1849, to paint a panorama of the Hudson River in a canvas 900 feet long and eight feet wide. He was married to Mary Ann Libby, the daughter of Oliver Libby of Boston, on March 28, 1850. About this time he engaged in the investigation of certain Indiana coal fields, and in 1854 became resident agent for several copper mines in northern Michigan. But mining proved a passing interest, and after he lost his income in the panic of 1857, Stearns sold his Dover farm and migrated to California. He became a partner in a San Francisco printing business and later attempted independent publication, his first paper in 1859 being a prophetic article on the value of the sugar-beet for California. As acting editor of the Pacific Methodist he strongly upheld the Union cause in the Civil War and exerted an influence in the state said to have been far from negligible. Possessing considerable administrative capacity he became deputy clerk of the California supreme court, 1862-63, and secretary to the State Board of Harbor Commissioners, 1863-68. Resigning because of ill health he spent the next two years in the East. Stearns returned to California to serve as secretary to the Board of Regents of the University of California in 1874, and supervised the dignified landscaping of the old campus until illness again impelled his retirement.

Even as a boy Stearns had become interested in collecting shells. His first zoological publication was a list of mollusks of Bolinas Bay (Proceedings of the California Academy of the Natural Sciences, volume III, 1868). He likewise actively participated in the work of the young and struggling Academy of Natural Sciences, which he joined in 1864, holding many of its offices, and helping to prevent its dissolution after the earthquake of 1868. Thenceforth his scientific labors, particularly in the study of conchology, were unremitting. In 1869 he participated in a zoological expedition to Florida, and after another ten years again went east. In 1882 he was engaged in research for the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. In 1884 he was appointed paleontologist to the United States Geological Survey by John Wesley Powell, and assistant curator of mollusks in the National Museum by Spencer F. Baird [qq.v.]. In 1892 he settled in Los Angeles where he lived in semi-invalidism until his death. He was survived by one daughter.

Essentially a naturalist of the old school he will long be remembered as one of that group of earnest pioneer students of the Californian fauna which included Joseph Le Conte, James G. Cooper, William H. Dall [qq.v.], and others. A bibliography of his writings lists about 160 titles, mainly concerning molluscan systematics and distribution, but including several on coelenterates and others appertaining to ethnology, agriculture, and forestry. His was the foundational work on the interesting fossil land-snails of the John Day beds in Oregon. Although he suffered often from depression, Stearns's outstanding characteristics were vivacity, enthusiasm, versatility, a lively sense of humor, and a deep attachment to friends, especially exemplified in an intense and enduring love for his father. He became a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1874. Numerous mollusca and other animals, living and extinct, commemorate his name. His collection of mollusks was acquired by the National Museum.

[Who's Who in America, 1908-09; Avis Stearns Van Wagenen, Genealogy and Memoirs of Charles and Nathaniel Stearns, and Their Descendants (1901); M. R. Stearns, Robert Edwards Carter Stearns, privately printed (n.d.), and "Bibliography of Scientific Writings of E. C, Stearns," with a biographical sketch by W, H. Dall, Smithsonian Misc. Collections, volume LVI (1012): W. H. Dall, "Dr. R. E. C. Stearns," Nautilus, October 1909; Los Angeles Daily Times, July 29, 1909.]

S.S.B


STEARNS, William Augustus (March 17, 1805-June 8, 1876), Congregational clergyman, president of Amherst College,  The period of the 1830’s was characterized by increasing heat over the slavery issue and the Stearns brought much obloquy on himself by condemning the extreme measures of the abolitionists although he preserved a consistent attitude of opposition to slavery.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 549:

STEARNS, WILLIAM AUGUSTUS (March 17, 1805-June 8, 1876), Congregational clergyman, president of Amherst College, was born at Bedford, near Concord, Massachusetts, his parents being the Reverend Samuel Horatio and Abigail (French) Stearns. Eben Sperry Stearns [q.v.] was a younger brother. Through his father his ancestry ran back to Isaac Stearns who emigrated to Salem in 1630 and was admitted freeman of Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1631. Descended through both parents from distinguished leaders of the Congregational Church, he early felt himself destined to the ministry. The family consisted of eleven children who lived to reach adult estate and the problem of giving the five boys and six girls the benefit of "the New England system of education in ministers' families, viz: pure air, simple diet and a solid training in knowledge, human and divine" (Tyler, Discourse, post, p. 12) on an annual stipend which never exceeded five hundred dollars, in almost forty years of service, must have been a great one, but it was successfully met. The boys were all sent to Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and four of them were later graduated at Harvard College, William in the class of 1827. He then entered Andover Theological Seminary, where he became one of a group of unusually able young men, all of whom later fulfilled their early promise.

While he was still a student at Andover he preached occasionally to a small and weak congregation in Cambridgeport, and on his graduation he was invited to become its pastor. His friends protested that his talents entitled him to a more important charge, but, interpreting the call as evidence of divine will, he accepted it and was ordained December 14, 1831. The pastorate lasted twenty--three years and was singularly successful, the weak and despised mission becoming one of the most prosperous and efficient of all the churches in the vicinity of Boston. The period was characterized by increasing heat over the slavery issue and the young clergyman brought much obloquy on himself by condemning the extreme measures of the abolitionists although he preserved a consistent attitude of opposition to slavery.

His success as a pastor and especially the fruitfulness of his work among his younger parishioners led, in 1854, to his selection as the fourth president of Amherst College, a call he was moved to accept in spite of many misgivings. Thus he began his long term of service in the field of education which was to last until his sudden death at Amherst twenty-two years later. His kindly and urbane manner and the very evident sincerity of his moral character combined to captivate and hold the affections of faculty and students alike. He proved to be an exceptionally strong administrator and greatly increased the material wealth of the College while at the same time the curriculum was enriched and broadened. He was in great demand as a preacher on notable occasions and his sermons were generally printed at the request and expense of his hearers. He also wrote a considerable number of pamphlets on educational and missionary affairs. His only books were: Life of Reverend Samuel H. Stearns (3rd and enlarged edition, 1846), Infant Church Membership, or the Relation of Baptized Children to the Church (1844), and Adjutant Stearns (copyright 1862), a short life of a son, Frazar Augustus, killed in the Civil War. He was a member of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and a trustee of Phillips Academy, and of Andover Theological Seminary. He held the presidency of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society from 1859 to 1876 and was influential in the counsels of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

On January 10, 1832, he married Rebecca Alden Frazar of Duxbury, Massachusetts, by whom he had three sons and three daughters; after her death, July 19, 1855, he married, in August 1857, Olive Coit Gilbert of Providence, Rhode Island.

[A. S. Van Wagenen, Genealogy and Memoirs of Isaac Stearns and His Descendants (1901); W. S. Tyler, Discourse Commemorative of the Late President Stearns (1877) and A History of Amherst College (1895); C. M. Fuess, Men of Andover (1928); Springfield Daily Republican, June 9, 1876; Congregational Quarterly, July 1877, pp. 425-26; information from descendants.]

F.L.T.


STEBBINS, Giles B., Wisconsin, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1850-1851, 1851-1852, Manager, 1852-1853.


STEBBINS, Horatio (August 8, 1821-April 8, 1902), Unitarian clergyman. After the death, in 1864, of Thomas Starr King [q. v.], one of the most influential and beloved men on the Pacific Coast, the members of the Unitarian Church in San Francisco chose Stebbins to succeed him.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 549-550:

STEBBINS, HORATIO (August 8, 1821-April 8, 1902), Unitarian clergyman, was born at South Wilbraham, Massachusetts, the son of Calvin and Amelia. (Adams) Stebbins, and a descendant of Rowland Stebbins who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1634 and settled successively in Roxbury, Springfield, and Northampton.  Horatio's mother died when he was six years old and his father married again. The boy's early education, broken by periods of farm work and teaching, was completed at Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1846. Entering Harvard, he graduated in the class of 1848. While there he made a hundred dollars by raising a crop of potatoes on a plot of ground where one of the college buildings now stands. He remained at Harvard as a student in the Divinity School until 1851, in which year, June 3, he married Mary Ann, daughter of Samuel and Mary (Bowman) Fisher of Northboro, Massachusetts. On the fifth of the following November he was ordained and installed as colleague of Reverend Calvin Lincoln at the Unitarian Church, Fitchburg, Massachusetts. After a successful ministry here, he became on January 31, 1855, the associate of Dr. Ichabod Nichols at the First Church, Portland, Maine, succeeding him as pastor when Nichols died in 1859.

 After the death, in 1864, of Thomas Starr King [q. v.], one of the most influential and beloved men on the Pacific Coast, the members of the Unitarian Church in San Francisco chose Stebbins to succeed him. Accepting the call, Stebbins left his comfortable and well established Portland parish for the more primitive conditions of the Far West. Sailing for California by the way of Panama, he arrived on September 7, 1864, and for the next thirty-five years was an acknowledged force in the development of the state. After more than three decades of service he said with truth: "I have not withheld my hand or my heart as a minister, a man, or a citizen from any human interest, within the reach of limited capacity and prescribed duty" (Thirty-one Years of. California, 1895, pp. 21, 22). Though quite different from the magnetic King, he was himself a striking personality. His physical appearance attracted attention everywhere, for he was a big, towering man, dignified in bearing and polished in manners. Independent, intellectually honest, direct and forceful in speech, and possessing an organlike voice, he was likely to be the principal speaker at any important gathering. He had, furthermore, the faith, the patience, the indifference to both praise and censure, and the broad culture needed in the California leaders of his time. His influence stands out most conspicuously in the educational field. The year after his arrival in San Francisco he was made a trustee of the College of California and soon became president of the board. He strongly supported the establishment of a state university, and when the Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College was projected, the trustees of the College of California offered to cede its property to the state with the condition that a college of liberal arts be maintained. Without Stebbins' "planning wisdom and public skill the acceptance of the proposals ... would probably not have been gained from the State" (Ferrier, post, p. 467). He was given a place on the first board of regents of the University and had an important part in its management until 1894. He was a friend and adviser of Leland Stanford [q.v.], helped in the formation of Stanford University, and became one of its trustees. Named by the will of James Lick [q.v.] as a trustee of the California School of Mechanical Arts, he was for many years active in the affairs of that institution. A serious heart trouble compelled him to resign his pastorate in January 1900. Returning to the East, he died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a little more than two years later, his body being taken to Portland, Maine, for burial. His first wife, by whom he had three children, died in February 1875 and on November 9, 1876, he married Lucy Ward, daughter of Doliver and Eliza Ann (Wilbray) Ward of Chicago, by whom he had a son and a daughter. Several of his addresses were published and selections from his writings are contained in Horatio Stebbins: His Ministry and Personality (1921), by Charles A. Murdock.


[In addition to the two works mentioned above, see R. S. and R. L. Greenlee, The Stebbins Genealogy (1904); Unitarian Year Book, 1902; S. A. Eliot, Heralds of a Liberal Faith (1910), volume III; W.W. Ferrier, Origin and Development of the University of California (1930); University Chronicle, July 1902; Christian Register, April 17, 1902; San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 1902.]

H. E. S.


STEBBINS, Rufus Phineas (March 3, 1810-August 13, 1885), Unitarian clergyman, preached against slavery.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 550-551:

STEBBINS, RUFUS PHINEAS (March 3, 1810-August 13, 1885), Unitarian clergyman, was a descendant of Rowland Stebbins, or Stebbing, a native of Cambridge, England, who in 1634 emigrated to Roxbury, Massachusetts, and later moved to Springfield. A descendant, Stephen, became a farmer in South Wilbraham in 1741, and his great-grandson Rufus Phineas, second son of Luther and Lucina (Stebbins) Stebbins, was born there. Meager schooling with farm labor was the lot of his athletic and buoyant youth, when, as his cousin Horatio Stebbins [q.v.] reports, "he could spring upon a horse's back from the ground, and ride like the wind without pad or saddle" (Unitarian Review, post, p. 437). After belated preparation in Wilbraham Academy, he graduated with distinction from Amherst College in 1834, and after three years in the Harvard Divinity School was ordained as pastor of the Congregational Church in Leominster, Massachusetts, September 20, 1837, nine days after his marriage to Eliza Clarke Livermore of Cambridge. In his own later words, he came to the parish "all ablaze with enthusiasm, flaming with zeal to correct all evils and perfect all good in a day ... restless, dissatisfied, aggressive, belligerent" (Reverend Calvin Lincoln: Sermon Preached ... September 18, 1881, 1882), and the energy of his denunciation of slavery, intemperance, and war provoked some temporary opposition. This vanished in view of his religious fervor and pastoral efficiency, and though austere in censure of innocent youthful amusements, he developed a crowded Sunday school, for whose forty-one teachers he conducted fortnightly training classes. He also received private pupils in his home, among them his cousin Horatio, and Thomas Hill [q.v.], afterwards president of Harvard University.

In 1844 Stebbins became the first president of the Theological School of Meadville, Pennsylvania, then founded in the interest of the Unitarians and the Christian Connection, serving also as pastor of the Meadville Unitarian Church until 1849. Robust energy of body and mind enabled him to accomplish a creative work in administration and teaching. He had a magisterial comprehension of the full range of knowledge, which found expression in an initial address in Meadville, October 24, 1844, and in Academic Culture (1851), an address delivered before the students of Allegheny College. Resigning in 1856, he sought rest in Cambridge, but on April 30, 1857, he began a new pastorate in Woburn, Massachusetts. Here his notable public service on the school board of the town and the emotional power and ethical emphasis of his pulpit eloquence won adherents to his church, but for reasons now obscured he suddenly resigned, November 28, 1863. He then took up his residence in Cambridge and devoted his time to preaching in various pulpits and to his duties as president of the American Unitarian Association. Early in 1865 he raised by personal effort over a hundred thousand dollars for the work of the Association-an amount unparalleled at that time--and in May accepted temporarily the administrative office of secretary. From 1871 to 1878 he built up the struggling Unitarian Church of Ithaca, New York, winning to its friendship Ezra Cornell [q.v.]; then, returning to New England, he organized, April 21, 1878, the Unitarian Church of Newton Center, Massachusetts, which he served until his death in Cambridge seven years later.

With little interest in philosophy, Stebbins based his thought solely on the Bible read with the Unitarian exegesis taught him by his Harvard teachers. He remained unaffected by the Transcendentalist movement of German Biblical criticism. In his Study of the Pentateuch (1881) he still upheld Mosaic authorship. The Bible, he maintained, was a revelation, even though divine illumination of its authors was not always verbal inspiration and though the revealed truth was; often expressed in poetical form with imaginative coloring and emotional rather than logical terms. Strenuous in denial of Trinitarian doctrine (see Christian Examiner, July 1851, June, September 1853), he found in Jesus, not only the Messiah commissioned to proclaim the Gospel, but an ever present agent in the affairs of the world, spiritually present when the bread was broken in the holy communion, and a constant saving presence to support and comfort men in the vicissitudes of life.

He contributed articles to the Christian Examiner, the Christian Palladium, the Christian Repositor, of which he was one of the founders and editors, and the Unitarian Review. He also published, in addition to numerous sermons and other addresses, An Historical Address Delivered at the Centennial Celebration of the Town of Wilbraham (1864), which comprises, with appendix and index, 317 pages.

[Unitarian Review, November 1885; Christian Register, August 20, 27, 1885; Joseph Allen, The Worcester Association and Its Antecedents (1865); S. A. Eliot, Heralds of a Liberal Faith (1910), volume III; E. M. Wilbur, A Historical Sketch of the Independent Congregational Church, Meadville, Pennsylvania (1902); F. A. Christie, The Makers of the Meadville Theological School (1927); R. S. and R. L. Greenlee, The Stebbins Genealogy (2 volumes, 1904).]

F.A.C.


STEEL, William, 1809-1881, reformer, abolitionist leader, southeastern Ohio, active in Underground Railroad.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V., p. 659). 


STEDMEN, William, Randolph, Ohio, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1848-1856.


STEELE, Daniel (October 5, 1824-September 2, 1914), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, teacher, author.  Steele was a leader in his denomination and active in the principal reform movements of his day. He was a stanch opponent of slavery and a persistent advocate of temperance and woman's rights.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 555:

STEELE, DANIEL (October 5, 1824-September 2, 1914), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, teacher, author, was born at Windham, New York, in the Catskills, a son of Perez and Clarissa (Brainerd) Steele and a descendant of George Steele who came to Massachusetts in 1631/32, later settling in Connecticut. During his entire preparatory course at Wesleyan Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, he supported himself by teaching school as he did also during his freshman year at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, where he was graduated, second in his class, in 1848. For the next two years he was a tutor in mathematics at Wesleyan, and during this period, 1849, he joined the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he remained a member till 1906, when he assumed a retired relation. From his ordination in 1850 until 1861, he served churches in the following places in Massachusetts: Fitchburg, Leominster, Boston, Malden, Springfield, and Holliston. Leaving the pastorate in the latter year, he was from 1862 to 1869 professor of ancient languages in Genesee College, Lima, New York, and from 1869 to 1871 was acting president of that institution. When the college was moved to Syracuse and became Syracuse University in 1871, he held the chair of mental and moral philosophy there for a year and also served as vice-president of the college of liberal arts in 1871-72, and as acting chancellor of the university in 1872. Again resuming the pastorate, he ministered continuously to churches in Massachusetts from 1872 to 1888, serving in Boston, Auburndale, Lynn, Salem, Peabody, Reading, and again in Boston. While pastor in Reading in 1884 he became instructor in New Testament Greek and exegesis in Boston University. From 1886 to 1899 he taught in the New England Deaconess' Training School, and then devoted the remainder of his life to literary work.

He was the author of a commentary on the Book of Joshua which appeared in 1873 as the third volume in D. C. Whedon, Commentary on the Old Testament; and in addition published Binney's Theological Compend Improved (1875); Love Enthroned (1875), his most widely known and influential work; Milestone Papers (1878); a commentary on Leviticus and Numbers (1891), in the Whedon Series; Half-Hours with St. Paul (1895); Defense of Christian Perfection (1896); Gospel of the Comforter (1897); Jesus Exultant (1899); A Substitute for Holiness; or, Antinoinianism Revived (1899); Half-Hours with St. John's Epistles (1901); Steele's Answers (1912). He was a constant contributor to the religious press, was associate editor of Divine Life, 1889-93, and of the Christian Witness, 1896. His weekly contribution to Zion's Herald, known as "Daniel Steele's Column" was eagerly mad for many years.

Steele was a leader in his denomination and active in the principal reform movements of his day. He was a stanch opponent of slavery and a persistent advocate of temperance and woman's rights. He was a man of scholarly attainments and saintly character; but with his earnest piety he combined the saving grace of a delightful sense of humor. His outlook was broad and he was in full sympathy with the liberal scientific and theological opinion of his time. He had a wide circle of friends both within and beyond the confines of his own denomination. He died at his home in Milton, Massachusetts, in his ninetieth year. On August 8, 1850, he was married to Harriet, daughter of Reverend Amos Binney of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and two sons and two daughters survived him.

[Official Minutes New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1915; Zion's Herald, September 9, 1914; Boston Transcript, September 3, 1914; Who's Who in America, 1914-1 s; D. S. Durrie, Steele Family (1859); Alumni Record of Wesleyan University (1911).]

F.T.P.


STEEL, William, 1809-1881, reformer, abolitionist leader, southeastern Ohio, active in Underground Railroad.

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume V., p. 659)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 659:

STEEL, William, reformer, born in Biggar, Scotland, 26 August, 1809; died in Portland, Ore., 5 January, 1881. He came to the United States with his parents in 1817 and settled near Winchester, Virginia, but removed soon afterward to Monroe county, Ohio, where, from 1830 till the civil war, he was an active worker in the “Underground railroad,” of which he was one of the earliest organizers. During these years large numbers of slaves were assisted to escape to Canada, and in no single instance was one retaken after reaching him. At one time the slave-holders of Virginia offered a reward of $5,000 for his head, when he promptly addressed the committee, offering to bring it to them if the money were placed in responsible hands. He acquired a fortune as a merchant, but lost it in 1844. From 1872 till his death he resided with his sons in Oregon. In the early days of the anti-slavery movement Mr. Steel was the recognized leader of the Abolitionists in southeastern Ohio. He was at one time a candidate of the Liberty party for congress, and in 1844 circulated in eastern Ohio the “great petition,” whose signers agreed to vote for Henry Clay if he would emancipate his one slave. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 659.


STEELE, John B., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

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


STEPHENS, George E., 1832-1888, African American, journalist, soldier, abolitionist.  Wrote for the New York Weekly Anglo-African newspaper.  Enlisted and fought in 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment.  Supported equal pay for colored troops in the Union Army.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 10, p. 509)


STEPHENS, Uriah Smith, 1821-1882, labor leader, abolitionist leader.  An abolitionist, he supported Fremont in 1856 and Lincoln in 1860.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 581; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 759-762). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 581:

STEPHENS, URIAH SMITH (August 3, 1821- February 13, 1882), pioneer labor leader, was born near Cape May, New Jersey. It was his original intention to become a Baptist minister, but the panic of 1837 brought reverses to his family and terminated his studies. He was then indentured to a tailor, from whom he derived both a trade and mercantile wisdom. Meanwhile he became a student of economics, one of his teachers and companions being Reverend John L. Lenhardt. After completing his apprenticeship, he taught school for a short time in New Jersey. In 1845 he moved to Philadelphia, and in 1853 began an extended trip, through the West Indies, Central America, and Mexico, to California, where he remained nearly five years. After his return to Philadelphia he agitated for a westward workers' migration. An abolitionist, he supported Fremont in 1856 and Lincoln in 1860. In 1861 he was present at the national convention of workingmen opposed to the Civil War. He was a Mason, an Odd Fellow, and a member of the Knights of Pythias. There is no evidence to bear out the legend that he came under direct Marxist influence. His political interest was confined to Greenbackism.

In 1862 he helped organize the Garment Cutters' Association of Philadelphia. The difficulties which that organization encountered from the pressure of the employers led Stephens and six others, upon its dissolution in 1869, to found the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, an organization destined to become the most powerful labor body of its day, with a membership in 1886 of over three quarters of a million. After being defeated on the Greenback ticket for Congress from the fifth district of Pennsylvania in 1878, he resigned as Grand Master Workman of the Knights. He was reelected in absentia, and resigned again in 1879. The principles which Stephens and his associates laid down for the Knights were secrecy, union of all trades, education, and cooperation. The secrecy aspect, with its attendant rituals, was introduced by Stephens. The practical unification of trades in a national organization was a unique and invaluable contribution to the labor movement. Unity was also an internal policy vigorously extended to include skilled and unskilled, women and men, negro and white. Education became agitation of the principles of cooperative organization. Cooperative ownership of the means of production was one of the ideas of the time, a facet of utopian socialism, and Stephens conceived of the Knights of Labor not simply as a trade-union, but as a nucleus for building a cooperative commonwealth. The lack of class consciousness which underlay the cooperative movement led to the use of the boycott (consumer action) rather than the strike as an economic weapon, though strikes occurred.

The ruthless crushing of the Molly Maguires after the great strikes of the middle seventies, the Knights' retarded growth, the active opposition of the Catholic Church (mainly in the person of Terence V. Powderly [q.v.], Stephens' successor), gave strength to an anti-secrecy faction which, soon after Stephens' resignation in 1879, overthrew District Assembly 1, which had controlled the General Assembly. In 1881, after a bitter fight between Stephens and Powderly, the principle of secrecy was repudiated. Stephens thus tasted defeat on his basic idea of labor organization, but he is nevertheless justly revered as one of the great pioneer labor leaders of America. After his death, in Philadelphia, the Richmond convention of the Knights (1886) granted $10,000 for his family.

[J. R. Commons and others, History of Labor in the U.S. (1918), volume II; G. E. McNeill, The Labor Movement: The Problem of To-day (1887); T. V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859-1889 (1889); Selig Perlman, A Historical of Trade Unionism in the U. S. (1922); N. J. Ware, The Labor Movement in the U. S., 1860-1895 (1929); C. D. Wright, "An Historical Sketch of the Knights of Labor," in Quart, Journal of Economics, January 1, 1887; A. C. Stevens, The Cyclopedia of Fraternities (1899); Public Ledger (Philadelphia), Feb 15, 1882.]

H. So-w.


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

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 99, 103, 224-225, 227)


STERLING, G.W., Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1841-42.


STERLING, John M., Cleveland, Ohio, abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1840, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

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


STERN, Nathaniel, Pennsylvania, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1837-1840.


STEVENS, Aaron Dwight, 1831-1860, militant abolitionist.  Chief aid to abolitionist John Brown in his unsuccessful raid on the U.S. Arsenal in Harper’s Ferry.  He was tried and executed for this action on March 16, 1860.


STEVENS, Abel (January 17, 1815-September 11, 1897), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, editor, and historian.  He was an abolitionist. His position alienated the radicals and at the General Conference of 1860. To support the position of Stevens and other New York leaders on the slavery issue an independent journal was established in 1860 called The Methodist, which from the beginning had Stevens' substantial aid, and of which he was associate editor.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 604-605:

STEVENS, ABEL (January 17, 1815-September 11, 1897), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, editor, and historian, was the third child of Samuel and Mary (Hochenmeller) Stevens. He was born in Philadelphia, where his father, a native of Needham, Massachusetts, had settled as a copperplate printer and engraver. Eight years after Abel's birth his father died, leaving the mother with five young children. The estate was mismanaged by the custodian and the family forced to undergo numerous hardships, but Abel was sent to Wesleyan Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and later entered Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, though his stay at the latter institution was short, owing to his feeble health. The records of the University indicate, however, that he had completed the scientific course when he left college. Five years later (1839) Brown University conferred upon him the degree of M.A. While a very young man he displayed extraordinary ability as a speaker and at nineteen was financial agent of Wesleyan University. In 1834 he was admitted to the New England Conference on trial, was ordained deacon in 1836, and elder in 1838. From 1835 to 1837 he served the Church Street Church and the Bennet Street Church in Boston. He visited Europe in 1837 and his published letters from abroad attracted attention. Upon his return he became the minister of the Methodist church in Providence, Rhode Island. At the age of twenty-five, on the recommendation of President Wilbur Fisk [q.v.] of Wesleyan University, he was made editor of Zion's Herald, an influential Methodist journal published in Boston. This position he held for twelve years.

In 1852 he became the editor of a new literary venture of the Methodists called the National Magazine, which position he held until June 1856. He again visited Europe in 1855 and on his return was chosen editor of the Christian Advocate and Journal in New York. Here he again di splayed the highest degree of editorial ability. By this time the Methodist Episcopal Church had divided over the slavery issue, though there still remained in the Northern branch numerous slave-holding members. Stevens contended that nothing should be done to embarrass the border churches. He argued that the slave-holders had a constitutional right to church membership and protested against the attempt to expel them. He maintained, however, that he was an abolitionist. His position alienated the radicals and at the General Conference of 1860 he was not reelected editor. To support the position of Stevens and other New York leaders on the slavery issue an independent journal was established in 1860 called The Methodist, which from the beginning had Stevens' substantial aid, and of which he was associate editor, 1871-74. From 1861 to 1865 he served two churches in the New York East Conference, to which he had transferred on his removal to New York. For some years he was also constantly employed in writing and speaking in the interest of lay representation in the General Conference, and much of his writing in The Methodist was devoted to this subject.

Throughout his life Stevens was a tireless worker and a prolific writer. His first book, entitled An Essay on Church Polity, was published in 1847. This was followed in 1848 by the first volume of his Memorials of the Introduction of Methodism into the Eastern States, the second volume appearing in 1852. His most important works were the seven volumes dealing with the history of English and American Methodism. The History of the Religions Movement of the Eighteenth Century, Called Methodism, in three volumes, appeared between the years 1858 and 1861; the History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, in four volumes, between the years 1864 and 1867. These works, founded on extensive research and written with remarkable literary attractiveness, take high rank among denominational histories. He also published Life and Times of Nathan Bangs (2 volumes, 1863). His last book was Madame De Stael, A Study of her Life and Times (2 volumes, 1881). The books mentioned represent only his major publications.

At fifty years of age Stevens retired from active participation in the affairs of the Church, and after he had finished his histories took up his residence in Geneva, Switzerland, where he served as the minister of the Union Church and corresponded with several American newspapers. In 1888 he returned to the United States and made his home in San Jose, California, where he died suddenly of heart failure at the age of eighty-two. He had been married three times: in 1838, to Marguerite, daughter of the Reverend Bartholomew Otherman of Roxbury, Massachusetts; on September 8, 1869, at Clinton, New York., to Amelia Dayton, who died within a year; and in 1871 to Frances C. Greenough, who, with three of the six children of his first marriage, survived him.

[Sources include Christian Advocate (New York), September 16, 23, 1897; The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, volume XI (1911); Zion’s Herald, September 15, 1897; The Call (San Francisco), September 12, 1897. The date of birth sometimes appears as January 19, but is given as January 17 in the general catalogues of Brown and Wesleyan universities. Information regarding Stevens' family was obtained through the courtesy of Dr. James R. Joy.]

W.W. S.


STEVENS, John L., 1820-1895, author, journalist, clergyman, newspaper publisher, diplomat, anti-slavery activist and leader, political leader.  Co-founder of the Republican Party in Maine.  Co-owner and editor of the Kennebec Journal in Augusta.


STEVENS, Thaddeus, 1792-1868, statesman, lawyer, abolitionist leader.  Anti-slavery leader in U.S. House of Representatives.  As member of Whig Party and leader of the radical Republican Party, urged Lincoln to issue Emancipation Proclamation.  Led fight to pass Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, abolishing slavery and establishing citizenship, due process and equal protections for African Americans. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 677-678; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 620; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 764-767; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 20, p. 711). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 620-:

STEVENS, THADDEUS (April 4, 1792-August 11, 1868), lawyer, congressman, political leader, was born in Danville, Vermont, of a family which had migrated from Massachusetts a few years earlier. His father, Joshua Stevens, an unthrifty shoemaker, died or disappeared at an undetermined date, leaving the mother, Sally (Morrill) Stevens, and four small sons in dire poverty. She was fortunately a woman of fine ideals and great industry, and made many sacrifices to educate Thaddeus, who as the youngest child, and lame and sickly from birth, required special care. The family soon removed to Peacham, Vermont, to gain the advantages of the academy which had been established there in 1795. This village, just above the junction of the Connecticut and Passumpsic rivers in north central Vermont, was still part of a semi-frontier community, and the boy grew up in a ruggedly democratic society. He was early trained to hard work and an independent outlook, and though a chance visit to Boston at the age of twelve gave him an ambition some day "to become rich" (McCall, post, p. 7), he imbibed a strong feeling for the poor and an intense dislike of aristocracy and of caste lines.

Completing his course at Peacham Academy, Stevens entered Dartmouth College as a sophomore in 18II, and graduated in 1814. However, he spent one term and part of another at the University of Vermont, There are early evidences of his headstrong nature: at Peacham Academy he joined other students in presenting a tragedy in the evening, both the dramatic entertainment and the hour being infractions of the rule, and at the University of Vermont he is said to have killed a cow. At the latter institution he also wrote a drama on "The Fall of Helvetic Liberty" and helped enact it. The instruction at Dartmouth and Vermont was limited and thorough, emphasizing Greek, Latin, higher mathematics, and ethics. From his classical training Stevens undoubtedly drew much of the clarity, exactness, and force which later characterized his public speaking, and which led Blaine to say that he rarely uttered a sentence that would not meet the severest tests of grammar and rhetoric (J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, I, 1884, p. 325). He had determined to practise law, and began reading it in Vermont. On taking his degree he obtained a post as instructor in an academy at York, Pennsylvania, and continued his law studies under David Casset, leader of the local bar. Apparently to evade a time requirement in Pennsylvania, he took his bar examinations at Bel Air, Maryland, passing with ease when he proved that in addition to a little law he knew how to order Madeira for his examiners and to lose money at cards to them. He then removed to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1816 to practise.

For several years a struggling lawyer of narrow income, Stevens used his leisure to do much profitable reading in history and belles-lettres. But an important case in which he defended a man accused of murder on the then unusual plea of insanity gave him a large fee, said to have been $1500 (Hensel, post, p. 5), and a reputation. Thereafter from 1821 to 1830 he appeared in almost every important case at the county bar and won almost all of his numerous appeals to the state supreme court (Woodburn, post, p. 12). Since his county adjoined Maryland, Stevens saw much of the slavery system and of runaway negroes, and his instinctive New England dislike of slavery grew into a fierce hatred. It is said that he once spent $300 which he had saved to make additions to his law library in purchasing the freedom of a negro hotel-servant who was about to be sold away from his family (Hensel, pp. 7, 8). He defended numerous fugitive slaves without fee, and displayed great skill in gaining their freedom.

After practising law for ten years in Gettysburg, Stevens also entered the iron business by becoming in 1826 a partner in James D. Paxton & Company, which at once built Maria Furnace in Hamilton-ban Township, Adams County. The company, which became Stevens & Paxton in 1828, first tried to manufacture stoves and other light castings, but the metal was "cold-short" and the product frequently too brittle to have a value. Stevens and Paxton therefore bought property near Chambersburg, where they built Caledonia Forge (probably named after Stevens' native county in Vermont), and mixed pig iron from Maria Furnace with other ores. In 1837 they also built Caledonia Furnace, and finding ample supplies of superior ore near it, the next year gave up their first furnace entirely. They confined themselves chiefly to the sale of blooms. The Caledonia establishment was never very profitable even in the earlier years. When it met the competition of more effective and economical iron works, Stevens kept it up primarily because he did not wish to deprive the surrounding community of its principal means of livelihood. From his manufacturing enterprise sprang Stevens' interest in protective tariff.

It was natural for a man who felt with his burning intensity on public questions to push into politics. In 1830 he was described as "a firm and undeviating Federalist" and "a violent opponent of General Jackson" (quoted, Woodburn, p. 13). But already the Anti-Masonic movement had attracted him, and he emerged into political prominence in 1831 at the Anti-Masonic Convention in Baltimore which nominated William Wirt for president, and at which he delivered a notable arraignment of secret orders. Two years later he was elected to the Pennsylvania House on the Anti-Masonic ticket, taking his seat in the last weeks of 1833. As a member of the legislature Stevens quickly became known as one of the most fiery, most aggressive, and most uncompromising leaders in Pennsylvania affairs. He served until 1841. For some years he introduced or supported much legislation striking at Masonic influences, and in 1835 was chairman of a committee which made abortive attempts to investigate the evils of Free-Masonry. But his range of interests was wide. He was a warm advocate of the act of 1834 extending the free school system of Philadelphia over the whole state. The next year, when in a reaction against the taxes that were required an effort was made to repeal this law, he sprang into statewide fame by a brilliant defense of free education,-a defense "which produced an effect second to no speech ever uttered in an American legislative assembly" (McCall, p. 38). His denunciation of class-hostility toward free public schools, his excoriation of the repeal as "an act for branding and marking the poor" (Woodburn, p. 45), and his panegyric of a democratic system of instruction, completely won the hostile House. What was more, it caused the Senate to reverse its position. Stevens also labored for larger appropriations for colleges, including Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College) at Gettysburg. He argued in behalf of the right of petition, appealed for a constitutional limit on the state debt, and defended the protective tariff and the United States Bank. In 1838 a disputed election in Philadelphia County brought on at Harrisburg the "Buckshot War," with the Whig and Anti-Masonic members of the House endeavoring to organize in opposition to the Democrats. Stevens was the chief leader in this attempt, showing the fierce fighting spirit and uncompromising disposition which marked him through life. At one time he escaped from a mob in the state capitol by leaping from a window. His faction was defeated, and the Democrats declared his seat vacated, but he was at once reelected. In 1836-37 he offered a resolution in favor of abolishing slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. In the state constitutional convention of 1837 he displayed great bitterness in debate, opposing everything that smacked of privilege or class distinctions, and refusing to sign the constitution finally adopted because it limited suffrage to white citizens (McCall, p. 48). At his retirement from the legislature the Harrisburg Pennsylvania Telegraph pronounced him "a giant among pigmy opponents" (E. B. Callender, Thaddeus Stevens, Commoner, 1882, p. 51), and every one recognized him as one of the strongest men in the state.

His decision to quit politics was only temporary, for as the contest over slavery grew heated he was irresistibly drawn toward the arena. Pique over his failure to gain a place in the cabinet of Harrison, whom he had supported in 1836 and 1840, may have played a part in his retirement. His business had not prospered, and he had debts variously estimated at from $90,000 to $217,000 to pay off (Woodburn, p. 66). Removing in 1842 to Lancaster, he at once gained a place at its bar worth from $12,000 to $15,000 a year. As he repaired his fortunes he turned toward public life and in 1848 was elected on the Whig ticket to the Thirty-first Congress. Here he immediately took a leading place among the little band of free-soilers, surpassing such men as Joshua R. Giddings and G. W. Julian [qq.v.] in fieriness of temper as in general parliamentary versatility. He was willing to make no compromise whatever with slavery in the territories, and predicted that if ringed about by "a cordon of freemen," all slave states would within twenty-five years pass laws "for the gradual and final extinction of slavery" (February 20, 1850, Congressional Globe, 31 Congress, I Session, Appendix, p. 142). He denounced slavery as "a curse, a shame, and a crime"; he compared it to the horrors of Dante's Inferno (June 10, 1850, Ibid., Appendix, p. 767). He taunted men of the lower South as slave-drivers, and Virginians for devoting their lives "to selecting and grooming the most lusty sires and the most fruitful wenches to supply the slave barracoons" (February 20, 1850, Ibid., Appendix, p. 142). His invective was bestowed as harshly upon Northerners who condoned slavery as upon Southerners who practised it. He assailed the compromise measures of 1850, and did his utmost to defeat the Fugitive Slave Act. Southern members expressed horror at his gross language, which they declared too indecent for print, and at his reckless and incendiary sentiments. Reelected in 1850, he renewed his assaults upon slavery and his warnings to the South against secession. He also spoke for increased tariffs. In March 1853, disgusted with the moderation of most Whigs, he quit Congress but not politics. For within a year Douglas had prepared his Kansas-Nebraska scheme, and the moment was ripe for a leader of Stevens'. unsurpassed powers of agitation and denunciation.

In the formation of the Republican party in Pennsylvania, Stevens played a vigorous part. He helped organize Lancaster County in 1855, and in 1856 attended the National Convention at Philadelphia as a supporter of Justice McLean. His impassioned appeals at this gathering led Elihu B. Washburne to say that he had "never heard a man speak with more feeling or in more persuasive accents" (E. B. Washburne, ed., The Edwards Papers, 1884, p. 246, note). In 1858 he was reelected to Congress and, with fire unabated at the age of sixty-eight, entered the last debates before the Civil War. His harshness of speech was as great as ever. An early colloquy with Crawford of Georgia almost provoked a riot on the floor (Woodburn, pp. 135-36). He also renewed his pleas for a protective tariff. In 1860 he again was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, and though he was constrained to support Cameron and preferred McLean, finally voted for Lincoln. Returning to Congress, he opposed any concessions to the Southerners as "the coward breath of servility and meanness"; he warned the South to secede at its peril, saying that if it tried to break up the Union "our next United States will contain no foot of ground on which a slave can tread, no breath of air which a slave can breathe" (January 29, 1861, Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, 2 Session, p. 624). He called upon Buchanan to exert the Federal authority sternly against those who were flouting the national government. In one memorable debate he denounced the plotters of "treason" so violently that the excitement, according to Henry L. Dawes, "beggared all description," and his friends formed a hollow square to protect him from the menaces of hostile members (McCall, pp. 127-28).

Stevens was again mentioned for a cabinet post, and when Lincoln chose Simon Cameron instead he criticized the cabinet as representing political expediency rather than efficiency. But he soon found himself in a position of greater power than if he had taken Cameron's place. He was made chairman of the ways and means committee, which gave him wide authority over all revenue bills and most other congressional measures dealing with the prosecution of the war; while as Blaine states, in everything he was "the natural leader, who assumed his place by common consent" (Blaine, ante, I, 325). Upon nearly all aspects of the war he had stern and positive views, and his ideas of policy diverged sharply from Lincoln's. In the field of finance he fortunately gave the administration loyal support. He was prompt in carrying through the House all necessary legislation authorizing Secretary Chase to float loans. He and his committee acted with expedition and nerve in devising new taxes and making them effective. He pressed the income tax against urban objection, the direct tax on real estate against rural objection. The internal revenue act of 1862 showed especial ingenuity in reaching almost every source of revenue, and for this he as well as Justin S. Morrill, chairman of the sub-committee on taxation, deserves credit. On the legal-tender legislation that became a matter of hard necessity following the suspension of specie payments he held doctrines possibly derived in large part from Eleazar Lord (McCall, p. 259; W. C. Mitchell, A History of the Greenbacks, 1903, pp. 47 ff.). He favored a uniform nation-wide paper currency issued directly by the United States without mediation of the banks, legal tender for all purposes, and interchangeable with six per cent. United States bonds (Woodburn, pp. 257-58). The act finally passed with numerous compromises, and the amendment which required the interest on government bonds to be paid in coin and not greenbacks was highly repugnant to Stevens. In his opinion it changed a "beneficent" measure into one "positively mischievous" by establishing one currency for the rich bondholder and another for the plow holder and fighter (February 20, 1862, Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 900).

On the conduct of the war Stevens took a harsh and aggressive position. He was one of the two House members who in 1861 voted against the Crittenden resolution declaring that the war was not fought for conquest or subjugation, or to interfere with the established institutions of the South. From the early months he urged confiscation of all property used for insurrectionary purposes and the arming of slaves (August 2, 1861, Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 1 Sess., pp. 414-15). He bitterly criticized Lincoln for overruling Fremont and Hunter on military emancipation, and termed the President's proposal for compensated emancipation "diluted milk and water gruel" (Ibid., 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. II 54). In language often acrid and abusive he called upon Lincoln to turn out Seward, shake loose from the Blairs and other border-state politicians, and- use every possible method of attack against the South. "Oh, for six months of stern old Jackson !" was one of his exclamations (Woodburn, p. 220). He helped make the committee on the conduct of the war, formed after Ball's Bluff, a thorn in the side of the administration. As the conflict progressed he asked ever--sterner measures. Believing the Constitution no longer applicable to the South, he had no difficulty in justifying demands for wholesale arrests, confiscations, and capital punishments. Early in 1862 he told the House that the war would not end till one party or the other had been reduced to "hopeless feebleness" and its power of further effort had been "utterly annihilated" (January 22, 1862, Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 440). He went so far by 1864 a s to speak of the necessity of seeing the "rebels" exterminated, and more than once spoke of desolating the section, erasing state lines, and colonizing it anew. It was charged that his shrill demands for vengeance after 1863 were prompted in part by the destruction of his iron works near Chambersburg in Lee's invasion of that year (Rhodes, post, V, 544). Confederate troops spent several days at the Caledonia iron works, where they removed all stores and supplies, then burning most of the settlement. In a letter Stevens describes the destruction in indignant terms. They "took all my horses, mules, and harness, even the crippled horses"; they seized two tons of his bacon, with molasses, other contents of the store, and $2,000 worth of grain; they burnt the furnace, rolling-mill, sawmill, two forges, bellows-houses, and other parts of the works; they "even hauled off my bar-iron, being as they said convenient for shoeing horses, and wagons about $4,000 worth"; and they destroyed fences and about eighty tons of hay (Stevens Papers, Library of Congress, volume II). Stevens was forced to provide for the indigent families of the vicinity.

But his chief quarrel with Lincoln was upon reconstruction. He earnestly opposed Lincoln's ten per cent. plan, objected to the seating of congressmen from Louisiana under it, and in a notable speech on reconstruction laid down the rule that the South was outside the Constitution and that the law of nations alone would limit the victorious North in determining the conditions of restoration (January 22, 1864, Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, l Session, pp. 317-19). The Wade-Davis bill, embodying a rigorous scheme of reconstruction, did not go far enough for him, but when Lincoln gave this bill a pocket veto with an explanatory proclamation Stevens called the action "infamous" (Woodburn, p. 321). Though he supported Lincoln for reelection in 1864 it was probably with secret hostility (G. W. Julian, Political Recollections, 1884, p. 243; Woodley, post, p. 405), and his sorrow over the President's assassination was not keen. Temporarily he hoped that Johnson would take the radical road. But within a month he saw that the new President was following Lincoln, and wrote Sumner in angry horror: "I fear before Congress meets he will have so be-devilled matters as to render them incurable" (Beale, post, p. 63). With Sumner, he at once prepared to give battle to Johnson for the purpose of reducing the South to a "territorial condition," making it choose between negro suffrage and reduced representation, imposing other harsh conditions, and fixing Republican supremacy-for which he appreciated economic as well as political arguments (Beale, pp. 73, 152, 206, 403-05). Like Sumner, he also set about promoting schism in Johnson's cabinet (Oberholtzer, post, I, 164).

As soon as Congress met, the two houses, on motion of Stevens, appointed a joint committee on reconstruction (December 4, 1865, Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, 1 Session, p. 6), of which he as chairman of the House group was the dominant member. A fortnight later (December 18, 1865) he again asserted that rebellion had obliterated the Southern states and that the section was a "conquered province" with which Congress could do as it pleased. He also frankly avowed that one aim of representation was "to divide the representation, and thus continue the Republican ascendency" (Ibid., pp. 73-74). The first open rupture with the President came in February 1866, on the Freedmen's Bureau Bill which Stevens belligerently pushed and Johnson vetoed. Beginning with Johnson's speech on Washington's birthday, the two men exchanged bitter attacks, and Stevens succeeded in passing both the Civil Rights Bill and a revised Freedmen's Bureau Bill over Johnson's veto. On April 30, 1866, the joint committee reported the Fourteenth Amendment, which with a few changes Congress adopted, and a bill declaring that when the amendment became part of the Constitution any state lately in insurrection which ratified it and adopted a constitution and laws in conformity with its terms should be admitted to representation in Congress. But this bill never passed. It did not go as far as Stevens wished and on the last day of the session he tried to amend it to require full negro suffrage. Johnson opposed the congressional plan, the South with his apparent approval refused to accept the Fourteenth Amendment, and the whole issue went before the people in the congressional election of 1866. Economic factors strengthened Stevens' hands, for large elements feared loss of tariff advantages, railway grants, free homesteads, and gold bond-redemptions, with all of which the Republican party was identified (Beale, pp. 225-99). A sweeping victory that fall gave Stevens the whip-hand over Johnson and the South.

The first use which he made of his success was to impose military reconstruction and the Fifteenth Amendment upon the South. He had expected it to reject the Fourteenth Amendment and thus give him an opening, and he was prepared to make the most of a defiance which he had deliberately inspired and encouraged (Woodburn, pp. 436-37). His new measure, introduced February 6, 1867, and passed in March, provided for temporary military rule while the states were remade in the South on the basis of negro suffrage and the exclusion of leading ex-Confederates. He pushed it through a reluctant House by invective, sarcasm, threats, taunts, and cracking of the party whip (Rhodes, VI, 17, 18). Having accomplished this, he turned to the chastisement of the President. He declared during the summer of 1867 that he would willingly help impeach Johnson but that he did not believe the measure would succeed (July 19, 1867, Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 745-46). In December he did vote for an impeachment resolution which failed by nearly two to one. When Johnson summarily removed Stanton as secretary of war Stevens saw his chance, and the very next day reported an impeachment resolution based on the President's supposed disregard of the Tenure of Office Act (February 22, 1868, Ibid., 40 Congress, 2 Session, p. 1336). He was made a member of the committee to draft articles of impeachment, and also one of the managers to conduct the case before the Senate. But his health had now hopelessly failed, and he took little part in the trial itself. Deeply disappointed by the President's acquittal, he sank so rapidly that when Congress recessed he could not be taken back to Lancaster, but died in Washington. He had never married, and only his nephew and colored housekeeper were at his bedside. By his own wish he was buried in a small graveyard in Lancaster. His tombstone bears an inscription prepared by himself: "I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but, finding other cemeteries limited by charter rules as to race, I have chosen this, that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life-Equality of Man before his Creator" (Woodburn, p. 609; Callender, p. 163).

Stevens was an intense partisan, and his career was marred throughout by a harsh and vindictive temper which in his last years made him frankly vengeful toward the South. Within a brief time after his death it was evident that he had fallen short of the measure of a statesman. His radical and bitter policy, offered as a means of obtaining equality and justice for the negro, aroused fierce resentment, accentuated racial antagonism, cemented the Solid South, and postponed for many decades any true solution of the race problem. He h ad rare parliamentary talents. Well-read, with a quick and lucid mind, of indomitable courage, a master of language and past master of invective, gifted with a sardonic humor and nimble wit, he was almost invincible on the floor. His private life was far from saintly, for gambling was but one of several habitual vices. But his leonine spirit, his terrible earnestness, his gay resourcefulness, and his fine intellectual equipment always inspired respect. Had tolerance and magnanimity been added to his character, he might have been a brilliant instead of sinister figure in American history.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 677-678:

STEVENS, Thaddeus, statesman, born in Danville, Caledonia county, Vermont, 4 April, 1792; died in Washington, D. C., 11 August, 1868. He was the child of poor parents, and was sickly and lame, but ambitious, and his mother toiled to secure for him an education. He entered Vermont university in 1810, and after it was closed in 1812 on account of the war he went to Dartmouth, and was graduated in 1814. He began the study of law in Peacham, Vermont, continued it while teaching an academy in York, Pennsylvania, was admitted to the bar at Bel Air, Maryland, established himself in 1816 at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and soon gained a high reputation, and was employed in many important suits. He devoted himself exclusively to his profession till the contest between the strict constructionists, who nominated Andrew Jackson for the presidency in 1828, and the national Republicans, who afterward became the Whigs, drew him into politics as an ardent supporter of John Quincy A dams. He was elected to the legislature in 1833 and the two succeeding years. By a brilliant speech in 1835, he defeated a bill to abolish the recently established common-school system of Pennsylvania. In 1836 he was a member of the State constitutional convention, and took an active part in its debates, but his anti-slavery principles would not permit him to sign the report recommending an instrument that restricted the franchise to white citizens. He was a member of the legislature again in 1837, and in 1838, when the election dispute between the Democratic and anti-Masonic parties led to the organization of rival legislatures, he was the most prominent member of the Whig and anti-Masonic house. In 1838 he was appointed a canal commissioner. He was returned to the legislature in 1841. He gave a farm to Mrs. Lydia Jane Pierson, who had written poetry in defence of the common schools, and thus aided him in saving them. Having incurred losses in the iron business, he removed in 1842 to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and for several years devoted himself to legal practice, occupying the foremost position at the bar. In 1848 and 1850 he was elected to congress as a Whig, and ardently opposed the Clay compromise measures of 1850, including the fugitive-slave law. On retiring from congress, March, 1853, he confined himself to his profession till 1858, when he was returned to congress as a Republican. From that time till his death he was one of the Republican leaders in that body, the chief advocate of emancipation, and the representative of the radical section of his party. His great oratorical powers and force of character earned for him the title, applied to William Pitt, of the “great commoner.” He urged on President Lincoln the justice and expediency of the emancipation proclamation, took the lead in all measures for arming and for enfranchising the negro, and initiated and pressed the fourteenth amendment to the Federal constitution. During the war he introduced and carried acts of confiscation, and after its close he advocated rigorous measures in reorganizing the southern states on the basis of universal freedom. He was chairman of the committee of ways and means for three sessions. Subsequently, as chairman of the house committee on reconstruction, he reported the bill which divided the southern states into five military districts, and placed them under the rule of army officers until they should adopt constitutions that conceded suffrage and equal rights to the blacks. In a speech that he made in congress on 24 February, 1868, he proposed the impeachment of President Johnson. He was appointed one of the committee of seven to prepare articles of impeachment, and was chairman of the board of managers that was appointed on the part of the house to conduct the trial. He was exceedingly positive in his convictions, and attacked his adversaries with bitter denunciations and sarcastic taunts, yet he was genial and witty among his friends, and was noted for his uniform, though at times impulsive, acts of charity. While skeptical in his religious opinions, he resented slighting remarks regarding the Christian faith as an insult to the memory of his devout mother, whom he venerated. The degree of LL. D. was conferred on him by the University of Vermont in 1867. He chose to be buried in a private cemetery, explaining in the epitaph that he prepared for his tomb that the public cemeteries were limited by their charter-rules to the white race, and that he preferred to illustrate in his death the principle that he had advocated through his life of “equality of man before his Creator.” The tomb is in a large lot in Lancaster, which he left as a burial-place for those who cannot afford to pay for their graves. He left a part of his estate to found an orphan asylum in Lancaster, to be open to both white and colored children. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 677-678.


STEWARD, Austin, 1793-1865, African American, former slave, anti-slavery activist, reformer.  Steward was born a slave in Prince William County, Virginia.  Wrote autobiography, Twenty-two Years a Slave, and Forty Years Freeman; Embracing a Correspondence of Several Years, published in Rochester, New York, in 1857. He was Vice President of the National Convention of Negroes in Philadelphia, elected in 1830.  In 1831, he moved to Canada to a colony for former slaves, Wilberforce, named after a British abolitionist.  He helped finance the colony.  In 1834, he became an Agent for the newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Standard.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 10, p. 511; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 683).

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 683:

STEWART, Austin, author, born in Prince William county, Virginia, about 1793; died after 1860. He was born in slavery, and when a lad was taken to Bath, New York. He afterward fled to Canandaigua, and in 1817 he engaged successfully in business in Rochester. In 1826 he delivered an oration at the celebration of the New York emancipation act, and in 1830 he was elected vice-president of the National convention of negroes at Philadelphia. The following year he removed to a small colony that had been established in Canada West, named the township Wilberforce, and was chosen its president. He used his own funds to carry on the affairs of the colony, but, finding that no more land would be sold to the colonists by the Canada company, returned to Rochester in 1837. He afterward opened a school in Canandaigua, and after two years became an agent for the “Anti-Slavery Standard.” He published “Twenty-two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman” (2d ed., Rochester, New York, 1859). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 683.


STEWART, Alvan, 1790-1849, New York, reformer, educator, lawyer, abolitionist leader, temperance activist.  Member, American Anti-Slavery Society.  Vice President, 1834-1835, and Manager, 1837-1840, AASS.  Member of the Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1844-149.  Founder, leader, Liberty Party.  Founder, New York State Anti-Slavery Society (NYSASS), 1835. 

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. xiii, 4-5, 9, 13, 15-36, 49, 50, 63, 68, 92-94, 98, 145, 266; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 225-226, 293-295, 300; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 151, 177; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 4, 39, 40, 41, 246, 293; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 4-5, 9, 13, 15-36, 49, 50, 63, 92, 98; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 49, 52, 73, 112, 122; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 25, 32, 33, 47-52, 60, 103n, 115, 132; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 218-220; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 683; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, p. 5; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 768-769; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 20, p. 742). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 2, pp. 5-6:

STEWART, ALVAN (September 1, l790-May 1, 1849), lawyer, abolitionist, was born in South Granville, New York, the son of Uriel Stewart, who five years after the boy's birth moved to Westford, Chittenden County, Vermont. Alvan attended district school and in 1809 entered the University of Vermont, leaving there in 1812 to teach in Canada. After a visit home he was arrested as a spy in Schoharie County, New York, and upon his release went to Cherry Valley, Otsego County, New York, where he taught school and studied law. In, 1815 he journeyed as far West as Paris, Kentucky, and there spent a year teaching and studying. He then traveled in the South for a time, finally returning to Cherry Valley, where he was admitted to the bar. About 1832 he moved to Utica. Here he acquired a considerable reputation as a lawyer and was regarded as a most formidable adversary before a jury (Proctor, post, p. 220). Originally a Democrat, he became an aggressive protectionist, and in 1828 published a pamphlet, Common Sense, opposing Jackson on the tariff question.

In 1834 he joined the newly organized American Anti-Slavery Society, and at once took the lead in establishing abolitionist organizations in New York. In 1835 he issued a call for a convention, which assembled at Utica on October 21, and formed the New York State Anti-Slavery Society. During the next few years, as the society's president, he labored incessantly, collecting money, organizing auxiliaries, and making speeches. These speeches, characterized by a wildfire humor and a vivid, if somewhat exuberant, imagination, earned for him the title of humorist of the anti-slavery movement. He aspired to another title, however, that of constitutionalist to the cause. Basing his argument upon the due process clause of the Constitution, he contended that slaves were deprived of their freedom without due process of law, and that slavery itself was therefore in violation of the Constitution: This view he attempted to persuade the Ameri~ can Anti-Slavery Society at its 1838 meeting to adopt. It so outraged William Jay [q.v.], son of the great jurist, that he withdrew from the society; and though Stewart won over to his views a majority of the delegates, he was unable to convince the two-thirds necessary to amend the anti-slavery creed.

As president of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, he took the position that the national society had no jurisdiction within the bounds of his organization. In the 1838 convention of the latter he proposed that agents' of the national society be excluded from all the state auxiliaries, and the proposal was adopted. Furthermore, at the New York State Society headquarters, he opposed the pledging of contributions to the support of the national society. "A dollar spent at Utica," he told his constituents, "is worth three spent at New York." Erratic, independent, and intractable by nature, he placed himself at the head of the faction opposed to the operations of the American Anti-Slavery Society. More than any other abolitionist except William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] he was responsible for the disruption of the national movement, which occurred in 1840.

At an early date Stewart had urged separate political anti-slavery organization. In 1840 he joined with Myron Holley [q.v.], the leading political abolitionist, in calling an anti-slavery political convention, which met in Albany, on April 1, with Stewart as presiding officer. This convention organized the Liberty Party and nominated James G. Birney [q.v.] for president and Stewart for governor of New York; but in the subsequent campaign, Birney received only a few thousand votes and Stewart a few hundred. Disgusted with the outcome of political action, he returned to private life. He still served as president of the diminished New York society, and on occasion he donated his services as counsel for the slave. Before the supreme court of New Jersey, in a test case arranged by local abolitionists, he challenged the constitutionality of slavery with eloquence (A Legal Argument before the Supreme Court of the State of New Jersey ... for the Deliverance of Four Thousand Persons from Bondage, 1845). In his early years he "was quite too much given to his cups," but later became an advocate of total abstinence and an effective temperance lecturer (Beardsley, post, pp. 159, 169). In 1835 he published Prize Address for the New York City Temperance Society. His wife was Keziah Holt of Cherry Valley, New York, by whom he had five children, three of them dying young. In 1860 Writings and Speeches of Alvan Stewart on Slavery was published by his son-in-Jaw, Luther R. Marsh.

[The Friend of Man (Utica, New York), 1835-42; Emancipator (New York and Boston), 1833-42; Bayard Tuckerman, William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery (1893); Levi Beardsley, Reminiscences (1852); L. B. Proctor, The Bench and Bar of New York (1870); G. H. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse (1933); D. S. Durrie, A Genealogical History of the Holt Family in the U. S. (1864); New York Tribune, May 3, 1849; Oneida Morning Herald, May 4, 1849. ]

G. H. B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 683:

STEWART, Alvan, reformer, born in South Granville, Washington county, New York, 1 September, 1790; died in New York city, 1 May, 1849. His parents removed when he was five months old to Crown Point, New York, and in 1795, losing their possessions through a defective title, to Westford, Chittenden county, Vermont, where the lad was brought up on a farm. In 1808 he began to teach and to study anatomy and medicine. In 1809 he entered Burlington college, Vermont, supporting himself by teaching in the winters, and, visiting Canada in 1811, he received a commission under Governor Sir George Prevost as professor in the Royal school in the seigniory of St. Armand, but he returned to college in June, 1812. After, the declaration of war he went again to Canada, and was held as a prisoner. On his return he taught and studied law in Cherry Valley, New York, and then in Paris, Kentucky, making his home in the former place, where he practised his profession and won reputation. He was a persistent advocate of protective duties, of internal improvements, and of education. He removed to Utica in 1832, and, though he continued to try causes as counsel, the remainder of his life was given mainly to the temperance and anti-slavery causes. A volume of his speeches was published in 1860. Among the most conspicuous of these was an argument, in 1837, before the New York state anti-slavery convention, to prove that congress might constitutionally abolish slavery; on the “Right of Petition” at Pennsylvania hall, Philadelphia, and on the “Great Issues between Right and Wrong” at the same place in 1838; before the joint committee of the legislature of Vermont; and before the supreme court of New Jersey on a habeas corpus to determine the unconstitutionality of slavery under the new state constitution of 1844, which last occupied eleven hours in delivery. His first published speech against slavery was in 1835, under threats of a mob. He then drew a call for a state anti-slavery convention for 21 October, 1835, at Utica. As the clock struck the hour he called the convention to order and addressed it, and the programme of business was completed ere the threatened mob arrived, as it soon did and dispersed the convention by violence. That night the doors and windows of his house were barred with large timbers, and fifty loaded muskets were provided, with determined men to handle them, but the preparations kept off the menaced invasion. “He was the first,” says William Goodell, the historian of abolitionism, “to insist earnestly, in our consultations, in committee and elsewhere, on the necessity of forming a distinct political party to promote the abolition of slavery.” He gradually brought the leaders into it, was its candidate for governor, and this new party grew, year by year, till at last it held the balance of power between the Whigs and Democrats, when, uniting with the former, it constituted the Republican party. The characteristics of Mr. Stewart's eloquence and conversation were a strange and abounding humor, a memory that held large resources at command, readiness in emergency, a rich philosophy, strong powers of reasoning, and an exuberant imagination. A collection of his speeches, with a memoir, is in preparation by his son-in-law, Luther R. Marsh. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 683.


STEWART, Archibald, Madison County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-39.


STEWART, Austin, see STEWARD, Austin


STEWART, James W., African American, businessman, anti-slavery activist.  Husband of abolitionist Maria W. Stewart.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 10, p. 524)


STEWART, John E., African American, abolitionist, publisher of The African Sentinel and Journal of Liberty, founded 1831, Albany, New York.

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 41)


STEWART, Maria W., 1803-1879, Hartford, Connecticut, free African American woman, author, abolitionist, women’s rights activist, civil rights advocate, orator.  Published Religion and Pure Principles of Morality—The Sure Foundation on Which we Must Build, in 1831. Contributor to the abolitionist newspaper, Liberator.  Also wrote, Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart (1835). 

(Richardson, 1987; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 41, 289, 463-464; 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, 1994, pp. 4, 6-7, 10, 125, 128-129, 156-157, 206; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 10, p. 524; Richardson, Marilyn, Maria W. Stewart: America’s First Black Woman Political Writer, Indiana University Press, 1988; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition.  Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Volume 2, pp. 656-658; Garcia, Jennifer Anne, Maria W. Stewart: America’s First Black Feminist, 1998)


STEWART, Philo P., Troy, New York, abolitionist, Church Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1861-64.


STEWART, Robert, Ross County, Ohio, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-1840, Vice-President, 1840-1856.


STEWART, Samuel, New York, abolitionist leader.

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


STEWART, William, Illinois, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1837-1839.



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.