Y: Yale through Young

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.


YALE, Calvin, Reverend, Vermont, clergyman.  Member and advocate for the American Colonization Society.  Stated that colonization “may ultimately lead to the extinction of slavery…” 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 132)


YATES, Richard (January 18, 1815-November 27, 1873), Civil War governor of Illinois.  Elected to Congress in 1850 and again in 1852 he had during one of his terms the distinction of being the only Whig member from Illinois. In this period he opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill. Having taken an antislavery stand he joined the Republican party and was a member of the national conventions which nominated Lincoln in 1860 and Grant in 1868. As contrasted with that of radical abolitionists, however, his attitude was conservative, resembling Lincoln's.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 599-601:

YATES, RICHARD (January 18, 1815-November27, 1873), Civil War governor of Illinois, was born in Warsaw, Kentucky, the son of Henry and Millicent (Yates) Yates, whose common grandfather, Michael Yates, hailed from Caroline County, Virginia. In 1831 the family moved to Sangamon County, Illinois, and Richard was sent to Illinois College at Jacksonville, where in 1835 he received the first graduating diploma issued by that institution (C. H. Rammelkamp, Illinois College: A Centennial History, 1928, p. 69). Already known as a boy orator, he spoke at graduation on "The Influence of Free Institutions in Moulding National Character" (Ibid., pp. 69-70). After studying law at Transylvania University he was admitted to the bar (1837) and began practice at Jacksonville, which remained his home during his whole public career. For three terms (1842-46, 1848-50) he was a member of the state legislature. Elected to Congress in 1850 and again in 1852 he had during one of his terms the distinction of being the only Whig member from Illinois. In this period he favored the homestead act, opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, supported the movement to establish colleges with federal land grants, and spoke vigorously for extending an official welcome to the Hungarian patriot Kossuth. Having taken an antislavery stand he joined the Republican party and was a member of the national conventions which nominated Lincoln in 1860 and Grant in 1868. As contrasted with that of radical abolitionists, however, his attitude was conservative, resembling Lincoln's. In party conferences looking to the governorship in 1860 N. B. Judd and Leonard Swett were more prominently mentioned than Yates; but his popularity in doubtful counties turned the balance and he became the party choice. He was elected over James C. Allen, Democrat, by a vote of 172,000 to 159,000; and served as governor from January 1861 to January 1865.

During the war he was widely known as a vigorous state executive, upholding Lincoln's hand and showing great ardor in the raising of troops and in other complex matters of war administration. At times his zeal outran the efforts of the government at Washington so that he was advised to reduce the number of regiments and discharge excessive recruits (Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois, 1863, pp. 18-19). He gave U. S. Grant his first Civil War commission and assignments, putting him in charge of camps for organizing volunteers, giving him staff duty at Springfield, and tendering him the colonelcy of the 21st Regiment of Illinois Volunteers (June 1861). War duties pressed heavily upon him as he attended to military appointments, approved a variety of new ar.my units, called special legislative sessions, recommended emergency laws, visited "the boys" in camp and hospital, reviewed Illinois troops in battle areas, attended to voluminous complaints by soldiers' parents, promoted the raising of bounties, conferred with other governors and with Lincoln, and made hot speeches playing upon war emotions and searing the Democrats. When the Democratic majority in the legislature of 1863 opposed the existing conduct of the war and embarrassed the governor by passing (in the lower house) a resolution urging an armistice and recommending a national convention to restore peace (while at the same time opposing secession and disunion), Yates seized upon a disagreement in the matter of adjournment as the opportunity for exercising his constitutional prerogative of proroguing the Assembly. Overlooking the fact that the Democrats supplied their share of enlistments and otherwise supported the Union, the Republicans stigmatized their opponents as traitors; and the war years became a period of wretched party bitterness in the state. Through all this the governor was personally popular, and his prestige was increased by the success of the war in which Illinois reported over 250,000 enlistments.

After the war Yates served one term (1865-71) in the United States Senate. Party regularity marked his course: he favored vindictive measures against the South, voted for President Johnson's conviction in the impeachment proceeding, and supported the prevailing radical Republican program, which he justified with convincing patriotic unction and oratorical flourish. He died suddenly at St. Louis while returning from Arkansas, whither he had gone as federal commissioner to inspect a land-subsidy railroad. He was buried with full honors at Jacksonville.

Yates was married on July 11, 1839, to a "dark eyed little beauty," Catharine Geers, a native of Lexington, Kentucky. She outlived him by thirty-five years, dying in 1908. They had two daughters and three sons, one of whom, Richard, was governor of the state, 1901-04, and congressman during several terms. Oratorical skill and a strikingly handsome appearance were among the rich personal endowments that contributed to Yates's career. His use of liquor sometimes led to over indulgence, and there is record of his lack of sobriety when inaugurated as governor (Memoirs of Henry Villard, 1904, I, 148). When criticized on this score in 1868 he admitted the fault, apologized "without reserve or defense," and explained that his use of stimulants after exhaustive labor had not interfered with the performance of public duty ("Address to the People of Illinois," Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1868, p. 2). It has been said that "no governor of any State [was] more watchful of the State's interests ... or more loved by [his] people ...  including the troops in the field" (Shelby M. Cullom, Fifty Years of Public Service, 1911, p. 45). "His success in political life," writes another, "was largely due to his personality; he was endowed with a manly carriage, fine presence, cordial manner and happy speech" (Jayne, post, p. 144). He is honored above other Illinois governors in a beautiful bronze statue at Springfield.

[There is no biography of Yates, and this sketch has been based upon scattered sources, including newspapers, minor essays and obituaries, manuscript collections, state archives, and information generously supplied by Catharine Yates Pickering, daughter of Richard Yates the younger. The date of birth, usually given (even by Yates himself) as 1818, has been verified as 1815 by reference to the family Bible. The voluminous Yates papers, though preserved by his son Richard, have not been open to historical use. In the archives at Springfield the governor's letter books and incoming correspondence for the Yates administration are missing. Yates's messages and speeches are conveniently available at the Illinois State Historical Library See also: Richard Yates, War Governor of Illinois (1924), address by Richard Yates the younger at the dedication of the statue of Yates in Springfield, October 16, 1923; C. M. Earaes, Historic Morgan and Classic Jacksonville (1885); L. U. Reavis, The Life and Public Services of Richard Yates (1881); The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, volumes I and II (r 927-33), being Illinois Historical Colls., volumes XX, XXII; A. C. Cole, The Era of the Civil War (1919); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); speech by Richard Yates the younger, February 12, 19.21, containing letters from Lincoln to Yates, in Congress Record, 66 Congress, 3 Session, pp. 3074-79; Report of the Adj. General of Illinois 1861-65; I. 0. Foster, "The Relation of ... Illinois to the Federal Government during the Civil War" CMS.), doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, 1925; Richard Yates the younger, Descendants of Michael Yates (1906); William Jayne "Richard Yates' Services ... as War Governor," Trans. Illinois State Historical Society, 1902; E. L. Kimball, "Richard Yates:  His Record as Civil War Governor of Illinois," Journal Illinois State Historical Society, April 1930; Chicago Tribune, November 28, 29, 1873; Jacksonville Daily Journal, November 29, 1873.

J. G. R.


YATES, William, abolitionist, agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  Worked at Flushing, Long Island. 

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


YEADON, Richard (October23, 1802-April25, 1870), lawyer, editor. He served at least three terms (1856-60; 1862-64) in the state House of Representatives, where he contributed to strengthening financial and simplifying testamentary and land-title law and opposed the reopening of the African slave trade.  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, p. 602:

YEADON, RICHARD (October23, 1802-April25, 1870), lawyer, editor, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the only son of Richard and Mary (You) Adams Yeadon and grandson of the English immigrant Richard Yeadon and his wife Mary Lining. Graduating from South Carolina College in 1820, Yeadon was admitted to the bar in 1824. In 1831, during the nullification controversy, he became a constant contributor to the City Gazette in support of its Unionist policy. On July I, 1832, without giving up his law practice, he became editor of the Charleston Daily Courier, the leading Unionist journal of the state, and six months later he became a part owner. Ill health forced him to retire from the editorship November 4, 1844, though he long continued to contribute editorials.

An ardent Whig, he opposed John C. Calhoun [q.v.] but praised his wisdom in crushing the Bluffton movement of R. B. Rhett [q.v.] in 1844 for re-asserting nullification. When Rhett in 1856 offered for governor and sought to rouse secession sentiment, Yeadon declared him unfit for leadership and denounced his effort to undo the Union-preserving influence of Buchanan's election. Taunted as a "traitor" for his Unionism, he protested that none would sacrifice himself for his state more willingly than he. Secession once ordained, he bought Confederate bonds generously and gave largely for equipping Confederate soldiers and building a navy. He offered a reward of $10,000 for the capture dead or alive of Benjamin F. Butler [q. v.] after President Davis declared that Federal officer an outlaw. Throughout the war, with men like R. W. Barnwell and James Chesnut [q.v.], Yeadon supported President Davis against radicals led by Rhett. Yeadon's election to the legislature in 1862 by a vote overtopping that given to extremists expressed the conservatism always strong in Charleston. Insistent on the supremacy of law, he was determined in defense of legal rights. He supported the Citadel authorities in the student rebellion of 1858, and when Dr. R. W. Gibbes [q.v.] was ejected from the council chamber which he had entered to report proceedings for the South Carolinian, Yeadon prosecuted Gibbes's suit for damages and won a small award.

Yeadon had many non-professional interests. He operated a peach farm at his country place near Aiken and fancied fine horses. On December 23, 1829, he married Mary Videau Marion, great-grand-niece of General Francis Marion [q.v.], and subsequently compiled a genealogy of his wife's family. He was chiefly responsible for removing the body of Hugh S. Legare [q.v.] from Massachusetts to Charleston. He served at least three terms (1856-60; 1862-64) in the state House of Representatives, where he contributed to strengthening financial and simplifying testamentary and land-title law and opposed the reopening of the African slave trade. He originated the ordinance establishing the Charleston High School, secured the Council's donation of $1,000 a year for a century to the College of Charleston, and gave liberally for establishing a chair of political economy in the latter institution. He was industrious, hospitable, witty. Ill health intensified his sudden changes from exultation to depression. Childless, he adopted a nephew-killed in the war-and two of his wife's nieces. Though a believer in Christianity, he joined no church. He began life poor, but through his practice accumulated about $400,- 000, two thirds of which disappeared through the war. His wife survived him.

[W. L. T. Crocker, "Richard Yeadon" (MS.), master's thesis, University of South Carolina, 1927; W, L. King, The Newspaper Press of Charleston, South Carolina (1882); A. S. Salley, Jr., "Century of the Courier," in Centennial Edition of the News and Courier (1903); B. F. Perry, Reminiscences of Public Men (1883); B. F. Butler, Autobiography (1892): Laura A. White, Robert Barnwell Rhett (1931); D. D. Wallace, The History of South Carolina (1934), volumes II, III; A. C. Cole, The Whig Party in the South (1913); Charleston Daily Courier, April 26-28, 1870.]

D.D.W.


YEAMAN, George Helm, born 1829, lawyer, jurist, diplomat, writer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Elected to Congress 1862, served until March 1865.

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume VI, p. 639; Congressional Globe; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 639:

YEAMAN, George Helm, lawyer, born in Hardin county, Kentucky, 1 November, 1829. He was educated at an academy, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1852, and began to practise at Owensborough, Kentucky. In 1854 he was elected a judge of Daviess county. In 1861 he was chosen a member of the legislature, and in 1862 he recruited a regiment for the National army. The same year he was sent to congress as a Unionist to fill a vacancy, and, being re-elected, he served from 1 December, 1862, till 3 March, 1865. In the latter year he was appointed by President Johnson minister to Denmark, which office he held till 7 November, 1870, since which time he has practised law in New York. Besides pamphlets on “Naturalization” (1867) and “Privateering” (1868). Mr. Yeaman has published “A Study of Government” (Boston, 1870). He has also written for periodicals on the labor and currency questions. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 639.


YEATMAN, James Erwin (August 27, 1818-July 7, 1901), banker, civic leader, philanthropist. During the Civil War Yeatman's most important work was performed as president of the Western Sanitary Commission, created by order of Major-General John C. Fremont [q.v.] at St. Louis, September 5, 1861. Cooperating with Dorothea L. Dix [q.v.], then in St. Louis, Yeatman gave virtually the whole of his time to organizing hospitals, recruiting nurses, improving prison conditions, establishing soldiers' and orphans' homes and schools for refugee children, and distributing sanitary supplies. In 1863 he made a trip along the lower Mississippi inspecting the plight of freedmen.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 606-607:

YEATMAN, JAMES ERWIN (August 27, 1818-July 7, 1901), banker, civic leader, philanthropist, was born at "Beechwood," near Wartrace, Tennessee, five generations removed from John Yeatman of Virginia, whose paternal line went back to Dorsetshire, England. He was second among six children of Thomas Yeatman, a prosperous banker and manufacturer of iron materials, and Jane Patton (Erwin), of Buncombe County, North Carolina, who as a wealthy widow later married John Bell [q.v.], presidential candidate in 1860. Educated privately and at the New Haven Commercial School, Yeatman enjoyed a sojourn abroad and in 1842, after an apprenticeship in his father's extensive business at Cumberland, Tennessee, became its representative in St. Louis, Missouri

Here scrupulous honesty soon won him a leading place among businessmen. In 1847 he joined in erecting "Yeatman's row," an imposing housing project for the times, and in 1850 was one of the founders of the Merchants' Bank. Ten years later he gave up a flourishing commission business to become president of this institution, reorganized as the Merchants' National Bank; thereafter for thirty-five years he was largely responsible for the important place it occupied in the Mississippi Valley's financial life. In 1850 he asked Congress for a right of way through Missouri for the Missouri Pacific Railroad, of which he was an incorporator. He was the first president of the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association (1846), first head of the board of trustees of the St. Louis Asylum for the Blind, and a generous benefactor of Washington University. In 1889 he was named one of the original trustees of the Missouri Botanical Garden in the will of Henry Shaw [q.v.]. He was also secretary and trustee of the St. Louis Medical College.

Yeatman's most important work was performed as president of the Western Sanitary Commission, created by order of Major-General John C. Fremont [q.v.] at St. Louis, September 5, 1861. Cooperating with Dorothea L. Dix [q.v.], then in St. Louis, Yeatman gave virtually the whole of his time to organizing hospitals, recruiting nurses, improving prison conditions, establishing soldiers' and orphans' homes and schools for refugee children, and distributing sanitary supplies. Under his direction what were probably the first railroad hospital cars were outfitted on the Pacific Railroad and early in 1862 the commission placed on the Mississippi a hospital boat, the first of many such craft. Yeatman spent much time in the field and the soldiers knew him affectionately as "Old Sanitary" (Stevens, post, I, 297). In 1863 he made a trip along the lower Mississippi inspecting the plight of freedmen; President Lincoln asked him to head the Freedmen's Bureau when it organized, but Yeatman declined. The final report of the Western Sanitary Commission showed that it had received $770,998 in cash and stores valued at $3,500,000. Unquestionably Yeatman's genius for organization, tireless energy, and integrity were leading factors in the success of this pioneering effort at mitigating the misery of war.

Yeatman was married, September 11, 1838, to Angelica Charlotte Thompson of Alexandria, Virginia, great-grand-daughter of Charles Willson Peale [q.v.]; she died May 7, 1849, and on May S, 1851, he married Cynthia Ann Pope of Kaskaskia, Illinois, daughter of Nathaniel Pope [q.v.]. His second wife died July 3, 1854. More than six feet tall, courtly and genial, Yeatman had an impressive presence. His great brick residence, "Belmont," was a center of St. Louis' gay and leisurely antebellum society. Two of his five children were living when he died of the infirmities of age in his eighty-third year in a St. Louis hospital. He was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery. In his last years his charitable gifts were so numerous that he left little besides his extensive library (Eliot, post, p. 10). His city mourned him as its first citizen. Winston Churchill, who had Yeatman " very definitely in mind" when he drew the character of Calvin Brinsmade for The Crisis (1901), regarded him as "the flower of the American tradition."

[Who's Who in America, 1901-02; W. C. Hall, Descendants of Alexander Robinson and Angelica Peale (1896); E. C. Eliot, An Address Upon the Laying of the Corner Stone of the James E. Yeatman High School (1903); James Cox, Old and New St. Louis (1894); William Hyde and H. L. Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis (1899); L. U. Reavis, St. Louis the History of the  Great City of the World (1875); J. T. Scharf, History of St. Louis City and County (1883); W. B. Stevens, Missouri, the Center State (1915); J. G. Forman, The Western Sanitary Commission (1864); W.R. Hodges, The Western Sanitary Commission (1906); Review of Revs. (New York), August 1901; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 7, 8, 9, 1901, and St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, December 27, 1901; certain information from Mrs. Sara Yeatman Graham, Lakeland, Florida, Yeatman's granddaughter, Alfred C. Carr, St. Louis, his grandson, and Winston Churchill, Maitland, Florida]

I. D.


YOUNG, John Clarke (August 12, 1803- June 23, 1857), educator and Presbyterian minister,  In relation to the slavery issue, he twice freed groups of his own slaves and publicly debated in favor of including in the proposed Kentucky constitution of 1849-50 a clause providing for the gradual emancipation of the slaves; but he opposed the radical demands of the abolitionists.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, p. 629:

YOUNG, JOHN CLARKE (August 12, 1803- J une 23, 1857), educator and Presbyterian minister, was born in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, the posthumous son of Reverend John Young. Both father and mother, Mary (Clarke) Young, were of Scotch-Irish descent. Having studied under John Borland in New York City, Young attended Columbia College there for three years, but completed his college work in Dickinson College, graduating in 1823. He became a tutor in the College of New Jersey and graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1827. One year later he accepted the pastorate of the McChord (now Second) Presbyterian Church, Lexington, Kentucky. When the presidency of Centre College, Danville, became vacant in 1830, upon the resignation of Dr. Gideon Blackburn [q.v.], Young was elected to the place. The institution had graduated only twenty-five young men during the eleven years of its existence, and had a student body of thirty-three. At the time of Young's death in 1857, the college had more than 250 students and an endowment in excess of $100,000; it had attained a secure place among the strong liberal-arts colleges of the South and Middle West, and had just graduated a class of forty-seven.

Young was a notable figure in the development of Presbyterian policies throughout his life. In 1834, in addition to his duties as college president, he accepted the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church of Danville, and so successful was his ministry that in 1852 he organized the Second Presbyterian Church to care for the students of the college without overcrowding the parent church: Twice moderator of the Synod of Kentucky, he became in 1853 the moderator of the General Assembly. Being specially gifted as an extemporaneous speaker, he was frequently heard in the church courts as the spokesman for moderate and practicable measures. In the New School controversy, he deplored the violent measures that led to the division but remained loyal to the Old-School Assembly. In relation to the slavery issue, he twice freed groups of his own slaves and publicly debated in favor of including in the proposed Kentucky constitution of 1849-50 a clause providing for the gradual emancipation of the slaves; but he opposed the radical demands of the abolitionists. The habits of his mind were quiet, peaceful, and practicable, and his great success as educator and preacher was due to the happy combination of high principle and common sense. Several of his sermons and addresses were published, among them An Address to the Presbyterians of Kentucky, Proposing a Plan for the Instruction and Emancipation of Their Slaves (1836), written for a committee of the Synod; Scriptural Duties of Masters (n.d.), a sermon preached in 1846; and The Efficacy of Prayer (1858).

Young was twice married: first, November 3, 1829, to Frances Breckinridge, who died in 1837, and second, in 1839, to Cornelia Crittenden, daughter of John J. Crittenden [q.v.]. He was thus connected with two of the most prominent Kentucky families of the period. Of his ten children, one son, Dr. William C. Young, also a Presbyterian minister, was president of Centre College from 1888 till his death in 1896, and two daughters, Sarah Lee and Eugenia, made generous gifts to the college in memory of their father and brother.

[R. J. Breckinridge, in Danville Quarterly Review, Mar- 1864; Lewis and R. H. Collins, History of Kentucky (1874), I, 475; Z. F. Smith, The History of Kentucky (1886); S. M. Wilson, History of Kentucky (1928), III, 16-17; General Alumni Catalog of Centre College (1890); inaugural address of Dr. Wm. C. Young, in The Centre College of Kentucky, Inaugural Ceremonies, October 9, 1889 (1889); E. H. Roberts, Biographical Catalog Princeton Theol. Seminary (1933); interviews with Miss Eugenia Young.]

C. J. T.


YOUNG, Joseph, New York, American Abolition Society

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


YOUNG, Robert Alexander, free African American, wrote The Ethiopian Manifesto Issued in Defense of the Black Man’s Rights in the Scale of Universal Freedom, 1828

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 39, 501)



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.