C: Carter through Cutler

See below for annotated biographies of Free Soil Party leaders, members and supporters. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.

CARTER, Robert, 1819-1879, Albany, New York, newspaper editor.  Member and active in the Free Soil Party.  Edited the Boston Commonwealth, a paper of the Free Soilers.  Early member of the Democratic Party.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 541-542)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

CARTER, Robert, editor, born in Albany, New York, 5 February, 1819; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 15 February, 1879. He received a common-school education, and passed one term in the Jesuit College of Chambly, Canada. In his fifteenth year he was appointed assistant librarian in the state library at Albany, where he remained till 1838. At this time he began to publish poems and sketches in the daily papers, his first contribution being a long poem, which he dropped stealthily into the editor's letterbox, and which appeared the next day with flattering comments, but so frightfully misprinted that he hardly knew it. This experience and a natural aptitude led him to acquire proof-reading as an accomplishment, at which he became very expert. In 1841 he went to Boston, where he formed a life-long friendship with James Russell Lowell, and together they began “The Pioneer,” a literary monthly magazine, which Duyckinck says was “of too fine a cast to be successful.” Nevertheless, it’s want of success was due, not to the editors, but to the publisher, who mismanaged it and failed when but three numbers had been issued. Among the contributors were Poe, Hawthorne, Whittier, Neal, Miss Barrett (afterward Mrs. Browning), and the sculptor Story. Mr. Carter began in its pages a serial novel entitled “The Armenian's Daughter.” He next spent two years in editing statistical and geographical works, and writing for periodicals. His story, “The Great Tower of Tarudant,” ran through several numbers of the “Broadway Journal,” then edited by Poe. In 1845 he became a clerk in the post-office at Cambridge, and in 1847-'8 was private secretary to Prescott the historian. His elaborate article on the character and habits of Prescott, written for the New York “Tribune” just after the historian's death in 1859, was re-published in the memorial volume issued by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Mr. Carter joined the Free-Soil Party in 1848, and in 1850 wrote for the Boston “Atlas” a series of brilliant articles in reply to Francis Bowen's attack on the Hungarian revolutionists. These articles were re-published in a pamphlet, “The Hungarian Controversy” (Boston, 1852), and are said to have caused the rejection of Mr. Bowen's nomination as professor of history at Harvard. At the same time Carter edited, with Kossuth's approval, a large volume entitled “Kossuth in New England” (Boston, 1852). In 1851-'2 he edited, at first as assistant of John G. Palfrey and afterward alone, the Boston “Commonwealth,” the chief exponent of the Free-Soilers. For two years he was secretary of the state committee of the Free-Soil Party, and in the summer of 1854 he obtained the consent of the committee to call a convention, which he did without assistance, sending out thousands of circulars to men whose names were on the committee's books. The convention met in Worcester, 20 July, was so large that no hall could contain it, and held its session in the open air. A short platform drawn up by him was adopted, together with the name “Republican,” and on his motion a committee of six was appointed to organize the new party, John A. Andrew being made its chairman. In 1855 Carter edited the Boston “Telegraph,” in conjunction with W. S. Robinson and Hildreth the historian; in 1856 he edited the “Atlas”; and in 1857-'9 he was Washington correspondent of the New York “Tribune.” His next work was with Messrs. Ripley and Dana on the first edition of the “American Cyclopædia” (1859-'63), in which many important articles were from his pen, including “Egypt,” “Hindostan,” “Mormons,” and the history of the United States. In January, 1864, he was appointed private secretary of the treasury agent whose headquarters were at Beaufort, South Carolina; and from July of that year till October, 1869, he edited the Rochester, New York, “Democrat,” doing such work for it as was seldom done on any but metropolitan journals. When news came of the assassination of President Lincoln, he wrote, without consulting any book or memoranda, an article giving a brief but circumstantial account, with dates, of every celebrated case of regicide. He was editor of “Appletons’ Journal” in 1870-'3, and then became associate editor for the revision of the “American Cyclopædia.” But in 1874 impaired health compelled him to discontinue his literary work, and in the next three years he made three tours in Europe. He was the author of “A Summer Cruise on the Coast of New England” (Boston, 1864), which passed through several editions; and he left unpublished memoirs, of which only the first volume was complete in manuscript.—His first wife, Ann Augusta Gray, was a successful writer of poems and tales for the young.—His second wife, Susan Nichols, is principal of the female art school in Cooper Institute, New York, and has published hand-books of art and contributed largely to periodicals.  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888. Vol. I,  pp. 541-542.


CHANDLER, Zachariah, 1813-1879, statesman.  Mayor of Detroit, 1851-1852.  U.S. Senator 1857-1975, 1879.  Secretary of the Interior, 1875-1877. Active in Underground Railroad in Detroit area.  Helped organize the Republican Party in 1854.  Introduced Confiscation Bill in Senate, July 1861.  Was a leading Radical Republican Senator.  Chandler was a vigorous opponent of slavery.  He opposed the Dred Scott U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the Fugitive Slave Law.  In 1858, opposed the admission of Kansas as a slave state under the Lecompton Constitution.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 574-575; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 618; Congressional Globe; anonymous, Zachariah Chandler: an Outline Sketch of His Life and Public Services (1880), Wilmer C. Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chandler, 1811-75 (1917); Sewell, 1976; pp. 280,308)

Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 618;)

CHANDLER, ZACHARIAH (December 10, 1813- November 1, 1879), senator, Republican boss, was born at Bedford, New Hampshire. His father, Samuel Chandler, was a descendant of William Chandler, who emigrated from England and settled at Roxbury, Massachusetts, about 1637 (George Chandler, The Chandler Family, 1872, p. 818). His mother, Margaret Orr, was the oldest daughter of Col. John Orr. He received a common school education, and in 1833 removed to Detroit, where he opened a general store, and eventually through trade, banking, and land speculation became one of the richest men in Michigan. On December 10, 1844, he was married to Letitia Grace Douglass of New York. He made campaign speeches for Taylor in 1848, served for a year (1851-52) as mayor of Detroit, and in 1852 offered himself as a Whig candidate for governor and was defeated. He was one of the signers of the call for the meeting at Jackson, Michigan, July 6, 1854, which launched the Republican party, and "the leading spirit" of the Buffalo convention called to aid free state migration to Kansas (George F. Hoar, Autobiography, 1903, II, 75). In 1856 he was a delegate to the Republican national convention at Pittsburgh, and was made a member of the national committee of the party. In January 1857, he was elected to the United States Senate in succession to Lewis Cass [q.v.], and held his seat until March 3, 1875. In the Senate he allied himself with the radical anti-slavery element of the Republicans, although hostile to Charles Sumner, and was later recognized as one of the most outspoken enemies of secession. From March 1861 to 1875 he was chairman of the Committee on Commerce, to whose jurisdiction the appropriations for rivers and harbors, later known as the "pork barrel," were assigned. At the outbreak of the Civil War he exerted himself to raise and equip the first regiment of Michigan volunteers. He was a member of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War; initiated acts for the collection and administration of abandoned property in the South (March 3, 1863) and for the further regulation of intercourse with the insurrectionary states (July 2, 1864); bitterly denounced the incompetence of McClellan in a speech at Jackson, Michigan (July 6, 1862) which he regarded as one of his most important public services; supported the proposal of a national bank; voted for greenbacks as an emergency measure while strongly resisting inflation of the currency; and approved of the Reconstruction acts although criticizing them as in some respects too lax. His aggressive Republicanism was matched by his clamorous jingoism in regard to Great Britain; on January 15, 1866, he offered a resolution, which was tabled, for non-intercourse with Great Britain for its refusal to entertain the Alabama claims, and in 1867, when the question of recognizing Abyssinia as a belligerent in its war with Great Britain was under consideration, he submitted (November 29) a resolution "recognizing to Abyssinia the same rights which the British had recognized to the Confederacy" (Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 1 Session, p. 810). He was one of the promoters and most influential members of the Republican Congressional Committee, serving as its chairman in the campaigns of 1868 and 1876. From the beginning of his senatorial career he used his Federal patronage to strengthen his political power, and by methods openly partisan and despotic if not actually corrupt obtained control of the Republican machine in Michigan, and was for years the undisputed boss of his party in the state. The Democratic landslide of 1874, however, broke his power, and he was defeated for reelection to the Senate. In October 1875, he became secretary of the interior, retaining the office until the close of Grant's second administration. His reorganization of the department was attended by wholesale dismissals for alleged dishonesty or incompetence. He was again elected to the Senate in February 1879, to fill a vacancy caused by the resignation of Isaac P. Christiancy [q.v.].

[Aside from the Biography Congress Dir. (1913), the Journals of the Senate, the Congressional Globe, and Congressional Record, the chief source is the anonymous Zachariah Chandler: an Outline Sketch of His Life and Public Services (1880), which is supplemented in a number of details by Wilmer C. Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chandler, 1811-75 (1917), a doctoral dissertation of the University of Chicago.]

W.M.


CHENEY, Oren Burbank, 1816-1903, Maine, Free Will Baptist clergyman, state legislator in Maine, educator, newspaper editor, abolitionist.  Free Soil Party.  Editor of The Morning Star.  Founder and President of Bates College.  Conductor on the Underground Railroad for seven years.  Son of abolitionists Moses and Abigail Cheney. 

(E. Burlingame-Cheney, Story of the Life and Work of Oren B. Cheney, Founder and First President of Bates College (1907); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, pp. 53-54)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, pp. 53-54)

CHENEY, OREN BURBANK (December 10, 1816-December 22, 1903), Baptist clergyman, college president, was the son of Moses Cheney, a member of the New Hampshire legislature, and of Abigail (Morrison) Cheney, a woman of great energy and strength of character. His early education consisted of a few terms at private schools, a few at public schools, and a year when he was thirteen at New Hampton Institute. When he was sixteen he was sent to Parsonsfield Seminary, the first school founded and maintained by Free Baptists, where, as a student, he helped organize a temperance society, believed to be the first school society of that kind in the world. He was present in the same year at the organization of the Free Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. From this school he went again to the New Hampton Literary Institute. A year at Brown in 1835 was followed by a period at Dartmouth where he took his B.A. degree in 1839, and his M.A. in 1842. He taught the Indians who camped near the college, preached at a Free Will Baptist church at Grantham, ten miles away, and taught a school during the winters at Peterboro to pay his college expenses. In the fall after his graduation he was principal at the Farmington (Maine) Academy with Caroline Adelia Rundlett as his assistant. They were married a few months later. The following year he taught at Greenland, New Hampshire, walking to Northampton on Sundays to preach. Soon after he was licensed to preach. At this time he began to contribute articles to the Morning Star which appeared more or less regularly for sixty years. Called subsequently to be principal of Parsonsfield Seminary, he remained there for two years. Then, as he felt that he needed more theological preparation, he went to Whitestown, New York, to study. At the end of a year he accepted a country pastorate at West Lebanon, Maine, at a salary of $175 a year. His wife had died, and in 1847 he married Nancy S. Perkins, daughter of a Baptist clergyman. At Lebanon, with his customary energy, he founded an academy. After six years here in the church and at the academy, he was called to the Augusta (Maine) Baptist pastorate. In 1851, he was elected to the Maine legislature by a combination of the Free Soil, Independent, and Whig parties. He secured $2,000 from the legislature for the Lebanon Academy and voted for the first prohibition measure introduced in the Maine legislature by Neal Dow. In 1852 he was elected a delegate to the Maine Free Soil Convention at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which nominated John P. Hale for the presidency. When Parsonsfield Seminary was burned in 1854, he was deeply stirred and at this time began to consider an ideal school in which students could depend on their own efforts to pay their way. The result was the Maine State Seminary in Lewiston, Maine, which opened September 1, 1857, with Cheney as principal. In 1863, the trustees were induced to vote to establish a course of collegiate study, the legislature was petioned for an enlarged charter, received the ensuing year, and the name was changed to Bates College in honor of its most generous patron. Women as well as men had attended the seminary, but when the college was opened the feeling was so strong against women that all but one withdrew, the one, however, stayed and obtained her degree, and Bates as a result has remained a coeducational institution as its charter first provided. Cheney remained president of the college until 1894 and was president emeritus until his death in 1903. He was married a third time in 1892 to Emeline S. (Aldrich) Burlingame who had been much interested in Christian and reformatory work.

[General Cat. Bates College and Cobb Divinity School, 1863-1915 (1915); E. Burlingame-Cheney, Story of the Life and Work of Oren B. Cheney, Founder and First President of Bates College (1907).]


CHRISTIANCY, Isaac Peckham, born 1812, Johnstown, New York. U. S. Senator. “In 1848 was a delegate to the Buffalo Free-Soil Convention, having left the Democratic Party on the question of slavery. He was a member of the state senate from 1850 till 1852, and in the latter year was the Free-Soil candidate for governor.” Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. p. 611.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

CHRISTIANCY, Isaac Peckham, senator, born in Johnstown (now Bleecker), New York, 12 March, 1812. He was educated at the academies of Kingsborough and Ovid, New York, and when thirteen years old became the main support of his father's family. After teaching school he studied law with John Maynard till 1836, when he moved to Monroe, Michigan, and, on the completion of his law studies, was admitted to the bar. He was prosecuting attorney for Monroe county from 1841 till 1846, and in 1848 was a delegate to the Buffalo Free-Soil Convention, having left the Democratic Party on the question of slavery. He was a member of the state senate from 1850 till 1852, and in the latter year was the Free-Soil candidate for governor. He was one of the founders of the Democratic Party in Michigan, and was a delegate to its first national convention in Philadelphia in 1856. He purchased the Monroe “Commercial” in 1857, and became its editor, and in the same year was an unsuccessful candidate for U. S. Senator. He was elected a judge of the State supreme court in 1857, re-elected in 1865 and 1873, both times without opposition, and became chief justice in January, 1872. He was elected U. S. Senator in 1875, and, resigning in February, 1879, on account of ill health, was sent as minister to Peru, where he remained for two years. During the Civil War Judge Christiancy was for a time on the staff of General Custer and that of General A. A. Humphreys. His judicial opinions, which are to be found in the “Michigan Reports” from volumes 5 to 31, inclusive, contain the best work of his life. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. p. 611.


CIST, Charles, Cincinnati, Ohio, Active in Free-Soil Party (Rayback, 1970 p. 248)


CLAFLIN, William H., 1818-1903, Newton, Massachusetts, Church Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1859-62


CLARKE, George L., 1813-1890, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island.  Member of Free-Soil and Liberty Parties.


CLAY, Cassius Marcellus, 1810-1903, Madison County, Kentucky, anti-slavery political leader, emancipationist, large landowner, statesman, lawyer, diplomat, soldier, newspaper publisher. Prominent anti-slavery activist with Kentucky State legislature and member of the Free-Soil and Republican Party.  Published anti-slavery paper, True American, in Lexington, Kentucky.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 151, 171; Clay, 1896; Dumond, 1961, p. 258; Filler, 1960, pp. 213, 221, 248, 256, 272; Mabee, 1970, pp. 4, 237, 258-259, 327, 336, 372; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 5, 63, 64, 71, 107, 147, 156, 199; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 380, 619; Sewell, 1976; p. 136, 314; Smiley, 1962; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 503, 577, 639-640; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 18; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 171-173; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 4; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 311-312)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 18;

CLAY, CASSIUS MARCELLUS (October 19, 1810--July 22, 1903), abolitionist, the youngest son of Green Clay [q.v.], and Sally (Lewis) Clay, was born on his father's estate, "White Hall," in Madison County, Kentucky. His ancestry was Scotch, English, and Welsh; and in him was so strange a mixture of manly vigor, unfaltering honesty, indiscreet pugnacity, and the wild spirit of the crusader, as to make him one of the most remarkable of the lesser figures in American history. When very young he fought his mother, his schoolmaster, and a slave companion; the day before his wedding he caned a rival in the streets of Louisville; and when ninety-three years old, suffering under the hallucination that people were plotting against his life, he converted his ancestral mansion into a fortified castle, protected by a cannon. His career was turbulent in politics, in the army, within the circle of his family, and in all his social and diplomatic relations. In 1841 he fought a duel in Louisville with Robert Wickliffe, Jr.; four years later he so mutilated with a bowie knife Sam M. Brown as to be indicted for mayhem; in 1850 he stabbed to death Cyrus Turner; and in his old age he shot and killed a negro. In all his early political campaigns he carried a bowie knife and two pistols.

Clay was given the best opportunities of his day for an education, first receiving instruction from Joshua Fry in Garrard County, and later under the same master at Danville. He was then sent to the Jesuit College of St. Joseph in Nelson County. He attended Transylvania University for a time, and in 1831 with letters of introduction to President Jackson and to the principal men of note in the East he entered the junior class in Yale College, where he was graduated the next year. He returned to Kentucky and studied law at Transylvania but never took out license to practise. Wealthy and. ambitious for a political career, he was elected to the state legislature from Madison County in 1835 and in 1837, being defeated in 1836 on his advocacy of internal improvements. He now moved to Lexington and in 1840 was elected to the legislature to represent Fayette County. The following year he again ran, contrary to the advice of his distant kinsman, Henry Clay, and was defeated on the question of slavery. Though his father had been a large slaveholder, Clay had early developed a bitter hatred toward the institution, and, inspired by William Lloyd Garrison whom he had heard at Yale College, this hatred became a crusading passion. In his defeat for the legislature he saw the blatant tyranny and implacable opposition of the slaveholders, and he resolved to rid Kentucky of the evil. In June 1845 he set up in Lexington a newspaper which he called the True American and began his campaign. Foreseeing trouble he fortified his office with two four-pounder cannon, Mexican lances, and rifles, and strategically placed a keg of powder to be set off against any attackers. In August a committee of sixty prominent Lexingtonians visited his establishment while he was absent, boxed up his equipment, and sent it to Cincinnati. He continued to publish his paper from this new location, and later, changing its name to the Examiner, he moved it to Louisville.

Although Clay had opposed the annexation of Texas, in 1846 he volunteered among the first of those who were to invade Mexico, believing that since his country was at war it was his duty to fight, and feeling that a military record would help him politically. He fought with bravery in a number of engagements and was taken prisoner at Encarnacion in January 1847. After many harrowing experiences he was set free, returning to Kentucky to share in a resolution of commendation by the legislature and to receive a sword presented by his fellow citizens. In politics he began a strong follower of Henry Clay, but, during the campaign of 1844, became estranged from him on the issue of abolitionism. In the next presidential campaign he supported Taylor from the beginning, and in 1849 he made a determined effort to build up an emancipation party in Kentucky by holding a convention in Frankfort and running for governor. In the election he received 3,621 votes, enough to defeat the Whig candidate. On the birth of the Republican party he joined it, voting for Fremont in 1856 and for Lincoln in 1860. In this latter year he had a considerable following for the vice-presidency. He was on terms of close friendship with Lincoln, and, having been led to understand that he might have the secretaryship of war, was greatly chagrined when he did not receive it. To pacify him Lincoln offered him the diplomatic post at Madrid, which he refused. Later he accepted the Russian post. On his way east he reached Washington in April, at the time when it was cut off and undefended. He quickly grasped the situation and raised 300 men for the protection of the city and government, for which service he might have received appointment as major-general in the Federal army had he not preferred to continue to Russia. In 1862 he was recalled and made a major-general, but he refused to fight until the government should abolish slavery in the seceded states. He returned to Kentucky in the fall of 1862 on a mission to the legislature, did some fighting, and left for Russia again in 1863, where he remained until 1869. He fell out with President Grant and joining the Liberal Republicans supported Greeley in 1872. Disagreeing with the policy of reconstruction, he supported Tilden in 1876, but in 1884 he was for Blaine. After returning from Russia he retired to his estate in Madison County and in his old age, a few weeks before his death, the Richmond court adjudged him a lunatic. He was married to Mary Jane Warfield of Lexington in 1832, but was divorced from her in 1878. On his final return from Russia he brought to his home a Russian boy, whom he named Launey Clay, refusing to disclose his parentage. Shortly before his death he married a young girl from whom he soon secured a divorce.

[A vivid account of Clay' s career is set forth in his Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay; Memoirs, Writings and Speeches (1886), volume I. A second volume was projected but never published. Biographical Memoranda Class of 1832 Yale College (1880) contains sketch "communicated by himself." In 1848 his speeches were brought out by Horace Greeley under the title of Speeches and Writings of C. M. Clay. All of Clay's papers prior to the Civil War were burned during the conflict. Incomplete sketches of him may be found in R. H. and L. R. Collins, History of Kentucky (1874), and Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky (1877). A short sketch is in Who's Who in America, 1901-02. An account of the last days of his life and an obituary appear in Lexington (Kentucky) Leader, July 6-8, 23, 1903. Files of his True American are preserved in the Lexington Public Library]

E. M. C.

A volume of his speeches was edited by Horace Greeley (1848), and he has published “The Life, Memoirs, Writings, and Speeches of Cassius M. Clay” (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 503, 577, 639-640.


CLEVELAND, Chauncy Fitch, 1799-1887, Hampton, Connecticut, lawyer, Governor, U.S. Congressman, reformer, Free Soil Party.  Elected Governor of Connecticut in 1842 and in 1843.  Elected Congressman in 1842.  Opposed the Missouri Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law.  Joined the new Republican party in 1856. 

(Sewell, 1976; p. 218n; Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, p. 338; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, p. 203 Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, p. 203

CLEVELAND, CHAUNCEY FITCH (February 16, 1799-June 6, 1887), lawyer, governor, congressman, was born at Hampton, Connecticut, the son of Silas and Lois (Sharpe) Cleveland. After receiving a common-school education, he studied law with Daniel Frost of Canterbury, Connecticut, for three years, and in August 1819 was admitted to the Windham County bar. He became clerk of the probate court (1827), probate judge (1829), prosecuting attorney (1833), and state bank commissioner (1837). Between 1826 and 1866 he was twelve times elected to the General Assembly from the town of Hampton and was speaker of the House in 1835, 1836, and 1863. Elected governor of Connecticut in 1842 and 1843, he interested himself in social reform and recommended and carried through an act abolishing imprisonment for debt, a child-labor law, and appropriations for a "Retreat" for the insane poor at Hartford. During the Dorr insurrection in Rhode Island, he twice refused to honor the requisition of Charter Governor King for Thomas W. Dorr [q.v.], charged with treason against the State of Rhode Island, on the ground that Dorr was a political refugee and not a fugitive from justice (Providence Daily Journal, September 2, 1842). Nominated for Congress, he was defeated in 1838 and 1840 but was elected to the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses, where he defended the United States Supreme Court, asked that the franking privilege of members of Congress be curtailed, and opposed Clay's compromise measures of 1850 including the Fugitive Slave Bill. He was strongly anti-slavery, twice receiving the nomination of Free-Soilers for Congress, simultaneously with the Democratic nomination, and went so far in obeying the resolutions of the Connecticut legislature against the extension of slavery as to compare Daniel Webster with Benedict Arnold. A leader of the Democrats in Connecticut, he bolted his party in the mid-fifties, joined the new Republican party, acted as one of the vice-presidents of the Republican conventions of 1856 and 186o, and served as Republican presidential elector in 1860. In the following year he was appointed by Governor Buckingham to the delegation representing Connecticut in the peace conference that met in Washington, February 4-27, 1861, at the invitation of the State of Virginia. After the war he returned to the Democratic fold and was a Democratic presidential elector in 1876. He abandoned his law practise about 1879 and died at Hampton of apoplexy at the age of eighty-eight. He was married, first, to Diantha Hovey, December 13, 1821, by whom he had two children. She died, October 29, 1867, and on January 27, 1869, he was married to Helen Cornelia Litchfield.

[Public Acts, State of Conn., May Session 1842, chapters xxiii and xxviii; Resolutions and Priv. Acts, State of Connecticut, May Session 1842, p. 52, May Session 1843, p. 28; Congressional Globe, 31, 32 Congress; Roll State Officers and M embers of General Assembly of Connecticut (1881); L. E. Chittenden, Report Debates and Proc ...  Conference Convention (1864); E. J . and H . G. Cleveland, Genealogy Cleveland and Cleaveland Families (1899); E. D. Larned, History of Windham County, Connecticut, volume II (1880); Hartford Daily Courant, May 8, October 27, 1842, May 6, 1843; Hartford Times, June 7, 1887.]

F.E.R.


COLLAMER, Jacob, 1791-1865, lawyer, jurist.  U.S. Senator from Vermont.  U.S. Senator, 1854-1865.  Supported the Free Soil-Party and the non-extension of slavery into the new territories. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 689; Raybeck, 1970 p. 248 Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 300; Congressional Globe Addresses on the Death of Hon. Jacob Collamer delivered in the Senate and House of Representatives, December 14, 1865 (1866).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 300;

COLLAMER, JACOB (January 8, 1791-November 9, 1865), judge, United States senator, postmaster-general, was born in Troy, New York, third of the eight children of Samuel Collamer, member of an early Massachusetts family, and Elizabeth Van Ornum, of colonial Dutch descent. The family moved to Burlington, Vermont, when Jacob was about four. Here he prepared for college under members of the faculty, and graduated from the University of Vermont in 1810. At once he began the study of law at St. Albans, Vermont, under Mr. Langworthy and later under Benjamin Swift, afterward senator. His studies were interrupted by his being drafted into the detailed militia service in 1812. He served as lieutenant of artillery and as aide to General French, with whom he went to Plattsburg, arriving in the evening after the battle was over. Admitted to the bar in 1813 he practised at Randolph Center until he removed to Royalton in 1816. He married Mary N. Stone of St. Albans, daughter of Abijah Stone, on July 15, 1817. He served four terms in the legislature as representative of Royalton, and was one of the assistant judges of the supreme court of Vermont from 1833 until 1842 when he declined reelection. As delegate to the Vermont constitutional convention (1836) he actively supported the movement to substitute a state Senate for the old Governor's Council. "That amendment has been largely attributed to the ability and zeal with which he urged it" (Barrett, post). This year he moved to Woodstock, Vermont, his home for the rest of his life. His national career began in 1842 when, after a close and hotly contested election, he was chosen member of the House of Representatives for the 2nd Congressional District. Reelected in 1844 and 1846, he declined a fourth election. As representative he made speeches on the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, and the tariff, his address on "Wools and Woolens" attracting most attention. Recommended for a cabinet position by a legislative caucus, he became postmaster-general in the cabinet of President Taylor (1849). His service was short, for upon the death of President Taylor in July 1850 he resigned with the rest of the cabinet.

A few months after his return home, the Vermont legislature elected him, under the recently remodeled judicial system, circuit judge for the 2nd judicial circuit. In 1854, a candidate of the young Republican party as an anti-slavery Whig, he was elected senator. As a Republican he belonged to the conservative wing. In the Thirty-fourth Congress he served on the Committee on Territories under the chairmanship of Senator Douglas, and on March 12, 1856 made a vigorous minority report on the disorders in Kansas, defending the character of the free state leaders. He was one of three New England senators to vote against the tariff bill of 1857. In 1860 Vermont presented his name to the Republican convention for the presidential nomination, but after the first ballot, on which he received ten votes, his name was withdrawn. In the same year he was reelected to the Senate "with almost unprecedented unanimity." He and Fessenden refused to vote against the Crittenden compromise of the winter of 1861, though they did not vote for it. He drafted the bill, enacted July 13, 1861, which, according to Senator Sumner gave to the war for the suppression of the rebellion its first congressional sanction and invested the President with new powers" (Address of Senator Charles Sumner, December 14, 1865). On the problems of Reconstruction he held that Congress should control. While not an orator, and rarely speaking in the Senate, he was always listened to with attention, the logic of his arguments commanding respect. From June 1855 to October 1862 he was president the last-of the Vermont Medical College at Woodstock, in which he had lectured on medical law. He died at his home in Woodstock after a brief illness. Judge James Barrett, long his law partner, said of Collamer, "His mind was made up of a clear and ready perception, acuteness of discrimination, a facile faculty of analysis, an aptness and ease in rigid and simple logic, excellent commonsense, and withal a most tenacious memory of facts." [The chief source is the Memorial Address read by Judge Jas. Barrett before the Vermont Historical Society, October 20, 1868 (Rutland, 1868; Woodstock, 1868). Consult also Addresses on the Death of Hon. Jacob Collamer delivered in the Senate and House of Representatives, December 14, 1865 (1866) and Addresses on the Presentation of the Statue of Jacob Collamer of Vermont, by Jas. M. Tyler, Geo. B. Long, and Alexander H. Stephens, delivered in the House of Representatives February 15, 1881 (1881); and Henry Swan Dana, History of Woodstock, Vermont (1889).]

C.R.W.


CONWAY, Martin Franklin, 1829-1882, Hartford County, Maryland.  U.S. Congressman, diplomat, abolitionist.  Supported Kansas Free-State Movement. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, pp. 363-364) Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 363-364.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, pp. 363-364.

CONWAY, MARTIN FRANKLIN (November 19, 1827-February 15, 1882), free-state leader, first congressman from Kansas, was the son of Dr. W. D. Conway and Frances, his wife, who lived in Harford County, Maryland. He left school at the age of fourteen and went to Baltimore, where he learned the printer's trade. While working as a compositor he aided in founding the National Typographical Union, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He was married to Emily Dykes in June 1851. Three years later they removed to Kansas. As correspondent for the Baltimore Sun he reported conditions in the new territory for some time after his arrival. His letters attracted attention and he soon became one of the recognized leaders of the free-state movement. He was elected a member of the first territorial legislature but resigned without taking his seat. He took an active part in the Big Springs convention, September 5, 1855, which formulated the platform of the free-state party. A few weeks later he was elected a delegate to the Topeka constitutional convention and wrote the resolutions offered by that body. State officers were elected under this constitution, and Conway was chosen one of the supreme court justices of the territory. In 1858 he was elected a delegate to the Leavenworth constitutional convention of which he was made president. In 1859 he was nominated for representative in Congress by the Republicans and elected by a majority of 2,107 votes over John Halderman, his opponent. Kansas did not become a state until January 29, 1861, and the Congress to which he had been elected expired on March 4 following. He served during this short interval, being the first congressman from Kansas, was promptly renominated; and elected again in June 1861. Conway was dubbed "the silver tongued orator of the West" and "the Patrick Henry of Kansas" (Kansas Historical Collections, V, 45; X, 186). In the Thirty-seventh Congress he was noted for his radical utterances on the slavery question. Soon after the first session began he made a speech in which he declared that the paramount object of the federal government should be immediate and unconditional emancipation. Until such a policy should be adopted, he said, he would "not vote another dollar or man for the war." "Millions for freedom but not one cent for slavery," was one of his epigrams (Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, pt. 1, p. 87). Failing to be renominated at the end of his term in the Thirty-seventh Congress, he retired to private life but kept up his interest in public affairs. In the struggle between President Johnson and Congress, he strongly supported the former. The President appointed him United States consul at Marseilles, France, in June 1866. After his term of service ended he made his home in Washington, D. C., where, on October 11, 1873, he fired three shots at former Senator Pomeroy, slightly wounding him. When arrested Conway said, "He ruined myself and family." The former Senator declared that there had never been any trouble between them. Undoubtedly Conway was becoming unbalanced; later his mind gave way entirely as a result of disappointed ambition, and he was confined in St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Insane, at Washington, where he died.

[D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (1886); Andreas, History of Kansas (1883); F. W. Blackmar, Cyclopedia of Kansas History (1912); The Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, pt. 1; Kansas History Coll., vols. V (1896); VI (1900); VIII (1904); X (1908); XI (1910); XIII (1915); and XVI (1925). Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928);]

T.L.H.


CORWIN, Thomas, 1794-1865, statesman, U.S. Congressman, Governor of Ohio, U.S. Senator, Secretary of the Treasury, diplomat, opposed the annexation of Texas while he was in in the senate, and the extension of slavery into the new territories.

(Mitchell, 2007, p. 33, 35, 160, 172, 173, 266n; Sewell, 1976; p. 141-142, 305, 306, 354, 356; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 403; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 751; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 457; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 549). Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); See the “Life and Speeches” of Thomas Corwin, edited by Isaac Strohn (Dayton. 1859).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 457

CORWIN, THOMAS (July 29, 1794-December 18, 1865), governor of Ohio, senator, secretary of the Treasury, traced his ancestry to Matthias Corwin who settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts, about 1634. When Matthias Corwin, a descendant of the first Matthias, settled at Lebanon, Ohio, in 1798, he had only $100 with which to buy a farm, but he possessed qualities of mind and character which brought him to the speakership of the state Assembly, and endowed his children with an excellent inheritance. His wife, Patience Halleck, is reputed to have been a person of marked intellectuality. Thomas, their fifth child, born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, early exhibited bookish tendencies which the father did little to encourage, less, it appears, through lack of sympathy than through lack of means. From his large family he selected an older son to be educated as a lawyer, leaving Thomas to acquire what learning he could by the diligent use of a scanty leisure and his brother's books. At twenty-one, Thomas began to read law and in due course was admitted to the bar. In 1822 he married Sarah Ross, daughter of a congressman, related on her mother's side to the Randolphs of Virginia. He was elected to the General Assembly in 1821, 1822, and 1829, and became a supporter, in national politics, of the Clay-Adams group, by this path passing into the Whig party. Following Jackson's election, Corwin's party put him forward in his home district, a community favorable to Jackson, as its strongest candidate for Congress, and elected him with one-fourth more votes than his opponent received. During a decade in Congress, a period of Democratic control, his speeches, although infrequent, made an excellent impression. Most notable of these was his reply to General Isaac Crary (February 15, 1840).

His canvass for governor in 1840 made him famous as a campaign orator. He won by a majority of 16,000, but was defeated in 1842, in consequence of party strife over matters for which he had slight responsibility, and he refused renomination in 1844. He campaigned actively for Clay, however, on the Texas issue. The Whigs lost the presidency, but, regaining control of the Ohio legislature, sent Corwin to the United States Senate. Here, during the Mexican War, he reached the climax of his career. Convinced that the war was waged for territory, he besought Webster and Crittenden to stand with him against further appropriations. When they failed him, he pursued his opposition alone, delivering a powerful speech on February 11, 1847, in which he denounced the war as unjust, and with prophetic vision as well as eloquence predicted the sectional conflict which would follow the acquisition of Mexican territory. A few radicals talked of him for the presidency, but most Whigs as well as Democrats regarded such sentiments uttered in actual time of war as traitorous. Petitions to the legislature, however, demanding that his resignation be required, brought forth as a committee report a resolution of confidence.

Taylor's death brought Fillmore to office and Corwin to the post of secretary of the Treasury; this he filled without distinction, retiring with his chief in 1853. As the slavery controversy developed, he reluctantly abandoned the Whig party, being elected to the House in 1858 as a Republican, although he did not wholly accept the party program. He advocated the abolition of slavery in the territories, but upheld the right of each new state to decide the slavery question for itself. After Lincoln's election, he earnestly sought means of allaying the fears of the South, and served as chairman of the House committee of thirty-three. As minister to Mexico during the critical years 1861-64, he filled acceptably his last public office. Returning to Washington, he opened a law office, but died only a few months later.

Corwin's face was remarkably expressive, and his voice, although neither deep nor powerful, was musical and far-reaching. As a lawyer he was brilliant rather than learned; politics diverted his attention from profound study. A natural wit, he came to believe that fun-making had hampered his career, but his brilliant satire seldom left a sting. Though not a church member, he was permanently influenced by the religious atmosphere in which he was reared. His speeches are saturated with Biblical allusions and quotations. His chief fault was laxity in financial affairs. He was careless in collecting fees, and during most of his life was handicapped by a burden of debt. After leaving the cabinet he was impoverished by an unfortunate investment in railway stocks. He suffered loss frequently through becoming surety. He was much loved, and nowhere more so than at home and by his neighbors, for he was kind and generous.

[See E. T. Corwin, Corwin Genealogy in the U. S. (1872); Josiah Morrow, Life and Speeches of Thos. Corwin (1896); Addison Peale Russell, Thos. Corwin, A Sketch (1882), a somewhat laudatory character study containing valuable anecdotal material. Some sidelights are provided by letters of Thos. Corwin to Wm. Greene, 1841-51, in "Selections from the Wm. Greene Papers," ed. by L. Belle Hamlin, in History and Philosophical Society of Ohio Quart. Pub., vol. XIII (1918). See also Speeches of Thos. Corwin with a Sketch of his Life (1859), ed. by Isaac Strohm; Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society Quart. Pub., vol. IX (1914). The Lib. of Congress has twelve volumes of Corwin Papers covering the years of Corwin's term as secretary of the Treasury; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe].

H.C.H.


COWLES, EDWIN September 19, 1825-March 4, 1890), journalist, was born in Austinburg, Ohio. Published the Forest City Democrat, a Free-Soil Whig newspaper. In 1854, the name was changed to the Cleveland Leader.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 472.

COWLES, EDWIN (September 19, 1825-March 4, 1890), journalist, was born in Austinburg, Ohio. A Cowles, originally Coles or Cole, had come to Massachusetts in 1635, and a year later had joined the pioneer band that the Reverend Thomas Hooker led from Cambridge to Connecticut. In 1810, a descendant, Dr. Edwin Weed Cowles, settled at Austinburg, Ohio, among Connecticut neighbors who had been lured into the West. When Edwin, the son of Dr. Edwin Weed and Almira (Foote) Cowles, was seven years of age, the family took up its abode in Cleveland. Edwin's education was limited to a few years in the local schools and one at the Grand River Institute in Austinburg. At the age of fourteen, he entered a printer's office. Five years later (1844) he and T. H. Smead became partners in the printing business. In 1853, the partnership with Smead was dissolved and another formed with Joseph Medill and John C. Vaughn (Medill, Cowles & Company). The new organization published the Forest City Democrat, a Free-Soil Whig newspaper. In 1854, the name was changed to the Cleveland Leader. A year later Cowles became sole owner and shortly afterward editor as well. His enterprise rapidly grew to include both a morning and an evening daily newspaper.

His connection with political history was intimate. He was one of the founders of the Republican party. At the beginning of the Civil War he became an insistent advocate of coercion of the Southern states and immediate emancipation of the slaves. In 1861, Lincoln appointed him postmaster in Cleveland, an office he held five years. In 1876 and 1884, he was a delegate to the National Republican Convention. On the second occasion he was vice-president of the convention. He was a regular party man, loyal to Grant, and throughout his life a believer in Blaine. Finding that Blaine could not be nominated in 1876 and 1880, he threw his influence behind Ohio's favorite sons, Hayes and Garfield. Working all his life under a handicap of deafness that would have baffled a weaker personality, he was an editor of remarkable courage, unchangeable convictions, and relentless dogmatisms, and such qualities made his pen a power in northern Ohio for a generation.

He was married in 1849 to Elizabeth C. Hutchinson of Cayuga, New York. In his later years he aided his sons, Eugene and Alfred, in the development of new methods in electric smelting. The aluminum, carborundum, calcium carbide, and acetylene industries grew out of their work. A company was formed for the manufacture of such products and Edwin Cowles, who supplied most of the capital, was its president. His interests in this company kept him in Europe much of the last two years of his life.

[The chief sources are Cowles's newspapers, files of which are in the Western Reserve Historical Society The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Leader, and the New York Times, March 5, 1890, each published an estimate of his work. See also the Cleveland Weekly Leader and Herald, March 8, 1890; Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham, The Pioneer Families of Cleveland (1914), II, 394 ff. A History of Ashtabula County, Ohio (1878), contains a sketch prepared under Cowles's direction.]

E.J. B.


COX, JACOB DOLSON (October 27, 1828-August 8, 1900), Union general, governor of Ohio, secretary of the interior, author. Cox took a prominent part in bringing about the fusion of Whigs and Free-Soilers, and in 1855 was a delegate to the convention in Columbus which organized the Republican party in the state.  

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2 pp. 476-478 J. R. Ewing, Public Services of Jacob Dolson Cox (1902), Jas. Ford Rhodes "Jacob D. Cox" (Historical Essays, 1909, pp. 183- 88).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, pp. 476-478.

COX, JACOB DOLSON (October 27, 1828-August 8, 1900), Union general, governor of Ohio, secretary of the interior, author, was descended from one Michael Koch, who came from Hanover and settled in New York City in 1705. Jacob Dolson Cox, Sr., received his middle name from his mother, a member of a Dutch family of New York: his wife, Thedia R. Kenyon, was descended from Elder William Brewster and from the Allyns and Kenyons of Connecticut. To them was born, at Montreal, Jacob Dolson Cox, Jr., while the father, a building contractor, was engaged in the construction of the roof of the Church of Notre Dame. Returning to New York City soon after this event, the family suffered business reverses during the crisis of 1837. The boy's hope of obtaining a college education was impaired by the misfortune, and, under the state law, the alternative path to a lawyer's career, to which he aspired, was a seven years' clerkship in a law office. Entering upon such an apprenticeship in 1842, he changed his mind two years later, and went into the office of a banker and broker, where the shorter hours permitted him, with the aid of a friend, to pursue the study of mathematics and the classical languages. After two years more, through the influence of Reverend Charles G. Finney [q.v.], then professor of theology at Oberlin College, he was led to enter the preparatory department of that institution. Three years later (1849), while still an undergraduate, he married Helen, the daughter of Finney who was now president of the college. Graduating in 1851, Cox served for two years at Warren, Ohio, as superintendent of schools and principal of the high school, reading law at the same time, and beginning to practise in 1853.

Cox was at this time a Whig, but his Oberlin associations, his marriage, and other influences, combined to make him strongly anti-slavery in principle. He voted for Scott in 1852, but took a prominent part in bringing about the fusion of Whigs and Free-Soilers, and in 1855 was a delegate to the convention at Columbus which organized the Republican party in the state. A few years later his party friends, against his protest, nominated and elected him to the state Senate. Entering the Senate in 1859, he found there his friend James A. Garfield, and Governor-Elect Dennison, with whom he soon became intimate, this trio, together with Salmon P. Chase, then governor, forming a radical anti-slavery group.

With the outbreak of war in 1861, Cox's activity in organizing volunteers brought him a commission as brigadier-general of volunteers. During the summer he had a part in the Kanawha Valley campaign under McClellan, and a year later, in the Army of the Potomac, he participated in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam, commanding the 9th Corps at the former after the fall of General Reno. He was advanced to the rank of major-general on October 6, 1862, but the following April was reduced to his former rank because the number of major-generals permitted by law had been inadvertently exceeded. This bungling, which resulted in the promotion of less deserving officers, was a discouraging episode in his military career; but after repeated urging on the part of his superiors he was at length recommissioned in December 1864. During the winter of 1862- 63 he commanded the forces in West Virginia, and from April to December 1863 was in charge of the Ohio military district. During the Atlanta campaign he led a division of the 3rd Army Corps, and after the fall of Atlanta for a time commanded the entire corps. He took part in the battle of Nashville, and early in 1865 was sent into North Carolina to open communications. along the coast with Sherman, who was nearing the end of the march to the sea. On this expedition Cox defeated Bragg's troops and effected a junction with Sherman at Goldsboro.

After the war, while engaged in superintending the mustering out of the troops in Ohio, Cox was elected governor of the state. During the campaign in response to the inquiries of friends at Oberlin, he expressed himself as opposed to negro suffrage. He could not assume as they did, he wrote, that the suffrage, while whites and blacks dwelt in the same community, would cure all of the ills of the freedmen. Carrying these ideas further, he declared while governor, that the large groups of whites and blacks in the Southern states could never share political power, and that insistence upon it on the part of the colored people would bring about their ruin. As a remedy, he advocated the forcible segregation of the negroes, a plan which found little or no support. By such views, and by his indorsement of President Johnson's reconstruction policy, which he thought essentially the same as Lincoln's, he lost favor with his party, and was not renominated. He tried in vain to mediate between Johnson and the radical Republicans, and finally himself abandoned the President because of the latter 's obstinacy and pugnacity. In 1868 Cox declined Johnson's tender of the post of commissioner of Internal Revenue.

Upon Grant's accession, Cox accepted the office of secretary of the interior. He had become a prominent advocate of the new cause of civil-service reform, and in his own department he put the merit system into operation, resisting the efforts of the party spoilsmen to dictate appointments and to collect campaign assessments. He and Attorney-General Hoar were regarded by the Independent Republicans as the only strong men in Grant's cabinet. When Grant's extraordinary Santo Domingo embroglio forced Hoar from the cabinet-the story of which episode Cox gave to the public twenty-five years later (see Atlantic Monthly, August 1895)-Cox lost hope of maintaining his fight without the support of the President. Already he had clashed with Grant over the fraudulent claims of one McGarrahan to certain mineral lands, as well as over the Dominican situation and on October 5, 1870, he submitted his resignation. " My views of the necessity of reform in the civil service," he wrote, "have brought me more or less into collision with the plans of our active political managers, and my sense of duty has obliged me to oppose some of their methods of action" (New York Tribune, October 31, 1870).

The breach with Grant hurt Cox deeply. He held Grant's military talent in high esteem, and did not allow his judgment thereof to be affected by their difference (see, e. g., his review of Grant's Memoirs, in the Nation, February 25, 1886, July I, 1886); but in private conversation he permitted himself to criticize the President's course severely. Grant on his part, with his military instincts and experience, regarded Cox's independence of mind as a kind of insubordination. "The trouble was," as he put it, "that General Cox thought the Interior Department was the whole government, and that Cox was the Interior Department. I had to point out to him in very plain language that there were three controlling branches of the Government, and that I was the head of one of these and would so like to be considered by the Secretary of the Interior" (Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, p. 427). Progressive opinion supported Cox, and his political "martyrdom" undoubtedly hastened the triumph of the reform movement.

Upon leaving the cabinet the former secretary became conspicuously identified with the Liberal Republican movement, and was much talked of as its probable nominee for the presidency in 1872. At the Cincinnati convention, however, he was defeated by the more available Greeley. Meantime he had resumed the practise of law, at Cincinnati; but in 1873 he removed to Toledo to become president of the Wabash Railway. This position he gave up in turn upon being elected to Congress in 1876, from the 6th Ohio District, by an unprecedented majority.

He served but one term in Congress. He seems to have hoped to be able to do something to support President Hayes in his reform efforts, and his helplessness under existing political conditions probably discouraged him. At any rate he abandoned politics, even refraining thereafter from comment on political events, with the exception of a single speech during the Garfield campaign. Resuming his residence at Cincinnati, he became dean of the Cincinnati Law School (1881), a position which he held for the next sixteen years. During part of this time (1885-89) he also served as president of the University of Cincinnati. In addition to high repute as a lawyer, his reputation as a business man was enviable, and brought him in the middle nineties the tender of the post of railroad commissioner in New York City. This offer he declined, preferring to continue his connection with the Law School. In 1897 he declined President McKinley's offer of the Spanish mission, but in the same year he presented his library to Oberlin College and retired thither to write his Military Reminiscences. This work was barely completed and still unpublished when his death occurred, after a brief illness, while he was enjoying his customary summer outing along the coast of Maine, in company with a son.

Cox was tall, graceful, and well-proportioned, with erect, military bearing, and a frame denoting great physical strength. A man of many interests, he devoted much time in his later years to the study of microscopy, in which field he won international distinction. He was also a student of European cathedrals. His wide information, conversational gifts, and courteous manners made him an agreeable companion. The artistic genius of a son, Kenyon Cox [q.v.], doubtless bears witness to undeveloped talents of the father.

No small part of Cox's reputation rests upon his work as a writer. From 1874 until his death he was the Nation's military book critic. In addition to contributions to this and other journals, he wrote several books on military topics, the most important of which are: Atlanta, and The March to the Sea; Franklin and Nashville (volumes IX and X in the Campaigns of the Civil War series, 1882); The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 30, 1864 (1897); and Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (2 vols., 1900). He also contributed four chapters to M. F. Force's Life of General Sherman (1899). A work of less consequence is The Second Battle of Bull Run as Connected with the Fitz-John Porter Case (1882). Some critics of these books regard his attitude toward Rosecrans as unjust and not well informed, and his judgment in the Fitz John Porter case is open to question. In general, however, he is recognized as an elegant and forceful writer, of fine critical ability and impartial judgment, one of the foremost military historians of the country.

[The autobiographical nature of the Military Reminiscences makes it the chief source of information for Cox's life as a soldier. It contains a portrait. See also Bibliotheca Sacra, July 1901, pp. 436-68. J. R. Ewing, Public Services of Jacob Dolson Cox (1902), is a slight sketch of about twenty pages which contains some data not found elsewhere. Jas. Ford Rhodes touches the high points of Cox's civil career and appraises his personality in "Jacob D. Cox" (Historical Essays, 1909, pp. 183- 88). He tells the story of the cabinet controversy in History of the U. S. from the Compromise of 1850, VII (1910), 3-7. See also L.A. Coolidge, Ulysses S. Grant (1917); Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, His Life and Character (1898); Nation, August 9, 1901, p. 107. Estimates of Cox's writings may be found in the American History Review, III (1898), 578-80, and VI (1901), 602-06.]

H.C.H.


CUSHMAN, Lt. Governor of Massachusetts, Free Soil Party. 

(Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 348)


CUTLER, Hannah Tracy, 1815-1896, Becket, Massachusetts, abolitionist, physician.  Leader of the Temperance and women’s suffrage-rights movements, lecturer, educator, physician.  Helped found Women’s Anti-Slavery Society, member of the Free Soil Party, organizer of the Woman’s Kansas Aid Convention in 1856.  Served as President of the Western Union Aid Commission in Chicago, 1862-1864. 

(Yellin, 1994, p. 58n40; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 40) She is the author of “Woman as she Was, Is, and Should be” (New York, 1846); “Phillipia, or a Woman's Question” (Dwight, Illinois, 1886); and “The Fortunes of Michael Doyle, or Home Rule for Ireland” (Chicago, 1886).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

CUTLER, Hannah Maria Tracy, physician, born in Becket, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, 25 December, 1815. She is a daughter of John Conant, and was educated in the common school of Becket. In 1834 she married the Reverend J. M. Tracy, who died in 1843. Subsequently she prepared herself for teaching, and was matron of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1848-'9. In July, 1851, she visited England as a newspaper correspondent at the World's Fair. She was also at the same time a delegate from the United States at the Association in London, and while in England delivered the first lectures ever given there on the legal rights of women. In 1852 she married Samuel Cutler and moved to Illinois, where she labored assiduously for the reform of the laws relating to women. She was president of the Western Union Aid commission, Chicago, Illinois, in 1862-'4. In 1873 she visited France, in company with her son, J. M. Tracy, artist, and remained there till 1875. After her graduation as a physician at the Homoeopathic College in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1879, she settled at Cobden, Illinois, where she has practised with success. She is the author of "Woman as she Was, Is, and Should be" (New York, 1846); "Phillipia, or a Woman's Question" (Dwight, Illinois, 1886): and "The Fortunes of Michael Doyle, or Home Rule for Ireland " (Chicago, 1886). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 46.



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.