H: Hale through Hussey

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

HALE, Edward Everett, 1822-1909, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman, Unitarian minister, writer, abolitionist leader.  Before the Civil War he was active supporting the work of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, writing a book on Kansas (spelled Kanzas) and Nebraska, Co-founder of the Freedman’s Aid Society in 1862, which aided African Americans. 

(Adams, 1977; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 325-326; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 32-33, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 99; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 816)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 99;

HALE, EDWARD EVERETT (April 3, 1822- June 10, 1909), author, Unitarian minister, brother of Lucretia Peabody and Charles Hale [qq.v.], was born in Boston, the fourth of his parents' eight children, and died, at eighty-seven, in the house, in the Roxbury district of Boston, in which he had lived for forty years. His father, Nathan Hale [q.v.], was a nephew of the young American soldier of the same name whose story is a classic episode in the War of Independence. His mother, Sarah Preston Everett, was a sister of Edward Everett [q.v.]. He was fond of saying that he was "cradled in the sheets of a newspaper," and his father's long identification with the Boston Daily Advertiser, of which he acquired the ownership in 1814 and was editor for nearly fifty years thereafter, gave abundant color to the remark. When he was about eleven years old, his father suggested his translating, for publication in the Daily, an article from a French newspaper. It made no difference that he had never studied French. With the help of a sister and a dictionary he translated the article, which was duly printed (Life and Letters, 1917, I, 196). An easy-going journalistic attitude towards writing in general characterized much of his own work throughout life. At a dame school and the Boston Latin School he was made ready to enter Harvard College, as he did, at the age of thirteen. Looking upon school as a "necessary nuisance," he acquired much of his early education from the large, happy, and busy family of which he was a member. The young people made miniature railroad engines and printed books and periodicals of their own composition. Church-going and Sunday school, dancing lessons, frequent contacts with the most stimulating minds of the stirring, homogeneous community-all combined with the more definite processes of schooling to qualify the thirteen-year-old freshman for getting the best out of college. At Harvard he appears to have taken a healthy, all-round interest in the duties and pastimes of his course, gaining some mastery of the classics and English composition, and graduating in 1839, second in his class, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and class poet. At seventeen his formal education thus stood completed.

It had always been taken for granted that he would enter the Unitarian ministry. Without feeling any positive impulse in that direction, and with a marked disinclination to a formal course in theology, he devoted his first two years out of college to teaching in the Boston Latin School, wrote for the press, and pursued his studies for the ministry under private guidance. Before the end of 1842 he began to preach, and in April 1846 was ordained minister of the Church of the Unity in Worcester, Massachusetts. Ten years later he became minister of the South Congregational Church in Boston-his only other parish for the forty-three ensuing years through which he was to continue his active ministry.

A sketch of "Boston in the Forties"-in his New England Boyhood and Other Bits of Autobiography (1900)-helps one to account for the Hale of the fifties and thereafter. Here he depicted the ferments of the little city, of whose inhabitants Emerson was saying that "every man carries a revolution in his waist-coat pocket." What Hale himself said of the leaders in Boston at this time was that they "really believed that they could make the city of Boston the city of God, and they meant to do so," and that they were "men who knew that all things are possible to one who believes" (Ibid., p. 243).

Big of body and spirit, destined to grow, with his aspect of a shaggy prophet and his great, reverberating voice, into the very figure of a seer, Hale was precisely the man to put into action the prevailing beliefs of the Boston in which he came to maturity. Strongly Unitarian in his theological views, honored as a leader in his denomination, he was nevertheless concerned chiefly with the aspects of Christianity on which all could agree. The "New Civilization" for which he labored implied a general betterment of human relationships, social, political, personal. Before the Civil War he threw himself heartily into the work of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, writing a book on Kansas (spelled Kanzas) and Nebraska, and thus virtually beginning his long career of the service of causes through the printed word. As the war approached he drilled with a rifle corps in Boston-but felt, when the contest began, that he could be of most use at home. There he worked tellingly enough in the Sanitary Commission to win for his figure a conspicuous place on one of the bas-reliefs adorning the Soldiers' Monument on Boston Common. What was more important, he wrote at this time, "The Man Without a Country" (Atlantic Monthly, December 1863), one of the best short stories written by an American, and representing Hale at his best as a writer of fiction with a purpose.

The intended immediate purpose of "The Man Without a Country" was to influence an impending election. Its larger, long-continued service as a rarely effectual incentive to patriotism was unforeseen. In its blending of fact, none too thoroughly verified, with extravagant fiction, all narrated with a plausibility of detail clearly suggesting the influence of Defoe, it displays to the best advantage its author's method and manner. Four years earlier, in 1859, he h ad published in the Atlantic Monthly the s tory "My Double; and How He Undid Me," revealing him, equally at his best, in a distinctive vein of humor. These stories, with others, were included in his first volume of fiction, If, Yes, and Perhaps. Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations, with Some Bits of Fact (1868). His many subsequent books were, almost without exception, the work of a religious, humanitarian journalist, keenly perceptive of significances, historic and other, prodigal in illustrations from fact, but much le ss concerned with minor points of accuracy than with major considerations of meaning. "If a parable teaches its lesson," one can imagine his saying, "what matter if it does not tally at every point with the books of reference?" Especially in two of his books, Ten Times One is Ten (1871) and In His Name (1873), which he, though probably few others, counted his best, he gave the direction to far-reaching movements-the Lend a Hand movement, with its familiar motto of Hale's invention, "look up and not down, look forward and not back, look out and not in, lend a hand," and the I. H. N. and other clubs of organized good-will. Both of these stories appeared in Old and New, a monthly magazine which Hale edited from 1870 to 1875. This was a periodical of which one of his friends said that "it would have succeeded had there been anybody connected with it who wanted to make money." Through the press, daily, weekly, and monthly, Hale constantly poured himself forth, turning at times from prose to verse. In the vast bulk of his production three volumes-containing much of autobiography must be noted: A New England Boyhood (1893; reprinted in A New England Boyhood and Other Bits of Autobiography, 1900), lames Russell Lowell and His Friends (1899), and Memories of a Hundred Years (2 vols., 1902).

Two honors, one local, one national, were appropriate to the end of his career. When the twentieth century came in, it was Hale who was chosen to read the Ninetieth Psalm from the balcony of the Massachusetts State House to the great silent crowd that assembled on Boston Common during the final hour of December 31, 1900. The national honor was his election, at the end of 1903, as chaplain of the United States Senate. In these final years also he seized every occasion to urge, through speech and print, the cause of international peace. This was but the logical climax of a life-long work 'or the general wellbeing of mankind.

His domestic life was happy and spirited. On October 13, 1852, he married Emily Baldwin Perkins, of Hartford, Conn., a grand-daughter of Lyman Beecher [q.v.]. Travel, more often in America than in Europe, gave variety to the family routine of Boston in the winter and Matunuck, R. I., in the summer. Up to April in the last year of his life he performed the duties of his chaplaincy at Washington. Then he came back to Boston, where he died, June 10, 1909. His wife, with their one daughter and three of their seven sons, survived him.

[The three autobiographical volumes mentioned above provide many facts in the life of Hale. These are supplemented by the prefaces he wrote for the "Library Edition" of his works (Boston, 1898-1901). The Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, by Edward E. Hale, Jr. (2 vols., 1917), is the authoritative biography. The Philip Nolan of "The Man Without a Country" is not to be confused with the Philip Nolan [q.v.] of history, as Hale explained in "The Real Philip Nolan," Miss. Historical Society Pubs., IV (1901), 281-329.]

M.A. De W. H.


HALE, John Parker, 1806-1873, New Hampshire, lawyer, statesman, diplomat, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator.  Member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.  President of the Free Soil Party, 1852.  See first entry in Free-Soil List.


HALLET, Benjamin F. founding member of the Free-Soil Party.

(“Coalition in Massachusetts. Election of Mr. Sumner,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872; Sewell, 1976; p. 223)


HAMLIN, Hannibal, 1809-1891. Vice President of the United States, 1861-1865, under President Abraham Lincoln.  Congressman from Maine, 1843-1847.  U.S. Senator from Maine, 1848-1857, 1857-1861, and 1869-1881.  Governor of Maine, January-February 1857.  In February 1857, he resigned as Governor of Maine to return to the U.S. Senate.  In 1861, he was elected U.S. Vice President.  Was an adamant opponent of the extension of slavery into the new territories.  Supported the Wilmot Proviso and spoke against the compromise laws of 1850.  Strongly opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  Early founding member of the Republican Party.  Supported Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and creation of Black regiments for the Union Army.

(Harry Draper Hunt (1969). Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Lincoln's first Vice-President. Syracuse University Press: Charles Eugene Hamlin (1899). The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin. Syracuse University Press. Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe; Sewell, 1976; pp. 218, 229, 256, 263, 331, 338).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 196-198;

HAMLIN, HANNIBAL (August 27, 1809-July 4, 1891), vice-president, United States senator, the son of Cyrus and Anna (Livermore) Hamlin, was born at Paris Hill, Maine. He was a descendant in the fifth generation from James Hamlin who settled in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, about 1639. His father, a twin brother of Hannibal Hamlin, the father of Cyrus [q.v.], had studied medicine at Harvard, but after taking up land in Maine, combined farming with the practice of his profession and the holding of sundry local offices. Hannibal grew up in the wholesome environment of a good New England home and attended the village school and Hebron Academy in preparation for college. The latter project had to be abandoned, owing to family misfortunes, and after trying his hand at surveying, printing, and school teaching for a brief period, he decided to study law. He was fortunate in being able to enter the office of Fessenden & Deblois of Portland, the senior partner of which firm, Samuel Fessenden [q.v.], was at once the leading lawyer and the outstanding antislavery advocate of the state. Hamlin was admitted to the bar in 1833 and in the same year settled at Hampden, not far from Bangor. He acquired a considerable practice, but his pronounced talent for party work soon diverted his attention to a political career. As a Jacksonian Democrat, he represented Hampden in the legislature from 1836 to 1841 and again in 1847. He served as speaker for three terms, 1837, 1839- 40. The legislature, during his first five years of service, was an especially valuable training school, containing many members afterwards distinguished in state and national affairs and dealing with such important matters as the financial demoralization of 1837 and succeeding years, the Aroostook boundary embroglio, the abolitionist agitation, and the internal-improvement craze. Hamlin's attitude was usually cautious and conservative.

In 1842 he was elected to Congress and served without special distinction from March 4, 1843, to March 3, 1847. He had decided anti-slavery leanings but, like many of his contemporaries, regarded slavery as an institution beyond the legislative authority of the national government. It is to his credit, however, that he opposed the attempts of its supporters to suppress free discussion. The growing importance of this question eventually produced a serious schism in the Maine Democracy, and in 1848 Hamlin was elected to the United States Senate to serve the balance of the term of John Fairfield, deceased, by the anti-slavery wing of the party. He was reelected in 1851 for a full term. Although a popular campaign orator, he preferred, as he afterwards stated, to be "a working rather than a talking member" of the Senate. As chairman of the committee on commerce he was the author of important legislation dealing with steamboat licensing and inspection and ship-owners' liability. Though a supporter of Pierce in 1852, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the Democratic policy toward slavery, and in 1856 went over to the Republicans. His speech of June 12, 1856, in which he renounced his Democratic allegiance, was widely quoted for campaign purposes and was one of his most effective utterances (Congressional Globe, 34 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 1396-97). In the same year he was elected governor of Maine in an exciting contest which marked the beginning of a long period of Republican predominance. He served only a few weeks as governor, resigning from the Senate January 7, 1857, only to resign the governorship in the following month in order to begin a new term in the Senate. He became increasingly prominent in the anti-slavery contest, and the political needs of 1860 made him a logical running-mate for Lincoln. He again resigned from the Senate on January 17, 1861.

As vice-president during the Civil War, he presided over the Senate with dignity and ability, was on cordial terms with President Lincoln, and performed a great variety of wartime services for his former constituents in Maine. He was a strong advocate of emancipation and became identified with the "Radicals" of Congress . . : his nomination in 1860 had been due largely to party exigencies, his failure to receive a renomination in 1864 may be attributed to the same causes. After retirement from the vice-presidency, he served for about a year as collector of the port of Boston, resigning because of his disapproval of President Johnson's policy. After two years as president of a railroad company constructing a line from Bangor to Dover, he was reelected to the Senate, serving from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1881. He was associated with the Radical group in reconstruction matters, supported Republican principles in economic issues, and steadily maintained his hold on the party organization of his native state. He was an influential opponent of the third-term movement for Grant in the convention of 1880. After retirement from the Senate he served as minister to Spain for a brief period (1881-82), an appointment of obviously complimentary character, without diplomatic significance. He spent his last years in Bangor, enjoying a wide reputation as a political Nestor and one of the last surviving intimates of President Lincoln.

Hamlin is usually grouped with the members of that remarkable dynasty of Maine statesmen beginning with George Evans and ending with Eugene Hale, all of whom he knew and some of whose fortunes he undoubtedly influenced. As a party manager and leader he did not display the unflinching courage and determination of William Pitt Fessenden or Thomas B. Reed, nor that mastery of a wide field of legislation possessed by George Evans or Nelson Dingley. He had, however, a great fund of shrewd common sense and a gift of stating things in clear and understandable phrase. When as chairman of the committee on foreign relations he urged the acceptance of the Halifax fisheries award in the interest of international arbitration and when, on the floor of the Senate, he opposed the Chinese exclusion law as a violation of treaty obligations (Congressional Record, 45 Congress, 3 Session, pp. 1383-87), he displayed genuine statesmanship. It is also worth mention that if he quarreled with President Hayes over patronage and expressed his contempt for civil-service reform, he at least opposed the infamous "salary grab" and refused to take his share of the loot.

Personally Hamlin had many attractive qualities and retained the loyalty and affection of a host of supporters. Senator Henry L. Dawes, who knew him well, described him as "a born democrat," an interesting conversationalist, and an inveterate smoker and card player. He also mentioned as characteristic of the man that he wore "a black swallow-tailed coat, and ... clung to the old fashioned stock long after it had been discarded by the rest of mankind" (Century Magazine, July 1895). Hamlin had a stocky, powerful frame and great muscular strength. His complexion was so swarthy that in 1860 the story was successfully circulated among credulous Southerners that he had negro blood. He was a skillful fly fisherman and an expert rifle shot. He was twice married: on December 10, 1833, to Sarah Jane Emery, daughter of Judge Stephen A. Emery of Paris Hill, who died April 17, 1855, and on September 25, 1856, to Ellen Vesta Emery, a half-sister of his first wife. Charles Hamlin [q.v.] was his son.

[C. E. Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (1899), a biography by his grandson, exaggerates Hamlin's importance in national affairs, but is useful in its presentation of Maine party history and occasional documents of personal interest. See also H.F. Andrews, The Hamlin Family (1902), and Howard Carroll, Twelve Americans (1883).

The biographical literature of the period contains many references and the newspapers, probably because of Hamlin's association with Lincoln, published an unusually large amount of obituary material. See especially New York Tribune, July 5, 9, 10, 1891.]

W. A. R.


HARLAN, James, 1820-1899, statesman, lawyer, university president.  Early anti-slavery activist in the Free Soil Party.  Free Soil U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Elected Senator in 1855 representing Iowa.  Re-elected, served until 1865, when appointed Secretary of the Interior by President Lincoln.  Re-elected to Senate in 1866, served until 1873. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 83-84; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 269; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 10, p. 94; Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 269;

HARLAN, JAMES (August 26, 1820-October 5, 1899), United States senator, secretary of the interior, was a product of the frontier, of its opportunity and of its limitations. He was descended from George Harland, a Quaker, who emigrated from the vicinity of Durham, England, to County Down, Ireland, and thence in 1687 to America, settling finally in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His parents, Silas and Mary (Conley) Harlan, natives of Pennsylvania and Maryland respectively, were married in Ohio and then joined the stream of western migration, locating in Clark County, Illinois, where he was born. Four years later the family removed to the "New Discovery" in Parke County, Ind., a typical clearing settlement. Monotonous toil was relieved chiefly by visits of Methodist circuit riders who made the Harlan home their "preaching place." The frontier youth supplemented his log-school instruction by books secured from a county library. After teaching district school he attended a local "seminary" and entered Indiana Asbury (later DePauw) University in 1841. College life was interspersed by a trip to Iowa and a term of school teaching in Missouri. As a student his interest in politics was already marked; he was an ardent Whig. In 1845, the year that he took his degree, he was married to Ann Eliza Peck.

The young couple, true to type, sought the pioneer life in Iowa where Harlan became principal of the Iowa City College. Almost immediately his long and stormy political career began. In the first state election, in 1847, he was chosen superintendent of public instruction on the Whig ticket, but the election was declared illegal and in the contest to fill the vacancy he was defeated by methods that he regarded as highly irregular. Following this unfortunate experience, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1850 and in the same year declined the Whig nomination for governor. Before full establishment in his new profession, he was called to head the Iowa Conference University (now Iowa Wesleyan), which he served as president from 1853 to 1855. Under most discouraging conditions, both financial and academic, he was laying the foundations of one of the earliest trans-Mississippi colleges when the Free-Soil agitation put an end to his educational activities and career.

From the beginnings of the Free-Soil movement Harlan had been an active promoter. Put forward by friends as the new party's candidate for the United States Senate he was elected, in 1855, by a rump legislature after one house had formally adjourned. This irregularity led to the vacating of his seat in January 1857. He was promptly returned by a sympathetic legislature and in 1860 was the unanimous Republican choice for a second term. During his first senatorial contest he built up a personal organization throughout the state which he utilized effectively in later contests. As senator he concentrated on Western measures, homesteads, college land grants, and especially the Pacific railroad act, which he personally directed. He gave loyal support to the war measures of the administration and was intimate with President Lincoln; his daughter later married Robert Todd Lincoln [q.v.]. At the beginning of Lincoln's second term Harlan became secretary of the interior. This position was the disastrous turning-point of his career. Departmental policies created bitter enmities and led to charges of improper appointments and of corruption in the disposal of Indian and railroad lands. These charges persisted, although, according to one of Harlan's biographers, "each of the accusations was fairly and squarely met by facts which were a matter of record, and proven to be without foundation" (Brigham, post, p. 250). The most notable of his many dismissals in pursuance of his policy of economy was that of Walt Whitman [q.v.] from a clerkship in the Indian Office (Ibid., p. 208). The reconstruction contest caused a break between Harlan and Johnson, and Harlan resigned his portfolio in July 1866.

Before leaving the cabinet he had been making plans for a return to the Senate, and he had so influential a following that he was elected in 1866, but at the cost of the friendship of Samuel J. Kirkwood and James W. Grimes [qq.v.]. Upon returning to the Senate he was definitely aligned with the radical administration group and his most notable acts were his support of Johnson's impeachment and his spirited defense of Grant's Santo Dominican policy. The growing cleavage in the party, which was to culminate in the Liberal Republican movement, was reflected in the Iowa senatorial contest in January 1872 in which Harlan's opponents combined so effectively that he was defeated by William B. Allison [q.v.]. This defeat ended his official career at a comparatively early age. Though candidate for senator and governor at various times, he was never again successful in an election. His only remaining official service was as a member of the second court of Alabama claims, 1882-86. He was an active member of the Methodist Church, and the support that he received from Iowa Methodists occasionally figured in political controversies. He was president of Iowa Wesleyan again for a short time in 1869-70. Tall, dignified, impressive looking, Harlan was strong of body and of will. He was a zealous partisan and a persistent fighter, tenacious of conviction whether based upon reason or prejudice.

[The Harlan papers, including autobiographical sketch of early years and a large correspondence, are in the possession of Harlan's daughter, Mrs. Robert Todd Lincoln, and were used and quoted extensively in Johnson Brigham, James Harlan (1913). See also Cong. Globe, 34-42 Congress; Report of the Sec. of the Interior, 1865; Diary of Gideon Welles (3 vols., 1911); D. E. Clark, History of Senatorial Elections in Iowa (1912); A.H. Harlan, Hist. and Genealogy of the Harlan Family (1914); Hist. Sketch and Alumni Record of Iowa Wesleyan Coll. (1917); E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers and Public Men of Iowa (1916); Christian Advocate, October 19, 1899; Iowa State Register (Des Moines), October 6, 1899.)

E.D.R.


HARRISON, Henry Baldwin (September 11, 1821-October 29, 1901), governor of Connecticut, “Active in politics, he was successively a Whig, a Free-Soiler, and a Republican. In 1854 he was elected to the state Senate on the Whig ticket. In the Senate he was chairman of the committee on corporations and a member of committees appointed to consider a revision of the statutes and to compile laws regarding education. He introduced the personal-liberty bill which was passed by this session of the General Assembly of Connecticut to nullify in the state the Fugitive-Slave Law passed by Congress”.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2 pp. 341-342; Journal of the Senate of the State of Connecticut, May Session, 1854; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Connecticut, May Session, 1865, May Session, 1873, January Session, 1884; F. C. Norton, The Governors of Connecticut (1905).

Biography from Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2 pp. 341-342;

HARRISON, HENRY BALDWIN (September 11, 1821-October 29, 1901), governor of Connecticut, the son of Ammi and Polly (Barney) Harrison, was born in New Haven. He prepared for college at the Lancasterian School there under John E. Lovell, its founder, and by private study with George A. Thacher, at that time a student in the Yale Divinity School. While he was a student Harrison taught for a time in the Lancasterian School. He entered Yale in 1842 and graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1846. After leaving college he studied law in the Yale Law School and in a New Haven law office. He was admitted to the bar in 1848 and began to practise in New Haven with Lucius G. Peck. Although he later was known especially as a corporation lawyer, he attracted attention in 1855 by his successful defense of a client charged with murder, on the then unusual plea of insanity. Active in politics, he was successively a Whig, a Free-Soiler, and a Republican. In 1854 he was elected to the state Senate on the Whig ticket. In the Senate he was chairman of the committee on corporations and a member of committees appointed to consider a revision of the statutes and to compile laws regarding education. He introduced the personal-liberty bill which was passed by this session of the General Assembly of Connecticut to nullify in the state the Fugitive-Slave Law passed by Congress. He was the Republican candidate for lieutenant-governor in 1856, but was defeated. In 1865 he was elected to the lower house of the Connecticut legislature as a representative of New Haven, and in this session was chairman of the committees on railroads and on federal relations. He advocated an amendment to the state constitution which would give the negro the ballot. He was again elected to represent New Haven in the legislature of 1873, and served as chairman of the committee on a constitutional convention the bill for which was defeated-and as a member of the judiciary committee. In 1874 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the governorship. Representing New Haven in the lower house of the state legislature for the third time in--1884, he was chosen speaker of the House. In that year he was again a candidate for governor. No candidate received a majority of the popular vote, though the Democrats had a plurality. In the joint convention of the legislature made necessary by this situation Harrison was elected, 164 to 91. He served for two years, beginning J an. 7, 1885. He was a member of Trinity Church (Episcopal), New Haven, and a member of the Yale Corporation, 1872-85, and, ex officio, 1885-87. He was married in 1856 to Mary Elizabeth Osborne, daughter of Thomas Burr Osborne. From this marriage there were no children. Harrison survived his wife. His death occurred in his eighty-first year at his home in New Haven.

[Journal of the Senate of the State of Connecticut, May Session, 1854; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Connecticut, May Session, 1865, May Session, 1873, January Session, 1884; New Haven Morning Journal and Courier, esp. October 30, 1901; New Haven Evening Register, October 29, 1901; Yale College Class of I846 (1871); Obit. Record Grads. Yale University, 1902; E. E. Atwater, History of the City of New Haven (1887); F. C. Norton, The Governors of Connecticut (1905).

De F . V-S.


HASTINGS, Samuel Dexter (July 24, 1816-March 26, 1903), reformer. He was one of the active founders of the Liberty party in Pennsylvania and at the age of twenty-four was chairman of the state central committee. Hastings delivered a powerful speech against slavery and was the author of the resolutions which committed the new state of Wisconsin to its opposition to the extension of the slave trade.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2 386-387;

HASTINGS, SAMUEL DEXTER (July 24, 1816-March 26, 1903), reformer, born at Leicester, Worcester County, Massachusetts, was the son of Simon and Elizabeth (McIntosh) Hastings and a lineal descendant of Thomas Hastings who emigrated from England in 1634 and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts. His early youth was spent in Boston; at the age of fourteen he moved to Philadelphia and there humbly began his mercantile career. Aided by a friend from Leicester, he was established in his own business at the age of twenty-one. During his sixteen years in Philadelphia he maintained a deep interest in social and religious questions. In 1835 he began his long connection with the anti-slavery movement that brought him into intimate association with William "Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and John G. "Whittier. He was one of the active founders of the Liberty party in Pennsylvania and at the age of twenty-four was chairman of the state central committee. On August 1, 1837, he married Margaretta Shubert and in 1846 moved to Walworth County in Wisconsin Territory. Two years later he was elected to the first state legislature by a large majority. In the first session he delivered a memorable speech against slavery and was the author of the resolutions which committed the new state to its opposition to the extension of the slave trade. He moved from Walworth County to La Crosse in 1852 and later to Trempealeau on the Mississippi. In 1856 he was returned to the legislature and the following year was elected treasurer of the state. He held this office for eight years, ably managing the state finances during the difficult period of the Civil War.

During his long career Hastings was a zealous foe of liquor and tobacco. He had spoken frequently, had encouraged legislation, and was an active member of many organizations to suppress these alleged evils. In the Sons of Temperance he became Grand Worthy Patriarch of Wisconsin and was six times elected Right Worthy Grand Templar, the highest office in the international order of Good Templars. In his youth he had been an ardent Presbyterian but withdrew from the church because of his anti-slavery views. He became prominent in the Congregational Church, was influential in establishing a free Congregational church in Philadelphia and, although remaining a layman, became moderator of the Wisconsin state convention. To this convention he made the remarkable address based on the text, "whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God," in which he effectively demonstrated that tobacco could not be used to the glory of God. He spoke for prohibition in nearly every state of the Union, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and six times crossed the Atlantic to further the cause. For many years he contributed to prohibition and anti-slavery papers and in 1883 edited the speeches of John B. Finch under the title, The People versus the Liquor Traffic. He was for many years a member of the executive committee and treasurer of the national Prohibition party. Honest men sometimes quarreled with his methods, but he was never troubled by doubts of the value of his ends or his means to them. Throughout a long and active life he labored indefatigably for two great purposes: the emancipation of the negroes of the South and the imposition of prohibition upon the English-speaking peoples of the world. He died at Evanston, Illinois.

[Trans. Wisconsin Academy Science, Arts; and Letters, 1903, pp. 686-90; international Good Templar, October 1889; Columbian Biographical Dict., Wisconsin, vol. (1895); Proc. Wisconsin Historical Society, vol. XIV, pt. 2 (1904); L. N. H. Buckminster, The Hastings Memorial (1866); Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), March 26, 27, 1903; Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, pp. 386-387}

F.M.


HAWLEY, Joseph Roswell, 1826-1905, statesman, clergyman, lawyer, editor, opponent of slavery, Union officer.  Member of the Free Soil Party.  Co-founder of the Republican Party.  Chairman of Connecticut Free Soil State Committee.  He opposed pro-slavery Know-Nothing Party and aided in anti-slavery organizing.  Helped organize and found the Republican Party in 1856.  In 1857, became editor of the Republican newspaper, Evening Press in Hartford.  Enlisted in the Union Army, rising to the rank of Brigadier General, commanding both a division and a brigade. 

(Appletons, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 123-124; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 421; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 10, p. 351 The Brilliant Military Record of Major General Hawley (pamphlet, n.d.), reprinted from the Hartford Courant at the time of the Butler controversy; E. S. Hawley, The Hawley Record (1890); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

HAWLEY, Joseph Roswell, statesman, born in Stewartsville, North Carolina, 31 October, 1826. He is of English-Scotch ancestry. His father, Reverend Francis Hawley (descended from Samuel, who settled in Stratford, Connecticut, in 1639), was born in Farmington, Connecticut He went south early and engaged in business, but afterward entered the Baptist ministry. He married Mary McLeod, a native of North Carolina, of Scotch parentage, and the family went to Connecticut in 1837, where the father was an active anti-slavery man. The son prepared for college at the Hartford grammar-school and the seminary in Cazenovia, New York, whither the family moved about 1842. He was graduated at Hamilton in 1847, with a high reputation as a speaker and debater. He taught in the winters, studied law at Cazenovia and Hartford, and began practice in 1850. He immediately became chairman of the Free-Soil state committee, wrote for the Free-Soil press, and spoke in every canvass. He stoutly opposed the Know-Nothings, and devoted his energies to the union of all opponents of slavery. The first meeting for the organization of the Republican Party in Connecticut was held in his office, at his call, 4 February, 1856. Among those present were Gideon Welles and John M. Niles. Mr. Hawley gave three months to speaking in the Fremont canvass of 1856. In February, 1857, he abandoned law practice, and became editor of the Hartford "Evening Press," the new distinctively Republican paper. His partner was William Faxon, afterward assistant Secretary of the Navy. He responded to the first call for troops in 1861 by drawing up a form of enlistment, and, assisted by Drake, afterward colonel of the 10th Regiment, raising rifle company A, 1st Connecticut Volunteers, which was organized and accepted in twenty-four hours, Hawley having personally engaged rifles at Sharp's Factory. He became the captain, and is said to have been the first volunteer in the state. He received special praise for good conduct at Bull Run from General Erastus D. Keyes, brigade commander. He directly united with Colonel Alfred H. Terry in raising the 7th Connecticut Volunteers, a three years' regiment, of which he was lieutenant-colonel. It went south in the Port Royal Expedition, and on the capture of the forts was the first sent ashore as a garrison. It was engaged four months in the siege of Fort Pulaski, and upon the surrender was selected as the garrison. Hawley succeeded Terry, and commanded the regiment in the battles of James Island and Pocotaligo, and in Brannan's expedition to Florida. He went with his regiment to Florida, in January, 1863, and commanded the post of Fernandina, whence in April he undertook an unsuccessful expedition against Charleston. He also commanded a brigade on Morris Island in the siege of Charleston and the capture of Fort Wagner. In February, 1864, he had a brigade under General Truman Seymour in the battle of Olustee, Florida, where the whole National force lost 38 per cent. His regiment was one of the few that were armed with the Spencer breech loading rifle. This weapon, which he procured in the autumn of 1863, proved very effective in the hands of his men. He went to Virginia in April, 1864, having a brigade in Terry's division, 10th Corps, Army of the James, and was in the battles of Drewry's Bluff, Deep Run, Derbytown Road, and various affairs near Bermuda Hundred and Deep Bottom. He commanded a division in the fight on the Newmarket road, and engaged in the siege of Petersburg. In September, 1864, he was made a brigadier-general, having been repeatedly recommended by his immediate superiors. In November, 1864, he commanded a picked brigade sent to New York City to keep the peace during the week of the presidential election. He succeeded to Terry's division when Terry was sent to Port Fisher in January, 1865, afterward rejoining him as chief of staff, 10th Corps, and on the capture of Wilmington was detached by General Schofield to establish a base of supplies there for Sherman's army, and command southeastern North Carolina. In June he rejoined Terry as chief of staff for the Department of Virginia. In October he went home, was brevetted major-general, and was mustered out, 15 January, 1866. In April, 1866, he was elected governor of Connecticut, but he was defeated in 1867, and then, having united the "Press" and the "Courant," he resumed editorial life, and more vigorously than ever entered the political contests following the war. He was always in demand as a speaker throughout the country. He was president of the National Republican Convention in 1868, secretary of the committee on resolutions in 1872, and chairman of that committee in 1876. He earnestly opposed paper money theories. In November, 1872, he was elected to fill a vacancy in Congress caused by the death of Julius L. Strong. He was re-elected to the 43d Congress, defeated for the 44th and 45th, and re-elected to the 46th (1879-'81). He was elected senator in January, 1881, by the unanimous vote of his party, and re-elected in like manner in January, 1887, for the term ending 4 March, 1893. In the house he served on the committees on Claims, Banking and Currency, Military Affairs, and appropriations; in the senate, on the committees on Coast Defences, Railroads, Printing, and Military Affairs. He is chairman of the committee on Civil Service, and vigorously promoted the enactment of civil-service-reform legislation. He was also chairman of a Select Committee on Ordnance and War-Ships, and submitted a long and valuable report, the result of careful investigation into steel production and heavy gun-making in England and the United States. In the National Convention of 1884 the Connecticut Delegation unanimously voted for him for president in every ballot. He was president of the U. S. Centennial Commission from its organization in 1872 until the close of its labors in 1877, gave two years exclusively to the work, was ex-officio member of its committees, and appointed all save the executive. He received the degree of LL. D. from Hamilton in 1875, and from Yale in 1886. Of the former institution he is a trustee. Ecclesiastically he is a Congregationalist.  General Hawley is an ardent Republican, one of the most acceptable extemporary orators in the republic, a believer in universal suffrage, the American people and the "American way," is a "hard-money" man, would adjust the tariff so as to benefit native industries, urges the reconstruction of our naval and coast defences, demands a free ballot and a fair count everywhere, opposes the tendency to federal centralization, and is a strict constructionist of the constitution in favor of the rights and dignity of the individual states.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 123-124.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 421;

HAWLEY, JOSEPH ROSWELL (October 31, 1826-March 18, 1905), editor, soldier, senator, was descended in the eighth generation from Joseph Hawley who came from England to Boston in 1629 and later settled in Stratford, Conn. Hawley's father, the Reverend Francis Hawley, a native of Farmington, Connecticut, married Mary McLeod of North Carolina and at Stewartville in the latter state Joseph was born. In 1837 the family returned to Connecticut and the boy received his early schooling at Hartford and at Cazenovia, New York. After graduating with honor from Hamilton College in the class of 1847, winning distinction as a speaker and debater, he taught school and read law. In 1850 he was admitted to the bar in Connecticut and secured enough clients to make a living. Drawn into the ranks of the anti-slavery crusaders, he was a delegate to the national convention of the Free-Soil party in 1852. Four years later he called the meeting of a hundred Connecticut citizens among whom was his friend, Gideon Welles [q.v.]-which organized the Republican party in the state. He took an active part in the Fremont campaign, developing a vigorous and epigrammatic style on the stump. In 1857 he abandoned his law practice for the editor's chair when he took charge of the Hartford Evening Press, the organ of the new party. Associated with him on the Press was a college chum and life-long friend, Charles Dudley Warner [q.v.].

While the telegraph was still bringing the reports of the bombardment of Fort Sumter to his newspaper office, Hawley drew up the paper for enlisting the first company of volunteers from his state. He followed this action with a rousing speech on the evening of April 17 before a memorable Hartford mass-meeting. On the following day he was mustered into the service with the rank of captain. On January 15, 1866, he returned to civil life, having been brevetted major-general of volunteers to date from September 28, 1865, "for gallant and meritorious services during the war." He saw service in thirteen "battles and actions," most of them along the eastern coast of the Confederacy. In the operations in Virginia in 1864, he served under Benjamin Butler [q.v.] and later under Terry. He was cited for meritorious conduct at the fir st battle of Bull Run and at the battle of Olustee, Fla., February 20, 1864. Twice during the war his ability as a speaker was capitalized when he was sent North on recruiting duty.

In the year of his discharge he was elected governor of Connecticut by a people anxious to honor war veterans. In 1867 he became editor of the Hartford Courant with which the Evening Press was merged. He liked speaking better than writing, however, and politics remained to the end of his life his primary interest. He was as much at home in the conservative Republican party after the war as he had been in the crusading group in the years preceding it. In 1868, when the proposal to pay government bonds in depreciated currency was gaining favor west of the Appalachians, he uttered, as President of the Republican National Convention, his most quoted political epigram, "Every bond, in letter and in spirit, must be as sacred as a soldier's grave" (Official Proceedings, post, p. 24). Two years later he opposed openly the political aspirations of his former chief, the then discredited Butler who was seeking office in Massachusetts. Butler retaliated with a speech in Springfield on Aug. 24, 1871, in which he accused Hawley, while under his command, of incompetency and hinted at cowardice. Hawley, always impulsive and at times irascible, lost no time in calling his former commanding officer a "liar and blackguard." The resulting controversy, in which Butler hedged, was widely discussed throughout the North with public opinion running strongly in Hawley's favor.

Between 1868 and 1881 Hawley was twice defeated for and thrice elected to the House of Representatives, where he served on committees on claims, banking and currency, military affairs, and appropriations. At the Republican National Convention of 1872 he was secretary of the committee on resolutions and in 1876 chairman of that committee, playing no small part in shaping the issues on which his party went before the electorate. He was president of the United States Centennial Commission and disclosed his Puritan heritage by causing the exposition to be closed on Sundays. From 1881 to within two weeks of his death he was United States senator from Connecticut. He was able but not conspicuous. He was a consistent protectionist and advocate of sound money. He did his most useful work as chairman of the Senate committee on civil service and on military affairs. In the latter capacity he had charge in the upper house of bills for increasing the coast defenses, providing for a volunteer army, and reorganizing the regular army which were made necessary by the Spanish-American emergency in 1898. Hawley was married twice: in 1855 to Harriet Ward Foote, who died in 1886, and subsequently to Edith Anne Horner, a native of England. He died in Washington, D. C.

[E. P. Parker, "Memorial Address," in Joint Report of the Commission on Memorials to Senators Orville Hitchcock Platt and Joseph Roswell Haw ley to the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut (1915); letters by Hawley as president of the Centennial Commission and scrapbooks kept by him in Connecticut State Library; Sen. Report 6947, 59 Congress, 2 Session; files of the Hartford Courant; War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), 1 series esp. II, 355, and XXXV (pt. 1), 289; Official Proceedings, National Republican Conventions, 1868-80 (1903); Springfield Republican, August 25, 1871; The Brilliant Military Record of Major General Hawley (pamphlet, n.d.), reprinted from the Hartford Courant at the time of the Butler controversy; E. S. Hawley, The Hawley Record (1890); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Evening Star (Washington), and Hartford Courant, March 18. 1905.]

R.H.G.


HAWLEY, William Merrill, 1802-1869, lawyer, jurist, State Senator.  Member, Free-Soil Radical Delegation in August 1848.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 124

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

HAWLEY, William Merrill, lawyer, born in Delaware County, New York, 23 August, 1802; died in Hornellsville, New York, 9 February, 1869. His father, one of the earliest settlers in western New York, was a farmer, and unable to give his children a classical education. William went to the common school, and at the age of twenty-one moved to Almond, Alleghany County, where be cleared a piece of land for tillage. In the spring of 1824 be was elected constable, and began the study of law to assist him in this office. He was admitted to the bar in 1826, moved to Hornellsville the next year, and practised his profession until his appointment in 1846 as first judge of Steuben County. He served in the state senate, was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 22 May, 1848, which met in Baltimore, and was identified with the “Free-Soil radical delegation,” which culminated in the National Convention of 9 August, 1848, held in Buffalo, New York, in which Martin Van Buren was nominated for the presidency. Judge Hawley was one of the committee appointed to introduce the resolutions the essential elements of which were afterward adopted by the Republican Party. After his retirement from the state senate he did not again enter public life, but, devoting himself to his profession, acquired a large fortune, and practised until a short time before his death. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 124.


HAZARD, Rowland Gibson (October 9, 1801-June 24, 1888), manufacturer, writer on philosophical subjects. Hazard was an active Free-Soiler and later a Republican, a member of the Pittsburgh convention of 1856, of the convention in the same year that nominated John C. Fremont, and of the convention in 1860 that nominated Abraham Lincoln for president.  

(Gammell, William Life and Services of the Hon. Rowland Gibson Hazard, LL.D. (1888); The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Rhode Island)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2,  471-475;

HAZARD, ROWLAND GIBSON (October 9, 1801-June 24, 1888), manufacturer, writer on philosophical subjects, the son of Rowland and Mary (Peace) Hazard, and a younger brother of Thomas Robinson Hazard [q.v.], was born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Rowland Hazard, his father, born also in South Kingstown, became engaged in foreign commerce as a member of the Charleston, South Carolina, firm of Hazard & Robinson (afterward Hazard & Ayrault), and married Mary Peace of that city. About the turn of the century he went back to South Kingstown and took up his residence at Peacedale, a name chosen by him to commemorate the family in which he had found his wife, and which celebrated too the charm of the Kingstown countryside. In 1802 he began at Peacedale the woolen industry which successive generations of the Hazard family carried on in the same place. Rowland Gibson, his third son, studied at the schools at Burlington, New Jersey, and Bristol, Pennsylvania, and at the Friends' School at Westtown, Chester County, Pennsylvania. When about eighteen he returned to South Kingstown, became associated with his elder brother Isaac Peace Hazard in the business at Peacedale, from which their father had now retired, and continued in it for nearly fifty years. He was a Free-Soiler and later a Republican, a member of the Pittsburgh convention of 1856, of the convention in the same year that nominated Fremont, of the convention in 1860 that nominated Lincoln, and of the convention of 1868 that nominated Grant. He aided the free-school movement and was an advocate of temperance reform. In 1851, 1854, and 1880, he was a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, and in 1866 a member of the state Senate. While in the General Assembly he worked for the suppression of lotteries and for the prevention of bribery in elections. His financial articles, written during the Civil War, gained for him a wide reputation. Some of them were collected and published as Our Resources (1864), which was republished in London, and several were translated into Dutch and published in Amsterdam. He performed notable service in Europe in the effort to sustain the national credit. In 1866 Hazard retired from the business at Peacedale. Still possessed of the habit, or with the instinct born with him, of looking for general principles, and of applying the results of abstract thinking to practical ends, he engaged himself with problems of Reconstruction and other questions of the day. He helped to put the first railroad across the continent. As other demands lessened, he found time for study and writing, for travel, and for his philanthropies. With his son Rowland Hazard he e stablished the Hazard Professorship of Physics in Brown University. He was a trustee of Brown from 1869 to 1875, and a fellow from 1875 until his death in 1888. He married Caroline Newbold, daughter of John Newbold of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, September 25, 1828. Their two sons, Rowland John Newbold Hazard, were the third consecutive generation of Hazards to carry on the manufacture of woolen goods at Peacedale.

As a youth, Rowland Gibson Hazard had a certain precocity in mathematics. Before leaving school he discovered, it is said, an original and simple method of describing the hyperbola. In his maturer years his underlying interests were philosophical. When on his business trips, while traveling on packets and stage-coaches, on boats and trains, he made notes for later books. His first considerable publication, Language: Its Connexion with the Present Condition and Future Prospects of Man (1836), possibly had its inception in discussions with h s friend-and Poe's friend-Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, on the nature of poetry. The book attracted the attention of William Ellery Channing, who became intimate with him. Following the latter's death in 1842, Hazard wrote an Essay on the Philosophical Character of Channing, published in 1845. At some time prior to 1840, Channing suggested that Hazard should undertake a refutation of Jonathan Edwards on the Will. Hazard began to make notes and by 1843 had elaborated his main points only to lose all the material he had collected through a mishap to a Mississippi steamer on which he had taken passage to New Orleans. Fourteen years later he returned to the work and published it in 1864 under the title: Freedom of Mind in Willing; or Every Being That Wills a Creative First Cause. The book gained for Hazard the friendship of John Stuart Mill, who wrote to him: "I wish you had nothing to do but philosophize, for though I often do not agree with you, I see in everything you write a well-marked natural capacity for philosophy" (Freedom of Mind in Willing, ed. 1889, p. v). In 1864, while in Europe, he sought out Mill. His Two Letters on Causation and Freedom and Willing, Addressed to John Stuart Mill (1869) were the result of his conversations and correspondence with the British philosopher.

[Hazard's numerous writings, including several for the first time printed, were brought together by his grand-daughter, Caroline Hazard, and published under her editorship in four volumes in 1889. Each volume bears a separate title. Of these, the Essay 0n Language, and other Essays and Addresses contains a biographical preface by Miss Hazard, and Freedom of Mind in Willing contains an introductory essay by George P. Fisher on Hazard's philosophical writings. William Gammell's Life and Services of the Hon. Rowland Gibson Hazard, LL.D. (1888), contains a paper by President E. G. Robinson of Brown University on Hazard's philosophical writings and a bibliography of his works. Other sources include J. R. Cole, History of Washington and Kent Counties, Rhode Island (1889); The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Rhode Island (1881); Wm. R. Bagnall, The Textile Industries of the U. S. (1893); and the Providence Journal, June 25, 1888.]

W.A.S.


HIGGINSON, Thomas Wentworth Storrow, 1823-1911, author, editor, Unitarian clergyman, radical abolitionist, women’s rights advocate. An anti-slavery reformer, he ran-unsuccessfully-for Congress as a Free-Soil candidate and secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859.  Served as a Colonel in the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first African American regiment formed under the Federal Government. 

(Edelstein, 1968; Mabee, 1970, pp. 309, 312, 318, 319, 321, 336, 345, 377; Renehan, 1995; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 138, 207, 327, 337-338, 478-479; Rossbach, 1982; Sernett, 2002, pp. 205, 208, 211, 213, 325-326n3; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 199; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 16-18; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 431-434; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 10, p. 757; Wells, Anna Mary. Dear Preceptor… 1963.  Higginson, Thomas, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 1870)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

HIGGINSON, Thomas Wentworth, author, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 22 December, 1823, was graduated at Harvard in 1841 and at the divinity-school in 1847, and in the same year was ordained pastor of the 1st Congregational Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He left this church on account of anti-slavery preaching in 1850, and in the same year was an unsuccessful Free-Soil candidate for Congress. He was then pastor of a free Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1852 till 1858. when he left the ministry, and devoted himself to literature. He had been active in the anti-slavery agitation of this period, and for his part in the attempted rescue of a fugitive slave (see Burns, Anthony) was indicted for murder with Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and others, but was discharged through a flaw in the indictment. He also aided in the organization of parties of free-state emigrants to Kansas in 1856, was personally acquainted with John Brown, and served as brigadier-general on James H. Lane's staff in the free-state forces. He became captain in the 51st Massachusetts Regiment, 25 September, 1862, and on 10 November was made colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers (afterward called the 33d U. S. Colored Troops), the first regiment of freed slaves mustered into the national service, he took and held Jacksonville, Florida, but was wounded at Wiltown Bluff, South Carolina, in August. 1863, and in October, 1864, resigned on account of disability. He then engaged in literature at Newport, Rhode Island, till 1878, and afterward at Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has since resided. He is an earnest advocate of woman suffrage, and of the higher education for both sexes. He was a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1880 and 1881, serving as chief of staff to the governor during the same time, and in 1881-'3 was a member of the state board of education. He has contributed largely to current literature, and several of his books consist of essays that first appeared in "The Atlantic Monthly." His first publication was a compilation with Samuel Longfellow of poetry for the sea-side, entitled "Thalatta " (Boston, 1853). He is the author of "Out-door Papers" (Boston, 1863); "Malbone, an Oldport Romance "(1869); "Army Life in a Black Regiment" (1870; French translation by Madame de Gasparin. 1884): "Atlantic Essays" (1871); "The Sympathy of Religions" (1871); "Oldport Days" (1873): "Young Folks' History of the United States " (1875; French translation, 1875; German translation, Stuttgart, 1876); "History of Education in Rhode Island " (1876): " Young Folks' Book of American Explorers" (1877); "Short Studies of American Authors" (1879); "Common-Sense about Women" (1881); "Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli" (" American Men of Letters " series, 1884); "Larger History of the United States" to the close of Jackson's administration (New York, 1885); "The Monarch of Dreams " (1880); and " Hints on Writing and Speech-making" (1887). He has also translated the "Complete Works of Epictetus" (Boston, 1865), and edited "Harvard Memorial Biographies" (2 vols.. 1866), and "Brief Biographies of European Statesmen " (4 vols., New York, 1875-'7). Several of his works have been reprinted in England.—Thomas Wentworth's nephew, Francis John, naval officer, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 19 July, 1843, was graduated at the Naval Academy in 1861, and ordered into active service. He participated in the boat expedition from the "Colorado" that destroyed the Confederate privateer "Judith" in Pensacola U.S. Navy-yard, and was present at the passage of Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, acting as signal midshipman to Captain Theodoras Bailey. He took part in the blockade of Charleston. South Carolina, and the bombardment of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, was on board the " Housatonic" when she was blown up by a torpedo off Charleston, and commanded a detachment of launches operating by night on the communications between Morris Island and Charleston. He became lieutenant in 1862, lieutenant-commander in 1866, and commander in 1876, and is now (1887) in charge of the torpedo station at Newport, Rhode Island.—The first Stephen's great-grandson, Henry Lee, banker, born in New York City, 18 November, 1834, entered Harvard in 1851, but left before the end of his second year. He served in the Civil War, attaining the rank of major and brevet lieutenant-colonel in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, and was severely wounded at Aldie, Virginia. in 1863. Since the war he has engaged in banking in Boston. He has devoted much of his income to the promotion of music there, and especially to the organization of „the symphony orchestra.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 199.

Biography from the Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 16-18;

HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH (December 22, 1823-May 9, 1911), reformer, soldier, author, was born and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, Stephen Higginson, a prosperous Boston merchant, steward, or bursar, of Harvard College after his impoverishment by the Embargo of 1812, was the son of Stephen Higginson [q.v.], and was descended from Francis Higginson [q.v.], first minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Louisa Storrow, the second wife of Stephen Higginson, Jr., bore him ten children, of whom Thomas was the youngest. The name with which he began life, Thomas Wentworth Storrow Higginson, came direct from his maternal ancestry, for his mother was the daughter of an English army officer, Captain Thomas Storrow, a prisoner-of-war at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the Revolution, and Anne Appleton, a great-grand-daughter of the fir st royal governor of New Hampshire, John Wentworth [q.v.]. Higginson dropped the name of Storrow before entering college. At the age of thirteen he enrolled at Harvard in the class of 1841. "A child of the college," as he called himself in later life, he had passed his boyhood in the very shadow of it, and was better prepared than his years would suggest to profit from its influences. Graduated at seventeen, he stood second in his class, and was already a voracious reader, with a happily retentive memory. The out-door pursuits of a lover of nature and of such athletic sports as the times afforded-swimming, skating, loosely knit football-kept his tall, awkward body in good physical condition. While an undergraduate he could write in his journal, "I am getting quite susceptible to female charms" (Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 31), and long afterwards had the frankness to recall such tendencies, in their bud, by writing, "I don't believe there ever was a child in whom the sentimental was earlier developed than in me" (Ibid.). He found little satisfaction in the two years of teaching that followed his graduation from college. In 1843 he returned to Cambridge as a "res ident graduate" student, and for three years indulged his taste for discursive reading, without a fixed professional goal. The divinity school was reported to be made up of "mystics, skeptics, and dyspeptics," and did not attract him immediately upon his return to Cambridge, or hold him continuously after he had entered it; but in 1846-47 he was enrolled in its senior class, with which he graduated.

When only nineteen and still employed in teaching, Higginson became engaged to marry his second cousin, Mary Elizabeth Channing. Slender resources and uncertain prospects led to a long engagement, in the course of which the young student, charged with the idealism that produced many "come-outers" of the time, began his devotion to two favorite cause s, woman suffrage and opposition to slavery. In the second of these he was no mere anti-slavery theorist, but, at twenty-two, a "disunion abolitionist," pledged "not only not to vote for any officer who must take oath to support the U. S. Constitution, but also to use whatever means may lie in my power to promote the Dissolution of the Union" (Ibid., p. 76). So pronounced a radical was fortunate in finding any pulpit of his own, but in September 1847 Higginson became pastor of the First Religious Society of Newburyport, Massachusetts; in the same month he married Mary Channing. In the Unitarian ministry of his time and region there was abundant precedent for freedom of speech and action, and Higginson followed it heartily. Besides taking his place among temperance, suffrage, and anti-slavery reformers, he ran-unsuccessfully-for Congress as a Free-Soil candidate, and dealt so outspokenly with politics in his sermons that, after two years, he was found, in his own words, to have "preached himself out of his pulpit." For over two years more he remained in the neighborhood of Newburyport, when, in the spring of 1852, he accepted a call to the pastorate of a "Free Church" in Worcester-one of the precursors of later "ethical societies," and falling, as an organization, under a definition of "Jerusalem wildcats," which Higginson evidently relished (Cheerful Yesterdays, 1898, p. 130). In this post he remained till the autumn of 1861, occupied with many things besides his preaching-lecturing on anti-slavery and other topics, school-committee work, temperance and suffrage activities.

Through this period anti-slavery took more and more the right of way over other reforms with him. While still at Newburyport he was summoned hurriedly to Boston on one occasion to join a vigilance committee for the rescue of a fugitive slave, and suffered genuine chagrin at the government's thwarting of the rescue plans, Three years later, in May 1854, he was similarly summoned from Worcester to take part in the liberation of another fugitive slave, Anthony Burns [q.v.], about to be returned from Boston to his owner in the South. In this historic case Higginson bore an important part, helping to batter a passage through a door of the court house, and receiving a severe cut on the chin from his encounter with the police. In such enterprises he continued as he began-in sharp contrast with the leading anti-slavery reformers who refused, on principle, to fight. Twice in

1856 he supplemented his work in the East for freedom in Kansas by going West himself in the interest of organized settlers on debatable ground. His first visit took him to Chicago and St. Louis, his second into Kansas, on an adventurous, semi military journey, chronicled in letters to the New York Tribune, which were published al so as an anti-slavery tract, A Ride Through Kanzas (1856). This experience brought him into relations with John Brown, which later became those of close confidence and sympathy.

Holding no theories against the use of force, Higginson found it natural soon after the outbreak of war to stop his preaching and prepare for fighting. He was on the point of starting for the front in November 1862, as captain of a Massachusetts regiment he had helped to raise and drill, when the colonelcy of the first negro regiment in the Union army was offered to him. This he accepted, and held the command of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers from November 1862 until May 1864, when the serious effects of a slight wound obliged him to leave the army. His regiment took part in no important battles, but its experiences in camp at Beaufort, South Carolina, and on skirmishing and raiding expeditions up the St. Mary's and South Edisto Rivers afforded abundant material for his excellent book, Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870), besides placing him in physical perils which he appears to have met with fine courage.

When Higginson quitted the army in 1864 his wife had moved, because of her delicate health, from Worcester to Newport, Rhode Island, the scene of his one novel, Malbone (1869), and of his collected sketches, Oldport Days (1873). Here also he produced the two volumes of Harvard Memorial Biographies (1866), a work of high merit, for which he wrote thirteen of the ninety-five memoirs of Harvard graduates and students who gave their lives for the Northern cause in the Civil War. In Newport he and his wife continued to live until her long invalidism was ended by her death in September 1877, soon after which he went abroad for some months before settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1878, for the remainder of his life. In February 1879 he married his second wife, Mary Potter Thacher, of Newton, Massachusetts, who survived him. From his return to Cambridge until his death his life was that of a man of letters and a reformer, especially in the field of women's rights. As a writer he was primarily a "magazinist." His gifts of graceful and agreeable writing, of broad sympathy, of shrewd observation, both of men and of nature, joined with the equipment of wide reading well remembered, made him a welcome contributor to many periodicals, particularly the Atlantic Monthly in its earlier years. Through not qualifying as a specialist in any one field he felt conscious of a certain resemblance to a celebrated horse, "which had never won a race, but which was prized as having gained a second place in more races than any other horse in America" (Cheerful Yesterdays, p. 183). While still in Newport he wrote and published his popular and profitable textbook, Young Folks' History of the United States (1875), followed ten years later by his Larger History of the United States (1885). A bibliography of all his writings fills twenty-six closely printed pages of the biography by his widow. The chief books, not previously mentioned in this article, are: Atlantic Essays (1871), Life of Francis Higginson, First Minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1891); Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (7 vols., 1900); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1902), in the American Men of Letters series; John Greenleaf Whittier (1902), in the English Men of Letters series; Part of a Man's Life (1905), Life and Times of Stephen Higginson (1907), Carlyle's Laugh and Other Surprises (1909). Magazine articles, many of which were reprinted in these volumes, besides addresses and pamphlets swell the bibliography to its great size.

Though Higginson's tall, slender figure and sensitive features conveyed no marked suggestion of the soldier, the title of colonel clung to him through life. The uneventful career of a writer in Cambridge, a term of service (1880-81) in the Massachusetts legislature, a second and third journey to Europe, where he met many congenial spirits, the discovery and heralding of Emily Dickinson and her poetry, a lively interest in the past and present of his community, by summer residence stretched to include Dublin, New Hampshire, as well as Cambridge-with such concerns, intellectual, social, civic, the years of nearly half a century following the Civil War were happily and gently filled. Two daughters were born of his second marriage. Through the younger of these his old age was brightened by grandchildren. He had passed his eighty-seventh birthday when the labors of his active, well-stored mind and faithful pen came to their end.

[Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: The Story of his Life (1914), and Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1921) are the chief biographical sources. There is, moreover, much of autobiographic interest and value in books of his own that have been mentioned above.]

M.A. De W.H.


HOAR, Ebenezer Rockwood (February 21, 1816-January 31, 1895), lawyer, jurist, anti-slavery conscience Whig and Free-Soil member. U.S. congressman. Hoar was opposed to the extension of slavery into the new territories. U.S. attorney-general, brother of Samuel Hoar.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 86-87; Moorfield Storey and E. W. Emerson, E. R. Hoar (1911); G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (2 vols., 1903); Rayback 1970; Sewell, 1976; p. 139)

Biography in the Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 86-87;

HOAR, EBENEZER ROCKWOOD (February 21, 1816-January 31, 1895), jurist, congressman, attorney-general, was born in Concord, Massachusetts, the son of Samuel Hoar and brother of George Frisbie Hoar [qq.v.]. His mother was Sarah, daughter of Roger Sherman [q.v.]. He graduated from Harvard College in 1835, taught a year, began to read law in his father's office, and continued in the Harvard Law School, where he received the degree of LL.B. in 1839. He rapidly rose to eminence in practice, being associated in various cases with Choate and with Webster. He entered politics in 1840 as a delegate to the Whig young men's convention for Middlesex County. Five years later he was one of the organizers of an anti-annexation meeting at which was adopted a pledge written by himself and Henry Wilson to "use all practicable means for the extinction of slavery on the American Continent." A few months later as an anti-slavery Whig he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate, where his declaration that he would rather be a "Conscience Whig" than a "Cotton Whig" gave the slogan to the anti-slavery movement, of which he became a leader. His call to the people of Massachusetts in protest against the nomination of Taylor for president led to the Free Soil convention at Worcester on June 28, l848.

In 1849 he was appointed a judge of the court of common pleas. One of the notable features of his service on the bench was his charge to the grand jury in the trial of the men who attempted to free the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns [q.v.]. In 1855 he resigned to resume practice but in 1859 he became an associate justice of the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts, a position which he held for a decade. Then called by President Grant to the post of attorney-general, he proved one of the most effective department heads. He exerted his influence against the recognition of the Cuban insurgents as belligerents. When nine new circuit judgeships were created, Hoar's sturdy insistence that these positions be filled by men of high character and fitness was keenly resented by many senators who wished to treat them as patronage. Accordingly, a few months later when the President nominated him for a seat upon the supreme bench, the Senate rejected the nomination, ostensibly because he did not live in the district to which he was to be assigned. "What could you expect from a man who had snubbed seventy Senators!" said Simon Cameron (Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, post, p. 304). The charge that Grant and Hoar connived to pack the Supreme Court so as to obtain a reversal of its stand upon the legal-tender issue has been conclusively refuted (G. F. Hoar, The Charge against President Grant and Attorney General Hoar of Packing the Supreme Court, 1896; Storey and Emerson, post, pp. 199-202). In 1870, with dignified loyalty to his chief, he retired from the cabinet when Grant sought to secure the support of some Southern senators who were demanding that the Attorney-General be displaced by a man from the South; but the next year he yielded to Grant's request to serve as a member of the joint high commission which framed the Treaty of Washington to settle the Alabama claims. He served a single term in Congress (1873-75), where his brother, George F. Hoar, was one of his colleagues. Here he opposed the Sherman Resumption Bill and the Force Bill. He was a valuable member of the committee to which was referred the revision of the United States statutes and he served as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. At the end of his term he returned to Concord. In 1876 he was induced to enter the campaign as a candidate for Congress against Benjamin F. Butler [q.v.], to whose influence in national and in state politics he had for ·many years been the most vigorous opponent, but he was heavily defeated by that astute politician. As a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1876, he supported Bristow till the last ballot, when he voted for Hayes. In 1884 he supported Blaine. In his later years he declined to reenter public service though urged to be a member of the commission to investigate governmental conditions in Louisiana and to act as counsel for the United States before the fishery commission.

He was a devoted son of Harvard College, serving for nearly thirty years either as overseer or as member of the corporation. In the American Unitarian Association he was a dominant force. At the bar he was noted for the closeness of his reasoning and the keenness of his wit. He was a brilliant conversationalist and for nearly forty years was a member of the Saturday Club, which numbered many of the brightest intellects in New England. On November 20, 1840, he married Caroline Downes Brooks. Of their seven children, the youngest, Sherman Hoar, was elected as representative to Congress in 1890, third of the family in direct descent to hold that position.

Moorfield Storey and E. W. Emerson, E. R. Hoar (1911); G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (2 vols., 1903); Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 2 series, IX (1895); H. S. Nourse, The Hoar Family (1899); Boston Transcript, February 1, 1895.]

G. H. H.


HOAR, George Frisbie (August 29, 1826- September 30, 1904), lawyer, representative, U.S. Senator. Helped organize the Free-Soil Party in Massachusetts. Brother of Samuel and E. Rockwood Hoar.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 87-88.

HOAR, GEORGE FRISBIE (August 29, 1826- September 30, 1904), lawyer, representative, senator, was born in Concord, Massachusetts, the son of Sarah (Sherman) and Samuel Hoar [q.v.] and the brother of E. Rockwood Hoar [q.v.]. He was educated in the academy at Concord, Harvard College (B.A. 1846), and the Harvard Law School (LL.B. 1849). In 1849 he began the practice of law in Worcester, where he continued to make his home for the rest of his life. His beginning in politics was in folding and directing the call, prepared by his father and brother, for the convention which launched the Free Soil party in Massachusetts.

He was intimately associated with the planning and the early organization of the Republican party in the state and, for half a century, he gave to it service in many responsible positions without, apparently, appreciating those social and economic developments which had changed the party of Abraham Lincoln to that of Mark Hanna and William McKinley. He presided over the Republican state convention in 1871, 1877, 1882, and 1885. He was a delegate to its national convention from 1876 to 1888, and chairman of the one which nominated Garfield. In 1852 he was elected to the state House of Representatives and five years later he served a term in the Senate. In 1869, during his absence in England, he was elected as a Republican to Congress, and served in the House till 1877, when he was elected by the legislature to the Senate. Reelected four times, he continued to represent Massachusetts in the Senate until his death.

During his seven years in the House his most congenial work was on the committee on the judiciary. He was one of the managers of the House in the impeachment of William Belknap [q.v.] and presented a vigorous argument for his conviction despite the plea that the Senate had no jurisdiction because the defendant was no longer in office as secretary of war. He was a member of the electoral commission which determined the outcome of the Hayes-Tilden controversy in 1877. In 1873 he was chairman of the special committee which investigated governmental conditions in Louisiana.

In the Senate his most effective work was done upon measures of a professional or an administrative character, rather than upon more popular political measures. In his own opinion his most important service to the country was on the committee on claims, where he exercised great influence in determining the doctrines which guided the Senate's action on civil war claims of individuals, corporate bodies, and states. For more than twenty-five years he served continuously on the committee on privileges and elections, and his opinions are cited as authoritative. For twenty years he was a member of the committee on the judiciary and during much of the time its chairman. At the request of this committee he waited upon President McKinley [q.v.] to protest against his practice of appointing senators upon commissions whose work was later to come before the Senate for approval. In character, in speech, and in bearing he upheld the highest traditions of the Senate and was the author of two of its rules demanding decorum in debate. His speeches in opposition to the election of senators by popular vote were among the weightiest arguments on that side of the question. He was the author of the law of 1887 which repealed the portion of the tenure-of-office act then in force, and of the presidential succession act of 1886, and he had a large part in framing bankruptcy and anti-trust legislation.

Moral issues won his prompt and tireless support. In the House he opposed the "salary grab" of 1873 and he turned over every pen ny of back pay which that brought to him to found a scholarship in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. In the Senate he was the chief sponsor for laws to curb lotteries. His contempt for the bigotry of the "A. P. A." nativist movement led him, against the advice of his friends, to write a scathing letter which helped bury that movement "in the 'cellar' in which it was born" (Dresser, post, p. 7). Reckless of the possible political effect upon his future, he fought most strenuously against the Republican administration's Philippine policy. Although his stand upon this question was disapproved in Massachusetts, yet so great was the admiration for his sincerity that he was reelected in 1901 by a very large majority. Devotion to the country's service in the House and Senate involved not only the renunciation of a rapidly increasing legal practice but also the declining of other high honors. Twice he was offered an appointment to the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts. Hayes and McKinley each offered to send him to represent the United States in England, where his friendships among judges and scholars and statesmen would have made his position exceptionally congenial, but his modest means did not permit him to accept.

His counsel was sought in behalf of many educational and literary institutions. For twelve years he was an overseer of Harvard College. He helped establish in his home city the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Clark University and was an influential trustee of both these institutions from their organization until his death. He served as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution and as president of the American Antiquarian Society and of the American Historical Association. He was ever a student, accumulated for himself a choice library in history and in English and classical literature, and took an active interest in the development of the Library of Congress. He was instrumental in obtaining the return to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts of the manuscript of Governor Bradford's History of Plymouth plantation. He was a formidable debater, quick in repartee and in sustaining his arguments by legal and historical precedents. He was often invited to address literary and historical associations. Though he had neither a pleasing voice nor a graceful presence, he was an effective speaker possessed of a noble and dignified style. The stern · puritanism to which he had been accustomed in childhood was mollified in his later years. He was a liberal Unitarian, scrupulous in the support of his church and tolerant of the views of others. He delighted in the associations of the Saturday Club and in loyalty to his friends.

He was twice married: to Mary Louisa Spurr in 1853, and to Ruth Ann Miller in 1862. He was survived by the two children of his first wife.

[G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (2 vols., 1903); Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 2 series, XVIII-XIX (1905-06); a critical estimate by T. W. Higginson in Proceedings Academy of Arts and Science, vol. XL (1905); F. F. Dresser, G. F. Hoar: Reprint from Reminiscences and Biographical Notices of Past Members of the Worcester Fire Society 1917 (1917); eulogy in Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, vols. XVI-XVII (1905-07); G. F. Hoar, Memorial Addresses Delivered in the Sen. and H. of R. (1905); Talcot Williams, in Review of Review (New York), November 1904; M. A. De W. Howe, Later Years of the Saturday Club (1927); Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation ... With a Report of the Proceedings Incident to the Return of the MS. to Massachusetts (1899); H. S. Nourse, The Hoar Family (1899); Records of the Trustees of Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Boston Transcript, September 30, 1904; Springfield Daily Republican, September 30, 1904.]

G. H. H.


HOAR, Samuel (May 18, 1778-Novovember 2, 1856), lawyer, U.S. congressman, founding member of the Massachusetts Free-Soil Party, founding member of the Massachusetts Republican Party. Anti-slavery political leader.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903), vol. I; G. F. Hoar, in Memorial Biographies New England Hist. Genealogical Society, vol. III (1883); Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 1 series, vol. V (1862);

Biography from the Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 89-90

HOAR, SAMUEL (May 18, 1778-November 2, 1856), lawyer, congressman, was born in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the son of Susanna (Pierce) and Samuel Hoar, a lieutenant in the Revolutionary War, later a magistrate and member of the Massachusetts House and Senate. He was a descendant of John, one of the brothers of Leonard Hoar [q. v.]. He was prepared for college by the Reverend Charles Stearns of Lincoln and was graduated from Harvard College (B.A.) in 1802. The next two years he spent as tutor in a private family in Virginia, where he developed a life-long abhorrence of domestic slavery. He studied law in the office of Artemas Ward [q.v.] and in 1805 began practice in Concord. He rose rapidly in his profession and for forty years was one of the eminent lawyers in the state, ranking in court practice with Webster and Choate. He was a conservative in the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1820, served several terms in the state Senate, and at seventy-two was elected to the House of Representatives, where he was successful in defeating an attempt to abolish the corporation of Harvard College and to substitute a board to be chosen by the legislature. Harvard's president declared: "Other men have served the College; Samuel Hoar saved it" (G. F. Hoar, Autobiography, I, 29).

In politics he was first a Federalist, then a Whig. He was a representative in Congress, 1835-37, and vigorously upheld the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and opposed the recognition of the independence of Texas. He was a delegate to the convention which nominated Harrison for president. In 1848, believing that the nomination of Taylor marked the Whig party's abandonment of its opposition to the spread of slavery, he at once exerted himself to bring about united political action by men of all parties opposed to the nominations of Cass or Taylor. He was the first to sign the call written by his son, E. Rockwood Hoar [q.v.], for the convention, over which he presided, at Worcester on June 28, 1848, and in the ensuing campaign his name headed the electoral ticket of the Free Soil party in Massachusetts. In 1854 he led in the movement which, at the Worcester convention in September, first placed "Republican" candidates in · nomination for state  offices. The following year he was chairman of the committee which called the convention that formally organized the Republican party in Massachusetts.

In 1844 the governor, as authorized by the legislature, employed him to test the constitutionality of certain South Carolina laws under which many Massachusetts colored citizens, seamen on vessels touching at South Carolina ports, were seized on arrival, put in jail, and kept imprisoned till their vessel s ailed or, if their jail fees were not then paid, sold as slaves. On the day of Hoar's arrival in Charleston the legislature, only one member dissenting, by resolution requested the Governor to expel "the Northern emissary" from the state. Warned by the mayor and the sheriff that his life was in danger and urged to depart, he replied that he was too old to run and that he could not return to Massachusetts without an effort to perform the duty assigned him. Under threat of violence from the mob that surrounded his hotel, at the earnest request of a committee of seventy leading citizens, he consented to walk instead of being dragged-to the carriage waiting to convey him to the boat. The indignity to which this venerable citizen of Massachusetts had been subjected produced hot indignation throughout the North.

After he had retired from active practice of the law, for nearly twenty years he devoted his energies to the service of the church, of temperance, and of various organizations for the promotion of peace, colonization, and education. He was an overseer of Harvard College but not less interested and conscientious in his duties a s a member of the Concord school committee. He was a Unitarian, strict in observance of the Sabbath, and for many years teacher and superintendent in the local Sunday school, He was of imposing appearance, of great courtesy especially to women and little children, and tender to all who were the victims of injustice. He married (October 13, 1812) Sarah, daughter of Roger Sherman [q. v.] of Connecticut. Six children were born to them. Four of his descendants followed him in service in the national House of Representatives: his sons, E. Rockwood and George F. Hoar [q.v.]; and two grandsons, Sherman and Rockwood Hoar.

[G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903), vol. I; G. F. Hoar, in Memorial Biographies New England Hist. Genealogical Society, vol. III (1883); Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 1 series, vol. V (1862); Barzillai Frost, A Sermon Preached in Concord (1856); Joseph Palmer, Necrology of Alumni of Harvard College (1864); H. S. Nourse, The Hoar Family (1899); R. W. Emerson, in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, December 1856; Boston Transcript, November 3, 1856.)

G. H. H.


HOWE, John W., 1801-1873, member of the Free-Soil Party.

(Sewell, 1976; pp. 168n, 241)


HOWE, Julia Ward, 1819-1910, abolitionist, women’s suffrage advocate, social activist, poet, essayist. Author of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Wife of abolitionist Samuel Gridley Howe, whom she aided in the publishing and editing of the Boston Anti-slavery newspaper, the Commonwealth before the Civil War.

(Clifford, 1979; Grant, 1994; Richards, 1916; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 341-342; Williams, 1999; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 291-293; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 451-453; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 11, p. 331)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 291-293;

HOWE, JULIA WARD (May 27, 1819-Oct. 17, 1910), author, reformer, was born in New York City, the daughter of Samuel Ward [q.v.], a wealthy banker, and Julia Rush (Cutler) Ward, writer of occasional poems.
[…].It was inevitable that the Abolitionist movement should enlist both the Howes as enthusiastic crusaders. Mrs. Howe helped her husband edit The Commonwealth, an anti-slavery paper, and "Green Peace," their Boston residence, was a center of anti-slavery activity where Theodore Parker, Charles Sumner, and many others gathered. From her war experience came at length a poem which won extraordinary popularity, though it brought her in cash-from the Atlantic -only four dollars. One night, while visiting a camp near Washington, D. C., with the party of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, too stirred by emotion to sleep, she composed to the rhythm of "John Brown's Body," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," scribbling down in the dense darkness of her tent the lines she could not see. It is probable that much of the popularity of the poem was due to the long rolling cadence of the old folk song, and even more to the hysteria of the moment; but the honors, public and private, showered upon the author, have seldom been equaled in the career of any other American woman.

[L. E. Richards and M. H. Elliott, Julia Ward Howe (2 vols., 1915); L. E. Richards, Two Noble Lives (copyright 1911); M. H. Elliott, The Eleventh Hour in the Life of Julia Ward Howe (1911); Heroines of Modern Progress (1913); Women Who Have Ennobled Life (1915); Memorial Exercises in Honor of Julia Ward Howe, Held in Symphony Hall, Boston, on Sunday Evening, January 8, 1911 (1911); Bliss Perry, commemorative tribute in Proceedings American Acad. of Arts and Letters, and of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, vol. I (1913).]

M.S.G.


HOWE, Dr. Samuel Gridley, 1801-1876, abolitionist leader, philanthropist, physician, reformer.  Actively participated in the anti-slavery movement.  Free Soil candidate for Congress from Boston in 1846.  From 1851-1853 he edited the anti-slavery newspaper, the Commonwealth.  Active with the U. S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War.  Member of the American Freedman’s Inquiry Commission, 1863. Supported radical abolitionist John Brown. Husband of Julia Ward Howe. 

(Filler, 1960, pp. 43, 56, 117, 181, 204, 214, 238, 241, 268; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 32, 117, 119-120, 213; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 165, 207, 327, 388, 341; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 283; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 296-297; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 453-456; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 11, p. 342 F. B. Sanborn, Dr. S. G. Howe, the Philanthropist (1891); Julia Ward Howe, Memoir of Dr. Samuel  Gridley Howe (1876)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

HOWE, Samuel Gridley, philanthropist, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 10 November, 1801; died there, 9 January, 1876. He was graduated at Brown in 1821, and at the Harvard Medical school in 1824. After completing his studies he went to Greece, where he served as surgeon in the war for the independence in 1824-'7, and then as the head of the regular surgical service, which he established in that country. In 1827 he returned to the United States in order to obtain help for the Greeks when they were threatened with a famine, and later founded a colony on the isthmus of Corinth, but in consequence of prostration by swamp-fever he was obliged in 1830 to leave the country. In 1831, his attention having been called to the need of schools for the blind, for whose education no provision had been made in this country, he again visited Europe in order to study the methods of instruction then in use for the purpose of acquiring information concerning the education of the blind. While in Paris he was made president of the Polish committee. In his efforts to convey and distribute funds for the relief of a detachment of the Polish Army that had crossed into Prussia, he was arrested by the Prussian authorities, but, after six weeks' imprisonment, was taken to the French frontier by night and liberated. On his return to Boston in 1832 he gathered several blind pupils at his father's house, and thus gave origin to the school which was afterward known as the Perkins institution, and of which he was the first superintendent, continuing in this office until his death. His greatest achievement in this direction was the education of Laura Bridgman (q. v.). Dr. Howe also took an active part in founding the experimental school for the training of idiots, which resulted in the organization of the Massachusetts school for idiotic and feeble-minded youth in 1851. He was actively engaged in the anti-slavery movement, and was a Free-Soil candidate for Congress from Boston in 1846. During 1851-'3 he edited the “Commonwealth.” Dr. Howe took an active part in the sanitary movement in behalf of the soldiers during the Civil War. In 1867 he again went to Greece as bearer of supplies for the Cretans in their struggle with the Turks, and subsequently edited in Boston “The Cretan.” He was appointed, in 1871, one of the commissioners to visit Santo Domingo and report upon the question of the annexation of that Island to the United States, of which he became an earnest advocate. In 1868 he received the degree of LL. D. from Brown. His publications include letters on topics of the time; various reports, especially those of the Massachusetts commissioners of idiots (Boston, 1847-'8); “Historical Sketch of the Greek Revolution” (New York, 1828); and a “Reader for the Blind,” printed in raised characters (1839). See “Memoir of Dr. Samuel G. Howe,” by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (Boston, 1876). —

Biography from the Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 296-297;

HOWE, SAMUEL GRIDLEY (November 10, 1801-January 9, 1876), champion of peoples and persons laboring under disability, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to sturdy, middle-class parents. He was a descendant of Abraham How or Howe who settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts, about 1637. His mother, handsome Patty Gridley, came from a martial family. Through her he probably inherited his love of adventure and his soldierly bearing, as well as his beauty of person. His father, Joseph Neals Howe, was notably businesslike and frugal. Deciding to send but one son to college, he chose Sam, because he read aloud the best from the big family Bible; and Brown University, because it was less under Federalist influence than Harvard. The boy graduated in 1821, being more noted for pranks and penalties than for scholarship. He had, however, according to a college contemporary, a mind that was quick, versatile, and inventive, and he saw intuitively and at a glance what should be done (Julia Ward Howe, Memoir, post, p. 83). In 1824 he received the degree of M.D. from Harvard. Being allured by the romantic appeal of Greece, then battling against the Turk, like a crusader he set sail for that land, where, as fighter in its guerrilla warfare, surgeon in its fleet, and helper in reconstructing its devastated country and in ministering to its suffering people, he spent six adventurous years, during one of which he rushed home to plead for help and went back with a shipload of food and clothing. These supplies he distributed wisely, giving them outright to the feeble, but requiring the able-bodied to earn them through labor on public works. This procedure was the index of his future career; his chivalric zeal had become practical. His idea of real charity then and always was far in advance of his time and, together with much else that was momentous and permanently useful in his later life, seemed to spring full-fledged from his active and original brain.

Meanwhile, in 1829, Massachusetts had incorporated a school for the blind and in 1831 Howe was engaged to open it and carry it on. He went again to Europe and inspected such schools there. Incidentally, for bringing American aid and comfort to Polish refugees in Prussia, he was held six weeks in prison, secretly, and under harrowing conditions which profoundly affected him and explain some things in his after career. Returning home, he started the school (August 1832) in his father's house, with six pupils. He is said to have gone about at first blindfolded, the better to comprehend their situation. Having trained them by instrumentalities created by himself and according to his maxim, "Obstacles are things to be overcome," he exhibited their accomplishments, thereby obtaining funds and the gift of the Perkins mansion, whence the name Perkins Institution was derived. Never thereafter did he fail to win friends to his cause or money for his work and for the embossing of his books, which were in the "Boston line" (Roman letter) or "Howe" type. He showed the world that the young blind both could and should be brought up to be economically and socially competent. His annual reports-philosophic common-sense put into clear, pure, and forcible language were widely read. Succeeding educators must needs recur to them for re-inspiration. Horace Mann, one of his board of trustees, allowed himself to say in 1841: "I would rather have built up the Blind Asylum than have written Hamlet" (Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, post, II, 107). In the forty-four years of Dr. Howe's directorship of his school he visited seventeen states in behalf of the education of the blind, and in the 1870's he generously released several of his best teachers to further the American principles of training, then being introduced under Francis Joseph Campbell [q.v.] in London. He awakened the deafblind child, Laura Bridgman, to communication with others, educating her to usefulness and happiness at that time an astounding achievement which, done in the face of general disbelief, became of vast importance to human psychology, education, and hopefulness.

His knight-errantry was extended into many fields. He supported Horace Mann in his fight for better public schools and for normal schools; promoted the use of articulation and of the oral, as against the sign method, for instructing the deaf; so pioneered in behalf of the care and training of children then called idiots that Dr. Walter E. Fernald, one of his successors at the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble Minded Youth, declared these labors to be the chief jewel in his crown. He agitated for prison reform and the aiding of discharged convicts; helped Dorothea Dix by private and public support in her campaign for the humanitarian care ~f the insane; and from 1865 to 1874 he was chairman of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities, the fir st in America, and wrote its annual reports, therein stating his principles which have since become the orthodoxy of charity (F. G. Peabody, Hibbert Journal, post). Though tardy in joining the anti-slavery movement he · finally plunged headlong into it, opening his · town office as a rallying point. He served for the needed years as chairman and whip of a Boston vigilance committee, self-constituted, to prevent the forcible return South of fugitive slaves. With Julia (Ward) Howe [q.v.], whom he married April 27, 1843, he was co-editor for a while of the anti-slavery paper, The Commonwealth. He even ran for Congress in 1846 as the candidate of the "Conscience" Whigs; but here he suffered defeat, as he did also for reelection to the Boston school committee. Politics, indeed, was no forte of his, while action as a freelance was. Therefore, though much of the time ill from overwork, he threw himself with better success into helping save Kansas to the Free-Soilers. In this enterprise, as in his aiding and abetting the purposes of John Brown, he obeyed conscience rather than law. There are those who cannot excuse him for this "obfuscation," especially for his public letter disclaiming advance knowledge of Brown's raid, and his own subsequent disappearing into Canada. Later, when public excitement had quieted, he  went to Washington and testified before a Senate committee of inquiry regarding his knowledge of the affair. During the Civil War he was an active and useful member of the Sanitary Commission. Secretary Stanton appointed him one of the President's Inquiry Commission. He supported his friend, Senator Sumner, in behalf of negro suffrage as a politic al measure, and the education of freedmen as essential to their citizenship.

In 1866-67 he was protagonist in raising funds and clothing for the suffering Cretans, then waging a losing fight for freedom, and, accompanied by wife and children, again went to Greece to manage the distribution of supplies. He even stole into Crete itself, a hazardous undertaking, and while at Athens opened an industrial school for the Cretan refugees. In 1871, President Grant appointed Howe, Senator Wade of Ohio, and President White of Cornell, commissioners to report on the advisability of the United States' annexing the island of Santo Domingo. After spending about two months there they recommended such action, advice which mo st people considered quixotic. "He was never the hero of his own tale," says Dr. F. H. Hedge (Julia Ward Howe, Memoir, p. 95). He disliked being in the limelight, and his greater services were temporarily overshadowed by his gifted wife who long outlived him. His aggressive personality inspired both love and fear: he could be harsh and exacting or tender and generous. He had a host of friends; his enemies were few.

[F. B. Sanborn, Dr. S. G. Howe, the Philanthropist (1891); Julia Ward Howe, Memoir of Dr. Samuel  Gridley Howe (1876); " The Hero," poem by John Greenleaf Whittier; J. L. Jones, "Samuel Gridley Howe," in Charities Review, December 1897; P roc. at the Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, November 11, 1901 (1902); F. P. Stearns, "Chevalier Howe," in Cambridge Sketches (1905); Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe (2 vols., 1906-09), ed. by his daughter Laura E. Richards; F. G. Peabody, "A Paladin of Philanthropy," in Hibbert Journal, October 1909; D. W. Howe, Howe Genealogies,  Abraham of Roxbury (1929); J. J. Chapman, Learning and Other Essays (1910); L. E. Richards, Laura Bridgman, The Story of an Opened Door (1928); Boston Transcript, Boston Herald, Springfield Republican, January 10, 1876; see also Dickens' American Notes (1 842) for a short appreciation of Dr. Howe.]

E. E. A.


HOWELL, James Bruen (July 4, 1816- June 17, 1880), pioneer editor, political journalist,  “A loyal Whig, he early took leadership in that party in Iowa; but with the joining of the issue over the extension of slavery, he was among the first to urge the merging of all free-soil elements in a new organization and signed the call for the convention to organize the Republican party in the state. He was a delegate to the first national convention of the Republicans in 1856 and in the campaign sought in every way to promote party harmony and solidarity. At the Chicago convention, where he was one of the party counselors, he hailed the ticket with enthusiasm and lent every effort for its success. He was an ardent admirer of Lincoln and opposed the administration only when it seemed to falter in its policy regarding slavery.”

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 302-303).

HOWELL, JAMES BRUEN (July 4, 1816- June 17, 1880), pioneer editor, political journalist, was born near Morristown, New Jersey, but in 1819 he was taken by his parents, Elias and Eliza Howell, to Licking County, Ohio. His father served in the state Senate and in Congress. James was educated in the Newark, Ohio, schools and at Miami University, where he graduated in 1837. As a student he had a reputation for aggressive leadership. He studied law at Lancaster, Ohio, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. The following year he was an enthusiastic Harrison supporter and served the cause as an unsuccessful candidate for prosecuting attorney. Owing to failing health, in 1841 he took a western horseback journey in the course of which he came to Keosauqua, in Iowa Territory, a town which seemed a promising location for a young lawyer, and in time he settled there. He soon came to rank as one of the leading lawyers of the territory, but abandoned the law to purchase, in 1845, with James H. Cowles, the Des Moines Valley Whig. Three years later the paper was removed to Keokuk, which seemed to offer an opportunity for a larger constituency. In 1854 he and Cowles established a daily called the Whig, rechristened the next year the Gate City. Howell remained the active editor until 1870.

Howell has been termed, not inaptly, the Horace Greeley of Iowa. He had the same intense zeal for a cause, the agitator's conviction that permitted no qualification or concession. He was a hard fighter who gave no quarter and expected none. His editorial style had no adornments but was simple, direct, specific, immediately understandable to all readers, and, in harmony with the standards of the time, not lacking in personalities. "From 1845 to 1865 J. B. Howell was the most potent maker of newspaper opinion in the Des Moines Valley and in Iowa" (S. M. Clark, post, p. 350). A loyal Whig, he early took leadership in that party in Iowa; but with the joining of the issue over the extension of slavery, he was among the first to urge the merging of all free-soil elements in a new organization and signed the call for the convention to organize the Republican party in the state. He was a delegate to the first national convention of the Republicans in 1856 and in the campaign sought in every way to promote party harmony and solidarity. At the Chicago convention, where he was one of the party counselors, he hailed the ticket with enthusiasm and lent every effort for its success. He was an ardent admirer of Lincoln and opposed the administration only when it seemed to falter in its policy regarding slavery. Inevitably he was a pronounced radical in bitter opposition to Johnson's Reconstruction policy. He was a consistent supporter of Grant.

Although Howell sought public offices from time to time, he held but few. In the first state election he was an unsuccessful candidate for district judge. On several occasions his name was before the legislature for the United States senatorship, but he served only to fill out an unexpired term (January 1870-March 1871). His tenure was too brief to provide opportunity for constructive service, but he was active throughout and attracted attention by his vigorous opposition to additional railroad grants. At the end of his te rm he was appointed by Grant a member of the court of Southern claims upon which he served to the completion of its work in 1880. During the last twenty years of his life he labored under serious physical disability as a result of an accident which contributed ultimately to his death. He was married, on November 1, 1842, to Isabella Richards, of Granville, Ohio. Following her death he married, on October 23, 1850, Mary Ann Bowen of Iowa City.

[S. M. Clark, "Senator James B. Howell, " Annals of Iowa, April 1894; D. C. Mott, "Early Iowa Newspapers," Ibid., January 1928; D. E. Clark, Hist. of Senatorial Elections in Iowa (191 2); General Catalog of Graduates and Former Students of Miami University ...1809-1909; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); files of the Des Moines Valley Whig and the Gate City, especially the latter for June 18, 19, 20, 1880. ]

E.D.R.


HUNT, Ward (June 14, 1810-March 24, 1886), justice of the United States Supreme Court. “He opposed the annexation of Texas and the extension of slavery. He served as mayor of Utica in 1844. As the slavery controversy increased in bitterness Hunt abandoned his earlier affiliations and actively supported the candidacy of Van Buren and Adams on the Free-Soil ticket in 1848. He helped organize the Republican party in New York in 1856, was a zealous supporter of its policies…”

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, pp. 394-395.

HUNT, WARD (June 14, 1810-March 24, 1886), justice of the United States Supreme Court, was born in Utica, New York, the son of Montgomery and Elizabeth (Stringham) Hunt, and a descendant of Thomas Hunt who resided in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1650. His father was for many years cashier of the First National Bank of Utica. He attended the Oxford and Geneva academies in both of which he was a class mate of Horatio Seymour. At seventeen he entered Hamilton College but transferred to Union College where he graduated with honors in 1828. After a period of study in the law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, he returned to Utica and entered the office of Judge Hiram Denio. He was admitted to the bar in 1831 but his health broke down and necessitated his spending the winter in the South. On his return he entered a law partnership with Judge Denio and soon had an extensive practice. In 1838 he was elected as a Jacksonian Democrat to the New York Assembly from Oneida County and served one term. He opposed the annexation of Texas and the extension of slavery. He served as mayor of Utica in 1844. As the slavery controversy increased in bitterness Hunt abandoned his earlier affiliations and actively supported the candidacy of Van Buren and Adams on the Free-Soil ticket in 1848. He helped organize the Republican party in New York in 1856, was a zealous supporter of its policies, and was actively considered by the Republican caucus in Albany in 1857 as a candidate for the United States Senate.

Hunt had early ambitions for judicial office. In the late forties he ran for the supreme court of the state but was defeated, owing, it is alleged, to the opposition of the Irish vote which was antagonistic because of his successful defense of a policeman who had been charged with the murder of an Irishman. Again in 1853 he ran on the Democratic ticket for the same office, but his political deflection to the Free-Soilers five years earlier brought about his defeat. In 1865 he ran as a Republican for the court of appeals, to succeed his former partner, Judge Denio, and was elected. Three years later he became chief judge of that tribunal and remained as commissioner of appeals under the judicial reorganization effected by constitutional amendment in 1869. In the autumn of 1872 he was nominated by President Grant to the associate justiceship on the Supreme Court left vacant by the resignation of Justice Samuel Nelson, and he took his seat on January 9, 1873. He never returned to the bench after the Court's adjournment for recess on December 23, 1878. Early in January 1879 he suffered a paralytic stroke affecting his right side. He recovered slowly, but never completely, and remained an invalid until his death. In spite of his physical condition he did not resign from the Court until Congress by special act of January 27, 1882, extended to him the benefits of the act of 1869 which permitted federal judges to retire on full pay at the age of seventy years after ten years of service. The special act was introduced and sponsored by Hunt's former colleague on the bench, Senator David Davis. Hunt had not served ten years; he had in fact served only six years, and in the debates on the bill to pension him he was sharply criticized for having continued in office so long after becoming unfit to perform his judicial duties (Congressional Record, 47 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 505, 612-18). The act itself made the grant of Hunt's pension conditional upon his resigning within thirty days. He resigned on the day of its enactment.

Hunt was not a conspicuous member of the Supreme Court and his name is not associated with any outstanding decision or doctrine. He was, however, a hard-working and an able judge, and his decisions, though not brilliantly written, are clear and represent careful research. He wrote the opinion of the Court in 149 cases, only eight of which related to constitutional problems. He wrote four dissenting opinions and dissented without opinion in eighteen cases. He was married twice: to Mary Ann Savage, of Salem, New York, in 1837, who bore him a son and a daughter; and to Maria Taylor of Albany in 1853.

[Hunt's opinions are found from 15 Wallace to 98 U. S. Reports. For a memorandum on his resignation and an obituary notice see 105 U. S., ix-x, and 118 U. S., 70 I. Other sources include: M. M. Bagg, Memorial History of Utica, New York (1891); H. L. Carson, The Supreme Court of the U. S.: Its History (1892), vol. II; David McAdam and others, History of the Bench and Bar of New York (1897), vol. I; D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, vol. II (1906), vol. III (1909); T. B. Wyman, Genealogy of the Name and Family of Hunt (1862-63); C. E. Fitch, Encyclopedia of Biography of New York (1916); New York Times, New York Tribune, March 25, 1886.]

R.E.C.


HUSSEY, Erastus, 1800-1889, Battle Creek, Michigan, political leader, abolitionist leader, agent, Underground Railroad.  Helped more than one thousand slaves escape after 1840.  Co-founder of the Republican Party.  Member of the Free-Soil and Liberty Parties.  (Dumond, 1961, p. 339)



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