Lincoln’s Cabinet

See below for biographies of members of Lincoln’s cabinet from Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.

BATES, EDWARD (September 4, 1793-March 25, 1869), statesman, was the son of Thomas Fleming Bates, a Virginia planter and merchant, who on August 8, 1771, had married Caroline Matilda Woodson. The young couple first lived in Henrico County and their three children were born. About 1776 the family moved to Goochland County, where a home called "Belmont" was established, and where nine more children were born, of whom Edward was the youngest. Thomas F. Bates fought as a volunteer soldier under Lafayette at the siege of Yorktown, but, as a Quaker, paid the price of this patriotic service by being read out of meeting. He also suffered heavy financial losses during the Revolutionary War and died leaving his family in straitened circumstances. Edward was taught to read and write by his father and at the age of ten was placed under the instruction of a cousin, Benjamin Bates of Hanover, Virginia, and by him was prepared to enter Charlotte Hall Academy in St. Mary's County, Maryland. He had hoped to attend Princeton, but a serious injury cut short his course at the academy and caused him to give up the idea of a college education. Through the influence of a relative, James Pleasants, a member of Congress, he was then appointed a midshipman in the navy; but because of his mother's objections he declined the appointment. In February 1813 he joined a volunteer militia company which was raised in Goochland County to assist in repelling a threatened attack on Norfolk; and he remained in the army until October, serving successively as private, corporal, and sergeant.

At the suggestion of his brother, Frederick Bates [q.v.], then secretary of Missouri Territory, Edward went out to St. Louis in 1814 and began the study of law under Rufus Easton, the foremost lawyer of the territory. In November 1816 he took out a license to practise law, and two years later formed a partnership with Joshua Barton, the brother of David Barton, one of the first United States senators from Missouri. The partnership continued until June 30, 1823, when Barton was killed in a duel. On May 29, 1823, Bates married Julia Davenport Coalter, the daughter of David Coalter, a South Carolinian who had moved to Missouri in 1817. She bore him seventeen children, eight of whom survived him.

Until he was elected to Congress in 1826, Bates held only minor public offices, though he had served acceptably as a member of the state constitutional convention of 1820, as attorney-general, and as a member of the state legislature. In the Twentieth Congress he was the sole representative of Missouri in the lower house, and already the choice of the Whig party for the United States Senate. The followers of Thomas H. Benton, however, had a majority in the state legislature, and Bates was defeated by a few votes. So strong was Jacksonian democracy in Missouri, indeed, that Bates was defeated for reelection to Congress in 1828. He was still regarded as the leader of his party, but he led a forlorn hope. About this time he moved to St. Charles County and located on a farm on Dardenne Prairie. He continued the practise of law, his services being in demand in all of the neighboring counties. There he remained until 1842 when he resumed practise in St. Louis. In 1830 he was elected to the state Senate, where he served for four years, and in 1834 was again elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. The door to more important offices seemed closed to him, but in 1847 his opportunity came. As president of the River and Harbor Improvement Convention which met at Chicago, he made an eloquent speech which attracted the attention of the public and made him a national figure (Niles' Register, LXXII, 366-67). In 1850 President Fillmore appointed him secretary of war, but for personal and domestic reasons he declined the appointment.

From this time on his views on social and constitutional questions and on national politics were sought and frequently expressed in speeches and newspaper articles. He opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, a stand which aligned him with the "free labor" party in Missouri, though he still considered himself a Whig and in 1856 acted as president of the Whig national convention which sat at Baltimore. He drew closer to the Republican party when he opposed the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution. His upright and clear-headed course attracted nation-wide attention, and in 1858 Harvard University conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., an unusual honor for a Missourian of that day. Early in 1860 a Bates for president movement was launched in Missouri. His supporters contended that a Free-Soil Whig from a border state, if elected on the Republican ticket, would avert secession. The movement received the support of many leaders, particularly in the border states. But the decision of the national Republican committee to hold the convention at Chicago instead of at St. Louis was a serious setback to the Bates supporters and added strength to the candidacy of Lincoln. On the first ballot Bates received only 48 votes; on the second ballot 35; and on the third and deciding ballot only 22.

Soon after the Chicago convention Lincoln decided to offer Bates a cabinet position. Some of Bates's friends had urged, indeed, that he should be appointed secretary of state, but the President felt that the first place in the cabinet should go to Seward. He gave Bates his choice of any other cabinet position and the latter wisely chose that of attorney-general. He was the first cabinet officer to be chosen from the region west of the Mississippi River. For a time he had much influence in the cabinet. It was at his suggestion that the Navy Department began the equipment of a fleet on the Mississippi River. In the Trent affair, he urged that the question of legal rights be waived and that every effort be made to avert a war with Great Britain. He differed with Lincoln on the question of the admission of West Virginia to the Union. As attorney-general he filed an elaborate opinion in which he contended that the West Virginia Government represented and governed but a portion of the state of Virginia and that the movement for separate statehood was "a mere abuse, nothing less than attempted secession, hardly veiled under the flimsy forms of law."

From this time Bates's influence in the cabinet gradually waned. He disagreed with many of the military policies. He felt that as the war progressed constitutional rights were giving way before the encroachments of the military authorities. He resented the interference of Seward in matters which belonged to the attorney-general's office. He had little confidence in Stanton, Seward, or Chase, and he felt that Lincoln lacked the will-power to end what Bates considered abuses. In Missouri, moreover, the radical Republicans got control of the state government in 1864, and this meant the end of law in his home state. Weary of a cabinet position in which his views had little weight, and in the belief that he could best serve his country and his state as a private citizen, he tendered his resignation as attorney-general on November 24, 1864.

On January 6, 1865, a radical state constitutional convention assembled in St. Louis and drew up a new state constitution. It also passed an ordinance emancipating the slaves and an ouster ordinance, the intention of which was to place the state judiciary in the hands of the radicals. It also adopted a stringent test oath for voters. Bates fought the radicals by publishing a series of newspaper articles in which he pleaded for a government of law instead of a government of force. By many letters to prominent men all over the North he attempted to arouse them to the dangers of radical rule, insisting that the extreme radicals were nothing less than revolutionists who had seized upon the general zeal for putting down the rebellion and had perverted it into a means of destroying all government by law. This struggle against the Missouri radicals was his last great contest. A few months after his return to Missouri his health began to break. It steadily declined and on March 25, 1869, he died. In person Edward Bates was small. His early portraits show a strong countenance with clean cut features, piercing eyes, and a well-formed chin. Until middle life he was clean-shaven, but in his later years he wore a full beard. He was modest and unpretending, but a courageous fighter for law and justice.

[The largest collection of Bates papers, including letters and diary (June 3, 1846-December 25, 1852), is deposited with the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis. His diary (April 20, 1859-July 30, 1866) is deposited in the MS. Division of the Library of Congress See Charles Gibson, " Edward Bates," in Missouri Historical Society Collections, II, 52-56 (1900); F. W. Lehman, "Edward Bates and the Test Oath," Ibid., IV, 389- 401 (1923); " Letters of Edward Bates and the Blairs," Missouri Historical  Review, XI, 123-46 (1917); Nicolay and Hay , Lincoln (1890); Gideon Welles, Diary (1911); Onward Bates, Bates, et al. of Virginia and Missouri (1914).]

T.M.M.



BLAIR, MONTGOMERY (May 10, 1813- July 27, 1883), lawyer, statesman, eldest son of Francis Preston Blair, Sr. [q.v.], was reared in Franklin County, Kentucky, amidst the scenes of political strife between "relief" and "anti-relief" and "Old" and "New Court" factions. The schools of Kentucky gave him his early education. He was appointed by President Jackson to West Point in 1831; after his graduation in 1835 he received a lieutenancy in the army in time to serve in the Seminole War. The next year he resigned his commission in order to study law in Transylvania University. He settled in St. Louis in 1837 as the protege of Thomas Hart Benton. After practising law two years he was appointed United States district attorney for Missouri, only to be removed for political reasons by President Tyler. He served in St. Louis as mayor (1842-43) and as judge of the court of common pleas (1845-49). In 1849 he resigned to resume his law practise. In 1853 he moved to Maryland where he practised law chiefly before the Supreme Court of the United States. President Pierce made him the first solicitor for the court of claims of the United States (1855) but President Buchanan dismissed him because of his pronounced views on slavery. He was a Free-Soiler in principle, believed slavery could be peaceably settled, generally held the political views of border statesmen, and had sympathy with the interests of the West. After joining the American party he left it because of its silence on slavery and became a Democratic" Republican in the Republican party. His prestige was greatly increased among anti-slavery people when he became counsel for Dred Scott. His sense of fairness led him to help secure a defense attorney for John Brown after the Harper's Ferry incident. He was a delegate to the Democratic national conventions in 1844, 1848, and 1852. In 1860 he presided at the state Republican convention at Baltimore and attended the Chicago national convention as a delegate from Maryland. Because of his services to the Republican party, his family connections, and his political views and experiences he was made postmaster general in Lincoln's cabinet, where he belonged to the Bates-Welles-Blair group. He strongly urged the reënforcement of Southern forts, particularly Fort Sumter, which he believed could be held against the Confederates, and threatened to resign if that fort were not reenforced. Without being obsequious he was a staunch supporter of Lincoln. He strongly opposed Secretary Chase's views, befriended McClellan, and insisted from the beginning of the incident that the seizure of Mason and Slidell was illegal. In his own department he organized the postal system for the army, introduced compulsory payment of postage and free delivery in cities, improved the registry system, established the railway post-office, organized the postal draft plan which his successor put into operation, stopped the franking privileges of postmasters, and was instrumental in bringing about the Postal Union Convention at Paris (1863). In the Union national convention (1864) the Radicals succeeded in passing a resolution which virtually demanded the dismissal of Blair from the cabinet. The President, after a fair assurance of victory at the polls, bowed to political expediency and requested Blair's resignation, which was cheerfully given. Blair continued, however, to work loyally for Lincoln. After the assassination of Lincoln, Blair advised Johnson to dismiss the old and appoint a new cabinet. He sought moderation for the South, asserting and believing that Lincoln's plan of reconstruction was just and best. He decried the disfranchisement of the Southern whites and enfranchisement of the negroes. His views brought him into conflict with those held by the radical reconstructionists. He drifted back to the Democratic party, where he supported Seymour in 1868 and Greeley in 1872, and championed Tilden's cause in 1876. With the financial aid of W. W. Corcoran he established a newspaper, the Union (Washington, D. C.), to uphold Tilden's claims to the Presidency. As Tilden's counsel he appeared before the Electoral Commission. He declared Tilden represented "the one issue" reform. Being elected to the Maryland House of Delegates (1878) and immediately made chairman of the judiciary committee, Blair proposed the resolution which denied the right of President Hayes to office. Though honest in his belief that Hayes was illegally chosen president, he aroused the intense enmity of many people by his method of agitating the question. He unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1882. Blair was tall and spare, clean-shaven, with light hair and bluish-grey eyes. His speech was slow, his voice calm. Few men were more courteous and genial than he, but he was temperamentally combative and obstinate when he thought he was right. Though deeply religious he held anti-ritualistic sentiments. As a lawyer he used persuasive argument which was the result of research and logical reasoning. While he had strong prejudices, he was shrewd, frank, and thoroughly honest. He was twice married: to a Miss Buckner of Virginia, who died in 1844, and to a daughter of Judge Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire. He was an inveterate worker and died while engaged in writing a life of Andrew Jackson.

[The Blair Papers (unpublished); Levi Woodbury Papers (unpublished); "Montgomery Blair" in Maryland in National Politics (1915) by Jesse Frederick Essary; "Montgomery Blair" in Sketches of Representative Men North and South (1872), ed. by Augustus C. Rogers; "The Public Career of Montgomery Blair, Particularly with Reference to His Services as Postmaster General of the United States" by Madison Davis in the Records of the Columbia Historical Society, XIII (1910), 126-61; Diary of Gideon Welles (1911); J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln (10 volumes, 1890).]

W.E.S.



CAMERON, SIMON (March 8, 1799-June 26, 1889), senator, secretary of war, diplomat, was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, of Scotch and German ancestry, the son of Charles and Martha (Pfoutz) Cameron. Reverses and misfortunes in his father's family cast him upon the world early and he was obliged to apprentice himself for a time in a printing business in Harrisburg. In January 1821, at the solicitation of Samuel D. Ingham, he went to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where he edited the Bucks County Messenger, soon merged with the Doylestown Democrat as the Bucks County Democrat. On the decease of this paper at the close of the year 1821, he returned to Harrisburg for a short time as partner of Charles Mowry in the management of the Pennsylvania Intelligencer, but during 1822 he went to Washington to study national political movements, obtained work in the printing house of Gales & Seaton who printed the congressional debates, and spent his spare time in the houses of Congress and in making useful friends, among them Monroe and Calhoun. About 1824 he returned to Harrisburg, bought the Republican, and was soon exercising considerable influence in state and national politics. He was then, as later, a staunch advocate of the protective tariff. The remunerative position of state printer was given him and in 1826 he was made adjutant-general of the state. Newspaper editing did not hold him long. As soon as his position was established and his purse sufficient, he left the press and entered pursuits which promised greater financial gain. It was the era of internal improvements, and the ambitious young Cameron was quick to see money-making possibilities. He became a contractor for the construction of canals and began a network of railroads in Pennsylvania which he later united into the Northern Central Railroad. In 1832 he set up the Bank of Middletown with himself as cashier, and soon afterward entered the iron business. Subsequently he also engaged in insurance and became interested in other projects. Notwithstanding the diversity of these undertakings Cameron managed them with skill and success and amassed a fortune. At no time, however, did he lose his interest in state and national politics. It was partly through his efforts that the state legislature in 1830 was induced to head a movement for Jackson's renomination, and two years later he aided materially in having Van Buren nominated for vice-president in place of Calhoun. It was also largely through Cameron's maneuvering that James Buchanan was sent to the Senate in 1833 just at the time when he despaired of political opportunities and was seriously considering a return to the practise of law. Prior to 1838 Cameron had held no public office except the position of adjutant-general of Pennsylvania, but in that year he received an appointment as commissioner to settle certain claims of the Winnebago Indians, a place he acquired with Buchanan's assistance. Considerable scandal arose from his activities because of his adjusting the claims by the payment of notes on his own bank, an arrangement which enriched himself and earned for him the derisive sobriquet, "The Great Winnebago Chief." Following this episode, Cameron's political influence decreased for a time, but actually his career as a great politician was only beginning. In 1845 by a coalition of Whigs, Native Americans, and Protectionist Democrats he won the Senate seat vacated by Buchanan who resigned to enter Polk's cabinet. Buchanan was irritated at Cameron's defeat of the regular party candidate, George Woodward, a free-trader, and the two men parted political company. Alexander K. McClure, an old political foe, has written that from 1845 until Cameron's death nearly a half-century later, "There is not an important complete chapter of political history in the State that can be written with the omission of his defeats or triumphs, and even after his death until the present time [1905] no important chapter of political history can be fully written without recognizing his successors and assigns in politics as leading or controlling factors" (Old Time Nates of Pennsylvania, 1905, I, 98). Still, the victory of 1845 did not crown Cameron as the political czar of his state. He had won by fusion methods and incurred bitter Democratic opposition. In 1849 he was unable to command Democratic support and failed to effect a strong enough coalition in the legislature to win a reelection. His first term in the Senate is of interest principally because in 1846 he made the one important speech of his career. It was in opposition to the Walker revenue tariff. Another attempt in 1855 to return to the Senate with Know-Nothing support also resulted in failure. Cameron then decided to cast his lot with the new Republican party and in 1856 actively supported Fremont for President. The following year Republican backing and three Democratic votes, obtained by bargaining, enabled him to return to the Senate. There he became an implacable foe of President Buchanan. Cameron's political somersaulting was now at an end; he remained a Republican for the rest of his life and gave much of his time and energy to the building up of a smooth running party machine in Pennsylvania. In the management and control of it he was unequalled. His leadership was sometimes challenged; he suffered subsequent defeats; but no one ever dislodged him from control of the organization. In 1860 it helped him to make a presentable showing in the Republican national convention as a candidate for president. He could not be nominated, but his henchmen traded Pennsylvania votes for Lincoln in exchange for a cabinet post for Cameron. After much hesitation Lincoln abided by the bargain his managers had made without his consent. Cameron resigned his seat in the Senate and became secretary of war. The choice proved a most unfortunate one. Although Cameron was an able business executive, political considerations too often governed his judgments and his actions in departmental administration. He dispensed civil and military offices and army contracts in a notorious fashion; corruption became rampant. Although it does not appear that he enriched himself, there were many who did profit shamefully. Complaints against his management and his favoritism poured into Washington almost daily and demands for his removal were persistent. In an effort to retrieve popular support he began to advocate the freeing and arming of slaves, policies which were rapidly gaining public favor, but which were not then acceptable to the President. So embarrassing did the Secretary's presence become that Lincoln in January 1862 appointed him minister to Russia to be rid of him. Three months later the House of Representatives censured his conduct in the handling of contracts. Cameron had no intention of remaining long in Russia, however, and was back in the United States in time to try for the Senate again in 1863. He failed of election, but in 1867, after a struggle of unexampled desperation, was successful. For ten years thereafter the Senator reigned supreme in Pennsylvania, and in 1873 returned to the Senate without a contest. He also became a power in Grant's administration, controlled the patronage of his state, and in 1876 succeeded in having his son, James Donald Cameron [q.v.], appointed secretary of war. When President Hayes in 1877 refused to continue the son in that office, Cameron resigned his own place in the Senate upon receiving assurances from the subservient Pennsylvania legislature that it would elect his son as his successor. With this bold stroke the Senator closed his remarkable political career. At the same time he handed over to his son the control of the state machine. No politician of his generation understood the science of politics better than Simon Cameron; none enjoyed greater power. He studied and understood individuals who could be of service to him; he knew the precise value of men and could marshal them when occasion arose. His methods were often circuitous, the means employed were often questionable, but the end in view was always clear. Cameron was of broad intellectual force, if not of fine learning; he could employ his faculties to the utmost and meet each new problem in an eminently practical way. He could be patient and conservative, or keen and aggressive, as the situation demanded. Tradition and precedent bore lightly upon him and were promptly brushed aside when new conditions and necessities arose. He lived in a time when men firmly believed that "to the victor belongs the spoils, "and to this doctrine he gladly subscribed. By patronage he built up a political despotism in Pennsylvania; with it he rewarded his friends and punished his foes. It was commonly said that he never forgot a friend or an enemy. In his senatorial career there was little that was statesmanlike or brilliant. He had no aptitude for Websterian oratory or flights of verbal fancy. He said little in public that was vital, but did much in private that was practical, far-seeing, and astute. His business in the Senate, as elsewhere, was politics, and he governed his conduct accordingly. In appearance he was tall and slim, with a "marked Scotch face," keen gray eyes, a high broad forehead crowned with a luxuriant crop of hair. His manners and speech were kindly and gentle, and his genial, democratic manner won many people to him. He prided himself on possessing the doggedness and determination of his German forebears and the aggressiveness of the "Scotch rebels." His fighting qualities were great. Time dealt lightly with him and at the end of his half-century of political activity and struggle, he was hale and hearty as ever. For twelve years after leaving the Senate he enjoyed freedom from the cares and perplexities of political life on his farm at Donegal Springs, and saw his son three times elected to the place he had surrendered to him. In his ninety-first year, rich in honors and fortune, he passed away. His wife Margaret Brua died several years before, leaving five children.

[The Coryell and Buchanan papers in the Pennsylvania Historical Society contain a number of Cameron letters relating to his earlier years. Some others written in later life are to be found in the Library of Congress, in the manuscript collections of his political contemporaries. The files of the War Department and the Official Records contain most of his war correspondence, and the "Report of the Committee on Contracts" (House Report No. 2, 37 Congress, 2 Session) reveals much regarding his deficiencies as secretary of war. The most useful accounts of his life are in Alexander K. McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania (1905) and Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Time (1892) . These are critical, but not unfriendly. Standard histories and the biographies of public men of Cameron's time also are helpful. Additional information is to be found in A.H. Meneely, The War Department, 1861 (1928); Ellis and Evans, History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (1883); New York Times, March 13, 14, 1877, June 3, 1878, June 27, 1889; Pittsburgh Dispatch, June 27, 1889 ; Harrisburg Daily Patriot, June 27, 1889; Phila. Press, March 13, 14, 15, 1877, January 20, June 27, 1889.]

A. H. M .



CHASE, SALMON PORTLAND (January 13, 1808-May 7, 1873), statesman, secretary of the treasury under Lincoln, and chief justice during Reconstruction, was born at Cornish, New Hampshire. His line can be traced through nine generations to Thomas Chase of Chesham, England, and through six generations to the American emigrant, Aquila Chase, who settled at Newbury, Massachusetts, about 1640. From Newbury the Chases moved to Sutton, Massachusetts, and later to Cornish, a frontier community on the Connecticut River. The Cornish farmer, Ithamar Chase, father of Salmon, held various state and local offices and was in politics a Federalist; the mother, Janette Ralston, was a woman of vigorous Scotch ancestry. Salmon was the eighth of eleven children. In his childhood the family moved to Keene, New Hampshire, where Ithamar became a tavern keeper. The boy received his early training in the Keene district school and in a private .school kept by a Mr. Dunham at Windsor, Vermont.

The death of his father occurred when the boy was nine years old, and shortly after this he was placed under the stern guidance of his uncle, Philander Chase [q.v.], bishop of Ohio, a vigorous pioneer leader in the Protestant Episcopal Church. For two years, the boy lived with the bishop at Worthington, near Columbus, Ohio, entering the church school which the bishop conducted. His days at Worthington were devoted to classical studies, and he was at this time confirmed in the Episcopal Church; but his uncle's hope of making him an Episcopal clergyman was not realized. When Bishop Chase became president of Cincinnati College in the fall of 1821 Salmon entered the college; and a very serious student he seems to have been, to judge by his own statement that he had little to do with college pranks but spent much time "in reading, either under the bishop's direction, or at my own will." "I used to meditate a great deal," he added, "on religious topics; for my sentiments of religious obligation and . . . responsibility were profound" (Schuckers, p. 16). Leaving Cincinnati after less than a year, he spent some months in preparatory study, and then entered as a junior in Dartmouth College, from which he graduated without marked distinction in 1826. He then solicited the influence of another uncle, Dudley Chase, United States senator from Vermont, for a government clerkship; but, this being refused, he conducted a school for boys in Washington, having at one time under his charge sons of all but one of the members of John Quincy Adams's cabinet. In Washington and Baltimore he frequently visited in the cultured home of William Wirt [q.v.]; and his otherwise somber diary glows with youthful romance and sprightliness as it records the evenings spent in the company of the charming Wirt daughters.

Having determined upon his career, he read law under the nominal supervision of Wirt; and with scant legal preparation he was admitted to the bar on December 14, 1829. The following year he settled in Cincinnati, where in addition to legal duties he was soon occupied with anti-slavery activities and with various literary ventures. In 1830 he assisted in organizing the Cincinnati Lyceum which presented a series of lectures, and became himself a lecturer and magazine contributor. In his lecture-essay on the "Life and Character of Henry Brougham" (North American Review, July 1831) his reforming instinct was manifest in his pointed comments on legal abuses of the time. While waiting for clients the lawyer-author sought unsuccessfully to establish a literary magazine for the West, and then turned his energies into the compilation of the Statutes of Ohio (3 volumes, Cinn., 1833-35), a standard work which required heavy labor in the preparation and proved most serviceable to lawyers.

The events of Chase's private life are intimately related in his diary and family memoranda. Three marriages are recorded: the first to Katherine Jane Garniss (March 4, 1834), who died December 1, 1835; the second to Eliza Ann Smith (September 26, 1839), who died September 29, 1845; and the third to Sarah Bella Dunlop Ludlow (November 6, 1846), who died January 13, 1852. Six daughters were born to him, of whom four died when very young. The births and deaths of his children, and the loss of his wives, are recorded in his diary with a revealing tenderness and a grief which takes refuge in religion. Two children reached maturity: the brilliant Katherine, daughter of his second wife, who became the wife of Governor William Sprague of Rhode Island, and Janette, daughter of his third wife, who became Mrs. William S. Hoyt of New York City.

Despite scornful opposition, Chase prominently defended escaping slaves, and was called the "attorney-general for runaway negroes." He labored unsuccessfully to obtain the release of Matilda, a slave woman befriended by J. G. Birney; and when Birney himself was indicted for harboring a fugitive, Chase carried the case to the supreme court of Ohio, where he made a vigorous argument, contending that Matilda, having been voluntarily brought into a free state by her master, became free (Birney vs . Ohio, 8 Ohio, 230). Unwilling to commit itself to the Chase doctrine with which it was evidently impressed, the court directed the dismissal of the indictment against Birney on merely technical grounds. On another occasion Chase defended Vanzandt (the original of John Van Trompe in Uncle Tom's Cabin), prosecuted for aiding the escape of slaves from Kentucky. This case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, and in its argument Chase was associated with William H. Seward, both giving their services without compensation. Chase contended that the federal government under the Constitution had "nothing whatever to do, directly, with slavery"; that "no claim to persons as property can be maintained under any ... law of the United States"; and that the fugitive-slave act of 1793 was unconstitutional. The case was lost for his client; but it did much to bring Chase into prominence.

In politics Chase subordinated party interests to the central issue of slavery. Though formerly a Whig, he joined the Liberty party after the nomination of Birney in 1840; and in various of the conventions of this party, state and national, he was an outstanding leader. The resolutions of the Buffalo convention of August 1843 came chiefly from his pen; and the Southern and Western Liberty Convention at Cincinnati in 1845 (designed as a rallying point for anti-slavery sentiment in the Middle West) was mainly his work. He was active in the Free Soil movement of 1848, presiding at the Buffalo convention, and drafting in part the platform which declared for "no more slave states and no more slave territory." The power of the new party in the nation at large was shown by the defeat of Cass, whose choice had angered the anti-slavery Democrats; and in the Ohio legislature the Free Soilers used their balance of power in alliance with the Democrats to elect Chase to the United States Senate (February 22, 1849). By this time he had come to realize the weakness of a party grounded on a purely antislavery basis, and was turning his attention to the possibility of capturing the Democratic party for the anti-slavery cause.

Chase entered upon his senatorial career at the time of the mid-century crisis over the slavery question. Unwilling to temporize on this issue, and resenting the Southern leanings of the Democratic party, he opposed the compromise measures of 1850; and in 1854 he issued his "Appeal of the Independent Democrats," denouncing Douglas 's Nebraska bill as a "criminal betrayal of precious rights," warning the people that the "dearest interests of freedom and the Union" were in "imminent peril," and imploring all Christians to protest against "this enormous crime." In this "Appeal" we have the key-note of Chase's senatorial policy-a policy of writing slavery restrictions into national law wherever possible, and of paving the way for a new Democratic party that would be free from pro-slavery "domination." He introduced an amendment to Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska bill affirming the right of the people of a territory to prohibit slavery if they wished (as seemed to be implied in Douglas's "popular sovereignty" doctrine); but the amendment was emphatically rejected.

In the altered political horizon produced by the dissolution of the Whig organization and the rise of the Republican party, Chase naturally cast his lot with the Republicans. Meeting in Columbus in July 1855 the new party (perhaps best designated as an "anti-Nebraska" party) nominated Chase as governor; and in a triangular contest in which he had to combat the old Whigs and the old-line Democrats, while suffering embarrassment from his Know-Nothing friends, he was victorious. In 1857 he was reelected as Republican governor; and by this time he had become committed to the new party. As governor his administration was embarrassed by interstate conflicts over the fugitive-slave question, by a threat of Governor Wise of Virginia to invade Ohio in order to suppress alleged attempts to rescue John Brown (to which Chase sent a vigorous reply), and by corruption in the office of state treasurer. One of his achievements as governor was a reorganization of the militia system which added greatly to the state's military preparedness in 1861.

In 1856 Chase was an avowed aspirant for the Republican presidential nomination; but he did not even command the support of the full Ohio delegation, and his position at Philadelphia was much weaker than that of Fremont. Again in 1860 his wide prestige and his consistent record of anti-slavery leadership caused him to be prominently mentioned for the presidency; but his expected strength did not materialize in the convention at Chicago, since the Ohio delegation was again divided, and the firmness of his outspoken opinions caused him to be rejected from the standpoint of "availability." With only 49 votes out of 465 on the first ballot, and with dwindling support as the voting proceeded, his friends gave up the struggle in his behalf; and when the break for Lincoln became apparent, they threw their votes to the Illinois candidate, thus putting Chase in favor with the incoming administration.

When Virginia, in an effort to avert impending war, called the Peace Convention at Washington in February 1861 Chase attended as one of the Ohio commissioners; but he refused to compromise as to slavery extension, and his speeches in the convention, though disclaiming any intention to invade state rights, probably tended to confirm the Southerners' worst fears.

Chase was again chosen United States senator in 1860, but resigned to become Lincoln's secretary of the treasury, which office he held from March 1861 until July 1864. As director of the country's finances during the Civil War it was his task to borrow money from reluctant bankers and investors; to labor with congressional committees in the formulation of financial legislation; to devise remedial measures for a deranged currency; to make forecasts and prepare estimates in days when financial responsibility was diffused and scientific budgets were unknown; to trim the sails of fiscal policy to political winds; to market the huge loans which constituted the chief reliance of an improvident government; and to supervise the enforcement of unusual laws, such as that which provided for the seizure of captured and abandoned property in the South. The low state of public credit was reflected in the suspension of specie payments at the close of the year 1861; the high interest rate ( over seven per cent) on government loans; the marketing of the bonds at a discount; the difficulty of obtaining loans even on these unfavorable terms and the height and instability of the premium on gold. Chase was fortunate in having the valuable assistance of Jay Cooke who, as "financier of the Civil War," performed the same kind of service in marketing bonds that Robert Morris and Benjamin Franklin did for the Revolutionary War. When the bill to provide for immense issues of paper money with the legal tender feature was under consideration in Congress, Chase at first disapproved, endeavoring to obtain support among bankers for his national banking system; but when this support failed he grew non-committal and later gave a reluctant approval. The country was thus saddled with the "greenback" problem without such active opposition as his judgment would have dictated. The national banking system, first established by law on February 25, 1863, was originated by Chase, who formally submitted his proposal in December 1862 in order to increase the sale of government bonds, improve the currency by providing reliable bank notes backed by government security, and suppress the notorious evils of state bank notes. This was perhaps his most important piece of constructive statesmanship.

On the major questions of the war Chase was called upon, as a member of the President's official family, to assist in the formulation of policies. He favored, in a qualified manner, the provisioning of Fort Sumter; urged the confiscation of "rebel" property; approved the admission of West Virginia (the legality and wisdom of which was doubted by certain members of the cabinet); gave reluctant consent to the surrender of Mason and Slidell; urged McClellan's dismissal; approved Lincoln's suspension of the habeas corpus privilege, and, in general gave support to those measures which were directed toward a vigorous prosecution of the war. The closing paragraph in Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, invoking the "gracious favor of Almighty God," was penned by him; but he considered the President's policy of liberation weak, and did not approve the exceptions of whole states and large districts from the proclamation as issued. Chase never had that easy comradeship with Lincoln which Seward had; and the President never got on well with his minister of finance. To Chase Lincoln seemed to lack force; and he frequently complained of the chief's lax administration. He spoke with disparagement of the "so-called cabinet," considered its meetings "useless," and privately expressed distrust of the President's whole manner of conducting the public business. Often he was at odds with his colleagues, and many difficulties arose because of the presence of both Seward and Chase in the President's household-Seward the easy-going opportunist, and Chase the unbending apostle of righteousness and reform. In December 1862 the most serious cabinet crisis of Lincoln's administration arose when, in a Republican caucus of the upper House, certain radical senators, partisans of Chase, expressed lack of confidence in the President and demanded a "reconstruction" of the cabinet, by which was intended primarily the resignation of Seward. One of the senators thus wrote of the designs of the Chase men: "Their game was to drive all the cabinet out then force upon him [the President] the recall of Mr. Chase as Premier, and form a cabinet of ultra men around him" (Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, 1925, I, 604). Lincoln handled the situation by arranging a meeting in which the intriguing senators were asked to give open expression to their complaints in the presence of the cabinet. In this meeting Chase was placed in a very embarrassing position. With Lincoln and his colleagues in the room he felt impelled to speak favorably of cabinet harmony in the presence of senators to whom he is said to have remarked that "Seward exercised a back stair and malign influence upon the President, and thwarted all the measures of the Cabinet" (Ibid., p. 603). As a result of these bickerings both Seward and Chase resigned; Lincoln promptly refused to accept either resignation, and matters proceeded as before, except that, as the months passed, Chase's official position became more and more difficult. He honestly differed with Lincoln on essential matters; chafed at the President's inaction and "looseness"; became increasingly impatient at the slow progress of the war, and probably came to believe in his own superior ability to guide the ship of state. Though not quite disloyal to the President, he nevertheless became the center of an anti-Lincoln movement while retaining his position in the cabinet.

Early in 1864 many zealous Unionists, including Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, William Cullen Bryant, and Theodore Tilton, had reached the conclusion that Lincoln's administration was a failure; and a congressional committee of which Senator Pomeroy of Kansas was chairman sounded the call for Chase in a paper known as the "Pomeroy Circular," which was at first distributed confidentially but soon found its way into the press. The paper declared that it was practically impossible to reelect Lincoln; that his "manifest tendency toward temporary expedients" would become stronger during a second term, and that Chase united more of the needful qualities than any other available candidate. Chase, it appears, did not know of the circular until he saw it in a Washington paper; but his criticisms of the administration, as well as his willingness to rely upon the good judgment of those who thought that "the public good" would be promoted by the use of his name, were well known. An element of bitterness was injected into the Chase boom when General Francis P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri, delivered an abusive speech against Chase in Congress in April 1864; and the friendliness of the President toward Blair was misconstrued, adding a further strain to the relations between Chase and Lincoln.

When the publication of the Pomeroy circular required an explanation, Chase wrote Lincoln of his entirely passive attitude toward the movement in his behalf, assured the President of his respect and affection, and offered to resign his secretaryship if the President should desire it. Lincoln's reply indicated that he had not been offended and that he desired no change in the treasury department. The Chase movement soon collapsed, partly from mismanagement, and partly for the lack of any solid foundation. The President's party managers played a trump card by setting an early date (June 7) for the Republican or "Union" nominating convention at Baltimore; and when a caucus professing to speak for the Union members of the Ohio legislature indorsed the President, Chase withdrew his candidacy.

He did not long remain in the cabinet. After various differences over appointments, he submitted for the office of assistant treasurer at New York the name of M. B. Field whom Lincoln found unacceptable because of influential opposition in the state. When Lincoln suggested that the appointment would subject him to "still greater strain," Chase replied that he had thought only of fitness in his suggested appointments, referred to the "embarrassment and difficulty" of his position, and, as on various other occasions, presented his resignation. Chase's diary indicates that he could have been induced to remain in the cabinet (Warden, post, p. 618); but, somewhat to his chagrin, Lincoln accepted the resignation, and he unexpectedly found himself out of office. "Of all I have said in commendation of your ability and fidelity," wrote the President, "I have nothing to unsay; and yet you and I have reached a point of mutual embarrassment in our official relations which it seems cannot be overcome or longer sustained consistently with the public service."

In the depressing summer of 1864 certain factors seemed to be working for a revival of the Chase candidacy. Distrust of the President, combined with anger at his veto of the Wade-Davis reconstruction bill and depression due to the unfavorable military situation, caused certain anti-Lincoln men to launch a movement for another nominating convention "to concentrate the Union strength on some one candidate who commands the confidence of the country" (New York Sun, June 30, 1889, p. 3). The plan contemplated that Lincoln, renominated in June, should be induced to withdraw. On August 18, 1864, Horace Greeley wrote: "Mr. Lincoln is already beaten. He cannot be elected. And we must have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow" (Ibid.). Charles Sumner approved the movement; and various men who had been active in the earlier effort toward Chase's candidacy, notably Henry Winter Davis, gave it support. Whitelaw Reid, who was very close to Chase, induced the Cincinnati Gazette to come out for Lincoln's withdrawal. Chase's own attitude was at first receptive and non-committal. In September, however, the entire political situation changed with the fall of Atlanta and Republican success in Vermont and Maine. The proposed convention was not held; the whole "radical" movement was abandoned; its sponsors came out for the Baltimore candidates, and Chase himself participated in the campaign for Lincoln, making various speeches in the West.

When Chief Justice Taney died, October 12, 1864, Lincoln's choice fell upon Chase in spite of misgivings as to the former secretary's presidential ambitions-or, as some thought, the President may have felt that he was putting a perpetual candidate in an office where presumably his ambition would be silenced. The years of Chase's chief justiceship fell during the turbulent period of Reconstruction. Occupied with problems of unusual complexity in his judicial capacity, he by no means held aloof from political controversies; and the most determined efforts to put him in the presidency came while he wore the toga of judicial office. Though these years witnessed the fruition of cherished hopes in the eradication of slavery and the restoration of the Union, the satisfaction he might have felt in the accomplishment of these objects was clouded by post-war excesses and corruption which put him out of tune with the party of his later choice, while in his own person he suffered disappointment, affront, and injured dignity. He was probably the least happy of our chief justices. At the time of Lincoln's assassination his life was considered in danger and he was protected by military guard. On April 15, 1865, he administered the presidential oath to Johnson; and it seemed for a time that he might become a sort of mentor to the new president. On various occasions he approached Johnson with advice on Reconstruction policies, at times even drafting public statements to be delivered or issued by the President. Warmly advocating negro suffrage, and favoring the radical policy of Reconstruction, he started in May 1865 on an extended Southern tour which occupied two months and was devoted to confidential investigations concerning conditions in the states lately in "rebellion." At Charleston, South Carolina, and elsewhere he addressed colored audiences, advocating the enfranchisement of their race.

After the war Chase was confronted with the question of reopening federal courts in the South; but he delayed because of the conviction that subordination to the military authorities would be inconsistent with judicial independence; and when at length he did open the United States circuit court at Raleigh, North Carolina, on June 6, 1867, he carefully explained in his address to the bar that this was done only after the habeas corpus privilege had been restored and assurances given that the "military authority [ did] not extend in any respect to the courts of the United States." When planning to reopen the circuit court at Richmond, Virginia, he declined military protection for himself and the court, with the comment: "If I go to Richmond at all, I intend to have no relations with the military, except those which spring from the good-will which subsists between myself and some of the officers" (Warden, post, p. 659).

A painful duty confronting Chase in his capacity as circuit justice was that of presiding at the proposed trial of Jefferson Davis, who, after two years in military custody, was released to the civil authorities in May 1867 and placed under indictment for treason against the United States. The earlier stages of the case cannot be traced here; but on March 26, 1868, in the United States circuit court at Richmond, a grand jury brought in an elaborate indictment against Davis, charging treason under the federal law of 1790, which prescribed the penalty of death. Chase's reluctance to preside at the Davis prosecution may well have explained his repeated postponements in coming to Richmond to hold court. When he did appear he was annoyed by association on the bench with John C. Underwood [q.v.], federal district judge in Virginia, a man whose pronounced anti-Southern prejudices destroyed his judicial impartiality. In December 1868 a motion to quash the indictment was argued before Justices Chase and Underwood, Davis's counsel contending that any prosecution of the Confederate leader for treason would be inconsistent with the fourteenth amendment of the Federal Constitution, in which disability from office-holding, not death, was prescribed for those in Davis's position. Favoring the quashing of the indictment, Chase disagreed with Underwood; the disagreement was certified to the United States Supreme Court; and the Davis case was pending there when, on December 25, 1868, President Johnson issued an unconditional and universal pardon to all who had participated in the "rebellion." The consequent termination of the case, both at Richmond and at Washington, gave genuine relief to Chase (R. F. Nichols, "United States vs. Jefferson Davis,'' American Historical Review, XXXI, 266 ff . ).

When the peak of radical fury was reached in the attempt to remove President Johnson, it fell to Chase as chief justice to preside over the Senate sitting as a court of impeachment. The flimsiness of the charges betrayed the whole movement as a partisan attack upon the President because of his opposition to the Stevens-Sumner-Wade policy of Reconstruction; and the great danger was that the judicial character of the whole proceeding would be a mere pretense. Denying that the Senate was a court, the anti-Johnson group sought to subordinate the chief justice as a figurehead, to exclude ordinary rules of evidence, to suppress essential testimony, to deny adequate opportunities for defense, to intimidate individual senators, and to rush the whole proceeding through with railroad speed. Chase, however, refused to accept the role of puppet and effectively asserted his prerogatives as presiding judge. Characteristically, he began by lecturing the Senate for receiving articles of impeachment and framing rules of procedure before being organized as a court. For this he was criticized; and even Warden states that his "hero" erred in this respect; but the question was essentially a judicial one to which the Chief Justice had given earnest study, and his unwillingness to surrender his own functions is more to be admired than censured. He considered himself a part of the court, with the presiding judge's function of seeing that its proceedings from the outset were properly conducted. The Senate radicals were minded to deny him the casting vote; but he successfully defended this right, taking the opportunity, on the occasion of the first tie on a question of adjournment, to announce his vote and declare the tribunal adjourned. He was attacked as a partisan of the President, accused of seeking converts for acquittal, and assailed for playing politics in allowing his name to be used as a candidate for the presidency during the impeachment proceedings. As to the "stories" of rides in which he advised senators on their duty, he himself said that there was a "grain of fact sunk in gallons of falsehood" (Warden, post, p. 696). He did profoundly disapprove of the whole impeachment movement and did not entirely suppress his views; but there is no reason to reject his own statement that he did not seek to influence or convert any one (not even Sprague, his son-in-law), and that until the final vote he had no idea what the result would be.

Chase's incurable ambition for the presidency found its most striking manifestation in 1868, when, after obtaining no notice in the Republican convention, he became the center of a determined boom among the Democrats. Though certain papers, such as the New York Tribune, put forth his name, he made no effort for the Republican nomination. One should perhaps discount his statements in private letters that he would not take the nomination; for he had no chance whatever in that party, whose radical leaders had repudiated him, and whose emotional swing to Grant was irresistible. From the standpoint of party regularity it seemed to many a shocking thing that so prominent a Republican should not only fail to support his party's candidate, but should seek the leadership of the opposing party. For Chase, however, party regularity had never been an imperative motive; he had often described himself as an independent Democrat, and his attitude toward Grant was that of thorough disapproval and lack of confidence. Newspapers and influential leaders began to work for him; and he decided to allow his name to be used. In correspondence and interview he again showed a receptive attitude, and when asked for a public statement he defined his policy, emphasizing universal amnesty and universal suffrage, though realizing that such an attitude would injure his prospects (Schuckers, post, pp. 584-86). In the Democratic convention at New York an active group of Chase managers labored early and late ("Kate" Sprague turning politician and exerting her personal and social influence) ; and a "Chase platform" was circulated among the delegates. When it came to the voting, however, his platform was rejected; Ohio declared for Seymour of New York; and in an atmosphere of pandemonium Seymour was unanimously chosen for the presidential candidacy, with Chase's factious enemy, Blair, as running mate. In his disappointment Chase bore himself in silence and dignity and gave no countenance to efforts of his friends to obtain Seymour's withdrawal or launch a third-party movement.

Meanwhile the court over which Chase presided was faced by a menacing Congress and subjected to unusual strain in deciding a series of perplexing cases. In the Milligan case (4 Wallace, 2), it was held that military commissions for the trial of citizens are illegal, except where invasion or war actually deposes the civil courts. On the main point of this decision Chase concurred; but he dissented from that portion which held that Congress could not have provided for such trials if it had wished. At various times it seemed that the court would have to decide on the constitutionality of the Reconstruction Acts; but such a result, which would have precipitated an unseemly contest with Congress, was avoided. In Mississippi vs. Johnson (4 Wallace, 475) and Georgia vs. Stanton (6 Wallace, 50), the court refused to enjoin the President or a member of the cabinet from enforcing the Reconstruction Acts. This was in keeping with the court's practise of avoiding political questions. In the McCardle case (6 Wallace, 318), which again involved the legality of Reconstruction legislation, a decision was avoided by an act of Congress which deprived the court of jurisdiction; and the court permitted its functions thus to be limited. Further questions concerning reconstruction were considered in Texas vs. White (7 Wallace, 700), Cummings vs. Missouri (4 Wallace, 277) and Ex parte Garland (4 Wallace, 333). In these controversies the court held the Union to be indissoluble, declared secession a nullity, and denied the validity of test oaths intended to exclude ex-Confederates from officeholding. The application of the Fourteenth Amendment to certain state legislation was considered in the Slaughterhouse Cases ( 16 Wallace, 36), in which the court refused to set itself up as a censor of state laws or invade the domain of civil rights theretofore belonging to the states. Preferring a broader application of the amendment, Chase dissented from this opinion, whose main doctrine has since been abandoned by the court.

In 1870 Chase delivered the opinion declaring unconstitutional that part of the Legal Tender Act of 1862 which made the "greenbacks" legal tender as to contracts existing at the time the act was passed (Hepburn vs. Griswold, 8 Wallace, 603). As secretary of the treasury he had issued these government notes; and he was now roundly abused for holding them illegal. When the Hepburn decision was reversed in 1871 (Legal Tender Cases, 12 Wallace, 457), Chase dissented.

It appears that Chase would have accepted a presidential nomination by the Liberal Republicans in 1872; but, aside from other factors, the state of his health would have prevented such a nomination. His vote this year was given to Greeley (Schuckers, post, p. 593). On May 7, 1873, he died of a paralytic stroke in New York.

Chase was tall, massive, handsome in feature, and distinguished in figure and bearing. His portraits show a large head, with deep-set, blue-gray eyes, prominent brow, spirited nostrils, and firm lips. He was near-sighted and may have lacked magnetism and approachableness; but there was something in his mien that bespoke a determined will. His religious convictions were genuine and earnest. Reading his diaries we find how he chided himself on his sinfulness; how at times he declined communion from self-distrust; how he was equally disturbed if at other times his unworthiness failed to oppress him; how he repeated psalms while bathing or dressing; how he pursued his Scripture reading and prayer as a pure matter of conscience. He considered it sinful to waste time. Though fond of chess, he foreswore cards and avoided fashionable society. He once described a charming young lady as one with whom he would have fallen in love had she not been "fond of the gay world" and "disinclined to religion," which he valued "more than any earthly possession" (Warden, post, 190). Though he was socially at ease, a sense of humor was denied him; and when telling a story he would usually spoil it. Schuckers speaks of his "modesty"; but others considered him conceited and accessible to flattery. Though hardly the scholar in politics, he was of a literary turn; and in early life he sometimes expressed himself in verse. There are purple patches in his usually grave diaries to which the historian turns with real delight.

Having the "defects of his virtues," he was self-righteous, opinionated, and difficult to work with. Ambition colored all the more prominent phases of his career. That it diminished his usefulness, impaired his dignity, and blinded his judgment as to currents of public opinion, may be conceded; but it did not prompt unworthy bargains nor excessive electioneering. His moral courage was manifest in his opposition in the Cincinnati council to saloon licenses, his defiance of threatened violence, his advocacy of unpopular causes, and his refusal to truckle for the presidency. As war-time minister of finance he resisted alluring opportunities for private gain. Though puritanical, he was not a fanatic. His anti-slavery activities were held within bounds; and he never affiliated with the Garrison or Phillips type of abolitionist. The antagonism between him and Wade was of long standing; and he disliked the excesses of the radical school of Reconstruction while partly approving its program. His mental operations were steady rather than rapid; his public statements precise and devoid of verbiage. As a speaker he commanded attention rather by conviction and intellectual force than by the orator's art. His opinions as chief justice were characterized by a practical emphasis upon main principles rather than by brilliance or fondness for legal lore.

[Portions of Chase's elaborate diaries and letters have been published in Robert B. Warden, Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase (1874), in J. W. Schuckers, Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase (1874), and in the Annual Report, American Historical Association, 1902, volume II. The last mentioned volume includes some interesting letters from Chase to Sumner and a large number of letters from George S. Denison, who, as treasury official at New Orleans during the Civil War, wrote in full concerning conditions in Louisiana. The bulk of the original manuscript of the diary, together with letters and miscellaneous material, is to be found in the library of the Pennsylvania Historical Society at Philadelphia ; and another large collection of Chase manuscripts (over one hundred volumes) is deposited in the division of manuscripts of the Library of Congress The biographical work by Warden is garrulous, extravagantly eulogistic, and of negligible importance, except as a source book; that of Schuckers, though of somewhat more value, is far from satisfactory. The short volume by A. B. Hart in the American Statesmen series (1899), though not free from error, is the best biography. The amusing campaign biography by J. T. Trowbridge, The Ferry Boy and the Financier (1864), is based in part upon a series of autobiographical letters written by Chase himself; but Chase's recollections were often dim, and Trowbridge drew freely upon his own fancy. A series of letters bearing upon the movement in 1864 to displace Lincoln in favor of Chase appeared under the title "Unwritten History" in the New York Sun, June 30, 1889. The following titles may also be noted: Donn Piatt, Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union (1887); Arthur M. Schlesinger, "Salmon Portland Chase, Undergraduate and Pedagogue," in Ohio Archaeology. and Historical Quarterly, volume XXVIII, no. 2 (1910); Norton S. Townshend, "Salmon P. Chase" (Ibid., volume I, 1887) ; Elbridge G. Spaulding, A Resource of War: History of the Legal Tender Paper Money Issued During the Great Rebellion (1869); Chas. Warren, The Supreme Court in U. S. History (1922); Hugh McCulloch, Men and Measures of Half a Century (1888).]

J.G.R.



DENNISON, WILLIAM (November 23, 1815-June 15, 1882), governor of Ohio, was the son of William Dennison, who with his New England wife, Mary Carter, about 1805 removed from New Jersey to Cincinnati, and there became a successful business man. The son attended Miami University, where he proved to be a capable student of political science, history, and literature. Graduating in 1835, he read law in the office of Nathaniel G. Pendleton, father of George H. Pendleton [q.v.]. He was admitted to the bar in 1840 and practised until 1848, when he was elected to the state Senate as a Whig. After a hot contest, which prevented organization of the Senate for two weeks, he was defeated as his party's candidate for the position of presiding officer.

In 1844, in his maiden speech before the public, Dennison had opposed the admission of Texas and the extension of the area of slavery. The position then taken foreshadowed his course through the next twenty years. As a member of the state Senate, he had a part in the fight for the repeal of the notorious "Black Laws," and while adhering to the Whig party through 1852 he was one of the first of the Ohio party leaders to join the Republican movement. In February 1856 he attended the preliminary convention at Pittsburgh and served as a member of the Committee on Resolutions; and in June he was acting chairman of the Ohio delegation in the Philadelphia Convention, which nominated Fremont. Three years later, as Republican candidate for governor, he defeated Judge Rufus P. Ranney, who ranked as the leader of the state bar, and thus found himself in the executive chair when the Civil War began. He came to the governor's chair with little experience in public affairs. Although he was well regarded by the business men of the capital city, to whom in large part he owed his nomination, he was but little known to the public, and his nomination was thought to be due to a dearth of able rivals. He campaigned with unexpected brilliance in 1859, but his success did not win for him the full confidence of the people, who decided that he was aristocratic and vain. Thus handicapped, he met the war crisis without adequate support in public opinion. Disposed in advance to be discontented, the people of Ohio were unable for a time to appreciate the energy and wisdom with which he performed his duties. Regarding the Ohio River as an unsafe line of defense for his state, Dennison dispatched McClellan with state troops to aid the loyal citizens of western Virginia in driving out the Confederates. He advocated a similar campaign in Kentucky, but the Federal government preferred to respect the state's neutrality. As a means of preventing the transportation of war supplies and war news without his approval, he practically assumed control of the railways, telegraph lines, and express companies at the outset of hostilities; and against the advice of his attorney-general, he used money refunded by the Federal government on account of state military expenditures without turning it into the treasury for reappropriation. Many complaints thus arose, not without some justification, in spite of the fact that he had with extraordinary promptness succeeded in placing in the field more than the state's quota of the troops called for by the Federal government. As a war governor, Dennison proved unpopular, and the party leaders did not venture to renominate him in 1861. Moreover, they felt the necessity of uniting with the War Democrats, and effected this purpose by supporting David Tod. Dennison accepted the situation without any show of personal feeling, and continued to give loyal support to his party. Governor Tod, in particular, constantly sought his advice and aid.

In 1864, Dennison acted as chairman of the Republican National Convention, and in the same year was appointed postmaster-general by Lincoln, which office he held until 1866, when he resigned it on account of dissatisfaction with President Johnson's course. In 1872 he was mentioned for the vice-presidential nomination, and in 1880 was defeated by Garfield for the Republican nomination as United States senator. In the same year he was chairman of the Sherman Committee in Ohio, and leader of his forces in the national convention. It is thought that had Grant been nominated, Dennison might have won the vice-presidency.

Notwithstanding his prominence in political affairs, Dennison was primarily a business man. Soon after his admission to the bar he had married the daughter of William Neil of Columbus, a promoter of stage transportation, and had settled in that city. In the early fifties he became president of the Exchange Bank, member of the city council, and organizer of the Franklin County Agricultural Society. In the dawning era of the railway, he was a pioneer promoter of the new type of transportation, leading in the organization, especially, of the Hocking Valley and Columbus & Xenia railroads. An enterprise of another type which he was influential in establishing was the Columbus Rolling Mills. By such ventures, notwithstanding heavy losses in the panic of 1873, he acquired a considerable fortune. To the end of his life, mostly on account of his reserved manner, few knew him well. On the street he spoke only to old and intimate friends. Yet no man knew better how to treat his fellows in parlor or office, and never, intentionally, did he mistreat friend or foe (Cincinnati Enquirer, June 16, 1882). He died in Columbus after a period of invalidism lasting about eighteen months.

[Most sketches of Dennison are based on Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War (1868), I, 1017-22, and index. See also E. O. Randall and D. V. Ryan, History of Ohio (1912), IV, Passim; Ohio Archeology and History Society Pubs., I, 1-23; IV, 444; IX, 149; Harper's Weekly, January 28, 1865; Ohio State Journal and Cincinnati Enquirer, June 16, 1882. The best source for the years of Dennison's governorship is his message of January 6, 1862, which includes documents.]

H. C. H.



FESSENDEN, WILLIAM PITT (October 16, 1806-September 8, 1869), lawyer, politician, financier, was the son of Samuel Fessenden and Ruth Greene, and a descendant of Nicholas Fessenden who came to America in the seventeenth century and settled at Cambridge, Massachusetts He was born out of wedlock at Boscawen, New Hampshire, and spent his early years in the home of his grandparents at Fryeburg, Maine, but when his father married in 1813 he became a member of the new household. He appears to have been a precocious boy and his entrance to college was delayed for some time on account of his extreme youth. He graduated from Bowdoin College, nevertheless, in 1823, although his diploma was withheld for a year on the ground that he had been "repeatedly guilty of profane swearing" and had "indicated a disorganizing spirit" and that "his general character and the bad influence of his example" called for punishment. Fessenden himself denied that he had been guilty of some of the alleged offenses. He was destined to receive the honorary degree of doctor of laws from Bowdoin in 1858 and to be a member of the governing boards of the college for the last twenty-six years of his life.

After graduation he studied law, with some interruptions, and was admitted to the bar in 1827. After two years at Bridgton he moved to Portland and except for a year in Bangor, maintained a residence there for the rest of his life. After his return from Bridgton he made his first appearance in public office when in 1831 he was elected to the legislature on the anti-Jackson ticket. He was engaged to Ellen, sister of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and her death before their marriage was a great blow to him. On April 23, 1832, he married Ellen Maria Deering, daughter of James Deering, a prominent Portland merchant. In 1835 he formed a partnership with William Willis which lasted until his election to the United States Senate almost twenty years later. He had by 1835 established a reputation as one of the able lawyers of the state. In a few years he was considered by many the equal of his father, then the leader of the Maine bar, against whom he frequently appeared in important litigation. He was active in the Whig party and in 1837 by special invitation accompanied Daniel Webster on a tour of several months in the western states. He was for many years on cordial terms with the great Whig leader, who had been his godfather in 1806, and with his family, but his letters show that he had some definite reservations as to Webster's political conduct and the chapter closed with Fessenden in opposition to his nomination for the presidency at the Whig convention of 1852.

In 1839 he was elected to another term in the Maine legislature, being a member of the judiciary committee and assisting in a revision of the statutes. The following year he was elected to Congress, where he remained a single term. His two years in the lower house were, naturally enough, without special distinction but some of his remarks in debate seem to have drawn favorable attention. His letters show that this first experience in Washington gave him certain unfavorable impressions of public life and participants in it, which he retained to the end. Unlike his abolitionist father, he was in the beginning conservative on the slavery issue, but a view of the situation at Washington aroused his contempt for "the mean subserviency of these northern hirelings" (Fessenden, post, I, 23), and in another letter he expressed admiration of John Quincy Adams for "his indomitable spirit and the uprighteousness of his soul." From that time on his hostility to the institution grew steadily and the following decade saw him among the active organizers of the new Republican party.

For twelve years following his retirement from Congress he held no important public office although he served two terms in the legislature in 1845-46 and 1853-54, was active in Whig party councils, and was several times an unsuccessful candidate for the national Senate and House. The growth of anti-slavery sentiment in Maine was decidedly to his advantage and on January 4, 1854, an anti-slavery combination in the legislature elected him to the United States Senate. He was sworn in on February 23, and on March 3 delivered the first great speech of his senatorial career, in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska bill (Congressional Globe, 33 Congress, l Session, App., pp. 319- 24). For the next fifteen years he was one of the dominant figures in national affairs.

In 1857 he was assigned to the finance committee which, under existing rules, then handled both revenue and appropriation bills in the upper house. He had approximately ten years' service in the committee, more than half of this period as chairman, and, due to the responsibilities entailed by the Civil War, earned a permanent place among American public financiers. In 1857, when his most important work began, he suffered a severe loss in the death of his wife and his own health became permanently impaired. He is reported to have been one of the numerous victims of the mysterious epidemic said to have originated in the National Hotel. Thereafter he was inclined to be morose and unsociable in his habits and given to displays of irritability which would have been ruinous to any one but a man of commanding ability and high character. With a few friends, however, he was always on the best of terms and his letters to members of his family are hard to reconcile with his reputation for harshness and austerity. His constant references to his garden in Portland, or to fly-fishing on Maine trout streams, disclose a very different personality from the one appearing in speeches on the Morrill tariff, Reconstruction, and the Fourteenth Amendment.

As a leader of the opposition to the Buchanan administration he advanced steadily in prestige and he was now regarded as one of the greatest debaters who had yet appeared in Congress. Contemporaries sometimes found it hard to realize that a man of his slight physique, poor health, and unobtrusive manners was nevertheless one of the greatest intellectual forces in the government. In 1859 he was elected for a six-year term and was thus assured of a full share in the opportunities and responsibilities of the Civil War. "Let them stand firm like men and not tremble and shake before rebellion," he wrote when the final break impended, and his own conduct justified such advice.

When the Thirty-seventh Congress met in July 1861, he became chairman of the finance committee and carried a tremendous burden of work and responsibility in putting the finances of the country on a war footing. He did a great deal of the preliminary work in preparing bills and was in charge of their passage on the floor of the Senate. His reputation as a debater is seen to be well deserved by an examination of the debates on the great revenue and appropriation measures of the war period. His quick temper is equally apparent and even with the lapse of years the rasp of some of his comments can still be felt. He consistently tried, apparently, to confine expenditures to the legitimate outlays necessitated by the war, to avoid dangerous and wasteful precedents, to follow strictly the regular rules of procedure, and, as far as possible in view of extraordinary needs, to be economical and businesslike. "it is time for us to begin to think a little more about the money" he declared on one occasion early in the war, "the event of this war depends upon whether we can support it or not" (Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 1038). Such a course inevitably meant opposition to a variety of personal and sectional projects and stirred the wrath of the proponents of a swarm of expensive, futile, but popular measures growing out of wartime conditions.

In general Fessenden supported: Secretary Chase's financial program and did much to secure its adoption by Congress. In the very important matter of the legal-tender notes, resorted to in 1862, he expressed disapproval and voted for the unsuccessful Collamer amendment striking this feature from the bill. His speech on the evils of irredeemable paper and the dangers of inflation is a classic on the subject (Ibid., pp. 762-67). He admitted, however, that the situation was without a parallel in the history of the United States and afterward stated that the legal tenders were probably the only resource available at the time. Later on, as secretary of the treasury, he stood firm against further inflation, and when the war was over assumed the offensive against greenback heresies. In one matter he had a clearer vision than most of his colleagues or Secretary Chase himself, namely, the need of a drastic taxing program, which was too long delayed by political cowardice and inertia. At the first war session he declared himself in favor of an income tax as best calculated to meet current needs (Ibid., 37 Congress, l Session, p.255).

On June 29, 1864, Secretary Chase resigned and President Lincoln promptly selected Fessenden as his successor, sending the nomination to the Senate while Fessenden himself was seeking a White House appointment to recommend Hugh McCulloch. He accepted the post reluctantly and with a definite understanding that he would be relieved as soon as the situation permitted. Faced at the beginning with an almost empty treasury, unpaid bills, including the army's pay, maturing loans, inadequate revenue, and countless difficulties in detail, he was able during his brief tenure to meet emergencies and to turn the department over to his successor in relatively sound condition. He raised the interest rate on government bonds and through the sales organization of Jay Cooke marketed another great loan, standing firmly against any further inflation of the currency. He had been reelected to the Senate for a third term on January 5, 1865, and his resignation as secretary took effect on March 3.

With the prestige of the preceding years behind him Fessenden was certain to take an outstanding part in Reconstruction. As Lincoln had said of him he was "a Radical without the petulant and vicious fretfulness of many Radicals" (John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln, 1890, IX, 100). His opposition to some features of the Confiscation Act, his refusal to be stampeded into an attempt to expel Senator Garrett Davis who had written some foolish resolutions which were alleged to be treasonable, and similar incidents, had tended to differentiate his position from that of Sumner, Wade, and other leaders. As a matter of fact, however, in his views as to policy toward the Southern states, he was, as Carl Schurz says, "in point of principle not far apart from Mr. Stevens" (The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, III, 1908, p. 219). On December 21, 1865, he became chairman of the famous joint committee on Reconstruction and its report, largely his personal work, is one of the great state papers in American history. His views of Reconstruction might well be summarized by his statement in reply to President Johnson's attack on the committee. He said the South had been subdued under the laws of war and, "there was nothing better established than the principle that the conquerors had the power to change the form of government, to punish, to exact security, and take entire charge of the conquered people" (Fessenden, post, II, 9-10) . He was equally emphatic that Reconstruction was a function of Congress and not of the President.

Fessenden's feeling toward the latter was made perfectly clear. He had little respect for him as a man and thoroughly disapproved of his policies and official conduct. He believed, however, that the President had not been guilty of any impeachable offenses and that the attempt to apply the remedy of impeachment would permanently lower the standards of American politics and government. He declined to vote on the Tenure of Office Act, but said that he disapproved of it on principle and that it would be productive of great evil. By 1867 he was definitely aligned with the conservatives. When impeachment finally came his position as a majority leader was especially difficult. His own view, stated again and again, was that the impeachment trial was a judicial process, not the summary removal of an unpopular and ill-advised executive. To a relative he wrote, "If he was impeached for general cussedness, there would be no difficulty in the case. That, however, is not the question to be tried" (Fessenden, post, II, 184). To Neal Dow, who had written him that Maine expected him to vote for conviction, he replied in terms worthy of Edmund Burke: "I wish you, my dear sir, and all others my friends and constituents, to understand that ... I, not they, have solemnly sworn to do impartial justice .... The opinions and wishes of my party friends ought not to have a feather's weight with me in coming to a conclusion" (Ibid., II, 187-88). The official reasons for his vote of "not guilty" are found in the lengthy opinion which he filed in the official record ( Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 2 Session, pp. 452-57).

Fessenden undoubtedly reached the high point of his career by this vote, but it brought a tremendous storm of partisan denunciation which he faced courageously and in confidence that his course would eventually be justified by events. Throughout his senatorial career he showed himself indifferent to public opposition or acclaim, and he had already taken the unpopular side on many less conspicuous issues. As the excitement of the trial passed away, the country began to appreciate his courage and wisdom and he lived long enough to realize that the tide was turning. Whether he could have secured a reelection is problematical as his death occurred before the attitude of the majority in the Maine legislature was definitely settled. His ability and strength of character, had he survived and been returned to the Senate for another term, would have been of inestimable value in the following decade. As it was, even if he appears at times to have interpreted America in terms of ledgers, balance sheets, and Supreme Court decisions, and if he lacked the sympathetic understanding of the feelings and motives of the common man which characterized Lincoln, he has a secure place among the great leaders of the Civil War era when courage in governmental circles was not always as much in evidence as on the battlefield.

[Life and Public Services of William Pitt Fessenden, by his son Francis Fessenden (2 volumes, 1907), is the best source of information. While defective in arrangement and methods of presentation it gives a fair and comprehensive survey of his activities and contains personal correspondence and other material not available in official records. Brief sketches also occur in the following: G. H. Preble, "William Pitt Fessenden," New-England. History and Genealogical Register, April 1871; A. F. Moulton, Memorials of Maine (1916); L. C. Hatch, Maine: A History, volume II (1919), and History of Bowdoin College (1927).]

W.A.R.

R.G.C-I



McCULLOCH, HUGH (December 7, 1808-May 24, 1895), comptroller of the currency, secretary of the treasury, was born at Kennebunk, Maine, to which place his parents had moved from Kennebunkport in 1802. A grandson of Adam McCulloch who came to Maine from Scotland about 1766, he was the son of Hugh and Abigail (Perkins) McCulloch. His father was a ship-builder and West India merchant. Hugh entered Bowdoin College, but left during his sophomore year. In 1863 Bowdoin gave him the honorary degree of A.M., and in subsequent catalogues he was listed among the graduates of 1829 (information from office of Alumni Secretary, Bowdoin College). After leaving college he taught school, studied law in Boston, and was admitted to the bar in 1832. In 1833 he moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he began the practice of law and in 1838 married Susan Mann. In 1835 he was appointed cashier and manager of the Fort Wayne branch of the State Bank of Indiana, a position which he accepted with some hesitation because he possessed "no practical knowledge" of banking. Until 1856 he managed the Fort Wayne branch, and then, until 1863, the State Bank itself, of which he had been made president. The bank weathered the panic of 1837, though not without suspending specie payments; but in the panic of 1857 it was the only state bank in the country, except the Chemical at New York and isolated Kentucky institutions, to avoid such suspension.

McCulloch's larger field of achievement opened to him unexpectedly, as a result of the high repute won through his Indiana career. He visited Washington in 1862 to oppose, on behalf of the old state banks, the projected national banking legislation. When the law had been enacted, in March 1863, he was asked by the secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase [q.v.]. to launch the new system himself as comptroller of the currency. After some hesitation he consented, and in his arduous task he was completely successful, largely because of his influence with the existing state banks. With the Secretary, whom he greatly respected, he seems to have had but one dispute: he disapproved positively Chase's plan of requiring numerical titles for all state banks rechartered as national institutions. The Comptroller insisted that compulsory relinquishment of well-known titles or "trade names" such as Bank of Commerce or Chemical Bank, in exchange for designation as Tenth or Twentieth National, would seriously impede the acceptance of national charters, and the Secretary had eventually to yield through visible force of circumstances.

McCulloch remained in charge of the national banking system until March 1865. Chase had resigned the Treasury portfolio in 1864 to become chief justice of the Supreme Court; W. P. Fessenden [q.v.], his successor, withdrew at the beginning of Lincoln's second term; and Lincoln thereupon offered the place to McCulloch, who thus succeeded to the administration of the Treasury virtually at the moment when the Civil War ended. He was confronted immediately with the question of what to do with the government's war-time issues of paper money, irredeemable in gold. Of this, $450,000,000 was in existence, and its value in gold had ranged early in 1865 from 42¼ cents per dollar in January to 77¼ cents in May, when the war was definitely over.

In his official declarations, the new Secretary at once recommended retirement of the United States notes and return to the gold standard. In his first report to Congress he took the advanced ground that authority for the government "to issue obligations for a circulating medium as money, and to make these obligations a legal tender," could be found " only in the unwritten law" which warrants assumption in war-time of powers ordinarily withheld and that, since the "present legal tender acts were war measures," he believed that "they ought not to remain in for ce one day longer than shall be necessary to enable the people to prepare for a return to the constitutional currency" ("Report of the Secretary of the Treasury . . . 1865," House Executive Documents No. 3, 39 Congress, I Session, pp. 3, 4). He referred to the abnormally high prices, reduction of which was imperative, and declared that "there is more danger to be apprehended from the inability of government to reduce its circulation rapidly enough, than from a too rapid reduction of it." He did not believe "that return to specie payments will bring prices back to the standards of former years," but held that "the longer contraction is deferred, the greater must the fall eventually be and the more serious its consequences" (Ibid., p. 12).

McCulloch's clear and cogent reasoning in this report won him a pledge from the House of Representatives, in a resolution adopted by a handsome majority, for cooperation in his program, "with a view to as early a resumption of specie payments as the business interests will permit" (Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, 1 Session, p. 75), but the bill authorizing issue of bonds for early and progressive retirement of the United States notes failed to get a majority. Congress in 1866 authorized the retirement of only $10,000,000 in the first six months under the law and $4,000,000 per month thereafter. Two years later it revoked even these powers. Resumption was destined not to be actually achieved until eleven or twelve years afterward.

Although failing in his primary purpose, McCulloch continued to conduct the Treasury until March 1869. The policy of regular and largescale reduction of the funded public debt, the task of readjusting the public revenue and carefully re-introducing federal taxation in the South, occupied all his energies. The Secretary was as bold when occasion warranted as he was habitually cautious. He did not hesitate, for instance, to purchase United States bonds on the market with Treasury funds, in order to support the price when panic was threatened in Wall Street on the news of Lincoln's assassination. With President Andrew Johnson he was able to maintain cordial relations; though he criticized severely Johnson's ill-judged public speeches. Indeed McCulloch described Johnson as one who "in intellectual force had few superiors" (Men and Measures, p. 406) and held that his official attitude on public questions of the day was justified by the event and by subsequent Supreme Court decisions.

After his retirement from the Treasury in 1869, McCulloch was for several years a partner in the London banking house of Jay Cooke, McCulloch & Company. The firm survived the failure in 1873 of the affiliated American house of Jay Cooke & Company, continued to meet all payments, and was in due course reorganized under the title McCulloch & Company. McCulloch made one brief reappearance in public life when, in October 1884, at the age of seventy-six, he was asked by President Arthur to resume the office of secretary of the treasury to succeed W. Q. Gresham [q.v.], resigned. He held the post until the end of the Arthur administration in the ensuing March. In this brief time he had little opportunity for constructive effort; his chief contribution was the warning, in his "Annual Report . . . on the State of His Finances," in December 1884, of what was happening to the currency. As a result of the compulsory Silver Coinage Act of 1878, he wrote, "It is evident . . . that silver certificates are taking the place of gold, and later a panic or an adverse current of exchange might compel the use in ordinary payments by the Treasury of the gold held for redemption of the United States notes, or the use of silver or silver certificates in payment of its gold obligations" (House Executive Document No. 2, 48 Congress, 2 Session, p. xx. xi). The first conditional prediction actually came true in 1894; fulfilment of the second was narrowly averted.

In his last years McCulloch lived in retirement in the neighborhood of Washington, D. C. In 1888 he published Men and Measures of Half a Century, containing reminiscences of his early Western career and his official experiences, together with personal impressions of American life and opinions concerning public questions of the period. He died at "Holly Hill," Prince George's County, Maryland, survived by two sons and two daughters.

[Men and Measures of Half a Century and a review in the Nation (New York), March 7, 1889; annual reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1865-68; E. P. Oberholtzer, Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War (2 volumes, 1907); William Henry Smith, History of the Cabinet of the U.S. (1925) E. E. Bourne, History of Wells and Kennebunk (1875); Charles Bradbury, History of Kennebunk Port (1837); A Biographical History of Eminent and Self-made, Men of the State of Indiana (1880), volume II ; obituary in Evening Star (Washington), May 24, 1895.]

A. D. N.



SEWARD, WILLIAM HENRY (May 16, 1801-0ct. 10, 1872), statesman, was born in Florida, Orange County, New York, the son of Dr. Samuel S. and Mary (Jennings) Seward. After preparatory studies in Florida and the neighboring village of Goshen, he was sent at the age of fifteen to Union College. Graduating in 1820, he began to read law and was admitted to the bar in 1822, establishing himself the next year in Auburn, New York, which was to be his home for the rest of his life. Seward's convivial temperament as well as his profession fitted him for politics; the question was with what political group he would affiliate himself. His family had been Democratic-Republicans of the strictest persuasion, but with praiseworthy independence the rising young lawyer chose to ally himself with the opposing elements. In this decision the principal factors, according to his Autobiography (p. 54) written nearly fifty years later, were his distrust of the Southern Jeffersonians, and his great interest in internal improvements. At any rate, Seward voted for De Witt Clinton for governor, and John Quincy Adams for president in 1824, and wrote a good "Address" in support of the former (Works, III, 335). The enthusiasm which he then felt for Adams was never dimmed, and undoubtedly had its part in forming his own political ideals as time went on.

The closing  years of the 1820's saw the rise of the Anti-Masonic movement in western New York. To this Seward found himself drawn, both by expediency and by conviction. In the deliberations of the new organization, as indeed in previous political discussions, the rising young politician was drawn close to Thurlow Weed [q.v.], whose casual acquaintance he had first made in 1824 and with whom he was to maintain one of the most intimate and long-standing friendships in American political annals. It was due to Weed's influence that Seward stood for and was elected in the fall of 1830 to the state Senate. In this body he served for the next four years, as a distinguished member of the minority and later as its leader. He played a prominent part in the debates on Andrew Jackson's bank policy; he sustained the President in his opposition to Nullification; he continued to advocate internal improvements; he supported abolition of imprisonment for debt. Defeated for reelection in 1833, he was unanimously nominated for governor in 1834. By this time the Whig party had supplanted the Anti-Masons, and it was under the Whig banner that Seward was to fight for the next twenty years. In this first Whig candidacy, however, he was defeated, by William L. Marcy [q.v.]. The next few years Seward devoted to the practice of law, and he acquired a modest competence through his success as agent for the Holland Company, in settling disputes with settlers in Chautauqua County (Autobiography, p. 328; Works, III, 461).

The Whigs carried the New York legislature in the election of 1837 and Seward's political ambitions, which he professed were dead in 1834, rapidly came to life again, with the governorship as their objective. The contest for the nomination lay between him and the dignified Francis Granger [q.v.], nearly nine years his senior. Seward professed to be willing to let the convention decide, but an active organization was set on foot, the young voters being particularly active in his favor. Weed, after some hesitation, decided that his protege should have the nomination, and in a closely contested convention battle Seward was chosen. In the electoral campaign itself, he was compelled for the first time to face the issue of slavery. His attitude in 1838 can hardly be called an advanced one. By the abolitionists he was asked three questions, whether he was in favor of (1) a law granting trial by jury to all fugitives, (2) of abolishing the special qualifications for negro voters, and (3) of repealing a law permitting the importation and detention of slaves in the state of New York for a period of nine months. He answered the first question in the affirmative, but the other two in the negative, declaring that the subjects with which they dealt did not enter "into the political creed" of his party (Works, III, 426-32).

The election of 1838 resulted in a victory for Seward, as did that of 1840, though by a reduced plurality. His four years in the governorship reveal the natural ardor and optimism of his temperament, his strong humanitarian sympathies, and also his impulsiveness and tendency to challenge majority opinion. Always warmly convinced of the desirability of internal improvements, Seward courageously urged them upon successive legislatures (see his message of 1840, Works, II, 212-55). In the midst of the depression, he refused to acquiesce in the suspension of activities already undertaken, and from first to last boldly defended large expenditures. In this particular case the policy cannot be said to have succeeded. The state's credit was adversely affected, its bonds selling at a discount of twenty per cent in 1841. When the Democrats regained control of both houses of the legislature in the fall elections, they proceeded to suspend virtually all but the most necessary expenditures, and to levy additional taxes. Seward, however, stoutly insisted that his policy had been wise, and that the obstacles to its accomplishment were merely a blind distrust of the future, on the part of foreign investors and of the American people. His natural impulsiveness, as well as his generosity of feeling, was illustrated also by his attitude on the question of public education in New York City. The schools there, conducted by a private corporation, the Public School Society, had been unacceptable to the rapidly growing Catholic population, and, furthermore, did not attract the children of the immigrant classes. In his message of 1840, after consulting with his old friend, Dr. Eliphalet Nott of Union College, Seward recommended "the establishment of schools in which they (the children of New York) may be instructed by teachers speaking the same language with themselves and professing the same faith" (Works, II, 215). This recommendation caused a storm of criticism from the nativist elements in the state, stronger in the Whig than in the Democratic party. Seward was compelled to retreat from the position which he had assumed, though he succeeded in securing the establishment of public schools free from sectarian influence in the city.

On the slavery question Seward took advanced ground during his term of office. He refused to surrender three sailors, who had instigated the flight of a fugitive slave to New York, when the extradition of these men was demanded by the state of Virginia. His act provoked so much irritation in Virginia as to bring about reprisals against New York shipping. But it was typical of his humanitarian spirit, and it won him the ardent support of the growing abolitionist element (for the controversy, 1839-41, see Works, II, 449 ff.). No one would maintain, however, that Seward was an uncompromising idealist in the governorship. He dispensed offices on the strict spoils basis, as was the custom of the time; he signed a law requiring registration of voters in New York City under party pressure and very much against his personal convictions; and it may be that other motives than humanitarian interest were operating in the evolution of the policies above described. But he declined to be a candidate for reelection in 1842, and his letters show that he felt himself at this time to be too far in advance of public opinion to prosper politically.

The years in the governorship depleted Seward's financial resources. During the next seven years he worked assiduously to restore them, at first in his old field, the court of chancery, but, after a little, more and more in patent cases. From time to time he took criminal cases, involving trial before a jury. One of the most striking involved the death sentence on a poor imbecile negro, Freeman, in whose defense Seward made in 1846 one of the most eloquent of his speeches (Works, I, 391-475) ; this he afterwards declared he would have repeated without the alteration of a word. A case which won him still more fame was that in which in a suit for damages he unsuccess fully defended in 1846-47 Van Zandt, an Ohio farmer, who had assisted in the flight of fugitive slaves (Ibid. , I, 476 ff.). In these years of private practice Seward was very far from abandoning his interest in politics. He took part in almost every campaign, often outside the borders of the state. He also ardently championed the cause of Irish freedom, gaining the support of the Irish-American voters as a result. The tide was running more and more his way, also, with regard to the question of slavery. By 1848 anti-slavery sentiment had become so strong that it was possible for him to be elected to the United States Senate, many Democrats, as well as all the Whig members of the legislature, voting for him.

When Seward entered the Senate the slavery question had become acute, and the question of its relation to the disposition of the territories just acquired from Mexico was assuming portentous proportions. In the celebrated debate growing out of Henry Clay's famous resolutions of 1850, Seward took his stand firmly against all compromise, and in favor of the unconditional admission of California as a free state. In his well-known speech of March 11 he declared that there was no reason to jumble together a variety of important questions in a single measure, as Clay had wished to do; he boldly asserted that the fugitive-slave law was impossible of enforcement in the North; he wished to abolish, not only the slave trade, as proposed by Clay, but also slavery in the District of Columbia; he was opposed to leaving the territories to organize themselves with or without slavery. In a prescient sentence he declared that the slave system would either be removed "by gradual voluntary effort, and with compensation," within the framework of the Union, or the Union would be dissolved, and civil wars ensue, bringing on violent but complete and immediate emancipation he had been passed over in 1856 in the Republican National Convention for Fremont; and some of his shifts of attitude may be attributed to the fact that he had his eye on the presidential nomination of 1860.

In 1859 Seward went abroad, meeting many celebrities in England and France, and returning to a great reception in New York. In February 1860, he again advocated the admission of Kansas as a free state, and made a speech which may be regarded as an expression of the platform on which he would stand for the Republican nomination (February 29, 1860, Ibid., IV, 619-43). Its general tenor was extremely conciliatory and moderate; with rare exceptions, Seward optimistically believed that Republicanism involved no threat to the unity of the American people. When the Republican National Convention met in Chicago in June 1860, he was undoubtedly the leading candidate, but the hostility of Horace Greeley, the opposition of the Know-Nothings, and Seward's own too widely known radical utterances, conspired to deprive him of the nomination. It was a severe blow, but he bore it with his usual outward equanimity and with very real generosity. He campaigned for the Republican ticket throughout the North, minimizing the Southern threats of secession, and urging the election of Lincoln. In the crisis which followed the election Seward showed characteristic elements of strength and weakness. His invincible optimism inclined him to minimize the dangers that lay ahead; yet, in the face of secession, he employed the language and the method of conciliation. He was also one of the Senate committee of thirteen constituted to consider means of composing the situation; as the spokesman of the section, and at the suggestion of Weed, he proposed on December 24 that Congress guarantee slavery in the slave states, and request the repeal of the personal liberty laws in exchange for the grant of jury trial to fugitive slaves (Senate Report No. 288, 36 Congress, 2 Session, pp. 10, 11, 13). His speech of January 12, 1861, made after three more states had seceded, was admirable in its spirit (Works, IV, 651-69). Clearly avowing his loyalty to the Union, he again spoke in the most conciliatory vein, advocating a constitutional convention to settle outstanding difficulties, and even suggesting, in departure from the Republican platform, the admission of the remaining territories as two states without regard to slavery. It is entirely possible that he personally favored the Crittenden Compromise; but the influence of the President-elect was thrown on the other side, and Seward voted against this proposal when it came before the Senate on March 2.

As early as December 8, Seward had been offered the office of secretary of state by Lincoln. He accepted on December 28; and although he was deeply displeased at the selection of Chase and Blair as cabinet colleagues, and even sought to reverse his decision as late as March 2, he yielded to the entreaties of the President. He took office on March 4, no doubt believing that he would be, and deserved to be, the dominant figure in the administration, and the man who could best avert the perils of civil war. In the critical period from March 4 to April 12, 1861 (the date of the firing on Sumter), Seward appears at very far from his best. He still retained the delusion that he might determine the course of the administration; and his famous memorandum, "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration, April 1, 1861," admits of no apology. In this reckless document he advocated embroiling the United States with most of Europe and waging actual war on Spain and France, as a means of solidifying the Union (Nicolay and Hay, post, II, 29). The only concrete grievance on the horizon was the Spanish re-annexation of Santo Domingo, and this had not been officially consummated. A madder or wilder project than Seward's could hardly have been devised. Nor is it possible to imagine anything more arrogant than the last sentence of his memorandum, in which he virtually suggested that the President abdicate his power to the Secretary of State. Seward's course with regard to secession itself is not easy to justify. It is understandable that he entered into negotiations with the Confederate commissioners sent to Washington to demand the surrender of the forts still held by the Union government in the South; but it is not so easy to justify machinations behind the back of the President, by which the reënforcement of Fort Pickens was delayed, and the expedition to Sumter, when it sailed, weakened by the absence of the Powhatan. Seward was not even resolutely pacifist; on one occasion he spoke of using force to collect the revenue, and in general he was in favor of holding the Gulf forts, perhaps with a view to a possible war with Spain, though not of holding Sumter. No doubt much to his discomfiture, and with many a wound to his pride, he saw himself overruled and the decisive events which culminated in the opening of the Civil War directed by the chief whose real measure he had not yet taken.

Seward's conduct of the office of secretary of state during the four years of the war deserves high praise. More than any preceding secretary he conducted his diplomatic correspondence with an eye to public opinion at home. It is no chance that the publication of diplomatic dispatches in one or more annual volumes put out by the State Department begins with him (Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 2 volumes, 1861). He no doubt wrote almost too much for the American public, as compared with those to whom his dispatches were actually directed. But in so doing he did much both to inspirit and to restrain public opinion as occasion demanded. His early dispatches were too blustering in tone, and might have gotten him into serious trouble sometimes had it not been for the wisdom of Lincoln. As time went on, he dropped the truculent tone and expressed the views of the United States with dignity and force. On the occasion of the seizure of Mason and Slidell on board the Trent, an act received with something like ecstasy by Northern opinion, he behaved with great coolness in the midst of popular excitement. When the protest of the British government against such action arrived, it was the Secretary, this time somewhat against the opinion of the President, who decided that the protest must be heeded. The dispatch in which he conceded the surrender of the Southern commissioners is a masterpiece (Works, V, 295-309). Written with an eye to making palatable an act sure to be violently condemned by the hotheads in the United States, it flattered Northern opinion by its specious reasoning, and made the action appear as in accord with fundamental American traditions.

The possibility of European intervention in the Civil War Seward met, on the whole, with similar adroitness. The optimism of his dispatches, their profound self-confidence, and their array of facts, could hardly fail to make an impression. This tone, maintained through good fortune and bad, and coupled with warning after warning of the dangerous consequences of intervention, was, in general, just what the situation demanded. At times Seward was still a little bumptious, and his habit of publishing many of his dispatches was often irritating, but the general principle was sound. He could depend, too, on the tact and high diplomatic skill of Charles Francis Adams in interpreting his instructions. Seward made skilful use abroad of the question of slavery to check the anti-Northern agitation in France and England. On the Emancipation Proclamation he was at first conservative, because of his fear of its domestic consequences. When it was first discussed in July 1862, he urged Lincoln to postpone action, at least until a Federal victory (Nicolay and Hay, II, 479). But when the preliminary proclamation was issued after Antietam, he used it with great effect in his dispatches to Adams and W. L. Dayton. The danger of intervention seemed greatest in the fall of 1862 and the winter of 1863. At the end of October, the French government sought to secure joint action with Great Britain and Russia looking to an armistice. The proposal was rejected, and Seward wisely made no protest. But when the French directly proffered mediation early in 1863, Seward responded in one of his most effective dispatches (February 6, 1863, Senate Executive Document No. 38, 37 Congress, 3 Session, p. 11-16).

In his correspondence Seward adroitly defended the broad interpretation of continuous voyage in dispatches that suggest Sir Edward Grey's half a century later, and he protested vigorously against the outfitting of Confederate privateers in British ports. His steady pressure, combined with the skill of Adams, finally led the British government to take due precautions, in the case of the Laird rams, while his protests in the case of the Alabama laid the basis for solid pecuniary claims later. Nowhere was Seward more adroit than in his treatment of the French intervention in Mexico, and the establishment of Maximilian on a Mexican throne. From an early period he made the distaste of the United States for the whole project obvious; yet he suavely assumed the rumors of monarchy to be ill-founded as long as he could do so, and until the end of the war never let anything like menace enter into his tone. When the House of Representatives on April 4, 1864, condemned the schemes of Louis Napoleon (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, l Session, p. 1408), Seward penned a masterly dispatch in which he soothed French susceptibilities, explaining that the opinion of the legislative branch of the government did not alter executive policy (April 7, 1864, Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, 1865, volume III, 356-57). When the Civil War was over, there was much sentiment for vigorous action against the French. Seward handled this delicate situation magnificently. He temporized while he could; the situation of the French grew more and more difficult; and then in dispatches gradually mounting in tone he edged his adversary, Drouyn de L'huys, from one position to another, until he finally secured the promise of the evacuation of Mexico in a fixed period of time. In the latter part of the correspondence Seward fell into his old habit of writing for domestic consumption; and the same may be said of his correspondence with Austria on the same subject; but the total effect of his activity is admirable.

Seward was, in temperament and conviction, an expansionist. During the 1850's this sentiment came in conflict with his anti-slavery views, and led him to oppose such projects as the purchase of Cuba. But when the war was over the strong instinct revived. In 1867 he negotiated the cession of Alaska, and with the aid of Sumner secured the prompt ratification of the treaty by the Senate. He sought to acquire the two most important islands of the Danish West Indies; but this agreement was never ratified. He encouraged overtures from the Dominican Republic looking to incorporation in the United States, again unsuccessfully. In his instructions to the American minister at Honolulu he advocated the annexation of Hawaii. Seward's views were those which a later generation was to accept.

In domestic affairs Seward exercised a constant influence both on the Lincoln and the Johnson administrations. He had a large, indeed it may be said the chief, responsibility for the treatment of political prisoners at the beginning of the war, and contrary to his general temperament he here showed much rigor. He exercised, as has been seen, a positive influence on the policy of the administration with regard to the border states and emancipation. He performed heavy labors as a sort of political liaison officer, and his interest in problems of patronage, while not always wisely exerted, was continuous. In the Johnson administration he was a central figure. He advocated a conciliatory policy towards the South, wrote some of Johnson's most important veto messages, and supported the President in many speeches, making "the swing around the circle" with him in 1866. By doing so he lost both popularity and influence, and he valued both dearly; but whatever the reaction of the moment, the judgment of time has been that he was wiser than his opponents.

The burdens of his last four years at Washington Seward sustained in circumstances that would have daunted a man less tenacious and industrious. He had suffered serious injury in a carriage accident in the spring of 1865, and this had been followed by the brutal attack upon him in his house which was contemporaneous with the assassination of Lincoln; yet he was soon transacting the public business with as much skill and coolness as ever. At the end of his term of office, despite the fact that he was partially crippled, he went around the world, the first important American political figure to do so, and much enjoyed the enthusiasm which his visit evoked. He returned to Auburn in the autumn of 1871, and there increasing paralysis overtook him. He died on October 10, 1872. On October 20, 1824, he had married Frances Miller, the daughter of his law partner. A woman of liberal sympathies and humanitarian views, she undoubtedly influenced his later career, and especially his attitude toward slavery. They had three sons and two daughters, one of whom died in infancy. Fredrick William Seward [q.v.] was closely associated with his father. A nephew, Clarence Armstrong Seward (October 27, 1828-July 24, 1897), who became an orphan in childhood and was brought up in his uncle's family, served for a brief time in 1865 as assistant secretary of state and attained prominence as a corporation lawyer. His cousin, George Frederick Seward [q.v.], another nephew of William H. Seward, was launched upon his diplomatic career under the latter's influence.

In Seward the politician and the statesman are interestingly, and on the whole happily, commingled. It is easy to discover occasions on which he equivocated, as politicians do; it is easy to discover occasions on which he sought the applause of the multitude, not always careful of the consequences. Even in his diplomacy, and strikingly in his early utterances on questions of foreign affairs, this is true. Yet Seward chose his early political creed, it would appear, from conviction; he associated himself with definite policies, and loved to do so; much earlier than most anti-slavery leaders of the political stripe, he adopted that important cause; he often showed real courage in advocating it. He made serious blunders, and might have made more, in estimating the true value of the conflicting forces at the end of 1860 and the beginning of 1861 but his years at the State Department are years of steady growth, and of very creditable achievement, while his role in maintaining national morale must not be underestimated. He was the partisan of a wise policy of reconciliation when the war was over. The unswervingly independent mind has its uses in the world; but its possessor is not apt to succeed in politics. It may be fairly argued that Seward combined devotion to principle, and flexibility as to means, in such proportions as to make him most effective.

As a human being, few could have been more lovable. Cheerful, generous, loathing personal controversy, he had a wide range of interests and of sympathies. He read much and widely; he traveled extensively, going to Europe several times, and seeing a great deal of his own country. He was a little vain, and he had his political enemies; he is dwarfed by the master-spirit of his great chief; but, compared with the irascible Stanton, the pompous Sumner, the intriguing Chase, and many others, he looms up as one of the most attractive, as well as most important, figures in a critical period of American history.

[Autobiography of William H. Seward, from 1801 to 1834, with a Memoir of His Life, and Selections from His Letters, from 1831 to 1846 (1877), ed. by F. W. Seward, the continuation of this by F . W. Seward, Seward at Washington (2 volumes, 1891);

G. E. Baker, ed. , The Works of William H. Seward (5 volumes, 1884);

Life of Thurlow Weed (2 volumes, 1883-84), including his autobiography, ed. by Harriet A. Weed, and a memoir by

T. W. Barnes; J. D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New York (3 volumes, 1842-48);

D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume II (1906);

Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S. (2 volumes, 1861), and Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs (14 volumes, 1862-66), bound and usually cited as Diplomatic Correspondence of the U.S.;

Gideon Welles, Lincoln and Seward (1874);

F. W. Seward, Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat (1916);

Olive R. Seward, ed., William H . Seward's Travels Around the World (1873);

J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works (2 volumes, 1894);

Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (2 volumes, 1900), which is sympathetic yet critical, and is exceedingly well proportioned;

T . K. Lothrop, William Henry Seward (1896) and E. E . Hale, Jr., William H . Seward (1910), of less importance; an interesting sketch in Gamaliel Bradford, Union Portraits (1916);

C. F . Adams, Seward and the Declaration of Paris (1912); Tyler Dennett, "Seward's Far Eastern Policy," in American History Review, October 1922;

studies of Seward's Mexican policy in J . M. Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations (1932), and Dexter Perkins, The Monroe Doctrine, 1826- 1867 (1933);

detailed study of his policy toward Great Britain in E. D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War (2 volumes, 1925);

general treatment by H. W. Temple in S. F. Bemis, ed., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, volume VII (1928);

unpublished materials in the possession of Mrs. Thomas G. Spencer, Rochester, New York, and W. H. Seward, Auburn, New York

;unpublished correspondence in Department of State, Washington, D. C.]

D.P.



SMITH, CALEB BLOOD (April 16, 1808- January 7, 1864), lawyer, congressman, cabinet officer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, but when six years old was taken by his parents to Cincinnati, Ohio. He was enrolled as a student at the College of Cincinnati, 1823-25, and at Miami University, 1825-26, but did not graduate. Commencing the study of law in Cincinnati, he soon removed to Connersville, Ind., where he continued his law studies in the office of Oliver H. Smith [q. v .]. He was admitted to the bar, and commenced practice in the fall of 1828. His eloquence before juries contributed no little to his advancement in his profession.

Entering politics, he was an unsuccessful candidate for a seat in the Indiana House of Representatives in 1831, but the following year he purchased an interest in the Political Clarion, changed its name to the Indiana Sentinel, used it as a medium the publication of his Whig policies, and was elected. He was reelected each year until 1837 and was again elected in 1840. In the sessions of 1835-36 and 1836-37 he was speaker of the house and in 1840-41, chairman of the committee on canals. During his legislative career he was one of those who took the lead in procuring an order for the survey, by the federal government, of routes in Indiana for canals and railroads, and in otherwise promoting projects for internal improvements. When those projects were more or less wrecked by the panic of 1837, Smith was appointed a commissioner to collect assets and adjust debts. He accepted and served, but not without a temporary loss of popularity. In a triangular election in 1840 he was defeated as a candidate for a seat in Congress, but he won in a clear field in 1842, was reelected in 1844; and again in 1846. In the Twenty-ninth Congress (1845-47) he was a member of the committee on foreign affairs, and in the Thirtieth (1847-49), chairman of the Committee on the Territories. At a Whig caucus preceding the opening of the Thirtieth Congress he was proposed for nomination as speaker of the House, but failed of nomination by fifteen votes. His first speech in the House was made February 8, 1844, in favor of excluding from membership the men who, in four states, had been elected by general ticket. He participated in debates on the Oregon question, the independent treasury bill, slavery in the Territories and the District of Columbia, the tariff, and the Dorr rebellion, but his principal efforts were directed against the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico. He supported Taylor in the presidential campaign of 1848, and was proposed for the position , postmaster general in Taylor's cabinet, but was given, instead, a seat on the board of commissioners to adjust claims against Mexico, serving in that capacity until 1851, when he removed to Cincinnati and resumed the practice of law. Three years later he was made president of the Cincinnati & Chicago Railroad Company, which was soon in financial difficulties, and in 1859 he removed to Indianapolis, Indiana.

Smith was one of the leaders of the Indiana delegation to the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1860, and when, in behalf of that delegation, he had seconded the nomination of Lincoln, the convention broke into its greatest demonstration. In the campaign that followed, he was one of the most effective speakers, especially in Indiana, a doubtful state. In recognition of his services or in fulfillment of a promise, Lincoln appointed him Secretary of the Interior, but when failing health would no longer permit his administration of that office, the President accepted his resignation, December 1862, and immediately appointed him judge of the United States district court for Indiana. A little more than a year later he was fatally stricken while in the court house in Indianapolis, and died the same day. On July 8, 1831, he married Elizabeth B. Walton, daughter of William Walton, a pioneer from Ohio; they had three children. [L. J. Bailey, "Caleb Blood Smith," in Ind. Magazine of History, September 1933; Charles Roll, "Indiana's Part in the Nomination of Abraham Lincoln for President" Ibid. March 1929; G. J. Clarke, "The Burnt District:" Ibid.' June 1931;

[Journal and Genealogical History of Wayne, Fayette. Union and franklin Counties, Ind. (1899), volume I; C. W. Taylor, Biographical Sketches and Review of the Bench and Bar of Ind. (1895); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); American Whig Review, December 1850; Indianapolis Daily Journal, January 9, 1864; Caleb Blood Smith Papers (8 - volumes), MSS. Div., Library of Congress]

N. D. M.



SPEED, JAMES (March 11, 1812-June 25, 1887), lawyer, federal attorney-general, was the descendant of James Speed who emigrated from England and settled in Surry County, Virginia, about the end of the seventeenth century. His grandfather, also James, settled near Danville, Kentucky, about 1783. His father, John, settled in Jefferson County,· at "Farmington," five miles from Louisville, and married Lucy Gilmer Fry. There James was born. He attended school in the neighborhood, and then at St. Joseph's College in Bardstown, where he was graduated probably in 1828. The next two years he spent in the county clerk's office in Louisville. He then went to Lexington to the law department of Transylvania University. In 1833 he began the practice of law in Louisville and continued with a few interruptions as long as he lived. In 1841 he married Jane Cochran, the daughter of John Cochran of Louisville. They had seven sons. In 1847 he was elected to the state legislature. In 1849 he was defeated for the state constitutional convention by James Guthrie, on the emancipation issue. His grandfather, James, had suffered defeat for a seat in the Constitutional Convention of 1792 on the same issue, for hostility to slavery long characterized the Speed family. In 1849 Speed wrote a series of letters to the Louisville Courier, in which he boldly assumed a position against slavery that definitely limited his political career until the outbreak of the Civil War. For two years, from 1856 to 1858, in addition to his legal practice, he taught law in the University of Louisville.

In the secession movement he took the typical Kentucky attitude-a desire to preserve the Union and at the same time avoid war. He was a member of the Union .central committee, which was set up to merge the Bell and Douglas forces, and which on April 18, 1861, issued an address lauding Governor Beriah Magoffin's refusal to respond to Lincoln's call for troops and advising the people to refuse aid to either side. In 1861 he was elected to the state Senate as an uncompromising Union man, and he continued in this position until 1863. He became a principal adviser of Lincoln on affairs in Kentucky, and in the latter part of 1864 was appointed attorney-general. He was the brother of Joshua Fry Speed, Lincoln's intimate friend. He was also a Southerner and a conservative, a man agreeing with the President's policy of moderation toward the Southern states, and a man for whom Lincoln had a personal affection. Lincoln could say of him in Washington, that he was "an honest man and a gentleman, and one of those well poised men, not too common here, who are not spoiled by a big office" (Lord Charnwood, Abraham Lincoln, 1916, p. 404). As long as Lincoln lived Speed held true to the President's policy; but when a strange fascination for the radicals developed, Charles Sumner was then able to say of him that he was the "best of the Cabinet" (J. F. Rhodes, History of the United. States, 1904, V, 533). He favored military commissions to try the Lincoln conspirators and other persons not protected by their paroles (opinion of the Constitutional Power of the Military to Try and Execute the Assassins of the President, 1865, and the American Annual Cyclopaedia, Appletons', 1866), though he consistently held that Jefferson Davis should be tried by the civil courts. He early began to advocate negro suffrage and was soon as critical as Stanton of President Johnson. He opposed Johnson's veto of the Freedmen's Bureau bill and favored the Fourteenth Amendment. As time went on he found himself increasingly out of harmony with Johnson, and on July 17, 1866, he resigned. The breaking point seems to have developed over the Philadelphia convention, when, in answer to a communication sent him by the committee in charge of promoting that convention, he declared that he thoroughly disapproved of it.

He then returned to Louisville and later bought a home near the city, "The Poplars." In September 1866 he attended the Southern Radical convention in Philadelphia and was made its permanent chairman. There he made a bitter speech against Johnson, characterizing him as the "tyrant of the White House"-an expression he later changed to "tenant" (J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years, 1886, II, 226; G. F. Milton, Age of Hate, 1930, p. 726, footnote 28). Back in Kentucky he took a prominent part in Radical Republican activities. In 1867 he received forty-one votes in the Kentucky legislature for senator but was defeated; the next year the Kentucky delegates gave him their votes for vice-president; in 1870 he ran for the national House of Representatives and was defeated. In 1872 and in 1876 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention and each time served on the committee of resolutions. As he grew older he reverted to the ways and beliefs of his earlier life. He continued his practice of law in Louisville and from 1872 to 1879 he taught law again in the University of Louisville. In 1884 he supported Grover Cleveland for the presidency. A few years before his death he became a n .unwilling party to a controversy with Joseph Holt, over the question of President Johnson having received the recommendation for mercy in the Mrs. Surratt case. Against the almost frantic appeals of Holt to Speed to say publicly that Johnson saw the recommendation, Speed resolutely refused on the ground of the rule against divulging cabinet proceedings. Speed's last public appearance was at Cincinnati on May 4, 1887, when he addressed the Society of the Loyal Legion, Address of Hon. James Speed before the ... Loyal Legion (1888). He died at "The Poplars" and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery at Louisville.

[James Speed, James Speed, A Personality (1914); Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky (Cincinnati, 1878) ; Diary of Gideon Welles ( 1911), volume II ; A. J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln (1928), volume I; Appletons' Annual Cyclopedia . . . . , 1887 (1888) ; War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), 2 series, VII; Lewis and R. H. Collins, History of Kentucky (2 volumes, 1874); Thomas Speed, Records and Memorials of the Speed Family (1892); New York Herald, July 17, 1866; Louisville Commercial, June 26, 1887; North American Review, July, September 1888; letters in Joseph Holt Correspondence and Edwin M. Stanton MSS. in the Library of Congress and in the Charles Sumner MSS. in Harvard College Library]

E. M. C.



STANTON, EDWIN MCMASTERS (December 19, 1814-December 24, 1869), attorney-general and secretary of war, a native of Steubenville, Ohio, was the eldest of the four children of David and Lucy (Norman) Stanton. His father, a physician of Quaker stock, was descended from Robert Stanton, who came to America between 1627 and 1638, and, after living in New Plymouth, moved to Newport, Rhode Island, before 1645, and from the latter's grandson, Henry, who went to North Carolina between 1721 and 1724 (W. H. Stanton, post, pp. 27-34). His mother was the daughter of a Virginia planter. The death of Dr. Stanton in 1827 left his wife in straitened circumstances and Edwin was obliged to withdraw from school and supplement the family income by employment in a local bookstore. He continued his studies in his spare time, however, and in 1831 was admitted to Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio. During his junior year his funds gave out and he was again obliged to accept a place in a bookstore, this time in Columbus. Unable to earn enough to return to Kenyon for the completion of his course, he turned to the study of law in the office of his guardian, Daniel L. Collier, and in 1836 was admitted to the bar. His practice began in Cadiz, the seat of Harrison County, but in 1839 he removed to Steubenville to become a partner of Senator-elect Benjamin Tappan.

Stanton's ability, energy, and fidelity to his profession brought him quick recognition and a comfortable income. To give wider range to his talents he moved to Pittsburgh in 1847 and later, in 1856 he became a resident of Washington, D. C., in order to devote himself more to cases before the Supreme Court. His work as counsel for the state of Pennsylvania (1849-56) against the Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Company (13 Howard, 518; 18 Howard, 421) gave him a national reputation and resulted in his retention for much important litigation. He was one of the leading counsel in the noted patent case of McCormick vs. Manny (John McLean, Reports of Cases  ... in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Seventh Circuit, volume VI, 1856, p. 539) and made a deep impression upon one of his associates, Abraham Lincoln, because of his masterly defense of their client, Manny (A. J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1928, volume I, 581). Stanton's practice was chiefly in civil and constitutional law, but in 1859 in defending Daniel E. Sickles [q.v.], charged with murder, he demonstrated that he was no less gifted in handling criminal suits. More important than any of these cases, however, was his work in California in 1858 as special counsel for the United States government in combatting fraudulent claims to lands alleged to have been deeded by Mexico to numerous individuals prior to the Mexican War. It was a task requiring prodigious and painstaking research in the collection of data and the most careful presentation, but Stanton proved equal to the occasion and won for the government a series of notable victories. It has been estimated that the lands involved were worth $150,000,000. His services in this connection were undoubtedly the most distinguished of his legal career. As a lawyer Stanton was capable of extraordinary mental labor; he was orderly and methodical, mastering with great precision the law and the facts of his cases, and he was able apparently to plead with equal effectiveness before judges and juries.

It was his success in the California land cases, together with the influence of Jeremiah S. Black [q.v.], that won for him the appointment of attorney-general on December 20, 1860, when Buchanan reorganized his cabinet. Prior to that time Stanton had taken little part in politics and had held only two minor offices, those of prosecuting attorney of Harrison County, Ohio (1837-39), and reporter of Ohio supreme court decisions (1842-45). Jacksonian principles enlisted his sympathies while -an undergraduate and he appears to have adhered quite consistently to the Democratic party from that time until his entrance into Lincoln's cabinet in 1862. He favored the Wilmot Proviso, however, and was critical of the domination of the Southern wing of the party during the two decades before 1860. Like his forebears he disapproved of the institution of slavery, but he accepted the Dred Scott decision without question and contended that all laws constitutionally enacted for the protection of slavery should be rigidly enforced. He supported Breckinridge's candidacy for the presidency in 1860 in the belief that the preservation of the Union hung on the forlorn hope of his election (Gorham, post, I, 79). Above all Stanton was a thorough-going Unionist.

In Buchanan's cabinet he promptly joined with Black and Joseph Holt [q.v.] in opposition to the abandonment of Fort Sumter and was zealous in the pursuit of persons whom he believed to be plotting against the government. Since he was of an excitable and suspicious temperament, his mind was full of forebodings of insurrection and assassination, and, while he hated the "Black Republicans," he collogued with Seward, Sumner, and others in order that they might be apprised of the dangers he apprehended to be afoot. The disclosure of this later resulted in the charge that he had betrayed Buchanan (Atlantic Monthly and Galaxy, post). If Stanton was at odds with the President at that time he gave him no indication of it for Buchanan wrote in 1862: "He was always on my side and flattered me ad nauseam" (G. T. Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, 1883, volume II, 523).

During the early months of Lincoln's presidency, Stanton, now in private life, was utterly distrustful of him and unsparing in his criticism of "the imbecility of this administration" (Ibid., II, 559). When George B. McClellan [q.v.] took over the control of the operations of the army in 1861, Stanton became his friend and confidential legal adviser and expressed to him his contempt for the President and his cabinet. Oddly enough, soon afterwards he also became legal adviser to Secretary of War Simon Cameron [q.v.] and aided in framing the latter's annual report recommending the arming of slaves (Atlantic Monthly, February 1870, p. 239; October 1870, p. 470 ). It was this proposal, offensive to Lincoln, which hastened Cameron's departure from the War Department and inadvertently helped to pave the way for Stanton's succession to the post. Although he had had no personal contacts of any kind with Lincoln since March 4, 1861, Stanton was nominated for the secretaryship, confirmed on January 15, 1862, and five days later entered upon his duties. Various plausible explanations for his selection by Lincoln have been given. Gideon Welles firmly believed that Seward was responsible for it, but Cameron claimed the credit for himself (American Historical Review, April 1926, pp. 491 ff.; Meneely, post, pp. 366-68). The true circumstances may never be known.

Stanton was generally conceded to be able, energetic, and patriotic, and his appointment was well received. It presaged a more honest and efficient management of departmental affairs and a more aggressive prosecution of the war. In these respects the new secretary measured up to the public expectations. He immediately reorganized the department, obtained authorization for the increase of its personnel, and systematized the work to be done. Contracts were investigated, those tainted with fraud were revoked, and their perpetrators were prosecuted without mercy. Interviews became public hearings; patronage hunters received scant and usually brusque consideration; and the temporizing replies of Cameron gave way to the summary judgments of his successor. At an early date Stanton persuaded Congress to authorize the taking over of the railroads and telegraph lines where necessary, and prevailed upon the President to release all political prisoners in military custody and to transfer the control of extraordinary arrests from the State to the War Department. Also he promptly put himself in close touch with generals, governors, and others having to do with military affairs, and especially with the congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War.

For a few months after entering office Stanton continued his friendly relations with McClellan and assured the general of his desire to furnish all necessary materiel, but he became impatient when McClellan proved slow in accomplishing tangible results. Despite the Secretary's professions of confidence and cooperation, McClellan soon became distrustful and suspected Stanton of seeking his removal. The withdrawing of McDowell's forces from the main army in the Peninsular campaign was attributed to Stanton and editorial attacks upon him began to appear in the New York press which were believed to have been inspired by McClellan (Gorham, I, 415-21). Both men were too suspicious, jealous, and otherwise ill-suited to work in harmony; trouble between them was inevitable. Stanton was particularly irked by McClellan's disobedience to orders and in August 1862 joined with Chase and others in the cabinet in seeking to have him deprived of any command (Welles, Diary, I, 83, 93, 95- 101; "Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase," Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, 1903, volume II, 62-63).

Although McClellan constantly complained of a shortage of men, supplies, and equipment, Stanton appears to have made vigorous efforts to meet his requisitions. The same was true with respect to other commanders in the several theatres of operations. His dispatch of 23,000 men to the support of Rosecrans at Chattanooga (September 1863) in less than seven days and under trying circumstances was one of the spectacular feats of the war. Quickness of decision, mastery of detail, and vigor in execution were among Stanton's outstanding characteristics as a war administrator, and he became annoyed when his subordinates proved deficient in these qualities. He was frequently accused of meddling with military operations and was probably guilty of it on many occasions; but Grant had no complaint to make of him in this respect. His severe censorship of the press was also a source of much criticism in newspaper circles, and his exercise of the power of extraordinary arrest was often capricious and harmful. Soldiers and civilians alike found him arrogant, irascible, and often brutal and unjust. Grant said that he "cared nothing for the feeling of others" and seemed to find it pleasanter "to disappoint than to gratify" (Personal Memoirs, volume II, 1886, p. 536). A noted instance of his harshness was his published repudiation of General Sherman's terms to the defeated Johnston in May 1865. That Sherman had exceeded his authority was generally admitted, but the severity of the rebuke was as unmerited as it was ungrateful. Again, Stanton's part in the trial and execution of Mrs. Surratt, charged with complicity in Lincoln's assassination, and his efforts to implicate Jefferson Davis in the murder of the President were exceedingly discreditable (Milton, post, Ch. x; DeWitt, post, pp. 232-34; 272-76). His vindictiveness in both instances was probably owing in part to a desire to avenge the death of his chief, whose loss he mourned. Intimate association for three years had gradually revealed Lincoln's nature and capacities to Stanton, and while he was sometimes as discourteous to him as to others, there developed between the two men a mutual trust and admiration.

At the request of President Johnson, Stanton retained his post after Lincoln's death and ably directed the demobilization of the Union armies. At the same time he entered upon a course with respect to reconstruction. and related problems that brought him into serious conflict with the President and several of his colleagues. During the war he appears to have been deferential and ingratiating in his relations with the radical element in Congress, particularly with the powerful congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, and when peace came he began almost immediately to counsel with leading members of that faction as to the course to be pursued in reconstruction. Although he expressed approval in cabinet meetings of the President's proclamation of May 29, 1865, initiating a reasonable policy of restoration under executive direction, it was soon suspected by many of Johnson's supporters that Stanton was out of sympathy with the administration and intriguing with the rising opposition. In this they were not mistaken (Beale, post, pp. 101-06). When Charles Sumner in a speech on September 14, 1865, denounced the presidential policy, insisted on congressional control of reconstruction, and sponsored negro suffrage, Stanton hastened to assure him that he indorsed "every sentiment, every opinion and word of it" (Welles, II, 394). From the summer of 1865 onward, upon nearly every issue he advised a course of action which would have played into the hands of the Radicals and fostered a punitive Southern policy. He urged the acceptance of the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights bills of 1866, and while he was evasive regarding the report of the Stevens committee on reconstruction, he subsequently expressed approval of the Military Reconstruction bill based upon it which was passed over the President's veto on March 2, 1867 (Welles, III, 49; Gorham, II, 420). Stanton actually dictated for Boutwell [q.v.] an amendment to the army appropriation act of 1867 requiring the president to issue his army orders through the secretary of war or the general of the army and making invalid any order issued otherwise (G. S. Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, 1902, volume II, 107-08; Milton, p. 378). He was also responsible for the supplementary reconstruction act of July 19, 1867, which exempted military commanders from any obligation to accept the opinions of civil officers of the government as to their rules of action (Gorham, II, 373). The one important measure in the rejection of which the Secretary concurred was the Tenure of Office bill which was chiefly intended to insure his own retention in the War Department. He was emphatic in denouncing its unconstitutionality and "protested with ostentatious vehemence that any man who would retain his seat in the Cabinet as an adviser when his advice was not wanted was unfit for the place" (Welles, III, 158; J. D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1897, volume VI, 587). He aided Seward in drafting the veto message.

For more than a year Johnson had been importuned by his supporters to remove Stanton and he repeatedly gave the Secretary to understand "by every mode short of an expressed request that he should resign" (Richardson, ante, VI, 584), but Stanton ignored them and with fatal hesitation the President permitted him to remain. In doing so he virtually gave his opponents a seat in the cabinet. By the beginning of August 1867, however, Johnson could tolerate his mendacious minister no longer. He had become convinced that the insubordination of General Sheridan and other commanders in the military districts was being encouraged by the Secretary and he was now satisfied that Stanton had plotted against him in the matter of the reconstruction legislation. Consequently, on August 5, he called for his resignation, but Stanton brazenly declined to yield before Congress reassembled. in December, contending that the Tenure of Office bill had become law by its passage over the veto and Johnson was bound to obey it. A week later he was suspended, but in January 1868 he promptly resumed his place when the Senate declined to concur in his suspension. Johnson then resolved to dismiss him regardless of the consequences and did so on February 21, 1868. Stanton with equal determination declared that he would "continue in possession until expelled by force" (Gorham, II, 440), and was supported by the Senate. He ordered the arrest of Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas, who had been designated secretary ad interim, and had a guard posted to insure his own occupancy and protect the department records from seizure. For several weeks thereafter he remained in the War Department building day and night, but when the impeachment charges failed (May 26, 1868) he accepted the inevitable and resigned the same day.  

Over-exertion during his public life, together with internal ailments, had undermined Stanton's health and he found it necessary after leaving the department to undergo a period of rest. During the fall of 1868 he managed to give some active support to Grant's candidacy and to resume to a limited extent his law practice, but he never regained his former vigor. He was frequently importuned to be a candidate for public office, but steadfastly refused. His friends in Congress, however, prevailed upon Grant to offer him a justiceship on the United States Supreme Court and this he accepted. His nomination was confirmed on December 20, 1869, but death overtook him before he could occupy his seat.

With the gradual rehabilitation of Andrew Johnson's reputation Stanton's has suffered a sharp decline. His ability as a lawyer and his achievements as a tireless and versatile administrator during the Civil War have not been seriously questioned, but his defects of temperament and the disclosures of his amazing disloyalty and duplicity in his official relations detract from his stature as a public man. In 1867 he explained his remaining in the War Department by contending that his duties as a department head were defined by law and that he was not "bound to accord with the President on all grave questions of policy or administration" (Gorham, II, 421; J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States, 1920, VI, 210, note 3); but shortly before his death he is said to have admitted that "he had never doubted the constitutional right of the President to remove members of his Cabinet without question from any quarter whatever," and that in his reconstruction program Johnson advocated measures that had been favorably considered by Lincoln (Hugh McCulloch, 20 Men and Measures of Half a Century, 1888, pp. 401-02). Stanton was encouraged in his disloyalty and defiance by Republican politicians, newspapers, and Radical protagonists generally, but his conduct has found few defenders among modern students of the post-war period. Whether he was motivated by egotism, mistaken patriotism, or a desire to stand well with the congressional opposition is difficult to determine.

In appearance Stanton was thick-set and of medium height; a strong, heavy neck supported a massive head thatched with long, black, curling hair. His nose and eyes were large, his mouth was wide and stern. A luxuriant crop of coarse black whiskers concealed his jaws and chin. Altogether he was a rather fierce looking man; there was point to Montgomery Blair's characterization, the "black terrier." Stanton was twice married. Mary Ann Lamson of Columbus, Ohio, with whom he was united on December 31, 1836, died in 1844. On June 25, 1856, he married Ellen M. Hutchison, the daughter of a wealthy merchant of Pittsburgh. Two children were born of the first union; four of the second. His biographers assure us that in his family life Stanton was a model husband and father, and for his mother, who survived him, he appears to have cherished a lifelong filial devotion.

[There is no satisfactory biography of Stanton.

G. C. Gorham, The Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton (2 volumes, 1899), and

F. A. Flower , Edwin McMasters Stanton (1905) contain much useful data, but both are extremely laudatory.

The Diary of Gideon Welles (3 volumes, 1911), although hostile, is a very serviceable documentary source.

The writings and biographical literature of other public men of the day contain numerous references to Stanton.

Of especial value for the war period are J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (10 volumes, 1890), and Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (12 volumes, Gettysburg ed., 1905).

See also A. H. Meneely, The War Department-1861 (1928).

G. F. Milton, The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals ( 1931), and

H. K. Beale, The Critical Year (1930) are the most scholarly of the recent studies of the reconstruction era.

D. M. DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903), is the standard book on the subject and has a sharply critical chapter on Stanton's public career.

Revealing disclosures of his conduct while in Buchanan's cabinet are to be found in the Black-Wilson controversy in the Atlantic Monthly, February, October 1870, and the Galaxy, June 1870, February 1871, reprinted as A Contribution to History (1871).

The papers of Stanton and many of his associates are deposited in the Library of Congress these, together with War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), and other government publications pertaining to the war and reconstruction problems are the basic sources for the study of Stanton's official life. Genealogical material is in

W . H. Stanton. A Book Called Our Ancestors the Stantons (1922). For an obituary, see New York Daily Tribune, December 25, 1869.]

A.H. M.



USHER, JOHN PALMER (January 9, 1816---April 13, 1889), lawyer, secretary of the interior in Lincoln's cabinet, was descended from a young English Puritan, Hezekiah Usher, who settled in Boston, Massachusetts, about the middle of the seventeenth century, becoming a bookseller and later a selectman. Among his descendants were John Usher who became lieutenant-governor of New Hampshire in 1692 and Dr. Nathaniel Usher, who with his wife, Lucy (Palmer), lived in Brookfield, Madison County, New York, when their son, John Palmer, was born. After receiving a common-school education Usher studied law in the office of Henry Bennett of New Berlin, New York, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. A year later he moved to Terre Haute, Indiana, and began the practice of his profession. He rode the circuit, and was sometimes engaged with Abraham Lincoln in the argument of cases. In 1850- 51 he served in the Indiana legislature.

When the Republican party was organized in 1854, Usher became an active supporter of its principles and in 1856 was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress. He was appointed attorney-general of Indiana in November 1861, but four months later resigned to accept the position of assistant secretary of the interior at Washington. In January 1863 he was appointed head of that department, following the resignation of Caleb B. Smith [q.v.]. In his first report he called special attention to the benefits of the new homestead law, remarking that in less than a year after it went into operation almost a million and a half acres had been taken up. He recommended a small tax on the net profits of gold and silver mines, larger Indian reservations, also larger appropriations-with a policy guided by justice and humanity-for these wards of the nation. His last report contained a comprehensive statement concerning public lands, which, he said, had included about one fifth of the entire country and had been the cause of about one fourth of all the laws passed by Congress to that date.

When the Civil War closed Usher decided to retire from political life and resume the practice of law in one of the growing Western states. He accordingly resigned as secretary of the interior on May 15, 1865, and removed with his family to Lawrence, Kansas, where he accepted appointment as chief counsel for the Union Pacific Railroad-a position which he held to the end of his life. He represented the company in much important litigation in both state and federal courts. Usher's only writings were his two reports (1863, 1864) as secretary of the interior (Executive Document No. 1, volume III, 38 Congress, 1 Session &; and House Executive Document No. 1, pt. 5, 38 Congress, 2 Session) and a chapter in Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln (1886), edited by A. T. Rice; but in 1925 Nelson H. Loomis published President Lincoln's Cabinet, by Honorable John P. Usher, a pamphlet containing the substance of an after-dinner speech delivered in 1887 together with a newspaper interview. On January 26, 1844, Usher married Margaret Patterson; they had four sons. He died in a hospital in Philadelphia.

[Usher kept no diary and preserved no papers. President Lincoln's Cabinet (1925) contains an authoritative biography by N. H . Loomis. See also Kansas State Historical Society Colls., volume XII (1912); C. W. Taylor, The Bench and Bar of Indiana (1895); E. P. Usher, A Memorial Sketch of Roland Greene Usher (1895), containing a genealogy; Lawrence Daily Journal, April 14, 1889; Lawrence Evening Tribune, April 15, 1889; Topeka Capital-Commonwealth, April 16, 1889. Important facts have also been obtained from a son, the late Samuel C. Usher.]

T. L. H.



WELLES, GIDEON (July 1, 1802-February 11, 1878), secretary of the navy, son of Samuel and Ann (Hale) Welles, was born in Glastenbury (now Glastonbury), Connecticut, on land bought from the Indians by his ancestor, Thomas Welles, governor and first treasurer of Connecticut, who had settled in Hartford in 1636. He attended, 1819-21, the Episcopal Academy at Cheshire, Connecticut, and, 1823-25, the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy at Norwich, Vermont (now Norwich University). From his father he received a comfortable living. He studied law, but by January 1826 had become part owner and editor of the Hartford Times, which, under him, was one of the first papers in New England to declare for Jackson. He resigned the editorship in 1836, but continued to be an important contributor to the Times until he broke with the editor over the slavery question. In 1826 he was elected to the legislature, being its youngest member, and served there from 1827 to 1835. He led fights against imprisonment for debt, property and religious qualifications on voting, religious tests for witnesses in court, and grants of special privilege by the legislature. He disliked banks. He fathered Connecticut's general incorporation law, which became a model for other states. On June 16, 1835, he married Mary Jane Hale of Lewistown, Pennsylvania They had nine children.

A devoted Jeffersonian democrat who believed in freedom for the individual, strict construction, and state rights, Welles helped organize Jacksonian Democracy in Connecticut and was always depended on by Jackson for advice and support. He was elected state comptroller of public accounts in 1835, 1842, and 1843. Jackson appointed him postmaster of Hartford in 1836, and he served until Harrison removed him in 1841. As chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing for the Navy, 1846--49, he made friend ships and acquired experience that were later to prove valuable. He was an unsuccess ful Democratic candidate for Congress in 1834 and for the Senate in 1850. On frequent trips to Washington during thirty-five years and on at least five journeys to the West, Welles made a host of friends among important leaders. He seldom forgot a face, a name, or a personality. He was an uncanny judge of men.

He left the Democratic party on the slavery question, and helped organize the Republican party when the Democrats supported the Kansas-Nebraska bill. In 1856 he helped establish the Republican organ, the Hartford Evening Press, and became one of its chief political writers. He contributed an important series of articles to the New York Evening Post and the National Intelligencer in the exciting ante-bellum days. In 1855 William Cullen Bryant spoke of him as "long a valued correspondent of the Evening Post" whose "newspaper style is much better than that of almost any correspondent we have" (W. C. Bryant to Welles, July 17, 1855) . He was an unsuccess ful candidate for the governorship of Connecticut in 1856, Republican national committeeman and member of the national executive committee from 1856 to 1864, and head of Connecticut's delegation to the Chicago convention. Always a moderate, he deprecated extremists of both sections.

Soon after the election of 1860 Lincoln chose him as the New England member of his cabinet (J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 1890, volume III, 367), but did not offer him the place until March 3, 1861. As secretary of the navy under Lincoln and Johnson, 1861-69, Welles held that office longer than any previous incumbent. More prophetic than others, he foresaw that the war would be long. With similar foresight he told Chase in 1863 that reconciliation would at best require more than a generation (Diary, I, 412). He reorganized his department and created overnight a navy where there was none. What ships there were lay scattered over the world. Many officers joined the Confederate navy. In the Ordnance Bureau only two men remained loyal. Two important navy yards fell into Confederate hands. Welles's administration of the Navy Department was much criticized. Some mistakes he did make. The building of light-draft monitors was a costly blunder that arose from failure to supervise Stimers, whose previous record gave the department excessive confidence in him. The Norfolk navy yard need not have been sacrificed. Welles urged its defense, but the inability of the War Department to send protecting troops, the unwillingness of Lincoln to provoke Virginia into secession, and trust of disloyal subordinates by a loyal though hesitant elderly commandant led to its loss. Welles's orders if carried out would have saved at least the ships and armaments. Welles was accused of slowness and undue deliberation; yet he built an adequate navy from nothing with surprising speed. He was charged with extravagance; yet no other war-time business was conducted so economically. He was criticized for allowing his wife's brother-in-law, George D. Morgan, to collect a handsome commission for purchasing ships; yet the commission was normal, and Morgan drove excellent bargains. Several scandals developed in navy yards, but Welles was the first to investigate and punish offenders. No other department was more free from political favoritism. Doggedly he withstood demands for favors. He refused to yield to the demands of Hale for a navy yard in his district though that senator headed the naval committee (Welles to J. P. Hale, January 12, 1863). "The pretensions and arrogance of Senators become amazing," he exploded (Diary, I, 384). "I will not prostitute my trust to their schemes and selfish personal partisanship," he swore (Ibid., I, 327). He urged a new navy yard at Philadelphia in the face of pressure from his own state to locate it at New London. Welles was convinced that the New York press opposed him because he had offended an influential New Yorker when he refused to buy vessels through his agency (Ibid., II, 259-60). His masterly rebukes of naval officers delinquent in duty made him enemies but improved the efficiency of the service. Neither Wilkes's popularity nor Preble's famous name and powerful connections protected them when Welles decided that the good of the service required their removal. He reproved Porter for discourtesy and Phelps for seeking promotion through political pressure. Yet the same vigorous pen defended any officers who deserved it, and his letters of congratulation and praise made the heart glad.

His supervision of naval warfare was creditable. It is hard to determine how much of the credit belonged to him and how much to Gustavus V. Fox [q.v.] and to naval officers whom Welles trusted. Welles supervised most matters closely, and intelligently followed experiments in guns, in naval tactics, in new types of ship. He often personally wrote instructions for important engagements. He also knew how to choose reliable advisers and to cooperate with them effectively. Several claim credit for the capture of New Orleans, but Welles certainly contributed greatly to that victory. The failure of Samuel F. du Pont [q.v.] at Charleston led to endless disputes and made a bitter enemy of that officer, whom Welles blamed for lack of aggressiveness. "He has a reputation to preserve instead of one to make" (Diary, I, 247).

The greatest disputes arose over new ships. The navy had lagged behind France and Great Britain in adopting ironclads, but Welles sponsored their use. Some criticized him for slowness in developing them, others for using them at all. It is significant that in the face of expert and popular skepticism and ridicule Welles studied plans for ironclads as early as March 1861, had Dahlgren report in June on their development in France and Britain, and requested on July 4 and got from Congress a commission to study ironclads and money to build three, if the report was favorable. He conferred in July with the partner of John Ericsson [q.v.], saw Ericsson's plans in August, and was so impressed that he rushed Bushnell off to Washington to present them to the Naval Board and curtailed his own vacation in order to speak in their behalf. He signed a contract with Ericsson in September 1861, requested $12,000,000 for ironclads on December 2, and finally got the bill for $10,000,000 passed in the Senate by personal intervention. When, therefore, popular clamor for ironclads burst forth after the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac (Virginia) on March 7, he was already using for them $10,000,000 obtained while they were still ridiculed. In a letter of April 25, 1862, Ericsson gave the lie to the attack of the New York Herald on Welles and testified that he had cooperated admirably in building the Monitor. Welles also developed heavy ordnance, improved steam machinery, and armored cruisers. The much-criticized steam-engine of Benjamin F. Isherwood [q.v.] developed speed not equaled until years later. The exigencies of war made him concentrate on monitors useful against an enemy with no navy. As early as December 1862, however, he warned the naval committees that only fast ironclad cruisers could maintain the position of the Union against other naval powers. After the war, he urged enlargement of inadequate navy yards, their modernization to build, repair, and store ironclads, improvement in the selection of naval cadets, and the establishment of a "steam engineering" department at the Naval Academy. Porter, who disliked him, testified that he had "served his country, ... with fidelity and zeal, if not with conspicuous ability" (D. D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, 1885, p. 66). Lincoln wrote on July 25, 1863, "Your department has been conducted with admirable success." The blockade was successful; and naval attacks were often brilliantly executed. Welles's navy was an important factor in the crushing of the Confederacy.

Welles's contribution to the general policies of the government was as important as his departmental administration. He was a close observer and critic of the activities of the War Department and always distrusted Stanton (Diary, I, 58-69). In many campaigns he cooperated with the army but found it difficult to do so. Seward's interference in the Navy Department at the time of the Sumter expedition and his tendency to meddle and give orders to Welles and his subordinates annoyed Welles. He suspected Seward's motives (Ibid., I, 12, 36, 204-05, et passim). Yet when Seward was attacked by congressional enemies Welles loyally supported him. Welles urged the "closing" of Southern ports instead of  permitting other nations to recognize Confederate belligerency by blockading them. When the blockade was established he favored rigid enforcement. On July 22, 1861, long before the army acted, Welles ordered naval commanders to give protection to runaway slaves. On September 25 he issued orders to enlist them in the service. In 1862 3 he protested vigorously against Chase's deprecation of the currency (Ibid., I, 147, 167- 9, 232, 494). He opposed the admission of West Virginia as unconstitutional. In 1863 he deplored the suspension of habeas corpus, the arrest Vallandigham. and the suppression of the Chicago Times (Ibid. , I, 321-22, 432-35). He disliked the excessive use of power involved in freeing the slaves but favored this as a necessary war measure (Ibid., I, 144). In 1863 he had seen that emancipation involved not only moral and political but also industrial and social relations and wondered whether immediate, universal emancipation might not be injurious to master and slave alike (Ibid., I, 403). While others changed ground he contended to the end that the war was not fought against states but against rebellious individuals and that states could not secede (Ibid., I, 414). He backed Lincoln's moderate program and when Johnson became president supported his efforts to restore Southern states. He early urged Johnson to oust his enemies from office and use the patronage to support his policies (Ibid., II, , 398, 556). He helped force James Harlan, James Speed, and William Dennison [qq.v.] out of the cabinet and warned Johnson against Stanton's duplicity (Ibid., II, 398, 404). He supported the new conservative party movement of 1866. When the Radicals triumphed in 1866 he continued to urge upon them a program of moderation and to defend Southerners against Radical excesses. During the impeachment he gave Johnson vigorous support.

In 1868 he returned to the Democratic fold, in 1872 became a Liberal Republican, and in 1876 not only supported Tilden but also used his still-effective pen to attack the decision of the Electoral Commission. He convincingly maintained that he had stood consistently upon his principles while parties and politicians shifted ground. Between his retirement in 1869 and his death he published articles in the Galaxy (November-December 1871; April-May 1872; December 1872; May 1873; October, November, December 1873; September, October 1876; January-February, October, November, December 1877) which remain important historical documents. One of these was expanded and published as Lincoln and Seward (1874). His painstaking diary is a storehouse of historical data, though in its published form (Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 volumes, 1911) there is no indication of the corrections and revisions made in later years by Welles himself (H. K. Beale, in American Historical Review, April 1925, pp. 547-52).

Welles had a commanding figure; yet his bounteous white whiskers and wig gave him benignity. To the navy and to Lincoln he was ''Father Welles," to Governor Andrew of Massachusetts "that old Mormon deacon." An Episcopalian by faith, he was deeply religious. A New England conscience, a keen sense of duty, and a methodical mind made him a dependable public servant. An unusual memory, interest in people, and capacity for shrewd analysis of character gave him a wide knowledge of politicians; his letters and diary contain remarkable sketches of his contemporaries. Since he was no orator and his editorials were usually unsigned, others gained greater fame, but a vigorous political style and access to leading newspapers gave him far reaching influence. Throughout the stormy days of the war he maintained poise and calmness that often encouraged but in crises irritated his associates. Realism and unusual common sense prevented too great disappointment on his part when men fell short of his standards. His severer qualities were softened by marked human kindness, loyalty to friends, and a love of amusing anecdote. Never brilliant, he was competent and, above all, faithful and honest. Pronouncing him "a very wise, strong man," Dana said : "There was nothing decorative about him; there was no noise in the street when he went along; but he understood his duty, and did it efficiently, continually, and unvaryingly" (C. A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War, 1898, p. 170).

[MS. diaries, letters, and articles in Library of Congress; obituary by William Faxon in the Hartford Daily Courant, February 12, 1878; C. O. Paullin, "A Half Century of Naval Administration in America, 1861-19II," U. S. Naval Institute Proc., volumes XXXVIII, XXXIX (1912-13); C. B. Boynton, History of the Navy during the Rebellion (1876-78); F. M. Bennett, The Steam Navy of the U.S. (1896); J. P. Baxter, The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship (1933); H.K. Beale, The Critical Year (1930), for Welles's course under Johnson; Albert Welles, History of the Welles Family (1876); J. H. Trumbull, The Memorial History of Hartford County, Connecticut. (2 volumes, 1886); H. R. Stiles, The History of Ancient Wethersfield (1904), II, 776-77.]

H. K. B-e.


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