Encyclopedia of Civil War Biography - Cra-Cuy
CRAFT, Ellen, 1827-1900, African American, author, former slave who escaped to freedom in 1848 with William Craft. Wrote Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, 1860.
See also Craft, William
(Drake, 1950, pp. 137-138; Hersch, 1978; Mabee, 1970, pp. 285-286, 290, 302, 303, 316, 336; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 53, 246; Smedley, 1969, pp. 51, 184, 209, 246-247, 464, 489; Still, 1883; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 647; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 315)
Chapter: “Workings of the Fugitive Slave Act,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.
Sometimes, however, this monotony of gloom was relieved by some pleasant episode, in which the heroism and strategy of the pursued were crowned with success, and the selfish purposes of the pursuer were foiled. Of this character were the escape of William and Ellen Crafts of Georgia, and the unsuccessful attempt to arrest and return them to bondage. Ellen, whose complexion was very light, dressed herself in male attire, and personated a young planter, afflicted with consumptive tendencies, on his way north to obtain medical advice. William was a Negro, without admixture of blood; and he acted the part of a family servant, greatly devoted to his young master. They took the public routes, mingled with the passengers, and arrived safely in Massachusetts, where they were cordially welcomed by the friends of the slave. The slave-hunter not only failed in his attempt, but the attempt itself to arrest them, which was made in October, 1850, excited the deepest interest, raised up for them friends, and procured for them aid, which resulted in the discomfiture of their pursuers and in their escape to England. And not only did they escape, but those who sought their re-enslavement became the objects of such uncomfortable notoriety in Boston that they were followed in the streets, pointed out as slave-hunters, waited upon at their hotel, and advised to leave while they were unmolested.
Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, learning that Hughes and Knight were in the city in pursuit of the fugitives, informed Mrs. George S. Hillard -- a friend of not only the Crafts, but of fugitives generally -- of the fact. She at once communicated the facts to them. Crafts armed and barricaded himself in his shop, declaring that he would never be taken alive. Ellen was taken out of the city to the home of Ellis Gray Loring. But, fearing that she would not be safe there from the kid nappers, Theodore Parker took her to his own home and kept her there until the slave-hunters had left the city. Mr. Parker armed himself and put his house in a state of defence. “For two weeks," he said,” I wrote my sermons with a sword in the open drawer under my inkstand, and a pistol in the flap of the desk, loaded and ready, with a cap on the nipple." Before William Crafts fled from the United States to England they were married by Mr. Parker according to the laws of Massachusetts. He gave William a sword, and told him of his “manly duty” "to defend the life and liberty of Ellen," and gave them both a Bible to be “a symbol of their spiritual culture."
Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 325-326.
CRAFT, William, c. 1826-1890, African American author, former slave who escaped to freedom in 1848 with Ellen Craft. Wrote Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, 1860.
(Drake, 1950, pp. 137-138; Hersch, 1978; Mabee, 1970, pp. 285-286, 290, 302, 303, 316, 336; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 53, 246; Smedley, 1969, pp. 51, 184, 209, 246-247, 464, 489; Still, 1883; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 648; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 315)
CRAGIN, Aaron H., senator, born in Weston, Vermont, 3 February, 1821. He received a common-school education, studied law, and was admitted to the bar at Albany, New York, in 1847. He moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire, and began practice in that year, was elected to the New Hampshire legislature in 1852, and served till 1855, when he entered Congress, having been chosen by the American Party. He was reelected in 1856, and served till 3 March, 1859. He was returned to the legislature in that year, and was a delegate to the Republican National Convention at Chicago in 1860. In 1865 he was elected U. S. Senator from New Hampshire, and served as chairman of the committee on contingent expenses of the Senate; was re-elected to the Senate in 1871, and was chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs. He was one of the commissioners appointed for the sale of the Hot Springs of Arkansas. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 764-765
CRAIG, James, soldier, born in Pennsylvania, 7 May, 1820. He studied law and moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, where he began practice. In the Mexican War he was a captain in the Missouri mounted rifles from August, 1847, till November, 1848. He was state attorney for the Twelfth Judicial Circuit in 1852-'6, and was then elected to Congress as a Democrat, serving from 7 December, 1857, till 3 March, 1861. President Lincoln appointed him brigadier-general of volunteers, 21 March, 1862, and he served in the west. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 765
CRAIGHILL, William Price, soldier, born in Charlestown, Jefferson County, West Virginia, 1 July, 1833. After attending Charlestown Academy he entered the U.S. Military Academy, where he was graduated in 1853, standing second in a class of fifty- two, and was assigned to the engineer company. He superintended the building of Fort Delaware in 1858, was made first lieutenant on 1 July, 1859, and served most of the time till 1864 at the Military Academy as instructor, treasurer, and in command of an engineer detachment there. He was made captain on 3 March, 1863, was engaged in constructing defences for Pittsburg when it was threatened by Morgan and other raiders, and was chief engineer of the middle department from April till June, 1864. He was brevetted lieutenant-colonel, 13 March, 1865, for his services in the defence of Cumberland Gap, and was made major on 23 November, serving on the board for carrying out in detail the modifications of the New York defences from 20 June till 10 November, 1865. From 1865 till 1867 he superintended the defences of Baltimore Harbor. Since then he has been engaged on a great number of important works, including the improvement of the Potomac near Washington, from 1870 till 1874, that of the Appomattox River, 1870–’71, and of the Delaware in 1873. He was sent to examine movable dams and other works in France and Great Britain in 1877-'8. On 2 January, 1881, he was promoted to lieutenant- colonel. Colonel Craighill is a member of the Maryland Historical Society, and was a delegate to the general convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1880, 1883, and 1886. He has compiled “Army Officer's Pocket Companion” (New York: 1861); translated Dufour's “Cours de tactiques” (1863); and, jointly with Captain Mendell, General Jomini's “Précis de l'art de la guerre” (1862). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 766.
CRAM, Thomas Jefferson, soldier born in New Hampshire about 1807; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 20 December, 1883. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1826, standing fourth in a class of forty-one, and served there as assistant professor of mathematics in 1826-'9, and of natural and experimental philosophy in 1829-'36. He resigned on 16 September, 1836, and was for two years assistant engineer on railroads in Maryland and Pennsylvania. He was reappointed, with the rank of captain, 7 July, 1838, and served as topographical engineer on various surveys. He aided m making military reconnaissance in Texas in 1845-46 and in 1855-'8 was chief topographical engineer, Department of the Pacific. He was promoted to major, 6 August, 1861, to lieutenant-colonel on 9 September, and was transferred to the Engineer Corps on 3 March, 1863. From 1861 till 1863 he acted as aide-de-camp to General Wool, being engaged in the capture of Norfolk, Virginia, 10 May, 1862. He was made colonel on 23 November, 1865, and on 13 January, 1866, was brevetted brigadier-general and major-general in the regular army for his services during the Civil War. After this he served on boards of engineers for the improvement of harbors on the great lakes, and on 22 February, 1869, was retired Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 767.
CRANDALL, Phineas, abolitionist, Fall River, Massachusetts, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1834-36, 1839-1840.
CRANDALL, Prudence, 1803-1889, Canterbury, Connecticut, Society of Friends, Quaker, educator, abolitionist.
(Dumond, 1961, pp. 211-217; Foner, 1984; Fuller, 1971; Goodell, 1852, pp. 393, 436; Mabee, 1970, pp. 148, 149, 150, 373; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 247-248; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 13, 89, 199, 203, 211, 223; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 768; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 192-193; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 667; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 307)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
CRANDALL, Prudence, educator, born in Hopkinton, Rhode Island, 3 September, 1803. She was educated at the Friends' boarding-school in Providence, and in 1831, under the patronage of residents of the town, established the Canterbury, Connecticut, boarding-school. In 1833 her school had become one of the best of its kind in the state. At this time Miss Crandall admitted a young Negro girl as a pupil, and thereby incurred the displeasure of nearly all her former patrons, who threatened to withdraw their daughters from her care. Opposition strengthened her decision to educate the oppressed race, and, after consultation with several of the anti-slavery leaders, she issued a circular announcing that on the first Monday of April, 1833, she would open a school “for the reception of young ladies and little misses of color.” “Terms, $25 per quarter, one half paid in advance.” In the list of references are the names of Arthur Tappan, Samuel J. May, William Lloyd Garrison, and Arnold Buffum. The circular was first published in the “Liberator” of 2 March, 1833. In Canterbury there was great indignation, and several public meetings were held. Messrs. May and Buffum appeared on behalf of Miss Crandall, but were denied a hearing on the ground that they were interlopers. The town pledged itself to oppose the school, and a petition was sent to the legislature, praying for an act prohibiting private schools for non-resident colored persons. Such an act was passed in May; but in the meantime, in spite of all opposition, Miss Crandall had opened her school, and began her work with a respectable number of pupils. She was arrested and imprisoned under the new law, and in August and October was twice brought to trial. She was convicted, and the case was then carried up to the supreme court of errors, where judgment was reversed on a technicality in July, 1834. Pending this decision, Miss Crandall was the object of persecutions of the most annoying description. The term “boycott,” not then known, best describes the measures that were taken to compel the suspension of her school. Finally her house was set on fire and the building so damaged by a mob that it was, deemed best to abandon the undertaking. Such was the beginning of the higher education for colored people in New England. After the breaking up of her school, she married the Reverend Calvin Philleo, a Baptist clergyman, who died in 1876. They lived at various places in New York and Illinois, and she now (1886) resides in Elk Falls, Kansas. Miss Crandall's portrait was painted by Francis Alexander in 1838, for the American Anti-Slavery Society, and became the property of Samuel J. May, who gave it to Cornell University, in the library of which it is still preserved. The illustration presented above is from that portrait. Her life has been written by the Reverend John C. Kimball (a pamphlet, printed privately, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 768.
Chapter: “Hostility to Colored Schools: Miss Crandall's School Suppressed,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872:
Miss Prudence Crandall, a member of the Society of Friends had established a good reputation as a teacher in Plainfield, Connecticut. In the autumn of 1832, invited by several prominent citizens, she purchased a large house in the village of Canterbury, and established a school for young ladies in the higher branches of education. A few mol1ths after comme11cing her: school, she admitted Sarah Harris, a colored girl, a member of the village church. She had attended the district school, and desired, to use her own words, '' to get a little more learning, enough to teach colored children! Although she had been a classmate of some of Miss Crandall's pupils in the district school, objection was soon raised to her remaining in this institution, and remonstrances were made by several patrons of the new school against her continuance, though some of them belonged to the same church, and though they knew nothing to her discredit, except that she belonged to the proscribed race. But their prejudices against color and their pride of caste were aroused, and they were resolved it should never be said that their daughters "went to school with a nigger." Miss Crandall had invested all her property in the building, and had incurred something of a debt besides; and the alternative presented to her of dismissing that colored girl or losing her white pupils was a sore trial. She, however, met the issue bravely, grandly, and in the spirit of self -abnegation and devotion to principle, leaving the event with God.
Having determined on her course, she advertised that at the commencement of her next term, her school would be opened for young ladies and little misses of color, and others who might wish to attend. The people of Canterbury, on learning the fact, were greatly enraged and thrown into intense excitement. A town meeting was called on the 9th of March, before the term began, to adopt measures to avert or abate the threatened" nuisance." In the meantime Miss Crandall was grossly insulted and slandered. Reverend Samuel J. May, then a pastor in the neighboring town of Brooklyn, George W. Benson, and Arnold Buffum, president and agent of the New England Antislavery Society, were com missioned by her to represent her cause at the town meeting. At the meeting resolutions were introduced protesting against the opening of such a school, and suggesting the appointment of the selectmen to wait upon Miss Crandall and persuade her, if possible, to relinquish the project. Andrew T. Judson, a Democratic politician, afterward a member of Congress and judge of the District Court of the United States, resided on Canterbury Green, in a house adjoining the building of the school; and this Democrat was horrified that a· school for Negro girls was to be opened near his mansion. Confessedly a leader in this mean· and cruel crusade against that noble woman and her benevolent design, he, addressed the meeting in a strain of bitter and relentless hostility, and avowed his determined purpose to defeat it.
When he closed, Mr. Buffum and Mr. May presented a letter to the moderator from Miss Crandall, requesting that they might be heard in her behalf. But Judson and others sprang to their feet, and with clenched fists admonished them to be silent. They were not permitted to speak, and she was thus denied even the courtesy of a hearing. And yet these gentlemen went to the meeting ready to agree with the people of the town, if they would repay to Miss Crandall what they had advised her to give for the house and allow her time to remove, that she would transfer her school to some more retired part of the town and vicinity. But the meeting would hear nothing, and adjourned with the purpose to crush the enterprise with or without law.
Notwithstanding, however, this opposition, the school was opened with some fifteen or twenty pupils. Then commenced the most disgraceful persecutions. Her pupils were insulted whenever they appeared in the village, the stores were closed against her and them, her well was filled with filth, and her house was repeatedly assailed. An attempt was made under the Vagrant Act to drive her young pupils from the town; but, on Mr. May and other Brooklyn citizens giving bonds to the amount of ten thousand dollars, that scheme was abandoned. Baffled in their attempts, Mr. Judson and the town authorities repaired to the legislature and secured the passage of a law providing that no person should establish in that State any school or other literary institution for the education of colored persons who were not inhabitants of the state, nor harbor or board any colored person not an inhabitant of the state for that purpose, without the consent in writing from the selectmen of the town in which such school or institution might be instituted. This act, disgraceful alike in its passage and provisions, was received by the inhabitants of Canterbury and vicinity with firing of cannon, ringing of bells, and other demonstrations of general rejoicing.
A few days after its passage, Mr. May and George W. Benson visited Miss Crandall, to advise with her in regard to that inhuman arid wicked enactment by which a woman might be fined and imprisoned for giving instruction to colored children. After consultation, it was determined, should she be prosecuted, that she should remain in the hands of those with whom the hideous act originated. On the 27th of June Miss Crandall was arrested, brought before two justices of the peace, and committed to take her trial at the next term of the county court, in the month of August. Mr. May and his friends were informed that she was in the hands of the sheriff, and would be committed to jail unless bonds were given for her appearance. According to agreement, however, the bonds were not given, and the responsibility was thrown upon the framers of that infamous statute of giving the required sureties themselves, or of committing an unoffending woman to jail. A man had recently been confined in the jail for the murder of his wife. The jailer, at the request of Mr. May, had his cell put in order for her comfortable reception, should she be sent there. The sheriff and jailer saw and felt that her incarceration would bring dishonor upon the state and deep disgrace upon her persecutors, and they lingered, in the hope that something might be done to avert the disagreeable alternative.
But she and her friends remained firm. When night came, that brave and devoted woman was delivered into the hands of the jailer, and led into the cell from which a murderer had: just passed to execution. Her friends retired, and she remained in the prison till the morning, when the required bonds were given. The intelligence of these proceedings went over the country, exciting no small amount of feeling in all, and in the better portion of the community intense indignation at the inhuman law and the scandalous proceedings that preceded and led to its enactment. Arthur Tappan, with characteristic promptness and generosity, wrote at once to Mr. May, indorsing his conduct, authorizing him to spare no reasonable cost in her defence, employ the ablest counsel, and consider him responsible for the expense. Accordingly, Hon. William W. Ellsworth, Hon. Calvin Goddard, and Hon. Henry Strong, eminent members of the Connecticut bar, were retained. These distinguished lawyers expressed the opinion that the law was clearly unconstitutional, and would be so pronounced by a competent judicial tribunal.
But the persecution against Miss Crandall went on. Even physicians refused to attend the sick of her family. The trustees of the church forbade her to come with any of her family into the house of the Lord. But her friends stood by her with unfaltering devotion. Arthur Tappan left his pressing business, visited her, and was deeply affected by her heroism and the courage and trust with which she inspired her pupils. To Mr. May he said: "The cause of the whole oppressed race of our country is to be much affected by the decision of this question. You are almost helpless without the press. You must issue a paper, publish it largely, send it to all persons whom you know in the county and state, and to all the principal newspapers throughout the country. Many will E1ubscribe for it and contribute largely to its support, and I will pay whatever it may cost." Thus encouraged and supported by the deep sympathy, large-hearted benevolence, and sagacious counsel of Mr. Tappan, Mr. May commenced the publication of a paper called the “Unionist " Charles C. Burleigh, then living with his parents in the neighboring town of Plainfield, assisting them on their farm, and at the same time pursuing his legal studies, was sought out and made its editor. Mr. Burleigh thus commenced his antislavery career, which he pursued with earnest fidelity to the end of the system he helped to destroy. By common consent, his talents and forensic abilities were acknowledged to be of a high order. None ever doubted his conscientiousness; though many regretted certain idiosyncrasies of mind and manner, which unquestionably impaired somewhat his usefulness, as they marred the general symmetry of his character.
On the 23d of August, 1833, the trial of Miss Crandall for the crime of teaching a school for colored girls was commenced in the court of Windham County, Judge Joseph Eaton presiding. Mr. Judson, her persecutor and prosecutor, took the lead. He denied that colored persons were citizens in the states where they were not enfranchised, and he insolently inquired why a man should be educated who could not be a freeman. She was defended with signal ability. Though Judge Eaton charged that he regarded the law as constitutional, the jury failed to return a verdict for conviction. It was understood that seven were for it, and five were for acquittal.
Foiled in this attempt to procure conviction, and impatient of delay, the prosecutors of the suit, refusing to wait for the December term of the same court, commenced a new trial before Judge Daggett, of the Supreme Court. The judge, a native of Massachusetts, had risen rapidly in his profession, had served in the United States Senate, and was then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut. He was known to have little sympathy with the colored people, and to have been an advocate of the new law. Of course, no great surprise was felt at his adverse decision. In an elaborate opinion, he maintained the constitutionality of the law, and declared that he was not aware that free blacks were styled citizens in the laws of Congress, or of any of the states. The jury rendered a verdict against Miss Crandall, and her counsel at once, filed a bill of exceptions and appealed the case. Before the highest tribunal her case was argued in July, 1834. That court, however, decided that the case ought to be quashed for legal informality, and tamely evaded the constitutional question by declaring it “unnecessary for the court to come to any decision on the question as to the constitutionality of the law."
Soon after this failure an unsuccessful attempt was made to burn Miss Crandall's house. In spite, however, of persecutions, insults, imprisonments, and the attempt to destroy her dwelling, this brave woman struggled on in her work of disinterested benevolence. But her enemies were determined and implacable. On the 9th of September, near the hour of midnight, her house was assaulted with clubs, doors and windows were broken in, and the building left nearly untenantable. Her few friends, having been invited to look up on the scene of desolation, and deeming further effort unavailing, if not perilous to life and limb, advised the abandonment of the enterprise. Acting upon this advice, the heroic lady, who had breasted and braved the violence of the mob and the undisguised intolerance of the community for seventeen months, disbanded her school, and sent twenty young girls to their homes, whose only offence, their enemies being judges, was the color of their skin and their strong desire to learn. Mr. May states that when he gave that advice the words blistered his lips and his bosom glowed with indignation. “I felt ashamed," he said, "of Canterbury, ashamed of Connecticut, ashamed of my country, ashamed of my color."
It is in the light of such facts that the deep degradation and demoralization reached by even the New England of those days appears, when not only the demands of humanity and religion were resisted, but the peculiar claims of womanhood and childhood were rudely and roughly ignored. A lonely and, from all that appears, a lovely woman of culture and character, at the head of a seminary of learning, yields to the importunity of a colored girl of seventeen to get a little more learning, that she may teach the children of her race, encounters the rough hostility of the whole community, with hardly a dissenting voice in the church or out of it, and is compelled to accept the cruel alternative of turning her back, or of relinquishing the patronage of those on the faith in whom· she embarked her all and ventured on the enterprise. The scene shifts.
A new act in the drama, a real tragedy, without its blood, opens. The same brave woman, true to her convictions and deaf to the claims of selfish fear and interest, appears upon the stage with twenty young girls, coming up from as many lonely homes of a proscribed people, anxious to learn. To aid them, to educate twenty immortal minds for their high mission on earth, she not only sacrifices position and popular favor, but bows beneath the crushing weight of public obloquy, and hazards, not to say sacrifices, her pecuniary means without reserve. And what had the public of Canterbury and Connecticut for such sublime devotion to principle, for such heroic self-sacrifice? Social ostracism, personal insult, exclusion from God's house, a criminal trial, conviction and incarceration in a murderer's cell! Nor was this the work of unprincipled politicians and fellows of the baser sort alone. The town and its church, the county and its court, the state and its legislature, all joined in this dark business and contributed to this sad result.
Do questions rush to the lip? How could such things happen? How could there be philanthropy, or piety, or even common honesty and humanity, or anything but barbarism, in a community which could enact or tolerate such scenes? And yet there may have been for perfect consistency is a "jewel" rarely found, an exotic which seldom blooms on earth.
And yet these facts are both a puzzle and a mortification, antagonistic alike to the doctrines of the Decalogue and of the Declaration of Independence. So intensely unchristian, barbarous, and despotic, they provoke, if they do not entirely justify, the severe criticisms against both the Christianity and republicanism not only of those but of later days. For these facts were but representative of much that was then taking place throughout the country, and which afterward transpired.
These scenes of Canterbury were hardly more disgraceful than those which were witnessed twenty years later in Boston, at the rendition of Anthony Burns. Andrew T. Judson, commanding the silence of the committee appearing in behalf of Miss Crandall, in that old meeting-house at Canterbury, was no more an instrument of the Slave Power than was Mr. Webster, years afterward, demanding from the steps of the Revere House, in Boston, that the citizens of New England should "learn to conquer their prejudices." The trustees of that church, excluding Prudence Crandall and her pupils from the house of God, were hardly more obnoxious to just condemnation than were the Fugitive Slave Act discourses and "South Side Views" of subsequent years. They all reveal the sad truth that the virus of slavery was coursing through the veins of the body politic, destroying its healthy action, weakening its powers of reason and conscience, so that the language of the prophet seems not too strong: “The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint."
Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 240-247.
CRANE, William, 1790-1866, Richmond, Virginia, merchant, philanthropist. Active supporter of the American Colonization Society in the Richmond auxiliary. Created the Richmond African Baptist Ministry Society as a part of the Richmond Baptist Foreign Ministry Society. (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 1; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 109, 128.
CRANE, Charles Henry, Surgeon-General, U. S. A., born in Newport, Rhode Island, 19 July, 1825; died in Washington, D. C., 10 October, 1883. He was graduated at Yale in 1844, and studied medicine at Harvard Medical School. In 1847 he passed the examination as acting assistant surgeon, and was at once ordered to Mexico, and, after attaining the full grade of assistant surgeon, served with the army of invasion till July, 1848. During the ten years that followed he was stationed in almost every state and territory of the Union, and was repeatedly in the field with expeditionary forces against the Indians, notably that against the Rogue River Tribe in 1850. He was promoted surgeon, 21 May, 1861, and in February, l862, was assigned to duty as medical director. Department of Key West. On 30 June he was appoints medical director, Department of the South. In September, 1863, he was placed on duty in the surgeon-general's office in Washington, and became assistant surgeon-general, with the rank of colonel, 28 July, 1866. On the retirement of Surgeon General Barnes, 3 July, 1882, he became surgeon-general of the U. S. Army. He received brevets to include the rank of brigadier-general in the regular service at the close of the Civil War. One of his most noteworthy characteristics was the facility with which he managed the complicated routine of his office, and the good judgment that he brought to bear in reconciling the often conflicting interests of the Army Medical Corps when it was at its numerical maximum during the Civil War. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 1
CRAPO, Henry H., governor of Michigan, born in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, 24 May, 1804; died in Flint, Michigan, 23 July, 1869. He early moved to New Bedford, where he resided until 1857, when he settled in Michigan. For many years he was extensively engaged in the manufacture and sale of lumber, and also held important political offices. He was elected mayor of Flint, subsequently served in the state senate, and was twice chosen governor of the state, holding that office from 1864 till 1868. During the Civil War he rendered important services to the cause of the Union. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 2.
CRAVATH, Erastas Milo, 1833-1900, Homer, New York, clergyman, educator, abolitionist, Union Army soldier. Field agent for the American Missionary Association (AMA), 1865. Established schools for former slaves. Co-founder of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee in 1866.
CRAVEN, Thomas Tingey, naval officer, born in Washington, D. C., 30 December, 1808. He was the oldest son of Tunis Craven, of the U. S. Navy, and his wife, Hannah Tingey, daughter of Commodore Thomas Tingey, also of the U. S. Navy. Young Craven attended school in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, until in 1822, when he entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, and from 1823 till 1828 served in the Pacific Squadron on the “ United States" and on the "Peacock." In 1828 he joined the "Erie," of the West India Squadron, as sailing-master, and took part in the capture of the pirate "Federal." After being commissioned lieutenant in 1830, he spent three years in cruising on the " Boxer." and in 1885-'6 was attached to the receiving-ship at New York, after which he joined the "John Adams." In 1838 he commanded the "Vincennes," Captain Wilkes's flag-ship in the Antarctic exploring Expedition. He then served on the " Boxer, "Fulton," "Monroe," 'Macedonia," and "Porpoise," principally in the African Squadron, after which, during 1846, he was attached to the naval rendezvous in New York. He then served on the " Ohio," in the Pacific Squadron, and on the “ Independence," in the Mediterranean Squadron, returning home in January, 1850. In the following July he was made commandant of midshipmen in the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, becoming commander in December, 1852, and remaining at the academy until June, 1855. After commanding the " Congress," of the Mediterranean Squadron, for several years, he was ordered to resume his post at Annapolis. In October, 1860, he was detached from this place, and, after a short time spent in recruiting-service in Portland, Maine, was commissioned captain in June, 1861, and assigned to the command of the Potomac Flotilla. In the autumn of 1861 he was placed in command of the “Brooklyn." participating in the capture of New Orleans and subsequent operations on the Mississippi. He was made commodore in July, 1862, and during the subsequent years of the Civil War commanded the "Niagara," on the coast of England and France. In September, 1866, he was placed in command of the U.S. Navy-yard at Mare Island, California, where he received, in October of the same year, his commission as rear-admiral, and continued there until August, 1868, when he assumed command of the Pacific Squadron. In December, 1869, he was retired, but continued on duty in San Francisco until that office was dispensed with. He now (1886) resides at Kittery Point, Maine Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 2-3.
CRAVEN, Tunis Augustus Macdonongh, naval officer, born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 11 January, 1813; died in Mobile Bay, Ala,, 5 August, 1864. He entered the U. S. Navy as a midshipman in February, 1829. and until 1837 served in different vessels, after which he was at his own request attached to the coast survey. In 1841 he was made a lieutenant and served in the "Falmouth" until 1843, when he was transferred to the "North Carolina." Three years later he was connected with the Pacific Squadron as lieutenant of the "Dale," and participated in the conquest of California. In 1849 he returned east, and for some time afterward was associated in the work of the coast-survey, having command of various vessels attached to this bureau. He commanded the Atrato Expedition which left New York in October, 1857, for the purpose of surveying the Isthmus of Darien by way of the Atrato River for a ship-canal. Later he commanded the "Mohawk," stationed off the coast of Cuba to intercept slavers. On one occasion he captured a brig containing 500 Negroes, who were afterward sent to Africa and liberated. He also saved the crew of a Spanish merchant vessel, for which he was presented by the queen of Spain with a gold medal and a diploma. About the same time the New York board of underwriters presented Mrs. Craven with a silver service of plate for the efficient services rendered to merchant vessels while at sea by her husband. At the beginning of the Civil War he was , placed in command of the "Crusader," and was instrumental in preserving for the Union the fortress at Key West. In April, 1861, he was made a commander, and ordered to the charge of the "Tuscarora," in search of Confederate cruisers. While so occupied he succeeded in blockading the "Sumter," so that, after it had been kept a close prisoner for two months in Gibraltar, the officers and crew deserted her. On his return home, he was given command of the monitor "Tecumseh," and directed to join the James River Flotilla. A few months later he was attached to Admiral Farragut's Squadron, then collected for the attack on Mobile. In the subsequent battle the "Tecumseh" was given the post of honor, and on the morning of 5 August, leading the fleet, she fired the first shot at 6:47 A. M. The general orders to the various commanders directed them, in order to avoid the line of torpedoes at the entrance of the bay, to pass eastward of a certain red buoy and directly under the guns of Fort Morgan. The Confederate ram "Tennessee" was on the port-beam of the "Tecumseh," inside of the line of torpedoes, and Craven, in his eagerness to engage the ram, passed to the west of the buoy, when suddenly the monitor reeled and sank with almost everyone on board, destroyed by a torpedo. As the "Tecumseh" was going down, Commodore Craven and his pilot, John Collins, met at the foot of the ladder leading to the top of the turret. Craven, knowing it was through no fault of the pilot, but by his own command, that the fatal change in her course had been made, stepped back, saying: "After you, pilot." There was no "after" for him. When the pilot reached the top round, the vessel seemed "to drop from under him," and no one followed. A buoy that swings to and fro with the ebb and flow of the tide marks the scene of Commodore Craven's bravery and of his death, and beneath, only a few fathoms deep, lies the "Tecumseh." He has been called the "Sydney" of the American Navy. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 3-4.
CRAVEN, Charles Henderson, naval officer, son of Thomas Tingey, born in Portland, Maine, 30 November, 1843, was graduated at the U. S. U.S. Naval Academy in 1863, promoted to ensign, and served in that capacity in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron until 1865. He participated in many of the engagements in the vicinity of Charleston and Savannah during 1863-'4, and was attached to the " Housatonic " when she was blown up in February, 1864. During 1865-'7 he served in the European Squadron on the " Colorado," and was commissioned lieutenant-commander in November, 1866. He then served on the "Wampanoag," and was made lieutenant-commander in March, 1868, after which he was attached to the Pacific Squadron. Subsequently he served on shore duty at Mare Island, California In 1874 he became executive officer of the "Kearsarge," of the Pacific Squadron, and later of the " Monocacy." He was detached from duty in June, 1879, broken down by over-work, and was retired in May, 1881. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 4.
CRAVEN, Henry Smith, son of Thomas Tingey, civil engineer, born in Bound Brook, New Jersey, 14 October, 1845, studied in St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, and later in the scientific department of Hobart, but was not graduated, as he entered the army shortly before the close of the Civil War. He obtained employment on the Croton works in New York City, but in 1866 went to California and became secretary, with the rank of lieutenant, to his father, then commanding the North Pacific Squadron, and in 1869 was appointed assistant civil engineer of the U.S. Navy-yard at Mare Island. This office he resigned in 1872, and then practised his profession in San Francisco until 1879. He was commissioned civil engineer in the U. S. Navy during the latter year, and ordered to Chester, Pennsylvania, where he was occupied with the construction of the iron floating dock then building for the Pensacola Navy-yard. Later he was ordered to the U.S. Navy-yard at League Island, Pennsylvania, and in July, 1881, was sent to the U.S. Navy-yard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and in September, 1882, assigned to special duty at Coaster's Harbor training station. He was granted leave of absence in 1883, and took charge of the construction of the new Croton Aqueduct in New York, up to March, 1886. He is the inventor of an automatic trip for mining buckets (1876), and of a tunneling machine (1883). Mr. Craven was given the honorary degree of B. S. by Hobart in 1878, and is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p.4.
CRAWFORD, George Washington, lawyer, born in Columbia County, Georgia, 22 December, 1798. He was graduated at Princeton in 1820, and after studying law with Richard Henry Wilde in Augusta, was admitted to the bar in 1822. He was appointed attorney-general of Georgia in 1827, and continued in that office until 1831. From 1837 till 1842 was a member of the legislature from Richmond County, with the exception of one year. He then was elected to Congress as a Whig to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Richard W. Habersham, and served from 7 February, 1843, till 3 March of the same year, during which he was also elected governor of Georgia, and re-elected in 1845. Later he held the office of Secretary of War in President Taylor's cabinet, serving from 7 March, 1849, till 15 August, 1850. On the death of the president Mr. Crawford resigned his portfolio, and subsequently spent some time in travel abroad, after which he returned to Georgia, where he has since resided in retirement at his home in Richmond County. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p.4.
CRAWFORD, Martin Jenkins, lawyer, born in Jasper County, Georgia, 17 March, 1820; died in Columbus, Georgia, 22 July, 1883. He was educated at Mercer University, and, after studying law, was admitted to the bar in 1839. For a while he followed his profession, but the death of his father caused him to give his attention to planting. From 1845 till 1847 he was a member of the state legislature, and in 1850 was a delegate to the Southern Convention held in Nashville during May. In 1853 he was made judge of the superior courts of the Chattahoochee Circuit, and held that office until his election to Congress as a Democrat, where he served from 3 December, 1855, until his withdrawal on 23 January, 1861. He was then elected by the convention of Georgia a delegate to the Confederate Provisional Congress, serving from January, 1861, till February, 1862, and subsequently was appointed one of the three commissioners sent to treat with the authorities in Washington for a peaceful separation of the states. During 1862 he raised the 3d Georgia Cavalry, and after a year's service was transferred to the staff of General Howell Cobb, with whom he continued until the close of the war. He then resumed the practice of his profession, and in 1875 was appointed judge of the superior courts of the Chattahoochee Circuit, to which office in 1877 he was reappointed for a term of eight years. In 1880 he was appointed associate justice of the supreme court of Georgia, to fill the unexpired term of Logan E. Bleckley, on the completion of which he became his own successor by appointment from the state legislature. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 4.
CRAWFORD, Samuel Wylie, soldier, born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, 8 November, 1829. He was graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1845, after which he studied medicine, and in 1851 became an assistant surgeon in the U. S. Army. He served in various forts in the southwest, principally in Texas, until 1860, when he was stationed at Fort Moultrie and later at Fort Sumter, being one of the garrison of that fort at the beginning of the Civil War, and having command of a battery during the bombardment. From that time till August, 1861, he was at Fort Columbus, New York Harbor. He then vacated his commission of assistant surgeon by accepting the appointment of major in the 13th Infantry, and in 1862 was commissioned a brigadier-general of volunteers. General Crawford served with distinction in the Shenandoah Campaign, being present at the battles of Winchester and Cedar Mountain, losing one half of his brigade in the last named action. At the battle of Antietam he succeeded General Mansfield in command of his division, and was severely wounded. Early in 1863 he was placed in command of the Pennsylvania reserves, then stationed about Washington, and with these troops, forming the 3d Division of the 5th Army Corps, he was engaged at Gettysburg, serving with great bravery. Subsequently he participated in all the operations of the Army of the Potomac until the close of the war. He was brevetted successively from colonel, in 1863, up to major-general in 1865, for conspicuous gallantry in the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Petersburg, Five Forks, and other engagements. General Crawford was mustered out of the volunteer service in 1866, and then served with his regiment in the south, becoming colonel of the 16th U.S. Infantry in February, 1869, and later of the 2d U.S. Infantry, he continued in the service until February, 1873, when, owing to disability resulting from wounds, he was retired with the rank of brigadier-general. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 4-5.
CREIGHTON. Johnston Blakeley, naval officer, born in Rhode Island, 12 November, 1822; died in Morristown. New Jersey, 13 November, 1883. He entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, 10 February, 1838, became a lieutenant, 9 October, 1853, commanded the steamer "Ottawa," of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, in 1862, commissioned as commander, 20 September, 1862, was on special duty in 1863, and in commander of the steamer " Mahaska," of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which was engaged in the bombardment of Forts Wagner and Gregg in August, 1863. He was transferred to the "Mingo," of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, and commanded that steamer till the close of the war. He was commissioned captain on 26 November, 1868, and became a commodore on 9 November, 1874. He was commandant of the Norfolk Navy-yard in 1879, and was retired with the rank of rear-admiral in 1883. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 7.
CRENSHAW, Walter Henry, born in Abbeville District, South Carolina, 7 July. 1817; died in Alabama in 1878. He was graduated at the University of Alabama in 1834, and was from 1838 till 1867 a member of either the upper or lower house of the Alabama Legislature, officiating as Speaker of the House in 1861-5, and President of the Senate in l865-7. In 1865 he was a member of the Constitutional Convention. He was afterward judge of the Butler County Criminal Court, and with two other commissioners codified the laws of the state. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 7.
CRESSON, Elliot, 1796-1854, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, philanthropist, supported American Colonization Society. (Staudenraus, 1961, pp. 125, 128, 193, 240, 189-190, 216-218, 224, 234, 238-239; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 7-8; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 540)
CRESSON, Elliott, philanthropist, born in Philadelphia, 2 March. 1796: died there. 20 February, 1854. He was a member of the Society of Friends, became a successful merchant in Philadelphia, and devoted his attention to benevolent objects, especially the promotion of the welfare of the Indians and Negroes in the United States. He conceived the intention of becoming a missionary among the Seminoles of Florida, but afterward gave his mind to the scheme of colonizing American Negroes in Africa, engaged in establishing the first colony of liberated slaves at Bassa Cove, on the Grain Coast, became president of the Colonization Society, and labored as its agent in New England in the winter of 1838-'9, in the southern states in 1839- 40, and in Great Britain in 1840-'2 and 1850-'3. He left in his will $122,000 to various benevolent institutions, and a lot, valued at $30,000, for a home for superannuated merchants and gentlemen. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 7-8.
CRESWELL, John Angel James, 1828-1891, statesman, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, 1863-1865. U.S. Senator 1865-. Supported the Union. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 8; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 541; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 726; Congressional Globe)
CRESWELL, John A. J., statesman, born in Port Deposit, Cecil County, Maryland, 18 November, 1828. He was graduated at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, in 1848, studied law, and was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1850. He was a member of the state legislature in 1860 and 1862, and assistant adjutant-general for Maryland in 1862-'3. He was elected to Congress, and served from 7 December, 1863, till 3 March, 1865; and, having distinguished himself as an earnest friend of the Union, was elected as a republican to the U. S. Senate in March, 1865, to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. On 22 February, 1866, he delivered, at the request of the House of representatives, a memorable eulogy of his friend and colleague, Henry Winter Davis. He was a delegate to the Baltimore Convention of 1864, the Philadelphia Loyalists' Convention of 1866, the Border States Convention held in Baltimore in 1867, and the Chicago Republican Convention of 1868. In May, 1868, he was elected secretary of the U. S. Senate, but declined. On 5 March, 1869, he was appointed by President Grant Postmaster-General of the United States, and served till 3 July, 1874. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 8.
Crispin, Silas, soldier, born in Pennsylvania about 1830. He was appointed to the U. S. Military Academy in 1846, and at graduation ranked third in his class. Assigned to duty at the arsenal at Watervliet, New York, he remained there two years, and then served successively at the arsenals at Alleghany, Pennsylvania, St. Louis, Missouri, and the Leavenworth Ordnance Depot in Kansas. In 1860 he became assistant inspector of arsenals. He was promoted captain of ordnance, 3 August, 1861, and in that grade served through the Civil War, having charge of different depots for the Ordnance Department. He received successive brevets to include that of colonel in the regular army at the close of the Civil War, but did not receive his promotion as major of ordnance until 7 March, 1867. On 14 April, 1875, he was promoted lieutenant-colonel, and colonel, 23 August, 1881. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 9
CRITTENDEN, John Jordan, statesman, born in Woodford County, Kentucky, 10 September, 1787; died near Frankfort, Kentucky, 26 July, 1863. His father served in the war of the Revolution, with the rank of major. The son was graduated at William and Mary College in 1807, and entered upon the practice of the law in his native county, but after a short time moved to Logan County, bordering on Tennessee, a thinly settled part of the state. In 1809 Governor Vinian Edwards appointed him attorney-general of the territory of Illinois. He served for a short time as a volunteer in the war of 1812, was aide to General Shelby in 1813, and served with Adair and Berry in the Canada Campaign. After leaving the army he resumed the practice of his profession, soon attaining a high place at the bar. In 1810 he was elected to the legislature, where he at once took a high rank. The next year he was elected to the U. S. Senate, but after three years' service he resigned his seat, and in 1819 took up his residence in Frankfort. Here he soon rose to eminence in the legal profession, especially as a criminal lawyer, and served several terms in the legislature. In 1827 he was appointed by President Adams U. S. District Attorney, but, on the accession of General Jackson to the presidency in 1829, he was removed. He was elected again to the U. S. Senate in 1835, and served a full term. In the remarkable canvass of 1840, Mr. Crittenden took an active part in favor of General Harrison. He was re-elected to the Senate at the expiration of his term, but resigned his seat to accept the appointment of attorney-general in Harrison's cabinet. On the death of Harrison, and the accession of Mr. Tyler, Mr. Crittenden's views of national policy not being in harmony with those of the new president, he retired from the cabinet. Mr. Clay having decided to retire from the Senate in 1842, Mr. Crittenden was appointed to fill the vacant scat; and at the expiration of the term was again elected for a full term. In 1848 he was elected governor of Kentucky, and resigned his seat in the Senate to fill that office. Notwithstanding the intimate relations between Mr. Clay and himself, he favored the nomination of General Taylor in 1848 as the Whig candidate for the presidency, but only after Mr. Clay had assured him that he would not be a candidate. When the president died, and Mr. Fillmore succeeded him, Mr. Crittenden accepted the portfolio of attorney-general in the new cabinet. The great question as to the constitutionality of the Fugitive-Slave Law was referred to him, and he prepared an opinion in favor of it. In 1855 he was once more elected to the Senate, and took a leading part in the discussions of the important questions that came before Congress in the course of the next five years. The sentiments uttered by him were eminently national, and he exerted his full strength in a patriotic effort to effect a satisfactory settlement of the disturbing elements that imperilled the perpetuity of the Union. He opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and, in expressing his views of the questions growing out of the Kansas troubles, vigorously opposed the policy of the administrations of Presidents Pierce and Buchanan. He favored the election of Bell and Everett in the presidential canvass of 1860. He vehemently opposed secession, and supported Mr. Lincoln's administration, holding that it was the right and duty of the government to maintain the Union by force. He exerted his full power to effect a compromise between the contending parties, but, failing to accomplish it, took his stand for the government. In the hope of maintaining the Union, he proposed an amendment to the constitution in December, 1860, providing for the re-enactment of the Missouri Compromise, and the prohibition of any interference by Congress with slavery wherever it should be legally established. Mr. Crittenden had been six times elected to the Senate, and his last effort in that body was to save the Union. On 4 March, 1861, he presented the credentials of his successor, Mr. Breckinridge, and retired returning to Kentucky, he urged his state to stand by the Union, and held it firmly against the appeals of the other states of the south. He became a candidate for a seat in Congress, and, being elected, took his place in the House of Representatives, where he was at once recognized as a powerful leader. He offered, on 19 July, 1861, the following resolution, which was adopted with only two dissenting votes: "Resolved by the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States, That the present deplorable Civil War has been forced upon the country by the disunionists of the southern states, now in arms against the constitutional government, and in arms around the capital; that in this national emergency congress, banishing all feelings of mere passion or resentment, will recollect its only duty to the whole country; that this war is not waged on their part in any spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the constitution, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease." He opposed the employment of slaves as soldiers, and he denied the power of Congress to organize the state of West Virginia. His last speech, delivered 22 February, 1863, showed that his force had not abated. He denounced the conscription bill, and declared that the war had been changed from its original purpose. He was again a candidate for Congress, but died before the election. Mr. Crittenden's personal qualities were fine. He made friends everywhere; there was cordiality blended with dignity in his manner; his voice was musical in conversation, and captivating in his public speeches. By Thomas Corwin and others of his compeers he was esteemed the most able debater in the Senate. —His son, George Bibb, born in Russellville, Kentucky, 20 March, 1812; died in Danville. Kentucky, 27 November, 1880, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1832, served in the Black Hawk Expedition, though not at the seat of war, and resigned, 30 April, 1833. He volunteered in the Texan revolution of 1835, and was taken prisoner at Meir, on the Rio Grande, by the Mexicans, who carried him with his company to the city of Mexico, where he was confined in a foul prison until released, through the intervention of Daniel Webster, nearly a year afterward. On one occasion the Mexicans decided to shoot a certain number of the prisoners as a measure of retaliation, and Crittenden, being an officer, was one of the first to draw lots to determine which of them should die. He drew a favorable lot, but when a friend who had a family drew a fatal black bean, he gave to that soldier his white bean, and risked his life in another chance. He served through the Mexican War as captain of mounted rifles, and was brevetted major for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, was one of the first to enter the city of Mexico, became major of mounted rifles, 15 April, 1848. served on frontier duty, was promoted lieutenant-colonel, 30 December, 1856, and on 10 June, 1861, resigned and joined the Confederate Service. He was commissioned brigadier-general, and soon afterward major-general, and was assigned, in November, 1861, to the command of southeastern Kentucky and a part of eastern Tennessee. On learning that General Zollicoffer had moved his forces across the Cumberland at Mill Spring, he gave orders to recross the river, but Zollicoffer delayed executing the order until the rise of the river rendered it impracticable to transport the artillery. When General Thomas approached with a large force, on 18 January, 1862, General Crittenden ordered an attack. The Confederates attempted to surprise the Union troops at Fishing Creek; but only two regiments came "up to begin the attack in the morning of 19 January, and after the death of General Zollicoffer the troops were demoralized. General Crittenden effected the retreat of his forces across the river, leaving the artillery behind, he was severely censured for making the attack, was kept under arrest until November, and soon afterward resigned his commission. He continued to serve as a volunteer on the staff of General John S. Williams, who frequently followed his advice and gave him the command of bodies of troops. After the war he resided in Frankfort, Kentucky, where he was state librarian from 1867 to 1871.—Another son, Thomas Leonidus, born in Russellville, Kentucky, 15 May, 1815, studied law under his father, was admitted to the bar, and became commonwealth's attorney in Kentucky in 1842. He served in the Mexican War as lieutenant-colonel of Kentucky Infantry, and was volunteer aide to General Taylor at the battle of Buena Vista. In 1849 he was appointed by President Taylor consul to Liverpool, and served till 1853, then returned to the United States, resided for some time at Frankfort, and afterward engaged in mercantile business at Louisville. Kentucky At the beginning of the Civil War he espoused the national cause, and on 27 October, 1861, was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers. He commanded a division at the battle of Shiloh, and was promoted major-general, 17 July, 1862, for gallant services on that occasion, and assigned to the command of a division in the Army of the Tennessee. He commanded the 2d Corps, forming the left wing of the Army of the Ohio under General Buell. and afterward served under General Rosecrans in the battle of Stone River, and at Chickamauga commanded one of the two corps that were routed. In the Virginia Campaign of 1864 he commanded a division of the 9th Corps. He resigned, 13 December, 1864. but entered the regular army as colonel of the 32d U.S. Infantry on 28 July, 1866, was brevetted brigadier-general for gallantry at Stone River, 2 March, 1867, transferred to the 17th U.S. Infantry in 1869. and served with his regiment on the frontier until he was retired on 19 May, 1881.—Thomas T., a nephew of John Jordan, born in Alabama about 1838, served In the Mexican War as lieutenant of Missouri mounted volunteers, afterward settled in Indiana, and entered the volunteer army in 1861 as colonel of a regiment of three months' men, with a detachment of which he took part in the battle of Philippi. The regiment was reorganized under his command at the expiration of its term of service, and served for three years. He was promoted brigadier-general on 28 April, 1862, and taken prisoner at Murfreesboro on 12 July, and not released till October. He resigned 5 May. 1863. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 9-11.
CROASDALE, Samuel, soldier, born in Pennsylvania; died at Antietam, Maryland, 17 September, 1862. He was a lawyer in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Immediately after the president's proclamation of 15 April, 1861, be volunteered for three months, and. after the governor's call for nine months' men in the summer of 1862, raised a company in Doylestown, and, upon the organization of the 128th Pennsylvania Regiment, was appointed its colonel. After a few weeks service in camps of instruction near Washington, the emergencies of the invasion of Maryland required the services of the regiment in the field. At Antietam it was assigned an important position, and Colonel Croasdale, having formed his men in line, was leading an assault under a heavy fire, when a ball killed him instantly. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 11.
CROCKER, Marcellus M., soldier, born in Franklin, Johnson County, Indiana, 6 February, 1830; died in Washington. D. C, 26 August, 1860, He entered the U. S. Military Academy in 1847, but left at the end of his second year, studied law, and practised in Des Moines, Iowa. He entered the national service as major of the 2d Iowa Infantry in May, 1861, was promoted colonel on 30 December, fought with distinction in the battle of Shiloh, April 6 and 7, 1862, was promoted brigadier-general on 29 November, 1862, and engaged at the siege of Vicksburg, conducting a raid in Mississippi. After the re-enlistment of his brigade as veteran volunteers he fought through the Georgia Campaign of Senator Sherman, commanding a division a part of the time. He was suffering from consumption during the whole of his military career, and was assigned to duty in New Mexico on account, of sickness. The brigade that he had commanded and brought to a high state of discipline was nicknamed "Crocker's Greyhounds." It lost heavily in the assault of Bald Hill before Atlanta, on 22 July, 1864, and in Hardee's attack on their position later in the day fully half were killed, wounded, or captured. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 11-12.
CROGHAN, George St, John, a Confederate officer, was fatally wounded at McCoy's Mills, West Virginia, during Floyd's retreat from Cotton Hill, in December, 1861. Before his death he admitted to General Benham, by whose soldiers he had been wounded, that he had fought on the wrong side. He invented a peculiar packsaddle for mules, which had been successfully used in conveying wounded men over the mountain passes of western Virginia. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 13-14.
CROMWELL, Henry Bowman, merchant, born in 1828; died in Brooklyn, New York, 2 April, 1864. He engaged in trade at an early age, and became a member of the firm of Cromwell, Haight & Company before he was twenty years old. In 1850 he became a partner in the firm of John Haight & Company, in Huddersfield, England, and resided there until 1854, when he returned to his native city, and soon engaged in the shipping business, managing a line of screw propellers in connection with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, his business increasing until he had connection with nearly all the important domestic seacoast ports. During the few years previous to 1861 he had in successful operation steam lines from New York to Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington, Norfolk, Alexandria, and Washington, Portland, and Baltimore; also from Baltimore to Charleston and Savannah. When the Civil War began he sold nearly all his vessels to the government, and immediately proceeded with the construction of two fine steamers, the "George Washington" and "Oliver Cromwell," which subsequently sailed between New York and New Orleans. Although Mr. Cromwell's commercial interests were so largely connected with the south, he firmly upheld the cause of the government during the war. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 14.
CROOK, George, soldier, born near Dayton, Ohio, 8 September, 1828; died in Chicago, Illinois, 21 March, 1890. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1852, and went to California in 1852-'61. He participated in the Rouge River Expedition in 1856, and commanded the Pitt River Expedition in 1857, where he was engaged in several actions, in one of which he was wounded by an arrow. He had risen to a captaincy when, at the beginning of the Civil War, he returned to the east and became colonel of the 36th Ohio Infantry. He afterward served in the West Virginia Campaigns, in command of the 3d Provisional Brigade, from 1 May till 15 August, 1862, and was wounded in the action at Lewisburg. He engaged in the northern Virginia and Maryland Campaigns in August and September, 1862, and for his services at Antietam was brevetted lieutenant-colonel, U. S. Army. He served in Tennessee in 1863, and on 1 July he was transferred to the command of the 2d Cavalry Division . After various actions, ending in the battle of Chickamauga, he pursued Wheeler's Confederate Cavalry from the 1st to the 10th of October, defeated it, and drove it across the Tennessee with great loss. He entered upon the command of the Kanawha District in Western Virginia in February, 1864, made constant raids, and was in numerous actions. He took part in Sheridan's Shenandoah Campaign in the autumn of that year, and received the brevets of brigadier-general and major-general in the U. S. Army, 13 March, 1865. General Crook had command of the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac from 26 March till 9 April, during which time he was engaged at Dinwiddie Court-House, Jettersville, Sailor's Creek, and Farmville, till the surrender at Appomattox. He was afterward transferred to the command of Wilmington, North Carolina, where he remained from 1 September, 1865, till 15 January, 1866, when he was mustered out of the volunteer service. After a six weeks' leave of absence he was assigned to duty on the board appointed to examine rifle tactics, was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the 23d Infantry, U. S. Army, on 28 July, 1866, and assigned to the Districts of Boisé, Idaho, where he remained until 1872, actively engaged against the Indians. In 1872 General Crook was assigned to the Arizona District, to quell the Indian disturbances. He sent an ultimatum to the chiefs to return to their reservations or “be wiped from the face of the earth.” No attention was paid to his demand, and he attacked them in the Tonto basin, a stronghold deemed impregnable, and enforced submission. In 1875 he was ordered to quell the disturbances in the Sioux and Cheyenne nations in the northwest, and defeated those Indians in the battle of Powder River, Wyoming. In March another battle resulted in the destruction of 125 lodges, and in June the battle of Tongue River was a victory for Crook. A few days later the battle of the Rosebud gave him another, when the maddened savages massed their forces and succeeded in crushing Custer. (See Custer, George Armstrong.) Crook, on receiving re-enforcements, struck a severe blow at Slim Buttes, Dakota, and followed it up with such relentless vigor that by May, 1877, all the hostile tribes in the northwest had yielded. In 1882 he returned to Arizona, forced the Mormons, squatters, miners, and stock-raisers to vacate the Indian lands on which they had seized, encouraged the Apaches in planting, and pledged them the protection of the government. In the spring of 1883 the Chiricahuas intrenched themselves in the fastnesses of the mountains on the northern Mexican boundary, and began a series of raids. General Crook struck the trail, and, instead of following, took it backward, penetrated into and took possession of their strongholds, and, as fast as the warriors returned from their plundering excursions, made them prisoners. He marched over 200 miles, made 400 prisoners, and captured all the horses and plunder. During the two years following, he had sole charge of the Indians, and in that time no depredation occurred. He set them all at work on their farms, abolished the system of trading and paying in goods and store orders indulged in by contractors, paid cash direct to the Indians for all his supplies, and stimulated them to increased exertion. The tribes became self-supporting within three years. Appleton’s pp. 14-15
CROSBY, Alpheus Benning, surgeon, born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, 22 February, 1832; died in Hanover, New Hampshire. 9 August, 1877. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1853, and at the medical department there in 1856. Meanwhile he had devoted one year as an assistant surgeon in the Marine Hospital at Chelsea, Massachusetts Returning to Hanover, he began practice, but at the beginning of the Civil War joined the 1st New Hampshire Volunteers as surgeon, and was afterward promoted to brigade-surgeon. In 1862 he resigned, and became associate professor of surgery to his father, who was professor of surgery and anatomy in Dartmouth. On his father's death, in 1868, he became his successor, and occupied the chair until 1877. Dr. Crosby was also, in 1866-72, a professor in the University of Vermont, in 1869-'70 a lecturer in the University of Michigan, in 1869 a professor and lecturer in Bowdoin College, in 1871-'2 a professor in the Long Island College Hospital, and in 1872-'7 professor of anatomy in Bellevue Hospital Medical College. In Jane," 1877, he presided at the annual meeting of the New Hampshire Medical Society, and delivered an address upon "The Ethical Relations of Physician and Patient." Many of his medical lectures have been published. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 16-17.
CROSBY, Stephen Moody, born in Salisbury, Massachusetts, 14 August, 1827, was educated in the Boston Latin-school and the Lowell high-school, graduated at Dartmouth in 1849, and at Harvard law-school in 1852. At the beginning of the Civil War he entered the national service, was paymaster from 1862 till 1866, and brevetted lieutenant-colonel for meritorious services. He was elected representative in the state legislature in 1869, was state senator in 1870-'l, state director of the Boston and Albany Railroad for 1871-'2. commissioner of the Hoosac Tunnel in 1874-'5. and treasurer of the Massachusetts Trust Company in 1870-'83, when he became president of that corporation. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 17.
CROSBY, Eben, soldier. Of his early life nothing is known, he served with distinction in the National Army throughout the Civil War, losing an arm at Gettysburg. He received, on 28 July, 1866, the appointment of second lieutenant of infantry in the U. S. Army, and on 27 May, 1869, was assigned to service on the western border. He was killed by Indians, near Heart River, fifteen miles from Fort Rice, while returning from the Yellowstone Expedition, 3 October, 1872. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 17.
CROSBY, John Schuyler, soldier, born in Albany, New York, 19 September, 1839. He was educated in the New York schools and at the University, but before graduation made a tour of the world. At the beginning of the Civil War he entered the regular army as second lieutenant of artillery, served with his battery under McClellan in the Army of the Potomac, and in the Florida Campaign of 1862 was transferred to the Department of the Gulf under General Banks, and brevetted captain after the Teche Campaign. He carried the first despatches from the Red River to Farragut, for which he was brevetted major, and also brevetted major and lieutenant-colonel in the regular army for his services at Sabine Cross-Roads and Pleasant Hill. In August, 1864. he was commissioned colonel of the 7th New York Heavy Artillery , but declined the appointment, becoming assistant adjutant-general on the staff of General Canby in the Department of the Gulf, and being afterward transferred to Sheridan's staff. In 1866 he served in the campaigns of Sheridan and Custer against the Indians. He resigned in 1872, and was appointed consul to Florence, Italy, in 1876. He became governor of Montana on 4 August, 1882, took an active part in preventing the Yellowstone Park from falling into the hands of a cattle syndicate, and in November, 1884, was appointed first assistant Postmaster-General, but resigned 4 March, 1886. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 17-18.
CROSBY, Peirce, naval officer, born near Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 16 January, 1823. He was educated at a private school, and was appointed in 1838 midshipman from Pennsylvania. He sailed in 1842 on the frigate " Congress" to the Mediterranean, serving on her six months, when he returned to the United States. In May, 1844, he was promoted to passed midshipman, and served on the coast survey in 1844-'6. He was six months on the " Decatur,'' in the Gulf of Mexico during the Mexican War, participated in the attack and capture of Tuxpan and Tobasco, and then served a year on the "Petrel." Peace being declared in 1848, he was transferred to other duties, and commissioned lieutenant, 3 September, 1853. At the beginning of the Civil War Lieutenant Crosby served in Chesapeake Bay, keeping the communications open between Annapolis and Havre de Grace, was detailed, on the night prior to the battle of Big Bethel, to transport troops across Hampton creek, and also upon their return from their unsuccessful expedition. In the attack on Forts Hatteras and Clark he commanded the "Fannie," a light-draught steamer, and superintended the landing of troops, until the surf swamped and broke his boats. He then took a ship's heavy launch and landed two more boat-loads of men; but the sea became so heavy that the launch was dashed upon the shore and the crew hurled out. He succeeded in landing 300 men, but, on account of the bad weather, the squadron stood off seaward, leaving him and his companions upon shore. Lieutenant Crosby put out a strong picket in front of the enemy's batteries, thus preventing their making a reconnaissance and ascertaining his weakness. On the following day the squadron returned and captured the forts, in the winter of 1861-'2 he took command of the gun-boat "Pinola," and joined the Gulf Squadron under Farragut. On his way he captured the "Cora," loaded with cotton. On arriving at the mouth of the Mississippi, he co-operated with the "Itasca" in breaking the chain barrier across the river below Forts Jackson and St. Philip, and participated in the capture of New Orleans, and also at the passage and repassage of the batteries at Vicksburg, 30 June and 15 July. He was promoted to commander, 3 September, 1862, and appointed fleet-captain of the North Atlantic Squadron, and did good service in various expeditions. In the winter of 1863 he took command of the "Florida," destroyed two blockade-runners at Masonboro inlet, was transferred to the "Keystone State" in 1864, and captured five blockade-runners, causing many others to throw overboard their cargoes in order to escape. In 1864-'5 he was in command of the "Metacomet," and planned and superintended the removal, by the use of drag-nets, of 140 torpedoes which interfered with the approaches to Mobile, successfully clearing the track so that vessels passed up the river and forced the surrender of the city. In 1865 he was transferred to the command of the "Shamokin," and sailed in her for the coast of Brazil, where he remained until 1868. On 27 May, 1868, while yet in Brazilian waters, he was promoted to a captaincy, and returned to the United States, becoming inspector of ordnance at Norfolk Navy-yard. He was promoted to commodore, 3 October, 1874, made rear-admiral, 10 March, 1882, and assigned to the command of the Asiatic Squadron. In 1883 he was placed on the retired list. He had been in active service more than forty- eight years, over twenty-three of which were at sea. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 18.
CROSBY, William George, lawyer, born in Belfast, Maine, in 1806; died there in 1881. He was graduated at Bowdoin in 1823, and studied and practised law in his native town. Governor Crosby was one of the two Whigs that held the office of governor, Edward Kent being the other. In 1853 the Maine law and the pro-slavery tendencies of the democracy lost that party the control of both branches of the legislature, which elected Mr. Crosby governor, and he was re-elected by the legislature in 1854. After the close of his term he took no active part in politics. During the Civil War his sympathies were with the Union, but at its close he affiliated with Andrew Johnson and was a Democratic candidate for Congress, but was defeated. He was prominent in promoting the public school system of Maine. While in college he published a small volume of poems. He was a contributor to the "Token," a Boston annual, edited by N. P. Willis; "The Legendary," which illustrated the scenes, romances, and legends of our own country; and the " Bowdoin Poets," and was the author of "Poetical Illustrations of the Athenaeum Gallery." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 18.
CROSMAN, George Hampton, soldier, born in Taunton, Massachusetts, in November, 1798; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 28 May, 1882. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1828, assigned to the 6th U.S. Infantry, and served on frontier and garrison duty. He was promoted to first lieutenant on 30 August, 1828, and made assistant quartermaster on 15 October, 1830. He performed the duties of this office in the Indian country during the Black Hawk war of 1832, and in the Florida War of 1836-'7, and was promoted to captain, 30 April, 1837. He was chief quartermaster in the military occupation of Texas in 1845-'6, and distinguished himself at the storming of Palo Alto, 8 May, 1846, receiving the brevet of major for his gallantry on that occasion. He became major on the staff and quartermaster, 3 March, 1847, deputy quartermaster-general with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1856, and assistant quartermaster-general with rank of colonel in 1863, serving during this time in charge of various clothing depots and arsenals. From 1864 till 1866 he was occupied in preparing for publication a "Manual for the Quartermaster's Department," He was brevetted brigadier-general and major-general, U. S. Army, for his services during the Civil War, on 13 March, 1865, and was retired from active service in 1866, but was on duty again in Philadelphia as chief quartermaster of the Department of the East till 1868.—His son, Alexander Foster, naval officer, born in St. Louis, Missouri, 11 June, 1838; in Greytown, Nicaragua, 12 April, 1872, was appointed to the U. S. Naval Academy from Pennsylvania, and graduated in 1855. He was attached to the frigate "Congress," of the Mediterranean Squadron, in 1856-'8, made master, 4 November, 1858, served on the Paraguay Expedition of 1858-'9, and was promoted to lieutenant in 1861. He commanded the " Somerset," of the East Gulf Squadron, in 1862, was made lieutenant-commander on 16 July of that year, and served in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the rest of the war, most of the time in the "Wabash." He was with the naval brigade of that squadron on General Hatch's expedition to sever the railroad from Charleston to Savannah, and co-operated several times with the army on Stono River, engaging Fort Lamar once. He was honorably mentioned in Commander George H. Preble's official report of 10 January, 1865. After the war he served on the " Ossipee," the "Onward, "and at Portsmouth Navy-yard. He was commissioned commander in 1870, ordered to the command of the Isthmus Surveying Expedition in January, 1872, and was drowned in the Harbor of Greytown. At the time of his death he was preparing a book on seamanship. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 19.
CROSS, Charles E., soldier, born in Massachusetts hi 1837; died near Fredericksburg, Virginia, 5 May, 1863. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in May, 1861, standing second in a class of forty, and was assigned to the Engineer Corps, he was engaged in drilling volunteers at Washington, D. C. and as assistant, engineer in constructing the defences of that city till March, 1862, participating in the battle of Bull Run on 21 July, 1861, and being promoted to first lieutenant on 6 August. In the Virginia Peninsular Campaign he was engaged in the siege of Yorktown. and in the construction of roads, field-works, and bridges for the passage of the army and its immense trains over White Oak Swamp and Chickahominy River. He commanded an engineer battalion at Antietam, and received the brevet of lieutenant-colonel for gallantry there, having previously been given that of major for services on the peninsula. He was engaged in building the pontoon bridges for the advance and retreat of the army at Fredericksburg, and was employed in throwing up field-works, making surveys, and guarding bridges, in the early part of 1863, being promoted to captain of engineers on 3 March. He was at the battle of Chancellorsville, 3-5 May, 1863, and was killed while assisting to throw a bridge across the Rappahannock, in the face of the enemy. For his gallantry on this occasion he was given, after his death, the brevet of colonel. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 19.
CROSS, Edward Ephram, soldier, born in Lancaster, New Hampshire, 22 April, 1832: died near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 2 July, 1863. He was educated at Lancaster Academy, and began life as a journeyman printer. He went to Cincinnati in 1852, and in 1854 became an editor of the "Cincinnati Times," also acting as correspondent for the "New York Herald" and other journals. In 1854 he canvassed the state of Ohio for the American Party. He was afterward employed as agent of the St. Louis and Arizona Mining Company, in which he subsequently became a large stockholder. In 1858 he made a trip across the plains, taking the first steam-engine and the first printing-press that ever crossed the Rocky mountains. In 1860 he held a lieutenant-colonel's commission in the Mexican Army, and when the news of the attack on Fort Sumter reached him he was in command of a large garrison at El Fuerte. He at once resigned, and hastened to Concord, New Hampshire, where he offered his services to the governor of the state, organized the 5th New Hampshire Regiment, and was commissioned as its colonel. Under his command the regiment distinguished itself in many important engagements, and won an enviable reputation for bravery, becoming known as the "Fighting Fifth." He was mortally wounded at the battle of Gettysburg while leading the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division , 2d Army Corps. He had been several times wounded before, and General Hancock had strongly recommended his promotion to brigadier-general, but, though he had commanded a brigade for several months with conspicuous gallantry, it was delayed, as has been claimed, through political influence. Colonel Cross was the author of numerous poems and prose sketches, written under the pen-name of Richard Everett. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 19-29.
CROSS, John, clergyman, anti-slavery agent. Congregational Minister in Geneva and Oriskany Falls, New York. Lectured on abolition and anti-slavery. He became interested in the anti-slavery cause while attending the Oneida Institute. He lectured in Collinsville, Copenhagen, Constableville and in New York City. Cross was President of Wheaton College, founded as an abolitionist institution and a “reform-oriented anti-slavery [institution].” Cross was a conductor in the Underground Railroad, allowing slaves to be hidden on the college campus. Cross worked actively with abolitionist Johnathan Blanchard. (Dumond, 1961, p. 186; Mass, David, 2010, Marching to the Drumbeat of Abolitionism: Wheaton College and the Coming of the Civil War.)
CROSS, Osborne, soldier, born in Maryland in 1803 ; died in New York City, 15 July, 1876, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1825, assigned to the infantry, and served on garrison, frontier, and commissary duty. He was made first lieutenant on 31 December, 1831, assistant quartermaster, 1 January, 1836, and became captain in the First U.S. Infantry, 7 July, 1838. He was chief quartermaster of Wool's Division in 1846-'7, and of the Army of Mexico in 1848, promoted to major on 24 July, 1847, and served until the Civil War, during which he was chief quartermaster of various posts and camps. He was made deputy quartermaster-general, 26 February, 1863, and on 13 March, 1865, was brevetted brigadier-general in the regular army. He was promoted to colonel, 29 July, 1866, and on the same day was retired. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p 20.
CROTHERS, Samuel, 1783-1856, Greenfield, Ohio, abolitionist, clergyman, noted theologian. Vice president, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Organized Paint Valley Abolitionist Society. Worked in Chillicothe Presbytery of Ohio. Wrote articles against slavery in quarterly anti-slavery magazine. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 91-92, 135; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 21)
CROTHERS, Samuel, clergyman, born near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, 22 October, 1783; died in Oswego, Illinois, 20 July, 1856. He went to Lexington, Kentucky, with his father in 1787, entered the academy there in 1798, and, after studying at the New York Theological Seminary, returned to Kentucky in 1809, and was licensed to preach by the Kentucky Presbytery. After a year of missionary work, he was settled, in 1810, over the churches of Chillicothe and Greenfield, Ohio, but in 1813 devoted himself to the latter alone. In company with his former teacher in New York, Dr. Mason, he opposed close communion, and the exclusive use of what has been called inspired psalmody. Trouble growing out of his opinions on these subjects led him, in 1818, to resign his charge and move to Winchester, Kentucky; but he returned to Greenfield in 1820, organized a new church, and remained pastor of it till his death. Dr. Crothers was a concise and vigorous writer and an eloquent preacher. See “Life and Writings of Samuel Crothers,” by Reverend A. Ritchie (Cincinnati 1857). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 21.
CROWNINSHIELD, Arrant Schuyler, naval officer, born in New York State, 14 March, 1843, was graduated at the U. S. Naval Academy in 1863. He was attached to the steam sloop " Ticonderoga," and participated in both attacks on Fort Fisher, being commended for his efficiency by Captain Charles Steedman. He was made lieutenant, 10 November, 1866, lieutenant-commander, 10 March, 1868, and commander, 25 March, 1880. He is a member of the Naval Advisory Board in New York City. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 22.
CRUFT, Charles, soldier, born in Indiana; died in Terre Haute, Indiana, 23 March, 1883. He was commissioned an officer of volunteers from Indiana, 16 July, 1862, and became a major-general of volunteers, 5 March, 1865. He served with credit throughout the war, and specially distinguished himself in the battles that were fought near Richmond, Kentucky, 29 and 30 August, 1862, having command of a brigade under General Mahlon D. Manson. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 22.
CRUMMELL, Alexander, 1819-1898, African American, clergyman, professor, African nationalist, anti-slavery activist and lecturer. Lectured in England against American slavery. Supported colonization of Blacks to Africa. Worked in New York office of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Correspondent for the Colored American. (Rigsby, 1987; Wilson, 1989; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 820; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 366)
CULLOM, Shelby Moore, senator, born in Monticello, Wayne County, Kentucky, 22 November, 1829. His father settled in Tazewell County, Illinois, in 1830, where he became prominent among the pioneers of the state, a member of the legislature, and a trusted friend of Abraham Lincoln. The son received a classical education, began the study of law in Springfield, Illinois, in 1853, and as soon as he was admitted to the bar was elected city attorney. He practised law in Springfield, was a candidate for presidential elector on the Fillmore ticket in 1856, elected to the legislature in 1856 and 1860, chosen speaker in his second term, a member of the war commission that sat at Cairo in 1862, and a member of Congress from Illinois from 4 December, 1865, till 3 March, 1871, representing the Springfield District, which before his election was democratic. During his third term he served as chairman of the Committee on Territories, conducted an investigation into the question of polygamy in Utah, and secured the passage of a bill for the extirpation of polygamy, which failed to come to a vote in the Senate. In 1872 he returned to the Illinois House of Representatives, was elected speaker in 1873, and in 1874 served another term in the legislature. After his return from Washington he became a banker at Springfield. He was a member of the Republican National in 1868, and, as chairman of the Illinois Delegation, placed General Grant in nomination at Philadelphia in 1872 and General Logan in 1884. He was elected governor of Illinois in 1876, and reelected in 1880, serving from 8 January, 1877, to 5 February, 1883, when he resigned, having been chosen U.S. Senator as a Republican, to succeed David Davis, independent Democrat, for the term expiring on 3 March, 1889. Mr. Cullom has been prominently connected with the question of mil road regulation. As speaker of the House of Representatives he appointed the committee that drafted the stringent railroad law of Illinois, which was one of the first states to take action on the subject during his service of six years as governor it became his duty to appoint the Illinois Railroad Commissioners, and to see that they secured the enforcement of the law, which was sustained by the court and practically put in operation during his administration. As senator he has been zealous and active in endeavoring to secure national legislation upon the same subject, and in 1885, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce, conducted an investigation into the question of the regulation of railroad corporations by national legislation. His report upon this subject, submitted to the Senate, 18 January, 1886, is an elaborate review of the whole subject, and has attracted attention at home and abroad, resulting in the passage by the Senate of the bill that bears his name, which was referred to a conference committee of the two houses. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 27.
CULLUM, George W., soldier, born in New York City, 25 February, 1809. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1833, entered the Engineer Corps, was promoted captain on 7 July, 1838, superintended the construction of fortifications and other public works at New London, Connecticut, and in Boston Harbor, organized pontoon-trains for the army in Mexico, was engaged in 1847-'8 in preparing a "Memoir on Military Bridges with India-Rubber Pontoons," and from 1848 till 1855 was instructor of practical military engineering at the Military Academy, except two years, during which he travelled abroad on sick-leave. In 1853-'4 he constructed for the Treasury Department the assay-office in New York City, after which he was employed for five years on fortifications and harbor improvements at Charleston, South Carolina, and superintended works at New Bedford, Newport, New London, and the eastern entrance to New York Harbor. On 9 April, 1861, he was appointed aide-de-camp to the commander-in-chief of the army. He was promoted major of engineers on 6 August, 1861, commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers on 1 November, appointed chief engineer of the Department of the Missouri, was chief of staff to General Halleck while commanding the Departments of the Missouri and the Mississippi, and general-in-chief of the armies, directed engineer operations on the western rivers, was for some time in command at Cairo, was engaged as chief of engineers in the siege of Corinth, and, after accompanying General Halleck to Washington, was employed in inspecting fortifications, examining engineering inventions, and on various engineer boards. He was also a member of the U. S. Sanitary Commission from 1861 till 1864. In the autumn of 1864 he was employed in projecting fortifications for Nashville, Tennessee, which had been selected as a base of operations and depot of supplies for our western armies. From 8 September, 1864, till 28 August, 1866, he was superintendent of the U. S. Military Academy. He was brevetted colonel, brigadier, and major-general for meritorious services during the rebellion on 13 March, 1865, and mustered out of the volunteer service on 1 September, 1866. He was a member of the board for improving the defences of New York, and then of the board for fortifications and river and harbor obstructions required for the national defence from 1867 till 13 January, 1874, when he was retired from active service, after which he resided in New York, and devoted himself to literary, scientific, and military studies. He was chosen in that year vice-president of the American Geographical Association, and has been president of the Geographical Library Society since 1880. He has published a "Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the United States Military Academy, from 1802 to 1850," afterward enlarged to cover the period until the army reorganization of 1867, with a supplement continuing the register to 1879 (New York, 1879); a translation of Duparcq's "Elements of Military Art and History" (1863); "Systems of Military Bridges" (1863); "Sketch of Major-General Richard Montgomery, of the Continental Army" (1876); "Campaigns and Engineers of the War of 1812—'5" (1879); "Historical Sketch of the Fortification Defences of Narragansett Bay since the Founding, in 1638. of the Colony of Rhode Island" (Washington, 1884). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 27
CUMMING, Gilbert W., lawyer, in Delaware County, N. Y., in 1817. He was apprenticed to a carriage-maker, but spent his spare hours in study. He began to study law in 1838, and became prominent in his profession. During the anti-rent troubles of 1845 he commanded a military regiment, and succeeded in restoring quiet. He moved, in 1853, to Janesville, Wisconsin, and in 1858 to Chicago. In September, 1861, he raised the 51st Illinois Regiment, and was appointed its colonel. He was afterward assigned to the command of a brigade, and did good service at Island Number Ten, New Madrid, and Corinth. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 29
CUMMING, Kate, author, born about 1835. She is of Scottish descent, and has resided in Mobile, Alabama, since her childhood. During the Civil War she was with one of the Confederate Armies, receiving the wounded and assisting in organizing the field hospitals in the campaigns in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia, when the army was retreating. Every evening she spent a few moments over her diary, recording the incidents that had taken place around her. She published " Hospital Life in the Army of Tennessee" (Louisville, Kentucky, 1866). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 29
CUMMING, William, soldier, born in Georgia about 1790; died in Augusta, Georgia, in February, 1863. He studied at. the Litchfield, Connecticut, law-school, but inherited a fortune and never practised. He was appointed major in the 8th U.S. Infantry on 25 March, 1813, and was wounded in the battle of Chrysler's Field, 11 November He was made adjutant general, with the rank of colonel, on 16 February, 1814, being severely wounded at Lundy's Lane on 25 July, and resigning 31 March, 1815. He declined the appointment of quartermaster-general, with the rank of brigadier-general, in April, 1818, and also that of major-general, tendered him by President Polk on 3 March, 1847. Colonel Cumming was a leader of the Union Party in the nullification struggle, and his quarrel with George McDuffie, of South Carolina, on this issue was notorious. The two men, attended by a long train of friends in their own equipages, rushed from one point to another in the attempt to find a place of meeting, and loudly accused each other of betraying their intentions to the officers of the law. They were widely caricatured, and their actions were watched with interest all over the country. They finally succeeded in meeting twice, and exchanged three shots, by one of which McDuffie was wounded in the hip and lamed for life. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 29
CUMMING, Alfred, governor of Utah, born about 1802; died in Augusta, Georgia, 6 October, 1873, was a sutler during the Mexican War. He had been superintendent of Indian affairs on the upper Missouri, and in 1857 President Buchanan appointed him governor of Utah territory, and sent him there with a force of 2,500 men to protect him in the discharge of his functions, which constituted the famous "Utah Expedition" of that year. On 27 November the governor issued a proclamation declaring the territory to be in a state of rebellion, and this document was sent to Salt Lake City by a Mormon prisoner, accompanied by a letter to Brigham Young, evincing a willingness to temporize. The expedition went, into winter quarters at Camp Scott, on Black's Fork, and in March, 1858, Colonel Thomas L. Kane arrived in the camp, having been sent by the president as special envoy to Brigham Young. The relations between Governor Cumming and General Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of the expedition, had become somewhat strained, and. soon after Colonel Kane's arrival, that gentleman, taking offence at a fancied slight, wrote a challenge to General Johnston with Governor Cumming's consent. During the spring difficulties constantly arose, through a misunderstanding on Cumming's part, as to the power he possessed over the troops. On 8 March Judge Cradlebaugh made requisition for soldiers to protect his court, sitting at Provo, during the trial of the Mormons indicted for complicity in the Mountain Meadows massacre, and they were furnished by General Johnston, whereupon Governor Camming protested against their use, and on 27 March issued a proclamation denouncing the general's action. The Secretary of War afterward forbade General Johnston to use troops for such purposes. After the proclamation of pardon to the Mormons, in accordance with the temporizing policy adopted by Buchanan's administration. Governor Cumming objected to the farther advance of the army, but, notwithstanding his protest, it was marched into Salt Lake City, and did much to preserve order. Governor Cumming held his office till 1861, when he was succeeded by Stephen S. Harding.—Alfred's nephew, Alfred, born in Augusta, Georgia, 30 January, 1829, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1849. He was aide to General Twiggs at New Orleans in 1851-'3, was made first lieutenant on 8 March, 1855, and captain in the 10th U.S. Infantry, 20 July, 1856. He was on the Utah Expedition of 1859- 60, and on 19 January, 1861, resigned, and was soon commissioned lieutenant-colonel in the Confederate Army. He rose to the rank of brigadier-general, and served until disabled by wounds received at the battle of Jonesboro, Georgia, 31 August, 1864. After the war he became a planter near Rome, Georgia Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 29-30.
CUMMINGS, Amos Jay, journalist, born in Conkling, New York, in 1842. His father edited and published a weekly religious paper in Irvington, and the youth entered the printing-office at the age of twelve years. After attaining manhood, he travelled and worked at the case in many states of the Union and in Canada. He also visited Mexico, Central America, and Europe. At the beginning of the Civil War he was a compositor on the New York " Tribune," but soon joined a regiment of volunteers, and fought in the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Soon afterward he returned to work at the " Tribune " establishment, becoming successively night editor, city editor, and political editor of that paper. At present (1887) he is on the editorial staff of the New York "Sun." In 1885-'6 he was president of the New York Press Club Mr. Cummings is known as a ready extemporaneous speaker. In 1886 he was elected a representative in Congress. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 30
CUMMINGS, Andrew Boyd, naval officer, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 22 June, 1830: died in New Orleans, Louisiana, 18 March, 1863. He entered the U. S. Navy as midshipman in April, 1847, and was successively advanced through the different grades until he became lieutenant-commander in July, 1862. During the passage of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, and the capture of New Orleans, he was executive officer of the "Richmond." During the subsequent engagement with the batteries at Port Hudson he fell mortally wounded while cheering the men at their guns. He was removed to New Orleans, but died four days later. Admiral Porter said in a letter written at that time: "He was a gallant officer, and too good a man to lose." Admiral Farragut wrote: "Poor Cummings was a great loss, both to the country and to his family." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 30
CURRY, George Law, governor of Oregon, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2 June, 1820; died in Portland, Oregon, 28 July, 1878. His grandfather was a native of England, and his father, George Curry, commanded the Philadelphia " Washington Blues" a first lieutenant in the battle of Bladensburg in 1812. Young Curry moved with his family to Caracas, Venezuela, in 1824, but soon returned, residing near Holmesburg, Pennsylvania, till his father's death in 1829. From 1831 till 1840 he lived with his uncle in Boston, where he was apprenticed to a jeweler. In 1838 he was president of the Mechanic Apprentices' Library, and delivered several addresses and poems before the association. He went to St. Louis in 1848 and connected himself with Joseph M. Field in the publication of the "Reveille." He moved to Oregon City, Oregon, in 1846, took charge of the "Oregon Spectator," the first newspaper published on the Pacific Coast, and in 1848 founded the "Oregon Free Press." He was appointed secretary of the territory in 1853, and, after twice acting as governor for short periods, was appointed to that office in 1854, and held it till the admission of Oregon into the Union in 1859. His administration was marked by the rapid development of the territory and by several Indian wars, one of which—in 1855—was the most bloody in the history of the northwest coast. Besides U. S. troops, about 2,500 volunteers were kept in the field for several months, and Governor Curry distinguished himself by his services in conquering a peace. He was afterward thanked by the legislatures of Oregon and Washington Territories. In 1860 he came within one vote of an election to the U. S. Senate. In 1866 he worked earnestly in behalf of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which he had first advocated in St. Louis in 1845. He afterward retired to his farm on Willamette River. He was subsequently state land commissioner. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 33.
CURRY, Jabez Lamar Monroe, educator, born in Lincoln County, Georgia, 5 June, 1825 He moved with his father to Talladega County, Alabama, in 1838, was graduated at the University of Georgia in 1843, and at Harvard law-school in 1845. After entering on the practice of his profession in Talladega County, he served in the Mexican War as a private of Texas Rangers in 1846, but resigned on account of his health. He was chosen to the Alabama legislature in 1847, 1853, and 1855, and in 1850 was an elector on the Democratic ticket. He was then elected to Congress without opposition, as a state-rights House of Representatives, and served from 7 December, 1857, till 21 January, 1861, when he resigned, having previously joined with the other Alabama representatives at Washington in advising the immediate secession of the state. He was a deputy from Alabama to the Provisional Confederate Congress, a representative in the first Confederate Congress, and in 1864-'5 served in the Confederate Army, under General Joseph E. Johnston, as lieutenant-colonel of cavalry. At the close of the war he was ordained as a Baptist clergyman, was president of Howard College, Alabama, in 1866-'8, and professor of English, philosophy, and constitutional law in Richmond College, Virginia, in 1868-'81. He was president of the foreign mission board of the southern Baptist Convention in 1874-'85, and of the trustees of Richmond College in 1882- 5. In 1881-5 Dr. Curry was general agent of the Peabody Educational Fund, and he has "labored in behalf of public-school education, higher, normal, and industrial, for all the people of both races." Dr. Curry is one of the most effective platform speakers in the country, and has declined numerous invitations to become a pastor, preferring to preach occasionally. An address made by him before the Evangelical alliance, urging the complete separation of church and state, was reprinted and distributed in England by the disestablishment party. In the spring of 1885 Dr. Curry was appointed U. S. minister to Spain, and in that capacity he has settled several important questions that have been pending for years. Mercer University, Georgia, gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1867, and Rochester University that of D. D. in 1871. He is a contributor to the religious press, and has published speeches and pamphlets. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 33
CURTIN, Andrew Gregg, governor of Pennsylvania, born in Bellefonte, Centre County, Pennsylvania, 22 April, 1815. His father, Roland Curtin, emigrated from Ireland in 1793, and in 1807 established near Bellefonte one of the first manufactories of iron in that region. Andrew studied law in Dickinson College law-school, was admitted to the bar in 1839, and soon became prominent. He early entered politics as a Whig, laboring for Harrison's election in 1840, and making a successful canvass of the state for Clay in 1844. He was a presidential elector in 1848, and a candidate for elector on the Whig ticket in 1852. In 1854 Governor Pollock appointed him secretary of the commonwealth and ex-officio superintendent of common schools, and in the discharge of his duties Mr. Curtin did much toward reforming and perfecting the school system of the state. In his annual report of 1855 he recommended to the legislature the establishment of normal schools, and his suggestion was adopted. In 1860 he was the Republican candidate for governor. The Democrats, though divided in national politics, were united in Pennsylvania, but Mr. Curtin was elected by a majority of 32,000. In his inaugural address he advocated the forcible suppression of secession, and throughout the contest that followed he was one of the "war governors" who were most earnest in their support of the national government. He responded promptly to the first call for troops, and when General Patterson, who was in command in Pennsylvania, asked for twenty-five thousand more, they were immediately furnished. General Patterson's requisition was afterward revoked by the Secretary of War, on the ground that the troops were not needed; but Governor Curtin, instead of disbanding them, obtained authority from the legislature to equip them at the state's expense, and hold them subject to the call of the national government. This body of men became known as the "Pennsylvania Reserve," and was accepted by the authorities at Washington a few weeks later. Governor Curtin was untiring in his efforts for the comfort of the soldiers, answering carefully the numerous letters sent him from the field, and originated a system of care and instruction for the children of those slain in battle, making them wards of the state. He thus became known in the ranks as "the soldiers' friend." Governor Curtin's health began to fail in 1863, and he signified his intention of accepting a foreign mission that had been offered him as soon as his term should expire, but in the meantime he was renominated, and re-elected by 15,000 majority. In November, 1865, he went to Cuba for his health, and in that year declined another offer of a foreign mission. In 1869 General Grant appointed him minister to Russia, and in 1868 and 1872 he was prominently mentioned as a candidate for vice-president. He returned home in August, 1872, supported Horace Greeley for the presidency, and subsequently joined the Democratic Party, by which he was elected to Congress for three successive terms, serving from 1881 till 1887. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 34
CURTIS, Benjamin Robbins, 1809-1874, Watertown, Massachusetts, jurist, lawyer, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1851-1857. Dissented from majority court decision on the Dred Scott case. Argued that U.S. Congress had the legal right to prohibit slavery, and disagreed with the decision that held that “a person of African descent could not be a citizen of the United States.” (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 35; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 609)
CURTIS, Benjamin Robbins, jurist, born in Watertown, Massachusetts, 4 November, 1809; died in Newport, Rhode Island, 15 September, 1874. He was graduated at Harvard in 1829, admitted to the bar in 1832, and, after practising for a short time in Northfield, Massachusetts, moved to Boston. The extent and readiness of his attainments, his accuracy, and his logical mind, soon made him prominent in his profession. In 1851 President Fillmore appointed him to the U. S. supreme bench. In the celebrated "Dred Scott" case he dissented from the decision of the court and made a powerful argument in support of his conclusions. He upheld the right of Congress to prohibit slavery, and declared his dissent from "that part of the opinion of the majority of the court in which it is held that a person of African descent cannot be a citizen of the United States." On this memorable occasion only one other justice of the seven coincided with the opinion of Judge Curtis, he resigned in 1857, and resumed practice in Boston, frequently appearing before the Supreme Court at Washington in important cases. He was for two years a member of the Massachusetts legislature, but took little part in politics, devoting himself with earnestness to his profession. In the impeachment trial of President Johnson in 1868 Judge Curtis was one of the counsel for the defence. The answer to the articles of impeachment was read by him, and was largely his work. He opened the case in a speech that occupied two days in delivery, and that was commended for legal soundness and clearness. He was the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator in 1874. He published Reports of Cases in the Circuit Courts of the United States" (2 vols., Boston, 1854); "Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States," with notes and a digest (22 vols., Boston); and "Digest of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States." from the origin of the court to 1854. Of his "Memoir and Writings" (2 vols., Boston. 1880), the first volume contains a memoir by George Ticknor Curtis, and the second "Miscellaneous Writings," edited by his son, Benjamin B, Curtis.—His brother, George Ticknor, lawyer, born in Watertown, Massachusetts, 28 November, 1812, was graduated at Harvard In 1832. He was admitted to the bar in 1836, and engaged in the practice of the law in Boston till 1862, when he moved to New York. While in Boston, Mr. Curtis held the office of U. S. Commissioner, and as such, in 1851, returned to his master a fugitive slave named Thomas Sims, for which act he was severely denounced by the abolitionists. He also served for two or three years in the Massachusetts legislature, but has allowed politics to interfere but little with his profession and his historical investigations. He has published a "Digest of English and American Admiralty Decisions" (Boston, 1839); volumes ii. and iii. of a "Digest of the Decisions of the Courts of Common Law and Admiralty in the United States" (3 vols., 1840-'6); "Rights and Duties of Merchant Seamen" (1841); " American Conveyancer" (1846); "Law of Copyright" (1847); "Law of Patents" (1849; 4th ed., 1873); "Equity Precedents" (1850); "Inventor's Manual," " Commentaries on the Jurisprudence, Practice, and Peculiar Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States " (2 vols., 1854-18); "History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States" (2 vols., 1855-'8); "Life of Daniel Webster" (New York, 1870); "Life of James Buchanan" (1883); and "Creation or Evolution " (1887). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp.
CURTIS, George William, author, born in Providence, Rhode Island, 24 February, 1824. After attending a school in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, he moved to New York with his father in 1839, and for a year was a clerk in a mercantile house in that city. He with his elder brother, in 1842, joined the community of Brook Farm, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, and, after eighteen months of study and farm labor, the brothers went to Concord, Massachusetts, where they spent eighteen months more in a farmer's family, afterward tilling a small piece of land on their own account for six months. In 1846 Mr. Curtis went abroad, living for some time in Italy and Germany, and afterward travelling in Egypt and Syria. He returned to this country in 1850, and soon afterward became one of the editorial staff of the New York "Tribune." Mr. Curtis was one of the editors of the first series of "Putnam's Monthly " from its appearance in 1852 till it ceased to exist. About three years after it was established the magazine passed into the hands of the firm of Dix, Edwards & Company, in which Mr. Curtis was a special partner, pecuniarily responsible, but taking no part in its commercial management. In the spring of 1857 the house, which had also undertaken to publish books, was found to be insolvent for a large amount, and Mr. Curtis sank his private fortune in the endeavor to save its creditors from loss, which he finally accomplished in 1873. In 1853 he began in " Harper's Monthly" the series of papers entitled the " Editor's Easy Chair," and in the same year entered the lecture field, meeting with great success. He soon gained reputation as a popular orator, and in the presidential canvass of 1850 spoke in behalf of the Republican candidates. Soon after the establishment of "Harper's Weekly," in 1857, he became its leading editorial writer, which place he still holds, and on the establishment of " Harper's Bazar" in 1867 he began a series of papers under the title of " Manners upon the Road," which was continued weekly until the spring of 1873. He was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1860 and 1864, and in the latter year was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in the 1st New York District. In 1862 he declined the office of consul-general in Egypt, offered him by President Lincoln. In 1867 he was elected a delegate at large to the Constitutional Convention of New York, in which he was chairman of the committee on education. In 1868 he was nominated a Republican presidential elector, and in 1869 declined the Republican nomination for secretary of state of New York. Mr. Curtis has always been an earnest advocate of civil-service reform, and in 1871 was appointed by President Grant one of a commission to draw up rules for the regulation of the civil service. He was elected chairman of the commission and of the advisory board in which it was subsequently merged, but resigned in March, 1873, on account of difference of views between him and the president in regard to the enforcement of the rules. He was a delegate to the National Republican Convention of 1876 that nominated President Hayes, and at the beginning of the administration he was asked to select a foreign mission, which he declined, and he also declined the special offer of the mission to Germany. Mr. Curtis was chairman of a meeting of independent Republicans that met in New York on 16 June, 1884, to take action against the nomination of James G. Blaine, made by the Chicago Convention, and he subsequently supported the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland. Since 1864 Mr. Curtis has been one of the regents of the University of the state of New York, and is now (1886) its vice-chancellor. He has published "Nile Notes of a Howadji" (New York, 1851); "The Howodji in Syria" (1852); "Lotus-Eating," letters originally written to the New York " Tribune" from various watering-places (1852); two volumes of selections from his contributions to "Putnam's Magazine," entitled "Potiphar Papers" (1853) and "Prue and I" (1856); and "Trumps," a novel, which had appeared in "Harper's Weekly" in 1858-'9 (1862). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 34-35
CURTIS, Joseph Brigham, soldier, born in Providence, Rhode Island, 25 October, 1830; killed near Fredericksburg, Virginia, 13 December, 1862, was graduated at the Lawrence scientific school of Harvard in 1856. In 1857 he became a member of the New York Central Park Engineer Corps, and in April, 1861, was appointed engineer, with the rank of captain, in the 9th New York Volunteers. After that regiment was mustered out, he became, on 16 September, 1861, second lieutenant in the 4th Rhode Island Volunteers, and was promoted to first lieutenant on 2 October He served with Burnside in North Carolina, distinguished himself by his coolness and daring at the capture of Roanoke Island, 7 February, 1802, and on 9 June was appointed assistant adjutant-general on General Rodman's staff. In August he was promoted, at General Burnside's special request, to the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 4th Rhode Island Regiment, joined the Army of the Potomac, and was with it in the succession of battles between the Rappahannock and Washington. In the battle of Antietam his regiment suffered so much that it was withdrawn from the field by the general's command, whereupon Colonel Curtis took a musket and cartridge-box from a dead soldier and did duty as a private in a Pennsylvania regiment till the close of the battle. He was killed at Fredericksburg while in command of his regiment, the colonel having been disabled by a wound. See a memoir by George William Curtis, in John R. Bartlett's "Rhode Island in the Rebellion" (1867). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 36.
CURTIS, Edward, born in Providence, Rhode Island, 4 June, 1838, was graduated at Harvard in 1859, and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1804. He had entered the army as medical cadet on 6 September, 1861, became acting assistant surgeon on 5 May, 1863, assistant surgeon in 1864, and was brevetted captain and major on 13 March. 1865. He resigned from the army in 1870, and began practice in New York City. During the later years of his army service he was in charge of the microscopical section of the medical museum, and was especially engaged in developing the art of photographing through the microscope. He became lecturer on histology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1870, and in 1873 was given the chair of materia mediea and therapeutics, becoming professor emeritus in 1886. He was made assistant surgeon to the New York Eye and Ear infirmary in 1872, surgeon in 1874, and in 1870 became medical director of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, retiring from active practice. Dr. Curtis has published a "Catalogue of the Microscopical Section of the U. S. Army Medical Museum (Washington, 1867), and "Manual of General Medicinal Technology" (New York, 1883). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 36.
CURTIS, Josiah, physician, born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1816. He was graduated at Yale in 1840, and soon afterward became principal of an academy in Salem, New Jersey, and later taught in Philadelphia, where he studied medicine, and in 1843 was graduated at Jefferson Medical College. After spending a year in lecturing on physiology and public health, he" settled for practice in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1849 he moved to Boston, and between 1850 and 1855 twice visited Europe for the purpose of studying the sanitary condition of the large cities. In 1861 he was called to Washington to superintend the mortality statistics of the U. S. Census of 1860. He there entered the army, and remained with it until 1865, when he took up his residence in Knoxville, Kentucky In 1872 Dr. Curtis filled the place of surgeon, microscopist, and naturalist to the U. S. Geological Survey, and in 1873 became chief medical officer of the U. S. Indian Service. He has published numerous articles on ventilation and kindred subjects, and is the author of a report on the " Hygiene of Massachusetts" (1849), and earlier reports to the Massachusetts legislature on the registration of births, marriages, and deaths. he is noted as the discoverer of collodion. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 36-37.
CURTIS, Newton Martin, soldier, born in De Peyster, St. Lawrence County, New York, 21 May, 1835. He was educated at common schools, and at Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary, in 1854-'5. He became a prominent Democrat, was postmaster of his native town in 1857-'61, and Democratic candidate for assembly in 1860. He enrolled a volunteer company on 14 April, 1861, was commissioned captain in the 16th New York Regiment on 7 May, and served in the Army of the Potomac. He became lieutenant-colonel and then colonel of the 142d New York Infantry, and during the battle of Cold Harbor was assigned to the command of a brigade whose leader had been killed in the action. He was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers, 28 October, 1864, and for his services at the capture of Fort Fisher was promoted on the field to brigadier-general of volunteers, and was also thanked by the legislature of New York. He was brevetted major-general of volunteers, 13 March, 1865, and assigned to duty as chief of staff to General E. O. C. Ord. On 1 July, 1865, he was given the command of southwestern Virginia, with headquarters at Lynchburg, and was mustered out on 15 January, 1866. He was collector of customs in the District of Oswegatchie, New York, in 1866-7, special agent of the U. S. Treasury from 1867 till his resignation in 1880, and a member of the legislature in 1883-'5, having been elected as a Republican. He was president of the State Agricultural Society in 1880, and has been secretary and trustee of the state agricultural station since its organization in that year. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 37.
CURTIS, Samuel Ryan, soldier, born in New York state, 3 February, 1807; died in Council Bluffs, Iowa, 26 December, 1806. He moved when a child to Ohio and was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1831, but resigned from the army in 1832, and became a civil engineer, superintending the Muskingum River improvements in 1837-'9. He then studied law. and practised in Ohio from 1841 till 1846. He had become a captain of militia in 1833, was lieutenant-colonel in 1837-'42, colonel in l843-"45. In 1846 he was made adjutant-general of Ohio for the special purpose of organizing the state's quota of volunteers for the Mexican War. He served in that war as colonel of the 2d Ohio Regiment, and was commandant of Camargo, a large military depot, holding it on 18 February, 1847, against General Urrea, and then pursuing the enemy by forced marches through the mountains to Ramos, Mexico, thus opening General Taylor's communications. After the discharge; of his regiment he served on General Wool's staff, and as governor of Saltillo, Mexico, in 1847-'8. He then engaged in engineering in the west, and in 1855 settled as a lawyer in Keokuk, Iowa. While a resident of this place he was elected to Congress as a Republican, and served two terms and part of a third, from 1837 till 1861, being a member of the committees on military affairs and the Pacific Railroad. He was also a delegate from Iowa to the Peace Congress of February, 1861. He resigned from Congress in 1861 to become colonel of the 2d Iowa Regiment, and on 17 May was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers, being on the first list sent to the Senate for confirmation. He took charge of the large camp of instruction near St. Louis in August and September, 1861, commanded the southwestern District of Missouri from 26 December, 1861, till February, 1862, and the Army of the Southwest till August, 1862. On 6-8 March, at Pea Ridge, Ark., he gained a decisive victory over a Confederate force, commanded by Generals Price and McCulloch. He was promoted to major-general of volunteers on 21 March. 1862, and from 14 July till 29 August occupied Helena, Arkansas, having marched over one thousand miles through wildernesses and swamps. While on leave of absence, from 29 August till 24 September, 1862, he was president of the Pacific Railroad Convention in Chicago. He was at the head of the Department of the Missouri from September, 1862, till May, 1863, and of that of Kansas from 1 January, 1864, till 7 February, 1865, commanding at Fort Leavenworth during the Price raid of October, 1864, and aiding in the defeat and pursuit of General Price's army. He commanded the Department of the Northwest from 16 February till 26 July, 1865, was U. S. commissioner to negotiate treaties with various Indian tribes from August till November, 1865, and to examine the Union Pacific Railroad till April, 1866. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 37.
CUSHING, Caleb, 1800-1879, Boston, Massachusetts, statesman, soldier, lawyer, politician, U.S. Attorney General. Argued against slavery and defended the principles of the American Colonization Society and colonization. (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 38-39; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 623; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 210)
CUSHING, Caleb, statesman, born in Salisbury, Massachusetts, 17 January, 1800; died in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 2 January, 1879. He was graduated at Harvard in 1817, and for two years was a tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar, and settled in Newburyport. He rose rapidly in his profession, and, although busily engaged with his practice, found time to devote to literature and politics, and was a frequent contributor to periodicals. In 1825 he was elected a representative to the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature, and in 1826 a member of the state senate. At this time he belonged to the then Republican Party. In 1829 Mr. Cushing visited Europe, and remained abroad two years. In 1833 he was again elected a representative from Newburyport to the Massachusetts legislature for two years, but in 1834 was elected from the Essex North District of Massachusetts a representative to Congress, and served for four consecutive terms, until 1843. He supported the nomination of John Quincy Adams for the presidency, and was a Whig until the accession of John Tyler. When the break in the Whig Party occurred, during the administration of President Tyler, Mr. Cushing was one of the few northern Whigs that continued to support the president, and became classed as a Democrat. Soon afterward he was nominated for Secretary of the Treasury, but the Senate refused to confirm him. He was subsequently confirmed as commissioner to China, and made the first treaty between that country and the United States. On his return he was again elected a representative in the Massachusetts legislature. In 1847 he raised a regiment for the Mexican War at his own expense, became its colonel, and was subsequently made brigadier-general. While still in Mexico he was nominated by the Democratic Party of his state for governor, but failed in the election. From 1850 till 1852 he was again a member of the legislature of his native state, and, at the expiration of his term, was appointed associate justice of the state supreme court. In 1853 President Pierce appointed him U. S. Attorney-General, from which office he retired in 1857. In 1857, 1858, and 1859. He again served in the legislature of Massachusetts. In April, 1860, he was president of the Democratic National Convention in Charleston. South Carolina, and was among the seceders from that body who met in Baltimore. At the close of 1860 he was sent to Charleston by President Buchanan, as a confidential commissioner to the secessionists of South Carolina; but his mission effected nothing. Mr. Cushing was frequently employed during the Civil War in the departments at Washington, and in 1866 was appointed one of the three commissioners to revise and codify the laws of Congress. In 1868 he was sent to Bogota to arrange a diplomatic difficulty. In 1872 he was one of the counsel for the United States at the Geneva Conference for the settlement of the Alabama claims, and in 1873 was nominated for the office of chief justice of the United States; but the nomination was subsequently withdrawn. A year later he was nominated and confirmed as minister to Spain, whence he returned home in 1877. His publications include a " History of the Town of Newburyport " (1826): "The Practical Principles of Political Economy" (1826); "Historical and Political Review of the Late Revolution in France " (2 vols., Boston, 1833); "Reminiscences of Spain" (2 vols., Boston, 1833); "Growth and Territorial Progress of the United States" (1839); "Life of William H. Harrison" (Boston, 1840); and "The Treaty of Washington " (New York. 1873). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 38-39.
CUSHING, Henry W., abolitionist, Providence, Rhode Island. Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833, Vice President, 1833-1837. (Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833)
CUSHING, William Barker, naval officer, born in Wisconsin, 24 November, 1842; died in Washington, D. C., 17 December, 1874. He was appointed to the Naval Academy from New York in 1857, but resigned on 23 March, 1861. In May, 1861, he volunteered, was appointed master's mate, and on the day of his arrival at Hampton Roads captured and brought into port a tobacco-schooner, the first prize of the war. He was attached to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the war, and repeatedly distinguished himself by acts of bravery. He was commissioned lieutenant on 16 July, 1862. In November, 1862, he was ordered in the steamer " Ellis" to capture Jacksonville. Florida, intercept the Wilmington mail, and destroy the saltworks at New Juliet. He captured a large mail, took two prizes, and shelled a Confederate camp, but was unable to cross the bar that night, and in the morning ran aground. The crew transferred everything except the pivot-gun to one of the captured schooners, and sailed to a place of safety, a mile and a half away; but dishing remained with six volunteers on board the steamer until she was disabled by a cross-fire from the shore, when he set her on fire and made his escape to the schooner in a row-boat. He distinguished himself the same year on the Blackwater and in the sounds of North Carolina. In 1863 he added to his reputation for bravery and judgment by an expedition up the Cape Fear and Little Rivers and operations on the Nansemond. His most brilliant exploit was the destruction of the Confederate ironclad ram "Albemarle" on the night of 27 October, 1864. This powerful vessel had successfully encountered a strong fleet of U. S. gunboats, and fought them for several hours without sustaining material damage. There was nothing able to cope with her in the sounds. Cushing volunteered to destroy her, and with a steam launch and a volunteer crew he ascended Roanoke River, towing an armed cutter. The river was lined with pickets to guard against just such an attack as this: but Cushing's luck did not desert him, and he was within a few yards of the "Albemarle" before he was discovered. Casting off the boat that was in tow, he ordered its crew to attack a picket-post nearby, while, with a full head of steam, he drove the launch straight at the huge bulk of the iron-clad, whose crew rushed to quarters and at once opened fire. The launch replied effectively with her howitzer. A raft of heavy logs surrounded the larger vessel, but the launch was driven over them, and by the time she had received her death-wound from the "Albemarle's" guns, Gushing had coolly swung the torpedo-boom under the great ship's overhang and exploded the charge. A large hole was blown in the iron-clad's side, she sank at her moorings, and was never raised. Telling his companions to look out for themselves, Gushing left his sinking launch and swam downstream, reaching the bank, thoroughly exhausted, half a mile below. As soon as he recovered his strength he plunged into the dense swamp, and after many hours of tedious wading came out upon the shore of a creek, where, with his usual good luck, he found a picket-boat, and at 11 p. m. the following night reached a U. S. gun-boat at the mouth of the river. Of the gallant fellows who risked their lives with him, only one escaped besides himself. Two were drowned, and most of the others captured. Lieutenant Gushing did not expect to return alive from this enterprise, whether he succeeded in sinking the " Albemarle" or not, and before setting out he had visited Massachusetts in order to bid his friends good-by. Five times the Secretary of the Navy officially wrote him commendatory letters, and for the "Albemarle " affair he received the thanks of Congress, and was promoted lieutenant-commander, 27 October, 1864. At Fort Fisher, under a constant and heavy fire, he buoyed out the channel in a small skiff, and continued the work for six hours till he had completed it. At the final assault on Fort Fisher be fed a force of sailors and marines from the “Monticello " in an attack on the sea-front of the fort, and amid an unceasing fire at short range, which cut down his men in windrows, he crossed a hundred yards of sand, rallied his men, and lent such efficient assistance to the troops that, before midnight the fort was surrendered. After the war he served in the Pacific and Asiatic Squadrons, being in command of the steamer "Lancaster" in 186-'7, and of the "Maumee," in the Asiatic Squadron, in 1868-'9. On the return of the " Maumee" to the United States, Lieutenant-Commodore Gushing was advanced to the rank of commander. 31 January, 1872, being the youngest officer of that rank in the nary. He was allowed leave of absence, but his health, which had been impaired by over-exertion, failed completely, and he died of brain fever. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 40-41.
CUSHMAN, Pauline, spy, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 June, 1833. She was the daughter of a Spanish refugee, who became a tradesman in New Orleans, and afterward an Indian trader at Grand Rapids, Michigan After reaching womanhood she returned to the south as a variety actress, and attracted attention by her beauty. When acting in Louisville, Kentucky, in March, 1863, she was offered a bribe if she would give a toast to Jefferson Davis during the performance, and, on informing the provost-marshal. Colonel Moore, was induced to carry out the plot. She was afterward employed by the government as a detective to discover the southern sympathizers and spies in Louisville, and their methods of conveying information and medical supplies across the lines, and frequently also as a scout. Securing a theatrical engagement at Nashville, where she was welcomed as a secessionist, she performed valuable services for the army police in detecting thefts from the government stores, trade in contraband, and the practices of guerillas. Thence she was sent beyond the lines in May, 1863, ostensibly as a rebel sympathizer, in order to gain information of the strength of the Confederate forces and fortifications, the extent of their supplies, and their contemplated movements. She was captured, taken to the headquarters of General Bragg, and sentenced by a court-martial to be hanged as a spy, but was left behind at the evacuation of Shelbyville, where she was found by the Union troops. The fame of her adventures extended over the country, and after her escape from imprisonment she was given by the soldiers the title of major, and was accoutered as an officer. Her knowledge of the roads in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi was of great service to the Army of the Cumberland. See her “Life," by F. L. Sarmiento (Philadelphia, 1865). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 42.
CUSTER, George Armstrong, soldier, born in New Rumley, Harrison County, Ohio, 5 December, 1839; died in Montana, 25 June, 1876. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in June, 1861, and reported for duty at Washington. General Winfield Scott gave him despatches to carry to General Irwin McDowell, then in command of the Army of the Potomac, he was assigned to duty as lieutenant in the 5th U.S. Cavalry , and participated, on the day of his arrival at the front, in the first battle of Bull Run. General Philip Kearny selected him as his first aide-de-camp, and he afterward served on the staff of General William F. Smith. While on this duty he was given charge of the balloon ascensions, to make rcconnoissances. In May, 1862, General George B. McClellan was so impressed with the energy and perseverance that he showed in wading the Chickahominy alone, to ascertain what would be a safe ford for the army to cross, and with his courage in reconnoitering the enemy's position while on the other side, that he was appointed aide-de-camp, with the rank of captain, to date from 15 June, 1862. Captain Custer applied at once for permission to attack the picket-post he had just discovered, and at daylight the next morning surprised the enemy, drove them back, capturing some prisoners and the first colors that were taken by the Army of the Potomac. After General McClellan's retirement from command of the army, Captain Custer was discharged from his volunteer appointment and returned to his regiment as lieutenant. He had served there but a short time when General Alfred Pleasonton, on 15 May, 1863, made him aide-de-camp on his staff. For daring gallantry in a skirmish at Aldie and in the action at Brandy Station, as well as in the closing operations of the Rappahannock Campaign, he was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, dating from 29 June, 1863, and assigned to duty as commander of the Michigan brigade. At Gettysburg his brigade, together with those of Gregg and McIntosh, defeated General Stuart's efforts to turn the left flank. For this action he was brevetted major in the U.S. Army, to date from 3 July, 1863. At Culpepper Court-House he was wounded by a spent ball, which killed his horse. He took part in General Sheridan's cavalry raid toward Richmond, in May, 1864, and was brevetted lieutenant-colonel for gallant and meritorious services in the battle of Yellow Tavern, 11 May. In General Sheridan's second raid on Richmond the Michigan brigade made a most gallant fight at Trevillion Station; but so great was their peril that the colors of the brigade were only saved from capture by General Custer's tearing them from the standard, held in the grasp of a dying color-sergeant, and concealing the flag in his bosom. On 19 September, 1864, he was made brevet-colonel, U. S. Army, for gallantry at the battle of Winchester, and on 19 October he was brevetted major-general of volunteers for gallantry and meritorious services at Winchester and Fisher's Hill. On 30 September he assumed command of the 3d Division of Cavalry , with which he fought the brilliant battle of Woodstock on 9 October, where he was confronted by his former classmate at West Point, the Confederate General Rosser. He drove the enemy twenty-six miles, capturing everything they had on wheels except one gun. At Cedar Creek he confronted the enemy from the first attack in the morning until the battle ended. The 3d Division recaptured, before the day was over, guns and colors that had been taken from the army earlier in the fight, together with Confederate flags and cannon. After this brilliant success General Ouster was sent to Washington in charge of the captured colors, and recommended for promotion. In the spring of 1865, when General Sheridan moved his cavalry toward Richmond again, the 3d Division fought alone the battle of Waynesboro. The enemy's works were carried, and 11 guns, 200 wagons, 1,000 prisoners, and 17 battle-flags were captured. On reaching Fredrickshall Station, General Custer found that General Early had rallied from his retreat at Waynesboro and was preparing for another attack. He therefore sent a regiment to meet him at once. General Early was nearly captured, his command destroyed, and a campaign ended in which he lost his army, every piece of artillery, and all his trains. For gallant and meritorious services at the battles of Five Forks and Dinwiddie Court-House, Gen Custer was brevetted brigadier-general, U. S. Army, to date from 13 March, 1865. In a general order addressed to his troops, dated at Appomattox Court-House, 9 April, 1865, General Custer said: “During the past six months, though in most instances confronted by superior numbers, you have captured from the enemy in open battle 111 pieces of field artillery, 65 battle-flags, and upward of 10,000 prisoners of war, including seven general officers. Within the past ten days, and included in the above, you have captured 46 field-pieces of artillery, and 37 battle-flags. You have never lost a gun, never lost a color, and never been defeated; and, notwithstanding the numerous engagements in which you have borne a prominent part, including those memorable battles of the Shenandoah, you have captured every piece of artillery which the enemy has dared to open upon you.”
General Custer received the first flag of truce from the Army of Northern Virginia, and was present at the surrender at Appomattox Court-House. He was brevetted major-general for his services in the last campaign, and appointed major-general of volunteers, to date from 15 April, 1865. He participated in all but one of the battles of the Army of the Potomac. After the grand review he was ordered to Texas, to command a division of cavalry. In November, 1865, he was made chief of cavalry, and remained on this duty until March, 1866, when he was mustered out of the volunteer service, to date from February, 1866. He then applied to the government for permission to accept from President Juarez the place of chief of Mexican cavalry in the struggle against Maximilian. President Johnson declined to give the necessary leave of absence, and General Ouster decided to accept the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 7th Cavalry , his appointment dating from 28 July, 1866. He joined his regiment at Fort Riley, Kansas, in November, 1866, and served on the plains until 1871. On 27 November he fought the battle of the Washita, in Indian territory, and inflicted such a defeat upon the Indians that the entire tribe of Cheyennes were compelled to return to their reservation. He was ordered, with his regiment, to Kentucky, in 1871, where he remained until 1873. In the spring of that year he was sent, with the 7th, to Fort Rice, Dakota, and from there accompanied an expedition to the Yellowstone. On 4 August he fought the Sioux, with his regiment, on the Yellowstone, near the mouth of Tongue River, and on the llth had another engagement three miles below the mouth of the Big Horn. In July, 1874, the government ordered an expedition, commanded by General Custer, into the Black Hills, which resulted in a hitherto unexplored region being opened to miners and frontiersmen. On 15 May, 1876, General Custer commanded his regiment in a campaign against the confederated Sioux tribes. The Indians were discovered encamped on the Little Big Horn River, in a region almost unknown. Eleven tribes, numbering nearly 9,000, had their villages on and in the vicinity of the Little Big Horn. The government expedition consisted of 1,100 men. The strength of the enemy not being known, General Custer was ordered to take his regiment and pursue a trail. He arrived at what was supposed to be the only Indian village on 25 June, and an attack was made by a portion of the regiment numbering fewer than 200 cavalry, while General Custer, with 277 troopers, charged on the village from another direction. They were met by overwhelming numbers, and General Custer, with his entire command, was slain. The officers and men were interred upon the battle-field, and in 1879 it was made a national cemetery. A monument recording the name and rank of all who fell was erected by the U. S. government on the spot where General Ouster made his last stand. In 1877 his remains were removed to the cemetery at West Point, New York.
He was nearly six feet in height, broad-shouldered, lithe, and active, with a weight never above 170 pounds. His eyes were blue, his hair and mustache of golden tint. He was a man of immense strength and endurance, and, as he used neither liquors nor tobacco, his physical condition was perfect through all the hardships of his life. Eleven horses were shot under him in battle. At the age of twenty-three he was made a brigadier-general, at twenty-five a major-general. The close of the war reduced his command from thousands to hundreds; but his enthusiastic devotion to duty was not diminished, and his form was seen at the head of his men in his Indian service just as it had been during the Civil War. He reverenced religion, he showed deference to the aged, he honored womankind, he was fond of children, and devoted to animals. His domestic life was characterized by a simplicity, joyous contentment, and fondness for home that was surprising when it is remembered that, out of the thirty-seven years of his brief life, fourteen were spent in active warfare. One of his friends wrote his history under his name in one sentence, “This was a man.” In 1871 General Custer began to contribute articles on frontier life to the “Galaxy,” which were published in book-form under the title “ My Life on the Plains” (New York, 1874). He was engaged on a series of “War Memoirs” for the “Galaxy” at the time of his death. He occasionally contributed articles on hunting to “Turf, Field, and Farm” and “Forest and Stream.” His life has been written by Frederick Whittaker (New York, 1878). — His wife, Elizabeth Bacon, whom he married in February, 1804, was with him at the front during the last year of the war, and also accompanied him in his nine years' service on the western frontier. She has published “Boots and Saddles, or Life with General Custer in Dakota” (New York, 1885), and “Tenting on the Plains, or General Custer in Kansas and Texas,” with a sketch of his life (1888). — His brother, Thomas Ward, soldier, born in New Rumley, Harrison County, Ohio, 15 March, 1845; died in Montana, 25 June, 1870. After repeated attempts, which failed on account of his youth, he succeeded in enlisting as a private in an Ohio regiment, and served in the west until he was made aide-de-camp on his brother's staff, then with the Army of the Potomac. His appointment as second lieutenant in the 6th Michigan Cavalry dated from 8 November, 1864. His horse was often neck and neck with that of his brother in the famous cavalry charges, and in the fight at Namozine Church, 2 April, 1865, he captured a Confederate flag. At Sailor's Creek, 6 April, he captured a second flag, but was shot by the standard-bearer and severely wounded in the face. He was preparing to charge again, when stopped by his brother and told to go to the rear and have his wound dressed. As he paid no attention to this request, it became necessary for General Custer to order him under arrest before he could check his ardor. He received a medal from Congress for the capture of the colors at Sailor's Creek. In the spring of 1865 he accompanied General Custer to Texas and served on the staff until mustered out of service in November. He received the brevets of captain, major, and lieutenant-colonel. On 28 February, 1866, he was appointed second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Infantry of the regular army, and on 28 July was promoted to a first lieutenancy in his brother's regiment, the 7th U.S. Cavalry , with which he served on frontier duty until he fell beside his brother in the battle of the Little Big Horn. When he was asked his opinion of his brother, just before the final campaign, General Custer said: “If you want to know my opinion of Tom, I can only say that I think he should be the general and I the captain.” Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 43-45.
CUTLER, Hannah Maria Tracy, 1815-1896, Becket, Massachusetts, abolitionist, physician. Leader of the Temperance and women’s suffrage-rights movements, lecturer, educator, physician. Helped found Women’s Anti-Slavery Society, member of the Free Soil Party, organizer of the Woman’s Kansas Aid Convention in 1856. Served as President of the Western Union Aid Commission in Chicago, 1862-1864. (Yellin, 1994, p. 58n40; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 46)
CUTLER, Hannah Maria Tracy, physician, born in Becket, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, 25 December, 1815. She is a daughter of John Conant, and was educated in the common school of Becket. In 1834 she married the Reverend J. M. Tracy, who died in 1843. Subsequently she prepared herself for teaching, and was matron of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1848-'9. In July, 1851, she visited England as a newspaper correspondent at the World's Fair. She was also at the same time a delegate from the United States at the Association in London, and while in England delivered the first lectures ever given there on the legal rights of women. In 1852 she married Samuel Cutler and moved to Illinois, where she labored assiduously for the reform of the laws relating to women. She was president of the Western Union Aid commission, Chicago, Illinois, in 1862-'4. In 1873 she visited France, in company with her son, J. M. Tracy, artist, and remained there till 1875. After her graduation as a physician at the Homoeopathic College in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1879, she settled at Cobden, Illinois, where she has practised with success. She is the author of "Woman as she Was, Is, and Should be" (New York, 1846); "Phillipia, or a Woman's Question" (Dwight, Illinois, 1886): and "The Fortunes of Michael Doyle, or Home Rule for Ireland " (Chicago, 1886). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 46.
CUTLER, Lysander, soldier, born in Maine about 1806; died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 30 July, 1866. He offered his services to the government at the beginning of the Civil War, and was given command of the 6th Wisconsin Regiment, which he speedily brought into a state of discipline, and rendered one of the best in the service, Subsequently he was in command of the " Iron Brigade " (originally Meredith's), of the Army of the Potomac, to which his regiment was attached, and won the promotion of brigadier-general and afterward major-general. He was twice wounded. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 47.
CUTT, James Madison, born on Cutts Island, near Saco, Maine, 29 July, 1805: died in Washington, D. C, 11 May, 1863. He was educated in Washington, and was destined for the bar, but the war of 1812 swept away much of his father's property, and young Cutts, then a student in William Wirt's office, was compelled to give up his studies. He was appointed in the Treasury Department, becoming chief clerk in the second comptroller's office, and ultimately, during Buchanan's administration, second comptroller. This office he held until his death, through the administration of President Lincoln. His daughter Ada married, first. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, and, several years after his death. Colonel Robert Williams, U. S. A. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 48.
CUTT, Richard Dominions, surveyor, born in Washington, D. C., 21 September, 1817; died there, 13 December, 1883. He was educated at Georgetown College, and entered the U.S. Coast Survey in 1843, remaining in its service for over forty years. His first efforts were directed toward raising the standard of topographical work, which he accomplished with eminent success. Of late years the higher scientific work of the survey has occupied his attention, and his operations have extended to all parts of the country. The shores of the Chesapeake, the coasts of the Pacific, the plains of Texas, and the mountains of New England equally bear testimony to his professional ability. To him the navigators of the Pacific are indebted for the first surveys of San Francisco, San Diego, and Monterey Bays, and some other minor harbors on the coast. In 1855 he was appointed U. S. surveyor upon the International fisheries commission for the settlement of the limits of the fishing-grounds between the United States and the British Dominions in North America. In the Civil War he was on the staff of General Henry W. Halleck, and received the brevet rank of brigadier-general of volunteers in March, 1865. In 1873 he was one of the U. S commissioners to the Vienna International Exposition, and in 1883 he attended the International Geodesic Conference in Rome, which was convened for the purpose of considering a universal prime meridian and the unification of time. He held at his death the office of first assistant superintendent of the U.S. Coast Survey, having direct charge of the office and topography. In 1845 he married Martha Jefferson Hackley, granddaughter of Thomas Mann Randolph, of Tuckahoe, Georgia Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 48.
CUTTER, Calvin, physician, born in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, in 1807; died in Greene, Maine, 25 March, 1830. He was a pupil at the New Ipswich Academy, and afterward taught in Wilton, New Hampshire. and Ashby, Massachusetts. In 1829 he studied medicine, and practised his profession in Rochester, New Hampshire from 1831 till 1833, in Nashua from 1834 till 1837, and in Dover from 1838 till 1841. Between 1842 and 1856 Dr. Cutter visited twenty-nine states of the Union, delivering medical lectures. In 1847 he began the compilation of "Cutter's Physiology," a text-book for schools mud colleges, of which, prior to 1871, about 500,000 copies had been sold. It has been translated into several oriental languages. In 1856 Dr. Cutter was chosen to convey a supply of Sharpe's rifles to Kansas, a hazardous task, which was successfully performed. Later in the same year he led into Kansas the Worcester armed company of sixty men, and also the force known as "Jim Lane’s army." which he commanded for nearly a year. He was president of the military council in Kansas, and instrumental in the capture of Colonel Titus. In 1861 Dr. Cutter became surgeon of the 21st Massachusetts Infantry, and served in the National Army nearly three years. He was twice wounded, and made prisoner at Bull Run. During most of his term of service he had charge of the medical depot of the 9th Army Corps as surgeon-in-chief. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 48-49.
CUTTER, George Washington, poet, born in Massachusetts in 1801; died in Washington, D. C, 24 December, 1865. He studied law, and followed his profession with success in Kentucky until about 1845. During the Mexican War he raised a company of infantry, of which he became captain, and which subsequently was included in the 2d Kentucky Volunteers under Colonel McKee. Later he married Miss Drake, an actress of Cincinnati, and for a time made his home in Covington, Kentucky Afterward he became interested in politics, and was known favorably as an eloquent orator. His services were rewarded with a clerkship in the Treasury Department, an office that he retained during several administrations. "The Song of Steam, "The Song of the Lightning," and "E Pluribus Unum," are his best-known pieces. He published " Buena Vista and other Poems" (Cincinnati, 1848); "Song of Steam and other Poems"(1857); and "Poems, National and Patriotic" (Philadelphia, 1857). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 49.
CUTTING, Francis Brockholst, jurist, born in New York City in 1805; died there, 26 June, 1870. He studied at Columbia, was admitted to the bar, and rapidly rose to distinction in his profession. In 1836 he was elected a member of the state legislature, as a Democrat from 1840 till 1853 he devoted himself to his large and lucrative practice in his native city, and from 1853 till 1855 represented one of its Districts in Congress, where he was a War Democrat. On the renomination of Abraham Lincoln for the presidency, he aided in his re-election, and thereafter was active in supporting the cause of the Union. After the war Mr. Cutting retired from politics and quietly pursued his profession. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 49.
CUTTING, James Ambrose, inventor, born in Massachusetts in 1814; died in Worcester, Massachusetts, 31 July, 1867. His early years were spent in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where he lived in straitened circumstances. He invented a new bee-hive, and for the patent received sufficient encouragement to settle in Boston, where he then devised several improved processes, but deriving no important benefit from them, and soon lost all his property. Afterward turning his attention to the new art of making daguerreotypes, he discovered the process of making pictures on glass, which after his own name he called ambrotypes. This he at once patented, and then disposed of his rights, both in this country and abroad. He established an aquarium in Boston, and subsequently the aquarial gardens. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 49.
CUYLER, John M., surgeon, U. S. Army, born in Georgia, about 1810; died in Morristown, New Jersey, 26 April, 1884. He entered the army as assistant surgeon in 1834, being among the first to pass the rigid examination instituted in 1833. He was actively engaged in the Creek War of 1838, and the Seminole War of 1840, and served with distinction through the Mexican War, receiving promotion as major and surgeon on 16 February, 1847. From 1848 till 1855 he served at West Point. As senior medical officer at Fort Monroe, during the first years of the Civil War, his services were invaluable in organizing the medical department of the armies congregated there. He served afterward as medical inspector and acting medical inspector-general. He served on examining boards, and sought to uphold a high professional standard among army surgeons. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel and medical inspector on 11 June, 1862, brevetted brigadier-general on 13 March, 1865, and promoted to the rank of colonel on 26 June, 1876. After the war he was medical director of important departments until his retirement, 30 June, 1882. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 50.
