Encyclopedia of Civil War Biography - Dab-Dev
DABNEY, Robert Lewis, clergyman, born in Louisa County, Virginia, 5 March, 1820. He studied at Hampden Sidney College, and was graduated at the University of Virginia in 1842. After teaching for two years, he studied at the Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, was licensed to preach in l840. He was ordained by the Lexington Presbytery in July, 1847, and became pastor of Tinkling Spring Church in Augusta County, Virginia, where he remained for six years. In 1853 he accepted the professorship of church history in Union Seminary, Virginia, and remained until 1883, except during the Civil War, when he was actively engaged in the Confederate service as chaplain of the 18th Virginia Regiment, and afterward as chief of staff to General Thomas J. Jackson. In 1883 he was elected to the chair of moral philosophy in the University of Texas. The degree of D.D. was conferred on him by Hampden Sidney College in 1853, and that of LL.D. by the Southwestern Presbyterian University, Tennessee, in 1877, and simultaneously by Hampden Sidney College. Besides being a voluminous contributor to periodical literature, Dr. Dabney has published "Life of Reverend Dr. F. S. Sampson" (Richmond, 1854); "Life of General T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson" (London, 1864); "Sacred Rhetoric" (Richmond, 1866); "Defence of Virginia and the South " (New York, 1868); " Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century Considered " (1876); "A Course of Systematic and Polemic Theology" (St. Louis, 1878); and " The Christian Sabbath " (Philadelphia, 1881) Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 51.
DABNEY, Virginias, author, born at Elmington, Gloucester County, Virginia, 15 February, 1835. He was graduated at the University of Virginia in 1855, and practised law. But he had abandoned this profession for literature when the Civil War began in 1861. He became a staff officer in the Confederate Army, and served through the war. He has published "The Story of Don Miff, as told by his Friend, John Bouche Whacker, a Symphony of Life" (Philadelphia, 1886). This book reached its fourth edition in six months. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 51.
DAHLGREN, John Adolph, naval officer, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 13 November, 1809; died in Washington, D. C, 12 July, 1870. His father, Bernard Ulric Dahlgren, was Swedish consul at Philadelphia till his death in 1824 The great object of the son's early ambition was to enter the Navy of the United States, and he received his midshipman's warrant on 1 February, 1826, making his first cruise in the " Macedonian," of the Brazil Squadron, in 1827-'9. He was attached to the sloop " Ontario," of the Mediterranean Squadron, in 1830-'2, and made passed midshipman in the latter year, and in 1834, owing to his mathematical proficiency, detailed for duty on the U.S. Coast Survey. In this year he wrote a series of letters on naval topics to the Philadelphia "National Gazette," signed "Blue-Jacket." He was commissioned lieutenant in 1837, and in the same year his hitherto exceptionally fine sight became so impaired by incessant labor as to threaten entire loss of vision, and an absolute rest was needed. During this period of enforced inaction Lieutenant Dahlgren resided on a farm. In 1842 he resumed duty, and in 1843 went to the Mediterranean in the frigate "Cumberland," returning late in 1845 to the United States, the cruise having been shortened by the prospect of a war with Mexico. In January, 1847, Lieutenant Dahlgren was assigned to ordnance duty at Washington, although he desired, and made an effort to obtain, active duty at sea. Then began those labors as an ordnance officer which for sixteen years demanded the most extraordinary energy, and which finally made Dahlgren chief of ordnance, and gave him the world's recognition as a man of science and inventive genius. He saw almost at once the defects in gunnery then existing, and soon offered the remedy in the style of cannon known by his name, which for so many years constituted the naval armament of the United States. It was proposed by him in 1850, and the first gun according to his design was cast in May of that year. These guns are of iron, cast solid, and cooled from the exterior. They are distinguished by great thickness at the breech, rapidly diminishing from the trunnions to the muzzle, and were the first practical application of results obtained by experimental determination of pressures at different points along the bore. They are chiefly smooth-bores of nine and eleven-inch calibre; but Dahlgren also invented a rifled cannon, and introduced boat-howitzers with iron carriages, which were unsurpassed for combined lightness and accuracy. Under the sole direction of Lieutenant Dahlgren, the Ordnance Department at Washington acquired the most extensive additions, including the foundry for cannon, gun-carriage shops, the experimental battery, and equipment of all kinds. He was made commander in 1855, and, in order to introduce innovations that completely revolutionized the armament of the U.S. Navy, and to remove objections particularly to his eleven-inch gun, which was then considered too heavy for use at sea, he was permitted to equip the sloop-of-war "Plymouth entirely as he wished. The experimental cruise of this vessel lasted from 1857 till 1859. He was on ordnance duty at the Washington Navy-yard in 1860-'l, and on 22 April, 1861, after the resignation of Franklin Buchanan, who entered the Confederate Service, was given command of the yard, which was not only of great importance on account of naval resources, but also as the key of the defences of Washington on the left. Commander Dahlgren hastened to secure the only route left to the capital by the Potomac River, and, when Alexandria was seized, he moved down the left wing of the column under Colonel Ellsworth. He was appointed chief of the Ordnance Bureau on 18 July, 1862, and shortly afterward promoted to be captain, his commission being antedated to 16 July. On 7 February, 1863, he was made a rear-admiral, receiving at the same time the thanks of Congress, and ten years additional on the active list, which, however, he did not live to enjoy. In July, 1863, he was ordered to relieve Admiral Dupont in the command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. In July, August, and September of that year he co-operated with the land forces under General Gillmore in various attacks on the defences of Charleston, and succeeded, by silencing Fort Sumter and the batteries on Morris Island, in obtaining for the monitors a safe anchorage inside the bar, thus putting a stop to blockade-running. His failure to take Charleston provoked some hostile criticism, but his operations had the continuous approval of the Navy Department. He led a successful expedition up St. John's River in February, 1864, to aid in throwing a military force into Florida, co-operated with Sherman in the capture of Savannah, on 23 December, and entered Charleston with General Schimelpfennig on its evacuation in February, 1865. In 1866 he was given command of the South Pacific Squadron. He was again chief of the Ordnance Bureau in 1868-'70, and a few months before his death was relieved at his own request and appointed to the command of the Washington Navy-yard. His death was the result of heart-disease. Admiral Dahlgren was a man of great personal bravery, dignified in manner, and of exemplary character. He published many scientific works on ordnance, which have been used as textbooks in the U.S. Navy. They include "Thirty-two-pounder Practice for Rangers" (1850): " System of Boat-Armament in the U. S. Navy " (1852: French translation, 1855); "Naval Percussion Locks and Primers" (1852); "Ordnance Memoranda " (1853); "Shells and Shell-Guns," explaining his own system (1856); and various reports on ordnance, armored vessels, and coast defences. After his death appeared "Notes on Maritime and International Law," with a preface by his widow, indicating the plan of an uncompleted work (Boston, 1877). See "Memoir of John A. Dahlgren," by his widow (Boston, 1882).—His son, Ulric, born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1842; died near King and Queen's Court-House, Virginia, 4 March, 1864, removed to Washington with his father in 1848. In the intervals of study he spent his time in the U.S. Navy-yard, where he became familiar with the construction and use of artillery, and was taught by the sailors to swim and row. He began the study of civil engineering in 1858, and in 1860 began also to study law in Philadelphia; but, at the beginning of the Civil War, he returned to Washington, and just after the first battle of Bull Run was sent by his father to place and take charge of a naval battery on Maryland Heights. He then became aide to General Sigel, and served through Fremont's mountain campaign and through Pope's campaign, acting as Sigel's chief of artillery at the second battle of Bull Run. In November, 1862, he attacked Fredericksburg at the head of Sigel's body-guard of 57 men, and held the town for three hours, returning with 31 prisoners, and for his gallantry was detailed as special aide on General Burnside's staff. He was afterward on General Hooker's staff, distinguished himself at Chancellorsville, and as aide to General Meade performed much dangerous and important service in the Gettysburg Campaign at the head of a hundred picked men. On the retreat of the enemy from Gettysburg he led the charge into Hagerstown, and was severely wounded in the foot. His leg was amputated, and for a time his life was in danger; but he recovered, was promoted to colonel for his gallantry, and, though obliged to walk on crutches, returned at once to active service. He lost his life in a raid planned by him, in concert with General Kilpatrick, to release the Union prisoners at Libby prison and Belle Isle. A memoir of him, written by his father, was revised and published by his stepmother (Philadelphia, 1872).— Admiral Dahlgren's second wife, Madeleine Vinton, born in Gallipolis, Ohio, about 1835, is a daughter of Samuel F. Vinton, for over twenty years a leader of the Whig Party. At an early age she married Daniel Convers Goddard, of Zanesville, who died, leaving t wo children. She married Admiral Dahlgren on 2 August, 1865, and has three children of this marriage. As early as 1859 she published sketches and poems under the pen-name of " Corinne." In 1870-'3 she actively opposed the movement for female suffrage, and drew up a petition to Congress, which was extensively signed, asking that the right to vote should not be extended to women. The literary Society of Washington, of which she was one of the founders, held its meetings in her house for six years, and she was elected its vice-president. She was for some time president of " The Ladies' Catholic Missionary Society of Washington," and has built the chapel of "St. Joseph's of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in South Mountain, Maryland Mrs. Dahlgren's works include "Idealities" (Philadelphia, 1859); "Thoughts on Female Suffrage" (Washington, 1871); "South Sea Sketches " (Boston, 1881); "Etiquette of Social Life in Washington " (Philadelphia, 1881); "South Mountain Magic" (1882); "A Washington Winter" and " Memoirs of John A. Dahlgren" (1882); and "The Lost Name " and " Lights and Shadows of a Life " (Boston, 1886). She has translated from the French, Montalembert's "Pius IX" and De Chambrun's "Executive Power" (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1874), the preface to the latter being written by James A. Garfield, and from the Spanish, Donoso Cortes's " Catholicism. Liberalism, and Socialism," for which she received the thanks of Pius IX. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 53-54.
DAILY, Samuel Gordon, 1823-1866, abolitionist. Member of the Nebraska Territorial House of Representatives. U.S. Congressman.
DAKIN, Thomas Spencer, merchant, born in Orange County, New York, in 1831; died in Brooklyn, 13 May, 1878. He was the eldest of four children, and, until he was seventeen years of age, worked on his father's farm. He then walked, about seventy-five miles, to New York, and began life as an office-boy. In 1858 he established the firm of Thomas S. Dakin & Company, commission agents, continuing it until 1861, when he engaged in the oil trade, and became the head of the firm of Dakin & Gulick. In 1870 he retired from business. He was elected captain in the 13th Regiment, Brooklyn, in 1862, and served in the Virginia Campaign as a member of the staff of General Crook, who then commanded the 5th Brigade. After the war he became major-general of militia, and was widely known as a member of the American rifle team. He especially practised shooting at long range, and took part in the first international contest at Creedmoor in September, 1874, when the Irish team, under Major Leech, was defeated by the American team. In the following year the Americans again defeated the Irish team at Dolly Mount, Ireland, when General Dakin made the remarkable score of 165 in a possible 180. He was afterward elected a member of the legion of honor of France. In the international match in 1876, when the Americans defeated teams from Ireland, Scotland, Australia, and Canada, their success was mainly due to the instructions of General Dakin. In the first day's shooting he made the highest score, 203. He also took part in the Irish-American return match of the same year, when his score was again the highest, reaching 208. He was the only rifleman that shot in every international contest held either in this country or in Europe. He was a director in the National and several other rifle associations. In 1876 he was the Democratic nominee for Congressman in the third Congressional District, but was defeated by a small majority Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 56.
DALE, William Johnson, physician, born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, 5 September, 1815. His grandfather, William Johnson, fought at Bunker Hill; his paternal grandfather, Ebenezer, at Lexington; and his father, Ebenezer, was a surgeon in the war of 1812. He was graduated at Harvard in 1837, at its normal school in 1840, and began practice in Boston. In June, 1861, he was commissioned surgeon-general of Massachusetts, holding the rank of colonel, and in December of that year was appointed acting assistant surgeon of the U. S. Army, which place he retained till the close of the war. He was on duty in Boston, Massachusetts, during the Civil War, and had general supervision of all matters connected with the medical staff and the care and treatment of the sick and wounded that were sent home. In October, 1868, he was raised to the rank of brigadier-general, in connection with his appointment as surgeon-general of Massachusetts. In recognition of his services, the U. S. authorities gave his name to a general hospital established at Worcester, Massachusetts, opened in September, 1863. He is a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and was its anniversary chairman. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 57.
DALLAS, George Mifflin, statesman, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 10 July, 1792; died there, 31 December, 1864, was graduated with first-class honors at Princeton in 1810, and then studied law in his father's office, being admitted to the bar in 1813. The same year be received the appointment of private secretary to Albert Gallatin, and accompanied that gentleman on his mission to Russia, to negotiate a treaty of peace with England. On his return to this country, in the following year, he assisted his father for some months in his duties as secretary of the treasury, and then began the practice of law in New York City, and was solicitor of the U. S. Bank. In 1817 he was appointed deputy attorney-general for Philadelphia County. Taking an active part in politics, and supporting the candidacy of General Jackson for the presidency in 1824 and 1828, Mr. Dallas was in 1829 elected mayor, and, on the elevation of General Jackson to the presidency, in 1829 was appointed U. S. Attorney for that district. He retained this office till 1831, when he was elected to the U. S. Senate in the place of Isaac D. Barnard, who had resigned. He took a prominent part in the debates of that body until the expiration of his term, in 1833, when he declined a re-election, returned to the practice of the law, and filled the office of Attorney-General of Pennsylvania from 1833 till 1835. In 1837 President Van Buren appointed him minister to Russia, which post he retained till October, 1839, when he was recalled, at his own request, and again resumed legal practice, George M. Dallas and James Buchanan were for many years rival leaders of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania, and aspirants for the presidency of the United States. In May, 1844, the Democratic Convention at Baltimore nominated him for vice-president of the United States on the ticket with James K. Polk for president. The Democratic candidates were elected by an electoral vote of 170 out of 275. The questions of the time were the tariff and the annexation of Texas. Mr. Polk's election caused the admission of Texas to the Union just before the close of Mr. Tyler's term of office, but the subject of the tariff was left for the new administration. The appointment of his rival Buchanan, as secretary of state, left Mr. Dallas without influence on the policy of the administration; but the tie in the Senate on the free-trade tariff of 1846, and its adoption by his casting vote, gave him prominence. A bill that levied duties on imports for the purpose of revenue only, abandoning the protective policy, was passed by the House of Representatives in 1846, but when it reached the Senate that body was evenly divided, on that the decision rested with the vice-president. In giving his vote Mr. Dallas said that, though the bill was defective, he believed that proof had been furnished that a majority of the people desired a change, to a great extent, in principle, if not fundamentally; but in giving the casting vote for a low tariff he violated pledges made to the protectionists of Pennsylvania that had secured the vote of the state for his party in the presidential election. His term expired in 1849. In 1856 Mr. Dallas succeeded Mr. Buchanan as minister to Great Britain, and continued in that post from 4 February, 1856, until the appointment by President Lincoln of Charles F. Adams, who relieved him on 16 May, 1861. At the very beginning of his diplomatic service in England he was called to act upon the Central American question, and the request made by the United States to the British government that Sir John Crampton, the British minister to the United States, should be recalled. Both these delicate questions were managed by Mr. Dallas in a conciliatory spirit, but without any sacrifice of national dignity, and both were settled amicably. At the close of his diplomatic career Mr. Dallas returned to private life and took no further part in public affairs except to express condemnation of secession. Many of his speeches were published, among them "An Essay on the Expediency of erecting any Monument to Washington except that involved in the Preservation of the Union" (1811); "A Vindication of President Monroe for authorizing General Jackson to pursue the Hostile Indians into Florida" (1819); "Speech in the Senate on Nullification and the Tariff" (1831); "Eulogy on Andrew Jackson" (1845); "Speech on giving his Casting Vote on the Tariff of 1846 " (1846); "Vindication of the Vice-President's Casting Vote in a Series of Letters" (1846); "Speech to the Citizens of Pittsburg on the War, Slavery, and the Tariff " (1847); "Speech to the Citizens of Philadelphia on the Necessity of maintaining the Union, the Constitution, and the Compromise" (1850). A "Series of Letters from London," written while he was minister there, in 1856-'60, was edited and published by his daughter Julia (Philadelphia, 1869 lieutenant-general in 1782, and was made a baronet in 1783. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 59.
DALTON, Edward Barry, physician, born in Lowell, Massachusetts, 21 September, 1834; died in Santa Barbara, California, 13 May, 1872. He was graduated at Harvard in 1855, and at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, in 1858. Dr. Dalton then settled in New York, and was resident physician of St. Luke's Hospital when the Civil War began. He at once volunteered as a surgeon, and served from April, 1861, till May, 1865. At first he was a medical officer in the U.S. Navy, after which he was commissioned surgeon of the 36th New York Volunteers, and subsequently surgeon of U. S. Volunteers, serving as medical inspector of the 6th Army Corps, and as medical director of the Department of Virginia. In March, 1864, he was transferred to the Army of the Potomac, where he remained throughout the campaign of that year, from the Wilderness to City Point, having charge of all the wounded, and establishing and moving the hospitals. At City Point he was made chief medical officer of the depot field-hospitals, Army of the Potomac, till the final campaign in March and April, 1865, when he accompanied the troops as medical director of the 9th Army Corps. After his discharge he was successively appointed brevet lieutenant-colonel and colonel of volunteers. In March, 1866, he was appointed sanitary superintendent of the New York Metropolitan Board of Health, in which office he remained until his resignation in January, 1869. In 1869 he originated the present city ambulance system for the transportation of the sick and injured. His health had then begun to fail, and, after trying various resorts, he finally visited California, where he died from consumption. He published papers on "The Disorder known as Bronzed Skin, or Disease of the Supra-renal Capsules" (1860); "The Metropolitan Board of Health" (1868); and "Reports of the Sanitary Superintendent, of the Metropolitan Board of Health " from 1866 till 1869. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 60.
DALTON, Thomas, 1794-1883, free African American, Massachusetts, abolitionist. Leader, Massachusetts General Colored Association. Leader, New England Anti-Slavery Society. Wife was Lucy Dalton. Organized anti-slavery conventions with abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
DANA, Charles Anderson, 1819-1897, New Hampshire, newspaper editor, author, government official, anti-slavery activist and abolitionist leader. Proprietor and managing editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. As editor, he had the Tribune actively advocate for the anti-slavery cause. The Tribune became one of the leading newspapers promoting anti-slavery. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 64-65; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 49; Wilson, J. H., Life of Charles A. Dana. New York, 1907)
DANA, Charles Anderson, editor, born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, 8 August, 1819; died near Glen Cove, Long Island, 17 October, 1897. He was a descendant of Richard, progenitor of most of the Danas in the United States. His boyhood was spent in Buffalo, New York, where he worked in a store until he was eighteen years old. At that age he first studied the Latin grammar, and prepared himself for college, entering Harvard in 1839, but after two years a serious trouble with his eyesight compelled him to leave. He received an honorable dismissal, and was afterward given his bachelor's and master's degrees. In 1842 he became a member of the Brook Farm Association for agriculture and education, being associated with George and Sophia Ripley, George William Curtis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Parker, William Henry Channing, John Sullivan Dwight, Margaret Fuller, and other philosophers more or less directly concerned in the remarkable attempt to realize at Roxbury a high ideal of social and intellectual life. One of the survivors of Brook Farm speaks of Mr. Dana as the only man of affairs connected with that Unitarian, humanitarian, and socialistic experiment. His earliest newspaper experience was gained in the management of the “Harbinger,” which was devoted to social reform and general literature. After about two years of editorial work on Elizur Wright's Boston “Chromotype,” a daily newspaper, Mr. Dana joined the staff of the New York “Tribune” in 1847. The next year he spent eight months in Europe, and after his return he became one of the proprietors and the managing editor of the “Tribune,” a post which he held until 1 April, 1862. The extraordinary influence and circulation attained by that newspaper during the ten years preceding the Civil War was in a degree due to the development of Mr. Dana's genius for journalism. This remark applies not only to the making of the “Tribune” as a newspaper, but also to the management of its staff of writers, and to the steadiness of its policy as the leading organ of anti-slavery sentiment. The great struggle of the “Tribune” under Greeley and Dana was not so much for the overthrow of slavery where it already existed as against the further spread of the institution over unoccupied territory, and the acquisition of slave-holding countries outside of the Union. It was not less firm in its resistance of the designs of the slave-holding interest than wise in its attitude toward the extremists and impracticables at the north. In the “Tribune's” opposition to the attempt to break down the Missouri compromise and to carry slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and in the development and organization of that popular sentiment which gave birth to the Republican Party and led to the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Mr. Dana bore no unimportant part. Writing of the political situation in 1854, Henry Wilson says, in his “Rise and Fall of the Slave Power”: “At the outset, Mr. Greeley was hopeless and seemed disinclined to enter the contest. He told his associates that he would not restrain them, but, as for himself, he had no heart for the strife. They were more hopeful; and Richard Hildreth, the historian, Charles A. Dana, the veteran journalist, James S. Pike, and other able writers, opened and continued a powerful opposition in its columns, and did very much to rally and reassure the friends of freedom and to nerve them for the fight,” In 1861 Mr. Dana went to Albany to advance the cause of Mr. Greeley as a candidate for the U. S. Senate, and nearly succeeded in nominating him. The caucus was about equally divided between Mr. Greeley's friends and those of Mr. Evarts, while Ira Harris had a few votes which held the balance of power, and, at the instigation of Thurlow Weed, the supporters of Mr. Evarts went over to Judge Harris. During the first year of the war the ideas of Mr. Greeley and those of Mr. Dana in regard to the proper conduct of military operations were somewhat at variance; and this disagreement resulted in the resignation of Mr. Dana, after fifteen years' service on the “Tribune.” He was at once employed by Secretary Stanton in special work of importance for the War Department, and in 1863 was appointed assistant Secretary of War, which office he held until after the surrender of Lee. His duties as the representative of the civil authority at the scene of military operations brought him into close personal relations with Mr. Stanton and Mr. Lincoln, who were accustomed to depend much upon his accurate perception and just estimates of men and measures for information of the actual state of affairs at the front. At the time when General Grant's character and probable usefulness were unknown quantities, Mr. Dana's confidence in Grant's military ability probably did much to defeat the powerful effort then making to break down the rising commander. Of this critical period General Sherman remarks in his “Memoirs”: “One day early in April, 1868, I was up at Grant's headquarters [at Vicksburg], and we talked over all these things with absolute freedom. Charles A. Dana, assistant Secretary of War, was there, and Wilson, Rawlins, Frank Blair, McPherson, etc. We all knew, what was notorious, that General McClernand was intriguing against General Grant, in hopes to regain command of the whole expedition, and that others were raising clamor against Grant in the newspapers of the north. Even Mr. Lincoln and General Halleck seemed to be shaken; but at no instant did we (his personal friends) slacken in our loyalty to him.” Mr. Dana was in the saddle at the front much of the time during the campaigns of northern Mississippi and Vicksburg, the rescue of Chattanooga, and the marches and battles of Virginia in 1864 and 1865. After the war his services were sought by the proprietors of the Chicago “Republican,” a new daily, which failed through causes not within the editor's control. Returning to New York, he organized in 1867 the stock company that now owns the “Sun” newspaper, and became its editor. The first number of the “Sun” issued by Mr. Dana appeared on 27 January, 1868, and for nearly twenty years he was actively and continuously engaged in the management of that successful journal, and solely responsible for its conduct. He made the “Sun” a Democratic newspaper, independent and outspoken in the expression of its opinions respecting the affairs of either party. His criticisms of civil maladministration during General Grant's terms as president led to a notable attempt on the part of that administration, in July, 1873, to take him from New York on a charge of libel, to be tried without a jury in a Washington police court. Application was made to the U. S. District Court in New York for a warrant of removal; but in a memorable decision Judge Blatchford, now a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, refused the warrant, holding the proposed form of trial to be unconstitutional. Perhaps to a greater extent than in the case of any other conspicuous journalist, Mr. Dana's personality was identified in the public mind with the newspaper that he edited. He has recorded no theories of journalism other than those of common sense and human interest. He was impatient of prolixity, cant, and the conventional standards of news importance. Mr. Dana's first book was a volume of stories translated from the German, entitled “The Black Ant” (New York and Leipsic, 1848). In 1855 he planned and edited, with George Ripley, the “New American Cyclopædia.” The original edition was completed in 1863. It has since been thoroughly revised and issued in a new edition under the title of “The American Cyclopædia” (16 vols., New York, 1873-'6). With General James H. Wilson he wrote a “Life of Ulysses S. Grant” (Springfield, 1868). His “Household Book of Poetry, a collection of the best minor poems of the English language,” was first published in 1857, and has passed through many editions, the latest, thoroughly revised, being that of 1884. His “Reminiscences of the Civil War” appeared in 1898, after his death, in “McClure's Magazine.” Appleton’s 1900 pp. 64-65.
DANA, Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh, nephew of Samuel Luther and James Freeman, soldier, born in Fort Sullivan, Eastport, Maine, 15 April, 1822. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1842, and, after being appointed in the 7th Infantry as second lieutenant, served on garrison duty in the southwest. During the Mexican War he served with distinction, and was present at many of the important engagements, being severely wounded in storming the intrenchments at the battle of Cerro Gordo. He became captain on the staff and assistant quartermaster in March, 1848, and until 1855 served in garrison duty, principally in Minnesota. From 1855 till 1861 he was a banker in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was brigadier-general of the militia from 1857 till 1861. During the Civil War he accompanied the 1st Minnesota Infantry as colonel to the front, becoming brigadier-general of volunteers in February, 1862, and attached to the Army of the Potomac. He served in the battles before Richmond, and at Antietam commanded a brigade in General John Sedgwick's Division of General Edwin V. Sumner's Corps, and was severely wounded. He was commissioned major-general of volunteers in November, 1862, and was in command of the defences of Philadelphia during the invasion of Pennsylvania by the Confederate Army in 1863. Afterward he joined the Army of the Gulf, and commanded the expedition by sea to the Rio Grande, landing at Brazos Santiago, and driving the Confederate forces as far as Laredo, Texas. He then successively commanded the 13th Army Corps, the District of Vicksburg, the 16th Army Corps, the Districts of West Tennessee and Vicksburg, and finally the Department of the Mississippi. In Mav, 1865, he resigned from the army and engaged in mining operations in the western states. From 1866 till 1871 he was general agent of the American-Russian Commercial Company of San Francisco, in Alaska and Washington, after which he became superintendent of railroads in Illinois, and in 1878 of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quiney Railroad. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 68
DANE, Nathan, 1752-1835, jurist, anti-slavery activist, delegate to the Continental Congress, 1785-1788, Massachusetts, framed Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (Appletons, 1888, Vol. II, p. 72; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 63; Locke, 1901, pp. 93, 158n; ; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 76)
DANE, Nathan, jurist, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, 27 Dec., 1752; died in Beverly, Massachusetts, 15 Feb., 1835. He was graduated at Harvard in 1778, and, after studying law, was admitted to its practice and settled in Beverly. His acquirements made him a safe and able counsellor, and with his large and diversified experience he became one of the most prominent lawyers of New England. He entered at once into political life, and from 1782 till 1785 was a member of the Massachusetts legislature. In 1785 he was a delegate to the Continental Congress, and was continued as such by re-election until 1788. During his career in the national legislature he rendered much efficient service by his work on committees, and was the framer of the celebrated ordinance passed by Congress in 1787 for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio. It was adopted without a single alteration, and contains the emphatic statement “that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.” He also incorporated in this ordinance a prohibition against all laws impairing the obligation of contracts, which the convention that formed the constitution of the United States a few months afterward extended to all the states of the Union by making it a part of that constitution. In 1790 he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate, and again elected in 1794 and 1796. He was appointed judge of the court of common pleas for Essex County in 1794, but, after taking the oath of office, almost immediately resigned, and in 1795 was appointed a commissioner to revise the laws of the state. In 1811 he was delegated to revise and publish the charters that had been granted in Massachusetts, and in 1812 was selected to make a new publication of the statutes. During the same year he was chosen a presidential elector. He was a delegate to the Hartford Convention in 1814, and also to the Massachusetts constitutional Convention in 1820, but declined serving on account of deafness. For fifty years he devoted his Sundays to theological studies, excepting during the hours of public worship, reading generally the Scriptures in their original languages. In 1829 he gave $10,000, which he increased by $5,000 in 1831, for the foundation of the Dane professorship of law in Harvard law-school, requesting that his friend, Judge Joseph Story, should occupy the chair, which he did until his death. He published “A General Abridgment and Digest of American Law” (9 vols., Boston, 1823-‘9), and “Appendix” (1830). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 72.
DANFORTH, Joshua Nobel, Reverend, 1798-1861, clergyman. Agent for the American Colonization Society in New York and New England, 1834-1838. He established a headquarters office in Boston. He organized numerous auxiliaries and recruited notable members, such as Herman Humphrey, President of Amherst College, and noted historian, George Bancroft. His assistants were Reverend Charles Walker and Reverend Cyril Pearl. (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 73; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 196-197, 201-202, 204, 209-210, 227)
DANFORTH, Joshua Noble, clergyman, born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1 April, 1798; died in New Castle, Del, 14 Nov., 1861. He was graduated at Williams in 1818, and spent two years at the Princeton theological seminary. After being ordained by the New Brunswick presbytery, on 30 Nov., 1825, he was installed pastor of the church in New Castle, Del., where he remained until 1828, when he accepted a call to Washington. In 1832-'4 he was agent of the American colonization Society, from 1834 till 1838 pastor of the Congregational Church in Lee, Massachusetts, and then for fifteen years in charge of the 2d Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, Va. In 1860 he again accepted an agency for the American colonization Society. Dr. Danforth received in 1855 the degree of D. D. from Delaware College. He contributed largely to the religious and secular press, and wrote “Gleanings and Groupings from a Pastor's Portfolio” (New York, 1852). Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888. Vol. II, p. 73.
DANGERFIELD, Newby, free African American man with John Brown during his raid at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859; hanged with John Brown, 1859 (see entry for John Brown).
DANIEL, John Moncure, editor, born in Stafford County, Virginia, 24 October, 1825; died in Richmond, Virginia, 30 March, 1865. His father was the son of an eminent surgeon in the U. S. Army, who married a daughter of Thomas Stone, of Maryland, signer of the Declaration of Independence. John Moncure was educated mainly by his father, and studied law with Judge Lomax in Fredericksburg, Virginia, but did not complete his studies, his father's death rendering it necessary to earn a support for himself and aid his brothers. In 1845 he went to Richmond, where he obtained the place of librarian in a small public library, which, though it brought little money, supplied opportunity for indulging his passion for reading. The first exhibition of his prowess as a writer was on an agricultural monthly, "The Southern Planter," to which he attracted so much notice that he was invited to a place on the staff of a new Democratic newspaper (1847), the "Richmond Examiner," which speedily became the leading paper of the south. The brilliant invective of the paper led to his fighting several duels. Mr. Daniel’s " Democratic " principles were of the philosophical European school, and he was enabled to harmonize his pro-slavery radicalism with these by the adoption of Carlyle's theory (in "The Nigger Question "), which he interpreted as meaning that Negroes were not to be considered as men in the same sense as whites. He was heretical in religious opinions, and his columns bore witness to much admiration for Emerson and Theodore Parker. He even published Parker's famous sermon on Webster in his paper. The literary character of the "Examiner was very high. Mr. Daniel was a friend of. Edgar A. Poe, whom he aided with money, and of whom he wrote a remarkable sketch in the "Southern Literary Messenger." Some of Poe's poems were revised for this paper. Mr. Daniel was perhaps the earliest, apostle of the secessionists in Virginia, In 1853 he was appointed by President Buchanan minister to the court of Victor Emanuel, and while there he took high ground in demanding the same immunities for an Italian naturalized in the United States and visiting Sardinia as for any other American, and was indignant that Mr. Marcy did not support him in threatening a rupture of diplomatic relations. He caused some scandal by escorting to a royal ball at Turin (on occasion of the betrothal of Prince Napoleon and Princess Clotilde) the Countess Marie de Solms (afterward Madame Katazzi), who had not been invited. This matter was the subject of a curious correspondence between Cavour and his minister at Washington. Garibaldi requested Daniel to annex Nice to the American republic, which Daniel declined on the ground that it was contrary to the Monroe Doctrine. His social relations at Turin were for a time rendered unpleasant through the imprudent publication by a friend in Richmond if a private letter in which he ridiculed the habitual of the court, the letter having found its way to Turin. Nevertheless. Daniel passed more than seven agreeable years abroad. At the beginning of the Civil War he hastened home, and served on the staff of General A. P. Hill. His arm being shattered, he resumed editorship of the Richmond "Examiner." He attacked Jefferson Davis and Mr. Elmore (Confederate Treasurer) with great severity, was challenged in 1864 by the latter, and met him in a duel, where he was unable to point his pistol on account of his wounded arm. He was shot in the leg in this duel. He predicted the collapse of the Confederacy, and died three days before it occurred. Frederick S. Daniel has printed privately a volume containing his brother's leading articles during the war, with a memoir. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 74-75.
DANIEL, Raleigh Travers, jurist, born in Stafford County, Virginia, 15 October, 1805; died in Richmond, 16 August, 1877. His father was an eminent physician, his mother a daughter of Thomas Stone, signer of the Declaration of Independence. His early education was acquired from John Lewis, who kept a classical school in Spottsylvania County, and was perhaps the test teacher of Latin and Greek in that region. At the age of seventeen he entered the office of his uncle, Judge P. V. Daniel (afterward of the U. S. Supreme Court), at Richmond, and, after a careful training for the profession of law, took a high position at the bar. In the early part of his career he was appointed commonwealth's attorney for Henrico County, in which Richmond is situated, and held that office until 1852. Though belonging to a democratic family, he was the leader of the Whig Party in Richmond while yet a young man, and was repeatedly elected to represent that city in the legislature. He was the favorite orator of his party in Virginia, always chairman of its state committee, and on its electoral ticket; and in the presidential canvasses of 1840 and 1844 he confronted the democratic champions in every part of the state. Such was the admiration felt for him by his opponents that, in 1847 a democratic assembly elected him one of the three members of the governor's council. By seniority he became lieutenant-governor of the state. He was a strong Union man so long as that sentiment was possible in his state; but when the war came he considered service to his state the paramount duty. When Richmond was occupied by the national forces Mr. Daniel was removed by General Schofield from the office of city attorney. When the autonomy of the state was restored in 1868, he devoted himself to the work of organizing the conservative party, which triumphed in the election of Gilbert C. Walker as governor. In 1872 he was elected attorney-general of Virginia, and in this office showed such capacity for mastering the novel questions and difficulties that had followed the confusion of affairs that at the next convention he was re-nominated by acclamation. He was elected by an overwhelming majority, on 11 August, 1877, but died from a hemorrhage four days later. His culture, eloquence, and social qualities are still remembered in every part of Virginia, where no man of his political opinions had ever been so popular. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 75.
DANIEL, William, jurist, born in Cumberland County, Virginia, in 1770; died in Lynchburg, Virginia, 20 November, 1839. He was a member of the Virginia house of delegates, and gained reputation as an orator by his defence of the "Resolutions of '98" He became circuit judge and ex-officio member of the, old general court of Virginia. His judicial opinions are high authority, and some of his sayings are proverbial in his neighborhood.—His son, William, jurist, born in Winchester, Virginia, 26 November, 1800; died in Lynchburg, Virginia, 28 March, 1873, was educated at Hampden Sidney College and at the University of Virginia, and while yet a youth was a lawyer of large practice and wide reputation for eloquence. He was elected to the Virginia house of delegates before he was of age. He was an elector on the Polk ticket in 1844. He was a judge of the supreme court of appeals of Virginia from 1847 till 1865. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 75.
DANIEL, John Warwick, senator, born in Lynchburg, Virginia, 5 September, 1842, received a classical education, and in May, 1861, volunteered in the Confederate Army, in which he served throughout the war, rising to be major and adjutant-general of Early's Division in the Army of Northern Virginia. In 1865-'6 he studied law at the University of Virginia, and soon after entering upon practice gained a high reputation as an advocate. He has published "Attachments" (1869) and “Negotiable Instruments" (1876). He was elected to the state house of delegates in 1869. and to the state senate in 1875 and 1879. In 1876 he was an elector-at-large on the Tilden and Hendricks ticket. He was nominated for governor, in 1881, by the debt-paying democracy, and resigned from the state senate to accept the nomination, but was defeated by William E. Cameron, the readjuster candidate. On 4 November, 1884, he was elected a representative in Congress, and on 15 December 1885, was chosen U. S. Senator to succeed William Mahone, whose term expires 3 March, 1887. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 75-76.
DANIEL, William, candidate for the vice-presidency, born on Deal's Island, Somerset County, Maryland, 24 January, 1826. He was graduated at. Dickinson College in 1848, and admitted to the bar in 1851. He was elected to the legislature in 1853, and introduced a bill similar to the Maine liquor law, was re-elected on the temperance issue by the American Party, and on the completion of his term sent to the state senate in 1857 as a supporter of local option. After the first session he resigned, and removed to Baltimore. He became an earnest anti-slavery Republican, and in 1864 was a member of the State Constitutional Convention for the emancipation of the slaves. He was chosen president of the Maryland Temperance Alliance on its organization in 1872, and continued in that post in subsequent years. Through the efforts of that society and the energy and eloquence of its president, the Maryland option law was enacted, and adopted by thirteen counties of the twenty-three composing the state. On 14 July, 1884, the alliance joined the National Prohibition Party. Mr. Daniel appeared at the head of the Maryland delegation in the Prohibitionist Convention in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, acted as temporary chairman of the convention, and was nominated by it for vice-president of the United States. The St. John and Daniel ticket received 150,369 ballots, or l-49 per cent, of the total popular vote. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 76.
DANIELS, Edward, 1828-1916, Boston, Massachusetts, geologist, educator, abolitionist, Union officer in the Civil War.
DARGAN, Edmund Strother, 1805-1879, legislator, jurist. (American National Biography, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 103; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 74)
DARGAN, Edmund Spawn, jurist, born in Montgomery County, North Carolina 15 April, 1805; died in Mobile, Alabama, in November, 1879. He was the son of a Baptist minister of Irish descent, at whose death he was left without means. By his own exertions he obtained a fair knowledge of English, Latin, and Greek, although he was at work on a farm until he was twenty-three years old. He read law, was admitted to the bar in 1829, went to Alabama, and taught three months in Washington, Autauga County. Here he was elected a justice of the peace, and filled the office for several years, meanwhile engaging in the practice of law. In 1833 he moved to Montgomery, and in 1841 was elected to the bench of the circuit court of the Mobile District, and moved to Mobile. He resigned the office of judge in 1842, and in 1844 was elected to the state senate. He was also mayor of Mobile the same year. He resigned from the Senate the following year, and was elected to Congress, serving from 1 December, 1845, till 3 March, 1847. On the question of the northwestern boundary of Oregon he made an able speech, and offered some valuable amendments to the resolution of notice. He was the first proposer of the line of adjustment finally adopted on the settlement of the question with the British government. He declined a renomination, and in 1847 was elected to fill a vacancy on the bench of the Supreme Court of Alabama. In July, 1849, by the resignation of Justice Collier, he became chief justice, which office he resigned in December, 1852, and resumed the practice of law in Mobile. In 1861 he was a delegate to the State Convention, and voted for the ordinance of secession. He also served for one term as a representative in the Confederate Congress. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 77.
DAVENPORT, Henry Kallock, naval officer, born in Savannah, Georgia, 10 December, 1820; died in Franzensbad, Bohemia, 18 August, 1872. He entered the U.S. Navy as midshipman in February, 1838, and served on various vessels until 1844, when he was made passed midshipman and attached to the U.S. Coast Survey. Later he sailed on the "Columbia," and from 1849 till 1853 was connected with the mail-steamship service. After being promoted to lieutenant in December, 1852, he spent some time on sea duty in various squadrons, being present at the capture of the Barrier forts, Canton River, in 1856, and later on shore duty at the U. S. Observatory in Washington. During the Civil War he was attached to the "Cumberland." and was present at the engagement off Hatteras Inlet. From 1861 till 1864 commanded the steamer "Hetzel," and was engaged in the naval fight on James River in 1861, in the battle of Roanoke Island, at Newbern, and was senior officer in command of the sounds of North Carolina in 1862-'4, during which time he was in several battles and expeditions in these waters, covering the flanks of the army. He became commander in July, 1862, and from 1864 till 1866 served in the Pacific Squadron, commanding the Lancaster" and "Powhatan." In 1868 he was promoted captain, and, after being engaged in navigation duty in Washington Navy-yard during 1867-'70, was given command of the "Congress”, of the European squadron. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 82-83.
DAVIDSON, John Wynn, soldier, born in Fairfax County, Virginia, 18 August, 1824; died in St. Paul, Minnesota, 26 June, 1881. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1845, assigned to the 1st Dragoons, and accompanied General Kearny to California in 1846, in charge of a howitzer battery. During the Mexican War he served in the Army of the West, being present at the combats of San Pasqual, San Bernardo, San Gabriel, and Mesa. He was a scout in 1850, and was at the action of Clear Lake, 17 May, and at Russian River, 17 June, under Captain Nathaniel Lyon. From this time till the Civil War he continued on frontier and garrison duty. He fought the battle of Cieneguilla, New Mexico, on 30 March, 1854, against the Apache and Utah Indians, losing three fourths of his command, and, being himself wounded. He was promoted to captain on 20 January, 1855, to major on 14 November, 1861, and, after serving in defence of Washington, was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers on 3 February, 1862. In the Virginia Peninsular campaign of 1862 he commanded a brigade in General Smith's Division , and received two brevets for gallant conduct—that of lieutenant-colonel for the battle of Gaines's Mills, and that of colonel for Golding's Farm. He was also engaged at Lee's Mills, Mechanicsville, Savage Station, and Glendale. He commanded the St. Louis District of Missouri from 6 August, till 13 November, 1862, the Army of Southeast Missouri till 28 February, 1863, and the St. Louis District again till 6 June, co-operating with General Steele in his Little Rock Expedition and directing the movements of troops against Pilot Knob and Fredericktown, and in the pursuit of the enemy during Marmaduke's raid into Missouri. He led a cavalry division from June till September, commanded in the actions at Brownsville, Bayou Metre, and Ashley's Mills, Arkansas, and took part in the capture of Little Rock. He was made chief of cavalry of the Military Division west of the Mississippi on 26 June, 1864, and on 24 November led a cavalry expedition from Baton Rouge to Pascagoula. He was brevetted brigadier-general in the regular army on 13 March, 1865, for the capture of Little Rock, and major-general for his services during the war. He was made lieutenant-colonel of the 10th U.S. Cavalry on 1 December, 1866, was acting inspector-general of the Department of the Missouri from November, 1866, till December, 1867. He was mid professor of military science in Kansas agricultural College from 1868 till 1871. He then commanded various posts in Idaho and Texas, and, in 1877-'8, the District of Upper Brazos, Texas. On 20 March, 1879, he was made colonel of the 2d U.S. Cavalry. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 87.
DAVIES, Thomas Alfred, soldier, born in St. Lawrence County, New York, in December, 1809, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1829, and assigned to the 1st Infantry. After serving on frontier duty, he resigned on 31 October, 1831, and was employed on the Croton Aqueduct as a civil engineer till 1833, when he became a merchant in New York City, but was again employed on the aqueduct in 1840-'l. He re-entered the national service on 15 May, 1861, as colonel of the 16th New York Regiment, was at the battle of Bull Run, and in the defenses of Alexandria from November, 1861, till 7 March. 1862, when he was made brigadier-general of volunteers. He was engaged in the siege of Corinth in April and May, 1862, the battle of Corinth on 3-4 October, and commanded the District of Columbus, Kentucky, in 1862-'3, that of Holla, Missouri, in 1863-'4, that of North Kansas in 1864-'5, and that of Wisconsin from April till June, 1865. He was brevetted major-general of volunteers on 11 July, 1865, and shortly afterward returned to New York City. He has published "Cosmogony: or Mysteries of Creation," an analysis of the natural facts stated in the Hebraic account of creation (New York, 1858); "Adam and Ha-Adam" (1859); "Genesis Disclosed" (1860); "Answer to Hugh Miller and Theoretical Geologists" (1861); "How to make Money, and How to Keep It" (1866); and " Appeal of a Layman to the Committee on the Revision of the English Version of the Holy Scriptures, to have Adam and Ha-Adam restored to the English Genesis where left out by former Translators" (1875). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 90-91.
DAVIES, Henry Eugene, lawyer, born in New York City, 2 July, 1836, was educated at Harvard, Williams, and Columbia, where he was graduated in 1857. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began practice. He entered the army in April, 1861, as a captain in the 5th New York Volunteers, became major in the 2d New York Cavalry in July, and subsequently its colonel. He was made a brigadier-general of volunteers on 16 September. 1863, and served with distinction in the cavalry corps of the Army of the Potomac till the close of the war. He was brevetted major-general of volunteers, 1 October, 1864, given his full commission on 4 May. 1865, and commanded the middle District of Alabama till his resignation on 1 January. 1866. He was public administrator of New York City in 1866-'9, assistant district attorney of the Southern District of New York in 1870-'2, and since 1873 has been engaged in law practice. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 91.
DAVIS, Benjamin Franklin, soldier, born in Alabama in 1832; died at Beverly Ford, Virginia, 9 June, 1863. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1854, and distinguished himself in both the infantry and cavalry service in New Mexico. In 1862 he became colonel of the 8th New York Cavalry . He was instantly killed while commanding a brigade at Beverly Ford, Virginia Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 93.
DAVIS, Cushman Kellogg, senator, born in Henderson, Jefferson County, New York, 16 June, 1838. He moved with his parents, when a child, to Waukesha, Wisconsin, attended Carroll College in that town, and was graduated at Michigan University in 1857. He then studied law, and in 1859 began practice at Waukesha. He became a 2d lieutenant in the 28th Wisconsin Regiment in 1861, and served as assistant adjutant general during most of the Civil War on the staff of General Willis A. Gorman. He was compelled to leave the army in 1864 by an attack of typhoid fever, and in 1865 went to Minnesota and resumed the practice of his profession at St. Paul. He was elected to the Minnesota legislature in 1866, was U. S. District Attorney for Minnesota in 1867-71, and in 1873 was elected governor of the state on the Republican ticket, serving one term, and declining a re-nomination. He was an unsuccessful candidate for U. S. Senator in 1875, and again in 1881, but on 18 January, 1887, was elected to the office. Michigan University gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1886. He has delivered many lectures, of which the best known is "Modern Feudalism" (1870), and has published " The Law in Shakespeare " Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 94.
DAVIS, Daniel, lawyer, born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, 8 May, 1762; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 27 October, 1835. He settled in Portland (then called Falmouth) in 1782, and held offices in Massachusetts, of which Maine was then a part. In 1804 he moved to Boston, and in 1832 to Cambridge. He was U. S. Attorney for Maine in 1796-1801, and solicitor-general of Massachusetts in 1800-'32. He was author of several legal works, the principal ones being " Criminal Justice " (Boston, 2d ed., 1828) and "Precedents of Indictments" (Boston, 1831). —His son, Charles Henry, naval officer, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 16 January, 1807; died in Washington, D. C, 18 February, 1877. He entered the U. S. Navy as a midshipman in 1823, and was attached to the frigate " United States,” of the Pacific Squadron, in 1827-8. In March, 1829, he became passed midshipman, and was ordered to the "Ontario," of the Mediterranean Squadron. He received his commission as lieutenant in March, 1834, and, after serving in 1837-'8 on the " Vincennes," of the Pacific Squadron, and in 1840-'l on the "Independence, of the Brazil Squadron, was on special duty from 1842 till 1856, being engaged first on ordnance duty and then as assistant in the U.S. Coast Survey. During 1846-'9 he was occupied in a survey of the waters about Nantucket, in the course of which he discovered the "new south shoal" and several smaller shoals directly in the track of vessels sailing between New York and Europe, and of coasting vessels from Boston. These discoveries were thought to account for several wrecks and accidents before unexplained, and called forth the special acknowledgments of insurance companies and merchants, He became commander in June, 1854, and was given the " St. Marys," in the Pacific Squadron, during 1857-'9, after which he was appointed superintendent of the "American Nautical Almanac." He had filled this place in 1849-56, and the existence of the "Almanac" was largely due to his efforts. In November, 1861, he became captain, and during that year was a member of the board of officers convened for the purpose of making a thorough investigation of the southern coast and harbors, their access and defences. The information thus acquired led to the organization of the expedition against Port Royal, South Carolina, in which Captain Davis was chief of staff and fleet-officer. In May, 1862, he was appointed flag-officer of the Mississippi Flotilla, succeeding Andrew H. Foote in that capacity. Soon after his arrival, the Confederate fleet lying below Fort Pillow, consisting of eight iron-clad steamers, four of which were fitted up as rams, steamed up for an engagement. The flotilla was quickly put in motion to receive them, and, after an action lasting about an hour, three of the Confederate gun-boats were disabled, and the fleet retreated under the guns of Fort Pillow. Subsequently (5 June) the fort was abandoned. Three days later the flotilla moved down the river near Memphis, and again engaged the Confederate fleet. A running fight ensued, in which all the Confederate vessels were either captured or destroyed, except the "Van Horn." After the engagement Captain Davis received the surrender of Memphis, then joined Admiral Farragut and was engaged in operations around Vicksburg, and in expeditions up the Yazoo River. He was commissioned commodore in July, 1862, and became chief of the Bureau of Navigation in Washington, and was made rear-admiral, to date from February, 1863. In 1865 he was appointed superintendent of the Naval Observatory in Washington, and in 1867 commanded the South Atlantic Squadron. He returned to Washington in 1869, and, after being made a member of the Light-House Board, became commander of the Norfolk Navy-yard, but later resumed his old place of superintendent of the Naval Observatory. He was a member of numerous scientific societies, and in February, 1877, was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Admiral Davis, during his connection with the coast survey, was led to investigate the laws of tidal action, and published a "Memoir upon the Geological Action of the Tidal and other Currents of the Ocean," in the "Memoirs of the American Academy" (Boston, 1849), and " The Law of Deposit of the Flood Tide; its Dynamical Action and Office." being vol. iii. of the "Smithsonian Contributions" (Washington, 1852). He contributed various translations and articles on mathematical astronomy and geodesy to periodicals, and was the author of an English translation of Gauss's " Theria Motus Corponim Coelestium " (Boston, 1858).—His son. Charles Henry, naval officer, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 28 August, 1845, was graduated at the U. S. Naval Academy in 1864, and served in the Mediterranean Squadron till 1867. meanwhile becoming ensign and master in 1866. From 1867 till 1870 he was on the "Guerriere" in the South Atlantic Squadron, and from 1872 till 1874 on the Pacific. He received his commission as lieutenant in March, 1868, and became a lieutenant-commander in December of the same year. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 94-95.
DAVIS, David, jurist, born in Cecil County, Maryland, 8 March, 1815, died in Bloomington, Illinois, 20 June, 1888. He was graduated at Kenyon College, Ohio, in 1832, studied law in Massachusetts, and went through a course at the law-school of New Haven, moved to Illinois in 1835, and was admitted to the bar, after which he settled in Bloomington. He was elected to the state legislature in 1844, was a member of the convention that formed the state constitution in 1847, elected judge of the Eighth Judicial Circuit of the state in 1848, re-elected in 1855, and again in 1861, resigning in October, 1862, He was an intimate friend of Abraham Lincoln, and rode the circuit with him every year, he was a delegate at large to the Chicago Convention that nominated Mr. Lincoln for the presidency in 1860, accompanied him on his journey to Washington, and in October, 1862, was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. After President Lincoln's assassination Judge Davis was an administrator of his estate. In 1870 he held, with the minority of the Supreme Court, that the Acts of Congress making government notes a legal tender in payment of debts were constitutional. In February, 1872, the National Convention of the Labor Reform Party nominated him as its candidate for president, on a platform that declared, among other things, in favor of a national currency "based on the faith and resources of the nation, and interchangeable with 3-65-per-cent bonds of the government, and demanded the establishment of an eight-hour law throughout the country, and the payment of the national debt without mortgaging the property of the people to enrich capitalists. In answer to the letter informing him of the nomination, Judge Davis said: "Be pleased to thank the convention for the unexpected honor which they have conferred upon me. The chief magistracy of the republic should neither I sought nor declined by any American citizen." His name was also used before the Liberal Republican Convention at Cincinnati the same year, and received 92 votes on the first ballot. After the regular nominations had been made, he determined to retire from the contest, and so announced in a final answer to the labor reformers. He resigned his seat on the supreme bench to take his place in the U. S. Senate on 4 March, 1877, having been elected by the votes of independents and Democrats to succeed John A. Logan. He was rated in the Senate as an independent, but acted more commonly with the Democrats. After the death of President Garfield in 1881 Judge Davis was chosen President of the Senate. He resigned his seat in 1883, and retired to his home in Bloomington, where he resided quietly till his death. The degree of LL. D., was conferred on him by Williams College, Beloit College, and the Wesleyan University at Bloomington. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 95.
DAVIS, Garrett, senator, born in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, 10 September, 1801; died in Paris, Kentucky, 22 September, 1872. He received an academic education, and was employed as a writer in the County and Circuit courts of his district. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1823. He was elected to the state legislature in 1833, and twice re-elected. He was a member of the state constitutional convention from 1839 till 1847, when he became a representative in Congress from Kentucky, but declined a re-election, devoting himself to agriculture. He was elected U. S. Senator for Kentucky in 1861 for the term ending in 1867, and served on the Committees on Foreign Relations, on Territories, Claims, and Pensions. In 1864 he was appointed a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. In January, 1867, he was re-elected to the Senate for the term ending in 1873. He was of small physique, but endowed with wonderful endurance. His speeches were characterized by sarcasm and fierce invective, as well as laborious research. Early in life he became the friend of Henry Clay, possessing his confidence and high regard. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 96.
DAVIS, Henry Winter, 1817-1865, statesman, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 3rd District of Maryland, 1854, 1856, 1858, 1863-1865. Anti-slavery activist in Congress. Supported enlistment of African Americans in Union Army. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 97-98; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 119; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 198; Congressional Globe)
DAVIS, Henry Winter, statesman, born in Annapolis, Maryland. 16 August, 1817; died in Baltimore, 30 December, 1865. His father, Reverend Henry Lyon Davis, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was the president of St. John's College, at Annapolis, and rector of St. Ann's Parish. He lost both offices on account of his Federal politics, and moved to Wilmington, Delaware, leaving his son with Elizabeth Brown Winter, an aunt, who possessed a noble character, and was rigid in her system of training children. The boy afterward went to Wilmington, and was instructed under his father's supervision. In 1827 the family returned to Maryland and settled in Anne Arundel County. Here Henry Winter became much attached to field sports, and gave little promise of scholarly attainments. He roamed all about the country, always attended by one of his father's slaves, with an old fowling-piece upon his shoulder, burning much powder and returning with a small amount of game. The insight into slavery that he thus gained affected him strongly. He said, in after years: "My familiar association with the slaves, while a boy, gave me great insight into their feelings and views. They spoke with freedom before a boy what they would have repressed before a man. They were far from indifferent to their condition; they felt wronged, and sighed for freedom. They were attached to my father, and loved me, yet they habitually spoke of the day when God would deliver them." He was educated in Alexandria, and at Kenyon College, where he was graduated in 1837. His father died in that year, leaving a few slaves to be divided between himself and his sister, but he would not allow them to be sold, although he might have pursued his studies with ease and comfort. Rather than do this he obtained a tutorship, and, notwithstanding these arduous tasks, read the course of law in the University of Virginia, which he entered in 1839. The expenses of his legal studies were defrayed with the proceeds of some land that his aunt had sold for the purpose. He began practice in Alexandria, Virginia, but first attained celebrity in the Episcopal Convention of Maryland by his defence of Dr. H. V. D. Johns against the accusation of Bishop Whittingham for having violated the canon of the Episcopal Church in consenting to officiate in the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1850 he moved to Baltimore, where he held a high social and professional position. He was a prominent Whig, and known as the brilliant orator and controversialist of the Scott canvass in 1852. He was elected a member of Congress for the 3d District of Maryland (part of Baltimore) in 1854, and re-elected in 1856, serving on the Committee of Ways and Means. After the dissolution of the Whig Party he joined the American or Know-nothing Party. He was re-elected to Congress in 1858, and in 1859 voted for Mr. Pennington, the Republican candidate for speaker, thus drawing upon himself much abuse and reproach. The legislature of Maryland "decorated him with its censure," as he expressed it on the floor of the house; but he declared to his constituents that, if they would not allow their representative to exercise his private judgment as to what were the best interests of the state, "You may send a slave to Congress, but you cannot send me." After the attack on the 6th Massachusetts Regiment in Baltimore in 1861, Mr. Davis published a card announcing himself as an "unconditional union" candidate for Congress, and conducted his canvass almost alone, amid a storm of reproach and abuse, being defeated, but receiving about 6,000 votes. When Mr. Lincoln was nominated in 1860, Mr. Davis was offered the nomination for vice-president, but declined it; and when the question of his appointment to the cabinet was agitated, he urged the selection of John A. Gilmer in his stead. He was again in Congress in 1863-'5, and served as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Although representing a slave state, Mr. Davis was conspicuous for unswerving fidelity to the Union and advocacy of emancipation. He heartily supported the administration, but deprecated the assumption of extraordinary powers by the executive, and denounced Congress as cowardly for not authorizing by statute what it expected that department to do. He early favored the enlistment of Negroes in the army, and said, "The best deed of emancipation is a musket on the shoulder." In the summer of 1865 he made a speech in Chicago in favor of Negro suffrage. Mr. Davis was denounced by politicians as impractical. He used to say that he who compromised a moral principle was a scoundrel, but that he who would not compromise a political measure was a fool, Mr. Davis possessed an unusually fine library, and was gifted with a good memory and a brilliant mind, which was united with many personal advantages. Inheriting force and scholarship from his father, he had received also a share of his mother's milder qualities, which won many friends, although, to the public, he seemed stern and dictatorial. At his death Congress set apart a day for the commemoration of his public services, an honor never before paid to an ex-member of Congress. He published a book entitled the " War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century" (Baltimore, 1853). His collected speeches, together with a eulogy by his colleague, John A. J. Cresswell, were published in New York in 1867. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 97-98.
DAVIS, Jefferson, statesman, born in that part of Christian County, Kentucky, which now forms Todd County, 3 June, 1808; died in New Orleans, 6 December, 1889. His father, Samuel Davis, had served in the Revolution, and, when Jefferson was an infant, moved with his family to a place near Woodville, Wilkinson County, Mississippi Young Davis entered Transylvania College, Kentucky, but left in 1824, on his appointment by President Monroe to the U. S. Military Academy. On his graduation, in 1828, he was assigned to the 1st U.S. Infantry, and served on the frontier, taking part in the Black Hawk war of 1831-'2. He was promoted to first lieutenant of dragoons on 4 March, 1833, but, after more service against the Indians, abruptly resigned on 30 June, 1835, and having married at one of the family homes, the daughter of Zachary Taylor, then a colonel in the army, settled near Vicksburg, Mississippi, and became a cotton-planter. Here he pursued a life of study and retirement till 1843, when he entered politics in the midst of an exciting gubernatorial canvass. He was chosen an elector on the Polk and Dallas ticket in 1844, made a reputation as a popular speaker, and in 1845 was sent to Congress, taking his seat in December of that year. He at once took an active part in debate, speaking on the tariff, the Oregon question, and military matters, especially with reference to the preparations for war with Mexico. On 6 February, 1846, in a speech on the Oregon question, he spoke of the “love of union in our hearts,” and, speaking of the battles of the Revolution, said: “They form a monument to the common glory of our common country.”
In June, 1846, he resigned his seat in the house to become colonel of the 1st Mississippi Volunteer Rifles, which had unanimously elected him to that office. Having joined his regiment at New Orleans, he led it to re-enforce General Taylor on the Rio Grande. At Monterey he charged on Fort Leneria without bayonets, led his command through the streets nearly to the Grand Plaza through a storm of shot, and afterward served on the commission for arranging the surrender of the place. At Buena Vista his regiment was charged by a Mexican brigade of lancers, greatly its superior in numbers, in a last desperate effort to break the American lines. Colonel Davis formed his men in the shape of a letter V, open toward the enemy, and thus, by exposing his foes to a covering fire, utterly routed them, though he was unsupported. He was severely wounded, but remained in the saddle till the close of the fight, and was complimented for coolness and gallantry in the commander-in-chief's despatch of 6 March, 1847. His regiment was ordered home on the expiration of its term of enlistment, and on 17 May, 1847, Colonel Davis was appointed by President Polk a brigadier-general, but declined the commission on the ground that a militia appointment by the Federal executive was unconstitutional. He was appointed by the governor of Mississippi to fill a vacancy in the U. S. Senate in August, 1847, and in January, 1848, the legislature unanimously elected him senator, and re-elected him in 1850 for a full term. He was made chairman of the Senate committee on Military Affairs, and here, as in the house, was active in the discussions on the various phases of the slavery question and the important work of the session, including the fugitive-slave law, and the other compromise measures of 1850. Mr. Davis proposed the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, and continued a zealous advocate of state rights. He was the unsuccessful state-rights or “resistance” candidate for governor of his state in 1851, though by his personal popularity he reduced the Union majority from 7,500 to 999. He had resigned his seat in the Senate to take part in the canvass, and, after a year of retirement, actively supported Franklin Pierce in the presidential contest of 1852. After the election of General Pierce, Mr. Davis received the portfolio of war in his cabinet, and administered it with great credit. Among other changes, he proposed the use of camels in the service on the western plains, introduced an improved system of infantry tactics, iron gun-carriages, rifled muskets and pistols, and the use of the Minié ball. Four regiments were added to the army, the defences on the sea-coast and frontier were strengthened, and, as a result of experiments, heavy guns were cast hollow, and a larger grain of powder was adopted. While in the Senate, Mr. Davis had advocated the construction of a Pacific Railway as a military necessity, and a means of preserving the Pacific Coast to the Union, and he was now put in charge of the organization and equipment of the surveying parties sent out to examine the various routes proposed. He also had charge of the appropriation for the extension of the capitol. Mr. Davis left the cabinet at the close of President Pierce's term in 1857, and in the same year entered the Senate again. He opposed the French spoliation bill, advocated the southern route for the Pacific Railroad, and opposed the doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” often encountering Stephen A. Douglas in debate on this question. After the settlement of the Kansas contest by the passage of the Kansas Conference Bill, in which he had taken a chief part, he wrote to the people of his state that it was “the triumph of all for which we contended.” Mr. Davis was the recognized Democratic leader in the 36th Congress. He had made a tour of the eastern states in 1858, making speeches at Boston, Portland, Maine, New York, and other places, and in 1859, in reply to an invitation to attend the Webster birthday festival in Boston, wrote a letter denouncing “partisans who avow the purpose of obliterating the landmarks of our fathers,” and containing strong Union sentiments. He had been frequently mentioned as a Democratic candidate for the presidency, and received many votes in the convention of 1860, though his friends announced that he did not desire the nomination. Before Congress met, in the autumn of 1860, Mr. Davis was summoned to Washington by members of President Buchanan's cabinet to suggest some modifications of the forthcoming message to Congress. The suggestions were made, and were adopted. In the ensuing session Mr. Davis made, on 10 December, 1860, a speech in which he carefully distinguished between independence, which the states had achieved at great cost, and the Union, which had cost “little time, little money, and no blood,” taking his old state-rights position. He was appointed on the Senate committee of thirteen to examine and report on the condition of the country, and, although at first excused at his own request, finally consented to serve, accepting the appointment in a speech in which he avowed his willingness to make any sacrifice to avert the impending struggle. The committee, after remaining in session several days, reported, on 31 December, their inability to come to any satisfactory conclusion. On 10 January, 1861, Mr. Davis made another speech on the state of the country, asserting the right of secession, denying that of coercion, and urging the withdrawal of the garrison from Fort Sumter. Mississippi had seceded on 9 January, and on 24 January, having been officially informed of the fact, Mr. Davis withdrew from the Senate and went to his home, having taken leave of his associates in a speech in which he defended the cause of the south, and, in closing, begged pardon of all whom he had ever offended.
Before he reached home he had been appointed by the convention commander-in-chief of the Army of Mississippi, with the rank of major-general; but on 18 February, 1861, he exchanged this office for that of President of the Confederate States, to which the provisional Congress at Montgomery had elected him on 9 February He selected for his cabinet Robert Toombs, of Georgia, as Secretary of State; Leroy P. Walker, of Alabama, Secretary of War; Charles G. Memminger, of South Carolina, Secretary of the Treasury; Stephen R. Mallory, of Florida, Secretary of the Navy; Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, Attorney-General; and John H. Reagan, of Texas, Postmaster-General. The last three continued in the cabinet as long as the Confederate government maintained its existence. Toombs, Walker, and Memminger were succeeded by others. In his inaugural address Mr. Davis asserted that “necessity, not choice,” had led to the secession of the southern states; that the true policy of the south, an agricultural country, was peace; and that “the constituent parts, but not the system,” of the government had been changed. The attack on Fort Sumter, on 13 April, precipitated the war, and Mr. Davis, in his first message to the provisional Confederate Congress, on 29 April, after a review of events (from the formation of the United States Constitution till 1861), which, in his judgment, had led to the contest, commended this act, while avowing a desire to prevent the shedding of blood. The message also condemned, as illegal and absurd, President Lincoln's proclamation calling for troops, and that announcing a blockade of southern ports, and ended with the famous words, “All we ask is, to be let alone,” followed by a promise to resist subjugation to the direst extremity. Shortly after the change of the Confederate capital from Montgomery to Richmond, which he had strongly advised, Mr. Davis removed thither, and was met on his way with many marks of popular favor, every railway station swarming with men, women, and children, who greeted him with waving handkerchiefs. Soon after his arrival the fine residence of James A. Seddon was bought and put at Mr. Davis's disposal by citizens of Richmond. His first days in the new capital were spent in reviewing troops and in speech-making. He exhorted his hearers to remember the dignity of the contest, and “to smite the smiter with manly arms, as our fathers did before us,” and declared his willingness to lay down his civil office and take command of the army, should the extremity of the cause ever warrant such action. Before his arrival in Virginia an army of about 30,000 men had been raised, and as fast as new troops arrived their officers were assigned to a rank in the Confederate service, regulated by that which they had formerly held in the U. S. Army. On 20 July, Mr. Davis sent his second message to the Provisional Congress, then in session at Richmond. In this message he complained of barbarities committed by National troops, and again asserted the impossibility of subduing the south. On the morning succeeding the delivery of this message he set out for Manassas, where a contest was thought to be impending, and arrived there in time to witness the close of the battle of Bull Run, reaching the field when victory had been assured to the Confederates.
The battle of Bull Run was followed by a period of inaction, and Mr. Davis was blamed by many for this policy, as well as for his “failure to organize the troops of the several states into brigades and divisions formed of the soldiers of each,” as the law directed. In answer to these complaints, he has urged the length of time necessary to organize “the terrible machine, a disciplined army,” and protested that, as far as in him lay, he favored an advance and endeavored to comply with the legal plan of army organization. The question of the treatment of Confederate prisoners by the National authorities soon demanded his attention. On 17 April, 1861, two days after Mr. Lincoln's call for troops, Mr. Davis had issued a proclamation inviting applications for letters of marque and reprisal. The “Savannah,” a private vessel commissioned in accordance with this offer, was captured off Charleston, and her officers and crew were tried for piracy in New York and sentenced to death. Later the captain and crew of the privateer “Jefferson Davis” were similarly convicted in Philadelphia. Thereupon, in November, 1861, Mr. Davis ordered retaliatory measures to be taken, and fourteen Union prisoners were selected by lot and held as hostages for the safety of the condemned men. The latter were ultimately put on the footing of prisoners of war by order of the National government, and subsequently a cartel was adopted for the exchange of prisoners, which remained in force till its suspension in 1864, caused by disagreement as to the status of Negro soldiers. In November, 1861, a presidential election was held in the Confederacy, and Mr. Davis was chosen president for six years without opposition. In his message to the Provisional Congress at its last session, 18 November, 1861, he briefly sketched the situation at the close of the first year of the war, alluding to the Confederate successes, the contest for the possession of Kentucky and Missouri, and to the “Trent” affair. (See Wilkes, Charles.) He urged the construction of another railway line through the Confederacy, asserted the improvement of the south in military means and financial condition, and the inefficiency of the blockade, and said: “If it were indeed a rebellion in which we were engaged, we might find ample vindication for the course we have adopted in the scenes which are now being enacted in the United States.” The first Congress under the permanent constitution met in Richmond, on 18 February, 1863, and Mr. Davis was inaugurated on 23 February The Confederacy had just met with its first serious reverses in the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson; but in his inaugural, after a vindication of the right of secession, Mr. Davis indulged in many favorable hopes. “The final result in our favor,” said he, “is not doubtful. Our foes must sink under the immense load of debt which they have incurred. . . . In the heart of a people resolved to be free, these disasters tend but to stimulate to increased resistance.” In his short messages of 35 February and 15 August he suggested various measures for the improvement of the Confederate forces. The result of the reverses in the early months of the year, to which had now been added the capture of New Orleans, began to show itself in a growing opposition to Mr. Davis's administration, which up to this time had seemed all but universally popular, and this opposition increased in force up to the latest days of the war. One of the first acts of the Congress was to pass a sweeping conscription law, to which Mr. Davis reluctantly assented. This was stoutly resisted in some quarters, and led to a spirited correspondence between Mr. Davis and Governor Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, who disputed the constitutionality of the measure. Congress also authorized the suspension of the habeas corpus act for ten miles around Richmond, and the formation of a military police, for the alleged reason that the government was continually in danger from the presence in Richmond of National spies, and the consequent plots and intrigues. Mr. Davis was present with General Lee at the battle of Fair Oaks on 31 May, and, after the wounding of General Joseph E. Johnston in that engagement, assigned Lee to the command of the Army of Northern Virginia, having previously, on 13 March, charged him, “under the direction of the president, with the conduct of military operations.” During a visit to the army in the western department, in December, 1862, Mr. Davis, in an address to the Mississippi legislature, defended the conscription law and declared that “in all respects, the Confederacy was better prepared for war than it was a year previous.”
The Proclamation of Emancipation by President Lincoln, to take effect 1 January, 1863, called out from Mr. Davis a retaliatory proclamation, dated 23 December, 1862, in which, after reciting, among other acts, the hanging of William B. Mumford for tearing down the United States flag at New Orleans, after the city was captured by the National forces, General Benjamin F. Butler was declared a felon, and it was ordered that all commissioned officers serving under him, as well as any found serving in company with slaves, should be treated as “robbers and criminals deserving death.” These threats, however, were not generally executed, though supported by the legislation of the Congress. In his message of January, 1863, Mr. Davis announced his intention of turning over National prisoners for prosecution in state courts, as abettors of servile insurrection; but this proposition was rejected by Congress, and provision made for their trial by military tribunals. The two long messages sent by Mr. Davis to Congress in 1863 consist largely of discussions of the position of foreign powers, especially Great Britain, with reference to the war. The one dated 7 December announces the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and urges “the compulsory reduction of the currency to the amount required by the business of the country,” together with other measures for improving the finances, which had become hopelessly depreciated. They had never been on a sound basis, and the currency had declined in value till it was nearly worthless. In April, 1863, in compliance with a request of the Confederate Congress, Mr. Davis had issued an address to the people of the south, in which he drew the happiest conclusions as to the success of the Confederacy, from the way in which, in the face of obstacles, it had already organized and disciplined armies. “At no previous period of the war,” said he, “have our forces been so numerous, so well organized, and so thoroughly disciplined, armed, and equipped as at present.”
The disasters of July—at Gettysburg and Vicksburg—coming in the face of this assertion, and the state of the currency just mentioned, emboldened the opposition party in all parts of the Confederacy fiercely to assail the administration. Mr. Davis was held responsible for the advance into Pennsylvania, and accused of partiality in appointing Pemberton to command in the west. Charles C. Memminger, Secretary of the Treasury, resigned, and his place was filled by George A. Trenholm; but the new secretary was unable to stop the depreciation of the currency. The lack of coin in the country, the inability of the people to bear more taxation, and the spirit of speculation fostered by the enormous issues of paper money, hastened the financial ruin of the Confederacy. Food, too, was scarce. Kentucky and Tennessee, whence had come most of the meat supplies, were lost to the Confederacy, and the army was on half-rations. At this time there was a clamor against the commissary-general, Colonel Northrop. A committee of the Confederate Congress investigated the matter and exonerated him; but the opponents of the administration have continued to hold him, and Mr. Davis through him, responsible for the scarcity of food in the Confederacy, and therefore, indirectly, for much of the sufferings of Union prisoners during the war. The exchange of prisoners had been interrupted for some time by the refusal of the Confederate government to recognize Negroes as National soldiers, and after many futile attempts to come to an understanding with the National government, “We offered,” says Mr. Davis (“Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,” vol. ii., p. 601), “to the United States government their sick and wounded, without requiring any equivalents.”
The year 1864 opened with Confederate successes in Florida, the southwest, and North Carolina; and Mr. Davis, in his message of 2 May, said: “The armies in northern Virginia and Tennessee still oppose, with unshaken front, a formidable barrier to the progress of the invader.” That progress, however, was not long to be stayed. By an order issued on 17 July, 1864, Mr. Davis removed General Joseph E. Johnston from the command of the army opposed to General Sherman in Georgia. The cause and alleged injustice of this removal have not yet ceased to be subjects for controversy, it being asserted by Mr. Davis's opponents that personal reasons influenced him against an officer with whom he had never been very friendly, while his supporters, denying this, fully justify the act. The reasons given in Adjt.-General Cooper's brief despatch were, that General Johnston had “failed to arrest the advance of the enemy to the vicinity of Atlanta, and expressed no confidence that he could defeat or repel him.” In answer to which General Johnston wrote: “I assert that Sherman's army is much stronger, compared with that of Tennessee, than Grant's compared with that of northern Virginia. Yet the enemy has been compelled to advance much more slowly to the vicinity of Atlanta than to that of Richmond and Petersburg, and penetrated much deeper into Virginia than into Georgia.” General John B. Hood, successor of General Johnston, was obliged to evacuate Atlanta on 1 September Mr. Davis then visited Georgia and endeavored to raise the spirits of the people there, and to restore harmony between the Confederate and state governments. Governor Brown, who had opposed the conscription act, continued to be hostile to the administration, notwithstanding an interview with Mr. Davis in which the latter tried to convince him that his complaints were unjust. He reviewed and addressed Hood's army on 18 September, and afterward, in speeches made in Macon, Augusta, and elsewhere, strove to inspire the people with the spirit of renewed resistance, and to persuade them that an honorable peace was impossible. As is evident from the tone of these and other speeches, the peace Party in the south was daily gaining strength. Besides those who really desired peace, there were others who hoped that a rejected attempt to treat with the National government might fire the south with indignation. As early as 30 December, 1863, Governor Zebulon B. Vance, of North Carolina, had written to Mr. Davis urging negotiation. The latter, in his answer, dated 8 January, 1864, cited previous unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the authorities at Washington, and concluded that another would be undesirable. In January, 1865, however, after an interview with Francis P. Blair, Sr., who had gone to Richmond, unofficially, in the hope of bringing about peace, Mr. Davis agreed to send three commissioners to confer with the National government. The result was an unsatisfactory meeting on a steamer in Hampton Roads. On the return of the commissioners public meetings were held, at which there seemed to be a return of the enthusiasm of the early days of the war. Peace with the independence of the south was now seen to be impossible, and the horrors of subjugation by the north were painted in gloomy colors by the speakers. Mr. Davis, always an able and impressive speaker, made what has been called the most remarkable speech of his life. But this outburst of enthusiasm was only temporary. The evacuation of Atlanta had been followed by Sherman's march to the sea, and Hood's disastrous campaign in Tennessee. General Hood himself said, in speaking of it, when taking leave of his army in January, 1865: “I alone am responsible for its conception.” These reverses, however, with Grant's steady advance on Richmond, and, above all, the re-election of President Lincoln, had produced a growing conviction in the south that defeat was inevitable. The Confederate Congress that met in November, 1864, was outspoken in opposition to the administration, and in January, 1865, the Virginia delegation urged a change in the cabinet, expressing their want of confidence in its members. As a consequence of this, James A. Seddon, then Secretary of War, sent in his resignation.
In his last message to Congress, dated 13 March, 1865, Mr. Davis, while acknowledging the peril of the Confederacy, asserted that it had ample means of meeting the emergency. On Sunday, 2 April, 1865, while seated in his pew in St. Paul's Church, Richmond, he was handed a telegram from General Lee, announcing the latter's speedy withdrawal from Petersburg, and the consequent necessity for the evacuation of the capital. That evening, accompanied by his personal staff, members of the cabinet, and others, he left by train for Danville. On his arrival there he issued, on 5 April, a proclamation of which he afterward admitted that, “viewed by the light of subsequent events, it may fairly be said it was over-sanguine.” In it he said: “Relieved from the necessity of guarding particular points, our army will be free to move from point to point, to strike the enemy in detail far from his base.” Danville was abandoned in less than a week, and after a conference at Greensboro, North Carolina, with Gens. Johnston and Beauregard, in which his hopes of continuing the war met with little encouragement, he went to Charlotte, where he heard of the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. His wife had preceded him with a small escort, and it was just after he had overtaken her, while encamped near Irwinsville, Georgia, that the whole party were captured, on 10 May, by a body of cavalry under Lieutenant-Colonel Pritchard. He was taken to Fort Monroe, and kept in confinement for two years.
On 21 September, 1865, the U. S. Senate called on the president for information on the subject of his trial, and in response reports were submitted from the Secretary of War and the attorney-general, their substance being that Virginia was the proper place for the trial, and that it was not yet possible peacefully to hold a U. S. court in that state. On 12 October, in reply to a letter from President Johnson, Chief-Justice Chase said that he was unwilling to hold court in a district still under martial law. On 10 April, 1866, the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives reported that there was no reason why the trial should not be proceeded with, and that it was the duty of the government to investigate, without delay, the facts connected with Lincoln's assassination. On 8 May, 1866, Mr. Davis was indicted for treason by a grand jury in the U. S. Court for the District of Virginia, sitting at Norfolk under Judge Underwood, the charge of complicity in the assassination of the president having been dropped. On 5 June, at a session of the court held in Richmond, James T. Brady, one of Mr. Davis's counsel, urged that the trial be held without delay; but the government declined to proceed on the indictment, urging the importance of the trial and the necessity of preparation for it. The court refused to admit the prisoner to bail. On 13 May, 1867, he was brought before the court at Richmond on a writ of habeas corpus, and admitted to bail in the amount of $100,000, the first name on his bail-bond being that of Horace Greeley. Mr. Davis's release gave much satisfaction to the southern people. The interest taken in him during his imprisonment, and their prevalent idea that he was to suffer as a representative of the south, rather than for sins of his own, and was “a nation's prisoner,” had made him more popular there than he had been since the first days of the war. After an enthusiastic reception at Richmond he went to New York, then to Canada, and in the summer of 1868 visited England, a Liverpool firm having offered to take him as a partner, without capital.
This offer, after investigation, was declined, and, having visited France, he returned to this country, he was never brought to trial, a nolle prosequi being entered by the government in his case in December, 1868, and he was also included in the general amnesty of that month. After his discharge he became president of a life insurance company at Memphis, Tennessee In 1879 Mrs. Dorsey, of Beauvoir, Mississippi, bequeathed to him her estate, where he ever afterward resided, giving much of his time to literary pursuits. In June, 1871, in a speech at a public reception in Atlanta, Georgia, he said that he still adhered to the principle of state sovereignty, was confident of its final triumph, and was “not of those who ‘accept the situation.’ ” In 1876, when a bill was before the House of Representatives to remove all the political disabilities that had been imposed on those who took part in the insurrection, James G. Blaine offered an amendment excepting Jefferson Davis, and supported it by a speech in which he accused Mr. Davis of being “the author of the gigantic murders and crimes at Andersonville.” Senator Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia, spoke in reply, defending Mr. Davis from this charge. Again, in 1879, Mr. Davis was specially excepted in a bill to pension veterans of the Mexican War, the adoption of an amendment to that effect being largely the result of a speech by Zachariah Chandler. In October, 1884, at a meeting of Frank P. Blair post, of the Grand Army of the Republic, in St. Louis, General William T. Sherman asserted that he had seen letters and papers showing that Mr. Davis had abandoned his state-rights doctrines during the war, and had become practically a dictator in the south. Mr. Davis, in a letter to a newspaper, denied the charge, and General Sherman then filed with the war department at Washington papers that, in his view, substantiated it. On 28 April, 1886, Mr. Davis spoke at the dedication of a monument to Confederate soldiers at Montgomery, Alabama, and was enthusiastically received. The engraving on the preceding page is a view of his early home in Mississippi.
Two biographies of Mr. Davis have been written, both by southern authors, which illustrate the extremes of southern opinion. That by Frank H. Alfriend (New York, 1868) represents those who are friendly to Mr. Davis, while that by Edward A. Pollard, with the sub-title “Secret History of the Confederacy” (Philadelphia, 1869), holds him responsible for all the disasters of the war. Mr. Pollard, who was an editor of the Richmond “Examiner,” a paper hostile to the administration, concedes that Mr. Davis was thoroughly devoted to the cause of the south, and had indomitable pluck, but accuses him of vanity, gross favoritism, and incompetency. In addition to these works, see Dr. Craven's “Prison Life of Jefferson Davis” (New York, 1866). Mr. Davis himself had published “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government” (2 vols., New York, 1881).—His brother, Joseph Emory, lawyer, born near Augusta, Georgia, 10 December, 1784; died in Vicksburg, Mississippi, 18 September, 1870, was the oldest of the ten children of Samuel Davis, and in 1796 moved with his father to Kentucky. He was placed in a mercantile house at an early age, studied law in Russellville and in Wilkinson County, whither he accompanied his father in 1811, was admitted to the bar in 1812, and practised in Pinckneyville, and afterward in Greenville, rising to high rank in the profession. He was the delegate from Jefferson County in the convention that organized the state government in 1817, and took a prominent part in framing the constitution. In 1820 he moved to Natchez, and formed a co partnership with Thomas B. Reed, then the leader of the Mississippi bar. In 1827 he decided to retire from the profession in which he had won success by his learning, argumentative powers, and oratorical ability, in order to become a planter. In this occupation he was also very successful, and at the beginning of the Civil War he possessed one of the finest plantations on the Mississippi River. During the war he was driven from his home with his family, and endured many hardships. He returned to Vicksburg at its close, and, after a controversy with the officers of the Freedmen's bureau, regained possession of his estate, but continued to reside in the city of Vicksburg. Mr. Davis was noted for his benevolence, and many youths of both sexes were indebted to him for a liberal education. Appleton’s, 1900 pp. 98-102.
DAVIS, Jefferson C., soldier, born in Clark County, Indiana, 2 March, 1828; died in Chicago, Illinois, 30 November, 1879. His ancestors were noted in the Indian wars of Kentucky. At the age of eighteen, while pursuing his studies in the Clark County, Indiana, seminary, he heard of the declaration of war with Mexico, and enlisted in Colonel Lane's Indiana Regiment. For gallant conduct at Buena Vista he was on 17 June, 1848, made second lieutenant of the 1st Artillery . He became first lieutenant in 1852, took charge of the garrison in Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in 1858, and was there during the bombardment in April, 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War. In May, 1861, he was promoted to a captaincy and given leave of absence to raise the 22d Indiana Volunteers, of which regiment he became colonel, and was afterward given a brigade by General Frémont, with whom he served in Missouri. He also commanded a brigade under Gens. Hunter and Pope. For services rendered at Milford, Missouri, on 18 December, 1861, where he aided in capturing a superior force of the enemy, with a large quantity of military supplies, he was made brigadier-general of volunteers. At the battle of Pea Ridge he commanded one of the four divisions of General Curtis's army. He participated in the siege of Corinth, and, after the evacuation of that place by the Confederate forces, was assigned to the Army of the Tennessee. On 29 September, 1862, he chanced to meet in Louisville General William Nelson, from whom he claimed to have received treatment unduly harsh and severe. An altercation ensued, and in a moment of resentment he shot Nelson, instantly killing him. He was arrested, and held for a time, but no trial was ordered, and he was released and assigned to duty at Covington, Kentucky He led his old division of the 20th Army Corps into the fight at Stone River, and for his bravery was recommended by General Rosecrans for major-general. In 1864 he commanded the 14th Corps of Sherman's army in the Atlanta Campaign and in the march through Georgia. In 1865 a brevet major-generalship was given him, and he was made colonel of the 23d U.S. Infantry, 23 July, 1866. He afterward went to the Pacific Coast, and commanded the U. S. troops in Alaska, and in 1873, after the murder of General Canby by the Modoc Indians in northern California, took command of the forces operating against them, and compelled them to surrender. Appleton’s 1900 pp. 103-104.
DAVIS, John, 1787-1854, Northborough, Massachusetts, lawyer, statesman, four-term U.S. Congressman, Governor of Massachusetts, U.S. Senator, 1835-1841. Opposed the war with Mexico and introduction of slavery in U.S. territories. Supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the Compromise Acts of 1850. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 103-104; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p.133)
DAVIS, John, statesman, born in Northborough, Massachusetts, 13 January, 1787; died in Worcester, Massachusetts, 19 April, 1854. he was graduated at Yale with honor in 1812, studied and, was admitted to the bar in 1815, and practised with success in Worcester. He was elected to Congress as a Whig in 1824, and reelected for the four succeeding terms, sitting from December, 1825, till January, 1834, and taking a leading part as a protectionist in opposing Henry Clay's compromise tariff bill of 1833, and in all transactions relating to finance and commerce. He resigned his seat on being elected governor of Massachusetts. At the conclusion of his term as governor he was sent to the U. S. Senate, and served from 7 December, 1835, till January, 1841, when he resigned to accept the governorship a second time. In the Senate he was a strong opponent of the administrations of Jackson and Van Buren, and took a conspicuous part in the debates as an advocate of protection for American industry, replying to the free-trade arguments of southern statesmen in speeches that were considered extremely clear expositions of the protective theories. A declaration in one of his speeches, that James Buchanan was in favor of reducing the wages of American workingmen to ten cents a day, was the origin of the epithet "ten-cent Jimmy," which was applied to that statesman by his political opponents for several years. A short speech against the sub-treasury, delivered in 1840, was printed during the presidential canvass of that year as an electioneering pamphlet, of which more than a million copies were distributed. he was again elected U.S. Senator, and served from 24 March, 1845, till 3 March, 1853, but declined a re-election, and died suddenly at his home. He protested vigorously against the war with Mexico. In the controversy that followed, over the introduction of slavery into the U. S. territories, he earnestly advocated its exclusion. The Wilmot Proviso received his support, but the compromise acts of 1830 encountered his decided opposition. He enjoyed the respect and confidence of his constituents in an unusual degree, and established a reputation for high principles that gained for him the popular appellation of "honest John Davis."—His wife, who was a sister of George Bancroft, the historian, died in Worcester, Massachusetts, 24 January, 1872, at the age of eighty years.— his son, Hasbrouck, soldier, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, 19 April, 1827; drowned at sea, 19 October, 1870, was graduated at Williams in 1845, and afterward studied in Germany. He taught in the Worcester high-school for a year, and was settled as pastor of the Unitarian Society in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1849. He afterward studied law, was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1854, and went to Chicago in 1855. He was mustered into the United States service in 1862 as lieutenant- colonel of the 11th Illinois Cavalry . He served with conspicuous gallantry in Stoneman's pursuit of the Confederates after their retreat from Yorktown in April, 1862, and in the autumn distinguished himself at Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry, where he was in command of the Union cavalry, and led them, on the night of 14 September, 1862, through the enemy's lines to Greencastle, Pennsylvania, capturing an ammunition-train on the way. He was promoted colonel, 5 January 1864, and at the close of the war was brevetted brigadier-general. After returning to Chicago, he was elected city attorney. He was lost on the steamer "Cambria" in the voyage to Europe. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 103-104.
DAVIS, John Lee, naval officer, born in Carlisle, Sullivan County, Indiana, 3 September, 1825. He entered the U. S. Naval service as a midshipman on 9 January, 1841, was warranted passed midshipman on 10 August, 1847, and, while serving as acting lieutenant, commanding one of the boats of the "Preble," of the East India Squadron, he boarded a piratical Chinese junk off Macao in November, 1849, with another officer and sixteen men, and captured the vessel and crew. He was commissioned lieutenant on 15 September, 1855, was attached to the Gulf Squadron in 1861, and, as executive officer of the "Water Witch," took part in engagements with the Confederate ram "Manassas" at the head of the Mississippi passes and the Squadron near Pilot Town on the same day, 12 October, 1861. He was commissioned lieutenant-commander on 16 July, 1862, and attacked Fort, McAllister on 19 November, when his vessel was pierced by a solid shot below water. The leak was stopped temporarily, and after the action the vessel was taken on shore and patched at the falling of the tide. He again engaged the fort on 22 January and 1 February, 1863, and on 28 February, when the privateer "Nashville" was destroyed. On 19 March he sank the blockade-running steamer " Georgiana" when she attempted to enter Charleston Harbor. He was transferred to the command of the iron-clad "Montauk," and took part in the engagements with Forts Sumter, Gregg. Moultrie, and Battery Bee. in the beginning of September, 1863, and in the attacks on Fort Sumter on 5, 9, and 10 November, and that on Fort Moultrie on 16 November, 1863. In 1864-'5 he commanded the steamer "Sassacus." of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which towed the powder-boat "Louisiana" from Norfolk to Fort Fisher in December, and engaged that fort on 24 and 25 December, 1864, 13 and 14 January, 1865; Fort Anderson, in Cape Fear River, on 18 February; and Fort Strong on 20 and 21 February, on which last day the vessel was struck under the water-line, but the leak was kept under till dark, and then effectually stopped. He was commissioned commander on 25 July, 1866, promoted captain on 14 February, 1873, and was a member of the Light-House Board in 1876, and of the board of inspection in 1882. He was promoted commodore on 4 February, 1882, commanded the Asiatic Station in 1883-'6, and on 30 October, 1885, received his commission as rear-admiral, and was in November, 1886, relieved of his command of the Asiatic Squadron and placed on the retired list. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 105.
DAVIS, John W., statesman, born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 17 July, 1799; died in Carlisle, Indiana, 22 August 1859. He received a classical education, studied medicine, and was graduated at the Baltimore Medical College in 1821, removing in 1823 to Carlisle. Indiana. He was for several years a member of the Indiana House of Representatives, being chosen speaker in 1832. In 1834 he was appointed a commissioner to negotiate a treaty with the Indians. He was elected to Congress by the Democrats, and served from 7 December, 1835, till' 3 March, 1837, was re-elected and again served from 1839 till 1841, and from 1848 till 1847. During his last term he was Speaker of the House of Representatives, having been elected 1 December, 1845. He was U. S. Commissioner to China in 1848-'50, and governor of Oregon in 1853-'4. He presided over the convention held at Baltimore in 1852 that nominated Franklin Pierce for the presidency, Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 105.
DAVIS, Nelson Henry, soldier, born in Oxford, Worcester County, Massachusetts, 20 September, 1821. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1846, and assigned to the 3d U.S. Infantry. He served in the war with Mexico, received the brevet of 1st lieutenant for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, and was also at the siege of Vera Cruz, the battle of Cerro Gordo, and the capture of the city of Mexico. He was promoted 1st lieutenant 8 June, 1849, and then served on the frontier, being engaged in several actions while on the Sierra Nevada Expedition of 1849-'50, and taking part in the Rogue River Expedition of 1853. He was made captain on 3 March, 1855, was at the battle of Bull Run, and from 4 September to 12 November, 1861, was colonel of the 7th Massachusetts Volunteers. He then became major and assistant inspector-general, and served with the Army of the Potomac till the autumn of 1863, receiving the brevet of lieutenant colonel for gallantry at Gettysburg. He was then transferred to New Mexico, was brevetted colonel 27 June, 1865, for his services against the Apache Indians, and also received the brevet of brigadier general for his services in the Civil War. He was inspector-general of the District of New Mexico in 1868, of the Department of Missouri in 1868-'72, was on a tour of inspection till 1876, and then became inspector-general of the Division of the Atlantic. He was commissioned brigadier-general on 11 March, 1885, and retired on 20 September Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p 106.
DAVIS, Paulina Kellogg Wright, 1813-1876, abolitionist, feminist, women’s rights activist, reformer. Davis was married to abolitionist Francis Wright. They served on the executive committee of the Central New York Anti-Slavery Society. Their house was attacked by an angry mob for their anti-slavery activities. After the death of her husband, she re-married, to anti-slavery Democrat Thomas Davis, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1852. In May 1850, in Boston, Davis and other women’s rights activists planned and organized the first national women’s rights Convention. (American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 214-216; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 216; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 106; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 141)
DAVIS, Paulina (WRIGHT), reformer, born in Bloomfield, New York, 7 August, 1813; died in Providence, Rhode Island, 24 August, 1876. She married Francis Wright, of Utica, New York, in 1833, and after his death became in 1849 the wife of Thomas Davis, of Providence, Rhode Island, who was a member of Congress in 1853-'5. For thirty-five years she labored zealously to promote the rights of women, established “The Una,” the first woman-suffrage paper, wrote a history of woman-suffrage reform, and gave lectures in the principal cities of the United States. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 214-216.
DAVIS, Thomas, 1806-1895, North Providence, Rhode Island, manufacturer, Member of U.S. House of Representatives, 1853-1855, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1848-52. Disapproved of the Missouri Compromise.
DAVIS, Thomas T., 1810-1872, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1862 and 1864 from Syracuse, New York. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 97; Congressional Globe)
DAVIS, Thomas T., lawyer, born in Middlebury, Vermont, 82 August, 1810; died in Syracuse, New York, 2 May," 1872, was graduated at Hamilton College in 183l. He studied law, and was admitted to the Bar of Syracuse in 1833. He was counsel for the principal manufacturing establishments of that city, and took an active interest in railroad and mining enterprises. In 1862 he was elected to Congress, and re-elected in 1864 After that date he resided in Syracuse, devoting himself to his law practice. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 97.
DAVIS, Werter Renick, , clergyman, born in Circleville, Ohio, 1 April, 1815, was educated at Kenyon College, and received the degree of M. D. from the College of Medicine and Surgery in Cincinnati. Subsequently he became a minister in the Methodist Church, and entered the Ohio conference in 1835. He then filled various pastorates in West Virginia and Ohio until 1853. when he was transferred to the Missouri Conference and stationed at St. Louis. In 1854 he became professor of natural sciences in McKendree College, where he remained until 1858, acting as president during his last year at that institution. He was then elected president of Baker University, but afterward resigned, and for fourteen consecutive years was appointed to a presiding eldership. During the Civil War he went to the front as chaplain of the 12th Kansas Infantry, and then was commissioned lieutenant-colonel to raise and organize the 16th Kansas Cavalry in 1862, of which he became colonel, and continued in command of that regiment until the close of the war. Dr. Davis was a member of the first state legislature of Kansas, and also held the office of superintendent of public instruction in Douglas County. He was a member of the general conferences of 1868, 1872, and 1880, and a delegate to the Ecumenical Methodist Conference in London, and to the Centennial Conference held in Baltimore. Maryland. in 1884. He edited, in 1859, "The Kansas Message," the first paper published in Baldwin City, and has published several sermons. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 96.
DAWES, Henry Laurens, 1816-1903, Massachusetts, judge, U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts. Served in Congress 1857-1873. U.S. Senator 1875-1893. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 107; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 149; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 250; Congressional Globe)
DAWES, Henry Laurens, statesman, born in Cummington, Massachusetts, 30 October, 1816. He was graduated at Yale in 1839, became a teacher, and edited the Greenfield “Gazette,” and subsequently the Adams “Transcript.” He was admitted to the bar in 1842, and served in the legislature from 1848 till 1850, when he became a member of the state senate. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1853, and attorney for the western District of Massachusetts, continuing until 1857, when he was elected to Congress, and served as a member of the committee on Revolutionary Claims. He remained in Congress by successive re-elections until 1878. In 1866 he was a delegate to the Loyalists' Convention in Philadelphia, and in 1875 he succeeded Charles Sumner in the Senate, and was re-elected in 1881 and 1887. He has been chairman of the committee on ways and means, has served on committee on public buildings and grounds, and inaugurated the measure by which the completion of the Washington monument was undertaken. He is the author of many tariff measures, and assisted in the construction of the wool and woollen tariff of 1868, which was the basis of all wool and woollens from that time until 1883. He is also a member of the committees on Approbations, Civil service, Fisheries, Revolutionary claims, and Indian and Naval Affairs. He was appointed on a special committee to investigate the Indian disturbances in the Indian territory, upon which he made a valuable report. The entire system of Indian education due to legislation was created by Mr. Dawes. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 107.
DAWSON, Samuel Kennedy, soldier, born in Pennsylvania about 1818. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1839, and assigned as second lieutenant to the 1st Artillery . He served on the northern frontier at Plattsburg, New York, during the Canada border disturbances of 1839, and on the Maine frontier, pending the "disputed territory" controversy in 1840. During the war with Mexico he was present at the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Cerro Gordo, and took part in the siege of Vera Cruz. He was promoted to be first lieutenant, 18 June, 1840, brevet captain, 18 April, 1847, captain, 31 March, 1853, and major of the 19th U.S. Infantry, 14 May, 1861. Captain Dawson took part in the campaigns against the Seminoles, 1851-'6, and was attached to the party engaged in the pursuit of Cortinas's Mexican marauders in 1859. During the Civil War he was present at the bombardment of Fort Pickens, in 1861, and served in the Tennessee Campaign of 1863, being severely wounded at the battle of Chickamauga, for which he was promoted to be brevet colonel, and subsequently brevet brigadier-general, for gallant and meritorious services during the war. He was commissioned colonel of the 19th U.S. Infantry, 28 July, 1866. In 1865 and 1866 he commanded a detachment of the 15th U.S. Infantry at Mobile, mid the entire regiment at Macon. Georgia Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 110.
DAY, Hannibal, soldier, born in Vermont about 1802. He is the son of Dr. Sylvester Day, assistant surgeon. U. S. Army. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1823, and made second lieutenant in the 2d Infantry. On 4 April, 1832, he was commissioned first lieutenant, and in the fame year took part in the Black Hawk Expedition, but was not on duty at the seat of war. He also served in the Florida wars in 1838-'9 and 1841-2, and in the war with Mexico in 1846-'7. He was commissioned captain, 7 July, 1838, major, 23 February, 1852, lieutenant-colonel, 25 February, 1861, and colonel, 7 January, 1862. He commanded a brigade of the 5th Corps in the Pennsylvania Campaign in 1863, taking part in the battle of Gettysburg. He was retired from active duty, “on his own application after forty consecutive years of service,” 1 August, 1863, and employed on military commissions and courts-martial from 25 July, 1864. On 13 March, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-general for long service. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 111.
DAY, William Howard, 1825-1900, African American anti-slavery advocate, writer, orator, printer. Husband of abolitionist Lucy Stanton Sessions, who published the abolitionist newspaper, Aliened American. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 10, p. 154)
DAYTON, William Lewis, 1807-1864, lawyer, statesman, diplomat, U.S. Senator. Member of the Free Soil Whig Party. Opposed slavery and its expansion into the new territories. Opposed the Fugitive Slave bill of 1850. Supported the admission of California as a free state and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. First vice presidential nominee of Republican Party in 1856, on the ticket with John C. Frémont. Lost the election to James Buchanan. (Goodell, 1852, p. 570; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 59; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 113; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 166; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 280)
DAYTON, William Lewis, statesman, born in Baskingridge, New Jersey, 17 February, 1807; died in Paris, France, 1 December, 1864. He was graduated at Princeton in 1825, and received the degree of LL. D. from that college in 1857. He studied law in Litchfield, Connecticut, and was admitted to the bar in 1830, beginning his practice in Trenton, New Jersey In 1837 he was elected to the State Council (as the Senate was then called), being made chairman of the judiciary committee, the supreme court of the state in 1838, and in 1842, he became associate judge of was appointed to fill a vacancy in the U. S. Senate. His appointment was confirmed by the legislature in 1845, and he was also elected for the whole term. In the Senate debates on the Oregon question, the tariff, annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War, he took the position of a Free-Soil Whig. He was the friend and adviser of President Taylor, and opposed the Fugitive-Slave Bill, but advocated the admission of California as a free state, and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In 1856 he was nominated by the newly formed Republican Party for vice-president. In March, 1857, he was made attorney-general for the state of New Jersey, and held that office until 1861, when President Lincoln appointed him minister to France, where he remained until his death.—His son, William Lewis, who was graduated at Princeton in 1858, and practised law in Trenton, was appointed by President Arthur minister to the Netherlands. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 280.
DEARING, James, soldier, born in Campbell County, Virginia, 25 April, 1840; died in Lynchburg in April, 1865. He was a great-grandson of Colonel Charles Lynch, of Revolutionary fame, who gave his name to the summary method of administering justice now known as "Lynch Law," through his rough-and-ready way of treating the tories. He was graduated at Hanover, Virginia, Academy, and was appointed a cadet in the U. S. Military Academy, but resigned in 1861, to join the Confederate Army when Virginia passed the ordinance of secession. He was successively lieutenant of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans, captain of Latham's battery, major and commander of Denny's Artillery Battalion, and colonel of a cavalry regiment from North Carolina, and was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general for gallantry at the battle of Plymouth. He participated in the principal engagements between the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac. On the retreat of the Confederate forces from Petersburg to Appomattox Court-House, he was mortally wounded near Farmville in a singular encounter with Brigadier-General Theodore Read, of the National Army. The two generals met, on 5 April, at the head of their forces, on opposite sides of the Appomattox, at High Bridge, and a duel with pistols ensued. General Rend was shot dead, but General Dearing lingered until a few days after the surrender of Lee, when he died in the Old City Hotel at Lynchburg, Virginia Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 117-118.
DE BAPTISTE, George, 1814-1875, free African American abolitionist, businessman. Aided fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad in Madison, Indiana, as well as Ohio and Kentucky areas. Became active in abolition movement in the Detroit area. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 3, p. 538; American National Biography, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 306)
DE BOLT Rezin A., jurist, born in Fairfield County, Ohio, 20 January, 1828. He received a common-school education and worked on a farm till his seventeenth year, when he was apprenticed to a tanner. After serving his time he followed his trade for a few years, but in the meantime studied law, and was admitted to the bar in February, 1856. He moved to Trenton, Grundy County, Missouri, in 1858, and began the practice of law. He was appointed school commissioner of Grundy County in 1859, and re-elected to the same office in 1860, serving until the beginning of the Civil War. He entered the National service in 1861 as captain in the 33d Missouri Infantry, was captured at the battle of Shiloh, 6 April, 1862, and held as prisoner until the following October. In 1863 he resigned his commission on account of impaired health, and resumed his profession, but in 1864 re-entered the army as major in the 44th Missouri Infantry, and was mustered out of service in August, 1865. He was elected judge of the circuit court for the 11th District of Missouri in November, 1863, which office he held until his election as a representative from Missouri in the 44th Congress, closing his Congressional career in 1877. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 119.
DE BOW, James Dunwoody Brownson (de bo), statistician, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 10 July, 1820; died in Elizabeth, New Jersey, 27 February, 1867. He was employed in a commercial house for seven years, was graduated at Charleston College in 1843, and in the following year was admitted to the bar. He had a predilection for statistical science and literature, and before adopting the legal profession and contributor to the "Southern Quarterly Review," of which he became editor in 1844. His elaborate article on ' Oregon and the Oregon Question" attracted wide attention in the United States and Europe, appeared in French, and was the occasion of a debate in the French chamber of deputies. In 1845 Mr. De Bow withdrew from its editorship and moved to New Orleans, where "De Bow's Commercial Review" was established by him, and attained immediate success. In 1848 he became professor of political economy and commercial statistics in the University of Louisiana, and was one of the founders of the Louisiana Historical Society, since merged into the Academy of science. He left the university about 1850 to assume charge of the census bureau of Louisiana, holding the office three years, during which time he collected a vast mass of statistical matter relating to the population and products of the state, and the commerce of New Orleans. President Pierce appointed him superintendent of the census in 1853, and he performed the duties of this office two years, continuing to edit his "Review." He devoted himself almost wholly to political economy, writing extensively on commercial statistics and finance, and contributing articles on American topics to the eighth edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." He delivered various addresses before literary, agricultural, and commercial associations. Apart from his literary pursuits he was one of the most industrious men of his time, and, notwithstanding his delicate organization and frequent ill health, his public lecturing and executive duties were apparently unabated. He was active in enterprises for the material and intellectual interests of the south, and was a member of every southern commercial convention subsequent to that of Memphis in 1845, and was president of the Knoxville Convention of 1857. During the Civil War his "Review" was necessarily suspended, though his voice and pen were employed in advocacy of the Confederacy, previous to which he had uttered bitter denunciations against the northern states and their institutions. After the overthrow of the Confederacy his views changed, he admitted the superiority of the free-labor system of the northwest to the slave-labor system of the south, and urged the legislatures of the southern states to encourage immigration. His "Review" was first resumed in New York City, and subsequently in Nashville, Tennessee. He was author of an "Encyclopaedia of the Trade and Commerce of the United States" (2 vols., 1853), and "The Industrial Resources and Statistics of the Southwest," compiled from his "Review" (3 vols., New York, 1853). He collected and prepared for the press, in 1854, a greater part of the material for the three volumes of the quarto edition, and compiled the octavo volume entitled "Statistical View of the United States," being a compendium of the Seventh Census (that of 1850), of which 150,000 copies were ordered by Congress (Washington, 1854). He was also author of "The Southern States, their Agriculture, Commerce, etc." (1856), and edited a work on mortality statistics. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 119.
DE CAMP, John, naval officer, born in New Jersey in 1812; died in Burlington, New Jersey, 25 June, 1875. He was appointed to the U.S. Navy from Florida in October, 1827, and served on the sloop "Vandalia," of the Brazil Squadron, in 1820-'30. He was promoted to passed midshipman in 1833, was in the West India Squadron till 1837, and commissioned lieutenant in 1838, and served on the frigate "Constitution" along the coast of Africa in 1854. He was commissioned commander in 1855, and served in the U.S. Navy-yard, New York, U.S. Light-House Inspector, and as commander of the store-ship " Relief." He commanded the steam sloop "Iroquois" at the attack upon Forts Jackson and St. Philip, and the capture of New Orleans (April, 1862), and participated in various actions on the Mississippi, including Vicksburg, while in command of the "Wissahickon." He was commissioned captain in 1862, and was in the South Atlantic Squadron in 1863-'4. He was promoted to the rank of commodore in 1866, commanded the receiving ship "Potomac" in 1868-'9, and was retired in 1870 with the rank of rear-admiral. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 119-120.
DE FOREST, John William, author and soldier, born in Humphreysville (now Seymour), Connecticut, 31 March, 1826. He attended no college, but pursued independent studies, mainly abroad, was a student in Latin, and became a fluent speaker of French, Italian, and Spanish. While yet a youth, he passed four years travelling in Europe, and two years in the Levant, residing chiefly in Syria. Again, in 1850, he visited Europe, making extensive tours through Great Britain. France, Italy, Germany, Greece, and Asia Minor. From that time until the Civil War began he wrote short stories for periodicals, having already become an author of several books. In 1861, as captain, he recruited a company for the 12th Connecticut Volunteers, and served constantly in the field till January, 1865, taking an active part under Generals Weitzel and Banks in the southwestern states, and under General Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, and leaving the army with the brevet of major. Graphic descriptions of battle-scenes in Louisiana, and of Sheridan's battles in the valley of the Shenandoah, were published in "Harper's Monthly" during the war by Major De Forest, who was present on all the occasions thus mentioned, and was fortunate enough, while experiencing forty-six days under fire, to receive but one trifling wound. He was one of only two or three American literary men that laid down the pen for the sword. From 1865 till 1868 he remained in the army as adjutant-general of the Veteran Reserve Corps, and afterward as chief of a district under the Freedman's Bureau. Since then he has resided in New Haven, except when travelling in Europe. The honorary degree of A. M. was conferred upon him by Amherst College in 1859. Besides essays, a few poems, and about fifty short stories, numerous military sketches, and book-reviews, most of which were anonymous, he, in 1873, contributed to the "Atlantic Monthly" a short serial story, entitled "The Lauson Tragedy." He has published " The History of the Indians of Connecticut, from the… Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 123-124.
DEFREES, John D., politician, born in Sparta, Tennessee, 8 November, 1811; died in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, 19 October, 1882. In 1818 he was apprenticed by his father to a printer in Ohio, and at the same time began to study law. He was admitted to the Bar of Indiana in 1836, having moved to that state a few years before to establish a newspaper in conjunction with his brother. He was soon elected to the legislature, and was several times reelected. In 1844 he resigned his seat in the state senate, and bought the " Indiana State Journal," a weekly paper published at Indianapolis. He moved there and made that paper a daily, which he edited for several years. After the Whig Party was dissolved he united with the Republican, and in 1856 became the first chairman of the Republican state committee, which place he occupied until 1860. Mr. Defrees was a friend of many leading politicians, among whom were Clay, Crittenden, Webster, and Corwin, who regarded him as an adroit politician. President Lincoln appointed him to the office of government printer, which he filled for many years. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 124.
DE GROOT, Albert, captain, born on Staten Island about 1810. He was taken into service by Cornelius Vanderbilt, and soon rose to the rank of captain, commanding some of the principal boats on the Hudson. He erected the Prescott House, on Broadway, in 1857, and constructed the steamer "Jenny Indiana" During the war he built the steamers "Resolute" and " Reliance," which were purchased for the U.S. Navy. He was active in promoting the erection of the Vanderbilt Bronzes, and presented to the printers of New York the statue of Benjamin Franklin, which stands in front of the "Times " and " Tribune" buildings. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 124.
DEITZLER, George Washington, 1826-1884, abolitionist. (Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 201)
DEITZLER, George Washington, soldier, born in Pine Grove, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 30 November, 1826; died near Tucson, Arizona, 11 April, 1884. He received a common-school education, moved to Kansas, and "grew up with the state." He was a member of the Kansas House of Representatives in 1857-'8. and again in 1859-'60, and during the former period was elected speaker. He was subsequently mayor of Lawrence, and treasurer of the University of Kansas. At the beginning of the war he was made colonel of the 1st Regiment of Kansas Volunteers. He was promoted to be brigadier-general, 29 November, 1862, but resigned in August of the year following. In 1864 he was commissioned major-general of Kansas militia. He was killed by being thrown from a carriage. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 125.
DE KAY, Joseph Rodman Drake, soldier, born 21 October, 1836; died in New York City, 9 June, 1886, served with credit during the Civil War on the staffs of Generals Mansfield, Pope, and Hooker, and won the brevet of lieutenant-colonel for gallantry in several battles.—Another son of George Coleman, George Coleman, soldier, born 34 August, 1842; died in New Orleans, 27 June, 1862, left his studies in Dresden, Saxony, in 1861, returned to the United States, and entered the National service as lieutenant of artillery, and afterward was on the staff of General Thomas Williams till he received a mortal wound in a fight with bushwhackers at Grand Gulf. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 126.
DE KAY, Sidney, soldier, born 7 March, 1845, ran away from school in the second year of the Civil War and joined the 71st New York Volunteers. He was afterward made lieutenant in the 8th Connecticut Regiment, served on the staffs of Generals B. P. Butler, Devens, and Terry, and received the brevet of major. After the war he went to Crete to assist the Greeks against the Turks. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 126.
DE KRAFFT, James Charles Philip, naval officer, born in the District of Columbia, 12 January, 1826; died there, 29 October, 1885. He was appointed midshipman from Illinois in 1841, and attached to the frigate "Congress," in the Mediterranean Squadron. During the Mexican War he took part in the first attack on Alvarado in 1846. He was commissioned lieutenant, 15 September, 1855, and detailed to the command of the frigate "Niagara" in 1860, in which vessel he was present at the assault on Fort McCrean, one of the defences of Pensacola, the following year. In 1862-'3 he was on duty in the U.S. Navy-yard at Washington, and commanded the steamer "Conemaugh, Western Gulf-Blockading Squadron, in 1864-'6, during which period he assisted in the operations against Fort Powell, Mobile Bay. Commissioned as commander in 1866, and as captain in 1872, he served subsequently as captain of the "Hartford," as chief of staff of the Asiatic Station, and had charge of the Washington and Philadelphia Navy-yards. He was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral in June, 1885. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 126.
DELAFIELD, Richard, military engineer, son of John, senior; born in New York City, 1 September, 1798; died in Washington, 5 November, 1873. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1818 at the head of his class, and was immediately promoted to be 2d lieutenant of engineers, being assigned to duty with the American Boundary commission under the treaty of Ghent. In 1820 he received his Commission as 1st lieutenant, and in 1828 was made captain. From 1819 till 1838 he was employed in the construction of the defences of Hampton Roads, as superintending engineer on the fortifications in the vicinity of the Mississippi, and those on or near Delaware River and Bay. Promoted to the rank of major in 1838, he was appointed superintendent of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, where he remained for seven years, and subsequently held the office from 1856 till March, 1861, when he was relieved, at his own request. From 1846 till 1855 he superintended the defences of New York Harbor and the Hudson River improvements, with the exception of ten months, when he acted as chief engineer of the Department of Texas. During the Crimean war (1855-'6) he was ordered to Europe in company with Captain (afterward Major General) McClellan and Major Mordecai to report on any changes that had been made in modern warfare. His elaborate report was printed by Congress in 1860. He was made lieutenant-colonel in 1861, colonel in 1863, brigadier-general and chief of engineers in 1864, and received the brevet rank of major-general, 13 May, 1865, " for faithful, meritorious, and distinguished services in the engineer department during the rebellion." He was retired 8 August, 1866, his name having been borne on the army register for over forty-five years. He rendered valuable service to the government during the Civil War, on the staff of Governor Morgan, of New York (1861-'3), in the reorganization and equipment of the state forces. From 1864 till 1870 he was on duty at Washington as commander of the Engineer Corps, and in charge of the Bureau of Engineers of the War Department, and served as inspector of the Military Academy, as member of the Light-house Board, and of the commission for the improvement of Boston Harbor. He was also one of the regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 128.
DELANO, Columbus, Congressman, born in Shoreham, Vermont, 5 June, 1809. He moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio, in 1817, was educated at the common schools, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1831. He practised at Mount Vernon, and became eminent as an advocate and criminal lawyer. He was a delegate in 1860 to the National Republican Convention at Chicago which nominated Lincoln and Hamlin. He served as state commissary-general of Ohio in 1861, and was a member of the Ohio House of Representatives in 1863, and was elected a member of Congress from that state in 1844, 1864, and 1866. He was a delegate in 1864 to the National Republican Convention at Baltimore, which nominated Lincoln and Johnson. On 5 March, 1869, he was appointed by President Grant Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and while he held office reorganized the bureau, thereby increasing the receipts over 100 per cent in eight months. He succeeded Jacob D. Cox as Secretary of the Interior in October, 1870, a portfolio that he retained till 1875. Mr. Delano has for many years been one of the trustees of Kenyon College, Ohio, which conferred on him the degree of LL. D., and in connection with which he has endowed a grammar school called Delano Hall. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 133-134.
DELANY, Martin Robinson, 1812-1885, free African American, publisher, editor, journalist, writer, physician, soldier. Publisher of abolitionist newspaper, North Star in Rochester, New York, with Fredrick Douglass. Published The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, 1852. Published The Ram’s Horn in New York. Supported colonization of African Americans in 1854. Led National Emigration Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1854. Recruited thousands of African Americans for service in the Civil War. First African American major in the U.S. Army. (Mabee, 1970, pp. 133, 145, 400n18; Pease, 1965, pp. 319-330; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 32, 50, 55, 164, 192, 251-252, 264, 275, 704-705; Sernett, 2002, pp. 151, 240, 314n61; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 219; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 382)
DELAPLAINE, Isaac Clason, lawyer, born in New York City, 27 October, 1817; died there, 17 July, 1866. He was graduated at Columbia in 1834, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He was elected to Congress from New York as a fusionist, and served from 4 July, 1861, till 3 March, 1863. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 134.
DELAVAN, Edward Cornelius, 1793-1871, Ballston Center, New York, reformer, temperance activist, abolitionist. Life member of the American Colonization Society (ACS). Sought to defend the ACS against attacks by William Lloyd Garrison. American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1837-39. (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 134; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 201)
DELAVAN, Edward Cornelius, reformer, born in Schenectady county, New York, in 1793; died in Schenectady, 15 Jan., 1871. He was a wine-merchant, and acquired a fortune. At one time he owned much real estate in Albany, including the Delavan house, which he erected. In 1828, in company with Dr. Eliphalet Nott, he formed the State temperance Society in Schenectady, and entered with zeal into the cause of temperance reform, devoting .his ample means to its promotion, speaking, lecturing, and writing on the subject, and employing others in all these ways to further the cause. He met with great opposition in this work. In 1835 he wrote to the Albany “Evening Journal,” charging an Albany brewer with using filthy and stagnant water for malting. The brewer prosecuted him for libel, and the trial, which took place in 1840 and attracted wide attention, occupied six days, and resulted in a verdict for Delavan. After this, several similar suits that had been begun against him for damages aggregating $300,000, were abandoned. Mr. Delavan had the proceedings of this trial printed in pamphlet-form for distribution as a tract. He procured, about 1840, several drawings of the human stomach when diseased by the use of alcoholic drinks, from postmortem examinations made by Professor Sewall, of Washington, D. C. These he bad engraved and printed in colors, and made very effective use of them. He also published for years, at his own expense, a periodical advocating, often with illustrations, the temperance cause; this was subsequently merged in the “Journal of the American Temperance Union,” to whose funds he was a most liberal contributor. He had trained himself to public speaking, and became an efficient advocate of the cause he had so much at heart. Mr. Delavan presented to Union College a collection of shells and minerals valued at $30,000. He lost a large portion of his property a few years before his death. He published numerous articles and tracts, and “Temperance in Wine Countries” (1860). Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888. Vol. II, p. 134.
DE LEON, David Camden, surgeon, born in South Carolina in 1822; died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 3 September, 1872. He was educated in his native state, and graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1836. He entered the U. S. Army as assistant surgeon on 21 August, 1838, served in the Seminole War, and was then stationed for several years on the western frontier. At the beginning of the Mexican War he went with General Taylor to the Rio Grande, was present at most of the battles in the campaign toward Mexico, and entered that city when it surrendered. For these services, as well as for gallantry in action, where he several times took the place of commanding officers who had been killed or wounded, Dr. De Leon twice received the thanks of Congress, but was again assigned to frontier duty in Mexico, on the ground of his great energy and hardihood. He was promoted to surgeon, with the rank of major, on 29 August, 1856, and on, 19 February, 1861, resigned his commission and was placed at the head of the medical department of the Confederate Army. At the close of the war he went to Mexico, but after a year's residence in that country he returned to New Mexico, where he had been stationed for many years, and owned property, continuing in practice until his death. He was a man of fine literary culture, and a vigorous writer. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 135.
DEMING, Henry Champion, 1815-1872, lawyer, soldier. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut, 1863, 1865. Colonel, commanding 12th Connecticut Regiment. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 138-139; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 230; Congressional Globe)
DEMING, Henry Champion, lawyer, born in Middle Haddam, Connecticut, in 1815; died in Hartford, 9 October, 1872. He was graduated at Yale in 1836, and at Harvard law-school in 1839. He then opened a law office in New York City, but devoted himself chiefly to literature, being engaged with Park Benjamin in editing the "New World," a literary monthly. He moved to Hartford in 1847, served in the lower house of the legislature in 1849-50 and 1859- 61, and in 1851 was a member of the state senate. He was mayor of Hartford in 1854-'8 and in 1860-2, having been elected as a Democrat. Early in the war he opposed coercion, even after the fall of Sumter, and when asked to preside at a war-meeting on 19 April, 1861, declined in a letter in which he said that he would support the Federal government, but would not sustain it in a war of aggression or invasion of the seceded states." When Washington was threatened, however, he favored the prosecution of the war, and on 9 October, 1861, was elected by acclamation speaker pro tempore of the state house of representatives, the Republican majority thus testifying their approval of his course. In September, 1861, he accepted a commission as colonel of the "charter oak regiment (the 12th Connecticut), reassigned especially for General Butler's New Orleans Expedition. After the passage of the forts his regiment was the first to reach New Orleans, and was assigned by General Butler the post of honor at the custom-house. Colonel Deming was on detached duty, acting as mayor of the city from October, 1862, till February, 1863. He then resigned, returned home, and in April, 1863, was elected to Congress as a Republican, and served two terms, being a member of the Committee on Military Affairs, and chairman of that on expenditures in the War Department. In 1866 he was a delegate to the Loyalists' Convention in Philadelphia, and from 1869 till his death was U. S. collector of internal revenue for his district. Mr. Deming was one of the most eloquent public speakers in New England, a gentleman of fine culture and of refined literary taste. He published translations of Eugene Sue's "Mysteries of Paris " and " Wandering Jew " (1840), a eulogy of Abraham Lincoln, delivered by invitation of the Connecticut legislature in 1865, "Life of Ulysses S. Grant" (Hartford, 1868), and various addresses. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 138-139.
DENISON, Andrew Woods, soldier, born in Baltimore, Maryland, 15 December, 1831; died there. 24 February 1877. In 1862 he raised the 8th Maryland Regiment for the National Army, and in August of that year became its colonel, serving till the close of the war. He commanded the Maryland Brigade of Robinson's Division at Laurel Hill, where he lost an arm, and was again wounded at White Oak Ridge, near Petersburg, he was brevetted brigadier-general for gallantry in the first-named battle on 9 August, 1864, and major-general for the second, 31 March, 1865. General Denison was appointed postmaster of Baltimore, 19 April, 1869, and held the office till his death. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 140.
DENISON, Charles Wheeler, 1809-1881, New York City, abolitionist leader, author, clergyman, newspaper editor. Editor of The Emancipator, the first anti-slavery newspaper in New York. Co-founder and organizer of the Baptist Anti-Slavery Society in 1840 and the American Baptist Free Mission Society in 1843. Manager, 1833-1836, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833. Lecturing Agent for the AASS in Connecticut and Eastern New York. Co-founder of the Delaware State Anti-Slavery Society. (Dumond, 1961, p. 182; Sorin, 1971; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 140)
DENISON, Charles Wheeler, author, born in New London, Connecticut, 11 November, 1809; died 14 November, 1881. Before he was of age he edited a newspaper in his native town. He afterward became a clergyman, edited the "Emancipator," the first anti- slavery journal published in New York, and took part in other similar publications. In 1853 he was U. S. consul in British Guiana. He spent some time among the operatives of Lancashire, speaking in behalf of the National cause during the American Civil War, and in 1867 edited an American paper in London, being at the same time pastor of Grove Road Chapel, Victoria park. During the last two years of the war he served as post chaplain in Winchester, Virginia, and as hospital chaplain in Washington. He published "The American Village and other Poems" (Boston, 1845); "Paul St. Clair," a temperance story; "Out at Sea," poems (London, 1867); "Antonio, the Italian Boy" (Boston, 1873); "The Child Hunters," relating to the abuses of the padrone system (Philadelphia, 1877); and a series of biographies published during the war, including " The Tanner Boy" (Grant); "The Bobbin Boy" (Banks); and "Winfield; the Lawyer's Son" (Hancock).—His wife, Mary Andrews, author, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 26 May, 1826, became connected, on her marriage with Mr. Denison, with the "Olive Branch," of which he was assistant editor. She continued to contribute to magazines, and, when living in British Guiana, wrote tropical sketches for American periodicals. She also contributed to English magazines while in London. Her books are mostly tales of home-life, and include "Home Pictures," a collection of sketches written for periodicals (New York, 1853); "Gracie Amber" (1857); "Old Hepsey, a Tale of the South" (1858); "Opposite the Jail" (1858); "The Lovers' Trials" (Philadelphia, 1865); "Annie and Teely" (1869); "That Husband of Mine," an anonymous book, which reached a sale of over 200,000 copies in a few weeks (Boston, 1874); "That Wife of Mine"(1877): "Rothmell" (1878); "Mr. Peter Crewett" (1878); "His Triumph" (1883); "What One Boy can Do "(1885); and numerous Sunday-school books. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 140
DENISON, Frederic, clergyman, born in Stonington, Connecticut, 28 September, 1819. He was graduated at Brown in 1847. Besides having been pastor of several Baptist Churches. Mr. Denison served during three years of the late war as chaplain of the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry and the 3d Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. He has written a great number of poems and articles for periodicals, and is author of the following works: "The Supper Institution," The Sabbath Institution," "The Evangelist, or Life and Labors of Reverend Jabez S. Swan" (New Haven, 1878); "History of the First Rhode Island Cavalry "; "Westerly and its Witnesses for Two Hundred and Fifty Years"; "Picturesque Narragansett, Sea and Shore "; "Illustrated New Bedford, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket"; "History of the Third Rhode Island Heavy Artillery Regiment ": and " Picturesque Rhode Island."—His brother, John Ledyard, educator, born in Stonington, Connecticut, 19 September, 1826. His education was received at the Connecticut literary institution and at Worcester Academy, and he established the Mystic River Academy. Settling in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1855, he became subsequently secretary and treasurer of the Henry Bill Publishing Company, and president of the Connecticut Baptist Education Society. He received the degree of A. M. from Brown in 1855. He is the author of a " Pictorial History of the Wars of the United States," and has edited an "Illustrated History of the New World," in English and in German. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 140-141.
DENNIS, George R., senator, born in White Haven, Somerset County, Maryland, 8 April. 1822. He was graduated at the Polytechnic Institute of Troy, New York, and entered the University of Virginia. He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, was graduated there in 1842, and, after practising for several years, he retired and has since devoted his attention to agriculture. He was a delegate to the National Convention that nominated Fillmore in 1856, and to the Democratic National Convention in 1868, serving as one of the vice-presidents. He was elected to the Maryland State Senate in 1854, to the house of delegates in 1867, and to the Senate again in 1871. While filling this office he was elected U. S. Senator from Maryland as a Democrat, serving until 1873. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 142.
DENNISON, William, 1815-1882, Civil War governor of Ohio, lawyer, founding member of Republican Party, State Senator, opposed admission of Texas and the extension of slavery into the new territories. Anti-slavery man, supporter of Abraham Lincoln. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 142; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 241; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 446)
DENNISON, William, war governor of Ohio, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, 23 November, 1815; died in Columbus, 15 June, 1882. His father was a prosperous business man, and had him prepared for college in the best schools of Cincinnati. He was graduated at Miami in 1835, studied law in Cincinnati, under the direction of Nathaniel Pendleton and Stephen Fales, and practised in Columbus until 1848, in which year he was chosen to the state legislature. About this period Mr. Dennison became interested in banking and in railroad affairs, and was president of the Exchange bank and president of the Columbus and Xenia Railroad Company. In 1856 he was a delegate to the first National Convention of the Republican Party. He was chosen governor of Ohio in 1860 by the Republicans, and delivered his first message to the general assembly in 1861. At his suggestion the legislature voted $3,000,000 to protect the state from invasion and insurrection, and conferred power upon the executive to raise troops. Governor Dennison was an anti-slavery man and an ardent admirer of President Lincoln. In response to his call for 11,000 troops, he offered 30,000, sending agents to Washington to urge their acceptance. He took possession of the telegraph lines and railroads in the name of the state, and seized money in transit from Washington to Ohio, which he gave to the quartermaster-general to clothe and equip soldiers. Governor Dennison was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1864, and was elected chairman. He was appointed by President Lincoln Postmaster-General in 1864, and continued in that office, under President Johnson, until his resignation in 1866. Governor Dennison was a member of the National Republican Convention at Chicago in 1880, and was leader of the friends of Senator John Sherman during the struggle for the nomination. He was also a candidate for senator in that year. He contributed largely to Dennison College, Granville, Ohio. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 142
DENT, Frederick F., lawyer, born in Cumberland, Maryland, in 1786; died in Washington, D. C, 15 December 1873. He was trained in commercial pursuits, and became a merchant in Pittsburg and subsequently in St. Louis, accumulated wealth, and had a wide reputation for hospitality. He was the father of Mrs. U. S. Grant. In politics Mr. Dent was a rigid and aggressive Democrat, his views coinciding with the Benton-Jackson school, and he held these opinions tenaciously to the last of his life. John W. Forney, in his "Anecdotes of Public Men," refers to him as a very interesting old gentleman, kind, humorous, and genteel, indicating an independent spirit in his views, and exhibiting a wonderfully retentive memory for by-gone days. Mr. Dent was a member of his son-in-law's household after General Grant became commander of the National armies, and his farm, "White Haven," near St. Louis, became the General's property.— His son, Frederick Tracy, soldier, born in White Haven, St Louis County, Missouri, 17 December, 1820. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1843, made brevet 2d lieutenant, and served on frontier duty and in garrison prior to the Mexican War, which he entered in 1847. He was engaged in the siege of Vera Cruz, the capture of San Antonio, and the battles of Churubusco, where he was severely wounded, and Molino del Rey, receiving for gallant and meritorious conduct the brevets of 1st lieutenant and captain. He served thereafter on the Pacific Railroad survey, on frontier duty in Idaho, in removing the Seminole Indians, and at various points in Texas, Virginia, and Washington territory, until he joined the Yakima Expedition in 1856. He participated in the Spokane Expedition in Washington territory, being engaged in the combat of "Four Lakes" in 1858, in that of Spokane Plain in the same year, and in the skirmish on that river. After frontier duty at Fort Walla Walla he became a member of the Snake River, Oregon, Expedition, to rescue the survivors of the massacre of Salmon Fall (I860), at which time, 1863, he was promoted to the rank of major, and was in command of a regiment in the Army of the Potomac in 1863, in New York City called to suppress anticipated riots, from September, 1863, till January, 1864, serving as a member of the military commission for the trial of state prisoners from January till March, 1864, becoming then a staff officer with Lieutenant-General Grant, having the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Aide-de-camp during Grant’s whole time as lieutenant-general, he was present in the battles and military operations of the Richmond Campaign, and as military commander of the city of Richmond, and of the garrison of Washington, D. C, in 1865, and on the staff of the general-in-chief at Washington after 1866, as colonel, aide-de-camp, and secretary to President Grant daring his first term. For his gallant and meritorious services in the field during the Civil War he was brevetted brigadier-general U. S. A. and brigadier-general of volunteers. He was transferred to the 14th U.S. Infantry in 1866, was made lieutenant-colonel of the 32d U.S. Infantry in 1867, colonel of the 1st U.S. Artillery in 1881. At his own request, after forty years of service, was retired in December, 1883.— His brother. Louis, lawyer, born in St. Louis in 1822; died in Washington, D. C., 22 March, 1874, received a literal education in his native city, and studied law. About 1850 he went to California, where he engaged in business, afterward holding the office of judge. In 1862 he returned to St. Ignatius, and from 1863 till 1867 was engaged in cotton-planting in Mississippi and Louisiana. He afterward practised law in Washington. During the reconstruction period he drifted into southern politics, having moved to Mississippi, and in 1869 was nominated for governor of that state by the National Union Republicans, a new party, organized on the basis of equal rights, general amnesty, and reconciliation; but, contrary to his own expectation and to those of his friends, he did not receive the support of the administration in the canvass. Prior to his nomination, President Grant wrote to him: "I would regret to see you run for an office and be defeated by my act; but, as matters now look, I must throw the weight of my influence in favor of the party opposed to you." Judge Dent replied, defending the claims of his party. Although the Democrats made no nomination, but gave their votes to Mr. Dent, he received only half as many as his opponent. Governor Alcorn, the regular Republican nominee. After this he settled in Washington. In December, 1873, he became a Roman Catholic. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 143.
DENVER, James W., politician, born in Winchester, Virginia, in 1818. He received a public-school education, emigrated in childhood with his parents to Ohio, moved to Missouri in 1841, where he studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He was appointed captain of the 12th Infantry in March, 1847, and served in the war with Mexico till its close in July, 1848. Moving to California in 1850, he was appointed a member of a relief committee to protect emigrants, and was chosen a state senator in 1852. While a member of this body in 1852, he had a controversy with Edward Gilbert, ex-member of Congress, in regard to some legislation, which resulted in a challenge from Gilbert, that was accepted by Denver. Rifles were the weapons, and Gilbert was killed by the second shot. In 1853 Mr. Denver was appointed secretary of state of California, and from 1855 till 1857 served in Congress. He was appointed by President Buchanan Commissioner of Indian Affairs, but resigned, and was made governor of Kansas. Resigning this post in 1858, he was reappointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs, which office he held till March, 1859. In 1861 he entered the National service, was made brigadier-general, served in the western states, and resigned in March, 1863. Afterward he settled in Washington, D. C, to practice his profession as an attorney. John W. Forney, in his "Anecdotes of Public Men," says: "General Denver, while in Congress, as chairman of the Committee on the Pacific Railroad, in 1854-'5, presented in a conclusive manner the facts demonstrating the practicability of that great enterprise, and the advantages to be derived from it." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 144.
DEPEW, Chauncey Mitchell, lawyer, born in Peekskill, New York, 23 April, 1834. He is of French Huguenot descent, and was born in the old homestead that has been in the possession of his family for over 200 years. He was graduated at Yale in 1856, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began his active work at an exciting period in our political life. He served in the New York Assembly in 1861-'2, and during the second session was chairman of the ways and means committee, and also acted as speaker of the assembly during a portion of the time. He canvassed the state for Mr. Lincoln in 1860, and has taken part in almost every subsequent political contest. In 1863 he was elected Secretary of State, but declined a re-election in 1865. He has held various other offices, including those of tax commissioner of New York City and minister to Japan, which he resigned very soon, to devote himself to his profession. In 1866 he was appointed attorney for the New York and Harlem Railroad Company, and when the Hudson River Road was consolidated with the New York Central, in 1869, Mr. Depew was again made the general counsel of the consolidated company. He was candidate for lieutenant-governor of the state on the Liberal Republican ticket in 1872, but was defeated. In 1874 he was the choice of the legislature for regent of the State University, and was also one of the commissioners to build the capitol at Albany. During the memorable contest in the assembly, after the resignation of Senators Conkling and Piatt from the U. S. Senate, and in the election of the successor to Mr. Piatt, Mr. Depew was a candidate for eighty-two days, receiving over two thirds of the Republican vote, but retired from the contest, that the election of Warner Miller might be assured. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 144-145.
DE PEYSTER, John Watte, Jr., soldier, son of the preceding, born in New York, 2 December, 1841; died there 12 April, 1873. In March, 1862, he left the law school of Columbia College and joined the staff of General Philip Kearny as volunteer aide, participating in the battle of "Williamsburg. He for a time commanded a company of New York cavalry, was afterward major of the 1st New York Artillery, and still later served on the staff of General Peck. He was then prostrated by fever, and, after a severe illness of several months, returned to the field in the winter of 1863. For his zeal, capacity, and energy, displayed in the Chancellorsville Campaign and in the battle of Fredericksburg, he was promoted to be lieutenant-colonel and colonel. He remained with the army until midsummer of the same year, when his increasing weakness compelled him to resign. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 146.
DE PUY, Henry Walter, lawyer, born in Pompey Hill, Onondaga County, New York, in 1820; died 2 February, 1876. He studied law, and was admitted to the Bar of New York. He was private secretary to Governor Horatio Seymour during his term of 1853-4, and subsequently served as U. S. consul at Carlsruthe, and as secretary of legation at Berlin in 1854, which place he resigned to take part in the political struggle of 1860. From President Lincoln he received the appointment of Secretary of the State of Nebraska, organized that territory, and served as the first speaker of its legislature. He was also Indian agent to the Pawnees, under President Lincoln, and devoted much time and energy to reform the Indian service of the government. For several years he edited and published a newspaper in Indianapolis, Indiana, in support of the liberal party, being a warm friend of Governor Chase. He was a constant contributor of political articles to the press, the author of several popular poems, and of the following works: "Kossuth and his Generals," with a brief history of Hungary (New York, 1851); "Louis Napoleon and his Times," with a memoir of the Bonaparte family (1853); "Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Heroes of '76," with the early history of Vermont (1853); and "Threescore Years and Beyond " (1873). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p 146.
DERBY, James Cephas, publisher, born in Little Falls, New York, 20 July, 1818. He was educated at the grammar-school in Herkimer, New York He was apprenticed to the book-selling business in Auburn, New York, in 1833. and afterward was in business on his own account, both there and in New York City. Among the American authors whose works he published were the Cary sisters, B. P. Shillaber, S. G. Goodrich, Henry Wikoff, Henry Ward Beecher, Augusta J. Evans, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and Marion Harland. He retained for years the friendship of such men as William H. Seward, Alexander H. Stephens, and Horace Greeley. He is himself the author of "Fifty Years among Authors, Books, and Publishers" (New York, 1884). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 146.
DE ROSSET, Moses John, physician, born in Pittsboro, North Carolina, 4 July, 1838; died in Wilmington, 1 May, 1881, in youth showed remarkable aptitude for languages and mathematics. He passed three years in Geneva at the famous school of Diedrich, and spent six months in Cologne to perfect himself in German. He was graduated at the medical department of the University of New York in 1859, was appointed resident physician at Bellevue Hospital, New York, and entered upon the duties in 1859. At the beginning of the Civil War he entered the Confederate Army as assistant surgeon, and, after serving through Stonewall Jackson's valley Campaign, was promoted to full surgeon, and assigned to duty in Richmond. Subsequently he was detached as inspector of hospitals of the Department of Henrico. At the close of the war he moved to Baltimore, where he was appointed adjunct professor of chemistry in the medical department of the University of Maryland. He was also professor of chemistry in the dental college in that city. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 148-149.
DE RUSSY, Louis G., soldier, born in New York in 1796; died in Grand Ecore, Louisiana, 17 December, 1864. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1814, and made 3d lieutenant in the 1st Artillery He served in the war of 1812-'5, with Great Britain, as acting assistant engineer in erecting temporary defences for New York City and its environs, and was in garrison in New York Harbor in 1815-'6, when he was made battalion adjutant of artillery. In 1819 he became topographer of a commission to establish the northern boundary of the United States under the treaty of Ghent. He became captain of the 3d Artillery in 1825, and in the following year was made paymaster and major. In 1842 he was dropped from the army, and became a planter at Natchitoches, Louisiana In 1846 he served in the Mexican War at Tampico, and became colonel of the 1st Louisiana Volunteers. He completed the defences of the place, opened a new channel to Tamessie River, held various civil offices, and was engaged in the fight at Callabosa River and in the skirmish of Tantayuka. He was a civil engineer from 1848 till 1861, employed in making improvements in navigation, and from 1851 till 1853 was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and from 1853 till 1855 of the Senate. He was major-general of Louisiana militia from 1848 till 1861, when he entered the Confederate Army. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 149.
DE RUSSY, Rene Edward, soldier, born in New York City in 1791; died in Sun Francisco. 26 November, 1865. He was a son of Thomas De Russy, of St. Malo, France, who came to New York in 1791, and moved to Old Point Comfort, Virginia, where he resided many years. The son was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1812, and made 2d lieutenant of engineers. He served in the war of 1812-'5, with Great Britain, as assistant engineer in constructing defences at New York and at Sackett's Harbor, New York, and participated in the campaigns on the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain. In 1814 he was brevetted captain for gallant conduct at the battle of Plattsburg. He was chief engineer of General Macomb's army in 1814, and captain of the Corps of Engineers in 1815. He was assistant engineer in the construction of the fort at Rouse's Point, New York, in 1816, superintending engineer of the repairs and construction of fortifications in New York Harbor in 1818, and of defensive works on the Gulf of Mexico in 1821. In 1824 he was brevetted major. He was superintendent of the U. S. Military Academy from 1833 till 1838, and lieutenant-colonel of engineers from 1838 till 1863. At the beginning of the Civil War he was ordered to the defence of the Pacific Coast, and constructed the fortifications of San Francisco Harbor. He was also president of the board of engineers for devising projects and alterations in the land defences of San Francisco. In 1865 he was brevetted major-general in the U. S. Army for long and faithful service.—his son, Gustavus Adolphus, soldier, born in Brooklyn, New York, 3 November, 1818, having been three years at West Point, was appointed from Virginia, 2d lieutenant in the 4th U. S. Artillery , 8 March, 1847. He served in the Mexican War, having been brevetted 1st lieutenant "for gallant and meritorious conduct" at Contreras and Churubusco, and captain, 13 September, 1847, for gallantry at Chapultepec. He was regimental quartermaster from 1847 till 1857, and stationed at Fort Monroe in 1848. He was made 1st lieutenant, 16 May, 1849; captain, 17 August, 1857; brevet major, 25 June, 1862, for bravery displayed in the action near Fair Oaks, Virginia; brevet lieutenant-colonel, for the same cause in the battle of Malvern Hill, and brevet colonel, 17 March, 1863. He was promoted to be brigadier-general of volunteers, 23 May, 1863; brevet colonel, 13 March, 1865 (for services in the war of the rebellion); and brevet brigadier general, for the same cause, on the same day. He was mustered out of the volunteer service, 13 January, 1866; promoted to be major in the regular army, 26 July, 1866; lieutenant-colonel, 25 August, 1876; colonel 30 June, 1882; and was retired by operation of law, 3 November, 1882. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 149.
DE SAUSSURE, Wilmot Gibbes, lawyer, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 23 July, 1822; died 1 February, 1880, was graduated at South Carolina College in 1840, and admitted to the bar in 1843. He was a member of the legislature for ten years, was in command of the state troops that took possession of Fort Moultrie when Major Anderson evacuated it in December, 1860, as lieutenant-colonel was in command of the artillery on Morris Island during the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April, 1861, and was treasurer, and subsequently adjutant and inspector-general, of South Carolina. He was president of the state Society of the Cincinnati, the St. Andrews Society, the Charleston Library Society, the St. Cecilia Society, and the Huguenot Society of South Carolina. His published addresses include "The Stamp-Act of Great Britain, and the Resistance of the Colonies," showing that South Carolina, on 20 March, 1770. adopted a constitution by which the royal government ceased to exist there; "The Causes which led to the Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown "; " The Centennial Celebration of the Organization of the Cincinnati "; "Memoir of General William Moultrie "; and "Muster-roll of the South Carolina Soldiers of the Continental Line and Militia who served during the Revolution." He also prepared an address on the celebration by the Huguenot Society of America of the bicentennial anniversary of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (New York, 1885). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 150.
DETMOLD, William Ludwig, surgeon, born in Hanover, Germany, 27 December, 1808. His lather was court physician to the king of Hanover. William received his medical degree from the University of Gottingen in 1830, and enlisted as surgeon in the royal Hanoverian grenadier-guard. He came to the United States on leave of absence in 1837, and sent his resignation from New York. He became professor of military surgery and hygiene at Columbia in 1862, and was made professor emeritus in 1866. Dr. Detmold introduced orthopedic surgery into the United States, and during the Civil War acted as volunteer surgeon in Virginia. He introduced a knife and fork for one-handed men, which was put by Surgeon-General Barnes on the supply list, under the name of "Detmold's knife." Among his numerous contributions to medical literature is ''Opening an Abscess in the Brain." in the "Journal of the Medical Sciences” for February, 1850.— His brother, Christian Edward, engineer, born in Hanover. 2 February. 1810, was educated at the Military Academy in his native city, and came to New York in 1826, with the intention of embarking for Brazil, and entering the military service of Dom Pedro I. But unfavorable accounts of the condition of that country induced him to remain here, and he became well known as an engineer. In 1827 he made many surveys in Charleston, South Carolina, and vicinity, and in 1828 made the drawings for the first locomotive built by the Messrs. Kemble in New York. In 1833-'4 he was in the employ of the U. S. War Department, and superintended the laying of the foundations of Fort Sumter during the illness of the engineer in charge of the work. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 154-155.
DE TROBRIAND, Philippe Regis, soldier, h. in the Chateau des Rochettes, near Tours, France, 4 June, 1816. His full name and title were Philippe Regis Denis de Keredern, Baron de Trobriand; But, on becoming an American citizen, he modified the name and dropped the title. His early education was for a military career. He studied at the College Saint Louis in Paris, the College of Rouen, where his father was in command, and the College of Tours; but the revolution of 1830 changed his prospects, and he was graduated at the University of Orleans as bachelier-es-lettres in 1834, and at Poitiers as licencie-en-droit in 1838. He came to the United States in 1841, edited and published the "Revue de nouveau monde" in New York in 1849-1850, and was joint editor of the " Courrier des Etats-Unis" in 1854-'61. On 28 August of the last named year he entered the National Army as colonel of the 55th New York Regiment. He was engaged at Yorktown and Williamsburg, commanded a brigade of the 3d Army Corps in 1862-'3, and was at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. He was made brigadier-general of volunteers in January, 1864, and commanded the defences of New York City from May till June of that year. As commander of a brigade in the 2d Army Corps he was at Deep Bottom, Petersburg, Hatcher's Run, and Five Forks, and was at the head of a division in the operations that ended in Lee's surrender. For his services in this campaign he was brevet ted major-general of volunteers on 6 April, 1865. He entered the regular army as colonel of the 31st U.S. Infantry on 28 July, 1866, was brevetted brigadier-general, U. S. Army, 2 March, 1867, and commanded the District of Dakota in August of that year. He was transferred to the 13th U.S. Infantry on 15 March, 1869, and commanded the District of Montana, and afterward that of Green River. He was retired at his own request, on account of age, on 20 March, 1879, and is now (1887) a resident of New Orleans, Louisiana He has published " Les gentilshommes de l'ouest," a novel (Paris, 1841), and "Quatre ans de campagnes a l'armee du Potomac" (2 vols., Paris et Bruxelles, 1867). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 155.
DEVENS, Charles, jurist, born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, 4 April, 1820. He was graduated at Harvard in 1838, studied in the law-school at Cambridge, and practised from 1841 till 1849 in Franklin County, Massachusetts. He was a member of the state senate from that county in 1848 and 1849. From 1849 till 1853 he held the office of U. S. marshal for the District of Massachusetts. During this period Thomas Sims was remanded as a fugitive slave, and Mr. Devens, in obedience to what he considered the exigencies of his office, caused the process to be executed. After the rendition he endeavored, through the Reverend L. A. Grimes, in 1855, to obtain the freedom of Sims, offering to pay whatever sum was necessary for the purpose, but the effort was fruitless. At a later period, hearing that Mrs. Lydia Maria Child was making applications for money to purchase the freedom of Sims, Mr. Devens addressed her letter requesting the return of the sums she had collected for this purpose, and that she allow him the privilege of paying the whole sum. To this Mrs. Child assented; but, before the affair could be arranged, the war rendered negotiation impossible. Sims was eventually liberated by the progress of the National armies, was pecuniarily aided by Mr. Devens in establishing himself in civil life, and at a later period appointed by him. while attorney-general of the United States, to an appropriate place in the department of justice. In 1854 Mr. Devens resumed the practice of law in Worcester. On 19 April, 1861, he accepted the office of major, commanding an independent battalion of rifles, with which he served three months, and in July was appointed colonel of the 15th Massachusetts Volunteers. With this regiment he served until April, 1862. and was wounded in the battle of Ball's Bluff. He was made brigadier-general in 1862, commanded a brigade during the Peninsular Campaign, was disabled by a wound at Fair Oaks, and was in the battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg. In 1863 he commanded a division in the 11th Corps at the battle of Chancellorsville, where he was severely wounded. Returning to the field in the spring of 1864, he was appointed to the command of a division in the 18th Army Corps, reorganized as the 3d Division of the 24th Corps, and his troops were the first to occupy Richmond when it was evacuated by the Confederates. General Devens was brevetted major-general for gallantry and good conduct at the capture of Richmond, and remained in the service for a year after the termination of hostilities, his principal duty being as commander of the District of Charleston, which comprised the eastern portion of South Carolina. In June, 1866, at his own request, he was mustered out of service, and immediately resumed the practice of his profession in Worcester. In April, 1867, he was appointed one of the justices of the superior court of Massachusetts, and in 1873 was made one of the justices of the supreme court of the state. In 1877 he became attorney-general in the cabinet of President Hayes. On his return to Massachusetts in 1881 he was reappointed one of the justices of the supreme court of the state, which office he now holds (1887). His only publications are his legal opinions and addresses on public occasions. Of his addresses the most important are those at the centennial celebration of the battle of Bunker Hill, at the dedication of the soldiers' monuments in Boston and Worcester, on the deaths of General Meade and General Grant, and as presiding officer at the 250th anniversary of Harvard. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 155-156.
DEVEREUX, John Henry, railroad manager, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 5 April, 1832; died in Cleveland, Ohio, 17 March, 1886. He was educated in the Portsmouth. New Hampshire, Academy, and in 1848 went to Cleveland, Ohio, where he served as construction engineer on several railroads. He moved to Tennessee in 1852, and became prominent in railroad affairs there. At the beginning of the Civil War he offered his services to the government, and aided the Union cause as superintendent of military railroads in Virginia. He resigned in 1864, and returned to Cleveland, where he became one of the foremost railroad men in the west. He was chosen president of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis Railroad in June, 1873, of the Atlantic and Great Western in 1874, and of the Indianapolis and St. Louis in 1880, being receiver of the last-named road from May till September, 1882. In 1877 General Devereux, by his personal courage, prevented 800 of his men from joining in the railroad riots. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 156.
DE VILLIERS, Charles A., soldier, born in 1826. He had been an officer in the French Army, and afterward became colonel of the 11th Ohio Volunteers. At the beginning of the Civil War in the United States he was taken prisoner, 17 July, 1861, and sent to Richmond. About the middle of September following he eluded the guards and escaped. Under the guise of a mendicant Frenchman, aged, infirm, and nearly blind, he succeeded in obtaining the commandant's permission to go to Fort Monroe, under a flag of truce, that he might embark "for his dear old home in France." After two weeks' delay the supposed Frenchman was assisted on board a "transport at Norfolk and taken to the Union boat. When safely under his own flag, he cast off his pack, green goggles, and rags, thanked the officers for their politeness, shouted a loud huzza for the stars and stripes, and gave them the pleasing information that they had just parted with Colonel De Villiers, of the 11th Ohio. He arrived safely in Washington, rejoined his regiment, and was made brigadier-general, 10 October, 1861. He had been the military instructor of Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth. He received his discharge from the army on 23 April, 1862, and returned to France. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 156.
DEVIN, Thomas C, born in New York City in 1822; died there, 4 April, 1878. He received a common-school education, followed the trade of a painter, and became lieutenant-colonel of the 1st New York Militia Regiment. Just after the battle of Bull Run, Mr. Devin accosted Thurlow Weed, at that time a stranger to him, and said that he wished authority to raise a cavalry company for immediate service. Mr. Weed telegraphed to Governor Morgan for a captain's commission for Mr. Devin, obtained it, and in two days the company had been recruited and was on its way to Washington. At the end of the three months for which he had enlisted he entered the service again as colonel of the 6th New York Cavalry . His command was attached to the cavalry corps of the Army of the Potomac, and participated in all the battles fought by that corps from Antietam to Lee's surrender. At Five Forks he commanded his brigade, and carried the Confederate earthworks. He was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers, 15 August, 1864, for bravery at Front Royal, where his command captured two stands of colors, and where he was wounded; and major-general, 13 March, 1865, for his services during the war. He entered the regular army as lieutenant-colonel of the 8th U.S. Cavalry , 28 July, 1866, commanding the District of Montana. On 2 March, 1867, he was brevetted colonel, U. S. Army, for gallantry at Fisher's Hill, and brigadier-general for services at Sailor's Creek. He then commanded the District of Arizona, and on 25 June, 1877, became colonel of the 3d Cavalry. General Grant, in a conversation with Thurlow Weed, called General Devin, next to General Sheridan, the best cavalry officer in the National Army. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 156-157.
