Encyclopedia of Civil War Biography - Dib-Dye
DIBRELL, George Gibbs, soldier, born in White County, Tennessee, 12 April, 1822. His common-school education was supplemented by one term at East Tennessee University. He was a farmer and merchant, was elected a member of the state constitutional convention of Tennessee, on the union ticket, in February, 1861, and to the legislature of Tennessee in August. Entering the Confederate Army as a private, he was elected lieutenant-colonel, and was promoted colonel and brigadier-general of cavalry in 1864. He was detailed to escort the executive officers and treasure of the Confederate government after the evacuation of Richmond, and took charge of the archives at Greensboro, North Carolina, after the surrender of Lee's army. He was a member of the constitutional convention of Tennessee in 1870, and was twice elected a representative from that state in Congress, serving from 5 March, 1875, till 5 March, 1879. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 169.
DICKEY, Theophilus Lyle, jurist, born near Paris, Kentucky, 12 November, 1812; died in Atlantic City, New Jersey, 22 July, 1885. He read law in his native state, moved to Ohio, liberated the slaves that he had inherited, and afterward established himself in practice in Illinois. During the Mexican War he served as a captain in Colonel Hardin's regiment, and in the Civil War he was colonel of the 11th Illinois Cavalry, and served for two years under General Grant, on whose staff he served for some months as chief of cavalry. From 30 July, 1868, till the close of President Johnson's Administration he was assistant was judge of the Illinois Supreme Court. See General Jas. Grant Wilson's "Sketches of Illinois Officers" (Chicago, 1803). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 171.
DICKINSON, Anna Elizabeth, 1842-1932, anti-slavery activist, African American rights activist, women’s rights activist, orator, lecturer, educator, Quaker (American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 235-237; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 557; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 171-172; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Supp. 1, p. 244)
DICKINSON, Anna Elizabeth, orator, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 28 October, 1842. Her father died when she was two years old, leaving her in poverty, and she was educated in the free schools of the Society of Friends, of which her parents were members. Her early days were a continuous struggle against adverse circumstances, but she read eagerly, devoting all her earnings to the purchase of books. She wrote an article on slavery for the " Liberator" when only fourteen years old, and made her first appearance as a public speaker in 1857, at meetings for discussion held by a body calling themselves "Progressive Friends," chiefly interested in the anti-slavery movement. A sneering and insolent tirade against women, by a person prominent at these meetings, called from the spirited girl a withering reply, her maiden speech. From this time she spoke frequently, chiefly on temperance and slavery. She taught school in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 1859-'60, and was employed in the U. S. Mint in Philadelphia from April to December, 1861, but was dismissed for saving, in a speech in West Chester, that the battle of Ball's Bluff "was lost, not through ignorance and incompetence, but through the treason of the commanding general" (McClellan). She then made lecturing her profession, speaking chiefly on political subjects. William Lloyd Garrison heard one of her anti-slavery speeches in an annual meeting of the Progressive Friends, held at Kennett, Chester County, Pennsylvania, with great delight, and on his return to Boston spoke of the "girl orator" in such terms that she was invited to speak in the fraternity course at Music Hall, Boston, in 1862, and chose for her subject the "National Crisis." Prom Boston she went to New Hampshire, at the request of the Republican state committee, to speak in the gubernatorial canvass, and thence was called to Connecticut. On election night a reception was tendered her at Hartford, and immediately thereafter she was invited to speak in Cooper Institute by the Union League of New York, and shortly afterward in the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, by the Union League of that city. Prom this time to the end of the Civil War she spoke on war issues. In the autumn of 1863 she was asked by the Republican state committee of Pennsylvania to speak throughout the coal regions in the canvass to re-elect Curtin, the male orators at the committee's command being afraid to trust themselves in a district that had recently been the scene of draft riots. Ohio offered her a large sum for her services, but she decided in favor of Pennsylvania. On 16 January, 1864, at the request of prominent senators and representatives, she spoke in the capitol at Washington, giving the proceeds, over $1,000, to the Freedmen's Relief Society. She also spoke in camps and hospitals, and did much in aid of the national cause. After this her addresses were made chiefly from the lyceum platform. On the termination of the war she spoke on " Reconstruct ion " and on "Woman's Work and Wages." In 1869-70, after a visit to Utah, she lectured on " Whited Sepulchers." Later lectures, delivered in the northern and western states, were "Demagogues and Workingmen," "Joan of Arc," and 'Between us be Truth." the last-named being delivered in 1873 in Pennsylvania and Missouri, where obnoxious bills on the social evil were before the legislatures. In 1876 Miss Dickinson, contrary to the advice of many of her friends, left the lecture platform for the stage, making her first appearance in a play of her own, entitled " A Crown of Thorns." It was not favorably received by the critics, and Miss Dickinson afterward acted in Shakespeare's tragedies, still meeting with little success. "Aurelian " was written in 1878 for John McCullough, but was withdrawn by the author when the failing powers of the great tragedian made it apparent that he would be unable to appear in it. It has never been put upon the stage, but Miss Dickinson has given readings from it. She lectured on "Platform and Stage" in 1879, and in 1880 wrote "An American Girl" for Fanny Davenport, which was successful. Miss Dickinson's published works are "What Answer I" a novel (Boston, 1808); "A Paying Investment" (1876); and "A Ragged Register of People, Places, and Opinions" (New York, 1879). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 171-172.
DICKINSON, Daniel Stevens, statesman, born in Goshen, Connecticut, 11 September, 1800; died in New York City, 12 April, 1866. In early life he was taken by his father to Guilford, Chenango County, New York, where he obtained a public-school education. In addition to this, with but slight assistance, he acquired the Latin language and made himself acquainted with the higher mathematics and other sciences while apprenticed to a clothier. When he became his own master he occupied himself for a time in teaching and surveying, then studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1828, beginning practice in Guilford. In 1831 he moved to Binghamton, which thenceforth became his home. In 1836 he was chosen state senator, and his great ability as a debater soon made him the leader of his party. Among the questions that came up for discussion were several measures, such as the small-bill law and the general banking law that arose out of the recent overthrow of the U. S. Bank, the construction of the Erie Railway, and the enlargement of the Erie Canal. His strongest oratorical effort at this time was his speech in opposition to the repeal of the usury laws, 10 February, 1837. In 1840 he was nominated for the office of lieutenant-governor by the Democrats, and, although defeated that year, he was elected in 1842. He thus became ex-officio president of the Senate, of the court of errors, and of the canal board. At the expiration of his term of office in 1844, Governor Bouck appointed him to fill a vacancy in the U. S. Senate, and on the meeting of the legislature the appointment was ratified and he was elected for a full term. Mr. Dickinson held for several years the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Finance. In discussing the exciting issues of the day he took strong conservative ground, and from that standpoint spoke frequently on the annexation of Texas, the joint occupation of Oregon, the Mexican War, the Wilmot Proviso, and the compromise measures of 1850. In December, 1847, he introduced two resolutions regarding the government of the territories, which virtually embodied the doctrine afterward known as " popular sovereignty." (See Butts, Isaac.) Among the measures that have since been adopted, Mr. Dickinson earnestly advocated the free passage of weekly newspapers through the mails in the County where published. Mr. Dickinson’s conservative course in the Senate not only secured him the vote of Virginia for the presidential nomination in the Democratic Convention of 1852, but a strongly commendatory letter from Daniel Webster, 27 September, 1850, in which the writer asserted that Mr. Dickinson's "noble, able, manly, and patriotic conduct in support of the great measures" of that session had "entirely won his heart" and received his "highest regard.” In 1852 President Pierce nominated Mr. Dickinson for collector of the port of New York, and the nomination was confirmed by the Senate; but the office was declined. At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, Mr. Dickinson threw all his influence on the side of the government regardless of party considerations, and for the first three years devoted himself to addressing public assemblages in New York, Pennsylvania, and the New England states. In 1861 he was nominated for attorney general of his state, and was elected by 100,000 majority. He was nominated by President Lincoln to settle the northwestern boundary question, but declined, as he also did a nomination by Governor Fenton to fill a vacancy in the court of appeals of the state of New York. He subsequently accepted the office of district-attorney for the southern District of New York, and performed its duties almost till the day of his death. In the Republican National Convention of 1864, when President Lincoln was renominated, Mr. Dickinson received 150 votes for the Vice-presidential nomination. As a debater he was clear, profound, and logical, and not, infrequently overwhelmed his opponents with scathing satire. His speeches were ornamented with classical allusions and delivered without apparent effort. Among his happiest efforts are said to have been his speech in the National Democratic Convention at Baltimore in 1852, in which, having received the vote of Virginia, he declined in favor of General Cass, and his eulogy of General Jackson in 1845. Mr. Dickinson's brother has published his "Life and Works " (2 vols., New York, 1867). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 172-173.
DICKSON, Reverend Moses, 1824-1901, free African American, anti-slavery leader, clergyman, activist, underground abolitionist. Minister, African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Founded Knights of Liberty in St. Louis, Missouri, 1846. (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 50; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 2)
DILLINGHAM, Richard, 1823-1850, Society of Friends (Quaker), abolitionist. Arrested, tried and convicted for aiding three fugitive slaves in Tennessee in December 1848. Imprisoned in Tennessee State Penitentiary. Died of cholera while there in June 1850. (Coffin, 2001)
DIMICK, Justin, soldier, born in Hartford County, Connecticut, 5 August. 1800; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 13 October, 1871. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1819, and assigned to the light artillery. After serving at various posts, and as assistant instructor of infantry tactics at West Point for a few months in 1822, he was promoted to 1st lieutenant in the 1st Artillery , 1 May, 1824, and brevetted captain, 1 May, 1834, for ten years' faithful service in one grade. He was given his full commission in 1835, and brevetted major, 8 May, 1836, for gallant conduct in the Florida War, having on that date killed two Seminole Indians 1 in personal encounter while skirmishing near Hernandez plantation. He was engaged in suppressing the Canada-border disturbances at Rouse's Point, New York, in 1838-'9, and in the performance of his duty seized a vessel laden with ammunition for the Canadian insurgents. For this act he was called upon in 1851-'3 to defend a civil suit in the Vermont courts. He served as lieutenant-colonel of an artillery battalion of the army of occupation in Texas in 1845-'6, and during the Mexican War received two brevets, that of lieutenant-colonel, 20 August, 1847, for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, and that of colonel on 13 September, for his services at the storming of Chapultepec, where he was wounded. Besides these battles, he was at Resaca de la Palma, La Hoya, and the capture of the city of Mexico. He served again against Florida Indians in 1849-'50 and 1856-'7, was made major in the 1st Artillery , 1 April, 1850, lieutenant-colonel, 5 October, 1857, and commanded the Fort Monroe artillery school in 1859-'61. He was promoted to colonel on 26 October, 1861, and commanded the depot of prisoners of war at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, until 1 January, 1864. He was retired from active service on 1 August 1863, and in 1864-'8 was governor of the soldier's home near Washington, D. C. On 13 March, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-general, U. S. Army, "for long, gallant, and faithful services to his country." —His son, Justin E, died near Chancellorsville, Virginia, 5 May, 1863, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1861, served as 1st lieutenant of the 1st Artillery , and received mortal wounds in the battle of Chancellorsville. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 179
DIMITRY, Alexander, educator, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, 7 February, 1805; died there, 30 January, 1883. His father, Andrea Demetrius, a native of the Island of Hydra, on the coast of Greece, went to New Orleans in 1794, and was for many years a merchant there. Alexander was graduated at Georgetown College, D. C, and soon afterward became editor of the New Orleans " Bee." He was a fine pistol shot and an accomplished fencer, and in his early manhood took part in several duels, either as principal or second. He was subsequently a professor in Baton Rouge College, and in 1834 was employed in the general post-office department. On his return to Louisiana in 1842 he created and organized the free-school system there, and was state superintendent of schools in 1848-'51. In 1856 he became translator to the State Department in Washington. He was appointed U. S. minister to Costa Rica and Nicaragua in 1858, and served till 1861, when he became chief of a bureau in the Confederate Post-office Department. His son John Bull Smith, born in Washington, D. C, 27 December, 1835, was educated at College Hill, near Raymond, Mississippi, and accompanied his father to Central America as secretary of legation in 1859. He served in the Confederate Army of Tennessee in 1861-'4, and was dangerously wounded at Shiloh. In 1864-'5 he was chief clerk in the Confederate Post-office Department. Another son, Charles Patton, journalist, born in Washington, D. C, 31 July, 1837, was educated at Georgetown College, D. C, and, although not graduated, received from it the degree of M. A. in 1867. He served in the Confederate Army as a private in the Louisiana guard. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 179-180.
DIMMOCK, Charles, soldier, born in Massachusetts in 1800; died in Richmond, Virginia, 27 October, 1863. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1821, assigned to the 1st Artillery , and served as assistant professor of engineering at West Point in 1821-2. He was attached to the artillery school at Fort Monroe in 1825-6 and 1828-'9, being adjutant of the school in the last-named year. He was promoted to 1st lieutenant in 1828, was assistant quartermaster in 1831-'6, and superintended operations at Delaware breakwater in 1831-'3. He was made captain on 6 August, 1836, but resigned on 30 September, and became a civil engineer in the south, being employed on many important railroads, and in 1837-'8 in the location of a U. S. military road to Fort Smith, Arkansas. In 1843-'7 he was director of the James River and Kanawha Canal. He was captain of Virginia militia in 1839-'40, lieutenant colonel in 1841-'2, and superintendent of the state armory in 1843-'61. He was a member of the Richmond City Council in 1850,1854, and 1858, and at the beginning of the Civil War entered the Confederate service, became brigadier-general, and was chief of the ordnance department of Virginia. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 180.
DIX, Dorothea Lynde, philanthropist, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, about 1794; died in Trenton, New Jersey, 19 July, 1887. After the death, in 1821, of her father, a merchant in Boston, she established a school for girls in that city. Hearing of the neglected condition of the convicts in the state prison, she visited them, and became interested in the welfare of the unfortunate classes, for whose elevation she labored until 1834, when, her health becoming impaired, she gave up her school and visited Europe, having inherited from a relative sufficient property to render her independent. She returned to Boston in 1837 and devoted herself to investigating the condition of paupers, lunatics, and prisoners, encouraged by her friend and pastor, Reverend Dr. Channing, of whose children she had been governess. In this work she has visited every state of the Union east of the Rocky mountains, endeavoring to persuade legislatures to take measures for the relief of the poor and wretched. She was especially influential in procuring legislative action for the establishment of state lunatic asylums in New York, Pennsylvania. North Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, and other states. In April, 1854, in consequence of her unwearied exertions and petitions that she presented to Congress in 1848 and 1850, a bill passed both houses appropriating 10,000,000 acres to the several states for the relief of the indigent insane; but the bill was vetoed by President Pierce, on the ground that the general government had no constitutional power to make such appropriations. During the Civil War she was superintendent of hospital nurses, having the entire control of their appointment and assignment to duty. After its close she resumed her labors for the insane. Miss Dix published anonymously “The Garland of Flora” (Boston, 1829), and “Conversations about Common Things,” “Alice and Ruth,” “Evening Hours,” and other books for children; also, “Prisons and Prison Discipline” (Boston, 1845); and a variety of tracts for prisoners. She is also the author of many memorials to legislative bodies on the subject of lunatic asylums and reports on philanthropic subjects. Appleton’s 1900, p. 183.
DIX, John Adams, born in Boscawen. New Hampshire, 24 July, 1798; died in New York City, 21 April. 1879. His early education was received at Salisbury, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the College of Montreal. In December, 1812, he was appointed cadet, and going to Baltimore aided his father, Major Timothy Dix of the 14th U. S. Infantry, and also studied at St. Mary's College. He was made ensign in 1813, and accompanied his regiment, taking part in the operations on the Canadian frontier. Subsequently he served in the 21st U.S. Infantry at Fort Constitution, New Hampshire, where he became 2d lieutenant in March, 1814, was adjutant to Colonel John De B. Walback, and in August was transferred to the 3d Artillery. In 1819 he was appointed aide-de-camp to General Jacob Brown, then in command of the Northern military department, and stationed at Brownsville, where he studied law, and later, under the guidance of William West, was admitted to the bar in Washington. He was in 1820 sent as special messenger to the court of Denmark. On his return he was stationed at Fort Monroe, but continued ill-health led him to resign his commission in the army, 29 July, 1828, after having attained the rank of captain. He then settled in Cooperstown, New York, and began the practice of law. In 1830 he moved to Albany, having been appointed adjutant-general of the state by Governor Enos B. Throop. In 1833 Dix was appointed secretary of state and superintendent of common schools, publishing during this period numerous reports concerning the schools, and also a very important report in relation to a geological survey of the state (1836). He was a prominent member of the "Albany Regency," who practically ruled the Democratic Party of that day. Going out of office in 1840, on the defeat of the Democratic candidates and the election of General Harrison to the presidency, He turned to literary Pursuits, and was editor-in-chief of "The Northern light," a journal of a high literary and scientific character, which was published from 1841 till 1843. In 1841 he was elected a member of the assembly. In the following year he went abroad, and spent nearly two years in Madeira, Spain, and Italy. From 1845 till 1849 he was a U. S. Senator, being elected as a Democrat, when he became involved in the Free-Soil movement, against his judgment and will, but under the pressure of influences that it was impossible for him to resist. He always regarded the Free-Soil movement as a great political blunder, and labored to heal the consequent breach in the Democratic Party, as a strenuous supporter of the successive Democratic administrations up to the beginning of the Civil War. In 1848 he was nominated by the Free-Soil Democratic Party as governor, but was overwhelmingly defeated by Hamilton Fish. President Pierce appointed him assistant treasurer of New York, and obtained his consent to be minister to France, but the nomination was never made. In the canvass of 1856 he supported Buchanan and Breckenridge, and in 1860 earnestly opposed the election of Mr. Lincoln, voting for Breckenridge and Lane. In May, 1861, he was appointed postmaster of New York, after the defalcations in that office. On 10 January, 1861, at the urgent request of the leading bankers and financiers of New York, he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Buchanan, and he held that office until the close of the administration. His appointment immediately relieved the government from a financial deadlock, gave it the funds that it needed but had failed to obtain, and produced a general confidence in its stability. When he took the office there were two revenue cutters at New Orleans, and he ordered them to New York. The captain of one of them, after consulting with the collector at New Orleans, refused to obey. Secretary Dix thereupon telegraphed: " Tell Lieutenant Caldwell to arrest Captain Breshwood, assume command of the cutter, and obey the order I gave through you. If Captain Breshwood, after arrest, undertakes to interfere with the command of the cutter, tell. Lieutenant Caldwell to consider him as a mutineer, and treat him accordingly. If anyone attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot." At the beginning of the Civil War he took an active part in the formation of the Union Defence Committee, and was its first president; he also presided at the great meeting in Union square, 24 April, 1861. On the president's first call for troops, he organized and sent to the field seventeen regiments, and was appointed one of the four major-generals to command the New York state forces. In June following he was commissioned major-general of volunteers, and ordered to Washington by General Scott to take command of the Arlington and Alexandria Department. By a successful political intrigue, this disposition was changed, and he was sent in July to Baltimore to take command of the Department of Maryland, which was considered a post of small comparative importance; but, on the defeat of the Federal forces at Bull Run, things changed; Maryland became for the time the centre and key of the national position, and it was through General Dix's energetic and judicious measures that the state and the city were prevented from going over to the Confederate cause. In May, 1862, General Dix was sent from Baltimore to Fort Monroe, and in the summer of 1863, after the trouble connected with the draft riots, he was transferred to New York, as commander of the Department of the East, which place he held until the close of the war. In 1866 he was appointed naval officer of the port of New York, the prelude to another appointment during the same year, that of minister to France. In 1872 he was elected governor of the state of New York as a Republican by a majority of 53,000, and, while holding that office, rendered the County great service in thwarting the proceedings of the inflationists in Congress, and, with the aid of the legislature, strengthening the national administration in its attitude of opposition to them. On a renomination, in 1874, he was defeated, in consequence partly of the reaction against the president under the "third-term" panic, and partly of the studious apathy of prominent Republican politicians who desired his defeat. During his lifetime General Dix held other places of importance, being elected a vestryman of Trinity Church (1849), and in 1872 comptroller of that corporation, delegate to the convention of the diocese of New York, and deputy to the general convention of the Episcopal Church. In 1853 he became president of the Mississippi and Missouri Railway Company, and in 1863 became the first president of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, an office which he held until 1868, also filling a similar place for a few months in 1872 to the Erie Railway Company. He married Catharine Morgan, adopted daughter of John J. Morgan, of New York, formerly member of Congress, and had by her seven children, of whom three survived him. He was a man of very large reading and thorough culture, spoke several languages with fluency, and was distinguished for proficiency in classical studies, and for ability and elegance as an orator. Among his published works are "Sketch of the Resources of the City of New York " (New York, 1827); " Decisions of the Superintendents of Common Schools" (Albany, 1837); "A Winter in Madeira, and a Summer in Spain and Florence" (New York, 1850; 5th ed.. 1833): "Speeches and Occasional Addressee" (2 vols., 1864); "Dies Irae," translation (printed privately, 1863; also revised ed., 1875); and "Stabat Mater," translation (printed privately, 1868). Son, Charles Temple, artist, born in Albany, 25 February, 1838; died in Rome, Italy, 11 March, 1873, studied at Union, and early turned his attention to art. He had made good progress in his studies when, at the beginning of the Civil War, he was chosen aide-de-camp on the staff of his father, and won credit from his faithful performance of duty. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 183-184.
DIXON, Archibald, senator, born in Caswell County, North Carolina, 2 April, 1802; died in Henderson, Kentucky, 23 April, 1870. His grandfather. Colonel Henry, received a wound at the battle of Eutaw which caused his death; and Wynn, his father, served gallantly through the Revolutionary war. In 1805 he moved with his father to Henderson County, Kentucky, where he received a common-school education, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1824, and attained high rank as a criminal lawyer. He was a member of the legislature in 1830 and 1841, of the state senate in 1830, and lieutenant-governor in 1843-'7. In 1848 he was the choice of a majority of the Kentucky Whigs for governor; but on the nomination of John J. Crittenden by a section of them he withdrew from the candidacy, in order to heal dissensions in the party. When a candidate for governor he defended the American protective policy, and made that the principal subject of his discussions. In 1849, when the proposition for gradual emancipation of the slaves was before the people, he vehemently opposed the scheme, and, being chosen a member of the Constitutional Convention, proposed a resolution, which was substantially incorporated in the new constitution, declaring that whereas the right of the citizen to be secure in his person and property lies at the bottom of all governments, and slaves, and children hereafter born of slave mothers, are property, therefore the convention has not the power nor the right to deprive the citizen of his property except for the public good, and only then by making to him a just compensation. He was the Whig candidate for governor in 1851, but the Whigs who were emancipationists withdrew their support on account of his views on the slavery question, and put in nomination Cassius M. Clay, which resulted in the election of a Democrat. He had endeavored to unite the party by declining the nomination; but his friends in the convention insisted upon his taking it. His canvass was contemporaneous with the agitation for the dissolution of the Union, and he eloquently seconded before the people the appeals for its preservation uttered in Washington by Clay and Webster. He and Mr. Crittenden were rival candidates before the legislature for the next seat that fell vacant in the U. S. Senate: but both withdrew for the sake of harmony. When Henry Clay died, shortly afterward, Mr. Dixon's friends elected him for the unexpired term, retook his seat on 20 December, 1852, and served till 3 March, 1855. During the Civil War he was an advocate of peace, and in 1863 was a delegate to the peace Convention held at Frankfort, Kentucky Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 185-186.
DIXON, James, 1814-1873, lawyer. Republican U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator representing Connecticut. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 186; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 328; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 646; Congressional Globe)
DIXON, James, senator, born in Enfield, Connecticut, 5 August, 1814; died in Hartford, 27 March, 1873. He was graduated at Williams with distinction in 1834, studied law in his father's office, and began practice in Enfield, but soon rose to such eminence at the bar that he moved to Hartford, and there formed a partnership with Judge William W. Ellsworth. Early combining with his legal practice an active interest in public affairs, he was elected to the popular branch of the Connecticut legislature in 1837 and 1838, and again by in 1844. In 1840 he married Elizabeth L., daughter of the Reverend Dr. Jonathan Cogswell, professor in the Connecticut theological Institute. Mr. Dixon at an early date had become the recognized leader of the Whig Party in the Hartford Congressional District, and was chosen in 1845 a member of the U. S. House of Representatives. He was re-elected in 1847, and was distinguished in that difficult arena alike for his power as a debater and for an amenity of bearing that extorted the respect of political opponents even in the turbulent times following the Mexican War, and the exasperations of the sectional debate precipitated by the "Wilmot Proviso." Retiring from Congress in 1849, he was in that year elected from Hartford to a seat in the Connecticut Senate, and. having been re-elected in 1854, was chosen president of that body, but declined the honor, because the floor seemed to offer a better field for usefulness. During the same year he was made president of the Whig state Convention, and, having now reached a position of commanding influence, he was in 1857 elected U. S. Senator, and participated in all the parliamentary debates of the epoch that preceded the Civil War. He was remarkable among his colleagues in the Senate for the tenacity with which he adhered to his political principles, and for the clear presage with which he grasped the drift of events. Six years afterward, in the midst of the Civil War, he was re-elected senator with a unanimity that had had no precedent in the annals of Connecticut. During his service in the Senate he was an active member of the Committee on Manufactures, and during his last term was at one time appointed chairman of three important committees. While making his residence in Washington the seat of an elegant hospitality, he was remarkable for the assiduity with which he followed the public business of the Senate, and for the eloquence that he brought to the discussion of grave public questions as they successively arose before, during, and after the Civil War. Among his more notable speeches was one delivered 25 June, 1862, on the constitutional status created by the so-called acts of secession—a speech that is known to have commanded the express admiration of President Lincoln, as embodying what he held to be the true theory of the war in the light of the constitution and of public law. To the principles expounded in that speech Mr. Dixon steadfastly adhered during the administration alike of President Lincoln and of his successor. In the impeachment trial of President Johnson he was numbered among the Republican senators who voted against the sufficiency of the articles, and from that date he participated no longer in the councils of the Republican Party. Withdrawing from public life in 1869, he was urged by the president of the United States and by his colleagues in the Senate to accept the mission to Russia, but refused the honor. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 186.
DIXON, Nathan Fellows, born 1833, lawyer. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Rhode Island. Member of 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st Congress. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 187; Congressional Globe)
DIXON, Nathan Fellows, lawyer, born in Westerly, R, I., 1 May, 1812; died there, 11 April, 1861, was graduated at Brown in 1833, attended the law-schools at New Haven and Cambridge, and practised his profession in Connecticut and Rhode Island from 1840 till 1849. He was elected to Congress from Rhode Island in 1849, and was one of the governor's council appointed by the general assembly during the Dorr troubles of 1842. In 1844 he was a presidential elector, and in 1851 was elected as a Whig to the general assembly of his state, where, with the exception of two years, he held office until 1859. In 1863 he went to Congress as a Republican, and served as a member of the Committee on Commerce. He was a member of the 39th, 40th, and 41st Congresses, and declined re-election in 1870. He, however, resumed his service in the general assembly, being elected successively from 1872 till 1877. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 187.
DOCKERY, Oliver H., Congressman, born in Richmond County, North Carolina, 12 August, 1830. He was graduated at the University of North Carolina in 1848, and studied law, but never practised. He represented his native county in the state legislature in 1858-'9. He was candidate for district elector on the Union ticket, Bell and Everett, in 1860. He was for a short time in the Confederate service, but soon withdrew, and ever afterward was an outspoken advocate of the re-establishment of the Union, and was active in the peace movement of 1864 in his state, under Governor Holden. He was elected a representative from North Carolina in Congress from 13 July, 1868. till 3 March, 1871, and was re-elected as a Republican. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 190.
DODGE, William Earle, Sr., 1805-1883, Hartford, Connecticut, merchant, abolitionist. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888 p. 192; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 352)
DODGE, William Earl, merchant, born in Hartford, Connecticut, 4 September, 1805; died in New York City, 9 February, 1883, received a common school education, and worked for a time in his father's cotton mill. At the age of thirteen he moved to New York City with his family, and entered a wholesale dry goods store, remaining there eight, years. Afterward he engaged in the same business on his own account, continuing till 1833, when he married the daughter of Anson G. Phelps, and became a member of the firm of Phelps, Dodge & Co. He continued at the head of this house till 1879. Mr. Dodge was one of the first directors of the Erie Railroad, and was interested in other railways and in several insurance corporations. He also owned large districts of woodland, and had numerous lumber and mill interests, besides being concerned in the development of coal and iron mines. He was elected president of the New York Chamber of Commerce three times in succession. He was a trustee of the Union Theological Seminary, one of the founders of the Union League Club of New York City, vice-president of the American Bible Society, president of several temperance associations, and took great interest in the welfare of the freed men. He was a member of the peace Convention of 1861, and in 1866-'7, having successfully contested the election of his Democratic opponent, James Brooks, was a representative in Congress, serving on the Committee on Foreign Affairs. President Grant appointed him a member of the Indian Commission. He left a large fortune, and made several bequests to religious and charitable institutions. A bronze statue of him has been placed at the junction of Broadway and Sixth Avenue, New York City. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 192.
DODGE, William Earl, born in New York City, 15 February, 1832, has given his time and attention to the administration of an extensive mercantile business. He has been connected with the allotment and sanitary commissions during the Civil War, and is now (1887) president of several religious and benevolent societies. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 192.
DODGE, Charles Cleveland, soldier, born in Plainfield, New Jersey, 16 September, 1841, was commissioned as captain of New York mounted rifles on 6 December, 1861, and as major on 30 December, was in command of the outposts at Newport News, and a cavalry column of General Wool's army that marched on Norfolk, and received the surrender before the arrival of his superiors. He commanded in successful engagements at Suffolk, Virginia, and Hertford Ford, North Carolina, was made colonel 14 August, 1862, promoted brigadier-general 29 November, 1862, was in command at Suffolk during Longstreet's siege, and resigned on 12 June, 1863. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 192.
DODGE, Grenville Mellen, soldier, born in Danvers, Massachusetts, 12 April, 1831. He was graduated at Captain Partridge's Military Academy, Norwich, Vermont, in 1850, and in 1851 moved to Illinois, where he was engaged in railroad surveys until 1854. He was afterward similarly employed in Iowa and as far west as the Rocky Mountains, and made one of the earliest surveys along the Platte for a Pacific Railroad. He was sent to Washington in 1861 by the governor of Iowa to procure arms and equipment for the state troops, and on 17 June became colonel of the 4th Iowa Regiment, which he had raised, having declined a captaincy in the regular army tendered him by the Secretary of War. He served in Missouri under Fremont, commanded a brigade in the army of the southwest, and a portion of his command took Springfield 13 February, 1862, opening General Curtis's Arkansas Campaign of that year. He commanded a brigade on the extreme right in the battle of Pea Ridge, where three horses were shot under him, and, though severely wounded in the side, kept the field till the final rout of the enemy. For his gallantry on this occasion he was made brigadier-general of volunteers on 31 March, 1862. In June of that year he took command of the District of the Mississippi, and superintended the construction of the Mississippi and Ohio Railroad. General Dodge was one of the first to organize colored regiments. During the Vicksburg Campaign, with headquarters at Corinth, he made frequent raids, and indirectly protected the flanks of both Grant and Rosecrans, being afterward placed by Grant at the head of his list of officers for promotion. He distinguished himself at Sugar Valley, 9 May, 1864, and Resaca, 14 and 15 May, and for his services in these two battles was promoted to major-general of volunteers on 7 June. 1864. He led the 16th Corps in Sherman's Georgia campaign, distinguished himself at Atlanta on 22 July, where, with eleven regiments, he withstood a whole army corps, and at the siege of that city, on 19 August, was severely wounded and incapacitated for active service for some time. In December, 1864, he succeeded General Rosecrans in the command of the Department of Missouri. That of Kansas and the territories was added in February, 1865, and he carried on in that year a successful campaign against hostile Indians. In 1866 he resigned from the army to become chief engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad, which was built under his supervision. He resigned in 1869 to accept a similar place in the Texas Pacific Railroad, and since then has been constantly employed in building railroads in the United States and Mexico. He has been for many years a director of the Union Pacific Railroad. General Dodge was elected to Congress from Iowa as a Republican during his absence from the state, and served one term in 1867-'9, declining a re-nomination. He was also a delegate to the Chicago Republican Convention of 1868 and the Cincinnati Convention of 1876. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 192-193.
DODGE, Henry, soldier, born in Vincennes, Indiana, 12 Oct, 1782: died in Burlington, Iowa, 19 June. 1867. His father, Israel Dodge, was a revolutionary officer of Connecticut. Henry commanded a mounted company of volunteer riflemen in August and September, 1812, became major of Louisiana militia under General Howard on 28 September, major in McNair's Regiment of Missouri militia in April, 1813, and commanded a battalion of Missouri mounted infantry, as lieutenant-colonel, from August till October, 1814. He was colonel of Michigan Volunteers from April till July, 1832, during the Black Hawk War, and in the affair with the Indians at Pickatolika, on Wisconsin River, 15 June, totally defeating them. He was commissioned major of U. S. rangers, 21 June, 1832, and became the first colonel of the 1st Dragoons, 4 March. 1838. He was successful in making peace with the frontier Indians in 1834, and in 1835 commanded on important expedition to the Rocky mountains. General Dodge was unsurpassed as an Indian fighter, and a sword, with the thanks of the nation, was voted him by Congress. He resigned from the army, 4 July, 1836, having been appointed by President Jackson governor of Wisconsin territory and Superintendent of Indian affairs. He held this office till 1841, when he was elected delegate to Congress as a Democrat, and served two terms. In 1846 he was again made governor of Wisconsin, and after the admission of that state to the Union was one of its first U. S. Senators. He was re-elected, and served altogether from 23 June, 1848, till 3 March, 1857. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 193.
DODGE, Augustus Caesar, senator, born in St. Genevieve, Missouri, 12 January, 1812; died in Burlington, Iowa, 20 November, 1883, received a public-school education, and served under his father in the Winnebago war of 1827 and the Black Hawk war of 1832. He moved to Burlington, Iowa, was register of the land-office there in 1838-'9, and was then elected a delegate to Congress as a Democrat from the territory of Iowa, serving from 1840 till 1847. Upon the admission of Iowa to the Union he became one of its U. S. Senators, and served from 1848 till his resignation, 8 February, 1855, his father being in the Senate from Wisconsin during the same period. He was a presidential elector in 1848, U. S. minister to Spain in 1855-'9, his appointment to fill the mission vacated by the accomplished linguist, Pierre Soule, eliciting from Horace Greeley the criticism that the administration had thought proper to appoint as successor to a gentleman who spoke six languages a person who could not correctly speak one. General Dodge was a delegate to the Chicago National Democratic Convention of 1864, and in 1873-'4 was mayor of Burlington, having been chosen on an independent ticket. On 4 February, 1854, Albert G. Brown, of Mississippi, alluded, in the course of a speech in the Senate, to certain occupations as menial and degrading, whereupon Mr. Dodge replied to him, ending with the following words: "I tell the senator from Mississippi, in presence of my father, who will attest its truth, that I have performed, and do perform when I am at home, all of those menial services to which that senator has referred in terms so grating to my feelings. As a general thing, I saw my own wood and do all my own marketing. I never had a servant, of any color, to wait upon me a day in all my life. I have driven teams, horses, mules, and oxen, and considered myself as respectable then as I now do, or as any senator upon this floor is." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 193.
DODGE, Richard Irving, soldier, born in Huntsville, North Carolina 19 May, 1827. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1848, assigned to the 8th U.S. Infantry, and after serving at various posts was promoted to captain, 3 May, 1861. He commanded the camp of instruction at Elmira, New York, in August and September, 1861, and served as mustering and disbursing officer at various places during the Civil War. He was assistant inspector-general of the 4th Army Corps in 1863, and promoted to major, 21 June, 1864. He was member of a board to perfect a system of army regulations in New York City in 1871—'2, was promoted to lieutenant-colonel on 29 October, 1873, and since that time has served against hostile Indians in the west. He was made colonel of the 11th U.S. Infantry on 26 June, 1882. Colonel Dodge has published "The Black Hills" (New York, 1876);" The Plains of the Great West" (1877; republished in London as "Hunting Grounds of the Great West"); and " Our Wild Indians " (1881). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 194.
DODGE, Theodore Ayrault, soldier, born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 28 May, 1842. After receiving a military education at Berlin under Major General Von Frohreich, of the Prussian Army, he studied at University College, London, and at Heidelberg, and was graduated at the University of London in 1861. On his return to this country in that year he enlisted as a private in the national service, and lost his right leg at Gettysburg. He became 1st lieutenant on 13 February, 1862, captain in the veteran reserve corps, 12 November, 1863, and was brevetted major, 17 August, 1864, and colonel, 2 December, 1865. He was made captain in the 44th Regular Infantry, 28 July, 1866. He served as chief of a war department bureau till 28 April, 1870, when he was retired, and has since lived in Boston. Colonel Dodge has lectured and contributed much to periodicals, and has published "The Campaign of Chancellorsville" (Boston, 1881): a "Bird's-Eye View of the Civil War " (1883); and " A Chat in the Saddle " (1885). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 104.
DONALDSON, Edward, naval officer, born in Baltimore, Maryland, 17 November, 1810. He entered the U. S. Navy as cadet, midshipman on 21 July, 1835, and served on the " Falmouth," the " Warren," and the "Vandalia" in the West India Squadron. In 1838 he went to the East Indies in the "Columbus," and in 1839 participated in the attack on the forts on the coast of Sumatra. He was promoted passed midshipman in June, 1841, and attached to the Mosquito fleet in Florida during 1841-'2, after which he served on various vessels until 1840, when he was appointed on the U. S. Coast Survey. He received his commission as lieutenant in October, 1847, and was connected with the "Dolphin," the "Waterwitch," the "Merrimac," and the "San Jacinto," and was on special shore duty until 1861. During 1861 he commanded the gun-boat "Sciota," attached to the Western Gulf Squadron, and took part in the bombardment of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, and the subsequent capture of New Orleans. He participated in the passage of the Vicksburg batteries, and was made commander in July, 1862. After a year in command of the receiving-ship at Philadelphia, he was transferred to the " Keystone State " as executive officer during her trip to the West Indies in search of the Confederate cruiser '"Sumter," and was her commander in 1863-'4. During the battle of Mobile Bay, 5 August, 1864, he commanded the " Seminole," and rendered efficient service by his coolness and judgment in piloting his vessel while passing Fort Morgan, the regular pilot being ill. In 1865 he was on ordnance duty in Baltimore. He was made captain in July, 1866, and subsequently had command of the receiving ship at Philadelphia until 1868. when he was assigned to the Brooklyn Navy-yard. In September, 1871, he became commodore, and for a tune had charge of the naval station in Mound City, Illinois. He was promoted to rear-admiral on 21 September 1870, and placed on the retired list a few days later. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 197.
DONALDSON, James Lowry, soldier, born in Baltimore, Maryland, 17 March, 1814; died there, 4 November, 1885. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1836, and became 2d lieutenant in the 3d U.S. Artillery , serving in that capacity during the Florida War in 1836-'8. He was transferred to the 1st U.S. Artillery in May, 1837, and became 1st lieutenant in July, 1838. Subsequently he was on garrison duty until 1846, when he was stationed at Fort Brown during the military occupation of Texas. During the Mexican War he participated in the battles of Monterey and Buena Vista, receiving the brevets of captain and major. He was appointed assistant quartermaster, with the rank of captain, in March, 1847, and was on duty as such in Coahuila, Mexico. Subsequent to the war he continued as quartermaster at various posts until he became chief quartermaster of the Department of New Mexico in 1858-'62. During the Civil War he held a like office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the 8th Army Corps in Baltimore, Maryland, and in the Department of the Cumberland. He was chief quartermaster of the military Division of the Tennessee in June, 1865, and of the military Division of the Missouri until 1860, when he was retired. Meanwhile he had attained the rank of colonel on the staff, and had received the brevet of major-general of volunteers. He resigned on 1 January, 1874. During his administration of the quartermaster's department of the Division of the Tennessee, he became a favorite with General George H. Thomas, to whom he suggested the creation of cemeteries for the scattered remains of soldiers who had fallen in battle, from which has resulted the annual Decoration Day. General Donaldson published "Sergeant Atkins" (Philadelphia, 1871), a tale of adventure founded on events that took place during the Florida War. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 198.
DONNELLY, Ignatius Loyola, 1831-1901, author. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota 1863-1869. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 201; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 369; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 730; Congressional Globe)
DONNELLY, Ignatius, author, born in Philadelphia, 3 Nov., 1831. He was educated in the public schools of his native city, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and practised. He went to Minnesota in 1857, was elected lieutenant-governor in 1859, and again in 1861, and was then elected to Congress as a Republican, serving from 7 Dec., 1863, till 3 March, 1869. Besides doing journalistic work he has written an “Essay on the Sonnets of Shakespeare”; “Atlantis, the Antediluvian World” (New York, 1882), in which he attempts to demonstrate that there once existed in the Atlantic ocean, opposite the straits of Gibraltar, a large island, known to the ancients as “Atlantis”; and “Ragnarok” (1883), in which he tries to prove that the deposits of clay, gravel, and decomposed rocks, characteristic of the drift age, were the result of contact between the earth and a comet. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 201.
DOOLITTLE, James Rood, 1815-1897, lawyer, jurist. Democratic and Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, 1857-1869. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 201-202; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 374; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 746; Congressional Globe)
DOOLITTLE, James Rood, senator, born in Hampton, Washington County, New York, 3 January, 1815. After attending Middlebury Academy, he entered Geneva (now Hobart) College, where he was graduated in 1834. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1837, and practised at Rochester and at Warsaw, New York. He was elected district attorney of Wyoming County, New York, in 1845, and also served for some time as a colonel of militia. He moved to Wisconsin in 1851, and was elected judge of the First Judicial Circuit of that state in 1853, but resigned in 1856, and was elected U. S. Senator as a Democratic Republican, to succeed Henry Dodge, serving two terms, from 1857 till 1869. He was a delegate to the Peace Convention of 1861. While in the Senate, he served as chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs and as member of other important committees. During the summer recess of 1865, he visited the Indians west of the Mississippi as a member of a special Senate committee. He took a prominent part in debate on the various war and reconstruction measures, upholding the national government, but always insisting that the seceding states had never ceased to be a part of the Union. He opposed the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, on the ground that each state should determine questions of suffrage for itself. Mr. Doolittle retired from public life in 1869, and has since resided in Racine, Wisconsin, though practicing law in Chicago. He was president of the Philadelphia National Union Convention of 1866, and also of the Baltimore National Democratic Convention of 1872, which adopted the nomination of Horace Greeley for the presidency. Judge Doolittle has been a trustee of Chicago University since its foundation, served for one year as its president, and was for many years a professor in its law school. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 201-202.
DOREMUS, Sarah Piatt, philanthropist, born m New York City, 3 August, 1802; died there, 29 January, 1877. She was the daughter of Elias Haines, a merchant of New York, and her mother was the daughter of Robert Ogden, a distinguished lawyer of New Jersey. In 1812 she united with her mother in praying for the conversion of the world, and from that time dates her interest in foreign missions. She married, in 1821, Thomas C. Doremus, a merchant, whose wealth thenceforth was freely expended in her benevolent enterprises. In 1828, with eight ladies, she organized the Greek relief mission, and sent Dr. Jonas King to Greece to distribute supplies. Seven years later she became interested in the mission at Grand Ligne, Canada, conducted by Madame Henriette Feller, of Switzerland, and in 1860 was made president of the organization. In 1840 she began visiting the New York City prisons, and after establishing Sabbath services, used her influence in 1842 toward founding the Home for women discharged from prison, now the Isaac T. Hopper home, of which she became president on the death of her friend and cofounder. Miss Catherine M. Sedgwick. She aided in founding, in 1850, the House and School of Industry for Poor Women, becoming its president in 1867, and in 1854 became vice-president of the Nursery and Child's Hospital. In 1855 she assisted Dr. J. Marion Sims in his project of establishing the New York Woman's Hospital, of which she was ultimately president. During the Civil War she co-operated with the work carried on in the hospitals, ministering alike to the wounded from north and south. She founded, in 1860, the Woman's Union Missionary Society, designed to elevate and Christianize the women of heathen lands, and she took an active part as manager in the Presbyterian Home for Aged Women, organized in 1866. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 202-203.
DOREMUS, Robert Ogden, chemist, born in New York City, 11 January, 1834, studied at Columbia, and was graduated at the New York University in 1842. Here he came under the influence of John W. Draper, and in 1843 became his assistant in the medical department of the university. This office he held for seven years, and aided Professor Draper in many of his famous researches on light and heat. In 1847 he went to Europe, continuing his chemical studies in Paris with special reference to electro-metallurgy, also visiting the establishments where chemical products were manufactured. On his return to New York, in 1848, with Dr. Charles T. Harris, he established a laboratory on Broadway for the purpose of giving instruction in analytical chemistry, and for making commercial analyses, he was elected professor of chemistry in the New York College of pharmacy in 1849, and delivered the first lectures in his own laboratory. A year later [1862] he went to Paris, where he spent two years in developing the use of compressed granulated gunpowder in fire-arms. The cartridges patented by him require no serge envelopes as are ordinarily used in muzzle-loading cannon, and hence no sponging of the gun after firing is necessary. Dr. Doremus was authorized by the French minister of war to modify the machinery in the Bouchet Pouderie so that gunpowder of the American character could be produced. Subsequently an exhibition of the firing of compressed granulated powder in cannon and small arms was made in Vincennes, before Napoleon III, and many of his generals. This system was adopted by the French government, and a large portion of the Mont Cenis tunnel was blasted with "la poudre comprimee." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 203.
DORNIN, Thomas Aloysius, naval officer, born in Ireland about 1800; died in Norfolk, Virginia, 22 April, 1874. He was appointed midshipman, 2 May, 1815, and lieutenant in 1825. After cruising in the Pacific, he volunteered in the sloop-of-war "Vincennes." bound round the world, and returned in her in 1830. After again cruising in the Pacific, he was appointed to the command of the store ship "Relief" on the fitting out of the South Sea exploring Expedition. While in command of the "Shark," in the Pacific, he was commissioned commander (1841) and given charge of the sloop " Dale.'' which he brought home from a cruise in 1843. In 1851 he sailed in command of the "Portsmouth," and during his cruise he was ordered to charter one of the Panama steamers and endeavor to prevent the invasion of Mexican territory by William Walker's Expedition. In the execution of this design he was completely successful. After discharging his steamer he visited Mazatlan, where he found forty American citizens, who had been peaceably doing business in Guaymas, closely packed in the hold of a schooner, doubly ironed, and chained to the bottom of the vessel. Captain Dornin at once demanded of the governor their immediate release, and after considerable delay that official finally complied. Dornin then sailed for Acapulco, where he learned that a Mexican War vessel had declared a blockade and driven off U. S. mail steamers. He pursued and overhauled the vessel, and notified her commander that such proceedings were in violation of a special treaty between the United States and Mexico. The Mexican, after making a written protest, abandoned the blockade. After being commissioned as captain (1855), and while in command of the "San Jacinto." Dornin captured two slave-vessels on the coast of Africa with over 1,400 slaves on board, and landed them safely in Liberia. During the Civil War he was promoted to the rank of commodore on the retired list (16 July, 1862), and at its close was placed in charge of the Fifth light-house District Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 204.
DOUAI, Adolph Karl Daniel, 1819-1888, Germany, socialist, abolitionist, newspaper editor and publisher, educator. Published newspaper, San Antonio Deutsche Zeitung [German News], which strongly editorialized against slavery. Opposed slavery in the territory of Texas in articles, a very unpopular editorial position, which caused him to lose the publication. (Randers-Pehrson, 2000)
DOUBLEDAY, Charles William, soldier, born in Leicestershire, England, 28 January, 1820. This surname, of Huguenot origin, was originally Dubaldy. He came to this country early in life, and received a common-school education in Ohio. He went to California in the early days of the "gold fever" and led a life of adventure. Early in 1854 he embarked from San Francisco for New York, by way of Nicaragua, but remained in that country, and espoused the popular cause in the Civil War then in progress, raising and commanding a company of American and English riflemen. He subsequently he came major and colonel, and, after the arrival of Walker and his party (see Walker, William), was with that adventurer in the battles of Rivas and Virgin Bay. After Walker had unfolded to Doubleday his visionary scheme of a southern empire, the latter left, him in disgust and returned to New York late in 1855. But he afterward joined Lockridge's unsuccessful attempt to re-enforce Walker, was injured by the boiler explosion that frustrated that attempt, and subsequently accompanied a party of adventurers that sailed from Mobile, and was shipwrecked on the coast of Central America. In 1861-'2 Colonel Doubleday commanded a company of cavalry in the service of the United States, and was for a time acting brigadier-general. He has published " Reminiscences of the Filibuster War in Nicaragua" (New York, 1880). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 209-210.
DOUBLEDAY, Thomas Donnelly, born in Albany, New York, 18 February, 1816; died in New York City, 9 May, 1864, was engaged in the book trade, and in 1862 became colonel of the 4th New York Artillery . He was run over by an omnibus in Broadway, New York, and fatally injured. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 210.
DOUBLEDAY, Abner, soldier, born in Ballston Spa, New York, 26 June, 1819, was a civil engineer in 1836-'8, when he was appointed to the U. S. Military Academy, and on his graduation in 1842 was assigned to the 3d Artillery . He served in the 1st Artillery during the Mexican War. being engaged at Monterey and at Rinconada Pass during the battle of Buena Vista. He was promoted to 1st lieutenant, 3 March, 1847, to captain, 3 March, 1855. He served against the Seminole Indians in 1856-'8. Doubleday was in Fort Moultrie from 1860 till the garrison withdrew to Fort Sumter on 26 December of that year, and aimed the first gun fired in defence of the latter fort on 12 April, 1861. He was promoted to major in the 17th Infantry on 14 May, 1861, from June till August was with General Patterson in the Shenandoah Valley, and then served in defence of Washington, commanding forts and batteries on the Potomac. He was made brigadier-general of volunteers on 3 February, 1862, assigned to the command of all the defences of Washington on the same date, and commanded a brigade on the Rappahannock and in the northern Virginia Campaign from May till September, 1862, including the second battle of Bull Run, where on 30 August he succeeded to the command of Hatch's division. In the battle of Antietam his division held the extreme right and opened the battle, losing heavily, but taking six battle-flags. On 29 November, 1862, he was promoted to major-general of volunteers. He was at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and succeeded General John F. Reynolds as chief of the 1st Corps when that officer was appointed to the command of one wing of the army. On 1 July, 1863, he was sent to Gettysburg to support Buford's cavalry, and, on the fall of General Reynolds, took command of the field till the arrival of General Howard, some hours later. His division fought gallantly in the battle that followed, and on the third day aided in the repulse of Pickett's charge. General Doubleday served on courts-martial and commissions in 1863-'5, and on 12 July, 1864, temporarily commanded the southeastern defences of Washington when the city was threatened by Early's raiders. He was brevetted colonel in the regular army on 11 March, 1865, and brigadier and major-general on 13 March, for his services during the war. In November and December, 1866, he was in command at Galveston, Texas, served as assistant commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau there till 1 August, 1867, and, after being mustered out of the volunteer service, was made colonel of the 35th U.S. Infantry, 15 September, 1867. He was a member of the retiring-board in New York City in 1868, and in 1869-'71 superintended the general recruiting service in San Francisco, where in 1870 he suggested and obtained a charter for the first cable street-railway in the United States. After commanding posts in Texas he was retired from active service on 11 December, 1873. He has published " Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'l" (New York, 1870); "Chancellorsville and Gettysburg" (1882): and articles in periodicals on army matters, the water supply of cities, and other subjects. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 210.
DOUBLEDAY, Ulysses, soldier, born in Auburn, New York, 31 August, 1834, was educated at the academy in his native town. He became major in the 4th New York Artillery , 2 January, 1862, lieutenant-colonel of the 3d U. S. Colored Troops, 15 September, 1863, and colonel of the 45th Colored Troops, 8 October, 1864. He commanded a brigade at the battle of Five Forks, and was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers, 11 March, 1865, for his gallantry there. General Doubleday was for many years a member of the stock exchange in New York City. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 210.
DOUGHTY, William Henry, surgeon, born in Augusta, Georgia, 5 February, 1836. He received an academic education in Augusta, was graduated at the medical department of the University of Georgia in 1855, and in the same year began practice in Augusta, giving especial attention to gynecology. From March, 1862, till April, 1865, he served as a surgeon in the Confederate Army, being exclusively employed in hospital duty. He was surgeon-in-charge in the general hospital at Macon, Georgia, in Walker's Division Hospital at Lauderdale Springs, Mississippi, and at the second Georgia Hospital at Augusta, where he was engaged from October, 1863, till the close of the war. In the course of this long service he tied the subclavian artery at its external third twice, which operations have passed into the permanent records of military surgery. Prom 1867 till 1875 he three times held the professorship of materia medical and therapeutics in the Medical College of Georgia (now the Medical department of the State University). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 211.
DOUGLAS, H. Ford, 1831-1865, African American, abolitionist, anti-slavery activist, military officer, newspaper publisher, born a slave. Active in anti-slavery movement in Ohio. Garrisonian abolitionist. Advocated for African American emigration. Published Provincial Freeman. Published in Canada. Served as African American officer in artillery unit. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 61; American National Biography, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 796)
DOUGLAS, Stephen Arnold, statesman, born in Brandon. Vermont, 23 April, 1813; died in Chicago, Illinois, 3 June, 1861. His father, a graduate of Middlebury College and a young physician of high standing, died suddenly when Stephen was two months old. and the widow with her two children retired to a farm near Brandon. Here her son lived with her until he was fifteen years of age, attending school during the three winter months and working on the farm the remainder of the year. Determined then to earn his own living, he went to Middlebury and became an apprentice at cabinet-making. This trade he followed for about eighteen months, when he was forced to abandon it on account of impaired health. He then attended the academy at Brandon for about a year. In the autumn of 1830 he moved to New York state with his mother, who had married Gehazi Granger, of Ontario County, and attended the academy at Canandaigua until December, 1832, when he began the study of law; but, finding that his mother would be unable to support him through the long course of legal studies prescribed by the state, he determined upon going to the west, and on 24 June. 1833, set out for Cleveland, Ohio, where he was dangerously ill with fever for four months. He then visited (Cincinnati. Louisville, St. Louis, and Jacksonville, Illinois, but failed to obtain employment. Finding his money exhausted, he walked to Winchester, where he arrived at night with only thirty-seven and a half cents. Here he secured three days employment as clerk to an auctioneer at an administrator's sale, and was paid six dollars. During the sale he made so favorable an impression that he at once obtained a school of almost forty pupils, whom he taught for three months. During this time he studied law at night, and on Saturdays practised before justices of the peace. In March, 1834, he moved to Jacksonville, obtained his license, and began the regular practice of law. Two weeks thereafter he addressed a large Democratic meeting in defence of General Jackson's administration. In a short sketch of his early life, written in 1838, from which the foregoing facts have been taken, Mr. Douglas thus spoke of this event: "The excitement was intense, and I was rather severe in my remarks upon the opposition, . . . The next week the 'Patriot,' the organ of the opposition, devoted two entire columns to me and my speech, and continued the same course for two or three successive weeks. The necessary consequence was that 1 immediately became known to every man in the County, and was placed in such a it nation as to be supported by one party and opposed by the other. . . Within one week thereafter I received for collection demands to the amount of thousands of dollars from persons I had never seen or heard of. . . How foolish, how impolitic, the indiscriminate abuse of political opponents whose humble condition or insignificance prevents the possibility of injury, and who may be greatly benefited by the notoriety thus acquired! . . . Indeed. I sincerely doubt whether I owe most, to the kind and efficient support of my friends (and no man similarly situated ever had better and truer friends), or to the violent, reckless, and imprudent opposition of my enemies." During the remainder of the canvass Mr. Douglas bore a prominent part, and on the assembling of the legislature, although not yet twenty-two years of age, he was elected attorney general, an officer who then, in addition to his other duties, rode the metropolitan circuit. His opponent was General John J. Hardin. This office he resigned in December, 1835. having been elected to the lower house of the legislature, of which he was the youngest member. The mental vigor and capacity he there displayed, in striking contrast with his physical frame, which was then very slight, won for him the title of the "Little Giant," which followed him through life. In 1837 he was appointed register of the land-office at Springfield. In 1838 he was the Democratic candidate for Congress; but his opponent was declared elected by a majority of five votes. Over fifty votes cast for Mr. Douglas were rejected by the canvassers because his name was misspelled. In December, 1840, he was appointed secretary of state of Illinois, and in the following February elected a judge of the supreme court. Here his decision of character was shown in the trial of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet. A mob had taken possession of the court-room, intending to lynch the prisoner, and the officers of the court appeared powerless. In this emergency Judge Douglas saw a bystander idly looking on whose great strength and desperate courage were well known. Above the shouts of the rioters rose the voice of the judge appointing this man a special officer, and directing him to select his deputies and clear the court-room. In ten minutes order was restored. In 1843 Judge Douglas was elected to Congress by a majority of 400, and he was re-elected in 1844 by 1,900, and again in 1840 by over 3,000; but before the term began he was chosen U.S. Senator, and took his seat in the Senate, 4 March, 1847. He was re-elected in 1852 and 1858. and had served fourteen years in that body at the time of his death. His last senatorial canvass was remarkable from his joint discussions with Abraham Lincoln. Each was conceded to be the leader of his party and the fittest exponent of its principles, and the election of one or the other to the Senate was the real issue of the contest, which was for members of the legislature. Mr. Buchanan's administration was understood to be hostile to Mr. Douglas. The result of the election showed a Republican popular majority of 4,000; but the Democrats returned a majority of eight members to the legislature, which secured Senator Douglas's re-election. In 1852, at the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, he was strongly supported for the presidential nomination, receiving a plurality on the thirtieth ballot. In 1856 he was again a candidate at the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati, his friends throughout the convention controlling more than enough votes to prevent any nomination under the two-third rule. On the sixteenth ballot he received 121 votes; but, as he was opposed to the principle of the two-third rule, he at once withdrew in favor of Buchanan, who had received a majority, thus securing his nomination. At the Democratic National Convention in Charleston in 1860, on the first ballot he received 145 votes out of 252 cast. On the twenty-third ballot he received 152 votes, which was not only a large majority of the votes cast, but also a majority of all those entitled to representation. The convention having adjourned to Baltimore, he received on the first ballot 173 out of 1904 votes cast. On the second ballot he received 181 votes out of 1944, and his nomination was then made unanimous. The seceding delegates nominated John C. Breckenridge. Abraham Lincoln was the nominee of the Republican party, and John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party. Of the electoral votes only twelve were cast for Douglas, although he received 1,375,157 of the popular votes, distributed through every state in the Union. Mr. Lincoln received 180 electoral votes and 1,806,352 popular votes. From the age of twenty-one till his death, with the exception of about two years, Mr. Douglas's entire life was devoted to the public service. During his Congressional career his name was prominently associated with numerous important measures, many of which were the offspring of his own mind or received its controlling impress. In the House of Representatives he maintained that the title of the United States to the whole of Oregon up to latitude 54° 40' N. was “clear and unquestionable." He declared that he "never would, now or hereafter, yield up one inch of Oregon either to Great Britain or any other government." He advocated the policy of giving notice to terminate the joint occupation, of establishing a territorial government over Oregon protected by a sufficient military force, and of putting the country at once in a state of preparation, so that if war should result from the assertion of our just rights we might drive "Great Britain and the last vestiges of royal authority from the continent of North America, and make the United States an ocean-bound republic." In advocating the bill refunding the fine imposed on General Jackson by Judge Hall, he said: "I maintain that, in the exercise of the power of proclaiming martial law, General Jackson did not violate the constitution nor assume to himself any authority not fully authorized and legalized by his position, his duty, and the unavoidable necessity of the case. . . . His power was commensurate with his duty, and he was authorized to use the means essential to its performance. . . . There are exigencies in the history of nations when necessity becomes the paramount law, to which all other considerations must yield." General Jackson personally thanked Mr. Douglas for this speech, and a copy of it was found among Jackson's papers endorsed by him: "This speech constitutes my defence." Mr. Douglas was among the earliest advocates of the annexation of Texas, and, after the treaty for that object had failed in the Senate, he introduced joint resolutions having practically the same effect. As chairman of the committee on territories in 1840, he reported the joint resolution by which Texas was declared to be one of the United States, and he vigorously supported the administration of President Polk in the ensuing war with Mexico. He was for two years chairman of the committee on territories in the house (then its most important committee in view of the slavery question), and became chairman of the same committee in the Senate immediately upon entering that body. This position he held for eleven years, until moved in December, 1858, on account of his opposition to some of the measures of President Buchanan's administration. During this time he reported and carried through the bills organizing the territories of Minnesota, Oregon. New Mexico, Utah, Washington, Kansas, and Nebraska, and also those for the admission of the states of Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, and Oregon. On the question of slavery in the territories he early took the position, which he consistently maintained, that Congress should not interfere, but that the people of each state and territory should be allowed to regulate their domestic institutions to suit themselves. In accordance with this principle he opposed the Wilmot Proviso when it passed the House of Representatives in 1847, and afterward in the Senate when it was offered as an amendment to the bill for the organization of the territory of Oregon. Although opposed to the principles involved in the Missouri Compromise, he preferred, as it had been so long acquiesced in to carry it out in good faith rather than expose the country to renewed sectional agitation; and hence, in August, 1848, he offered an amendment to the Oregon bill, extending the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, thus prohibiting slavery in all the territory north of the parallel of 36° 30', and by implication tolerating it south of that line. This amendment was adopted in the Senate by a large majority, receiving the support of every southern and several northern senators: but was defeated in the house by nearly a sectional vote. This action of the House of Representatives, which Mr. Douglas regarded as a practical repudiation of the principle of the Missouri Compromise, together with the refusal of the Senate to prohibit slavery in all the territories, gave rise to the sectional agitation of 1840-50, which was temporarily quieted by the legislation known as the "compromise measures of 1850," the most famous of which was the fugitive- slave law (see Clay, Henry, vol. i., page 644). Mr. Douglas strongly supported these measures, the first four having been originally reported by him from the committee on territories. The two others, including the fugitive-slave law, were added by the committee of thirteen, and the measures were reported back by its chairman, Henry Clay. On his return to Chicago, the city council passed resolutions denouncing him as a traitor, and the measures as violations of the law of God and of the constitution; enjoining the city police to disregard the laws, and urging the citizens not to obey them. The next evening a large meeting of citizens was held, at which it was resolved to "defy death, the dungeon, and the grave," in resistance to the execution of the law. Mr. Douglas immediately appeared upon the stand, and announced that on the following evening he would speak at the same place in defence of his course. Accordingly, on 23 October, he defended the entire series of measures in a speech in which he defined their principles as follows: "These measures are predicated upon the great fundamental principle that every people ought to possess the right, of framing and regulating their own internal concerns and domestic institutions in their own way. . . . These things are all confided by the constitution to each state to decide for itself, and 1 know of no reason why the same principle should not be extended to the territories." This constituted the celebrated doctrine of " Popular Sovereignty," sometimes called by its opponents " squatter sovereignty " (see Butts, At the close of his speech the meeting unanimously resolved to sustain all the compromise measures, including the fugitive-slave law, and on the following evening the common council repealed their nullifying resolutions by a vote of twelve to one. In December, 1853, Mr. Douglas reported his celebrated bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which formed the issues upon which the Democratic and Republican parties became arrayed against each other. The passage of this bill caused intense excitement in the non-slaveholding states, and Mr. Douglas, as its author, was bitterly denounced, he said that he travelled from Washington to Chicago by the light of his own burning effigies. The controversy turned upon the following provision repealing the Missouri Compromise: “Which, being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the states and territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850 (commonly called the compromise measures), is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the constitution of the United States." In the Congressional session of 1857-'8 he denounced and opposed the Lecompton Constitution, on the ground that "it was not the act of the people of Kansas, and did not embody their will." Mr. Douglas was remarkably successful in promoting the interests of his own state during his Congressional career. In 1848 he introduced and procured the passage of the bill granting to the state of Illinois the alternate sections of land along the line of the Illinois Central Railroad, which so largely contributed to developing the resources and restoring the credit of the state. He was one of the earliest and warmest advocates of a railroad to the Pacific. In foreign policy he opposed the treaty with England limiting the territory of Oregon to the forty-ninth parallel. He also opposed the Trist peace treaty with Mexico. He opposed the ratification of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, chiefly because it pledged the faith of the United States never to annex, colonize, or exercise dominion over any part of Central America. He maintained that the isthmus routes must be kept open as highways to the American possessions on the Pacific; that the time would come when the United States would be compelled to occupy Central America; and declared that he would never pledge the faith of the republic not to do in the future what its interests and safety might require. He also declared himself in favor of the acquisition of Cuba whenever it could be obtained consistently with the laws of nations and the honor of the United States. In 1855 he introduced a bill for the relief of the U. S. Supreme Court, giving circuit-court powers to the district courts, requiring all the district judges in each circuit to meet once a year as an intermediate court of appeals under the presidency of a justice of the supreme court, and providing for appeals from the district courts to these intermediate courts, and thence to the Supreme Court, in cases involving large amounts. In 1857 he declared that the only solution of the Mormon question in Utah was to "repeal the organic act absolutely and unconditionally, blotting out of existence the territorial government, and bringing Utah under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States government." In 1858. and again in 1860, he visited the southern states, and made many speeches. Everywhere he boldly denied the right of secession, and maintained that, while this was a union of sovereign states independent in all local matters, they were bound together in an indissoluble compact by the constitution, which established a national government inherently possessing all powers essential to its own preservation. During the exciting session of 1860-1, Mr. Douglas, as a member of the committee of thirteen, and on the floor of the Senate, labored incessantly to avert Civil War by any reasonable measures of adjustment, but at the beginning of hostilities he threw the whole weight of his influence in behalf of the Union, and gave Mr. Lincoln's administration an unfaltering support. In public speeches he denounced secession as crime and madness, and declared that, if the new system of resistance by the sword and bayonet to the result of the ballot-box shall prevail in this country, "the history of the United States is already written in the history of Mexico." He said that "no one could be a true Democrat without being a patriot." In an address to the legislature of Illinois, delivered at its unanimous request, he urged the oblivion of all party differences, and appealed to his political friends and opponents to unite in support of the government. In a letter dictated for publication during his last illness, he said that but one course was left for patriotic men, and that was to sustain the government against all assailants. On his death-bed his last coherent words expressed an ardent wish for the preservation of the Union, and his dying message to his sons was to "obey the lows and uphold the constitution." Mr. Douglas was somewhat below the middle height, but strongly built, and capable of great mental and physical exertion. He was a ready and powerful speaker, discarding ornament in favor of simplicity and strength. Few equalled him in personal influence over the masses of the people, and none inspired more devoted friendship. While considering it the duty of Congress to protect the rights of the slaveholding states, he was opposed to slavery itself. His first wife was the only child of a large slave-holder, who in his last will provided that, if Mrs. Douglas should die without issue, all her slaves should be freed and moved to Liberia at the expense of her estate, saying further that this provision was in accordance with the wishes of Judge Douglas, who would not consent to own a slave. He married, 7 April, 1847, Martha, daughter of Colonel Robert Martin, of Rockingham County, North Carolina, by whom he had three children, two of whom, Robert M. and Stephen A., both lawyers, are living (1887). She died 19 January, 1853. He married, 20 November, 1856, Adele, daughter of James Madison Cutts, of Washington, D. C, who is now the wife of General Robert Williams, U. S. A. The spot on the bank of Lake Michigan in Chicago that Mr. Douglas had reserved for his future home was bought from his widow by the state, and there his remains lie under a magnificent monument begun by private subscriptions und completed by the state of Illinois. It is surmounted by a statue executed by Leonard Yolk. His life was written by James V. Sheehan (New York, 1866), and by Henry M. Flint (Philadelphia, 1866). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 213-216.
DOUGLAS, William, 1804-1862, African American abolitionist, church community leader in Baltimore, Maryland, and later in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was active in the Anti-Slavery Society.
DOUGLASS, Anna Murray, 1813-1882, African American, anti-slavery activist, conductor on the Underground Railroad, wife of Frederick Douglass. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 66)
DOUGLASS, Frederick, 1817-1895, African American, escaped slave, author, diplomat, orator, newspaper publisher, radical abolitionist leader. Published The North Star abolitionist newspaper with Martin Delany. Wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas: An American Slave, in 1845. Also wrote My Bondage, My Freedom, 1855. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1848-1853.
(Dumond, 1961, pp. 331-333; Filler, 1960; Foner, 1964; Mabee, 1970; McFeely, 1991; Quarles, 1948; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 264-265; Wilson, 1872, 499-511; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 217; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 251-254; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 816; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 309-310; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 67; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)
DOUGLASS, Frederick, orator, born in Tuckahoe, near Eastern, Talbot County, Maryland, in February, 1817; died in Washington, D. C., 20 February. 1895. His mother was a Negro slave, and his father a white man. He was a slave, until at the age of ten he was sent to Baltimore to live with a relative of his master. He learned to read and write from one of his master's relatives, to whom he was lent when about nine years of age. His owner allowed him later to hire his own time for three dollars a week, and he was employed in a ship-yard, and, in accordance with a resolution long entertained, fled from Baltimore and from slavery, 3 September, 1838. He made his way to New York, and thence to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he married and lived for two or three years, supporting himself by day-labor on the wharves and in various workshops. While there he changed his name from Lloyd to Douglass. He was aided in his efforts for self-education by William Lloyd Garrison. In the summer of 1841 he attended an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, find made a speech, which was so well received that he was offered the agency of the Massachusetts anti-slavery Society. In this capacity he travelled and lectured through the New England states for four years. Large audiences were attracted by his graphic descriptions of slavery and his eloquent appeals. In 1845 he went to Europe, and lectured on slavery to enthusiastic audiences in nearly all the large towns of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. In 1846 his friends in England contributed $750 to have him manumitted in due form of law. He remained two years in Great Britain, and in 1847 began at Rochester, New York, the publication of “Frederick Douglass's Paper,” whose title was changed to “The North Star,” a weekly journal, which he continued for some years. His supposed implication in the John Brown raid in 1859 led Governor Wise, of Virginia, to make a requisition for his arrest upon the governor of Michigan, where he then was, and in consequence of this Mr. Douglass went to England, and remained six or eight months. He then returned to Rochester, and continued the publication of his paper. When the Civil War began in 1861 he urged upon President Lincoln the employment of colored troops and the proclamation of emancipation. In 1863, when permission was given to employ such troops, he assisted in enlisting men to fill colored regiments, especially the 54th and 55th Massachusetts. After the abolition of slavery he discontinued his paper and applied himself to the preparation and delivery of lectures before lyceums. In September, 1870, he became editor of the “New National Era” in Washington, which was continued by his sons, Lewis and Frederick. In 1871 he was appointed assistant secretary to the commission to Santo Domingo; and on his return President Grant appointed him one of the territorial council of the District of Columbia. In 1872 he was elected presidential elector at large for the state of New York, and was appointed to carry the electoral vote of the state to Washington. In 1876 he was appointed U. S. marshal for the District of Columbia, which office he retained till 1881, after which he became recorder of deeds in the District, from which office he was moved by President Cleveland in 1886. In the autumn of 1886 he revisited England, to inform the friends he had made as a fugitive slave of the progress of the African race in the United States, with the intention of spending the winter on the continent and the following summer in the United Kingdom. His published works are entitled “Narrative of my Experience in Slavery” (Boston, 1844); “My Bondage and my Freedom” (Rochester, 1855); and “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass” (Hartford, 1881). Appleton’s 1900, p. 217.
Chapter: “Position of the Colored People. - Frederick Douglass,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.
While the free colored people instinctively distrusted the Colonization Society, and withheld their confidence from it, they at once and heartily accepted the abolition movement. This was especially true of the more intelligent and well-informed. Among the colored ministers there were several who, seeing its religious as well as humane bearings, rendered essential aid to the cause. A few others did something in the same direction, arousing public attention and quickening the zeal of the friends of freedom.
But in 1841 a champion arose in the person of Frederick Douglass, who was destined to play an important part in the great drama then in progress. In him not only did the colored race but manhood itself find a worthy representative and advocate; one who was a signal illustration, not only of self-culture and success under the most adverse circumstances, but of the fact that talent and genius are " color-blind," and above the accidents of complexion and birth. He, too, furnished an example of the terrible necessities of slavery, and its purpose and power to crush out the human soul; as also of the benign energies of freedom to arouse, to develop, and enlarge its highest and noblest faculties, --the one aiming, and almost succeeding in the attempt, to make him a mere mindless and purposeless chattel; the other actually and indissolubly linking his name and labors with the antislavery cause, both in this country and in Europe. As few of the world's great men have ever had so checkered and diversified a career, so it may be at least plausibly claimed that no man represents in himself more conflicting ideas and interests. His life is in itself an epic which finds few to equal it in the realms of either romance or reality.
Frederick Douglass was born on the Eastern Shore, Maryland, about the year 1817. According to the necessities of slavery and the usual practice of slave-masters, he was taken from his mother when an infant, consequently deprived of even the rude care which maternal instinct might have prompted, and placed under the guardianship of his grandmother, with whom he lived until he was seven years of age. At the age of ten he was sent to Baltimore, to be the companion and protector of the son of a young married couple, who, in consequence of general refinement of character and his proposed relation to their darling boy, treated him, at first, kindly. This change Mr. Douglass ever regarded as a providential interposition, as the turning-point where his pathway, leaving the descending grade of slave life, entered upon that which led him in that widely divergent and upward direction it has since pursued. Leaving the rude experience of the plantation, with the barren and desert-like surroundings of the Eastern Shore, for the bustle and necessary companionship of the city, an opportunity of learning to read was afforded him, which he most sedulously and successfully, though surreptitiously, improved. But the friendliness which his master and mistress had so generously extended to him as an ignorant slave, they felt obliged, by the necessities of the system, to withhold from him now that he could read, and had learned to question the rightfulness of slavery and to chafe under its chains.
Returned to the Eastern Shore, he encountered the rigors of plantation life, greatly increased by the drunken caprices of an intemperate master, and doubtless aggravated by his own impatient and contumacious rebellings under such slave-holding restraint. This, however, was but a prelude to an experience graver and still more tragic. Despairing of controlling young Douglass himself, his owner placed him - as men place their unbroken colts under the care of horse-trainers in the hands of a professed Negro-breaker, known through the region as a cruel and merciless man, who had, not only gained that reputation, but found it necessary or for his interest to maintain it. Concerning this change Mr. Douglass remarks, after referring to the " comparative tenderness " with which he had been treated at Baltimore: " I was now about to sound profounder depths in slave life. The rigors of a field less tolerable than the field of battle were before me." That his apprehensions were not groundless these extracts, taken from his autobiography, abundantly show: “I had not been in his possession three whole days before he subjected me to a most brutal chastisement. Under his heavy blows blood flowed freely; the wales were left on my back as large as my little finger. The sores on my back from this whipping continued for weeks." "I remained with Mr. Corey one year, cannot say I lived with him, and during the first six months that I was there I was whipped either with sticks or cowskins every week. Aching bones and a sore back were my constant companions. Frequently as the lash was used, however, Mr. Corey thought less of it, as a means of breaking down my spirit, than of hard and long-continued labor. He worked me steadily up to the point of my powers of endurance. From the dawn of day in the morning till the darkness was complete in the evening, I was kept at hard work in the field or the woods."
He gave accounts of individual cases of brutal chastisement which were revolting almost beyond conception; while his concise description of himself" as a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness” seems but a natural result. "A few months of discipline," he says," tamed me. Mr. Corey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed; my intellect languished; the disposition to read departed; the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute."
Having completed his year with Corey, he was hired out to another and more humane master. But the iron of slavery rankled in his soul, and he could not endure its galling restraints, however softened by kindness. After long rumination upon the subject, and conferences with four or five of his companions in bondage, he proposed and planned an attempt to escape. Betrayed, however, by a confederate, they were prevented from carrying their attempt into execution, and were arrested and imprisoned. Instead of being “sold South"-- that dreaded alternative of success, which held back thousands from making the attempt --he was sent again to Baltimore. Being nearly murdered by the carpenters of a ship-yard, because of their jealousy of slave competition with white labor,--a crime for which no indictment could be found, though sought, because no white witnesses would testify against his brutal assailants, --he was sent to another yard to learn the trade of a calker. Becoming an expert workman, he was permitted to make his own contracts, returning his week's wages every Saturday night to his master. At the same time --which was of more importance to him, he was permitted to associate with some free colored men, who had formed a kind of lyceum for their mutual improvement, and by means of which he was enabled to increase materially his knowledge and mental culture. All of this, however, did but increase his sense of the essential injustice of slavery, and make him more restive under its galling chains. Accordingly he made his plans, now successful, and on the third day of September, 1838, he says, “I bade farewell to the city of Baltimore, and to that slavery which had been my abhorrence from childhood." For prudential reasons the particulars of his mode of escape were withheld from the public knowledge, as they were of little comparative importance; while, had they been known then, they might have compromised some and hedged up the way of escape of others. Landing in New York, a homeless, penniless, and friendless fugitive, he thus describes his feelings: " In the midst of thousands of my fellow-men, and yet a perfect stranger! In the midst of human brothers, and yet more fearful of them than of hungry wolves! I was without home, without friends, without work, without money, and without any definite knowledge of which way to go or where to look for succor." In the midst of his perplexities he met a sailor, whose seeming frankness and honesty won, as they deserved, his confidence. He introduced him to David Ruggles, chairman of the Vigilance Committee, a colored gentleman of much intelligence, energy, and worth, who by his position and executive ability did much for his people. This gentleman advised him to go to New Bedford, Massachusetts, assisted him in reaching that city, and introduced him to trustworthy friends there. Here he was employed, mostly as a day laborer on the wharves, encountering the same shameful and unmanly jealousy of colored competition that had nearly cost him his life at Baltimore, and which would not allow him to work at his trade as calker by the side of white men. Being a professing Christian, he was interested in religious meetings, where he was accustomed to pray and exhort, a practice which probably had something to do with his wonderful subsequent success as a public speaker.
The first demonstration of his eloquence which attracted public attention was at a meeting mainly of colored people, in which were specially considered the claims of the Colonization Society. Here began to be emitted specimens of that fiery eloquence from his capacious soul, burning with the indignant and unfading memories of the wrongs, outrages, and the deep injustice which slavery had inflicted on him, and which it was now inflicting upon his brethren in bonds. Of course, the few white Abolitionists of New Bedford were not long in finding out the young fugitive, appreciating his gifts and promise of usefulness, and in devising ways of extending his range of effort for their unpopular cause. Attending an antislavery convention at Nantucket, he was persuaded to address the meeting. His speech here seems to have been singularly eloquent and effective. Among those present was Mr. Garrison, who bore his testimony, both then and afterward, to "the extraordinary emotion it exerted on his own mind, and to the powerful impression it exerted upon a crowded auditory." He declared, too, that “Patrick Henry had never made a more eloquent speech in the cause of liberty than the one they had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive." Nathaniel P. Rogers, editor of the "Herald of Freedom," thus characterized a speech made by him the same year. After speaking of his “commanding figure and heroic port," his head, that “would strike a phrenologist amid a sea of them in Exeter Hall," he adds: "As a speaker he has few equals. It is not declamation, but oratory, power of debate. . . He has wit, argument, sarcasm, pathos, all that first-rate men show in their master efforts."
This language, especially that of Mr. Garrison, seems extravagant, and the laudation excessive; nor could it be accepted as a general and critical estimate of Mr. Douglass as an orator, great as his powers confessedly were and are. His Nantucket speech was unquestionably one of those rare bursts of eloquence, little less than inspiration itself, which are sometimes vouchsafed to a man in his happiest moods; when the speaker seems to rise above himself and to take his audience with him. Besides, there was certainly much in the circumstances and surroundings of that meeting to impress the minds and stir the sensibilities of such an assembly. On that isle of the sea, at some distance from the mainland, one could easily imagine a picture of the nation overshadowed by the dark cloud of slavery, and prostrate beneath a despotism pressing alike on the slaves at the South and on their advocates at the North. Indeed, the latter had just passed through a baptism of fire and blood, during those fearful years of mobs and martyrdom, which had measurably ceased, but had been succeeded by what the earnest Abolitionist deprecated more than violence, and that was the general apathy which then reigned.
In the conflict for freedom of speech and the right of free discussion Abolitionists had achieved a victory. What they had contended for had, at length, been conceded; at least, the principle was no longer contested. They had conquered a peace; but their opponents were determined it should be the peace of the grave. For the wordy warfare of discussion and the brutal violence of lynch laws they would substitute the policy of neglect. To let them severely alone, to belittle their cause, to pass them by with a supercilious sneer, and to frown contemptuously upon their attempts to gain a hearing, became at that time the tactics of the enemies against the advocates of human rights. Of course, what were termed antislavery measures had lost much of their zest and potency; meetings became less numerously attended, and, consequently, less frequent; organizations, losing their interest and effectiveness, began to die out. Something was necessary to revive and reanimate the drooping spirits and the languid movements of the cause and its friends. It was then, at this opportune moment, while they were thus enveloped in the chill and shade of this most uncomfortable and unsatisfactory state of affairs, the young fugitive appeared upon the stage. He seemed like a messenger from the dark land of slavery itself; as if in his person his race had found a fitting advocate; as if through his lips their long pent up wrongs and wishes had found a voice. No wonder that Nantucket meeting was greatly moved. It would not be strange if the words of description and comment of those present and in full sympathy with the youthful orator should be somewhat extravagant.
The Massachusetts Antislavery Society at once made overtures to Mr. Douglass, and he became one of its accredited agents. For this new field of labor, which he reluctantly and hesitatingly entered, and for which he modestly said he “had no preparation," the event proved that he was admirably fitted. In addition to that inborn genius and those natural gifts of oratory with which he was so generously endowed, he had the long and terrible lessons which slavery had burned into his soul. The knowledge, too, which he had stolen in the house of bondage, had enabled him to read the " Liberator " from week to week, as he was engaged in his hard and humble labors on the wharves of New Bedford, and thus to become acquainted with the new thoughts and reasonings of others. Doubtless many things which had long lain in his own mind formless and vague he found there more clearly defined and more logically expressed; while the fierceness and force of its utterances tallied only too well with the all-consuming zeal of his own soul. Thus fitted and commissioned he entered upon the great work of his life. Though distrustful of his abilities, no knight-errant ever sallied forth with higher resolve, or bore himself with more heroic courage. With whatever diffidence he undertook the proposed service, there was no lack of earnestness and devotion. Nor was his range a limited one. Fitted by his talents to move thousands on the platform, he was prepared by his early experience to be equally persuasive in a little meeting in a country school-house. In hall or church or grove he was alike effective. He could make himself at home in the parlors of the great or by the firesides of the humble: He could ride in the public conveyances from State to State, or tramp on foot from neighborhood to neighborhood. Fertile in expedients and patient in endeavor, he was not easily balked or driven from his purpose. In the midst of the prejudices of caste, hardly less strong and cruel in Massachusetts than in Maryland, he never permitted these, however painful, to divert him from his purpose. If he could not ride inside the stage, he would ride outside; if he could not ride in the first-class car, he rode in the second class; if he could not occupy the cabin of the steamer, he went into the steerage; but to these insults to his manhood he generally interposed his earnest protest, and often only yielded to superior force.
The character, culture, and eloquence displayed by his addresses provoked the insinuation that he was an impostor, and that he had never been a slave. To silence this imputation, he prepared and published, in the spring of 1845, an autobiography, which was widely circulated. As in it he gave the names of persons, places, and' dates, by which his claims and statements could be verified, it was soon known in Maryland, and he and his friends were given to understand that efforts would be made for his recapture. To place himself out of the reach of his pursuers, and, at the same time, help forward his great work, it was proposed that he should visit England. He was very kindly received there, and visited nearly all the large towns and cities of the kingdom. In a lecture in Finsbury's Chapel, in London, to an audience of three thousand, he thus answered the question why he did not confine his labors to the United States.
“My first answer is, because slavery is the common enemy of mankind, and that all mankind should be made acquainted with its abominable character. My second answer is, that the slave is a man, and as such is entitled to your sympathy as a man and a brother. He has been the prey, the common prey, of Christendom during the last three hundred years; and it is but right, just, and proper that his wrongs should be known throughout the world. I have another reason for bringing this matter before the British public, and it is this: slavery is a system of wrong so blinding to all around it, so hardening to the heart, so corrupting to the morals, so deleterious to religion, so sapping to all the principles of justice in its immediate vicinity, that the community thus connected with it lack the moral power necessary to its removal. It is a system of such gigantic evil, so strong, so overwhelming in its power, that no one nation is equal to its removal. It requires the humanity of Christianity, the morality of the civilized world, to remove it. Hence I call upon the people of Britain to look at this matter, and to exert the influence I am about to show they possess for the removal of slavery from America. I can appeal to them as strongly by their regard for the slaveholder as by 'their regard for the slave to labor in this cause. There is nothing said here against slavery that will not be recorded in the United States. I am here, also, because the slaveholders do not want me to be here. I have adopted the maxim laid down by Napoleon, never to occupy ground which the enemy would like me to occupy. The slaveholders would much rather have me, if I will denounce slavery, denounce it in the Northern States, where their friends and supporters are, who will stand by them and mob me for denouncing it…The power I exert here is something like the power that is exerted by the man at the end of the lever; my influence now is just in proportion to my distance from the United States."
In the same speech, referring to the barbarous laws of the slave code, denying that he was inveighing against the institutions of America, and asserting that his only purpose was to strip this anomalous system of all concealment, he said: " To tear off the mask from this abominable system; to expose it to the light of heaven, ay, to the heat of the sun, that it may burn and wither it out of existence, --is my object in coming to this country. I want the slaveholder surrounded as by a wall of antislavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and his system glaring down in letters of light. I want him to feel that he has no sympathy in England, Scotland, or Ireland; that he has none in Canada, none in Mexico, none among the poor wild Indians; that the voice of the civilized, ay, the savage world is against him. I would have condemnation blaze down upon him in every direction, till, stunned and overwhelmed with shame and confusion, he is compelled to let go the grasp he holds upon the persons of his victims and restore them to their long-lost rights." That, like other prominent Abolitionists of those days, he overrated the power of truth, and underestimated the power of slavery and its tenacity of life, appears in the same speech, and in this connection, when he says: “I expose slavery in this country because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death. Expose slavery, and it dies. Light is to slavery what the heat of the sun is to the root of a tree; it must die under it." Mr. Douglass had not to live long --his own career furnishing the most convincing evidence of the fact --to see that something more than “light " was necessary to destroy slavery. To expose it was not to kill it.
Of this, too, he received substantial evidence in England and Scotland, especially the latter ; in England, by the refusal of the Evangelical Alliance, at the instance of the American delegation, to exclude the representatives of slaveholding churches from its platform ; in Scotland, where he found the Free Church not only receiving contributions for its church-building fund from such churches, but sturdily defending its propriety by the voice of its prince of scholars and clergymen, Dr. Chalmers, and by that of its hardly less honored leaders, Dr. Cunningham and Dr. Candlish. And this latter was done in spite of the earnest remonstrances of himself and others, among them that most eloquent Englishman, George Thompson, urging them not to receive that “price of blood," but to "send back the money."
Mr. Douglass remained in Great Britain nearly two years; in which time he visited England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, everywhere pressing upon the public mind the evils of slavery and the duty of laboring for its overthrow. He was cordially received, and treated with the utmost consideration. His friends, without solicitation from him, raised one hundred and fifty pounds for his manumission, and twenty-five hundred dollars with which to establish a press in this country, which he subsequently did, at Rochester, New York. His journal was first called the “North Star," and afterward "Frederick Douglass's Paper," and was ably conducted and well sustained till after the abolition of slavery. Thus by voice, pen, and personal influence has he contributed in no small measure to those manifold labors which the last thirty years have witnessed for the removal of slavery, and for the rehabilitation of his race with those rights of which it had so long been despoiled, and for the still higher purpose of preparing it for the new position it now occupies.
The main interest and importance, however, of Mr. Douglass's career, are public, rather than personal. Full of thrilling adventure, striking contrasts, brilliant passages, and undoubted usefulness, as his history was, his providential relations to some of the most marked facts and features of American history constitute the chief elements of that interest and importance which by common consent belong to it. Lifting the curtain, it revealed with startling vividness and effect the inner experience and the workings of slavery, not only upon its victims, but upon all connected with it. In it, as in a mirror, are seen how unnatural, how inhuman, and how wicked were its demands. Torn from his mother's arms in infancy, he was treated with the same disregard of his comfort and the promptings of nature as were the domestic animals of the farm-yard. As he was transferred from one master to another, everyone can see what the hazards of a “chattel personal” were, and how the kindness of one only aggravated the harshness of another. In the extreme solicitude manifested by his kind master and mistress at Baltimore that he should not learn to read, and their marked· displeasure and change of treatment when he had thus learned, are seen not only the stern necessities of slavery, but how it quenched the kindlier feelings and turned to bitterness even affection itself. In the terrible struggle with Corey which he so graphically describes, when " the dark night of slavery shut in upon him," and he was "transformed to a brute," is disclosed something of the process by which manhood was dethroned, and an immortal being was transformed by something more than legal phrase into a chattel,--a thing. Had he, after his first unsuccessful attempt to escape, been " sold South," as he had reason to apprehend, and had not been sent north to Baltimore, that night would have remained unbroken, and that transformation would have been complete; and the world now knows what a light would have been extinguished and what a sacrifice would have been made. He escaped, indeed; but how many did not? Not all were so richly endowed, though none can tell how many " village Hampdens," how many " mute, inglorious Miltons" have thus been lost to letters and to man; while many have learned to sympathize with Dr. Campbell, at Finsbury's Chapel, when he exclaimed: " My blood boiled within me when I heard his address to-night, and thought that he had left behind him three millions of such men."
And sadder still when it is seen that all this was done, if not in the name of the Christian religion, in spite of it, by those professing its holy faith, -- his owner, and tormentor, Corey, both being members of the church; the latter punctilious and pretentious in his church-going, praying, and psalm singing, adding the latter generally to his daily family worship, -- and saddest of all, that, when Mr. Douglass, rescued as from the lion's den, bore a testimony which could not be gainsaid, the multitudes, though fascinated by his thrilling story and matchless eloquence, withheld from him what he earnestly sought, while only the few were willing to receive the unpopular doctrines of his Abolitionism. For twenty years he labored as few others could, addressing thousands upon thousands in the New England, Middle, and Western States; and yet till the beginning of the Rebellion he belonged to a despised minority, while the system that had so outraged him and his people still dominated the State, and was sanctioned, if not sanctified, by the church. In the light of such a history this mountain of national guilt assumes more towering proportions, and its base is seen to rest not upon the South alone, but upon the whole land. The crime was gigantic; and, though its expiation has already been terrible, who shall say that it has been commensurate with the crime itself?
Few have forgotten the closing utterances of Mr. Lincoln's second Inaugural concerning the war still raging, sounding as if they fell from the judgment-seat and were the words of doom itself: " Yet, if God will that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so it still must be said, ' The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" The solemn significance .of this language is still worthy of thought, though the war has ceased and the ·great armies then in the· field have been recalled.
Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 499-511.
DOUGLASS, Grace Bustill, 1782-1842, African American activist, abolitionist. Co-founder of the Female Anti-Slavery Society. (Yellin, 1994, p. 11; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 71)
DOUGLASS, Roswell, Lowell, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1842-44
DOUGLASS, Margaret Crittenden, educator, born in Washington, D. C. She moved at an early age to Charleston, South Carolina, where she married, and in 1845 to Norfolk. Virginia She opened a school for the instruction of colored children, but it was broken up by the authorities in 1853, and she herself was imprisoned for a month in the common jail. She published a “Personal Narrative,” relating her experiences (Boston, 1854). [Appleton’s 1900, Vol. II., p. 217
DOUGLASS, Sarah Mapps, 1806-1882, African American, abolitionist leader, educator, writer, lecturer. Organizer, member and manager of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Participant and organizer of the Anti-Slavery Conventions of American Women in 1838-1839. (Yellin, 1994, pp. 10-11, 71, 76-77, 96-97, 116-117, 117n, 148, 156, 164-165, 169, 237-238; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 255-256; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 6, p. 821; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 76)
DOUGLASS, William, 1804-1862, Baltimore, Maryland, African American, clergyman, abolitionist, opposed colonization. (Sinha, 2016, pp. 219-220, 270, 340-341)
DOW, Neal, born 1804, abolitionist (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 218-219; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 411)
DOW, Neal, temperance reformer, born in Portland, Maine, 20 March, 1804. He is of Quaker parentage, attended the Friends' Academy in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and was trained in mercantile and manufacturing pursuits. He was chief engineer of the Portland Fire Department in 1839, and in 1851 and again in 1854 was elected mayor of the city. He became the champion of the project for the prohibition of the liquor traffic, which was first advocated by James Appleton in his report to the Maine legislature in 1837, and in various speeches while a member of that body. (See Appleton, James.) Through Mr. Dow's efforts, while he was mayor, the Maine Liquor Law, prohibiting under severe penalties the sale of intoxicating beverages, was passed in 1851. After drafting the bill, which he called " A bill for the suppression of drinking houses and tippling-shops," he submitted it to the principal friends of temperance in the city, but they all objected to its radical character, as certain to insure its defeat. It provided for the search of places where it was suspected that liquors intended for sale were kept; for the seizure, condemnation, and confiscation of such liquors, if found; and for the punishment of the persons keeping them by fine and imprisonment. Notwithstanding the discouragement of friends, he went to the legislature, then in session at Augusta, had a public hearing in the hall of representatives which was densely packed by the legislators and citizens of the town, and at the close of the hearing the bill was unanimously accepted by the committee. It was printed that night, was laid on the desks of the members the next morning, and on that day, the last, of the session, was passed through all its stages, and was enacted without any change whatever. Mr. Dow was a member of the Maine legislature in 1858-'9. On 31 December, 1861, he was appointed colonel of the 13th Maine Volunteers, and with his regiment he joined General Butler's expedition to New Orleans, he was commissioned a brigadier-general of volunteers, 28 April, 1862, and placed in command of the forts at the mouth of the Mississippi, and afterward of the District of Florida. He was wounded twice in the attack on Port Hudson, 27 May, 1863, and taken prisoner while lying in a house near. After imprisonment for over eight months in Libby Prison and at Mobile, he was exchanged. He resigned on 30 November, 1864. In 1857, and again in 1866 and 1874, Mr. Dow went to England at the invitation of the United Kingdom Temperance Alliance, and addressed crowded meetings in all the large cities. He has spent many years in endeavoring, by public speeches in the United States and Canada, as well as in Great Britain, and by frequent contributions to magazines and newspapers, to win the popular sanction for prohibitory legislation. In 1880 he was the candidate for the National Prohibition Party for president of the United States, and received 10,305 votes. In 1884 an amendment to the constitution of Maine was adopted by a popular vote of nearly three to on, in which it was declared that the manufacture, sale, and keeping for sale of intoxicating beverages was forever forbidden, and commanding the legislature to enact suitable laws for the enforcement of the prohibition. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 219.
DOWELL, Greensville, physician, born in Albemarle County, Virginia, 1 September, 1822; died in Galveston, Texas, in 1881. He was educated at the University of Louisville and at Jefferson Medical College, and was graduated M. D., from the latter. After practicing in various states he finally established himself in Galveston, Texas, and was for fifteen years preceding his death, professor of surgery in the Texas Medical College. He was a surgeon in the Confederate Army, from 1863 to 1865, was editor and publisher of the " Galveston Medical Journal." originated the Dowell system for the treatment of hernia, and was the author of several books on that subject and yellow fever. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 219.
DOWLING, John, 1807-1878, Newport, Rhode Island, abolitionist, clergyman, educator, author. Vice President, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1834-1835. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 220)
DOWLING, John, clergyman, born in Pavensey, Sussex, England, 12 May, 1807; died in Middletown, New York, 4 July, 1878. In an irregular way he acquired a classical education, and became a tutor in a classical institution in London in 1826. Three years later he established a boarding-school a few miles from Oxford, where he taught until 1832. In that year he emigrated to the United States and united with the Baptist Church in Catskill, New York, where he was ordained. In 1834 he moved to Newport, R.I., and two years later was called to a church in New York. He afterward preached in Providence, Philadelphia, Newark, and other places. The degree of D. D. was conferred upon him by Transylvania University. Dr. Dowling's published works include “Vindication of the Baptists” (New York); “Exposition of the Prophecies” (1840); “Defence of the Protestant Scriptures” (1843); “History of Romanism” (1845), of which 30,000 copies were sold in less than ten years; “Power of Illustration”; “Nights and Mornings”; and “Judson Offering.” He edited a Conference hymn-book (1868); Noel's work on “Baptism,” the works of Lorenzo Dow, Conyer's “Middleton, on the Conformity of Popery and Paganism”; “Memoir of the Missionary Jacob Thomas”; and a translation from the French of Dr. Cote's work on “Romanism.” Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 220.
DOWNES, John A., naval officer, born in Massachusetts, 25 August, 1822; died in New Orleans, 20 September, 1865, entered the U.S. Navy on 4 September, 1837; became passed midshipman in 1843, lieutenant in 1851, and a commander in 1862. During the Civil War he commanded the iron-clad "Naliant" at the bombardment of Fort McAlister, 3 March, 1863, and in the first attack upon Fort Sumter, 7 April, 1863. In the report of Rear-Admiral Dupont he is mentioned as one of those "who did everything that the utmost gallantry and skill could accomplish in the management of their untried vessels." He aided in the capture of the Confederate ironclad "Atlanta." He was on special duty at Boston a short time, and was then given command of the Gulf Squadron, in which service he died. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 221
DRAKE, Francis Samuel, born in Northwood, New Hampshire, 22 February, 1828; died in Washington, D. C, 22 February, 1885, was educated in the public schools of Boston. After aiding his father in his Boston book-store he entered a counting-house in that city, but went to Leavenworth, Kan., in 1862, and engaged in bookselling there till 1867, when he returned to Boston. Mr. Drake inherited his father's taste for historical work, and was an eager collector long before he wrote anything for publication. He prepared without aid a "Dictionary of American Biography," the materials for which he was twenty years in collecting (Boston, 1872). He also published a "Memorial of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati " (1873); " Lite of General Henry Knox " (1873): "The Town of Roxbury" (1873); "Tea-Leaves" (1884); and "Indian History for Young Folks" (1885). He edited Schoolcraft's "History of the Indians," and contributed articles on Brighton. Watertown, and Roxbury to the "Memorial History of Boston." His "Dictionary of American Biography," with his latest corrections and all the materials that he had gathered for a new edition, is incorporated in "Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 226.
DRAKE, Samuel Adams, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 20 December, 1833, was educated in the public schools of his native city. He went to Kansas in 1858 as telegraphic agent of the New York associated press, became the regular correspondent of the St. Louis "Republican" and the Louisville "Journal," and for a while edited the Leavenworth " Times." On the organization of the state militia at the beginning of the Civil War he became adjutant-general of the northern division, and in 1861 was a captain of militia in the service of the United States. He had risen to the rank of brigadier-general of militia in 1861, and in 1864 was colonel of the 17th Kansas Volunteers, commanding the post of Paola, Kansas, during Price's invasion of Missouri in that year. In 1871 General Drake returned to Massachusetts. His first publication was " Hints for Emigrants to Pike's Peak" (a pamphlet, 1866). He has since written "Old Landmarks of Boston" (1872); "Old Landmarks of Middlesex " (1873); "Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast" (1875); "Bunker Hill" (1875); "Captain Nelson" (1879); "History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts" (1880); "Heart of the White Mountains" (1881); "Around the Hub" (1881); "New England Legends" (1883); "Our Great Benefactors (1885); and "The Making of New England'' (1886). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 226.
DRAPER, Alonzo Granville, soldier, born in Brattleboro, Vermont, 6 September 1835; died in Brazos, Texas, 3 September, 1865. He early settled in Boston, and was graduated at the English high-school in 1854. after which he moved to Lynn, where he edited the "New England Mechanic," and held office in the city government. At the beginning of the Civil War he recruited a company of volunteers for the 14th Massachusetts Regiment, and was commissioned captain, 6 May, 1861. In January, 1863, he was promoted major, and, after being transferred to the 2d National Colored Regiment, was made colonel in August, 1863, and afterward attached to the 25th Corps, where for a month he had charge of a brigade in Major-General Paine's division, and where he won the title of brevet brigadier-general 28 October, 1864. A few months previous to his death he left Virginia in command of a brigade, and died from wounds received in Texas. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 226.
DRATON, Daniel, captain of the Pearl, in 1848 attempted to transport and free 76 slaves; arrested and imprisoned. (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 51)
DRATON, Thomas Fenwick, son of the second William, born in South Carolina about. 1807, was originally named Thomas. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1828, and served in garrison in Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, and Newport, Kentucky, in 1828-'32, and then on topographical duty, but resigned on 15 August, 1836, and became a civil engineer in Charleston, Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. He was also a planter in St. Luke's Parish, South Carolina, in 1838-'61, was a state senator in 1853-'6, and president of the Charleston and Savannah Rail Road in 1868-'61. At the beginning of the Civil War he entered the Confederate service, was commissioned brigadier-general, and commanded the Confederate troops on Hilton Head Island at the time of the Port Royal Expedition, in which his brother, Captain Percival Drayton, commanded a national vessel. After the war General Drayton became a farmer in Georgia, and in 1878 was made president of the South Carolina Immigrant Association, and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 230.
DRAYTON, Percival, naval officer, born in South Carolina, 25 August, 1812; died in Washington, D. C., 4 August, 1865, entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, 1 December, 1827, was promoted to lieutenant, 28 February, 1838, and served on the Brazilian, Mediterranean, and Pacific Squadrons. He was attached to the Naval Observatory in Washington in 1852, and soon afterward was associated with Commander, afterward Admiral, Farragut in ordnance experiments, forming a close intimacy with that officer that lasted through life. He was made commander, 14 September, 1855, took part in the Paraguay Expedition of 1858, and in 1860 was on ordnance duty at the Philadelphia Navy-yard. Though strongly bound by family ties to the seceding states, he rejected all offers of place in the southern confederacy, and remained loyal to the national government. He commanded the " Pocahontas" in the Port Royal Expedition, and was afterward transferred to the "Pawnee," in which he made valuable reconnaissance’s of St. Helena sound and adjacent waters. He was promoted to captain on 16 July, 1862, and in the autumn of that year was ordered to the new Ericsson monitor "Passaic." In this iron-clad he bombarded Fort McAllister, and was in the first attack on Fort Sumter under Admiral Du Pont, who spoke in the highest terms, in his last report, of Drayton's “capacity and courage." He afterward became fleet-captain of the West Gulf Squadron, and commanded Farragut's flag-ship, the "Hartford," in the battle of Mobile Bay, 5 August, 1864. In his detailed report of that action Farragut spoke of Drayton's "coolness and ability," and said: “He is the fleet-captain of my squadron, and one of more determined energy, untiring devotion to duty, and zeal for the service, tempered by great calmness, I do not think adorns any navy." Captain Drayton afterward accompanied Farragut to New York, where a formal reception was given to the two officers on 12 December, 1864. On 28 April, 1865, Captain Drayton was made chief of the bureau of navigation, and died while discharging the duties of that office. He was especially distinguished as a flag-officer, and his refined manners and knowledge of languages caused his services in that position to be sought by every commanding officer with whom he sailed. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 230.
DRESSER, Amos, 1812-1904, Peru, Massachusetts, anti-slavery agent, educator, Lane University alumnus. Worked in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Was beaten, tarred and feathered by mob. Arrested in Nashville, Tennessee, for distributing abolitionist materials and in 1836 he became a successful lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. He worked for abolitionist leader Henry B. Stanton in Worcester County, Massachusetts. Wrote Narrative of the Arrest, Lynch Law, and Scourging of Amos Dresser; At Nashville, Tennessee, August, 1835 [1849]. (Dumond, 1961, p. 186; Mabee, 1970, pp. 31-33, 35, 37, 152, 153, 257; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 199-200)
DRESSLER, Horace, died 1877, lawyer, defended fugitive slaves in New York courts (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 231)
DRESSER, Horace, lawyer, died 27 January, 1877. He was graduated at Union in 1828. Mr. Dresser was one of the first lawyers who spoke in the New York courts in behalf of the Negro race, and his best energies were devoted to defending and assisting fugitive slaves. He wrote much on constitutional questions, and published “The Battle Record of the American Rebellion” (New York, 1863), and “Internal Revenue Laws as Amended to July, 1866” (New York, 1866). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 231.
DRIGGS, John F., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Congressional Globe)
DRUM, Richard Coulter, soldier, born in Pennsylvania, 28 May, 1825. He studied at Jefferson College, entered the army as a private in the 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers on 8 December, 1846, was engaged at the siege of Vera Cruz, and appointed a 2d lieutenant of U. S. Infantry on 18 February, 1847. He was brevetted 1st lieutenant for bravery at Chapultepec and the capture of the City of Mexico. After the war with Mexico he was transferred to the artillery, was engaged in the action at Blue Water, Nebraska, served as aide- de-camp to General Harney in the Sioux Expedition, and was in Kansas during the troubles of 1856. From 1856 till 1858 he served as acting assistant adjutant-general at the headquarters of the Department of the West, and subsequently as adjutant in the artillery-school. At the beginning of the Civil War he was appointed assistant adjutant-general of the U. S. Army, and promoted to captain on 14 May, 1861, major on 3 August, 1861, and lieutenant-colonel on 17 July, 1862. On '24 September, 1864, he was brevetted colonel, "and on 13 March, 1865, brigadier-general for services during the war. He continued in the adjutant-general's department, was stationed in 1866-'8 at Philadelphia, in 1868-'9 at Atlanta, the headquarters of the Department of the South, receiving promotion as colonel on 22 February, 1869, and on 15 June, 1880, succeeded General Townsend, on the latter's retirement, as adjutant-general of the army, with the rank of brigadier-general.—His elder brother, Simon Henry, soldier, born in Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in June, 1807; killed in action at the storming of the city of Mexico, 13 September, 1847, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1830. He was assistant instructor of infantry tactics there in 1830-'2, was engaged in the Florida War and the Canada border disturbances, and as captain of artillery in the occupation of Texas in 1846, served through the Mexican War, distinguished himself at Contreras, where he recaptured two field-pieces taken from his regiment at Buena Vista, and fell at the assault on the city of Mexico after he had entered the Belen gate while directing the fire of a gun he had captured. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 233-234.
DUANE, James Chatham, military engineer, born in Schenectady, New York, 30 June, 1824. He was graduated at Union College in 1844, and at the U. S. Military Academy in 1848. From 1848 till 1854 he served with the Engineer Corps, and as assistant instructor at West Point. He was then employed in the construction of fortifications till 1856, was light-house inspector at New York in 1856-'8, commanded the engineer company in the Utah Expedition of 1858, and was afterward instructor of engineering at the Military Academy till the beginning of the Civil War. He was stationed at Fort Pickens, Florida, in 1861. During the winter following he organized engineer equipage for the Army of the Potomac, went to Harpers Ferry in February, 1862, to bridge the Potomac, commanded the engineer battalion at the siege of Yorktown, constructed bridges across Chickahominy and White Oak Swamps, was engaged at Gaines's Mill on 27 June, 1862, and in the subsequent operations of the Peninsular Campaign made roads, field-works, and bridges, notably one 2,000 feet long across the Chickahominy. In the Maryland Campaign he served as chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, and was engaged at South Mountain and Antietam. In 1863, as chief engineer of the Department of the South, he took part in the attack on Fort McAllister, Georgia, and in operations against Charleston. From 15 July, 1863, he was again attached to the Army of the Potomac, and was engaged at Manassas Gap, Rappahannock Station, the Wilderness, and Cold Harbor, and distinguished himself at the siege of Petersburg. He became captain of engineers on 6 August, 1861, major on 3 March, 1863, and was brevetted colonel on 6 July, 1864, and brigadier-general at the close of the war. From 1865 to 1868 he superintended the construction of the fort at Willet's Point, New York, receiving promotion as lieutenant-colonel on 7 March, 1867. He served subsequently as superintendent of fortifications on the coast of Maine and New Hampshire, as light-house engineer of the northeast coast, as a member of various engineer boards, and as president of the board of engineers in New York City. He was promoted colonel on 10 January, 1883, and in the autumn of 1886 was appointed chief of engineers, with the rank of brigadier-general. He has published a "Manual for Engineer Troops" (New York, 1862). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 236.
DUER, William Alexander, 1780-1858, New York City, New York, jurist, educator. President of Columbia College. Officer of the New York City auxiliary of the American colonization Society. (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 245-246; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 488; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 135)
DUER, William Alexander, jurist, born in Rhinebeck, New York, 8 Sept., 1780; died in New York, 30 May, 1858, studied law in Philadelphia, and with Nathaniel Pendleton in New York. During the quasi war with France in 1798 he obtained the appointment of midshipman in the U.S. Navy, and served under Decatur. On the adjustment of the French question, he resumed his studies with Pendleton, and was admitted to the bar in 1802. He engaged in business with Edward Livingston, who was then district attorney and mayor of New York, and, after his removal to New Orleans, formed a professional partnership with his brother-in-law, Beverley Robinson. About this time he contributed to a partisan weekly paper called the “Corrector,” conducted by Dr. Peter Irving in support of Aaron Burr. Mr. Duer shortly afterward joined Livingston at New Orleans, and studied Spanish civil law. He was successful, but, owing to the climate and to his marriage with the daughter of William Denning, a prominent whig of New York, he was induced to resume practice in the latter city. Here he contributed literary articles to the “Morning Chronicle,” the newspaper of his friend Peter Irving. He next opened an office in Rhinebeck, and in 1814 was elected to the state assembly, where he was appointed chairman of a committee on colleges and academies, and succeeded in passing a bill, which is the original of the existing law on the subject of the common-school income. He was also chairman of the committee that arranged the constitutionality of the state law vesting the right of navigation in Livingston and Fulton, and throughout his service bore a prominent pad in promoting canal legislation. He was judge of the supreme court from 1822 till 1829, when he was elected president of Columbia College, where he remained until failing health compelled him to resign in 1842. During his administration he delivered to the senior class a course of lectures on the constitutional jurisprudence of the United States (published in 1833; revised ed., 1856). He delivered a eulogy on President Monroe from the portico of the city hall. After his retirement he resided in Morristown, New Jersey, where he wrote the life of his grandfather, Lord Stirling (published by the Historical Society of New Jersey). In 1847 he delivered an address in the college chapel before the literary societies of Columbia, and in 1848 an historical address before the St. Nicholas Society, which gives early reminiscences of New York, and describes the scenes connected with the inauguration of President Washington, both of which were published. He was the author of two pamphlets addressed to Cadwallader D. Colden on the “Steam boat Controversy,” and the “Life of William Alexander, Earl of Stirling” (New York, 1847). Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888 Vol. II, pp. 245-246
DUFFIE, Alfred Nattie, soldier, born in Paris, France, 1 May, 1835; died in Cadiz, Spain, 1 November, 1880, He studied at several military academies in Paris, and was graduated at the military College of St. Cyr in 1854 as 2d lieutenant. He served in Algiers and Senegal, and in the Crimea during the war with Russia, where he was promoted to 1st lieutenant of cavalry. He afterward took part in the campaign against Austria, and gained several medals of honor. He came to the United States in 1860, accepted a captaincy in the 1st New Jersey Cavalry at the beginning of the Civil War, and was promoted major of the Harris Light Cavalry of New York. In July, 1862, he became colonel of the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry , and on 23 June, 1863, was promoted to brigadier-general of volunteers. After the war General Duffie was appointed U. S. consul in Cadiz, where he served until his death, a period of ten years. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 247-248.
DUFFIELD, William Ward, soldier, born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 19 November, 1823, was graduated at Columbia in 1842. He served in the Mexican War, was wounded at Cerro Gordo, 18 April, 1847, and also at Contreras, 20 August, 1847, while acting adjutant of the 2d Tennessee Infantry and on General Gideon J. Pillow's staff. After the close of the war he became a civil engineer. He was resident engineer of the Hudson River Railroad in 1851, chief engineer of the Oakland and Ottawa Railroad, Michigan, and located that line from Pontiac to Grand Haven; chief engineer of the Central military tract Railroad, Illinois, in 1854 (now part of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad), and built that line; division engineer of the Grand trunk Railroad, and built the line from Detroit to Port Huron. He served as lieutenant-colonel of the 4th Michigan Infantry in 1861, and was in the first battle of Bull Run. On 10 September, 1861, he was appointed colonel of the 9th Michigan Infantry. He joined General Sherman at Louisville, Kentucky, and was sent by him to occupy and fortify the pass through Muldraugh Hill, West Point, Kentucky, 22 January, 1862. He was appointed by General Buell commander of the 23d Brigade. Army of the Cumberland, 22 April, 1862, and brigadier-general and president of the examining board under the Act of Congress to test the efficiency of volunteer officers, 2 May, 1862. He overtook the Confederate forces under Colonel John Morgan at Lebanon, and captured the place after a sharp fight. He was assigned by General Buell to command all the forces in Kentucky, 8 May, 1862, and was relieved of this post on 10 September. He rejoined the 14th Corps. Army of the Cumberland, under General Thomas, and served with it until the battle of Murfreesboro, where he was disabled by two severe wounds and captured. Unable to take the field at the time required by the Act of Congress, he resigned, and was appointed chief engineer of the Hudson River Railroad. He was employed in 1869 to survey lands in Colorado, in 1871-'2 was chief engineer of the Kentucky Union Railroad, and located that line from Paris to Hazard. He was elected to the Michigan State Senate in 1880. and m 1882 was employed in surveying government land in Dakota. In 1885 he was re-appointed chief engineer of the Kentucky Union Railroad. He has published "School of Brigade and Evolutions of the Line" (Philadelphia, 1802). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 248.
DUFFIELD, Henry Martin, lawyer, born in Detroit, Michigan, 15 May, 1842, was graduated at Williams in 1861, and enlisted in that year in the 9th Michigan Infantry. He was promoted to be adjutant of his regiment and assistant adjutant of U. S. troops in Kentucky in 1862. In 1863 he was made post-adjutant of Chattanooga, and was wounded in the battle of Chickamauga while serving on the staff of General Thomas. From that date until the close of the war he was assistant provost-marshal-general of the Army of the Cumberland on General Thomas's staff. He was the orator on the occasion of the unveiling of the Garfield statue in Washington, in May. 1887. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Congress in 1870, and has been corporation counsel for Detroit since 1876. He is also president of the state military board of Michigan. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 249.
DUGANNE, Augustine Joseph Hickey, author, born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1823; died in New York, 20 October, 1884. While quite young he wrote patriotic songs and poems, which were published in newspapers and became popular. These were collected and published in a volume entitled "Hand Poems " (Boston, 1844), which had a large sale. He was one of the founders of the American or "Know-nothing" Party. During the Civil War he joined the 176th Regiment of New York Volunteers, and was commissioned colonel. He was captured by the Confederates and confined in a southern prison. After the war he resumed editorial and literary work, and became connected with the "New York Tribune." He delivered an oration on the heroic succession at the Cooper Institute (5 April, 1867) on the second anniversary of the death of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1867). His publications are "A Comprehensive Summary of General Philosophy" (1845); "The Iron Harp" (Philadelphia, 1847); "The Lydian Queen," a tragedy, produced at the Walnut street theatre, Philadelphia (1848); "MDCCCXLVIII, or the Year of the People " (1849); "Parnassus in Pillory, a Satire, by Motley Manners, Esq." (New York, 1851); "The Mission of Intellect," a poem read in New York (1852); "Art's True Mission in America" (New York, 1867); "The Gospel of Labor," a poem read in New York (1854); " Poetical Works " (Philadelphia, 1856); "A Class-Book of Government and Civil Society" (New York, 1859); "History of Governments" (1861); "The Ring of Destiny, or the Astrologer's Plot, a Tale of Ancient Days" (Boston, 1861); "Utterances" (New York, 1864); "Camps and Prisons; Twenty Months in the Department of the Gulf " (New York, 1865); " Fighting Quakers a True Story of the War for Our Union (New York, 1866); "Revised Leaves," a series of critiques on contemporary authors, published in "Sartain's Magazine, and papers upon a variety of subjects, under various pen-names, in magazines and journals. His last production was a satire on Robert G. Ingersoll, entitled " Injure Soul." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 249.
DUGAS, Louis Alexander, physician, born in Washington, Georgia, 3 January, 1806. His parents were of French ancestry, and emigrated from Santo Domingo, W. I. He was educated at home, studied medicine with Dr. John Dent, and in 1827 was graduated at the medical department of the University of Maryland. After attending lectures in Baltimore and Philadelphia, and spending several years in study in Europe, he settled in Augusta, Georgia, in 1831. In 1832 he united with five others in founding the Medical College of Georgia, in which he still holds the professorship of surgery. In 1869 the degree of LL. D. was conferred upon him by the University of Georgia. For many years he was president of the Medical Society of Augusta, and he has been president of the Medical Association of Georgia. During the Civil War he was volunteer and consulting surgeon of military hospitals. Prom 1851 till 1858 he was editor of the "Southern Medical and Surgical Journal." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 249-250.
DUMONT, Ebenezer, soldier, born in Vevay, Indiana, 23 November, 1814; died in Indianapolis, Indiana, 16 April, 1871, was educated at Indiana University, but was not graduated, and, after studying law, was admitted to the bar, and began practice in his native town. He was chosen to the legislature in 1838, where he was speaker of the house, was treasurer of Vevay County in 1839-'45, and was for many years president of the state bank. He fought in the Mexican War as lieutenant-colonel of the 4th Indiana Volunteers, distinguishing himself at the battle of Huamantla. He was an elector on the Democratic ticket in 1852, and again a member of the legislature in 1850 and 1853. At the beginning of the Civil War he became colonel of the 7th Indiana Regiment, and served with distinction in 1861 at Laurel Hill, Rich Mountain, and Carrick's Ford. He then reorganized the regiment for three years' service, and commanded it in the action of Greenbrier River on 3 October under General Reynolds. He was made brigadier-general of volunteers, 3 September, 1861, was engaged at Cheat Mountain on 12 September, and commanded the 17th brigade of the Army of the Ohio in January, 1862. He attacked and routed John Morgan at Lebanon, Kentucky, on 5 May, 1862, and in October of that year commanded the 12th Division of General Buell's army. On 28 February, 1863, he resigned his commission on account of failing health, and was elected to Congress as a unionist, serving from 1863 till 1867. General Dumont was appointed governor of Idaho a short time before his death. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 254.
DUNBAR, Reverend Duncan, 1791-1864, New York, clergyman, abolitionist. Executive Committee, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1837-1840. (Goodell, 1852, p. 188; Yellin, 1994, pp. 39, 43n; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 255)
DUNBAR, Duncan, clergyman, born in the northern highlands of Scotland about 1791; died in New York City, 28 July, 1864. When about twenty years old he moved to Aberdeen and engaged in business, occasionally preaching as a layman. He settled in the province of New Brunswick in 1817, where he became a Baptist, and was immersed in the harbor of St. John, 31 October, 1818. He was soon afterward ordained, moved to the United States in December, 1823, and held pastorates in Philadelphia and elsewhere. Most of his ministry was spent in the McDougal Street Baptist Church in New York City. He was for twenty years a member of the board of managers of the American and Foreign Bible Society. See his life by his son-in-law, Reverend Jeremiah Chaplin (New York, 1878). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 255.
DUNCAN, James, Reverend, Vevay, Indiana (near Cincinnati), clergyman, abolitionist. In 1824, he published influential anti-slavery tract, A Treatise on Slavery, in which is Shown Forth the Evil of Slaveholding, Both from the Light of Nature and Divine Revelations, 1824, which called slavery a “heinous sin.” Wrote Slaveholders Prayer, published by American Anti-Slavery Society in New York and Cincinnati in 1840. Opposed gradual emancipation laws. Said that slavery violated the Constitution. Advocated for African American citizenship. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 140-141; Sinha, 2016, pp. 176, 224)
DUNCAN, Johnson Kelly, soldier, born in York, Pennsylvania, 19 March, 1827; died in Knoxville, Kentucky, 18 December, 1862. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1849, and became 2d lieutenant in the 3d U.S. Artillery , serving in the Florida hostilities against the Seminole Indians. From 1850 till 1853 he was attached to Forts Sullivan and Preble in Maine, on garrison duty, and was then assistant on the Northern Pacific Railroad exploration till December, 1854. He resigned from the army in January. 1855. and became superintendent of repairs in New Orleans, in charge of the branch mint, marine Hospital, quarantine warehouse, and Pas a l' Outre boarding station. From 1859 till 1860 he was professionally occupied as civil engineer, surveyor, and architect in New Orleans, becoming also, in 1860, chief engineer of the board of public works of the state of Louisiana. At the beginning of the Civil War he entered the Confederate Army as colonel, but soon was appointed brigadier-general from Louisiana. He commanded Forts Jackson and St. Philip at the time of their capture by Admiral Farragut, on 25 April, 1862, and became a prisoner of war. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 256.
DUNCAN, Thomas, soldier, born in Kaskaskia, Illinois. 14 April, 1819; died in Washington, D. C, 7 January, 1887. He early became a soldier, and served as a private in the Illinois mounted volunteers in 1832, during the Black Hawk War. Subsequently he was connected for some years with military expeditions, and in 1846 was appointed from Illinois as 1st lieutenant in the U. S. Mounted Rifles, now the 3d Cavalry. He served during the war with Mexico, and was engaged in the siege and surrender of Vera Cruz. Later he was on recruiting duty, was promoted captain in March, 1848, and was on garrison duty at various posts till 1856. He was stationed with his regiment in New Mexico till 1862, had command of Fort Burgwin, Fort Massachusetts, Fort Garland, and Fort Union, participated in the Navajo Expedition of 1858, defeated the Comanche Indians in the action at Hatch's Ranch in May, 1861, and became major of his regiment in June, 1861. During the Civil War he had command of Fort Craig in New Mexico, was in charge of the cavalry forces at the battle of Valverde, N. M„ and of his regiment in the action in Albuquerque, N. M., where a portion of his skull was carried away by a cannon-ball. He was assistant provost-marshal of Iowa in 1863-'6, became lieutenant- colonel of the 5th U. S. Cavalry in July, 1866, and commanded the District of Nashville till September, 1868. He then was ordered to the Department of the Platte, was stationed successively at Fort McPherson and Fort D. A. Russell, and was afterward in charge of the construction of Sidney Barracks, till November, 1871. Failing health compelled him to obtain sick leave till January, 1873, when he was retired from active service. Colonel Duncan received several brevets, including that of brigadier-general, for his services during the Civil War. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 256.
DUNLAP, George Washington, Congressman, born near Lexington, Kentucky, 22 February, 1813; died in Lancaster, Kentucky, 6 June, 1880. He was graduated at Transylvania University in 1834, and at the law school in 1837. He began practice at Lancaster, Kentucky, in 1838, and was master commissioner of the circuit court from 1843 till 1874, was a member of the legislature in 1853, and of the famous Frankfort Border-State Convention of May, 1861, where he used his influence to avert the Civil War. He was elected to Congress as a Unionist, and served one term, in 1861-'3, voting men and money for the support of the government. He was a presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1864. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 258.
DUNLAVY, James, soldier, born in Decatur County, Indiana, 4 February, 1844. His father was a prominent Democratic politician in Indiana. He enlisted as a private in the 30th Iowa Cavalry , and in 1863 reenlisted in the 3d Iowa Cavalry , and served in Tennessee, Missouri, and Georgia till the close of the Civil War. During the battle of Mine Creek, Kansas, 25 October, 1864, when alone and wounded in one arm, he captured the Confederate General Marmaduke. After the war he entered Keokuk, Iowa, Medical College, was graduated in 1870, and is now (1887) practising his profession at Stiles, Iowa. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 259.
DUNN, Oscar James, lieutenant-governor of Louisiana, born in Louisiana in 1820; died in New Orleans, 20 November, 1871. He was born a slave, and as soon as he was old enough to do manual labor was purchased by a firm in the plastering trade, but after reaching his majority ran away from his owners. When General Butler entered New Orleans he enlisted in the first Regiment of Colored Troops raised in Louisiana, and reached a captaincy, the highest rank then permitted to his race. When an incompetent person was promoted over him to the rank of major, he resigned his commission. After the war Captain Dunn was active in promoting the reconstruction of his state. He had acquired wealth, and in 1868 became lieutenant-governor of Louisiana. John R. Lynch, then secretary of state of Mississippi, in an oration delivered at his funeral, said: "There now he before us the remains of the first colored man who ever held an executive office in this country." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 260.
DUNN, William McKee, lawyer, born in Hanover, Jefferson County, Indiana, 12 December, 1814. He was graduated at the Indiana State University in Bloomington in 1832, and was for three years principal of the preparatory department and professor of mathematics at Hanover College, Indiana. After a graduate course at Yale, where he received the degree of A. M. in 1835, he studied law, was admitted to the bar, and practised for many years in Madison, Indiana He was a member of the legislature in 1848, a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1850, and was then chosen to Congress as a Republican, serving from 1859 till 1863. When the war broke out he was offered a colonelcy by Governor Morton, and a brigadier-ship by President Lincoln, but declined both. During his second term he was chairman of the committee on patents. He was defeated in the election for the following Congress, and on 13 March, 1863, was appointed major and judge-advocate, U. S. volunteers, in the department of Missouri. On 22 Jane, 1864, he became colonel and assistant judge-advocate-general, U. S. Army, and was brevetted brigadier-general, U. S. Army, in March, 1865, for faithful, meritorious, and distinguished services in his department. On the retirement of Judge-advocate-general Holt, he was elected to the place. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia loyalists' Convention of 1866. General Dunn became judge-advocate-general, with the rank of brigadier-general, on 1 December, 1875, and on 22 January, 1881, was retired from active service. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 261.
DUNNELL, Mark Hill, Congressman, born in Buxton, Maine, 2 July, 1823. He was graduated at Waterville College (now Colby University) in 1849, and for five years was the principal of Norway and Hebron Academies. He was a member of the lower house of the Maine legislature in 1854, and in 1855 of the state senate, and from that time till 1859 was state superintendent of common schools. In 1856 he was a delegate to the National Republican Convention at Philadelphia. He began the practice of the law at Portland in 1860, served in the Union Army as colonel of the 5th Maine Infantry, and in 1862 was U. S. consul at Vera Cruz, Mexico. He moved to Minnesota in 1865, was a member of the legislature there in 1867, and in 1867-'70 was state superintendent of public instruction. He was then chosen to Congress as a Republican, and served four terms in succession, in 1871-'9. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 261.
DU PONT, Samuel Francis, naval officer, son of Victor Marie Du Pont de Ne mours. Born at Bergen Point, New Jersey, 27 September, 1803; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,23 June,1865. He was appointed a midshipman in the U.S. Navy from the state of Delaware in December, 1815, his first sea service being on the "Franklin," in the European Squadron. In 1821 he served for a year on the "Constitution," after which he was attached to the "Congress" in the West Indies and on the coast of Brazil. He was in the Mediterranean in 1824 on the "North Carolina," of which vessel he became sailing-master, four months of this cruise being spent on the "Porpoise," to which he was ordered soon after his promotion as lieutenant, 28 April, 1826. He was attached to the " Ontario" in 1829, made another three years' cruise in European waters, and from 1835 till 1838 was executive officer of the " Warren" and of the "Constellation," and commanded the "Grampus" and the "Warren" in the Gulf of Mexico. In the latter year he joined the " Ohio," the flag-ship of Commodore Hull, in the Mediterranean Squadron, his cruise ending in 1841. He was promoted commander in 1842, and sailed for China on the "Perry," but a severe illness forced him to give up his command and return home. In 1845 he was ordered to the Pacific as commander of the "Congress," the flag-ship of Commodore Stockton. When they reached California the Mexican War had begun, and Du Pont was at once assigned to the command of the "Cyane," 23 July, 1846. With this vessel he captured San Diego, took possession of La Paz, the capital of Lower California, spiked the guns of San Bias, and entered the harbor of Guaymas, burning two gun-boats and cutting out a Mexican brig under a heavy fire. These operations cleared the Gulf of California of hostile ships, thirty of which were taken or destroyed. He took part in the capture of Mazatlan under Commodore Shubrick, 11 November, 1847, leading the line of boats that entered the main harbor. On 15 February, 1848, he landed at San Jose with a naval force, and engaged a large body of Mexicans, marching three miles inland and successfully relieving Lieutenant Heywood's detachment, which was closely besieged in the Mission house and about to surrender. Later he led, or sent out, various expeditions into the interior, which co-operated with Colonel Burton and Lieutenant, (afterward General) Henry W. Halleck, who were moving southward, clearing the country of hostile troops and taking many prisoners. He was ordered home in 1848, became captain in 1855, and two years later went on special service to China in command of the "Minnesota," witnessing while there the naval operations of the French and English forces, notably their capture of the Chinese forts on the Peiho. After visiting Japan, India, and Arabia, he returned to Boston in May, 1859. Placed in command of the Philadelphia Navy-yard, 31 December, 1860, he took the most prompt and energetic measures, on his own responsibility, when communications were cut off with Washington, sending a naval force to the Chesapeake to protect the landing of troops at Annapolis. In June, 1861, he was made president of a board convened at Washington to elaborate a general plan of naval operations against the insurgent states. He was appointed flag-officer in September, and led the expedition that sailed from Norfolk in the following month, no American officer having ever commanded so large a fleet. On 7 November he successfully attacked the fortifications defending Port Royal Harbor, which were ably planned and skilfully executed. This engagement is justly regarded as one of the most brilliant achievements of naval tactics. His unarmored vessels, divided into main and flanking divisions, steamed into the harbor in two parallel columns. The flanking division, after engaging the smaller fort and driving back the enemy's ships, took position to enfilade the principal work, before which the main column, led by the flag-ship " Wabash," passed and repassed in an elliptic course, its tremendous lire inflicting heavy damage. Du Pont actively followed up his victory. Tybee was seized, giving a base for the reduction of Fort Pulaski by the army; a combined naval and military force destroyed the batteries at Port Royal ferry; the sounds and inland waters of Georgia south of the Savannah, and of the eastern coast of Florida, were occupied; St. Mary's, Fernandina, Jacksonville, and other places were captured: Fort Clinch and the fort at St. Augustine were retaken, and fourteen blockading stations were established, all thoroughly effective save that off Charleston, where the vessels at command were insufficient to cover the circuit of twenty-three miles from Bull's Bay to Stono. In recognition of his services, Du Pont received the thanks of Congress, and was appointed rear-admiral, to rank from 16 July, 1862. Toward the close of the year several armored vessels were added to his command, mostly of the monitor type, one of which destroyed the Confederate steamer "Nashville," under the guns of Fort McAllister. Being the first officer to whom the monitors had been assigned, he carefully tested their offensive powers by several attacks upon this work, on which they were unable to make any impression on account of the small number of their guns and the slowness of their fire. Assuming immediate command of his nine armored vessels, mounting thirty-two guns, Du Pont made a resolute attempt, on 7 April, 1863, to take Charleston. Unable to maneuver in the tortuous channels, filled with obstructions, that led to the harbor, the ironclads were exposed to a terrible cross-fire from a hundred guns of the heaviest calibres, and, darkness approaching, the ships were wisely withdrawn, one sinking soon afterward and five others being disabled. This action was fought pursuant to express instructions from the U.S. Navy department, its probable result not having been unforeseen by the admiral, who had given it as his opinion that the co-operation of troops was necessary to secure success. Time has fully confirmed the entire correctness of Du Pont's judgment; his able successor, with a larger force of armored ships, was no more fortunate, and Charleston only fell on the approach of Sherman's army. In June, the iron-clad ram "Atlanta" coming out of Savannah, Du Pont sent two monitors to intercept her, one of which, under Captain John Rodgers, succeeded in capturing her after a brief engagement. This was the last important incident of Admiral Du Pont's command, from which he was relieved on 5 July, 1863. During the intervals of more than twenty-five years of service at sea he was almost constantly employed on duties of importance. He was a member of the board that prepared the plan of organization for the Naval Academy, and was one of the officers that in after years revised and extended the system then adopted. He served on the light-house board, took part in two revisions of the rules and regulations for the U.S. Navy, and was a member of the naval retiring board of 1855. Admiral Du Pont was the author of various papers on professional subjects, including one on corporal punishment in the navy, and one on the use of floating batteries for coast defence, which has been republished, and is largely cited by Sir Howard Douglas in his work on naval gunnery.—Henry Algernon, soldier, son of Henry, born near Wilmington, Del., 30 July, 1838. was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy, 6 May, 1861, at the head of his class, and promoted to 2d lieutenant of the Engineer Corps. On 14 May, he was commissioned 1st lieutenant, 5th Artillery, and became captain 24 March, 1864. He was acting assistant adjutant-general of the troops in New York Harbor in 1862-'3, and commanded a battery in West Virginia from 1863 until 24 May, 1864, participating in the battle of Newmarket. As chief of artillery of that department from the latter date he commanded the artillery in engagements at Piedmont, Lexington, and Lynchburg during the spring and summer of 1864. Later in the year he took part in the battles of Cedar Creek, Halltown, Berryville, Opequan. and Fisher's Hill, in command of the artillery of Crook's Corps, being brevetted major for gallant services in the two last-mentioned engagements, and lieutenant-colonel, 19 October, 1864, for services at Cedar Creek. After the war he was a member of the board to assimilate the tactics for the three arras of the service. Colonel Du Pont resigned in March, 1875. Since 5 May, 1879, he has been president of the Wilmington and Northern Railroad Company. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 265-266.
DURKEE, Charles, senator, born in Royalton, Vermont, 5 December, 1807: died in Omaha, Neb. 14 January'. 1870. He was educated in his native town and in the Burlington Academy, after which he engaged in business, and later emigrated to the territory of Wisconsin, where he was one of the founders of Southport, now Kenosha. He was a member of the first territorial legislature of Wisconsin, held in Burlington (Iowa and Minnesota being then parts of the territory). In 1847 he was again a member of the territorial legislature, and in 1848 was elected to the first state legislature of Wisconsin. He was elected as a Free-Soiler to Congress, serving from 6 December, 1849, till 3 March, 1853, and was the first distinctive anti-slavery man in Congress from the northwest. In 1855 he was chosen as a Republican to the U. S. Senate from Wisconsin, succeeding Isaac P. Walker. He was a member of the Peace Congress in 1861, and was appointed governor of Utah in 1865, holding that office until failing health compelled him to resign. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 272-273.
DURYEE, Abram, soldier, born in New York City, 29 April, 1815. He is of Huguenot descent, and his grandfather served in the Revolutionary war, being at one time a prisoner in the old sugar-house on Liberty Street. His father and two of his uncles served as officers in the war of 1812. Young Duryee was graduated at the Crosby street high school, and trained to mercantile life, accumulating a fortune as a mahogany merchant in New York. He entered the New York state militia in 1833, and served in the 142d Regiment. Five years later he joined the 27th Regiment (now the 7th) as a private, and rose gradually until he became its colonel in 1849, holding that, office for fourteen years. During the Astor place riots he commanded his regiment, and was twice wounded, and he also participated in the subsequent police, city hall, sixth ward, and " dead-rabbit " riots with the 7th. In April, 1861, he raised in less than a week the 5th New York Volunteers, a regiment best known as "Duryee's Zouaves." His command was engaged at Big Bethel, the first battle of the war, and after the fight he was made acting brigadier-general, superseding General E. W. Pierce. In August, 1861, he received his commission as brigadier-general and was given command of a brigade in General James B. Ricketts's division. He participated in the battles of Cedar Mountain, Thoroughfare Gap, second Bull Run, and Chantilly, and with the Army of the Potomac was at South Mountain and Antietam, where he commanded General Ricketts's division when the latter succeeded General Hooker as corps commander. He then obtained a short leave of absence, and on his return to the army found that his brigade had been given to an inferior in rank. His claims for the old position were ignored, and in consequence he resigned in January, 1863. At the close of the war he received the brevet of major- general. Subsequently he was elected colonel of the 71st Regiment, and brigadier-general of the 4th New York Brigade, but both of these honors he declined. Besides his own regiment, the 165th (2d Duryee Zouaves) and the 4th Regiments in the national guard bore his name. In 1873 he was appointed police commissioner in New York City, which office he held for many years. At the time of the communistic gathering in Tompkins Square during January, 1874, with a small force of police he attacked the crowd, captured their banners, and drove them from the square. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 273-274.
DUTTON, Arthur Henry, soldier, born in Wallingford, Connecticut, 15 November, 1838; died in Baltimore, Maryland, 2 July, 1864. He was graduated at West Point in the Engineer Corps in 1861. He served on the staff of General Mansfield in Washington at the beginning of the war, and then had charge of the defences of Fernandina, Florida, until he became colonel of the 21st Connecticut Regiment on 5 September, 1862. While on duty in North Carolina with his regiment, he served as chief of staff to Major-General Peek, and subsequently held a similar position upon the staff of Major-General W. P. Smith. After the battle of Drury's Bluff, in which he greatly distinguished himself, he was placed in command of the 3d brigade. While reconnoitering with his brigade in the neighborhood of Bermuda Hundred on 5 June, 1864, he came upon the enemy strongly intrenched and almost hidden from view. Being, as usual, on the skirmish line, he was mortally wounded in the beginning of the engagement. — His brother, Clarence Edward, soldier, born in Wallingford, Connecticut, 15 May, 1841, was graduated at Yale in 1860, and subsequently spent two years in study at New Haven. In 1862 he became 1st lieutenant and adjutant, and shortly afterward captain, in the 21st Connecticut Volunteers. He was engaged at Fredericksburg, Norfolk, Cold Harbor, Bermuda Hundred, and Drury's Bluff. In 1863 he was admitted to the U. S. Army as 2d lieutenant in the ordnance corps, after passing a severe competitive examination, and was promoted 1st lieutenant in March, 1867. Meanwhile he had been stationed at Watervliet Arsenal in West Troy, in 1865, and came under the influence of Robert P. Whitfield and Alexander L. Holley, who directed his attention to geology and the technology of iron. For five years his leisure was occupied in the study of these subjects, and in 1870 he read his first paper, "On the Chemistry of the Bessemer Process, before the American Association for the advancement of science, at their Troy meeting. He was transferred to the Frankford arsenal in 1870. and in 1871 to the Washington Arsenal, where he remained until May, 1876, having been promoted to captain in June, 1873. While in Washington he renewed his studies in geology and devoted considerable attention to the microscopic examination of rocks. His work was noticed by the officers of the U. S. Geological Survey, and during the summers of 1875- 7 he was detailed for duty in connection with the survey of the Rocky Mountain Region under Major John W. Powell. The winters of these years were spent in the west as chief ordnance officer of the Department of the Platte. In 1878 he was ordered to report to the Secretary of the Interior, and subsequently was associated with the U. S. Geological Survey, being in 1887 geologist in charge of the division of volcanic geology. His work on the geology of the high plateaus of central Utah was begun in 1875 and completed in 1877, and that in the Grand Canyon District was finished in 1880. In 1882 he visited the Hawaiian Islands for the purpose of examining the volcanoes, and then made a special study of the great volcanic fields of the northwest. He began the examination of the Mount Taylor and Zuni District of New Mexico in 1884, and in 1885 began an investigation of the cascade and coast ranges of Northern California and Oregon, on which he is now (1887) still occupied. In 1886 he was employed for a short time in studying the causes of the Charleston earthquake, concerning which he prepared a monograph. Captain Dutton is a member of several scientific societies, and in 1884 was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Besides upward of fifty articles on scientific subjects, he has published the following government reports: "Geology of the High Plateaus of Utah" (Washington, 1880); "Tertiary History of the Grand Canon District" (1882); "Physical "Geology of the Grand Canon District" (1882); Hawaiian Volcanoes" (1884); and "Mount Taylor and the Zuni Plateau" (1886). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 276.
DUVAL, Isaac Hardin, soldier, born in Wellsburg, Brooke County, Virginia, 1 September, 1824. He received a common-school education, was many years a hunter in the Rocky mountains, commanded the first company that crossed the plains from Texas to California, and travelled in Mexico and Central and South America. In 1846-'7 he was secretary to the commissioners sent by President Polk to treat with the Indians on the Texas frontier. On 1 May, 1861, he entered the U. S. volunteer service as major of the 1st West Virginia Infantry. He was promoted colonel on 1 September, 1862, brigadier-general on 1 November, 1864, assigned to the command of the 1st Division of the 8th Army Corps, and made major-general by brevet at the end of the war. He was two years in the Senate of West Virginia, two years adjutant-general of the state, and in 1868 was elected as a Republican to Congress, serving one term. He was appointed assessor of internal revenue in 1871, and was collector for the first District of West Virginia in 1873-'5. He subsequently followed the insurance business, and in 1886 was elected to the legislature. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 277.
DWIGHT, Theodore, 1764-1846, Massachusetts, lawyer, author, editor, poet. Opposed slavery. Gave noteworthy anti-slavery speech at Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, May 8, 1794. He opposed the tree-fifths clause of the Constitution. He stated, “Enjoying no rank in the community, and possessing no voice, either in elections or legislation, the slaves are bro’t into existence in the Constitution of the United States, merely to afford opportunity for a few more of their masters, to tyrannize over their liberties.” Dwight called for immediate abolition of slavery. His brother was abolitionist Timothy Dwight. (American National Biography, 2002, Vol. 7, p. 189; Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Vo. 3, Pt. 1, p. 569; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. )
DWIGHT, Theodore, journalist, born in Northampton, Massachusetts, 15 Dec., 1764; died in New York City, 12 June, 1846, studied law in New Haven with his cousin, Judge Pierrepont Edwards, and began practice at Haddam, Connecticut, but moved to Hartford in 1791, and became eminent in his profession. He at one time moved to New York to become the law-partner of his cousin, Aaron Burr, but disagreed with the latter's political opinions and returned to Hartford, where he edited the “Courant” and the “Connecticut Mirror,” the organ, in that state, of the Federal Party, in which he had become prominent. He was also an active member of a club of young poets known as “the Hartford wits,” and is said to have been a principal contributor to the “Political Greenhouse” and the “Echo.” In 1806 he was chosen to Congress to fill the vacancy caused by John Cotton Smith's resignation, serving till 3 March, 1807, and declining a renomination. While in Congress he had several sharp passages of wit with John Randolph. He was a member of the state council in 1809-'15, and secretary of the celebrated “Hartford Convention” of 1814. In 1815 he moved to Albany and established the “Daily Advertiser,” but relinquished it after two years, to found the New York “Daily Advertiser,” a journal which he conducted until 1836, when, retiring from active life, he moved to Hartford, but returned to New York three years before his death. Mr. Dwight was a brilliant writer as well as able debater. Although he wrote too much and too rapidly for lasting fame, his political articles were bright and spicy, and his satirical and sketchy “New Year's Verses,” in the “Mirror,” were always looked for with eagerness. Mr. Dwight was a man of unflinching integrity and an outspoken opponent of slavery. In person he was tall and fine-looking. He published a “History of the Hartford Convention” (New York, 1833), and “Character of Thomas Jefferson, as exhibited in his own Writings” (Boston, 1839). The latter is written with a strong Federal bias. An outline of this “Life and Writings” was published by the New York Historical Society (1846), and a sketch of his character by Dr. Francis appeared subsequently under its auspices. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol.
DWIGHT, Theodore, 1796-1866, Connecticut, abolitionist, author, reformer, son of Theodore Dwight, 1764-1846. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 47, 113; Locke, 1901, pp. 93, 103f, 103n, 126, 151, 155, 166, 170, 171, 178, 183; Mason, 2006, pp. 31, 86, 147, 225, 229, 293-294n157; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 570; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 7, p. 195)
DWIGHT, Theodore, author, born in Hartford, Connecticut, 3 March, 1796; died in Brooklyn, New York, 16 October, 1866, was graduated at Yale in 1814, and began to study theology with his uncle, President Dwight, but illness forced him to abandon it in 1818, and he visited Europe for his health. He moved to Brooklyn in 1833, and engaged in various public and philanthropic enterprises, becoming a director of many religious and educational societies, and being active from 1826 till 1854 in multiplying and perfecting Sunday-schools. In 1854-'8 he engaged with George Walter in a systematic effort to send Free-Soil settlers to Kansas, and it is estimated that, directly or indirectly, they induced 9,000 persons to go thither. Mr. Dwight was a prolific writer, and at various times was on the editorial staff of the New York “Daily Advertiser,” his father's paper, the “American Magazine,” the “Family Visitor,” the “Protestant Vindicator,” the “Christian Alliance,” the “Israelite Indeed,” and the “New York Presbyterian,” of which he was at one time chief editor and publisher. In his later years he was employed in the New York custom-house. Mr. Dwight was familiar with six or eight languages. At the time of his death, which was the result of a railroad accident, he was translating educational works into Spanish, for introduction into the Spanish-American countries. He published “A Tour in Italy in 1821” (New York, 1824); “New Gazetteer of the United States,” with William Darby (Hartford, 1833); “President Dwight's Decisions of Questions discussed by the Senior Class in Yale College in 1813-'4” (New York, 1833); “History of Connecticut” and “The Northern Traveller” (1841); “Summer Tour of New England” (1847); “The Roman Republic of 1849” (1851); “The Kansas War; or the Exploits of Chivalry in the 19th Century” (1859); and the “Autobiography of Gen. Garibaldi,” edited (1859). He was also the author of numerous educational works. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol.
DWIGHT, Timothy, 1752-1817, New Haven, Connecticut, anti-slavery writer, educator, clergyman. Pastor, Congregational Church at Greenfield Hill. President of Yale, 1795-1817. Member of the American Colonization Society Committee in New Haven. Condemned slavery and its brutality in his writings and poetry. Wrote Greenfield Hill against slavery. In 1790, Dwight co-founded the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and Relief of Persons Unlawfully Held in Bondage. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 77, 87; Mason, 2006, pp. 52, 102, 220, 266nn80-81; Sinha, 2016, pp. 45, 58, 106, 107, 109; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 281-282; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 7, p. 192; National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, Vol. 1; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 86)
Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
DWIGHT, Timothy, educator, b in Northampton, Massachusetts, 14 May, 1752; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 11 Jan., 1817. He was the great-grandson of Nathaniel, who was brother to Capt. Henry Dwight, of Hatfield (see DWIGHT, JOSEPH). His father, Maj. Timothy Dwight (Yale, 1744), was a lawyer by education, and became a prosperous merchant of Northampton; his mother was Mary, third daughter of the Reverend Jonathan Edwards, a lady of great mental ability and force of character. During the boy's earlier years she devoted herself to his education. At twelve he was sent to the Reverend Enoch Huntingdon's school in Middletown, where he was fitted for college, matriculating at Yale in 1765. He was graduated in 1769, having but one rival in scholarship, Nathan Strong. After leaving college he was principal of the Hopkins grammar-school in New Haven for two years. In the autumn of 1771 he was given the post of tutor in his alma mater, and in the same year began his ambitious epic, “The Conquest of Canaan.” He was made M. A. in 1772, and on taking his degree delivered a dissertation on the “History, Eloquence, and Poetry of the Bible,” which attracted much attention. While a tutor, he studied law, with the intention of adopting it as a profession; but in 1777, there being a great dearth of chaplains in the Continental army, he was licensed to preach, and soon afterward became chaplain in Parsons's brigade, of the Connecticut line. While holding this office he wrote several stirring patriotic songs, one of which, “Columbia,” became a general favorite. His father's sudden death in 1778 recalled him to the care of his widowed mother and her family, with whom he remained at Northampton, Massachusetts, five years, tilling the farm and preaching occasionally in the neighboring churches. He also kept a day-school for both sexes, in which Joel Barlow, the poet, was a teacher; and after the capture of New Haven by the British he had under his care several of the students of Yale. In 1782 he was a member of the Massachusetts legislature, but refused a nomination to Congress. Receiving a call from the church at Greenfield Hill, a beautiful rural parish in Fairfield, Connecticut, he moved thither in 1783; and shortly afterward he established an academy, which soon acquired a national reputation, students being attracted from all parts of the country and from the West Indies. In this school Dr. Dwight became the pioneer of higher education for women, assigning his female students the same advanced studies as those pursued by the boys, and earnestly advocating the practice. The College of New Jersey gave him the degree of S. T. D. in 1787, and Harvard that of LL. D. in 1810. In 1799 he declined a call from the Dutch Reformed Church at Albany. During this period he proposed and agitated, until he secured, the union of the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches of New England. In 1795, on the death of Dr. Stiles, he was called to the presidency of Yale College, an office which he held until his death in 1817. On this long and successful administration of the affairs of Yale College Dr. Dwight's claims to distinction largely rest. When he assumed control there were but 110 students; the curriculum was still narrow and pedantic; the freshmen were in bondage to the upper-class men, and they in turn to the faculty. President Dwight abolished the primary-school system, and established among the class-men, and between them and the faculty, such rules as are usually observed by gentlemen in social intercourse. He introduced the study of oratory into the curriculum, and himself gave lectures on style and composition. He also abolished the system of fines for petty offences. At his death the number of students had increased to 313. In politics he was a federalist of the Hamilton school, and he earnestly deprecated the introduction of French ideas of education. His published works fill thirteen large octavo volumes, and his unpublished manuscripts would fill almost as many more. While he was a tutor in college, imprudence in the use of his eyes had so weakened them that he could use them neither for study nor writing, and he was afterward obliged to employ an amanuensis very frequently. His most ambitious work was his epic, The Conquest of Canaan.” A critic, writing in the “North American Review” (vii., 347), said its author had invented a medium between absolute barbarism and modern refinement. “There is little that is really distinctive, little that is truly oriental, about any of his persons or scenes…. It is occasionally animated, and in description sometimes picturesque and poetical.” His pastoral poem, “Greenfield Hill” (1794), in which was introduced a vivid description of the burning of Fairfield by the British in 1779, was much more popular. In 1800 he revised Watts's Psalms, adding translations of his own, and a selection of hymns, both of which were adopted by the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church. The best known of these is the version of the 137th Psalm, beginning, “I love thy kingdom, Lord, the house of thine abode.” His “Travels in New England and New York” (4 vols., New Haven, 1821; London, 1823) was pronounced by Robert Southey the most important of his works. His “Theology Explained and Defended in a Course of 173 Sermons” (5 vols., Middletown, Connecticut, 1818; London, 1819; new ed., with memoir by his son, Reverend Sereno E. Dwight, New York, 1846) has gone through a score of editions in this country and at least one hundred abroad, and on it rests his reputation as a theologian. Besides these works and numerous discourses he published “America, a Poem” (1772; “The Genuineness and Authenticity of the New Testament” (1793); “Triumph of Infidelity, a Satire” (1797); “Discourse on the Character of Washington” (1800); “Observations on Language” (1816); and “Essay on Light” (1816). See, besides, the memoir by his son, and the life in vol. xiv. of Sparks's “American Biography,” by Reverend William B. Sprague. Dr. Dwight married, in March, 1777, Mary, daughter of Benjamin Woolsey, of Long Island, who bore him eight sons. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 281-282.
Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:
This eminent divine was born of reputable parents, in Northampton, Massachusetts, in the year 1752. His mother was a daughter of the celebrated metaphysician and theologian, President Edwards, and is said to have inherited much of the uncommon powers of her father. She early perceived the promise of superior genius in her son, and cherished its progressive developments with all a mother’s fondness. His advancement in learning, while almost in his infancy, was wonderfully rapid; and we are told by his biographers, that at the age of six years he studied through Lilly’s Latin grammar twice, without the knowledge of his father. When he had just passed his thirteenth year, he was admitted a member of Yale College, and he went through his collegiate course with great credit. Immediately after graduating, he opened a grammar school in New Haven, which he continued for two years, when he was chosen a tutor in the college. During the period he was occupied with his school, he made a regular division of his time, devoting six hours of the day to his pupils, and eight hours to his private studies. He was for six years a tutor in the college, and was a laborious and successful teacher. So popular was he with the students, that on his resignation, and when only twenty-five years of age, a petition was presented by them to the corporation of the college, soliciting his appointment to the presidency. In directing his private studies at this time, he turned his attention more particularly to rhetoric and belles lettres, which had been but little cultivated in our seminaries previous to the revolution, and his early productions in prose and verse, in conjunction with those of Trumbull, Humphreys, and Barlow, formed an era in American literature.
In 1771 he commenced writing the “Conquest of Canaan,” a regular epic poem, which employed his leisure hours until 1774, when it was completed. On receiving the degree of Master of Arts, in 1772, he pronounced an oration on the history, eloquence, and poetry of the Bible, which was published in this country and in England. In order to economize his time at this period, and to avoid the necessity of exercise, he restricted himself to certain abstemious rules in diet, which, in the end, greatly impaired his health, and he was at length reluctantly compelled to lay aside his books. His physician recommended the daily use of severe bodily exercise, which he had endeavored to forego, and it is said, that during a twelvemonth he walked and rode upwards of five thousand miles, besides resuming, no doubt, that good old system of living to which he had been accustomed. The result, in a short time, was the complete restoration of his health, which continued good for the ensuing forty years of his life, and until he was attacked by his last illness.
In 1777 the different classes in the college were separated on account of the war, and he repaired, with his class, to Weathersfield, in Connecticut, where he remained from May to September. During this summer he was licensed to preach as a Congregational minister. In September he was nominated a chaplain in the army, and immediately joined the brigade of General Parsons, in the Massachusetts line. While in the army he wrote several patriotic songs, which were much admired and widely circulated.
In 1778 he received the melancholy tidings of the death of his father, upon which he resigned his situation in the army, and returned to Northampton, to assist his widowed mother in the education and support of her family. Here he remained about five years, laboring on the farm during the week, and preaching every Sabbath in one of the neighboring towns, besides establishing a school, which was largely patronized. During this period he was twice elected a member of the legislature of Massachusetts.
In 1783 he was ordained a minister in the parish of Greenfield, in Connecticut. Besides attending to his parochial duties, he also opened an academy here, which soon acquired a reputation then unequalled in our country; and in the course of twelve years, he taught more than one thousand scholars in the various branches of English and classical literature. During his residence at Greenfield he published the “Conquest of Canaan,” for which, at the close of the war, he had obtained a list of three thousand subscribers. He however withheld its publication at that time, and now printed it at his own expense. It was shortly afterwards republished in England, and received the approbation of Darwin and Cowper, the former, particularly, commending the smoothness and melody of the versification. There are many splendid passages in this poem, and if it was not popular with all classes of readers, something may, doubtless, be attributed to the theme; and although the author himself declared in after life that “it was too great an undertaking for inexperienced years,” still, it must be considered an extraordinary production for a youth of twenty-two.”
In 1794 he published his poem entitled “Greenfield Hill,” named after the beautiful spot where he resided.
In 1795 he was elected president of Yale College, on the death of President Styles. On his accession to this office, he found the college in a depressed state, owing to the want of funds and other causes; but his distinguished reputation as an instructer brought to it a great increase of students, and he soon succeeded in establishing two new professorships, and in greatly extending the library and philosophical apparatus. He not only enlarged the sphere of instruction, but changed the whole system of government of the college, while he reformed the modes and elevated the tone of education, directing the students to a loftier aim in literary and moral improvement. The effects were soon abundantly visible, and Yale College has ever since ranked with the first institutions of learning in our country. During the twenty-one years he presided over it, a greater number of students were educated there than in any other similar institution.
In 1796 he commenced a regular course of travelling through New England and the state of New York, which he continued during the spring and fall vacations in each succeeding year, until a short time before his death. In these excursions, undertaken principally for the purposes of health, and of relaxation from his sedentary duties in the college, he was in the habit of making brief notes, upon the spot, of every thing interesting which he saw or heard, for the immediate gratification of his family; and these notes were afterwards written out by him, or to his dictation, by an amanuensis, and have been published since his death, under the title of “Travels in New England and New York,” in four volumes octavo. This work contains a mass of useful and interesting information upon a great variety of topics, with amusing anecdotes and graphic sketches of scenery and character. A most valuable portion of it is its historical notices of the origin and customs of the aborigines of our country. He also left behind him, ready for the press, a complete system of divinity, contained in one hundred and seventy-three discourses or lectures, which formed his course in the college as professor of theology, and which have been published, both in England and this country, under the title of “Theology Explained and Defended.” He continued the active performance of his duties until near the close of his life, and heard the recitation of a theological class a week before his death. During his illness, which continued about two years, he occasionally occupied himself in poetical composition, to divert his mind from his painful sufferings. Four days previous to his death, he performed the last of his literary and earthly labors; and as he laid his manuscript aside, which was a theological dissertation, he said to his family, “I have now finished.” He died at his residence in New Haven, January 11th, 1817, after severe and repeated attacks of his disease, the character of which, it is said, was not well understood.
In this brief sketch, it is not to be expected that full justice can be done to the character of President DWIGHT. We shall endeavor, however, to present our own views of it, derived from personal knowledge, and the observations of others, who have written his biography. As poetry did not form the business of his life, but was written merely as a mode of literary relaxation, there have been those among us who surpassed him in this department of literature, and as a poet, therefore, we do not ask for him the highest meed of praise. His mind, perhaps, was too logical and argumentative, his train of thought too methodical, and his memory too retentive of facts and details, and too much engrossed with them, to leave room for the display of that brilliant fancy which the highest flights of poetry require. His stronger mental powers he had subjected to a severe discipline from early youth, and we suspect that the philosophy of Bacon and Locke had always more charms for him than the music of the Doric reed. Still, some of his smaller poetical pieces are extremely beautiful.
But the fame of Dr. DWIGHT was not built upon his poetry, and does not rest upon it. As an instructer, he stood pre-eminent among his contemporaries, from the opening of his grammar school in New Haven, while a mere youth, to the close of his career as president of Yale College. He early made innovations upon previous methods of instruction, which were dictated by his powerful and original genius, and they were attended with signal success, as many who now occupy high places amongst us can bear witness. The art of the pedagogue, under his hands, expanded into a noble vocation, which commanded respect and veneration, and elevated science and literature in our country to a rank which, before his time, they had not attained. Over his pupils he exercised an unbounded influence, which was cemented in affection; and his unwearied efforts at all times were, to pour into their minds that ripe knowledge, which it had been the whole business of his life to treasure up from study, meditation, and a familiar intercourse with the world. He was versed in almost every subject of science and art, and besides his own peculiar and professional studies, he had acquired inexhaustible treasures in natural philosophy, chemistry, history, geography, statistics, philology, husbandry, and domestic economy; and which were so methodically arranged in his mind, as to be always at command, and when he became animated in discourse, were poured forth from his lips in a perpetual stream of knowledge arid wisdom.
Dr. DWIGHT’S colloquial powers were very great, and no one who had the pleasure of listening to his conversation ever failed to be impressed with a high opinion of his great attainments, and a profound respect for his character, which was heightened by his polished and courteous address. To strangers he was urbane and affable, and among the friends of his fireside, he intermingled, in his social converse, flashes of wit with practical wisdom, the utile cum dulci, in the most fascinating degree. His temper was ardent, but his heart was full of kindness, and probably no husband, father, or friend, was ever more beloved than he was by those to whom he stood in these relations. To them his loss was irreparable, and a whole community sympathized in their sorrows. His memory was a storehouse of anecdotes upon all subjects, which he had been industriously collecting from books, and a long and attentive observation of mankind; and little of what he had once learned was afterwards forgotten. Hence his society was greatly courted, and the attentions which he uniformly received from all classes of his fellow citizens, were richly repaid by the instruction and pleasure which his conversation afforded.
As a theologian he stood at the head of his profession, at the time of his death, and was inferior in learning to none of his predecessors, if we except, perhaps, his maternal grandfather, President Edwards. As a proof of the correctness of this high praise, we confidently refer to his voluminous theological works, and the criticisms which have been pronounced upon them, both at home and abroad. He was an eloquent preacher, and although his discourses were addressed to the understanding rather than the passions of his hearers, who were statedly the members of the college, yet, when the subject admitted of oratorical display, he showed himself equal to the highest efforts of the art. His sublime conceptions of the Deity, especially of the divine attributes of love and mercy, on which he delighted to dwell, when embodied in his powerful and impressive language, were only second to those of the great English epic poet; while in touches of pathos, particularly in his funeral discourses, or over the premature grave of youthful genius, he opened a direct and easy avenue to the stoutest heart, and his appeals were irresistible. His voice was clear, distinct, and loud, and its inflections, although few, were musical and agreeable; the only defect in his elocution was, too marked and frequent an emphasis, and too little variety in his tones; but his manner was dignified, earnest, and impressive, evincing sincere and ardent piety, and a feeling heart. The effect of his eloquence was enhanced by his fine personal appearance, graceful gestures, and an eye of fire.
In his intercourse with his fellow men and his “walk with God,” he was every thing which the most devout Christian or rigid moralist could desire; and when he expired, our country was bereaved of a great and good man, and learning and religion sustained a loss not easily to be supplied.
Source: National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 1839, Vol. 1.
DWIGHT, William, soldier, grandson of Edmund's brother Jonathan, born in Springfield, Massachusetts, 14 July, 1831. attended a military school at West Point in 1846-9, and was at the U. S. Military Academy there in 1849-'53, but resigned before he was graduated and became a manufacturer in Boston, and afterward in Philadelphia. He was commissioned captain in the 13th U. S. Infantry on 14 May, 1861, and in June of that year became lieutenant-colonel of the 70th New York Volunteers, of which Daniel E. Sickles was colonel. At the battle of Williamsburg half the regiment were killed or wounded, Colonel Dwight being wounded three times and left for dead on the field. For his gallantry on this occasion he was promoted to brigadier-general of volunteers on 29 November, 1862, and assigned to the 1st Brigade of Grover's Division, which he led in the attack on Port Hudson. He also served on the commission to settle the terms of surrender of that place. In May, 1864, he was General Banks's chief of staff in the Red River Expedition, succeeding Charles P. Stone, and in July of that year was put in command of the 1st Division of the 19th Army Corps, under Sheridan, with which he rendered important service at Winchester, Fisher's Hill, and Cedar Creek. He remained in the army till 15 January, 1866, and subsequently moved to Cincinnati. Ohio. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 280.
DWIGHT, Wilder, soldier, born in Springfield, Massachusetts, 23 April, 1833; died in Boonsborough, Maryland. 19 September, 1862, was graduated at Harvard in 1853, and at the law-school in 1855. He practised in Boston from 1857 till 24 May, 1861, when he became major of the 2d Massachusetts Infantry. He distinguished himself in General Banks's retreat through the Shenandoah Valley, and was taken prisoner at Winchester on 25 May, 1862. He was made lieutenant-colonel on 13 June, 1862, was mortally wounded at Antietam, and died in hospital two days later. His " Life and Letters " were published by" his mother, Elizabeth Amelia, daughter of Daniel Appleton White, of Salem, Massachusetts (Boston, 1868). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 280-281.
DYE, William McEntyre, soldier, born in Pennsylvania about 1832. He was appointed from Ohio to the U. S. Military Academy, where he was graduated in 1853, served in the 8th U.S. Infantry on frontier and garrison duty, was promoted 1st lieutenant in 1850, and captain, 14 May, 1861. After being employed on mustering and recruiting service he became colonel of the 20th Iowa Regiment, 25 August, 1862, served in Missouri and Arkansas in 1862-'3, receiving the brevet of major for gallantry at Vicksburg, and led a brigade in the Red River Campaign of 1864, for which he was brevetted lieutenant-colonel on 28 May. He commanded a brigade at Mobile Bay in September, and, after taking part in several expeditions, was acting assistant provost-marshal-general of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Dakota in 1865. He was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers. 13 March, 1865, for services during the war, and colonel in the regular army on 9 April for gallantry in the Mobile Campaign. He was promoted major of the 4th U.S. Infantry, 14 January, 1866, served in various garrisons, and on 30 September, 1870. was honorably discharged at his own request. He entered the Egyptian service late in 1873, and served as assistant to the chief of staff in the Abyssinian Expedition, where he was wounded. On its return he was charged by an Egyptian officer with assault and battery, and was to have been court-martialed, but his resignation was accepted before the trial. He subsequently received $5,000 from the Egyptian government in compensation for his wound, and afterward returned to this country. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 284.
DYER, Alexander Brydie, soldier, born in Richmond, Virginia, 10 January, 1815; died in Washington, D. C., 20 May, 1874. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1837, served in garrison at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, in the Florida War of 1837-'8, and on ordnance duty at various arsenals in 1838-'46, was chief of ordnance of the army invading New Mexico in 1846-'8, during a part of which time he was on the staff of General Sterling Price, and was engaged at Canada, Taos, where he was wounded 4 February, 1847, and Santa Cruz de Rosales, Mexico, receiving for his services the brevets of 1st lieutenant and captain. He was afterward in command of North Carolina Arsenal. At the beginning of the Civil War Captain Dyer was active in promoting the efficiency of the ordnance department. He invented the Dyer projectile for cannon. He was in command of the Springfield armory in 1861-4, and greatly extended the manufacture of small-arms for the army. In 1864, as Chief of Ordnance, U. S. Army, he was placed in charge of the ordnance bureau in Washington, D. C, with the rank of brigadier-general, and he retained this office till his death. In March, 1865, he was brevetted major-general, U. S. Army, for faithful, meritorious, and distinguished services. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 285.
DYER, Charles Volney, Dr., 1808-1878, Clarendon, Vermont, abolitionist, jurist, businessman, Underground Railroad activist. Co-founded Chicago chapter of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1838 with Philo Carpenter. Station master on the Underground Railroad. Gubernatorial candidate with Liberty Party in 1848. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 285; Campbell, 2009)
DYER, Charles Volney, Abolitionist, born in Clarendon, Vermont, 12 June, 1808; died at Lake View, near Chicago, 24 April, 1878. He was graduated at the medical department of Middlebury College in 1830, and began practice in Newark, New Jersey, in 1831, but moved in 1835 to Chicago, and soon became acting surgeon in Fort Dearborn. He was successful in his practice and business adventures, retiring from the former in 1854, and becoming agent for the " Underground Railroad " in Chicago. One instance illustrates the courage of Dr. Dyer: In 1846 a fugitive from Kentucky was caught in Chicago by his master and an armed posse, bound tightly with ropes, and guarded while a man went for a blacksmith to rivet the manacles that were to be put upon him. Dr. Dyer, hearing of the arrest, went hurriedly to the Mansion House and to the room where the victim was confined, burst open the door, cut the cords, and told the fugitive to go, which he did before his captors recovered from their surprise and bewilderment at such unexpected and summary proceedings. A bully, with brandishing Howie-knife, rushed toward the doctor, who stood his ground and knocked down his assailant with his cane. Sympathizing friends subsequently presented the doctor a gold-headed hickory cane of gigantic proportions, appropriately inscribed, which is now in the library of the Chicago Historical Society. At an anti-slavery convention in 1846 at Chicago, Dr. Dyer was chairman of the committee for establishing the " National Era" at Washington, an organ of the Abolition Party, established 7 January, 1847. Dr. Dyer had a genial nature, which manifested itself in ready witticisms and pleasant conversation, except when he chanced to come in contact with shams, impostors, or hypocrites, for which he had a most profound contempt and abundant words to express his detestation. In recognition of Dr. Dyer's sterling integrity and the great service he had rendered the cause of anti-slavery. President Lincoln, who knew him well, appointed him in 1863 judge of the mixed court at Sierra Leone, for the suppression of the slave trade, after which appointment he passed two years travelling in Europe. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 285
DYER, David Patterson, lawyer, born in Henry County, Virginia, 12 February, 1838. He moved to Missouri in 1841, and was educated at the common schools and at St. Charles College, studied law at Bowling Green, and was admitted to the bar in March, 1859. He was elected district prosecuting attorney in 1860, and in 1862-'5 was a member of the legislature. He recruited and commanded the 49th Regiment of Missouri Volunteer Infantry during a part of the Civil War, participated in the campaigns against Mobile in 1865, and in 1866 was chosen secretary of the state senate. He was a delegate to the Chicago National Republican Convention in 1868, and in the same year was elected to Congress from Missouri, serving on the committees on territories and agriculture, and was U. S. attorney for the eastern District of Missouri in 1875-'6. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 285.
