Encyclopedia of Civil War Biography - E
EADS, James Buchanan, engineer, born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, 23 May, 1820; died in Nassau, N. P., Bahama Islands, 8 March, 1887. He early showed a great interest in machinery, and at the age of ten constructed models of saw-mills, fire-engines, steamboats, and other machines. In 1833 he settled in St. Louis, where, besides being variously employed, he acquired considerable knowledge of civil engineering and cognate subjects. He constructed a diving-bell boat in 1842 to recover the cargoes of sunken steamers, and soon afterward designed larger boats, with novel and powerful machinery, for pumping out the sand and water, and lifting the entire hull and cargo. Many valuable steamers were set afloat and restored to usefulness by his methods. He disposed of his interests in these inventions in 1845, and then established in St. Louis the first glass-works west of the Ohio River. In 1866 he made a proposition to Congress to keep the channels of the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Arkansas Rivers clear of snags, wrecks, and other obstructions for a term of years, but this offer was not accepted. In 1861 he was called to Washington and consulted by the president and his cabinet in relation to the practicability of using light iron-clad vessels on the Mississippi and its tributaries. Soon afterward he designed and constructed eight iron-clad steamers, fully equipped, within 100 days. These were employed in the capture of Fort Henry in February. 1862, a month earlier than the conflict between the "Merrimac" and " Monitor." Subsequently, in 1862, he constructed numerous other iron-clads and mortar-boats, which proved of great value in the campaigns of Grant and in the capture of Mobile by Farragut. From 1867 till 1874 he was engaged in the construction of the steel arch bridge across the Mississippi at St. Louis. The central arch of this bridge has a clear span of 520 feet, and has been pronounced the finest specimen of metal arch construction in the world. This structure ranks among the noted bridges of the world. On the completion of this enterprise, Mr. Eads turned his attention to the deepening of the Mississippi by means of jetties. His plans, which were strongly opposed by the Chief Engineers of the U. S. Army, to whom the government naturally looked for official advice, were submitted to Congress, and finally a bill was passed granting him permission to attempt the improvement of the South Pass. Four years after he began work the U. S. inspecting officer reported that the maximum depth proposed hail been secured throughout the jetty. This was a great triumph for Mr. Eads. as it was a practical demonstration of his theories. Subsequently he outlined one of the grandest plans that hydraulic engineering has ever undertaken, having for its object the extension of the deep water from the Gulf of Mexico to the mouth of the Ohio, into the very heart of the Mississippi valley. This magnificent channel was to be made permanent by practically putting an end to the caving of its" banks. In 1880 Congress reported in favor of the adoption of the jetty system, as devised by him, and appointed a commission, of which he was made a member. A large sum of money was appropriated by Congress for the work, and along a small portion of the river the improvement was constructed. Congress afterward discontinued its appropriations, but enough had been done to establish the entire practicability of the plan. More recently Mr. Eads proposed a ship-railway to be constructed across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and after failing to induce the government to attempt the execution of this work, he formed a private company, for the incorporation of which a bill was passed by the U. S. Senate in 1887. Such an undertaking was shown by him to be entirely feasible, and he considered it far more economical than a canal. It was Mr. Eads's purpose to devote the remaining energies of his life to the prosecution of this scheme. He also examined and reported upon the bar at the mouth of the St. John's River, Florida, the improvements of the Sacramento River, the Harbor of Toronto, the port of Vera Cruz, the Harbor of Tampico, the Harbor of Galveston, and the estuary and port of the Mersey, in England. Mr. Eads was president of the St. Louis Academy of Sciences for two terms, and in 1872 was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The degree of LL. D. was conferred upon him by the University of Missouri. In 1881 he addressed the British Association for the Advancement of Science at York on the improvement of the Mississippi, and also upon the Tehuantepec ship-canal. Three years later he received the Albert medal of the Society of Arts in token of its appreciation of the services he had rendered to the science of engineering. Mr. Eads was the first citizen of the United States upon whom this medal has teen conferred. Occasional technical papers on bridge construction and the application of the jetty system to rivers were contributed by him to engineering journals. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 287
EAGLE, Henry, naval officer, born in New York City, 7 April, 1801; died 26 November, 1882. His father was from Dublin, Ireland, and was major of an Irish Brigade in New York, and during the war of 1812 assisted in preparing earthworks near Fort Greene. The son entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman on 1 January, 1818, and was commissioned as a lieutenant to the West Indies in 1827. After service in Brazil and on the Pacific Coast, he was made commander in 1844, and superintended the construction of the Stevens iron battery at Hoboken, New Jersey, to which he devoted several years, acting as inspector in New York in 1846. He commanded the bomb-vessel "Etna" and a division of the squadron during the Mexican War, and was civil and military governor, and collector of the ports of Tabasco, Mexico, in 1847-8. In September, 1855, he was commissioned captain. He was the bearer of important communications from Brooklyn to Washington at the outbreak of the Civil War, volunteered for the command of the gun-boat "Monticello," made the first naval attack of the war, and silenced the guns of Sowell's Point battery, Virginia, 19 May, 1861. Subsequently he commanded the frigate " Santee," of the Gulf Blockading Squadron, and during his service a boat-expedition from that vessel captured and destroyed the privateer " Royal Yacht, in the Harbor of Galveston. Texas. He was promoted commodore in 1862, and on 1 January, 1863, was placed on the retired list. In 1864 and 1865 he was engaged as prize commissioner, and in that year became light-house inspector, which office he held for one year. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 287-288.
EARLE, John Milton, 1794-1874, Leicester, Massachusetts, businessman, abolitionist, statesman, political leader, newspaper publisher, pioneer and leader in the anti-slavery/abolitionist movement. Member of Whig and Free Soil parties. Husband of abolitionist Sarah H. Earle. (Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 347)
EARLE, Pliny, inventor, born in Leicester, Massachusetts, 17 December, 1762; died there, 19 November, 1832. He was a descendant of Ralph Earle, who, with nineteen others, successfully petitioned Charles I., in 163, for a charter to form themselves into a body-politic of Rhode Island. In 1785 he became connected with Edmund Snow in the manufacture of hand-cards for carding cotton and wool, and in 1786 he established himself in the business. Among the many obstacles encountered by Samuel Slater in the introduction into the United States of the manufacture of cotton by machinery was the difficulty of procuring card-clothing for his machines. After unsuccessful applications to several other persons, he went, in 1790, to Mr. Earle, who, although it was a new and untried work, agreed to make the cards. He succeeded, but to achieve that success he was obliged to prick the holes for the teeth with two needles fastened in a handle. This led him to the invention of the machine for pricking " twilled " cards, by which the labor of a man for fifteen hours could be performed in as many minutes. This machine was in general use for years, until it was superseded by the machine that both pricks the leather and sets the teeth. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and, apart from his inventive genius, made extensive attainments in science and literature. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 288.
EARLE, Thomas, 1796-1849, Worcester, Massachusetts, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist leader, journalist, lawyer, political leader, Philadelphia, PA. Edited Pennsylvania Freeman. Petitioned Congress to amend U.S. Constitution to compensate slaveholders in the South who freed their slaves. Earle joined the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1820, and in 1821 was a Delegate to the American Convention of Abolition Societies. As a lawyer, he represented the Society in defense of African Americans. Vice presidential candidate for abolitionist Liberty Party. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1839-1840. He actively supported Black suffrage. (Bonner, 1948; Drake, 1950, p. 149; Dumond, 1961, p. 297; Goodell, 1852, p. 471; Sinha, 2016, pp. 97, 119-120, 174, 263, 465, 470; Pennsylvania Freeman, April 23, 1840; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 288-289; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 1, p. 597; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 7, p. 231)
EARLE, Thomas, lawyer, born in Leicester, Massachusetts, 21 April, 1796; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 14 July, 1849, was educated at Leicester Academy. In 1817 he moved to Philadelphia, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits for a few years, but subsequently studied law and practised his profession. He became distinguished also as a journalist, editing in succession the "Columbian Observer," "Standard," "Pennsylvanian," and "Mechanics' Free Press and Reform Advocate." In 1837 he took an active part in calling the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania, of which he was a prominent member, and it is supposed that he made the original draft of the new constitution. He lost his popularity with the Democratic Party by advocating the extension of the right of suffrage to Negroes. He was the candidate of the liberty Party for vice-president in 1840, but the nomination was repudiated by the abolitionists, whom that party was supposed to represent. Mr. Earle subsequently took little part in political affairs. He devoted his time principally to literary work, and published an "Essay on Penal Law "; an "Essay on the Rights of States to Alter and to Annul their Charters"; "Treatise on Railroads and Internal Communications" (1830); and a" Life of Benjamin Lundy." At the time of his death he was engaged in a translation of Sismondi’s "Italian Republics," and in the compilation of a "Grammatical Dictionary of the French and the English Languages." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 288-289.
EARLE, William B., abolitionist, Worcester, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1841-51.
EARLY, Jubal Anderson, soldier, born in Franklin County, Virginia, 3 November, 1816. He was graduated at the U S. Military Academy in 1837, appointed a lieutenant of artillery, and assigned to duty at Fort, Monroe, Virginia He served in the Florida War in 1837-8, resigned from the army in July, 1838, and began the practice of law in Virginia. He served in the legislature in 1841-'2, and was commonwealth attorney in 1842-'7, and again in 1848-'52. During the Mexican War he was major of a Regiment of Virginia Volunteers, serving from January, 1847, till August, 1848, was acting governor of Monterey in May and June, 1847, and after the disbanding of the army returned to the practice of law. At the beginning of the Civil War he entered the Confederate Service as a colonel, commanded a brigade at Bull Run, and in the battle of Williamsburg, 5 May, 1862, was supposed to be mortally wounded. He was promoted brigadier-general, and in May, 1863, commanded the division that held the lines at Fredericksburg, while Lee was fighting the battle of Chancellorsville. He also commanded a division at Gettysburg. In 1864 he was ordered to the valley of the Shenandoah, where his operations were at first successful. In July he crossed the Potomac, gained the battle of Monocacy, and threatened Washington, but was obliged to retreat. Toward the end of the month a portion of his cavalry advanced into Pennsylvania as far as Chambersburg, which, by his orders, they burned. He was afterward, 19 September, defeated by Sheridan on the Opequan, and again at Fisher's Hill three days later. On 19 October, General Early surprised the National forces at Cedar Creek in the absence of General Sheridan; but the latter, having arrived in the afternoon, rallied his army and gained a decisive victory, General Early losing the greater part of his artillery and trains. In March, 1865, he was totally routed by General Custer at Waynesboro, and a few days later he was relieved by Lee from the command in the valley; that general saying in his letter, 30 March, 1865: "Your reverses in the valley, of which the public and the army judge chiefly by the results, have, I fear, impaired your influence both with the people and the soldiers, and would greatly add to the difficulties which will, under any circumstances, attend our military operations in S. W. Virginia. While my own confidence in your ability, zeal, and devotion to the cause is unimpaired, I have nevertheless felt that I could not oppose what seems to be the current opinion without injustice to your reputation and injury to the service." After the close of the war he spent some time in Europe, and on his return resumed the practice of law in Richmond. He subsequently took up his residence in New Orleans (alternately with Lynchburg), where, with General Beauregard, he became a manager of the Louisiana State Lottery. He is president of the Southern Historical Society, and has published a pamphlet entitled "A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence in the Confederate States" (Lynchburg, 1867). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 290.
EASTMAN, Seth, soldier, born in Brunswick, Maine, 24 January, 1808; died in Washington, D. C, 31 August, 1875. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1829 and assigned to the infantry. After frontier and topographical duty he was assistant teacher of drawing at West Point from 1833 to 1840, served in the Florida War in 1840-'l. and afterward on the western frontier. From 1850 to 1855 he was employed in the Bureau of the Commissioner of Indian affairs to illustrate the national work on the "History, Condition, and Future Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States" (Washington, 1850-'7). He then returned to the frontier, he was retired with the rank of lieutenant-colonel on 3 December, 1863, on account of disability from exposure in the line of duty, and on 9 August, 1866, was brevetted brigadier-general. General Eastman was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1838. He was the author of a "Treatise on Topographical Drawing" (1837). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 292.
EASTON, Langdon Cheves, soldier, born in St. Louis, Missouri, 10 August, 1814; died in New York City, 29 April, 1884. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1838, and was assigned to the 6th U.S. Infantry. He was promoted to be 1st lieutenant, 23 July, 1839, and held the commission till 15 April, 1851, becoming assistant quartermaster, with the rank of captain, 3 March, 1847, and quartermaster, with the rank of colonel, 2 August, 1864. He served in the Florida and Mexican Wars, and during the Civil War. He was chief quartermaster of the Army of the Cumberland from 15 December, 1863, till 4 May, 1864, and of the armies commanded by Major-General Sherman from 4 May, 1864, till 27 June, 1865, being present during the operations of the campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and subsequently at the capture of Savannah. On the march from the latter city to Goldsborough, North Carolina and thence to Washington, D. C, via Raleigh and Richmond, General Easton acted in the same capacity. After the close of the war he was stationed in Mississippi and Missouri. He was brevetted lieutenant-colonel, colonel, and brigadier-general, 17 September, 1864, " for distinguished and important service in the quarter-master's department in the campaign terminating in the capture of Atlanta, Georgia," and major-general, 13 March, 1865, " for meritorious service during the war." He was promoted to be colonel and assistant quartermaster-general, 6 June, 1872, retiring from active service, 24 January, 1881. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 292.
EATON, Amos Beebe, soldier, born in Catskill, New York, 12 May, 1806; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 21 February, 1877, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1820. He took part in the Seminole War, was appointed chief commissary of subsistence of General Taylor's army at the beginning of the Mexican War, and was brevetted major after the battle of Buena Vista. He was depot purchasing commissary in New York from 1861 till 1864. when he was appointed commissary-general of the Subsistence Bureau in Washington, D. C. After being promoted successively to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, colonel, and brigadier-general, he was brevetted major-general in 1865, and was placed on the retired list in 1874. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 296.
ECKERT, Thomas Thompson, telegrapher, born in St. Clairsville, Ohio, 23 April, 1825. In 1849 he was appointed postmaster at Wooster, Ohio, and as he had learned telegraphy, the wires were brought into his office. In 1852 he supervised the construction of the telegraph line between Pittsburg and Chicago, over the Fort Wayne route, and was offered the superintendency. When the lines under his management were made a part of the Western Union Telegraph Company, his jurisdiction became largely extended. In 1859 he left this to superintend the affairs of a gold-mining company in Montgomery County, North Carolina, where he remained until the Civil War began, when he moved to Cincinnati. He was called to take charge of the military telegraph office at the headquarters of General McClellan, and in 1862 accompanied that officer to the peninsula as superintendent of the military telegraph, Department of the Potomac, with the rank of captain and assistant quarter- master. In September he was called to Washington to establish the military telegraph headquarters in the war department buildings, and was promoted to the rank of major. From this time till the close of the war he was on intimate terms with President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton. In 1864 he was brevetted lieutenant-colonel, and afterward brigadier-general. The same year he was appointed assistant Secretary of War, retaining the office till 1866, when he resigned and became general superintendent of the eastern division of the lines of the Western Union Telegraph Company. In 1875 he became president of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, and in 1880 president of the American Union Telegraph Company. On the consolidation of these companies with the Western Union Telegraph Company, in 1881, he returned to the service of the latter company as vice-president and general manager. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 298.
EDDY, Norman, Congressman, born in Seipio, Cayuga County, New York, 10 December, 1810; died in Indianapolis, Indiana, 28 January, 1872. He was graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1835, and moved in 1836 to Mishawaka, Indiana. where he practised for several years, but finally gave up his profession for that of the law, and was admitted to the bar in April, 1847, removing to South Bend, Indiana, in the same year. He was elected sole senator on the Democratic ticket in 1850, and in 1852 was elected to Congress over Schuyler Colfax, but was defeated by him in 1854. President Pierce appointed Mr. Eddy district attorney for Minnesota in 1855, and in 1856-'7 he was commissioner of the Indian trust lands in Kansas. In the autumn of 1861 he organized the 48th Indiana Regiment, was commissioned its colonel, and continued in command till July, 1863, when he resigned because of disability resulting from wounds received in the battle of Iuka, Mississippi. In that engagement the 48th lost 119 killed or wounded out of 420 that entered the fight. Colonel Eddy was appointed collector of internal revenue by President Johnson in 1865, and in 1870 was elected Secretary of State of Indiana, which office he held till his sudden death from heart disease. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 300.
EDGERTON, Sidney, 1818-1900, U.S. Congressman from Ohio, Chief Justice of the Idaho Territorial Supreme Court, and Territorial Governor of Montana. 1818-1900, abolitionist. (Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 20).
EDMUNDS, George Franklin, statesman, born in Richmond. Vermont, 1 February, 1828. He was educated at the common schools and by a private tutor; studied law at an early age, and began practice in 1849, removing in 1851 to Burlington, Vermont. He was a representative in the Vermont legislature in 1854-'9, serving as speaker for three years, and in 1861-"2 was a member of the state senate, and its president pro tempore. At the beginning of the Civil War he was a member of the state convention that formed a coalition between the Republicans and war Democrats, and drew up the resolutions adopted there. He was appointed to the U. S. Senate in March, 1866, by the governor of Vermont, to fill the vacancy made by the death of Solomon Foot, and was then elected by the legislature unto fill the unexpired term, and three times reelected. Mr. Edmunds was active in the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, sided with President Grant against Charles Sumner, and acted an influential part in the passage of the reconstruction measures, adopting a conservative course. In 1876-'7 he was one of the members of the electoral commission, having been previously chairman of the committee which, in concert with a similar committee of the House of Representatives, prepared the bill creating that commission. The passage of the Pacific Railroad Funding Act was also largely due to his influence and exertions. At the National Republican Conventions, held in Chicago in 1880 and 1884, Mr. Edmunds received thirty-four and ninety-three votes respectively for the presidential nomination, each on the first ballot. He was elected president pro tempore of the Senate after Mr. Arthur became President of the United States. In the Senate he has served on the committees on commerce, public lands, appropriations, pensions, retrenchment, private land claims, the library, and the judiciary, and has served as chairman of the last-named committee for several successive congresses. As a legislator, Senator Edmunds is noted for his legal acumen, his readiness in repartee, and his love of strictly parliamentary procedure. He has been a fearless foe of political jobs and legislative intrigues. He was the author of the act of 22 March, 1882, for the suppression of polygamy in Utah and the disfranchisement of those who practice it. This is known as the " Edmunds Act,' and was upheld by the supreme court in decisions that were rendered on 22 March, 1884, in a series of five cases. He was also the chief author of the similar act passed in 1887; and of the act of 1886 prescribing the manner in which electoral votes for president shall be counted. In 1886 he was the leader in the Senate in the attempt to compel President Cleveland to furnish that body with all documents necessary to show cause for recent removals from office. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 304-305.
EDSON, Theodore, soldier, born in Massachusetts in 1838; died in Rock Island, Illinois, 16 November, 1870. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1860, and served with honor in the Civil War, being chief of ordnance in General Rosecrans's Tennessee campaign. He was brevetted captain on 31 December, 1862, for services at the battle of Stone River, given his full rank on 3 March, 1863, and commanded various arsenals and ordnance depots, being chief of ordnance in the Department of Virginia and North Carolina in 1864-5. He was promoted to major in 1867, and in 1869- 70 was instructor in gunnery at West Point. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 305.
EDWARDS, John, lawyer, born in Jefferson County, Kentucky, 24 October, 1815. He received a common-school education, studied law, and entered upon the practice of his profession. He was a member of the legislature of Indiana from 1845 till 1849, when he emigrated to California, and was at once made alcalde (Mayor). He returned to Indiana in 1852, and was in the same year elected to the state senate. He moved subsequently to Iowa, was chosen a member of the State Constitutional Convention in 1855, and was in the legislature from 1856 till 1860, serving the last two years as speaker of the house. On 21 May, 1861, he was appointed lieutenant-colonel and aide-de-camp on the governor's staff. He organized and commanded state troops until May, 1862, when he became colonel of the 18th Iowa Infantry. On 26 September, 1864, he was promoted to be brigadier-general of volunteers, and was mustered out of the service, 15 January, 1866. After the close of the war he settled at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and was appointed U. S. assessor, 6 August, 1866. He was also elected a member of the 42d Congress as a literal Republican, but his election was successfully contested by Thomas Boles, who took his seat, 9 February, 1872. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 306.
EDWARDS, Landon Brame, physician, born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, 20 September, 1845, was educated at Randolph Macon College. In 1863 he enlisted in the artillery corps of the Confederate Army, in which he served until the end of the war. He was graduated at the medical department of the University of the City of New York in March. 1867, and until October of that year served as house physician in the Charity Hospital, Blackwell's Island, and then as assistant physician to the Hospital for Nervous Diseases at Lake Mahopac, New York Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 306.
EDWARDS, Ninian Wirt, lawyer, born in Frankfort, Kentucky, 15 April, 1809, was taken by his father, when an infant, to Kaskaskia, then the capital of Illinois Territory. He was graduated at the Transylvania University, and at its law department in 1833. Before his graduation he was married to Elizabeth P. Todd, a sister of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Edwards began the practice of law in 1833, and in 1834 was appointed attorney-general of Illinois, but resigned in 1835, and moved to Springfield. In 1836 he was elected to the legislature, and with Abraham Lincoln and others was active in securing the removal of the capital to Springfield. Mr. Edwards remained a member of the legislature continuously till 1852. During that period he was also a member of the convention that framed the state constitution in 1848. In 1854 he was appointed by, the governor attorney before the board of commissioners whose duty it was to investigate the claims of canal contractors against the state, amounting to over $1,500,000. From 1854 till 1857 he served as superintendent of public instruction, and drafted a bill regarding free schools, which afterward became a law. In August, 1861, he was appointed by President Lincoln captain commissary of subsistence, which appointment he held until 22 June, 1865. In the latter year Mr. Edwards retired almost entirely from the practice of his profession. At the request of the State Historical Society, he prepared a volume entitled "The Life and Times of Ninian Edwards, and History of Illinois," which is considered an authority (1870). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 308.
EDWARDS, Oliver, soldier, born in Springfield, Massachusetts, 30 January, 1835. He was graduated at the Springfield high-school in 1852. At the beginning of the Civil War Mr. Edwards was commissioned 1st lieutenant and adjutant of the 10th Massachusetts Regiment, and in January, 1862, was appointed senior aide-de-camp on the staff of General Darius N. Couch. He was commissioned major of the 37th Massachusetts on 9 August, and was promoted colonel on 27 August. On 19 October, 1864, he was brevetted brigadier-general "for gallant and distinguished services at the battle of Spottsylvania Court-House, and for meritorious services at the battle of the Opequan." He was brevetted major-general, 5 May, 1865, "for conspicuous gallantry in the battle of Sailors Creek, Virginia" and was made a full brigadier-general, 19 May, 1865. After serving through the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, and those of Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, General Edwards was ordered to New York City in command of a picked provisional brigade, to quell the draft riots in July, 1863, and placed in command of Fort Hamilton and Fort Lafayette. At the end of the enforcement of the draft, General Edwards returned to the Army of the Potomac, and took part in the battle of Rappahannock. During the second day of the battle of the Wilderness, when in command of the 4th Brigade, 2d Division , 6th Army Corps, he made a charge at the head of the 37th Massachusetts Regiment, and succeeded in breaking through the Confederate lines. At Spottsylvania, Virginia, 12 May, 1864, he held the "bloody angle" with his own brigade from 5 A. M. till 4 P. M. and was at the head of twenty regiments from that hour until 5 a. m., when the enemy withdrew, making twenty-four hours of continuous fighting. He subsequently participated in all the battles of the overland Campaign, and accompanied the 6th Corps when sent to the defence of Washington against the advance of Early. He was afterward with General Sheridan in his campaign in the Shenandoah valley, and took part in the battle of Winchester, of which town he was placed in command by that officer. The latter also offered him the provost-marshal-generalship of the Middle Military Division, but he declined it, preferring a direct command. In the final assault on Petersburg, General Edwards's brigade captured the guns in front of three of the enemy's brigades, and he received the surrender of the city from the hands of its mayor, 3 April, 1865. At the battle of Sailor's Creek, on 6 April, General Edwards, with the 3d Brigade of the 1st Division , captured General Custis Lee and staff, with his entire brigade, Lieut.-General Ewell and staff, and many others. He was mustered out of the army on 16 January, 1866, and has been since engaged in mercantile pursuits, both in this country and in England. He invented the Florence oil-stove. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 308-309.
EGAN, Thomas W., soldier, born in New York City in 1836; died there, 24 February, 1867. He entered the 40th New York Regiment at the beginning of the Civil War, and was made lieutenant-colonel, 14 June, 1861. In June, 1862, he was promoted colonel, and participated in all the battles of the Army of the Potomac. During General Grant's Overland Campaign of 1864 he commanded a brigade, receiving his commission 8 September, 1864, and was wounded at Petersburg. At the battle of Boydton plank-road he commanded the division, and was brevetted major-general. He was seriously wounded in November, and on recovery was given a division in the Army of the Shenandoah. General Egan was mustered out of the service, 15 January, 1866, and subsequently lived in New York. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 314.
EGLE, William Henry, historian, born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 17 September, 1830. After receiving a public-school education he spent three years as a printer in the office of the "Pennsylvania Telegraph," and subsequently had charge of the state printing. In 1853 he became editor of the "Literary Companion," and also of the "Daily Times," both of which were soon discontinued. He then turned his attention to medicine, and was graduated at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1859, after which he settled in Harrisburg. He served during the Civil War as surgeon of Pennsylvania volunteers, and in the Appomattox Campaign was chief medical officer of General David B. Birney's division in the 24th Army Corps. Since 1870 Dr. Egle has been surgeon of militia, and is now (1887) senior medical officer of the National Guard of Pennsylvania He turned his attention to historical research in 1871, and has been elected corresponding member of various historical and learned societies in the United States and England. In March, 1887, he was appointed state librarian of Pennsylvania. Among his works are " History of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania" Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. (Harrisburg, 1876); " Notes and Queries relating to Interior Pennsylvania" (3d series, 18H1—'7); "History of the County of Dauphin " (1883); " History of. the County of Lebanon" (1883); "Historical Register" (2 vols., 1883-'4); "Pennsylvania Genealogies, Scotch, Irish, and German" (1880); "Centenary Memorial of the Founding of the city of Harrisburg" (1886); and "Pennsylvania in the Revolution" (2 vols., 1887). He has also edited, with John Blair Linn, "Pennsylvania Archives" (2d series, 12 vols., 1874-'80). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 315.
EKIN, James Adams, soldier, born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 31 August, 1819. He was a ship-builder prior to 1861, but at the beginning of the Civil War entered the 12th Pennsylvania Infantry as 1st lieutenant and regimental quartermaster, and at the expiration of three months was made captain and assistant quartermaster in the volunteer army, being stationed in Pittsburg as acting assistant commissary of subsistence. In October, 1861, he was made assistant quartermaster and stationed in Indianapolis until December, 1863, when he was admitted to the regular army with similar rank, to date from March, 1863, and assigned to duty as quartermaster of the cavalry bureau in Washington till February, 1864. He was then promoted to lieutenant-colonel and made chief quartermaster of the cavalry corps of the Army of the Potomac, remaining as such until August, when he was advanced to colonel and given charge of the 1st Division of the quartermaster-general's office in Washington, where he continued till 1870, holding various appointments in that office. Subsequently he was chief quartermaster of the 5th Military District and the Department of Texas, then chief quartermaster of the Department of the South, and in similar capacity in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and finally disbursing agent of the quartermaster's department in Louisville, Kentucky, being assistant quartermaster-general of the army from February, 1882. He received the brevet of brigadier-general in the volunteer army, and those of major to brigadier-general in the regular army, for his services during the war. In August, 1883, he was retired, and has since resided in Louisville. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 317-318.
EDGERTON, Sidney, 1818-1900, U.S. Congressman from Ohio, Chief Justice of the Idaho Territorial Supreme Court, and Territorial Governor of Montana. 1818-1900, abolitionist. (Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 20).
ELDRIDGE, Charles A., politician, born in Bridport. Vermont. 27 February, 1821. He moved with his parents to New York, where he studied and began the practice of law, and in 1848 settled in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He was a member of the state senate in 1854-'5. In 1862 he was elected a member of Congress as a Democrat, and was five times re-elected, serving from 7 December, 1863, to 3 March, 1875. On 1 February. 1864, he offered a resolution condemning the draft as contrary to the genius of republican government, and on 21 March of the same year one calling upon the president to furnish the names of all persons that had been arrested for political cause. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 319
ELDRIDGE, Hamilton N., soldier, born in South Williamstown, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, 23 August, 1831; died in Chicago, Illinois, 27 November, 1882. He was graduated at Williams in 1856, in the same class with James A. Garfield, and at the Albany law Institute in 1857, and began practice in Chicago. In July, 1862, with his partner, Colonel F. W. Tourtellotte, he raised the 127th Illinois Regiment, and was made its lieutenant-colonel. He commanded the regiment in the operations of General Sherman from Memphis to Grenada and Chickasaw Bayou, distinguished himself at Arkansas Post, was promoted colonel, and took part in the siege of Vicksburg, where he bore the colors with his own hand, after several color-bearers had been shot, and led his regiment, in advance, to the fortifications of the enemy. After the surrender, he was compelled by sickness to resign, and was brevetted brigadier-general for gallantry. After a slow recovery he resumed the practice of law in Chicago. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 319.
ELIOT, Thomas Dawes, 1808-1870, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts, 1854-1855, 1859-1869. Founder of the Republican Party from Massachusetts. Opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill as a member of Congress. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Active in the Free soil Party. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 325; Congressional Globe)
ELIOT, Thomas Dawes, Congressman, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 20 March, 1808; died in New Bedford, Massachusetts, 12 June, 1870. He was graduated at Columbian College, Washington, D. C, in 1825, studied law in Washington and New Bedford, and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. After being a member of both houses of the legislature, he was elected to Congress as a Whig, to fill the unexpired term of Zeno Scudder, serving from 17 April, 1854, till 3 March, 1855, and making an eloquent speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which was published (Washington, 1854). He was prominent in the Free-Soil convention at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1855, and on the dissolution of the Whig Party was active among the founders of the Republican Party in Massachusetts, he declined its nomination for attorney-general in 1857, but was afterward elected to Congress again for five successive terms, serving from 1859 till 1869. Mr. Eliot took an active part in the proceedings of the house, particularly in the legislation on the protection and welfare of the Negroes. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 325.
ELIOT, William Greenleaf, 1811-1887, educator, clergyman, opponent of slavery. Active in Sanitary Commission in the Civil War. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 325)
ELIOT, William Greenleaf, educator, born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, 5 August, 1811; died at Pass Christian, Mississippi, 23 January, 1887. His great-grandfather was brother to the great-grandfather of Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard. He was graduated at Columbian College, Washington, D. C., in 1831, and at Harvard divinity-school in 1834. In the latter year he was ordained pastor of the Church of the Messiah (Unitarian) in St. Louis, Missouri, a place which he held until 1872. During all this time he was energetically employed in improving the condition and advancing the interests of the public schools of St. Louis. A man of untiring energy and rare administrative ability, he was engaged in all sorts of public and philanthropic enterprises, and has probably done more for the advancement of St. Louis and all the southwest than any other man that has lived in that section. He was always a bold and outspoken opponent of slavery. In 1861 he was found among the small band of resolute men who assisted Generals Nathaniel Lyon and Francis P. Blair in preserving Missouri to the Union; and during the war he was active in the western Sanitary Commission. In 1872 he was chosen to succeed Dr. Chauvenet as chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, and held the office until his death. He has published a “Manual of Prayer” (Boston, 1851); “Discourses on the Doctrines of Christianity” (Boston, 1852; 22d ed., 1886); “Lectures to Young Men” (1853; 11th ed., 1882); “Lectures to Young Women” (1853; 13th ed., enlarged, with the title “Home Life and Influence,” St. Louis, 1880); “The Unity of God” (Boston, 1854); “Early Religious Education” (1855); “The Discipline of Sorrow” (1855); “The Story of Archer Alexander, from Slavery to Freedom” (Boston, 1885); and a great number of pamphlets, tracts, discourses, and review articles. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888. Vol. II, p. 325
ELKINS, Stephen Benton, politician, born in Perry County, Ohio, 26 September, 1841. He moved to Missouri when very young, was graduated at Missouri University in 1860, and studied law. He served in 1862-'3 as a captain in the 77th Missouri Regiment, and in the latter year went to New Mexico, where he was admitted to the bar in 1864. He also engaged in mining and stock-raising there, and accumulated a fortune. He was a member of the territorial legislature in 1865-'6, attorney-general of the territory in 1868-'9, and U. S. District Attorney in 1870-'2. He was then elected a delegate to Congress as a Republican, and served two terms, from 1873 till 1877, making a speech in 1874 on the admission of New Mexico to the Union, which attracted much attention. In 1875 he became interested in the West Virginia system of railroads, and has lately resided in New York. Mr. Elkins was a member of the National Republican Committee from 1872 till 1884. He took an active part in the Chicago convention of 1884 that nominated James G. Blaine for the presidency, and earnestly supported him in the canvass. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 325-326.
ELLERY, Frank, naval officer, born in Newport, Rhode Island, 23 July, 1794; died in Castleton, Vermont, 24 March, 1871, entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman on 1 January, 1812, and served in the frigate "President" on all her cruises, being wounded in the action with the " Belvidere " by the bursting of the gun at which he was stationed. He. received a sword and the thanks of Congress for his services on Lake Champlain, was in the "Constellation" in the Mediterranean in 1815, at the capture of an Algerine frigate and a Turkish flag-ship, and assisted in expelling McGregor's band of adventurers from Amelia Island, Florida, in 1817, capturing one of their privateers with her prize. He became lieutenant, 28 March, 1820, commanded the "Cyane," of the Brazil Squadron, in 1827, and was on duty at the Boston and New York rendezvous in 1829-'37. He commanded the steamer "Enterprise" in 1840, was put on the reserved list, 13 September, 1855, commanded the Boston rendezvous again in 1861, and was commissioned commodore on the retired list, 4 April, 1867. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 326.
ELLET, Charles, engineer, born in Penn's Manor, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1 January, 1810; died in Cairo, Illinois, 21 June, 1862. He was destined by his father for the life of a farmer, but his inclinations led him to mathematical and engineering pursuits. First as a rodman, then as a volunteer, and subsequently as a paid assistant on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, he soon acquired means to visit Europe, and completed his education in the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. He became an engineer on the Utica and Schenectady Railroad, then on the Erie, and subsequently chief engineer of the James and Kanawha Canal. In 1842 he planned and built the first wire suspension bridge in this country, across the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. He designed and built the railroad suspension bridge across the Niagara River below the falls in 1847, and afterward built a suspension bridge at Wheeling, Virginia. He then engaged in many important engineering works, constructed a remarkable temporary track across the Blue Ridge, improved the navigation of the Kanawha River, and aided in laying out the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and in 1846-'7 he was president of the Schuylkill Navigation Company. He was among the first to advocate the use of steam rams, and suggested a plan to the Russian government by which the allied fleet before Sebastopol might be destroyed. At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 he became interested in military matters, and devoted much attention to the use of rams in naval warfare. He sent a plan for cutting off the Confederate Army at Manassas to General McClellan, who rejected it, and Ellet then wrote two pamphlets censuring McClellan's mode of conducting the campaign. He urged upon the government the construction of steam rams, for use on the large rivers of the west, and after his plans had been rejected by the navy department he presented them to the Secretary of War, by whom they were approved. He was then commissioned colonel of engineers, and converted several powerful light-draught steamers on the Mississippi River into rams. With these he engaged in the naval battle off Memphis on 6 June, 1862, and sank and disabled several of the Confederate vessels, but during the battle he was struck above the knee by a musket-ball, and died from the effects of his wound. Among his most noteworthy labors was his investigation of the hydraulics of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the result of which he published in a paper entitled the " Physical Geography of the Mississippi Valley, with Suggestions as to the Improvement of the Navigation of the Ohio and other Rivers," printed in the "Smithsonian Transactions" (Washington, 1851). His other publications are "An Essay on the Laws of Trade”, (1839); "The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, containing Plans for the Protection of the Delta from Inundation" (Philadelphia, 1853); a pamphlet on "Coast and Harbor Defences, or the Substitution of Steam Battering-Rams for Ships of War" (Philadelphia, 1855). and many other scientific papers.— His brother Alfred W.. held a commission under him as lieutenant-colonel in the same fleet, and was appointed brigadier general of volunteers, 1 November, 1862. He ordered the burning of Austin, Mississippi, on 24 May, 1863, in retaliation for information furnished by citizens to Confederates of General Chalmers's command, which enabled them to fire upon a Federal transport. He resigned on 31 December, 1864.—Charles's son, Charles Rivers, soldier, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1841; died in Bunker Hill, Illinois, 29 October, 1862, was engaged at the beginning of the war in studying medicine, and became assistant surgeon in one of the military hospitals. In 1862 he commanded one of his father's rams in the action at Memphis. After his father's death, on the organization of the Mississippi brigade by his uncle, Alfred W. Ellet, he was appointed colonel, and when his uncle was commissioned brigadier-general he was placed in command of the marine brigade. Choosing the ram " Queen of the West" for his headquarters, he made many daring expeditions on the Mississippi, and succeeded in running the Confederate batteries at Vicksburg as he was cruising between that stronghold and Port Hudson. On 10 February, 1863, he made an expedition up the Red River and captured the Confederate steamer "Era" and some other vessels. After ascending the river with success the pilot ran his vessel aground, placing her in such a difficult position that she was disabled by the fire from the Confederate fort, and fell into the hands of the enemy. Colonel Ellet made his escape on a bale of cotton, and was rescued by the " De Soto." During the siege of Vicksburg, and afterward, he rendered valuable assistance to General Grant in keeping open his communications, but in the course of this duty his health failed, owing to the influence of the climate, and he died suddenly in Illinois, where he had retired for rest. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 326-327.
ELLIOT, George Henry, military engineer, born in Lowell, Massachusetts, 31 March, 1831. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1855 as a lieutenant of artillery, served on the Texas frontier, and entered the Engineer Corps in 1857. He was engaged in constructing the works on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Harbor, and other fortifications on the Pacific Coast till 1870, was promoted major on 3 March, 1867, chief engineer of the Washington aqueduct in 1870-'l, engineer secretary of the Light-house Board, and in 1873 went to Europe to examine light-house systems there. He became assistant to the chief of engineers at Washington in 1884, and was advanced to the grade of lieutenant-colonel on 8 August, 1882. He superintended the improvement of Connecticut River in 1882-3. and in 1883-'7 Harbor improvements at Nantucket, Newport, Providence, New Bedford, and other places on the coast of New England. He published "Light-House Systems in Europe " (1874), and " The Presidio of San Francisco " (1874). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp.
ELLIOTT, Gilbert Molleson, soldier, born in Thompson, Windham County, Connecticut, 7 October, 1840; died on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, 24 November, 1863. He moved to New York in early childhood and studied at the Free Academy (now the College of the City of New York), received the gold medal for excellence as the leader of his class at four successive commencements, and delivered the valedictory oration at his graduation in 1861. He also took the Burr gold medal for mathematics, the Cromwell gold medal for history and belles-lettres, and the Ward bronze medals for excellence in logic, philosophy, law, Greek, Latin, and Spanish, oratory, composition, and engineering. In April. 1861, when Fort Sumter was fired upon, he unfurled the stars and stripes from the college building, and in his address declared he would defend his country's honor with his life's blood. Full of loyalty and patriotism, he gave up his purpose of studying law and entered the United States service in October, 1861, as 1st lieutenant in the 102d New York Volunteers. He took part in Banks's campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, distinguished himself at Antietam, was soon afterward promoted to captain, and a little, later was attached to the staff of General John W. Geary. He acted as ordnance officer in the 2d Division of the 12th Army Corps, and rendered effective service during the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. When his commission as major was received, he returned to his regiment and snared its fortunes. The 12th Corps was transferred to Chattanooga in 1863. His regiment was directed to lead the assault at Lookout Mountain, and he was placed in actual command of it. While leading the skirmishers, he was mortally wounded by a sharp-shooter. The government gave him the posthumous brevets of lieutenant-colonel and colonel. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 330.
ELLIOT, Samuel Mackenzie, 1811-1857, physician, abolitionist leader, Union Army officer. Active in the New York abolition movement.
ELLIOT, Washington Lafayette, soldier, born in Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 31 March, 1831, accompanied his father in cruises in the West Indies in 1831-'2, and on board the " Constitution" on a cruise in the Mediterranean. He studied at Dickinson College, and in 1841 entered the U. S. Military Academy. In May, 1846, he was commissioned as 2d lieutenant of mounted rifles. He served with his regiment in Mexico till the surrender of Vera Cruz, was promoted 1st lieutenant on 20 July, 1847, and after the war was stationed at Fort Laramie and in Texas and New Mexico, becoming a captain in July, 1854. In September, 1858, he distinguished himself in conflicts with the Navajos in New Mexico. In the beginning of the Civil War he took part in the actions at Springfield and Wilson's Creek, Missouri, was appointed colonel of the 2d Iowa Cavalry in September, 1861, and on 5 November, 1861, was promoted major in the regular army. He afterward commanded a brigade of cavalry in the Army of the Tennessee, was engaged at the capture of Madrid, brevetted for gallantry at the capture of Island No. 10, and again for services at the siege of Corinth, and in a raid on the Mississippi and Ohio Railroad in May, 1862. He was promoted to brigadier-general of volunteers in June, 1862, became chief of cavalry in the Army of Virginia in August, 1862, and was wounded at the second battle of Bull Run. He commanded the Department of the Northwest in the beginning of 1863, was placed in command of a division in the Army of the Potomac in the summer of that year, then in the Army of the Cumberland, and was engaged in re-enforcing General Burnside, and commanded in the action of Mossy Creek, Tennessee. He was subsequently chief of cavalry in the Army of the Cumberland, and took part in the Atlanta Campaign and in the pursuit of General Hood. In 1865 he commanded a division of the 4th Corps, and was in the battles around Nashville. For services at Nashville he received the brevets of major general of volunteers and brigadier-general in the regular army. He was also brevetted major-general, U. S. Army, for gallant and meritorious services during the war. He became lieutenant-colonel in August, 1866, colonel in April, 1878, and on 20 March, 1879, was retired at his own request. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 330-331.
ELLIOT, Stephen, soldier, born in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1832; died in Aiken, South Carolina, 21 March, 1866. At the beginning of the war he raised and equipped a battery of light artillery, known as the Beaufort Artillery. At Pinckney Island, in August, 1862, he commanded three batteries, and was promoted for his gallantry. Shortly afterward he was placed in command of Fort Sumter, where he continued during the long bombardment to which it was subjected by General Gillmore. In July, 1864, he was wounded by the explosion of the mine at Petersburg, and was disabled for the rest of the war. He attained the grade of brigadier-general. In 1865 he took the oath to support the Constitution of the state and of the United States, and later was a candidate for Congress, being opposed by ex-Governor Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 332.
ELLIS, John Millott, 1831-1894, anti-slavery advocate, clergyman, educator. Proponent of emancipation of enslaved individuals during the Civil War.
ELLIS, John Willis, governor of North Carolina, born in Rowan County, North Carolina, 25 November, 1820; died in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1861. He was graduated at the University of North Carolina in 1841, was admitted to the bar in 1842, and soon acquired a large practice. He was a member of the state house of commons from 1844 till 1848, when he was elected a judge of the superior court of North Carolina. This office, in which he succeeded his former preceptor. Judge R. M. Pearson, who was elevated to the supreme bench, he held until 1858, when he was chosen governor of North Carolina. He was re-elected in I860, and died in office. On 2 January, 1861, Governor Ellis took possession of Fort Macon, at Beaufort, the works at Wilmington, and the U. S. Arsenal at Fayetteville, professedly on behalf of the state. On the 20th of April he ordered the seizure of the U. S. Mint at Charlotte. He was active in promoting the passage of the Secession Ordinance in North Carolina. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 333-334.
ELLIS, Theodore Gunville, soldier, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 25 September, 1829; died in Hartford, Connecticut, 8 January, 1883. He became a civil engineer, was chief engineer of the Sackett's Harbor and Saratoga Railroad, subsequently had charge of silver mines in 1856-'58 in Mexico, and in 1859 became engineer of the Hartford Dyke. He entered the Federal Army as adjutant of the 14th Connecticut Infantry, was engaged at Antietam and Fredericksburg, was promoted major in April, 1863, and at the battle of Chancellorsville commanded the regiment. At Gettysburg his regiment was hotly engaged, and captured five battle-flags in a bayonet charge. In September, 1863, he became lieutenant-colonel, and in October colonel, of the regiment. He was engaged at Mine Run, and in the battle of the Wilderness and the subsequent conflicts commanded a brigade. During the summer of 1864 he commanded the camp at Annapolis, Maryland His regiment had become greatly reduced in numbers by many severe engagements. In the winter of 1864-7 he was a member of a general military court, at Washington, he was mustered out on 8 June, 1865, with the brevet rank of brigadier-general. In 1867 he became surveyor-general of Connecticut, He was for several years vice-president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. In 1874 he conducted hydraulic experiments with large apertures at Holyoke, Massachusetts. At the time of his death he had charge of the government works on the Connecticut River. He was the author of many important papers on engineering published in the "Transactions" of the American Society of civil engineers, and elsewhere. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 334.
ELLSWORTH, Ephraim Elmer, soldier, born in Mechanicsville, Saratoga County, New York, 23 April, 1837; died in Alexandria, Virginia, 24 May, 1861. Alter entering mercantile life in Troy and New York City, he moved at an early age to Chicago, where he studied law, and became a solicitor of patents. In 1860 he organized a regiment of Zouaves, which became renowned for the perfection of their discipline, and of which he was commissioned colonel. He accompanied Lincoln to Washington in 1861, and proceeded thence to New York, where in April he organized a Zouave regiment composed of firemen. Of this regiment he was appointed colonel, and sent to Alexandria, Virginia. Seeing a Confederate flag floating above a hotel owned by a man named Jackson, Ellsworth rushed to the roof and tore down the flag. On his way from the roof he was met and shot dead by Jackson, who in turn was immediately killed by one of Ellsworth's men, Frank E. Brownell. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 335
ELY, Alfred, lawyer, born in Lyme, New London County, Connecticut, 18 February, 1815. He received an academic education, moved to Rochester, New York, in 1835, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1841, and began practice in Rochester. Mr. Ely was elected to Congress as a Republican in 1858, and served from 5 December, 1859, till 3 March, 1863. He went as a civilian spectator to the battle-field of Bull Run in July, 1861, where he was captured by the Confederates and put into Libby Prison, Richmond. After nearly six months' confinement he was exchanged for Charles J. Faulkner, the American minister to France, who had been imprisoned for disloyalty. During his term of imprisonment he kept a diary, which was edited by Charles Lanman, with the title "Journal of Alfred Ely, A Prisoner of War in Richmond " (New York, 1862). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 339.
ELY, William G., soldier, born about 1835. At the beginning of the Civil War he enlisted as a private for the three months' call, went out again as lieutenant-colonel of the 6th Connecticut Infantry, and was afterward elected colonel of the 18th Regiment. On 13 June, 1863, in charge of the 2d Brigade, he advanced upon the Fort Royal pike, and, while in action, was made a prisoner. He was confined in Libby prison, Richmond, Virginia, till the following February, when, with 108 other officers, he escaped through the famous tunnel dug under Twentieth Street. About fifty of the party were recaptured, among them Colonel Ely, in a state of great exhaustion. He was taken by cavalry forty-two miles out, after being absent four days, and returned to the prison. A few weeks later he was paroled, and returned north, his exchange following. On 17 May, 1864. he rejoined his regiment, and commanded it at the battle of Piedmont on 4 June. 1864. On 18 June, in the advance toward Lynchburg, he was wounded in the throat and temporarily disabled. In August he was assigned to the command of a brigade, and in September was brevetted a brigadier-general. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 340
ELZEY, Arnold, soldier, born in Somerset County, Maryland, 18 December, 1816; died in Baltimore, Maryland, 21 February, 1871. His name was originally Arnold Elzey Jones, but he dropped the last name shortly after his graduation at the U. S. Military Academy in 1837. He was assigned to the 2d U.S. Artillery , and served in the Florida War of 1837-'8 and in the Canada border disturbances. During the Mexican War he was brevetted captain for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, and was also at Fort Brown, Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, San Antonio, Molino del Rey, Chapultepec, and the capture of the city of Mexico. He became captain in the 2d U.S. Artillery , 14 February, 1849, and served against the Seminoles in 1849-'50 and 1856. On 25 April, 1861, he resigned and entered the Confederate service, with the rank of colonel. At the first battle of Bull Run he was senior colonel of Kirby Smith's Brigade, and in the afternoon after General Smith was wounded, led a successful charge, for which he was complimented by General Beauregard, and promoted on the field to a brigadier-generalship by Jefferson Davis. He commanded a brigade through Stonewall Jackson's valley campaign, was wounded and had his horse shot under him at Port Republic, and at Cold Harbor was shot through the head. This last wound prevented him from seeing any more active service, but after his recovery he was promoted to major-general, and commanded the Department of Richmond till just before the close of the war, when he joined Hood in Georgia, and was with him at Chattanooga. After the close of the war he retired to a farm near Jessup's Cut, Anne Arundel County, Maryland Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 340.
EMERSON, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882, author, poet, essayist, transcendentalist, abolitionist. Wrote antislavery poetry. Founder of the Transcendentalist Club. Became active in the abolition movement in the mid-1830s. Emerson opposed the annexation of Texas, and signed petitions to that effect. Also against the forced removal of Cherokee Indians during the Van Buren administration. He addressed meetings of abolition societies calling for emancipation, and aiding and defending fugitive slaves. Called for disobeying immoral laws that supported slavery. In 1851, in his speech opposing the Fugitive Slave Law, he declared “an immoral law makes it a man’s duty to break it at every hazard.” (Sinha, 2016, pp. 328, 488-489, 519-520, 550, 557, 562; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, pt. 2, p. 132; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 343-348)
EMERSON, Ralph Waldo, author, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 25 May, 1803; died in Concord, Massachusetts, 27 April, 1882. He was the second of five sons of the Reverend William Emerson, minister of the 1st Church, Boston. His grandfather at the sixth remove, Reverend Joseph Emerson, of Mendon, Massachusetts, married the granddaughter of Reverend Peter Bulkeley, who was one of the founders of Concord, Massachusetts, and minister of the first church there. Joseph's grandson, of the same name, was pastor at Malden, and married a daughter of the Reverend Samuel Moody, of York, Maine, and three of the sons of this union were clergymen; among them William, Ralph Waldo's grandfather, who presided over the church in Concord at the time of the first battle of the Revolutionary war, which took place close by the minister's manse. This grandfather also had married the daughter of a minister, the Reverend Daniel Bliss, his predecessor in the pulpit at Concord. Thus the tendency and traditions of Ralph Waldo Emerson's ancestry were strong in the direction of scholarly pursuits and religious thought. His family was one of those that constitute, as Dr. Holmes says, the “academic races” of New England. His father (see Emerson, William) was a successful but not popular preacher, whose sympathies were far moved from Calvinism. He published several sermons, and was editor of the “Monthly Anthology” from 1805 till 1811, a periodical that had for contributors John Thornton Kirkland, Joseph S. Buckminster, John S. J. Gardiner, William Tudor, and Samuel C. Thacher. It was largely instrumental in developing a taste for literature in New England, and led to the establishment of the “North American Review.” The mother of Waldo was a woman “of great patience and fortitude, of the serenest trust in God, of a discerning spirit, and the most courteous bearing.” He strongly resembled his father. His aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, a woman of high intellectual attainments, was one of his early companions; and in some printed extracts from her journals a mode of thought and expression remarkably similar to that of the now celebrated essayist is traceable. His youngest brother, Charles Chauncey, who died young, in 1834, was distinguished by a singularly pure and sweet character, and contributed to the “Harvard Register” three articles in which there are passages strikingly like portions of the essays afterward produced by Ralph Waldo. The latter concentrated in himself the spiritual and intellectual tendencies of several generations. He entered the grammar-school at the age of eight, and the Latin-school, under Master Gould, in 1815; but neither here nor at Harvard did he show unusual ability. After leaving college he engaged in teaching, and began the study of theology under the direction of Dr. Channing, although not regularly enrolled at the Cambridge divinity-school. He read Plato, Augustine, Tillotson, Jeremy Taylor, and had from boyhood been an enthusiast regarding Montaigne's essays, of which he said: “It seems to me as if I had myself written the book in some former life.” In 1826 he was “approbated to preach” by the Middlesex Association of Ministers; but his health forced him to pass the winter in South Carolina and Florida. He was ordained in March, 1829, as colleague of Reverend Henry Ware. Jr., in the pastorate of the 2d Church, Boston, and succeeded to Ware's place within eighteen months. His preaching was eloquent, simple, and effective. He took part actively in the city's public affairs, and showed a deep interest in philanthropic movements, opening his church, also, to the anti-slavery agitators. In 1832, however, he resigned his pastorate, and did not thereafter regularly resume ministerial labors. Having decided that the use of the elements in the communion was a mistaken formality — the true communion, as he thought, being purely spiritual — he refused to make the compromise proposed, that he should put his own construction on the Lord's supper, leaving his congregation to retain their view. The parting with his flock was friendly, and, although long misunderstood in certain quarters, he always maintained a strong sympathy with Christianity. For several years he had been writing poetry, but he published no literary work during the term of his pastorate. The poem “Good-bye, Proud World,” incorrectly attributed to the date of his resignation, was written before he entered the ministry. Excepting this piece, little poetry of his early period has been given to the world. He had married, in 1829, Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker, who died in February, 1832. In 1833 he went to Europe for his health, visiting Sicily, Italy, and France, and preaching in London and Edinburgh. At this time he met Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle, forming with the last-named writer an enduring friendship, which is one of the most interesting in literary annals. It resulted in a correspondence, which was continued for thirty-six years, and has been published under the editorship of Charles Eliot Norton (Boston, 1883). Returning to the United States in 1834, Mr. Emerson preached in New Bedford, declined a call to settle there, and went to Concord, where he remained. In the next winter he began lecturing, the subjects of his choice being, curiously enough, “Water” and “The Relation of Man to the Globe.” But he soon found themes better suited to his genius, in a course of biographical lectures given in Boston, discussing Luther, Milton, Burke, Michael Angelo, and George Fox. Two of these were published in the “North American Review.” This course was followed by ten lectures on English literature in 1835, twelve on the philosophy of history in 1836, and in 1837 ten on human culture. Much of the matter embraced in them was afterward remoulded and brought out in his later volumes of essays, or condensed into the rhythmic form of poems. Mr. Emerson married, in September, 1835, Miss Lidian Jackson, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. He then left the “Old Manse,” where he had been staying with Dr. Ripley, and moved into a house on the old Lexington road, along which the British had retreated from Concord in 1775. In this “plain, square, wooden house,” surrounded by horse-chestnut and pine trees, with pleasant garden-grounds attached, he made his home for the rest of his life; and, through his presence there, the village became “the Delphi of New England.” On 19 April, 1836, the anniversary of the Concord fight, Emerson's hymn, composed for the occasion and containing those lines which have since resounded almost as widely as the fame of the deed,
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Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world,”
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was sung at the dedication of the battle-monument. In September of the same year his first book, “Nature,” an idealistic prose essay in eight chapters — which had been written in the same room of the “Old Manse” in which Hawthorne afterward wrote his “Mosses” — was published anonymously in Boston. During the summer he had supplied the pulpit of the Concord Unitarian Church for three months, and in the autumn he preached a while for a new society at East Lexington; but he refused to become its pastor, saying: “My pulpit is the lyceum platform.” Doubts had arisen in his mind as to the wisdom of public prayer, the propriety of offering prayer for others, and the rightfulness of adhering to any formal worship. From this time his career became distinctively that of a literary man, although for several years he confined himself mainly to lecturing, and most of his prose writings were first given to the public orally. Carlyle had said to Longfellow that when Emerson came to Craigenputtock it was “like the visit of an angel.” In 1836 he edited early sheets of Carlyle's “Sartor Resartus,” and in 1838 three volumes of the same author's essays, all of these appearing in book-form in this country before they did so in England, and netting a comfortable sum for Carlyle. “Nature,” similarly, met with considerable appreciation in England, but in the United States it took twelve years to sell 500 copies. The character of the book was both methodical and rhapsodical. It taught that the universe consists of nature and the soul, and that external nature serves four purposes — viz.: commodity, beauty, language, and discipline. It ministers to the senses; then to the love of beauty; then it gives us language — i. e., supplies words as the signs of natural facts, by which we interpret our own spirits. Natural laws applied to man become moral laws; and thus we perceive the highest use of nature, which is discipline. It trains reason, develops the intellect, and becomes the means of moral culture. Thus nature speaks always of spirit, suggests the idea of the absolute, teaches worship of God, whom we cannot describe, and shows us that nature itself is only an apparition of God. “The mind is a part of the nature of things,” and God is revealed directly to the soul, spirit being present all through nature, but acting upon us through ourselves and not from without. In verbal style this treatise has great beauty, and rises to the plane of a prose poem; but the contents perplexed theologians. The author was accused of pantheism, though it is hard to see how the belief so named differs from the professed Christian doctrine of the omnipresence of God. Most of the practical people in the community regarded Emerson as crazy, revolutionary, or a fool who did not know his own meaning. Ex-president John Quincy Adams wrote concerning him in 1840: “After failing in the every-day vocations of a Unitarian preacher and school-master, he starts a new doctrine of transcendentalism, declares all the old revelations superannuated and worn out, and announces the approach of new revelations.”
The term transcendentalists was somewhat vaguely applied to a number of writers, among whom Emerson was the chief; but they did not constitute a regularly organized group, and had no very well-defined aims in common that could warrant the classification. Emerson himself disclaimed it later, saying “there was no concert of doctrinaires to establish certain opinions or to inaugurate some movement in literature, philosophy, or religion . . . but only two or three men and women, who read alone, with some vivacity. Perhaps all of these were surprised at the rumor that they were a school or a sect, but more especially at the name of 'Transcendentalism.'” Nevertheless, the scholars and writers of the period under notice, who numbered considerably more than two or three, finally adopted the name that had been forced upon them by changing the name of a periodical gathering held by them from the “Symposium” to “The Transcendental Cluborn” A period of new intellectual activity had begun about 1820, on the return of Edward Everett from Europe, laden with treasures of German thought, which he put into circulation. Gradually his influence, and that of Coleridge and Carlyle in England, produced a reaction against the philosophy of Locke and Bentham, which, denying all innate ideas, and insisting upon purely mechanical revelation, had hitherto ruled Unitarians in Old and New England. The reactionists affirmed the existence of innate ideas, and a faculty in man that transcends the senses and the understanding. Supported by Goethe's deep love of nature as a companion of man, and Wordsworth's conception of it as interfused with spirit, Emerson made a new advance, reiterated the idea of a transcendent faculty, intuitive religion, and perception of God, and embodied in an original form the spiritual interpretation of nature. The Symposium, or Transcendental Club, began to meet in 1836, first at the house of Dr. George Ripley. Among the members were Emerson, Frederic H. Hedge, James Freeman Clarke, Convers Francis, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott, Reverend Cyrus A. Bartol, Orestes A. Brownson, Margaret Fuller, and Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody. Dr. Channing once attended, and was in sympathy with the club, which discussed religion, impersonality, justice, truth, mysticism, pantheism, and the development of American genius. In this last theme perhaps lay the germ of Emerson's oration, “The American Scholar,” delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge in August, 1837. This has been well called “our intellectual Declaration of Independence,” an event without any former parallel in our literary annals. After eloquently describing the education and duties of the scholar, it protested against the prevailing subserviency to European taste, suspected the American freeman of being “timid, imitative, tame,” and demanded that the individual man “plant himself indomitably on his instincts and there abide. . . . We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. . . . A nation of freemen will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which inspires all men.” His friend, Bronson Alcott, having set up a school in Boston for teaching young children by methods based on a new theory of education, published in 1837 a book reporting his own conversations with the children on the gospels, which excited severe criticism, and Emerson defended him in the Boston “Courier.” He was destined to rouse a much greater hostility himself by his address to the senior class in the Divinity College, Cambridge, 15 July, 1838. With great force and beauty of language he attacked the formalism of contemporary religion, and the traditional limited way of using the mind of Christ. “Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. . . . The soul is not preached. . . . It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that he speaketh, not spake. The true Christianity — a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of man — is lost.” To each of the graduates he said: “Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hands with the Deity.” The address, pronounced with strong conviction, led to lively controversy, in which Emerson took no part. Ten lectures were given by him, in the winter of 1838-'9, on “The Doctrine of the Soul,” “Home,” “The School,” “Love,” etc., followed later by “Man the Reformer,” “The Method of Nature,” and a “Lecture on the Times.” In these he treated some of the reforms then agitated — temperance, anti-slavery, non-resistance, no government, and equal labor. Having come to hold the position of a religious reformer, he was looked to for sympathy with other reforms; but he dealt with them in the same spirit as with religion, and proceeded to reform the reformers. He pointed out that “reforms have their higher origin in an ideal justice, but they do not retain the purity of an idea.” Their work “is done profanely, not piously; by management, by tactics, and by clamor.” Any end pursued for itself, by the practical faculty, must become an offence. The end should be “inapprehensible to the senses”; then it would always be a good, always giving health. Briefly, it was Emerson's mission not to do practical work for reforms, but to supply impulses and a high inspiration to the workers. In 1841 he lectured on “The Conservative,” and the next year on " The Transcendentalist," saying that “transcendentalism ” was simply modern idealism, and that the “new views” were the oldest of thoughts cast in a new mold. Yet, seven years before, he had consulted with others about establishing a journal to be known as “The Transcendentalist,” and in July. 1840, it was begun, under the name of “The Dial.” Emerson succeeded Margaret Fuller as the editor, and during its continuance, until April, 1844, published more than forty of his own pieces, prose and verse, in its columns. The poems included such famous ones as “The Problem,” “Wood-notes,” “The Sphinx,” and “Fate.” This periodical contained much delicate and valuable writing, but failed of pecuniary support. Associated as he was with the idealists, in the capacity of chief intellectual leader, he took a cordial interest in the semi-socialistic experiment at Brook Farm (1840 to 1847), with which some of the brightest New England men and women of that day were connected; but he did not join the community. Hawthorne, who was actually a member and lost money in the undertaking, has been much criticised for having viewed it independently; but Emerson, outside, held a similar neutral attitude, and wrote an account of the affair, in which, touching it humorously at points, he called it “a French Revolution in small, an Age of Reason in a patty-pan.” In 1841 appeared the first volume of his essays, made up from lectures. It embraced “History,” “Compensation,” “Self-Reliance,” “Heroism,” “The Over-Soul,” “Spiritual Laws,” “Love,” “Friendship,” “Prudence,” “Intellect,” “Circles,” and “Art.” A second series was published in 1844, containing “Character,” “Gifts,” “Manners,” “The Poet,” “Politics,” “New England Reformers,” and a new one on “Nature.” These made a favorable impression in France and England, and laid the basis of his lofty reputation in this country as a prose-writer. Two years later he collected in a volume of “Poems” his scattered metrical pieces, many of which had been printed in periodicals. He did not escape sharp criticism, but the circle of his admirers rapidly widened. A new periodical, “The Massachusetts Quarterly Review,” began its career at Boston in 1847, edited by Theodore Parker, a disciple of Emerson, who expounded the “new views” in a more combative way; and Emerson wrote for it an “Editor's Address,” inculcating a wise and sincere spirit in meeting the problems of the state, of slavery, and socialism. In October of that year he sailed to England on a lecturing tour, repeated a course on “Representative Men” in various places, read a special series in London on “The Mind and Manners in the Nineteenth Century,” and lectured frequently in Scotland. He was enthusiastically received by large audiences, met a great number of the foremost men and women of the time, and was a guest in many private houses. In 1849 he returned home and published “Representative Men” (1850). Here he contributed to the “Memoirs” of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852) an account of her conversations in Boston and her Concord life. He also, having visited Paris while abroad, gave a lecture on “France,” which has never been printed; and at the Woman's Rights convention in 1856 delivered an address that took advanced ground, for that date, in favor of larger liberty for women. In this year the result of his observations in England was published in the volume entitled “English Traits,” which gained cordial recognition both at home and abroad, and has been translated into several foreign languages. It is certainly the best analysis of the English people that has been written by an American, and probably the best produced in any country. The style is succinct and exact, sown with epigram, as in most of Emerson's writings; but, the purpose being more objective than that of his essays, the saving common sense that underlies all of his thinking is here brought constantly and predominantly into view. Previously to this publication he had given seven lectures in Freeman place chapel, Boston, and another in New York, and had also made addresses before the Anti-slavery Society in both cities. While in the ministry he alone had opened a church to abolition speakers, and his sympathies were always on the side of emancipation. In 1835 he countenanced Harriet Martineau in her outspoken condemnation of slavery, and in the height of her unpopularity invited her to his house. Again, in 1844, he spoke stirringly on the anniversary of West Indian emancipation, and scourged his countrymen for tolerating Negro servitude. His own plan was to buy the slaves, at a cost of $2,000,000,000, and he put faith in moral and spiritual influences to remove the evil, rather than in legislation. He never formally united with the abolition Party, but he encouraged it, and his influence was great. As the contest grew warmer, he rose to the emergency and took a more active part, even making campaign speeches for John G. Palfrey, who, having missed re-election to Congress on account of his anti-slavery course in that body, was nominated as Free-Soil candidate for governor of Massachusetts. The assault on Charles Sumner by Preston S. Brooks called forth another vigorous speech. In November, 1859, he said before the Parker fraternity that John Brown, were he to be hanged, would “make the gallows glorious, like the cross.” A few days afterward he spoke at a John Brown meeting at Tremont temple, with Wendell Phillips, and took part in another at Concord, and in still a third at Salem, Massachusetts. In January, 1861, also, he addressed the Anti-slavery Society at Boston, in the face of disturbance by a mob. Though he was not a chief agitator of the cause, these efforts, so alien to his retired habits as a student, poet, and meditative writer, made him a marked advocate of freedom.
The “Atlantic Monthly” made its first appearance in November, 1857, with James Russell Lowell as the editor, and Emerson became, a contributor, printing in all twenty-eight poems and prose articles in the first thirty-seven volumes. “The Romany Girl,” “Days,” “Brahma,” “Waldeinsamkeit,” “The Titmouse,” “Boston Hymn,” “Saadi,” and “Terminus,” which are among his best-known poems, belong to this period; and in the “Atlantic” in 1858 appeared his essay on Persian poetry, which is instructive as to the influence of oriental verse upon Emerson's. He continued to lecture in different parts of the country, and at the Burns festival in Boston in January. 1859, made an after-dinner speech which is described as imbued with a passion uncommon in his utterances. Its effect on the assembly was said, by a competent judge who had heard the chief orators of the time, to have surpassed anything accomplished by them, and it seems to have indicated a reserve power in Emerson seldom suspected. In 1860 and 1862 he lost by death his friend Theodore Parker and his intimate companion Thoreau, both of whom he celebrated in memorial addresses. The “Conduct of Life” was published in the former year — a series of essays on fate, power, wealth, culture, behavior, worship, considerations by the way, beauty, and illusions. With a diminished admixture of mysticism, it offered a larger proportion of practical philosophy, and stated the limitations of fate in life, while but reaffirming the liberty of the individual. Hitherto Emerson's books had sold very slowly; but of the “Conduct of Life” the whole edition, 2,500 copies, was sold in two days. This is an index of the great change that had occurred in the popular estimate of him since the issuing of his first volume, “Nature,” twenty-seven years before. He who had been feared as a revolutionist, or laughed at as erratic, was now, at the age of fifty-seven, accepted as a veritable prophet and sage. The people and the times had, in a measure, grown up to him. A new “Dial” having been established in Cincinnati about this time, he wrote for its pages. During the Civil War he delivered a lecture on “American Civilization” at the Smithsonian institution in February, 1862; an address in Boston on the emancipation proclamation, September of the same year; and at Concord, 19 April, 1865, he pronounced a brief eulogy on Abraham Lincoln.
On 30 May, 1867, he attended at the organization of the Free religious Association in Boston, and stated his view as to religion briefly thus: As soon as every man is apprised of the Divine presence in his mind, and sees that the law of duty corresponds with the laws of physical nature — that duty, social order, power of character, wealth of culture, perfection of taste, all draw their essence from this moral sentiment — “then we have a religion that exalts, that commands all the social and all the private action.” Emerson passed many severe criticisms on his countrymen, publicly accused America of wanting in faith, hope, enthusiasm, and in a letter to Carlyle called it an intelligent but sensual, avaricious America. The war, with its heroisms and exhibitions of moral strength, gave him new courage, new belief in the national future. His Phi Beta Kappa oration of 1867 on “The Progress of Culture” expressed even more sanguine expectation than “The American Scholar,” thirty years before. He received the degree of LL. D. from Harvard in 1866, and was elected to the board of overseers in 1867. He began to feel the approach of age, and in 1866 wrote the noble poem “Terminus.”
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It is time to be old,
To take in sail;
. . . . .
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.”
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Nevertheless, in the following year he brought out “May-Day,” a long poem, the freshest and most youthful in tone of any that he had written, accompanied by many other pieces, some of which had appeared previously. In the next three years, 1868-'70, he read at Harvard a number of lectures on “The Natural History of the Mind,” which have not been collected. The essays entitled “Society and Solitude” were published in 1870. They are noticeable for an easy, almost conversational tone, differing remarkably from the earlier published essays and “English Traits.” The same is true of “Letters and Social Aims” (1875). Emerson's method of composition was to jot down notes from reading and observation, which were entered in a commonplace book, with a memorandum on the margin. From this he drew the material for his lectures, which, heard from the platform, were flowing in style and clear in sequence. When he prepared them for publication, much of the incidental matter and connecting links were struck out. The latest two volumes were arranged for the press when the author, growing old, gave them a less rigorous revision, and relied upon help from others. In 1870 and 1871 he wrote introductions to a translation of Plutarch's “Morals” and W. E. Channing's poem “The Wanderer.” “Parnassus,” a collection of poems by British and American authors, was brought out, with a short introduction, in 1874. Emerson was nominated in the latter year for the lord-rectorship of Glasgow University by the independents, and was defeated by a vote of 500 in his favor against 700 for Benjamin Disraeli. In 1875 he made a short address at the unveiling of French's statue of “The Minute-Man” on the Concord battle-field. He responded to an invitation from two societies of the University of Virginia in 1876 by lecturing to them on “The Scholar.” In March, 1878, he read a paper at the Old South Church, Boston, on “The Fortune of the Republic,” in which, commenting with sagacity on current tendencies in the national life, he said: “Let the passion for America cast out the passion for Europe.” The same year he printed in the “North American Review” “The Sovereignty of Ethics”; in 1879 he read “The Preacher” in Divinity College, Cambridge, and an essay on “Superlatives” was published in “The Century” magazine for February, 1882, shortly before his death. Two posthumous volumes of essays and reminiscences have appeared: “Miscellanies,” and “Lectures and Biographical Sketches”; and many brief poems heretofore unpublished have been included in a new edition.
In July, 1872, Emerson's house at Concord was partly destroyed by fire. This shock hastened the decline of his mental powers, which had already set in, and impaired his health. His friends spontaneously asked to be allowed to rebuild the house, and deposited in bank for him over $11,000, at the same time suggesting that he go abroad for rest and change. With his daughter Ellen he visited England and the Nile, and returned to Concord in May, 1873, to find his house rebuilt, and so perfectly restored to its former state that few could have discovered any change (see view on page 346). Welcomed by the citizens in a mass, he drove to his home, passing beneath a triumphal arch erected in his honor, amid general rejoicing.
After 1867 Emerson wrote no poems, and little prose, but revised his poetry and arranged the “Selected Poems.” Always inclined to slow speech, sometimes pausing for a word, he succumbed to a gradual aphasia, which made it difficult for him to converse. He forgot the names of persons and things. He had some difficulty in discriminating printed letters, and for the last five years of his life was unable to conduct correspondence. Yet he read through all his own published works “with much interest and surprise,” and tried to arrange his manuscripts, which he examined thoroughly. He also, following his custom of reading a paper annually before the Concord lyceum, gave there, in 1880, his hundredth lecture to the local audience. On that occasion the several hundred people in the hall spontaneously arose at his entrance and remained standing until he had taken his place on the platform. He took an interest in the Concord school of philosophy, organized in 1880, and supplied to its sessions an essay on “Natural Aristocracy.” Most of these later productions were put together from portions of earlier compositions. Throughout this time of decline he retained the perfect courtesy and consideration for others that had always characterized him. He was apparently quite able to comprehend the essence of things around him, and, to a certain extent, ideas; but the verbal means of communication were lost. He had so long regarded language and visible objects as mere symbols, that the symbols at last melted away and eluded him. He continued to read everything in printed form that he found upon his table, whispering the words over like a child, and was fond of pointing out pictures in books. In April, 1882, he took a severe cold, and, attended by his son, Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, died of pneumonia. He was buried in the cemetery at Concord, near the graves of Hawthorne and Thoreau, in ground over which he had often walked and talked with them and with Margaret Fuller.
Emerson was tall and slender, not of robust physique, rather sallow in the face, with an aquiline nose, brown hair, and eyes of the “strongest and brightest blue.” His head was below the average in circumference, long, narrow, but more nearly equal in anterior and posterior breadth than most heads. His appearance was majestic. He was calm, kindly in expression, and frequently smiled, but seldom laughed. His manners were dignified but exquisitely simple. He was a ready listener, and often seemed to prefer listening, as if he were to be instructed rather than to instruct. He rarely showed irritation. His hospitality was almost unbounded, and he frequently waited upon the humblest of his guests with his own hands. He was never well-to-do until in his latest years. In 1838 he wrote to Carlyle that he possessed about $22,000 at interest, and could earn $800 in a winter by lecturing, but never had a dollar “to spend on a fancy.” He worked hard every summer writing, and every winter travelling and lecturing. His habits were regular and his diet frugal, the only peptic luxury in which he indulged being pie at breakfast. Every morning was spent in his study, and he would go all day without food unless called to eat. His bed-time was ten o'clock, but, if engaged in literary work, he would sit up until one or two, and was able to do this night after night. He fulfilled the duties of a citizen by attending town-meetings punctiliously. Much question has been made whether Emerson was rather a poet than a philosopher, or whether he was a philosopher at all. An exact philosopher he was not; but all that he wrote and said was based upon philosophic ideas. He was an intellectual rather than an emotional mystic, an idealist who insisted upon the application of idealism to the affairs of daily life. He believed that “Nature is the incarnation of a thought. . . . The world is mind precipitated.” He believed in the Over-Soul as a light guiding man, the light of intuitive perception, in God as the soul of the world, and in the human soul as one with that Over-Soul. He was not able to formulate these or other beliefs of his logically. Writing to his former colleague, Henry Ware, he said: “I could not give an account of myself if challenged. . . . I do not know what arguments are in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men.” This continued to be his position to the end. He relied upon intuition, and thought that every one might bring himself into accord with God on that basis. He expressed what he felt at the moment, and some of his sayings, even in a single essay, seem to be mutually opposed. But, if the whole of his works be taken together, a type of thought may be discerned in the conflicting expressions, coherent and suggestive, like that presented by the photographs of several generations of a family superimposed on one plate. In the beginning he seems to have looked somewhat askance at science; but in the 1849 edition of “Nature” he prefixed some verses that said:
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And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.”
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This came out ten years before Darwin's “Origin of Species,” and twenty years sooner than “The Descent of Man.” Lamarck's theories, however, had been popularized in 1844. But Emerson here showed how quick he was to seize upon the newest thought in science or elsewhere if it seemed to be true. Eleven years passed, and he declared in the essay on “Worship,” in “Conduct of Life”: “The religion which is to guide and fulfil the present and coming ages must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science. . . . There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked . . . but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters, science for symbol and illustration. It will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry.” While he thus advanced in viewing science, he advanced also in viewing all other subjects; but it was from the point of view of intuition and oneness with what he called the Over-Soul. Everything that he said must be looked at in the light of his own remark, “Life is a train of moods.” But his moods rest upon the certainty, to him, of his own intuition. Emerson's presentation of his views is generally in a large degree poetic. His poems sum up and also expand his prose. The seeming want of technical skill in his verse is frequently due to a more subtile art of natural melody which defied conventional rules of versification. The irregular lines, the flaws of metre and rhyme, remind us of the intermittent breathings of an Æolian harp. Emerson's poetic instrument may have been a rustic contrivance, but it answered to every impulse of the winds and the sighs of human feeling, from “Monadnoc” to the “Threnody” upon the death of his child-son. Sometimes he unconsciously so perfected his poetic lines that, as Dr. Holmes says, a moment after they were written they “seemed as if they had been carved on marble for a thousand years,” as this in “Voluntaries”:
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So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can.”
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Matthew Arnold has pronounced his essays “the most important work done in prose” in this century; but Professor C. C. Everett, discussing the qualities of Emerson in the “Andover Review” for March, 1887, describes his philosophy as that of a poet, and adds, “so his ethics is the ethics of a poet.” He regards the poems as the most complete and worthy expression of Emerson's genius. But Dr. Everett's discovery of passion in Emerson's poetry is not generally accepted by other critics. As has been well remarked by another writer, the verse, in general abstractly and intellectually beautiful, kindles to passion only when the chosen theme is distinctly American or patriotic. Emerson constantly preached by life and pen a new revelation, a new teacher of religion and morals, putting himself always in the place of a harbinger, a John crying in the wilderness. Julian Hawthorne has written of him: “He is our future living in our present, and showing the world, by anticipation, what sort of excellence we are capable of.” His own life conformed perfectly to the idealism that he taught; but he regarded himself as a modest link in the chain of progress. He made his generation turn their eyes forward instead of backward. He enforced upon them courage, self-reliance, patriotism, hope. People flocked to him from all quarters, finally, for advice and guidance. The influence that he exercised not only upon persons since grown eminent, such as Professor Tyndall, who found a life's inspiration in his thought, but also upon thousands unknown, is one of his claims to recognition. Another is that, at a time when, it is conceded, the people of the United States were largely materialistic in their aims, he came forward as the most idealistic writer of the age, and also as a plain American citizen. He was greatly indebted to preceding authors. It has been ascertained that he named in his writings 3,393 quotations from 808 individuals, mostly writers. “The inventor only knows how to quote,” said Emerson; and, notwithstanding his drafts upon the treasury of the past, he is the most original writer as a poet, seer, and thinker that America possesses. The doctrine of the “many in one,” which he incessantly taught, is exemplified in himself and his works. The best extant accounts of Emerson are “Ralph Waldo Emerson, his Life, Writings, and Philosophy,” by George Willis Cooke (Boston, 1881); “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes (Boston, 1884); “Emerson at Home and Abroad,” by Moncure D. Conway; “Biographical Sketch,” by Alexander Ireland; “The Genius and Character of Emerson, Lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy,” edited by F. B. Sanborn (Boston, 1885). See, also, F. B. Sanborn's “Homes and Haunts of Emerson.” J. E. Cabot, of Boston, has in charge a life authorized by Emerson's family, which may include extracts from his diaries and other unpublished matter. [Appleton’s 1900]
EMMONS, George Foster, naval officer, born in Clarendon, Rutland County, Vermont, 23 August, 1811; died in Princeton, New Jersey, 2 July, 1884. He entered the U.S. Navy as midshipman, 1 April, 1828, was promoted to passed midshipman in 1831, and was attached to Captain Charles Wilkes's exploring Expedition in 1838- 42. He was made lieutenant on 25 February, 1841, and after the loss of his vessel, the "Peacock," off Columbia River, Oregon, in July of that year, had charge of a party that explored the country south of the Columbia to the head-waters of the Sacramento, and went thence to San Francisco. He then served in various vessels, taking part in several engagements on shore in California, during the Mexican War. He became commander on 28 January, 1856, commanded the " Hatteras," of the western Gulf Squadron, in 1862, and in that year captured Cedar Keys, Florida, and Pass Christian, Mississippi, and about twenty prizes. He afterward commanded the " R. R. Cuyler," of the same squadron, and after being commissioned captain, 7 February, 1863, was fleet-captain under Admiral Dahlgren off Charleston. He commanded the " Lackawanna," and a division of from five to fifteen vessels in the Gulf of Mexico in 1864-'5, and while at New Orleans assisted in destroying the ram "Webb," and preventing the destruction of the city and shipping. In 1866-'8 he commanded the " Ossipee”, carrying the U. S. Commissioners to Alaska, and hoisting the American flag over that country. He was made commodore, 20 September, 1868, appointed senior member of the Ordnance Board in Washington in 1869, and given charge of the Hydrographic Office in 1870. He was promoted to rear admiral, 25 November, 1872, and retired from active service on 23 August, 1873. He published " The Navy of the United States from 1775 to 1858" (Washington, 1853). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 351.
EMMONS, William Hemsley, soldier, born in Queen Anne County, Maryland, 9 September, 1811, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1831, and appointed lieutenant of artillery and mounted rangers. He was stationed chiefly at sea-ports in 1831-'6, and was in Charleston Harbor during the nullification trouble in South Carolina. He was in the Creek Nation in 1836-'8, was appointed 1st lieutenant of topographical engineers in the latter year, and employed successively on the improvements of Delaware, River, and on the northeast boundary survey. He went with General Stephen W. Kearny to California in 1840, and was on his staff during the Mexican war, when he was successively made captain and brevet-major. He was on the Mexican and California border in 1848-'53, and in those years was commissioner and astronomer to run the boundary between Mexico and the United States, especially under the Gadsden Treaty of 1853. He was in Kansas in 1854, in Utah in 1858, and remained on border duty till 9 May, 1861, when he resigned. He was reappointed as lieutenant-colonel of the 6th U.S. Cavalry on 14 May, and he took part in the Peninsular Campaign, being engaged at Yorktown, Williamsburg, and Hanover Court-House. He was made brigadier-general of volunteers, 17 March, 1862, commanded a division under Banks in Louisiana in 1863, and, having been raised to the command of the 19th Corps, was with the same commander in 1864 in the Red River Expedition, in which he displayed unwonted bravery and skill, winning distinction especially at Sabine Cross-Roads, at Pleasant Hill, and at Cane River. Later in the same year, at the head of the 19th Corps, he offered a splendid and successful resistance to Early in the Shenandoah valley, especially at Opequan Creek, 19 September, at Fisher's Hill, 22 September, and at Cedar Creek in October. He received the successive brevets of major-general of volunteers, 23 July, 1864, and brigadier-general and major-general in the regular army, 13 March, 1865, and on 25 September, 1865, was commissioned full major-general of volunteers. After the war he was successively in command of the Department of West Virginia in 1865-'6, of the Department of Washington in 1869-'71, and of the Department of the Gulf in 1871-5. He retired in 1876 with the rank of brigadier-general. General Emory has published " Notes of a Military Reconnaissance in Missouri and California" (New York, 1848); and "Report of the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission" (Washington).—His son. William Hemsley, naval officer, was graduated at the U. S. Naval Academy in 1866, became master in 1869, and lieutenant in 1870, and in 1884 commanded the "Bear," of the Greely relief Expedition. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 352.
ENDICOTT, William, 1809 – 1881, abolitionist, of Danvers, Massachusetts, he wrote often for abolition papers. A lineal descendant of John Endecott, the first and longest-serving Governor of Massachusetts, he pursued the craft of morocco dressing, but left it to follow humanitarian pursuits. In 1831, he was on a ship that was shipwrecked off the Fiji Islands, but miraculously, he survived to write a short book about it published 42 years after his death, called “Wrecked among Cannibals in the Fijis,” describing the cannibalistic acts he witnessed firsthand. When he returned from Fiji, he became an inspector at the Salem Courthouse, where he worked until his death in 1881. (Letters of William Lloyd Garrison: No Union with the Slaveholders, 1841-1849, page 316; Alfred P. Putnam, “History of the Antislavery Movement in Danvers,” Danvers Historical Collections, 30:22-23, 1942.)
ENDICOTT, William, 1826-1914, abolitionist, of Beverly, Massachusetts, financial manager for abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison. Also a descendant of Governor John Endecott, and the son of a respectable dry goods merchant in Beverly, he could not attend college for health reasons and chose instead a business career. He became a wealthy merchant, known as an innovator in department-store-style merchandising and he developed extensive connections with prominent Bostonians. As his wealth grew, he served as a trustee and/or treasurer of many of Boston’s financial, cultural, and charitable institutions. He also took active interest in politics, local and national, which included participating in efforts to keep Kansas free of slavery, lending money to William Lloyd Garrison, taking care of Garrison’s financial affairs, and serving on a committee to create in 1885 the famous statue of Garrison that is on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall in Boston’s Back Bay.
ENGELHARD, Joseph Adolphus, soldier, born in Monticello, Mississippi, 27 September, 1832; died in Raleigh. North Carolina, 17 February, 1879. After attending schools in Mississippi and New Albany, Indiana, he was graduated at the University of North Carolina in 1854. He studied law at Harvard, and subsequently at Chapel Hill, and was licensed to practice in the County courts in 1850. He then moved to Tarboro, where he remained until the beginning of the war. He entered the Confederate Army as captain and quartermaster of the 33d Regiment in May, 1861, and in April, 1862, was promoted to be major and quartermaster of Branch's brigade. In December of that year he was transferred to General Pender's brigade as its adjutant-general, and served in this capacity till Lee's surrender. He became the editor of the Wilmington "Journal" in 1865, and was afterward elected secretary of state, which office he held till his death. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 356.
ENGLE, Frederick, naval officer, born in Delaware County. Pennsylvania, in 1799; died in Philadelphia, 12 February, 1868. He entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman on 30 November, 1814, and became lieutenant on 13 January, 1825. During the Mexican War he commanded the " Princeton”, and served in the Blockading Squadron. He was promoted to captain in 1855, and at the beginning of the Civil War was sent to China to bring home the "Hartford." He was then assigned to the command of the Philadelphia Navy-yard, and subsequently became governor of the naval asylum in that city. He was promoted to be rear-admiral on the retired list, 25 July, 1866. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 357.
ENGLISH, Earl, naval officer, born in Crosswicks, Burlington County, New Jersey, 18 February, 1824. He was educated in Trenton, New Jersey, and entered the naval service, 25 February, 1840. His first cruise was in the U. S. frigate "Constellation" around the world, returning after an absence of four years, then being ordered to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he was graduated in 1846. He joined the U. S. frigate "Independence," and was actively employed on the Pacific Coast, principally in California. He was at the capture of Mazatlan, Mexico, in November, 1847, and remained there till the close of the Mexican War. In 1852 he was attached to the U. S. brig " Dolphin," which was engaged in " deep-sea soundings" across the Atlantic Ocean from Newfoundland. He was appointed master, 1 March, 1855, and lieutenant on 14 September. In 1857 he cruised in the East Indies, and took part in the engagement with the barrier forts, seven miles below Canton, China, in which he was wounded. He was made lieutenant-commander, 16 July, 1862, and served throughout the Civil War, being employed principally in the Gulf of Mexico and the sounds of North Carolina, and commanding at different periods the " Somerset," "Sagamore," and "Wyalusing." In 1866 he was appointed commander, and after the war served four years on the East India Station. He was then employed in Japanese waters during the struggle that resulted in the overthrow of the Tycoon. When the latter was defeated at Osaka, 18 February, 1868, he received him on board the "Iroquois," which was then anchored in the Osaka River. He was commissioned captain, 28 September, 1871, commodore, 25 March, 1880, and rear-admiral, 4 September, 1884, at which time he resigned the office of chief of the Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting, which he had held for six years. He then took command of the European Station, and was retired, 18 February. 1886. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 358.
ENGLISH, James Edward, 1812-1890, statesman, businessman. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut 1861-1865 as War Democrat. Governor of Connecticut, 1867-1870. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 358; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 165; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 7, p. 527; Congressional Globe)
ENGLISH, James Edward, statesman, born in New Haven, Connecticut, 13 March, 1812. He received a common-school education, and served an apprenticeship in a carpenter's shop. Here his energy and capacity were such that before he had attained his majority he was made master builder. He then engaged in the lumber-trade, and subsequently in real estate, banking, and manufacturing enterprises, and became one of the richest men in Connecticut. In 1848 he was a member of the New Haven common council, and elected a member of the state general assembly in 1855, and elected to the Senate in 1856-'8. He was then elected to Congress as a War-Democrat, and served from 1861 till 1865, voting with the Republicans for the abolition of slavery. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia National Union Convention in 1866, and was governor of Connecticut in 1867-'70. He then travelled extensively in Europe and the United States. In 1875 he was elected U.S. Senator to fill a vacancy, and served till the following spring. He is president of the New Haven Savings Bank, and a manager of Adams Express Company. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 358.
ENGLISH, William Hayden, lawyer, born in Lexington, Scott County, Indiana, 27 August, 1822. His father, Elisha G. English, one of the pioneers of Indiana, was honored with many public trusts during a period of forty years. William was educated in the common schools and at Hanover College, studied law, and was admitted to practice in the U. S. supreme court before he was twenty-three years of age. He served as deputy clerk of his native County, and as postmaster of Lexington, before reaching his majority. In 1843-'4 he was a principal clerk in the Indiana House of Representatives. He was principal secretary of the state convention of 1850, which framed the constitution of Indiana, and was a member and speaker of the first, House of Representatives after its adoption in 1851. He was a clerk in the U. S. Treasury Department during Polk's administration, and held a clerkship in the U. S. Senate about 1850. He was elected to Congress in 1852 as a Democrat, and served from 1853 till 1861, when he resigned and engaged in banking. He was prominently identified with the legislation of that period, and was the author of a compromise measure, in relation to the admission of Kansas as a state, which became a law, and was a prolific theme of controversy in the heated political contests of that day, under the name of "the English Bill." From 1853 till 1861 he was one of the regents of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. In 1880 Mr. English was unanimously nominated for vice-president, on the ticket with General Hancock, by the Democratic National Convention. He is president of the Indiana Historical Society, and author of an historical and biographical work on the constitution and law-makers of that state (Indianapolis, 1887). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 359.
ERICSSON, John, engineer, born in Langbanshyttan, province of Wermland, Sweden, 31 July, 1803. His father, Olof, was a mining proprietor, and his brother, Baron Nils Ericsson, was colonel of engineers, and became chief of the Swedish railways. As a boy, John had ample opportunity of watching machinery connected with mines, and his mechanical talent was early developed. He received his earliest instruction from a Swedish governess, and a German engineering officer who had served under Bernadotte. Before he was eleven years of age he had constructed with his own hands, and after his own plans, a miniature saw-mill, and had made numerous drawings of complicated mechanical contrivances. These efforts having attracted the attention of Count Platen, this celebrated engineer appointed him a cadet in the corps of mechanical engineers, and, after six months' tuition, he was made a leveller at the grand Swedish ship canal, then in course of construction. Two years later, at the age of fourteen, he was employed to set out the work of a section employing 600 soldier operatives, and occupied his leisure in making drawings of every implement and machine connected with the canal. He entered the Swedish Army as ensign in 1820, and was rapidly promoted to a lieutenancy. Shortly afterward he passed with distinction a competitive examination for an appointment on the survey of northern Sweden. Notwithstanding the labor attendant upon his duties as a surveyor, he undertook to make drawings for a work on canals, and to engrave the plates in the style of what was known as machine engraving. He devised a line engraving machine, by means of which, within one year, he completed eighteen large copper plates, which experts pronounced to be of superior merit. When about twenty-two years old he constructed a condensing flame-engine of ten-horse power, and in 1826 went to England to introduce it; but it was not successful, the flame produced by mineral fuel being far less in volume than that obtained from a pine-wood fire, while the intense heat from coal seriously affected the working parts of the engine. In 1827 he resigned his commission in the army, after being promoted to a captaincy. The failure of the flame-engine compelled him to draw upon his mechanical abilities for means to prosecute further experiments. He produced, in rapid succession, an instrument for taking sea soundings, a hydrostatic weighing machine, and numerous other devices, including tubular steam-boilers, and artificial draught by centrifugal fan-blowers, dispensing with huge smoke-stacks, economizing fuel, and showing the fallacy of the assertion that the production of steam was dependent on the amount of fire surface. In the steamship "Victory," in 1828, he made the first application to navigation of the principle of condensing steam and returning the water to the boiler, and in the same year submitted to the admiralty his self-acting gun-lock, the peculiarity being that by its means naval cannon could be automatically discharged at any elevation, notwithstanding the rolling of the ship. Not being able to agree as to the terms of adoption in the British Navy, he kept the secret of this invention till 1843, when he applied it to the wrought-iron gun of the " Princeton." In 1829 he produced the celebrated steam carriage " Novelty," built for the purpose of competing with George Stephenson for the historical Liverpool and Manchester railway prize. This engine was planned and completed, and placed on the trial-ground within seven weeks; but, although the "Novelty," guided by its inventor, far exceeded all other competitors in lightness, elegance, and speed, attaining the then amazing speed of thirty miles an hour, Stephenson's "Rocket" proved superior in traction, and was awarded the prize. In the "Novelty" he introduced several features, the four most important of which are retained in the locomotive of the present day. This year, also, he invented a steam fire-engine, which excited great interest in London, and for which he afterward received, in 1840, the great fold medal of the Mechanics' Institute of New York. In 1830 he introduced "link motion " for reversing locomotive engines, and a modification of this device is now in use in all locomotives. His long-cherished plan of a caloric engine was realized in 1833, and was hailed with astonishment by the scientific world of London. Lectures were delivered on it by Dr. Dionysius Lardner and Michael Faraday, and it was highly approved by Dr. Andrew Ure and Sir Richard Phillips. A working engine of five-horse power was built, in which he placed the "Regenerator," but it was unsuccessful owing to the high temperature essential, which produced oxidation, quickly destroying the valves and other working parts. In 1853 the caloric ship " Ericsson," of 2,000 tons, was propelled by a motor on the same principle. A sea trial from New York to Washington and back established great economy in fuel, but at a speed too slow to compete with steam. For several years thereafter Ericsson devoted himself to the improvement of the stationary caloric engine and its application to light mechanical purposes, and more than 6,000 of such engines have been built up to 1887, hundreds being employed in New York City in pumping water in private dwellings. In 1862 the American Academy of arts and sciences awarded the gold and silver Rumford medals to Ericsson "for his improvements in the management of heat, particularly as shown in his caloric engine of 1858." This was the second bestowal of the premium in the United States. In 1836 Ericsson invented and patented the screw propeller, which revolutionized navigation, and in 1837 built a steam vessel having twin screw propellers, which on trial towed the American packet-ship "Toronto" at the rate of five miles an hour on the River Thames. Subsequently the admiralty barge, bearing the lords of the admiralty, was towed at a rapid rate, but the endeavor to convince them of the practicability of the new device was futile, since they thought that, as the power must be applied at the stern, the vessel would not steer. In 1838 he constructed the iron screw-steamer " Robert P. Stockton," which crossed the Atlantic under canvas in 1839, and was afterward employed as a tug-boat on the River Delaware for a quarter of a century. In 1839, urged by Commodore Robert F. Stockton, U. S. N., Ericsson resigned his office in London as superintending engineer of the Eastern Counties Railway, and came to the United States during November. In 1841, under order from the U. S. Navy Department, he furnished designs for the screw war-ship "Princeton," the first vessel having the propelling machinery below water-line, out of the reach of hostile shot. This vessel dictated the reconstruction of the navies of the world. Besides its screw propeller, the " Princeton " was remarkable for numerous mechanical novelties devised by Ericsson, such as a direct-acting semi-cylindrical steam-engine of great compactness and simplicity: a telescopic smoke-stack; and independent centrifugal blowers for ventilation and for promoting combustion in the boiler-furnaces, obviating the necessity of exposing the chimney during battle. He also fitted it with wrought-iron gun-carriages, with mechanism for dispensing with breeching, and taking up the recoil of the twelve-inch wrought iron gun, the first of its kind, and up to that time the largest and most powerful piece of ordnance mounted on ship-board; the self-acting lock, before referred to; and an optical instrument to enable the commanding officer, by mere inspection, accurately to ascertain the distance of the object to be aimed at. The " Princeton" is correctly regarded as the pioneer of modern naval construction, and also as the foundation of the steam marine of the world. During the construction of the " Princeton," and before the end of 1843, numerous propeller vessels were built and furnished with engines by Ericsson, for carrying freight on the rivers and inland waters of the United States, and his propellers were in successful application in more than sixty vessels in this country before a single attempt was made to evade his patent. Up to this period Europe was skeptical regarding the commercial value of the new method of propulsion. In 1851, in the U. S. division of the World's fair held in London, he exhibited several of his inventions, including his instrument for measuring distances at sea; a hydrostatic gauge for fluids under pressure; a gauge for the volume of water passing through pipes; the alarm barometer; a pyrometer; an instrument for measuring fluids by the velocity with which they pass through definite apertures; and a self-registering deep-sea lead, still in use by the U. S. Coast Survey, the principle of which was adopted in constructing the sounding apparatus used by the " Challenger" Expedition. For these philosophical exhibits Ericsson was awarded the prize medal of the exhibition. Previous to 1836, Ericsson conceived the idea that was put in practical shape when, in 1854, he presented to Emperor Napoleon III, plans of a partially submerged armored vessel, with guns in a revolving shot-proof cupola placed centrally on the deck. This was the first suggestion of the "Monitor," which was designed and built by him in Greenpoint, New York, in 1861, for the U. S. government, under very arbitrary conditions. When the proposition to build this vessel was accepted, the only drawing completed by the designer was a mere outline and section to illustrate the stability of the structure; but, by extraordinary energy and executive skill, calculations and working-plans were made, and the " Monitor" launched, with steam machinery complete, in one hundred days from the laying of the keel. She arrived in Hampton Roads just in time to defeat, on 9 March, 1862, the Confederate iron-clad " Merrimac," which, on the day preceding, had destroyed the "Cumberland" and "Congress," and was about to sink or disperse the rest of the government's wooden fleet. But for the victory of the “Monitor," the result of the war might have been changed, and European interference attempted. A fleet of monitors was then quickly built, which defeated several Confederate iron-clad batteries; and Ericsson's system was taken up by European maritime powers and carried out by them on a large scale. In 1869 he constructed for the Spanish government a fleet of thirty steam gun-boats, which was intended to guard Cuba against filibustering parties. In 1881 his latest war-vessel, the "Destroyer" was devised. It carries a submarine gun of sixteen inches calibre, which discharges 300 pounds of gun-cotton, in a 1,500-pound projectile, against an iron-clad's hull beneath the water-line. During many years Ericsson has devoted much time to scientific investigation, including computations of the influences that retard the earth's rotary motion. His " Sun Motor," erected at New York in 1883, develops a steady power obtained from the supply of mechanical energy stored up in the sun. This motor is intended by the designer as a contribution to applied science. Ericsson has contributed numerous papers, on scientific, naval, and mechanical subjects, to various journals in America and Europe. In "Contributions to the Centennial Exhibition " (New York, 1876) he describes the scientific apparatus devised and employed by him in experiments which determined all important practical questions relating to radiant heat, and of numerous novel instruments by which he has demonstrated the intensity of solar energy and the temperature of the solar surface: it also contains a description of his principal engineering constructions during his residence in the United States. Many honors have been bestowed upon him. Besides receiving royal favors from Sweden, he is knight commander of royal orders in Denmark and Spain; recipient of the grand cross of naval merit from the late King Alfonso of Spain, and of a special gold medal sent by the emperor of Austria in behalf of science; has received the thanks of Congress, and is a member of various scientific institutions in Europe and America. Wesleyan University gave him the degree of LL. D, in 1862. In 1867 a huge monument, quarried in one piece from the neighboring granite-mines, was set up in front of his birthplace, bearing the inscription, in the Swedish language, "John Ericsson was born here, 31 July, 1803." He now (1887) resides in New York City. See "Ericsson and his Inventions," "Atlantic Monthly," July, 1862, and "John Ericsson," "Scribner's Monthly," April, 1879. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 363-365.
ERNST, Oswald Hubert, soldier, born near Cincinnati, Ohio, 27 June, 1842. He entered Harvard in 1858, and two years later was appointed to the U. S. Military Academy, where he was graduated in 1864, becoming at once 1st lieutenant in the Engineer Corps. In July, 1864, he became assistant engineer of the Army of the Tennessee, and served throughout the Georgia Campaign. After a short service at the U. S. Military Academy as assistant professor of engineering, he was appointed assistant engineer in constructing fortifications on the Pacific Coast, and remained so occupied till 1868. He was promoted captain in March, 1867, had command of an engineer company at Willett's Point, New York, in 1868-'71, and in 1870 was sent as astronomer with the government expedition to Spain, to observe the solar eclipse of that year. Later he was appointed instructor of practical military engineering, military signaling, and telegraphy at the Military Academy, performing also the duties of architect for the more important structures of the place. In 1878 he became assistant engineer on western river improvements, and in 1880 was given charge of the improvements of the Mississippi River, between the Illinois and Ohio Rivers. He received his commission as major in May, 1882, and has since had charge of the works of river and harbor improvement in Texas. Major Ernst has written articles on engineering subjects, and has also published "A Manual of Practical Military Engineering" (New York, 1873). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 365.
EUSTIS, George, Congressman, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, 28 September, 1828; died in Cannes, France, 15 March, 1872, was educated at Jefferson College, Louisiana, and at Harvard law-school. He was elected to Congress as an American, and served from 1855 till 1859. He went to France as Secretary of the Confederate Legation, and remained there after the Civil War. During the Franco-Prussian War he voluntarily gave his services to the U. S. Legation in Paris. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 379.
EUSTIS, James Biddle, senator, born in New Orleans, 27 August, 1834. He received a classical education, was graduated at Harvard law-school in 1854, admitted to the bar in 1856, and practised in New Orleans. When the Civil War began he entered the Confederate Army, and, after one year service as judge-advocate on the staff of General Magruder, was transferred to the staff of General Joseph E. Johnston, with whom he served till the close of the war. He then resumed practice in New Orleans, was elected a member of the legislature prior to the Reconstruction Acts, and was one of the committee sent to Washington to confer with President Johnson on Louisiana affairs. He was a member of the state house of representatives in 1872, and was elected a member of the state senate for four years in 1874. He was chosen to the U. S. Senate as a Democrat in January, 1870, to fill the vacancy which, it was claimed, existed by failure of the Senate to give the seat to P. B. S. Pinchback, who had been elected in 1873. Only three Republicans took part in the election, on the ground that no vacancy existed, and Mr. Eustis was not given his seat till late in 1877, serving till 1879. He then became professor of civil law in the University of Louisiana, but in 1884 was again elected to the U. S. Senate for the full term of six years. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 379-380.
EUSTIS, Henry Lawrence, engineer, born at Fort Independence, Boston, Massachusetts, 1 February, 1819; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 11 January, 1885, was graduated at Harvard in 1838, and in that year was appointed to the U. S. Military Academy, where he was graduated at the head of his class in 1842. He was then assigned to the Engineer Corps, and ordered to Washington as assistant to the chief engineer. He assisted in the construction of Fort Warren and Lovell's Island sea-wall, in Boston Harbor, in 1843-'5, and during the following two years was connected with engineering operations in Newport Harbor. In 1847 he was made the principal assistant professor of engineering at West Point, but resigned in 1849 in order to become professor of engineering in Harvard, and organized that department in the Lawrence scientific school there, and held this office until his death. He was dean of the scientific faculty from 1871 till 1885. In the Civil War he was colonel of the 10th Massachusetts Volunteers, and served at Williamsport, Fredericksburg, Marye Heights, Salem, Gettysburg, Rappahannock Station, Mine Run, Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, and many minor actions. He was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers on 12 September, 1863, and resigned on 27 June, 1864, owing to impaired health. He returned to his college duties in Cambridge in 1864. He was a member of various learned societies, to whose transactions he contributed papers, and also wrote reports and technical articles. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 380.
EVANS, Nathan George, soldier, born in Darlington District, South Carolina, in 1823; died in Midway, Alabama, 80 November, 1868. He was graduated at the U. & Military Academy in 1848, assigned to the 1st U.S. Dragoons, and served on frontier duty and against the Indians. He was made 1st lieutenant in the 2d Cavalry, 3 March, 1855; captain, 1 May, 1856; and distinguished himself in a fight with Comanche Indians, 1 October, 1858, killing two of them in personal combat. He resigned on 27 February, 1861, entered the Confederate service as colonel, and commanded a brigade at Bull Run. He was then promoted to brigadier-general, and commanded the Confederate forces at Ball's Bluff, 19 October, 1861. He also commanded in the actions at James Island, South Carolina, and Kinston, North Carolina, in 1862, and subsequently became major-general. He led a division of Gordon's corps at Hatcher's Run, surrendered with General Lee on 9 April, 1865, and from 1866 till his death was engaged in teaching. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 383.
EVARTS, William Maxwell, lawyer, born in Boston, 6 February, 1818. He was prepared for college in the Boston Latin-school, graduated at Yale in 1837, and while in college, with four of his classmates, he founded the " Yale Literary Magazine." Choosing the profession of the law, he studied in Harvard law school, and in the office of Daniel Lord, of New York City, and was admitted to the bar established a reputation for learning and acumen, and was often consulted by older lawyers. In 1849- '53 he was assistant district attorney in New York City, and in 1851 successfully conducted the prosecution of the Cuban filibusters concerned in the "Cleopatra" Expedition. The same year he was selected to argue in favor of the constitutionality of the Metropolitan Police Act. In 1857 and 1860 he was retained by the state of New York to argue the Lemmon slave case against Charles O'Conor, the counsel for the State of Virginia, before the Supreme Court and the court of appeals. He became an active and prominent member of the Republican Party, was chairman of the New York delegation in the Republican National Convention of 1860, and proposed the name of William H. Seward for the presidency. In 1861 he and Horace Greeley were rival candidates for the U.S. Senatorship before the New York legislature, but finally his name was withdrawn to enable his supporters to secure the election of Ira Harris. In 1862 he conducted the case of the government to establish in the supreme court the right of the United States in the Civil War to treat captured vessels as maritime prizes, according to the laws of war. In 1865 and 1866 he maintained with success before the courts the unconstitutionality of state laws taxing U. S. bonds or National bank tax without the authorization of Congress. In 1868 President Johnson chose him as chief counsel in the impeachment trial before the Senate, and from 15 July, 1868, till the end of President Johnson's administration, he filled the office of Attorney-General of the United States. He acted in 1872 as counsel for the United States before the tribunal of arbitration on the Alabama claims at Geneva, and presented the arguments on which the decisions favorable to the United States were to a large extent based. In 1875 he was senior counsel for Henry Ward Beecher in the trial of the suit against him in Brooklyn. For many years his reputation had been national, and he had been engaged in a large number of cases involving great interests, among the more famous of which were the Parrish will case and the contest over the will of Mrs. Gardner, mother of the widow of President Tyler. His services were often sought in cases in which large corporations were parties, and he received in some instances fees of $25,000 or $50,000 for an opinion, such as that on the Berdell mortgage upon the Boston, Hartford, and Erie Railroad. The firm of Evarts, Choate & Beaman, of which he is senior partner, has among its clients many of the prominent merchants and bankers of New York City. In 1877 he was the advocate of the Republican Party before the electoral commission, and during the administration of President Hayes he was Secretary of State. His administration of the State Department was marked by a judicious and dignified treatment of diplomatic questions, and especially by the introduction of a higher standard of efficiency in the consular service, and the publication of consular reports on economic and commercial conditions in foreign countries. In 1881, after the conclusion of his term of service in the cabinet, he went to Paris as delegate of the United States to the International Monetary Conference. On 4 March, 1885, he took his seat in the U. S. Senate for the term expiring 3 March, 1891, having been elected as a Republican to succeed Elbridge G. Lapham as senator from New York. Mr. Evarts is known as a brilliant speaker at convivial gatherings, and as a public orator of eloquence and versatility. On many important occasions he has delivered addresses, several of which have been published. Among his public addresses are the eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase, at Dartmouth College, in June, 1873; the Centennial oration, in Philadelphia, in 1876; and the speeches at the unveiling of the statues of William H. Seward and Daniel Webster, in New York, and of Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 385
EVERETT, Alexander Hill, 1792-1847, Boston, Massachusetts, newspaper editor of the North American Review, anti-slavery advocate. Defended the American Colonization Society, and colonization, as anti-slavery. Raised funds for the Society. (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 386-387; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 220; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 135, 210, 214)
EVERETT, Alexander Hill, born in Boston; Massachusetts, 19 March, 1792; died in Macao, China, 28 June, 1847. He was a son of the Reverend Oliver Everett (who was pastor of the New South Church in Boston from 1782 to 1792), and was graduated at Harvard in 1806 with the highest honors of his class, although the youngest of its members. After leaving college he was for a year assistant teacher in Phillips Exeter Academy, then studied law in the office of John Quincy Adams, whom in 1809 he accompanied to Russia, residing for two years in his family, attached to the legation. At the close of the war between the United States and Great Britain, Governor Eustis, of Massachusetts, was appointed minister to the Netherlands, and Mr. Everett went with him as secretary of legation, but after a year of service returned home. On the retirement of Governor Eustis he was appointed his successor, with the rank of charge d’affaires, and held this post from 1818 till 1824. In 1825-'9 he was minister to Spain, after which he returned home and became proprietor and editor of the “North American Review,” to which he had, during the editorship of his brother Edward, been one of the chief contributors. From 1830 till 1835 he sat in the legislature of Massachusetts; in 1840 he resided, as a confidential agent of the United States, in the Island of Cuba, and while there was appointed president of Jefferson College, Louisiana, but was soon obliged by failing health to return to New England. On the return of Caleb Cushing from his mission to China, Mr. Everett was appointed commissioner to that empire, and sailed for Canton, 4 July, 1845. He was detained by illness at Rio Janeiro, and returned home, but in the summer of 1846 made a second and more successful attempt to reach his destination, and died in Macao. Mr. Everett’s first published compositions appeared in the “Monthly Anthology,” the vehicle of the Anthology club of Boston, which consisted of George Ticknor, William Tudor, Dr. Bigelow and Reverend J. S. J. Gardiner, Alexander H. Everett, and Reverend Messrs. Buckminster, Thacher, and Emerson. The “Monthly Anthology,” established by Phineas Adams, was published from 1803 till 1811 Mr. Everett published “Europe, or a General Survey of the Political Situation of the Principal Powers, with Conjectures on their Future Prospects” (London and Boston, 1822; translated into German, French, and Spanish, the German version edited by Professor Jacobi, of the University of Halle); “New Ideas on Population, with Remarks on the Theories of Godwin and Malthus” (London and Boston, 1822); “America, or a General Survey of the Political Situation of the Several Powers of the Western Continent, with Conjectures on their Future Prospects, by a Citizen of the United States” (Philadelphia, 1827; London, 1828); “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays” (first series, Boston, 1845; second series, 1847); and “Poems” (1845). To Sparks’s “American Biography” Mr. Everett contributed the lives of Joseph Warren and Patrick Henry. His principal contributions to the “North American Review” are on the following subjects: French Dramatic Literature; Louis Bonaparte; Private Life of Voltaire; Literature of the 18th Century; Dialogue on Representative Government, between Dr. Franklin and President Montesquieu; Bernardin de St. Pierre; Madame de Staël; J. J. Rousseau; Mirabeau; Schiller; Chinese Grammar; Cicero on Government; Degerando’s History of Philosophy; Lord Byron; British Opinions on the Protecting System; The American System; Life of Henry Clay; Early Literature of Modern Europe; Early Literature of France; Origin and Character of the Old Parties; and Thomas Carlyle. His principal contributions to the “Democratic Review” are the following: The Spectre Bride-groom, from Bürger; The Water-King, a Legend of the Norse; The Texas Question; and The Malthusian Theory. His contributions to the “Boston Quarterly Review” were chiefly, if not altogether, devoted to an exposition of questions connected with the currency. Among Mr. Everett’s published orations are the following: On the Progress and Limits of the Improvement of Society; The French Revolution; The Constitution of the United States; Discovery of America by the Northmen; Battle of New Orleans; and Battle of Bunker Hill. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 386-387
EVERETT, Edward, statesman. Supporter of colonization and the American Colonization Society. (Burin, 2005, p. 28; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II., pp. 387-389, Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 207, 245w)
EVERETT, Edward, born in Dorchester. Massachusetts, 11 April. 1794; died in Boston, 15 January, 1865, entered Harvard (where he edited the " Harvard Lyceum" in 1807, and was graduated with the highest honors in 1811. In 1813 he was settled as pastor over the Unitarian Church in Brattle Square, Boston, succeeding the Reverend Joseph Stevens Buckminster, and soon attracted attention by his eloquence, especially by his sermon delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives, Washington, in February, 1820. "The sermon was truly splendid," wrote Judge Joseph Story, "and was heard with a breathless silence. The audience was very large, and, being in that magnificent apartment of the House of Representatives, it had vast effect. I saw Mr. King, of New York, and Mr. Otis, of Massachusetts, there. They were both very much affected with Mr. Everett's sermon; and Mr. Otis, in particular, wept bitterly. There were some very stirring appeals to our most delicate feelings on the loss of our friends. Indeed, Mr. Everett was almost universally admired as the most eloquent of preachers. Mr. King told me he never heard a discourse so full of unction, eloquence, and good taste." After his graduation Mr. Everett was Latin tutor at Harvard, and in 1814 he was chosen to fill the newly-formed chair of Greek literature, to qualify himself for which he spent more than four years (from the spring of 1815 to the autumn of 1819) in Europe, studying for two years in the University of Gottingen. "Edward Everett," remarks Abraham Hayward in his sketch of "American Orators and Statesmen," in the "London Quarterly Review" for December, 1840, "is one of the most remarkable men living. ... At nineteen he had already acquired the reputation of an accomplished scholar, and was drawing large audiences as a Unitarian preacher. At twenty-one (the age at which Roger Ascham achieved a similar distinction) he was appointed professor of Greek in Harvard University, and soon afterward he made a tour of Europe, including Greece. M. Cousin, who was with him in Germany, informed a friend of ours that he was one of the best Grecians he ever knew, and the translator of Plato must have known a good many of the best. On his return from his travels he lectured on Greek literature with the enthusiasm and success of another Abelard—we hope without the Heloise." Before his departure for Europe, Mr. Everett had given a striking proof of his wide reading and critical powers in answering a volume entitled " The Grounds of Christianity Examined," by George B. English (Boston, 1813). Mr. Everett convicts English of dishonesty in his assertions, and of plagiarism from Evanson, Collins. Toland, Sember, Priestley, Rabbi Isaac, and Orobio. About ninety-four pages are borrowed from other writers, while English credits other authors with twenty-four pages only. In 1819 Mr. Everett returned home and entered upon the duties of the Greek professorship. In addition to his regular duties he published a translation of Buttman's Greek grammar, and a Greek reader based upon that of Jacobs. He became editor of the "North American Review" in January, 1820, and in the next four years contributed to its pages about fifty papers, to which are to be added sixty more written while the "Review" was under the management of his brother Alexander and his successors. In May, 1822, Mr. Everett married Charlotte Gray, a daughter of Peter Chardon Brooks, whose biography he wrote. In 1824 Mr. Everett was elected to Congress from the Boston District, and sat in the House of Representatives for ten years. He took the side in politics maintained by the friends of President John Q. Adams, as a " National Republican " and " Whig "; but gave special attention to obtaining pensions for the survivors of the Revolution, and offered vigorous opposition to the removal of the Indians from Georgia. In 1835, and for three successive years thereafter, he was elected governor of Massachusetts, and at the next election was defeated by only one vote out of more than 100,000. In 1840 he made another journey to Europe, and while residing in London he was appointed, chiefly through the influence of Daniel Webster, minister to England. During his sojourn in that country he received the degree of D. O. L. from Oxford and that of LL.D. from Cambridge and Dublin. He was recalled by President Polk in 1845. From 1846 till 1849 he was president of Harvard College, and on the death of Daniel Webster, in 1852, was appointed Secretary of State. In 1853 he succeeded John Davis in the U. S. Senate. In the summer and autumn of this year he spoke on the Central American question, addressed the New York Historical Society on colonization and emigration, replied to Lord John Russell's protest against the doctrines of the U. S. government in the note declining the Tripartite Convention, and spoke in opposition to the proposed new constitution in Massachusetts. On the assembling of Congress in December, 1853, although his health had been impaired by his labors, he continued them with such zeal and fidelity in the discussion of the bill to repeal the Missouri Compromise, and other important measures of that session, that in the following May he was obliged to resign his seat. In 1853 Miss Ann Pamela Cunningham originated a plan to purchase Mount Vernon by private subscription, in an address to the women of the United States, signed "A Southern Matron," and in this praiseworthy object she found an efficient advocate in Mr. Everett, who delivered in its behalf his oration on Washington, from 19 March, 1856, till June, 1859 —122 times—with a result of more than $58,000. In the autumn of 1858 Mr. Everett contracted with Robert Bonner, proprietor of the New York "Ledger," to furnish an article weekly for that paper for one year, in consideration of $10,000, to be paid in advance to the Mount Vernon fund. Mr. Everett also invited the readers of the "Ledger" to transmit each the sum of fifty cents or more toward the same object, and this appeal produced more than $3,000. On 22 December, 1857, he delivered an address on charity and charitable associations for the benefit of the Boston Provident Association, which was repeated fifteen times, with receipts of about $18,500. On 17 January, 1859, he delivered an address in Boston on the " Early Days of Franklin," which was repeated five times, yielding about $4,000 to various institutions. The receipts of these lectures were not less than $90,000. A notice of the "Life and Works of Daniel Webster," by Mr. Everett, is included in the collective edition of the works of the former (6 vols., Boston, 1852). From his pen also came the "Life of General Stark," in Sparks's "American Biography," and several of the annual reports of the Massachusetts board of education. At the instance of Lord Macaulay, he contributed a life of Washington to the "Encyclopedia Britannica " (published separately, New York, 1860). Mr. Everett had substantial claims to the character of a poet. His dirge of "Alaric the Visigoth" and the beautiful poem of "Santa Croce" are among the few compositions that the remembrance of school-boy declamation can present without fear of rebuke to the maturer judgment of riper years. In addition to the "Defence of Christianity," already mentioned, and occasional addresses, official letters, reports, etc., Mr. Everett published "Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions" (Boston, 1836); "Importance of Practical Education and Useful Knowledge," a selection from his "Orations and other Discourses," published in 1836, originally prepared for the Massachusetts District-school library at the request of the Board of Education (New York, 1847); "Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions from 1826 to 1850" (2d ed., 2 vols., Boston, 1850; this edition includes all that were in the edition of 1836; 3d ed., 2 vols., 1853). These volumes contain eighty-one articles. The third volume of Everett's "Orations and Speeches" (Boston, 1859) contains forty-six articles, and also a copious index to the contents of the three volumes. Volume IV of the "Orations and Speeches" (Boston, 1859) contains fifty-nine articles. Those who would witness a remarkable illustration of the power of eloquence to transfuse life and beauty into the teachings of science, the lessons of history, the ethics of politics, and vicissitudes of letters, will not neglect to devote their "days and nights" to the orations of Edward Everett. The first oration that drew upon Mr. Everett the eyes of his countrymen at largo was delivered at Cambridge before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 27 August, 1824. The subject was, " The Circumstances Favorable to the Progress of Literature in America." When the youthful orator had excited to a painful pitch the feelings of the vast assemblage, he suddenly turned to the illustrious guest, Lafayette, who had seen so much of the rise and fall of human greatness, who had witnessed alike the destruction of a throne and the birth of a nation, and addressed him in an apostrophe never to be forgotten by auditor or reader. Perhaps Mr. Everett's powers as an orator are nowhere displayed to greater advantage than in that passage in his Fourth of July address delivered at Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1855, in which he epitomizes, in a single eloquent paragraph, the far-reaching consequences of the battle of Lexington. he said: " On the 19th of April the all-important blow was struck; the blow which severed the fated chain whose every link was bolted by an act of parliament, whose every rivet was closed up by an order in council— which bound to the wake of Europe the brave bark of our youthful fortune, destined henceforth and forever to ride the waves alone—the blow which severed that fated chain was struck. The blow was struck which will be felt in its consequences to ourselves and the family of nations till the seventh seal is broken from the apocalyptic volume of the history of empires. The consummation of four centuries was completed. The life-long hopes and heart-sick visions of Columbus, poorly fulfilled in the subjugation of the plumed tribes of a few tropical islands, and the partial survey of the continent; cruelly mocked by the fetters placed upon his noble limbs by his own menial and which he carried with him into his grave, were at length more than fulfilled, when the new world of his discovery put on the sovereign robes of her separate national existence, and joined, for peace and for war, the great Panathenaic procession of the nations. The wrongs of generations were redressed. The cup of humiliation drained to the dregs by the old puritan confessors and nonconformist victims of oppression—loathsome prisons, blasted fortunes, lips forbidden to open in prayer, earth and water denied in their pleasant native land, the separations and sorrows of exile, the sounding perils of the ocean, the scented hedge-rows and vocal thickets of the 'old countrie' exchanged for a pathless wilderness ringing with the war-whoop and gleaming with the scalping-knife; the secular insolence of colonial rule, cheeked by no periodical recurrence to the public will; governors appointed on the other side of the globe that knew not Joseph; the patronizing disdain of undelegated power: the legal contumely of foreign law, wanting the first element of obligation, the consent of the governed expressed by his authorized representative; and at length the last unutterable and burning affront and shame, a mercenary soldiery encamped upon the fair eminences of our cities, ships of war with springs on their cables moored in front of our crowded quays, artillery planted open-mouthed in our principal streets, at the doors of our houses of assembly, their morning and evening salvos proclaiming to the rising and the setting sun that we are the subjects and they the lords—all these hideous phantoms of the long colonial night swept off by the first sharp volley on Lexington Green." An eloquent review of Mr. Everett's orations, by Professor Cornelius C. Felton, was published in the "North American Review " for October, 1850, and an admirable analysis of his mental characteristics and oratorical style, by a distinguished critic, himself an orator of renown, George S. Hillard, will be found in the same periodical for January, 1837. We give a brief extract from the latter: "The great charm of Mr. Everett's orations consists not so much in any single and strongly developed intellectual trait as in that symmetry and finish which, on every page, give token to the richly endowed and thorough scholar. The natural movements of his mind are full of grace; and the most indifferent sentence which falls from his pen has that simple elegance which it is as difficult to define as it is easy to perceive. His level passages are never tame, and his fine ones are never superfine. His style, with matchless flexibility, rises and falls with his subject, and is alternately easy, vivid, elevated, ornamented, or picturesque, adapting itself to the dominant mood of the mind, as an instrument responds to the touch of a master's hand. His knowledge is so extensive and the field of his allusions so wide, that the most familiar views, in passing through his hands, gather such a halo of luminous illustrations that their likeness seems transformed, and wo entertain doubts of their identity." In 1860, when secession was seriously threatened by South Carolina. Mr. Everett, against his own inclination (as he wrote to the author of this sketch), permitted his name to be used by the Constitutional-Union Party as a candidate for the vice-presidency, John Bell, of Tennessee, being the candidate for president. They received thirty-nine electoral votes—those of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. (See Bell, John.) During the Civil War Mr. Everett labored zealously in defence of the Union, but was always disposed to extend the hand of fraternal reconciliation toward those whom he regarded as so greatly in the wrong; and his last public service was one of humanity in behalf of southern sufferers by the conflict, at the meeting in Faneuil Hall on Monday, 9 January, 1865, for the relief of the people of Savannah. On his return home after a day of fatiguing engagements, he was obliged to summon his physician, and did not again leave his house. "We all remember him," remarks Daniel Webster, "some of us personally, myself, certainly, with great interest, in his deliberations in the Congress of the United States, to which he brought such a degree of learning and ability and eloquence as few equalled and none surpassed. He administered, afterward, satisfactorily to his fellow-citizens, the duties of the chair of the commonwealth. He then, to the great advantage of his country, went abroad. He was deputed to represent his government at the most important court of Europe, and he carried thither many qualities, most of them essential, and all of them ornamental and useful, to fill that high station. He had education and scholarship. He had a reputation at home and abroad. More than all, he had an acquaintance with the politics of the world, with the laws of this country and of nations, and with the history and policy of the countries of Europe. And how well these qualities enabled him to reflect honor upon the literature and character of his native land, not we only, but all the country and all the world, know. He has performed this career, and yet is at such a period of life that I may venture something upon the character and privilege of my countrymen when I predict that those who have known him long and know him now, those who have seen him and see him now, those who have heard him and hear him now, are very likely to think that his country has demands upon him for future efforts in its service." It is pleasing to know that the cordial relations that united the hearts of these distinguished pal riots were never disturbed by misunderstanding nor chilled by estrangement. To this gratifying truth we have the following testimony, which occurs in a letter from Webster to Everett, written about three months before the decease of the former: "We now and then see stretching across the heavens a clear, blue, cerulean sky, without cloud, or mist, or haze. And such appears to me our acquaintance from the time when I heard you for a week recite your lessons in the little school-house in Short street, to the date hereof [21 July, 1852]. Mr. Everett had long contemplated a work upon international law, and at the time of his death he was preparing a course of lectures on this theme, which he had "promised to deliver before the Dane law-school." But failing health, and the fatigue and excitement of travel arising from "much serving" in patriotic enterprises, prevented the completion of the greatly desired treatise. The accompanying illustration is a view of Mr. Everett's birthplace in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The house is supposed to have been built by Colonel Robert Oliver, about 1740. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 387-389.
EWELL, Benjamin Stoddert, soldier and educator, born in Washington, D. C, 10 June, 1810. He is a grandson of Benjamin Stoddert, first Secretary of the Navy. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1832, and assigned to the 4th U.S. Artillery. He served in the Military Academy as assistant professor of mathematics in 1832-'5, and as assistant professor of natural and experimental philosophy in 1835-'6, when he resigned. From 1836 till 1839 he was one of the principal assistant engineers of the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad. He was professor of mathematics at Hampden-Sidney from 1840 till 1846, when he was elected to the Cincinnati professorship of mathematics and military science in Washington College, Lexington, Virginia, which office he held two years. In 1848 he was elected professor of mathematics and acting president of William and Mary, and became president in 1854. He held this office till the beginning of the Civil War, when the college was suspended. He then served in the Confederate Army as colonel of the 32d Virginia Regiment in 1861-'2, and afterward was appointed adjutant-general to General Joseph E. Johnston, when he commanded the departments of Tennessee and Mississippi. He was again elected president of William and Mary in 1865, and still (1887) retains the office. The degree of LL. D., was conferred on him from Hobart College in 1874. He was made an honorary member of the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain in 1880. Dr. Ewell urged the election and re-election of General Grant to the presidency because of his moderation and magnanimity at the close of the Civil War. He was opposed to secession in 1861, thinking it unnecessary and unconstitutional, and resisted the measure until war was waged. Since 1865 he has exerted himself to foster harmony between the north and the south, and loyalty to the National government, he spoke in the House of Representatives at Washington on 1 April, 1874, and again on 25 January, 1876, in support of the petition of William and Mary College for an appropriation on account of the destruction of its buildings and property during the Civil War. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 391-392.
EWELL, Richard Stoddert, soldier, born in Georgetown, D. C, 8 February, 1817; died in Springfield, Tenn., 25 January, 1872. was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1840. His first experience of actual warfare was obtained in Mexico, where, in August, 1847, he was engaged at Contreras and at Churubusco. He was promoted to captain, 4 August, 1849, and in June, 1857, won distinction fighting against the Apaches in New Mexico. When the Civil War began, he resigned his commission, entered the Confederate Army, and was actively engaged throughout the war. He was promoted to the rank of major-general, and fought at Blackburn's Ford, 18 July, 1861, and at Bull Run, 21 July. In the following year he distinguished himself under Jackson, by whom he was greatly trusted, and took an active part in the various movements preceding the second battle of Bull Run, losing a leg at Warrenton Turnpike on 28 August, 1862. He took part also in the Maryland Campaign. When General Jackson was fatally wounded at Chancellorsville, Ewell, at his request, was promoted to lieutenant-general, and assigned to the command of the 2d Corps. At the head of Jackson's veterans he fought valiantly at Winchester, at Gettysburg, and at the Wilderness on the Confederate left. He was captured, with his entire force, by Sheridan at Sailor's Creek, 6 April, 1865. After the war he retired to private life. General Grant says in his " Memoirs ": "Here " [at Farmville] "I met Dr. Smith, a Virginian and an officer of the regular army, who told me that in a conversation with General Ewell, a relative of his" [who had just been made a prisoner], " Ewell had said that when we hail got across the James River he knew their cause was lost, and it was the duty of their authorities to make the best terms they could while they still had a right to claim concessions. The authorities thought differently, however. Now the cause was lost, and they had no right to claim anything. He said further, that for every man that was killed after this in the war, somebody is responsible, and it would be but very little better than murder. He was not sure, that Lee would consent to surrender his army without being able to consult with the president, but he hoped he would." Grant says this gave him the first idea of demanding the surrender.—his brother, Thomas Ewell, was killed at the battle of Cerro Gordo. Mexico, in 1847. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 392.
EWING, Andrew, Confederate soldier, born in Nashville, Tennessee; died in Atlanta, Georgia, 16 June, 1864. He studied law and became eminent in his profession, and for years participated in the political controversies that distinguished the history of Tennessee at that time. He represented the Nashville District in Congress from 3 December, 1849, to 3 March, 1851, having been elected as a Democrat. In February, 1861, he was elected as a Unionist to represent Davidson County in the proposed state convention, which was voted down by the people. Subsequently he was drawn away from his allegiance to the Union, and took an active part against the government. After the fall of Fort Donelson he left his home, and until he died held an office in the Confederate Army. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 393.
EWING, Thomas, 1789-1871, West Liberty, Ohio, statesman, attorney, Whig U.S. Senator, 1831-1837, from Oho, opposed slavery as a senator. Secretary of the Treasury, 1841-1847. Secretary of the Interior. Opposed Fugitive Slave Law, Henry Clay’s Compromise Bill, and called for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Adopted Civil War General William T. Sherman as a boy. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 393-394; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 237)
EWING, Thomas, statesman, born near West Liberty, Ohio County, Virginia, 28 December, 1789; died in Lancaster, Ohio, 20 October, 1871. His father, George Ewing, served in the Revolutionary Army, and moved with his family in 1792 to the Muskingum River, and then to what is now Athens County, Ohio. In this unsettled district young Ewing's education was necessarily imperfect. His sister taught him to read, and in the evenings he studied the few books at his command. In his twentieth year he left his home and worked in the Kanawha salt establishments, pursuing his studies at night by the light of the furnace-fires. He remained here till he had earned enough money to clear from debt the farm that his father had bought in 1792, and had qualified himself to enter the Ohio University at Athens, where, in 1815, he received the first degree of A. B. that was ever granted in the Northwest. He then studied law in Lancaster, was admitted to the bar in 1816, and practised with success for fifteen years. In 1831-37 he served as U. S. Senator from Ohio, having been chosen as a Whig. He supported the protective tariff system of Clay, and advocated a reduction in the rates of postage, a recharter of the U. S. bank, and the revenue collection bill, known as the "forcebill." He opposed the removal of the deposits from the U. S. bank, and introduced a bill for the settlement of the Ohio boundary question, which was passed in 1836. During the same session he brought forward a bill for the reorganization of the general land-office, which was passed, and also presented a memorial for the abolition of slavery. In July, 1836, the secretary of the treasury issued what was known as the " specie circular." This directed receivers in land-offices to accept payments only in gold, silver, or treasury certificates, except from certain classes of persons for a limited time. Mr. Ewing brought in a bill to annul this circular, and another to make it unlawful for the secretary to make such a discrimination, but these were not carried. After the expiration of his term in 1837 he resumed the practice of his profession. He became Secretary of the Treasury in 1841, under Harrison, and in 1849 accepted the newly created portfolio of the interior, under Taylor, and organized that department. Among the measures recommended in his first report, 3 December, 1849, were the establishment of a mint near the California gold-mines, and the construction of a railroad to the Pacific. When Thomas Corwin became Secretary of the Treasury in 1850, Mr. Ewing was appointed to succeed him in the Senate. During this term he opposed the Fugitive Slave Law, Clay's compromise bill, reported a bill for the establishment of a branch mint in California, and advocated a reduction of postage, and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. He retired from public life in 1851, and again resumed his law-practice in Lancaster. He was a delegate to the Peace Congress of 1861. During the Civil War he gave, through the press and by correspondence and personal interviews, his counsel and influence to the support of the National authorities. While he devoted much of his time to political subjects, the law was his favorite study and pursuit. He early won and maintained throughout his life unquestioned supremacy at the Bar of Ohio, and ranked in the Supreme Court of the United States among the foremost lawyers of the nation. In 1829, just after his father's death, General William T. Sherman, then a boy nine years of age, was adopted by Mr. Ewing, who afterward appointed him to the U. S. Military Academy, and in 1850 he married Ellen, the daughter of his benefactor. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 393-394.
EWING, Hugh Boyle, soldier, born in Lancaster, Ohio, 31 October, 1826, was educated at the U. S. Military Academy. At the time of the gold fever, in 1849, he went to California by way of New Orleans and Texas, and travelled extensively through that country, going to the High Sierra in an expedition sent by his father, then Secretary of the Interior, to rescue emigrants from the snows. In 1852 he returned by way of Panama, as bearer of despatches to Washington. He then went to Lancaster and completed his law studies, began the practice of his profession in St. Louis in 1854. and two years later opened an office with his brother Thomas in Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1858 he moved to Ohio, in order to assume charge of his father's salt-works. In April, 1861, he was appointed brigade-inspector of Ohio volunteers, with the rank of major, and took part in the early combats in the mountains of West Virginia under McClellan and Rosecrans. He commanded the 30th Ohio Regiment in August, 1861, was appointed brigadier- general, 29 November, 1862, and brevetted major-general in 1865. He led a brigade at Antietam, and at the siege of Vicksburg. and a division at Chickamauga, which formed the advance of Sherman's army, and which, in a desperate battle, carried Mission Ridge. He was afterward ordered to North Carolina, and was preparing a secret joint military and naval expedition up the Roanoke, when the war came to an end. In 1866 he was appointed U. S. Minister to Holland, where he served for four years. After his return he bought a small estate near his native town, where he has since resided. General Ewing has travelled widely in this country and abroad, and is author of " The Grand Ladron, a Tale of Early California," and "A Castle in the Air" (1887). Son of Thomas Ewing. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 394.
EWING, Thomas, lawyer, born in Lancaster, Ohio, 7 August, 1829, was educated at Brown University, which gave him the degree of A. M. in 1860. He was private secretary to President Taylor from 1849 till 1850, and subsequently studied law in Cincinnati, where he began to practice his profession. In 1856 he moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, and became a member of the Leavenworth Constitutional Convention of 1858, and in 1861 became the first chief- justice of the state, he was a delegate to the Peace Conference of 1860. He resigned his judge-ship in 1862, recruited the 11th Kansas Regiment, was made its colonel, and served with distinction in the Civil War, taking part in the battles of Fort Wayne, Cane Hill, and Prairie Grove. He was made brigadier-general, 13 March, 1863, for gallantry at the last-named battle, commanded the district of the border, and subsequently at Pilot Knob, 28 September, 1864, with a thousand men, held his position against the repeated assaults of the Confederates under Price, thus checking the invasion of Missouri. He made a retreat to Rolla in 1864, and in 1865 was brevetted major-general of volunteers. After the war he practised law in Washington, D. C, but returned to Lancaster in 1871, and in 1877-'81 was a member of Congress, where he prepared a bill to establish a bureau of labor statistics. He also actively supported the measures that stopped the use of troops at the polls, advocated the remonetization of silver, and the retention of the greenback currency. In 1879 he was the unsuccessful candidate for governor of Ohio. At the close of his last term in Congress he declined a renomination, and moved to New York City, where he has since practised law. Son of Thomas Ewing. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 394
EWING, Charles, soldier, born in Lancaster, Ohio, 6 March, 1835; died in Washington, D. C, 20 June, 1883, was educated in his native town, at a Dominican College, and at the University of Virginia. At the beginning of the Civil War he received a commission in the regular army as captain of the 13th Infantry, and also served for some time on the staff of his brother-in-law, Gen. William T. Sherman. He was brevetted major in 1863 for gallantry in the first assault at Vicksburg, where he was wounded while planting the flag of his battalion on the parapet. He was also brevetted lieutenant-colonel in 1864 for services in the Atlanta Campaign, and colonel in 1865 for gallant conduct during the war. On 8 March, 1865, he was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers. He resigned his commission in 1867, and practised law successfully in Washington, D. C. during the remainder of his life. [Son of Thomas Ewing]. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 394-395.
