Encyclopedia of Civil War Biography - Gag-Gid
GAGE, Frances Dana, 1808-1884, journalist, poet, reformer, temperance leader, women’s rights, anti-slavery leader. Lectured on abolition and was often threatened with physical violence. Her home was burned three times. During the Civil War, she taught newly freed slaves and was active as a volunteer with the Sanitary Commission. In 1863, she was appointed Superintendent of a refuge of more than 500 freed slaves at Paris Island, South Carolina. Gage was married to abolitionist James L. Gage, a lawyer from McConnelsville, Ohio. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 568-569; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 84; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 326-328; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 605; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 321)
GAGE, Frances Dana, reformer, born in Marietta, Ohio, 12 October, 1808; died in Greenwich, Conn., 10 November, 1884. Her father, Colonel Joseph Barker, went from New Hampshire with the first company of pioneers that settled Ohio. Miss Barker married in 1829 James L. Gage, a lawyer of McConnellsville. Ohio. She early became an active worker in the temperance, anti-slavery, and woman’s- rights movements, and in 1851 presided over a woman's-rights convention in Akron, Ohio, where her opening speech attracted much attention. She moved in 1853 to St. Louis, where she was often threatened with violence on account of her anti-slavery views, and twice suffered from incendiarism. In 1857-'8 she visited Culm. St. Thomas, and Santo Domingo, and on her return wrote and lectured on her travels. She afterward edited an agricultural paper in Ohio; but when the Civil War began she went south, ministered to the soldiers, taught the freedmen, and, without pay, acted as an agent of the Sanitary Commission at Memphis, Vicksburg, and Natchez. In 1863-"4 she was superintendent, under General Rufus Saxton. of Paris Island, South Carolina, a refuge for over 500 freedmen. She was afterward crippled by the overturning of a carriage in Galesburg, Illinois, but continued to lecture on temperance till August, 1867, when she was disabled by a paralytic shock. Mr. Gage was the mother of eight children, all of whom lived to maturity. Four of her sons served in the National Army in the Civil War. Mrs. Gage wrote many stories for children, and verses, under the pen-name of "Aunt Fanny." She was an early contributor to the "Saturday Review," and published "Poems" (Philadelphia, 1873); "Elsie Magoon, or the Old Still-House" (1872); "Steps Upward " (1873); and "Gertie's Sacrifice." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 568-569.
GAGE, James L., 1800-1863, McConnelsville, Ohio, lawyer, abolitionist. Husband of Francis Dana Gage. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 568)
GAGE, Matilda Joslyn, 1826-1898, abolitionist, reformer, woman’s suffrage advocate. Daughter of noted abolitionist Dr. H. Joslyn. From 1852 until 1861, she actively supported reform movements and was a strong advocate of the abolition of slavery. In 1872, she was elected President of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association. She wrote The History of Woman’s Suffrage with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 569; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 86; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 607)
GAGE, Matilda Joslyn, reformer, born in Cicero, New York, 24 March, 1826. Her father, Dr. H. Joslyn, was an active abolitionist, and she inherited from him an interest in the questions of woman suffrage and slavery. She was educated in De Peyster and Hamilton, N. Y., and in 1845 was married to Henry H. Gage, a merchant in Cicero. From 1852 till 1861 she wrote and spoke on reform measures, and was an eager advocate of the abolition of slavery at any cost. In 1862, on the presentation of colors to a company of the 122d New York Regiment, Mrs. Gage made an address in which she prophesied the failure of any course that did not abolish slavery. In 1872 she was elected president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and of the New York State Woman’s Suffrage Society, and she is now (1887) vice-president of each, and one of a special committee to arrange for an international council of women to meet in Washington in 1888. From 1878 till 1881 Mrs. Gage edited and published the "The National Citizen" in Syracuse, New York She is the author of " Woman as an Inventor " (New York, 1870), and " The History of Woman Suffrage." with Susan H. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton(3 vols., New York," 1881-6). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 569.
GALE, George Washington, 1789-1861, Galesburg, Illinois, anti-slavery advocate, clergyman. Presbyterian minister. Founder of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, which was anti-slavery. Founder Oneida Manuel Labor Institute. American Anti-Slavery Society Manager, 1837-1840. (Dumond, 1961, p. 159; Filler, 1960, p. 32; Muelder, 1959; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 574; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 99; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 630)
GALE, George Washington, educator, born in Northeast, Dutchess County, New York, 3 December, 1789; died in Galesburg, Illinois, 13 September, 1862. He was graduated at Union in 1814, and licensed as a Presbyterian clergyman in October, 1819, when he took charge of the Church at Adams, Jefferson County, New York. His pastorate was distinguished by a powerful revival of religion, in which Charles G. Finney and other eminent men were among the converts. He resigned his charge in 1823, and afterward established the Oneida manual labor Institute at Whitesboro, New York, where he remained from 1827 till 1834. His life work was the organization of Knox College at Galesburg, Illinois, in 1835. He was a man of strong prejudices and acute intellect. He received the degree of D. D. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 574.
GALLOWAY, Abraham Hankins, 1737-1870, African American, fugitive slave, abolitionist, Union spy. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 577)
GALLOWAY, Samuel, 1811-1872, lawyer, U.S. Congressman, Ohio, opponent of slavery (Dumond, 1961, p. 219; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 582; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 117)
GALLOWAY, Samuel, lawyer, born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 20 March, 1811; died in Columbus, Ohio, 5 April, 1872. He was of Scotch-Irish parentage. After removing to Ohio in 1819, he was graduated at Miami in 1833, at the head of his class, and in the following year taught a classical school at Hamilton, Ohio. In 1835 he was elected professor of ancient languages in Miami, but resigned in consequence of ill health in 1836. He resumed teaching in 1838, first at Springfield, Ohio, and later as professor of ancient languages at South Hanover College, Indiana. In 1841 he returned to Ohio, where he studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1842. He practised in Chillicothe, Ohio, until 1844, when he was elected to be secretary of state and moved to Columbus. He held this office for eight years, and after declining a re-election resumed his profession. In 1854 he was elected to Congress as a Republican and served one term. He was defeated by S. S. Cox in 1856, and again in 1858. Mr. Galloway took an active part in the political conflicts arising out of the Kansas question. He rendered important legal services to the war department during the Civil War. He was active in religious matters, and was for thirteen years a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 582.
GALUSHA, Elon, 1790-1859, Perry, NY, anti-slavery activist, abolitionist leader, Baptist clergyman, lawyer, reformer. Co-founder and first President of the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Society. Co-founder in 1843 of the American Baptist Free Mission Society, which admitted no slaveowners. Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1837-1840. Supported the Liberty Party. (Dumond, 1961, p. 349; Goodell, 1852, pp. 496, 499; Sorin, 1971; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 584)
GALUSHA, Elon, clergyman, born in Shaftsbury, Vt.; died in Lockport, New York, 13 June, 1859, was ordained to the Baptist ministry in early life, and served as pastor of churches in Whitesborough, Utica, Rochester, and Lockport, New York. At one time he was president of the Baptist Missionary Convention of New York. He was an attractive preacher, and one of the most widely known and esteemed among the Baptist ministers of his generation. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 584.
GAMBLE, Hamilton Rowan, 1798-1864, lawyer, political leader. Member of the American Colonization Society. Governor and Secretary of State of Missouri. Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice (Whig Party). Dissented in Missouri Supreme Court decision of “Dred Scott v. Emerson” case, 16th Governor of Missouri, 1861-1864. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 587; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 120; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 670)
GAMBLE, Hamilton Rowan, governor of Missouri, born in Winchester, Virginia, 29 November, 1798; died in Jefferson City, Missouri, 31 January, 1864. His education was received principally at Hampden Sidney, and when about eighteen years of age he was admitted to the Bar of Virginia. In 1818 he went to Missouri, and resided several years in Franklin, Howard County. He was elected secretary of state in 1824, which office he held one year. He then became a successful lawyer in St. Louis, served on the bench from 1851 till 1855, and was presiding judge of the supreme court of Missouri. At one time he was a member of the state house of representatives. In 1861 he was elected to the state constitutional convention, which body appointed him provisional governor of Missouri, the regular governor, Claiborne F. Jackson, having joined the secession party. He held this office until his death. In the state convention of 1861, as chairman of the committee on Federal relations, Governor Gamble made a report expressing a hope for an amicable adjustment of the existing difficulties without Civil War. He pronounced the president's call for troops unconstitutional, and appealed to the legislature to unite for the preservation of the state. Later the governor was authorized to receive a loan of $500,000 and to purchase ammunition, and the state military was put under his command, On 12 June, 1861, he issued a proclamation calling into service 50,000 of the state militia " for the purpose of repelling invasion, and for the protection of the lives, liberty, and property of the citizens." On 12 June, 1862, the state convention passed a resolution expressing confidence in the integrity and patriotism of the governor and state officers. On 13 June he submitted a message to the convention, declaring that he would furnish aid to any state that would adopt a measure of emancipation. On 22 July, Governor Gamble summoned the militia to defend the state against Confederate guerillas. He called the adjourned state convention to reassemble in June, 1863, to consult and act on the subject of emancipation, and, after expressing a desire for peace, offered his resignation, which was not accepted. Governor Gamble in 1838 organized the 2d Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 587.
GANNETT, Ezra Stiles, Reverend, 1801-1871, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman. Co-founder of the Young Men’s Colonization Society in Boston. Co-founded monthly paper, The Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom. Strong supporter of the American Colonization Society (ACS). He defended the ACS and its policies against criticism by William Lloyd Garrison. Gave sermons against slavery in his church. (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 588-589; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 134, 206, 214)
GANNETT, Ezra Stiles, clergyman, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 4 May, 1801; died near Boston, Massachusetts, 25 June, 1871. He was a grandson of President Ezra Stiles of Yale. He was graduated at Harvard with first honors in 1820, studied divinity, and in 1824 became the colleague of Dr. William E. Channing in Boston, finally succeeding him as pastor. He was a foremost figure in the Unitarian controversy which agitated the New England Churches in 1825-'35, but in the latter year was driven by illness to Europe, and during the summer following his return was seized with a paralytic stroke, which left him a cripple for life. He became co-editor of the “Christian Examiner,” and his lectures on Unitarian doctrines were the delight of Boston theologians. He delivered the annual election sermon in 1842, in 1843 the “Dudleian lecture,” and in that year was given the degree of D. D. by Harvard. He took part in a second controversy which arose in the Unitarian denomination, and, circumscribed as he was by his infirmity, he did a large amount of ministerial and literary work. He was president of the American Unitarian Association in 1847-'51, of the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches in 1857-'62, and an overseer of Harvard in 1835-'58. On the bronze bas-reliefs of the soldiers’ monument on Boston common his face appears in the sanitary commission group; and the Freedman's Aid Society had his best labors in its behalf. He was killed by a railway accident. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 588-589
GANSEVOORT, Guert, naval officer, born in Gansevoort, Saratoga County, New York, 7 June, 1812; died in Schenectady, New York, 15 July, 1868, was the son of Leonard H. Gansevoort. He was appointed midshipman in 1823; lieutenant in 1837; commander, 14 September, 1855; captain, 16 July, 1862; and commodore in 1866. He was lieutenant on the brig "Somers" when Commander Alexander S. Mackenzie executed Midshipman Spencer for mutiny (see Mackenzie), and was one of the council of officers that approved and sustained the act. He rose to prominence during the Mexican War, in which he distinguished himself in command of the " John Adams.” He was engaged in the Indian War of 1856, and did honorable service in the battle of Sitka on the Pacific Coast. For some time after the beginning of the Civil War he was chief of the ordnance department at the Brooklyn Navy-yard, but subsequently was in command of the iron-clad " Roanoke." His last cruise ended in September, 1864, and he retired as commodore on 28 January, 1867. His service in the U.S. Navy covered a period of forty-five years, eighteen spent at sea. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 590.
GARDNER, Charles W., 1782-1863, African American, Episcopal clergyman, abolitionist (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 590)
GARDNER, Eliza Ann, 1831-1922, African American, abolitionist. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 592)
GARDNER, John Lane, soldier, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 1 August, 1793; died in Wilmington, Delaware, 19 February, 1869. He entered the army in 1812 as lieutenant of infantry, saw his first active service in Canada, and was wounded at the battle of La Colle Mill, 30 March, 1814, while serving under General James Wilkinson. After the war he was transferred to the artillery. In 1820-'30 he was assistant quartermaster-general, with the rank of captain, and in 1833 was brevetted major of artillery for ten years' faithful service. He served with his regiment during the Florida War, and was reported to the department as having shown "the utmost activity, skill, and intrepidity " at the battle of Wahoo Swamp, 21 November, 1832. He was promoted major in 1845, commanded his regiment throughout the Mexican War, was brevetted lieutenant-colonel for service at the battle of Cerro Gordo, 18 April, 1847, and colonel at Contreras on 20 August, where he commanded the right column of attack. From 1842 till 1850 he was in command of the District of Florida, became lieutenant-colonel in 1852, and some years later was stationed at Charleston Harbor, where he was in command in 1860. Though mustering fewer than fifty men at Fort Moultrie, he effected an arrangement with Colonel Joseph P. Taylor, commissary-general, for six months' provisions, and announced his intention to defend the fort to the last extremity against the secessionists. Secretary of War John B. Floyd thereupon relieved him from command, and ordered him to report to General David E. Twiggs, in Texas. Major Robert Anderson succeeded to the command at Fort Moultrie, and on Christmas eve removed the garrison to Fort Sumter. In 1861 he was promoted colonel of the 2d Artillery , and the next year was, by his own request, placed on the retired list, and employed in recruiting service. In 1865 he was brevetted brigadier-general " for long and faithful service." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 598.
GARDNER, William Henry, naval officer, born in Maryland in 1800; died in Philadelphia, 18 December, 1870. He entered the U.S. Navy in 1814 as a midshipman, was commissioned lieutenant in 1825, served on the "Vandalia," of the British Squadron, in 1829-'30, was commissioned commander in 1841, commanded the receiving-ship " Norfolk " in 1843, and of the " Vandalia," in the Pacific Squadron, between 1850 and 1852. In September, 1855, he was commissioned captain, commanded the steam frigate " Colorado," of the Home Squadron, in 1859-'60, was commandant at Mare Island, California, in 1861, and on special service in 1862. In July of that year he was commissioned commodore, and retired. He was light-house inspector from 1863 till 1869. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 598-599.
GARESCHI, Julius Peter, soldier, born in Cuba in 1821; died near Stone River, Tennessee, 31 December, 1862, He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1841, and entered the army as 2d lieutenant of the 4th U.S. Artillery. From 1841 till 1846 he served on frontier and garrison duty, and afterward with distinction in the Mexican War. He was appointed assistant adjutant-general in 1855. At the beginning of the Civil War he applied for active service, and was appointed chief of staff to General William S. Rosecrans, of the Army of the Cumberland. He had previously declined the commission of brigadier-general of volunteers, and remained a lieutenant-colonel in the regular army. At the battle of Stone River, in Tennessee, 31 December, 1862, in a gallant attempt to regain the day which then appeared to be lost, Colonel Gareschi dashed forward at the head of his column, but was struck in the head by a cannon-ball and instantly killed. He was a founder and liberal beneficiary of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, at Washington. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 599
GARFIELD, James Abram, 1831-1881, lawyer, Union general. Lt. Colonel, 42nd Regiment Ohio Volunteers. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Twentieth President of the United States. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 599-605; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 145; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 715; Congressional Globe)
GARFIELD, James Abram, twentieth president of the United States, born in Orange, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 19 November, 1831; died in Elberon, New Jersey, 19 September, 1881. His father, Abram Garfield, was a native of New York, but of Massachusetts ancestry, descended from Edward Garfield, an English Puritan, who in 1630 was one of the founders of Watertown. His mother, Eliza Ballou, was born in New Hampshire, of a Huguenot family that fled from France to New England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. Garfield, therefore, was from lineage well represented in the struggles for civil and religious liberty, both in the Old and in the New World. Abram Garfield, his father, moved to Ohio in 1830, and settled in what was then known as “The Wilderness,” now as the “Western Reserve,” which was occupied by Connecticut people. Abram Garfield made a prosperous beginning in his new home, but died, after a sudden illness, at the age of thirty-three, leaving a widow with four small children, of whom James was the youngest. In bringing up her family, unaided in a lonely cabin (see accompanying illustration), and impressing on them a high standard of moral and intellectual worth, Mrs. Garfield displayed an almost heroic courage. It was a life of struggle and privation; but the poverty of her home differed from that of cities or settled communities it was the poverty of the frontier, all shared it, and all were bound closely together in a common struggle, where there were no humiliating contrasts in neighboring wealth. At three years of age James A. Garfield went to school in a log hut, learned to read, and began that habit of omnivorous reading which ended only with his life. At ten years of age he was accustomed to manual labor, helping out his mother's meagre income by work at home or on the farms of the neighbors. Labor was play to the healthy boy; he did it cheerfully, almost with enthusiasm, for his mother was a staunch Campbellite, whose hymns and songs sent her children to their tasks with a feeling that the work was consecrated; but work in winter always yielded its claims to those of the district school, where he made good progress, and was conspicuous for his assiduity. By the time he was fourteen, young Garfield had a fair knowledge of arithmetic and grammar, and was particularly apt in the facts of American history, which he had eagerly gathered from the meagre treatises that circulated in that remote section. Indeed, he read and re-read every book the scanty libraries of that part of the wilderness supplied, and many he learned by heart. Mr. Blaine attributes the dignity and earnestness of his style to his familiarity with the Bible and its literature, of which he was a constant student. His imagination was especially kindled by the tales of the sea; a love for adventure took strong possession of him. He so far yielded to it that in 1848 he went to Cleveland and proposed to ship as a sailor on board a lake schooner. But a glance showed him that the life was not the romance he had conceived. He turned promptly from the shore, but, loath to return home without adventure and without money, drove some months for a boat on the Ohio canal. Little is known of this experience, except that he secured promotion from the tow-path to the boat, and a story that he was strong enough and brave enough to hold his own against his companions, who were naturally a rough set. During the winter of 1849-'50 he attended the Geauga seminary at Chester, Ohio, about ten miles from his home. In the vacations he learned and practised the trade of a carpenter, helped at harvest, taught, did anything and everything to get money to pay for his schooling. After the first term, he asked and needed no aid from home; he had reached the point where he could support himself. At Chester he met Miss Lucretia Rudolph, his future wife. Attracted at first by her interest in the same intellectual pursuits, he quickly discovered sympathy in other tastes, and a congeniality of disposition, which paved the way for the one great love of his life. He was himself attractive at this time, exhibited many signs of intellectual superiority, and was physically a splendid specimen of vigorous young manhood. He studied hard, worked hard, cheerfully ready for any emergency, even that of the prize-ring; for, finding it a necessity, he one day thrashed the bully of the school in a stand-up fight. His nature, always religious, was at this period profoundly stirred in that direction. He was converted under the instructions of a Campbellite preacher, was baptized and received into that denomination. They called themselves “The Disciples,” contemned all doctrines and forms, and sought to direct their lives by the Scriptures, simply interpreted as any plain man would read them. This sanction to independent thinking, given by religion itself, must have had great influence in creating that broad and catholic spirit in this young disciple which kept his earnest nature out of the ruts of moral and intellectual bigotry. From this moment his zeal to get the best education grew warmer; he began to take wider views, to look beyond the present into the future. As soon as he finished his studies in Chester, he entered (1851) the Hiram eclectic Institute (now Hiram College), at Hiram, Portage County, Ohio, the principal educational institution of his sect. He was not very quick of acquisition, but his perseverance was indomitable, and he soon had an excellent knowledge of Latin and a fair acquaintance with algebra, natural philosophy, and botany. He read Xenophon, Caesar, and Virgil with appreciation; but his superiority was more easily recognized in the prayer-meetings and debating societies of the college, where he was assiduous and conspicuous. Living here was inexpensive, and he readily made his expenses by teaching in the English departments, and also gave instruction in the ancient languages. After three years he was well prepared to enter the junior class of any eastern college, and had saved $350 toward the expenses of such an undertaking out of his salary. He hesitated between Yale, Brown, and Williams Colleges, finally choosing Williams on the kindly promise of encouragement sent him by its president, Mark Hopkins. It was natural to expect he would choose Bethany College, in West Virginia, an institution largely controlled and patronized by the “Disciples of Christ.” Garfield himself seems to have thought some explanation for his neglect to do so necessary, and with particularity assigns as reasons that the course of instruction at Bethany was not so extended as in the old New England colleges; that Bethany was too friendly in opinion to slavery; and — most significant of all the reasons he gave — that, as he had inherited by birth and association a strong bias toward the religious views there inculcated, he ought especially to examine other faiths. Entering Williams in the autumn of 1854, he was duly graduated with the highest honors in the class of 1856. His classmates unite with President Hopkins in testifying that in college he was warm-hearted, large-minded, and possessed of great earnestness of purpose and a singular poise of judgment. All speak, too, of his modest and unassuming manners. But, outside of these and other like qualities, such as industry, perseverance, courage, and conscientiousness, Garfield had exhibited up to this time no signs of the superiority that was to make him a conspicuous figure. But the effects of twenty-five years of most varied discipline, cheerfully accepted and faithfully used, begin now to show themselves, and to give to history one of its most striking examples of what education — the education of books and of circumstances — can accomplish. Garfield was not born, but made; and he made himself by persistent, strenuous, conscientious study and work. In the next six years he was a college president, a state senator, a major-general in the National Army, and a representative-elect to the National Congress. American annals reveal no other promotion so rapid and so varied.
On his return to Ohio, in 1856, he resumed his place as a teacher of Latin and Greek at Hiram Institute, and the next year (1857), being then only twenty-six years of age, he was made its president. He was a successful officer, and ambitious, as usual, beyond his allotted task. He discussed before his interested classes almost every subject of current interest in scholarship, science, religion, and art. The story spread, and his influence with it; he became an intellectual and moral force in the Western Reserve. It was greatest, however, over the young. They keenly felt the contagion of his manliness, his sympathy, his thirst for knowledge, and his veneration for the truth when it was found. As an educator, he was, and always would have been, eminently successful; he had the knowledge, the art to impart it, and the personal magnetism that impressed his love for it upon his pupils. His intellectual activity at this time was intense. The canons of his church permitted him to preach, and he used the permission. He also pursued the study of law, entering his name, in 1858, as a student in a law-office in Cleveland, but studying in Hiram. To one ignorant of the slow development that was characteristic of Garfield in all directions, it would seem incredible that he now for the first time began to show any noticeable interest in politics. He seems never to have even voted before the autumn of 1856. No one who knew the man could doubt that he would then cast it, as he did, for John C. Frémont, the first Republican candidate for the presidency. As moral questions entered more and more into politics, Garfield's interest grew apace, and he sought frequent occasions to discuss these questions in debate. In advocating the cause of freedom against slavery, he showed for the first time a skill in discussion, which afterward bore good fruit in the House of Representatives. Without solicitation or thought on his part, in 1859 he was sent to represent the counties of Summit and Portage in the Senate of Ohio. Again in this new field his versatility and industry are conspicuous. He makes exhaustive investigations and reports on such widely different topics as geology, education, finance, and parliamentary law. Always looking to the future, and apprehensive that the impending contest might leave the halls of legislation and seek the arbitrament of war, he gave especial study to the militia system of the state, and the best methods of equipping and disciplining it.
The war came, and Garfield, who had been farmer, carpenter, student, teacher, lawyer, preacher, and legislator, was to show himself an excellent soldier. In August, 1861, Governor William Dennison commissioned him lieutenant-colonel in the 42d Regiment of Ohio Volunteers. The men were his old pupils at Hiram College, whom he had persuaded to enlist. Promoted to the command of this regiment, he drilled it into military efficiency while waiting orders to the front, and in December, 1861, reported to General Buell, in Louisville, Kentucky General Buell was so impressed by the soldierly condition of the regiment that he gave Colonel Garfield a brigade, and assigned him the difficult task of driving the Confederate general Humphrey Marshall from eastern Kentucky. His confidence was such that he allowed the young soldier to lay his own plans, though on their success hung the fate of Kentucky. The undertaking itself was difficult. General Marshall had 5,000 men, while Garfield had but half that number, and must march through a state where the majority of the people were hostile, to attack an enemy strongly intrenched in a mountainous country. Garfield, nothing daunted, concentrated his little force, and moved it with such rapidity, sometimes here and sometimes there, that General Marshall, deceived by these feints, and still more by false reports, which were skilfully prepared for him, abandoned his position and many supplies at Paintville, and was caught in retreat by Garfield, who charged the full force of the enemy, and maintained a hand-to-hand fight with it. for five hours. The enemy had 5,000 men and twelve cannon; Garfield had no artillery, and but 1,100 men. But he held his own until re-enforced by Gens. Grander and Sheldon, when Marshall gave way, leaving Garfield the victor at Middle Creek, 10 January, 1862, one of the most important of the minor battles of the war. Shortly afterward Zollicoffer was defeated and slain by General Thomas at Mill Spring, and the Confederates lost the state of Kentucky. Coming after the reverses at Big Bethel, Bull Run, and the disastrous failures in Missouri, General Garfield's triumph over the Confederate forces at Middle Creek had an encouraging effect on the entire north. Marshall was a graduate of West Point, and had every advantage in numbers and position, yet seems to have been out-generaled at every point. He was driven from two fortified positions, and finally completely routed — all within a period of less than a fortnight in the month of January, 1802. In recognition of these services, especially acknowledged by General Buell in his General Order No. 40 (20 January, 1862), President Lincoln promptly made the young colonel a brigadier-general, dating his commission from the battle of Middle Creek. During his campaign of the Big Sandy, while Garfield was engaged in breaking up some scattered Confederate encampments, his supplies gave out, and he was threatened with starvation. Going himself to the Ohio River, he seized a steamer, loaded it with provisions, and, on the refusal of any pilot to undertake the perilous voyage, because of a freshet that had swelled the river, he stood at the helm for forty-eight hours and piloted the craft through the dangerous channel. In order to surprise Marshall, then intrenched in Cumberland Gap, Garfield marched his soldiers 100 miles in four days through a blinding snow-storm. Returning to Louisville, he found that General Buell was away, overtook him at Columbia, Tennessee, and was assigned to the command of the 20th brigade. He reached Shiloh in time to take part in the second day's fight, was engaged in all the operations in front of Corinth, and in June, 1862, rebuilt the bridges on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and exhibited noticeable engineering skill in repairing the fortifications of Huntsville. The unhealthfulness of the region told upon him, and on 30 July, 1862, under leave of absence, he returned to Hiram, where he lay ill for two months. On 25 September, 1862, he went to Washington, and was ordered on court-martial duty, and gained such reputation in this practice that, on 25 November, he was assigned to the case of General Fitz-John Porter. In February, 1863, he returned to duty under General Rosecrans, then in command of the Army of the Cumberland. Rosecrans made him his chief-of-staff, with responsibilities beyond those usually given to this office. In this field, Garfield's influence on the campaign in Middle Tennessee was most important. One familiar incident shows and justifies the great influence he wielded in its counsels. Before the battle of Chickamauga (24 June, 1863), General Rosecrans asked the written opinion of seventeen of his generals on the advisability of an immediate advance. All others opposed it, but Garfield advised it, and his arguments were so convincing, though pressed without passion or prejudice, that Rosecrans determined to seek an engagement. General Garfield wrote out all the orders of that fateful day (19 September), excepting one — and that one was the blunder that lost the day. Garfield volunteered to take the news of the defeat on the right to General George H. Thomas, who held the left of the line. It was a bold ride, under constant fire, but he reached Thomas and gave the information that saved the Army of the Cumberland. For this action he was made a major-general, 19 September, 1860, promoted for gallantry on a field that was lost. With a military future so bright before him, Garfield, always unselfish, yielded his own ambition to Mr. Lincoln's urgent request, and on 3 December, 1863, resigning his commission, and hastened to Washington to sit in Congress, to which he had been chosen fifteen months before, as the successor of Joshua R. Giddings. In the meantime Thomas had received command of the Army of the Cumberland, had reorganized it, and had asked Garfield to take a division. His inclination was to accept and continue the military career, which had superior attractions; but he yielded to the representations of the President and Sec. Stanton, that he would be more useful in the House of Representatives.
General Garfield was thirty-two years old when he entered Congress. He found in the house, which was to be the theatre of his lasting fame, many with whom his name was for the next twenty years intimately associated. Schuyler Colfax was its speaker, and Conkling, Blaine, Washburne, Stevens, Fenton, Schenck, Henry Winter Davis, William B. Allison, and William R. Morrison were among its members. His military reputation had preceded him, and secured for him a place in the committee on military affairs, then the most important in Congress. His first speech (14 January, 1864), upon a motion to print extra copies of General Rosecrans's official report, was listened to with attention; and, indeed, whenever he spoke upon army matters, this was the case. But the attention was given to the man for the information he possessed and imparted rather than to the orator; for in effective speech, as in every other matter in which Garfield succeeded, he came to excellence only by labor and practice. He was soon regarded as an authority on military matters, and his opinion was sought as an expert, experienced and careful. To these questions he gave all necessary attention, but they did not exhaust his capacity. He began at this time, and ever afterward continued, a thorough study of constitutional and financial problems, and to aid him in these researches he labored to increase his familiarity with the German and French languages. In this, his first session, he had to stand almost alone in opposition to the bill that increased the bounty paid for enlistment. He advocated liberal bounties to the veterans that re-enlisted, but would use the draft to secure raw recruits. History vindicated his judgment. In the same session he spoke on the subject of seizure and confiscation of rebel property, and on free commerce between the states. On 13 January, 1865, he discussed exhaustively the constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.
In the 39th Congress (1865) he was changed, at his own request, from the committee on military affairs to the ways and means committee, which then included Messrs. Morrison, of Illinois, Brooks and Conkling, of New York, and Allison, of Iowa. His reason for choosing this new field was that, the war being ended, financial questions would have supreme importance, and he wished to have his part in their solution. In the 40th Congress (1867) he was restored to his old committee on military affairs, and made its chairman. In March, 1866, he made his first speech on the question of the public debt, foreshadowing, in the course of his remarks, that Republican policy which resulted in the resumption of specie payment, 1 January, 1879. From this moment until the treasury note was worth its face in gold, he never failed, on every proper occasion, in the house and out, to discuss every phase of the financial question, and to urge upon the National conscience the demands of financial honor. In May, 1868, he spoke again on the currency, dealing a staggering blow to the adherents of George H. Pendleton, who, under the stress of a money panic, were clamoring for the government to “make the money-market easier.” It may be said that he was at this, as at later times, the representative and champion of the sound-money men in congress, and first and last did more than anyone else, probably, in settling the issues of this momentous question. In 1877 and 1878 he was again active in stemming a fresh tide of financial fallacies. He treated the matter this time with elementary simplicity, and gave in detail reasons for a hard-money policy, based not so much upon opinion and theory as upon the teachings of history.
In the 41st Congress a new committee — that on banking and currency — was created, and Garfield was very properly made its chairman. This gave him new opportunities to serve the cause in which he was heartily enlisted, and no one now seeks to diminish the value of that service. The most noticed and most widely read of these discussions was a speech on the National finances, which he delivered in 1878, at Faneuil hall, Boston. It was circulated as a campaign document by thousands, and served to win a victory in Massachusetts and to subdue for a while the frantic appeals from the west for more paper money. He served also on the select committee on the census (a tribute to his skill in statistics) and on the committee on rules, as an appreciation of his practical and thorough knowledge of parliamentary law. In the 42d and 43d Congresses he was chairman of the committee on appropriations. In the 44th, 45th, and 46th Congresses (the house being Democratic) he was assigned a place on the committee of ways and means. In reconstruction times, Garfield was earnest and aggressive in opposition to the theories advocated by President Johnson. He was a kind man, and not lacking in sympathy for those who, from mistaken motives, had attempted to sever their connection with the Federal Union; but he was not a sentimentalist, and had too earnest convictions not to insist that the results won by so much treasure and blood should be secured to the victors. An old soldier, he would not see Union victories neutralized by evasions of the constitution. On these topics no one was his superior in either branch of Congress, and no opponent, however able, encountered him here without regretting the contest.
In 1876, General Garfield went to New Orleans, at President Grant's request, in company with Senators Sherman and Matthews and other Republicans, to watch the counting of the Louisiana vote. He made a special study of the West Feliciana Parish case, and embodied his views in a brief but significant report. On his return, he made, in January, 1877, two notable speeches in the house on the duty of Congress in a presidential election, and claimed that the vice-president had a constitutional right to count the electoral vote. He was opposed to an electoral commission; yet, when the commission was ordered, General Garfield was chosen by acclamation to fill one of the two seats allotted to Republican representatives. His colleague was George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts. Garfield discussed before the commission the Florida and Louisiana returns, on 9 and 16 February, 1877. Mr. Blaine left the house in 1877 for the Senate, and this made Garfield the undisputed leader of the Republican Party in the house. He was at this time, and subsequently, its candidate for speaker.
The struggle begun in the second session of the 45th Congress (1879), when the Democratic majority sought to control the president through the appropriations, gave Garfield a fine opportunity to display his powers as a leader in opposition. The Democratic members added to two general appropriation bills, in the shape of amendments, legislation intended to restrain the use of the army as a posse to keep the peace at elections, to repeal the law authorizing the employment of deputy U. S. marshals at the elections of members of Congress, and to relieve jurors in the U. S. courts from the obligation of the test oath. The Senate, which was Republican, refused to concur in these amendments, and so the session ended. An extra session was promptly called, which continued into midsummer. Contemporary criticism claims that, in this contest, General Garfield reached, perhaps, the climax of his Congressional career. A conservative man by nature, he revolted at such high-handed measures, and in his speech of 29 March, 1879, characterized them as a “revolution in congress.” Against this insult to the spirit of the law he protested with unwonted vigor. Like Webster in 1832, he stood the defender of the constitution, and his splendid eloquence and resistless logic upheld the prerogatives of the executive, and denounced these attempts by the legislature to prevent or control elections, however disguised, as an attack upon the constitution. He warned the house that its course would end in nullification, and protested that its principle was the “revived doctrine of state sovereignty.” (See speeches of 26 April, 10 and 11 June, and 19 and 27 June, 1879.) The result of it was that the Democrats finally voted $44,600,000 of the $45,000,000 of appropriations originally asked — a great party victory, to which General Garfield largely contributed. His arguments had the more weight because not partisan, but supported by a clear analysis and statement of the relations between the different branches of the government. His last speech to the house was made on the appointment of special deputy marshals, 23 April, 1880. At the same time he made a report of the tariff commission, which showed that he was still a sincere friend to protection. He was already United States Senator-elect from Ohio, chosen after a nomination of singular unanimity, 13 January, 1880.
Where there is government by party, no leader can escape calumny; hence it assailed Garfield with great venom. In the presidential canvass of 1872, he, with other Republican representatives, was charged with having bought stock in the Credit Mobilier, sold to them at less than its value to influence their action in legislation affecting the Union Pacific Railroad. A Congressional investigation, reporting 13 February, 1875, seemed to establish these facts so far as Garfield was concerned. He knew nothing of any connection between the two companies, much less that the Credit Mobilier controlled the railway. Garfield denied that he ever owned the stock, and was vaguely contradicted by Oakes Ames, who had no evidence of his alleged sale of $1,000 worth of the stock to Garfield, except a memorandum in his diary, which did not agree with Ames's oral testimony that he paid Garfield $329 as dividend on the stock. Garfield admitted that he had received $300 in June, 1868, from Ames, but claimed that it was a loan, and that he paid it in the winter of 1869. It was nowhere claimed that Garfield ever received certificate, or receipt, or other dividends, to which, if the owner of the stock, he was entitled, or that he ever asked for them. The innocence of General Garfield was generally recognized, and, after the circumstances became known, he was not weakened in his district. Another investigation in the same Congress (43d) gave calumny a second opportunity. This was the investigation into the conduct of the government of the District of Columbia. It revealed startling frauds in a De Golyer contract, and Garfield's name was found to be in some way connected with it. The facts, corroborated in an open letter by James M. Wilson, chairman of the committee, were: In May, 1872, Richard C. Parsons, a Cleveland attorney, then marshal of the supreme court in Washington, having the interests of the patents owned by De Golyer in charge, was called away. He brought all his material to Garfield, and asked him to prepare the brief. The brief was to show the superiority of the pavement (the subject of patent) over forty other kinds, and did not otherwise concern the contract or have anything to do with its terms. The fraud, as is generally understood, was in the contract, not in the quality of the pavement. Garfield prepared the brief and delivered it to Parsons; but did not himself make the argument. Parsons sent Garfield subsequently $5,000, which was a part of the fee Parsons had received for his own services. As thoughtful people reviewed the case, there was no harsher criticism than that suggested by General Garfield's own lofty standard of avoiding even the appearance of evil — that he had not shown his usual prudence in avoiding any connection, even the most honest, in any way, with any matter that could in any shape come up for Congressional review. It was the cruel and unjust charges made in connection with these calumnies which sent the iron into his soul, and made wounds which he forgave but never forgot.
In June, 1880, the Republican convention to nominate a successor to President Hayes was held in Chicago, and to it came Garfield, naturally, at the head of the Ohio delegation. He sympathized heartily with the wish of that delegation to secure the nomination for John Sherman, and labored loyally for that end. There could be no criticism of his action, nor could there be any just criticism of his loyalty to his candidate, except (and that he never concealed) that he wished more to defeat the nomination of Grant than to secure that of Senator Sherman. He believed a third term such a calamity that patriotism required the sacrifice of all other considerations to prevent it. That view he shared with Mr. Blaine, also a candidate in this convention, whose instructions to his friends were, “Defeat a third term first, and then struggle for the prize of office afterwards. Success in the one case is vital; success in the other is of minor importance.” On the thirty-third ballot Grant had 306 votes, the remaining 400 being divided between Blaine, Edmunds, and Washburne. The hope of the Grant men or the Blaine men to secure the prize faltered, and in the thirty-fourth ballot Wisconsin broke the monotony by announcing thirty-six votes for James A. Garfield. This put the spark to fuel that had been unconsciously prepared for it by the events of the long struggle. In all the proceedings, peculiar fitness had put Garfield to the front as the counsellor and leader of the anti-Grant majority, and the exhibition of his splendid qualifications won increasing admiration and trust. His tact and readiness in casual debate, and the beauty and force of the more elaborate effort in which he nominated Sherman, won the wavering convention. On the thirty-sixth ballot the delegates broke their ranks and rushed to him. He received 399 votes, and then his nomination (8 June, 1880) was made unanimous. General Garfield left the convention before the result was announced, and accepted the nomination by letter. This was a thoughtful document, and acceptable to the Republican voters. Disregarding precedent, he spoke in his own behalf in Ohio, New York, and other states. He spoke sensibly and with great discretion, and his public appearance is thought to have increased his popularity. He was elected (2 November, 1880) over his competitor, General Winfield Scott Hancock, by the votes of every northern state except New Jersey, Nevada, and California. His inaugural address, 4 March, 1881, was satisfactory to the people generally, and his administration began with only one cloud in the sky. His cabinet was made up as follows: James G. Blaine, of Maine, secretary of state; William Windom, of Minnesota, secretary of the treasury; Wayne MacVeagh, of Pennsylvania, attorney-general; Thomas L. James, of New York, postmaster-general; Samuel J. Kirkwood, of Iowa, secretary of the interior; Robert T. Lincoln, of Illinois, Secretary of War; William H. Hunt, of Louisiana, Secretary of the Navy. There was bitter dissension in the party in New York, and Garfield gave much consideration to his duty in the premises. He was willing to do anything except yield the independence of the executive in his own constitutional sphere. He would give to the New York Senators, Conkling and Platt, more than their share of offices; but they should not be allowed to interfere with or control the presidential right of nomination. He made nominations to the Senate — as many, it is said, as twelve — in that interest, and then (23 March, 1881) sent in the name of William H. Robertson, a leader in the other faction, as collector of the port of New York. Senator Conkling protested, and then openly resisted his confirmation. Yielding to him in the interest of senatorial courtesy, his Republican colleagues, in caucus, 2 May, 1881, agreed to let contested nominations lie over practically until the following December. This was a substantial victory for Mr. Conkling; but it was promptly met by the president, who, a few days afterward (5 May), withdrew all the nominations that were pleasing to the New York senator. This brought the other senators to terms. Mr. Conkling, recognizing defeat, and Mr. Platt with him, resigned their offices, 16 May, 1881. On 18 May, Collector Robertson was confirmed. The early summer came, and peace and happiness and the growing strength and popularity of his administration cheered the heart of its chief. At a moment of special exaltation, on the morning of 2 July, 1881, he was shot by a disappointed office-seeker. The avowed object was to promote to the presidential chair Vice-President Arthur, who represented the Grant or “stalwart” wing of the party. The president was setting out on a trip to New England, anticipating especial pleasure in witnessing the commencement exercises of his alma mater at Williamstown. He was passing through the waiting-room of the Baltimore and Potomac depot, at nine o'clock that morning, leaning on the arm of Mr. Blaine, when the assassin fired at him with a pistol. The first ball passed through his coat-sleeve; the second entered by the back, fractured a rib, and lodged deep in the body. The president was carried to the White House, where, under the highest medical skill, and with every comfort that money and devotion could bring, he lingered for more than ten weeks between life and death. The country and the world were moved by the dastardly deed; and the fortitude and cheerfulness with which the president bore his suffering added to the universal grief. Daily bulletins of his condition were published in every city in the United States and in all the European capitals. Many of the crowned heads of Europe sought by telegraphic inquiry more particular news, and repeated their wishes for his recovery. A day of national supplication was set apart and sacredly observed, and the prayers at first seemed answered. His physicians were hopeful, and gave expression to their hope. His condition seemed to improve; but when midsummer came, the patient failed so perceptibly that a removal was hazarded. On 6 September, 1881, he was taken to Elberon, New Jersey, by a special train. He bore the journey well, and for a while, under the inspiration of the invigorating sea-breezes, seemed to rally. But on 15 September, 1881, symptoms of blood-poisoning appeared. He lingered till the 19th, when, after a few hours of unconsciousness, he died peacefully. A special train (21 September) carried the body to Washington, through a country draped with emblems of mourning, and through crowds of reverent spectators, to lie in state in the rotunda of the capitol two days, 22 and 23 September The final services held here were never surpassed in solemnity and dignity, except on 27 February, 1882, when, in the hall of representatives, at the request of both houses of Congress, his friend, James G. Elaine, then secretary of state, delivered a memorial address, in the presence of the president and the heads of all the great departments of the government, so perfect that the criticism of two continents was unqualified praise. In a long train, crowded with the most illustrious of his countrymen, which in its passage, day or night, was never out of the silent watch of mourning citizens, who stood in city, field, and forest, to see it pass, Garfield's remains were borne to Cleveland and placed (26 September, 1882) in a beautiful cemetery, which overlooks the waters of Lake Erie. The accompanying illustration represents the imposing monument that is to mark his last resting-place.
His tragic death assures to Garfield the attention of history. It will credit him with great services rendered in various fields, and with a character formed by a singular union of the best qualities — industry, perseverance, truthfulness, honesty, courage — all acting as faithful servants to a lofty and unselfish ambition. Without genius, which can rarely do more than produce extraordinary results in one direction, his powers were so many and well-trained that he produced excellent results in many. If history shall call Garfield great, it will be because the development of these powers was so complete and harmonious. It has no choice but to record that, by the wise use of them, he won distinction in many fields: a teacher so gifted that his students compare him with Arnold of Rugby; a soldier, rising by merit in rapid promotion to highest rank; a lawyer heard with profit and approbation in the supreme court; an eloquent orator, whose own ardent faith kindled his hearers, speaking after thorough preparation and with practised skill, but refusing always to win victory by forensic trick or device; a party leader, failing in pre-eminence only because his moral honesty would not let him always represent a party victory as a necessity of national well-being. In all these characters he was the friend of learning and of virtue, and would probably ask no other epitaph than the tribute of a friend, who said that, “among the public men of his era, none had higher qualities of statesmanship and greater culture than James A. Garfield.”
Garfield's speeches are almost a compendium of the political history of the stirring era between 1864 and 1880. Among those worthy of special mention, on account of the importance of the subjects or the attractive and forcible presentation of them, are the following: On the Enrolling and calling out of the National Forces (25 January, 1864): on the Reconstruction of the Southern States (February, 1866); on Civil-Service Reform, in the Congress of 1870 and other Congresses; on the Currency and the Public Faith (April, 1874); on the Democratic Party and the South (4 August, 1876), of which a million copies were distributed as a campaign document; the speech in opposition to the Wood bill, which was framed to break down the protective tariff (4 June, 1878); the speeches on Revolution in Congress (4 March and 4 April, 1879); on Congressional Nullification (10 June, 1879); on Treason at the Polls (11 June, 1879); and on the Democratic Party and Public Opinion (11 October, 1879). Among his speeches in Congress, less political in character, were that on the National Bureau of Education (8 June, 1866); a series on Indian Affairs, covering a period of several years; one on the Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion (2 March, 1869); two on the Census (6 April and 16 December, 1879); one on Civil-Service Reform; many addresses on the silver question; and one on National aid to education (6 February, 1872). He found time to make frequent orations and addresses before societies and gatherings outside of Congress. His address on College Education, delivered before the literary societies of Hiram College (14 June, 1867), is an admirable plea for a liberal education, and on a subject in which the author was always deeply interested. On 30 May. 1868, he delivered an address on the Union Soldiers, at the first memorial service held at Arlington, Virginia. A eulogy of General Thomas, delivered before the Army of the Cumberland, 25 November, 1870, is one of the happiest of his oratorical efforts. On the reception by the house of the statues of John Winthrop and Samuel Adams, he spoke with a great wealth of historical allusion, and all his memorial addresses, especially those on his predecessor in Congress, Joshua R. Giddings, Lincoln, and Profs. Morse and Henry, are worthy of study. But in all this series nothing will live longer than the simple words with which, from the balcony of the New York custom-house, he calmed the mob frenzied at the news of Lincoln's death: “Fellow-citizens: Clouds and darkness are around him; His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds; justice and judgment are the establishment of his throne; mercy and truth shall go before his face! Fellow-citizens! God reigns, and the Government at Washington lives.”
After the death of President Garfield, a popular subscription for his widow and children realized over $300.000. The income of this fund is to be paid to Mrs. Garfield during her life, after which the principal is to be divided among the children — four sons and a daughter. More than forty of Garfield's speeches in Congress have been published in pamphlet-form, as has also his oration on the life of General George H. Thomas. A volume of brief selections, entitled “Garfield's Words,” was compiled by William R. Balch (Boston, 1881). His works have been edited by Burke A. Hinsdale (2 vols., Boston, 1882). The most complete life of President Garfield is that by James R. Gilmore (New York, 1886).
A monument to President Garfield. designed by John Q. A. Ward, was erected in Washington, D. C., by the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, and dedicated on 12 May, 1887. It consists of a bronze statue of Garfield, 10½ feet high, standing on a circular pedestal, 18 feet in height, with buttresses, on which are three reclining figures, representing a student, a warrior, and a statesman. The U. S. government gave the site and the granite pedestal, besides contributing to the cost of the statues, and furnishing cannon to be used in their casting. (See page 602.) The unusual attitude of the arms is explained by the fact that General Garfield was left-handed. His wife, Lucretia Rudolph, born in Hiram, Portage County, Ohio, 19 April 1832, was the daughter of a farmer named Rudolph. She first met her husband when both were students at Hiram, Ohio, and was married 11 November, 1858. in Hudson, Ohio, soon after his accession to the presidency of the college. Seven children were born to them, of whom four sons and one daughter are living (1898). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 599-605.
GARLAND, Augustus Hill, cabinet officer, born in Tipton county, Tennessee, 11 June, 1832. His parents moved to Arkansas before he was a year old. He was educated at St. Mary's College, Lebanon, Kentucky, and St. Joseph's College, Bardstown, Kentucky, read law there and in Arkansas, and was admitted to the bar in Washington, Arkansas, in 1853. After practising in that place for three years, he moved to Little Rock. He was a Whig in politics, and in 1860 was an elector on the Bell and Everett ticket. He was an opponent of the secession ordinance in the state convention, but after its passage he espoused the southern cause, and was a member of the Provisional Congress that met in Montgomery, Alabama, in May, 1861. He was chosen a delegate to the 1st Confederate Congress, and afterward served in the Senate, in which he had a seat when the Confederacy fell. In 1865 he petitioned the U. S. Supreme Court for the right to practice without taking the "iron-clad" oath, presenting an argument on which the question was decided in his favor in December, 1867. He was elected U. S. Senator for the term beginning on 4 March, 1867, but was not permitted to take his seat. In 1874, after serving a short time as acting Secretary of State, he was elected by a large majority governor of Arkansas under the new state constitution. In January,1876, he was sent to the U. S. Senate, succeeding Powell Clayton, a Republican, and re-elected in 1883, serving from 5 March, 1877, to 5 March, 1885, when he took his seat in the cabinet, having been appointed by President Cleveland Attorney-General of the United States. His successful test-oath case is reported in Wallace's "Supreme Court Reports," Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 605.
GARLAND, John, soldier, born in Virginia in 1792; died in New York City, 5 June, 1861. He was appointed 1st lieutenant of infantry on 31 March. 1813, served through the war with Great Britain, became a captain on 7 May, 1817, was made major by brevet in 1827, attained the full rank of major on 30 October, 1836, and that of lieutenant-colonel on 27 November, 1839. He won distinction in the Florida War under General Worth, and served through the Mexican War, distinguishing himself in six battles, and commanding a brigade at Monterey and through General Scott's subsequent campaign. He was severely wounded at the taking of the city of Mexico. He was brevetted colonel for gallantry at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and brigadier-general for meritorious and gallant conduct at Contreras and Churubusco. He was promoted colonel on 9 May, 1861. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 605.
GARLAND, Hugh A., lawyer, died at Franklin, Tennessee, 30 November, 1864, studied and practised law in St. Louis, Missouri. He joined the Confederate Army, was made a colonel, participated in the actions between the forces of Generals Hood and Thomas in middle Tennessee, and fell at Franklin, Tennessee. while leading his command. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 605.
GARLAND, Samuel, soldier, born in Lynchburg, Virginia, 16 December, 1830; died at South Mountain, Maryland, 14 September, 1862, was educated at the Virginia Military Institute, was graduated in law from the University of Virginia in 1851, and practised with success in Lynchburg. He was chosen captain of a volunteer company that was organized in 1859, after John Brown's raid, was commissioned a colonel by the governor of Virginia on the secession of the state, and was engaged at the first battle of Bull Run, at Drainsville, and at the battle of Williamsburg, where he was wounded. He was promoted brigadier-general, and when he had recovered from his wound sufficiently to take the field, was given the command of a North Carolina brigade, which formed part of General D. H. Hill's division. He was engaged in the battle of Seven Pines, the battles around Richmond, especially that of Gaines's Mill, the battle of Manassas, and led the van of Lee's army in the Maryland Campaign, where he fell in the battle of South Mountain. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 606.
GARNER, Peter M., abolitionist, born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, 4 December, 1809; died in Columbus, Ohio, 12 June, 1868. He moved to Fairview, Guernsey County, Ohio, with his parents, became a teacher, and was a pioneer in the anti-slavery movement in Ohio. In 1845, with two other citizens, he was seized by Virginians and taken to Parkersburg and thence to Richmond, and held in confinement six months, on a charge of assisting slaves to escape, but was finally released on his own recognizance. From 1847 till 1860 he taught in the Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus, and during the war had charge of the military prisoners. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 606.
GARNET, Henry Highland, 1815-1882, African American, abolitionist leader, clergyman, diplomat, publisher. Member Liberty Party. Former fugitive slave. Published The Past and Present Condition and Destiny of the Colored Race, 1848. Publisher with William G. Allen of The National Watchman, Troy, New York, founded 1842. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 329-333; Mabee, 1970, pp. 57, 60, 61, 62, 64, 152, 255, 273, 294, 296, 325, 337, 338; Pasternak, 1995; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 33, 164, 192, 305-306, 329; Sernett, 2002, pp. 22, 67, 70-71, 116-117, 206, 209, 240; Sorin, 1971, pp. 89-92, 97, 113; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 606; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 154; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 332-333; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 735; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 608)
GARNET, Henry Highland, clergyman, born in New Market, Maryland, 23 December, 1815; died in Monrovia, Liberia, 13 February, 1882. He was a pure-blooded Negro of the Mendigo Tribe, of the Slave Coast, and born in slavery. His parents escaped with him to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where they remained a year, and in 1826 settled in New York City. He was educated in Canaan Academy, New Hampshire, and the Oneida Institute, near Utica, New York, where he was graduated with honor in 1840. He taught in Troy, New York, studied theology under Dr. Nathaniel S. S. Beman, was licensed to preach in 1842, and was pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Troy for nearly ten years. For a short time he also published “The Clarion,” a newspaper. In 1846 he was employed by Gerrit Smith to distribute a gift of land among colored people. He went to Europe in 1850 in the interest of the free-labor movement, and lectured in Great Britain on slavery for three years. In 1851 he was a delegate to the Association at Frankfort, He went to Jamaica as a missionary for the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1853, but returned to the United States on account of failing health, and in 1855 entered on the pastorate of Shiloh Presbyterian Church in New York City. In 1865 he accepted a call to a church in Washington, D. C. After a successful pastorate of four years he resigned to become president of Avery College, but gave up that post soon afterward, and returned to Shiloh Church. President Garfield offered him the appointment of minister and consul-general to Liberia, and after the accession of President Arthur the nomination was made and confirmed by the Senate. He arrived at Monrovia on 23 December, 1881, and entered auspiciously upon his diplomatic duties, but soon succumbed to the climate. A memorial school, organized by his daughter, Mrs. M. H. Garnet Barboza, was endowed in honor of him at Brewersville, Liberia. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 606.
GARNETT, Richard Brooke, soldier, born in Virginia in 1819; died near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 3 July, 1863, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1841, entered the army as lieutenant of infantry, served in the Florida War and on the Texas frontier, became a captain on 9 May, 1855, was engaged in Kansas in 1856-'7, and in the Utah Expedition of 1858, and resigned on 17 May, 1861, to join the Confederate Army. He was engaged in many of the battles in Virginia, was afterward attached to General Lee's army, with the rank of brigadier-general, and fell in the battle of Gettysburg. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 607.
GARNETT, Robert Selden, son of Robert S., soldier, born in Essex county, Virginia, 16 December 1819; died at Carrick's Ford, Virginia, 13 July, 1861. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1841, appointed 2d lieutenant of artillery, and from July, 1843, to October, 1844, was assistant instructor of infantry tactics at the Military Academy. He was aide-de-camp to General Wool in 1845, distinguished himself in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, was promoted 1st lieutenant in 1846, was aide-de-camp to General Taylor through the Mexican War, and was brevetted captain and major for gallant and meritorious conduct at Monterey and Buena Vista. He was transferred to the infantry in 1848, and promoted captain in 1851. From 1852 till 1854 he was commandant of the corps of cadets and instructor in infantry tactics at West Point. He was commissioned as major on 27 March, 1855, was the commander in the operations against the Indians on Puget's Sound, Washington territory, in 1856, and commanded the Yakima Expedition in 1858. At the beginning of the Civil War he returned from Europe, where he had been travelling on sick leave, resigned his commission in the U. S. Army on 30 April, 1861, and was appointed adjutant-general, with the rank of colonel, to organize the Virginia troops. On 6 June, 1861, he was commissioned as Brigadier-general in the Confederate Army, and sent to command the forces in the western part of the state. He found himself confronted by General McClellan with a much superior force, consisting of U. S. regulars and Indiana riflemen. After General Pegram, with a part of his command, had been surrounded, he attempted to retreat with the remainder on Beverly. When the National troops overtook him at Carrick's Ford, on Cheat River, he took command of the detachment with which he attempted to cover the retreat. His army was routed, and he was killed in the engagement. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 607
GARNETT, Alexander Yelverton Peyton, physician, born in Essex county, Virginia, 20 September, 1820, was graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1841, entered the U. S. Navy as assistant surgeon on 8 September, 1841, was promoted surgeon in 1848, and resigned on 21 October, 1850, in order to accept the professorship of clinical medicine in the National Medical College at Washington, D. C. He married in 1848 the eldest daughter of Henry A. Wise. In 1861 he left Washington, and became a member of the examining board of surgeons for the Confederate Army, and afterward surgeon in charge of the two military hospitals in Richmond. He was the family physician of Jefferson Davis and of all his cabinet officers, and accompanied Mr. Davis after the evacuation of Richmond. Afterward he returned to Washington, and was again elected a professor in the medical college in 1867, but resigned in 1870, and was made an emeritus professor. He was elected a vice-president of the American Medical association in 1885. He has contributed to medical literature papers on the claims of "Condurango as a Cure for Cancer," "The Potomac Marshes and their Influence as a Pathogenic Agent," "Epidemic Jaundice among Children," " The Sorghum Vulgare or Broom-Corn Seed in Cystitis," '"Nekton's Probe in Gunshot Wounds,". Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 607.
GARNETT, Muscoe Russell Hunter, politician, born in Essex county, Virginia; died in Virginia about 1863, was graduated at the University of Virginia, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and practised at Loretto, Virginia. He was a delegate to the state convention for revising the constitution in 1850, and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1853 till 1856. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions of 1852 and 1850, and elected to Congress to serve out an unexpired term, and twice re-elected, serving from 1 December, 1850, to 3 March, 1861. After the formation of the southern confederacy he was elected to the 1st Congress at Richmond. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 607.
GARRARD, Theophilus Toulmin, soldier, born near Manchester, Kentucky, 7 June, 1812. He was a member of the lower house of the Kentucky legislature in 1843-'4, served through the Mexican War as a captain in the 10th U. S. Infantry, went to California, on the discovery of gold in 1849, by the overland route, remained in the mines fifteen months, and then returned by way of Panama to Kentucky. He was elected to the state senate in 1857, resigned to become a candidate for Congress, and elected a state senator again in 1861. He was appointed a colonel of the 3d Kentucky U. S. Volunteer Infantry, promoted brigadier-general in March, 1863, and mustered out on 4 April, 1864. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 608.
GARRARD, Kenner, soldier, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1830; died there, 15 May, 1879. was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1851, entered the U.S. Dragoons, became a captain on 3 March, 1855, was engaged in frontier service in Texas, and captured by the Confederates on 12 April, 1861, being placed on parole until exchanged as a prisoner of war on 27 August, 1862. He served meanwhile as instructor and commandant of cadets at West Point. He was commissioned on 27 September, 1862, as colonel of the 146th Regiment of New York Volunteers, and engaged in the principal battles of the Rappahannock and Pennsylvania Campaigns. On 23 July, 1863, he was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers, took part at Rappahannock Station and in the Mine Run operations, and in 1864 commanded a cavalry division of the Army of the Cumberland, and participated in the operations around Chattanooga and the invasion of Georgia, being constantly engaged in detached expeditions. He was brevetted colonel in the U. S. Army for services in the expedition to Covington, Georgia. From December, 1864, till the end of hostilities he commanded the 2d Division of the 16th Army Corps. He distinguished himself at the battle of Nashville, earning the brevets of major-general of volunteers and brigadier-general in the regular army, participated in the operations against Mobile, led the storming column that captured Blakely, and was in command of the District of Mobile until after he was mustered out of the volunteer service on 24 August, 1865. He received the brevet of major-general, U. S. Army, for services during the war. On 9 November, 1866, he resigned his commission in the regular army. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 608.
GARRETT, Thomas, 1783-1871, Wilmington, Delaware, abolitionist leader, Society of Friends, Quaker, member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, operator of the Underground Railroad, helped 2,700 Blacks escape to freedom, 1840-1860. Vice President, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1843-1864. Officer in the Delaware Abolition Society in 1827.
(Drake, 1950, pp. 185, 187; Dumond, 1961; McGowan, 1977; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 74, 306, 464, 488; Still, 1883; Wilson, 1872, Vol. 2, pp. 83-86; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 609; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 165)
GARRETT, Thomas, abolitionist, born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, 21 August, 1783; died in Wilmington, Del., 23 January, 1871. He was of Quaker parentage, learned his father's trade, that of an edge-tool maker, moved to Wilmington in 1820, and became a wealthy iron merchant. He was devoted to the cause of emancipation from the time when a colored female servant was kidnapped from his father's house, in 1807, and for forty years gave aid and succor to fugitive slaves, and concealed their flight so skilfully that slave-owners usually gave up the chase when they learned that their runaways had fallen into his hands. As many as 3,000 fugitives from Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia owed their liberty to him. He never enticed Negroes to escape, and shrewdly avoided any breach of the law that could be proved against him. In May, 1848, however, he was compelled to pay heavy damages to owners of escaped slaves, and, after the passage of the Fugitive-Slave Law, incurred the penalty of a fine that swept away the remainder of his fortune. In answer to the reprimand of the U. S. District judge before whom he was tried, he said that he had always helped a fellow-being to liberty when he could, and should continue to do so. His fellow-townsmen readily advanced him the capital to begin business again, and before he died he had again acquired a competence. In accordance with his dying instructions, his body was borne to the grave by colored men of Wilmington. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 609
Chapter: “Underground Railroad. - Operations at the East and in the Middle States,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.
But unquestionably the most efficient agent of the Underground Railroad, as he was the most successful in these associated efforts of antislavery men to aid escaping fugitives, was Thomas Garrett of Delaware. Born in Pennsylvania of Quaker parentage, and richly endowed by nature with qualities calculated to command the ·respect and confidence of others, he early took up his residence in Delaware. At the age of twenty-four, by the kidnapping of a colored woman of his family, whom he pursued and rescued, he took his first lesson in what proved to be his life , 's work. Though he lived in a slave State, with the usual characteristics of a slaveholding community, he never concealed his opposition to the system, or his purpose to assist those who sought to escape its thraldom. Indeed, for more than fifty years, he was the Good Samaritan of his State; his the house of refuge, always open to the fugitive victims of an oppressed race. So persistent was his philanthropy and so widely known were his sentiments, that he left a record of more· than twenty-seven hundred slaves\ he had assisted to escape. Nor did that record embrace the whole, as he did not begin the count at the outset of his operations. That .with such success and such clearly avowed opinions he should have been allowed to remain in a slave State, engaged in a lucrative business, and to fill up his more than fourscore years, are facts clearly opposed to the traditional policy of such communities. This seems all the more strange, as it does not appear that the slaveholders of that State had any scruples about inflicting upon him all that the law would impose. For in 1848, under the lead of James Bayard, afterward senator of the United States, he was prosecuted four times before Judge Taney, and was convicted on the charge of abducting two slave children,--an alleged offence of which he was guilty, at worst, only by construction, --and mulcted in fines which swept from him all his property, leaving him penniless at the age of sixty, and compelling him to begin life anew.
With such evidence of his fidelity to his convictions, and of the determination of the slaveholders to prevent him from carrying into execution those convictions, it is certainly· a mystery, not to be fathomed here, that he was permitted to accomplish so much. If he did not bear with him a charmed life, there certainly seems to be reason for the belief that the " voice within " he thought he heard was no fancy ; and, more, that He who spoke that voice extended his protecting and guiding hand, enabling him to obey it. That, or far more than the ordinary amount of moral courage, must have inspired him when, in reply to the auctioneer who had just struck off the last article of his property, which had been seized and sold to pay the fine imposed, and who had expressed the hope that he would never be guilty of the like offence again, he said: " Friend, I haven't a dollar in the world; but if thee knows a fugitive who needs a breakfast send him to me." No more true heroism was exhibited by Luther at Worms, hardly more by the Apostles before the Sanhedrim. It was the utterance of a sublime trust, under circumstances well calculated to test the strength of both courage and principle.
No wonder, then, having outlived the fury of his persecutors, and the system which made them such, that he became an honored member of the community which had hunted him with such ferocity; that the closing years of his ripe old age were peaceful and serene; that, when he died, the whole community seemed moved as the heart of one man; and that his funeral seemed rather an ovation to a conqueror than the sorrowful rites around the lifeless form of a departed friend. It was a fitting close, too, to so triumphant a career, that representatives of the race he had done so much for became his own selected bearers of his body to the grave. His, too, was the rare good fortune, seldom accorded to reformers, of receiving here something like an adequate reward for their sufferings and sacrifices, not only in the accomplishment of what he labored for, but in the popular recognition of the virtues that made him thus heroic and effective.
Such was the Underground Railroad and the system of efforts it represented: They who engaged in those efforts were generally Christian men and women, who feared God and regarded man ; and they did it because, in their esteem, such service was but obedience to the royal law, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'' They acted, indeed, in full view of the fact that in obeying that law they must often disregard human statutes; but this they were prepared to do, and to accept the consequences,--the censures, reproaches, and arguments they were sure to encounter; the fines, imprisonments, and even death itself, to which they were constantly exposed. To the argument, generally twofold, that such interference was both unlawful and inexpedient, they returned for reply, that, though unlawful in the courts of earth, they were sure it could not be in the court of Heaven; and that that could not be inexpedient which was so clearly right. They found warrant, too, in the infinite worth of the human soul, the wide difference between a chattel personal, subject to all the accidents of property, the helpless victim of human caprice, passion, and self-interest, and the freeman, at liberty to develop the vast capabilities of his humanity for both time and eternity. The difference between Frederick Douglass, an ignorant and imbruted serf of an ill-tempered and brutal Maryland slaveholder, cowed and hopeless, and Frederick Douglass, with his imperial intellect, cultivated and resplendent, swaying thousands by his eloquence, and reaching forth his strong arm to lift up his race; between the Edmondson sisters, sold on the block for the vilest purposes, and the same, refined and Christian women, gracing the domestic and social circle,--was so great that they could not doubt the expediency of any efforts which might result in such a transformation. And though the thousands thus rescued did not exhibit so wide discrimination, they felt it a glorious privilege, at whatever risk and cost, to give them the opportunity of such, or even far less, improvement. There was, however, no election. To them it was the Master’s
"Living presence in the bond and bleeding slave";
and the piteous entreaty of the latter was but the voice of Him they could not disobey. To them· it was both a promise and a warning
“That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law and creed,
In the depths of God's great goodness may find mercy in his need
But woe to him who crushes the soul with chain and rod,
And herds with lower na.tu.res the awful form of God! "
Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 83-86.
GARRISON, William Lloyd, 1805-1879, journalist, printer, preeminent American abolitionist leader. Founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. President and Member of the Executive Committee, AASS, 1843-1864. Founder, editor, Liberator, weekly newspaper founded in 1831, published through December 1865. Corresponding Secretary, 1840-1844, Counsellor, 844-1860, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Co-founder, New England Anti-Slavery Society (NEASS).
(Drake, 1950, pp. 185, 187; Dumond, 1961, pp. 137, 167, 168, 169, 172, 173, 179, 182, 190, 273, 283, 286-287; Filler, 1960; Garrison, 1885-1889, 4 volumes; Goodell, 1852, 1852, pp. 396-397, 401, 405, 410, 419, 436, 455-456, 458-459, 460, 469, 512, 541; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Kraditor, 1969; Mabee, 1970, pp. 2, 8, 26, 28, 131, 149, 152, 376, 378, 398n15; Mayer, 1998; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 41-42, 106, 131, 152, 179, 208-209, 289, 307-309, 321, 378, 463; Sorin, 1971; Stewart, 1992; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 610-612; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 168; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 332-334; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 761; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 305-306; Merrill, Walter M. Against the Wind and Tide. 1963; Thomas, John L. The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison. 1963)
GARRISON, William Lloyd, journalist, born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 10 December, 1805; died in New York City, 24 May, 1879. His father, Abijah Garrison, was a sea-captain, a man of generous nature, sanguine temperament, and good intellectual capacity, who ruined himself by intemperance. His mother, Fanny Lloyd, was a woman of exceptional beauty of person and high character, and remarkable for inflexible fidelity to her moral convictions. They emigrated from Nov* Scotia to Newburyport a short time before the birth of Lloyd, and not long afterward the father left his family and was never again seen by them. At fourteen years of age Lloyd was apprenticed to the printing business in the office of the Newburyport " Herald," where he served until he was of age, becoming foreman at an early day, and displaying a strong natural taste and capacity for editorship. From the first he was remarkable for his firmness of moral principle, his quick appreciation of ethical distinctions, and an inflexible adherence to his convictions at whatever cost to himself. His aims and purposes were of the highest, and those who knew him best foresaw for him an honorable career. His apprenticeship ended, he became editor for a time of the Newburyport "Free Press," which he made too reformatory for the popular taste at that day. To this paper John G. Whittier, then unknown to fame, sent some of his hoariest poems anonymously, but * , A the editor discovering his genius, penetrated his incognito, and they formed a friendship that was broken only by death. Mr. Garrison s next experiment in editorship was with the "National Philanthropist" in Boston, a journal devoted to the cause of temperance. We next hear of him in Bennington, Vt.. whither he went in 1828 to conduct the "Journal of the Times," established to support John Quincy Adams for reelection as president. Before leaving Boston, he formed an acquaintance with Benjamin Lundy, the Quaker abolitionist, then of Baltimore, where he was publishing the “Genius of Universal Emancipation," a journal that had for its object the abolition of American slavery. Going to New England with the distinct purpose of enlisting the clergy in his cause, Lundy was bitterly disappointed by his want of success; but he mightily stirred the heart of young Garrison, who became his ally, and two years later his partner, in the conduct of the "Genius of Universal Emancipation." This journal, up to that time, had represented the form of abolition sentiment known as gradualism, which had distinguished the anti-slavery societies of I he times of Franklin and Jay. and fully answered the moral demands of the period. These societies were at this time either dead or inactive, and, since the Missouri contest of 1819-20 the people of the north had generally ceased to strive for emancipation, or even to discuss the subject. With the exception of Lundy's earnest though feeble protest, supported mainly by Quakers, the general silence and indifference were unbroken. The whole nation had apparently come to the settled conclusion that slavery was intrenched by the constitution, and all discussion of the subject a menace to the Union. The emancipation of slaves in any considerable numbers, at any time or place, being universally regarded as dangerous to the public peace, the masters were held excusable for continuing to hold them in bondage. Mr. Garrison saw this state of things with dismay, and it became clear to him that the apathy which tended to fasten slavery permanently upon the country as an incurable evil could be broken only by heroic measures. The rights of the slaves and* the duties of the masters, as measured by sound moral principles, must be unflinchingly affirmed and insisted upon. Slavery being wrong, every slave had a right to instant freedom, and therefore immediate emancipation was the duty of the masters and of the state. What was in itself right could never be dangerous to society, but must be safe for all concerned; and therefore there could be no other than selfish reasons for continuing slavery for a single day. In joining Lundy, Garrison at once took this high ground, creating thereby a strong excitement throughout the country, His denunciations of the domestic slave-trade, then rife in Baltimore, subjected him to the penalties of Maryland law, and he was thrust into jail. When released upon the payment of his fine by Arthur Tappan, of New York, he immediately resumed the work of agitation by means of popular lectures, and on 1 January, 1831, founded "The Liberator,'' a weekly journal, in Boston, which he continued for thirty-five years, until slavery was finally abolished. It was small at first, but after a few years was enlarged to the usual size of the newspapers of that day. The spirit of the paper was indicated by this announcement in the first number: "I am aware that many object to the severity of my language, but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject 1 do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him moderately to rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen: but urge me not to use moderation in a cause, like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse— 1 will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard." It was a purely moral and pacific warfare that he avowed. No appeal was made to the passions of the slaves, but to the consciences of the masters, and especially of the citizens of the free states, involved by the constitution in the guilt of slavery. But he was charged with a design to promote slave insurrections, and held up to public scorn as a fanatic and incendiary. The state of Georgia offered $5,000 reward for his apprehension, and the mails from the south brought him hundreds of letters threatening him with death if he did not abandon his moral warfare. The whole land was speedily filled with excitement, the apathy of years was broken, and the new dispensation of immediatism justified itself by its results. In 1832 the first society under this dispensation was organized in Boston; within the next two years the American anti-slavery Society was formed in Philadelphia, upon a platform of principles formulated by Mr. Garrison; and from this time the movement, in spite of powerful efforts to crush it, grew with great rapidity. Governors of states hinted that the societies were illegal, and judges affirmed that the agitators were liable to arrest as criminals under the common law. Mr. Garrison aggravated his offence, in the eyes of many, by his opposition to the scheme of African colonization, which, under the pretence of unfriendliness to slaver)', had gained public confidence at the north, while in truth it fostered the idea that the slaves were unfit for freedom. His "Thoughts on African Colonization," in which he judged the society out of its own mouth, was a most effective piece of work, defying every attempt at an answer. From 1833 till 1840 anti-slavery societies on Mr. Garrison's model were multiplied in the free states, many lecturers were sent forth, and an extensive anti-slavery literature was created. The agitation assumed proportions that greatly encouraged its promoters and alarmed its opponents. Attempts were made to suppress it by the terror of mote; Elijah P. Lovejoy, in 1837, at Alton, Illinois, was slain while defending his press, and in 1835 Garrison was dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his body, his life being saved with great difficulty by lodging him in jail. Marius Robinson, an anti-slavery lecturer, in Mahoning county, Ohio, was tarred and feathered in a cruel way; Amos Dresser, a theological student, while selling cottage Bibles at Nashville, Tennessee, was flogged in the public square because it happened that, without his knowledge, some of his Bibles were wrapped in cast-off antislavery papers; and in Charleston, South Carolina, the post office was broken open by a mob, which made a bonfire of anti-slavery papers and tracts sent through the mails to citizens of that city. In 1840 the abolition body was rent in twain, mainly by two questions, viz.: 1. Whether they should form an anti-slavery political party. 2. Whether women should be allowed to speak and vote in their societies. On the first of these questions Mr. Garrison took the negative, on the ground that such a party would probably tend to delay rather than hast en the desired action in respect to slavery. On the second he took the affirmative, on the ground that the constitutions of the societies admitted "persons" to membership without discrimination as to sex. This division was never healed, and thenceforth Mr. Garrison was recognized chiefly as the leader of the party agreeing with him upon these two questions. Personally he was a non-resistant, and therefore a non-voter; but the great body of his friends had no such scruples, and held it to be a duty to exercise the elective franchise in opposition to slavery. In 1844 Mr. Garrison became convinced that the constitution of the United States was itself the main support of slavery, and as such was to be repudiated. Borrowing the words of Isaiah, he characterized it as "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell." His influence carried the anti-slavery societies over to this ground, which they firmly held to the end of the conflict. Few of the members had any scruples as to forceful government. They simply declared that they could not conscientiously take part in a government that bound them by oath, in certain contingencies, to support slavery. The political party anti-slavery men went their way, leaving the work of moral agitation to Garrison and Ins associates, who were still a powerful body, with large resources in character, argument, and influence. The two classes, though working by divergent methods, had yet a common purpose, and, though controversy between them at times waxed warm, their agreements were broad and deep enough to insure mutual respect and a no inconsiderable degree of co-operation. The political anti-slavery leaders recognized the value of the moral agitation as a means for the regeneration of public sentiment, and for keeping their own party up to its work; and the agitators bore glad witness to the sincerity of men who, though they could not see their way clear to a repudiation of the constitution, were bent upon doing all that they could under it to baffle the designs of the slave- power. Thousands of the political abolitionists made regular and liberal contributions to sustain the work of moral agitation, and the agitators rejoiced in every display of courage on the part of their voting friends, and in whatever good they could accomplish. The Civil War brought the sincere opponents of slavery, of whatever class, into more fraternal relations. Mr. Garrison was quick to see that the pro-slavery Union was destroyed by the first gun fired at Sumter, and could never bo restored. Thenceforth he and his associates labored to induce the government to place the war openly and avowedly on an anti-slavery basis, and to bend all its efforts to the establishment of a new Union from which slavery should be forever excluded. In this they had the co-operation of the most enlightened and earnest leaders and members of the Republican Party, and on 1 January, 1803, their united labors were crowned with success. President Lincoln's proclamation of freedom to the slaves was a complete vindication of the doctrine of immediate emancipation; while the conditions of reconstruction gave the country a new constitution and a new Union, so far as slavery was concerned. When the contest was over, the leaders of the Republican Party united with Mr. Garrison's immediate associates in raising for him the sum of $30,000, as a token of their grateful appreciation of his long and faithful service; and after his death the city of Boston accepted and erected a bronze statue to his memory. During the struggle in which he took so prominent a part he made two visits to England, where he was received with many marks of distinction by the abolitionists of that country, as the acknowledged founder of the anti-slavery movement in the United States. The popular estimate of his character and career is doubt less expressed in the words of John A. Andrew, war-governor of Massachusetts : " The generation which immediately preceded ours regarded him only as a wild enthusiast, a fanatic, or a public enemy. The present generation sees in him the bold and honest reformer, the man of original, self-poised, heroic will, inspired by a vision of universal justice, made actual in the practice of nations; who, during to attack without reserve the worst and most powerful oppression of his country and his time, has outlived the giant wrong he assailed, and has triumphed over the sophistries by which it was maintained." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 610-612.
Chapter, “Early Antislavery Movements: Benjamin Lundy - William Lloyd Garrison,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872:
In the great conflict between freedom and slavery in America many names became historic, a few illustrious. No person is more inseparably associated with that struggle than William Lloyd Garrison. Men have differed, do and will differ, in their estimate of his distinctive doctrines and modes of action, and of his influence on the final result; but he will ever be associated in their memories with the conflict which emancipated one race and broke the power of another.
Born at Newburyport, Massachusetts, December 12, 1804, Mr. Garrison learned the art of printing, and commenced his editorial career at twenty-one years of age. He was first connected with the " Free Press," in his native town; next with the "National Philanthropist," a temperance paper, published in Boston; then with the "Journal of the Times," at Bennington, Vermont; then with the " Genius of Universal Emancipation," at Baltimore ; and finally, with " The Liberator," which he established in Boston, January 1, 1831, and of which he was the editor during the thirty-five years of its existence. During these forty years of continuous editorial service he evinced singular personal independence, rare moral courage, and an uncompromising fidelity to his convictions and to the claims of humanity.
While at Boston, in the spring of 1828, he became acquainted with Benjamin Lundy, then on his first tour to the Eastern States in the service of the slave. He there listened to the cogent reasonings and was moved by the tender appeals of that singularly disinterested and tireless champion, who had consecrated his life to the cause of his oppressed countrymen, and ever gratefully acknowledged these obligations.
When, in 1828, Mr. Garrison assumed the editorial control of the “Journal of the Times," at Bennington, Vermont, he announced in his editorial address that the paper would be independent in the broadest and stoutest signification of the term; that it should be trammeled by no interest, biased by no sect, awed by no power. He distinctly avowed that he had three objects in view, which he should pursue through life, whether in that place or elsewhere; and those three objects were "the suppression of intemperance and its associate vices, the gradual emancipation of every slave in the Republic, and the perpetuity of national peace." He pledged, himself that what might be wanting in vigor should be made up in zeal. This independence and this avowal elicited from Mr. Lundy, who had sought to secure Mr. Garrison's services for his" Genius of Universal Emancipation," the warmest commendations, because he had shown " a laudable disposition to advocate the claims of the poor, distressed African upon our sympathy and justice." And he declared, if he continued to advocate the cause of the unfortunate Negro, that “his talents will render him a most valuable coadjutor in this holy undertaking."
Mr. Garrison continued his connection with the “Journal of the Times " for several months; but in the latter part of the summer of 1829 he became associated with Mr. Lundy in the editorship of his paper, in Baltimore. In this new field he was brought into more immediate contact with slavery; and yet his utterances were no less decided and strong, still proclaiming his unrelenting hostility to slavery, intemperance, and war. Although at first he had looked with favor on the colonization scheme, as "an auxiliary to abolition" deserving encouragement, yet utterly inadequate alone, a short residence at Baltimore, and a fuller acquaintance with the spirit and purposes of its advocates, soon led him to discard and denounce it, and from that time onward to become one of its most uncompromising foes. On the subject of slavery he claimed that slaves were entitled to complete and immediate emancipation; that expediency had no place in the consideration of questions of simple right; that, even if the question of expediency were admitted into the discussion, it remained true that the sooner the chains were broken the wiser the act; and that, if the idea of removing the slaves from the country were not visionary, as he contended it was, all colored people born on the soil had the right to remain, and none had the right to compel their removal.
The sinfulness of slavery and the duty of immediate emancipation had been often proclaimed before, --at least, in substance, if not in the precise phraseology of the new formula. Edwards, Hopkins, and Emmons, of the last century, as Wesley before them,, who had condensed his estimate of the system into that burning and oft-repeated sentence, " Slavery is the sum of all villanies," had stated, as strongly as language could express the thought, the essential wrongfulness of the system, and the duty of immediate repentance, with the consequent fruits meet for repentance. Reverend John Rankin, whose name is honorably associated with the earlier antislavery efforts of the present century, was a native of Tennessee; and he testifies that in his " boyhood " a majority of the people of Eastern Tennessee, though not of the State, were Abolitionists. In Kentucky, where he was first settled in the ministry, he says: “We had our abolition societies, auxiliary to a State Society then existing." He spoke openly against the “sin" of slavery, while the people of his church showed the sincerity of their opposition by leaving the State almost as a body, because pf the increasing proslavery spirit of the people therein. At an anniversary meeting of the American Antislavery Society at New York, he declared that he himself and the antislavery societies of the South believed and avowed the doctrine of immediate emancipation.
In Ohio the antislavery sentiment was not only decided, but active. Indeed, several years before the formation of the American Antislavery Society the Chilicothe Presbytery made strenuous efforts to purge the Presbyterian Church of the sin of slavery. The Cincinnati Synod, on motion of Dr. Samuel Crothers, unanimously "resolved that the holding of slaves for gain is heinous sin and scandal." In 1825 Elizabeth Heyrick, of England, a member of the Society of Friends, had published a pamphlet, entitled, “Immediate, not Gradual Emancipation," which was somewhat in advance of the general sentiment of the British people, though they were not long in arriving at the same conclusion. It is stated, however, by Oliver Johnson, who had it on the highest authority, that Mr. Garrison had not seen the work before he wrought out the same sentiment in his own mind, basing his conclusion on the two-fold grounds of ''moral duty and logical necessity." There can be no doubt that the new circumstances in which Mr. Garrison found himself, with the sad and revolting scenes which were daily enacted before his eyes in a slaveholding community, and in a slave-mart like Baltimore, quickened both mind and heart, and hastened convictions to which he soon arrived, and which, when reached, he was not slow to enunciate in language unequivocal and strong. For not only was slavery there, with it ordinary incidents of "wrong and outrage," but Baltimore was then, next to Richmond, the great Northern slave-mart of the Border States. It was the slave-trader's exchange, where was the slave-prison and where could be witnessed the revolting atrocities of the auction-block and the saddening exhibitions of the coffle and the slave-ship, with their heart-breaking partings, their apprehensions, and their despairing dread of impending evils. In a community where such scenes were common, and among a people accustomed to them and acquiescent in them, Mr. Garrison was not long in tracing the logic of the system, and in detecting the real tendency of colonization, and the empty pretensions of those who advocated it as a means of removing the evils of the system of oppression.
The subject, however, which more particularly stirred his soul and fired his indignation, and which called forth his fiercest anathemas, was the interstate slave-trade. In the prosecution of this general traffic an incident and illustration soon occurred which especially excited his feelings, and called forth his sternest rebukes and his most objurgatory language. The captain of a vessel owned by Francis Todd, of his own native town of Newburyport, took, with the owner's consent, a cargo of slaves for the New Orleans market. In consequence of the severity of his rebuke and his unmeasured words of condemnation, both a civil and criminal suit were instituted against Mr. Garrison. Tried by a proslavery court and jury, he was, of course, convicted, and his sentence embraced both imprisonment and fine.
The knowledge of this, and the great wrong done to an American citizen simply for language employed only in behalf of freedom and against oppression, excited a good deal of feeling, as it became known, among the philanthropists of the time. The case was brought by Mr. Lundy to the notice of that munificent as well as earnest friend of the slave, Arthur Tappan of New York, who at once paid the fine; so that, after an incarceration of seven weeks, Mr. Garrison was set free. It is said that Henry Clay was on the point of doing the same thing, through the earnest solicitation of John G. Whittier, who represented to him that Mr. Garrison had been an earnest and effective advocate of the election of John Quincy Adams. This action of the agents of slavery completed the work already far advanced, and made Mr. Garrison ever afterward an uncompromising, if not a bitter foe, not only to slavery, but to everything that interposed itself between him and the object of his unconquerable aversion and determined hostility. Nothing was too high or too low, nothing was too strong or too sacred, to escape his fierce denunciations. No iconoclast ever dashed down more remorselessly the idols of popular regard. The oath of eternal hostility to Rome which the youthful Hannibal was made to swear was not more sacredly kept than was the vow of the young reformer, as he went forth from that Baltimore prison, against that power which held millions of his countrymen in chains, and which would silence free speech and destroy the liberty of the press.
Imprisonment neither intimidated nor silenced him. From that Baltimore jail, he sent forth a letter in which he arraigned the law and the arbitrary conduct of the court. “Is it,'' he asked, “supposed by Judge Brice that his frowns can intimidate me, or his sentence stifle my voice on the subject of oppression? He does not know me. So long as a good Providence gives me strength and intellect, I will not cease to declare that the existence of slavery in this country is a foul reproach to the American name; nor will I hesitate to proclaim the guilt of kidnappers, slavery abettors, or slave-owners, wherever they may reside, or however high they may be exalted. I am only in the alphabet of my task; time shall perfect a useful work. It is my shame that I have done so little for the people of color; yea, before God, I feel humbled that my feelings are so cold and my language so weak. A free white victim must be sacrificed to open the eyes of the nation, and to show the tyranny of our laws. I expect, and am willing to be persecuted, imprisoned, and bound for advocating the rights of my colored countrymen; and I should deserve to be a slave myself if I shrank from that danger."
This violent individual demonstration was, however, but significant of the general feeling and policy toward this antislavery sheet and its heroic conductors. Nor did the persecutions, slanders, and libel suits which they prompted fail of their purpose. Former friends timidly shrunk from the fierce conflict, and withheld both their moral and pecuniary support; and even these earnest and brave men were compelled so far to succumb to the popular pressure as to dissolve their partnership, and the paper was changed from a weekly to a monthly journal. But, though not agreed in all things, they parted with “the kindliest feelings and mutual personal regard." Mr. Lundy declared that Mr. Garrison “had proven himself a faithful and able coadjutor in the great and holy cause"; and the latter, in separating from his philanthropic friend, expressed the hope that “we shall ever remain one in spirit and purpose."
After his liberation from prison, in June, 1830, Mr. Garrison proceeded North delivering a course of antislavery lectures in Philadelphia, New York, New Haven, Hartford, Boston, Charlestown, and other cities and towns of New England. In these lectures, he maintained the sinfulness of slavery, and the duty of immediate and unconditional emancipation. The colonization scheme, which had obtained a strong hold upon the confidence and support of the churches and the benevolent people of the North, was sternly arraigned, and the designs of its originators were declared to be hostile to the free people of color in the slaveholding States. Earnest appeals were made, especially to members of Christian churches, to engage at once in the work of immediate and unconditional emancipation, which was proclaimed to be the duty of the people and the right of' the slave. But these views were far in advance of the prevailing sentiments of even most of the members of the churches; and although some gladly accepted them, the many were either hostile or indifferent. It was often with difficulty, therefore, that churches were opened for his addresses, and sometimes they were positively refused.
In the month of August, he issued proposals for the publication of a journal, to be called “The Liberator," in the city of Washington. The proposition, though hailed with favor by a few persons in different sections of the country, was "palsied by public indifference." The persecutions against Mr. Lundy had also been so great in Baltimore that he had been compelled to remove the "Genius of Universal Emancipation” to the seat of the Federal government, thus rendering the establishment of “The Liberator” there less necessary.
But there was another reason for changing the place of the publication of the proposed journal. This reason is given by Mr. Garrison in his first number, which was published in Boston, in January, 1831:
“During my recent tour," he says, " for the purpose of exciting the minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery, every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the fact that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free States, and particularly in New England, than at the South. I found contempt more bitter, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than among slave-owners themselves. Of course, there were individual exceptions to the contrary. This state of things afflicted, but did not dishearten me. I determined at every hazard to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill, and in the birthplace of Liberty. That standard is now unfurled; and. long may it float, unhurt by the spoliations of time or the missiles of a desperate foe, -- yea, till every chain be broken and every bondman set free! Let Southern oppressors tremble, - let their secret abettors tremble, --let their Northern apologists tremble, --let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble! "
In establishing "The Liberator, Mr. Garrison announced that he should not array himself as the political partisan of any man, and that, in defending the great cause of human rights, he wished ".to derive the, assistance of all religions and of all parties."
Many persons, however, who had become deeply interested in Mr. Garrison's addresses in the summer and autumn deemed his language too vituperative, denunciatory, and severe. Some of his earliest and most, intimate friends, who earnestly, desired the success of his cause, had often remonstrated with him. In his salutatory address, referring to these remonstrances, he said:
“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think or speak or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest, --I will not equivocate, --I will not excuse, --I will not retreat a single inch, -- AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead!"
To those who questioned the wisdom of his course, he replied:
“It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years, not perniciously, but beneficially, - not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God that he enables me to disregard' the fear of man that bringeth a snare,' and to speak his truth in its simplicity and power."
He closed with the vow to oppose and thwart the brutalizing sway of oppression, “till Africa's chains Are burst, and freedom rules the rescued land."
Mr. Garrison's partner in the publication of "The Liberator” was Mr. Isaac Knapp, a printer, like himself, and also a native of the same town. The paper was commenced without funds and without a single subscriber. Bearing the comprehensive and cosmopolitan motto, “My country is the world, my countrymen are all mankind," it appealed to no party, sect, or interest for recognition and support. Both editor and printer labored hard and fared meagerly; and it was only thus -- and a marvel it was at that -- that their journal lived. But Mr. Garrison had a mission to fulfil, and he bravely met the conditions it imposed. For, whatever may be the estimate of his policy, and whatever may have been his mistakes, none can withhold the meed of admiration at the moral courage and faith he exhibited as he entered upon his life's work. Hardly grander were their exhibition when Kepler was working out his problem of the solar system willing to "wait a century for a reader "; when Columbus was travelling through Europe, from court to court, from philosopher to prince, in the vain search for a convert to his new theory of a western passage to the Indies; or even when Luther was nailing his theses to the door of the church, and thus braving the thunders of the Vatican, than when that young man - with no advantages of birth or culture, with wounds still bleeding from his recent encounter with the dark and bloody tyrant, in his dingy room of sixteen feet square, at once his sanctum, workshop, and home-made assault upon a despotism which not only trampled millions of slaves in the dust, but dominated the whole country, binding both church and state in chains, and there forged his weapons of warfare from the indestructible materials of God's Word and the Declaration of Independence. It must have been something more than "the grace of indignation” which urged him on, which crowned him with the honors of imprisonment, gave him the garland of a rope, the escort of a mob of Boston's " respectability and standing," and extorted such honorable mention by Southern governors and legislatures as can now be gathered from their records.
It was not that Mr. Garrison discovered any new truths, or that he stood alone, which gave him his prominence from the start. The sinfulness of slaveholding, and the duty of its immediate relinquishment had been as unequivocally proclaimed by others, and there were those then in the field as decided and pronounced as he. It must have arisen partly, at least, from the peculiar state of public opinion at that time. After the crowning triumph of the Slave Power in the Missouri Compromise, and in the sectional victory of the South, by the defeat of Mr. Adams and the election of General Jackson, there seemed to be a general acquiescence on the part of the people in these triumphs, and a growing disposition to remit further antislavery effort.
The nation had reached its nadir; for, though there were subsequently other aggressions, more flagrant outrages, and new concessions and compromises, yet never after that was the nation so voiceless and timid. Cowed and silent before the domineering Power, with the number of protestants growing fewer and feebler, the very boldness and seeming audacity of the young man in his attic, telling the nation that he was in earnest and would be heard, aroused attention. The very deliberation with which he heralded and began the assault, the stern defiance he bade the foe at whose feet he threw the gauntlet of mortal combat, made him the mark for criticism and hostile demonstration, as well as the rallying point of those who sympathized with him in spirit and in purpose. His impartiality, too, between sects and parties, men and schools, constitutions and laws, and whatever arrayed itself against the slave or remained neutral, increased that attention and criticism.
His pen, if possible, was more severe, caustic, and exasperating than had been his speech. While friends generally doubted, and questioned, and the people condemned, the slaveholders were stung to madness. Before the close of the first year, the Vigilance Association of Columbia, South Carolina, “composed of gentlemen of the first respectability," offered a reward, of fifteen hundred dollars for the apprehension and conviction of any white person detected in circulating in that State "the newspaper called 'The Liberator.' “The corporation of Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, passed an ordinance rendering it penal for any free person of color to take from the post-office " the paper published in Boston called 'The Liberator,'" the punishment for each offence to be twenty dollars fine or thirty days imprisonment. In case the offender was not able to pay the fine, or the fees for imprisonment, he was to be sold into slavery for four months. The grand jury of Raleigh, North Carolina, at the instigation of the attorney-general, made an indictment against the editor and publisher of “The Liberator" for its circulation in that county. The legislature of Georgia proceeded to pass an act, which was promptly signed by Governor Lumpkin, offering a reward of five thousand dollars for the arrest, prosecution, and trial to conviction, under the laws of the State, of the editor or publisher " of a certain paper called 'The Liberator,' published in the town of Boston and State of Massachusetts."
But neither the doubts of friends, the condemnation of the North, nor the threats and offered rewards of the South, moved Mr. Garrison from his purpose. He bade defiance to his persecutors, and avowed his readiness to die, if need be. He stood, he says, “like the oak, like the Alps, --unshaken, storm-proof. Opposition and abuse and slander and prejudice and judicial tyranny add to the flame of my zeal. I am not discouraged; I am not dismayed; but bolder and more confident than ever."
Nor is there any doubt that his voice and pen were among the most potent influences that produced the antislavery revival of that day. Antislavery societies were formed, antislavery presses were established, and antislavery lectures abounded. Nine years after the establishment of “The Liberator “there were nearly two thousand antislavery societies, with a membership of some two hundred thousand. This result, however, was not secured without agitation, controversy, and strife. Nor were these all outside of the societies. Within them were discords and dissensions, growing out of the nature of their work and the character of their members. For the latter were generally, and almost of necessity, persons of positive convictions and self-assertion, engaged in a work of appalling magnitude and beset with unanticipated difficulties. Especially true was this of those who gathered around Mr. Garrison; adopted and defended his views, and recognized him as their leader. Embracing many men, and especially women, of talent, culture, and eloquence, they were a small, compact, aggressive, and somewhat destructive body, who, with marked characteristics and occasional idiosyncrasies, yet seemed to be swayed by a common impulse, and to be committed not only to a common object, but to the pursuit of that object by modes peculiarly their own.
In pursuance of their object, they avowed the purpose of granting quarter to nothing which, in their apprehension, interposed itself between them and that object. Not finding that hearty co-operation and ready acquiescence in their utterances and modes of action in church or state which they desired or hoped for, but oftener hostility and persecution, they soon arrayed themselves in antagonism to the leading influences of both. Arid so, singularly enough, they presented what appeared to their countrymen the practical solecism of endeavoring to reform the government by renouncing all connection with it; of seeking to remove a political evil by refusing all association with political parties, by whose action alone that evil could be reached; of depending alone on moral suasion, and an appeal to the consciences of the people, and yet coming out of all the religious associations and assemblies of the land. This arraying themselves against the patriotism, the partisanship, and the religious sentiment of the great body of the people prevented harmonious co-operation, and rendered inevitable, sooner or later, a disruption of the national society. In that separation, which took place in 1840, but a small part remained with Mr. Garrison, --probably not more than one fifth of the members of the antislavery societies then existing; and these were confined mainly to New England, and mostly to Eastern Massachusetts. Nor did their numbers increase during the conflicts of the subsequent twenty years. Indeed, it is doubtful whether, in 1860, when Mr. Lincoln was elected by a vote of nearly two million, on a clearly defined and distinct issue with the Slave Power, there were more Abolitionists of that school than there were twenty years before, when the American Antislavery Society was rent in twain. During all this period, however, they acted, as they professed, "without concealment and without compromise." Whatever may be the estimate of the weight of their influence on public opinion, none will ever doubt the sincerity of their convictions, the purity of their motives, the boldness of their utterances, or· the inflexibility of their purposes.
Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 176-1888.
GASTINE, Civique, 1793-1822, reformer, wrote anti-slavery literature, called for equality between Blacks and Whites (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 613-614)
GATCH, Philip (American National Biography, 2002, Vol. 8)
GATES, Cyrus, 1802-1891, Maine, New York, abolitionist, cartographer. Active in hiding fugitive slaves in the Underground Railroad. His home was used to hide slaves.
GATES, Seth Merrill, 1800-1877, abolitionist leader, lawyer, newspaper editor, U.S. Congressman, Whig Party, Western New York. Anti-slavery political leader in House of Representatives. (Dumond, 1961, p. 295; Mabee, 1970, p. 128; Sorin, 1971, p. 104; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 615-616)
GATES, Seth Merrill, lawyer, born in Winfield, Herkimer County, New York, 16 October, 1800; died in Warsaw, New York, 24 August, 1877. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1827, and began practice in Le Roy. He was elected to the state legislature in 1832, but declined a re-election. During this session he was instrumental in procuring a charter for the first Railroad in western New York, being a portion of the present New York Central. In 1838 he purchased the " Le Roy Gazette," which he edited for several years. He was elected to Congress in 1838, and re-elected in 1840. On the expiration of his Congressional service, he moved to Warsaw, and continued his law-practice. On account of his hostility to slavery, a reward of $500 was offered by a southern planter for his "delivery in Savannah, dead or alive." In 1848 he was the Free-Soil candidate for lieutenant-governor of New York, but was defeated. He drew up the protest of the Whig members of Congress in 1843 against the annexation of Texas, erroneously attributed in several histories to Mr. Adams's pen; and the correspondence between Mr. Gates and ex-President John Quincy Adams, who signed the protest, is still in the possession of his son. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888,Vol.II,pp.615-616
GATES, William, general, born in Massachusetts in 1788; died in New York, 7 October, 1868. He was a son of Lemuel Gates, an officer in the Revolution, who died in 1806. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1806, receiving the appointment of 2d lieutenant in the regiment of artillerists, and served in garrison until 1812. When the war with Great Britain began, he was appointed acting adjutant of light artillery and aide to General Porter, and in 1813 he was promoted to captain. He was engaged in the capture of York (now Toronto). Canada West, and in the bombardment and capture of Fort George. In May, 1814, he was transferred to the corps of artillery, and served in garrison and frontier duty for several years. He was appointed captain of the 2d Artillery upon the reorganization of the army in June, 1821, and two years later was brevetted major. He served on garrison duty until 1832, when he was stationed at Fort Moultrie, Charleston Harbor, during the nullification troubles. He took part in the Florida War, personally captured Osceola, and escorted the Cherokees to the Indian Territory. He served in the war with Mexico as colonel of the 3d Artillery, and from 1846 till 1848 acted as governor of Tampico, Mexico. Subsequently he served on garrison duty, and retired from active service in 1853. He was brevetted brigadier-general in 1865 for long and faithful service. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 616-617.
GATLING, Richard Jordan, inventor, born in Hertford county, North Carolina, 12 September, 1818. While yet a boy he assisted his father in perfecting a machine for sowing cotton-seed, and another for thinning cotton-plants. His first invention was a screw for propelling water-craft, but, on applying for letters patent, he found that he had been anticipated by Ericsson. He subsequently invented and patented a machine for sowing rice, and, on his removal to St. Louis in 1844, he adapted it to sowing wheat in drills. He attended medical lectures at Laporte, Indiana, in 1847-'8, and also at the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati in 1848-'9, but never practised his profession. In 1850 he invented a machine for breaking hemp, and in 1857 a steam plough, which, however, was never brought into use. In 1861 he conceived the idea of his revolving battery gun. The first of these was made at Indianapolis in 1862. Twelve were subsequently manufactured and used by General Butler on the James River, Virginia. In 1865 Dr. Gatling further improved his invention, and in 1866, after satisfactory trials at Washington and at Fortress Monroe, the arm was adopted into the U. S. service. It is also made in Austria and in England, and is used by several European governments. As now perfected, the gun is made of various calibres and weights, for different kinds of service, and consists of a number of simple breech loading rifled barrels, grouped around and revolving about a common axis, with which they lie parallel. These component barrels are loaded and fired while revolving, the empty cartridge shells being ejected in continuous succession. Each barrel is fired only once in a revolution, so that a ten barrel gun fires ten times in one revolution of the group of barrels. The mode of firing is simple. One man places one end of a feed-case full of cartridges into a hopper at the top of the gun, while another turns a crank by which the gun is revolved. As soon as the supply of cartridges in one feed-case is exhausted, another feed-case may be substituted without interrupting the revolution or the succession of discharges. The usual number of barrels composing the gun is ten. The invention is now protected by five patents, which cover successive improvements. The nature of these may be inferred from the statement that, whereas the original Gatling gun only fired from 250 to 300 shots per minute, those now made discharge 1,200 shots, as many as 500 having frequently been fired in two and one half seconds. Dr. Gatling now (1887) resides in Hartford, Connecticut, but has spent much of his time abroad, exhibiting his invention. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 617.
GAY, Sydney Howard, 1814-1888, New York, NY, author, newspaper editor, abolitionist. Member of the Garrisonian abolitionists. Became traveling lecturing agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in 1842. Gay was a member of the Executive Committee from 1844-1864 and Corresponding Secretary, 1846-1849. Appointed editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard in 1844, published in New York. Served until 1858, when he became an editor with the Tribune. He was the wartime managing editor of the Tribune. Ardent supporter of Lincoln and the Union. (Mabee, 1970, p. 298; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 618-619; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 195; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 806)
GAY, Sydney Howard, author, born in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1814, entered Harvard at the age of fifteen, but in his junior year was obliged to give up study on account of his health. The degree of A. B. was afterward conferred upon him. After some years, spent partly in travel, partly in a counting-house in Boston, he began the study of law in his father's office in Hingham. But he soon abandoned it from conscientious scruples concerning the oath.to support the constitution of the United States; for he came to the conclusion that, if one believed slavery to be absolutely and morally wrong, He had no right to swear allegiance to a constitution that recognized it as just and legal, and required the return of fugitives from bondage. Of the "Garrisonian abolitionists," with whom he thereafter cast his lot, he says: "This handful of people, to the outside world a set of pestilent fanatics, were among themselves the most charming circle of cultivated men and women that it has ever been my lot to know." In 1842 he became a lecturing agent for the American anti-slavery Society, and in 1844 editor of the "Anti-Slavery Standard," published in New York. This place he retained till 1857, when he became editorially connected with the "Tribune," of which, from 1862 till 1866, he was managing editor. Henry Wilson, afterward vice-president of the United States, said: "The man deserved well of his country who kept the 'Tribune' a war paper in spite of Greeley." Mr. Gay was managing editor of the Chicago "Tribune " from 1867 till the great fire of 1871. During the following winter he acted with the relief committee, and wrote their first public report, in the spring of 1872, of their great work of the past six months. Subsequently, for two years, he was on the editorial staff of the New York " Evening Post." In 1874, William Cullen Bryant, being invited to join a great publishing-house in the enterprise of preparing an illustrated history of the United States, consented on condition that Mr. Gay should be its author, as he himself could not think of undertaking such a work at his advanced age. Mr. Bryant wrote the preface to the first volume, while the history itself was written by Mr. Gay, with the help of several collaborators in special chapters, to whom he gives credit in his prefaces. This work (4 vols., 8vo, New York, 1876-'80), beginning with the prehistoric races of America and coming down to the close of the Civil War, introduced a new treatment of American history, which has been followed by later writers and has become popular. Mr. Gay has since written a "Life of James Madison" (Boston, 1884). He was engaged on a life of Edmund Quincy for the series of the "American Men of Letters," when he was interrupted by a long and serious illness. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 618-619.
GAYARRE, Charles Etienne Arthur, historian, born in New Orleans, Louisiana. 9 January, 1805. He was educated at the College of New Orleans. In 1825, the draft of a criminal code having been laid before the state legislature by Edward Livingston, Gayarre published a pamphlet opposing some of its provisions, particularly that relating to the abolition of capital punishment. He went to Philadelphia in 1826, studied law, and was admitted to the bar there in 1829, returning to New Orleans in 1830. In the same year he was elected to the legislature, and was chosen by that body to write an address complimenting the French Chambers on the revolution of 1830. He was appointed deputy attorney-general of the state in 1831, and in 1833 presiding judge of the city court of New Orleans. In 1835 he was elected to the U. S. Senate, but impaired health prevented his taking his seat, and he went to Europe, where he remained for nearly eight years. In 1844 he again entered the state legislature, and was re-elected in 1846. He was appointed secretary of state in the latter year and again in 1850, retaining the office for seven years. In 1853 Judge Gayarre was an unsuccessful independent candidate for Congress. During the Civil War he espoused the cause of the seceding states, and in 1863 delivered an address urging the arming of the slaves and their emancipation, conditioned on the recognition of the Confederacy by France and England. Since the war he has been for some time reporter of the state supreme court. His historical works comprise the "Histoire de la Louisiane" (2 vols., New Orleans, 1847);" Romance of the History of Louisiana" (New York, 1848); "Louisiana, its Colonial History and Romance " (New York, 1851); "Louisiana, its History as a French Colony" (2 vols., 1851-'2); and " History of the Spanish Domination in Louisiana from 1769 to December, 1803" (1854). The complete " History of Louisiana," revised and brought down to 1861, afterward appeared (3 vols., 1866). He is the author of " Philip I. of Spain," a biography, with an introduction by George Bancroft (New York, 1866); "Fernando de Lemos, Truth and Fiction," a novel (1872); and "Aubeit Dubayet," sequel to the foregoing (Boston, 1882). He has also published a drama, "The School for Politics " (1854), " Dr. Bluff," a comedy in two acts, and several literary and political addresses, among which are two lectures on "The Influence of the Mechanic Arts." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 619-620.
GEARY, John White, soldier, born near Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County. Pennsylvania, 30 December, 1819; died in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 8 February. 1873. His father was of Scotch-Irish descent. The son entered Jefferson College, but, on account of his father's loss of property and sudden death, was compelled to leave and contribute toward the support of the family. After teaching he became a clerk in a commercial house in Pittsburg, and afterward studied mathematics, civil engineering, and law. He was admitted to the bar, but never practised his profession. After some employment as civil engineer in Kentucky, he was appointed assistant superintendent and engineer of the Alleghany Portage Railroad. When war was declared with Mexico, in 1846, he became lieutenant-colonel of the 2d Regiment of Pennsylvania volunteer Infantry, and commanded his regiment at Chapultepec. where he was wounded, but resumed his command the same day at the attack on the Belen gate. For this service he was made first commander of the city of Mexico, and colonel of his regiment. He was appointed in 1849 to be first postmaster of San Francisco, with authority to establish the postal service throughout California. He was the first American alcalde of San Francisco, and a " judge of the first instance." These offices were of Mexican origin, the " alcalde" combining the authority of sheriff and probate judge with that of mayor, and the judge of the first instance presiding over a court with civil and criminal as well as admiralty jurisdiction. Colonel Geary served until the new constitution abolished these offices. In 1850 he became the first mayor of San Francisco. He took a leading part in the formation of the new constitution of California, and was chairman of the territorial Democratic committee. In 1852 he retired to his farm in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, and remained in private life until 1856, when he was appointed territorial governor of Kansas, which office he held one year. He then returned to Pennsylvania, and at the beginning of the Civil War raised the 28th Pennsylvania Volunteers. He commanded in several engagements, and won distinction at Bolivar Heights, where he was wounded. He occupied Leesburg, Virginia, in March, 1862, and routed General Hill. On 25 April, 1863, he received the commission of brigadier-general of U. S. volunteers. He was severely wounded in the arm at Cedar Mountain, 9 August, 1862, and in consequence could not take part in the battle of Antietam. At the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg he led the 2d Division of the 12th Corps. The corps to which General Geary's regiment was attached joined the Army of the Cumberland, under General Hooker's command, to aid in repairing the disaster at Chickamauga, and he took part in the battles of Wauhatchie and Lookout Mountain, in both of which he was distinguished. He commanded the 2d Division of the 20th Corps in Sherman's inarch to the sea, and was the first to enter Savannah after its evacuation, 22 December, 1864. In consideration of his services at Fort Jackson he was appointed military governor of Savannah, and in 1865 he was promoted to be major-general by brevet. He was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1866, and held this office until two weeks before his death. During his administration the debt of the commonwealth was reduced, an effort to take several millions from the sinking fund of the state bonds was prevented, a disturbance at Williamsport quelled, and a bureau of labor statistics established by the legislature, 12 April, 1872. Governor Geary possessed great powers of application and perception, force of will, and soundness of judgment, and was popular among his troops. In recognition of his service to the state and nation, the general assembly erected a monument at his grave in the cemetery of Harrisburg.—His eldest son, Edward Ratchford, born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, 14 September, 1845; killed in the battle of Wauhatchie, Lookout Mountain, 28 October, 1863, left the sophomore class in Jefferson College in 1861 to enlist as a private in the 28th Pennsylvania Regiment. He became captain of Hampton battery, and subsequently a lieutenant in Knapp's battery, which post he held at the time of his death. He was engaged at Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 620-621.
GEDDES, James Lorraine, soldier, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 19 March, 1827; died in Ames, Story County, Iowa, 21 February, 1887. In 1837 he was brought by his father, Captain Alexander Geddes, to Canada. At the age of sixteen he returned to Scotland, but soon sailed for India, where, after studying for two years at the British Military Academy in Calcutta, he enlisted in the Royal horse Artillery , serving seven years under Sir Hugh Gough, Sir Charles Napier, and Sir Colin Campbell. He passed through the Punjab Campaign, was present at the battle of Kyber Pass, and ascended the Himalayas with the last-named officer in the expedition against the hill tribes. For his services he was rewarded with a medal and clasp. At the end of ten years he returned to his home in Canada, and was commissioned colonel of a cavalry regiment; but he soon resigned from the army, emigrating to Iowa in 1857, and settled at Vinton, Benton County At the beginning of the Civil War he gave up his place as a teacher, and in August, 1861, enlisted as a private in the 8th Iowa Regiment. He was rapidly promoted captain, lieutenant-colonel, and colonel, being ultimately brevetted brigadier-general in the volunteer service, 5 June, 1865. At Shiloh he was wounded and fell into the hands of the enemy, remaining a prisoner until early in 1863, when he was exchanged and again saw service under General Grant at Vicksburg and under General Sherman at Jackson, Mississippi In October, 1863, he was placed in command of a brigade and ordered to Brownsville, Texas. Subsequently he was made provost- marshal of Memphis, and by his exertions the city was probably saved from capture by the Confederate General Forrest. During the Mobile Campaign he commanded a brigade, and to him is due the capture of Spanish Fort. The defences of that work were considered impregnable; but on one side ran a ravine, beyond which was a bluff. This vulnerable point was soon discovered by General Geddes, who pushed his men up the ravine, over the bluff, and into the enemy's works, being actually in possession before the commandant of the fort had learned the fact, or it had become known to General Geddes's superior officer. After the war he had charge of the blind-asylum at Vinton for several years, took part in the organization, and for fifteen years shared in the management of the Iowa College of Agriculture at Ames, Story County, serving at different times as vice-president, professor of military tactics, treasurer, and land-agent. General Geddes wrote several war-songs, which were set to music and became widely popular. Among them were "The Soldier's Battle-Prayer" and "The Stars and Stripes." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 621.
GENTRY, Meredith Poindexter, statesman, born in Rockingham County, North Carolina, 15 September, 1809; died near Nashville, Tennessee, 2 November, 1866. In 1813 his father, a wealthy planter, moved to Williamson County, Tennessee, where the facilities for education were limited. Meredith's school-days ended at the age of fourteen, when he had acquired little more than the rudiments. He, however, supplemented these while working on his father's plantation by reading the standard English authors. He also took great delight in perusing the Congressional debates. He early conceived a fancy for military life, and joined a militia company, of which he was soon elected captain, and subsequently promoted colonel of the regiment. He became known as a popular orator, and in 1835 was chosen to a seat in the legislature, which he retained until 1839, when he was elected to Congress, taking his seat, 2 December, 1839, and at once joining Messrs. Clay, Webster, and Calhoun in their efforts to stem the tide of what they held to be the dangerous encroachments of the executive. Mr. Gentry was an original Whig, and remained such until the party ceased to exist. His first speech, which attracted universal attention, was in favor of the reception of petitions praying for the abolition of slavery. Although himself a large slave-holder, and maintaining that the Federal government had no right to interfere with slavery in individual states, he urged that the petitions, although asking what could not be constitutionally granted, should nevertheless be received and considered. His second speech, on the bill to secure freedom of elections and restrict executive patronage, was one of the ablest of that Congress, and became an effective campaign document in the presidential canvass of 1840. Mr. Gentry was re-elected to the 27th, known as the "Whig Congress," but, on account of the death of his first wife, refused to be a candidate for election to the 28th. He was, however, returned to the 29th, and was also elected to the 30th, 31st, and 32d. Mr. Gentry's first speech, after his return to Congress in December, 1843, was in reply to the charge of President Polk that the Whigs were giving aid and comfort to the enemy through their opposition to the Mexican War. Mr. Gentry, in behalf of himself and his political friends, indignantly repelled the aspersions of the president. As a result of the speech, a resolution was introduced by the Whigs declaring that, while patriotism required that the armies should be sustained, yet the war should be waged only for the purpose of obtaining an honorable peace, and not with any view to conquest. On leaving Congress Mr. Gentry retired to his plantation in Tennessee, and after the election of Mr. Lincoln became a secessionist. He was elected to the Confederate Congress in 1862, and again in 1863. He did not approve, however, of the policy of the authorities at Richmond. He advocated secession only as a temporary expedient. "There were very few men in the House of Representatives," said Alexander H. Stephens, " who could compare with Mr. Gentry in political knowledge, and in the readiness with which he brought this knowledge to bear on any point in running debate. His eulogy on Clay, delivered without premeditation, was apt, powerful, and pathetic. Socially he was urbane and genial, and was possessed of high conversational powers, with a fund of humor and anecdote." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 626.
GEORGE, James Zachariah, senator, born in Monroe County, Georgia, 20 October, 1826. He lost his father in infancy, and his mother moved, when he was eight years of age, to Noxubee county, Mississippi, where he was educated in the common schools. He served as a private in the 1st Mississippi Volunteers, commanded by Jefferson Davis, during the Mexican War, and was at the battle of Monterey. On his return he studied law, was admitted to the bar, and in 1854 elected reporter of the high court of errors and appeals. He was re-elected in 1860. He served as a member of the state convention that passed the ordinance of secession, which he voted for and signed. He was a captain in the 20th Mississippi Volunteers in the Confederate Army, and subsequently colonel of the 5th Mississippi Cavalry . He was also appointed a brigadier-general of militia. He was chairman of the Democratic State Executive Committee, 1875-'6. was appointed a judge of the supreme court of the state in 1879, and afterward elected chief justice. The latter office he resigned in February, 1881, to take his seat in the U. S. Senate. His term expired 3 March, 1887. Judge George prepared and published ten volumes of the decisions of the court of which he was the official reporter, and subsequently issued a digest of all the decisions from the admission of Mississippi into the Union to and including the year 1870. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 627.
GETTY, George Washington, soldier, born in Georgetown, D. C., 2 October, 1819. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1840, assigned to the 4th Artillery, and served at Detroit during the border disturbances of that year. After doing garrison duty at various posts, he was promoted to 1st lieutenant on 31 October, 1845. During the Mexican War he was brevetted captain, 20 August, 1847, for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, and was also engaged at Molino del Rey, Chapultepec, and the assault and capture of the city of Mexico. From this time till the Civil War he was in various garrisons, but fought against the Seminoles in 1849-'50 and 1856-'7, and took part in quelling the Kansas disturbances of 1857-'8. He was made aide-de-camp, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, on 28 September, 1861, commanded the artillery in the engagements near Budd's Ferry in November and December of that year, and in the Peninsular Campaign of 1862 commanded four batteries at Yorktown, Gaines's Mills, and Malvern Hill. He was at South Mountain and Antietam. was made brigadier-general of volunteers on 25 September, 1862, and took part in the Rappahannock Campaign of 1862-'3, being engaged at Fredericksburg and in the defence of Suffolk, Virginia, from 11 April till 3 May, and receiving the brevet of lieutenant-colonel on 19 April for his services. He was brevetted colonel for gallantry at the battle of the Wilderness, where he was severely wounded, served in the defence of Washington in July, 1864, and in the Shenandoah Campaign, being brevetted major-general of volunteers, 1 August, 1864, for his services at Winchester and Fisher's Hill, and brigadier-general in the regular army for gallantry at Petersburg. He was at Lee's surrender, and on 13 March, 1865, was brevetted major-general, U. S. Army, for services during the war. He became colonel of the 37th U.S. Infantry on 28 July, 1866, was transferred to the artillery in 1870, and afterward served in command of various districts and posts. He commanded the troops along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad during the riots of 1877, and, on 2 October, 1883, was retired from active service. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 633.
GEYER, Henry Sheffe, jurist, born in Fredericktown, Maryland, 9 December, 1790; died in St. Louis, Missouri, 5 March, 1859. He began to practise law in his native city in 1811, and on 20 May, 1813, became 1st lieutenant in the 38th Infantry. He was made regimental paymaster on 25 December, and served till June, 1815, when he was mustered out. He then moved to St. Louis, Missouri, at that time a frontier village, and was a member of the territorial legislature in 1818, and captain of the first militia company in the territory. He was a delegate to the state constitutional convention of 1820, and was five times chosen to the legislature after the admission of Missouri to the Union, serving as speaker of the first three general assemblies of the state. In 1825 he was one of the revisers of the statutes, and contributed largely to the adoption of a code, which was at that time superior to that of any other western state. He declined the post of Secretary of War, tendered him by President Fillmore in 1850, and was then elected U. S. Senator over Thomas H. Benton, on the fortieth ballot, by a majority of five votes. He served from 1851 till 1857, and while in Washington was one of the counsel in the Dred Scott Case. He was the oldest member of the St. Louis Bar, both in years and in professional standing. He published "Statutes of Missouri " (St. Louis, 1817). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 633.
GHERARDI, Bancroft, naval officer, born in Jackson, Louisiana. 10 November. 1832. He entered the U.S. Navy from Massachusetts as midshipman, 29 June, 1846, served on the " Ohio," of the Pacific Squadron, till 1850, entered the Naval Academy in 1852, and was made passed midshipman on 8 June of that year. He became master and lieutenant in 1855, and at the beginning of the Civil War was on the "Lan- caster," of the Pacific Squadron. He was made lieutenant-commander, 16 July, 1862, took part in the engagement with Fort Macon in that year, and in 6commanded successively the gun-boat "Chocorua" and the steamer " Port Royal," of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron. In the latter vessel he took part in the battle of Mobile Bay, and distinguished himself for coolness and courage. During the action, by the orders of Captain Thornton A. Jenkins, to whose vessel, the "Richmond." the " Port Royal" was lashed, Gherardi cast off, and went in chase of the Confederate gun-boats “Morgan," " Gaines," and "Selma." Later in the war he commanded the "Pequot." He was promoted to commander in 1866, to captain in 1874, and to commodore in 1884, and in 1885 served on the board of examiners for promotion. In 1886 he succeeded Admiral Ralph Chandler as commandant of the Brooklyn Navy-yard. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 633-634.
GHOLSON, Samuel Jameson, jurist, born in Madison County, Kentucky, 19 May, 1808: died in Aberdeen, Mississippi, 16 October, 1883. He went with his family in 1817 to Alabama, was educated in the common schools in that state, studied law at Russellville, Alabama, and was admitted to the bar. He moved to Athens, Mississippi, in 1830, and in 1833-'6 was a member of the Mississippi legislature. He was chosen to Congress as a Democrat in January, 1837, to fill a vacancy, and a few months afterward was elected for a full term; but his seat was contested by his opponent, and on 31 January, 1838, was declared vacant by the house. While in Congress, he had several sharp passages with Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, and a duel between the two was at one time prevented only by the influence of John C. Calhoun and other friends of the disputants. Mr. Gholson was appointed U. S. Judge for the District of Mississippi by President Van Buren in 1838, and held this office till 1861, when he resigned and took an active part in the Secession Convention. He then enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private, was chosen captain, and alter the fall of Fort Donelson, where he was wounded, raised another company and was at Iuka and Corinth, where he was wounded again. He was made major-general of state troops in the spring of 1863, and on 1 June, 1864, was promoted to brigadier-general in the Confederate Army, commanding a cavalry brigade in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He received two more serious wounds near Jackson in 1864, and on 27 December of that year lost his right arm in the action at Egypt, Mississippi. After the war he was again a member of the legislature in 1866 and 1878, being Speaker of the House in the latter rear. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 634.
GIBBS, Robert Wilson, scientist and historian, born in Charleston. South Carolina, 8 July, 1809; in Columbia, South Carolina, 15 October, 1866, was graduated at South Carolina College in 1827, and at the Medical College of South Carolina, Charleston, in 1830, after attending lectures in Philadelphia in 1827-'8. In 1827-'35 he was assistant professor of chemistry, geology, and mineralogy in South Carolina College. He was twice mayor of Columbia, and in 1852-"60 was editor of the ' Daily South-Carolinian " and the "Weekly Banner." He was surgeon-general of the state from 1861 till the close of the war, and during that time made an examination of the Virginia hospitals, for which he was praised by the Confederate Congress. In 1865, when Columbia was burned, he lost his house, with valuable collections of paintings, fossils, and minerals. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II,
GIBBON, John, soldier, born near Holmesburg, Pennsylvania, 20 April. 1827. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1847. assigned to the artillery, and served at the city of Mexico and Toluca till the close of the Mexican War. From this time till the Civil War he was largely on frontier and garrison duty, but was assistant instructor of artillery at West Point in 1854-'7, and quartermaster there in 1856-"9. On 2 November, 1859, he became captain in the 4th Artillery. He was chief of artillery of General McDowell's division from 29 October, 1861, till 2 May, 1862, and at the latter date was made brigadier-general of volunteers. He commanded a brigade through the Northern Virginia, Maryland, Rappahannock, and Pennsylvania Campaigns in 1862-'3, receiving the brevets of major in the regular army, 17 September, 1862, for Antietam; lieutenant-colonel, 13 December 1862, for Fredericksburg, where he commanded a division, was wounded, and disabled for three months; and colonel, 4 July, 1863, for Gettysburg, where he was severely wounded while in command of the 2d Army Corps. He was disabled by this wound till 15 November, when he commanded the draft depot at Philadelphia till 21 March, 1864. He was then assigned to a division of the 2d Corps, becoming a major-general of volunteers on 7 June, 1864. and being engaged at the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor. After 15 January, 1865, he commanded the 24th Army Corps, and was before Petersburg from 15 June, 1864, till 2 April, 1865. taking part in the assaults of the last two days, and carrying two redoubts. He was brevetted brigadier-general and major-general, U. S. Army, to date from 13 March, 1865, was one of the commissioners to carry into effect the stipulations for Lee's surrender, and was mustered out of volunteer service on 15 January, 1866. Since the war he has commanded various posts as colonel of the 36th Infantry in 1866-'9, and of the 7th Infantry in 1869-86. He was superintendent of the general recruiting service in New York City in 1873, had charge of the Yellowstone Expedition against Sitting Bull in 1876, and on 9 August, 1877, commanded in the action with the Nez Perces Indians at Big Hole Pass, Montana, where he was wounded. He temporarily commanded the Department of Dakota in 1878, and since 29 July, 1885, that of the Columbia, having charge in 1885-'6, by direction of the president, of the suppression of the riots against the Chinese in Washington Territory. On 10 July, 1886. he was promoted to brigadier-general. General Gibbon has published " The Artillerist's Manual" (Now York, 1859), and has contributed articles to current literature, including one on "Our Indian Question" in the Journal of the military service institution, for which a prize medal was awarded him. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 640.
GIBBONS, James Sloan, 1810-1892, Philadelphia, PA, New York, NY, Society of Friends, Quaker, merchant, abolitionist, philanthropist. Member of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839-1840, 1840-1844. Married to abolitionist Abigale Hooper. (Drake, 1950, pp. 160, 162, 198; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 636; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 242)
GIBBONS, James Sloan, merchant, born in Wilmington, Delaware, 1 July, 1810, was educated in private schools in his native city, and in early life moved to Philadelphia, where he became a merchant. He came to New York in 1835, and has since been connected with banks and finance in that city. He has contributed to various literary and financial periodicals, and has published " The Banks of New York, their Dealers, the Clearing House, and the Panic of 1857," with a financial chart (New York, 1858), and " The Public Debt of the United States, its Organization, its Liquidation, and the Financial System" (1867). His song “We are Coming father Abraham”, was a very popular song during the Civil War. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 636.
GIBBONS, Abby (Abigail) Hopper, 1801-1893, Society of Friends, Quaker, women’s prison reformer, philanthropist, abolitionist, daughter of Isaac and Sarah Hopper, wife of noted abolitionist James Sloan Gibbons. Gibbons was a member of the Executive Committee from 1841-1844. American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). The Manhattan Anti-Slavery Society. (Emerson, 1897; Yellin, 1994, p. 43n41; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 636; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 237; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 347-348; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 906)
GIBBONS, Abigail Hopper, philanthropist, born in Philadelphia, 7 December, 1801, is a daughter of Isaac T. Hopper, the Quaker philanthropist. After teaching in Philadelphia and New York, she married Mr. Gibbons in 1833, and in 1836 moved to New York with him. In 1845 Mrs. Gibbons aided her father in forming the Women's Prison Association, and in founding homes for discharged prisoners, and frequently visited the various prisons in and about New York. She was the principal founder of the Isaac T. Hopper Home, and for twelve years was president of a German Industrial School for Street Children, the attendance at which increased in four months from 7 to nearly 200. Throughout the war Mrs. Gibbons gave efficient aid in hospital and camp, often at personal risk, and in 1863, during the draft riots, her house was one of the first to be sacked by the mob, owing to the well-known anti-slavery sentiments of herself and her husband. The attention of the rioters was first called to the house by someone who pointed it out as the residence of Horace Greeley. After the war she planned and organized a labor and aid association for the widows and orphans of soldiers. She aided in establishing the New York Infant Asylum in 1871, and the New York Diet Kitchen in 1873, and has been one of the active managers of both these institutions. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 636.
GIBBONS, Henry, abolitionist, Wilmington, Delaware, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-40, Vice-President, 1840-43. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II. p. 636.
GIBBONS, Henry, physician, born in Wilmington, Delaware, 20 Sept., 1808; died there, 5 November, 1884, was graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1829, practised in Wilmington till 1841, and then in Philadelphia, where he was professor of the principles and practice of medicine in the Philadelphia College of Medicine. He moved in 1850 to San Francisco, California, where he became, in 1861, professor of materia medica in the Medical College of the Pacific (now Cooper Medical College), being transferred to the chair of the principles and practice of medicine in 1868. He was president of the California State Board of Health from its establishment in 1873 till his death, and edited the “Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal” for twenty years. Dr. Gibbons was a founder of the California Academy of Sciences. He published a prize essay on “Tobacco” and several addresses and essays. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II. p. 636.
GIBBONS, Joseph, philanthropist, born near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 14 August, 1818; died there, 9 December, 1883. He was of a family of English Quakers who came from Wiltshire about the time of Perm's settlement of the colony. He was graduated at Jefferson Medical College in 1845, and in the same year married Phebe, eldest daughter of Thomas Earle, who was the first candidate of the Liberty Party for vice-president of the United States in 1840, the presidential candidate being James G. Birney. Dr. Gibbons's life was chiefly identified with the practical side of the anti-slavery movement. He was instrumental with his father in aiding over 1,000 runaway slaves to freedom by the system quaintly known as the " Underground Railroad." Some account of this peculiar institution may be found in William Still's " Underground Railroad" (Philadelphia, 1872), and Dr. Smedley's "History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania" (Lancaster, 1883). Dr. Gibbons was also an earnest temperance advocate, and did much to popularize the public school system of Pennsylvania in its infancy. He was regarded as one of the founders of the Republican Party in his native state, and enjoyed the friendship and esteem of Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, Joshua R. Giddings, David Wilmot, and Henry Wilson. He established the "Friends' Journal " in 1873, and, though partially deprived of speech by apoplexy soon afterward, conducted it until his death. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 637.
GIBBS, George, antiquarian, born in Sunswick, now Astoria, L. I., 17 July, 1815; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 9 April, 1873, received his early education at Round Hill school in Northampton, Massachusetts, under George Bancroft and Joseph G. Cogswell. He spent two years in foreign travel, and then was graduated at Harvard Law-School in 1838. Subsequently he practised in New York City with Prescott Hall, and devoted himself to the historical branch of conveyancing, making valuable collections of titles and abstracts. He also at this time occupied himself with the preparation of the " Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams," edited from the papers of his grandfather, Oliver Wolcott (New York, 1846). His early fondness for outdoor life continued as long as he lived, and soon after the discovery of gold in California he marched with the mounted rifles overland from St. Louis to the Pacific Coast, establishing himself in Columbia, Oregon. In 1854 he received the appointment of collector of Astoria, which he held for several years, and on the expiration of his term of office remained in the west, devoting his attention to the study of Indian dialects and to geology and natural history. Later he was attached to the U. S. Government Boundary Commission, where his knowledge of natural history made his services of great value, and he was also geologist under General Isaac I. Stevens on the survey of the North Pacific Railroad. In 1857 he was appointed to the Northwest Boundary Survey, and at the close of its work prepared an elaborate report on the geology and natural history of the country. He returned to New York in 1860, and was active in his efforts toward preventing secession. In 1861 he volunteered and did military duty in Washington. During the draft riots in New York, two years later, he offered to defend the residence of General John C. Fremont when a night attack was threatened. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 637-638.
GIBBS, Alfred, soldier, born in Sunswick. L. I., 22 April. 1823: died in Fort Leavenworth. Kansas, 26 December, 1868. His family, disappointed in their wish to obtain a military appointment for their second son. persisted in the effort, and as the one grew beyond the age within which the candidate is eligible, the claim for appointment was transferred to the next, and as persistently urged. The second son was compelled to give up his ambition, but the third received the long-sought commission. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1846. assigned to the mounted rifles, and received two brevets during the Mexican War—that of 1st lieutenant for gallantry at Cerro Gordo, where he was wounded, and that of captain for his services at Garita de Belen, city of Mexico. He was also at Vera Cruz, Confreres, Churubusco, and Chapultepec. He was aide-de camp to General Persifor P. Smith in Mexico, California, and Texas in 1848-'56, was promoted to 1st lieutenant, 31 May, 1853, and served on the frontier till the Civil War, being severely wounded in a skirmish with Apache Indians at Cooke's Spring, N. M., 8 March, 1857, and taking part in the Navajo Expedition of 1860. He was depot commissary at Albuquerque, N. M., in 1860-'l, was promoted to captain, 13 May, 1861, and on 37 August, 1862, was taken prisoner by the Confederates at San Augustine Springs, N. M. He was paroled till exchanged, 27 August, 1862, and on 6 September became colonel of the 130th New York Regiment. He was engaged in the operations about Suffolk, Virginia, till June, 1863, and in July and August of that year in organizing his command as a cavalry regiment, which was afterward known as the 1st New York Dragoons. In 1864-'5 he commanded a cavalry reserve brigade, and served under General Sheridan on several of his cavalry raids. He was brevetted major, 11 June, 1864, for gallantry at Trevillian Station, Virginia, lieutenant-colonel for services at the battle of Winchester, and on 19 October, 1864, became brigadier-general of volunteers. He commanded a cavalry brigade in the final attack and pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia in March and April, 1865, and on 13 March received all the brevets up to and including that of major-general, U. S. Army, for his services during the war. He was mustered out of volunteer service, 1 February, 1866, became major in the 7th U.S. Cavalry on 28 July, and served in various forts in Kansas till his death. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 638-639.
GIBBS, Josiah Willard, Sr., 1790-1861, New Haven, Connecticut, abolitionist, philologist, author. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 630; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 247
GIBBS, Josiah Willard, philologist, born in Salem, Massachusetts, 30 April, 1790; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 25 March, 1861. He was graduated at Yale in 1809, and from 1811 till 1815 was connected with the college as tutor. Subsequently he spent some years at Andover, where he devoted himself to the study of Hebrew and biblical literature, producing at this time some of his most important works. In 1824 he was called to New Haven, and became professor of sacred literature in the theological school of Yale College, which chair he retained until his death. He also held the office of librarian from 1824 till 1843, and in 1853 received the degree of LL. D. from Princeton. Professor Gibbs was a constant contributor of articles on points of biblical criticism, archæology and philological science to the “Christian Spectator,” “Biblical Repository,” “New Englander,” and the “American Journal of Science.” He was particularly fond of grammatical and philological studies, and attained a high reputation for thoroughness and accuracy in them. His work appears in several of the most important philological books published during the century, and among others in the revised edition of Webster's “Unabridged Dictionary” and Professor William C. Fowler's “English Language in its Elements and its Forms” (New York, 1850). For some years, he was one of the publishing committee of the American oriental Society. Professor Gibbs published a translation of Storr's “Historical Sense of the New Testament” (Boston, 1817); a translation of Gesenius's “Hebrew Lexicon of the Old Testament” (Andover, 1824; London, 1827); an abridged form of Gesenius's “Manual Hebrew and English Lexicon” (1828); “Philological Studies with English Illustrations” (New Haven, 1856); “A New Latin Analyst” (1859); and “Teutonic Etymology” (1860). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 630
GIBBS, Mifflin Wistar (American National Biography, 2002, Vol. 8)
GIBSON, Randall Lee, senator born at Spring Hill, Woodford County, Kentucky, 10 September. 1832. His grandfather, Randall Gibson, was a Revolutionary soldier, who, after the War of Independence, moved with his kindred to the southwest, and finally made his home at Oakley, Warren County, Mississippi. He built the first church, and founded the first college (Jefferson) in the Mississippi Valley. His father, Tobias Gibson, was a large sugar-planter in Terre Bonne Parish, Louisiana. Randall was graduated with honors at Yale in 1853, and was also class orator. He was graduated in 1855 at the law department of the University of Louisiana (now Tulane University), of which he is at, present (1887) the official head, being president of the board of administrators. He then studied at Berlin, travelled in Russia, and spent six months as an attaché of the American legation at Madrid. On his return he engaged in sugar-planting, until the Civil War, when he joined the Confederate Army as a private, but was made a captain in the 1st Louisiana Artillery, and stationed at Fort Jackson, below New Orleans. Not long afterward he was elected colonel of the 13th Louisiana Infantry. At Shiloh he commanded a brigade, which attacked the "hornet's nest" in front, and was four times repelled with great slaughter, but he held on, was in the front line at i sunset, and was distinguished in the fighting next day. Gibson was with Bragg's army in the Kentucky Campaign, and was recommended for promotion for skill and gallantry at Perryville, where one third of his brigade were killed or wounded, and at Murfreesboro and Chickamauga. He was in all the battles in General Joseph E. Johnston's retreat from Dalton to Atlanta, and at Jonesboro lost half his command. In the defeat of General Hood at Nashville he successfully covered the retreat. In Canby's campaign against Mobile, Gibson was detached with 3,500 men to Spanish Fort, where he held the National forces at bay for two weeks, and then withdrew his entire command, under cover of darkness, threading a pathway only eighteen inches wide through a marsh. He was financially ruined by the war, but, resuming his profession in New Orleans, soon acquired a lucrative practice. In 1872 he was elected to Congress as a democrat, but was not admitted to a seat. He was again elected in 1874, 1876, 1878, and 1880. He was then sent to the U. S. Senate, and took his seat 4 March, 1883. He may fairly be said to have been the father of the policy for the improvement of the Mississippi River, which he originated, and has consistently advocated and successfully guided. He has been the most pronounced opponent in the south of all forms of financial inflation and irredeemable issues. As a member of the ways and means committee he steadily advocated moderate measures of revenue reform, and resisted alike the extreme protectionists and the free-traders. In 1883 he was selected by Paul Tulane as president of the board of administrators who were to manage his gift for education in New Orleans, now estimated at $1,500,000. Under his auspices Tulane University was founded. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 640-641.
GIDDINGS, Howard, abolitionist
GIDDINGS, Joshua Reed, 1795-1865, lawyer, statesman, anti-slavery U.S. Congressman, Northern Whig from Ohio, elected in 1838. First abolitionist elected to House of Representatives. Worked to eliminate “gag rule,” which prohibited anti-slavery petitions. Served until 1859. Leader and founder of the Republican Party. Supported admission of Florida as a free state. Opposed annexation of Texas and the war against the Seminoles in Florida. Argued that slavery in territories and District of Columbia was unlawful. Active in Underground Railroad. Was censured by the House of Representatives for his opposition to slavery. Opposed Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and against further expansion of slavery into the new territories acquired during the Mexican War of 1846. (Blue, 2005, pp. 69, 84, 86, 100, 163, 165, 188, 199, 201, 202, 216, 218-220, 221, 224, 245; Dumond, 1961, pp. 243-245, 302, 339, 368; Filler, 1960, pp. 103, 145, 186, 224, 247, 258, 264, 268; Locke, 1901, pp. 64, 175; Mabee, 1970, pp. 56, 63, 261, 305, 306; Miller, 1996; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 6, 23-26, 32-33, 45, 48-49, 54-55, 60, 61, 63, 65, 69-72, 131, 136, 162-163, 166-167; Pease, 1965, pp. 411-417; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 45, 47-49, 56, 173, 305, 316-318; Stewart, 1970; Wilson, 1872, pp. 446-455; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 641-642; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 260; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 946)
GIDDINGS, Joshua Reed, statesman, born in Athens, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, 6 October, 1795; died in Montreal, Canada, 27 May, 1864. His parents moved to Canandaigua, New York, and in 1806 to Ashtabula county, Ohio, where the boy worked on his father's farm, and by devoting his evenings to hard study made up somewhat for his limited educational advantages. In 1812 he enlisted in a regiment commanded by Colonel Richard Hayes, being the youngest member, and was in an expedition sent to the Peninsula north of Sandusky Bay. There, 29 September, 1812, twenty-two men, of whom he was one, had a skirmish with Indians, in which six of the soldiers were killed and six wounded. Mr. Giddings afterward erected a monument there to the memory of his fallen comrades. After the war he became a teacher, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1820. He was elected to the Ohio legislature in 1826, served one term, and declined a re-election. In 1838 he was elected, as a Whig, to Congress, where he had hardly taken his seat before he became prominent as an advocate of the right of petition, and the abolition of slavery and the domestic slave-trade. He had been known as an active abolitionist before his election. His first attempt to discuss the subject on the floor of Congress, 11 February, 1839, was thwarted by the gag rule; but two years later, 9 February, 1841, he delivered a notable speech on the war with the Indians in Florida, in which he maintained that the contest was waged solely in the interest of slavery, the object being to enslave the Maroons of that state, who were affiliated with the Seminoles, and break up the asylums for fugitives. This subject he set forth more elaborately years afterward in his “Exiles of Florida” (Columbus, Ohio, 1858; new ed., New York, 1863). In the autumn of 1841 the “Creole” sailed from Virginia for Louisiana with a cargo of slaves, who got possession of the vessel, ran into the British port of Nassau, N. P., and, in accordance with British law, were set free. In the excitement that followed, Daniel Webster, secretary of state, wrote to Edward Everett, U. S. minister at London, saying that the government would demand indemnification for the owners of the slaves. Thereupon Mr. Giddings, 21 March, 1842, offered in the House of Representatives a series of resolutions in which it was declared that, as slavery was an abridgment of a natural right, it had no force beyond the territorial jurisdiction that created it; that when an American vessel was not in the waters of any state it was under the jurisdiction of the United States alone, which had no authority to hold slaves; and that the mutineers of the “Creole” had only resumed their natural right to liberty, and any attempt to re-enslave them would be unconstitutional and dishonorable. So much excitement was created by these resolutions that Mr. Giddings, on the advice of his friends, withdrew them, but said he would present them again at some future time. The house then, on motion of John Minor Botts, of Virginia, passed a resolution of censure (125 to 69), and by means of the previous question denied Mr. Giddings an opportunity to speak in his own defence. He at once resigned his seat and appealed to his constituents, who re-elected him by a large majority. In the discussion of the “Amistad” case (see Cinque), Mr. Giddings took the same ground as in the similar case of the “Creole,” and in a speech a few years later boldly maintained that to treat a human being as property was a crime. In 1843 he united with John Quincy Adams and seventeen other members of Congress in issuing an address to the people of the country, declaring that the annexation of Texas “would be identical with dissolution”; and in the same year he published, under the pen-name of “Pacificus,” a notable series of political essays. A year later he and Mr. Adams presented a report discussing a memorial from the Massachusetts legislature, in which they declared that the liberties of the American people were founded on the truths of Christianity. On the Oregon question, he held that the claim of the United States to the whole territory was just, and should be enforced, but predicted that the Polk administration would not keep the promise on which it had been elected — expressed in the motto “Fifty-four forty, or fight” — and his prediction was fulfilled. In 1847 he refused to vote for Robert C. Winthrop, the candidate of his party for speaker of the house, on the ground that his position on the slavery question was not satisfactory; and the next year, for the same reason, he declined to support the candidacy of General Taylor for the presidency, and acted with the Free-Soil Party. In 1849, with eight other Congressmen, he refused to support any candidate for the speakership who would not pledge himself so to appoint the standing committees that petitions on the subject of slavery could obtain a fair consideration; and the consequence was the defeat of Mr. Winthrop and the election of Howell Cobb, the Democratic candidate. Mr. Giddings opposed the compromise measures of 1850, which included the fugitive-slave law, and the repeal of the Missouri compromise, taking a prominent part in the debates. In 1850, being charged with wrongfully taking important papers from the post-office, he demanded an investigation, and was exonerated by a committee that was composed chiefly of his political opponents. It was shown that the charge was the work of a conspiracy. In 1856, and again in 1858, he suddenly became unconscious, and fell while addressing the house. His Congressional career of twenty years' continuous service ended on 4 March, 1859, when he declined another nomination. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed him U. S. consul-general in Canada, which office he held until the time of his death. One who knew him personally writes: “He was about six feet one inch in height, broad-shouldered, of very stalwart build, and was considered the most muscular man on the floor of the house. Whenever he spoke he was listened to with great attention by the whole house, the members frequently gathering around him. He had several affrays on the floor, but invariably came out ahead. On one occasion he was challenged by a southern member, and promptly accepted, selecting as the weapons two raw-hides. The combatants were to have their left hands tied together by the thumbs, and at a signal castigate each other till one cried enough. A look at Mr. Giddings's stalwart frame influenced the southerner to back out.” Mr. Giddings published a volume of his speeches (Boston, 1853), and wrote “The Rebellion: its Authors and Causes,” a history of the anti-slavery struggle in Congress, which was issued posthumously (New York, 1864). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 641-642.
Chapter: “Coastwise Slave-Trade. - Demands upon the British Government - Censure of Mr. Giddings,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.
The British government was assured by Mr. Webster that the case was one " calling loudly for redress"; that the " Creole" was passing from one port to another of the United States, on a voyage " perfectly lawful,'' with persons bound to service belonging to American citizens, and recognized as property by the Constitution of the United States and in those States in which slavery existed; that the slaves rose, murdered one man, and that the " mutineers and murderers " took the vessel into a British port. He declared that it was the plain and obvious duty of the authorities of Nassau to assist in restoring to the master and crew their vessel, and in enabling them to resume their voyage and to take with them the mutineers and murderers to their own country to answer for their crimes. This extraordinary position and claim were laid before the British government; but all efforts to secure compensation for the slaves, or the surrender of the men who had asserted and maintained their own liberty, were unavailing. England declined to act the ignoble part of a slave-catcher for the slave-traffickers of the United States.
Mr. Giddings, then a member of the House of Representatives, was so impressed with the positions of the President and Senate, that he deemed it to be a duty he owed to his country to combat them. He drew up a series of resolutions, setting forth that prior to the adoption of the Constitution each State exercised full and perfect jurisdiction over slaves in its own territory; that by the adoption of the Constitution no part of that jurisdiction was delegated to the Federal government; that by the Constitution each State surrendered to the Federal government complete jurisdiction over commerce and navigation; that slavery, being an abridgment of the natural rights of men, could exist only by positive municipal law; that, when a ship belonging to a citizen of any State left the waters of the United States and entered upon the high seas, the persons on board became amenable to the laws of the United States; that when the brig " Creole " left Virginia the slavery laws of that State ceased to have jurisdiction over the persons on board; that in resuming their natural rights they violated no law of the United States, nor incurred any legal penalties; that all attempts to gain possession of or to re-enslave these persons were unauthorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States; that all attempts to exert the influence of the nation in favor of the coastwise slave-trade was subversive of the rights of the people of the free States, unauthorized by the Constitution, and prejudicial to the national character.
These resolutions were submitted to the consideration of Mr. Adams. He avowed his readiness to support them, excepting the one denying the right of the Federal government to abolish slavery in the States. He held that the national government, in case of insurrection or war, might, under the war-power, abolish slavery, and, with statesmanlike sagacity and a wise forecast of possible contingencies, which subsequent events proved to be near at hand, he did not wish to give a vote that would be quoted by the friends of slavery as a denial of that power; " but," he added, " I will cheerfully sustain all but that which denies this right to the Federal government.''
When, on the 21st of March, the State of Ohio was called, Mr. Giddings introduced these resolutions, and gave notice that he would call them up for" consideration the next day. The reading of the resolutions attracted profound attention, and created much excitement. Mr. Ward, a Democratic member from New York, proposed to bring the House to an immediate vote by demanding the previous question, remarking that the resolutions were too important to be adopted or rejected without consideration, Mr. Everett of Vermont moved to lay them on the table; but his motion was defeated by a large majority. Mr. Holmes of South Carolina; rising under great excitement, remarked: "There are certain topics, like certain places, of which it might be said, ' Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' “The House, by the large vote of one hundred and twenty-two to sixty-one, sustained the previous question. Mr. Everett asked to be excused from voting. As the subject was very important, and would probably come before the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which he was a member, he did not desire to express an opinion until he had examined it. He was a gentleman of high character, ripe age, large experience, and of much influence with his party and in the House. Usually moderate and cautious, on this occasion he seemed to be influenced by the excitement around him, and expressed his “utter abhorrence of the firebrand course of the gentleman from Ohio.'' Mr. Fessenden, then a young and rising member of the House from Maine, thought the resolutions were too important to be voted upon without greater deliberation. Mr. Cushing, then understood to be a special friend of the President and an exponent of his views, after reading the resolutions at the clerk's table, said: “They appear to be a British argument on a great question between the British and American governments, and constitute an approximation to treason on which I intend to vote ' No.'"
At the request of Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Giddings withdrew the resolutions, remarking that they would be published, and gentlemen would have time to examine them with care, and would present them the next day, when the resolutions would be in order. Mr. Botts then rose and, remarking that the withdrawal of the resolutions did not excuse their presentation, submitted a preamble and resolution; the first setting forth that Mr. Giddings, had presented a series of resolutions touching the most important interest connected with a large portion of the Union, then a subject of negotiation with the government of Great Britain of the most delicate nature, the result of which " might involve those nations and perhaps the civilized world in war," in which mutiny and murder were justified and approved in terms shocking all sense of law, order, and humanity; and the latter declaring that this House holds that "the conduct of the said member is altogether inconsistent and unwarranted, and deserving the severest condemnation of the people of this country, and of this body in particular." Objection being made to the consideration of the resolution, Mr. Botts moved a suspension of the rules, but was not sustained by a vote of the House.
As Ohio was still under the call for resolutions, under the rule, Mr. Weller, a Democratic member from that State, adopted Mr. Botts's resolution as his own, offered it, and called for the previous question. Several members questioned the propriety of ordering the previous question; but Mr. Weller, who was a Democrat of the most intense proslavery type, persisted in demanding it. The Speaker, Mr. White of Kentucky, decided that on a question of privilege the previous question could not cut off a member from his defence. Mr. Fillmore appealed from the decision; and the House overruled the Speaker by a large majority, and adjourned.
Thus, arraigned for a conscientious discharge of public duty, Mr. Giddings spent the entire night and the forenoon of the next day in preparing for his defence. Calling at the residence of Mr. Adams, for the purpose of consultation, he found, he says," the aged patriot laboring under great distress." He expressed to Mr. Giddings the fear that no defence would be permitted; that the question would be taken without debate, and the vote of censure passed. Mr. Giddings anticipated the vote of censure; but he suggested that the reflections of the night would convince members of “the impropriety of condemning a man unheard." To this suggestion, Mr. Adams made the discriminating and suggestive reply: "You are not as familiar with the slaveholding character as I am. Slaveholders act from impulse, not from reflection. They act together from interest, and have no dread of the displeasure of their constituents when they act for slavery."
On the assembling of the House, the Speaker remarked that the first business was on seconding the demand for the previous question. Mr. Weller said he would withdraw his demand for the previous question if Mr. Giddings would proceed with his defence, with the understanding that it should be called when he closed. But, Mr. Giddings refusing to make any terms to secure what he deemed to be his constitutional right, the previous question was ordered by seven majority. Mr. Weller then moved the suspension of the rules, to allow Mr. Giddings to make his defence; but the Speaker pronounced the motion out of order. To the suggestion of Mr. Adams that while the previous question cut off other members it ought not to apply to the member accused, the Speaker replied that the House had decided that the previous question applied to cases of privilege, and the privilege of one was the privilege of all.
The motion was made to hear Mr. Giddings by unanimous consent, and it was announced that such consent had been given. Mr. Giddings then said:" Mr. Speaker, I stand before the House in a peculiar position." Mr. Cooper of Georgia then objected to his proceeding, and he took his seat. Members gathered around Mr. Cooper, and persuaded him to withdraw his objection; but it was renewed by Mr. Calhoun of Massachusetts, who declared that he would not see a member of the House speak under such circumstances.
Mr. Giddings states that when he rose to speak he had intended to say: “It is proposed to pass a vote of censure upon me, substantially for the reason that I differ in opinion from a majority of the members. The vote is about to be taken without giving me an opportunity to be heard. It was idle for me to say I am ignorant of the disposition of a majority of the members to pass a vote of censure. I have been violently assailed in a personal manner, but have had no opportunity of being heard in reply. Nor do I ask for any favor at the hands of gentlemen; but, in the name of an insulted constituency, in behalf of one of the States of this Union, in behalf of the people of these States and of our Federal Constitution, I demand a hearing in the ordinary mode of proceeding. I accept no other privilege. I will receive no other courtesy."
The House, by a vote of one hundred and twenty-five to sixty-nine, adopted the vote of censure. Mr. Giddings then rose and, taking formal leave of the Speaker and officers of the House, retired from the hall. As he reached the front door he met Mr. Clay and Mr. Crittenden. Mr. Giddings states that "as Mr. Clay extended to me his hand he thanked me for the firmness with which I had met the outrage perpetrated upon me, and declared that no man would ever doubt my perfect right to state my own views, particularly while the Executive and the Senate were expressing theirs." Mr. Giddings immediately resigned, returned to Ohio, issued an address to the people of his district, was re-elected by a largely increased majority, and in five weeks took his seat in the House, “clothed with instructions from the people of his district to re-present his resolutions, and maintain to the extent of his power the doctrine which they asserted." He received a warm greeting from the friends of the freedom of debate, who had bravely stood by him in his time of trial.
The action of the House of Representatives, thus signally rebuked by Mr. Giddings's constituents, was also condemned by public meetings, whose proceedings were presented to Congress. Even some Democratic papers, among them the New York "Evening Post,'' asserted the right of Mr. Giddings to present his resolutions. And William C. Bryant, its accomplished editor, declared that if he was a resident of Mr. Giddings's District he would use every honorable means to secure his re-election. This action of the people produced most marked effects upon Congress. The majority who censured Mr. Giddings, fearing if the resolutions were again introduced they would be compelled to vote upon the principles embodied in them, voted, during the remainder of the session, when by the rules resolutions might be presented, to proceed to other business. Finding he could not present the resolutions, he reasserted and vindicated the principles embodied in them in an able and effective speech, which was listened to without interruption. Indeed; notwithstanding all their bluster and arrogant pretension, there seemed from that time a marked falling-off in their zeal, and a manifest disposition to desist from claims they had just declared their purpose to press even to and beyond the very verge of war. And this, notwithstanding the significant fact that the British ministry had not only refused the indemnity so clamorously demanded, but declined to deliver up Madison Washington and his compeers of the " Creole's" brave "nineteen," stigmatized by members of Congress as " murderers and mutineers." When Lord Ashburton was charged with the mission of settling all questions of difference between the two nations, the British government especially instructed him to hold no correspondence on points pertaining to this controversy.
This sudden change of tactics of Southern members not only appears in marked contrast with their previous violent demonstrations, but provokes no very flattering estimate of the course of those Northern senators who had not a single vote to· cast against the resolutions of Mr. Calhoun, which defiantly demanded what even the South itself found it convenient to forget. Indeed, that absence of a single negative that unbroken silence, spoke louder than words. Trumpet-tongued it proclaimed the vassalage of the nation to the Slave Power, and the ignoble and cruel bondage under which the parties and public men of those days were held. It revealed the humiliating fact that they were obliged to smother their convictions and ignore the claims of truth, and were compelled to take the weightiest questions of government and those of national importance from the high court of reason and conscience into the secret conclave of party cabals, inspired by the spirit of slavery and under the discipline of the plantation. If the time ever comes when "things” shall be "what they seem," and conscience and candor shall take the place of mere policy and pretension, it will be regarded as among the marvels of history that men acting from such motives in their public capacity should ever exhibit anything honorable and hearty in their personal and social relations, or that a representation acquiescing and participating in such an administration of public affairs could be anything but demoralized and debauched in the personnel of which it was composed.
Mr. Giddings had been appointed, by the Speaker, chairman of the Committee on Claims, a position he held at the time of his resignation, when another was appointed for the remainder of the session. At the beginning of the next session, an unavailing effort was made by Southern members to induce the Speaker not to reappoint Mr. Giddings to this important post. Mr. White, a personal friend of Mr. Clay, and among the most liberal of Southern statesmen, had pronounced the vote of censure an outrage, and without hesitation made Mr. Giddings chairman again of the committee. Consisting of nine members, it was composed of four Northern and two Southern Whigs, one Southern and two Northern Democrats. The three Democrats and two Southern Whigs had given their votes for the censure, and they deemed it a humiliation to sit with him as chairman. They accordingly determined to revive an old rule of the House, which had practically become obsolete, authorizing the committees to choose their own chairmen. A member of the committee apprised Mr. Giddings of this purpose, and advised him to resign. Having, however, acted according to the dictates of his conscience, he chose to abide the result. Mr. Arnold, a slaveholding Whig of Tennessee, refusing to support a scheme which he styled an outrage on a member because he was opposed to slavery, the project fell through and Mr. Giddings was permitted to retain his position.
But Mr. Giddings's earnest and outspoken fidelity to principle and to the cause of human rights often involved him in conflicts and exposed him to personal dangers, which well-illustrated at once the coarse brutality and domineering violence of the slave-masters and the rough road they were called to travel who dared to question their supremacy and oppose their policy. A somewhat marked example occurred near the close of the session in 1845. For the purpose of exhibiting the rascality of slaveholding demands, and the guilty subserviency and complicity of the government in yielding to those demands, he referred to the treaty of Indian Spring, by which, after paying the slaveholders of Georgia the sum of $109,000 for slaves who had escaped to Florida, it added the sum of $141,000 as compensation demanded for " the off spring which the females would have borne to their masters had they remained in bondage." And, said Mr. Giddings, Congress actually paid that sum” for children who were never born, but who might have been if their parents had remained faithful slaves."
Mr. Giddings's characterization of these outrageous and indecent demands and of this utterly indefensible policy greatly nettled the Southern members. Mr. Black of Georgia, in a towering passion, poured forth a torrent of coarse invectives and insinuations. He charged that Mr. Giddings had been interested in the horses and wagon lost by Mr. Torrey in his attempt to aid escaping fugitives; that Torrey died in the penitentiary; that the member of Ohio ought to be there; and, if Congress could decide the question, that would be his doom. With low-minded impertinence, he advised him to return to his constituents to “inquire if he had a character," asserting that he had none in that hall. To this gross assault, Mr. Giddings replied with becoming dignity and force. Alluding to the policy which would throw around all executive and Congressional action in behalf of slavery the shield "of perpetual silence," he said he did not hold the member from Georgia so much responsible as he did "the more respectable members" who stood around him, for the display of that " brutal coarseness which nothing but the moral putridity of slavery could encourage.", What he had said, he contended, were historic facts that could not be disproved. To the personal assault, he should make no other reply than that he stood there clothed with the confidence of an intelligent constituency, while his antagonist, alluding to Mr. Black's failure to secure a re-election, had been discarded.
Of course, language so direct and severe did but fan to a fiercer flame the fire that was already raging, and a collision seemed inevitable. Mr. Black, approaching Mr. Giddings with an uplifted cane, said: “If you repeat those words I will knock you down." The latter repeating them, the former was seized by his friends and borne from the hall. Mr. Dawson of Louisiana, who on a previous occasion had attempted to assault him, approaching him and, cocking his pistol, profanely exclaimed: " I ‘ll shoot him; by G-d I 'll shoot him ' " At the same moment, Mr. Causin of Maryland placed himself in front of Mr. Dawson, with his right hand upon his weapon concealed in his bosom. At this juncture four members from the Democratic side took their position by the side of the member from Louisiana, each man putting his hand in his pocket and apparently grasping his weapon. At the same moment, Mr. Rayner of North Carolina, Mr. Hudson of Massachusetts, and Mr. Foot of Vermont, came to Mr. Giddings's rescue, who, thus confronted and thus supported, continued his speech. Dawson stood fronting him till its close, and Causin remained facing the latter until he returned to the Democratic side. Thus, demoralized and imbruted seemed the men, even those high in station, who assumed to be the champions of slavery and its policy. Upon such men, moral considerations were lost. The only forces they ever respected were those of physical power.
Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 446-455.
GIDDINGS, Lura Maria, abolitionist, member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Daughter of Joshua Reed Giddings. (Blue, 2005, p. 183)
