Encyclopedia of Civil War Biography - Gre-Gru
GREELEY, Horace, 1811-1872, journalist, newspaper publisher, The New York Tribune. American Anti-Slavery Society. Major opponent of slavery. Co-founder, Liberal Republican Party in 1854. Supporter of the Union. (Blue, 2005, pp. 62, 110, 147-149, 159, 182, 253, 258, 262; Dumont, 1961, p. 352; Filler, 1960, pp. 6, 45, 56, 88, 112, 117, 163, 219, 237, 259; Greely, 1866; Greely, 1868; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 33, 54, 78, 81, 86, 96, 98, 116-117, 136, 138, 143, 146, 153, 154, 199, 204, 217-220, 227-229, 233; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 65, 67, 69, 141, 324, 476, 692-695; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 734-741; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 529; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 370-373; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 647)
GREELEY, Horace, journalist, born in Amherst, New Hampshire, 3 February, 1811; died in Pleasantville, near New York City, 29 November, 1872. His birthplace is shown in the accompanying engraving. On both sides his ancestors were of Scotch-Irish origin, but had been settled in New England for some generations. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, was a small farmer, always poor, and, by the time Horace was ten years old, a bankrupt and a fugitive from the state, to escape arrest for debt. Horace was the third child, four followed him, and when the little homestead of fifty acres of stony land at Amherst was lost and his father became a day-laborer at West Haven, Vermont, the united exertions of all that were able to work brought the family only a hard and bare subsistence. Horace had been a precocious child, feeble, and not fond of sports, but with a strong bent to books. He could read before he could talk plainly, when he was not yet three years old, and he was soon after the acknowledged chief in the frequent contests of the village spelling-match. He received only a common-school education, and after his sixth year had schooling only in winter, laboring at other times in the field with his father and brothers. When six years old he declared he would be a printer, and at eleven he tried to be apprenticed in the village office. He was rejected then on account of his youth, but tried again, three years later, at East Poultney, Vermont, in the office of the “Northern Spectator,” and was accepted as an apprentice for five years, to be boarded and lodged, and, after six months, to be paid at the rate of $40 a year. He learned the business rapidly, became an accurate compositor, gained the warm regard of his employer and of the whole village, showed a special aptitude for politics and political statistics, rose to be the neighborhood oracle on disputed points, took a leading part in the village debating-society, and was intrusted with a portion of the editorial work on the paper. Meantime he spent next to nothing, dressed in the cheapest way, went without a coat in summer and without an overcoat in winter, was laughed at as “gawky” and “stingy,” and sent almost every cent of his forty dollars a year to his father. At last, in June, 1830, the paper was suspended, and young Greeley, then in his twentieth year, was released from his apprenticeship, and turned out upon the world as a “tramping jour printer.” Fourteen months of such experience sufficed. He visited his father, who had now moved to the “new country” near Erie, Pennsylvania, worked with him on the farm when he could not find employment in country printing-offices, sent home most of his earnings, when he could, and at last decided to seek his fortune in New York. With his wardrobe in a bundle, slung over his shoulder by a stick, he set out on foot through the woods, walked to Buffalo, thence made his way, partly on canal-boats, partly by walking the towpath, to Albany, and then down the Hudson on a tug-boat. With $10 in his pocket, and his stick and bundle still over his shoulder, on 18 August, 1831, he entered the city in which he was to be recognized as the first of American journalists. He wandered for days from one printing-office to another vainly searching for work. His grotesque appearance was against him; nobody supposed he could be a competent printer, and most thought him a runaway apprentice. At last an Irishman at the cheap boarding-house he had found told him of an office where a compositor was needed; a Vermont printer interceded for him, when he was about to be rejected on his appearance, and at last he was taken on trial for the day. The matter assigned him had been abandoned by other printers because of its uncommon difficulty. At night his was found the best day's work that anybody had yet done, and his position was secure.
He worked as a journeyman printer in New York for fourteen months, sometimes in job-offices, for a few days each in the offices of the “Evening Post” and the “Commercial Advertiser,” longer in that of the “Spirit of the Times,” making friends always with the steady men he encountered, and saving money. Finally, in January, 1833, he took part in the first effort to establish a penny paper in New York. His partner was Francis V. Story, a fellow-printer: they had $150 between them, and on this capital and a small lot of type bought on credit from George Bruce, on his faith in Greeley's honest face and talk, they took the contract for printing the “Morning Post.” It failed in three weeks, but they had only lost about one third of their capital, and still had their type. They had therefore become master job-printers, and Greeley never worked again as a journeyman. They got a “Bank-note Reporter” to print, which brought them in about $15 a week, and a little triweekly paper, “The Constitutionalist,” which was the lottery organ. Its columns regularly contained the following card : “Greeley and Story, No. 54 Liberty street, New York, respectfully solicit the patronage of the public to their business of letter-press-printing, particularly lottery-printing, such as schemes, periodicals, and so forth, which will be executed on favorable terms.”
Mr. Greeley had renewed his habit of writing for the papers on which he was employed as a compositor. He was thus a considerable contributor to the “Spirit of the Times,” and now, by an article contributed to the “Constitutionalist,” defending the lotteries against a popular feeling then recently aroused, he attracted the attention of Dudley S. Gregory, of Jersey City, the agent of a great lottery association, whose friendship soon became helpful and was long-continued. His partner, Story, died after seven months, and his brother-in-law, Jonas Winchester, was taken into the partnership instead. The firm prospered, and by 1834 Mr. Greeley again began to think of editorship. The firm now considered itself worth $3,000. With this capital and the brains of the senior partner, the “New Yorker,” the best literary weekly then in America, was founded. Shortly before its appearance James Gordon Bennett visited Mr. Greeley and proposed to unite with him in establishing a new paper to be called the “New York Herald.” In declining, Mr. Greeley recommended another partner, who accepted and continued the partnership with Bennett until the “Herald” office was burned, when he retired. The “New Yorker” appeared on 22 March, 1834, sold one hundred copies of its first number, and for three months scarcely increased its circulation from this point over one hundred copies a week. By September, however, it had risen to 2,500. At the end of a year it was 4,500, at the end of the second year 7,000, and of the third 9,500. It was steadily popular with the press and people, and steadily unsuccessful pecuniarily. The first year showed a loss of $3,000, the second year of $2,000 more, and the third year of a further $2,000. Mr. Greeley became widely known and respected as its editor, was able to add to his income by furnishing editorials to the “Daily Whig” and other journals, and within four years had attained such prominence that the tow-headed printer who was mistaken for a runaway apprentice and dismissed from the “Evening Post” office, because the proprietors wished to have “at least decent looking men at the cases,” was selected by William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed as the best man available for the conduct of a campaign paper, which they desired to publish at Albany, to be called the “Jeffersonian.” He continued his work on the “New Yorker,” but went back and forth between New York and Albany each week. The “Jeffersonian,” for a campaign paper, was unusually quiet, calm, and instructive; but it seems to have given the Whig central committee satisfaction, and it still further brought its editor to the notice of the press and of influential men throughout the state. The “Jeffersonian” lasted until the spring of 1839, and Mr. Greeley was paid a salary of $1,000 for conducting it. A few months later the country entered upon the extraordinary popular excitements attending the presidential canvass of 1840, and when Mr. Greeley, prompt to seize the opportunity, issued simultaneously at New York and Albany, under the firm-name of “H. Greeley & Co.,” the first number of a new campaign paper called the “Log Cabin,” it sprang at once into a remarkable circulation; 20,000 copies of the first issue were printed, and this was thought to be an extravagant supply; but it was speedily exhausted. Other editions were called for, and finally, the type having been distributed, the number had to be reset, and in all 48,000 copies were sold. In a few weeks 60,000 subscriptions had been received, and the advance did not cease until the weekly issue had risen to between 80,000 and 90,000 copies — a circulation then absolutely unprecedented. The “Log Cabin” was a vivacious political journal, much more aggressive than the “Jeffersonian” had been, and displaying many of the personal peculiarities of its editor, his quaintness, his homely common sense, and an extraordinary capacity for compact and pungent statement. It printed rough caricatures of Van Buren and other Democrats, gave a good deal of campaign poetry, with music attached, and yet made room for lectures upon the “Elevation of the Laboring Classes.” In all the heat and fury of that turbulent campaign its editor set in one respect an example of moderation not always followed in contests of a much later date. In answer to a correspondent he said flatly: “ Articles assailing the personal character of Mr. Van Buren or any of his supporters cannot be published in the 'Log Cabin.'” Meantime, Mr. Greeley was widely consulted, was appointed on campaign committees, asked to make speeches, and called hither and thither to aid in adjusting political differences. He had become a person of influence and a political factor. He continued his paper for one week after the term promised, in order to send to his readers a complete account of the victory, the election of General Harrison as president, with as full returns of the vote as possible. After an interval of a few weeks it was resumed as a family political paper, and continued until it was able, on 3 April, 1841, to announce that “on Saturday, April 10th instant, the subscriber will publish the first number of a new morning journal of politics, literature, and general intelligence. 'The Tribune,' as its name imports, will labor to advance the interests of the people and to promote their moral, social, and political well-being. The immoral and degrading police reports, advertisements, and other matter which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading penny papers will be carefully excluded from this, and no exertion spared to render it worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant at the family fireside. Horace Greeley, 30 Ann Street.”
Until this time Mr. Greeley had acquired great reputation, but no money. In spite of the brilliant success of the “Log Cabin,” and the general esteem for the “New Yorker,” neither had ever been profitable, and their editor, always talked of as “able, but queer,” began also to be recognized as lacking in business qualifications. He gave credit profusely, loaned money when he had it to almost any applicant, made his paper sometimes too good for the popular demand, and had no faculty for advertising his own wares. Once, when admitting that his paper was not profitable, he frankly said: “ Since the 'New Yorker' was first issued, seven copartners in its publication have successively withdrawn from the concern, generally, we regret to say, without having improved their fortunes by the connection, and most of them with the conviction that the work, however valuable, was not calculated to prove lucrative to its proprietors. 'You don't humbug enough' has been the complaint of more than one of our retiring associates; 'You ought to make more noise, and vaunt your own merits. The world will never believe you print a good paper unless you tell them so.' Our course has not been changed by these representations.”
Mr. Greeley, although eccentric enough in his appearance and habits, had thus far developed but few eccentricities of thought. He was temperate almost to the verge of total abstinence, partly, no doubt, from taste, partly also, perhaps, from his observations on the intemperate habits common about his father's early home in New Hampshire. He was opposed to slavery, but rather deprecated northern interference: approved of the Colonization, and opposed anti-slavery societies at the north. He believed prohibition impracticable, but was warmly in favor of high license. He was vehemently in favor of a protective tariff, and always, as he expressed it, “an advocate of the interests of unassuming industry.” He had been captivated by vegetarian notions, and was for a short time an inmate of a Grahamite boarding-house. There he met Miss Cheney, a young teacher from Connecticut, who was making a short stay in New York, on her way to North Carolina. She was a highly nervous, excitable person, full of ideas, prone to “isms.” and destined to have a strong and not always helpful influence on his life. He continued the acquaintance by correspondence, became engaged, married her in North Carolina, and made a short wedding-journey, of which his first visit to Washington was the principal feature. About the same period he contributed a good many verses to the “Log Cabin” — “Historic Pencillings,” “Nero's Tomb,” “Fantasies,” “On the Death of William Wirt,” etc. They are not destitute of poetic feeling, but in later years he was never glad to have them recalled. In 1859, learning that Robert Bonner, of the “New York Ledger,” proposed to include them among representative poems in a volume to be made up from authors not appearing in Charles A. Dana's “Household Book of Poetry,” Mr. Greeley wrote: “Mr. Bonner, be good enough — you must — to exclude me from your new poetic Pantheon. I have no business therein, no right and no desire to be installed there. I am no poet, never was (in expression), and never shall be. True, I wrote some verses in my callow days, as I suppose most persons who can make intelligible pen-marks have done; but I was never a poet, even in the mists of deluding fancy. . . . Within the last ten years I have been accused of all possible and some impossible offences against good taste, good morals, and the common weal; I have been branded aristocrat, communist, infidel, hypocrite, demagogue, disunionist, traitor, corruptionist, and so forth, and so forth, but cannot remember that any one has flung in my face my youthful transgressions in the way of rhyme. . . . Let the dead rest! and let me enjoy the reputation, which I covet and deserve, of knowing poetry from prose, which the ruthless resurrection of my verses would subvert, since the unobserving majority would blindly infer that I considered them poetry.”
In establishing the “Tribune,” Mr. Greeley had considerable reputation, wide acquaintance among newspaper men and practical politicians, one thousand dollars in money borrowed from James Coggeshall, and the promise from another source of a thousand more, which was never realized. He had employed, some time before, at $8 a week, a young man fresh from the University of Vermont. This young man, Henry J. Raymond, now became his chief assistant in the conduct of the new paper, and gradually a considerable force of people of similar fitness gathered about him, the paper always having an attraction for men of intellect and scholarly tastes. In the early years it thus enjoyed the services of George William Curtis, William Henry Fry, Charles A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, Albert Brisbane, Bayard Taylor, Count Gurowski, and others. Of its first number, 5,000 copies were printed, and, as Mr. Greeley said, “with difficulty given away.” About 600 subscribers had been procured through the exertions of his personal and political friends. Being published at first at one cent a copy, it was regarded as a serious rival by the cheap papers, and the “Sun” especially undertook to interfere with its circulation by forbidding its newsboys to sell the new paper. The public considered this unfair, and the “Tribune” was greatly helped. In four weeks it reached a circulation of 6,000; in four weeks more its circulation had risen to the limit of the press, being between 11,000 and 12,000. Its business management was chaotic, but by July the chances for a permanent success were so clear that Thomas McElrath, a business man of excellent standing, was taken in as an equal partner. A weekly issue was projected, and on 20 September the “New Yorker” and the “Log Cabin” were merged in the first number of “The New York Weekly Tribune,” which soon attained considerable circulation and ultimately became a great political and social force in rural communities, particularly in the period of the anti-slavery discussion prior to and during the war for the Union. From this time forward Mr. Greeley's business prosperity was secure, but the “Tribune” might easily have been far more successful from the mere money point of view if its editor had been less outspoken and indifferent to the light in which the New York public might regard his opinions. The controlling influences in the city were then largely favorable to free-trade; but he made the “Tribune”\ aggressively protectionist. A commercial community was necessarily conservative, but the “Tribune” soon came to be everywhere regarded as radical. New York had close business connections with the south, but the “Tribune” gradually became more and more explicit in its anti-slavery utterances. The prevailing religious faith among the better educated classes was orthodox; Mr. Greeley connected himself almost from the outset with a Universalist Church. He aimed always to practise the utmost hospitality toward new ideas and their exponents, so that people soon talked of the “isms” of the “Tribune.” Sympathizing profoundly with workingmen, he was led constantly to schemes for bettering their condition, and became interested in the theories of Fourier. Before the “Tribune” was a year old he had discussed the subject of “Fourierism in France” in an article beginning thus: “We have written something, and shall yet write much more, in illustration and advocacy of the great social revolution which our age is destined to commence, in rendering all useful labor at once attractive and honorable, and banishing want and all consequent degradation from the globe. The germ of this revolution is developed in the writings of Charles Fourier.” In March, 1842, he began publishing, under a contract with a number of New York Fourierites, one column daily on the first page of the “Tribune” on Fourierite topics, from the pen of Albert Brisbane. The theories here advanced were also occasionally defended in the editorial columns. Mr. Greeley became a subscriber to one or two Fourierite associations, notably that of the “American Phalanx” at Red Bank, New Jersey, and occasionally addressed public meetings on the subject. When the famous Brook Farm experiment was abandoned, its chief, George Ripley, sought employment on the “Tribune,” and was soon its literary editor. Another of its members, Charles A. Dana, became in time the “Tribune's” managing editor. Another, Margaret Fuller, contributed literary work and occasional editorials, and lived in Mr. Greeley's family; and another, George William Curtis, was also employed. In 1846 Henry J. Raymond, who had now, owing to some disagreement, left the “Tribune” and become a leading editor on the “Courier and Enquirer,” saw that Fourierism offered an inviting point for attack upon the “Tribune.” Mr. Greeley, whose conduct of the paper was always argumentative and pugnacious, responded to some criticism by challenging Mr. Raymond to a thorough discussion of the whole subject, in a series of twelve articles and replies, to be published in full in all the editions of each paper. Mr. Raymond accepted, and made therein his first wide reputation in New York. Mr. Greeley's articles were undoubtedly able, but he was not so adroit a fencer as his opponent, and he had the unpopular side. The discussion left on the public mind the impression that Mr. Raymond was the victor, and the Fourierite movement from that date began its decline in America. Mr. Greeley was always careful to mark his dissent from many of Fourier's propositions. In the discussion Mr. Raymond endeavored to force him into the position that no man can rightfully own land (substantially the doctrine of which Henry George has since been the apostle), but Mr. Greeley indignantly repudiated it. In later years he dwelt upon the principle of association as the only one in Fourier's scheme that particularly attracted him; and in the form of co-operation among working-men this always received his zealous support.
The rappings and alleged spiritual manifestations of the Fox sisters at Rochester early attracted attention in the “Tribune,” and were fairly described and discussed without absolute incredulity. In 1848, at Mrs. Greeley's invitation, the Fox sisters spent some time in his family as his guests. He listened attentively to what they said, inquired with interest into details, but hesitated to accept the doctrine of actual spiritual communications, and at any rate failed, he said, to see that any good came of them. Nevertheless, the open-minded readiness that he displayed in investigating this, like any other new subject presented to him, led to his identification for some time in the public mind with the spiritualistic movement, so that as effective a weapon as could be used against the “Tribune” in commercial and conservative New York was to call it a Fourierite and spiritualistic organ. With all his radicalism, however, there were two subjects on which, then and throughout life, he was steadily conservative. He constantly defended the sanctity and permanence of the family relation, and protested against anything in legislation or public practice tending to break down the sanction of the Sabbath as a day of rest.
Meanwhile, the “Tribune” prospered moderately and almost continuously, and if Mr. Greeley had not been hopelessly incapable in business mailers, should soon have placed him in a position of comfortable independence. In twenty-four years it invested from its earnings $382,000 in real estate and machinery, and divided among its owners a sum equal to an annual average of over $50,000. But Mr. Greeley inherited his father's tendency to reckless indorsements for his friends, was readily imposed upon by adventurers, and found it easier to give a dollar to every applicant than to inquire into his deserts. In spite of an income liberal for those days, he was thus often in serious straits for money, and lived in an extremely plain if not always economical fashion. Presently, as his property became more valuable, he contracted the habit of raising money for immediate necessities by parting with some of it. After it was clear to practical men that the “Tribune” was a success, he sold half of it to Thomas McElrath for $2,000. By the time it was seven years old he owned less than a third of it. In 1860 his interest was reduced to three twentieths, in 1868 to less than one tenth, and by 1872 he actually owned only six shares out of the hundred into which the property was then divided. Meantime, though always hampered by his business ideas, the property had advanced in value until in 1867 he was able to sell at $6,500 a share, and his last sale was at $9,600. The price of the daily “Tribune” was kept at one cent until the beginning of its second volume, when it was advanced to two cents for a single number, or nine cents a week. It then had 12,000 subscribers, and did not lose 200 of them by the increase in price. A year later it had reached a circulation of 20,000, and advertisements were so numerous that frequent supplements were issued. After a time the price was again advanced to three cents, and finally to four. The circulation rose to a steady average of 35,000 to 40,000, and there were periods of extraordinary interest, especially during the Civil War, when for months it reached from 60,000 to 65,000. The weekly edition, being free then from competition, with strong weekly issues in the inland cities, gained a wide circulation throughout the entire north, being probably more generally read for some years in the northern states and territories than any other one newspaper. During political canvasses it sometimes reached a total circulation of a quarter of a million copies, and often for years ranged steadily above 100,000 copies a week. A semi-weekly edition was begun for the benefit of weekly readers enjoying mail facilities that led them to want their news oftener, and this edition ultimately attained a steady circulation of from 15,000 to 20,000 copies.
First Whig, then Anti-slavery Whig, then Republican, the “Tribune's” political course was generally in accord with the more popular and aggressive tendency of these parties. But it was also a highly individualized journal, constantly representing many opinions advocated by its editor irrespective of party affiliations, and sometimes against them. He held that the worst use any man could be put to was to hang him, and for many years vehemently opposed capital punishment. He favored the movement for educating women as physicians, and sought in many ways to widen the sphere of their employments. But he opposed woman suffrage unless it could be first shown that the majority of women themselves desired it. He assailed repudiation in every form, north or south, and was the bitterest critic of the repudiating states. In practice a total abstinent, he always favored the repression of the liquor traffic, and, where possible, its prohibition. He did not believe prohibition possible in states like New York, and there he favored high license and local option. He thought popular education had been directed too much toward literary rather than practical ends, and earnestly favored the substitution of scientific for classical studies. He gave the first newspaper reports of popular lectures by Professor Louis Agassiz and other eminent scientists; but he thought ill of theatres, and in the early days of the “Tribune” would not insert their advertisements. He encouraged the discussion of a reformed spelling; but, while allowing the phonetic system to be commended in his columns, refused to adopt it. He gave much space to accounts of all co-operative movements among laborers, and sought to encourage co-operation in America as a surer protection for labor than trades-unionism. He sought to remain on good terms with the latter, and even accepted the first presidency of Typographical Union No. 6; but when subsequently, under this union, a strike was ordered in his office to prevent the insertion of an advertisement for printers by a rival paper, he gave notice that thenceforward he would tolerate no trades-union meddling, should mind his own business, and require them to mind theirs. He was a warm friend to every movement in behalf of the Irish people, and particularly for the restoration to them of a greater measure of self-government. He advocated judicious but liberal appropriations for internal improvements, and was conspicuous in urging government aid for the construction of the first Pacific Railroad. He strove to diffuse knowledge of the west and promote its settlement, giving much space to descriptions of different localities, and making removal to the west his panacea for all sorts of misfortune and ill-luck in the east. He actively encouraged one of his agricultural editors to establish a colony in Colorado on land that could be cultivated only by irrigation, and was proud that the successful town founded by this colony was called by his name, and that its first newspaper bore as its title the “Greeley Tribune.” in an enlarged facsimile of his own handwriting. He had personally a great fondness for farming, but little success at it, though he derived great comfort and recreation from his experiments on the farm that he bought at Chappaqua, thirty-three miles north of New York, where his family resided in the summer, and where for many years he spent his Saturdays chopping down or trimming his trees, and occasionally assisting at other farm labor. He favored an international copyright. He constantly watched for new men in literature, was one of the first editors in America to recognize the rising genius of Dickens, and copied a sketch by “Boz” in the first issue of his first newspaper. He was one of the earliest in the east to discover Bret Harte, and perhaps the earliest to recognize Swinburne. He held frequent public discussions — one with Samuel J. Tilden and Parke Godwin on protection, another with Robert Dale Owen on marriage and divorce. He frequently addressed, in his editorial columns, open letters to distinguished public men, promptly printed replies if any came, and was apt to follow these with a telling rejoinder. Thurlow Weed, Benjamin P. Butler, Oliver P. Morton, John J. Crittenden, Samuel J. Tilden, and many others, were thus singled out. He was fond of taking readers into his confidence. Thus he published details of his experiments in farming, and printed serially a charming autobiography. He announced his intended movements, particularly his trips to Europe and through the west. The latter proved an ovation, especially in the territories and in California. Being arrested once in Paris as a director of the American world's fair, at the suit of a disappointed French exhibitor, he published a graphic and amusing account of his imprisonment in Clichy. He admired Fenimore Cooper, and yet was involved in the series of libel suits instituted by that novelist, through a letter (written by Thurlow Weed) published anonymously in the “Tribune”; whereupon he pleaded his own case, and promptly published an amusing report of the trial and the adverse verdict. Sometimes, especially in discussion, he was less good-humored. In an angry letter to a state officer about some public documents advertised in the New York “Times,” he referred to its editor as “that little villain, Raymond.” Replying to a charge against him by the “Evening Post” of some corrupt association with the slave interest, he began, “You lie, villain, wilfully, wickedly, basely lie.” A subscriber in Aurora, New York, discontinued his newspaper on the ground of Greeley 's opposition to William H. Seward, and angrily said his only regret in parting was that he was under the necessity of losing a three-cent stamp to do it. Greeley published the letter with this reply: “ The painful regret expressed in yours of the 19th inst. excites my sympathies. I enclose you a three-cent stamp to replace that whose loss you deplored, and remain, Yours placidly.” Quaint letters like this, the oddities of his excessively crabbed handwriting, peculiarities of dress, his cravat (apt to be awry), his white coat, his squeaky voice, his shuttling manner, came to be universally known, and only seemed to add to the personal fondness with which his readers and a large portion of the general public regarded him. He became, in spite of almost every oratorical defect, a popular speaker, always in demand, and always greeted with the loudest applause on whatever occasion, social, educational, reformatory, or political, he appeared. As early as January, 1843, he was announced as a lecturer on the subject of “Human Life,” the advertisement being accompanied with the request, “If those who care to hear will sit near the desk, they will favor the lecturer's weak and husky voice.” He was afterward able to make this weak and husky voice heard by mass meetings of thousands, and by the delivery of lectures throughout the west he often more than doubled in a winter the annual salary that he received from the “Tribune.” But he went, whenever he could, wherever he was asked, whether paid or not. He was always ready to write for other people's papers, too, sometimes for pay, because he needed the money, but almost as readily without it, because he craved new audiences.
In 1848 he was elected to the National House of Representatives, to fill a vacancy for three mouths. Regarding as an abuse the methods then pursued by Congressmen in charging mileage, he published a list of the members' mileage accounts. This caused great indignation, which was heightened by the free comments on Congressional proceedings contributed daily to the “Tribune” over his signature. Thus he said that if either house “had a chaplain who dared preach of the faithlessness, neglect of duty, iniquitous waste of time, and robbery of the public by Congressmen, there would be some sense in the chaplain business; but any ill-bred Nathan or Elijah who should undertake such a job would be kicked out in short order.” He broke down the mileage abuse. He also introduced the first bill giving homesteads, free, to actual settlers on the public lands. In 1861 he was a candidate for U.S. Senator against William M. Evarts, defeating Evarts, but being defeated in turn by the combination between Evarts's supporters and a few men favoring Ira Harris, of Albany, who was elected. In 1864 he was one of the Republican presidential electors. In 1867 his friends again put him forward for the Senate, but his candor in needlessly restating the views he held on general amnesty, then very unpopular, made his election impossible. The same year he was chosen delegate-at-large to the convention for revising the state constitution. At first he took great interest in the proceedings, but grew weary of the endless talk, and finally refused either to attend the body or draw his salary. Two years later he was made the Republican candidate for state comptroller, at a time when the election of the ticket was known to be hopeless, and in 1870 he was again nominated for Congress by the Republicans in a hopelessly Democratic District, where he reduced the adverse majority about 1,700, and ran largely ahead of the Republican candidate for governor. On the death of Charles G. Halpine (“Miles O'Reilly”), he accepted an appointment to the city office that Halpine had held, and discharged the duties gratuitously, turning over the salary to Colonel Halpine's widow. With one notable exception, this completes his career as office-holder or candidate for office.
Mr. Greeley's hostility to slavery grew stronger from the beginning of his editorial career. In 1848 he was intense in opposition to the Mexican War, on the ground that it was intended to secure more slave territory. In 1852 he sympathized with the Free-Soil movement, and disapproved of the Whig platform — “spat upon it,” as he said editorially — but nevertheless supported the Whig candidate, General Winfield Scott, because he thought that better than, by supporting a ticket that he knew could not be elected, to risk the success of the Democrats. In 1856 he was an enthusiastic supporter of John C. Frémont, and during the next four or five years may be said to have been the chief inspiration and greatest popular leader in the movement that carried the Republican party into power. He was indicted in Virginia in 1856 for circulating incendiary documents — viz., the “Tribune.” Postmasters in many places in the south refused to deliver the paper at all, and persons subscribing for it were sometimes threatened with lynching. Congressman Albert Rust made a personal assault upon him in Washington, and no northern name provoked at the south more constant and bitter denunciation. Throughout the Kansas-Nebraska excitement the “Tribune” was constantly at a white heat, and its voluminous correspondence and ringing editorials greatly stimulated the northern movement that made Kansas a free state. Still, he favored only legal and constitutional methods for opposing the aggressions of slavery, and brought upon himself the hostility of the Garrison and Wendell Phillips abolitionists, who always distrusted him and often stigmatized him as cowardly and temporizing.
Up to this time the popular judgment regarded Seward, Weed, and Greeley as the great Republican triumvirate. But in 1854 Mr. Greeley had addressed a highly characteristic letter to Governor Seward complaining that Seward and Weed had sometimes used their political power to his detriment, and shown no consideration for his difficulties, while some of Seward's friends thought Greeley an obstacle to the governor's advancement. Having labored to secure a legislature that would send Mr. Seward to the U. S. Senate, it seemed to him “a fitting time to announce the dissolution of the political firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley by the withdrawal of the junior partner.” The letter showed that the writer was hurt, but it was not unfriendly in tone, and it ended thus: “You have done me acts of valued kindness in the line of your profession; let me close with the assurance that these will be ever gratefully remembered by Yours, Horace Greeley.” Governor Seward's friends claimed that on account of Greeley's disappointment as an office-seeker, as shown in this private letter, he had resolved to prevent Seward's nomination for the presidency in 1860. Mr. Greeley denied this emphatically, but declared that he did not think the nomination advisable, and that in opposing Seward he discharged a public duty, in utter disregard of personal considerations. At any rate, he did oppose him successfully. The Seward men prevented his reaching the National Convention as a delegate from New York; but he secured a seat as delegate from Oregon in place of an absentee, and made such an effectual opposition to Mr. Seward that he may fairly be said to have brought about the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. In the canvass that followed, the “Tribune” was still a great national force. Immediately after the election Mr. Greeley said: “If my advice should be asked respecting Mr. Lincoln's cabinet, I should recommend the appointment of Seward as secretary of state. It is the place for him, and he will do honor to the country in it.”
When the Civil War approached, Mr. Greeley at first shrank from it. He hoped, he said, never to live in a Union whereof one section was pinned to the other by bayonets. But after the attack on Fort Sumter and the uprising at the north he urged the most vigorous prosecution of the war, to the end that it might be short. He chafed at the early delays, and the columns of his paper carried for weeks a stereotyped paragraph, “On to Richmond!” demanding the speediest advance of the National armies. Rival newspapers hastened in consequence to hold him responsible for the disaster at Bull Run, and his horror at the calamity, and sensitiveness under the attacks, for a time completely prostrated him. He subsequently replied to his critics in an editorial, which became famous, headed “Just Once,” wherein he defended the demands for aggressive action, though denying that the “On to Richmond” paragraph was his, and saying he would have preferred not to iterate it. Henceforth he would bar all criticism on army movements in his paper “unless somebody should undertake to prove that General Patterson is a wise and brave commander.” If there was anything to be said in Patterson's behalf, he would make an exception in his favor. He continued to support the war with all possible vigor, encourage volunteering, and sustain the drafts, meantime making more and more earnest appeals that the cause of the war — slavery — should be abolished. Finally he addressed to President Lincoln a powerful letter on the editorial page of the “Tribune.” which he entitled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions.” He made in it an impassioned appeal for the liberty of all slaves whom the armies could reach, and said: “On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the rebellion, and at the same time uphold its inciting cause, are preposterous and futile; that the rebellion, if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within a year if slavery were left in full vigor; that army officers who remain to this day devoted to slavery can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union; and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union. I appeal to the testimony of your ambassadors in Europe. It is freely at your service, not mine. Ask them to tell you candidly whether the seeming subserviency of your policy to the slave-holding, slavery-upholding interest is not the perplexity, the despair of statesmen and of parties; and be admonished by the general answer.” This appeal made a profound impression upon the country, and drew from the president within two days one of his most characteristic and remarkable letters, likewise published in the “Tribune.” Mr. Lincoln, after saying that “if there be perceptible in it [Mr. Greeley's letter] an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right,” continued: “My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. . . . What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. . . . I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere should be free.” The emancipation proclamation was issued within a month after this correspondence.
In 1864 Mr. Greeley became convinced that the rebels were nearer exhaustion than was thought, and that by a little diplomacy they could be led into propositions for surrender. He accordingly besought the president to send someone to confer with alleged Confederate commissioners in Canada. Mr. Lincoln finally sent Mr. Greeley himself, subsequently dispatching one of his private secretaries, Colonel John Hay, to the spot to watch the proceedings. It was found that the so-called commissioners had not sufficient authority. The negotiations failed, and Mr. Greeley's share in the business brought upon him more censure than it deserved. As soon as the surrender did come he was eager for universal amnesty and impartial suffrage, and he thought the treatment of Jefferson Davis a mistake. When, after imprisonment and delay, the government still failed to bring Mr. Davis to trial, Mr. Greeley visited Richmond and in the open court-room signed his bail-bond. This act provoked a storm of public censure. He had been writing a careful history of the Civil War under the title of “The American Conflict.” The first volume had an unprecedented sale, and he had realized from it far more than from all his other occasional publications combined. The second volume was just out, and its sale was ruined, thousands of subscribers to the former volume refusing to take it. On the movement of George W. Blunt, an effort was made in the Union League club to expel Mr. Greeley. This roused him to a white heat. He refused to attend the meeting, and addressed to the president of the club one of his best letters. “I shall not attend your meeting this evening. . . . I do not recognize you as capable of judging or even fully apprehending me. You evidently regard me as a weak sentimentalist, misled by a maudlin philosophy. I arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads, who would like to be useful to a great and good cause, but don't know how. Your attempt to base a great enduring party on the heat and wrath necessarily engendered by a bloody Civil War is as though you should plant a colony on an iceberg which had somehow drifted into a tropical ocean. I tell you here that, out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of human kind, your children will recollect my going to Richmond and signing the bail-bond as the wisest act, and will feel that it did more for freedom and humanity than all of you were competent to do, though you had lived to the age of Methuselah. I ask nothing of you, then, but that you proceed to your end by a brave, frank, manly way. Don't sidle off into a mild resolution of censure, but move the expulsion which you purposed and which I deserve if I deserve any reproach whatever. . . . I propose to fight it out on the line that I have held from the day of Lee's surrender. So long as any man was seeking to overthrow our government, he was my enemy; from the hour in which he laid down his arms, he was my formerly erring countryman.” The meeting was held, but the effort at any censure whatever failed.
Mr. Greeley did not greatly sympathize with the movement to make the foremost soldier of the war president in 1868, but he gave General Grant a cordial support. He chafed at the signs of inexperience in some of the early steps of the administration, and later at its manifest disposition to encourage, in New York, chiefly the wing of the Republican Party that had been unfriendly to himself. He disapproved of General Grant's scheme for acquiring Santo Domingo, and was indignant at the treatment of Charles Sumner and John Lothrop Motley. The course of the “carpet-bag” state governments at the south, however, gave him most concern, and brought him into open hostility to the administration he had helped to create. In 1871 he made a trip to Texas, was received everywhere with extraordinary cordiality, and returned still more outspoken against the policy of the government toward the states lately in rebellion. Dissatisfied Republicans now began to speak freely of him as a candidate for the presidency against General Grant. Numbers of the most distinguished Republicans in the Senate and elsewhere combined in the formation of the Liberal Republican Party, and called a convention at Cincinnati to nominate a national ticket. Eastern Republicans, outside of New York at least, generally expected Charles Francis Adams to be the nominee, and he had the united support of the whole revenue reform and free-trade section. But Mr. Greeley soon proved stronger than any other with western and southern delegates. On the sixth ballot he received 332 votes, against 324 for Adams, a sudden concentration of the supporters of B. Gratz Brown upon Mr. Greeley having been effected. Immediate changes swelled his majority, so that when the vote was finally announced it stood: Greeley, 482; Adams, 187. In accepting the nomination, which he had not sought, but by which he was greatly gratified, Mr. Greeley made the restoration of all political rights lost in the rebellion, together with a suffrage impartially extended to white and black on the same conditions, the cardinal principle of the movement. His letter ended with this notable passage: “With the distinct understanding that, if elected, I shall be the president, not of a party, but of the whole people, I accept your nomination in the confident trust that the masses of our countrymen, north and south, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has too long divided them, forgetting that they have been enemies in the joyful consciousness that they are and must henceforth remain brethren.”
Mr. Greeley's nomination at first caught the popular fancy, and his canvass promised for a time to resemble that of 1840, in the enthusiastic turmoil of which he had first risen to national prominence. But, contrary to his judgment (though in accordance with that of close friends), the Democrats, instead of putting no ticket in the field, as he had expected, formally nominated him. This action of his life-long opponents alienated many ardent Republicans. The first elections were considered in his favor, and when in the summer North Carolina voted, it was believed that his friends had carried the state. The later official vote, however, gave the state to the Grant party, and from that time the Greeley wave seemed to be subsiding. At last, on appeals from his supporters, who thought extraordinary measures needful, he took the stump in person. The series of speeches made in his tour, extending from New England through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, evoked great enthusiasm. All sides regarded them as an exhibition of brilliant and effective work unprecedented in that generation. But they were not enough to stem the rising tide. Mr. Greeley received 2,834,079 of the popular vote, against General Grant's 3,597,070; but he carried none of the northern states, and of the southern states only Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.
He had always been more sensitive to attacks and reverses than the public imagined, and now the strain proved too great. The canvass had been one of extraordinary bitterness, his old associates reviling him as a turn-coat and traitor, and some of the caricatures being unparalleled for their ferocity. His wife, always feeble, and of late years suffering greatly from a combination of nervous and other diseases, fell ill while he was absent on his tour. On his return he watched almost continuously for weeks at her bedside, and he buried her in the closing weeks of the canvass. For years he had been a sufferer from insomnia; he had necessarily lost much sleep, and during and after his wife's illness he scarcely slept at all. He was not disappointed in the election, for he had known for weeks that defeat was inevitable. Nor did this act, though generally disapproved by his friends, weaken his friendships. Henry Ward Beecher wrote: “You may think, amidst clouds of smoke and dust, that all your old friends who parted company with you in the late campaign will turn a momentary difference into a life-long alienation. It will not be so. I speak for myself, and also from what I perceive in other men's hearts. Your mere political influence may for a time be impaired, but your own power for good in the far wider fields of industrial economy, social and civil criticism, and the general well-being of society, will not be lessened, but augmented.” But Mr. Greeley's nervous exhaustion resulted in an inflammation of the upper membrane of the brain. He resumed his editorial duties, but in a few days was unable to continue them. He remained sleepless, delirium soon set in, and he died on 29 November, 1872.
The personal regard in which he was held, even by his bitterest opponents, at once became manifest. His body lay in state in the city hall, and a throng of many thousands moved during every hour of the daylight through the building to see it. The president, vice-president, and chief justice of the United States, with a great number of the leading public men of both parties, attended the funeral, and followed the hearse, preceded by the mayor of the city and other civic authorities, down Fifth avenue and Broadway. John G. Whittier described him as “our later Franklin,” and the majority of his countrymen have substantially accepted that phrase as designating his place in the history of his time, while members of the press consider him perhaps the greatest editor, and certainly the foremost political advocate and controversialist, if not also the most influential popular writer, the country has produced. In 1867 Francis B. Carpenter painted a portrait of Mr. Greeley for the “Tribune” association; a larger one, executed by Alexander Davis, was exhibited in the Paris salon, afterward became the property of Whitelaw Reid, and is now (1887) in the “Tribune” counting-room. At the time of Mr. Greeley's visit to Rome, Hiram Powers made a portrait bust, and at a later date Ames Van Wart executed one in marble, on a commission from Marshall O. Roberts. The bronze bust in Greenwood cemetery was presented by the printers of the United States. John Q. A. Ward is now (1887) completing a colossal sitting figure, to be cast in bronze and placed at the entrance of the “Tribune” building. The accompanying portrait is from an excellent photograph by Bogardus. Mr. Greeley's works are “Hints Toward Reforms” (New York, 1850); “Glances at Europe” (1851); “History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension” (1856); “Overland Journey to San Francisco” (1800); “The American Conflict” (2 vols., Hartford, 1864-'6); “Recollections of a Busy Life” (New York, 1868; new ed., with appendix containing an account of his later years, his argument on marriage and divorce with Robert Dale Owen, and miscellanies, New York, 1873); “Essays on Political Economy” (Boston, 1870); and “What I Know of Farming” (New York, 1871). He also assisted his brother-in-law, John F. Cleveland, in editing “A Political Text-Book” (New York, 1860), and supervised for many years the annual issues of the “Whig Almanac” and the “Tribune Almanac.” Lives of Horace Greeley have been written by James Parton (New York, 1855; new eds., 1868, and Boston, 1872); L. U. Reavis (New York, 1872); and Lewis D. Ingersoll (Chicago, 1873). There is also a “Memorial of Horace Greeley” (New York, 1873). [Appleton’s 1900]
GREBLE, John Trout, soldier, born in Philadelphia, 19 January, 1834; killed in the battle of Big Bethel, Virginia, 10 June, 1861. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1854, assigned to the 2d Artillery , and stationed at Newport, Rhode Island In September of that year he was made 2d lieutenant and sent to Tampa, Florida, where he served in the Indian troubles for two years. He was compelled, in consequence of a severe fever, to return home on sick leave, but in the beginning of 1856 resumed his duties, acting part of the time as quartermaster and commissary till December, 1856, when he was appointed acting assistant professor of geography, history, and ethics in the Military Academy, where he remained till 24 September, 1860. He was promoted 1st lieutenant on 3 March, 1857, detailed for active duty at Fort Monroe in March, 1861, and rendered efficient service in preventing its seizure. On 26 May, 1861, he was sent to Newport News as master of ordnance, superintended the fortifications of that point, and trained the volunteers to artillery practice. When the disastrous expedition to Big Bethel was planned, he was unexpectedly detailed to accompany it with two guns, though in his own judgment it was ill-advised and would probably prove fatal to him. When the National troops were repelled, by his admirable management of the guns he protected them from pursuit and destruction. Just at the close of the action, when he had given the orders to withdraw his guns from the field, he was struck by a rifle-ball on the right temple and instantly killed. For his bravery in the two days' action he was brevetted captain, major, and lieutenant-colonel, on the day of his death. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 734-741
GREELY, Adolphus Washington, explorer, born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 27 March, 1844. He was graduated at Brown high-school in 1860. and enlisted in the 19th Massachusetts Regiment on 3 July, 1861. After rising to the rank of 1st sergeant, he was appointed 2d lieutenant in the 81st U. S. Colored Infantry, 18 March, 1863, was promoted to 1st lieutenant, 26 April, 1864. and on 13 March, 1865, was brevetted major of volunteers for faithful services during the Civil War. He was appointed 2d lieutenant in the 36th regular Infantry, 7 March, 1867, assigned to the 5th U.S. Cavalry on 14 July, 1869, and promoted to 1st lieutenant, 27 May, 1873. Soon after the war he was detailed for duty in the signal service, and in 1881 was selected to command the expedition sent into the arctic regions by the government, in accordance with the plan of the Hamburg International Geographical Congress of 1879, to establish one of a chain of thirteen circumpolar stations for scientific purposes. His party, twenty-five in all, sailed from St. John's, Newfoundland, in the "Proteus," on 7 July, 1881, and reached Discovery Harbor, lat. 81° 44' N., long. 64° 45' W., on 12 August, 1881, taking with them materials for a house, instruments for scientific observation, and stores for twenty-seven months. Arrangements had been made to send out expeditions in the summers of 1882 and 1883, with additional stores for the party; but Greely was ordered if these expeditions failed to reach him, to abandon the station not later than September, 1883, and retreat southward along the coast by boat. The remained at every harbor nearly two years, frequent explorations being made into the surrounding country. On 15 May, 1882, three of the party succeeded in reaching a point farther north than any previously attained. (See Brainard, D. L.) Lieutenant Greely made two trips into the interior of Grinnell Land in the summer of 1882, discovering a lake sixty miles long, which he named Lake Hazen, two new mountain ranges, the altitude of whose highest peak. Mount Arthur, was 5,000 feet, and many rivers and glaciers. Meanwhile, the two relief expeditions had failed to reach Discovery Harbor. That of 1882, in the " Neptune," under Lieutenant Beebe, only succeeded in reaching latitude, 71° 20' N., and that of 1883, in the "Proteus and the "Yantic," under Lieutenant Garlington, resulted in the destruction of the former vessel by the ice. Both expeditions left stores in caches at various points. On 9 August, 1883, Greely and his party set out on their retreat southward, after making, during nearly two years, systematic observations of temperature, atmospheric pressure, the direction and height of the tides, the velocity of the wind, and the intensity of gravity. The health of all, up to this time, had been excellent. On 15 October, after meeting with various adventures, drifting about Smith sound for thirty days on an ice-floe, and being compelled to abandon their steam launch in the ice. They reached Cape Sabine, where they established their winter quarters. Here they suffered greatly from want of provisions, and were finally forced to live on boiled strips of seal-skin, lichens, and shrimps. Sixteen of the party died of starvation, one was drowned, and one, Private Henry, was shot by Lieutenant Greely's orders, on the ground that he repeatedly stole food. The seven survivors were rescued by the third relief expedition, under Captain Winfield Schley, on 22 June, 1883, in so exhausted, a condition that forty-eight hours' delay would have been fatal. Since the return of Lieutenant Greely he has been charged with incapacity and arbitrary conduct in his management of the expedition; but these charges have not been listened to by his superiors. He was promoted to captain, 11 June, 1886, and in 1887, after the death of General William B. Hazen, was appointed by President Cleveland to succeed that officer as chief of the signal-service corps, with the rank of brigadier-general. In 1885 he was given the queen's gold medal by the Royal Geographical Society of London, and he has also received a gold medal from the Paris Geographical Society. He has published "Three Years of Arctic Service "(New York, 1886). See also "The Rescue of Greely," by Captain Winfield S. Schley, U. S. N. (1885). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 741-42.
GREEN, Beriah, 1795-1874, Whitesboro, New York, reformer, clergyman, abolitionist. President, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. Active supporter of the anti-slavery Liberty Party. Corresponding Secretary, Executive Committee member and founding officer of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, Utica, New York, October 1836.
(Blue, 2005, pp. 17, 34-35; Dumond, 1961, pp. 159, 295; Goodell, 1852, pp. 395-396, 556; Green, 1836; Mabee, 1970, pp. 20, 21, 24, 25, 40, 45, 46, 109, 151, 152, 227, 252, 257, 363, 366, 369; Pease, 1965, pp. 182-191; Sernett, 2002, 36-39, 46, 55, 72, 78, 93-94, 99, 105-106, 108, 113, 116, 122, 125; Sorin, 1971, pp. 25, 60, 90, 96, 97, 130; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 742; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 539; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 480; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 326; Minutes, First Annual Meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, Utica, New York, October 19, 1836)
GREEN, Beriah, reformer, born in New York state in 1794; died in Whitestown, New York, 4 May, 1874. He was graduated at Middlebury College in 1819, and studied theology with the intention of becoming a Presbyterian minister, but formed a creed of his own, which did not admit of his joining any denomination. He moved to Kennebunk. Maine, in 1820, and the following year to Ohio, and was professor of sacred literature in the Western Reserve College. His determined opposition to slavery shortened his stay in this community, and three years later he became president of the Oneida Institute, Ohio. Throughout his life he was the earnest friend of Gerrit Smith and other abolitionists, and in 1834, having taken an active part in the formation of the American anti-slavery Society, was chosen its president. Mr. Green was also a temperance advocate and promoter of public education. In 1845 he founded the Manual Labor School in Whitestown, New York He had just addressed the board of excise in the town-hall of Whitestown, urging the prohibition of intoxicating liquors, and was waiting at the head of a line of citizens to place his vote in the ballot-box, when he fell dead. He published "History of the Quakers" (Albany, 1823) and "Sermons and Discourses, with a Few Essays and Addresses" (Utica, New York, 1833). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 742
GREEN, Charles, naval officer, born in Connecticut in 1814; died in Providence, Rhode Island, 7 April, 1887. He entered the U. S. Navy, 1 May, 1826, became passed midshipman, 28 April, 1832. Lieutenant, 8 March, 1837, commander, 14 September, 1855, captain, 16 July, 1862, and commodore, 4 April, 1867. On account of incapacity resulting from long and faithful service he was placed on the retired list, 15 November, 1862. When commanding the "Jamestown " in 1861-2. and on blockade duty off Savannah, Georgia, Fernandina, Florida, and Wilmington, N. C., he took six prizes. While on the coast of Florida he sent out a boat expedition and destroyed the bark "Alvarado " under the guns of the fort at Fernandina. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 742.
GREEN, Francis Marshall, naval officer, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 23 February, 1835. He early became a seaman, and in June, 1861, was appointed acting master in the U. S. Navy, and attached to the sloop "Vincennes," of the West Gulf Squadron. Subsequently he saw active service at the passes of the Mississippi, served on the sloop "Oneida," and commanded the steamer " Commodore." In April, 1864, he was promoted to acting volunteer lieutenant, and served on special duty on the "Niagara." Later he commanded the "Boxer," and participated in the capture of Fort Fisher. After the close of the war he was transferred to the regular navy, and in December, 1868, was commissioned lieutenant-commander. From 1873 till 1883 he was connected with Ave Expeditions for determining exact latitudes and longitudes in various parts of the world. In July, 1883, he was made commander, and after some time spent on shore duty was given command of the "Yantic." Commander Green has been associated in the publication of government reports, such as " Navigation of the Caribbean Sea" (1877): "A Report on Telegraphic Determination of Longitudes in the West Indies and Central America" (1877); similar reports for South America (1880), and the East Indies, China, and Japan (1883), and a work on "Geographical Positions" (1883). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 743.
GREEN, Jacob D., 1813-?, African American, former slave, anti-slavery lecturer. Author of slave account, “Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, A Runaway Slave, From Kentucky, Containing an Account of his Three Escapes, in 1839, 1846, and 1848,” 1864. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 5, p. 173)
GREEN, James Stephen, politician, born in Fauquier County, Virginia, 28 February, 1817; died in St. Louis, Missouri, 9 January, 1870. He received a common-school education, moved to Alabama, and afterward to Missouri, where he was admitted to the bar, and began to practise at Canton. He was presidential elector on the Polk and Dallas ticket in 1844, and was elected to Congress as a Democrat, serving from 1847 till 1851. He was charge d'affaires in the United States of Columbia in 1853. and was appointed consul in 1854, but did not act in that capacity. On his return in 1856 he was again elected representative to Congress, but did not take his seat, having been chosen to the U. S. Senate, where he served from 1857 till 1861. He bore a conspicuous part in the Kansas contest, 1857-'8, and presented the majority report of the committee on territories in favor of its admission as a state, under the Lecompton Constitution. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 743-744.
GREEN, John, physician, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, 2 April, 1835, was graduated at Harvard in 1855, admitted a fellow of the Massachusetts Medical Society by examination in 1858, studied medicine at Cambridge and in Europe in 1855-'60, and took his medical degree at Harvard in 1866. In 1857 he accompanied Professor Jeffries Wyman on a scientific expedition to Surinam. He began practice in Boston in 1861, and during 1862 was in the medical service of the Western Sanitary Commission of the U. S. Army, and acting assistant surgeon in the Army of the Tennessee. He visited Europe in 1865 in order to pursue studies in ophthalmology, and moved to St. Louis in 1866. He is an original member of the Ophthalmological Society of America, was elected professor of this branch and of otology in the St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1868, became surgeon to the St. Louis Eye and Ear Infirmary in 1872, and ophthalmic surgeon to St. Luke's Hospital in 1874. He is a member of the principal medical societies both of the state and country, and has contributed numerous papers on his specialty to various professional journals. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 744.
GREEN, John Thompson, jurist, born in Mechanicsville, South Carolina, 18 October, 1827: died in Sumter, South Carolina, 27 January, 1875. He was educated at the College of South Carolina, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1849. He frequently served in the state legislature between 1850 and 1865, having been first elected on the co-operative ticket, in opposition to that which advocated the secession of the state, and throughout the war he was a Unionist. From 1868 until civil rule stated he was provost of Sumter County. On the reconstruction of the state government he was appointed judge of the 3d Judicial District, and held office till his death. In 1874 he was the unsuccessful candidate for governor of the Independent Republican and Conservative Parties. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 744
GREEN, Joseph F., naval officer, born in Maine, 24 November, 1811. He was appointed midshipman, 1 November, 1827, and promoted to passed midshipman, 10 June, 1833. He was commissioned lieutenant, 28 February, 1838, and throughout the Mexican War was attached to the ship-of-line "Ohio," of the Pacific Squadron, and took part in all the important actions on the Pacific Coast. From 1850 till 1858 he served at the Boston Navy-yard on ordnance duty, and at the Naval Academy. He was commissioned commander, 14 September, 1855, captain in 1862, commanded the steam sloop "Canandaigua," of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, in 1862-'4, and participated in the bombardment of Fort Wagner, 18 July, 1863. From 1866 till 1868 he was on ordnance duty at the Boston U.S. Navy-yard, and was commissioned as commodore, 24 July, 1867. He was assigned to special duty in 1869, commanded the Southern Squadron of the Atlantic fleet in 1870, was commissioned rear-admiral the same year, and retired 25 November, 1872. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 745.
GREEN, Martin E., soldier, born in Lewis County, Missouri, about 1825; died in Vicksburg, Mississippi, 27 June, 1863. At the beginning of the Civil War he organized a regiment near Paris, Missouri, and, joining General Sterling Price, contributed largely to the success of the Confederates in the capture of Lexington, Missouri, and the Union garrison commanded by Colonel James A. Mulligan. He ordered his men to roll hemp-bales up the river-bank, which formed movable breastworks. After this battle he was appointed brigadier-general, served with General Price throughout the Missouri Campaign, and was conspicuous for bravery in the battles of Farmington, Iuka, Corinth, and Baker's Creek. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 745.
GREEN, Samuel Abbott, physician, born in Groton, Massachusetts, 16 March, 1830. He was graduated at Harvard in 1851, and received his medical degree three years later, after which he spent several years in Europe. On his return he began practice in Boston, and became one of the district physicians for the city dispensary. On 19 May, 1858. he was appointed by Governor Banks surgeon of the 2d Militia Regiment. At the beginning of the Civil War he was commissioned assistant surgeon of the 1st Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers, and was the first medical officer mustered in for three years' service. He was promoted surgeon of the 24th Massachusetts Regiment on 2 September, 1861, where he remained until 2 November, 1864, serving on the staffs of various Cavalry officers. He had charge of the hospital ship "Recruit," of the Burnside expedition to Roanoke Island, of the hospital ship "Cosmopolitan" on the coast of South Carolina, and during the siege of Port Wagner was chief medical officer on Morris Island. In October, 1863, he was sent to Florida, and was post-surgeon at St. Augustine and Jacksonville; thence he was sent to Virginia, and was with the army when Bermuda Hundred was taken. He was appointed acting staff-surgeon, and was stationed three months at Richmond after the fall of that city. For gallant and distinguished services in the field in 1864 he was brevetted lieutenant-colonel of volunteers. Dr. Green organized "Roanoke Cemetery" in 1862, which was one of the first regular burial-places for National soldiers. After the close of the war Dr. Green was from 1865 until 1872 superintendent of the Boston Dispensary, a member of the Boston school board in 1860-'2 and 1866-72, trustee of the public library in 1868-'78, and acting librarian from October, 1877, to October, 1878. In 1870 Governor Claflin appointed him one of a commission to care for disabled soldiers. In 1871 he became city physician of Boston, and retained the office till 1880. He was chosen a member of the board of experts authorized by Congress in 1878 to investigate the yellow fever, and in 1882 he was elected mayor of Boston. Dr. Green has given much time to historical studies, and for some years has been librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In addition to a large number of papers on scientific and historical subjects, he has published " My Campaigns in America: a Journal kept by Count William de Deux-Ponts, 1780-'l," translated from the French manuscript, with an introduction and notes (Boston, 1868); "An Account of Percival and Ellen Green and of Some of their Descendants " (printed privately, Groton, Massachusetts, 1876); "Epitaphs from the Old Burying-Ground in Groton, Massachusetts" (1879); "The Early Records of Groton, Massachusetts, 1662-1677" (1880); "History of Medicine in Massachusetts," a centennial address delivered before the Massachusetts Medical Society at Cambridge, 7 June, 1881 (Boston, 1881); "Groton during the Indian Wars" (Groton, 1883); "Groton during the Witchcraft Times" (1883); "The Boundary-Lines of Old Groton." (1885); "The Geography of Groton," prepared for the use of the Appalachian (mountain) club (1886); and "Groton Historical Series" (20 numbers, 1883-'7). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 746.
GREEN, Shields, free African American man (former slave) with John Brown during his raid at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859; hanged with John Brown, 1859 (see entry for John Brown). (Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 62, 63, 327; Sernett, 2002, pp. 210-212, 328n50)
GREEN, Thomas, soldier, born in Virginia in 1816: died in Blair's Plantation, Louisiana, 14 April, 1864. His father was chief justice of Tennessee and president of Lebanon law-College. The son moved to Texas in early manhood, was a ranger in the war of Texan independence, and also served in the Mexican War. In 1855-'8 he was clerk of the supreme court of Texas. He afterward joined the Confederate Army, and was engaged in the battles of Valverde, Bisland, and Galveston, and the capture of the " Harriet Lane." In the campaign of 1863 he commanded the Cavalry of General Richard Taylor s division, and repulsed the National Army, commanded by General Godfrey Weitzel and General Cuvier Grover, at the battle of Bayou la Fourche. After this action he was appointed major-general for distinguished services, and placed in command of the cavalry of the Trans-Mississippi Department. In April,1864, he commanded the Texas infantry in the Red River Campaign. He was mortally wounded near Pleasant Hill, 12 April, 1864, by a shot from a National gun-boat. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 746.
GREEN, Thomas Jefferson, soldier, born in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1801; died there, 13 December. 1863. He moved to Texas early in life, and served as brigadier-general of volunteers in the war of Texan independence. In 1843, with other officers, he refused to obey the orders of General Summerville whose loyalty he doubted, and, with a small force, left the main body of troops and attacked the town of Mier. The battle was disastrous to the Texans, and 193 officers and men were taken prisoners. In attempting to escape, they were recaptured, taken to the city of Mexico, and every tenth man was ordered to be shot by Santa-Anna. Green was kept a prisoner at hard labor till 16 September, 1844, when, with 103 others, he was released. He moved to California several years later, served in the state senate, and was major-general of militia. When the Civil War began he entered the Confederate Army, and was engaged in the early Virginia Campaigns. He published " The Mier Expedition" (New York, 1845). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 746-747.
GREEN, Wharton Jackson, politician, born in St. Mark's, Florida, about 1840, was educated at Harvard, the U. S. Military Academy, and the universities of Virginia and Cumberland, Tennessee. He visited Europe in 1858, and on his return settled as a planter in Warren County, North Carolina. He served throughout the Civil War in the Confederate Army as lieutenant-colonel of a North Carolina regiment, was wounded at Washington, North Carolina, and Gettysburg, and imprisoned at the close of the war at Johnson's Island. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1868, and was elected to Congress in 1882, and re-elected in 1884. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 747.
GREEN, William Alexander, physician, born in Augusta, Georgia, 5 January. 1834. He spent his early life as a clerk in a drug-store, devoting his spare hours to the study of medicine. In 1857 he was graduated from the Augusta Medical College. He then settled in Americus, Georgia, and remained there till 1861, when he entered the Confederate Army. He afterward became surgeon, and then chief surgeon of artillery in the 3d Army Corps, on the staff of General D. P. Hill, where he remained till the surrender of Lee. He served on many battle-fields, and was the first to bring to the notice of the medical authorities in the field the operation for resection. He was the inventor of a hypodermic syringe, the designer of a hypodermic syringe-needle, and of Green's "pocket-cases." He introduced many new remedies hypodermically, and gave much attention to pharmacy and chemistry. After the war he returned to Americus, and in 1875 moved to Macon. He has published many articles in medical journals, and is the author of papers on the " Small-Pox," "Vaccination and its Results," and "The Use of the Hypodermic Syringe." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 747.
GREENE, George Sears, soldier, born in Apponaug, Warwick, Rhode Island, 6 May, 1801. He is a descendant in the sixth generation from John Greene, deputy governor of Rhode Island, whose father, John, came from Salisbury, England, in 1635, and settled in Warwick, Rhode Island, in 1645. George Sears was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1823, second in his class. He served in various garrisons and as instructor at West Point until 1836, when he left the army and became a civil engineer, building many railroads in the states of Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Maryland, and Virginia. In 1856 he served in the Croton Aqueduct Department in the city of New York. He designed and built the reservoir in Central park, and the enlargement of High Bridge. He re-entered the army in 1862 as colonel of the 60th New York Regiment, and was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, 28 April, 1862. He commanded his brigade at Cedar Mountain, 9 August, 1862, and was in command of the 2d Division of the 12th Army Corps in the battle of Antietam. He also led his brigade at the battle of Chancellorsville. At Gettysburg, on the night of 2 July, 1863, with a part of his brigade, he held the right wing of the Army of the Potomac at Culp's Hill against more than a division of Confederate troops, thereby averting a disaster which would have resulted from turning the right wing of the army. He was transferred to the western armies in September, 1863, and in a night engagement at Wauhatchie, near Chattanooga, 28 October, 1863, was dangerously wounded in the jaw. This wound disabled him from active service till January, 1865, when he rejoined Sherman's army in North Carolina and participated in the engagements preceding Johnston's surrender. He was brevetted major-general of volunteers for his services on 13 March, 1865, and retired from the army in 1866. In 1867 he became chief engineer and commissioner of the Croton Aqueduct Department, and held the office till 1871, when he was made chief engineer of public works in Washington, D. C., but resigned in 1872. He was president of the American Society of Civil Engineers from 1875 till 1877, and since that date has been engaged as consulting engineer on various works. For several years he was also president of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.—His son, George Sears, Jr., born in Lexington, Kentucky, 26 November, 1837, entered Harvard in 1866, but left before graduating, in order to study civil engineering under his father. He served as assistant engineer on the Croton Aqueduct, on various railroads in Cuba, and in copper mining on Lake Superior. During 1868 he conducted extensive and accurate topographical surveys in Westchester County and Long Island City, New York, and at that time introduced several valuable improvements in instruments. These have since been adopted by the U. S. Coast Survey, and have come into general use. In 1875 he was appointed engineer-in-chief of the Department of Docks, New York City, in which capacity he designed and executed river walls, wharves, and piers in difficult situations. In 1867 he became a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, was director from 1882 till 1886, and vice-president in 1885-'6. —Another son, Samuel Dana, naval officer, born in Cumberland, Maryland, 11 February, 1839; died in Portsmouth Navy-yard, New Hampshire, 11 December, 1884, was graduated at the U. S. Naval Academy in 1859, and served as midshipman on the " Hartford," of the China Squadron. On his return to the United States in 1861 he volunteered for service on the iron-clad "Monitor," then building at New York, and served continuously on this vessel from the day she was launched until she foundered off Cape Hatteras on the night of 29 December, 1862. The "Monitor" left New York, 6 March, 1862, for Hampton Roads. She was built for river and harbor service, and on her way narrowly escaped sinking on two occasions, so that her officers and crew had been without sleep for forty-eight hours when they arrived at Hampton Roads on the morning of 9 March, 1862. Notwithstanding their exhaustion, they proceeded immediately to attack the "Merrimac," and in the memorable engagement that followed, her commanding officer, Lieutenant Worden, directed the movements of the vessel from the pilot-house, while Lieutenant Greene had charge of the guns in the turret. He personally fired every shot until near the close of the action, when the command devolved on him in consequence of the wounding of Lieutenant Worden. In the delay incident to the change of command the vessels drifted apart. As soon as Lieutenant Greene reached the pilot-house he turned the "Monitor" again toward the " Merrimac," but the latter was already in retreat toward Norfolk. Being without a pilot, he was unable to follow the " Merrimac" into the tortuous channel of the Elizabeth River, and, after firing a few shots after her, returned to the wooden vessels which had been saved from destruction by the timely arrival of the "Monitor." He was afterward engaged in the attack on Fort Darling and other naval actions on the James River. After the loss of the " Monitor " he served as executive officer of the " Florida" on blockade duty in 1863, of the "Iroquois," in search of the " Alabama," in 1864-'5, and on various other vessels from 1865 till 1869. He was promoted to lieutenant-commander in 1866, and to commander in 1872, and commanded the "Juniata" in 1875, the " Monongahela" in 1876-'7, and the " Despatch " in 1882-'4. He also served at the Naval Academy as assistant professor of mathematics in 1865-'8, of astronomy in 1871-'5, and as assistant to the superintendent in 1878-'82. He received a vote of thanks from the legislature of Rhode Island for his gallant services in the action between the "Monitor "and the "Merrimac'-— Another son, Francis Vinton, soldier, born in Providence, Rhode Island, 27 June, 1850, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1870, and assigned to the Engineer Corps. He served on the international commission for the survey of the northern boundary of the United States, as assistant astronomer and surveyor in 1872- 6, was promoted to 1st lieutenant, 13 January, 1874. and was military attaché to the U. S. legation at St. Petersburg in 1877-'9, being for a year with the Russian Army in the field. He was assistant to the engineer in charge of public works in the District of Columbia in 1879-'80, being made captain in January, 1883, instructor in practical engineering at West Point from 1 September, 1885, to January, 1886, and on 31 December of the latter year resigned his commission. He has published "Deflections of the Plumb-Line along the 49th Parallel" (1876); "The Russian Army and its Campaigns in Turkey in 1877-'8" (2 vols., New York, 1879); "Army Life in Russia" (1880); and " The Mississippi" (in "Campaigns of the Civil War" series, 1882). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 749-750.
GREENE, William Batchelder, author, born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, 4 April, 1819; died in Weston-Super-Mare, England, 30 May, 1878, was appointed to the U. S. Military Academy from Massachusetts in 1835, but left before graduation. He was made 2d lieutenant in the 7th U.S. Infantry in July, 1839, and. after serving through the Florida War, resigned in November, 1841. Subsequently he was connected with the Brook Farm Movement, after which he studied theology, and was graduated at the Harvard Divinity-School in 1845. He then became a Unitarian clergyman, and for several years was settled in Brookfield, Massachusetts. Later he went to Europe, but returned in 1861. Although a Democrat, he was a strong abolitionist, and at the beginning of the Civil War became colonel of the 14th Massachusetts Infantry, afterward the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery. In 1862. while stationed with his regiment in Fairfax, Virginia. he was recalled and assigned by General McClellan to the command of an artillery brigade in General Whipple's division. He resigned his commission in October, 1862, and returned to Boston. Mr. Greene was a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1853, was active in all reform movements, and was specially zealous for perfect freedom of speech. He was a fine mathematician, and was versed in Hebrew literature and in Hebrew and Egyptian antiquities. He published numerous pamphlets, including "Sovereignty of the People A (Boston, 1863); "Explanations of" the Theory of the Calculus" (1870); 'Transcendentalism" (1870); and "The Facts of Consciousness and the Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer" (1871); and in book-form," Remarks on the Science of History, followed by an a priori Autobiography" (1849); "Theory of the Calculus" (1870); and " Socialistic, Communistic,-Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments " (1875). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 754.
GREENE, Theodore Phinney, naval officer, born in Montreal, Canada. 1 November, 1809. He was appointed midshipman from Vermont in November, 1826, was promoted to passed midshipman in 1832, and in 1837 became lieutenant. During the Mexican War, from 1846 till 1848, he was on the "Congress," having command of the land forces in Mazatlan for six months, then on the "Cyane." of the Home Squadron, and in 1854- 6 at the Boston Navy-yard. He was commissioned commander in September, 1855, and subsequently, until 1860, was lighthouse-inspector, after which he was at the Navy-yard on Mare Island, California, until 1862. In July, 1862, he was made captain, and given command of the " Santiago de Cuba" and the " San Jacinto." While in charge of the latter, he was left in command of the East Gulf Squadron. Later he commanded the " Richmond, of the West Gulf Squadron, and in 1865 protected the troops while they were landing for the attack on Mobile. In 1866 he served on ordnance duty in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and in 1867 was given command of the "Powhatan," of the Pacific Squadron. He received his commission as commodore in July, 1867, and had charge of the Pensacola Navy-yard from 1868 till 1871, when he was retired. In March, 1872, he became rear-admiral on the retired list. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 754-755.
GREENFIELD, Elizabeth Taylor, singer, born in Natchez. Mississippi, in 1808; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1876. She was of African descent and was born a slave, but early gave great promise as a singer, and was freed by her mistress, Mrs. Greenfield, who gave her a liberal education. She sang with success, not only in this country, but in England, where the Duchess of Sutherland and the Duchess of Argyll became her patrons. She was known as the "Black Swan." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 755.
GREENWOOD, Miles, manufacturer, born in Jersey City, New Jersey, 19 March, 1807; died in Cincinnati, Ohio, 6 November, 1885. He moved to Ohio with his father in 1817, settled near Cincinnati, and in 1832 established, on the Miami Canal, the Eagle Ironworks, which soon became the largest in the west. His buildings were destroyed by fire in 1852, but were soon rebuilt. During the Civil War the works were employed in behalf of the government, all other business being suspended. At the beginning of the war Mr. Greenwood made for General Fremont twelve anchors for pontoon-bridges on twenty-four hours' notice. He also built machines that rifled 3,000 smooth-bore muskets a day, cast 150 bronze field guns in a brief period, and built a turret monitor when other builders declined the contract. Southerners vainly tried to persuade him to cease aiding the government, and his works were set on fire three times, with a loss of $100,000. He organized the first paid fire department in Cincinnati in 1852, and in the same year aided in introducing into that city the first steam fire-engine in the United States. He used to boast that in thus abolishing the old-fashioned fire-engine house and its attendant vices, he had done more for the cause of morality than many preachers. He was one of the founders of the Ohio Mechanics' Institute. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 758.
GREER, James Augustin, naval officer, born in Cincinnati. Ohio, 28 February, 1833. He entered the U.S. Navy as midshipman, 10 January, 1848, became lieutenant, 10 September, 1855, and lieutenant-commander, 16 July, 1862. He commanded the iron-clad "Benton " and a division of Admiral Porter's squadron at the passage of the Vicksburg batteries on 16 April. 1863, and in the succeeding engagements on the Mississippi until the fall of that city. He also accompanied the Red River Expedition. He was made commander, 25 July, 1866, and in 1873 commanded the " Tigress " in the " Polaris " search expedition. He was promoted to the grade of captain on 26 April, 1876. in 1886 served as president of the examining board, and in the same year was made commodore. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp.758.
GREGG, John Irvin, soldier, born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, 19 July, 1826, was the son of Andrew Gregg, an iron- master. He volunteered for the Mexican War as a private in December, 1846, became 1st lieutenant of the 11th regular Infantry in February, 1847, and was appointed captain on 5 September, 1847. After serving through the war, he was disbanded, 14 August, 1848. He then engaged in the iron business in Centre County, Pennsylvania He became a captain of Pennsylvania reserves in the early part of the Civil War, and was made captain, 6th U. S. Cavalry , in May, 1861. He became colonel, 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry , in October, 1862, and commanded a cavalry brigade in the Army of the Potomac, from April, 1863. till April, 1865. He participated in numerous battles, including Deep Bottom, where he was severely wounded. For gallant and meritorious services during the war he was brevetted major-general of volunteers, and brigadier-general U. S. Army at its close. After the war he was inspector-general of freedmen in Louisiana, and under the establishment of 28 July, 1868, became colonel of the 8th Cavalry . He was with his regiment on the Pacific Coast till retired for disability incurred in line of duty, 2 April, 1879.
GREGG, David McMurtrie, son of Matthew D. Gregg, soldier, born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, 10 April, 1838. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1855, and was assigned to the dragoons, receiving his full appointment as 2d lieutenant in September following. Afterward he served a short time in Jefferson barracks, Missouri, and was then ordered to New Mexico and California, and served in the campaigns of 1858-'60 against the Indians. In March, 1861, he was appointed 1st lieutenant, and in May following captain in the 6th Cavalry . In January he was appointed colonel of the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry , and was engaged at the battles of Fair Oaks, the seven days fight, and otherwise during the Virginia Peninsular Campaign in 1862. He became brigadier-general of volunteers on 29 November, commanded a division of cavalry in the Army of the Potomac from December, 1862, till June, 1863, and was engaged at Beverly Ford, Aldie, Gettysburg, Rapidan Station, and New Hope Church. He commanded the 2d Cavalry Division, 6 April, 1864, to 3 February, 1865, in the Richmond Campaign, and the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac from 1 August, 1864 (when he was brevetted major-general of volunteers), till his resignation, 3 February, 1865. He was appointed U. S. consul at Prague, Bohemia, in 1874, and in 1886 became commander of the Pennsylvania Order of the Loyal Legion. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 759.
GREGG, Maxey, soldier, born in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1814; died near Fredericksburg, Virginia, 13 December, 1862, was graduated at the College of South Carolina in 1836, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. He was appointed major of the 12th Infantry, 24 March, 1847, and served till the close of the Mexican War. He was a member of the South Carolina state Convention in 1861, and of the committee that prepared the ordinance of secession. In the Civil War he commanded the 1st South Carolina Regiment, and was afterward made a brigadier-general. He distinguished himself in several engagements in Virginia, and was killed at the battle of Fredericksburg. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 759.
GREGORY, Francis Hoyt, naval officer, born in Norwalk, Connecticut, 9 October, 1789; died in Brooklyn, New York, 4 October, 1866. He was in the merchant service in 1807-'9, but became a midshipman in the U.S. Navy in the latter year. Soon afterward, while serving on the " Vesuvius," and in charge of one of her barges near the Belize, he surprised and captured an English slaver. He was made acting master in 1811, and, while in command of gunboat No. 162, captured a schooner fitting for piratical purposes, disabled and drove away a privateer of greatly superior force, that had been annoying our commerce, and took a Spanish pirate of fourteen guns. He was with Commodore Chauncey in all his actions on Lake Ontario, and on 28 June was made lieutenant. In August, 1814, he was taken prisoner and sent to England, where he remained eighteen months. He soon afterward joined one of the frigates cruising against the Algerines, without coming home. In 1821-'3, while in command of the schooner " Grampus," he was active in suppressing piracy on the coasts of Cuba and Mexico, capturing near St. Croix the notorious pirate brig "Pandrita," a vessel far superior to his own in armament and number of men. He was promoted to commander, 28 April, 1828, and to captain, 18 January, 1838, and in 1844 commanded the "Raritan " in the blockade of the Mexican Coast. His last sea-service was in command of the African Squadron in 1846-'52. In July, 1861, he was ordered to superintend the construction of all vessels of war built outside of U.S. Navy-yards, and was engaged in this duty when he died. He was made rear-admiral on the retired list, 16 July, 1862. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 760.
GRESHAM, Walter Quinton, jurist, born near Lanesville, Harrison County, Indiana, 17 March, 1832. He was educated in country schools, and spent one year in the state university at Bloomington, Indiana, but was not graduated. He then studied law in Corydon, Indiana, was admitted to the bar in 1853, and became a successful lawyer. He was elected to the legislature in 1860, but resigned in August, 1861, to become lieutenant-colonel of the 38th Indiana Regiment. He was promoted to colonel of the 53d Indiana in December, and on 11 August, 1863, after the fall of Vicksburg, was made brigadier-general of volunteers. He commanded the 4th Division of Blair's Corps in the fighting before Atlanta, and received a severe wound that disabled him for a year, and prevented him from seeing further service. On 13 March, 1865, he was brevetted major-general of volunteers for his gallantry at Atlanta. After the war he resumed practice at New Albany, Indiana. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Congress in 1866, and in 1867-8 was financial agent of his state in New York. President Grant, who held him in great esteem, made him U. S. Judge for the District of Indiana in 1869, and in 1880 he was an unsuccessful candidate for U. S. Senator. He resigned his judgeship in April, 1882, to accept the place of Postmaster-General in President Arthur's cabinet, and in July, 1884, on the death of Secretary Folger, was transferred to the treasury portfolio. In October of that year he was appointed U. S. Judge for the 7th Judicial Circuit, which office he still holds (1887). Judge Gresham was a strong supporter of General Grant for a third term in the Chicago Convention of 1880, but has not been conspicuous in politics. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 761-762.
GREW, Henry, Reverend, 1781-1862, Boston, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, clergyman, religious writer, reformer, abolitionist leader. Daughters were Mary and Susan Grew, both abolitionists. Active in abolition movements. Vice President of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1853. Founding member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, 1832. Attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England, in June 1840. (Yellin, 1994, pp. 71, 312, 333; First Annual Report of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, 1832; Proceedings of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1853)
GREW, Mary, 1813-1896, abolitionist leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Leader of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Grew was an officer of the national branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Co-editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman. Was active in the Free Produce Association. In 1840, Grew and other women were elected as delegates at the World Anti-Slavery Convention. They were, however, excluded from the floor. After 1840, she was involved in women’s rights and other reform activities. Daughter of abolitionist Henry Grew. She was a stronger supporter and friend of prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. (Van Broekhoven, 2002, p. 206; Yellin, 1994, pp. 43, 71-72, 76, 84-85, 163, 176-177, 301-302, 326; Proceedings of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1853; Annual Reports, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society)
GREW, Susan, abolitionist, leader of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, daughter of abolitionist Henry Grew (Van Broekhoven, 2002, p. 206; Yellin, 1994, pp. 71, 80)
GRIER, Robert Cooper, jurist, born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 5 March, 1794; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 26 September, 1870. He was graduated at Dickinson in 1812, and after teaching there one year he returned to Northumberland, Pennsylvania, to assist his father in the academy, of which he became principal in 1815. He devoted his leisure to the study of law, was admitted to the bar in 1817, and practised in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania He then moved to Danville, where he attained eminence in his profession. He supported his mother, and educated a family of ten brothers and sisters. He was appointed judge of the district court of Alleghany in 1838, and moved to Alleghany City, but went to Philadelphia in 1848 and resided there till his death. He was appointed justice of the U. S. Supreme Court by President Polk on 4 August, 1846, and held that office until his death, although he had sent in his resignation in 1869. He was originally a Federalist, but acted with the Democratic Party until the Civil War, when he supported the national cause. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 763.
GRIER, William Nicholson, soldier, born in Pennsylvania in 1812; died at Napa Springs, Cal„ 9 July, 1885. He was graduated at the U.S. Military Academy in 1835, and assigned to the 1st U.S. Dragoons. He was on frontier duty in the Choctaw Nation from 1839 till 1840, when he became assistant instructor of infantry and cavalry tactics at West Point, and held the office one year, after which he was engaged in frontier duty in the west. He was appointed captain. 23 April, 1846, and entered on active service at the beginning of the Mexican War. He was brevetted major for gallant and meritorious conduct in the battle of Santa Cruz de Rosales, 16 March, 1848, and was on frontier duty at Fernandez de Taos in 1849. During the two following years he took part in the expedition against the Apache Indians, and was wounded in the skirmish at Too-koon-kurre Butte, 17 November, 1849. Subsequently he was in active service on the Pacific Coast and in the far northwest, serving in expeditions against the Indians in Washington Territory. In 1861-'2 he served as acting inspector-general of the Army of the Potomac, and commanded the 1st Regiment of Cavalry in the Virginia Peninsular Campaign. He was present at the siege of Yorktown and the battle of Williamsburg, where he was wounded and brevetted colonel for gallantry. He also took part in the battle of Gaines's Mills and in the seven days' change of base to the James River. He was on court-martial duty in St. Louis, Missouri, from September, 1862, till February, 1863. He served as superintendent of volunteer recruiting service and chief mustering and disbursing officer of Ohio. He also held this office in Iowa from March, 1863, till June, 1865, and in Pennsylvania from June, 1865, till April, 1866. He was brevetted brigadier-general, U. S. Army, for faithful service during the war on 13 March, 1865. On 31 August, 1866, he became colonel of the 3d U.S. Cavalry . At his own request he was placed on the retired list, 15 December, 1870. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 763.
GRIERSON, Benjamin Henry, soldier, born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 8 July, 1826. At an early age he moved to Trumbull County, Ohio, and was subsequently engaged in the produce business at Jacksonville, Illinois. At the beginning of the Civil War he became aide-de-camp to General Prentiss, was made major of the 6th Illinois Cavalry in August, 1861, became colonel, 28 March, 1862, and commander of a cavalry brigade in December. He was engaged in nearly all the cavalry skirmishes and raids in western Tennessee and northern Mississippi, and in April, 1863, made a successful cavalry raid from La Grange to Baton Rouge to facilitate General Grant's operations about Vicksburg. He became a brigadier-general of volunteers on 3 June, 1863, major-general, 27 May, 1865, colonel of the 10th U.S. Cavalry , 28 July, 1866, and was brevetted brigadier-and major-general, U. S. Army, 2 March, 1867, for his raid of December, 1864, in Arkansas. He was in command of the District of the Indian Territory from 1868 till 1873, and was engaged in active scouting, explorations, campaigns against the Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, and other tribes, and in removing intruders from the Indian Territory. From 1875 to 1881 he was actively engaged in scouting and exploring the country throughout western Texas, New Mexico, and in campaigns against hostile Indians. Since 13 November, 1886, he has commanded the District of New Mexico, with headquarters at Santa Fe, New Mexico Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 763.
GRIFFIN, Charles, soldier, born in Licking County, Ohio, in 1826; died in Galveston, Texas, 15 September, 1867. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1847, was assigned to the 2d Artillery , and was soon after ordered to Mexico, and commanded a company under General Patterson in the campaign from Vera Cruz to Puebla. In 1849 he was promoted to 1st lieutenant, and served in New Mexico against Navajo Indians until 1854. After other frontier service he was instructor of artillery at West Point in 1859-'61. In command of the "West Point battery " he fought at Bull Run, and on 9 June, 1862, was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers, and took part in the Peninsular Campaign, winning distinction at the battle of Gaines's Mill. At Malvern Hill, General Griffin, in command of the artillery, supported his brigade against the assault of General Magruder, drove back the enemy, and contributed signally to the success of the day. He was present at the Second Battle of Bull Run, and was charged by Pope in his report with refraining from taking part in the action, while he "spent the day in making ill-natured strictures upon the commanding general." General Griffin was arrested for trial on this charge, but was soon released. Having been promoted to the command of a division, he took part in the battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg, and in Hooker's campaign. On 1 August, 1864, he was brevetted major-general of volunteers, and on 18 August he received the brevet of colonel in the regular army. He was present at Gettysburg, and was conspicuous in all the engagements from the Wilderness to Five Forks. As commander of the 5th Corps, directed by General Grant, he received the arms and colors of the Army of Northern Virginia, after the surrender at Appomattox Court-House. On 13 May, 1865, General Griffin was brevetted brigadier-and major-general in the regular army, and on 10 August, 1865, was assigned to the command of the District of Maine, with headquarters at Portland. On 28 July, 1866, he was made colonel of the 35th U.S. Infantry, and in 1867 commanded the Department of Texas, with headquarters at Galveston. On 5 September, 1867, while the yellow fever was raging at Galveston, he was assigned to the temporary command of the 5th Military District on the removal of General Sheridan, and ordered to make his headquarters at New Orleans. He replied that "to leave Galveston at such a time was like deserting one's post in time of battle." He remained and fell a victim to the fever. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 763-764.
GRIFFIN, Simon Goodell, soldier, born in Nelson, Cheshire County, New Hampshire, 9 August, 1824. He was a teacher for several years, and represented his native town in the legislature. He subsequently studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1860, and began practice in Concord. At the beginning of the Civil War he was commissioned captain in the 2d Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteers, and was present at the first battle of Bull Run. In October, 1861, he was promoted lieutenant-colonel, and transferred to the 6th New Hampshire Regiment, and the command of the regiment devolved upon him. On 7 April, 1862, he commanded an expedition of 600 men, assisted by five gun-boats, to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, which resulted in the capture of prisoners and many stands of arms, and in the breaking up of a Confederate rendezvous at that place. He commanded his regiment at the battle of Camden, North Carolina, 19 April, and for its gallantry on this occasion was permitted to inscribe " Camden, 19 April, 1862," upon its colors. On 22 April he was commissioned colonel of the 6th Regiment. He was in the second battle of Bull Run, at Chantilly, and at Antietam, where, with his regiment and the 2d Maryland, he charged the stone bridge and carried it in the face of a heavy fire. He was present at Fredericksburg, his regiment losing one third its number, and on 20 May, 1863, he was assigned to the command of the 1st brigade, 2d Division , 9th Army Corps. This brigade, early in June, went to assist General Grant in his operations against Vicksburg, and participated in its capture. He was with his command in the Mississippi Campaign of General Sherman, and in the spring of 1864 was assigned to the 2d Brigade, 2d Division , and commanded it in the battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania Court-House, and was commissioned a brigadier-general on General Grant's recommendation. On the night of 16 June General Griffin, in command of his own and General Curtin's brigade, attacked the enemy's intrenched lines in front of Petersburg, carrying their works and capturing 1,000 prisoners, with arms, artillery, and ammunition. On 2 April, 1865, he arranged and led the assault at "Fort Hell," and for gallant conduct was brevetted a major-general, and afterward participated in the pursuit and capture of General Lee's army. He was mustered out in September, 1865, and declined a commission in the regular army. Subsequently General Griffin settled in Keene, New Hampshire, and served in the state legislature in 1866-'8, in the last two years being speaker of the house. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 764-765.
GRIFFING, Charles Stockman Spooner, abolitionist leader, member Western Anti-Slavery Society. Active in the Underground Railroad in Ohio. Husband of Josephine Sophia White Griffing. (American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 375-376)
GRIFFING, Josephine Sophia White, 1814-1872, Connecticut, abolitionist leader, women’s rights leader, active in Underground Railroad in Ohio, wife of Charles Stockman Spooner Griffing, also a strong abolitionist, member and agent for the Western Anti-Slavery Society, major writer for abolitionist paper The Anti-Slavery Bugle. The Griffing home was a station on the Underground Railroad in Ohio. Active in Women’s National Loyal League, which tried to outlaw slavery. Agent for the National Freedman’s Relief Association of the District of Columbia. (Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 375-376; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 574)
GRIFFITHS, John Willis, naval architect, born in New York City, 6 October, 1809; died in Brooklyn, New York, 29 April, 1882. His father, John Griffiths, was a shipwright in New York. After working at various occupations, the boy was apprenticed to his father's trade, and when nineteen years of age laid the lines of the frigate "Macedonia." In 1836 he published in the Portsmouth, Virginia. " Advocate " a series of articles giving his ideas on naval architecture, and in 1842 gave in New York and other cities the first lectures on that subject ever delivered in the United States, also opening a free school for instruction in ship-building. He favored many improvements, suggested the clipper model of the fast ships built for the China trade, and, on the discovery of gold in California, and as early as 1835 proposed the ram for the bow of war-ships. He made the calculations for the Collins steamers, and in 1850 sent to the World's Exhibition in London a steamship model that attracted much attention. In 1853 he began to build for William Norris. of Philadelphia, a steamer intended to cross the Atlantic in seven days, and though, from the failure of Norris, it was not completed according to his designs, it made the fastest time on record between Havana and New Orleans. In 1856 Mr. Griffiths became part proprietor and co-editor of the "Nautical Magazine and Naval Journal," but it was suspended in 1858 on his acceptance of an appointment from the government as special naval-constructor to build the U.S. gunboat "Pawnee," which he fitted with twin screws, a drop bilge, to increase the stability at the least expenditure of propulsion-power, and other new features. The " Pawnee “ was the widest, and lightest-draught vessel of her displacement that was ever built, and, although drawing only ten feet of water, carried a frigate's battery. In 1864 he invented a timber-bending machine, which he first used in building the ship " New Era " in Boston in 1870. Every frame timber that required curvature was bent from the straight log, and the futtocks were extended in one stick from the keel to the rail. The use of iron in ship-building supplanted this method. In 1871-'2 he erected improved timber-bonding machinery for the government, and in 1872 built the U. S. ship " Enterprise" at Portsmouth, New Hampshire His machines received two prize medals at the Centennial exhibition in 1876. He was the originator of the idea of life-boat steamers, and also showed a model and plans for such steamers at the Centennial. In 1879- 82 Mr. Griffiths edited in New York City a weekly journal entitled the "American Ship." Although many of Mr. Griffiths’s innovations in ship-building were opposed by more conservative architects, experience has usually proved the wisdom of his views, and no architect in the United States has been as generally followed by young ship-builders. Other inventions by him are iron keelsons for wooden ships (1848); bilge keels, to prevent rolling (1863): triple screws for great speed (1866); and improved rivets (1880). His most important work is his "Treatise on Marine and Naval Architecture" (New York, 1850; 4th ed., 2 vols., 1854), which was republished in England, and had a wide sale through Europe. Its publication did more to advance American ship-building than any other single influence, and it brought its author orders for models and drawings from nearly every maritime nation. He also published "The Ship-Builder's Manual" (2 vols., 1853); and "The Progressive Ship-Builder" (2 vols., 1875-'6). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 765-766.
GRIMES, Bryan, soldier, born in Pitt County, North Carolina, 2 November, 1828; died near Bear Creek, Pitt County, North Carolina, 14 August, 1880. His grandfather, William, was a patriot of the Revolution. Bryan was graduated at the University of North Carolina in 1848, and engaged in planting until he entered the Confederate Army in 1861 as major of the 4th North Carolina Regiment, he served throughout the war, and attained the rank of senior major-general in "Stonewall" Jackson's Corps, his division making the last charge at Appomattox. After the war he returned to agricultural pursuits. While driving at nightfall along the public road, two miles from his residence, he was fired upon and killed. The assassin was never discovered, but was supposed to be a sympathizer with the accused in a criminal suit in which General Grimes was an important witness. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 767.
GRIMES, James Wilson, 1816-1872, statesman, lawyer. U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Governor of Iowa, 1854-1858. Supported by Whigs and Free Soil Democrats. Elected as Republican Senator in 1859. Re-elected 1865. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 767; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 630; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 617; Congressional Globe)
GRIMES, James Wilson, statesman, born in Deering, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, 20 October, 1816; died in Burlington, Iowa, 7 February, 1872. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1836, and in the same year went west and began to practise law in Burlington, Iowa, then in what was known as the " Black Hawk Purchase," in the territory of Michigan. From 4 July, 1836, till 12 June, 1838, it was part of Wisconsin territory, and in 1837-'8 Mr. Grimes was assistant librarian of the territorial library. After the formation of Iowa Territory he was a delegate to its assembly in 1838 and 1843, and in 1852, after its admission to the Union, was a member of the legislature. He was governor of the state in 1854-'8, having been elected by Whigs and Free-Soil Democrats, and while holding the office did much to foster Free-Soil sentiment in his state. On 28 August, 1856, he wrote an official letter to President Pierce protesting against the treatment of Iowa settlers in Kansas. He was elected to the U. S. Senate as a Republican in 1859, and re-elected in 1865. His first speech, delivered on 30 January, 1860, was a reply to Senator Robert Toombs, who had accused Iowa of passing laws in violation of the rights of sister states, and after this he spoke frequently, and was known as a hard-working member of the Senate. In 1861 he was a delegate to the Peace Convention. He was a member of the committee on naval affairs from 24 January, 1861, till the end of his service, and was its chairman from December, 1864. He strongly advocated the building of iron-clads, and the abandonment of stone fortifications for harbor defence. Mr. Grimes was noted for his independence of character, which frequently brought him into conflict with his party associates in the Senate. Thus, although he favored a vigorous prosecution of the war, he considered President Lincoln's enlargement of the regular army in 1861 a dangerous precedent, and later he opposed a high protective tariff. In the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, Mr. Grimes was one of the few Republican Senators who voted "not guilty," and this act brought upon him a storm of condemnation which lasted but a short time, owing to the evident fact that his vote had been strictly in accordance with what he considered his duty. Mr. Grimes had a stroke of paralysis in 1869, and in April of that year went abroad, resigning his seat in the Senate on 6 December. He returned in September, 1871, apparently improved, but died soon afterward of heart disease. Mr. Grimes founded a professorship at Iowa College, at Grinnell, and gave money for scholarships there and at Dartmouth, receiving the degree of LL. D. from both colleges. He also established a free public library in Burlington, Iowa. Sec " Life of James W. Grimes," by William Salter (New York, 1876). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 767.
GRIMES, Leonard A., 1815?-1873, African American, clergyman, abolitionist. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 5, p. 234)
GRIMES, William W., 1824-1891, African American, clergyman, abolitionist. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 5, p. 238)
GRIMKÉ, Angelina Emily (Mrs. Theodore Weld), Society of Friends, Quaker, reformer, radical abolitionist leader, feminist, author, orator; wrote An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, 1836, member Anti-Slavery Society of New York. Sister of abolitionist leader Sarah Moore Grimké. Married to noted abolitionist Theodore Weld. (Barnes & Dumond, 1934; Ceplair, 1989; Drake, 1950, pp. 157-158, 173n; Dumond, 1961, pp. 90, 93, 185, 190-193, 195-196, 278-279; Lerner, 1967; Lumkin, 1974; Mabee, 1970, pp. 13, 28, 35, 36, 93, 129, 140, 188, 190, 191, 194, 213, 241, 266, 347, 348, 358, 376; Perry, 2001; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 44, 162, 173-174, 199, 289, 290, 308, 321-322, 416, 465, 511; Soderlund, 1985, p. 13; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 26-31, 36, 63, 70, 80, 97, 99, 100, 114, 122, 148; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 768; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 425; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 634; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 379-382; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 621; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 325; Barnes, Gilbert H., ed. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sara Grimké, 1822-1844, 2 Vols. 1934.)
GRIMKÉ, Charlotte Forten “Lottie,” 1837-1914, free African American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, women’s rights activist, writer, intellectual. She was a member of the prominent African American Forten family. They were active abolitionists and members of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee. Her mother and aunts were founding members and leaders of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Charlotte was a member of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society and was active early in the African American civil rights movement. She wrote anti-slavery poetry for the abolitionist movement. During the Civil War, she worked for the former slave community in the South Carolina Sea Islands, Port Royal Experiment. (Billington, 1953; Mabee, 1970, pp. 105, 161, 162, 308; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 289, 410, 416, 482; Stevenson, 1988; Yellin, 1994, pp. 69, 94, 98-99, 116, 116n, 164)
GRIMKÉ, John Faucheraud, jurist, born in South Carolina, 16 December, 1752; died in Long Branch, New Jersey, 9 August, 1819. He studied law in London, and was one of the Americans there who petitioned George III. against the measures that infringed on colonial rights. He returned home at the beginning of hostilities, and fought through the Revolution as lieutenant-colonel of artillery. He was elected a judge of the superior court in 1783, and in 1799 became senior associate, and thus virtually chief justice. He was also frequently a member of the legislature, speaker of the house in 1785-'6, and a member of the convention of 1788 that adopted the Federal constitution. Judge Grimké, during the latter part of his life, became involved in much litigation, which made him unpopular. Owing to this, and to some hasty action on his part, he was impeached before the legislature in 1811, but the charges were not sustained. Princeton gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1789. He published “Revised Edition of the Laws of South Carolina to 1789,” “Law of Executors for South Carolina,” “Probate Directory,” “Public Law of South Carolina” (Philadelphia, 1790), and “ Duty of Justices of the Peace” (3d ed., 1796). — His son, Thomas Smith, reformer, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 26 September, 1786; d. near Columbus, Ohio, 11 October, 1834, was graduated in 1807 at Yale, and during one of his vacations travelled with President Timothy Dwight. Abandoning his intention of studying for the ministry, he became a lawyer in deference to his father's wishes, and attained distinction at the bar and in politics. On 17 March, 1827, he advocated, in an address before the Bar Association of South Carolina, the codification of the laws of that state. He was a member of the state senate in 1826-'30, and in 1828 made a speech in support of the general government on the tariff question. One of his finest efforts was his argument on the South Carolina test-oath question in March, 1834. He was a pioneer in the temperance cause, standing at first almost alone in that work, and one of the most distinguished members of the American peace Society. He aided these and other reforms both pecuniarily and by his writings, and his public addresses in their favor won him much respect and sympathy. He advocated absolute non-resistance, holding that even defensive warfare is wicked, and his ideas met with much ridicule. When asked what he would do if he were mayor of Charleston, and a piratical vessel should attack the city, he is said to have replied that he would marshal the Sunday-school children in procession, and lead them to meet the invader. Though a fine classical scholar, he opposed both classics and mathematics as elements of an education, and urged the adoption of more extensive religious teaching. He was also one of the earliest advocates of reform in spelling, which he practically carried out in his later writings, making not only the changes advocated by Noah Webster, but others since advised by the Spelling-reform Association, though not generally adopted, such as the omission of final silent e. In October, 1834, he delivered an address on “American Education” before the Western literary Institute at Cincinnati, Ohio, and died suddenly while on his way home. He was much beloved, even by those who did not agree with his ideas. He published “Addresses on Science, Education, and Literature” (New Haven, 1831). See a “Eulogy” of him, by James H. Smith (Charleston, 1835). — Another son, Frederick, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 1 September, 1791; died in Chillicothe, Ohio, 8 March, 1863, was graduated at Yale in 1810, and moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1818. He was for some time presiding judge of the Ohio court of common pleas, and in 1836-'42 was a judge of the state supreme court, resigning, in the latter year, to devote his time to philosophical studies. He published an essay on “Ancient and Modern Literature” and a work on the “Nature and Tendencies of Free Institutions” (Cincinnati, 1848). His works, with his latest revisions, were published collectively after his death (1871). 767-768.
GRIMKÉ, Sarah Moore, 1792-1873, Society of Friends, Quaker, reformer, radical abolitionist, feminist, orator, author, women’s rights advocate, political activist. Wrote An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, 1836. Member of the Anti-Slavery Society of New York. Sister of abolitionist leader Angelina Emily Grimké. (Birney, 1885; Ceplair, 1989; Drake, 1950, pp. 157-158; Dumond, 1961, pp. 190, 275; Lerner, 1967; Mabee, 1970, pp. 47, 92, 129, 141, 194, 266, 342; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 44, 162, 199, 290, 308, 322-323, 362, 416, 433, 465, 519; Soderlund, 1985, p. 13; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 26-31, 36, 63, 70, 80, 97, 99, 100, 114, 122, 148; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 768; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 635; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 379-382; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 627; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 325; Barnes, Gilbert H., ed. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sara Grimké, 1822-1844, 2 Vols. 1934.)
GRIMKE, Sarah Moore, reformer, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 6 November, 1792; died in Hyde Park, New York, 23 December, 1873. After the death of her father, she and her sister Angelina, afterward Mrs. Theodore D. Weld (q. v.), having long been convinced of the evils of slavery, emancipated their Negroes and left their home. In her own account of the event, Miss Grimké says: “As I left my native state on account of slavery, deserted the home of my fathers to escape the sound of the driver's lash and the shrieks of the tortured victims, I would gladly bury in oblivion the recollections of those scenes with which I have been familiar. But it may not, cannot be; they come over my memory like gory spectres, and implore me with resistless power in the name of humanity, for the sake of the slave-holder as well as the slave, to bear witness to the horrors of the southern prison-house.” Miss Grimké went to Philadelphia in 1821, and became one of the most active members of the Anti-slavery Society, also advocating women's rights. She lectured in New England, and afterward made her home with the Weld family, teaching in their school, which was established in Belleville, New Jersey, in 1840. She published in 1827 an “Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States” — an effective anti-slavery document and afterward wrote “Letters on the Condition of Woman and the Equality of the Sexes” (Boston, 1838). She also translated Lamartine's “Joan of Arc” (1867). [Appleton’s 1900] pp,768.
GRINNELL, Josiah Bushnell, 1821-1891, New Haven, Vermont, abolitionist, Republican Party co-founder, theologian, lawyer. Founded First Congregational Church, Washington, DC, in 1851. Founded town of Grinnell, Iowa. Iowa State Senator, 1856-1860. Congressman 1863-1867. Supported radical abolitionist John Brown. Advocated for use of colored troops in the Union Army. As Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Mabee, 1970, p. 356; Payne, 1938; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 323-324; Schuchmann, 2003; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 1-2; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 4; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 634; Congressional Globe)
GRINNELL, Josiah Bushnell, congressman, born in New Haven, Vermont, 22 December, 1821. He was graduated at Oneida Institute in 1843 and at Auburn Theological Seminary in 1847, entered the ministry of the Presbyterian Church, and preached seven years in Union Village, New York, Washington, D. C., and New York City. He founded the Congregational Church at Grinnell, Iowa, in 1854, and preached there gratuitously for several years, but afterward retired from the ministry and became an extensive wool-grower. He was a member of the state senate in 1856-’60, special agent of the Post-Office Department in 1861-’3, and in 1863-’7 was a representative in congress, having been elected as a Republican. He was a special agent of the treasury department in 1868, and in 1884 was appointed commissioner of the U. S. Bureau of Animal Industries. When in the Iowa Senate Mr. Grinnell took an active part in the formation of the state free-school system, and was also the correspondent and confidant of John Brown, entertaining him and his company. “In my library,” says Mr. Grinnell in a recent letter, “secretly, in the gleam of bayonets, and near a miniature arsenal for the protection of a score of ex-slaves, he wrote a part of his Virginia proclamation.” Mr. Grinnell was active in aiding the escape of fugitive slaves, and at one time a reward was offered for his head. He has been connected with the building of six railroads, and has laid out five towns, including that of Grinnell, Iowa, which was named for him. He gave the proceeds of the sale of building-lots in that town to Grinnell University, now merged in Iowa College, and was for some time its president. He has published “Home of the Badgers” (Milwaukee, Wis., 1845); “Cattle Industries of the United States” (New York, 1884); and numerous pamphlets and addresses. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 1-2.
GRISWOLD, Alexander Viets, (Bishop), 1766-1843, Boston, Massachusetts, clergyman. Vice-President, American Colonization Society (ACS), 1840-41. (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 2; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 7; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)
GRISWOLD, John Augustus, 1818-1872, manufacturer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York. Mayor of Troy, NY, 1850. Raised regiment for Union Army. Supervised building of U.S.S. Monitor, the first ironclad Union Navy ship. Elected U.S. Congressman 1862, served 1863-1869. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. III, p. 3; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 4; Congressional Globe)
GRISWOLD, John Augustus, manufacturer, born in Nassau, Rensselaer County, New York, 11 November, 1818; died in Troy, New York. 31 October, 1872. He went to Troy in 1839, and was for a time an inmate of the family of his uncle, General Wool. He became interested in the Rensselaer Iron Company, in which he was afterward the principal partner. He was mayor of Troy in 1850, and was an active supporter of the National government during the Civil War, aiding in raising three regiments of infantry, as well as the "Black-Horse Cavalry," and the 21st New York, or "Griswold Light Cavalry." In 1861, in connection with C. S. Bushnell and John F. Winslow, he contracted to build Ericsson's "Monitor," and it was mainly due to him that the vessel was completed in the hundred days allowed by the government for her construction. The "Monitor" was built at great pecuniary risk, as her price, $275,000, was not to be paid till it had been practically shown that she could withstand the enemy's fire at the shortest ranges. Mr. Griswold was elected to congress in 1862 as a war Democrat, but subsequently joined the Republicans, and was re-elected by them, serving altogether from 1863 till 1869. He was an efficient member of the committee on naval affairs, and effectively defended the policy of the government in the construction of monitors when it was attacked in the house. He also aided in building the monitor " Dictator." In 1868 he was the Republican candidate for governor of New York, but was defeated, though his party claimed that he received a majority of the votes actually cast. Mr. Griswold did much to advance the prosperity of Troy, and contributed liberally to its charities. He was a trustee of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1800. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 3.
GRISWOLD, Whiting, 1814-1874, lawyer, politician, abolitionist. Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate.
GROESBECK, William Slocomb, lawyer, born in New York City, 24 July, 1815. He received an academic education, studied law, practised in Cincinnati, and was in 1851 a member of the State Constitutional Convention. In 1852 he was a member of the commission to codify the laws of Ohio. He was in congress from 7 December, 1857, till 3 March. 1859, serving on the committee on foreign affairs, was a member of the Peace Congress in 1861, and in 1862 a member of the Ohio State Senate. He was elected a delegate to the National Union Convention held in Philadelphia in 1866, and was one of the counsel for President Johnson in the impeachment trial of 1868. Mr. Groesbeck was nominated for the presidency in 1872 by a convention of Liberal Republicans who were dissatisfied with Horace Greeley, but the ticket was entirely forgotten during the excitement of the canvass, although Mr. Groesbeck received a single electoral vote for the vice-presidency. He was appointed in 1878 U. S. delegate to the International Monetary Congress held in Paris. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 4.
GROSE, William, soldier, born in Dayton, Ohio, 16 December, 1812. Both of his grandfathers served in the Revolution, and his father was a soldier in the war of 1812. The son received a common-school education. He was a presidential elector on the Pierce ticket, and an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for congress in 1852, but joined the Republican Party on its formation and was elected to the legislature in 1856. He was chosen a judge of the court of common pleas in 1860, but resigned in August, 1861, and recruited the 36th Indiana Infantry, of which he became colonel. At Shiloh his regiment was the only part of Buell's army that joined in the first day's fight, and after the engagement he commanded a brigade. He was with the Army of the Cumberland in all its important battles, served through the Atlanta Campaign, and, at the request of Generals Sherman and Thomas, was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers, receiving notice of his appointment while under fire in front of Atlanta. He was at Franklin and Nashville, and after the close of hostilities was president of a court-martial in Nashville till January, 1866. He was collector of internal revenue in 1866-'74, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for congress in 1878, and one of a commission to build three state hospitals for the insane, in 1884-'6. In 1887 he was again a member of the Indiana Legislature. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 5.
GROSS, William Hickley, archbishop, born in Baltimore, Maryland, 12 June, 1837. After studying in St. Charles College, he entered the novitiate of the Redemptorist Order in 1857, and was ordained priest in 1863. After attending wounded soldiers in the hospitals about Annapolis, and preaching to the Negroes, he was assigned to missionary duty in various places, but was attached to St. Alphonsus's Church in New York City for five years, and then became superior at the church of his order in Boston. He was consecrated bishop of Savannah on 27 April, 1873, and in 1884 he became archbishop of Oregon. Bishop Gross has done much for the education of the freedmen. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 6.
GROSVENOR, Cyrus Pitt, Reverend, 1792-1879, Salem, Massachusetts, clergyman, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery agent, anti-slavery Baptist minister, educator. President of New York Central College. Lectured on anti-slavery. Founding member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society (NEASS), 1832. American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) Vice President, 1834-1835, Manager, 1839-1840, 1840-1841. Member of the Liberty Party. Leader of the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Co-founded the abolitionist Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America and the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 188, 285, 393n24; Sinha, 2016, pp. 246, 256, 455-456, 472; Putnam, 1893, p. 14, “Friend of Man,” October 6, 1836, May 10, 1837; First Annual Report of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, 1832)
GROVER, Olivier, soldier, born in Bethel, Maine, 24 July, 1829; died in Atlantic City, New Jersey, 6 June, 1885. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1850, entered the 1st Artillery, and served on frontier duty till 1853, and on the Northern Pacific Railroad exploration from 14 April, 1853, till 17 July, 1854. He was promoted to 1st lieutenant, 3 March, 1855, and captain of the 10th U.S. Infantry, 17 September, 1858, and served at various western stations. He became brigadier-general of volunteers, 14 April, 1862, and was transferred to the Army of the Potomac, where he took part in many battles. He was brevetted lieutenant-colonel on 5 May for services at the battle of Williamsburg, Virginia, and on 31 May, colonel, for gallantry at Fair Oaks. At the second battle of Bull Run his brigade fought under General Hooker, and distinguished itself by a bayonet charge. Being transferred to the Department of the Gulf, he took command of a division of the 19th Corps from 30 December, 1802, till July, 1864, was in command of the right wing of the army besieging Port Hudson, Louisiana., in May, 1863, was promoted major, 31 August, 1863, and commanded a division in the Shenandoah Campaign from August to December, 1864. He was wounded at the battle of Cedar Creek on 19 October, 1864, and brevetted major-general of volunteers the same day for gallantry at Winchester and Fisher's Hill. On 13 March following he was also brevetted brigadier-general, U. S. Army, and major-general, U. S. Army. He was mustered out of the volunteer service, 24 August, 1865, and again returned to frontier duty until 7 November, 1866, when he was transferred to Jefferson barracks, Missouri, until 6 February, 1867. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel of the 38th U.S. Infantry, 28 July, 1866, assigned to the 3d U.S. Cavalry in 1870, and made colonel of the 1st U.S. Cavalry, 2 December, 1875, which rank he held during the remainder of his life. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 6.
GROW, Galusha Aaron, statesman, born in Ashford (now Eastford), Windham County, Connecticut, 31 August, 1824. When ten years old he moved to Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where he attended a district-school and pursued a preparatory course in Franklin academy, Harford. He was graduated at Amherst in 1844, studied law in Montrose, and was admitted to the bar of Susquehanna County, 19 April, 1847. He soon afterward settled in Towanda, and became a partner of David Wilmot. He practised law until the spring of 1850, when feeble health compelled him to seek out-door pursuits, and he engaged in farming, surveying, and gathering hemlock bark for tanneries. In the fall of 1850 he received and declined a unanimous nomination to the legislature, tendered by the Democratic Party. A few weeks later, David Wilmot, Free-Soil, and James Lowrey, Pro-slavery, candidates of the Democratic Party for congress, withdrew from the contest on an agreement that the two branches of the party should unite upon Mr. Grow as a candidate. The conventions reassembled, placed Mr. Grow in nomination, and, after an exciting campaign of one week, he was elected over John C. Adams, Whig. He took his seat in congress in December, 1851, being its youngest member, and continued to represent the “Wilmot District” for twelve successive years, although he had severed his connection with the Democratic Party on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. His period of service was distinguished by the legislation on the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas troubles, and the Homestead and Pacific Railroad Bills, as well as the election of Speaker Banks and the presidential campaigns of Fremont and Lincoln. He rendered important services on the committees on Indian affairs, agriculture, and territories, being a member of the latter six years and its chairman four. His first speech was delivered upon the homestead bill, a measure which he continued to urge at every congress for ten years, when he had at last the satisfaction of signing the law as speaker. At the convening of the first or extra session of the 37th congress, 4 July, 1861, he was elected speaker, and held the position until 4 March, 1863, when, on retiring, he received a unanimous vote of thanks, the first vote of the kind given to any speaker in many years. He was a delegate to the National Republican Conventions of 1864 and 1868, and chairman of the Pennsylvania State committee during the latter campaign. In 1857 he was a victim of the National hotel poisoning. He spent the summer of 1870 in California, Oregon, and British Columbia, and in 1871 he settled in Houston, Texas, as president of the International and Great Northern Railroad of Texas, remaining there until 1875, when he returned to Pennsylvania and took an active part in the state election of that year and the presidential campaign of 1876. In the autumn of 1876 he declined the mission to Russia. Appleton’s 1892 pp. 6-7
GRUBER, Reverend Jacob, clergyman. Preached against slavery; called it a sin. Gave sermon in Washington County, Maryland, on August 16, 1818. He was indicted on grounds of sedition. He was defended by attorney Rodger B. Tanney (later Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court). He was defended on the principle of free speech. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 142-147; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 35, 472)
GUEST, John, naval officer, born in Missouri in 1821; died in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 12 January, 1879. He entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman in 1837, and in 1843 became passed midshipman, and was attached to the steamer " Poinsett" in the survey of Tampa bay in 1844-'5. In 1850 he was made lieutenant, and in 1866 captain. He served in 1845-'8 on the frigate "Congress" in the Pacific, on the coast of Mexico during the Mexican War, and took part on shore in several sharp engagements. In 1854 he was second in command of the seamen and marines of the U. S. steamer " Plymouth," boarded at Shanghai a Chinese man-of-war and liberated a pilot-boat crew, and was also in a severe and victorious fight with the Chinese rebels, who endeavored to plunder the foreign residents of the city In April of the same year. He was in command of the boats of the " Niagara," and cut out the Confederate steamer "Aid," under the guns of Fort Morgan, in August, 1861. Captain Guest commanded the " Owasco," of Admiral Porter's mortar flotilla, in the bombardment and passage of Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, and commanded the same vessel at the bombardment of Vicksburg in the summer of the same year, receiving the highest praise from his superiors. He commanded the iron-clad "Lehigh " and the steamer " Itasca " at both of the Fort Fisher engagements. He was promoted to commodore in 1873, and at the time of his death was commandant of the Portsmouth U.S. Navy-yard. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 11.
GURLEY, Ralph Randolph, 1797-1872, Washington, DC, clergyman, co-founder of Liberia. Secretary, American Colonization Society (ACS), 1833-41, Executive Committee, 1839-41. Agent for the ACS. Served as administrator (Secretary), keeping records and writing the Annual Report. (Burin, 2005, pp. 16, 23-24, 64, 100; Campbell, 1971, pp. 9, 10, 48, 49, 53, 97, 112, 113, 138, 174; Dumond, 1961, pp. 172, 199-200; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 163; Sorin, 1971, p. 30; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 13-14; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 2, p. 56; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 731; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 35, 76, 78-79, 94-103, 119-135, 171, 197-198, 202-204, 207-209, 213-214, 222-223, 237-239, 242, 307-308)
GURLEY, Ralph Randolph, clergyman, born in Lebanon, Connecticut, 26 May, 1797; died in Washington, D. C., 30 July, 1872. He was graduated at Yale in 1818, moved to Washington, D. C., and was licensed to preach as a Presbyterian, but was never ordained. From 1822 till 1872 he acted as the agent and secretary of the American Colonization Society, visited Africa three times in its interests, and was one of the founders of Liberia. He also went to England to solicit aid in the work of colonization. During the first ten years of his agency the annual income of the society increased from $778 to $40,000. He delivered addresses in its behalf in all parts of the country, edited “The African Repository,” and, besides many reports, wrote the “Life of Jehudi Ashmun” (New York, 1839); “Mission to England for the American Colonization Society” (1841); and “Life and Eloquence of Reverend Sylvester Larned” (New York, 1844). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 13-14.
GURNEY, William, soldier, born in Flushing, New York, 21 August, 1821; died in New York City, 3 February, 1879. At the beginning of the Civil War he was engaged in business in New York City. In April, 1861, he entered the National service with the 7th Regiment, of which he was a member, for the three months' term. At its conclusion he accepted a commission as captain in the 65th New York, known as the " Fighting Chasseurs," and served in that capacity through the early campaigns of the war. In 1862 he was appointed assistant inspector-general and examining officer on Governor Morgan's staff. In July of that year he received authority to raise a regiment, and in thirty days he had recruited the 127th New York, at the head of which he returned to the field, joining the 23d Army Corps. In the following October he was assigned to the command of the 2d brigade of General Abercrombie's division. In 1864 he was ordered with his brigade to join General Gilmore's command on the South Carolina Coast, and in December, having been severely wounded in the arm in an engagement at Devoe's Neck, was sent north for treatment. Before he had been completely restored to health he was assigned to the command of the Charleston post, and while there was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers for gallantry in action. After he was mustered out of the service in July, 1865, he returned to Charleston and established himself in business. In October, 1870, he became treasurer of Charleston County, and held the office until 1876. He was a presidential elector in 1873, and in 1874 was appointed a centennial commissioner by President Grant, and elected a vice-president of the commission. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 14
GUTHRIE, John Julius, naval officer, born in Washington, N. C., in 1814; died at sea, near Cape Hatteras, in November, 1877. He became a midshipman in 1834, passed midshipman in 1838, and lieutenant in 1842. He served in the Mexican War and in the attack on the barrier forts in Canton River, China, in November, 1856, where he displayed gallantry. He pulled down the Chinese flag, which he presented to North Carolina as a trophy, and received the thanks of the legislature. In 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, he resigned his commission and entered the Confederate service. He was on active duty in New Orleans, and also commanded the "Advance," running the blockade between Wilmington and the Bermuda’s. At the close of the war he moved to Portsmouth, Virginia, and in 1865 was the first officer of the regular service who had joined the Confederates to be pardoned by the President. His disabilities were moved by a unanimous vote of congress. He was appointed in 1870 superintendent of the lifesaving stations from Cape Henry to Cape Hatteras, and was drowned while endeavoring to succor the passengers and crew of the U. S. steamship " Huron" in a storm off Cape Hatteras. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 15
GWIN, William, naval officer, born in Columbus, Bartholomew County, Indiana, 5 December, 1832; on the Yazoo River, Mississippi, 3 January, 1863. He entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, 7 April, 1847, and was promoted until he was commissioned lieutenant, 16 September, 1855, and lieutenant-commander, 16 July, 1862. At the beginning of the Civil War he was assigned to the "Cambridge," doing blockading duty on the Atlantic Coast. He was ordered in October, 1861, to the brig "Commodore Perry," and in January, 1862, to the command of the gunboat "Tyler," of the Western Flotilla, in which he participated in the attacks on Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. He also took part in the battle of Shiloh, and distinguished himself in the expedition up the Yazoo River in company with the "Carondelet," to meet the Confederate ram " Arkansas." After the accidental explosion on the "Mound City" at St. Charles, on White River, by which her commander, Captain Kelly, was badly scalded, Lieutenant-Commodore Gwin took charge of the vessel, which he retained until he was transferred to the "Benton," the largest and most powerful of the river fleet. While in command of the latter vessel, and during the attack on Haines's Bluff, on the Yazoo River, he was mortally wounded. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 19
GWIN, William McKendree, senator, born in Sumner County, Tennessee, 9 October, 1805; died in New York City, 3 September, 1885. His father, the Reverend James Gwin, was a pioneer Methodist minister, and also served as a soldier on the frontier under General Andrew Jackson. After receiving a classical education, the son studied law in Gallatin, Tennessee, but abandoned it for medicine, and took his medical degree in 1828 at Transylvania University. He then moved to Clinton, Mississippi, and obtained an extensive practice, but in 1833 left the profession, and was appointed by President Jackson U. S. Marshal for the District of Mississippi. In 1840 he was elected to congress as a Democrat, and became an adherent of John C. Calhoun. Declining a renomination for congress on account of financial embarrassment, he was appointed, on the accession of James K. Polk to the presidency, to superintend the building of the new custom-house at New Orleans. On the election of General Taylor he resigned and set out for California, where he arrived 4 June, 1849. His attention had first been called to that country by Mr. Calhoun, who, when Secretary of State, had laid his finger on the map where San Francisco now stands, saying, "There, when this bay comes into our possession, will spring up the great rival of New York." Dr. Gwin took an active part in favor of the formation of a state government, and was elected to the convention that was held in Monterey in September to frame a constitution. In the ensuing December, he was elected U. S. Senator for the long term, with General Fremont as his colleague. His labors in the Senate were incessant, and his success was remarkable. He maintained amicable relations with all parties, and his hospitable mansion became a neutral ground, where the leaders of rival factions met on social terms. On his return to California, in 1851, the legislature tendered him the thanks of the state for his services. In the following session he was a member of the finance committee and chairman of that on naval affairs. He secured the establishment of a mint in California, the survey of the Pacific Coast, a U.S. Navy-yard and station, with large appropriations, and carried through the Senate a bill providing for a line of steamers between San Francisco, China, and Japan, by way of the Sandwich Islands. He was re-elected, and served till 3 March, 1861. At the beginning of the Civil War he was arrested on accusation of disloyalty and imprisoned till 1863, when he went to Paris, where he became interested in a scheme to colonize Sonora with southerners. Dr. Gwin was invited to meet the emperor in private audiences, and interested him in the project. It is said that, on the invitation of the minister of foreign affairs, he drew up a plan for the colony, which was approved by Napoleon, and then submitted to Maximilian. The latter, who was at that time in Paris, requested Dr. Gwin's attendance at the Tuileries. and, after full inquiry, signified his approbation. Within two weeks after the departure of Maximilian for Mexico, Dr. Gwin also left for that country, bearing an autograph letter from the emperor to Marshal Bazaine. The latter gave no encouragement to the colonization plan, nor did Dr. Gwin succeed in securing from Maximilian any satisfactory assurances of support. He returned to France in January, 1865, and in an audience with the emperor frankly exposed the condition of affairs in Mexico. Napoleon urged his immediate return to Mexico, with a peremptory order to Marshal Bazaine to supply the troops necessary to the full accomplishment of his scheme. This advice was taken, but Dr. Gwin still met with no success, and, demanding an escort to take him out of the country, which was promptly furnished, returned to his home in California. He continued to take an active part in politics, and engaged with energy in the canvass for the presidency in 1876 in the interest of Samuel J. Tilden. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 19-20.
