COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 101 finding on that account. " The Mountain of the Holy Cross," " The Groves Were God's First Temples," " The Cliffs of Green River," " The Children of the Mountain," " The Ripening of the Leaf," and others have given him additional fame, and while they do not equal in grandeur the first mentioned, in many respects from an artistic standpoint they are superior. LELAND STANFORD was one of the greatest men of the Pacific coast and also .had a national reputation. He was born March 9, 1824, in Albany county, New York, and passed his early life on his father's farm. He attended the local schools of the county and at the age of twenty began the study of law. He entered the law office of Wheaton, Doolittle and Hadley, at Albany, in 1845, and a few years later he moved to Port Washington, Wisconsin, where he practiced law four years with moderate success. In 1852 Mr. Stanford determined to push further west, and, accordingly went' to California, where three of his brothers were established in business in the mining towns. They took Leland into partnership, giving him charge of a branch store at Michigan Bluff, in Placer county. There he developed great business ability and four years later started a mercantile house of his own in San Francisco, which soon became one of the most substantial houses on the coast. On the formation of the Republican party he interested himself in politics, and in 1860 was sent as a delegate to the convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln. In the autumn of 1861 he was elected, by an immense majority, governor of California. Prior to his election as governor he had been chosen president of the newly-organized Central Pacific Railroad Company, and after leaving the executive chair he devoted all of his time to the construction of the Pacific end of the transcontinental railway. May 10, 1869, Mr. Stanford drove the last spike of the Central Pacific road, thus completing the route across the continent. He was also president of the Occidental and Oriental Steamship Company. He had but one son, who died of typhoid fever, and as a monument to his child he founded the university which bears his son's name, Leland Stanford, Junior, University. Mr. Stanford gave to this university eighty-three thousand acres of land, the estimated value of which is $8,000,000, and the entire endowment is $20,000,000. In 1885 Mr. Stanford was elected United States senator as a Republican, to succeed J. T. Farley, a. Democrat, and was re-elected in 1891. His death occurred June 20, 1894, at Palo Alto,. California. STEPHEN DECATUR, a famous commodore in the United. States navy, was born in Maryland in 1779 . He entered the-naval service in 1798. In 1804, when the. American vessel Philadelphia had been run aground and captured in the harbor of Tripoli, Decatur, at the head of a few men, boarded her and burned her in the face of the guns from the city defenses. For this. daring deed he was made captain. He was given command of the frigate United States at the breaking out of the war of 1812, and in October of that year he captured the British frigate Macedonian, and was rewarded with a gold medal by congress. After the close of the war he was sent as commander of a fleet of ten vessels to chastise the dey of Algiers, who was preying upon. American commerce with impunity and demanding tribute and ransom for the release of American citizens captured. Decatur 102 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. captured a number of Algerian vessels, and compelled the dey to sue for peace. He was noted. for his daring and intrepidity, and his coolness in the face of danger, and helped to bring the United States navy into favor with the people and congress as a means of defense and offense in time of war. He was killed in a duel by Commodore Barron, March 12, 1820. JAMES KNOX POLK, the eleventh president of the United States, 1845 to 1849, was born November 2, 1795, in Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, and was the eldest child of a family of six sons. He removed with his father to the Valley of the Duck River, in Tennessee, in 1806. He attended the common schools and became very proficient in the lower branches of education, and supplemented this with a course in the Murfreesboro Academy, which he entered in 1813 and in the autumn of 1815 he became a student in the sophomore class of the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, and was graduated in 1818. He then spent a short time in recuperating his health and then proceeded to Nashville, Tennessee, where he took up the study of law in the office of Felix Grundy. After the completion of his law studies he was admitted to the bar and removed to Columbia, Maury county, Tennessee, and started in the active practice of his profession. Mr. Polk was a Jeffersonian " Republican" and in 1823 he was elected to the legislature of Tennessee. He was a strict constructionist and did not believe that the general government had the power to carry on internal improvements in the states, but deemed it important that it should have that power, and wanted the constitution amended to that effect. But later on he became alarmed lest the general government might become strong enough to abolish . slavery and therefore gave his whole support to the " State's Rights" movement, and endeavored to check the centralization of power in the general government. Mr. Polk was chosen a member of congress in 1825, and held that office until 1839. He then withdrew, as he was the successful gubernatorial candidate of his state. He had become a man of great influence in the house, and, as the leader of the Jackson party in that body, weilded great influence in the election of General Jackson to the presidency. He sustained the president in all his measures and still remained in the house after General Jackson had been succeeded by Martin Van Buren. He was speaker of the house during five sessions of congress. He was elected governor of Tennessee by a large majority and took the oath of office at Nashville, October 4, 1839. He was a candidate for re-election but was defeated by Governor Jones, the Whig candidate. In 1844 the most prominent question in the election was the annexation of Texas, and as Mr. .Polk was the avowed champion of this cause he was nominated for president by the pro-slavery wing of the democratic party, was elected by a large majority, and was inaugurated March 4, 1845. President Polk formed a very able cabinet, consisting of James Buchanan, Robert J. Walker, William L. Marcy, George Bancroft, Cave Johnson, and John Y. Mason. The dispute regarding the Oregon boundary was settled during his term of office and a new department was added to the list of cabinet positions, that of the-Interior. The low tariff bill of 1846 was carried and the financial system of the country was reorganized. It was also during President Polk's term that the Mexican war was successfully conducted, which resulted in the acquisition of Califor- COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 103 nia and New Mexico. Mr. Polk retired from the presidency March 4, 1849, after having declined a re-nomination, and was succeeded by General Zachary Taylor, the hero of the Mexican war. Mr. Polk retired to private life, to his home in Nashville, where he died at the age of fifty-four on June 9, 1849. ANNA DICKINSON (Anna Elizabeth Dickinson), a noted lecturer and public speaker, was born at Philadelphia, October 28, 1842. Her parents were Quakers, and she was educated at the Friends' free schools in her native city. She early manifested an inclination toward elocution and public speaking, and when, at the age of 18, she found an opportunity to appear before a national assemblage for the discussion of woman's rights, she at once established her reputation as a public speaker. From 1860 to the close of the war and during the exciting period of reconstruction, she was one of the most noted and influential speakers before the American public, and her popularity was unequaled by that of any of her sex. A few weeks after the defeat and death of Colonel Baker at Ball's Bluff, Anna Dickinson, lecturing in New York, made the remarkable assertion, " Not the incompetency of Colonel Baker, but the treachery of General McClellan caused the disaster at Ball's Bluff." She was hissed and hooted off the stage. A year later, at the same hall and with much the same class of auditors, she repeated the identical words, and the applause was so great and so long continued that it was impossible to go on with her lecture for more than half an hour. The change of sentiment had been wrought by the reverses and dismissal of McClellan and his ambition to succeed Mr. Lincoln as president. Ten years after the close of the war, Anna Dickinson was not heard of on the lecture platform, and about that time he made an attempt to enter the dramatic profession,. but after appearing a number of times in different plays she was pronounced a failure. ROBERT J. BURDETTE.—Some personal characteristics of Mr. Burdette were quaintly given by himself in the following words: "Politics ? Republican after the strictest sect. Religion ? Baptist. Personal appearance ? Below medium height, and weigh one hundred and thirty-five pounds, no shillings and no pence. Rich ? Not enough to own a yacht. Favorite reading? Poetry and history—know Longfellow by heart, almost. Write for magizines ?. Have more declined with thanks' letters than would fill a trunk. Never able to get into a magazine with a line. Care about it?. Mad as thunder. Think about starting a. magazine and rejecting everbody's articles. except my own." Mr. Burdette was born. at Greensborough, Pennsylvania, in 1844. He served through the war of the rebellion under General Banks " on an excursion ticket " as he felicitously described it, "good both ways, conquering in one ,direction and running in the other, pay going on just the same." He entered into journalism by the gateway of New York correspondence for the "Peoria Transcript," and in 1874 went on the " Burlington Hawkeye " of which he became the managing 'editor, and the work that he did on this paper made both himself and the paper famous in the world of humor. Mr. Burdette married in 1870, and his wife, whom he called " Her Little Serene Highness," was to him a guiding light until the day of her death, and it was probably the unconscious pathos with which he described her in his work that broke the: barriers that had kept him out of the maga- 104 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY'. zines and secured him the acceptance of his " Confessions " by Lippincott some years ago, and brought him substantial fame and recognition in the literary world. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, one of the leading novelists of the present century and author of a number of works that gained for him a place in the hearts of the people, was born March 1, 1837, at .Martinsville, Belmont county, Ohio. At the age of three years he accompanied his father, who was a printer, to Hamilton, Ohio, where he learned the printer's trade. Later he was engaged on the editorial staff of the Cincinnati Gazette " and the " Ohio State Journal." During 1861-65 he was the United States consul at Venice, and from 1871 to 1878 he was the editor-inchief of the. "Atlantic Monthly." As a writer he became one of the most fertile and readable of authors and a pleasing poet. In 1885 he became connected with " Harper's Magazine." Mr. Howells was author of the list of books that we give below: " Venetian Life," " Italian Journeys," " No Love Lost," " Suburban Sketches," " Their Wedding Journey," "A Chance Acquaintance," "A Foregone Conclusion," " Dr. Breen's Practice," "A Modern Instance," " The Rise of Silas Lapham," " Tuscan Cities," " Indian Summer," besides many others. He also wrote the " Poem of Two Friends," with J. J. Platt in 1860, and some minor dramas: " The Drawing Room Car," " The Sleeping Car," etc., that are full of exqusite humor and elegant dialogue. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL was a son of the Rev. Charles Lowell, and was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 22, 1819. He graduated at Harvard College in 1838 as class poet, and went to Harvard Law School, from which he was graduated in 1840, and commenced the practice of his profession in Boston, but soon gave his undivided attention to literary labors. Mr. Lowell printed, in 1841, a small volume of poems entitled " A Year's Life," edited with Robert Carter; in 1843, " The Pioneer," a literary and critical magazine (monthly), and in 1848 another book of poems, that contained several directed against slavery. He published in 1844 a volume of "Poems and in 1845 " Conversations on Some of the Old Poets," " The Vision of Sir Launfal," " A Fable for Critics," and "The Bigelow Papers," the latter satirical essays in dialect poetry directed against slavery and the war with Mexico. In 1851-52 he traveled in Europe and resided in Italy for a considerable time, and delivered in 1854-55 a course of lectures on the British poets, before the Lowell Institute, Boston. Mr. Lowell succeeded Longfellow in January, 1855, as professor of modern languages and literature at Harvard College, and spent another year in Europe qualifying himself for that post. He edited the " Atlantic Monthly " from 1857 to 1862, and the " North American Review " from 1863 until 1872. From 1864 to 1870 he published the following works: " Fireside Travels," " Under the Willows," " The Commemoration Ode," in honor of the alumni of Harvard who had fallen in the Civil war; "The Cathedral," two volumes of essays; " Among My Books" and " My Study Windows," and in 1867 he published a new series of the " Bigelow Papers." He traveled extensively in Europe in 1872-74, and received in person the degree of D. C. L. at Oxford and that of LL. D. at the University of Cambridge, England. He was also interested in political life and held COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 105 many important offices. He was United States minister to Spain in 1877 and was also minister to England in 1880-85. On January 2, 1884, he was elected lord rector of St. Andrew University in Glasgow, Scotland, but soon after he resigned the same. Mr. Lowell's works enjoy great popularity in the United States and England. He died August 12, 1891. JOSEPH HENRY, one of America's greatest scientists, was born at Albany, New York, December 17, 1797. He was educated in the common schools of the city and graduated from the Albany Academy, where he became a professor of mathematics in 1826. In 1827 he commenced a course of investigation, which he continued for a number of years, and the results produced had great effect on the scientific world. The first success was achieved by producing the electric magnet, and he next proved the possibility of exciting magnetic energy at a distance, and it was the invention of Professor Henry's intensity magnet that first made the invention of electric telegraph a possibility. He made a statement regarding the practicability of applying the intensity magnet to telegraphic uses, in his article to the "American Journal of Science " in 1831. During the same year he produced the first mechanical contrivance ever invented for maintaining continuous motion by means of electro-magnetism, and he also contrived a machine by which signals could be made at a distance by the use of his electro-magnet, the signals being produced by a lever striking on a bell. Some of his electro-magnets were of great power, one carried over a ton and another not less than three thousand six hundred pounds. In 1832 he discovered that secondary currents could be produced in a long conductor by the induction of the primary current upon itself, and also in the same year he produced a spark by means of a purely magnetic induction. Professor Henry was elected, in 1832, professor of natural philosophy in the College of New Jersey, and in his earliest lectures at Princeton, demonstrated the feasibility of the electric telegraph. He visited Europe in 1837, and while there he had an interview with Professor Wheatstone, the inventor of the needle magnetic telegraph. In 1846 he was elected secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, being the first incumbent in that office, which he held until his death. Professor Henry was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1849, and of the National Academy of Sciences. He was made chairman of the lighthouse board of the United States in 1871 and held that position up to the time of his death. He received the honorary degree of doctor of laws from Union College in 1829, and from Harvard University in 1851, and his death occurred May 13, 1878. Among his numerous works may be mentioned the following: "Contributions to Electricity and Magnetism," " American Philosophic Trans," and many articles in the "American Journal of Science," the journal of the Franklin Institute; the proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in the annual reports of the Smithsonian Institution from ifs foundation. FRANKLIN BUCHANAN, the famous rear-admiral of the Confederate navy during the rebellion, was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He became a United States midshipman in 1815 and was promoted through the various grades of the service and became a captain in 1855. Mr. Buchanan resigned his captaincy in order to join 106 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. the Confederate service in 1861 and later he asked to be reinstated, but his request was refused and he then entered into the service of the Confederate government. He was placed in command of the frigate "Merrimac " after she had been fitted up as an iron-clad, and had command of her at the time of the battle of Hampton Roads. It was he who had command when the " Merrimac" sunk the two wooden frigates, " Congress " and " Cumberland," and was also in command during part of the historical battle of the " Merrimac" and the " Monitor," where he was wounded and the com-mand devolved upon Lieutenant Catesby. Jones. He was created rear-admiral in the Confederate service and commanded tire Confederate fleet in Mobile bay, which was defeated by Admiral Farragut, August 5, 1864. Mr. Buchanan was in command of the "Tennessee," an ironclad, and during the engagement he lost one of his legs and was taken prisoner in the end by the Union fleet. After the war he settled in Talbot county, Maryland, where he died May 1, 1874. RICHARD PARKS BLAND, a celebrated American statesman, frequently called "the father of the house," because of his many years of service in the lower house of congress, was born August 19, 1835, near Hartford, Kentucky, where he received a plain academic education. He moved, in 1855, to Missouri, from whence he went overland to California, afterward locating in Virginia City, now in the state of Nevada, but then part of the territory of Utah. While there he practiced law, dabbled in mines and mining in Nevada and California for several years, and served for a time as treasurer of Carson county, Nevada. Mr. Bland returned to Missouri in 1865, -where he engaged in the practice of law at Rolla, Missouri, and in 1869 removed to Lebanon, Missouri. He began his congressional career in 1873, when he was elected as a Demo-crat to the forty-third congress, and he was regularly re-elected to every congress after that time up to the fifty-fourth, when he was defeated for re-election, but was returned to the fifty-fifth congress as a Silver Democrat. During all his protracted service, while Mr. Bland was always steadfast in his support of democratic measures, yet he won his special renown as the great advocate of silver, being strongly in favor of the free and unlimited coinage of silver, and on account of his pronounced views was one of the candidates for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party at Chicago in 1896. FANNY DAVENPORT (F. L. G. Davenport) was of British birth, but she belongs to the American stage. She was the daughter of the famous actor, E. L. Davenport, and was born in London in 1850. She first went on the stage as a child at the Howard Athenæum, Boston, and her entire life was spent upon the stage. She played children's parts at Burton's old theater in Chambers street, and then, in 1862, appeared as the King of Spain in " Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady." Here she attracted the notice of Augustin Daly, the noted manager, then at the Fifth Avenue theater, who offered her a six weeks' engagement with her father in "London Assurance." She afterwards appeared at the same house in a variety of characters, and her versatility was favorably noticed by the critics. After the burning of the old. Fifth Avenue, the present theater of that name was built at Twenty-eighth street, and here Miss Davenport appeared in a. play written for her by COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 107 Mr. Daly. She scored a great success. She then starred in this play throughout the country, and was married to Mr. Edwin F. Price, an actor of her company, in 1880. In 1882 she went to Paris and purchased the right to produce in America Sardou's great emotional play, "Fedora." It was put on at the Fourteenth Street theater in New York, and in it she won popular favor and became one of the most famous actresses of her time. HORACE BRIGHAM CLAFLIN, one of the greatest merchants America has produced, was born in Milford, Massachusetts, a son of John Claflin, also a merchant. Young Claflin started his active life as a clerk in his father's store, after having been offered the opportunity of a college education, but with the characteristic promptness that was one of his virtues he exclaimed, " No law or medicine for me." He had set his heart on being a merchant, and when his father retired he and his brother Aaron, and his brother-in-law, Samuel Daniels, conducted the business. Mr. Claflin was not content, however, to run a store in a town like Milford, and accordingly opened a dry goods store at Worcester, with his brother as a partner, but the partnership was dissolved a year later and H. B. Claflin assumed complete control. The business in Worcester had been conducted on orthodox principles, and when Mr. Claflin came there and introduced advertising as a means of drawing trade, he created considerable animosity among the older merchants. Ten years later he was one of the most prosperous merchants. He disposed of his business in Worcester for $30,000, and went to New York to search for a wider field than that of a shopkeeper. Mr. Claflin and William M. Bulkley started in the dry goods business there under the firm name of Bulkley & Claflin, in 1843, and Mr. Bulkley was connected with the firm until 1851, when he retired. A new firm was then formed under the name of Claflin, Mellin & Co. This firm succeeded in founding the largest dry goods house in the world, and after weathering the dangers of the civil war, during which the house came very near going under, and was saved only by the superior business abilities of Mr. Claflin, continued to grow. The sales of the firm amounted to over $72,000,000 a year after the close of the war. Mr. Claflin died November 14, 1885. CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN (Charlotte Saunders Cushman), one of the most celebrated American actresses, was born in. Boston, July 23, 1816. She was descended from one of the earliest Puritan families.. Her first attempt at stage work was at the age of fourteen years in a charitable concert given by amateurs in Boston. From this time her advance to the first place on the American lyric stage was steady, until, in 1835, while singing in New Orleans, she suddenly lost control of her voice so far as relates to singing, and was compelled to retire. She then took up the study for the dramatic stage under the direction of Mr. Barton, the tragedian. She soon after made her debut as " Lady Macbeth." She appeared in New York in September, 1836, and her success was immediate. Her " Romeo " was almost perfect, and she is the only woman that has ever appeared in the part of " Cardinal Wolsey." She at different times acted as support of Forrest and Macready. Her London engagement, secured in 1845, after many and great discouragements, proved an unqualified success. 108 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY Her farewell appearance was at Booth's theater, New York, November 7, 1874, in the part of "Lady Macbeth," and after that performance an Ode by R. H. Stoddard was read, and a body of citizens went upon the stage, and in their name the venerable poet Longfellow presented her with a wreath of laurel with an inscription to the effect that " she who merits the palm should bear it." From the time of her appearance as a modest girl in a charitable entertainment down to the time of final triumph as a tragic queen, she bore herself with as much honor to womanhood as to the profession she rep-. resented. Her death occurred in Boston, February 18, 1876. By her profession she acquired a fortune of $600,000. NEAL DOW, one of the most prominent temperance reformers our country has known, was born in Portland, Me., March 20, 1804. He received his education in the Friends Seminary, at New Bedford, Massachusetts, his parents being members of that sect. After leaving school he pursued a mecrantile and manufacturing career for a number of years. He was active in the affairs of his native city, and in 1839 became chief of the fire department, and in 1851 was elected mayor. He was re-elected to the latter office in 1854. Being opposed to the liquor traffic he was a champion of the project of prohibition, first brought forward in 1839 by James Appleton. While serving his first term as mayor he drafted a bill for the " suppression of drinking houses and tippling shops," which he took to the legislature and which was passed without an alteration. In 1858 Mr. Dow was elected to the legislature. On the outbreak of the Civil war he was appointed colonel of the Thirteenth Maine Infantry and accompanied General Butler's expedition to New Orleans. In 1862 he was made brigadier-general. At the battle of Port Hudson May 27, 1863, he was twice wounded, and taken prisoner. He was confined at Libby prison and Mobile nearly a year, when, being exchanged, he resigned, his health having given way under the 'rigors 0f his captivity. He made several trips to England in the interests of temperance organization, where he addressed large audiences. He was the candidate of the National Prohibition party for the presidency in 1880, receiving about ten thousand votes. In 1884 he was largely instrumental in the amendment of the constitution of Maine, adopted by an overwhelming popular vote, which forever forbade the manufacture or sale of any intoxicating beverages, a. nd commanding the legislature to enforce the prohibition. He died October 2, 1897. ZACHARY TAYLOR, twelfth president of the United States, was born in Orange county, Virginia, September 24, 1784. His boyhood was spent 0n his father's plantation and his education was limited. In 1808 he was made lieutenant of the Seventh Infantry, and joined his regiment at New Orleans. He was promoted to captain in 1810, and commanded at Fort Harrison, near the present site of Terre Haute, in 1812, where, for his gallant defense, he was brevetted major, attaining full rank in 1814. In 1815 he retired to an estate near Louisville. In 1816 he re-entered the army as major, and was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and then to colonel. Having for many years been Indian agent over a large portion of the western country, he was often required in Washington to give advice and counsel in matters connected with the Indian bureau. He served through the Black Hawk Indian war of 1832, and in 1837 was ordered to the command of the COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 109 army in Florida, where he attacked the Indians in the swamps and brakes, defeated them and ended the war. He was brevetted brigadier-general and made commander-inchief of the army in Florida. He was assigned to the command of the army of the southwest in 1840, but was soon after relieved of it at his request. He was then stationed at posts in Arkansas. In 1845 he was ordered to prepare to protect and defend Texas boundaries from invasion by Mexicans and Indians. On the annexation of Texas he proceeded with one thousand five hundred men to Corpus Christi, within the disputed territory. After reinforcement he was ordered by the Mexican General Ampudia to retire beyond the Nueces river, with which order he declined to comply. The battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma followed, and he crossed the Rio Grande and occupied Matamoras May 18th. He was commissioned major-general for this campaign, and in September he advanced upon the city of Monterey and captured it after a hard fight. Here he took up winter quarters, and when he was about to resume activity in the spring he was ordered to send the larger part of his army to reinforce General Scott at Vera Cruz. After leaving garrisons at various points his army was re- duced to about five thousand, mostly fresh recruits. He was attacked by the army of Santa Anna at Buena Vista, February 22, 1847, and after a severe fight completely routed the Mexicans. He received the thanks of congress and a gold medal for this victory. He remained in command of the " army of occupation " until winter, when he returned to the United States. In 1848 General Taylor was nominated by the Whigs for president. He was elected over his two opponents, Cass and Van Buren. Great bitterness was developing in the struggle for and against the extension of slavery, and the newly acquired territory in the west, and the fact that the states were now equally divided on that question, tended to increase the feeling. President Taylor favored immediate admission of California with her constitution prohibiting slavery, and the admission of other states to be formed out of the new territory as they might elect as they adopted constitutions from time to time. This policy resulted in the " Omnibus Bill," which afterward passed congress, though in separate bills; not, how- ever, until after the death of the soldier- statesman, which occurred July 9, 1850. One of his daughters became the wife of Jefferson Davis. MELVILLE D. LANDON, better known as " Eli Perkins, " author, lecturer and humorist, was born 'in Eaton, New York, September 7, 1839. He was the son of John Landon and grandson of Rufus Landon, a revolutionary soldier from Litchfield county, Connecticut. Melville was educated at the district school and neighboring academy, where he was prepared for the sophomore class at Madison University. He passed two years at the latter, when he was admitted to Union College, and graduated in the class of 1861, receiving the degree of A. M., in 1862. He was, at once, appointed to a position in the treasury department at Washington. This being about the time of the breaking out of the war, and before the appearance of any Union troops at the capital, he assisted in the organization of the " Clay 'Battalion," of Washington. Leaving his clerkship some time later, he took up duties on the staff of General A. L. Chetlain, who was in command at Memphis. In 1864 he resigned from the army and engaged in cotton planting in Arkansas 110 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY and Louisiana. In 1867 he went abroad, making the tour of Europe, traversing Russia. While in the latter country his old commander of the " Clay Battalion," General Cassius M. Clay, then United States minister at St. Petersburg, made him secretary of legation. In 1871, on returning to America, he published a history of the Franco–Prussian war, and followed it with numerous humorous writings for the public press under the name of " Eli Perkins," which, with his regular contributions to the " Commercial Advertiser," brought him into notice, and spread his reputation as a humorist throughout the country. He also published "Saratoga in 1891," " Wit, Humor and Pathos," " Wit and Humor of the Age," Kings of Platform and Pulpit," " Thirty Years of Wit and Humor," " Fun and Fact," and " China and Japan." LEWIS CASS, one of the most prominent statesman and party leaders of his day, was born at Exeter, New Hampshire, October 9, 1782. He studied law, and having removed to Zanesville, Ohio, commenced the practice of that profession in 1802. He entered the service of the American government in 1812 and was made a colonel in the army under General William Hull, and on the surrender of Fort Malden by that officer was held as a prisoner. Being released in 1813, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general and in 1814 appointed governor of Michigan Territory. After he had held that office for some sixteen years, negotiating, in the meantime, many treaties with the Indians, General Cass was made secretary of war in the cabinet of President Jackson, in 1831. He was, in 1836, appointed minister to France, which office he held for six years. In 1844 he as elected United States senator from Michigan. In 1846 General Cass opposed the Wilmot Proviso, which was an amendment to a bill for the purchase of land from Mexico, which provided that in any of the territory acquired from that power slavery should not exist. For this and other reasons he was nominated as Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States in 1848, but was defeated by General Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate, having but one hundred and thirty-seven electoral votes to his opponent's one hundred and sixty-three. In 1849 General Cass was re-elected to the senate of the United States, and in 1854 supported Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska bill. He became secretary of state in March, 1857, under President Buchanan, but resigned that office in December, 186o. He died June 17, 1866. The published works of Lewis Cass, while not numerous, are well written and display much ability. He was one of the foremost men of his day in the political councils of the Democratic party, and left a reputation for high probity and honor behind him. DE WITT CLINTON.—Probably there were but few men who were so popular in their time, or who have had so much influence in moulding events as the individual whose name honors the head of this article. De Witt Clinton was the son of General James Clinton, and a nephew of Governor George Clinton, who was the fourth vice-president of the United States. He was a native of Orange county, New York, born at Little Britain, March 2, 1769. He graduated from Columbia College, in his native state, in 1796, and took up the study of law. In 1790 he became private secretary to his uncle, then governor of New York. He entered public life as a Republican or anti-Federalist, and was elected to the lower COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 111 house of the state assembly in 1797, and the senate of that body in 1798. At that time he was looked on as " the most rising man in the Union." In 1801 he was elected to the United States senate. In 1803 he was appointed by the governor and council mayor of the city of New York, then a very important and powerful office. Having been re-appointed, he held the office of mayor for nearly eleven years, and rendered great service to that city. Mr. Clinton served as lieutenant-governor of the state of New York,. 1811-13, and was one of the commissioners appointed to examine and survey a route for a canal from the Hudson river to Lake Erie. Differing with President Madison, in relation to the war, in 1812, he was nominated for the presidency against that gentleman, by a coalition party called the Clintonians, many of whom were Federalists. Clinton received eight-nine electoral votes. His course at this time impaired his popularity for a time. He was removed from the mayoralty in 1814, and retired to private life. In 1815 he wrote a powerful argument for the construction of the Erie canal, then a great and beneficent work of which he was the principal promoter. This was in the shape of a memorial to the legislature, which, in 1817, passed a bill authorizing the construction of that canal. The same year he was elected governor of New York, almost unanimously, notwithstanding the opposition of a few who pronounced the scheme of the canal visionary. He was re-elected governor in 1820. He was at this time, also, president of the canal commissioners. He declined a re-election to the gubernatorial chair in 1822 and was removed from his place on the canal board two years later. But he was triumphantly elected to the office of governor that fall, and his pet project, the Erie canal, was finished the next year. He was re-elected governor in 1826, but died while holding that office, February 11, 1828. AARON BURR, one of the many brilliant figures on the political stage in the early days of America, was born at Newark, New Jersey, February 6, 1756. He was the son of Aaron and Esther Burr, the former the president of the College of New Jersey, and the latter a daughter of Jonathan Edwards, who had been president of the same educational institution. Young Burr graduated at Princeton in 1772. In 1775 he joined the provincial army at Cambridge, Massachusetts. For a time, he served as a private soldier, but later was made an aide on the staff of the unfortunate General Montgomery, in the Quebec expedition. Subsequently he was on the staffs of Arnold, Put•. nam and Washington, the latter of whom he disliked. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and commanded a brigade on Monmouth's bloody field. In 1779, on account of feeble health, Colonel Burr resigned from. the army. He took up the practice of law in Albany, New York, but subsequently removed to New York City. In 1789 he became attorney-general of that state. In 1791 he was chosen to represent the state of New York in the United States senate and held that position for six years. In 1800 he and Thomas Jefferson were both candidates for the presidency, and there being a tie in the electoral college, each having seventy-three votes, the choice was left to congress, who gave the first place to Jefferson and made Aaron Burr vice-presi. dent, as the method then was. In 1804 Mr. Burr and his great rival, Alexander Hamilton, met in a duel, which resulted in the death of the latter, Burr losing thereby con- 112 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY siderable political and social influence. He soon embarked in a wild attempt upon Mexico, and as was asserted, upon the southwestern territories of the United States. He was tried for treason at Richmond, Virginia, in 1807, but acquitted, and to avoid importunate creditors, fled to Europe. After a time, in 1812, he returned to New York, where he practiced law, and where he died, September 14, 1836. A man of great ability, brilliant and popular talents, his influence was destroyed by his unscrupulous political actions and immoral private life. ALBERT GALLATIN, one of the most distinguished statesmen of the early days of the republic, was born at Geneva, Switzerland, January 29, 1761. He was the son of Jean de Gallatin and Sophia A. Rolaz du Rosey Gallatin, representatives of an old patrician family. Albert Gallatin was left an orphan at an early age, and was educated under the care of friends of his parents. He graduated from the University of Geneva in 1779, and declining employment under one of the .sovereigns of Germany, came to the struggling colonies, landing in Boston July 14, 1780. Shortly after his arrival he proceeded to Maine, where he served as a volunteer under Colonel Allen. He made advances to the government for the support of the American troops, and in November, 1780, was placed in command of a small fort at Passamaquoddy, defended by a force of militia, volunteers and Indians. In 1783 he was professor of the French language at Harvard University. A year later, having received his patrimony from Europe, he purchased large tracts of land in western Virginia, but was prevented by the Indians from forming the large settlement he proposed, and, in 1786, purchased a farm in Fayette county, Pennsylvania. In 1789 he was a member of the convention to amend the constitution of that state, and united himself with the Republican party, the head of which was Thomas Jefferson. The following year he was elected to the legislature of Pennsylvania, to which he was subsequently re-elected. In 1793 he was elected to the United States senate, but could not take his seat on account of not having been a citizen long enough. In 1794 Mr. Gallatin was elected to the representative branch of congress, in which he served three terms. He als0 took an important position in the suppression of the " whiskey insurrection." In 1801, on the accession of Jefferson to the presidency, Mr. Gallatin was appointed secretary of the treasury. In 1809 Mr. Madison offered him the position of secretary of state, but he declined, and continued at the head of the treasury until 1812, a period of twelve years. He exercised a great influence on the other departments and in the general administration, especially in the matter of financial reform, and recommended measures for taxation, etc., which were passed by congress, and became laws May 24, 1813. The same year he was sent as an envoy extraordinary to Russia, which had offered to mediate between this country and Great Britain, but the latter country refusing the interposition of another power, and agreeing to treat directly with the United States, in 1814, at Ghent, Mr. Gallatin, in connection with his distinguished colleagues, negotiated and signed the treaty of peace. In 1815, in conjunction with Messrs. Adams and Clay, he signed, at London, a commercial treaty between the two countries. In 1816, declining his old post at the head of the treasury, Mr. Gallatin was sent as minister to France, where he remained until 1823. COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 113 After a year spent in England as envoy extraordinary, he took up his residence in New York, and from that time held no public office. In 1830 he was chosen president of the council of the University of New York. He was, in 1831, made president of the National bank, which position he resigned in 1839. He died August 12, 1849. MILLARD FILLMORE, the thirteenth president of the United States, was born of New England parentage in Summer Hill, Cayuga county, New York, January 7, 1800. His school education was very limited, but he occupied his leisure hours in study. He worked in youth upon his father's farm in his native county, and at the age of fifteen was apprenticed to a wool carder and cloth dresser. Four years later he was induced by Judge Wood to enter his office at Montville, New York, and take up the study of law. This warm friend, finding young Fillmore destitute of means, loaned him money, but the latter, not wishing to incur a heavy debt, taught school during part of the time and in this and other ways helped maintain himself. In 1822 he removed to Buffalo, New York, and the year following, being admitted to the bar, he commenced the practice of his profession at East Aurora, in the same state. Here he remained until 1830, having, in the meantime, been admitted to practice in the supreme court, when he returned to Buffalo, where he became the partner of S. G. Haven and N. K. Hall. He entered politics and served in the state legislature from 1829 to 1832. He was in congress in 183335 and in 1837-41, where he proved an active and useful member, favoring the views of John Quincy Adams, then battling almost alone the slave-holding party in national politics, and in most of public questions acted with the Whig party. While chairman of the committee of ways and means he took a leading part in draughting the tariff bill of 1842. In 1844 Mr. Fillmore was the Whig candidate for governor of New York. In 1847 he was chosen comptroller of the state, and abandoning his practice and profession removed to Albany. In 1848 he was elected vice president on the ticket with General Zachary Taylor, and they were inaugurated the following March. On the death of the president, July 9, 1850, Mr. Fillmore was inducted into that office. The great events of his administration were the passage of the famous compromise acts of 1850, and the sending out of the Japan expedition of 1852. March 4, 1853, having served one term, President Fillmore retired from office, and in 1855 went to Europe, where he received marked attention. On -returning home, in 1856, he was nominated for the presidency by the Native American or " Know-Nothing" party, but was defeated, James Buchanan being the successful candidate. Mr. Fillmore ever afterward lived in retirement. During the conflict of Civil war he was mostly silent. It was generally supposed, however, that his sympathy was with the southern confederacy. He kept aloof from the conflict without any words of cheer to the one party or the other. For this reason he was forgotten by both. He died of paralysis, in Buffalo; New York, March 8, 1874. PETER F. ROTHERMEL, one of America's greatest and best-known historical painters, was born in Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, July 8, 18r7, and was of German ancestry. He received his earlier education in his native county, and in Philadelphia 114 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY learned the profession of land surveying. But a strong bias toward art .drew him away and he soon opened a studio where he did portrait painting. This soon gave place to historical painting, he having discovered the bent of his genius in that direction. Besides the two pictures in the Capitol at Washington—"De Soto Discovering the Mississippi" and " Patrick Henry Before the Virginia House of Burgesses"—Rothermel painted many others, chief among which are: "Columbus Before Queen Isabella," " Martyrs of the Colosseum," " Cromwell Breaking Up Service in an English Church," and the famous picture of the " Battle of Gettysburg." The last named was painted for the state of Pennsylvania, for which Rothermel received the sum of $25,000, and which it took him four years to plan and to paint. It represents the portion of that historic field held by the First corps, an exclusively Pennsylvania body of men, and was selected by Rothermel for that reason. For many years most of his time was spent in Italy, only returning for short periods. He died at Philadelphia, August 16, 1895. EDMUND KIRBY SMITH, one of the distinguished leaders upon the side of the south in the late Civil war, was born at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1824. After receiving the usual education he was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated in 1845 and entered the army as second lieutenant of infantry. During the Mexican war he was made first lieutenant and captain for gallant conduct at Cerro Gordo and Contreras. From 1849 to 1852 he was assistant professor of mathematics at West Point. He was transferred to the Second cavalry with the rank of captain in 1855, served on the frontier, and was wounded in a fight with Comanche Indians in Texas, May 13, 1859. In January, 1861, he became major of his regiment, but resigned April 9th to follow the fortunes of the southern cause. He was appointed brigadier-general in the Confederate army and served in Virginia. At the battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, he arrived on the field late in the day, but was soon disabled by a wound. He was made major-general in 1862, and being transferred to East Tennessee, was given command of that department. Under General Braxton Bragg he led the advance in the invasion of Kentucky and defeated the Union forces at Richmond, Kentucky, August 30, 1862, and advanced to Frankfort. Promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, he was engaged at the battle of Perryville, October 10, and in the battle of Murfreesboro, December 31, 1862, and January 3, 1863. He was soon made general, the highest rank in the service, and in command of the trans-Mississippi department opposed General N. P. Batiks in the famous Red River expedition, taking part in the battle of Jenkins Ferry, April 30, 1864, and other engagements of that eventful campaign. He was the last to surrender the forces under his command, which he did May 26, 1865. After the close of the war he located in Tennessee, where he died March 28, 1893. JOHN JAMES INGALLS, a famous American statesman, was born December 29, 1833, at Middleton, Massachusetts, where he was reared and received his early education. He went to Kansas in 1858 and joined the free-soil army, and a year after his arrival he was a member of the historical Wyandotte convention, which drafted a free-state constitution. In 1860 he was COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 115 made secretary of the territorial council, and in 1861 was secretary of the state senate. The next year he was duly elected to the legitimate state senate from Atchison, where he had made his home. From that time he was the leader of the radical Republican element in the state. He became the editor of the " Atchison Champion " in 1863, which was a " red-hot free-soil Republican organ." In 1862 he was the anti-Lane candidate for lieutenant-governor, but was defeated. He was elected to the United States senate to succeed Senator Pomeroy, and took his seat in the forty-third congress and served until the fiftieth. In the forty-ninth congress he succeeded Senator Sherman as president pro tern., which position he held through the fiftieth congress. BENJAMIN WEST, the greatest of the early American painters, was of English descent and Quaker parentage. He was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, in 1738. From what source he inherited his genius it is hard to imagine, since the tenets and tendencies of the Quaker faith were not calculated to encourage the genius of art, but at the age of nine years, with no suggestion except that of inspiration, we find him choosing his model from life, and laboring over his first work calculated to attract public notice. It was a representation of a sleeping child in its cradle. The brush with which he painted it was made of hairs which he plucked from the cat's tail, and the colors were obtained from the war paints of friendly Indians, his mother's indigo bag, and ground chalk and charcoal, and the juice of berries; but there were touches in the rude production that he declared in later days were a credit to his best works. The picture attracted notice, for a council was called at once to pass upon the boy's conduct in thus infringing the laws of the society. There were judges among them who saw in his genius a rare gift and their wisdom prevailed, and the child was given permission to follow his inclination. He studied under a painter named Williams, and then spent some years as a portrait painter with advancing success. At the age of twenty-two he went to Italy, and not until he had perfected himself by twenty-three years, of labor in that paradise of art was he satisfied to turn his face toward home. However, he stopped at London, and decided to settle there, sending to America for his intended. bride to join him. Though the Revolution ary war was raging, King George III showed the American artist the highest consideration and regard. His remuneration from works for royalty amounted to five thousand dollars per year for thirty years. West's best known work in America is, perhaps, " The Death of General Wolf." West was one of the thirty-six original members of the Royal academy and succeeded Joshua Reynolds as president, which posi- tion he held until his death. His early works were his best, as he ceased to display originality in his later life, conventionality having seriously affected his eff0rts. He died in 1820. SAMUEL PORTER JONES, the famous Georgia evangelist, was born October 16, 1847, in Chambers county, Alabama. He did not attend school regularly during his boyhood, but worked on a farm, and went to school at intervals, on account of ill health. His father removed to Cartersville, Georgia, when Mr. Jones was a small boy. He quit school at the age of nineteen and never attended college. The war inter. fered with his education, which was intended 116 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. to prepare him for the legal profession. After the war he renewed his preparation for college, but was compelled to desist from such a course, as his health failed him entirely. Later on, however, he still pursued his legal studies and was admitted to the bar. Soon after this event he went to Dallas, Paulding county, Georgia, where he was engaged in the practice of his profession, and in a few months removed to Cherokee county, Alabama, where he taught school. In 1869 he returned to Cartersville, Georgia, and arrived in time to see his father die. Immediately after this event he applied for a license to preach, and went to Atlanta, Georgia, to the meeting of the North Georgia Conference of the M. E. church south, which received him on trial. He became an evangelist of great note, and traveled extensively, delivering his sermons in an inimitable style that made him very popular with the masses, his methods of conducting revivals being unique and original and his preaching practical and incisive. SHELBY MOORE CULLOM, a national character in political affairs and for many years United States senator from Illinois, was born November 22, 1829, at Monticello, Kentucky. He came with his parents to Illinois in 1830 and spent his early years on a farm, but having formed the purpose of devoting himself to the lawyer's profession he spent two years study at the Rock River seminary at Mount Morris, Illinois. In 1853 Mr. Cullom entered the law office of Stuart and Edwards at Springfield, Illinois, and two years later he began the independent practice of law in that city. He took an active interest in politics and was soon elected city attorney of Springfield. In 1856 he was elected a member of the Illinois house of representatives. He identified himself with the newly formed Republican party and in 1860 was re-elected to the legislature of his state, in which he was chosen speaker of the house. In 1862 President Lincoln appointed a commission to pass upon and examine the accounts of the United States quartermasters and disbursing officers, composed as follows: Shelby M. Cullom, of Illinois; Charles A. Dana, of New York, and Gov. Boutwell, of Massachusetts. Mr. Cullom was nominated for congress in. 1864, and was elected by a majority of 1,785. In the house of representatives he. became an active and aggressive member, was chairman of the committee on territories and served in congress until 1868. Mr. Cullom was returned to the state legislature, of which he was chosen speaker in 1872, and was re-elected in 1874. In 1876 he was elected governor of Illinois and at the end of his term he was chosen for a second term. He was elected United States senator in 1883 and twice re-elected. RICHARD JORDAN GATLING, an. American inventor of much note, was born in Hertford county, North Carolina, September 12, 1818. At an early age he. gave promise 0f an inventive genius. The first emanation from his mind was the invention of a screw for the propulsion of water craft, but on application for a patent, found that he was forestalled but a short time by John Ericsson. Subsequently he invented a machine for sowing wheat in drills, which was used to a great extent throughout the west. He then studied medicine, and in 1847-8 attended lectures at the Indiana Medical College at Laporte, and in 1848-9 at the Ohio Medical College at Cincinnati. He later discovered a method of transmitting power through the medium of compressed air. A COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 119 double-acting hemp break was also invented by him. The invention, however, by which Dr. Gatling became best known was the famous machine gun which bears his name. This he brought to light in 1861-62, and on the first trial of it, in the spring of the latter year, two hundred shots per minute were fired from it. After making some improvements which increased its efficiency, it was submitted to severe trials by our government at the arsenals at Frankfort, Washington and Fortress Monroe, and at other points. The gun was finally adopted by our government, as well as by that of Great Britain, Russia and others. BENJAMIN RYAN TILLMAN, who won a national fame in politics, was born August 11, 1847, in Edgefield county, South Carolina. He received his education in the Oldfield school, where he acquired the rudiments of Latin and Greek, in addition to a good English education. He left school in 1864 to join the Confederate army, but was prevented from doing so by a severe illness, which resulted in the loss of an eye. In 1867 he removed to Florida, but returned in 1868, when he was married and devoted himself to farming. He was chairman of the Democratic organization of his county, but except a few occasional services he took no active part in politics then. Gradually, however, his attention was directed to the depressed condition of the farming interests of his state, and in August, 1885, before a joint meeting of the agricultural society and state grange at Bennettsville, he made a speech in which he set forth the cause of agricultural depression and urged measures of relief. From his active interest in the farming class he was styled the "Agricultural Moses." He advocated an industrial school for women and for a separate agricultural college, and in 1887 he secured a modification in the final draft of the will of. Thomas G. Clemson, which resulted in the erection of the Clemson Agricultural College at Fort Hill. In 1890 he was chosen governor on the Democratic ticket, and. carried the election by a large majority. Governor Tillman was inaugurated December 4, 1890. Mr. Tillman was next elected to the United States senate from South. Carolina, and gained a national reputation by his fervid oratory. GEORGE DENISON PRENTICE. No journalist of America was so celebrated in his time for the wit, spice, and vigor of his writing, as the gentleman whose name heads this sketch. From Atlantic to Pacific he was well known by his witticism as well as by strength and force of his editorials. He was a native of Preston, Connecticut, born December 18, 1802. After laying the foundation of a liberal education in his youth, he entered Brown University, from which he was graduated in 1823. Taking up the study of law, he was admitted to the bar in 1829. During part of his time he was editor of the " New England Weekly Review," a position which he relinquished to go south and was succeeded by John Greenleaf Whittier, the Quaker poet. On arriving in Louisville, whither he had gone to gather items for his history of Henry Clay, Mr. Prentice became identified with the " Louisville Journal," which, under his hands, became one of the leading Whig newspapers of the country. At the head of this he remained until the day of his death. This latter event occurred January 22, 1870, and he was succeeded in the control of the " Journal " by Colonel Henry Watterson. Mr. Prentice was an author of considerable celebrity, chief among his works being: 120 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. " The Life of Henry Clay," and " Prenticeana," a collection of wit and humor, that passed through several large editions. SAM. HOUSTON, in the opinion of some critics one of the most remarkable men who ever figured in American history, was a native of Rockbridge county, Virginia, born March 2, 1793. Early in life he was left in destitute circumstances by the death of his father, and, with his mother, removed to Tennessee, then almost a boundless wilderness. He received but little education, spending the most of his time among the Cherokee Indians. Part of the time of his residence there Houston acted as clerk for a trader and also taught one of the primitive schools of the day, In 1813 he enlisted as private in the United States army and was engaged under General Jackson in the war with the Creek Indians. When peace was made Houston was a lieutenant, but he resigned his commission and commenced the study of law at Nashville. After holding some minor offices he was elected member of congress from Tennessee. This was in 1823. He retained this office until 1827, when he was chosen governor of the state. In 1829, resigning that office before the expiration of his term, Sam Houston removed to Arkansas, and made his home among the Cherokees, becoming the agent of that tribe and representing their interests at Washington. On a visit to Texas, just prior to the election of delegates to a convention called for the purpose of drawing up a constitution previous to the admission of the state into the Mexican union, he was unanimously chosen a delegate. The convention framed the constitution, but, it being rejected by the government of Mexico, and the petition for admission to the Confederacy denied and the Texans told by the president of the Mexican union to give up their arms, bred trouble. It was determined to resist this demand. A military force was soon organized, with General Houst0n at the head of it. War was prosecuted with great vigor, and with varying success, but at the battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836, the Mexicans were defeated and their leader and president, Santa Anna, captured. Texas was then proclaimed an independent republic, and in October of the same year Houston was inaugurated president. On the admission of Texas to the Federal 'Union, in 1845, Houston was elected senator, and held that position for twelve years. Opposing the idea of secession, he retired from political life in 1861, and died at Huntsville, Texas, July 25, 1863. ELI WHITNEY, the inventor of the cotton-gin, was born in Westborough, Massachusetts, December 8, 1765. After his graduation from Yale College, he went to Georgia, where he studied law, and lived with the family of the widow of General Nathaniel Greene. At that time the only way known to separate the cotton seed from the fiber was by hand, making it extremely slow and expensive, and for this reason cotton was little cultivated in this country. Mrs. Greene urged the inventive Whitney to devise some means for accomplishing this work by machinery. This he finally succeeded in doing, but he was harassed by attempts to defraud him by those who had stolen his ideas. He at last formed a partnership with a man named Miller, and they began the manufacture of the machines at Washington, Georgia] in 1795. The success of his invention was immediate, and the legislature of South Carolina voted the Bum of $50,000 for his idea. This sum he had great difficulty in collecting, after, years of COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 121 litigation and delay. North Carolina allowed him a royalty, and the same was agreed to by Tennessee, but was never paid. While his fame rests upon the invention of the cotton-gin, his fortune came from his improvements in the manufacture and construction of firearms. In 1798 the United States government gave him a contract for this purpose, and he accumulated a fortune from it. The town of Whitneyville, Connecticut, was founded by this fortune. Whitney died at New Haven, Connecticut, January 8, 1825. The cotton-gin made the cultivation of cotton profitable, and this led to rapid introduction of slavery in the south. His invention thus affected our national history in a manner little dreamed of by the inventor. LESTER WALLACK ( John Lester Wallack), for many years the leading light comedian upon the American stage, was the son of James W. Wallack, the Brummull of the Stage." Both father and son were noted for their. comeliness of feature and form. Lester Wallack was born in New York, January 1, 1819. He received his education in England, and made his first appearance on the stage in 1848 at the New Broadway theater, New York. He acted light comedy parts, and also occasionally in romantic plays like Monte Cristo, which play made him his fame. He went to England and played under management of such men as Hamblin and Burton, and then returned to New York with his father, who opened the first Wallack's theater, at the corner of Broome and Broadway, in 1852. The location was afterward changed to Thirteenth and Broadway, in 1861, and later to its present location, Broadway and Thirteenth, in 1882. The elder Wallack died in 1864, after which Lester assumed management, jointly with Theodore .Moss. Lester Wallack was commissioned in the queen's service while in England, and there he also married a sister to the famous artist, the late John Everett Millais. While. Lester Wallack never played in the interior cities, his name was as familiar to the public as that of our greatest stars. He died September 6, 1888, at Stamford, Connecticut. GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN, the palace car magnate, inventor, multi-millionaire and manufacturer, may well be classed among the remarkable self-made men of the century. He was born March 3, 1831, in Chautauqua county, New York. His parents were poor, and his education was limited to what he could learn of the rudimentary branches in the district school. At the age of fourteen he went to work as clerk for a country merchant. He kept this place three years, studying at night. When seventeen he went to Albion, New York, and worked for his brother, who kept a cabinet shop there. Five years later he went into business for himself as contractor for Moving buildings along the line of the Erie canal, which was then being widened by the state, and was successful in this. In 1858 he removed to Chicago and engaged in the business of moving and raising houses. The work was novel there then and lie was quite successful. About this time the discomfort attendant on traveling at night attracted his attention. He reasoned that the public would gladly pay for comfortable sleeping accom- modations. A few sleeping cars were in use at that time, But they were wretchedly crude, uncomfortable affairs. In 1859 he bought two old day coaches from the Chicago & Alton road and remodeled them some thing like the general plan of the sleeping- 122 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. cars of the present day. They were put into service on the Chicago & Alton and became popular at once. In 1863 he built the first sleeping-car resembling the Pullman cars of to-day. It cost $18,000 and was the " Pioneer." After that the Pullman Palace Car Company prospered. It had shops at different cities. In 1880 the Town of Pullman was founded by Mr. Pullman and his company, and this model manufacturing community is known all over the world. Mr. Pullman died October 19, 1897. JAMES E. B. STUART, the most famous cavalry leader of the Southern Confederacy during the Civil war, was born in Patrick county, Virginia, in 1833. On graduating from the United States Military Academy, West Point, in 1854, he was assigned, as second lieutenant, to a regiment of mounted rifles, receiving his commission in October. In March, 1855, he was transferred to the newly organized First cavalry, and was promoted to first lieutenant the following December, and to captain April 22, 1861. Taking the side of the south, May 14, 1861, he was made colonel of a Virginia cavalry regiment, and served as such at Bull Run. In September, 1861, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, and major-general early in 1862. On the reorganization of the Army of Northern Virginia, in June of the latter year, when R. E. Lee assumed command, General Stuart made a reconnaissance with one thousand five hundred cavalry and four guns, and in two days made the circuit of McClellan's army, producing much confusion and gathering useful information, and losing but one man. August 25, 1862, he captured part of Pope's headquarters' train, including that general's private baggage and official correspondence, and the next night, in a descent upon Manasses, capturing immense quantities of commissary and quartermaster store, eight guns, a number of locomotives and a few hundred prisoners. During the invasion of Maryland, in September, 1862, General Stuart acted as rear guard, resisting the advance of the Federal cavalry at South Mountain, and at Antietam commanded the Confederate left. Shortly after he crossed the Potomac, making a raid as far as Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. In the battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862, General Stuart's command was on the extreme right of the Confederate line. At Chancellorsville, after "Stonewall " Jackson's death and the wounding of Gereral A. P. Hill, General Stuart assumed command of Jackson's corps, which he led in the severe contest of May 3, 1863. Early in June, the same year, a large force of cavalry was gathered under Stuart, at Culpepper, Virginia, which, advancing to join General Lee in his invasion of Pennsylvania, was met at Brandy Station, by two divisions of cavalry and two brigades of infantry, under General John I. Gregg, and driven back. During the movements of the Gettysburg campaign he rendered important services. In May, 1864, General Stuart succeeded, by a detour, in placing himself between Richmond and Sheridan's advancing column, and at Yellow Tavern was attacked in force. During the fierce conflict that ensued General Stuart was mortally wounded, and died at Rich-mond, May 1, 1864. FRANKLIN PIERCE, the fourteenth president of the United States—from 1853 until 1857—was born November 23, 1804, at Hillsboro, New Hampshire. He came of old revolutionary stock and his father was a governor of the state. Mr. Pierce entered Bowdoin College in 182o, COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 123 was graduated in 1824, and took up the study of law in the office of Judge Woodbury, and later he was admitted to the bar. Mr. Pierce practiced his profession with varying successes in his native town and also in Concord. He was elected to the state legislature in 1833 and served in that body until 1837, the last two years of his term serving as speaker of the house. He was elected to the United States senate in 1837, just as President Van Buren began his term of office. Mr. Pierce served until 1842, and many times during Polk's term he declined important public offices. During the war with Mexico Mr. Pierce was appointed brigadier-general, and he embarked with a portion of his troops at Newport, Rhode Island, May 27, 1847, and went with them to the field of battle. He served through the war and distinguished himself by his skill, bravery and excellent judgment. When he reached his home in his native state he was received coldly by the opponents of the war, but the advocates of the war made up for his cold reception by the enthusiastic welcome which they accorded him. Mr. Pierce resumed the practice of his profession, and in the political strife that followed he gave his support to the pro-slavery wing of the Democratic party. The Democratic convention met in Baltimore, June 12, 1852, to nominate a candidate for the presidency, and they continued in session four days, and in thirty-'five ballotings no one had secured the requisite two-thirds vote. Mr. Pierce had not received a vote as yet, until the Virginia delegation brought his name forward, and finally On the forty-ninth ballot Mr. Pierce received 282 votes and all the other candidates eleven. His opponent on the Whig ticket was General Winfield Scott, who only received the electoral votes of four states. Mr. Pierce was inaugurated president of the United States March 4, 1853, with W. R. King as vice president, and the following named gentlemen were afterward chosen to fill the positions in the cabinet: William S. Marcy, James Guthrie, Jefferson Davis, James C. Dobbin, Robert McClelland, James Campbell and Caleb Cushing. During the administration of President Pierce the Missouri compromise law was repealed, and all the territories of the Union were thrown open to slavery, and the disturbances in Kansas 0ccurred. In 1857 he was succeeded in the presidency by James Buchanan, and retired to his home in Concord, New Hampshire. He always cherished his principles of slavery, and at the outbreak of the rebellion he was an adherent of the cause of the Confederacy. He died at Concord, New Hampshire, October 8, 1869. JAMES B. WEAVER, well known as a leader of the Greenback and later of the Populist party, was born at Dayton, Ohio, June 12, 1833. He received his earlier education in the schools of his native town, and entered the law department of the Ohio University, at Cincinnati, from which he graduated in 1854. Removing to the growing state of Iowa, he became connected with " The Iowa Tribune," at the state capital, Des Moines, as one of its editors. He afterward practiced law and was elected district attorney for the second judicial district 0f Iowa, on the Republican ticket in 1866, which office he held for a short time. In 1867 Mr. Weaver was appointed assessor of internal revenue for the first district of Iowa, and filled that position until sometime in 1873. He was elected and served in the forty-sixth congress. In 1880 the National or Greenback party in convention at Chicago, nominated James B. Weaver as 124 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. its candidate for the presidency. By a union of the Democratic and National parties in his district, he was elected to the forty-ninth congress, and re-elected to the same office in the fall of 1886. Mr. Weaver was conceded to be a very fluent speaker, and quite active in all political work. On July 4, 1892, at the National convention of the People's party, General James B. Weaver was chosen as the candidate for president of that organization, and during the campaign that followed, gained a national reputation. ANTHONY JOSEPH DREXEL, one of the leading bankers and financiers of the United States, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1826, and was the son of Francis M. Drexel, who had established the large banking institution of Drexel & Co., so well known. The latter was a native of Dornbirn, in the Austrian Tyrol. He studied languages and fine arts at Turin, Italy. On returning to his mountain home, in 1809, and finding it in the hands of the French, he went to Switzerland and later, to Paris. In 1812, after a short visit home, he went to Berlin, where he studied painting until 1817, in which year he emigrated io America, and settled in Philadelphia. A few years later he went to Chili and Peru, where he executed some fine portraits of notable people, including General Simon Bolivar. After spending some time in Mexico, he returned to Philadelphia, and engaged in the banking business. In 1837 he founded the house of Drexel & Co. He died in 1837, and was succeeded by his two sons, Anthony J. and Francis A. His son, Anthony J. Drexel, Jr. , entered the bank when he was thirteen years of age, before he was through with his schooling, and after that the history of the banking business of which he was the head, was the history of his life. The New York house of Drexel, Morgan & Co. was established in 1850; the Paris house, Drexel, Harjes & Co.,in 1867. The Drexel banking houses have supplied iand placed hundreds of millions of dollars n government, corporation, railroad and other loans and securities. The reputation of the houses has always been held on the highest plane. Mr. Drexel founded and heavily endowed the Drexel Institute, in Philadelphia, an institution to furnish better and wider avenues of employment to young people of both sexes. It has departments of arts, science, mechanical arts and domestic economy. Mr. Drexel, Jr.,departed this life June 30, 1893. SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE, inventor of the recording telegraph instrument, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, April 27, 1791. He graduated from Yale College in 1810, and took up art as his profession. He went to London with the great American painter, Washington Allston, and studied in the Royal Academy under Benjamin West. His " Dying Hercules," his first effort in sculpture, took the gold medal in 1813. He returned to America in 1815 and continued to pursue his profession. He was greatly interested in scientific studies, which he carried on in connection with other labors. He founded the National Academy of Design and was many years its president. He returned to Europe and spent three years in study in the art centers, Rome, Florence, Venice and Paris. In 1832 he returned to America and while on the return voyage the idea of a recording telegraph apparatus occurred to him, and he made a drawing to represent his conception. He was the first to occupy the chair of fine arts in the University of New COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 125 York City, and in 1835 he set up his rude instrument in his room in the university. But it was not until after many years of discouragement and reverses of fortune that he finally was successful in placing his invention before the public. In 1844, by aid of the United States government, he had constructed a telegraph line forty miles in length from Washington to Baltimore. Over this line the test was made, and the first telegraphic message was flashed May 24, 1844, from the United States supreme court rooms to Baltimore. It read, "What hath God wrought!" His fame and fortune were established in an instant. Wealth and honors poured in upon him from that day. The nations of Europe vied with each other in honoring the great inventor with medals, titles and decorations, and the learned societies of Europe hastened to enroll his name upon their membership lists and confer degrees. In 1858 he was the recipient of an honor never accorded to an inventor before. The ten leading nations of Europe, at the suggestion of the Emporer Napoleon, appointed representatives to an international congress, which convened at Paris for the special purpose of expressing gratitude of the nations, and they voted him a •present of 400,000 francs. Professor Morse was present at the unveiling of a bronze statue erected in his honor in Central Park, New York, in 1871. His last appearance in public was at the unveiling of the statue of Benjamin Franklin in New York in 1872, when he made the dedicatory speech and unveiled the statue. He died April 2, 1872, in the city of New York. MORRISON REMICH WAITE, seventh chief justice of the United States, was born at Lyme, Connecticut, November 29, 1816. He was a graduate from Yale College in 1837, in the class with Wllliam M. Evarts. His father was judge of the supreme court of errors of the state of Connecticut, and in his office young Waite studied raw. He subsequently removed to Ohio, and was elected to the legislature of that state in 1849. He removed from Maumee City to Toledo and became a prominent legal light in that state. He was nominated as a candidate for congress repeatedly but declined to run, and also declined a place on the supreme bench of the state. He won great distinction for his able handling of the Alabama claims at Geneva, before the arbitration tribunal in 1871, and was appointed chief justice of the supreme court of the United States in 1874 on the death of Judge Chase. When, in 1876, elec toral commissioners were chosen to decide the presidential election controversy between Tilden and Hayes, Judge Waite refused to serve on that commission. His death occurred. March 23, 1888., ELISHA KENT KANE was one of the distinguished American explorers of the unknown regions of the frozen north, and gave to the world a more accurate knowledge of the Arctic zone. Dr. Kane was born February 3, 1820, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a graduate of the universities of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and took his medical degree in 1843. He entered the service of the United States navy, and was physician to the Chinese embassy. Dr. Kane traveled extensively in the Levant, Asia and Western Africa, and also served in the Mexican war, in which he was severely wounded. His first Arctic expedition was under De Haven in the first Grinnell expedition in search of Sir John Franklin. in 1850. He commanded the second Grinnell expedition 126 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. in 1853-55, and discovered an open polar sea. For this expedition he received a gold medal and other distinctions. He published a narrative of his .first polar expedition in 1853, and in 1856 published two volumes relating to his second polar expedition. He was a man of active, enterprising and courageous spirit. His health, which was always delicate, was impaired by the hardships of his Arctic expeditions, from which he never fully recovered and from which lie died February 16, 1857, at Havana. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON was a daughter of Judge Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston, and was born November 12, 1815, at Johnstown, New York. She was educated at the Johnstown Academy, where she studied with a class of boys, and was fitted for college at the age of fifteen, after which she pursued her studies at Mrs. Willard's Seminary, at Troy. Her attention was called to the disabilities of her sex by her own educational experiences, and through a study of Blackstone, Story, and Kent. Miss Cady was married to Henry B. Stanton in 1840, and accompanied him to the world's anti-slavery convention in London. While there she made the acquaintance of Lucretia Mott. Mrs. Stanton resided at Boston until 1847, when the family moved to Seneca Falls, New York, and she and Lucretia Mott signed the first call for a woman's rights convention. The .meeting was held at her place of residence July 19-20, 1848. This was the first occasion of a formal claim of suffrage for women that was made. Mrs. Stanton addressed the New York legislature, in 1854, on the rights of married women, and in 1860, in advocacy of the granting of divorce for drunkenness. She also addressed the legislature and the constitutional con vention, and maintained that during the revision of the constitution the state was resolved into its original elements, and that all citizens had, therefore, a right to vote for the members of that convention. After 1869 Mrs. Stanton frequently addressed congressional committees and state constitutional conventions, and she canvassed Kansas, Michigan, and other states when the question of woman suffrage was submitted in those states. Mrs. Stanton was one of the editors of the " Revolution," and most of the calls and resolutions for conventions have come from her pen. She was president of the national committee, also of the Woman's Loyal League, and of the National Association, for many years. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD, a great American jurist, was born in Connecticut in 1805. He entered Williams College when sixteen years old, and commenced the study of law in 1825. In 1828 he was admitted to the bar, and went to New York, where he soon came into prominence before the bar of that state. He entered upon the labor of reforming the practice and procedure, which was then based upon the common law practice of England, and had become extremely complicated, difficult and uncertain in its application. His first paper on this subject was published in 1839, and after eight years of continuous efforts in this direction, he was appointed one of a commission by New York to reform the practice of that state. The result was embodied in the two codes of procedure, civil and criminal, the first of which was adopted almost entire by the state of New York, and has since been adopted by more than half the states in the Union, and became the basis of the new practice and procedure in England, contained in the Judicature act. He COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 127 was later appointed chairman of a new commission to codify the entire body of laws. This great work employed many years in its completion, but when finished it embraced a civil, penal, and political code, covering the entire field of American laws, statutory and common. This great body of law was adopted by California and Dakota territory in its entirety, and many -other states have since adopted its substance. In 1867 the British Association for Social Science heard a proposition from Mr. Field to prepare an international code. This led to the preparation of his "Draft Outlines of an International Code," which was in fact a complete body of international laws, and introduced the principle of arbitration. Other of his codes of the state of New York have since been adopted by that state. In addition to his great works on law, Mr. Field indulged his literary tastes by frequent contributions to general literature, and his articles on travels, literature, and the political questions of the hour gave him rank with the best writers of his time. His father was the Rev. David Dudley Field, and his brothers were Cyrus W. Field, Rev. Henry Martin Field, and Justice Stephen J. Field of the United States supreme court. David Dudley Field died at New York, April 13, 1894. HENRY M. TELLER, a celebrated American politician, and secretary of the interior under President Arthur, was born May 23, 1830, in Allegany county, New York. He was of Hollandish ancestry and received an excellent education, after which he took up the study of law and was admitted to the bar in the state of New York. Mr. Teller removed to Illinois in January, 1858, and practiced for three years in that state. From thence he moved to Colorado in 1861 and located at Central City, which was then one of the principal mining towns in the state. His exceptional abilities as a lawyer soon brought him into prominence and gained for him a numerous and profitable clientage. In politics he affiliated with the Republican party, but declined to become a candidate for office until the admission of Colorado into the Union as a state, when he was elected to the United States senate. Mr. Teller drew the term ending March 4, 1877, but was re-elected December 11, 1876, and served until April 17, 1882, when he was appointed by President Arthur as secretary of the interior. He accepted a cabinet position with reluctance, and on March 3, 1885, he retired from the cabinet, having been elected to the senate a short time before to succeed Nathaniel P. Hill. Mr. Teller took his seat on March 4, 1885, in the senate, to which he was afterward re-elected. He served as chairman on the committee of pensions, patents, mines and mining, and was also a member of committees on claims, railroads, privileges and elections and public lands. Mr. Teller came to be recognized as one of the ablest advocates of the silver cause. He was one of the delegates to the Republican National convention at St. Louis in 1896, in which he took an active part and tried to have a silver plank inserted in the platform of the party. Failing in this he felt impelled to bolt the convention, which he did and 'joined forces with the great silver movement in the campaign which followed, being recognized in that campaign as one of the most able and eminent advocates of "silver" in America. JOHN ERICSSON, an eminent inventor and machinist, who won fame in America, was born in Sweden, July 31, 1803. In early childhood he evinced a decided in- 128 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY clination to mechanical pursuits, and at the age of eleven he was appointed to a cadetship in the engineer corps, and at the age of seventeen was promoted to a lieutenancy. In 1826 he introduced a " flame engine," which he had invented, and offered it to English capitalists, but it was found that it could be operated only by the use of wood for fuel. Shortly after this he resigned his commission in the army of Sweden, and devoted himself to mechanical pursuits. He discovered and introduced the principle of artificial draughts in steam boilers, and received a prize of two thousand five hundred dollars for his locomotive, the " Novelty," which attained a great speed, for that day. The artificial draught effected a great saving in fuel and made unnecessary the huge smoke-stacks formerly used, and the principle is still applied, in modified form, in boilers. He also invented a steam fire-engine, and later a hot-air engine, which he attempted to apply in the operation of his ship, "Ericsson," but as it did not give the speed required, he abandoned it, but afterwards applied it to machinery for pumping, hoisting, etc. Ericsson was first to apply the screw propeller to navigation. The English people not receiving this new departure readily, Ericsson came to America in 1839, and built the United States steamer, " Princeton," in which the screw-propeller was utilized, the first steamer ever built in which the propeller was under water, out of range of the enemy's shots. The achievement which gave him greatest renown, however, was the ironclad vessel, the " Monitor," an entirely new type of vessel, which, in March, 1862, attacked the Confederate monster ironclad ram, " Virginia," and after a fierce struggle, compelled her to withdraw from Hampton Roads for repairs. After the war one of his most noted inventions was his vessel, " Destroyer," with a submarine gun, which carried a projectile torpedo. In 1886 the king of Spain conferred on him the grand cross of the Order of Naval Merit. He died in March, 1889, and his body was transferred, with naval honors, to the country of his birth. JAMES BUCHANAN, the fifteenth president of the United States, was a native of Pennsylvania, and was born in Franklin county, April 23, .1791. He was of Irish ancestry, his father having come to this .country in 1783, in quite humble circumstances, and settled in the western part of the Keystone state. James Buchanan remained in his secluded home for eight years, enjoying but few social or intellectual advantages. His parents were industrious and frugal, and prospered, and, in 1799, the family removed to Mercersbur Pennsylvania, where he was placed in school. His progress was rapid, and in 1801 he entered Dickinson College, at Carlisle, where he took his place among the best scholars in the institution. In 1809 he graduated with the highest honors in his class. He was then eighteen, tall, graceful and in vigorous health. He commenced the study of law at Lancaster, and was admitted to the bar in 1812. He rose very rapidly in his profession and took a. stand with the ablest of his fellow lawyers. When but twenty-six years old he successfully defended, unaided by counsel, one of the judges of the state who was before the bar of the state senate under articles of impeachment. During the war of 1812-15, Mr. Buchanan sustained the government with all his power, eloquently urging the vigorous prosecution of the war, and enlisted as, a private. COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 129 volunteer to assist in repelling the British who had sacked and burned the public buildings of Washington and threatened Baltimore. At that time Buchanan was a Federalist, but the opposition of that party to the war with Great Britain and the alien and sedition laws of John Adams, brought that party into disrepute, and drove many, among them Buchanan, into the Republican, or anti-Federalist ranks. He was elected to congress in 1828. In 1831 he was sent as minister to Russia, and upon his return to this country, in 1833, was elevated to the United States senate, and remained in that position for twelve years. Upon the accession of President Polk to office he made Mr. Buchanan secretary of state. Four years later he retired to private life, and in 1853 he was honored with the mission to England. In 1856 the national Democratic convention nominated him for the presidency and he was elected. It was during his administration that the rising tide of the secession movement overtook the country. Mr. Buchanan declared that the national constitution gave him no power to do anything against the movement to break up the Union. After his succession by Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Mr. Buchanan retired to his home at Wheatland, Pennsylvania, where he died June 1, 1868. JOHN HARVARD, the founder of the Harvard University, was born in England about the year 1608. He received his education at Emanuel College, Cambridge, and came to America in 1637, settling in Massachusetts. He was a non-conformist minister, and a tract of land was set aside for him in Charlestown, near Boston. He was at once appointed one of a committee to formulate a body of laws for the colony. One year before his arrival in the colony the general court had voted the sum. of four hundred pounds toward the establishment of a schocl or college, half of which was to be paid the next year In 1637 preliminary plans were made for starting the school. In 1638 John Harvard, who had shown great interest in the new institution of learning proposed, died, leaving his entire property, about twice the sum originally voted, to the school, together with three hundred volumes as a nucleus for a library. The institution was then given the name of Harvard, and established at Newton (now Cambridge), Massachusetts. It grew to be one of the two principal seats of learning in the new world, and has maintained its reputation since. It now consists of twenty-two separate buildings, and its curriculum embraces over one hundred and seventy elective courses, and it ranks among the great universities of the world. ROGER BROOKE TANEY, a noted jurist and chief justice of the United States supreme court, was born in Calvert county, Maryland, March 17, 1777. He graduated from Dickinson College at the age of eighteen, took up the study of law, and was admitted to the bar in 1799. He was chosen to the legislature from his county, and in 1801 removed to Frederick, Maryland. He became United States senator from Maryland in 1816, and took up his permanent residence in Baltimore a few years later. In 1824 he became an ardent admirer and supporter of Andrew Jackson, and upon Jackson's election to the presidency, was appointed attorney general of the United States. Two years later he was appointed secretary of the treasury, and after serving in that capacity for nearly one year, the senate refused to confirm the appointment. In 1835, upon the death of 130 - COMPENDIUM. OF BIOGRAPHY Chief-justice Marshall, he was appointed to that place, and a political change having occurred in the make up of the senate, he was confirmed in 1836. He presided at his first session in January of the following year. The case which suggests itself first to the average reader in connection with this jurist is the celebrated " Dred Scott " case, which came before the supreme court for decision in 1856. In his opinion, delivered on behalf of a majority of the court, one remarkable statement occurs as a result of an exhaustive survey of the historical grounds, to the effect that " for more than a century prior to the adoption of the constitution they (Africans) had been regarded so far inferior that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect." Judge Taney retained the office of chief justice until his death, in 1864. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.—This gentleman had a world-wide reputation as an historian, which placed him in the front rank of the great men of America. He was born April 15, 1814, at Dorchester, Massachusetts, was given a thorough preparatory education and then attended Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1831. He also studied at Gottingen and Berlin, read law and in 1836 was admitted to the bar. In 1841 he was appointed secretary of the legation at St. Petersburg, and in 1866-67 served as United States minister to Austria, serving in the same capacity during 1869 and 1870 to England. In 1856, after long and exhaustive research and preparation he published in London " The Rise of the Dutch Republic." It embraced three volumes and immediately attracted great attention throughout Europe and America as a work of unusual merit. From 1861 to 1868 he produced " The History of the United Netherlands," in four volumes. Other works followed, with equal success, and his position as one of the foremost historians and writers of his day was firmly established. His death occurred May 29, 1877. ELIAS HOWE, the inventor of the sewing machine, well deserves to be classed among the great and noted men of Amer. ica. He was the son of a miller and farmer and was born at Spencer, Massachusetts, July 9, 1819. In 1835 he went to Lowell and worked there, and later at Boston, in the machine shops. His first sewing machine was completed in 1845, and he patented it in 1846, laboring with the greatest persistency in spite of poverty and hardships, working for a time as an engine driver on a railroad at pauper wages and with broken health. He then spent two years of unsuccessful exertion in England, striving in vain to bring his invention into public notice and use. He returned to the United States in almost hopeless poverty, to find that his patent had been violated. At last, however, he found friends who assisted him financially, and after years of litigation he made good his claims in the courts in 1854. His invention afterward brought him a large fortune. During the Civil war he volunteered as a private in the Seventeenth Connecticut Volunteers, and served for some time. During his life time he received the cross of the Legion of Honor and many other medals. His death occurred October 3, 1867, at Brooklyn, New York. PHILLIPS BROOKS, celebrated as an eloquent preacher and able pulpit orator, was born in Boston on the 13th day of December, 1835. He received excellent COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 131. educational advantages, and graduated at Harvard in 1855. Early in life he decided upon the ministry as his life work and studied theology in the Episcopal Theological Seminary, at Alexandria, Virginia. In 1859 he was ordained and the same year became pastor of the Church of the Advent, in Philadelphia. Three years later he assumed the pastorate of the Church of the Holy Trinity, where he remained until 1870. At the expiration of that time he accepted the pastoral charge of Trinity Church in Boston, where his eloquence and ability attracted much attention and built up a powerful church organization. Dr. Brooks also devoted considerable time to lecturing and literary work and attained prominence in these lines. WILLIAM B. ALLISON, a statesman of national reputation and one of the leaders of the Republican party, was born March 2, 1829, at Perry, Ohio. He grew up on his father's farm, which he assisted in cultivating, and attended the district school. When sixteen years old he went to the academy at Wooster, and subsequently spent a year at the Allegheny College, at Meadville, Pennsylvania. He next taught school and spent another year at the Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio. Mr. Allison then took up the study of law at Wooster, where he was admitted to the bar in 1851, and soon obtained a position as deputy county clerk. His political leanings were toward the old line Whigs, who afterward laid the foundation of the Republican party. He was a delegate to the state convention in 1856, in the campaign of which he supported Fremont for president. Mr Allison removed to Dubuque, Iowa, in the following year. He rapidly rose to prominence at the bar and in politics. In 1860 he was chosen as a delegate to the Republican convention held in Chicago, of which he was elected one of the secretaries. At the outbreak of the civil war he was appointed on the staff of the governor. His. congressional career opened in 1862, when. he was elected to the thirty-eighth congress; he was re-elected three times, serving from March 4, 1863, to March 3, 1871. He was a member of the ways and means committee a good part of his term. His career in the United States senate began in 1873, and he rapidly rose to eminence in national affairs, his service of a quarter of a century in that body being marked by close fealty to the Republican party. He twice declined the portfolio of the treasury tendered him by Garfield and Harrison, and his name was prominently mentioned for the presidency at several national Republican conventions.. MARY ASHTON LIVERMORE, lecturer and writer, was born in Boston, December 19, 1821. She was the daughter of Timothy Rice, and married D. P. Livermore, a preacher of the Universalist church.. She contributed able articles to many of the most noted periodicals of this country and England. During the Civil war she labored zealously and with success on behalf of the sanitary commission which played so important a part during that great struggle. She became editor of the " Woman's Journal," published at Boston in 1870. She held a prominent place as a public. speaker and writer on woman's suffrage, temperance, social and religious questions, and her influence was great in every cause she advocated. JOHN B. GOUGH, a noted temperance J lecturer, who won his fame in America, was born in the village of Sandgate, Kent, 132 - COMPENDIUM OE BIOGRAPHY England, August 22, 1817. He came to the United States at the age of twelve. He followed the trade of bookbinder, and lived in great poverty on account of the liquor habit. In 1843, however, he reformed, and began his career as a temperance lecturer. He worked zealously in the cause of temperance, and his lectures and published articles revealed great earnestness. He formed temperance societies throughout the entire country, and labored with great success. He visited England in the same cause' about the year 1853 and again in 1878. He also lectured upon many other topics, in which he attained a wide reputation. His death occurred February 18, 1886. THOMAS BUCHANAN READ, author, sculptor and painter, was born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, March 12, 1822. He early evinced a taste for art, and began the study of sculpture in Cincinnati. Later he found painting more to his liking. He went to New York, where he followed this profession, and later to Boston. In 1846 he located in Philadelphia. He visited Italy in 1850, and studied at Florence, where he resided almost continuously for twenty-two years. He returned to America in 1872, and died in New York May 11 of the same year. He was the author of many heroic poems, but the one giving him the most renown is his famous "Sheridan's Ride," of which he has also left a representation in painting. EUGENE V. DEBS, the former famous president of the American Railway Union, and great labor leader, was born in the city of Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1855. He received his education in the public schools of that place and at the age of sixteen years began work as a painter in the Vandalia shops. After this, for some three years, he was employed as a locomotive fireman on the same road. His first appearance in public life was in his canvass for the election to the office of city clerk of Terre Haute. In this capacity he served two terms, and when twenty six years of age was elected a member of the legislature of the state of Indiana. While a member of that body he secured the passage of several bills in the interest of organized labor, of which he was always a faithful champion. Mr. Debs' speech nominating Daniel Voorhees for the United States senate gave him a wide reputation for oratory. On the expiration of his term in the legislature, he was elected grand secretary and treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman and filled that office for fourteen successive years. He was always an earnest advocate of confederation of railroad men and it was mainly through his efforts that the United Order of Railway Employes, composed of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen and Conductors, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association was formed, and he became a member of its supreme council. The order was dissolved by disagreement between two of its leading orders, and then Mr. Debs conceived the idea of the American Railway Union. He worked on the details and the union came into existence in Chicago, June 20,1893. For a time it prospered and became one of the largest bodies of railway men in the world. It won in a contest with the Great Northern Railway. In the strike made by the union in sympathy with the Pullman employes inaugurated in Chicago June 25, 1894, and the consequent rioting, the Railway Union COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 133 lost much prestige and Mr. Debs, in company with others of the officers, being held as in contempt of the United States courts, he suffered a sentence of six months in jail at Woodstock, McHenry county, Illinois. In 1897 Mr. Debs, on the demise of the American Railway Union, organized the Social Democracy, an institution founded on the best lines of the communistic idea, which was to provide homes and employment for its members. JOHN G. CARLISLE, famous as a lawyer, congressman, senator and cabinet officer, was born in Campbell (now Kenton) county, Kentucky, September 5, 1835, on a farm. He received the usual education of the time and began at an early age to teach school and, at the same time, the study of law. Soon opportunity offered and he entered an office in Covington, Kentucky, and was admitted to practice at the bar in 1858. Politics attracted his attention and in 1859 he was elected to the house of representatives in the legislature of his native state. On the outbreak of the war in 1861, he embraced the cause of the Union and was largely instrumental in preserving Kentucky to the federal cause. He resumed his legal practice for a time and declined a nomination as presidential elector in 1864. In 1866 and again in 1869 Mr. Carlisle was elected to the senate of Kentucky. He resigned this position in 1871 and was chosen lieutenant governor of the state, which office he held until 1875. He was one of the presidential electors-at-large for Kentucky in 1876. He first entered congress in 1877, and soon became a prominent leader on the Democratic side of the house of representatives, and continued a member of that body through the forty-sixth, forty-seventh, forty-eighth and forty-ninth congresses, and was speaker of the house during the two latter. He was elected to the United States senate to succeed Senator Blackburn, and remained a member of that branch of congress until March, 1893, when he was appointed secretary of the treasury. He performed the duties of that high office until March 4, 1897, throughout the entire second administration of President Cleveland. His ability and many years 'of public service gave him a national reputation. FRANCES E. WILLARD, for many years president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and a noted American lecturer and writer, was born in Rochester, New York, September 28, 1839. Graduating from the Northwestern Female College at the age of nineteen she began teaching and met with great success in many cities of the west. She was made directress of Genesee Wesleyan Seminary at Lima, Ohio, in 1867, and four years later was erected president of the Evanston College for young ladies, a branch of the Northwestern University. During the two years succeeding 1869 she traveled extensively in Europe and the east, visiting Egypt and Palestine, and gathering materials for a valuable course of lectures, which she delivered at Chicago on her return. She became very popular, and won great influence in the temperance cause. Her work as president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union greatly strengthened that society, and she made frequent trips to Europe in the interest of that cause. RICHARD OLNEY.—Among the prominent men who were members of the cabinet of President Cleveland in his second administration, the gentleman whose name 134 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. heads this sketch held a leading place, occupying the positions of attorney general and secretary of state. Mr. Olney came from one of the oldest and most honored New England families; the first of his ancestors to come from England settled in Massachusetts in 1635. This was Thomas Olney. He was a friend and co-religionist of Roger Williams, and when the latter moved to what is now Rhode Island, went with him and became one of the founders of Providence Plantations. Richard Olney was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1835, and received the elements of his earlier education in the common schools which New England is so proud of. He entered Brown University, from which he graduated in 1856, and passed the Harvard law school two years later. He began the practice of his profession with judge B. F. Thomas, a prominent man of that locality. For years Richard Olney was regarded as one of the ablest and most learned lawyers in Massachusetts. Twice he was offered a place on the bench of the supreme court of the state, but both times he declined. He was always a Democrat in his political tenets, and for many years was a trusted counsellor of members of that party. In 1874 Mr. Olney was elected a member of the legislature. In 1876, during the heated presidential campaign, to strengthen the cause of Mr. Tilden in the New England states, it was intimated that in the event of that gentleman's election to the presidency, Mr. Olney would be attorney general. When Grover Cleveland was elected president of the United States, on his inauguration in March, 1893, he tendered the position of attorney general to Richard Olney. This was accepted, and that gentleman fulfilled the duties of the office until the death of Walter Q. Gresham, in May, 1895, made vacant the position of secretary of state. This post was filled by the appointment of Mr. Olney. While occupying the later office, Mr. Olney brought himself into international prominence by some very able state: papers. JOHN JAY KNOX, for many years comptroller of the currency, and an eminent financier, was born in Knoxboro, Oneida county, New York, May 19, 1828. He received a good education and graduated at Hamilton College in 1849. For about. thirteen years he was engaged as a. private banker, or in a position in a bank, where he laid the foundation of his knowledge of the laws of finance. In 1862, Salmon P.. Chase, then secretary of the treasury, appointed him to an office in that department of the government, and later he had charge of the mint coinage correspondence. In 1867 Mr. Knox was made deputy comptroller of the currency, and in that capacity, in 1870, he made two reports on the mint. service, with a codification of the mint ,and coinage laws of the United States, and suggesting many important amendments. These reports were ordered printed by resolution of congress. The bill which he prepared, with some slight changes, was sub sequently passed, and has been known in history as the " Coinage Act of 1873." In 1872 Mr. Knox was appointed comp troller of the currency, and held that responsible position until 1884, when he resigned. He then accepted the position of president of the National Bank of the Republic, of New York City, which institution he served for many years. He was the author of " United States Notes," published. in 1884. In the reports spoken of above, a history of the two United States banks is COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 135 given, together with that of the state and national banking system, and much valuable statistical matter relating to kindred subjects. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.—In the opinion of many critics Hawthorne is pronounced the foremost American novelist, and in his peculiar vein of romance is said to be without a peer. His reputation is world-wide, and his ability as a writer is recognized abroad as well as at home. He was born July 4, 1804, at Salem, Massachusetts. On account of feeble health he spent some years of his boyhood on a farm near Raymond, Maine. He laid the foundation of a liberal education in his youth, and entered Bowdoin College, from which he graduated in 1825 in the same class with H W Longfellow and John S. C. Abbott. He then returned to Salem, where he gave his attention to literature, publishing several tales and other articles in various periodicals. His first venture in the field of romance, " Fanshaw,'' proved a failure. In 1836 he removed to Boston, and became editor of the " American Magazine," which soon passed out of existence. In 1837 he published " Twice Told Tales," which were chiefly made up of his former contributions to magazines. In 1838-41 he held a position in the Boston custom house, but later took part in the " Brook farm experiment," a socialistic idea after the plan of Fourier. In 1843 he was married and took up his residence at the old parsonage at Concord, Massachusetts, which lie immortalized in his next work, '' Mosses From an Old Manse," published in 1846. From the latter date until 1850 he was surveyor of the port of Salem, and while thus employed wrote one of his strongest works, " The Scarlet Letter." For the succeeding two years Lenox, Massachusetts, was his home, and the " House of the Seven Gables " way produced there, as well as the " Blithedale Romance." In 1852 he published a " Life of Franklin Pierce," a college friend whom he warmly regarded. In 1853 he was appointed United States consul to Liverpool, England, where he remained some years, after which he spent some time in Italy. On returning to his native land he took up his residence at Concord, Massachusetts. While taking a trip for his health with ex-President Pierce, he died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, May 19, 1864. In addition to the works mentioned above Mr. Hawthorne gave to the world the following books: " True Stories from History," " The Wonder Book," " The Snow Image," " Tangle-wood Tales," " The Marble Faun," • and " Our Old Home." After his death appeared a series of "Notebooks," edited by his wife, Sophia P. Hawthorne; " Septimius Felton," edited by his daughter, Una, and Dr. Grimshaw's Secret," put into shape, by his talented son, Julian. He left an unfinished work called " Dolliver Romance," which has been published just as he left it. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, sixteenth president of the United States, was born February 12, 1809, in Larue county (Hardin county), Kentucky, in a log-cabin near Hudgensville. When he was eight years old he removed with his parents to Indiana, near the Ohio river, and a year later his mother died. His father then married Mrs. Elizabeth (Bush) Johnston, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, who proved a kind of foster-mother to Abraham, and encouraged him to study. He worked as a farm hand and as a clerk in a store at Gentryville, and was noted for his athletic feats and strength, fondness for debate, a fund of humorous 136 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY anecdote, as well as the composition of rude verses. He made a trip at the age of ninetcen to New Orleans on a flat-boat, and settled in Illinois in 1830. He assisted his father to builda log house and clear a farm on the Sangamon river near Decatur, Illinois, and split the rails with which to fence it. In 1851 he was employed in the building of a flat-boat on the Sangamon, and to run it to New Orleans. The. voyage gave him a new insight into the horrors of slavery in the south. On his return he settled at New Salem and engaged, first as a clerk in a store, then as grocer, surveyor and postmaster, and he piloted the first steamboat that ascended the Sangamon. He participated in the Black Hawk war as captain of volunteers, and after his return he studied law,. interested himself in politics, and became. prominent locally as a public speaker. He was elected to the legislature in 1834 as a “Clay Whig," and began at once to display a command of language and forcible rhetoric that . made him a match for his more cultured opponents. He was admitted to the bar in 1837, and began practice at Springfield. He married a lady of a prominent Kentucky family in 1842. He was active in the presidential campaigns of 1840 and 1844 and was an elector on the Harrison and Clay tickets, and was elected to congress in 1846, over Peter Cartwright. He voted for the Wilmot proviso and the .abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and opposed the war with Mexico, but gained little prominence during his two years' service. He then returned to Springfield and devoted his attention to law, taking little interest in politics, until the repeal of the Missouri compromise and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854. This awakened his interest in politics again and he attacked the champion of that measure, Stephen A. Douglas, in a speech at Springfield that made him famous, and is said by those who heard it to be the greatest speech of his life. Lincoln was selected as candidate for the United States senate, but was defeated by Trumbull. Upon the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill the Whig party suddenly went to pieces, and the Republican party gathered head. At the Bloomington Republican convention in 1856 Lincoln made an effective address in which he first took a position antagonistic to the existence of slavery. He was a Fremont elector and received a strong support for nomination as vice-president in the Philadelphia convention. In 1858 he was the unanimous choice of the Republicans for the United States senate, and the great campaign of debate which followed resulted in the election of Douglas, but established Lincoln's reputation as the leading exponent of Republican doctrines. He began to be mentioned in Illinois as candidate for the presidency, and a course of addresses in the eastern states attracted favorable attention. When the national convention met at Chicago, his rivals, Chase, Seward, Bates and others, were compelled to retire before the western giant, and he was nominated, with Hannibal Hamlin as his running mate. The Democratic party had now been disrupted, and Lincoln's election assured. He carried practically every northern state, and the secession of South Carolina, followed by a number of the gulf states, took place before his inauguration. Lincoln is the only president who was ever compelled to reach Washington in a secret manner. He escaped assassination by avoiding Baltimore, and was quietly inaugurated March 4, 1861. His inaugural address was firm but conciliatory, and he said to the secessionists: " You have no oath registered in heaven COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 137 to destroy the government, while I have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.’ He made up his cabinet chiefly of those political rivals in his own party—Seward, Chase, Cameron, Bates—and secured the co-operation of the Douglas Democrats. His great deeds, amidst the heat and turmoil of war, were: His call for seventy-five thousand volunteers, and the blockading of southern ports; calling of congress in extra session, July 14, 1861, and obtaining four hundred thousand men and four hundred million dollars for the prosecution of the war; appointing Stanton secretary of war; issuing the emancipation proclamation; calling three hundred thousand volunteers; address at Gettysburg cemetery; commissioned Grant as lieutenant-general and commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States; his second inaugural address; his visit to the army before Richmond, and his entry into Richmond the day after its surrender. Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth in a box in Ford's theater at Washington the night of April 14, 1865, and expired the following morning. His body was buried at Oak Ridge cemetery, Springfield, Illinois, and a monument commemorating his great work marks his resting place. STEPHEN GIRARD, the celebrated philanthropist, was born in Bordeaux, France, May 24, 1750. He became a sailor engaged in the American coast trade, and also made frequent trips to the West Indies. During the Revolutionary war he was a grocer and liquor seller in Philadelphia. He married in that city, and afterward separated from his wife. After the war he again engaged in the coast and West India trade, and his fortune began to accumulate from receiving goods from West Indian planters during the insurrection in Hayti, little of which was ever called for again. He became a private banker in Philadelphia in 1812, and afterward was a director in the United States Bank. He made much money by leasing property in the city in times of depression, and upon the revival of industry sub-leasing at enormous profit. He became the wealthiest citizen of the United States of his time. He was eccentric, ungracious, and a freethinker. He had few, if any, friends in his lifetime. However, he was most charitably disposed, and gave to charitable institutions and schools with a liberal hand. He did more than any one else to relieve the suffering and deprivations during the: great yellow fever scourge in Philadelphia, devoting his personal attention to the sick. He endowed and made a free institution, the famous Will's Eye and Ear Infirmary of Philadelphia—one of the largest institutions of its kind in the world. At his death practically all his immense wealth was bequeathed to charitable institutions, more than two millions of dollars going to the founding of Girard College, which was to. be devoted to the education and training of boys between the ages of six and ten years. Large donations were also made to institutions in Philadelphia and New Orleans. The principal building of Girard College is the most magnificent example of Greek architecture in America. Girard died December 26, 1831. Louis J. R. AGASSIZ, the eminent flat-. uralist and geologist, was born in the parish of Motier, near Lake Neuchatel, Switzerland, May 23, 1807, but attained his greatest fame after becoming an American citizen. He studied the medical sciences at 138 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY Zurich, Heidelberg and Munich. His first work was a Latin description of the fishes which Martius and Spix brought from Brazil. This was published in 1829-31. He devoted much time to the study of fossil fishes, and in 1832 was appointed professor of natural history at Neuchatel. He greatly increased his reputation by a great work in French, entitled " Researches on Fossil Fishes," in 1832-42, in which he made many important improvements in the classification of fishes. Having passed many summers among the Alps in researches on glaciers, he propounded some new and interesting ideas on geology, and the agency of glaciers in his " Studies by the Glaciers." This was published in 1840. This latter work, with his " System of the Glaciers," published in 1847, are among his principal works. In 1846, Professor Agassiz crossed the ocean on a scientific excursion to the United States, and soon determined to remain here. He accepted, about the beginning of 1848, the chair of zoology and geology at Harvard. He explored the natural history of the United States at different times and gave an impulse to the study of nature in this country. In 1865 he conducted an expedition to Brazil, and explored the lower Amazon and its tributaries. In 1868 he was made non-resident professor of natural history at Cornell University. In December, 1871, he accompanied the Hassler expedition, under Professor Pierce, to the South Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 14, 1873. Among other of the important works of Professor Agassiz may be mentioned the following: " Outlines of Comparative Physiology," " Journey to Brazil," and " Contributions to the Natural History of the United States." It is said of Professor Agassiz, that, perhaps, with the exception of Hugh Miller, no one had so popularized science in his day, or trained so- many young naturalists. Many of the theories held by Agassiz are not supported by many of the naturalists of these later days, but upon many of the speculations into the origin of species and in physics he has left the marks of his own strongly marked individuality. WILLIAM WINDOM. —As a prominent and leading lawyer of the great northwest, as a member of both houses of congress, and as the secretary of the treasury, the gentleman whose name heads this sketch won for himself a prominent position in the history of our country. Mr. Windom was a native of Ohio, born in Belmont county, May 10, 1827. He received a good elementary education in the schools of his native state, and took up the study of law. He was admitted to the bar, and entered upon the practice of his profession in Ohio, where he remained until 1855. In the latter year he made ups his mind to move further west, and accordingly went to Minnesota, and opening an office, became identified with the interests of that state, and the northwest generally. In 1858 he took his place in the Minnesota delegation in the national house of representatives, at Washington, and continued to represent his constituency in that body for ten years. In 1871 Mr. Windom was elected United States senator from Minnesota, and was re-elected to the same office after fulfilling the duties of the position for a full term, in 1876. On the inauguration of President Garfield, in March, 1881, Mr. Windom became secretary of the treasury in his cabinet. He resigned this office October 27, 1881, and was elected senator from the North Star state to fill the va- COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 139 cancy caused by the resignation of . A. J. Edgerton. Mr. Windom served in. that chamber until March, 1883. William Windom died in New York City January 29, 1891. DON M. DICKINSON, an American politician and lawyer, was born in Port Ontario, New York, January 17, 1846. He removed with his parents to Michigan when lie was but two years old. He was educated in the public schools of Detroit and at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-one. In 1872 he was made secretary of the Democratic state central committee of Michigan, and his able management of the campaign gave him a prominent place in the councils of his party. In 1876, during the Tilden campaign, he acted as chairman of the state central committee. He was afterward chosen to represent his state in the Democratic national committee, and in 1886 he was appointed postmaster-general by President Cleveland. After the expiration of his term of office he returned to Detroit and resumed the practice of law. In the presidential campaign of 1896, Mr. Dickinson adhered to the " gold wing" of the Democracy, and his influence was felt in the national canvass, and especially in his own state. JOHN JACOB ASTOR, the founder of the Astor family and fortunes, while not a native of this country, was one of the most noted men of his time, and as all his wealth and fame were acquired here, he may well be classed among America's great men. He was born near Heidelberg, Germany, July 17, 1763, and when twenty years old emigrated to the United States. Evan at that age he exhibited remarkable business ability and foresight, and soon he was investing capital in furs which he took to London and sold at a great profit. He next settled at New York, and engaged extensively in the fur trade. He exported furs to Europe in his own vessels, which returned with cargoes of foreign commodities, and thus he rapidly amassed an immense fortune. In 1814 he founded Astoria on the western coast of North America, near the mouth of the Columbia river, as a depot for the fur trade, for the promotion of which he sent a number of expeditions to the Pacific ocean. He also purchased a large amount of real estate in New York, the value of which increased enormously All through life his business ventures were a series of marvelous successes, and he ranked as one of the most sagacious and successful business men in the world. He died March 29, 1848, leaving a fortune estimated at over twenty million dollars to his children, who have since increased it. John Jacob Astor left $400,000 to found a public library in New York City, and 'his son, William B. Astor, who died in 1875, left $300,000 to add to his father's bequest. This is known as the Astor Library, one of the largest in the United States. SCHUYLER COLFAX, an eminent American statesman, was born in New York City, March 23, 1823, being a grandson of General William Colfax; the commander of Washington's life-guards. In 1836 he removed with his mother, who was then a widow, to Indiana, settling at South Bend. Young Schuyler studied law, and in 1845 became editor of the " St. Joseph Valley. Register," a Whig paper published at South Bend. He was a member of the convention which formed a new constitution for Indiana in 1850, and he opposed 140 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. the clause that prohibited colored men from settling in that state. In 1851 he was defeated as the Whig candidate for congress but was elected in 1854, and, being repeatedly re-elected, continued to represent that district in congress until 1869. He became one of the most prominent and influential members of the house of representatives, and served three terms as speaker. During the Civil war he was an active participant in all public measures of importance, and was a confidential friend and adviser of President Lincoln. In May, 1868, Mr. Colfax was nominated for vice-president on the ticket with General Grant, and was elected. After the close of his term he retired from office, and for the remainder of his life devoted much of his time to lecturing and literary pursuits. His death occurred January 23, 1885. He was one of the most prominent members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in America, and that order erected a bronze statue to his memory in University Park, Indianapolis, Indiana, which was -unveiled in May, 1887. WILLIAM FREEMAN VILAS, who attained a national reputation as an able lawyer, statesman, and cabinet offrcer, was born at Chelsea, Vermont, July 9, 1840. His parents removed to Wisconsin when our subject was but eleven years of age, and there with the early settlers endured all the hardships and trials incident to pioneer life. William F. Vilas was given all the advantages found in the common schools, and supplemented this by a course of study in the Wisconsin State University, after which he studied law, was admitted to the bar and began practicing at Madison. Shortly afterward the Civil war broke out and Mr. Vilas enlisted and became colonel of the Twenty-third regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers, serving throughout the war with distinction. At the close of the war he returned to Wisconsin, resumed his law practice, and. rapidly rose to eminence in this profession. In 1885 he was selected by President Cleveland for postmaster-general and at the close of his term again returned to Madison, Wisconsin, to resume the practice of law. THOMAS McINTYRE COOLEY, an eminent American jurist and law writer, was born in Attica, New York, January 6, 1824. He was admitted to the bar in 1846, and four years later was appointed reporter of the supreme court of Michigan, which office he continued to hold for seven years. In the meantime, in 1859, he became professor of the law department of the University of Michigan, and soon afterward was made dean of the faculty of that department. In 1864 he was elected justice of the supreme court of Michigan, in 1867 became chief justice of that court, and in 1869 was re-elected for a term of eight years. In 1881 he again joined the faculty of the University of Michigan, assuming the professorship of constitutional and administrative law. His works on these branches have become standard, and he is recognized as authority on this and .related subjects. Upon the passage of the inter-state commerce law in 1887 he became chairman of the commission and served in that capacity four years. JOHN PETER ALTGELD, a noted American politician and writer on social questions, was born in Germany, December 30, 1847. He came to America with his parents and settled in Ohio when two years old. In 1864 he entered the Union army COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 141 and served till the close of the war, after which he settled in Chicago, Illinois. He was elected judge of the superior court of Cock county, Illinois, in 1886, in which capacity he served until elected governor of Illinois in 1892, as a Democrat. During the first year of his term as governor he attracted national attention by his pardon of the anarchists convicted of the Haymarket murder in Chicago, and again in 1894 by his denunciation of President Cleveland for calling out federal troops to suppress the rioting in connection with the great Pullman strike in Chicago. At the national convention of the Democratic party in Chicago, in July, 1896, he is said to have inspired the clause in the platform denunciatory of interference by federal authorities in local affairs, and "government by injunction." He was gubernatorial candidate for re-election on the Democratic ticket in 1896, but was defeated by John R. Tanner, Republican. Mr. Altgeld published two volumes of essays on " Live Questions," evincing radical views on social matters. ADLAI EWING STEVENSON, an American statesman and politician, was born in Christian county, Kentucky, October 23, 1835, and removed with the family to Bloomington, Illinois, in 1852. He was admitted to the bar in 1858, and settled in the practice of his profession in Metamora, Illinois. In 1861 he was made master in chancery of Woodford county, and in 1864 was elected state's attorney. In 1868 he returned to Bloomington and formed a law partnership with James S. Ewing. He had served as a presidential elector in 1864, and in 1868 was elected to congress as a Democrat, receiving a majority vote from every county in his district. He became prominent in his party, and was a delegate to the national convention in 1884. On the election of Cleveland to the presidency Mr. Stevenson was appointed first assistant postmaster-general. After the expiration of his term he continued to exert a controlling influence in the politics of his state, and in 1892 was elected vice-president of the United States on the ticket with Grover Cleveland. At the expiration of his term of office he resumed the practice of law at Bloomington, Illinois. SIMON CAMERON, whose name is prominently identified with the history of the United States as a political leader and statesman, was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, March 8, 1799. He grew to manhood in his native county, receiving. good educational advantages, and develop- ing a natural inclination for political life. He rapidly rose in prominence and became the most influential Democrat in Pennsylvania, and in 1845 was elected by that party to the United States senate. Upon the organization of the Republican party he was one of the first to declare his allegiance to it, and in 1856 was re-elected United States senator from Pennsylvania as a Republican. In March, 1861, he was appointed secretary of war by President Lincoln, and served until early in 1862, when he was sent as minister to Russia, returning in 1863. In 1866 he was again. elected United States. senator and served until 1877, when he re- signed and was succeeded by his son, James. Donald Cameron. He continued to exert a. powerful influence in political affairs up to the time of his death, June 26, 1889. JAMES DONALD CAMERON was the eldest son of Simon Cameron, and also attained a high rank among American statesmen. He was born at Harrisburg, 142 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY Pennsylvania, May 14, 1833, and received an excellent education, graduating at Princeton College in 1852. He rapidly developed into one of the most able and successful business men of the country and was largely interested in and identified with the development of the coal, iron, lumber and manufacturing interests of his native state. He served as cashier and afterward president of the Middletown bank, and in 1861 was made vice-president, and in 1863 president of the Northern Central railroad, holding this 'position until 1874, when he resigned and was succeeded by Thomas A. Scott. This road was of great service to the government during the war as a means of communication between Pennsylvania and the national capital, via Baltimore. Mr. Cameron also took an active part in political affairs, always as a Republican. In May, 1876, he was appointed secretary of war in President Grant's cabinet, and in 1877 succeeded his father in the United States senate. He was re-elected in 1885, and again in 1891, serving until 1896, and was recognized as one of the most prominent and influential members of that body. ADOLPHUS W. GREELEY, a famous American arctic explorer, was born at Newburyport, Massachusetts, March 27, 844. He graduated from Brown High School at the age of sixteen, and a year later enlisted in Company B, Nineteenth Massachusetts Infantry, and was made first sergeant. In 1863 he was promoted to second lieutenant. After the war he was assigned to the Fifth United States Cavalry, land became first lieutenant in 1873. He was/ assigned to duty in the United States signal service shortly after the close of the war. An expedition was fitted out by the United States government in 1881, under auspices of the weather bureau, and Lieutenant Greeley placed in command. They set sail from St. Johns the first week in July, and after nine days landed in Greenland, where they secured the services of two natives, together with sledges, dogs, furs and equipment. They encountered an ice pack early in August, and on the 28th of that month freezing weather set in. Two of his party, Lieutenant Lockwood and Sergeant Brainard, added to the known maps about forty miles of coast survey, and reached the highest point yet attained by man, eighty-three degrees and twenty-four minutes north, longitude, forty-four degrees and five minutes west. On their return to Fort Conger, Lieutenant Greeley set out for the south on August 9, 1883. He reached Baird Inlet twenty days later with his entire party. Here they were compelled to abandon their boats, and drifted on an ice-floe for one month. They then went into camp at Cape Sabine,where they suffered untold hardships, and eighteen of the party succumbed to cold and hunger, and had relief been delayed two days longer none would have been found alive. They were picked up by the relief expedition, under Captain Schley, June 22, 1884. The dead were taken to New York for burial. Many sensational stories were published concerning the expedition, and Lieutenant Greeley prepared an exhaustive account of his explorations and experiences. LEVI P. MORTON, the millionaire politician, was born in Shoreham, Vermont, May 16, 1824, and his early education consisted of the rudiments which he obtained in the common school up to the age of fourteen, and after that time what knowledge he gained was wrested from the hard school of experience. He removed to COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 148 Hanover, Vermont, then Concord, Vermont, and afterwards to Boston. He had worked in a store at Shoreham, his native village, and on going to Hanover he established a store and went into business for himself. In Boston he clerked in a dry goods store, and then opened a business of his own in the same line in New York. After a short career he failed, and was compelled to settle with his creditors at only fifty cents on the dollar. He began the struggle anew, and .when the war began he established a banking house in New York; with Junius Morgan as a partner. Through his firm and connections the great government war loans were floated, and it resulted in immense profits to his house. When he was again thoroughly established he invited his former creditors to a banquet, and under each guest's plate was found a check covering the amount of loss sustained respectively, with interest to date. President Garfield appointed Mr. Morton as minister to France, after he had declined the secretaryship of the navy, and in 1888 he was nominated as candidate for vice-president, with Harrison, and elected. In 1894 he was elected governor of New York over David B. Hill, and served one term. CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS, one of the most talented and prominent educators this country has known, was born January 24, 1835, at Derby, Vermont. He received an elementary education in the common schools, and studied two terms in the Derby Academy. Mr. Adams moved with his parents to Iowa in 1856. He was very anxious to pursue a collegiate course, but this was impossible until he had attained the age of twenty-one. In the autumn of 1856 he began the study of Latin and Greek at Denmark Academy, and in September, 1857, he was admitted to the University of Michigan. Mr. Adams was wholly dependent upon himself for the means of his education. During his third and fourth year he became deeply interested in historical studies, was assistant librarian of the university, and determined to pursue a postgraduate course. In 1864 he was appointed instructor of history and Latin and was advanced to an assistant professorship in 1865, and in 1867, on the resignation of Professor White to accept the presidency of Cornell, he was appointed to fill the chair of professor of history. This he accepted 0n condition of his being allowed to spend a year for special study in Germany, France and Italy. Mr. Adams returned in 1868, and assumed the duties of his professorship; He introduced the German system for the instruction of advanced history classes, and his lectures were largely attended. In 1885, on the resignation of President White at Cornell, he was elected his successor and held the office for seven years, and 0n January 17, 1893, he was inaugurated president of the University of Wisconsin. President Adams was prominently connected with numerous scientific and literary organizations and a frequent contributor to the historical and educational data in the periodicals and journals of the country. He was the author of the following: " Democracy and Monarchy in France," " Manual of Historical Literature," " A Plea for Scientific Agriculture," " Higher Education in Germany." JOSEPH B. FORAKER, a prominent political leader and ex-governor of Ohio, was born near Rainsboro, Highland county, Ohio, July 5, 1846. His parents operated a small farm, with a grist and sawmill, hav- 144 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. ing emigrated hither from Virginia and Delaware on account of their distaste for slavery. Joseph was reared upon a farm until 1862, when he enlisted in the Eighty-ninth Ohio Infantry. Later he was made sergeant, and in 1864 commissioned first lieutenant. The next year he was brevetted captain. At the age of nineteen he was mustered out of the army after a brilliant service, part of the time being on the staff of General Slocum. He participated in the battles of Missionary Ridge, Lookout Mountain and Kenesaw Mountain and in Sherman's march to the sea. For two years subsequent to the war young Foraker was studying at the Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, but later went to Cornell University, at Unity, New York, from which he graduated July 1, 1869. He studied law and was admitted to the bar. In 1879 Mr. Foraker was elected judge of .the superior court of Cincinnati and held the office for three years. In 1883 he was defeated in the contest for the governorship with Judge Hoadly. In 1885, however, being again nominated for the same office, he was elected and served two terms. In 1889, in running for governor again, this time against James E. Campbell, he was defeated. Two years later his career in the United States senate began. Mr. Foraker was always a prominent figure at all national meetings of the Republican party, and a strong power, politically, in his native state. LYMAN ABBOTT, an eminent American preacher and writer on religious subjects, came of a noted New England family. His father, Rev. Jacob Abbott, was a prolific and popular writer, and his uncle, Rev. John S. C. Abbott, was a noted preacher and author. Lyman Abbott was born December 18, 1835, in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He graduated at the New York University, in 1853, studied law, and practiced for a time at the bar, after which he studied theology with his uncle, Rev. John S. C. Abbott, and in 1860 was settled in the ministry at Terre Haute, Indiana, remaining there until after the close of the war. He then became connected with the Freedmen's Commission, continuing this until 1868, when he accepted the pastorate of the New England Congregational church, in New York City. A few years later he resigned, to devote his time principally to literary pursuits. For a number of years he edited for the American Tract Society, its " Illustrated Christian Weekly," also the New York " Christian Union." He produced many works, which had a wide circulation, among which may be mentioned the following: " Jesus of Nazareth, His Life and Teachings," " Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths," " Morning and Evening Exercises, Selected from Writings of Henry Ward Beecher," " Laicus, or the Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish," "Popular Religious Dictionary," and " Commentaries on Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts." GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.—The well-known author, orator and journalist whose name heads this sketch, was born at Providence, Rhode Island; February 24, 1824. Having laid the foundation of a most excellent education in his native land, he went to Europe and studied at the University of Berlin. He made an extensive tour throughout the Levant, from which he returned home in 1850. At that early age literature became his field of labor, and in-1851 he published his first important work, COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 145 "Nile Notes of a Howadji." In 1852 two works issued from his facile pen, " The Howadji in Syria," and " Lotus-Eating." Later on he was the author of the well-known " Potiphar Papers," " Prue and I," and " Trumps." He greatly distinguished himself throughout this land as a lecturer on many subjects, and as an orator had but few peers. He was also well known as one of the most fluent speakers on the stump, making many political speeches in favor of the Republican party. In recognition of his valuable services, Mr. Curtis was appointed by President Grant, chairman of the advisory board of the civil service. Although a life-long Republican, Mr. Curtis refused to support Blaine for the presidency in 1884, because of his ideas on civil service and other reforms. For his memorable and magnificent eulogy on Wendell Phillips, delivered in Boston, in 1884, that city presented Mr. Curtis with a gold medal. George W. Curtis, however, is best known to the reading public of the United States by his connection with the Harper Brothers, having been editor of the " Harper's Weekly," and of the " Easy Chair," in " Harper's Monthly Magazine," for many years, in fact retaining that position until the day of his death, which occurred August 31, 1892. ANDREW JOHNSON, the seventeenth president of the United States, served from 1865 to 1869. He was born December 8, 1808, at Raleigh, North Carolina, and was left an orphan at the age of four years. He never attended school, and was apprenticed to a tailor. While serving his apprenticeship he suddenly acquired a passion for knowledge, and learned to read. From that time on he spent all his spare time in reading, and after working for two years as a journeyman tailor at Lauren's Court House, South Carolina, he removed to Greenville, Tennessee, where he worked at his trade and was married. Under his wife's instruction he made rapid progress in his studies and manifested such an interest in focal politics as to be elected as " workingmen's candidate " alderman in 1828, and in 1830 to the mayoralty, and was twice re-elected to each office. Mr. Johnson utilized this time in cultivating his talents as a public speaker, by taking part in a debating society. He was elected in 1835 to the lower house of the legislature, was reelected in 1839 as a Democrat, and in 1841 was elected state senator. Mr. Johnson was elected representative in congress in 1843 and was re-elected four times in succession until 1853, when he was the successful candidate for the gubernatorial chair of Tennessee. He was re-elected in 1855 and in 1857 he entered the United States senate. In 1860 he was supported by the Tennessee delegation to the Democratic convention for the presidential nomination, and lent his influence to the Breckinridge wing of the party. At the election of Lincoln, which brought about the first attempt at secession in December, 1860, Mr. Johnson took a firm attitude in the senate for the Union. He was the leader of the loyalists in East Tennessee. By the course that Mr. Johnson pursued in this crisis he was brought prominently before the northern people, and when, in March, 1862, he was appointed military governor of Tennessee with the rank of brigadier-general, he increased his popularity by the vigorous manner in which he labored to restore order. In the campaign of 1864 he was elected vice-president on the ticket with President Lincoln, and upon the assassination of the latter he succeeded to the 146 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. presidency, April i 5, 1865. He retained the cabinet of President Lincoln, and at first exhibited considerable severity towards the former Confederates, but he soon inaugurated a policy of reconstruction, proclaimed a general amnesty to the late Confederates, and established provisional governments in the southern states. These states claimed representation in congress in the following December, and then arose the momentous question as to what should be the policy of the victorious Union against their late enemies. The Republican majority in congress had an apprehension that the President would undo the results of the war, and consequently passed two bills over the executive veto, and the two highest branches of the government were in open antagonism. The cabinet was reconstructed in July, and Messrs. Randall, Stanbury and Browning superseded Messrs. Denison, Speed and Harlan. In August, 1867, President Johnson removed the secretary of war and replaced him with General Grant, but when congress met in December it refused to ratify the removal of Stanton, who resumed the functions of his office. In 1868 the president again attempted to remove Stanton, who refused to vacate his post and was sustained by the senate. President Johnson was accused by congress of high crimes and misdemeanors, but the trial resulted in his acquittal. Later he was United States senator from Tennessee, and died July 31, 1875. EDMUND RANDOLPH, first attorney-general of the United States, was born in Virginia, August 10, 1753. His father, John Randolph, was attorney-general of Virginia, and lived and died a royalist. Edmund was educated in the law, but joined the army as aide-de-camp to Washington in 1775, at Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was elected to the Virginia convention ii 1776, and attorney-general of the state the same year. In 1779 he was elected to the Continental congress, and served four years. in that body. He was a member of the convention in 1787 that framed the constitution. In that convention he proposed what was known as the " Virginia plan" of confederation, but it was rejected. He advocated the ratification of the constitution in the Virginia convention, although he had refused to sign it. He became governor of Virginia in 1788, and the next year Washington appointed him to the office of attorney-general of the United States upon the organization of the government under the constitution. He was appointed secretary of state to succeed Jefferson during Washington's second term, but resigned a year later on account of differences in the cabinet concerning the policy pursued toward the new French republic. He died September 12, 1813. WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK was born in Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, February 14, 1824. He received his early education at the Norristown Academy, in his native county, and, in 1840, was appointed a cadet in the United States Military Academy, at West Point. He was graduated from the latter in 1844, and brevetted as second lieutenant of infantry. In 1853 he was made first lieutenant, and two years later transferred to the quartermaster's deportment, with the rank of captain, and in 1863 promoted to the rank of major. He served on the frontier, and in the war with Mexico, displaying conspicuous gallantry during the latter. Ile also took a part in the Seminole war, and in the troubles in Kansas, in 1857, and in California; at the out- COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 147 break of the Civil war, as chief quartermaster of the Southern district, he exerted a powerful influence. In 1861 he applied for active duty in the field, and was assigned to the department of Kentucky as chief quartermaster, but before entering upon that duty, was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers. His subsequent history during the war was substantially that of the Army of the Potomac. He participated in the campaign, under McClellan, and led the gallant charge, which captured Fort Magruder, won the day at the battle of Williamsburg, and by services rendered at Savage's Station and other engagements, won several grades in the regular service, and was recommended by McClellan for major-general of volunteers. He was a conspicuous figure at South Mountain and Antietam. He was commissioned major-general of volunteers, November 29, 1862, and made commander of the First Division of the. Second Corps, which he led at Fredricksburg and at Chancellorsville. He was appointed to the command of the Second Corps in June, 1863, and at the battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 2 and 3, of that year, took an important part. On his arrival on the field he found part of the forces then in retreat, but stayed the retrograde movement, checked the enemy, and on the following day commanded the left center, repulsed, on the third, the grand assault of General Lee's army, and was severely wounded. For his services on that field General Hancock received the thanks of congress. On recovering from his wound, he was detailed to go north to stimulate recruiting and fill up the diminished corps, and was the recipient of many public receptions and ovations. In March, 1864, he returned to his command, and in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania led large bodies of men successfully and conspicuously. From that on to the close of the campaign he was a prominent figure. In November, 1864, he was detailed to organize the First Veteran. Reserve Corps, and at the close of hostilities was appointed to the command of the Middle Military Division. In July, 1866, he was made major-general of the regular service. He was at the head of various military departments until 1872, when he was assigned to the command of the Department of the Atlantic, which post he held until his death. In 1869 he declined the nomination for governor of Pennsylvania. He was the nominee of the Democratic party for president, in 1880, and was defeated by General Garfield, who had a popular majority of seven thousand and eighteen and an electoral majority of fifty-nine. General Hancock died February 9, 1886. THOMAS PAINE, the most noted political and deistical writer of the Revolutionary period, was born in England, January 29, 1737, of Quaker parents. His education was obtained in the grammar schools of Thetford, his native town, and supplemented by hard private study while working at his trade of stay-maker at London and other cities of England. He was for a time a dissenting preacher, although he did not relinquish his employment. He married a revenue official's daughter, and was employed in the revenue service for some time. He then became a grocer and during all this time he was reading and cultivating his literary tastes, and had developed a clear and forcible style of composition. He was chosen to represent the interests of the excisemen, and published a pamphlet that brought him considerable notice. He was soon afterward introduced to Benjamin Franklin, and having been dismissed from the service on a 148 - COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY. charge of smuggling, his resentment led him to accept the advice of that statesman to come to America, in 1774. He became editor of the " Pennsylvania Magazine," and the next year published his " Serious Thoughts upon Slavery " in the " Pennsylvania Journal." His greatest political work, however, was written at the suggestion of Dr. Rush, and entitled " Common Sense." It was the most popular pamphlet written during the period and he received two thousand five hundred dollars from the state of. Pennsylvania in recognition of its value. His periodical, the " Crisis," began in 1776, and its distribution among the soldiers did a great deal to keep up the spirit of revolution. He was made secretary of the committee of foreign affairs, but was dismissed for revealing diplomatic secrets in one of his controversies with Silas Deane. He was originator and promoter of a subscription to relieve the distress of the soldiers near the close of the war, and was sent to France with Henry Laurens to negotiate the treaty with France, and was granted three thousand dollars by congress for his services there, and an estate at New Rochelle, by the state of New York. In 1787, after the close of the Revolutionary war, he went to France, and a few years later published his " Rights of Man," defending the French revolution, which gave him great popularity in France. He was made a citizen and elected to the national convention at Calais. He favored banishment of the king to America, and opposed his execution. He was imprisoned for about ten months during 1794 by the Robespierre party, during which time he wrote the " Age of Reason," his great deistical work. He was in danger of the guillotine for several months. He took up his residence with the family of James Monroe, then minister to France and was chosen again to the convention. He returned to the United States in 1802, and was cordially received throughout the country except at Trenton, where he was insulted by Federalists. He retired to his estate at New Rochelle, and his death occurred June 8, 1809. JOHN WILLIAM MACKAY was one of America's noted men, both in the development of the western coast and the building of the Mackay and Bennett cable. He was born in 1831 at Dublin, Ireland; came to New York in 1840 and his boyhood days were spent in Park Row. He went to California some time after the argonauts of 1849 and took to the primitive methods of mining—lost and won and finally drifted into Nevada about 1860. The bonanza discoveries which were to have such a potent influence on the finance and statesmanship of the day came in 1872. Mr. Mackay founded the Nevada Bank in 1878. He is said to have taken one hundred and fifty million dollars in bullion out of the Big Bonanza mine. There were associated with him in this enterprise James G. Fair, senator from Nevada; William O'Brien and James C. Flood. When vast wealth came to Mr. Mackay he believed it his duty to do his country some service, and he agitated in his mind the building of an American steamship line, and while brooding over this his attention was called to the cable relations between America and Europe. The financial management of the cable was selfish and extravagant, and the capital was heavy with accretions of financial " water " and to pay even an apparent dividend upon the sums which represented the nominal value of the cables, it was necessary to hold the rates COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY - 149 at an exorbitant figure. And, moreover, the cables were foreign; in one the influence of France being paramount and in the other that of England; and in the matter of intelligence, so necessary in case of war, we would be at the mercy of our enemies. This train of thought brought Mr. Mackay into relation with James Gordon Bennett, the proprietor of the " New York Herald." The result of their intercourse was that Mr. Mackay so far entered into the enthusiasm of Mr,. Bennett over an independent cable, that he offered to assist the enterprise with five hundred thousand dollars. This was the inception of the Commercial Cable Company, or of what has been known for years as the Mackay-Bennett cable. ELISHA GRAY, the great inventor and electrician, was born August 2, 1835, at Barnesville, Belmont county, Ohio. He was, as a child, greatly interested in the phenomena of nature, and read with avidity all the books he could obtain, relating to this subject. He was apprenticed to various trades during his boyhood, but his insatiable thirst for knowledge dominated his life and he found time to study at odd intervals. Supporting himself by working at his trade, he found time to pursue a course at Oberlin College, where he particularly devoted himself to the study of physicial science. Mr. Gray secured his first patent for electrical or telegraph apparatus on October 1, 1867. His attention was first attracted to telephonic transmission during this year and he saw in it a way of transmitting signals for telegraph purposes, and conceived the idea of electro-tones, tuned to different tones in the scale. He did not then realize the importance of his invention, his thoughts being employed on the capacity of the apparatus for transmitting musical tones through an electric circuit, and it was not until 1874 that he was again called to consider the reproduction of electrically-transmitted vibrations through the medium of animal tissue. He continued experimenting with various results, which finally culminated in his taking out a patent for his speaking telephone on February 14, 1876. He took out fifty additional patents in the course of eleven years, among which were, telegraph switch, telegraph repeater, telegraph annunciator and typewriting telegraph. From 1869 until 1873 he was employed in the manufacture of telegraph apparatus in Cleveland and Chicago, and filled the office of electrician to the Western Electric Company. He was awarded the degree of D. S., and in 1874 he went abroad to perfect himself in acoustics. Mr. Gray's latest invention was known as the telautograph or long distance writing machine. Mr. Gray wrote and published several works on scientific subjects, among which were: " Telegraphy and Telephony," and " Experimental Research in Electro-Harmonic Telegraphy and Telephony." WHITELAW REID.--Among the many men who have adorned the field of journalism in the United States, few stand out with more prominence than the scholar, author and editor whose name heads this article. Born at Xenia, Greene county, Ohio, October 27, 1837, he graduated at Miami University in 1856. For about a year he was superintendent of the graded schools of South Charleston, Ohio, after which he purchased the " Xenia News," which he edited for about two years. This paper was the first one outside of Illinois to advocate the nomination of Abraham Lincoln,, Mr. Reid having been a Republican since the birth of that party in 1856. After taking an active