Bac-Bay: Bacon through Bayard

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.


BACON, Reverend Leonard 1802-1881, clergyman, newspaper editor, author, abolitionist leader

BACON, LEONARD (February 19, 1802-December 24, 1881), Congregational clergyman, was born at Detroit, Michigan, the son of Reverend David Bacon [q.v.] and Alice (Parks) Bacon. In his sixth year the family removed to Tallmadge, Ohio, and one of the boy's first memories was of ·a school exhibition in the neighboring town of Hudson in which he and John Brown, later of Harper's Ferry fame, conducted a dialogue. At the age of ten, after his missionary father's defeat and poverty-stricken return to Connecticut, the boy was put under the care of an uncle, whose name he bore, in Hartford. So well was he trained at the Hartford Grammar School that at fifteen he entered the sophomore class of Yale College. Although maintaining a good rank, he fell below the expectations of his classmates, and, at the end of the course (1820), one of them, Theodore D. Woolsey, reproved him because "he had not studied enough and was in danger of hurting himself by superficial reading." This warning and a maturing sense of responsibility so influenced his habits in Andover Theological Seminary, which he entered in the autumn of 1820, that upon graduation he was assigned the principal address. On September 28, 1824, he was ordained as an evangelist by the Hartford North Consociation; it being his intention to go as a missionary to the Western frontier. The next day brought a letter from the ecclesiastical society of the First Church of New Haven, asking him to supply their vacant pulpit. After preaching fourteen sermons he was called by the society with a vote of 68 to 20 to become its minister at a salary of $1,000. He was installed over this noted church on March 9, 1825, when he was twenty-three years of age. The young man was rather appalled by the weight of his responsibilities. In the pews before him sat Noah Webster, the lexicographer, James Hillhouse, senator, Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, and many of the faculty of the college. The congregation was accustomed to a high order of ministerial ability. His immediate predecessor was Nathaniel W. Taylor, whose sermons were ·an intellectual event; before him, Moses Stuart, distinguished for scholarship and effective speech, had been the pastor. Evidently Leonard Bacon did not at first fulfil the hopes of his parish, for after some months a committee waited upon him, intimating that his sermons were not worthy of the high place he held. His answer was, "Gentlemen, they shall be made worthy." With the years he grew in power and gained hold upon the affections of his people. They were proud of his unusual influence in the city, of the commanding position he occupied in Congregational councils, and of the reputation which extended beyond the boundaries of the denomination. He was the sole and active pastor of the First Church for forty-one years, and pastor emeritus until his death. When it became known that he was leaving the active ministry the corporation of Yale offered him a chair in the Divinity School, and he was acting professor of revealed theology from 1866 to 1871, when he became lecturer on church polity and American church history, holding this position until his death in his eightieth year. He was twice married: in July 1825, to Lucy Johnson of Johnstown, New York, and in June 1847, to Catherine E. Terry of Hartford, Connecticut. Fourteen children were born to him.

Bacon was not primarily a great preacher. Although his sermons were always solid and dignified, they could be on ordinary Sabbaths very dull. But no occasion of unusual significance found him unequal to his task. As a theologian he was in sympathy with the system of thought known as the "New Haven School," yet he held his convictions in a spirit of abundant charity. His style in writing was the clear expression of a practical understanding, glowing with moral earnestness. At times it was made graceful by phrases of rare felicity. A gift of genuine poetic sentiment found expression in several hymns used in the churches of his order. The one beginning
"O God, beneath Thy guiding hand,"

written in 1838 for the second centennial of New Haven and of his church, sprang into immediate popularity and has secured a permanent place in American hymnology.

A natural controversialist, he was never so completely awake and self-possessed as in public debate with no moment available for preparation. Yet he fought as a champion, not as a gladiator. He engaged in no warfare which did not engage his conscience. "He inherited in large measure," wrote a friend, "the old Puritan zeal for making things straight in this crooked world, for compelling magistrates to rule justly, and for beating down the upholders of demoralizing institutions and customs." Yet he was a controversialist who sought to quell controversy. Two theological battles convulsed the Congregational churches of Connecticut during the early years of his ministry. The first was the famous Taylor-Tyler dispute on certain doctrines concerning man's freedom of choice. After the conflict had become so bitter that the followers of Dr. Tyler founded a new theological seminary at East Windsor, since removed to Hartford, Bacon wrote an Appeal to the Congregational Minister of Connecticut against a Division (1840), in which he showed that the two warring factions agreed on twenty-six points; as these more than covered the essential tenets of the Christian religion, he urged that, although the differences might be of importance to the science of theology, they afforded no occasion for brethren to renounce each other. The next pronounced disquiet grew out of the revolutionary teachings of Horace Bushnell [q.v.]. In 1847 Bushnell published his Christian Nurture in which he rejected the prevalent view of the necessity of conscious conversion and advanced the opinion that a child in a Christian household should "grow up a Christian," be trained in the Christian faith, and at the proper time be received into the church without experiencing a dramatic conversion. This was followed in 1849 by a still more unsettling book entitled God in Christ, in which was advanced what has since become known as the "moral influence" theory of the Atonement, in opposition to the prevailing substitutionary or governmental explanation. Bushnell, fiercely attacked, was defended by the Hartford Central Association. So intense was the feeling that fifty-one ministers petitioned the General Association of the state to exclude the Hartford Association from fellowship. Bacon, though not holding Bushnell's views, was influential in passing an ambiguous or mollifying resolution which prevented a division. If he was regarded as the most formidable polemical writer and speaker in the American Congregationalism of his day, he was equally distinguished for the soundness of his judgment. During the Beecher Tilton controversy, a council of churches called by Beecher's opponents in 1874 chose Bacon as moderator, while a later council held in Plymouth Church in 1876, the largest advisory council of its kind ever convened, also elected him moderator.

Perhaps Bacon's chief service to his denomination was his work in arousing Congregationalism to self-consciousness and confidence in its polity. In his early ministry the churches of this order were in a slough of self-distrust. A form of semi-presbyterianism was common among them, and a "Plan of Union," entered into with Presbyterianism, hindered Congregational polity from entering into the developing West. Bacon, as one of the editors of the Christian Spectator from 1826 to 1838, as one of the founders and editor for a score of years of the New Englander, by his speeches at conventions and his influence in national missionary societies, and by his historical studies, did more than any other to awaken the churches of this faith to the value of their heritage. In 1839 he published Thirteen Historical Bacon Discourses, but his most elaborate and permanent work, The Genesis of the New England Churches (1874), was the fruit of his old age. In this he told the story of the beginnings of Congregationalism in England, its establishment at Plymouth, Massachusetts, and its struggle until success was assured. It is worthy of note that this successor of John Davenport was much more in sympathy with the principles and polity of the Pilgrims than with those of the Puritans.

Bacon's most conspicuous claim for remembrance rests on his leadership in the anti-slavery cause. In his student days at Andover he wrote a report On the Black Population of the United States (1823) which was extensively circulated in New England, and its severest passages quoted even in Richmond. On going to New Haven he organized a society for the improvement of the colored people of that city. With Garrison and the extreme abolitionists he had no sympathy, and he received from them malignant attacks. In 1846 he published a volume entitled Slavery Discussed in Occasional Essays. This fell into the hands of a comparatively unknown lawyer in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. A statement in the preface made a profound impression on the future emancipator: "If that form of government, that system of social order is not wrong,-if those laws of the southern states, by virtue of which slavery exists there and is what it is, are not wrong, nothing is wrong." The sentiment reappeared in Lincoln's famous declaration, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." In 1848 the name of Leonard Bacon appears as one of the founders and the senior editor of the Independent, which ·asserted as a motto, "We stand for free soil.” Bitter opposition resulted from his anti-slavery work, even in his own church, but looking back on that epoch, he said : "I make no complaint-all reproaches, all insults endured in a conflict with so gigantic a wickedness against God and man, are to be received and remembered, not as injuries but a s honors." During the Civi1 War he was a steadfast supporter of the administration.

In appearance Bacon was of slight and sinewy frame, with a massive head, bushy hair and beard, a face suggestive of thought and intense energy, blue-gray eyes, lips mobile for wit, yet set in firmness, the whole figure denoting a man of vital force expressing itself in intellectual strength.

[Williston Walker, Ten New England Leaders(1901); Leonard Bacon, Pastor of the First Church in New Haven (1882); S. A. W. Duffield, English Hymns (1866); Congregation Yr. Bk. 18 82, pp. 18-21; New Haven Evening Register, Dec: 24, 1881.]

C.A. D-c:


BAILEY, Francis, abolitionist, founding member, Electing Committee, Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1787 (Basker, 2005, pp. 92, 102; Nathan, 1991)


BAILEY, Gamaliel, 1807-1859, Maryland, abolitionist leader, journalist, newspaper publisher and editor.  Publisher and editor of National Era (founded 1847), of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.  Co-founded Cincinnati Anti-Slavery Society in 1835.  Corresponding Secretary, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. Assistant and Co-Editor, The Abolitionist newspaper.  Liberty Party.  Published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1851-1852. (Blue, 2005, pp. 21, 25-26, 28, 30, 34, 52, 55, 67, 148-149, 166, 192, 202, 223, 248; Dumond, 1961, pp. 163, 223, 264, 301; Filler, 1960, pp. 78, 150, 194-195, 245, 252; Harrold, 1995; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 4, 5, 14, 23, 24, 26, 27, 44, 46, 54, 61, 63, 69, 88-89, 91, 103, 106; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 50, 185; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 136; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 496-497; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 1, p. 881)

BAILEY, GAMALIEL (December 3, 1807-June 5, 1859), journalist, anti-slavery agitator, was born at Mount Holly, New Jersey., the son of Reverend Gamaliel Bailey, a Methodist clergyman. Soon after his son's birth, his father removed to Philadelphia, where the boy, after attending private schools, entered the Jefferson Medical College, graduating in 1827. For a few months he taught in a New Jersey country school. Then, suffering in health, he shipped before the mast on a trading vessel bound for China. At Canton so much sickness developed among the sailors that he became temporarily ship's surgeon. On returning to America he opened a physician's office, but was soon installed as editor, in Baltimore, of the Methodist Protestant, the short-lived organ of the sect so styled-an unusual appointment considering that Bailey had then no experience in writing and was not a church-member. This position soon failing him, he departed to St. Louis to join an expedition to Oregon, only to find the venture a fraud. Practically penniless, he walked back to Cincinnati. Here a severe epidemic of cholera broke out soon after his arrival (1831), and through friendly influence he became physician in charge of the "Hospital for Strangers," where by his heroic work he gained favorable introduction to the city. In 1833 he married Margaret Lucy Shands of Virginia. In 1834 occurred the Lane Seminary debates on slavery, which immediately enlisted the interest of Bailey, who was lecturing there on physiology. After due reflection he became an ardent abolitionist and associated himself (1836) with J. G. Birney in editing the Cincinnati Philanthropist, the first anti-slavery organ in the West. A year later Bailey became sole editor and proprietor. The influence of his pen in the ensuing years is evidenced by the fact that his office was thrice mobbed; on one occasion printing outfit and building were entirely destroyed but three weeks later new presses were turning out the Cincinnati Philanthropist as usual-a remarkable accomplishment for that time. The third assault (1843) was suppressed by the police and a reaction in Bailey's favor followed; on the strength of this he launched a daily, the Herald. When the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society decided to publish a national periodical in Washington he was the logical choice for editor-in-chief. Disposing of his Cincinnati journals, he assumed his new duties at the nation's capital in January, 1847, and for twelve years efficiently served the Anti-Slavery cause through the National Era, a weekly journal, of which during the Fremont campaign of 1856 Bailey issued a daily edition at considerable personal sacrifice. In 1848 he again faced a mob, which for three days threatened his printing-plant and even his house, the rioters erroneously assuming his connection with the escape of certain slaves. His conduct at this time was thoroughly characteristic. Unarmed he appeared at the door of his house, and calmly entered on a frank statement of his innocence of the charge preferred and his right as an American citizen to complete freedom of utterance. His angry auditors yielded to his persuasive logic and, as he finished his appeal, dispersed. He was not molested again.

The career of the Era was remarkably successful. Whittier, Theodore Parker, Mrs. Southworth, Grace Greenwood, and particularly Mrs. Stowe, with Uncle Tom's Cabin, were contributors, but the directing mind and will were Bailey's. He exerted a wide moral and political influence for the Anti-Slavery movement, the more so because, besides integrity, good business judgment, and determination, he possessed literary ability and a fair-minded tolerance that compelled the respect even of opponents. He condemned the Know-Nothing movement, though it cost him money and friends.

Physically he was delicate-looking, but possessed a good physique, with well-shaped head, intellectual face, and magnetic manner. Political and social Washington flocked to the gatherings at the Bailey home, where the charm and wit of host, hostess, and guests added friends to their cause. In 1853 his health necessitated a trip to Europe, and in 1859, again ill, he embarked on a second voyage thither. He died at sea but his body was brought back to Washington for burial.

[The Atlantic Monthly, June 1866, XVII, pp. 743-51, contains an anonymous article "A Pioneer Editor," dealing with Bailey's career. A more intimate sketch is "An American Salon," by Grace Greenwood, in the Cosmopolitan, February 1890, VIII, 437-47. The files of the National Era (1847-59) reflect the mind and heart of the man. His obituary appeared in the issue of June 30, 1859, and an account of his funeral in that of July 7, 1859, with a tribute by Whittier entitled "Gamaliel Bailey."]

R.S.B.


BAILEY, William S., newspaper editor of the Newport News in Newport, Kentucky.  In the 1850s, his newspaper office was wrecked and his home burned down by angry mobs.  Opposed slavery and said, “The system of slavery enslaves all who labor for an honest living.”


BAIRD, Absalom, abolitionist leader, Washington Society Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. ; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 507-508;  Basker, 2005, p. 225.

BAIRD, ABSALOM (August 20, 1824-June 14, 1905), Union soldier, was born at Washington, Pennsylvania, the son of William and Nancy (Mitchell) Baird. His father was a distinguished member of the Pennsylvania bar and his grandfather, Dr. Absalom Baird, a surgeon in the Revolutionary army. His great-grandfather, Lieut. John Baird, participated in the Forbes expedition against the French and Indians at Fort Duquesne in 1758. Upon graduation from Washington College, Absalom Baird studied law but the threatened rupture between the United States and Mexico induced him to seek admission to the United States Military Academy in 1845, in order to prepare himself for the war that was impending. He was graduated in 1849 and assigned to the artillery. Three years campaigning against the Seminole Indians were succeeded by six years as instructor at West Point and these by duty in Texas, a frontier then distinctly unfriendly.

Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, Baird was appointed captain and assistant adjutant- general, and when McDowell's army marched into Virginia accompanied it as adjutant-general of Tyler's division, participating in the engagement at Blackburn's Ford and in the battle of Bull Run. Returning to the War Department he was promoted, November 12, 1861, to major and assistant inspector-general and during the winter gained an understanding of volunteers that later proved invaluable. When, in the spring of 1862, McClellan's army moved to the Peninsula, Baird forsook his desk for the remainder of the war. As inspector-general and chief of staff, 4th corps, he took an active part in the operations at Yorktown and Williamsburg. For his services he was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, April 28, 1862, and ordered to Kentucky, where he participated with his brigade in the capture of Cumberland Gap in June and later was directed to organize a division in General Gordon Granger's Army of Kentucky. This organization he pushed with restless energy and, in a month, the division moved to central Kentucky, to guard that section against Confederate cavalry raids until January 1863. As part of Rosecrans's army during the eight months following, Baird's division engaged in minor operations near Franklin and Shelbyville, Tennessee. At the request of General George H. Thomas, commanding the 14th corps, Baird was transferred to that corps in August 1863.

At this time, which marks the beginning of his distinguished military service, Baird was in the prime of life, active, energetic, ambitious; a just commander, a strict disciplinarian, and an aggressive fighter. With the 1st division he crossed the Tennessee River and the mountains and gained contact with Bragg's army on September 11. On September 19, the first day of the battle of Chickamauga, his division was heavily engaged and suffered severe losses. On September 20, it was on the left of Thomas's corps and of the Union army. To obtain possession of the roads to Chattanooga, in the rear of the Union army, the Confederates during the forenoon launched three powerful attacks against Baird's division, all of which were repulsed, the last largely through his personal exertions. The fighting continued ceaselessly throughout the afternoon, and when Thomas, at nightfall, retired to Rossville Gap, Baird's division was the last to leave the field, having suffered greater losses than any other division engaged except Brannan's. For his gallantry and steadfast courage Baird was brevetted lieutenant-colonel in the regular army, and both Rosecrans and Thomas recommended his promotion to major- general of volunteers. In the battle of Chattanooga which followed, his division, on November 25, as part of Thomas's corps, stormed Missionary Ridge in superb style. For this he was brevetted colonel in the regular army and again recommended for promotion to major-general by Grant and Thomas. A winter spent in outpost duty and skirmishing with the enemy was followed by participation in Sherman's Atlanta campaign, during which Baird's division was under fire nearly every day from May to August 1864. At the battle of Jonesboro he personally conducted a successful charge by one of his brigades against the enemy's entrenchments. For this he was awarded a medal of honor and for services rendered in the campaign Sherman recommended his promotion to major-general. He accompanied Sherman on his march to Savannah, where he received his brevet as major-general of volunteers, September 1, 1864, and again through the Carolinas until Johnston surrendered.

After the war Baird served as assistant commissioner in the Freedman's Bureau until September 1866, when he was discharged from the volunteer service and reverted to his permanent grade of major and assistant inspector-general. Shortly thereafter he received his brevets as brigadier-general and major-general in the regular army. He was promoted successively lieutenant-colonel and, in September 1885, brigadier-general and inspector-general. About the War Department the impressive dignity of his manner, his long white mustache, and the high beaver hat he favored, made him a notable figure. In 1887 he attended the maneuvers of the French army and received from the French Government the decoration of commander of the Legion of Honor. Retired for age on August 20, 1888, he died near Relay, Maryland., June 14, 1905, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

[Old Files Section, A.G. O.; Official Records, see Index; G. W. Cullum, Biography Reg., vol. II; Files Historical Section, Army War College.]

C. A.B.


BALDWIN, John Denison, 1809-1883, journalist, clergyman, Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1863-1867, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Editor of the anti-slavery journal, Republican in Hartford, Connecticut.  Owner, editor of Free-Soil Charter Oak at Hartford, Connecticut.  In 1852 became editor of the Commonwealth in Boston.  Supported negro causes. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 148-149; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, p. 537; Congressional Globe).

BALDWIN, JOHN DENISON (September 28, 1809-July 8, 1883), journalist, was descended from a Buckinghamshire county family through the emigrant, John Baldwin, who arrived in Stonington, Connecticut, in 1664. Five generations later, at North Stonington, John Denison Baldwin was born, eldest son of Daniel and Hannah (Stanton) Baldwin. Daniel Baldwin was a large land owner, who, suffering reverses, removed, when John was seven, to Chenango County, New York, at that time a wilderness. Here John toiled on the farm until, after another seven years, the family. returned to North Stonington where he was able to attend the village school. At seventeen he was studying at Yale, while supporting himself by public-school teaching. Unable to complete his college course, he began the study of law, then entered Yale Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1834. Ordained in the same year, he became pastor of the Congregational Church at West Woodstock, Connecticut, until 1837. Later he held pastorates at North Branford and North Killingly. As a preacher he is said to have shown sagacity and public spirit. Eager for further education, he studied French, German, and especially archeology. While at North Branford he published The Story of Raymond Hill and Other Poems (1847), which exhibit melancholy beauty and a moral purpose.

From North Killingly he was elected by the Free-Soil party, which he helped to organize in Connecticut, to the legislature, where he sponsored the law establishing the state's first normal school (1850). Reaching the conviction that his services would be more usefully employed in journalism, he abandoned the ministry in 1849 to become owner and editor of the Free-Soil Charter Oak at Hartford. Three years later he removed to Boston, becoming editor of the daily and weekly Commonwealth. Sumner, Henry Wilson, and Theodore Parker were frequent visitors to his office and became life-long friends. In 1859 he embraced the opportunity to purchase, with his sons, the Worcester Spy, which he made one of the leading newspapers of the state. Identifying himself now with the Republican party, he was influential, as a delegate to the convention of 1860, in securing the nomination of Hannibal Hamlin for vice-president. As a party counsellor, Baldwin was always highly valued for his knowledge of men and his political sagacity regarding the effects of measures. He was elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress ( 1862), and was twice reelected, becoming a member of committees on expenditures, public buildings, and library. He made notable speeches on state sovereignty and treason, on reconstruction, and in defense of the negro. His efforts-unfortunately premature-for international copyright, won gratitude from authors. Of Baldwin's two works Prehistoric Nations (1869) and Ancient America ( 1872), the first sets forth a now wholly discredited theory of the derivation of Western civilization from the Cushites of Arabia, while the second, a popular presentation of American aboriginal peoples, is rated as among the best books of its class then written. Baldwin later published several volumes on his own ancestry, besides contributing to the Baldwin Genealogy. His most influential work, however, was through the Spy. Here his industry, business capacity, and literary ability had full play and gave the paper wide influence through the state and beyond. Republicans knew it as the "Worcester County Bible," Democrats dubbed it "The Lying Spy." Baldwin's retentive memory afforded wide range of facts, and his direct, forcible, sincere words were always animated by high ideals. A journal's mission, he believed, was the exercise of an influence for right principles and movements; even news was subordinate. Though not a rapid writer, he was a diligent one, making frequent archaeological and kindred contributions to magazines. In later years he largely withdrew from active editorial work on the Spy, enjoying in retirement his family and books. He was married in 1832 to Lemira Hathaway of Dighton, Massachusetts, by whom he had four children, two daughters who died in early life and two sons, John Stanton and Charles Clinton, who survived him and carried on the Spy. He died in Worcester, Massachusetts.

[Sketches of Baldwin's career are given in his own Record of the Descendants of John Baldwin, of Stonington, Connecticut (1880); The Baldwin Genealogy (1881), ed. by C. C. Baldwin; S. E. Staples, Memorial of John Denison Baldwin ( 1884); Western Reserve Historical Tract 65 (in vol. II); Commemorative Biography Rec. of Tolland and Windham Counties, Connecticut (1903);_ Historical Homes and Institutions and Genealogy and Personal Memoirs of Worcester Co., Massachusetts ( 1907), ed. by E. B. Crane, vol. I; Charles Nutt, History of Worcester and Its People ( 1919), vol. IV; extended obituary in the Worcester Daily Spy, July 9, 1883; an unpublished autobiography in the possession of his grandson, Mr. Robert S. Baldwin of Worcester.]

R.S.B.


BALDWIN, Mathias William, 1795-1866, abolitionist, American inventor, machinery manufacturer, industrialist.  Founder, Baldwin Locomotive Works.  Founder, Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.  Strong supporter of the abolition movement in the United States.  (Appleton’s, 1888; Brown, 1995; Kelly, 1946; Westing, 1966).

BALDWIN, MATTHIAS WILLIAM  (November 10, 1795-September 7, 1866), manufacturer and philanthropist, was an important figure in the development of the locomotive in America. He was the youngest of five children born to William Baldwin, a carriage maker in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. The father died when the boy was four years old, the large property which he h ad accumulated was imprudently lost by his executors, and the family was left to enjoy the doubtful. blessings of honorable poverty. Through his mother's efforts, Matthias received a fair schooling, and was then apprenticed to Woolworth Brothers, manufacturing jewelers of Philadelphia, where he eventually became the best workman in their shop. At twenty-four, he set up for himself, but six years later abandoned the jewelry business, deciding that he "could not spend his life making gew-gaws"-especially since the national depression of 1825 made it no longer even financially profitable. He now entered into partnership with one David Mason in a constantly expanding manufacturing business, first producing engravers' and book-makers' tools, next adding hydraulic presses, then copper rolls for printing calico from a steel matrix and forms for new continuous calico color printing; finally in 1827 he constructed a six-horse-power noiseless stationary engine, and the firm began to build engines for sale. At this time, however, Mason became alarmed at these unceasing innovations and withdrew from the business, leaving his more enterprising partner to continue his increasingly successful career alone.

On April 25, 1831, Baldwin exhibited in Peale's Museum a dummy locomotive and two cars, improved from an imported English model and running upon a circular track built for the purpose. He then constructed for the Philadelphia & Germantown Railroad one of the first American locomotives to be actually employed in transportation; he made tools especially designed for the work, and brought his task to completion within six months. The resulting engine, christened "Old Ironsides," was partially of iron and partially of wood, weighed six tons, moved twenty-eight miles an hour, and drew thirty tons. It ran between Philadelphia and Germantown in fair weather-"On rainy days horses will be attached" (advertisement, Paulson's American Daily Advertiser, November 26, 1832). During the next ten years, Baldwin constructed many stationary engines and ten more locomotives, introducing continual improvements; after that time he devoted all his energy to locomotives alone. The business prospered, he moved his headquarters from Minor St. to Broad and Hamilton Sts., and successfully weathered several panics, notably that of 1837-40. In 1854 Matthew Baird [q.v.] bought an interest in the Baldwin works and became a partner, continuing so until Baldwin's death. A temporary boycott in the South shortly before the war, due to Baldwin's activities on behalf of the colored people, was compensated by the number of engines sold to the Government after hostilities began. Over 1,500 locomotives had been built by his company when Baldwin died in 1866. With remarkable persistence, although suffering great pain, he attended to his business until within a few days of his death.

Baldwin's interests, however, were by no means confined exclusively to business. As early as 1824 he had aided in the foundation of Franklin Institute for the betterment of labor. About 1826 he underwent religious conversion, became a Sunday-school superintendent, and for the next thirty-five years conducted a Bible class (Reverend George Duffield, Jr., American Presbyterian, September 27, 1866). In 1827 he married Sarah C. Baldwin (remotely related), by whom he had one son and two daughters. His home life was never extravagant, while he came to devote more than $50,000 a year to charities. In 1835 he founded a school for colored children, and hired the teachers for two years; at about the same time he contributed to the support of the colored evangelist, Pompey Hunt. To the Civil War Christian Commission his company appropriated ten per cent of its yearly income. He donated about $50,000 for seven churches and chapels in Philadelphia. He was for many years county and city prison inspector, attended the state constitutional convention in 1837, and was a member of the legislature in 1854. Fond of music and art, he visited Europe in 1860 to purchase pictures for his beautiful residence in Wissinoming, Frankford, a suburb of Philadelphia. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Horticultural Society, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Music Fund Society. In appearance he was athletic, being an expert archer and enthusiastic horseback rider; the benevolent expression of his face was heightened in later years by his white hair and beard. He practised total abstinence and was reluctant to use the grapes from his country estate even for medicinal wine. His speech was shrewd and concise, his views decided and positive. Doubt was foreign to his nature.

[Memorial of Matthias W. Baldwin ( 1867) with tributes by Reverend Wolcott Calkins, Reverend Daniel S. Miller, Joseph R. Chandler, and Franklin Peale; records 'of the Franklin Institute, 1832-66, giving detailed accounts of locomotive improvements; address before the American Philosophical Society, December 7, 1866, by Franklin Peale; article by Joseph R, Chandler, North American U. S. Gazette, September 14, 1866; brief account of Baldwin's philanthropies, Reverend Llewellyn Pratt, American Presbyterian, December 22, 1864; press notice of "Old Ironsides," Paulson's American Daily Advertiser, November 24, 1832; portr., World's Work, July 1924.]

F.H.D.
E.S.B.



BALDWIN, Rodger Sherman.  Strong supporter of the Lincoln and the abolition movement in the United States.  (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, pp. ; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 542-543.

BALDWIN, ROGER SHERMAN (January 4, 1793-February 19, 1863), lawyer, senator, governor of Connecticut, was the son of Simeon Baldwin [q.v.] and Rebecca Sherman, daughter of Roger Sherman [q.v.]. He prepared for college first with a teacher in New Canaan, and later at the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, under his cousin, Henry Sherman. Even as a boy he was scholarly and had read Virgil to a considerable extent before he was ten. He entered Yale when fourteen years of age and was graduated in 1811. He studied law in New Haven for a time, probably in his father's office, and then entered the Litchfield Law School. When he finished his course Judge Gould wrote to Judge Simeon Baldwin, "I restore your son, somewhat improved, as I hope and believe. At any rate, no student from our office ever passed a better examination." He was admitted to the bar of Connecticut in 1814 and began practise by himself in New Haven. Politically he rose step by step, being successively member of the common council of New Haven, alderman of New Haven, member of the Connecticut Senate, member of the Connecticut General Assembly, and in 1844 and 1845 governor of Connecticut. In 1847 he was appointed by Governor Bissell to fill the vacancy in the United States Senate caused by the death of Jabez W. Huntington. The following year he was elected by the General Assembly of Connecticut to complete Senator Huntington's unexpired term, which ended in 1851. In 1860 he was one of the electors of the president for the state at large when Lincoln was elected.

In spite of holding high political office, Baldwin's greatest fame was as a lawyer. His name was in every volume of the Connecticut Reports for forty-seven years. He was active in the movement for the abolition of slavery, making speeches on the subject at various times. One of his first cases was a writ of habeas corpus for the release of a negro seized as a fugitive slave, who had escaped from the service of Henry Clay. Perhaps his most noted case was that of the captives of the Amistad. Some negroes captured in Africa were sold to Cubans who started to take them by vessel to Guanaja. They were badly treated and on the second night killed the captain and the cook and attempted to force the Cubans to take them back to Africa. The Cubans managed to bring the boat to the north shore of Long Island, where a government vessel took possession. The negroes were arrested on a charge of murder and piracy. The government vessel libeled the Amistad, her cargo and slaves to recover salvage. The Cubans demanded the return of the slaves. A group of persons interested in abolition took up the defense of the slaves. The case went to the United States Supreme Court. Seth P. Staples, Theodore Sedgwick, and John Quincy Adams were associated with Roger Sherman Baldwin for the defense, which was successful. The decision (United States vs. Libellants of the Amistad, 1841, 15 Peters 518) gave the Africans absolute freedom.

Baldwin was a Whig and helped to organize the Republican party, to which he was loyal but only in so far as he believed in its principles. When he was in the United States Senate he desired reelection. In the General Assembly was a bare Whig majority, but two or three declined to vote for him because they believed his opinions did not exactly accord with certain party principles as they understood them. A written statement from him would have removed the opposition, but this he refused to give, because he did not wish to be in the position of an office-seeker and believed that members of the Senate should not be bound by pledges of any sort. He was not reelected. He was eminent in the Senate at a time when Webster, Clay, Benton, Calhoun, and Seward were members. One of his best speeches was on the compromise measures of 1850, especially the Fugitive Slave Law. Another spirited speech was a reply to the Senator from Virginia who compared the Revolutionary history of Connecticut and Virginia in an offensive manner. His last public service was as a delegate from Connecticut to the National Peace Conference --at Washington in 1861. He was the state's representative on the Resolutions Committee, which was the most important of the committees. In his later life he resumed practise and had important and lucrative cases. He was frequently in the Federal courts and was often asked for written opinions on difficult questions. He has been considered, by many, the ablest lawyer that Connecticut ever produced. Tall and erect, at sixty-nine he still walked with a firm step. Until the last few years of his life he always wore a full-dress suit of black with the occasional substitution of a blue coat with gilt buttons and buff waistcoat. He was married in 1820 to Emily Perkins, by whom he had six sons and three daughters.

[The most complete accounts of Baldwin's life are found in the article by his son, Simeon Eben Baldwin [q.v.], in W. L. Lewis, Great American Lawyers (1908), III,,193, and in W. S. Dutton, An Address at the Funeral of Hon. Roger Sherman Baldwin ( 1863). Other sketches of his life are in F. B. Dexter, Yale Biographies and Annals, 1805-15, series 6 (1912), p.369; New Haven Journal-Courier, February 21, 1863; Dwight Loomis and J. G. Calhoun, Judicial and Civil History of Connecticut (1875), p. 252; N. C. Osborn, I-fist. of Connecticut in Monographic Form (1925), III, 230. For other information see Cat. of the Officers and Grads. of Yale 1701-1924; New Haven Colony Historical Society Papers, IV; New York Genealogy and Biography Rec., XLII, 43; B. W. Dwight, History of the Descendants of John Dwight of Dedham, Massachusetts (1874), II, uo8; F. B. Perkins, Perkins Family of Connecticut (1860), pp. 3, 40, 79, 80; Chas. C. Baldwin, Baldwin  from 1500 to 1881 (1881), I, 278, 285; Wm. Prescott, Prescott Memorial (1870), pp. 121-23, 172-74; John Quincy Adams, Memoirs, ed. by Chas. Francis Adams (1876), X, 287,358,360, 395, 401,429, 430.

J M.E.M.


BALL, Charles, born 1780, escaped slave, wrote Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, 1837, a pre-Civil War slave narrative. (Mason, 2006, p. 169; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 185-186, 428, 574-575)


BALL, Lucy, Boston, Massachusetts, leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS). (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 199; Yellin, 1994, pp. 45, 56-57, 56n, 57n, 60-61, 63-64n, 263, 280)


BALL, Martha Violet, leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 199; Yellin, 1994, pp. 45, 56-57n, 60-61, 63-64n, 263, 280)


BALLOU, Adin, 1803-1890, Universalist and Unitarian, clergyman, reformer, temperance proponent, advocate of pacifism, writer, founder of Hopedale Community, opposed slavery.  President of the New England Non-Resistance Society.  Supporter of abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison.  Anti-slavery lecturer in Pennsylvania and New York, 1846-1848.  Vice President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1838-1840, 1840-1860.  (Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, pp. 556-557; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 48-50; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 2, p. 83)

BALLOU, ADIN (April 23, 1803-August 5, 1890), Universalist clergyman, reformer, founder of the Hopedale Community, was descended in the sixth generation from Maturin Ballou, American pioneer of an Anglo-Norman family, who shared with Roger Williams in the proprietorship of Providence Plantations in 1646. He was born at Cumberland, Rhode Island, the son of Ariel and Edilda (Tower) Ballou. Seventh of eight children, the boy received an elementary education in Cumberland and near-by schools and a farmer boy's training in hard work. The first excited an irrepressible eagerness for knowledge, the second developed personal responsibility, faithfulness, and self-reliance. Ariel Ballou disapproved his son's earnest desire to enter Brown University, and at seventeen the boy's schooling ceased; but he remained a life-long student. His religious nature asserted itself when he was twelve, and he joined a church of the "Christian Connection" in Cumberland; when eighteen, following what he believed a supernatural call to the ministry, he announced at a religious service his intention to preach at the village church the following Sunday; this he did so acceptably that it led to similar efforts elsewhere, and to his acceptance into fellowship in September 1821. Soon afterward he published an attack on certain Universalist tenets, but further study brought about a change of views and his expulsion from the Christian Church. The Universalists received him gladly, and during 1823 he preached successively in Mendon, Bellingham, Medway, and Boston. In 1824 he was over the Universalist society in Milford, in 1827 over the Prince St. association in New York, and in 1828 back in Milford again. This was a period when the Universalists, although agreed on the central tenet of universal salvation, were much divided on the question whether there is no further punishment or punishment of a limited duration. Ballou, believing strongly that the interests of morality were imperiled by the denial of all future punishment-in this opposing his more celebrated kinsman, Hosea Ballou, editor of the Universalist Magazine-and feeling that his coreligionists tended to neglect the practical moral problems of this life, decided to withdraw from the denomination. In 1831 he joined with seven other clergymen to form the "Massachusetts Association of Universal Restorationists," whose doctrines he expounded in the Independent Messenger (1831-39). The organization never recruited more than thirty-one ministers and was dissolved in 1841, but Ballou's writings exercised considerable influence on both Universalist and Unitarian thought.

Meanwhile he began to seek a practical outlet for his increasingly radical social views. The outstanding evils of his age, he had come to believe, were war, slavery, and intemperance. The Hopedale Community was his definite protest. This was the first of the Utopian enterprises, such as Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and the Oneida Community, that marked the decade 1840-50. Independently of other movements, Ballou and thirty-one others banded themselves, January 1841, in a joint-stock organization whose object was "to establish an order of human society based on the sublime ideas of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, as taught and illustrated in the Gospel of Jesus Christ" (Hopedale Community, p. 1). The members bound themselves to abstain from murder, hatred, unchastity, use of liquor as a beverage, and all participation in military or civic activities, including the vote. Each pledged himself "through divine assistance, to promote the holiness and happiness of all mankind."

Hopedale Community, so called from its founders' sanguine expectations, began with a capital of $4,000; 250 acres in the town of Milford were purchased (afterward increased to about 600). Despite some untoward circumstances, the Community prospered for a number of years. All sorts of "queer" persons flocked into it; many withdrew when they found their will could not be law; a few were expelled. With Ballou as president the saner minds held the organization within bounds. Farm work, road-making, building, and various industrial enterprises were carried on. The Practical Christian, edited by Ballou, was printed. Religious services were held regularly in the community chapel. A school and a considerable library were established.

In 1852 Ebenezer D. Draper became the second Community president, Ballou desiring to devote himself to the organization of a "Practical Christian Republic" with constituent communities, and to elucidating his principles in Practical Christian Socialism (1854). In 1856 Hopedale's membership h ad reached no and the Community joint-stock property $40,000; but discovery that liabilities exceeded resources caused Ebenezer and George Draper, owning three-fourths of the Community stock, to withdraw this from the enterprise. They invested it instead in the Hopedale Manufacturing Company, attained wealth, and gradually transformed the town from a community of idealists into a modern manufacturing center. The Community lingered on as a moral association until 1868, when it was merged with the Hopedale Parish (Unitarian), of which Ballou remained pastor until 1880. Ballou believed the basic cause of Hopedale Community's failure to be moral rather than financial-a lack of whole souled consecration. The germ of failure lay also in its material ambitions. Individual capacity for industry, after being encouraged, shrank from subjection to community supervision. During the Civil War Ballou maintained his courageous stand of non-resistance. He spent his la ter years in pastoral and voluminous literary labors; a powerful and persuasive speaker, his writings, though vigorous, were heavy.

Ballou married, 1822, Abigail Sayles of Smithfield, Rhode Island, who died at Milford, 1829; in 1830 he married Lucy Hunt of Milford. His daughter Abigail and her husband, W. S. Heywood, were active in Hopedale Community affairs, as was also his promising son, Adin Augustus, until his untimely death at the age of nineteen. Physically, Ballou is reported to have been a man of commanding bodily presence, with large, well-balanced head and radiant face. A statue of him was erected at Hopedale in 1900. Too independent to be a follower, by his aggressive personality, boldness of thought, and confidence in his ow n mission, he was destined to be a leader of separatist movements.

The more important of his works are: Memoir of Adin Augustus Ballou (1853); Practical Christian Socialism (1854); Primitive Christianity and its Corruptions (1870); History of the Town of Milford (1882); An Elaborate History and Genealogy of the Ballous in America (1888); Autobiography (1896) and History of the Hopedale Community ( 1897), both edited by his son-in-law, W. S. Heywood.

[G. L. Cary, "Adin Ballou and the Hopedale Community," New World, December 1898; L. G. Wilson, " Hopedale and Its Founder," New England Mag., April 1891; obituaries in the Milford (Massachusetts) Journal August 6, 1890, and in the Boston Journal and Boston Herald, August 6, 1890; In Memoriam, Reverend Adin Ballou, a sermon by C. A. Staples, August 24, 1890 (Boston, 1890); Ballou's correspondence with Tolstoi, Arena, December 1890.]

R. S.B.


BANKS, NATHANIEL PRENTISS (January 30, 1816-September 1, 1894), congressman, governor of Massachusetts, Union soldier, was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, the eldest of the seven children of Nathaniel P. and Rebecca (Greenwood) Banks. His father was superintendent of the mill in which is said to have been woven the first cotton cloth manufactured in the United States. After only a few years in the common schools the boy had to go to work in the cotton-mill, from which fact in later years there clung to him the nickname, "the Bobbin Boy of Massachusetts." Keenly ambitious, he set to work to remedy the deficiencies in his own education. By his own efforts he obtained some command of Latin, and diligently studied Spanish, early declaring that America some day would be brought into intimate association with peoples of that tongue. He seized every opportunity for practise in public speaking, lecturing on temperance and taking an active part in a local debating society. He soon became a recognized power in town meeting. For a time he studied to become an actor, and made a successful appearance in Boston as Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons, but he soon turned to the law. At twenty-three he was admitted to the bar, but he never practised in the courts. He first entered public service as an inspector in the Boston customs house. For three years he was the proprietor and editor of a local weekly newspaper, the Middlesex Reporter. In March 1847 he was married to Mary I. Palmer. Seven times he was a candidate for the lower branch of the Massachusetts legislature before he became a member of that body in 1849. By the "coalition'' in 1851 Henry Wilson as a Free-Soiler was made president of the Senate, and Banks as a Democrat was made speaker of the House, and he was reelected to that office the following year.

At thirty-seven this self-taught man was chosen president of what has been called "the ablest body that ever met in Massachusetts," the constitutional convention of 1853, over which he presided with rare tact and self-control. Entering Congress in 1853, he served-though not continuously-in ten Congresses, representing five different party alignments. In his first term, though elected as a Democrat, he showed his courage and independence by opposing the Kansas-Nebraska bill. In the Thirty-fourth Congress, to which he had been elected as the candidate of the "Americans" (Know-Nothing party), he was put forward for the speakership in the most stubborn contest in the history of that office. Backed by no caucus, he drew votes from the other Know-Nothing candidates because of his uncompromising record in his first term (H. von Holst, Constitutional History of the United States, 1885, V, 204 ff.). As the struggle dragged on, he bluntly declared that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was an act of dishonor, and that under no circumstances whatever would he, if he should have the power, allow the institution of human slavery to derive benefit from the repeal. He thus came to be regarded as "the very bone and sinew of Free-soilism," and his election (February 2, 1856, on the 133rd ballot, and only after the adoption of a resolution calling for election by plurality vote), was hailed as the first defeat of slavery in a quarter of a century, and was later looked back upon as the first national victory of the Republican party. He held that the speaker's office was not political but executive and parliamentary. To the anti-slavery men he gave a bare majority on the various committees, and made several of his most decided opponents chairmen. Historians of the office rate Banks as one of the ablest and most efficient of speakers (M. P. Follett, The Speaker of the House of Representatives, 1902, pp. 36, 58-59; H. B. Fuller, The Speaker of the House, 1909, pp. 102-11, 116-17). He showed consideration and consummate tact, and his decisions were prompt and impartial. Though his service was in a period of the bitterest partisanship, not one of his decisions was overruled.

In 1856 Banks declined a nomination for the presidency from the convention of "North Americans," anti-slavery seceders from the "American" convention which had nominated Fillmore. Though he had been the candidate of the "Americans" in his second campaign for Congress and though he had just received this further evidence of their favor, he had already outgrown that nativist association, and in 1857 he cast aside his promising career in Congress to accept the Republican nomination for governor of Massachusetts. To the dismay of conservatives, he adopted the innovation of stumping the state in person, and against the seemingly invincible incumbent of three terms he won the election by a large majority. He held the governorship for three successive years, 1858-60, and proved an effective and progressive executive. He was a pioneer in urging the humane and protective features of modern probation laws, and di splayed a great and intelligent interest in all movements for educational progress. His wise forethought as to the militia enabled his successor, Governor John A. Andrew, to respond at once to Lincoln's call, sending troop after troop of Massachusetts militia, well trained and fully equipped for service.

At the end of his term (January 1861) Banks removed to Chicago, to succeed George B. McClellan as president of the Illinois Central Railroad. But Sumter had hardly fallen when he tendered his services to President Lincoln, and on May 16 he was commissioned major-general of volunteers. His first service was in the Department of Annapolis, where he cooperated in measures to prevent the seemingly imminent secession of Maryland. He was next assigned to the 5th corps in the Department of the Shenandoah. Here the transference of Shields's division to McDowell left Banks isolated with a command diminished to 10,000 to cope with " Stonewall" Jackson's greatly superior force s. The Confederates' capture of Front Royal, May 23, 1862, left no course open to Banks-his force now outnumbered two to one-but precipitate retreat. A race for Winchester, a vigorous battle, in which Banks's command bore itself well, and then a hasty crossing of the Potomac at Harper's Ferry rescued his army, but with a loss of some 200 killed and wounded and more than 3,000 prisoners (J. W. Draper, History of the American Civil War, 1868, II, 393). In June, Banks's force was brought into the new consolidation, the Army of Virginia, placed under General Pope. From Culpeper, August 9, 1862, Pope ordered Banks, in case the enemy approached, to "attack him immediately." Acting upon this explicit order, late in the afternoon, Banks's little army, in mood to avenge the humiliations they had suffered in the Shenandoah Valley, charged the enemy with such suddenness and vehemence that the whole of Jackson's left was driven from its position before his reserves could be brought into action. But some lack of tactical skill, the wounding of two of Banks's general officers, and the weight of opposing numbers after the first shock of surprise soon turned the tide of battle, and the Federals were forced into disorderly retreat. Banks was severely blamed for making this attack at Cedar Mountain, and Pope denied that his order authorized the action which Banks took ("Report of the Joint Committee on Conduct of the War," Senate Report No. 142, 38 Congress, 2 Session, part III, pp. 44-54). But "it will be hard to prove, if language means anything, that he at all transgressed his [Pope's] orders. Of course the order should not have been given" (William Allan, The Army of Northern Virginia, 1892, p. 171, n.). For a short time in the fall of 1862 Banks was in charge of the defenses of Washington. In the closing months of the year, at New Orleans he succeeded General B. F. Butler in command of the department. He was assigned the tasks of holding New Orleans and the other parts of the state which had been reduced to submission, and of aiding Grant to open the Mississippi. After placing his garrisons he had hardly 15,000 men left for aggressive action. In April 1863 he succeeded in regaining considerable territory for the Union, and in May he reached Alexandria. His next objective was Port Hudson. On May 25 and 27 he made costly attempts to capture the place by assault, bringing into action negro troops, who, he declared, showed the utmost daring and determination. Repulsed with heavy losses, he began siege. Though hard pressed by famine, the garrison repelled another assault, June 13, but within a week after the fall of Vicksburg it found itself forced to unconditional surrender, July 9, with loss of 6,200 prisoners, a large number of guns, and a great mass of military supplies. The thanks of Congress were tendered to Banks and his troops (January 28, 1864) "for the skill, courage, and endurance which compelled the surrender of Port Hudson, and thus removed the last obstruction to the free navigation of the Mississippi River" (United States Statutes at Large, 38 Congress, 1 Session, Resolution No. 7).

The later movements of the year proved ineffective: although with the cooperation of a naval force Banks had advanced along the coast as far as Brownsville, capturing some works of importance, he found his force inadequate to extend the movement and withdrew to New Orleans. Here in the difficult task of dealing with the civilian population he inherited the unpopularity of his predecessor, and his assassination was attempted. He opposed the admission of Confederate attorneys to practise in the courts. With no legal authority for his action, in January and February 1864, Banks issued orders prescribing the conditions of suffrage and other details as to elections, under which state officers and delegates to a constitutional convention were chosen and a constitution adopted. Although hardly one in seven of the voters of the state voted upon the question of ratifying this constitution, Banks went to Washington, where for months he pressed the recognition of the Louisiana state Government (E. L. Pierce, Memoir of Charles Sumner, 1893, IV, 215, 221).

In the opening months of 1864 preparations were made for the ill-starred Reel River Expedition. General Grant had strenuously opposed this movement, and later declared that it was "ordered from Washington," and that Banks had opposed the expedition, and was in no way responsible, except for the conduct of it (Personal Memoirs, 1886, II, 139-40). The State Department insisted that the flag must be restored to some one point in Texas, as a counter to the movements of the French in Mexico; the President was eager to establish a loyal government in Louisiana; and the agents of the Government and speculators were lured by the great stores of cotton along the river. Starting in the early spring, the only season when the Reel River was navigable, Banks advanced with a land force of 27,000 men, Admiral Porter being in command of a supporting fleet of gunboats. When within two days' march of his objective, Shreveport, Banks's army, extending for miles along a single road, encountered the main body of the enemy at Sabine Crossroads, April 8, and was routed. On the following clay at Pleasant Hill a fierce battle was fought, in which both parties claimed the victory. Failure of his supplies of ammunition, rations, and water compelled Banks to fall back. Meantime the fleet had been placed in imminent peril by the unprecedentedly early subsidence of the Red River, and was saved only by the brilliant engineering feat of Colonel Joseph Bailey in constructing a series of dams that secured enough depth of water to send the gunboats over the shallows (J. W. Draper, History of the American Civil War, 1870, III, 235-38). The army followed the naval force down the river, repelling rear attacks. Grant's peremptory recall of 10,000 men left Banks facing a serious crisis. On May 13 he evacuated Alexandria. Though left in nominal command, he was soon virtually superseded by the arrival of General E. R. S. Canby, who had been appointee to the command of all forces west of the Mississippi. A majority of the Committee on the Conduct of the War placed upon Banks a large measure of responsibility for the disasters which befell this expedition, but a minority member, D. W. Gooch, defended him on the ground that the major causes of failure, i. e. the unforeseeable difficulties of navigation, and the shortness of the time for which nearly half of the force were "lent" by Sherman, were beyond his control (Senate Report No. 142, 38 Congress, 2 Session, part II, pp. 3-401). Although repeatedly in this humiliating expedition Banks showed a lack of military skill, in the main he had to "bear the blame of the blunders of his superiors," who for alleged reasons of state ordered a movement which had little military justification, and doomed it to failure by so organizing it that, while four forces were supposed to cooperate, the commander of no one of them had the right to give an order to another (Asa Mahan, Critical History of the Late American War, 1877, p. 407).

Honorably mustered out of military service, August 24, 1865, Banks returned to his native city, and was almost immediately elected as a Republican to fill a vacancy in the House, caused by the death of D. W. Gooch, where he continued to serve from the Thirty-ninth to the Forty-second Congress. During this period he voted for the act stopping further contraction of the currency, and was a member of the committee of five to investigate the Credit Mobilier charges. He was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs at the time Maximilian was in Mexico and war with France seemed likely to follow. He advised a bold policy in regard to the Alabama Claims, advocated our acquisition of Alaska, and reported a bill asserting the right of every naturalized American citizen to renounce all allegiance to his native land, and authorizing the President, if such right should be denied, in reprisal to suspend trade relations with such a Government, and to arrest and detain any of its citizens. In the campaign of 1872, because of a personal quarrel with President Grant; he supported Greeley's candidacy, and as a consequence was himself defeated for reelection. At the beginning of the short session, the month following this defeat, he tendered his resignation from the Committee on Military Affairs in order that the House might be "represented by some member more unequivocally committed to its policy," but the House by a substantial vote refused to excuse him from such service (December 2, 1872, Congressional Globe, p. 10). During the two-year interruption of his congressional career he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate for the session of 1874, but in the following November he was returned to Congress as a Democrat. Two years later he was reelected as a Republican. At the expiration of this term, he was appointed by President Hayes to the position of United States marshal for Massachusetts, and served from March II, 1879, to April 23, 1888. In that year he was reelected to Congress as a Republican, defeating Colonel Thomas W. Higginson. Before the end of the term his health became seriously impaired; he retired to his home in Waltham, where he died, September 1, 1894. He was survived by a son and two daughters,   one of whom, Maude Banks, attained some distinction as an actress. By resolution of the Massachusetts General Court provision was made for the erection of a bronze statue of General Banks upon the grounds of the State House. This statue, by Henry H. Kitson, was unveiled September 16, 1908.

[No general biography of Banks has been published. The story of his early career is told by William M. Thayer in The Bobbin Boy (1860). The main features of his military career are presented in the books and reports above cited; see also Official Records. Certain phases are discussed by G. F. R. Henderson,   in Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (1898), I, 388 ff., and by Geo. C. Eggleston, in History of the Confederate War (1910), I, 208. Frank M. Flynn's Campaigning with Banks in Louisiana (1887) contains little of value.]

G. H. H.


BANNEKER, Benjamin, 1731-1806, free African American, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, author, humanitarian. (Allen, 1971; Bedini, 1972; Green, 1985; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 18, 27, 31, 186-187; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 159)


BAQUAQUA, Mahommah Gardo, born c. 1824, African American abolitionist. Wrote slave narrative, An Interesting Narrative: Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua in 1854.  (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 1, p. 355)


BARBADOES, James G., 1796-1841, Boston, Massachusetts.  African American abolitionist, community activist.  Helped organize the Massachusetts General Colored Association (MGCA). Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  (Newman, 2002, pp. 100-102, 105, 114, 115, 126; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 161; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 2, p. 127; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 1, p. 362)


BARKER, Joseph, 1806-1875, English clergyman, author, controversialist, lecturer, abolitionist.  Supporter of abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison.  Vice President of the Anti-Slavery Party, 1852-1859.  Moved permanently to the United States in 1857.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts, opposed slavery in the House.  (Larsen, 2006; Locke, 1901, pp. 93, 150; Annals of Congress; Dictionary of National Biography, London, 1885-1900)


BARROW, David, 1753-1819, Baptist clergyman, abolitionist, founded Portsmouth-Norfolk Church in 1795.  Had Black pastor assistant.  Had mixed race congregation.  President of the Kentucky Abolition Society.  Wrote: “Involuntary, Unlimited, Perpetual, Absolute, Hereditary Slavery Examined on the Principles of Nature, Reason, Justice, Policy, Scripture,” (1807), published Abolition Intelligencer and Missionary Magazine.  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 90, 95, 133-134; Goodell, 1852; Locke, 1901, pp. 44, 90; Mason, 2006, pp. 171, 176)


BASCOM, Bishop Henry Bidleman, 1796-1850, clergyman. Methodist pastor.  Wrote Methodism and Slavery, 1847.  Chaplain of Congress.  President of Madison College, Uniontown, Pennsylvania.  Agent, Colonization Society, 1829-1831.  (Henkle, Life of Bascom, 1856; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 189-190; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 30-32).
BASCOM, HENRY BIDLEMAN (May 27, 1796-September 8, 1850), college president and Methodist bishop, was born at Hancock, New York, the son of Alpheus Bascom of French Huguenot stock and Hannah (Houk) Bascom of German ancestry. His parents were very poor, and it was only by the assistance of his mother's brother, after whom he was named, that he was enabled to attend school from his sixth to his twelfth year, at which time his education ended, so far as schools and teachers were concerned. His father moved to Little Valley in western New York in 1808, and it was while residing here that young Henry was converted and joined the Methodist Church at fifteen years of age. In 1812 the family moved to Maysville, Kentucky, on the southern bank of the Ohio River, but after only a short residence there they moved to the north side of the river and settled permanently in Brown County, Ohio. At an early age Bascom manifested unusual gifts for public speaking and leadership. He was given license to preach when he was only seventeen and the presiding elder immediately appointed him assistant to the pastor of the Brush Creek Circuit in bounds of which the country home of the Bascoms was located. When the Ohio Annual Conference met on September 1, 1813, Bascom was one of the ten young ministers "admitted on trial." The Methodist Circuits of those days embraced as a rule from twenty to thirty preaching places, each of which had preaching once a month. After spending three years on circuits in the Ohio Conference he was transferred to the Tennessee Conference (which at that time had within its bounds a considerable portion of Kentucky) and was appointed two years in succession to Danville, Kentucky, followed by two years at Louisville. When the Kentucky Annual Conference was organized in 1820, and took over the Kentucky territory then held by the Tennessee Conference, he became a member of the newly established conference, but after preaching for two years on large circuits, he was transferred back to the Ohio Conference and was put in charge for that year of the Brush Creek Circuit where he had begun his ministry nine years before. While pastor at Steubenville, Ohio, in 1823, he was, on the nomination of Henry Clay, elected chaplain to the Congress of the United States. During and following his residence in Washington, 1824-26, he traveled extensively and preached in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, making a profound impress ion by his oratory and drawing vast crowds wherever he went. He was next stationed for a short time at Pittsburgh and later at Uniontown, Pennsylvania; the seat of a newly organized Methodist school called Madison College, of which he was president from 1827 to 1829. He was agent for the American Colonization Society, 1829-31, during which time he traveled far and wide, pleading eloquently for the objects to be accomplished by that society. In 1832 he was elected professor of moral science in Augusta College, Kentucky, and was thereupon transferred from the Pittsburgh to the Kentucky Conference. Ten years later he was selected for the presidency of Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky, which office he filled from 1842 until 1849, dividing his time after 1846, between duties in this university and his work on the new Southern Methodist Quarterly Review to the editorship of which he was elected by the General Conference of 1846. In the meantime, he had taken an active part in the trying struggle between the Northern and Southern delegates in the General Conference of 1844 over slavery, the outcome of which was the division of the Church. It was he who wrote, at the request of his fellow delegates from the South, the "Protest" of the southern representatives against the action of that Conference with reference to Bishop Andrew of Georgia, excluding him from the exercise of his episcopal office because his wife was a slaveholder. In the "Convention" that met at Louisville, in 1845, to consider and perfect the method and plans for the organization of the Southern Church he wrote the able report of the committee to whom this important matter was referred. These and other state papers showed that he was not only American Methodism's foremost pulpit orator, but one of her greatest ecclesiastical statesmen. In addition to his election as editor of the Quarterly Review, the General Conference of 1846 had made him chairman of the commission charged with arranging and settling with representatives of the Methodist Episcopal [Northern] Church all matters relating to, and growing out of, the division of the church. At the meeting of the second General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, held in St. Louis in May 1850, when it was decided that only one new bishop was needed, he was elected on the second ballot by a large majority. He lived to preside over only one Annual Conference, the St. Louis, which met at Independence, Missouri, on July 10, only six weeks after his ordination as bishop. Returning to his home at Lexington, Kentucky, he was taken ill in Louisville, where he died.

All his life Bascom was hampered and embarrassed by poverty, having early gone in debt to help support his father and family, who were always in financial straits. During one of the early years of his ministry he traveled 5,000 miles, preached 400 times, and received for the year's service only $12.10! His salary at the institutions which he served as professor or president was inadequate to his necessities. This in part accounts for his postponement of all thought of matrimony until late in life. On March 7, 1839, when he was nearly forty-three years of age, he was married to Miss Van Antwerp of New York City, by whom he had two children.

Bascom possessed the elements that go to make a great orator. Whenever and wherever he preached, he easily and powerfully swayed vast audiences, but his type of oratory, though well suited to impress the typical American of seventy-five or a hundred years ago, would doubt less be accounted too florid, rhetorical, and emotional to impress in an equal degree an audience of the present day.

His published works were: Methodism and Slavery (1847); two volumes of Sermons (1849), of which 20,000 copies were sold; Works in four volumes, published posthumously (1855).

[M. M. Henkle, Life of Bascom (1856); H. H. Kavanaugh, "Memoir" in Vol. I of the bound copies of General Minutes of M. E. Church, South, pp. 8, 1-1 s; H. N. McTyeire, History of Methodism (1884), pp. 655-58; Gross Alexander, History of the M. E. Church, South (1894), pp. 60-61; W. B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit ( 1857- 69), VII, 534-40; Southern Meth. Quart. Review for 1850 and 1852.

W.F.T.


BASSET, William, Lynn, Massachusetts, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist, president Requited Labor Convention.  Member and manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839-1840, 1843-1853; Vice President, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1841, 1842-1846.  (Drake, 1950, pp. 157, 160, 178n, 159; Mabee, 1970, pp. 73, 120, 121, 209, 210)


BASSETT, Richard, 1745-1815, founding father, political leader, lawyer, jurist, Revolutionary War soldier.  Delegate to the Continental Convention of 1787.  Governor of Delaware and senior U.S. Senator from Delaware during First Congress.  Strong advocate of anti-slavery cause.  Freed his slaves.  (Conrad, 1908; Hoffecker, 2004; Martin, 1984; Martin, 1995; Munroe, 1954; Scharf, 1888)


BATES, Edward, 1793-1869, Virginia, statesman, lawyer, Society of Friends, Quaker.  Congressman.  U.S. Attorney General, Lincoln’s cabinet.  Member, Free Labor Party, Missouri.  Anti-slavery activist.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 193; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 48-49)

BATES, EDWARD (September 4, 1793-March 25, 1869), statesman, was the son of Thomas Fleming Bates, a Virginia planter and merchant, who on August 8, 1771, had married Caroline Matilda Woodson. The young couple first lived in Henrico County and their three children were born. About 1776 the family moved to Goochland County, where a home called "Belmont" was established, and where nine more children were born, of whom Edward was the youngest. Thomas F. Bates fought as a volunteer soldier under Lafayette at the siege of Yorktown, but, as a Quaker, paid the price of this patriotic service by being read out of meeting. He also suffered heavy financial losses during the Revolutionary War and died leaving his family in straitened circumstances. Edward was taught to read and write by his father and at the age of ten was placed under the instruction of a cousin, Benjamin Bates of Hanover, Virginia, and by him was prepared to enter Charlotte Hall Academy in St. Mary's County, Maryland. He had hoped to attend Princeton, but a serious injury cut short his course at the academy and caused him to give up the idea of a college education. Through the influence of a relative, James Pleasants, a member of Congress, he was then appointed a midshipman in the navy; but because of his mother's objections he declined the appointment. In February 1813 he joined a volunteer militia company which was raised in Goochland County to assist in repelling a threatened attack on Norfolk; and he remained in the army until October, serving successively as private, corporal, and sergeant.

At the suggestion of his brother, Frederick Bates [q.v.], then secretary of Missouri Territory, Edward went out to St. Louis in 1814 and began the study of law under Rufus Easton, the foremost lawyer of the territory. In November 1816 he took out a license to practise law, and two years later formed a partnership with Joshua Barton, the brother of David Barton, one of the first United States senators from Missouri. The partnership continued until June 30, 1823, when Barton was killed in a duel. On May 29, 1823, Bates married Julia Davenport Coalter, the daughter of David Coalter, a South Carolinian who had moved to Missouri in 1817. She bore him seventeen children, eight of whom survived him.

Until he was elected to Congress in 1826, Bates held only minor public offices, though he had served acceptably as a member of the state constitutional convention of 1820, as attorney-general, and as a member of the state legislature. In the Twentieth Congress he was the sole representative of Missouri in the lower house, and already the choice of the Whig party for the United States Senate. The followers of Thomas H. Benton, however, had a majority in the state legislature, and Bates was defeated by a few votes. So strong was Jacksonian democracy in Missouri, indeed, that Bates was defeated for reelection to Congress in 1828. He was still regarded as the leader of his party, but he led a forlorn hope. About this time he moved to St. Charles County and located on a farm on Dardenne Prairie. He continued the practise of law, his services being in demand in all of the neighboring counties. There he remained until 1842 when he resumed practise in St. Louis. In 1830 he was elected to the state Senate, where he served for four years, and in 1834 was again elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. The door to more important offices seemed closed to him, but in 1847 his opportunity came. As president of the River and Harbor Improvement Convention which met at Chicago, he made an eloquent speech which attracted the attention of the public and made him a national figure (Niles' Register, LXXII, 366-67). In 1850 President Fillmore appointed him secretary of war, but for personal and domestic reasons he declined the appointment.

From this time on his views on social and constitutional questions and on national politics were sought and frequently expressed in speeches and newspaper articles. He opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, a stand which aligned him with the "free labor" party in Missouri, though he still considered himself a Whig and in 1856 acted as president of the Whig national convention which sat at Baltimore. He drew closer to the Republican party when he opposed the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution. His upright and clear-headed course attracted nation-wide attention, and in 1858 Harvard University conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., an unusual honor for a Missourian of that day. Early in 1860 a Bates for president movement was launched in Missouri. His supporters contended that a Free-Soil Whig from a border state, if elected on the Republican ticket, would avert secession. The movement received the support of many leaders, particularly in the border states. But the decision of the national Republican committee to hold the convention at Chicago instead of at St. Louis was a serious setback to the Bates supporters and added strength to the candidacy of Lincoln. On the first ballot Bates received only 48 votes; on the second ballot 35; and on the third and deciding ballot only 22.

Soon after the Chicago convention Lincoln decided to offer Bates a cabinet position. Some of Bates's friends had urged, indeed, that he should be appointed secretary of state, but the President felt that the first place in the cabinet should go to Seward. He gave Bates his choice of any other cabinet position and the latter wisely chose that of attorney-general. He was the first cabinet officer to be chosen from the region west of the Mississippi River. For a time he had much influence in the cabinet. It was at his suggestion that the Navy Department began the equipment of a fleet on the Mississippi River. In the Trent affair, he urged that the question of legal rights be waived and that every effort be made to avert a war with Great Britain. He differed with Lincoln on the question of the admission of West Virginia to the Union. As attorney-general he filed an elaborate opinion in which he contended that the West Virginia Government represented and governed but a portion of the state of Virginia and that the movement for separate statehood was "a mere abuse, nothing less than attempted secession, hardly veiled under the flimsy forms of law."

From this time Bates's influence in the cabinet gradually waned. He disagreed with many of the military policies. He felt that as the war progressed constitutional rights were giving way before the encroachments of the military authorities. He resented the interference of Seward in matters which belonged to the attorney-general's office. He had little confidence in Stanton, Seward, or Chase, and he felt that Lincoln lacked the will-power to end what Bates considered abuses. In Missouri, moreover, the radical Republicans got control of the state government in 1864, and this meant the end of law in his home state. Weary of a cabinet position in which his views had little weight, and in the belief that he could best serve his country and his state as a private citizen, he tendered his resignation as attorney-general on November 24, 1864.

On January 6, 1865, a radical state constitutional convention assembled in St. Louis and drew up a new state constitution. It also passed an ordinance emancipating the slaves and an ouster ordinance, the intention of which was to place the state judiciary in the hands of the radicals. It also adopted a stringent test oath for voters. Bates fought the radicals by publishing a series of newspaper articles in which he pleaded for a government of law instead of a government of force. By many letters to prominent men all over the North he attempted to arouse them to the dangers of radical rule, insisting that the extreme radicals were nothing less than revolutionists who had seized upon the general zeal for putting down the rebellion and had perverted it into a means of destroying all government by law. This struggle against the Missouri radicals was his last great contest. A few months after his return to Missouri his health began to break. It steadily declined and on March 25, 1869, he died. In person Edward Bates was small. His early portraits show a strong countenance with clean cut features, piercing eyes, and a well-formed chin. Until middle life he was clean-shaven, but in his later years he wore a full beard. He was modest and unpretending, but a courageous fighter for law and justice.

[The largest collection of Bates papers, including letters and diary (June 3, 1846-December 25, 1852), is deposited with the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis. His diary (April 20, 1859-July 30, 1866) is deposited in the MS. Division of the Library of Congress See Charles Gibson, " Edward Bates," in Missouri Historical Society Collections, II, 52-56 (1900); F. W. Lehman, "Edward Bates and the Test Oath," Ibid., IV, 389- 401 (1923); " Letters of Edward Bates and the Blairs," Missouri Historical  Review, XI, 123-46 (1917); Nicolay and Hay,   Lincoln (1890); Gideon Welles, Diary (1911); Onward Bates, Bates, et al. of Virginia and Missouri (1914).]

T.M.M.


BAUMFREE, Isabella, see Truth, Sojourner


BAYARD, James Ashton, 1767-1815, statesman, diplomat, leader of Federalists, member of U.S. Congress from Delaware, opposed slavery as a member of U.S. House of Representatives (Appletons, 1888, Vol. 1, pp. 196-197; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 64-66; Goodell, 1852, p. 97; Locke, 1901, p. 93, 171; Annals of Congress, 1795-1815)

BAYARD, JAMES ASH(E)TON (July 28, 1767-August 6, 1815), statesman, diplomat, was a leader among the Federalists of the United States during the first quarter-century. Of old Huguenot stock, he was descended from Petrus Bayard, whose mother Anna, widow of Samuel Bayard and sister of Peter Stuyvesant, came with three children on The Princess to New Amsterdam May 11, 1647. Petrus obtained land in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and his son Samuel in 1698 chose Bohemia Manor, Maryland, for his home. Here James, of the third generation, brought Mary Ashton, his wife, and here on August 11, 1738, the first James Ashton Bayard was born. He was a surgeon in Philadelphia until his death in Charleston, South Carolina, January 8, 1770. In 1760 he married Agnes Hodge, who on July 28, 1767, gave him a second son, James Ashton (as the name was originally spelled, although custom has fixed the modern spelling as Asheton).

At the death of his father, James Ashton Bayard was placed under the guardianship of his father's twin brother, John Bayard [q.v.] of Philadelphia, which continued until James's graduation from Princeton College, September 29, 1784. During these fourteen years, and especially after the death of his mother in 1774, his immediate surroundings did much to determine the young man's future. His education was essentially conservative, whether at Piqua in Lancaster County from his uncle, at Princeton, or in the circle of Pennsylvania society in which he moved. Upon the completion of his college work he studied law with Joseph Reed and after 1785 with Jared Ingersoll, each of whom strengthened the conservative tone of his earlier training. When, therefore, he was admitted to the New Castle bar in August 1787, and at Philadelphia in September, and began the practise of his profession at Wilmington the same year, he was welcomed as a useful member of the Federalist party. And when on February 11, 1795, he married Ann, daughter of Chief Justice Richard Bassett [q.v.] of Delaware, he acquired an important political and social position among the Federalist leaders.

The election of 1796 demonstrated Bayard's vote-getting ability in Delaware, sending him to the House of Representatives, which he entered May 15, 1797. An excellent opportunity to demonstrate his strength came soon after he had taken his seat. On July 3, 1797, Adams sent Congress a message and papers disclosing a plan of certain United States citizens to aid Britain in seizing Spanish territory in Louisiana. Earlier fears of a British attack in this section had been brought to the notice of Timothy Pickering, secretary of state since December 10, 1795, by the Spanish, but such intentions had been denied by the British minister. Now a letter of William Blount [q.v.], senator from Tennessee, to James Carey, interpreter to the Cherokee Indians, dated April 21, 1797, had come to light involving the British minister and Blount himself in the plan. The manuscripts were laid before Congress and Blount's guilt seemed plain. No one claimed his innocence, but Gallatin and other Republicans declared that as a senator he was exempt from impeachment. The real criminal, continued Gallatin, was Robert Liston, the British minister, or President Adams, who had had "improper understandings" with him. In this crisis Bayard managed the case against Blount so ably that the latter was expelled from the Senate in July 1797.

Bayard played a decisive part in the disputed presidential election of 1800 when the decision between Jefferson and Burr, both Republicans, was thrown into the House of Representatives. The Federalists, on the principle that any one was preferable to Jefferson, supported Burr for thirty-five inconclusive ballots. Then their leaders decided to shift to Jefferson if they could obtain from him certain assurances as to the future. Bayard's position as the most important Federalist in a border state, as well as his work for Federalist financial measures, 1798-1800, made him the most fitting negotiator for that impartial treatment desired by business interests as well as by office-holders in the National Government. His first approach was through John Nicholas, representative from Virginia and a particular friend of Jefferson. To him Bayard stated that "if certain points of the future administration could be understood and arranged with Mr. Jefferson ... three states would withdraw from any opposition to his election." They sought only assurance of support for the public credit, the maintenance of the naval system, and security for minor office-holders in their government positions. "I explained," continued Bayard, "that I considered it not only reasonable but necessary, that offices of high discretion and confidence should be filled by men of Mr. Jefferson's choice." In the latter group he placed cabinet officers, and as examples of the former he mentioned collectors at ports of entry. He was assured by Nicholas that the points seemed reasonable, and that Jefferson with the men about him would undoubtedly be of the same opinion. Bayard replied that he "wanted an engagement," and if this were conceded by Jefferson, "the election should be ended." He was unable to obtain a direct promise from Nicholas, but in his deposition of April 3, 1806 (Bayard Papers, pp. 128-29), he states that General Samuel Smith took the same three points to the Virginian and was authorized by Jefferson "to say that they corresponded with his views and intentions and that he might confide in him accordingly." Although no Federalist voted for Jefferson, by absence or refusing to vote "the opposition of Vermont, Maryland, South Carolina and Delaware was immediately withdrawn and Mr. Jefferson was made President by the votes of ten states," on the thirty-sixth ballot (Bayard's letter of February 17, 1801, pub. in Niles' Weekly Register, November 16, 1822). Shortly afterward, Bayard wrote to President Adams declining the proffered ministry to France as he would have to hold it during Jefferson's term to make it worth while, and if he did so he would be accused of having made an agreement with him.

In the discussions of "the judiciary reform measure" of 1801 and its repeal, Bayard ably defended the Federalist position. The fact that his father-in-law, Richard Bassett, was one of the new judges involved, was unnecessarily invoked to explain his stand. The personal factor may have added vigor to his words, but Bayard's belief in the need for the law and in the increased importance it gave to Delaware (Bayard to Bassett, January 25, 1800) as well as his conviction that the repeal was "a most flagrant violation of the Constitution" and "prostrated the independence of the judicial power," were in all probability quite genuine.

Bayard's work in the Senate began January 15, 1805, and continued until May 3, 1813. Much of his time was occupied with legal business, for while he disagreed thoroughly with the administration which "distinguishes itself only by its weakness and hypocrisy," he was equally certain that "no Federal prescription" would ever be taken to end the "political malady" of the period (to Andrew Bayard April 2, 1805; January 30, 1806; Bayard Papers, pp. 164-65). Sane and moderate in his views, Bayard strove to uphold the dignity of his country against Britain or France as readily as he opposed the fitting out of the Miranda Expedition against Spain in 1806. A stanch believer in the superior abilities of an educated leadership, he was willing to subordinate himself if he could thereby be useful. An excellent illustration of Bayard's position was his national service under a hostile administration before and during the War of 1812. In 1808 he was willing to give Gallatin the credit of securing the renewal of the charter of the United States Bank expiring in 18u, or to join in obtaining a charter for a new one. The former was his preference, but during 1810-11 when renewal seemed impossible Bayard willingly served as chairman of the committee to secure a charter for a new institution. Defeated at this time by the vote of Vice-President Clinton, Bayard sought to keep the nation from the war into which she seemed to be drifting. He had little confidence in Napoleon's promises and saw clearly that Britain could not be coerced by commercial regulations (Bayard to Andrew Bayard July 3, 1809; March 5, 1811; to Wells January 12, 1812; Bayard Papers, pp. 177,179,188). He therefore joined Adams in urging that United States vessels be allowed to defend themselves and was pleased when our war-ships did so in the skirmishes with the Barbary States. He advised Federalist agreement in defensive measures and earnest support for all acts strengthening the army and navy. As late as May 2, 1812, he hoped the fear of additional free states from conquered Canada might induce the South to favor a naval war with Britain rather than land campaigns, a hope which had an unexpected measure of fulfilment in the war which followed. During this war Bayard is said to have "helped with his own hands to build a fort almost on the site of Fort Christina," the old Swedish fortress of 1638. Meanwhile necessity compelled the Republican leaders to abandon many of the methods used by Jefferson to obtain popularity. This brought Bayard and the President more in harmony as to the means of carrying on the war. A careful and judicious man devoted to his nation as well as to family and friends, Bayard was regarded as representing at this time both Federalist and Republican sentiment. The death of his sister Jane, September 30, 1809, after serious mental derangement requiring much care from Bayard, allowed him more time for national service in those trying years, while his wife, who survived him until 1854, helped her husband during the war period by assuming many of the family cares.

With the European crisis of 1813 and the ability of the United States to maintain her rights upon the sea demonstrated, both Britain and the United States wished peace. Adams, Bayard, and Albert Gallatin, from different sections of the country, were appointed by President Madison to represent the United States. Bayard sailed from New Castle, Delaware, on May 9, 1813. By August 1814 when the representatives of the two nations met at Ghent, Napoleon had been captured, three armies had been sent to America, and Castlereagh, British foreign secretary, was willing to show the contempt he felt for the United States. A description of the negotiations is out of place here. Suffice it to say that eventually a treaty resulted, giving to neither party what it proposed but securing for the United States the control of the Mississippi River, eliminating from discussion certain questions which time alone could settle and others which the war itself had decided. In Bayard's opinion no power in Europe would soon disturb America again (Papers, pp. 366-67). On February 27, 1815, Bayard was nominated minister to Russia, but he declined the position as he considered his services at that court unnecessary. His diplomatic ability was recognized in 1814-15, when he was chosen to continue with Adams, Clay, and Gallatin in negotiations for a treaty of commerce with Great Britain. Ill health prevented the completion of this mission, and on June 18, 1815, Bayard sailed from England for Wilmington, where he died six days after his arrival.

[The papers of James A. Bayard, American Historical Ass. Reports, 1913, II (1915), ed. by Elizabeth Donnan, and referred to as Bayard Papers; Bayard's letters to Cesar A. Rodney in Delaware Historical Society Papers for 1909 (XXXI); Massachusetts Historical Society Proc., December 1914; J. T. Scharf, History of Delaware (1888); J. G. Wilson, Col. John Bayard and the Bayard Family (1885); Annals of Congress, 1795-1815; Aurora General Advertiser, and Aurora (Philadelphia, 1795- 1818); the more gen. histories of the United States, especially those by Adams, Hildreth, McMaster, and Schouler; Writings of John Quincy Adams; Works of John Adams; Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin; Works of Alexander Hamilton; Writings of Thomas Jefferson; Writings of James Madison.]

C.H. L-n.,


BAYARD, Samuel, 1767-1840, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, jurist (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 199; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 69-70)

BAYARD, SAMUEL (January 11, 1767-May 11, 1840), jurist, was born in Philadelphia, fourth son of John Bayard [q.v.] and Margaret Hodge [for ancestry see James Ashton Bayard]. He was one of a large family of children brought up in a hospitable home where leading men of the period were entertained. At the time of the Revolutionary War, his father early allied himself with the American cause, and Philadelphia consequently was no longer a safe home for his family. For a few years it was a roving life for the boy Samuel; now at the old manor house in Maryland where aged family slaves were still cared for, now in Philadelphia, and now back again to the farm on the Schuylkill where a cottage was fitted up as a school-room and a teacher secured for the Bayard children and those of a few neighbors. A much interrupted education must have been his but it proved sufficient to permit his graduation from Princeton as valedictorian of his class at the age of seventeen. He studied law with William Bradford and became his law partner, practising law in Philadelphia for seven years. In August 1790 he married Martha Pintard of New Rochelle, New York, daughter of Lewis Pintard and Susan (Stockton) Pintard. The following year he was appointed clerk of the United States Supreme Court. When a man was wanted to prosecute United States claims before the British admiralty courts, following the ratification of Jay's treaty with Great Britain, November 19, 1794, Washington chose Bayard to act as the agent of the United States. For four years he with his family was in London in this capacity. The results of his official endeavors indicate the success of his efforts. He with his associates obtained from the British Government, for losses sustained by citizens from illegal and unauthorized captures of their ships on the high seas by English cruisers, the sum of $10,345,000.

When Bayard returned to the United States, he spent several years in New Rochelle and served as presiding judge of Westchester County under appointment of Governor Jay. In 1803 he removed to New York City and resumed his law practise there. The following year, the New York Historical Society was founded, and Bayard was "a hearty cooperator in establishing this Association." He presented to the society "that remarkable series of MSS., the Journals of the House of Commons during the Protectorate of Cromwell." In 1806 he purchased an estate in Princeton where he lived for nearly forty years. During this time he was widely identified with affairs of community, county, and state. He was a trustee of Princeton College and its treasurer for many years and was one of the founders of Princeton Theological Seminary. For a considerable period he was a presiding judge of the court of common pleas of Somerset County, and he served for several years in the legislature of New Jersey. In 1814 he suffered defeat as a Federalist candidate for Congress. For many years he was a delegate to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church; he aided with generous hand St. Clement's Episcopal Church in New York City, of which his eldest son, Reverend Lewis Pintard Bayard, was pastor; and for thirty years he contributed to various religious periodicals. He published a funeral oration on General Washington (1800); A Digest of American Cases on the Law of Evidence, Intended as Notes to Peake's Compendium (1810); An Abstract of the Laws of the United States which Relate to the Duties and Authority of Judges of Inferior State Courts and Justices of the Peace (1834); Letters on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper (1825).

[J. G. Wilson, Col. John Bayard and the Bayard Family (1885); Judge Bayard of New Jersey and His London Diary of I795-96, ed. by J. G. Wilson; F. B. Lee, Genealogy and Memorial History of the State of New York, IV (1910), 1543.]

A.E.P.



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.