Boo-Bro: Boorman through Brown

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


BOORMAN, James, 1783-1866, merchant, philanthropist  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 316; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. I, Pt. 2, pp. 443-444)

BOORMAN, JAMES (1783-January 24, 1866), merchant, railroad president, son of John and Mary (Colgate) Boorman, was born in the county of Kent, England, of Scotch ancestry. He came with his parents to New York in 1795; was apprenticed to Divie Bethune, and entered into partnership with him in 1805. In March 1813 he joined with a fellow Scot, John Johnston, in forming the New York mercantile house of Boorman & Johnston, which became successively, Boorman, Johnston & Company, and Boorman, Johnston, Ayres & Company. Adam Norrie became a partner in 1828. A subsequent department of the business was conducted as Boorman & Clark. At first Boorman sold Scotch cloths from Dundee, and Virginia tobacco, handling virtually all of the latter that came from the Richmond market. Later the firm did an enormous business in iron from Sweden and England. From South St. the house moved to Greenwich St. The business became so large that the partners had to relinquish a part of it. They were the largest importers of Madeira wines, and they received large consignments from Italy. Their counting-room was over the Bank of the Republic. "A more remarkable man than James Boorman never lived" ( Scoville, I, 157). In 1835 he received from Sweden a consignment of immense iron pillars, and the entire trade was much amused by Boorman's valiant effort to sell what no one wanted. Undaunted, he tore out the front of his store, put the pillars under the front wall, and with this increased support added several stories to the building. Aside from his own business he was made chief of every corporation with which he connected himself. He was the originator of the Hudson River Railroad, and as a director he led the board in bringing about the removal of Hon. Azariah C. Flagg as president of that road (Communications from ]. Boorman, W. C. Bryant & Company, 1849, reprinted in the Evening Post). He himself succeeded Flagg. At this time he wrote to the directors: "It will, I hope, not be deemed impertinent for me to add that any services to you as president are gratuitous .... " He was chairman of a committee of the road that awarded a contract to Peter Cooper for rails to extend his road to Albany, was a large owner in the Troy & Schenectady Railroad, and was a founder of the Bank of Commerce. He retired in 1855. No New York merchant was more liberal in benevolence. He gave with great liberality to the Institution for the Blind, the Protestant Half-Orphan Asylum, the Southern Aid Society, the Union Theological Seminary, and Trinity Church, of which latter he was long an officer. His town house was at Waverley Place and Washington Square. He also owned No. 1 Fifth Ave., the fine home that was later the residence of the Duncans, and he possessed a country estate at Hyde Park, Dutchess County, New York. He married Mary Wells Davenport on November 10, 1810, and they later adopted a daughter. He was inclined to be headstrong, he had little patience with incompetency, and none at all with shams; his integrity was of that rare sort that is never questioned.

[Boorman is mentioned prominently in J. A. Scoville, The Old Merchants of New York City (1863). The lengthy pamphlet entitled Communications from Jas. Boorman to the Stockholders of the Hudson River Railroad Co., in Reply to Mr. A. C. Flagg, late President of that Co., contains much valuable information. He gives some facts of his financial dealings in his Statement of the Administration of the Estate of fas. R. Smith (1865). His will, made in 1862, is on file in the New York Pub. Lib. Obituaries were published in the New York Times and New York Daily Tribune, January 26, 1866. ]

R.R.R.


BOOTH, Sherman M., 1812-1904, abolitionist, orator, politician, temperance activist.  Editor of anti-slavery newspaper, the Wisconsin Freeman, in Racine, Wisconsin.  Member, Free Soil Party, and helped found the Liberty Party.  Assisted runaway slave Joshua Glover.  Was arrested, tried and convicted for violation of Fugitive Slave Law.  Booth was acquitted under Wisconsin State law. (Blue, 2005, pp. 6-7, 13, 117-137, 267, 268; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 62, 151)


BOUDINOT, Elias, 1740-1821, New Jersey, philanthropist, lawyer, Revolutionary statesman, U.S. Congressman, opponent of slavery.  Trustee of Princeton.  Former president of the Congress of Confederation.  Secretary of Foreign Affairs.  Supported right to petition Congress against slavery. (Basker, 2005, pp. 128, 133, 321, 322, 348, 350-351; Drake, 1950, pp. 85, 106; Dumond, 1961, p. 54; Locke, 1901, pp. 92, 93, 140; Annals of Congress; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 327; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. I, Pt. 2, pp. 477-478; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 2, p. 243)

BOUDINOT, ELIAS (May 2, 1740-October 24, 1821), Revolutionary statesman, was the fourth of the same name in direct descent, and has been often confused with his younger brother, Elisha (1749-1819), and with this brother's son, Elias E. (1791-1863). Driven out of Marans, Rochelle, France, by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), Elias Boudinot the first, a prosperous merchant, elder in the Reformed Church, Seigneur de Cressy, went to London, thence to New York about 1687, joined in protest against Leisler's maladministration, bought extensive lands in Bergen County, New Jersey, and died in New York in 1702. Elias the second (1674-1719) married Marie Catherine Carree, and through their daughters was built up a remarkable matrimonial network of the Boudinot family with the Ricketts, Chetwood, Chandler, Clayton, Vergereau, Tennent, and other families noted in colonial law, church, and business affairs. Elias the third (1706-70), postmaster and silversmith of Princeton, married Catherine Williams of Antigua, British West Indies; their daughter, Annis, married Richard Stockton, signer of the Declaration of Independence, father-in-law of Benjamin Rush and grandfather of Richard Rush. Elias the fourth, born in Philadelphia, married, April 21, 1762, the signer's sister, Hannah Stockton (July 21, 1736-October 28, 1808), whom he had long courted, and urged to "press forward toward a heavenly goal." Their courting names "Eugenia" and "Narcissus" were in use thirty years later. Neither a classical academy education, baptism by George Whitefield, nor early and arduous study of law, could mar the serenity of Elias's temper or the poise of his good sense. Licensed counsellor and attorney-at-law, 1760, sergeant-at-law, 1770, he became a leader in his profession (hon. LL.D. Yale, 1790) and a trustee of Princeton (1772-1821). Two fellowships founded by him are extant there. He is described as tall, handsome, "every way prepossessing," elegant, eloquent and emotional. He could use tears to good effect but his advice to his only child, Susan Vergereau (1764-1854), married to William Bradford, attorney-general (1794-5), was: "take the world as you find it" and convert even prejudices to usefulness.

Supporting gentry rule, legal government, and property rights, he was a conservative Whig in politics but followed the liberal trend of his Colony and his connections, and entered on revolution chiefly by opposing Governor William Franklin. On June 11, 1774, he became a member of the Committee of Correspondence for Essex County, New Jersey, but felt a "firm dependence in the mother country essential." In March 1775, with William Livingston, he hurried the New Jersey Assembly into approving the proceedings of the first Continental Congress at Philadelphia (New Jersey Archives, series 1, vol. X, p. 575). In August 1775 he, then a member of the New Jersey Provincial Congress, procured from Elizabethtown eight or ten half-casks of powder for Washington's army at Cambridge, the forces there being down to eight rounds per man. In April 1776 at New Brunswick he quashed Dr. John Witherspoon's queer attempt to rush New Jersey into declaring for independence.

On June 6, 1777, by commission dated May 15, Congress appointed him commissary-general of prisoners, with the pay and rations of a colonel, five deputies, and full power even to altering the directions of the board of war. Thus he was drawn into "the boisterous noisy, fatiguing unnatural and disrelishing state of War and slaughter" (to his wife July 22, 1777). This he did, not only to "be of some service to the Prisoners" but also "to watch the Military and to preserve the Civil Rights of my Fellow Citizens" (Journal, p. 67). He organized the care of the American prisoners despite great difficulties, and put in $30,000 of his own money to do it. On William Duer's insistence he recovered most of this despite New England opposition. Washington offered to stand half the loss, corrected Boudinot's judgment as to treason and military tactics, and relied on him to reconcile Steuben to other officers and for certain secret service information. Their relations were close and, on Boudinot's part, extremely reverential. On November 20, 1777, he was elected delegate to Congress, and wrote of Philadelphia, "This City is enough to kill a horse" (to his wife July 9, 1778). He did not attend Congress until July 7, 1778, and then only on Washington's insistence that it was his only chance to be reimbursed in "hard money," i.e., out of the cash captured from Burgoyne (Journal, p. 69). Rechosen to Congress until 1784, president November 4, 1782, acting also as secretary of foreign affairs from June 16, 1783, he served on over thirty committees and usually as chairman, while his social grace and legal acumen were invaluable in dealing with representatives of other countries. He signed the treaties of peace with Great Britain and of alliance with the French king, the proclamations for cessation of hostilities, thanksgiving, discharging the army, and removing the Congress to Princeton, and presided at that session in Nassau Hall when Washington was thanked for his services "in establishing the freedom and independence of your country." His benevolent good sense went far to neutralize the acidities of our peace commissioners abroad.

As a strong Federalist he helped ratify the Constitution in New Jersey and conducted Washington into New York for the first inauguration. Elected to the House of Representatives in the first, second and third Congresses, he fathered many essential measures and took part in practically all important debates. In the great assault of February 1793 on Hamilton's conduct of the federal Treasury, Boudinot led the defense. In 1795 he succeeded David Rittenhouse as director of the United States Mint and reorganized the enterprise with "great industry as well as ability" (J. R. Snowden, A Description of the Medals of Washington, 1861, p. 185). Some of his rules are still in force. His technical skill and his care for the employees are shown by his letters to Jefferson of June 16, 1801, and April 17, 1802. He resigned July 1, 1805, to study the Bible at his home in Burlington, New Jersey. His religious works, The Age of Revelation (1801), Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend William Tennent (1807), The Second Advent (1815), A Star in the West ( 1816), may be read by those curious to do so. His guiding thought was "I am satisfied that the grace of God is not confined to Sector Party." He was the first counsellor named by the United States Supreme Court (February 5, 1790) and seems never to have lost either his taste for the practise of his profession or his acute and sensible interest in public affairs. Save when absent on duty, he spent his entire life in New Jersey, living successively at Princeton, Elizabethtown, and Burlington. His will, July 3, 1821, disposed of a large property, including several tracts of wild land in Pennsylvania, to innumerable dear ones and good causes. He seems to have had few quarrels, and no enemies.

[Boudinot's letters and papers have not been published. His Journal (1894) deals only with selected "American Events during the Revolutionary War" but affords interesting side-lights on the man. The Life, Public Services, Addresses and Letters of Elias Boudinot (1896) by a collateral descendant, Jane J. Boudinot, includes much material but the selection and arrangement are not impressive. This is the chief source. His public activities are reflected in the Journals of the Continental Congress, the Annals of the first, second, and third Congresses, and in the published letters of leading men of the period.]

W.L.W-y.


BOURNE, George, 1780-1845, New York City.  Author.  Presbyterian and Dutch Reform clergyman. Pioneer abolitionist leader.  Manager (1833-1839) and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Wrote, The Book of Slavery Irreconcilable (1816); An Address to the Presbyterian Church, Enforcing the Duty of Excluding all Slaveholders from the Communion of Saints; and Man Stealing and Slavery Denounced by the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 93, 175, 348; Mason, 2006, pp. 79, 100, 132-133, 231-232, 285n75; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 34, 105; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 330; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. I, Pt. 2, p. 485; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 2, p. 254).

BOURNE, GEORGE (June 13, 1780-November 20, 1845), Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed clergyman, abolitionist, was born in Westbury, England, and was educated at Homerton Seminary in London. From there he came to Virginia and Maryland. He was pastor of a Presbyterian church in South River, Virginia, in 1814. As a result of his strong reaction to his direct contact with the institution of slavery, he was one of the first in the United States to advocate immediate emancipation (The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, 1816). He was bitterly persecuted by the advocates of slavery and called before a Presbyterian council where he was condemned on a charge of heresy for his anti-slavery views. He was finally compelled to leave the Southern states. For a while he lived in Germantown, Pennsylvania (Manual of the Reformed Church), a little later in Sing Sing, New York, where he was principal of an academy as well as pastor of a Presbyterian church. In Quebec from 1825 to 1828, he had two Presbyterian churches, and here he became a strong opponent of Catholicism. Two years later he was back in New York, but without a church. Presbyterian records list him as an editor in 1831 and in 1832 Garrison writes of him as publishing "a spirited journal, entitled, The Protestant." The following year saw him a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, which had perhaps the greatest tolerance for his extreme anti-slavery principles. He supplied the Houston Street Chapel and vacant churches, and at the same time contributed to periodicals and the press, and was the author of a number of works which expressed his views. Garrison said of him, "Bourne thunders and lightens," and he frequently recognized his courage and the vigor and strength of his mind. He was among the fifty or sixty delegates present at the Philadelphia convention for the formation of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 (Garrison). At an anniversary meeting in 1837, he offered a resolution censuring clergymen who during the past year had defended slavery and opposed the enlightening of their congregations "without the advice and consent of the pastors and regular ecclesiastical bodies" (Ibid.). He was opposed to "woman's rights," and felt certain that no woman would be allowed a seat in the world anti-slavery convention, although Lucretia Mott had been appointed as a delegate by the American society. Naturally belligerent, he had no patience with the policy of non-resistance. He wrote Garrison in 1838 that he anticipated no peace from his "nonresistance oppugnation" but foresaw in it only mischief to the anti-slavery cause. He lived at West Farms from 1839 to 1842, and at the time of his death in 1845 was employed on the Christian Intelligencer in New York.

His published works are: The History of Napoleon Bonaparte (1806); The Spirit of the Public Journals; or, Beauties of the American Newspapers for 1805 (1806); The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable (1816); The Picture of Quebec (1829); An Address to the Presbyterian Church, Enforcing the Duty of Excluding All Slave-holders from the "Communion of Saints" (1833); Lorette, The History of Louise, Daughter of a Canadian Nun, Exhibiting the Interior of Female Convents (1834); Man-Stealing and Slavery Denounced by the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches (1834); Picture of Slavery in the Unit ed States of America ( 834); Slavery Illustrated in Its Effects upon Woman and Domestic Society (1837); A Condensed Anti-Slavery Bible Argument (1845).

[Minutes of General Assembly of the Presbyt. Church, vols. III, V, VI, VII; Manual of the Reformed Church in America (1879); Liberator, vols. I, II; Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Told by His Children (1885-89); New York Herald, November 22, 1845; New York Tribune, November 21, 1845.]

M.A.K.


BOUTWELL, George Sewall, 1818-1905, statesman, lawyer.  Helped organize the Republican Party.  Member of Congress, 1862-1868.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senator.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 331-332; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 489-490; Congressional Globe)  (Boston, 1859); a “Manual of the United States Direct and Revenue Tax” (1863); “Decisions on the Tax Law” (New York, 1863); “Tax-Payer's Manual” (Boston, 1865); a volume of “Speeches and Papers” (1867); and “Why I am a Republican” (Hartford, Connecticut, 1884). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 331-332.

BOUTWELL, GEORGE SEWALL (January 28, 1818-February 27, 1905), politician, born in Brookline, Massachusetts, was the son of Sewall and Rebecca (Marshall) Boutwell, both of old Massachusetts stock. His boyhood was passed in Lunenburg, Massachusetts., where from the age of thirteen to seventeen he was employed in a small store with the privilege of attending school during the winter months. When he was seventeen he became clerk in a store in Groton, Massachusetts. He devoted much of his time to self-education in the hope of becoming a lawyer, and at an early age began to write articles for the newspapers on political topics, and to make addresses. In 1841 he was married to Sarah Adelia Thayer. He was an active Democrat, and during seven sessions between 1842 and 1850 represented Groton in the lower house of the state legislature. Through his useful work there he became one of the leaders of the younger element of the party, whose anti-slavery leanings made possible the coalition with the Free-Soilers which in 1850 defeated the Whigs. As a result of this coalition, Boutwell was elected by the legislature governor for the year 1851, and Charles Sumner, representing the Free-Soilers, was elected senator; the same political combination effected Boutwell's reelection for 1852. After the expiration of his term he pursued legal studies with th e purpose of becoming a patent lawyer; from 1855 to 1861 he was secretary of the state board of education. In January 1862 he was admitted to the Suffolk bar.

The important part of Boutwell's career lies in the field of national politics. He had  been one of the organizers of the Republican party in Massachusetts in 1855, and he consistently represented its radical wing, more, however, on the side of practical politics than in its idealistic aspect. From July 17, 1862, to March 3, 1863, he was commissioner of internal revenue, and in that short period did effective work in organizing this new branch of the government. His activities as a radical Republican were most conspicuous during his terms of service as representative in Congress from 1863 to 1869 in connection with the problems of reconstruction. As a member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction he helped in framing the Fourteenth Amendment; his belief in the necessity of full suffrage for the negro led to his advocacy of the Fifteenth Amendment. His support of the congressional plan of Reconstruction involved persistent, vigorous, and even fanatical opposition to President Johnson and his policies. In the movement for the impeachment of the President he was among the leaders, being chosen by the House of Representatives as one of its s even managers to conduct the impeachment. His suggestion that a suitable punishment for Johnson, the "enemy of two races of men," would be his projection into a "hole in the sky" near the Southern Cross, drew the ridicule of William M. Evarts, counsel for the defense. Boutwell's efforts on behalf of the radical Republicans were rewarded by a place in Grant's cabinet as secretary of the treasury. To this position he brought qualifications chiefly of a political nature, and he was not a supporter of civil service reform; but he labored diligently in improving the organization of the department and in reducing the national debt. Before the end of his four years as secretary he had effected the redemption of 200 millions of six per cent bonds and sold an equal amount bearing interest at five per cent (Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, December 1872, iii). Early in his administration occurred the famous " Black Friday," on which day a n attempted corner in gold was broken by his release of Treasury gold.

From March 1873 to March 1877, he served a four-year term as senator from Massachusetts. On his failure to be reelected by his party he was appointed commissioner to revise the statutes of the United States. In 1880 he became counsel and agent of the United States before a board of international arbitrators for the settlement of claims of French citizens against the government of this country, and of American citizens against the government of France. In his practise as a lawyer, which he resumed after his retirement from the Senate, he handled numerous cases involving questions of international law. The independence of spirit which at various times in his career he had manifested, in marked contrast to his general disposition for party regularity- showed itself in his last years in his opposition to the policy of the Republican party on the Philippine question, and led to his withdrawal from the party; he was president of the Anti-Imperialist League from its organization in November 1898 until his death in 1905.

He was the author of Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions (1859); A Manual of the Direct and Excise Tax System of the United States (1863); Speeches Relating to the Rebellion and the Overthrow of Slavery (1867); The Constitution of the United States at the End of the First Century (1895); The Crisis of the Republic (1900).

[Boutwell's Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (1902) contains interesting though guarded accounts of the public men of his time; to it is prefixed a biographical sketch which appeared in the Memoirs of the Judiciary and the Bar of New England, January 1901. For his connection with the impeachment of Johnson see D. M. DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903); E. P. Oberholtzer, Jay Cooke (1907) has numerous references to Boutwell as secretary of the treasury.]

H. G. P.


BOWDITCH, Henry Ingersoll, 1819-1909, Boston, lawyer, abolitionist, physician.  Influenced by William Lloyd Garrison to join the anti-slavery cause.  Aided fugitive slaves, and promoted anti-slavery actions in the North.  Counsellor, 1843-1850, and Vice president, 1850-1860, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.  (Mabee, 1970, pp. 36, 94, 103, 110, 129, 336; Pease, 1965, pp. 343-348; Bowditch, Slavery and the Constitution, Boston: Robert F. Walcutt, 1849, pp. 120-126; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 1, Pt. 2, pp. 492-494; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 103-104; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 2, p. 267) He has translated “Louis on Typhoid” (2 vols., Boston, 1836); “Louis on Phthisis” (1836); and “Maunoir on Cataract” (1837). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 334.

BOWDITCH, HENRY INGERSOLL (August 9, 1808-January 14, 1892), physician af)d abolitionist, third son of Nathaniel Bowditch [q.v.] and Mary (Ingersoll) Bowditch, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, where he resided until 1823 when his family moved to Boston. He received his early education at the Salem Private Grammar School, but when fifteen he entered the Boston Public Latin School. As a boy he exhibited no evidence of precocity, though at fourteen he won a diploma for Latin. He entered Harvard College in 1825, graduating in 1828, but did not distinguish himself as an undergraduate; his diary (Life, I, 12) at that period, however, shows a serious-minded young man, deeply religious and conscientious. With some misgiving she entered the Harvard Medical School (M.D., 1832), and went from there to the Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston) where he served during 1831-32 as a house-officer under James Jackson [q.v.]. He went to Paris in 1832, and his father's international reputation brought him at once into contact with many of the best minds of France. For two years Bowditch studied under Louis and followed him in his wards at La Pitie, from time to time in company with other young Boston physicians. He became deeply attached to Louis and looked upon him as the greatest leader of that day in medical science. When Bowditch went to England the contra st between Louis and the English physicians whom he met seemed so great that he left London in disgust (Life, I, 55) and returned to Paris for an extra year. While in England he attended and was deeply moved by the funeral of Wilberforce, whose writings had stirred him and were largely responsible for stimulating his desire for freedom of the slaves. His letters from Europe (Life, 1, 32) are those of an alert and discerning fell ow with much tact and a broad understanding of human nature. His religious turn of mind, however, alway s showed itself in his letters, and they exhibited little humor. In 1834 he returned to Boston where he soon acquired a moderate practise. At that time William Lloyd Garrison was thundering his denunciations of slavery. Bowditch listened and became at once an ardent follower. He severed his connection with Warren Street Chapel because the " pillars" of this institution refused to listen to abolitionist sermons. In 1842 Massachusetts opinion was acutely aroused by the arrest in Boston of George Latimer, a runaway slave. William F. Channing, Frederick S. Gabot, and Bowditch formed themselves into a "Latimer Committee" and edited the Latimer Journal and North Star, a tri-weekly publication issued from November 11, 1842, until May 10, 1843. Bowditch's ardor in the cause of Latimer threatened to unbalance his mind. Later he assisted other runaway slaves, and no one did more than he to foster anti-slavery feeling in the North. Consequently this pious Christian did much to bring about the Civil War into which he entered with the spirit of a crusader of old. When his son, Nathaniel, was killed (1863) he said, "This summoned me like the notes of a bugle to a charging soldier" (Ibid., II, 16). It led him to write A Brief Plea for an Ambulance System for the Army of the United States; as drawn from the Extra sufferings of the Late Lieut. Bowditch and a Wounded Comrade (1863). The feeling created by this pamphlet eventually caused the government to establish an ambulance unit of men trained to care for the wounded,-one of the great services rendered to the Northern armies.

Bowditch's other medical contributions were numerous and important. His training with Louis had aroused his interest in the diseases of the chest, and in 1846 he published The Young Stethoscopist, a work used by medical students for fifty years. Puncturing of the chest (paracentesis thoracis) for removal of pleural effusions was advocated by Bowditch in 1851 in a paper read (October 20) to the Boston Society for Medical Observation (American Journal of Medical Science, April 1852). The use of the trocar and suction pump for this operation had been suggested by Dr. Morrill Wyman of Cambridge, Massachusetts, but the world is indebted to Bowditch for bringing the procedure to the attention of physicians and, through repeated efforts, convincing them of its value. The operation was not new, having been employed spasmodically since the time of Hippocrates, but substitution of a hollow needle for a lancet made the procedure safe and simple. As a student of tuberculosis, also, Bowditch became distinguished. In 1836 appeared (in Boston) his English editions of Louis's two monographs on Fever [typhoid] and on Phthisis. The latter work greatly amplified Laennec's classical treatise (1819) on the pathology of tuberculosis. For many years Bowditch collected evidence concerning the influence of damp soil upon the spread of tuberculosis, which was carefully tabulated case by case and analyzed after the numerical method of Louis, but he did not publish his conclusions until 1862 (Consumption in New England; or Locality One of Its Chief Causes). Tuberculosis was a subject which occupied his mind until his death, his last published work being on the open-air treatment of the disease (Transactions of the American Climatological Association, VI, reprinted, XXVIII). In this paper one finds the modern conception of tuberculosis therapy clearly enunciated.

Bowditch's greatest service lay in the public health measures which were instituted through his efforts, and with the lapse of time his work in this field assumes ever-increasing significance. In 1869 was established the first Massachusetts State Board of Health (Life, II, 217-39) on which Bowditch served until 1879 preparing reports upon general questions relating to public health. The Massachusetts Board was the second in this country. the first having been established in Louisiana (1855). Bowditch's most important contribution in the field was his book, Public Hygiene in America (1877), in which is given a history of preventive medicine and a summary of sanitary law in various parts of the world. Bowditch's influence in stimulating the public health movement in the country was probably greater than that of any other man of his time. From 1859 to 1867 he was Jackson Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Harvard Medical School. He was a Fellow of the American Academy, an active member of the Massachusetts Medical Society (in which he held secretarial offices from 1849 to 1854), and was associated with the Massachusetts General Hospital from May 6, 1838, until the end of his life. He was also instrumental in founding the Boston Medical Library. In 1838 he married Olivia Yardley, an English girl of great charm whom he had met six years before at his lodgings in Paris. She died in December 1890, and he in January 1892 at the age of eighty-three.

[The numerous letters and diaries of Bowditch have been collected by his son, Vincent Yardley Bowditch, in a two-volume work, Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch (1902). A bibliography of his scientific works is to be found in the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon General's Library, series 1, 2, and 3. See also Boston Medic. and Surgical Journal, CLXVII, 603-07. All of Bowditch's numerous case-books have been deposited in the Boston Medic. Lib.]

J.F.F.


BOWDITCH, William I., Boston, Massachusetts, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1852-56, Treasurer, 1862-64, Executive Committee, 1863-64


BOYD, Sempronius Hamilton, born 1828, lawyer, soldier.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Colonel, 24th Missouri Volunteers.  (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, p. 341; Congressional Globe)


BOYNTON, Charles Brandon, 1806-1883, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, lawyer, clergyman, anti-slavery activist.  Chaplain, U.S. House of Representatives, 39th and 49th Congress. (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 342-343; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. I, Pt. 2, pp. 536-539). His published books are “Journey through Kansas, with Sketch of Nebraska” (Cincinnati, 1855); “The Russian Empire” (1856); “The Four Great Powers—England, France, Russia, and America; their Policy, Resources, and Probable Future” (1866); “History of the Navy during the Rebellion” (New York, 1868). He received the degree of D. D. from Marietta college in recognition of his acquirements as a biblical scholar.

BOYNTON, CHARLES BRANDON (June 12, 1806-April27, 1883), Presbyterian and Congregational clergyman, author, was born in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts The Boyntons were among the early settlers of the township. The names of his parents are not recorded, but they may have been Henry and Mary (Meacham) Boynton (J. F. and C. H. Boynton, pp. 234,285; and H. Child, Gazetteer of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, 1725-1885, 1885, p. 389). After attending the Stockbridge Academy he became a member of the class of 1827 at Williams College, but on account of ill health left in the senior year without taking his degree. Thereafter he engaged in business, was president of the first railroad in Berkshire County, studied and practised law, was a justice of the Berkshire County court and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. On November 5, 1834, he married Maria Van Buskirk of Troy, New York, by whom he had seven children. Having studied theology privately with the Reverend Mr. Woodbridge of Spencertown, New York, he was ordained by the Columbia Presbytery in October 1840. He held charges at Housatonic, Massachusetts, 1840-45, and at Lansingburg, New York, 1845-46, and then went to Cincinnati to the Vine Street Church, at that time the Sixth Presbyterian, where he remained till March 1856. While in the West, Boynton became actively interested in the anti-slavery movement. In the autumn of 1854 he was one of a party sent to explore and report upon the climate, soil, productions, general resources, and promise of the territory of Kansas. His report, A Journey Through Kansas (1855), is an interesting account of the country before the trouble over slavery had grown acute. From 1856 to 1857 he was in his native Berkshires again as pastor of the South Church in Pittsfield. He then returned to the Vine Street Church in Cincinnati, only to leave it to be chaplain of the House of Representatives from 1865 to 1869. While in Washington he was pastor of several churches and a teacher in the United States Naval Academy. Meanwhile he was busy writing. In 1856 he had published anonymously The Russian Empire: its Resources, Government, and Policy. In 1864 appeared English and French Neutrality and the Anglo-French Alliance, in their Relations to the United States and Russia. Some chapters from this work were republished in 1865 as The Navies of England, France, America, and Russia, and the whole book, considerably revised, was reissued in 1866 as The Four Great Powers: England, France, Russia, and America: their Policy, Resources, and Probable Future. In these books Boynton advocated a strong navy and an alliance, formal or informal, with Russia to offset the encroachments of England and France, but his understanding of world politics was not equal to his earnestness and patriotism. In 1867-68 he brought out in two ponderous, stodgy volumes a History of the Navy during the Rebellion, a semiofficial work, for which he had access to the archives of the Navy Department. He was pastor of the Vine Street Church in Cincinnati for the third time from 1873 to 1877, and died at the home of a daughter in Cincinnati on April 27, 1883.

[Congregational Yearbook for 1884, p. 20; Cincinnati Enquirer, April 28, 1883; General Cat. of the Officers and Grads. of Williams College 1795-1910 (1910); J. F. and C. H. Boynton, The Boynton Family (1897), p. 234. Several of Boynton's sermons have been published as pamphlets.]

G. H. G.


BRADBURN, George, 1806-1880, Nantucket, Massachusetts, politician, newspaper editor, Unitarian clergyman, abolitionist, women’s rights activist, lecturer.  Member, American Anti-Slavery Society.  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-1845.  Attended World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in June 1840, where he protested the exclusion of women from the conference.  Lectured for the American Anti-Slavery Society with fellow abolitionists William A. White and Frederick Douglass in 1843.  Editor, the Pioneer and Herald of Freedom from 1846 to 1849 in Lynn, Massachusetts.


BRADFORD, William, 1663-1752, Leicester, England, Society of Friends, Quaker, printed first anti-slavery publication in the colony in 1693, titled “An Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes” (Drake, 1950, p. 14; Soderlund, 1985, p. 194; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 350; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. I, Pt. 2, pp. 463)

BRADFORD, WILLIAM (May 20, 1663- May 23, 1752), pioneer printer of the English middle colonies, was the son of William and Anne Bradford, humble folk of the Established Church in the parish of Barnwell, Leicestershire, England, where he was born. He was apprenticed to Andrew Sowle, chief London Quaker printer, and united with his master's sect. On April 28, 1685, in London, he married his master's daughter, Elizabeth, who died in New York, July 8, 1731, aged sixty-eight years. Bradford afterward married the widow Cornelia Smith, through whose relatives he suffered pecuniary losses. The assumption that he accompanied Penn to America in 1682 seems untenable, notwithstanding the claim on his tombstone. Hildeburn (James G. Wilson, Memorial History of New York, I, 572) declares that another of the name then came, who attained some local importance in Sussex (now part of Delaware) County. Our Bradford, on leaving London with Penn's consent, in 1685, brought over a letter recommendatory from George Fox. It appears that Bradford and his wife resided temporarily at Philadelphia on their arrival late that year, but that soon residence and printery were removed to Oxford township, where the domicile continued until removal to New York, whilst the press was reestablished at Philadelphia in 1688, where Bradford added a bookstore. The first issue of his press, in 1685, was an almanac by Samuel Atkins, in which Penn was dubbed "Lord Penn," an offense for which Bradford was reprimanded and ordered to print no more without license by the council (Pennsylvania Colonial Records, I, 165). In 1687 he was warned not to print anything about the Quakers without their official consent. He was reprehended by Governor John Blackwell and his council, in 1689, for printing Penn's charter. So, harassed by both civil and religious leaders and disappointed in the unproductiveness of his press and the lack of encouragement in his pet scheme to print an English Bible in 1688, he transferred his press to his "assignes" and, on receiving a certificate of removal in July 1689, returned to England. Better encouragement from the Yearly Meeting induced him to return and resume his press. In 1690 he was associated in founding the fir st pa per-mill in English America. In 1692 he was released from his official printing contract, and became involved in the turbulence that had arisen from the schism led by George Keith, whose propaganda he forwarded by the press. Bradford was arrested; his types, paper, and other things were seized by the sheriff. The case is enmeshed in conflicting partisan statements. A summa tion seems to show that he refused to furnish security for his recognizance, so was committed in a dwelling, but allowed considerable freedom. At his trial he pleaded his  own cause with great skill, maintaining the right of peremptory challenge of biased jurors in a libel action, and that the burden of proof was upon his prosecutors, whilst the jurors were judges of law as w ell as of fact. At a subsequent term he pleaded not guilty; and the jury,-out forty-eight hours,-not agreeing, he was discharged. On April 28, 1693, Governor Fletcher ordered the restoration of his seized property. Meanwhile, on March 23, 1693, the New York council, under Fletcher's direction, offered inducements for a printer to come to New York, to print the acts of assembly and other official papers, and have the bene fit of serving the public. Bradford accepted the offer and was established as "Printer to King William and · Queen Mary." His first warrant for salary was retroactive to April 10, 1693. From 1693 to 1724 he printed more than 250 pieces, and from 1725 to 1743 about 150 m o re. In the beginning, his issue s were mainly public documents and religious controversial pamphlets, but after 1710 they w ere more varied. Bradford was admitted a freeman of New York in 169 5, and the same year began to print the "Votes" of the assembly, which were the earliest legislative proceedings to be printed in America. In 1694, 1710, 1713, 1716, and 1726, he printed collections of New York laws. He printed the first New York paper currency (May 31, 1709), the first America n Book of Common Prayer (1710), the first drama written in English America (1714), the first history of New York ( 1727 ), and the first copperplate plan of New York (Lyne's survey, undated, but 1730). He was a vestryman of Trinity Church, 1703-10; official printer to New Jersey, 1703-33, with slight interruption, and clerk of New Jersey, 1711. In his sixty-third year, he began New York's first news paper, the New-York Gazette, November 8, 1725 (earliest issue extant No. 18), which apparently expired on November 19, 1744. Until 1733 it was the only newspaper in New York. It was never a well-edited product. Foreign news copy predominated and advertising was sparse. Journalism was for Bradford a losing venture. Having been printer to the Crown under four reigns, he retired in 1742, in his eightieth year, succeeded by his former apprentice, James Parker. He lived in retirement with his son, William, at New York, until his sudden death on the evening of May 23, 1752. Parker (Post-Boy, May 25, 1751) paid high tribute to Bradford as "a Man of great Sobriety and Industry;-a real Friend to the Poor and Needy; and kind and affable to all his Temperance was exceedingly conspicuous, and he was almost a Stranger to sickness all his Life." No portrait of Bradford exists. His first tombstone was damaged and removed to the New York Historical Society, whilst a new one of Italian marble was dedicated in Trinity churchyard, May 20, 1863, and that night an august celebration took place in Cooper Institute. The Bradford Club was named for him in 1859. The Grolier Club, in April 1893, paid him tribute in a "Bradford Exhibition." On November 8, 1925, journalists and printers celebrated the founding of his newspaper, and in 1926 there was formed the William Bradford Memorial Fellowship in Journalism. There are historical markers on the sites of his printing shops, at 81 Pearl St., and in Hanover Square.

[A collation of a great variety of conflicting statements in the following books and articles is imperative for the elimination of error : Antiquarian Researches, by Nathan Kite (Manchester, 1844), reprinted from the Friend, vols. XVI and XVII (Philadelphia, 1843); Memoir of Bradford in the Home Journal" February 14, 1852, anonymous; "Wm. Bradford," by W. IL, in History Mag., III (1859), 171 ff.; Address at Celebration, May 20, I863, by John Wm. Wallace (1863), the fullest biography, in which real facts are hidden in a mass of pedantry and irrelevancy; chapter headed "Of Persecution and Prosecution" in News of a Trumpet sounding in the Wilderness, by Daniel Leeds (New York, 1697), and for Bradford's birth date American Almanack, 1739, of Titan Leeds, under May 20. The following works of Chas. R. Hildeburn are indispensable : A Century of Printing: the Issues of the Press in Pennsylvania, vol. I (1885); List of the Issues of the Press in New York (1889); chap. XV in Wilson's Memorial History of New York, vol. I (1891), containing facts not found elsewhere; Cat. of Books Printed by Wm. Bradford ( 1893); Sketches of Printers and Printing in Colonial New York (1895); see also I. N. P. Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, chronology and appendix, vol. IV (1922).

V. H. P.


BRADLEY, Stephan Row, 1754-1830, jurist, Member of Congress, U.S. Senator, New Jersey, opposed slavery in U.S. Congress (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. 1, p.353; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. I, Pt. 2, pp. 575-576; Locke, 1901, pp. 94, 149f; Annals of Congress)

BRADLEY, STEPHEN ROW (February 20, 1754-December 9, 1830), jurist, senator, was descended from Stephen Bradley, one of Cromwell's Ironsides who emigrated, about the year 1650, from England to Connecticut. S. R. Bradley was born in the town of Wallingford (later known as Cheshire), the son of Moses and Mary (Row) Bradley. He graduated from Yale College in 1775, and early in 1776 was commissioned a captain of volunteers in the American army. He served in various capacities as commissary, quartermaster, aide to General Wooster, and at the end of the war retired with the rank of colonel. He studied law in the famous school of Judge Tapping Reeve, at Litchfield, Connecticut, and in 1779 like many other active and ambitious young men, he emigrated from Connecticut to the district known as the New Hampshire Grants, where the Green Mountain Boys sought to establish a new Commonwealth of Vermont, in opposition to the claims of New York. Bradley was one of two lawyers who were the first to be admitted to the Vermont bar. He opened a law office in Westminster. His rapid rise in influence is shown by the fact that before the end of his first year in Vermont he had been chosen as one of the agents to present Vermont's cause to the Continental Congress, and had written a pamphlet entitled Vermont's Appeal to the Candid and Impartial World (1780), an eloquent and militant argument for Vermont's right to statehood. By direction of Governor Chittenden the appeal was "published to the world," and circulated throughout several states. Bradley served as a member of the legislature and as speaker, and was the second judge of the supreme court who was a lawyer, most of the early judges being laymen. He was an active member of the commission that negotiated a settlement with New York, which made possible Vermont's admission as the first state to come into the Union after the original thirteen. In the convention called to consider ratification of the United States Constitution, Bradley was one of the leaders in the debate, favoring appr oval, which was carried by a large majority. He was elected one of Vermont's first United States senators, drawing the four-year term. He was defeated in 1794 for a reelection, but was chosen in 1801 to fill a vacancy and was reelected for a full term, this period continuing from October 1801 to March 1813. He served as president pro tempore, 1802-03 and in 1808.

Bradley introduced the bill which established a national flag of fifteen stripes and fifteen stars and this flag, sometimes known as the Bradley flag, was used from 1795 to 1814. His leadership is indicated by the fact that he issued the call for the caucus of Republican members of Congress which nominated James Madison as a candidate for president. Bradley was not an active partisan and his independence of party ties was shown on various occasions. In the controversy between the schools of political thought represented by Chief Justice Marshall and President Thomas Jefferson, which culminated in the establishment of a powerful and independent judiciary, Bradley, although a Republican, did not support the attempt to impeach certain judges. In a speech delivered in the Senate on April 25, 1812, he protested against a declaration of war before an army was organized, and S. G. Goodrich, better known by his pen name, "Peter Parley," a son-in-law of Bradley, in his Recollections of a Lifetime (1856), says that the senator retired from public life because of his dissatisfaction with the war policy of the Madison administration. Jeremiah Mason, one of the famous lawyers of the time, was a student in Bradley's office and in his Memoir and Correspondence (1873), he tells of Bradley's sagacity, his wit, and his great store of anecdotes. Other contemporaries mention his urbanity and social charm, He was thrice married: to Merab Atwater, to Thankful Taylor, and to Belinda Willard.

[A. J. Beveridge, Life of John Marshall (1916-19); Chas. Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of J. Q. Adams (1874-77); F. B. Dexter, Biography Sketches Grads. Yale College, vol. III (1903); B. H. Hall, History of Eastern Vermont (1858); W. H. Crockett, Vermont (1921), vols. II, III; Records of the Governors and Council of the State of Vermont ( 1874.), II, 200-22; P. C. Dodge, ed., Encyclopedia of Vermont Biography (1912).]

W. H. C.


BRAINERD, Lawrence, 1794-1870, anti-slavery activist, capitalist, statesman, U.S. Senator, member of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties.  Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833-1839.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 358; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. I, Pt. 2, p. 594)

BRAINERD, LAWRENCE (March 16, 1794- May 9, 1870), capitalist, senator, one of twelve children born to Ezra and Mabel (Porter) Brainerd, was a native of East Hartford, Connecticut. At the age of nine years he went to Troy, New York, to live with Joseph S. Brainerd, an uncle. Five years later, he removed with this uncle to St. Albans, Vermont. He attended the St. Albans Academy for two years and entered the store of a local merchant as clerk. At the age of twenty-two he established a mercantile business of his own in which he was very successful. He bought a large tract of swamp land near Lake Champlain, drained and improved it, and developed it into a 1,200-acre farm, one of the best in Vermont. When the Bank of St. Albans was established in 1826, he became a heavy stockholder, a director, and later its president. He was active in steamboat enterprises in the early days of that method of transportation, in 1847 superintending the building at Shelburne Harbor of the United States, then considered one of the finest steamboats ever built. He became interested early in railroad development and the construction of the Vermont & Canada line was due largely to his energy and aid, in cooperation with John Smith and Joseph Clark. He pledged practically his entire fortune to make possible the building of the railroad. From the construction of the road until his death he was a director and in later years was associated with his son-in-law, Governor John Gregory Smith, in the management of the corporation. He was also engaged in railroad building in Canada and was a promoter of the Missisquoi Railroad. He took an active interest in public affairs, being particularly interested in the anti-slavery cause and in temperance reform. Originally a Democrat, he was affiliated with the Free-Soil wing of the party. In 1834 he was a member of the legislature and in 1846, 1847, 1848, 1852, and 1854, he was a candidate of the Free-Soil Democratic party for governor. He was elected United States senator in 1854 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Upham, was president of the convention called to organize the Republican party in Vermont, was a delegate to a preliminary national Republican convention at Pittsburgh in February 1856, and called to order the first Republican national convention, held at Philadelphia in June 1856. Much interested in agricultural development, he was a president of the Vermont Agricultural Society. In 1819 he married Fidelia B. Gadcomb and twelve children were born to them. He was a man of large frame and great physical strength. [St. Albans Daily Messenger, May 9, 1870; W. H. Crockett, Vermont, vol. III ( 1921); H. C. Williams, ed., Biography Encyclopedia of Vermont (1885).]

W.H.C.


BRANAGAN, Thomas, former slaveholder in West Indies, wrote anti-slavery book in the United States.  Wrote, The Penitential Tyrant; or, Slave Trader Reformed: A Pathetic Poem, and A Preliminary Essay on the Exiled Sons of Africa Consisting of Animadversions on the Impolicy and Barbarity of the Deleterious Commerce and Subsequent Slavery of the Human Species (1801).  (Dumond, 1961, pp. 45, 80; Mason, 2006, pp. 26, 248n111; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 30-31)


BRANDEGEE, Augustus, 1828-1904, lawyer, jurist, abolitionist.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Elected to Connecticut State House of Representatives in 1854.  There, he was appointed Chairman of the Select Committee to pass a “Bill for the Defense of Liberty,” which was to prevent the Fugitive Slave Law from being enforced in the state. (Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; Congressional Globe)


BRINKERHOFF, James, 1810-1880, U.S. Congressman, member anti-slavery Free-Soil Party, author of the Wilmot Proviso Bill. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. I, Pt. 2, p.


BRINKERHOFF, JACOB (August 31, 1819 July 19, 1880), jurist and legislator, was the eldest son of Henry I. Brinkerhoff and Rachel Bevier, the father a member of an old Dutch family of New York, the mother of Huguenot ancestry (Roeliff and T. Van Wyck Brinkerhoff, Family of Joris D. Brinckerhoff, 1887, pp. 11-13, 67). Brinkerhoff was born at Niles, New York, and attended the public schools of his native town and the academy of Prattsburg, New York. He studied law for two years in a law office in Bath, New York. In 1836 he moved to Mansfield, Ohio, where he began the practise of law. He was twice married to Caroline Campbell of Lodi, New York, and after her death, to Marion Titus of Detroit. His public life consisted of two terms as prosecutor of Richland County, two terms as a Democratic member of the House of Representatives (1843-47), and three terms in the supreme court of Ohio (1856-71). In Congress he was identified with a small group of northwestern Democrats, advocates of a low tariff, expansionists, and Free-Soilers. He proposed an amendment to the joint resolution for the annexation of Texas, providing that, "as a fundamental condition, ... the existence of slavery shall be forever prohibited in one-half of all the annexed territory" (Congressional Globe, 28 Congress, 2 Sess., p. 192). This amendment failing, Brinkerhoff voted against the resolution. On the Oregon question he defended the claim of the United States to the whole territory. "We do not want war," he exclaimed, "but if we must have it, we would a great deal rather fight Great Britain than some other Powers, for we do not love her" (Ibid., 29 Congress, l Sess., pp. 203 ff.). When President Polk asked for $2,000,000 to negotiate peace with Mexico, Brinkerhoff supported an amendment to prohibit slavery in the acquired territory. The facts in his contention of twenty years later that he was the author of the Wilmot Proviso are shrouded in some doubt. It is quite possible that he may have suggested to Wilmot in part or in entirety the particular verbal form of the proposed amendment (see Brinkerhoff's statement in Congress, February 10, 1847, Ibid., 29 Congress, 2 Sess., p. 377). The Proviso attached to the Two Million Bill in Wilmot's handwriting is in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Brinkerhoff's alleged original draft, the evidence for his part, has unfortunately been lost (C. B. Going, David Wilmot, 1924, ch. ix). Brinkerhoff again became a conspicuous opponent of slavery when the Oberlin rescue cases came before the supreme court of Ohio, 1859. The court sustained the Fugitive Slave Law, the vote of the judges being three to two. Brinkerhoff wrote a dissenting opinion, falling back upon the strict construction theory, and so denying to Congress, the power to legislate upon the subject of fugitives from labor (Ex parte Bushnell, ex parte Langston, IX Critchfield's Ohio State Reports, 221- 29). Through the period of the slavery controversy Brinkerhoff passed from the ranks of the anti-slavery Democrats to the Free-Soil party and then to the Republican party. In 1872 he strongly indorsed the Liberal Republican movement (see Chicago Tribune, February 12, 1872). Little is known of his personal traits or his private life. He had a local reputation as a public speaker of more than average ability, quick at repartee, having read much and possessing a remarkable memory (A. A. Graham, History of Richland County, 1880, pp. 381-82).

[In addition to references given above, see obituary in Ohio Liberal (Mansfield), vol. VIII, No. 14; and The Recollections of a Life Time (1900), by General Roeliff Brinkerhoff.]

E.J.B.


BRISBANE, William Henry, 1803-1878, South Carolina, abolitionist leader.  Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.  Clergyman, Baptist Church in Madison, Wisconsin.  Chief Clerk of the Wisconsin State Senate.  He inherited slaves, however he realized slavery was wrong.  In 1835, Brisbane freed 33 of his slaves, bringing them to the North where he helped them settle.  As a result, he was criticized by his family and friends.  He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked for the abolitionist cause. (Dumond, 1961, pp. 93, 286; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 378)


BRODERICK, David Colbert, 1820-1859, Anti-Slavery U.S. Senator, member  Free-Soil Party. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. I, Pt. 2, p.
 
BRODERICK, DAVID COLBRETH (February 4, 1820-September 16, 1859), forty-niner, politician, was born in Washington, D. C. He was of Irish stock, and his father, a stone-mason for a time employed on the national Capitol, was doubtless an immigrant. Of the mother, whose maiden name was Copway, little is recorded except that she was idolized by her son. The boy had little schooling. Before he was fourteen the family moved to New York. About 1837 the father died, and the boy began his struggle for a living for himself, his mother, and his younger brother. Industrious, ambitious, belligerent, of strong physique and able to give a good account of himself in a street brawl, he literally fought his way to the front. By the time he was twenty he was a member of an engine company (of which later he became foreman) and was active in ward politics as an adherent of Tammany Hall. His mother dying and his brother being accidentally killed, he was left without kin. His struggles had molded his character; he was "stubborn, positive, unrelenting and unforgiving," self-centered also, and determined upon his advancement to the utmost of his powers. He owned a saloon, which seems to have netted a good profit, and he became politically prominent. He was a member of the city charter convention of 1846, over which he several times presided, and in the same year he was the unsuccessful Tammany nominee for Congress in the 5th district.

In the spring of 1849 he determined to go to California. Closing his saloon, emptying his casks in the street, and vowing that he would never again "sell or drink liquor, smoke a cigar or play a card," he took passage by way of Panama, and in June arrived in San Francisco. Here he found old friends ready to back him alike in business and politics. He formed a partnership with an assayer for the coining of gold "slugs" of four-dollar and eight-dollar values in metal, which passed readily, because of the scarcity of coin, for five dollars and ten dollars. The business, though highly profitable, was sold some months later, and Broderick turned his attention to the still more profitable enterprise of trading in shore-front lots. From the time he landed he was in politics. In August he was chosen a delegate to the constitutional convention, and in January of the following year was elected to fill a vacancy in the Senate. On the succession of Lieutenant-Governor McDougal to the governorship, in January 1851, Broderick was elected president of the Senate. Though his private life was exemplary, in politics he was unscrupulous. An adept in Tammany methods, he soon became a political boss; and it is said of him that from 1851 (when he was reelected to the Senate) to 1854 he was "the Democratic party of California." He now determined upon a seat in the United States Senate, and set about to compass the defeat of William M. Gwin, whose term would expire on March 4, 1855. The attempt served for the time only to divide the party and to deadlock the legislature, but on January 10, 1857, he won the election by 79 votes out of 111. At the same time, through a bargain made with his rival, Gwin, he brought about the latter's reelection and obtained the promise of a monopoly of the Federal patronage for the state.

President Buchanan refused to recognize the bargain, and Gwin, in spite of his promise, continued to distribute the patronage. Broderick turned on both men with bitter resentment. At what time he first developed sentiments hostile to the slave power and to political corruption cannot be said. But he now vehemently attacked the administration, both for its policy in Kansas and for its alleged venality, and he carried the war into his own state, where pro-slavery feeling was for the time dominant and aggressive. His attitude brought him into national prominence, but made him a marked man at home. Both he and his friends felt that he was now regarded as a menace and that means would be taken to get rid of him. A remark made by him on June 27, 1859, concerning Chief Justice David S. Terry, one of the leaders of the proslavery element, brought a challenge from Terry, who resigned his judgeship, and Broderick accepted. They met on the early morning of September 13. The pistol furnished Broderick was so "light on the trigger" that it was prematurely discharged by the act of raising his arm. Terry's bullet struck Broderick in the breast, and he fell mortally wounded. Conveyed to a near-by farmhouse, he lingered for three days. On his deathbed he said: "They have killed me because I was opposed to the extension of slavery and a corrupt administration." The dead body was conveyed to the city, where on September 18 funeral services were held at which Col. Edward D. Baker [q.v.] delivered an eloquent and impressive eulogy. On February 13, 1860, memorial services were held by both houses of Congress. Broderick was buried at the foot of Lone Mountain.

He is pictured by Lynch as a large man, robust, and of great strength, with steel-blue eyes, a large mouth filled with strong white teeth, a ruddy brown beard, and a plentiful shock of "slightly dark" hair. His face, says Lynch, was not attractive. His character has been variously portrayed; Bancroft says that it has been "distorted into something abnormal by both his enemies and his friends." The identification of the man shot down by Terry with the ward-heeler of 1850 is no easy task. He had become a student and a man of thought, an advocate of many measures of broad social significance. He read not only the historians and the statesmen, but the poets, and his favorite bard was Shelley. By whatever circumstances he had been led to a hatred of the slave power and a heightened devotion to the Union, the change was one which in a measure transformed him. Though martyrdom invested him with a glamour beyond his meed, he had given substantial promise of a great and useful career.

[Jeremiah Lynch, A Senator of the Fifties (1911); John W. Dwinelle, A Funeral Oration upon David C. Broderick, including memorial addresses delivered in Congress, February 13, 1860 (pamphlet, 1860); Jas. O'Meara, Broderick and Gwin (1881); H. H. Bancroft, History of Cal. (1888); Theodore H. Hittell, History of Cal. (1897); Hermann Schussler, The Locality of the Broderick-Terry Duel (pamphlet, 1916).]

W.J.G.


BROOKE, Abraham, 1806(8?)-1867, physician, radical reformer, abolitionist, Quaker, from Maryland, later moved to Ohio.  Strong supporter of William Lloyd Garrison and immediate abolition of slavery in the U.S.  Leader in Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  Organized the Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform in October 1842.  Active supporter of women’s rights.  Leader in Western Anti-Slavery Society.  (American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 3, p. 602)


BROWN, Benjamin Gratz, 1826-1885, lawyer, soldier.  Anti-slavery activist in Missouri legislature from 1852-1859.  Opposed pro-slavery party.  Commanded a regiment and later a brigade of Missouri State Militia.  U.S. Senator 1863-1867, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 105; Congressional Globe)

BROWN, BENJAMIN GRATZ (May 28, 1826-December 13, 1885), senator, governor of Missouri, was born at Lexington, Kentucky, the son of Mason and Judith (Bledsoe) Brown. His father, Mason Brown, was a jurist of some note who served as judge of a Kentucky circuit court and, from 1856 to 1859, as secretary of state. His grandfather, John Brown, was the first United States senator from Kentucky. The Browns were related to the Prestons, Breckenridges, Blairs, Bentons, and other well-known Kentucky families.

Brown entered Transylvania University but withdrew in 1845 and entered Yale University, where he was graduated in 1847. He then studied law in Louisville, was admitted to the Kentucky bar, and, in 1849, moved to St. Louis. The same year he took the stump in support of Thomas H. Benton's attack upon the "Jackson Resolutions" adopted by the Missouri legislature that year. He again came actively to the support of Benton in the Atchison-Benton senatorial contest of 1852-53. Appreciating the importance of the large German vote in St. Louis, he early cultivated its support; and, largely as a result, he was elected, and reelected, to the lower branch of the state legislature between 1852 and 1859. For upward of two decades the St. Louis Germans constituted the principal element in his political following. In the Missouri legislature of 1857, Brown took an especially prominent part. A joint resolution was introduced declaring emancipation of the slaves to be impracticable, and that any movement in that direction was "inexpedient, impolitic, unwise, and unjust." In reply to this, Brown, at some personal risk, it is said, made an able and forceful anti-slavery speech in which he advocated and prophesied the abolition of slavery in Missouri on economic grounds-more out of regard to the interest of poor white laborers than as an act of humanity to the slaves. This incident has been regarded by some as the beginning of the Free-Soil movement in Missouri (Speech of Hon. B. Gratz Brown of St. Louis on the Subject of Gradual Emancipation in Missouri, February 12, 1857, Pamphlet, 1857). Brown's speech apparently made him the Free-Soil Democratic candidate for governor the same year. He failed of election by the narrow margin of about 500 votes.

Between 1854 and 1859, most of Brown's energies were absorbed in newspaper editorial work for the Missouri Democrat-a paper of strong Free-Soil, and, later, Republican, principles. In its columns, Brown persistently assailed the institution of slavery in Missouri and advocated emancipation. In 1856 he fought a duel with Thomas C. Reynolds over differences growing out of editorials relating to the Know Nothing movement in St. Louis. Brown was shot near the knee, and limped during the rest of his life.

In the formation of the Republican party in Missouri in 1860 Brown took an active part and was a delegate-at-large to the Chicago convention which nominated Lincoln. At the opening of the Civil War, he became colonel of the 4th Regiment of Missouri (three months) Volunteers, and energetically cooperated with General Lyon and Frank P. Blair, Jr.. in circumventing the Missouri secessionists.

In the state election of 1862 the abolition of slavery was the outstanding issue, especially in the eastern part of the state. Brown led the radicals, who insisted upon immediate emancipation, in opposition to the gradual emancipationists led by his cousin, Frank P. Blair, Jr. Although the policy of the latter was indorsed two years later by the state convention which adopted an ordinance for the gradual extinction of slavery, Brown's faction won a majority of the seats in both branches of the next legislature, and nominated him for the United States Senate. After a prolonged contest, Brown was elected on the thirty-second ballot (1863) for the unexpired term of W. P. Johnson, who had been expelled as a secessionist. He took the oath of office December 14, 1863, and served until March 4, 1867. In 1864, he was one of the signers of the call for the Cleveland convention of radicals who opposed the renomination of Lincoln and nominated Fremont and Cochrane.

While in the Senate, Brown served upon the committees on military affairs, Indian affairs, Pacific railroad, printing, public buildings and grounds, and also as chairman of the committee on contingent expenses. Although frequently taking part in Senate debates, he made only one extended speech. This was in support of an amendment to a bill to promote enlistments in the army, confirming and making of full effect as law the President's emancipation proclamation, and adding a section declaring the immediate abolition of slavery in all states and territories of the United States, as a war measure (March 8, 1864. Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, I Sess. pt. II, pp. 984-90). His next longest speech was in opposition to the proposed reading and writing tests for voting in the District of Columbia and in advocacy of woman suffrage for the District. "I stand," he declared, "for universal suffrage, and as a matter of fundamental principle do not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of race, color, or sex ... I recognize the right of franchise as being intrinsically a natural right . . . " (December 12, 1866. Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, 2 Sess., pt. I, p. 76). He also spoke, or introduced resolutions, in favor of the eight-hour d ay for government employees, approving retaliation for rebel mistreatment of Northern prisoners of war, advocating government construction, ownership, and operation of telegraph lines, and urging the establishment of the merit system in the civil service. His speeches are noteworthy for their obvious sincerity and absence of buncombe, their dignified simplicity of diction, and unusual directness and incisiveness.

Before the end of his senatorial career, Brown became prominently identified with the so-called Liberal movement in Missouri for the repeal of the drastic test-oaths prescribed in the Missouri constitution of 1865 and aimed at sympathizers with the Confederate cause. Later, this Liberal movement, which came to embody a reaction against the radical Republican reconstruction policy and in favor of amnesty for former rebels and reconciliation between the sections, culminated in the nomination of Brown for governor, in 1870, and his triumphant election by a majority of more than 40,000. At the same election, constitutional amendments were approved repealing the obnoxious test-oaths.

In his messages as governor (1871-73), Brown recommended constitutional amendments reorganizing the courts, including the grand jury system, and the better regulation of railroads through the creation of a board of railroad commissioners. The bankruptcy of a number of railroads whose bonds had been guaranteed by the state embarrassed his administration, and resulted in a loss to the state of approximately $25,000,000.

The success of the Liberal movement in Missouri encouraged liberals and reformers in other states and led directly to the launching of the Liberal Republican party in 1872 in opposition to the renomination of President Grant and in favor of tariff and civil service reform and abandonment of radical Republican reconstruction policies. Brown's prominence naturally led to serious consideration of his availability as the presidential candidate of this independent movement; and at the Cincinnati convention of the Liberal Republicans, in May 1872, he stood fourth on the first ballot for the presidential nomination, receiving ninety-five votes. Suspecting that his delegates were being enticed away by the friends of Charles Francis Adams, Brown unexpectedly appeared in Cincinnati, obtained permission to address the convention, and in his speech astonished the delegates by warmly urging the nomination of Horace Greeley. On the sixth ballot Greeley was nominated, and, later, Brown himself received the vice-presidential nomination. Afterward, Carl Schurz and others charged that the ticket was the result of a deliberate bargain between the friends of Greeley and Brown (F. Bancroft, Speeches, Correspondence, and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, 1907-08, II, 362-63). Brown's nomination, however, seems to have been of little or no help to the Liberal Republican campaign, although he participated actively in the canvass. In August he attended a class banquet at Yale, became intoxicated, and made a speech in bad taste, criticizing things eastern (E. D. Ross, The Liberal Republican Movement, 1919, p. 156). Following this campaign, Brown gave up active participation in politics and devoted himself to the practise of law, making a specialty of railway cases. By 1876 he had virtually gone over to the Democratic party. He attended that party's national convention, where "loud calls for Gratz Brown brought that gentleman to the rostrum, accompanied by a round of applause" (Official Report of the Proceedings, p. 91). In his brief response, he expressed sympathy with Democratic demands for reform and the belief that former Liberals would warmly support those demands. Brown's death in 1885 was the direct result of overwork, following close upon a serious illness, in completing a report as referee in an important railroad case pending in the federal court at St. Louis. In person, Brown is described as of medium height, of very slender figure, and "immediately noticeable for his wealth of red hair and beard."

[A disparaging sketch by a political opponent in 1872, pointing out Brown's weaknesses, appears in E. Chamberlin, The Struggle of '72 (1872), pp. 540-47. A more favorable, and generally more satisfactory sketch is printed in W. B. Davis and D. S. Durrie, An Illus. History of Missouri (1876), pp. 482-83. Other Missouri histories contain scattered reference to Brown's opposition to secession, advocacy of emancipation in Missouri, and administration as governor, especially, W. F. Switzler, Illus. History of Missouri (1879); and The Province and States (1904), ed. by W. A. Goodspeed, vol. IV. The Brown-Reynolds duel is described in some detail in W. B. Stevens, St. Louis-the Fourth City, 1764- 1911 (1911), I, 377-85; Missouri Historical Review, XIX, 423- 26. Brown's senatorial speeches appear in the Congressional Globe for the 38th and 39th Congresses. For his political campaign speeches one must consult contemporary newspaper files. Interesting light on Brown's appearance at the Cincinnati convention is shed by H. Watterson, "The Humor and Tragedy of the Greeley Brown Campaign," Century, LXXXV, 27-45. His connection with the earlier stages of the Liberal Movement may best be traced in T. S. Barclay, "The Liberal Republican Movement in Missouri," Missouri Historical Review, vol. XX .]

P.O.R.


BROWN, Reverend Abel, 1810-1844 *


BROWN, David Paul, 1795-1872 Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p.

BROWN, DAVID PAUL (September 28, 1795- July II, 1872), lawyer, orator, and dramatist, was the only child of well-born, well-educated, and wealthy parents. His father, Paul Brown, was descended from Quaker ancestors who came from England with Lord Berkeley and settled in New Jersey. In 1790 Paul Brown removed from Berkeley, New Jersey, to Philadelphia, where he married Rhoda Thackara of Salem, New Jersey, and where in 1795 their son David Paul was born. David was taught by his mother till he was eight and he owed to her his unusual discrimination in speech. Later he was trained by tutors and attended the best local schools. His parents brought him up in an atmosphere of wealth, and encouraged him to spend money freely and intelligently. After the death of his mother in 1810 he was sent to the home of the Reverend Dr. Daggett, a Massachusetts clergyman, who directed the youth's education until 1812. Although David favored the profession of law, he then took up medicine to please his father and became a pupil of the famous Philadelphian, Dr. Benjamin Rush. Six months later (1813) Dr. Rush died; David was then permitted to transfer his studies to law, with an equally famous lawyer, William Rawle, as his preceptor. He read zealously, attended the courts, and enjoyed the society of such leaders at the bar as Lewis, Tilghman, Ingersoll, Dallas, and Binney. His father died in 1815, leaving him a comfortable fortune. In September 1816, just as he attained his majority, Brown was admitted to the Philadelphia bar and soon afterward to the bar of the supreme court of Pennsylvania, the district and circuit courts, and the Supreme Court of the United States.

His reputation as a public speaker quickly vied with his professional fame. At twenty-four he addressed a notable audience at the celebration of Washington's birthday. Five years later (1824) he delivered the address of welcome to Lafayette. During the same year he won distinction for his brilliant and successful defense of Judge Robert Porter, who had been impeached before the Senate of Pennsylvania. On December 24, 1826, he married Emmeline Catharine Handy. Meanwhile he continued to be honored with invitations to deliver his florid eulogiums whenever a notable occasion suggested a speaker of unusual oratorical repute.

In spite of his growing practise and the numerous demands on his time, he found opportunity to write reviews of current books and likewise to try his hand at poems and plays. His casual poetry, which appeared in the Philadelphia Sunday Despatch and elsewhere, is largely negligible. His efforts as a dramatist, however, are more significant. Within two weeks, and principally while riding on horseback to a fashionable suburban spa, he composed a tragedy in verse entitled Sertorius; or, The Roman Patriot, which was produced December 14, 1830, at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, with Junius Brutus Booth in the title role. Sertorius is a somewhat vapid imitation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Addison's Cato, but its sonorous lines were so well delivered by the famous actor that it was presented nine times. It was revived at the Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia, on February 6, 1832, and figured thereafter in the repertoire of the elder Booth. A romantic comedy, The Prophet of St. Paul's, also written in 1830, received a wretched belated performance at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, on March 20, 1837, and succumbed after the third performance. It dealt with the popular love story of Princess Mary and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Less significant plays were The Trial, a tragedy, and a farce called Love and Honor, or, The Generous Soldier.

 Brown was not concerned over the failure of his dramatic efforts, as they represented mere diversions in the life of a busy lawyer. His skill in cross-examination resulted in his being retained in almost every important criminal case in the Philadelphia courts. Though his practise was lucrative, it did not result in the accumulation of a fortune. He lived on a most lavish scale in accord with his father's theory that a prosperous man should spend his income freely to avoid the evils of indolence. He thought sufficiently well of himself to publish his reminiscences in two large volumes (1856) under the title The Forum; or, Forty Years Full Practice at the Philadelphia Bar.

Brown was a man of medium height, compactly built, with a high broad forehead, flashing dark eyes, a large mouth, and a voice of great compass. Friends testified to his amiable disposition, his urbanity of manner, and his other social graces. In court he was preeminently histrionic and perhaps too fond of the orotund phraseology that characterized the old-school lawyer. In 1873 his son, Robert Eden Brown, edited The Forensic Speeches of David Paul Brown, Selected from Important Trials and Embracing a Period of Forty Years. Brown regularly declined to consider public office and rarely practised in any courts outside of Pennsylvania.

[In addition to The Forum and The Forensic Speeches above mentioned, see Philadelphia North American and U. S. Gazette, July 12, 1872, and Philadelphia Public Ledger, July 15, 1872. For an account of the performances of Sertorius and The Prophet of St. Pauls, see Charles Durang, "The Philadelphia Stage" (in Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch), series III (beginning July 8, 1860), chapters IV, XLVIII, respectively. These plays were printed in Philadelphia, the first in 18 30, the second in 1836. See also the reprint of Sertorius in M. J. Moses, Representative Plays by American Dramatists, II (1925), 185-252, which is preceded by a critical note on Brown. A. H. Quinn, A History of the American Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War (1923), 249-50, cites passing references to Brown in Rees, Wemyss, Wood, and other commentators. For portraits of Brown, see J. T. Scharf and T. Westcott, History of Phila. (1884), II, 1549, and American History Reg. (1896),III, 622]

J. L.H.


BROWN, Frederick, radical abolitionist, son of abolitionist John Brown, accompanied his father on the raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859, was killed during the raid.  (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 206; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)


BROWN, Henry "Box," c. 1815-1878, former slave, author, orator, abolitionist, wrote Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written from a Statement of Fact by Himself (1849), published by abolitionist Charles Stearns. (Brown, 2002; Mabee, 1970, pp. 388-389; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 52, 184, 204-205, 464, 489; Ruggles, 2003; Stearns, 1848)


BROWN, John Mifflin, 1817-1893, educator, clergyman, African American, eleventh Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, abolitionist. (Angell, 1992; Murphy, 1993; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 207-208; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 138)

BROWN, JOHN MIFFLIN (September 8, 1817- March16, 1893), bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was a mulatto born at what is now called Odessa, Delaware. There he spent the first ten years of his life. He then moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where he lived with a Quaker family. These Friends gave him religious instruction at home and sent him to a private school. He had the opportunity for further instruction under a Catholic priest, but declined it for the reason that he desired to adhere to the principles of the Methodist Church. He next found friends in Philadelphia, where he lived in the home of Dr. Emerson and Henry Chester, who continued his education. For a number of years he attended the St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church, but in 1836 united with the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. There he attended an evening school and began his preparation for the ministry. He made several efforts to obtain advanced training, but had his first such opportunity when he entered the Wesleyan Academy at Wilbraham, Massachusetts. He studied there from 1838 to 1840, when he had to leave on account of poor health. After recovery, he studied further at Oberlin, but did not complete a course. Much better educated than most of his fellows, however, he began a private school in Detroit in 1844. At the same time he was engaged in religious work, for he had charge of a church in that city the following three years. He next served as a pastor in Columbus from 1844 to 1847. From this position he was called to the most significant work with which he had ever been connected. He was chosen the principal of Union Seminary, organized as a result of a vote of the African Methodist Episcopal Conference in 1844. This is often referred to as the original Wilberforce University. It was started in the African Methodist Episcopal Chapel in Columbus; but, being unsuccessful, it was soon moved twelve miles from the city and established on a farm of 120 acres. This was the first national educational effort of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Being in need of educated ministers, the conference established this institution on the manual labor plan by which poor students could work at some useful occupation to earn what they learned. Brown started the school with three students and left it with mo. Eventually Union Seminary was merged with the actual Wilberforce University founded by the Methodists in 1856 at Tawawa Springs, near Xenia.

Prior to this time, however, Brown had resumed his work in the church. In 1853 he had married Mary Louise Lewis of Louisville, who bore him eleven children. He became a pastor in New Orleans and served at various other places in the South. In 1864 he was chosen editor of the Christian Recorder, the organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which still exists as the oldest negro newspaper in the United States. Brown did not remain in this position long. During the same year he was made director of the rapidly expanding missionary work of the church, which required systematization and stimulus. He continued in this capacity for four years. In 1868, the unusual growth of the church after the emancipation of the freedmen necessitated his advancement to the highest post in the denomination, and he was ordained bishop. In this position he toiled successfully for twenty-five years, contributing to the urgent needs of belated people who now had their first opportunity for intellectual and spiritual uplift. To him belongs the credit for establishing Payne Institute, now Allen University, at Columbia, South Carolina; and for founding Paul Quinn College at Waco, Tex. He died at his home in Washington, D. C.

[Sketches of Brown appear in Wm. J. Simmons, Men of Mark (1887) and in the A. M. E. Church Review, July 1893; for additional facts see Daniel A. Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years (1888); and B. T. Tanner, Outline of Our History and Govt. for African Meth. Churches.]

C.G.W.


BROWN, John, 1800-1859, (known as “Old Brown of Osawatomie”), radical abolitionist leader, wrote Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States (1858); condemned slavery; led raid against the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859.  He was captured, tried and convicted and was executed on December 2, 1859 along with four of his co-defendants.  (De Caro, 2002; Drake, 1950, pp. 189, 192, 200; Du Bois, 1909; Oates, 1970; Quarles, 1974; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 58, 59, 61, 62, 138, 153, 198, 205-207, 226, 264, 327-329, 338, 422, 427, 478, 675-676; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, pp. 131-134; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 3, p. 690; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 307-308)

BROWN, JOHN (May 9, 1800-December 2, 1859), "Old Brown of Osawatomie," is now chiefly remembered for his raid on Harper's Ferry. He was born at Torrington, Connecticut, the son of Owen and Ruth (Mills) Brown. His biographers have pointed out with much satisfaction that he came of the best New England stock, with only slight dilution of the strain from a Dutch ancestor on the maternal side. They have passed over lightly much more significant facts of inheritance. John Brown's mother, who died when he was only eight years old, was insane for a number of years before her death and died insane, as had her mother before her. A sister of Ruth Mills had also died insane, while three sons of her brother Gideon Mills became insane and were confined in asylums (affidavit of Gideon Mills). Two sons of another brother were also adjudged insane. Owen Brown plied various trades in the Connecticut villages in which he sojourned. By his own admission he was "very quick on the moove." One of these moves took him to Hudson, Ohio, where John passed his boyhood. Owen Brown was twice married and became the father of sixteen children. He was a man of much piety, an abolitionist, and an agent of the underground railroad.

John's schooling was scanty, and reading formed the principal part of his early education. As he himself said, school always meant to him, even in later life, confinement and restraint. More to his liking was the free life of the wilderness. He delighted in the long journeys with droves of beef cattle with which he was sent to supply troops in the War of 1812. Later he worked at the tanner's trade, acting as his father's foreman (letter to Henry L. Stearns, July 15, 1857, in F. B. Sanborn's Life and Letters of John Brown, ch. I). In 1820 he married Dianthe Lusk, who in the twelve years of her married life bore him seven children. She, like her husband's mother, suffered from mental aberration in her later years and died in 1831. Two of her sons were of unsound mind. Within a year John Brown married Mary Anne Day, a girl of sixteen, of robust physique, who in twenty-one years bore him thirteen more children.

In 1825 Brown moved to Richmond, Pennsylvania, where he cleared the land of timber and set up a tannery. This was the first of ten migrations before his adventures in Kansas, in the course of which he established and sold tanneries, dabbled unsuccessfully in land speculation, and incurred debts. Then he turned shepherd, buying Saxon sheep on credit. One sum advanced by the New England Woolen Company he seems-apparently without any dishonest intent-to have diverted to his own use, but he was treated with leniency by his creditors after he had declared himself a bankrupt. He earnestly hoped that "Devine Providence" would enable him to make full amends-but it never did. His family also changed its abode frequently as he changed his pursuits; but he was often absent for long stretches of time. The story of his business career is a tale of repeated failures, complicated by law-suits which aggrieved parties instituted to recover money loaned on notes or to secure damages for non-fulfilment of contracts. Many of these were decided against the defendant, proving clearly enough his utter incapacity for business. His last business venture was a partnership with one Simon Perkins to raise sheep and to establish a broke rage for wool-growers. Brown went to Springfield, Massachusetts, and opened an office, but failure soon overtook this enterprise. Prolonged litigation followed; and one suit involving $60,000 for breach of contract was settled out of court by Brown's counsel (O. G. Villard, John Brown, p. 66). As his various ventures came to naught and his inability to earn a livelihood for his numerous progeny became manifest, he began to take more thought about the affairs of others, particularly about those who were or who had been in bondage. He determined to settle with his family in a newly-founded community of negroes at North Elba, New York, on lands donated by Gerrit Smith. His purpose was "to aid them by precept and example," avers his latest biographer without any intentional humor. Within two years, however, he had again moved, to Akron, Ohio, followed by his family.

Brown was well over fifty years of age before the idea of freeing the slaves by force dominated his mind. He had always been an abolitionist; he had made his barn at Richmond a station on the underground railroad; he had formed a League of Gileadites among the negroes in Springfield, to help them protect themselves and fugitive slaves. Now he began to have visions of a servile insurrection-the establishment of a stronghold somewhere in the mountains whence fugitive slaves and their white friends could sally forth and terrorize slaveholders (Ibid., pp. 53-56). These visions were never very clear or very coherent, and they were overcast by events in Kansas where protagonists of slavery and free-soilers from the North were contending passionately for possession of the territorial government and where a condition bordering on civil war was soon to exist. In the spring of 1855, five of his sons went to Kansas to help win the territory for freedom and incidentally to take up lands for themselves. In May John Brown, Jr., sent a Macedonian cry to his father for arms to fight the battle for free soil (Ibid., pp. 83-84). Brown then transferred what was left of his family to North Elba again, and in August set out for Kansas in a one-horse wagon filled with guns and ammunition. Ostensibly he was to join the colony on the Osawatomie as surveyor. At once, however, he became their leader and captain of the local militia company. As such he commanded it in the bloodless Wakarusa War, whose indecisive outcome left him ill at ease. The ensuing disorders, particularly the sack of Lawrence in May 1856 by the pro-slavery forces, preyed upon his mind. The cause of free-soil took on the aspect of a crusade. Members of his company met and resolved that acts of retaliation were necessary "to cause a restraining fear" (Ibid., p. 152). A list of victims was made out and on May 23, Capt. John Brown with a party of six, four of whom were his sons, set out for the Potawatomi country to discharge their bloody mission. During the night of May 24 they fell upon their five hapless victims without warning and hacked them to pieces with their sabers. Probably Brown killed no one with his own hand. but he assumed full re sponsibility for the massacre, asserting as he was wont to do that he was but an instrument in the hands of God. From this time on the name of "Old Osawatomie Brown" became a terror to pro-slavery settlers. Eventually, however, he and his men were beaten and dispersed, while in revenge Osawatomie was sacked and burned. In this guerrilla warfare, Frederick, one of the sons whose mind had become unbalanced, was killed.

Old acquaintances who saw Brown after his return from Kansas, in the autumn of 1856, commented on the change in his appearance and manner. With his gray hair and bent figure he looked like an old man. His inability to talk about anything except slavery, and that always with abnormal intensity, left many with the impression that he had become a monomaniac (affidavits). One keen observer, who did not know Brown's family history, detected "a little touch of insanity about his glittering gray-blue eyes" (Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, 1899, I, 179). Upon less keen observers in Massachusetts-less keen perhaps, because more preoccupied with the struggle for Kansas he made a happier impression. Emerson spoke of him as "a pure idealist of artless goodness." It is charitable to suppose that the Concord philosopher was at this time ignorant of the murders on the Potawatomi; but another ardent resident of Concord, Frank B. Sanborn, could hardly have been so ignorant, nor his friends, G. L. Stearns, T. W. Higginson, Theodore Parker, and S. G. Howe, who were members of the Massachusetts Sta te Kansas Committee and who gave Brown some supplies and arms, a little money, and many assurances of moral support in the fight for freedom in Kansas. When Brown returned to Kansas in the late autumn of 1857, he found both parties disposed to have recourse to ballots instead of bullets, and therefore had no opportunity to employ his peculiar methods of persuasion. He now began to recruit a body of men for a new enterprise. He proposed to transfer his offensive against slavery to a new front. In the following spring, at an extraordinary convention of his followers and negroes at Chatham in Canada, he divulged his plans for the liberation of slaves in the Southern states. He and his band were to establish a base in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia, to which slaves and free negroes would resort, and there-beating off all attacking forces whether state or federal-were to form a free state under a constitution. A provisional constitution was then adopted by the convention and Brown elected commander-in-chief (Villard, pp. 331-36).

Brown's funds were now exhausted, and he turned again to Gerrit Smith and to his Massachusetts friends. That they were aware of the wide reach of his new plans cannot now be doubted; yet they encouraged him with promises of financial support in what was essentially a treasonable conspiracy. For the immediate present, however, they counseled delay; and in the early summer of 1858 Brown returned to Kansas to resume operations under the name of Shubel Morgan. His chief exploit was a descent upon some plantations across the border in Missouri, in the course of which one planter was killed while defending his property and some eleven slaves were liberated. In the eyes of the government he was now no better than a dangerous outlaw. The president of the United States and the governor of Missouri offered rewards for his arrest; but Brown and his men, appropriating horses, wagons, and whatever served their purpose, eluded pursuit and finally succeeded in reaching Canada with the liberated slaves. Even this exploit did not cost Brown the confidence of his supporters. He made public speeches at Cleveland and at Rochester, and no one attempted to arrest him. Gerrit Smith declared him "most truly a Christian" and headed a subscription list with a pledge of $400. From the Massachusetts group Brown received $3,800, "with a clear knowledge of the use to which it would be put" (Sanborn, p. 523).

In the early summer of 1859, Brown fixed upon Harper's Ferry as the base of his operations in Virginia and rented a farm about five miles distant where he could collect his arms and his band of followers. By midsummer his little army of twenty-one men had rendezvoused secretly at Kennedy Farm; but it was not until the night of October 16 that the commander-in-chief gave the order to proceed to the Ferry. Even after all these weeks of preparation he seems to have had no coherent plan of attack. That he should have fixed upon this quiet town of mechanics, many of whom came from the North, as the place for an assault upon slavery, is inexplicable on any rational grounds. Neither it nor its environs contained many slaves; and it is one of the tragic ironies of the affair that the first man killed should have been a respectable free negro what was discharging his duty as baggage-master at the railroad station. When morning dawned, Brown and his men were in possession of the United States armory and the bridges leading to the Ferry, had made many inhabitants prisoners, among them one slaveholder from a plantation five miles away, and had persuaded a few slaves to join them; but there Brown's initiative failed. For some unexplained reason he did not make off to the mountains as he might easily have done. Meantime the news of the raid spread through the country-side. By mid-day local militia companies from Charlestown had arrived on the scene and had closed Brown's only way of escape. Desultory firing followed, with some casualties on both sides, while Brown with the remnant of his forces, the slaves, and some of his prisoners were shut up in the engine-house of the armory. During the following night a company of United States marines arrived under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee; and at dawn, upon Brown's refusal to surrender, carried the building by assault. Brown fought with amazing coolness and courage over the body of his dying son but was finally overpowered with four of his men. Seven had already been taken prisoner and ten had either been killed or mortally wounded, including two of Brown's sons. Brown himself was wounded but not seriously. Next morning he was taken to Charlestown and lodged in the jail. One week later he was indicted for "treason to the Commonwealth, conspiring with slaves to commit treason and murder." His trial was conducted with expedition but with exemplary fairness and decorum. It ended inevitably in the sentence of death; and on December 2, John Brown was hanged.

From the moment of his capture to his execution Brown conducted himself with a fortitude and dignity that commanded the respect of his captors and judges. To all questions regarding his motives he had only one answer: he had desired to free the slaves-he believed himself an instrument in the hands of Providence to this end. When confronted with the bloody consequences of his acts and with the designs he had entertained to incite a slave insurrection, he would recognize no inconsistency. It was this obsession regarding his mission and his unaccountableness to anybody but his Maker that created doubts as to his sanity. Before his execution seventeen affidavits from neighbors and relatives who believed Brown to be insane were sent to Governor Wise, but he decided for some reason not to follow his first inclination and have an alienist examine Brown. These remarkable affidavits with their unimpeachable testimony as to Brown's family history and his own erratic behavior constitute prima facie evidence which no modern court of law could ignore.

It is significant of the passions aroused by the Harper's Ferry raid that Brown was hailed both as a noble martyr in a great cause and as a common assassin. Probably Abraham Lincoln anticipated the final verdict of history when he said in his Cooper Union speech (February 27, 1860): "That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were in their philosophy precisely the same."

[The first biography of John Brown was written by James Redpath: The Public Life of Capt. John Brown, published in 1860 with a preface dated December 25, 1859. It is valuable only as reflecting the contemporary opinion of Brown's partisans. Equally partisan but valuable for its letters, documents, and personal recollections is F. B. Sanborn's The Life and Letters of John Brown (1885). The references in the text are to the fourth edition (1910). Richard J. Hinton in his John Brown and His Men (1894) also holds a brief for his hero. Of the later biographies O. G. Villard's John Brown (1910) is by far the best and most extensive. It contains much new material on the earlier career of Brown, drawn from widely scattered sources. Considering the undisguised admiration of the author for Brown as "a great and lasting figure in American History," he has written with commendable fairness. The question of Brown's insanity, however, he dismisses too readily. A valuable bibliography of the literature concerning John Brown is appended to the book. The affidavits relating to Brown' s alleged insanity are in the possession of Mr. Edwin Tatham of New York, who has permitted the writer to examine them.]

A.J.


BROWN, John B., politician, born in Richfield, New York, 16 July, 1807; d. in Washington, D. C., 9 December, 1867. In 1849 he removed to Virginia, where he became prominent in politics in that state. In 1856 he was one of the electors for Frémont, and in 1860 a delegate to the Chicago convention, where Lincoln was nominated. On his return to Virginia he was thrown into prison on the charge of circulating incendiary documents. At the beginning of the civil war the confederate authorities offered $1,000 for his apprehension. He subsequently received an appointment in Washington. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 404-407.


BROWN, Moses, 1738-1836, Maine, Providence, Rhode Island, abolitionist, industrialist, educator, Quaker.  Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Co-founder of Brown University.  Co-founded Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade in 1789. (Appletons, 1888, Vol. 1, p. 396; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 146; Bruns, 1977, pp. 308-313, 492-493, 515; Drake, 1950, pp. 79-80, 89, 97, 102, 123; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 2, 7, 17, 60, 87, 111; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 107, 120-121, 156, 157; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833)

BROWN, MOSES (September 12/23, 1738-September 7, 1836), manufacturer and philanthropist, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the youngest of the four distinguished sons of James and Hope (Power) Brown, the others being Nichola s, John, and Joseph [qq.v.]. James Brown died in 1739, leaving his boys to be brought up by their mother, a woman " of rare force of mind and character." At thirteen, Moses left school and went to live with his uncle, Obadiah Brown, part of whose fortune he inherited. In 1763 he was admitted to the firm of Nicholas Brown & Company, established by his brothers, but retired in 1773. In 1764 he married his cousin, Anna Brown, by whom he had three children, Sarah, Obadiah [q.v.], and a daughter who did not survive infancy. Mrs. Brown's death in 1773 was a crushing blow to her husband, temporarily turning his mind away from worldly matters. A year later he became a Quaker, freed his slaves, and helped to start the Rhode Island Abolition Society. After the Revolutionary War, he was one of the first in this country to become interested in cotton manufacturing and in 1789 he purchased a carding machine, which he set up under the management of his son-in-law, William Almy, and a young relative, Smith Brown, the firm name being Brown & Almy. Having made some experiments with a jenney and spinning frame which operated by hand, in the manner of Arkwright's famous invention, Moses Brown induced Samuel Slater [q.v.], one of Arkwright's men, to come to America, writing him (December 12, 1789, "Come and work our machines, and have the credit as well as advantage of perfecting the first water mill in America." Slater evaded the stringent British laws and came to Rhode Island, where, under Brown's patronage, he built from memory, without plans or drawings, a frame of twenty-four spindles and put it into successful operation. The venture was prosperous from the beginning, and added to Brown's already large estate. Although he was troubled with attacks of vertigo, Brown was able, by living quietly, to keep his health, and all his senses were alert up to the time of his death near the close of his ninety-eighth year. In 1779 he married Mary Olney, who died in 1798, and a year later he took a third wife, Phoebe Lockwood, who died in 1808.

In 1770 Moses Brown took the leading step toward moving Rhode Island College (founded at Warren, Rhode Island, in 1764) to Providence, where it was later, because of the benefactions of his family, renamed Brown University; and in 1771 he gave $1,000 to its endowment. In 1780 when subscriptions were solicited for a Friends' School, he contributed £115 and, when it was opened at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in 1784 under Isaac Lawton as principal, he became its treasurer. Owing to lack of funds, the school was discontinued four years later, but it was reopened in 1819 in Providence, its property having accumulated in Brown's hands to $9,300. Brown provided regularly for the school from that time on, and gave it in his will the sum of $15,000, with some land and his library. It is to-day known as the Moses Brown School. Brown was a member of the Rhode Island General Assembly from 1764 to 1771, and was the founder of many societies, including the Providence Atheneum Library, the Rhode Island Bible Society, and the Rhode Island Peace Society. His punctuality in business became proverbial. Although he was retiring by nature, he had many interests and left behind him an enormous private correspondence. He was a man of sound judgment, unblemished integrity, and liberal spirit.

[The best and fullest account of Brown's career is a sketch read, October 18, 1892, before the Rhode Island History Society by Augustine Jones, principal of the Friends' School, and later printed under the title Moses Brown; His Life and Services. See also J. N. Arnold, Vital Records of Rhode Island, vol. II (1892), pt. I, p. 214, and obituary in Mfrs. and Farmers Journal (Providence), September 7, 1836.]

C.M.F.


BROWN, Oliver, radical abolitionist, son of abolitionist John Brown, accompanied his father on the raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859, was killed during the raid  (Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 206, 327, 328; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)


BROWN, Owen, 1824-1889, radical abolitionist, third son of abolitionist John Brown, accompanied his father on the raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859; he escaped capture by the U.S. Marines.  He later served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.  (Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 206, 327; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)


BROWN, Salmon, radical abolitionist, son of abolitionist John Brown, accompanied his father on the raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859, was killed during the raid  (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 206; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)


BROWN, William Wells, 1814-1884, African American, abolitionist leader, author, historian, former slave, anti-slave lecturer, temperance activist. Wrote Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, 1847, also The American Fugitive in Europe, 1855.  Lecturer for Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, Massachusetts and American Anti-Slavery Society.  Wrote anti-slavery plays, “Experience; or How to Give a Northern Man a Backbone,” “The Escape; or A Leap for Freedom,” 1856. (Brown, 1856; Brown, 1847; Farrison, 1969; Greenspan, 2008; Mabee, 1970, pp. 52, 61, 65, 96-98, 137, 140, 145, 159, 161, 203, 221, 252, 258, 265, 333, 371, 390; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 29, 50, 55, 57, 61, 72, 179, 208-209, 246; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 161; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 3, p. 751; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 2, p.  325)

BROWN, WILLIAM WELLS (c. 1816-November 6, 1884), negro reformer, historian, was born in Lexington, Kentucky. The year is variously given as 1814, 1815, and 1816. His mother was a slave, his father is said to have been one George Higgins, a white slaveholder. When a youth Brown was taken to St. Louis and was hired out on a steamboat. He was next employed in the printshop of Elijah P. Lovejoy, then editor of the St. Louis Times. Working in this capacity, Brown got his start in education; but he was hired out on a steamboat again at the close of the next year. In 1834 he escaped into Ohio, intending to cross Lake Erie into Canada. On the way he was sheltered by a Quaker, Wells Brown, whose name he as s um ed in addition to the name William which he had borne as a slave. He now took up steam-boating on Lake Erie and obtained the position of steward in which he was able to help many a fugitive to freedom. In the year of his escape he married a free colored woman by whom he had two daughters. Profiting by school instruction and some help from friends, he acquired considerable knowledge of the fundamentals. In the North he soon learned to speak the English language so fluently that he could easily present the claims of the negro for freedom. During 1843-49 he was variously employed as a lecturer of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He was also interested in temperance, woman's suffrage, and prison reform, and was associated with the most ardent abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. In 1849 he visited England and represented the American Peace Society at the Peace Congress in Paris. Highly recommended by the American Anti-Slavery Society as an apostle of freedom, he was welcomed by famous Europeans such as Victor Hugo, James Haughton, George Thompson, and Richard Cobden. He remained abroad until the autumn of 1854. During these years of his activity as a reformer Brown found time also to study medicine. Like many of the physicians of his time, he did not undergo formal training in this field. He attended lectures in medical science and obtained privately other knowledge requisite to service a s a practitioner. But although he knew sufficient medicine to be useful in the profession, the urgent need for fighting the battles of the negro kept him in the work of reform. Brown's reputation rests largely on his ability as an historian. His writings covered various fields. The first to appear was his Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave (1847). His next important book was Three Years in Europe (1852). In 1853 he published Clotel, or the President's Daughter, a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. He next wrote a drama entitled The Dough Face, which was well received and was followed by another play, The Escape or A Leap for Freedom. In 1863 he published his first history entitled, The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, including an autobiographical memoir, which ran through ten editions in three years. The Negro in the American Rebellion, His Heroism and His Fidelity (1867) also made a favorable impression and supplied the need for an account of the part played by the negroes in the Civil War. The last work of importance which he wrote was The Rising Son: or, the Antecedents and the Advancement of the Colored Race (1874). In this treatise he undertook to trace the history of the negro from Africa to America. The abolitionists gave the author unstinted praise and widely circulated his books in this country and Europe. Although, like most historians of his day, he did not approach his subject scientifically, he passed for many years as the outstanding authority on the negro. At the time of his death his home was in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

[In addition to Brown's autobiographical writings, see Josephine Brown, The Biography of an American Bondman, by His Daughter (1856); memoir by Wm. Farmer in Three Y ears in Europe (1852); memoir by Alonzo D. Moore in The Rising Son (1874); W.J. Simmons, Men of Mark (1887), pp. 447-50; C. G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (4th ed., 1927), pp. 266-69; obituary in the Boston Transcript, November 8, 1884.]

C.G.W.



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