Fla-Fow: Flagg through Fowler

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


FLAGG, AZARIAH CUTTING (November 28, 1790-November 24, 1873), editor, politician, traced his ancestry from Thomas Flegg, a member of an old Norfolk family, who, leaving Scratby, England, in 1637, settled at Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1641, and whose descendants apparently about 1700 changed their name to Flagg. His father, Ebenezer Flagg, married Elizabeth Cutting of Shoreham, Vermont, and resided at Orwell, Vermont, where he was born. When eleven years old he was apprenticed to a cousin of his father's, a printer in Burlington, Vermont, with whom he spent five years. In 1806 he entered the employ of a firm of publishers, where he found opportunities to remedy the deficiencies of his early education. In 1811 he moved to Plattsburg, New York, and on the outbreak of the War of 1812 was commissioned lieutenant and quartermaster in the 36th Regiment, New York militia. He was engaged in the defense of Plattsburg, being present at a number of engagements, and was rewarded by Congress for gallant service. In 1813 he joined the staff of the Plattsburg Republican, became its editor, and continued as such till 1825. Entering with ardor into the political field where DeWitt Clinton and Van Buren were the leading New York figures, he developed a capacity for vigorous writing and trenchant speaking which soon brought him to the front. In 1823 he was elected to represent Clinton County in the New York Assembly and subsequently was admitted to the inner circle of the "Albany regency." In 1826 Governor DeWitt Clinton appointed him secretary of state, an office which he held for seven years. He was elected by the legislature state comptroller under Governor Marcy in 1834, serving till 1839. In 1842 he was reelected and continued in the position until the state constitution of 1846 came into operation. During his nine years' tenure of this office he established himself as "an able, methodical, keen and sagacious financier" (Proctor, post), though his views regarding public improvements have been stigmatized as short-sighted. In 1842 the legislature adopted the "stop and tax policy" of suspending all public works and imposing a direct tax, pledging a portion of the Erie Canal revenues to provide a sinking fund for the extinguishment of the public debt. Flagg was not, as has been mistakenly asserted, the originator of the scheme, but he was active in its support. He was a strong opponent of the Bank of the United States.

In 1846 he removed to New York City where he took an active part in the organization of the "Barnburners' " faction of the Democratic party, becoming one of its most prominent leaders. In 1852, after the reunion of the Democratic party, he was elected comptroller of the city of New York, and, being reelected in 1855, held office till 1859, when he retired from public life. His political career was distinguished for his unassailable integrity, consistent adherence to principles, and an unwavering support of Van Buren throughout all the latter's vicissitudes. A believer in "Free speech, Free labor, and Free men," he vehemently combated the pro-slavery sentiment within his party. For fourteen years prior to his death he was totally blind, but this affliction did not affect his naturally high spirits and he continued to the end to take a keen interest in political events. He was a frequent contributor to newspapers on public questions of the day, and was also the author of "Internal Improvements in the State of New York," a series of articles which appeared in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine in 1851, and A Few Historical Facts Respecting the Establishment ... of Banks ... in the State of New York from 1777 to 1864 (1868). He was married to Phoebe Maria Coe on October 20, 1814.

[N. G. and L. C. S. Flagg, Family Records of the Descendants of Gershom Flagg (1907), p. 48; Ann. Reg., 1873, p. 291; L.B. Proctor, The Bench and Bar of New York (1870), p. 289; P. S. Palmer, History of Plattsburg, New York (1877); De A. S. Alexander, A Pol. History of the State of New York, vols. I and II (1906); H. D. A. Donovan, The Barnburners (1925); J. D. Hammond, Life and Times of Silas Wright (1848); New York Times, November 26, 1873; Flagg letters in the Tilden Library, New York Pub. Lib.]

H.W.H.K.


FLETCHER, THOMAS CLEMENT (January 22, 1827-March 25, 1899), lawyer, soldier, and governor of Missouri, was born at Herculaneum, Missouri, the son of Clement B. Fletcher and Margaret (Byrd) Fletcher, emigrants from Maryland to Missouri in 1818, and both descended from early colonial ancestors. He received his education in the subscription school at Herculaneum, where he had for a teacher Willard Frissell, an emigrant from Massachusetts. At the age of seven teen he was given work in the circuit clerk's office and in 1846 was appointed deputy circuit-clerk. Three years later, at the age of twenty-two, he was elected to that office. He was married to Mary Clara Honey in 1851, admitted to the bar in 1856, and appointed land agent for the Southwest Branch of the Pacific Railroad (now the St. Louis & San Francisco), whereupon he moved to St. Louis. Politically, he was a Benton Democrat, and a strong opponent of slavery, although he came of a slave-owning family. After 1856 he became a Republican and, as a delegate to the Chicago convention, was an ardent supporter of Abraham Lincoln for the nomination in 1860.

At the outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed by General Lyons as assistant provost-marshal-general with headquarters at St. Louis. He became colonel of the 31st Missouri in 1862, was wounded and captured at Chickasaw Bayou but exchanged in May 1863, was present at the fall of Vicksburg and the battle of Chattanooga, and commanded a brigade in the Atlanta campaign. Returning home on account of illness in the spring of 1864, he recovered in time to organize the 47th and 50th Missouri regiments and to command the Union army which, at the battle of Pilot Knob, Missouri, checked General Price's army and probably saved St. Louis from capture. For this achievement Fletcher was given a vote of thanks by the Missouri legislature and brevetted brigadier-general by President Lincoln. While with Sherman he was nominated by the Republicans for governor over Charles D. Drake. He was elected by a large majority and reelected in 1866. Thus he served as governor of Missouri from January 1865 to January 1869, during the most trying period of reconstruction.

His administration was confronted with many serious problems; notably: amnesty for those who had fought against the United States; the disposal of the railroads which the state had acquired through the failure of the railroad companies to pay interest on the bonds which the state had guaranteed; and the reorganization of public education. The roads were sold under a guarantee of early completion and the state debt materially reduced; the public-school system was thoroughly reorganized and great progress was made in free education for all children of the state. The governor was unsuccessful, however, in his repeated efforts to obtain a constitutional amendment abolishing the test oaths as a qualification for voting and for engaging in the professions. Subsequent events soon proved the wisdom of his recommendations. He strongly advocated normal schools for training teachers, greater support for the state university, and especial attention to agricultural education, Upon the conclusion of his term as governor, he returned to St. Louis and practised law for a time and then moved to Washington, D. C., where he engaged in the practise of this profession until his death.

[Biography by J. H. Reppy, in The Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of the State of Missouri, vol. IV (1924), ed. by G. G. Avery and F. C. Shoemaker; H. L. Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri, vol. II (1901); W. B. Stevens, Centennial History of Missouri (1921), I, 407; sketch in Boonville Weekly Advertiser, March 31, 1899; obituary in Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), March 27, 1899; articles in Jefferson City People's Tribune, March 27, April 3, June 26, 1867.]

C.H.M.


FLOY, JAMES (August 20, 1806-Oct. 14, 1863), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, noted in his church as an editor, writer, and hymnologist, was born in New York. His father, Michael, was an emigrant from Devonshire, England, by occupation a practical horticulturist, who in 1802 married in New York, Margaret Ferris, a native of that city. James received a good secondary school training and entered Columbia College, but his father, deeming a practical education of more value, withdrew him, and sent him to England to study and practise horticulture at the Royal Gardens, London. Upon his return he worked for a time with his father, and in 1829 was married to Jane Thacker. His parents were devoted Methodists, and in 1831 when he himself experienced conversion, he was in the employ of Waugh and Mason, the Book Agents of the denomination. He became teacher in an African Sunday-school, and through the gradations of class leader, exhorter, and local preacher, finally stepped into the ministry, being admitted to the New York Conference on trial in May 1835; ordained deacon in 1837; and elder in 1839.

His ecclesiastical career had an unfortunate opening. Having, presumably, pledged himself to refrain from agitating the church by discussing the slavery question, as required of those made deacons, he aided in the preparation of an anti-slavery tract and attended an anti-slavery convention. Accordingly, at the Conference of 1838, with two others, he was charged with contumacy and in subordination, tried, and suspended. Upon his written promise to conform to rule in the future, however, the suspension was lifted. (See J. M. Buckley, A History of Methodists in the United States, 1896, p. 390.) Notwithstanding this event he soon rose to prominence in the Conference, and later, when it was divided, in the New York East Conference. He was appointee to important churches, served as presiding elder of the New York district, and was a member of the General Conferences of 1848, 1856, and 1860, at the latter having the gratification of seeing the Discipline put on an anti-slavery basis. It was in the literary field, however, that he became most widely known. Upon his motion the General Conference of 1848 ap pointed a committee which recommended a revision of the church hymnal. The revised version which appeared in 1849 was largely the work of two laymen, R. A. West and David Creamer [q.v.], and Floy, and owed much to the latter's knowledge and taste. The General Conference of 1856 elected him corresponding secretary of the Tract Society and editor of the National Magazine, which he ably conducted until lack of financial support caused its discontinuance in 1858. Keenly interested in religious education, he prepared Graduated Sunday School Textbooks, three volumes (1861-62). For almost a quarter of a century he was one of the foremost contributors to the Methodist Quarterly Review. Some of his articles for this periodical may be found in a posthumous edition of his writings, Literary Remains of Reverend Dr. Floy: Occasional Sermons and Reviews and Essays (1866). A companion volume, Old Testament Characters Delineated and Illustrated, appeared the same year. Death came to him suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in New York. His first wife having died about 1859, he later married Emma Yates, whose death occurred a few weeks before his own.

[The edition of his writings mentioned above contains a memoir. See also Minutes of the New York East Annual Conference (1864); Daniel Curry, "James Floy, D.D.," Meth. Quart. Rev., January 1864; address es in In Memoriam: Memorial Services of the Reverend James Floy, D.D. (1864); and obituary in Christian Advocate (New York), October 22, 1863.]

H. E. S.


FOGG, GEORGE GILMAN (May 26, 1813- October 5, 1881), lawyer, editor, diplomat, the son of David and Hannah Gilman (Vickery) Fogg was born at Meredith Center, N. H. He attended New Hampton Academy, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1839, studied law at Harvard and in the office of Judge Warren Lovell in Meredith Village, and began practise at Gilmanton Iron Works in 1842. After four years he moved to Concord and maintained a residence there for the rest of his life. He never married. He was active in politics, being a pioneer in the Free-Soil movement, and in 1846 was chosen secretary of state for a term of one year. A few years later he took an active part in the organization of the Republican party. He was the founder of the Independent Democrat of Concord and from 1846 to 1861 devoted himself largely t-o journalism. Under his direction the paper became one of the most influential in the state, and his editorial utterances were widely quoted throughout New England. From 1855 to 1859 he was state law reporter and for some years state printer as well. As a delegate to the Republican Convention of 1860, he was a strong supporter of Lincoln and in 1861 was appointed minister to Switzerland, holding the post until Oct. 16, 1865. Switzerland offered few of the problems found at London or Paris where belligerent rights, neutral duties, and the ever present possibility of intervention required so much diplomatic activity. In July 1861, he reported that, "here . . . the rebels have no friends," and on the close of the war, that Lee's surrender caused almost as much rejoicing as though it had been a Swiss victory. The dispatches published in Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs show that his work was largely of routine character, but performed to the satisfaction of both countries. In 1864 he represented the United States at the Geneva conference on the amelioration of conditions for the sick and wounded in time of war.

In 1866-67 Fogg served out the unexpired term of Daniel Clark in the United States Senate. He resumed editorial work but was now on bad terms with several of his party leaders, due, in part at least, to his failure to secure another diplomatic post. Although he continued to be active in both journalism and party management for some years longer, his influence seems to have declined. He was interested in the New Hampshire Historical Society and many local organizations in Concord, and was a trustee of Bates College. For several years prior to his death he was broken in health and able to do little work. He was one of the ablest journalists in the history of the state, and it was as a newspaper editor that he made his chief contribution to political history.

[C. H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of N. H. (1894); J. O. Lyford, History of Concord, N. H. (1903); J. 0. Lyford, Life of Edward H. Rollins (1906); Concord Daily Monitor, Oct. 6, 1881; the People and N. H. Patriot (Concord), Oct. 13, 1881.]

W.A. R.


FOLGER, CHARLES JAMES (April 16, 1818- September 4, 1884), jurist, secretary of the treasury, son of Thomas Folger, was born on the island of Nantucket, from which, at the age of twelve, he removed with his parents to Geneva, New York. His ancestors for generations had been New England whalers, tracing their origin to John Folger who came over from Norfolk, England, in 1635. Folger attended Geneva (now Hobart) College, from which he was graduated with the highest honors of his class in 1836. He took up the study of law at Canandaigua, was admitted to the bar in Albany in 1839, and started practise in Lyons, Wayne County. After a year he returned to Geneva where he maintained his home throughout the remainder of his life. On June 17, 1844, he married Susan Rebecca Worth.

Folger assumed his first important public office at the age of twenty-six, when, in 1844, he was appointed judge of the court of common pleas of Ontario County, and soon after was made master and examiner in chancery. From 1851 to 1855 he served as county judge. While originally a Democrat, Folger passed into the Republican fold over the Free-Soil bridge in 1854. In 1861 he was elected to the state Senate and was reelected three times, serving until 1869, and acting for four years as president pro tempore, and, throughout the period, as chairman of the judiciary committee. In the latter capacity he was noted for his conservative course and his stanch resistance to any modification of the law of marriage and divorce (Geneva Courier, September 10, 1884), and to important reforms in criminal procedure (Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, I, 137). Throughout these years Folger was one of the keenest critics of unsound legislation. “Whenever a bill was read a third time he watched it as a cat watches a mouse," wrote a contemporary (Ibid., p. 101). He consistently opposed the "accursed mildew of town bonding" (Geneva Courier, September IO, 1884), and was an uncompromising foe to stockjobbers. He attracted special attention during these years by his hostility to Governor Reuben E. Fenton of his own party and by his prominence in the legislative contest of 1868 between Vanderbilt and the New York Central and Gould and the Erie.

His most valued service to his state was rendered in the field of constitutional reform and interpretation. In the state convention of 1867 he was chairman of the judiciary committee, and to his efforts are attributed material changes in the judicial system. He was the foremost public sponsor of the proposed constitution, which was rejected by the people in 1869. He was elected an associate judge of the state court of appeals in 1870. The fact that he had been the choice of both the Republican and Democratic tickets in that election led to charges of a corrupt Tammany alliance (New York Times, May 17, 18, 1870). On the death of Chief Justice Church in 1880, Folger was designated by Governor Cornell to fill the unexpired term of that office. In November of that year he was reelected to the bench of the court of appeals, which he left shortly to take up his duties in the cabinet of President Arthur. In his term on the bench Folger rendered frequent opinions which revealed a valuable grasp of questions of constitutional law (see, for example, People ex rel. Lee vs. Chautaitqua County, 43 New York, 10; People vs. Bull, 46 New York, 57).

During this later period of his life Folger assumed a more active role in national politics. He was a prominent candidate for the United States senatorial nomination in 1867, but finally withdrew in favor of Conkling. In the following year he was active at the Republican National Convention at Chicago in demonstrating to other state delegations that New York was not solid for Reuben E. Fenton for Vice-President (New York Times, May 20, 1868). In 1869 he resigned from the state Senate to accept an appointment from President Grant as United States assistant treasurer in New York City, in which capacity he served for one year. Although he first refused the office of attorney-general in Garfield's cabinet, he finally accepted the treasury portfolio under President Arthur in 1881. Under his administration the public debt was reduced over $300,000,000, the largest reduction; which had ever been effected up to his time. During his administration offices in the Treasury Department were put in the classified service under Civil Service rules. His correspondence with James B. Butler, chief of the appointment division of the Treasury Department, reveals that even before these reforms, Folger attempted to maintain a high standard of personnel.

In 1882, through the joint efforts of President Arthur and Conkling, Folger was given the Republican nomination for governor, despite the stiff fight which Governor Cornell made for renomination in an administration-packed convention (New York Times, September 22, 23, 1882; Harper's Weekly, September 30, Oct. 21, 1882). His Democratic opponent was Grover Cleveland, who polled almost 200,000 votes more than Folger, the largest majority which had ever been scored in a contested election. Folger was a man of distinguished personal appearance, gentle in bearing, modest and even diffident, but withal an impressive speaker and conscientious in the execution of his public duties. His correspondence discloses the saving grace of a rich sense of humor.

[Outlines of Folger's career m ay be found in S. R. Harlow and S. C. Hutchins, Life Sketches of the State Officers, Senators. and Members of the Assembly of the State of New York in 1868, pp. 81-84; and in Chas. Andrews, An Address Commemorative of the Life of the Late Hon. Chas. J. Folger (1885). See also Homer A. Stebbins, A Pol. History of the State of New York, 1865-69 (1913); Chas. Z. Lincoln, The Constitutional History of New York, 5 vols. (1906); and De A. S. Alexander, A Pol. History of the State of New York, vol. III (1909). The New York Pub. Library has a collection of the unofficial correspondence of Secretary Folger with James B. Butler, 1881-84. Obituaries in New York Tribune, New York Times, and New York Evening Post, September 5, 1884; and Geneva Courier, September 10, 1884.]

R.B.M.


FOLLEN, Charles Theodore, 1796-1840, Massachusetts, educator, professor, writer, clergyman, Unitarian minister, abolitionist.  Fired from Harvard University for his anti-slavery oratory.  Wrote Lectures on Moral Philosophy, which strongly opposed slavery.  Influenced by abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier and abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, he became active in the New England Anti-Slavery Society.  American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice President, 1834-1835, 1836-1837, Member Executive Committee, 1837-1838, 1860-1863.  Counsellor of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1859-1960.  Wrote anti-slavery Address to the People of the United States, which he delivered to the Society’s first convention in Boston.  Supported political and legal equality for women.  (Goodell, 1852, pp. 418, 469; Pease, 1965, pp. lxi, 224-233; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 288; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 491-492; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 492; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 301-302)

FOLLEN, CHARLES (September 4, 1796-January13, 1840), German liberal refugee, first professor of German literature at Harvard, Abolitionist, Unitarian preacher, was the son of Christoph Follenius, a prominent judge at Giessen, Hesse-Darmstadt. He entered the university of his native town in the spring of 1813, not yet seventeen years old, devoting himself. to the study of law and ethics, but soon, at the rising of the German people against Napoleon, joined a company of volunteers. He as well as two of his brothers served throughout the campaign on French soil. After the conclusion of peace in 1814, resuming his studies at Giessen, he eagerly plunged into the progressive student movement-the so-called Burschenschaftsbewegung. A commanding personality, a fiery orator, an inspiring writer of verse, he easily rose to leadership among the radical youths of the Giessen Burschenschaft, pledged to republican ideals and the overthrow of the old feudal order. Although he was himself absent in 1817 from the great liberal demonstration on the Wartburg, he was one of its chief promoters and organizers. Even after his appointment, in 1818, to a lectureship at the University of Jena, undismayed by official warnings and censures, he carried on what was in effect revolutionary propaganda, and it is not surprising that, when on March 23, 1819, the reactionary writer Kotzebue was assassinated by Karl Sand, a close student friend of Follen's, the latter should have been arrested and tried as an accomplice. No evidence could be found against him, however, and he was acquitted, but since he was dismissed from the university and placed under strict police surveillance, so that all avenues for a useful public career in Germany seemed closed to him, he decided to leave the country and serve the cause of freedom elsewhere. After a brief stay in Paris early in 1820, where he made the acquaintance of Lafayette, he went to Switzerland, and taught Latin and history for a year in the cantonal school of Chur, until in the autumn of 1821 he was called as lecturer on jurisprudence and metaphysics to the newly reorganized University of Basel. Here he spent three active and highly successful years. In 1824, however, the Prussian government, fearful lest his democratic and cosmopolitan teachings should spread in Germany, not only forbade its subjects to attend the University of Basel, but, supported by the other members of the Holy Alliance, demanded Follen's extradition, on the charge of his subverting the foundation of society. Now America seemed the only asylum left. On November 1, 1824, Fallen and his friend Karl Beck sailed from Havre for New York.

Follen's American career also was a tragic mixture of high aspirations and deep disappointments. At first his ideals appeared to be realized in the new country. Through George Ticknor, to whom he was introduced by Lafayette, he received an offer from Harvard College of an instructorship in German, which he accepted with the understanding that he should also have an opportunity to give lectures on law. He entered upon this position in December 1825, and in the next few years displayed a most remarkable versatility. In addition to teaching the German language to college classes and lecturing on jurisprudence before select audiences of Boston lawyers, he gave practical lessons in the new art of gymnastics made popular by "Father" Jahn, wrote linguistic text-books, literary readers, theological and philosophical essays, preached occasionally in Unitarian churches and around Boston, and in 1829 even accepted an additional regular instructorship in ethics and history at the Harvard Divinity School. It is no wonder that a man of such parts should have been gladly received by the intellectual and social elite of New England. In September 1828, he married a woman of aristocratic breeding, Eliza Lee Cabot. In March 1830, he acquired American citizenship; in April of the same year, a son was born to him; in August, he was appointed, for a term of five years, professor of German literature at Harvard College.

Even before the appearance, in January 1831, of Garrison's Liberator, Follen had boldly spoken out against slavery in his Boston "Lectures on Moral Philosophy" of 1830, but it was Garrison's and Whittier's example which urged him into action against slavery. In 1834, he joined the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and at its first convention held in Boston, well knowing that he thereby risked his own future, he drafted the "Address to the People of the United States." There seems no doubt that this address was the immediate cause of the severance of Follen's connection with Harvard College. When the tenure of his professorship expired in August 1835, it was not renewed, although his striking success as a teacher had widely and emphatically been recognized. From now on all the more eagerly he devoted himself to upholding his ideals of reform and progress in every sphere of life. At a hearing before a committee of the Massachusetts legislature in January 1836, he protested with vigor and dignity against a proposed attempt to inhibit the publication of Abolitionist writings. In an article in the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine, October 1836, he laid bare all the various forms of oppression which seemed to him to endanger true democracy in this country, among them the political and legal inferiority of women, the general subserviency to wealth, the sectarianism of the churches, the formalism and conventionality of academic instruction. In the various positions which he filled during the following three years, as private teacher, lecturer, and Unitarian minister, he never ceased to make the training of original and independent individuals his primary object. His last ministry was at East Lexington, Massachusetts. On the return trip from a course of lectures on German literature before the Merchants' Library Association in New York, he perished with nearly all the passengers and crew of the steamer Lexington, which caught fire in Long Island Sound, during the night of January 13-14, 1840.

[The Works of Chas. Follen, with a Memoir of his Life (5 vols.), the first volume (1842) of which contains the admirable Life by Mrs. Eliza Lee Cabot Follen, herself a gifted writer of stories, essays, and verse; Kuno Francke, "Karl Follen and the German Liberal Movement," in Papers of the American Historical Assn., vol. V (1891), pp. 65-81; Geo. W. Spindler, Karl Follen; a Biographical Study (1917), a critical monograph, containing an excellent bibliography.]

K.F.


FOLLEN, Eliza Lee Cabot, 1787-1860, co-founder, leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) in 1833, writer, church organizer. American Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee member, 1846-1860.  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1846-1860.  Wrote “Anti-Slavery Hymns and Songs” and “A Letter to Mothers in the States.”  (Hansen, 1993; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 288; Sterling, 1991; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 491-492; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 492)

FOLLEN, ELIZA LEE CABOT (August 15, 1787-January 26, 1860), author, and prominent member of the Massachusetts anti-slavery group, was born in Boston, the fifth of the thirteen children of Samuel and Sarah (Barrett) Cabot. Her father, a descendant of John Cabot who, coming from the island of Jersey in 1700, settled in Salem, Massachusetts, was engaged in foreign commerce. For a number of years during Eliza's girlhood he was in Europe where he served as secretary of the commission to England under the Jay Treaty to settle the American spoliation claims. Her mother, a woman of strong character and notable mental attainments, was the daughter of Samuel and Mary (Clarke) Barrett, the latter a daughter of Richard Clarke [q.v.], and sister of Susannah Farnum Clarke who married John Singleton Copley [q.v.]. Eliza received an excellent education, and became a cultivated woman of marked intellectual ability, deeply interested in religious and social problems, and firm and outspoken in her convictions. After the death of her father in 1819, her mother having died ten years earlier, she and two of her sisters established a home of their own. Her family connections brought her into contact with many of the leading people of Boston; she was prominent in literary and religious circles, and numbered among her friends such personages as William Ellery Channing and Henry Ware [qq.v.].

She was one of a little group of men and women who established a Sunday-school in connection with the Federal Street Church, and with other members of the group was accustomed to meet once a week in Dr. Channing's study for the discussion of religious questions. When Charles Follen [q.v.] came to Boston and had been introduced to Miss Cabot by Catharine M. Sedgwick [q.v.], she took him to these gatherings and an intimate friendship between Follen and Channing ensued. Dr. Follen, in fact, nine years younger than Miss Cabot, became her protege; she suggested to him that he enter the ministry; and encouraged him to think that, though a foreigner, he would succeed. The woman in Germany to whom he was engaged re, fusing to leave home and friends for America, on September 15, 1828, he and Miss Cabot were married. Thereafter their fortunes were joined until his tragic death a little more than eleven years later. A son, Charles Christopher, was born to them on April 11, 1830. In 1841-42 she published in five volumes The Works of Charles Follen, with a Memoir of His Life.

Mrs. Follen's interest in the education of children and her connection with the Sunday-school movement gave direction to her literary activity. For two years beginning in April 1828, she edited the Christian Teacher's Manual; and from 1843 to 1850, the Child's Friend. Her books for the young were voluminous, some of them passing through numerous editions. The Well Spent Hour (1827) was especially popular. Writing from Liverpool, Mrs. John T. Kirkland remarked in a letter dated August 23, 1830: "Among the literary productions of America which have found their way across the Atlantic is our cousin Follen's Well-Spent Hour and Christian Teacher's Manual. ... She seems to be considered one of the lights of the New World, associated with Dr. Channing and Mr. Ware" (Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2 series, vol. XIX, 1906). Mrs. Follen also published Selections from the Writings of Fenelon, with a memoir of his life (1829); The Skeptic (1835); Sketches of Married Life (1838); and Poems (1839).

In addition to her writing she undertook the work of preparing her son and other boys for Harvard College; and was active in the support of the anti-slavery movement, furnishing numerous tracts and poems, and serving on the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society. She was also a counselor of the Massachusetts Society, and a member of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Altogether she was for years one of the notable personages of Boston. Every one respected her, but not every one loved her. J. Peter Lesley [q.v.] wrote to his stepmother, June 21, 1847, "We called together on Mrs. Fallen, relict of the lamented Dr. Fallen who perished in the Lex in g ton, last evening and found her one of those enthusiastic, partisan souls, who can see no faults in friends, nor virtues in enemies" (Mary Lesley Ames, Life and Letters of Peter and Susan Lesley, 1903). In general, however, she was spoken of with great reverence. James Russ ell Lowell, writing of the women who conducted anti-slavery bazaars in Faneuil Hall, characterized her thus:

"And there, too, was Eliza Follen,
Who scatters fruit-creating pollen
Where' er a blossom she can find
Hardy enough for Truth's north wind,
Each several point of all her face
Tremblingly bright with inward grace,
As if all motion gave it light
Like phosphorescent seas at night."

Her death, occasioned by typhoid fever, was coincident with her "annual festival," the meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

[See L. Vernon Briggs, History and Genealogy of the Cabot Family (2 vols., 1927); Ann. Report American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860 (1861); Mary E. Dewey, Life and Letters of Catharine M. Sedgwick (1871); Geo. W. Cooke, Unitarianism in America (1902); Liberator, January, February, 1860. Mrs. Follen's biography of her husband contains valuable but meager information about herself. Lowell's lines appeared in the Pennsylvania Freeman, December 27, 1846, and are reprinted in W. P. and F. J. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, III (1889), 179.]

H. E. S.


FOOT, SOLOMON (November 19, 1802-March 28, 1866), lawyer, politician, son of Solomon and Betsey (Crossett) Foot, was born at Cornwall, Vt. His father, a physician, died while he was still a child, but in spite of many difficulties and privations he secured an education, graduating at Middlebury College in 1826. For five years following graduation he engaged in teaching, most of the time as principal of Castleton Seminary, interrupted by one year (1827-28) as tutor at the University of Vermont. He studied law in the meantime, was admitted to the bar in 1831, and established himself in practise at Rutland. Though an able lawyer his early and long continued activity in public affairs prevented his attaining real prominence at the bar. In 1833 he was elected to the legislature as representative of Rutland. He was reelected in 1835, 1837, 1838, and 1847, and in each of the last three terms served as speaker. In the latter capacity, declared Senator Poland, "he first displayed that almost wonderful aptitude and capacity as the presiding officer of a deliberative assembly, which afterward made him so celebrated throughout the nation" (Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, 1 Session, p. 1908). He was a member of the constitutional convention of 1836 and prosecuting attorney of Rutland County from 1836 to 1842.

He was an active Whig and as such was elected to Congress in 1842, serving two terms until 1847 when he declined a renomination and returned to his legal practise. His service in the House was without special interest or distinction but he was strongly opposed to the Mexican policy of the administration and denounced the war which resulted. In 1850 he was elected to the United States Senate and served until his death sixteen years later, being at that time the senior member in point of continuous service. His opposition to the extension of slavery led him to join the new Republican organization when the Whig party finally disintegrated. During his first term in the Senate he also served for a year (1854-55) as president of the Brunswick & Florida Railroad Company, visiting England in connection with the sale of its securities and the purchase of material.

Foot was not distinguished as an orator and most of his remarks are brief and pointed interjections in the course of debate. His speech of March 20, 1858, on the proposed admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution (Congressional Globe, 35 Congress, 1 Session, App., pp. 153-58) shows, however, that he was capable of sustained argument and close reasoning, had he wished to devote himself to long set addresses. It was as a presiding officer that he appears to have made the deepest impression on his contemporaries. He was president pro tempore throughout most of the Thirty-sixth Congress and all of the Thirty-seventh, besides being often called on to preside when the regular incumbents were not available. "He was perhaps more frequently called to the ... chair than any other Senator," said J. B. Grinnell of Iowa, who also declares that his services had left a permanent impress on the parliamentary decorum and methods of the Senate (Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, 1 Session, p. 1924). In parliamentary law Charles Sumner testified, "he excelled and was master of us all." Fessenden, Reverdy Johnson, and others paid similar tribute to his fine presence, fairness, courage, and dignity in the chair as well as to the personal qualities which made him one of the most popular members of the upper chamber. When his death was announced, the splenetic Gideon Welles, never given to flattery of his associates, and usually suspicious of senators in particular, wrote in his diary (Diary of Gideon Welles, 19n, II, 466) that he had been a firm friend of the Navy Department, was "pater senatus and much loved and respected." His most notable committee service was rendered as chairman of the committee on public buildings and grounds, in which capacity he was able, in spite of the stringency of the Civil War, to push forward the completion of the Capitol. Judged by occasional remarks in the course of debate on appropriation bills, he appears to have had certain ideals as to the future development of the government property in Washington not altogether common at that time. He was twice married: July 9, 1839, to Emily Fay; and April 2, 1844, to Mary Ann (Hodges) Dana. He died in Washington, D. C.

[Geo. F. Edmunds, in Addresses Delivered before the Vt. Historical Society, October 16, 1866 (1866); N. Seaver, A Discourse delivered at the Funeral of Hon. Solomon Foot (1866); L. Matthews, History of the Town of Cornwall, Vt. (1862); N. Goodwin, The Foote Family (1849); G. W. Benedict, in Hours at Home (New York), July 1866; W. H. Crockett, Vermont, V (1923), 368-69; Proc. Vt. Historical Society for the Years 1919-1920 (1921); Daily Morning Chronicle (Washington, D. C.), March 29, 30, April 2, 1866; Rutland Daily Herald, March 29-April 2, 1866; Burlington Times, March 31, April 7, 1866; Vt. Watchman & State Journal (Montpelier), April 6, 1866.)

W.A.R.


FORBES, JOHN MURRAY (February 23, 1813- October 12, 1898), a business man, and also an active participant in public affairs, was born in Bordeaux, France, the son of Ralph Bennet and Margaret Perkins Forbes of Boston, Massachusetts, and grandson of Reverend John Forbes [q. v.] rector at St. Augustine in East Florida. At the age of fifteen he entered the counting-house of his uncles in Boston, and presently went to Canton, China, to represent them. During seven years in the Orient he gave evidence of unusual business abilities; and when he returned to America at the age of twenty-four, he had accumulated a fortune sufficient to enable him to take a position of importance in the commercial world. During the next nine years his investments on land and sea prospered, and in 1846 he turned his attention to railroad building and management in the West.

A group of capitalists, of whom he was the prime mover, purchased the unfinished Michigan Central Railroad from the State for $2,000,000, carried it to Lake Michigan, and then to Chicago, at the same time supplying funds for the connecting link between Detroit and Buffalo through Ontario. He next financed and put in operation the roads from Chicago to the Mississippi River and across Iowa, which formed the nucleus of what later became the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy system, and he was also responsible for the building of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad in Missouri. During the period of the Civil War and the years immediately following, his attention was given chiefly to public affairs; but in consequence of the panic of 1873 and of the necessity for effecting a change in the management of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, he became again the leading spirit in the direction of its affairs, occupying the position of president for two or three years, ending in 1881. He brought to the problems of railroad-building energy, courage, sound business judgment, integrity, and a broad view of the relation of the railroads to the public interest. Through the force of his personality the roads in which he was interested acquired a character and stability which distinguished them sharply from most of the railroads of that day.

His important public service began at the outset of the Civil War, when he became the most active helper of Governor John A. Andrew in putting the State of Massachusetts on a war footing. Of his many activities perhaps the most distinctive was the help which he rendered in the organization of its negro regiments. At Washington his knowledge of maritime affairs made him particularly helpful to the Navy Department. In 1863 he was sent unofficially to England to purchase, if possible, the ships known as the Laird rams, which were then being built for the Confederacy; and later he himself, with a few others, built a cruiser, larger than the Confederate Alabama, which he intended to sell to the government at cost. He organized the Loyal Publication Society, an effective bureau for propaganda; he was constantly consulted by officials in all branches of the government; he was untiring in giving suggestions and practical help on many matters of moment. His intense desire that the war should be prosecuted vigorously made him chafe at Lincoln's "slowness"; and he often made use of friends who had Lincoln's ear to put before him policies, such as the arming of the blacks, which he believed essential to Northern success. He was known to be disinterested, and his influence and accomplishment were great in proportion; furthermore, he consistently maintained the policy of keeping himself in the background and letting the credit for his actions go to others. After the war he was for some years a member of the national executive committee of the Republican party; but in 1884, as a protest against the nomination of James G. Blaine, he left the party and voted for Cleveland.

On February 8, 1834, Forbes was married to Sarah Hathaway of New Bedford. Of their six children the oldest son, William Hathaway, became president of the Bell Telephone Company. His summer home, from 1857, was the island of Naushon at the entrance of Buzzard's Bay, and he made the place memorable by the simple yet generous hospitality that he exercised and the distinguished men and women who were his guests. It is Forbes's quality as host that is the theme of Ralph Waldo Emerson's well-known characterization of him in Letters and Social Aims (Riverside Edition, p. 101). "Never was such force, good meaning, good sense, good action, combined with such domestic lovely behavior, such modesty and persistent preference for others. Wherever he moved he was the benefactor. It is of course that he should ride well, shoot well, sail well, keep house well, administer affairs well; but he was the best talker, also, in the company. . . . Yet I said to myself, How little this man suspects, with his sympathy for men and his respect for lettered and scientific people, that he is not likely, in any company, to meet a man superior to himself. And I think this is a good country that can bear such a creature as he is." [Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes (2 vols., 1899); Henry Greenleaf Pearson, An American Railroad Builder, John Murray Forbes (1911). Three volumes of Letters and three of Reminiscences, privately printed, contain abundant biographical details and reveal Forbes as a remarkably vigorous and racy writer.]

H. G. P.


FORD, GORDON LESTER (December 16, 1823- November 14, 1891), lawyer, bibliophile, tracing his American ancestry from Andrew Ford, an Englishman who emigrated to Weymouth, Massachusetts, in 1654, was the son of Lester and Eliza (Burnham) Ford. He was born at Lebanon, Connecticut. At the age of eleven he was sent to New York to enter the employ of his mother's brother, Gordon Burnham, a successful merchant. After this time his only schooling consisted of two term s in one of the city's night-schools. Even at that early age, he showed an innate aptitude for business and bookkeeping, and subsequently became accountant for the firm later w ell known as H. B. Claflin & Company. During these earlier years he lived with the family of the Quaker, John Gray, imbibing from such association many of the traits of that sect which he exhibited throughout his life. When still a young man, he entered the office of the United States marshal, studied law in his leisure moments, and was admitted to the New York County bar in 1850. He never seriously practised his profession, however, but devoted himself to business enterprise, in which he was uniformly successful. In 1852 he became president of the New London, Willimantic & Palmer Railroad, which position he held till 1856, when, soon after his marriage, he retired, and after a year or two in the suburbs of New York, made his home in Brooklyn. He speedily became identified with the leading institutions of that city. One of the earliest advocates of the abolition of slavery, he was largely instrumental in founding the Brooklyn Union in 1863. Appointed United States collector of internal revenue for the third collection district in 1869, he was removed in 1872 because he refused to allow political assessments for campaign purposes. Hitherto a stanch Republican, he now associated himself with the Liberal Republicans and was one of the Brooklyn delegates to the Cincinnati convention of May 1873, at which Horace Greeley was nominated for the presidency, though Ford himself actively supported Charles Francis Adams. In 1873 he became business manager of the New York Tribune, continuing in that position till 1881. Two years later he was elected president of the Brooklyn, Flatbush & Coney Island Railroad, but held the position for only a few months, retiring in order to devote himself to his private business affairs. He was heavily interested in Brooklyn commercial and financial institutions, particularly in the Peoples, Franklin and Hamilton Trust companies, and had with great prescience invested in real estate prior to the expansion of the city. From the first he associated himself with all movements aiming at the promotion of intellectual and artistic progress of the city. He was one of the founders of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Brooklyn Art Association, to both of which he gave much time and service. The Brooklyn Library, the Long Island Historical Society, and the Hamilton Club, organized in 1882 to take the place of the Hamilton Literary Association of Brooklyn, are also institutions with which he was intimately associated.

Throughout his life he was an enthusiastic, yet discriminating collector of books and manuscripts, relating principally to the history of America. His collection became the most valuable private library in America and before his death, the choicest collection of Americana in the world, containing 50,000 volumes, nearly 100,- 000 manuscripts, and autographic matter valued then at $100,000 (Bulletin of the New York Public Library, III, 1899, p. 52). He married Emily Ellsworth, daughter of Prof. William C. Fowler of Amherst, Massachusetts, and grand-daughter of Noah Webster. Eight children were born to them, two of whom, Paul Leicester Ford [q.v.] and Worthington Chauncey Ford, inherited their father's literary and historical interests. Gordon Lester Ford's only literary production was a foreword to Websteriana, a Catalogue of Books by Noah Webster (1882), though he superintended the publication of a number of volumes of original and previously unpublished material from his collection. In 1899 his entire library was presented to the New York Public Library by his sons in memory of their father.

[Obituary notice in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 14, 1891; E. R. Ford, Ford Genealogy (1916), pp. 12-13; private information.]

H. W. H. K.


FORNEY, JOHN WIEN (September 30, 1817- December 9, 1881), Philadelphia journalist, was born at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, of German descent, the son of Peter and Margaret (Wien) Forney. His brief schooling was terminated when at thirteen he went to work in a store. Three years later he became an apprentice in the printing-office of the Lancaster Journal. When he was twenty he became editor and part owner of a dying newspaper, the Lancaster Intelligencer, and in two years brought it to sufficient prosperity to enable him to unite it with the Journal and to marry Elizabeth Mathilda Reitzel in 1840. As a Democratic editor Forney attached himself at the outset of his career to the political fortunes of James Buchanan, whose presidential ambitions he made the means of his own advance locally and nationally. When Buchanan became secretary of state in 1845, President Polk appointed Forney deputy surveyor of the port of Philadelphia. This plum enabled its recipient to sell out at Lancaster and remove to Philadelphia, where in partnership with A. Boyd Hamilton he became editor and proprietor of the Pennsylvanian.

After the defeat of the Democrats in 1848, he sought election as clerk of the House of Representatives, but in spite of Buchanan's aid he failed to secure the position until 1851. He rendered active service in the campaign of 1852 and then became an editorial writer for the Washington Daily Union, the paper that enjoyed the executive patronage. In 1854 he was admitted to partnership in this paper and aided his partner A. O. P. Nicholson in obtaining the lucrative printing contracts of the House of Representatives. Meantime, he had become involved in a journalistic feud with a Virginia newspaper rival, Beverly Tucker of the Washington Sentinel, in which the powerful Virginia Democrats sided with Tucker. Forney resented also what he considered Southern persecution of his friend Governor Reeder in his Kansas difficulties. Finally, his friendship for Buchanan when Pierce was seeking renomination made his situation more than ever impossible, so in 1856 he relinquished his share in the Union, after presiding over the House of Representatives most successfully during the strenuous scenes of the two months' struggle for the speakership in 1855-56. This release left him free to devote himself to his great ambition, Buchanan's nomination and election as president.

Then came the question: what was to be the reward for his twenty years' loyalty? Both Buchanan and Forney agreed that he should have the Union with the fortune that came from the congressional printing. But Forney's enemies blocked this move. Then Forney desired to be senator from Pennsylvania; but Cameron defeated him, in spite of the fact that President Buchanan's influence gained the caucus nomination for him. Buchanan then offered him his choice of the Liverpool consulship or the naval office at Philadelphia; but Forney was committed to other men for these posts, and Mrs. Forney, who was in an unfortunate state of health, was bitterly opposed to his accepting either position. The twenty years of loyalty soon melted into distrust and dissatisfaction. Forney decided to go back to Philadelphia journalism, and there established the Press ostensibly in support of Buchanan in August 1857. Buchanan, however, could not or would not aid him with public printing. When Walker came back from Kansas and Douglas opened fire upon the Buchanan administration, Forney joined forces with them; by 1860 he had become a Republican and had resumed his old position as clerk of the House; a year later he became secretary of the Senate and continued in that position until 1868.

In 1861 Forney founded the Sunday Morning Chronicle, and on November 3, 1862, he began publishing a daily edition (the Daily Morning Chronicle), at the suggestion, it was afterward said, of President Lincoln, who feared the influence in the Army of the Potomac of the New York Tribune, which was critical of the administration (see Sunday Chronicle, December 11, 1881). At all events, with the Chronicle and the Press, Forney actively supported the Lincoln administration. He also supported President Johnson at first, but when the radicals began their warfare upon the administration Forney followed them and Andrew Johnson had no more virulent critic than Forney's Chronicle. During Grant's administration Forney sold out his Washington paper (1870) and went back to Philadelphia. Here he became collector of the port (1871) but retired within a year. The remaining ten years of his life were spent in journalism, Havel, and lecturing. In 1878 he founded and edited at Philadelphia a weekly magazine called Progress. Once more he changed his political allegiance, becoming a Democrat and writing The Life and Military Career of Winfield Scott Hancock (1880) as a campaign biography. He also wrote Anecdotes of Public Men (2 vols., 1873-81) and The New Nobility (1881). Throughout his life he had proved to be enterprising and energetic but emotional and unstable, sentimental in his loyalties, bitter in his hates. He possessed an unusually accurate instinct for winning causes, but in spite of his ability to support the victors, he generally had enemies sufficiently powerful to prevent his obtaining much profit from his foresight.

[Forty Years of American Journalism: Retirement of Mr. J. W. Forney from the Philadelphia "Press" (1877); Alex. Harris, Biog. History of Lancaster County (1872); Philadelphia Press, December 10, 12, 13, 1881; Philadelphia Record and Philadelphia Public Ledger, December 10, 1881; Washington Sunday Chronicle, December 11, 1881; Progress (Philadelphia) Dec. 17, 1881; Printers' Circular (Philadelphia), December 1881. A large and revealing collection of Forney's letters is to be found in the Jeremiah S. Black Papers, Library of Congress, and in the Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania H. O. Folker, Sketches of the Forney Family (1911), gives the name of Forney's mother as Wein, but the cemetery record gives Wien for his middle name.]

R. F. N.


FORTEN, Charlotte, 1837-1914, free African American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, women’s rights activist, writer, intellectual (Billington, 1953; Mabee, 1970, pp. 105, 161, 162, 308; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 289, 410, 416, 482; Stevenson, 1988; Yellin, 1994, pp. 69, 94, 98-99, 116, 116n, 164)


FORTEN, James, Jr., Philadelphia, PA, African American, abolitionist, son of James Forten, Sr.  American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1843-1844.  (Pease, 1965, pp. 233-240)


FORTEN, James, Sr., 1766-1842, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, businessman, social reformer, free African American community leader, led abolitionist group. Co-founder of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Organized first African American Masonic Lodge in 1797. Petitioned Congress to pass law to end slavery and the changing of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793.  Opposed Pennsylvania Senate bill that would restrict Black settlement in the state.  Supported temperance and women’s rights movements. American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice President, 1834-1835, Manager, 1835-1840.  (Basker, 2005, pp. 296-317; Billington, 1953; Douty, 1968; Dumond, 1961, pp. 170-171, 328, 340; Mabee, 1970, pp. 93, 104, 105, 161, 308; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 34, 105, 290; Winch, 2002; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 305-306; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 536; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 276; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 446)

FORTEN, JAMES (September 2, 1766-March 4, 1842), sail-maker, was descended from people who had lived in Pennsylvania for several generations. His father, Thomas Forten, died when he was but seven years old. James attended in Philadelphia the school of the Quaker Abolitionist, Anthony Benezet, but left in 1775, when he was not more than nine years of age, and went to work to help his mother. At fourteen he entered the service of the colonial navy, in the Royal Louis, commanded by Capt. Decatur, and was among those captured by the British ship Amphion. It happened, however, that the commander's son was on board, who exacted from his father the promise that James should not be forced to enlist in the English service. This pleased the young negro, for he feared being sold into slavery in the West Indies. In course of time he was transferred to a prison ship lying near New York, and he remained there through a raging pestilence until the prisoners were exchanged. Another voyage then took him to London for a year. On his return to Philadelphia he was apprenticed to Robert Bridges, a sail-maker, and in his twentieth year he became foreman of the working force. He afterwards became owner of the sail-loft, and about this time married the woman who became the mother of his eight children. Prospering in business, he ultimately won a considerable fortune.

In 1814, with Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, Forten secured 2,500 negro volunteers to protect the city of Philadelphia. His establishment was near the water, and at different times not less than seven persons were saved from drowning by his promptness and efficiency. Under date of May 9, 1821, the Humane Society of Philadelphia gave him a formal certificate of appreciation for having rescued four of these persons. In his mature life Forten was keenly interested in the welfare of the negro people, and in 1817 presided over a meeting in Bethel Church called to oppose the designs of the American Colonization Society. In his business he refused to furnish rigging to the owners of slave-vessels. He was also interested in the work of the temperance and the peace societies, and defended woman's rights. His success in business and his philanthropic spirit made him easily one of the foremost negroes in the country in his time. He commanded the highest respect in Philadelphia, and his funeral was attended by a vast throng of people.

[Robt. Purvis, Remarks on the Life and Character of las. Forten (1842); L. Maria Child, The Freedmen's Book (1865); Wm. Lloyd Garrison: The Story of his Life Told by his Children (4 vols., 1885-89), passim; B. T. Washington, The Story of the Negro (1909).)

B. B.


FORTEN, Margaretta, 1808-1875, free African American, officer, Female Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia, daughter of James Forten.  (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 416; Winch, 2002; Yellin, 1994, pp. 7, 79, 75, 115-116, 164, 237; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 447)


FORTEN, Robert Bridges, 1813-1864, African American (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 4, p. 449)


FORTEN, Robert, free African American, abolitionist, social activist, son of James Forten, father of Charlotte Forten. (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 288; Winch, 2002)


FORTEN, Sarah Louisa, free African American, Female Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia (Yellin, 1994, pp. 7, 98, 103-104, 114-116, 206)


FOSTER, Abby Kelley, 1810-1887, Worcester, Massachusetts, reformer, orator, abolitionist leader, women’s rights activist, temperance reformer, member Massachusetts and American Anti-Slavery Societies, co-founded abolitionist paper, Anti-Slavery Bugle in Ohio. Activist in the Underground Railroad. (Drake, 1950, p. 158; Sterling, 1991; Dumond, 1961, p. 281; Mabee, 1970, pp. 42, 77, 199, 213, 224, 266, 300, 323, 328, 329, 336; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 162, 169, 290-291, 465; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 42, 49, 63, 73, 149, 189-191, 210-211, 214, 216; Yellin, 1994, pp. 19, 26, 27, 31, 43, 148-149, 154, 170, 173, 175, 176, 223, 231-248, 267-268, 280-281, 286, 288, 289, 292, 294, 296, 332; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 515; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 542; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 308-310; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 289; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 323-324; Sterling, Dorothy. Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Antislavery. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991.)

FOSTER, ABIGAIL KELLEY (January 15, 1810-January 14, 1887), Abolitionist and woman's rights advocate, was the daughter of Wing and Diana (Daniels) Kelley of Pelham, Mass; She was of Irish-Quaker descent, and James Russell Lowell in the well-known "Letter from Boston" (Pennsylvania Freeman, January 1847), in which he describes the Abolitionist leaders, refers to her as "A Judith, there, turned Quakeress." Abby Kelley, as she was usually called by contemporaries and subsequent writers, became a teacher at Worcester, Millbury, and Lynn. While teaching in the Friends School in the last-named town she was impressed by Garrison's attack on slavery and in 1837 abandoned teaching for the lecture platform, giving her services gratuitously to the anti-slavery cause. She conducted a campaign in Massachusetts in company with Angelina Grimke and is reported to be the first Massachusetts woman to have regularly addressed mixed audiences. The latter innovation was the source of much scandal to her contemporaries. She was denounced by the clergy as a menace to public morals, and her meetings were occasionally broken up by mobs. For some years she endured an incredible amount of insult and abuse. (For a typical instance occurring in Connecticut, see L A. Coolidge, Orville H. Platt, 1910, pp. 5-7.) In 1839 the American Anti-Slavery Society indorsed the right of women to speak on its platform, but a year later her appointment to its executive committee caused a serious split in the organization. Her presence as a delegate at the world anti-slavery convention at London in 1840, and its refusal to recognize women delegates, caused an equally serious disturbance.

As a pioneer Abigail Kelley performed important services for her cause. She was a leader in the radical Abolitionist group, and became a well-known figure throughout the North. She was in a favorable position while attacking the evils of slavery to point out the serious legal, economic, and political disabilities of women. After 1850 she was more prominent as an advocate of woman's rights than as an anti-slavery leader; and she took a prominent part, with her husband, Stephen Symonds Foster [q.v.], whom she married December 31, 1845, in most of the woman's rights conventions for the next twenty years. Her appearance at the anniversary convention of 1880, together with Lucy Stone, as the only surviving leaders of the famous gathering of thirty years before, attracted great attention. The woman's rights movement had become fairly respectable by 1880, and had attracted many who would have shrunk from the hardships of pioneering. Her remark in the convention of 1851, in reply to some disparagement of the Abolitionists, that "bloody feet have worn smooth the paths by which you came up hither," is both poignant and significant. She was fearless in denouncing the conservatism of the church and clergy, and repeatedly declared that they must shoulder much of the responsibility for the wrongs of women. She was probably somewhat less extreme than her husband in both her religious and political views but was nevertheless a decided radical in both. In addition to her work in the woman's rights cause she was active in support of prohibition and minor humanitarian interests. She is described by those who knew her as an attractive, kindly person with unassuming manners, and a good housekeeper. On the platform she was an effective speaker for many years but her voice finally gave out from overuse. She was an invalid in her last years.

[Harriet H. Robinson, Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement (1881); Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805-79: The Story of his Life Told by his Children (1885-89); Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others, History of Woman Suffrage (3 vols., 1881-87); Lillie B. C. Wyman, "Reminiscences of Two Abolitionists," in New England Mag., January 1903; obituary articles in the Nation (New York), January 20, 1887, and Boston Daily Advertiser, January 15, 1887.]

W.A.R.


FOSTER, JOHN WATSON (March 2, 1836- November 15, 1917), lawyer, soldier, editor, diplomat, secretary of state, professor, was born in Pike County, Ind., where his father, Matthew Watson Foster, was a successful farmer. His mother, Eleanor Johnson, came of a Virginia family. Foster attended the University of Indiana (RA. 1855), where through study and in debate he developed the anti-slavery convictions implanted by his father. After a year at the Harvard Law School he spent another year in a law office in Cincinnati before he associated himself in the practise of law at Evansville with Conrad Baker, one of the ablest lawyers of Indiana. In 1859 he married Mary Parke McFerson who received repeatedly in his writings tributes for her counsel, assistance, and affection. When the Civil War broke out Foster's zeal for the anti-slavery cause and for the Union led him to enlist. Governor Morton sent him a commission as major. For his share in the capture of Fort Donelson he was promoted lieutenant-colonel, and for his meritorious service at Shiloh he was made a colonel. He commanded a brigade of cavalry in Burnside's expedition into East Tennessee and was the first to occupy Knoxville in 1863. He learned to know Grant, Sherman, and Thomas. Foster states in his Memoirs that his military life enlarged his knowledge of men and gave him a fuller self-confidence.

After the war Foster became editor of the Evansville Daily Journal, the most influential paper in Southern Indiana. In 1872, he served as chairman of the Republican state committee. As such he was instrumental in bringing about the reelection of Oliver P. Morton to the United States Senate and of Gen. Grant to the presidency. The next year President Grant designated him as minister to Mexico. He served there during the transition from the Lerdo to the Diaz regime and under trying circumstances succeeded in making himself highly agreeable to the Mexican government.

Early in 1880, President Hayes transferred him to St. Petersburg. He remained there a year and had little to do except to attend ceremonies and to plead for leniency in the treatment of American Jews. He returned to Washington and set up in the practise of law. In 1883, President Arthur offered him the appointment as minister to Spain. Foster accepted. He negotiated a reciprocity treaty affecting the trade with Cuba, but the treaty failed to meet the approval of the Senate. During Cleveland's first administration Foster practised law. Harrison appointed him on a special mission to Madrid to negotiate another reciprocity treaty. This treaty became effective and for two years greatly facilitated American trade with Cuba and Porto Rico.

During the latter part of Harrison's administration Foster became the agent for the United States in the Bering Sea or fur-seal arbitration. Two unexpected events weakened the case of the United States. As a part of the transfer of Alaska, Russia had delivered to the Department of State a mass of archives in the Russian language. These were reputed to show-and Foster so believed-that Russia had exercised exclusive territorial jurisdiction over Beri1ig Sea. Foster employed one I van Petroff to select the pertinent documents and to translate them. Petroff furnished the translations to support the American contention. Copies of the documents and their translation occupied a prominent place in the case. Several weeks after their submission to counsel for Great Britain a clerk in the Department of State, William C. Mayo, discovered discrepancies. Petroff confronted with the evidence admitted his guilt. Foster promptly informed the British legation in Washington of the circumstances of the case and explained to the British agent how the perfidy had been imposed upon him. The second untoward event occurred during the oral arguments before the tribunal at Paris. Russia had supported the stand taken by the United States for the protection of the fur seals. On June 21, 1893, Sir Richard Webster asked permission to read a document which had been laid before Parliament. Russia had conceded to Great Britain that seals could be taken anywhere outside a zone of thirty miles around the Russian islands on the Asiatic side of Bering Sea. The United States lost the case on all points with the exception that the tribunal allowed a prohibited zone of sixty miles around the Pribilof Islands.

For about eight months during 1892 and 1893 and partly overlapping the period of the fur-seal arbitration Foster served as secretary of state. As such he negotiated a treaty of annexation with the Republic of Hawaii. This negotiation took place so shortly after the establishment of the republic under the domination of American citizens there and under such questionable circumstances that when Cleveland succeeded to the presidency he withdrew the treaty from the Senate. Another important event in his term was the Baltimore incident. Capt. W. S. Schley of the Baltimore in Santiago harbor, Chile, had given shore leave to a number · of sailors and officers. Whatever the cause may have been, a fight ensued in which two sailors were killed and seventeen wounded. Foster called attention to the fact that reparation was due the injured and the dependents of those who had been killed. Chile proposed arbitration. Foster replied that inasmuch as questions of national honor were involved a frank and friendly offer of voluntary compensation would be accepted as a proof of good-will. Thereupon Chile offered $75,000 in gold which was accepted as satisfactory.

At the close of the Chino-Japanese War, December 1894, the Chinese foreign office invited Foster, then a private citizen, to join the Chinese commissioners in the negotiation of peace with Japan. He accepted, and performed a creditable service in bringing about an agreement between Li Hung Chang and Marquis Ito. Later, in 1907, Foster represented China at the Second Hague Conference. In 1903 Great Britain and the United States agreed to arbitrate their differences about the Alaska-Canadian boundary. The United States designated Foster as agent to take charge of the preparation of the case. Greatly to his credit the tribunal sustained substantially his arguments and conclusions. As a lawyer in Washington Foster represented various governments, notably the Mexican. Probably the most important case concerned the Weil and La Abra claims of over a million dollars, which had been awarded to the United States by a claims commission. Foster found and proved that the award had been obtained through fraud. Through his efforts Mexico was reimbursed for payments made on these claims.

Foster delivered numerous lectures on various phases of international relations which found their way later into periodicals and pamphlets. He was especially interested in foreign missions and in arbitration. His courses at George Washington University comprised the salient features of American diplomatic history from 1776 to 1876, the rules and procedure of diplomatic intercourse, which developed into the best book of its kind written by an American, and an outline of the relations of the United States with the Orient. Included in his printed works, which are marked by a good perspective, a restrained and apt use of anecdote, optimism, and a clear and readable style, are the following: A Century of American Diplomacy, 1776-1876 (1900); American Diplomacy in the Orient (1903); Arbitration and the Hague Court (1904); The Practise of Diplomacy (1906); and War Stories for my Grandchildren (1918).

[Foster wrote his own biography in Diplomatic Memoirs (2 vols., 1909), He describes accurately and with human interest the events in which he took part and the men and women whom he met. The volumes for the appropriate years of the foreign relations of the United States contain a record of his official work as minister to various countries and as secretary of state. See also Wm. R. Castle. Jr., in American Secretaries of State and their Diplomacy, vol. VIII (1928); Jose L. Suarez, Mr. John W. Foster (Buenos Aires, 1918); New York Times, November 16, Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), November 15, 1917.]

C.E.H.


FOSTER, Lafayette Sabine, 1806-1880, statesman, Connecticut State Representative, Mayor of Norwich, Connecticut, U.S. Senator 1854-?, Republican Party, opposed to slavery.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 512-513; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 553; Congressional Globe)


FOSTER, Stephen Symonds, 1809-1881, divinity student, radical abolitionist, women’s rights activist.  Founded New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society.  Manager, 1843-1845, American Anti-Slavery Society.  Husband of abolitionist and women’s rights activist Abby Kelly Foster.  Their home was a station on the Underground Railroad.  Wrote, The Brotherhood of Thieves; Or a True Picture of the American Church and Clergy, in 1843, an anti-slavery book. (Drake, 1950, pp. 158, 176-177; Mabee, 1970, pp. 223, 250, 251, 262, 266, 270, 272, 279, 297, 323, 324, 327, 329, 378, 394n24, 419n8; Pease, 1965, pp. 134-142, 474-479; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 169, 290; Stevens, 1843; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 514-515; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 3, Pt. 2, p. 558; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 307).

FOSTER, STEPHEN SYMONDS (November 17, 1809-September 8, 1881), Abolitionist, reformer, son of Asa and Sarah (Morrill) Foster, was born at Canterbury, N. H. His father's family had long been prominent in this vicinity and several of its members had been active in New Hampshire politics. He was the ninth child in a family of thirteen and at an early age became accustomed to hard work on the farm. He then learned the trade of carpenter and builder, but becoming interested in the religious life, decided to prepare himself for the ministry. In his early twenties he entered Dartmouth College and graduated in 1838. While an undergraduate he was attracted by the growing anti-slavery movement, which at that time had many supporters at. Dartmouth. Such a crusade had a strong appeal for a man of his humanitarian instincts. He had formulated a creed of his own, based largely on the Sermon on the Mount, and regardless of resultant complications in every-day life, endeavored to govern himself thereby. While at Dartmouth he served a jail sentence rather than perform militia duty, and incidentally, started an agitation which eventually produced drastic reforms in the wretched prison system of rural New England.

On leaving college he entered Union Theological Seminary but his stay at the institution was brief. He had already been assailed by doubt as to whether the churches were genuine upholders of Christian principles, and when the seminary refused accommodations for a meeting protesting against the government's course in the Northeastern Boundary embroglio, he dropped his studies, and soon after severed connections with the church and organized religion in general.' For some years he made a precarious living as an anti-slavery lecturer, and one of his associates, Parker Pillsbury [q.v.], has left a vivid record of the hardships, discouragements, and persecutions Foster encountered while campaigning in New Hampshire. He was associated with the extremist group, was a close friend of Garrison, and probably second only to the latter in influence and activity in the early years of the agitation. Like Garrison he denounced the Constitution and was ready to dissolve the Union. He accompanied his colleague on several lecture tours and became equally well known as an agitator, not only in New England, but throughout the Northern states. Eventually he settled on a farm near Worcester but continued to appear as a public speaker and lecturer.

Foster grasped one essential principle, namely, that "slavery is an American and not a Southern institution." Business, politics, and religion were, he believed, committed to the maintenance of the status quo. He detested the attitude of religious bodies especially and, about 1841, adopted the expedient of visiting various churches, interrupting services with a polite request for a hearing on the slavery issue. He was repeatedly ejected, several times prosecuted, and more than once roughly handled by offended worshipers, but he attracted attention to the cause which could hardly have been gained by more decorous methods. His career as lecturer was exciting, at least in the earlier years. Fearless, resolute, and gifted with an unusual command of denunciatory language, he was repeatedly jeered and pelted by unfriendly audiences. He wrote occasional newspaper articles but only one production of note. This pamphlet, The Brotherhood of Thieves; or a True Picture of the American Church and Clergy (1843), one of the most vitriolic works of the anti-slavery era, passed through more than twenty editions and was widely circulated. He remained with the extremists throughout the long contest over slavery but became interested in sundry other reform movements. Besides advocating woman suffrage, he was a temperance worker, an advocate of world peace, and an energetic supporter of the rights of labor. His refusal to pay taxes because women were denied the suffrage more than once forced his friends to bid in his farm at sheriff's sale. On December 31, 1845, he married a kindred spirit, Abigail Kelley [q.v.], Abolitionist lecturer and pioneer in the woman's rights movement.

Foster was a successful farmer and his property near Worcester was one of the best managed and most productive in the district. His contemporaries describe him as of rugged features, rather ungainly in general appearance, his hands hard and gnarled with labor, but he possessed a wonderful voice. Despite the vehemence of his platform manners he is said to have been gentle and kindly in his personal relations. He seems to have suffered from an overdeveloped logical sense -and a complete lack of humor. Probably Wendell Phillips made as fair an estimate of Foster's work as might be given when at his funeral he declared: "It needed something to shake New England and stun it into listening. He was the man, and offered himself for the martyrdom."

[J. K. Lord, History of Dartmouth College (1909); J. O. Lyford, History of the Town of Canterbury, N. H. (1912); Lillie B. C. Wyman, "Reminiscences of Two Abolitionists," New Eng. Mag., January 1903; Parker Pillsbury, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles (1883); Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805-79: The Story of his Life Told by his Children (1885-89); History of Woman Suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda J. Gage, eds. (3 vols., 1881-87); Parker Pillsbury, Memoir in the Granite Monthly, August 1882; The Nation, September 15, 1881; Boston Daily Advertiser, September 9, 10, 1881; Worcester Daily Spy, September 9, 1881.

W. A. R  


FOWLER, JOSEPH SMITH (August 31, 1820-April 1, 1902), senator, was born in Steubenville, Ohio, the son of James and Sarah (Atkinson) Fowler, both natives of Maryland. He attended country schools for a time and then began to teach in Shelby County, Kentucky. Later he returned to Ohio, and in 1843 was graduated from Franklin College at New Athens. At Bowling Green, Kentucky, he again taught school and at the same time studied law, and in 1845 became professor of mathematics at Franklin College, Davidson County, Tenn., where he remained for four years. On November 12, 1846, he married Maria Louisa Embry of Tennessee. His occupation and whereabouts in the years following 1849 are not known, but in 1856 he was made president of Howard Female Institute at Gallatin, Tenn., and remained there until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. He had been opposed to slavery since childhood, and he did not believe in the right of secession, but he had lived long enough in the South to be sympathetic with the Southern people, and would doubtless have remained there if it had not been for Davis's "forty day" proclamation, which caused him to move with his family to Springfield, Illinois. In 1862 he returned to Nashville, and Johnson made him state comptroller in the military government. He was an efficient officer, and was prominent in the work of reconstruction, particularly in relation to the abolition of slavery. In May 1865 he was elected United States senator but was denied his seat until July 1866. In Tennessee he had been on intimate terms with Johnson, but he differed with him as to Reconstruction, was one of the signers of the call for the Southern Loyalists' convention in 1866, and attended as a delegate. In the Senate he voted for most of the radical measures, including the reconstruction acts, although he did not approve of the provision for military government. He served faithfully but without any special distinction on many committees, and frequently participated in debate. Judging from the reports, he was an effective speaker. He was of average ability only, but was distinctly levelheaded. He was radical, but was inclined to be liberal. When Johnson removed Stanton, Fowler, like Henderson, declined to vote for the resolution declaring the removal an illegal act. He watched the House during the process of impeachment and was horrified at its dangerous passion, which he thought likely to precipitate a revolution. When impeachment had first been attempted, he had thought the President impeachable, but as time passed he had found that opinion "based on falsehood," and that Johnson was being attacked for pursuing Lincoln's policy. He then saw in the impeachment plan a plot contrived by leaders "neither numerous nor marked for their prudence, wisdom, or patriotism, ... mere politicians, thrown to the surface through the disjointed times," bent on "keeping alive the embers of the departing revolution," and with "more of sectional prejudice ... than of patriotism" (Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 2 Session, p. 4508). His attitude was soon made clear to the radicals who attempted to coerce him by threats and slander, but he quietly ignored them and voted "Not Guilty," with the quiet statement, "I acted for my country and posterity in obedience to the will of God." He filed a strong opinion, joined with Henderson and Ross in refusing to vote for the resolution of thanks to Stanton, and in July excoriated B. F. Butler for his report on the charges of corruption. In spite of his radical advocacy of negro suffrage, he voted against the Fifteenth Amendment, believing it wiser to move more slowly, and thinking that female suffrage should be included. He retired from the Senate in 1871 and returned to Tennessee. He supported Grant in 1868, but by 1872 was utterly disgusted with his administration and was an elector at large on the Greeley ticket. After some years he moved to Washington and remained there practising law until his death.

[Who's Who in America, 1901-02; Biog. Dir. American Congress (1928); Congressional Globe, 39-41 Congresses; Proceedings in the Trial of Andrew Johnson (1868); E.G. Ross, History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (1896); D. M. DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903); Washington Post and Washington Evening Star, April 2, 1902.]

J.G.de R.H.



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