Med-Moo: Medill through Moorhead

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


MEDILL, JOSEPH (April 6, 1823-March 16, 1899), journalist. With three younger brothers he purchased the Coshocton Whig in 1849 and immediately renamed it the Republican. Within two years he moved to Cleveland and established the Daily Forest City. A year later he consolidated it with a Free-Soil journal and established the Cleveland Leader. Accepting the election of 1852 as foreshadowing the end of the Whig party, he labored diligently for the organization of a new party to be called Republican. In March 1854 a secret meeting was held in the office of the Cleveland Leader and plans adopted for the new anti-slavery party. There is evidence to show that he was the first man to advocate the name Republican even before the Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p.

MEDILL, JOSEPH (April 6, 1823-March 16, 1899), journalist, was born in a village near St. John in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. He was of Scotch-Irish stock, and for generations his ancestors had been shipbuilders in Belfast. His father, William Medill, emigrated to America in 1819 and settled in an area that was later awarded to Canada by the Webster-Ashburton treaty of 1842. When he was nine his parents moved to Stark County, Ohio, and there he worked on the farm and received such education as the district schools and an academy in Massillon afforded. Upon reaching the age of twenty-one, he determined to enter a law office and after several years of study was admitted to the bar in 1846; but as law practice was at best uncertain, he turned to journalism. With three younger brothers he purchased the Coshocton Whig in 1849 and immediately renamed it the Republican. Within two years he moved to Cleveland and established the Daily Forest City. A year later he consolidated it with a Free-Soil journal and established the Cleveland Leader. Accepting the election of 1852 as foreshadowing the end of the Whig party, he labored diligently for the organization of a new party to be called Republican. In March 1854 a secret meeting was held in the office of the Cleveland Leader and plans adopted for the new anti-slavery party. There is evidence to show that he was the first man to advocate the name Republican even before the Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed (A. J. Turner, "Genesis of the Republican Party," Wisconsin State Register, March 1898; Cleveland, post, p. 85).

In the winter of 1854-55 he visited Chicago and with Dr. Charles Ray bought an interest in the Chicago Tribune, which was experiencing financial difficulties. He was at that time thirty-two years of age and fired with enthusiasm for the Republican party and the cause of freedom. In the campaign of 1856 he played an important part in the welding of discontented political groups into a compact Republican party and during the Lincoln-Douglas debates threw the resources of his paper behind the Republican candidate. He was a clos e friend of Abraham Lincoln, and more than once Lincoln conferred with him in the office of the Tribune. Although at first in favor of Salmon P. Chase, he soon arrived at the conclusion that Lincoln was the most available candidate and urged him on that ground. He always told with pleasure how he urged Carter of Ohio to change several votes to Lincoln in the Chicago convention, with the result that a landslide was started in favor of the Illinois candidate (Cleveland, post, p. 85). At the outbreak of the Civil War, he was opposed to any compromise with the South and at all times demanded an active prosecution of the war. Taking his stand in favor of emancipation and confiscation of southern property, he continually urged the administration to adopt a more radical course of action. He was among the first to advocate the arming of the slaves and insisted from the beginning of the conflict that the soldier in the field should not lose his right to vote. It was largely due to his efforts that several states in the Northwest passed laws to that effect in 1864 (Chicago Tribune, January 8, 21, February 4, 1864; Graphic, December 19, 1891; Andreas, post, volume II, p. 51). He was also one of the organizers of the powerful and influential Union defense committee, which became the mainstay of the government during the uncertain days of civil strife. In the reconstruction of the South following the war, he supported Congress and was heartily in favor of the radical policies of the Republican party.

He was elected to the Illinois constitutional assembly in 1869, and was the chairman of the committee on electoral and representative reform that wrote the minority-representation clause (Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention ... Illinois…  1869, 1870, volume I, pp. 56o-61). He served as one of the first civil-service commissioners under President Grant. Following the great fire which swept over Chicago in 1871, he was elected mayor and during his term of office labored diligently to remove the municipal government from politics. He greatly enhanced the appointive and removal po we r of the city administration. In 1874 he bought a majority of the stock of the Tribune company and during the remainder of his life controlled the policy of his paper. He had able colleagues, but it was he who gave the paper its impetus and direction. Until the day of his death he was actively in charge of the paper. While in San Antonio, Tex., he was ta k en ill with heart disease and died at the age of seventy-six. The day before his death he had written a short editorial, which appeared in the same issue of the Tribune that carried the news of his death. His last words were, " What is the news?" (Chicago Tribune, March 17, 1899). He was married on September 2, 1852, to Katharine Patrick, the daughter of James Patrick of New Philadelphia, Ohio. During the Civil War she took part in the labors of the sanitary commission and was active in all phases of war work. There were three children.

[Lyman Trumbull MSS. in Library of Congress; miscellaneous MSS. in Chicago Historical Society Library; manuscript biography written in I90i by M. Dodge in the office of the Chicago Tribune; H. I. Cleveland, "A Talk with ... the Late Joseph Medill," Saturday Evening Post, August s, 1899; Th e W. G. N.; a Handbook of Newspaper Administration (1922); Pictured E11cyc. of the World's Greatest Newspaper (copyright 1928); W. J. Abbot, "Chicago Newspapers," Review of Reviews, June 1895; A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago, 3 volumes, 1884-86; Chicago Times-Herald, March 17, 1899, Chicago Tribune, March 17, 1899.]


MERCER, Charles Fenton, 1778-1858, soldier, political leader, opponent of slavery. Promoted the colonization in Africa of free negroes from the United States.  

(Dumond, 1961, p. 61; Mason, 2006, pp. 124-125, 269; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 163; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 300)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 539; 

MERCER, CHARLES FENTON (June 16, 1778-May 4, 1858), congressman from Virginia, was born at Fredericksburg, Virginia, the youngest son of Eleanor (Dick) and James Mercer [q.v.]. His mother died when he was two years old and thirteen years later his father died leaving heavy debts, which the son later undertook to pay. The boy entered the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1795 and graduated in 1797 at the head of his class. In college he began his lifelong friendship with John Henry Hobart [q.v.] and became a devout Episcopalian. From 1797 until 1802 he read law at Princeton and at Richmond, Virginia. When war with France threatened in 1798 he volunteered and was twice offered a commission in the army, but since the threat of war had already passed he declined. In 1802 he was licensed to practise law. Soon afterward he went to England on business and also visited France. On his return he settled at Aldie, Loudoun County, Virginia, and began the practice of his profession. He became a member of the House of Delegates of Virginia in 1810 and served until he resigned in 1817 to enter Congress. While a member of the legislature he took a leading part in efforts to increase the banking capital of Virginia, to found a new bank, to promote the colonization in Africa of free negroes from the United States, and to build roads and canals. He offered a bill to provide for a complete system of public education, from common-school to state university, which was defeated in the Senate in the spring of 1817 after having passed the House (see his Discourse on Popular Education: Delivered in ... Princeton ... September 26, 1826, 1826). He was also the author of the act by which a sword and pension were given to George Rogers Clark. During the War of 1812 he served with the Virginia troops, rising to the rank of brigadier-general.

His enthusiasm for internal improvements, the suppression of the slave trade, and the colonization of free negroes gave direction to his efforts when he became a member of the federal House of Representatives in 1817. He was chairman of the committees on roads and canals and on the District of Columbia. Though a member of the Federalist party until its dissolution and then a Whig, he was never an ardent party man. He enjoyed the friendship of Monroe and of John Quincy Adams. He disliked Jackson and Van Buren and on January 26, 1819, delivered an address in Congress in which he assailed Jackson's course in the Seminole War (Annals of Congress, 15 Congress, 2 Session, cols. 797-831). He was a strong Unionist but was alarmed at the rapidly increasing power of the president and was opposed to the executive's control over federal patronage. He was active in the movement that resulted in the building of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and was for five years, from 1828 to 1833, president of the company. He was a leader in the Virginia constitutional convention of 1829-30, in which he advocated manhood suffrage, equal representation, and the popular election of important officers with the whole power of his distinguished oratorical ability.

Resigning from Congress on December 26, 1839, he became cashier of a bank in Tallahassee, Fla. He was original grantee, partner, and agent of the Texas association, a company which obtained a contract to settle colonists in Texas and to receive pay from the Republic in land. When the convention in 1845 declared colonization contracts unconstitutional he and his associates brought suit to force payment, but the case was decided against them in the United States courts. In 1845 he published An Exposition of the Weakness and Inefficiency of the Government of the United States. In 1847 he built a house near Carrollton, Kentucky, which he made his home until 1853, when he disposed of his property there. For three years he traveled in Europe, working in the interest of the abolition of the slave trade. Ill with cancer of the lip, he returned to Fairfax County, Virginia, where he was nursed by relatives until his death. He was never married.

[J. M. Garnett, Biographical Sketches of Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer (1911); W. F. Dunaway, "Charles Fenton Mercer," manuscript thesis in the Library of University of Chicago; Wm. and Mary College Quart., January 1909, p. 210; The Correspondence of John Henry Hobart, esp. volume III (1912); John McVicar. The Early Life and Professional Years of Bishop Hobart (1838); Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. by C. F. Adams, volumes IV-X (1875-76), esp. X, p. 360, for Adams' explanation of Mercer's becoming a bank cashier at Tallahassee.] 

C.F.A.


MERCER, John Francis, 1759-1821, soldier, statesman, planter.  Delegate to the Continental Congress.  Congressman from Maryland.  Voted against the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 301; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 543; Dumond, 1961, p. 61; Annals of Congress, 2 Con., 2 Session, p. 861; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 327). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 543;

MERCER, JOHN FRANCIS (May 17, 1759- August 30, 1821), soldier, congressman, and· governor of Maryland, belonged to the distinguished Mercer family of Virginia. His father, John Mercer, its founder, came of a family which originated in Chester, England. Born in Ireland, he emigrated in 1720 to Virginia, where he became known as an able lawyer and wealthy man of affairs. By his first wife, Catherine Mason, he had ten children, one of whom was James Mercer [q.v.]. His second wife, the mother of John Francis, was Ann Roy of Essex County, Virginia. The son, fifth of her nine children, was born at "Marlborough," his father's estate in Stafford County, Virginia, and received his higher education at the College of William and Mary. Since war with England seemed inevitable, early in 1776 he enlisted as lieutenant in the 3rd Virginia Regiment. He was promoted to a captaincy September 11, 1777, and in the following year became aide-de-camp to General Charles Lee [q.v.]. When, after the battle of Monmouth, the latter was court-martialed and disgraced, Mercer resigned his commission (October 1779) and returned to Virginia. In the fall of 1780 he reentered the war as lieutenant-colonel of infantry under General Lawson; and the following May he recruited a small group of cavalry to aid Lafayette, under whom he served for a short time. He then raised a corps of militia grenadiers, whom he commanded, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

During the first interval in his military service (1779-80) Mercer studied law for a year at Williamsburg under the direction of Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia; and between his service under Lawson and that under Lafayette he practised law at Fredericksburg. This appears to have been the extent of his experience as an active practitioner. Subsequently, he devoted most of his time to politics. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782 and in 1785-86. In December 1782, he was elected member of Congress from Virginia, to succeed Edmund Randolph who had resigned; and the following year he was reelected. Early in 1785 he married Sophia Sprigg of Maryland, and soon thereafter took up his residence at "Cedar Park," an estate in Anne Arundel County inherited by his wife from her father. He was a member from Maryland of the Federal Convention of 1787, and was so strongly opposed to the centralizing character of the document drawn up that he left before the gathering finished its work. As a delegate to the Maryland ratification convention, he spoke and voted against the Constitution; and after it was adopted, aligned himself with the Republicans. He was a member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1788-89 and 1791-92. Elected in 1791 to the federal House of Representatives to take the place of William Pinkney, resigned, he was reelected, but resigned his seat in April 1794 and retired to "Cedar Park." This terminated his career in national office.

He was again a member of the state House of Delegates in 1800-01, and in November 1801 was chosen Republican governor of Maryland by the state Assembly. The term of governorship was one year, and in the following autumn he was reelected. During his incumbency a constitutional amendment providing for manhood suffrage and vote by ballot was adopted, but Mercer appears to have had no special part in bringing this action about. His second term as governor ended, he served in the House of Delegates, 1803-06. When the trouble with England began in Jefferson's administration, he broke with the Republicans, virtually allied himself with the Federalists, and worked hard to avert war.  During his last few years; because of poor health, he lived quietly at "Cedar Park." Death came to him in Philadelphia, where he was seeking medical aid. Margaret Mercer [q.v.] was his daughter.

[The biographical sketch in H. E. Buchholz's Governors of Maryland (1908) contains many errors, but the article by James Mercer Garnett in Maryland Historical Magazine, September 1907, is dependable and quotes some rare documents. See also, in addition to the Annals of Congress and Maryland legislative journals: J. M. Garnett, Genealogy of the Mercer-Garnett Family of Essex County,. Virginia (1910); W. C. Ford, The Writings of George Washington, volumes XI, XII (1891); The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Ed.), volumes VIII, IX, XI (1903-04); Gaillard Hunt, The Writings of James Madison (9 volumes, 1900-10); S. M. Hamilton, The Writings of James Monroe (7 volumes, 1898-1903); Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (3: volumes, 1911) E. G. Swem and J. W. Williams, A Registry of the Geno. Assembly of Virginia (1918); F. B. Heitman, Historical Registry of Officers of the Continental Army (1893); Baltimore Patriot and Mercantile Advertiser, September 8, 1821.]

M. W.W.


MERCER, Margaret, 1791-1846, abolitionist, anti-slavery activist, reformer, educator.  Slave holder who freed her slaves in 1846 and paid their way to Liberia. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 545; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 331).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 545;

MERCER, MARGARET (July 1, 1791-September 17, 1846), anti-slavery worker and educator, was born in Annapolis, Maryland, the daughter of John Francis Mercer [q.v.] and his wife, Sophia Sprigg. Most of her childhood was spent in Annapolis, while her father filled various public offices, or at "Cedar Park," the estate of her maternal grandfather in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, which was the country home of the Mercer family for many years. She had a superior mind and a strong scholarly bent, and her education, carefully supervised by her father, was exceptional for a woman of her period.

From a religious motive, she began in her early youth to devote herself energetically to altruistic service. To Sunday schools-which then offered elementary education to the poor, as well as religious instruction-she gave time and money, working in connection with her church, the Protestant Episcopal. For the Greeks, then struggling for independence from Turkey, she also helped raise funds. Through many years, however, her chief interest was probably the antislavery cause as represented by the activities of the American Colonization Society, which aimed, through the removal of free negroes to Liberia, to encourage manumission and thereby ultimately to eliminate slavery from the United States. She urged emancipation upon others and after her father's death set an example by freeing her share of the family slaves and sending to Liberia those who were willing to go. She also raised money to purchase the freedom of other slaves, and for educational work in Liberia.

Much of the later part of her life was given to teaching. Cedar Park Institute, her first school, was conducted in her home; but later she moved her school to Franklin, near Baltimore; and, finally, settled at Belmont, near Leesburg, Virginia, where, on a run-down farm, she started a new boarding-school for girls which soon became noted for its high academic standards and strong religious and moral influence. In the interest of spiritual and ethical training, she wrote two books: Studies for Bible Classes, published some time before 1841, and Popular Lectures on Ethics or Moral Obligation for the Use of Schools (1837). The Belmont school soon developed into what was virtually a social settlement, including a little church built from money she had raised. The humble inhabitants of the region brought their problems to the leaders of the school, and sent their children to the free classes which it offered in primary subjects and agriculture. During most of Margaret Mercer's busy life she was handicapped by frail health, due to a tendency to tuberculosis; and from this disease she died in the home which she had developed in Virginia.

[Caspar Morris, Memoir of Miss Margaret Mercer (1848), which is a eulogy rather than a biography, contains many of her letters, and is the fullest account of her life; her Popular Lectures on Ethics, referred to above, throws light upon her ideals and intellectual ability; obituaries appeared in the Maryland Colonization Journal, November 1846, and the Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D. C.), September 22, 1846. See also J. M. Garnett, Genealogy of the Mercer-Garnett Family of Essex County, Virginia (1910).]

M. W.W.


MERCUR, Ulysses (August 12, 1818-June 6, 1887), congressman.  In 1856 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. He had been a Democrat, but he favored free-soil doctrines and opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. In 1860 he went so far as to serve as a presidential elector on the Lincoln and Hamlin ticket.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p.

MERCUR, ULYSSES (August 12, 1818-June 6, 1887), congressman, jurist, a son of Henry and Mary (Watts) Mercur, was of Austrian ancestry. His father, who was educated abroad, returned to America and settled in 1809 at Towanda, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, where Ulysses was born. His early life was spent on a farm and in the common-schools of the vicinity. When sixteen years old he became a clerk in his brother's country store. His father intended to establish him as a farmer, but because of the boy's desire to go to college, he sold his farm in order to finance his son's schooling. Ulysses entered Jefferson College at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania (later merged with 'Washington College at Washington, Pennsylvania, to form Washington and Jefferson College), and graduated in 1842. He read law with Judge William McKennan and in 1843 began his career as a lawyer at Towanda. On January 12, 1850, he married Sarah Simpson Davis. In 1856 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. He had been a Democrat, but he favored free-soil doctrines and opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. In 1860 he went so far as to serve as a presidential elector on the Lincoln and Hamlin ticket. He was associated with the group which was led by Galusha A. Grow and David Wilmot, and upon the election of Wilmot to the Senate in 1860 was appointed to fill his place as presiding judge of the thirteenth judicial district of Pennsylvania. At the election for the next full term as judge, he was chosen without opposition, and he served in this position till March 4, 1865.

Mercur was elected to Congress in 1864 and served continuously as a member of the lower house from March 4, 1865, to December 2, 1872. In Congress he was particularly active as an advocate of the extreme measures in dealing with the Southern States, and as an opponent of luxury taxes, especially the taxes on tea and coffee. In connection with Reconstruction, he once said that if the Southern states "will not respect the stars they must feel the stripes of our glorious flag" (Heverly, post, II, p. 123). He resigned as a member of Congress to become associate justice of the supreme court of Pennsylvania. He held this position from 1872 till 1883, and from 1883 till his death in 1887 he was· chief justice of the court. He died at Wallingford, Pennsylvania, and was buried at Towanda. Just as the distinctive policy of his group in Congress in connection with Reconstruction was reversed and discredited, so his conception of the judiciary was soon regarded as antiquated. As a judge, he was described by an associate as "conservative and cautious, looking to the old landmarks" (116 Pennsylvania, xxiii). By the end of his career the old landmarks were rapidly being destroyed by the necessity of adjusting government and law to conditions alien to his generation.

[Sources include: Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); 116 Pennsylvania Reports, xix-xxxi; Legal Intelligencer (Philadelphia), June 10, 17, 1887; Pittsburgh Legal Journal, June 8, 15, 1887; H. C. Bradsby, History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania (1891); C. F. Heverly, Pioneer and Patriot Families of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, volume II (1915); the Press (Philadelphia), June 7, 1887. Mercur's judicial opinions are in 73-116 Pennsylvania Reports.]

W. B-n. 


MERRILL, Samuel (October 29, 1792-August 24, 1855), Indiana official. During the existence of the Whig party, he adhered to it-with a strong anti-slavery leaning-and was an active party worker.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p.

MERRILL, SAMUEL (October 29, 1792-August 24, 1855), Indiana official, was the second of nine sons of Jesse and Priscilla (Kimball) Merrill of Peacham, Vermont. His first American ancestor, Nathaniel Merrill, settled at Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1635. Samuel Merrill attended an academy at Peacham and studied for a year, 1812-13, as a sophomore at Dartmouth College. He then taught school and studied law for three years at York, Pennsylvania. In r 816 he settled at Vevay, Switzerland County, Indiana, in the next year was admitted to the bar, and soon took his place as an active member of the community. Appointed tax assessor, he made the round of the county on foot for necessary economy; he was a contractor in the erection of a stone jail; superintendent of a town Sunday school started as early as 1817; and a representative of the county in the General Assemblies of 1819-20, 1820-21, and 1821-22. The General Assembly elected him state treasurer on December 14, 1822, and he held the office for four terms, till 1834. In 1824 he moved the state offices from Corydon to Indianapolis, one wagon sufficing for all the records and money. It took el even or twelve days to cover the distance (125 miles by present highways); the road through the wilderness was im passable in some places, and a new way had to be cut through the woods.

He lived henceforth at the capital. In the absence of teachers, he personally conducted a school; he acted for a time as captain of the first military company, served as a commissioner for the erection of the state capitol building, which was finished in 1835, was an early president of the Temperance Society, a manager of the State Colonization Society, a trustee of Wabash College, and the second president of the Indiana Historical Society, 1835-48. He was active in the organization of the Second Presbyterian Church (New School) and an intimate friend of Henry Ward Beecher during his pastorate. On January 30, 1834, the General Assembly elected him president of the State Bank of Indiana. In this capacity he personally examined each of the thirteen branches twice a year. An excellent law and the efficient service of such officers a s Merrill, Hugh McCulloch, and J. F. D. Lanier [qq.v.] combined to develop one of the best of all the state banks. After two terms in the office, Merrill was replaced by the choice of a Democratic legislature. From 1844 to 1848 he was president of the Madison & Indianapolis Railroad, during which time it was completed to Indianapolis. He spent the next two years compiling a third edition of the Indiana Gazetteer and in 1850 he bought Hood and Noble's bookstore, which later, under the name of the Merrill Company, undertook some publishing and event usually entered into the Bowen-Merrill (now the Bobbs-Merrill) publishing company. He also, with others, constructed a mill on Fall Creek.

On April 12, 1818, Merrill married Lydia Jane Anderson of Vevay, daughter of Capt. Robert and Catherine (Dumont) Anderson. Ten children were born to them. Aft er his wife's death in 1847, he was married, second, to Elizabeth Douglas Young, of Madison, Indiana. Throughout his life he was the personification of traditional New England Puritanism: conscientious, industrious, and devout. He is said to have read the entire Bible every year after he reached the age of twelve. The square-cut features, tightly closed lips, and clean-shaven face shown in most of his portraits reveal a sober, straightforward, uncompromising character. A bitter, twenty-four page pamphlet which he published in 1827 attacking Gov. James Brown Ray illustrates the  roughness with which he performed "an unpleasant task." During the existence of the Whig party, he adhered to it-with a strong anti-slavery leaning-and was an active party worker. He died in Indianapolis and was buried in Greenlawn Cemetery, […].

C. B. C.


MERRILL, Selah (May 2, 1837-January 22, 1909), Congregational clergyman, archeologist, consul. In 1864 he was ordained as a Congregational minister, and was appointed chaplain of the 49th United States Infantry, a colored regiment, with which he served at Vicksburg, 1864-65.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p.

MERRILL, SELAH (May 2, 1837-January 22, 1909), Congregational clergyman, archeologist, consul, was born at Canton Center, Hartford County, Connecticut. His parents, Daniel Merrill and Lydia (Richards), sprang from old New England stock; an ancestor, Nathaniel Merrill (or Merrell, as the name was then spelled), is known to have been at Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1635. After preparing for college at Westfield, Massachusetts, as well as at Williston Seminary, Easthampton, Merrill entered Yale with the class of 1863, but left college before graduation to study at the Yale Divinity School. In 1864 he was ordained as a Congregational minister, and was appointed chaplain of the 49th United States Infantry, a colored regiment, with which he served at Vicksburg, 1864-65. After the war he preached in Le Roy, New York, 1867, San Francisco, 1867-68, and Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, 1870-72.

Though he received the honorary degree of A.M. from Yale "for special services in Biblical learning," and spent two years (1868-70) at the University of Berlin, his lack of an adequate academic training was later to affect the value of his work very seriously. His interest in the Holy Land was whetted by an extended tour through Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, in 1869, but it was not until 1874 that his archeological career began. Before it was well under way he had been thrice married: first, March 15, 1866, to Fanny Lucinda Cooke, who died the following year; then, September 16, 1868, to Phila (Wilkins) Fargo, who died in 1870; and on April 27., 1875, to Adelaide Brewster Taylor, a direct descendant of Elder Brewster of the Mayflower.

[Annual of American Schools of Oriental Research, volume VIII (1928); Merrill's own books, especially East of the Jordan; Samuel Merrill, “A Merrill Memorial" (1917-28), 2 volumes, mimeographed, in Library of Congress; Congregationalist Year-Book, 1910; Who's Who in America, 1908-09; Congregationalist, January 30, 1909; San Francisco Examiner, January 23, 1909.] ·

W. F. A.


MERRILL, Stephen Mason (September 16, 1825-November 12, 1905) Methodist Episcopal bishop and writer,  Merrill, though not a radical, was against slavery and supported the Union.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p.

MERRILL, STEPHEN MASON (September 16, 1825-November 12, 1905) Methodist Episcopal bishop and writer, was born near Mount Pleasant, Jefferson County, Ohio, the fifth in a family of eleven children. His father, Joshua, was a farmer and shoemaker of New Hampshire birth and Revolutionary ancestry, descended from Nathaniel Merrill who settled at Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1635; his mother, Rhoda (Crosson), was the daughter of a Revolution ary soldier of Bedford, Pennsylvania. Both were plain pioneers, with small school learning, but characterized by sturdy moral fib er and strict Methodist piety. Stephen grew up in Clermont County, Ohio. His schooling ceased after a term or two in the rural academy at South-Salem. He learned his father's trade of shoemaker, but did not stick to his last, for having "experienced religion," after the thorough Methodist manner, he joined the Methodist Society at Greenfield, Ohio, in 1842, and resolutely set about preparing himself to preach the gospel, working at his bench by day and toiling over his books far into the night. In his twentieth year, when he was teaching school, he was licensed to preach. Two weeks before he was twenty-one he was admitted to Ohio Conference on trial and appointed to Georgetown, a "hardscrabble" circuit of twenty-two preaching places. On July 18, 1848, he married Anna Bellmire, who survived him by only a few days. They had one son.

Ordained deacon in 1849 and elder in 1851, Merrill rode hard circuits, read hard books, and meditated for eleven years. His salary was $216 and "table exercises." Then h e w as advanced to be pastor of a church, and from that position rose to the captaincy of a district, as presiding elder. In 1859 he was transferred to Kentucky Conference, but in 1863 returned to Ohio Conference. During these years he conquered a tendency to pulmonary disease and acquired rugged health. He also developed unusual gifts as a close student of the doctrines and especially the discipline of his denomination, and won recognition for power of lucid and logical statement in the public forum and in the church press.

Nor was he solely concerned with defending Arminian theology and Methodist polity against polemic Calvinists, Universalists, and others. In that seething ante-bellum period, his sound judgment, deep conviction, and knowledge of constitutional law were thrown into the discussions that sprang up wherever men gathered. Merrill, though not a radical agitator, was against slavery and for the Union. In his first General Conference (1868) he made his reputation as a Methodist leader, when his unanswerable argument defeated the popular project for admitting laymen to the Methodist legislature without duly amending the constitution. The General Conference was so impressed with his ability, " mental equipoise, mastery of constitutional principle and clearness of expression" that it elected him, though a newcomer, to the editorship of the Western Christian Advocate (Cincinnati). After four years in the editorial chair, where he gave ample demonstration of his intellectual resources, he was elected a bishop (1872). For eight years he resided in St. Paul, Minn. He was then assigned to Chicago, where he made his headquarters thereafter. In 1904 he retired from active duty at his own request, and died suddenly the following year while on a visit in Keyport, New Jersey.

Merrill's talents were rather solid than showy, and he had not the imaginative qualities essential to popularity a s a preacher or occasional orator. He was no revivalist or stump speaker, but his power of massive argument, which his admirers likened to that of Daniel Webster, bore down all opposition. His knowledge of Methodist law was encyclopedic, and all his resources were at instant call. Physically he was tall and gaunt, with head of unusual size and the features of a Roman senator. He had a voice whose heavy tones were under complete control, a n d he pursued the course of his thought to its conclusion unruffled by contrary argument. As a bishop his calm judgment and dispassionate attachment to known principles of law made him a useful counselor. Only one man, Joshua Soule [q.v.], is rated his superior as an expounder of the Methodist constitution. In 1888 Merrill wrote the Episcopal Address to the General Conference, out of which came in substance those sections of the present constitution of the Methodist Episcopal Church which treat of the composition, powers, and limitations of the General Conference. He shone as a parliamentarian, and was a model presiding officer. In his handling of men in the appointive function of the episcopacy he was wise, sympathetic, and just. His quiet humor eased many difficult situations. His most valuable book was A Digest of Methodist Law (1885). Other works included: Christian Baptism (1876); The New Testament Idea of Hell (1878); The Second Coming of Christ (1879); Aspects of Christian Experience (copyright 1882); Outline Thoughts on Prohibition (1886); The Organic Union of American Methodism (1892); Mary of Nazareth and Her Family (1895); The Crisis of This World (1896); Sanctification (1901); Atonement (copyright 1901); Discourses on Miracles (copyright 1902).

[R. J. Cooke, "Bishop Stephen Mason Merrill," M eth. Review, May 1907; Western Christian Advocate, September 2, 1896; Christian Advocate (New York), September 17, 1896; autobiographical statement in Journal of the Twenty-fourth Delegated General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1904); Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1846-51 (1854); Samuel Merrill, "A Merrill Memorial" (1917-28), 2 volumes, mimeographed, in Library of Congress; J. B. Doyle, 20th Century History of Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio (1910); New York Daily Tribune, November 14, 1905.]

J.R.J.


MERRITT, Timothy, 1775-1845, clergyman, opposed to slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 308)


MIFFLIN, Warner, 1745-1798, Virginia, Elder of the Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist leader.  Delegate of the Delaware Abolition Society.  Lobbied to pass 1782 Virginia law for private manumission of slaves.  Wrote A Serious Expostulation with the Members of the House of Representatives of the United States. 

(Basker, 2005; Bruns, 1977; Drake, 1950, pp. 75-76, 93, 95, 105, 107-108, 112-113; Dumond, 1961, pp. 20, 76; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 319-320)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 608; 

MIFFLIN, WARNER (October 21, 1745-October 16, 1798), Quaker reformer, son of Daniel and Mary (Warner) Mifflin, was born in Accomac County, Virginia, whither his grandfather, Edward, had removed from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a descendant of John Mifflin who emigrated from 'Wiltshire, England, sometime before 1680 and finally settled at "Fountain Green," now a part of Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. On May 14, 1767, ·warner married Elizabeth Johns, of Maryland, by whom he had nine children, and on October 9, 1788, Ann Emlen, of Philadelphia, by whom he had three. During most of his mature life he lived on his farm, "Chestnut Grove," near Camden, Del. (Justice, post, pp. 16-19).

He was a man of mild manner, always charitably inclined, yet of intense convictions. As early as 1775 he was arguing against "the pernicious use of ardent spirits." During the American Revolution he adhered to the Quaker peace principles and shared in · the obloquy thereby entailed. He refused to have the least part in supporting the war, even to the use of Continental paper money. Consequently, he was dubbed a Tory, and his patriot neighbors made serious threats against him. While General Howe was in Philadelphia and General Washington on the outskirts of the city, Mifflin was one of a committee of six appointed by the Friends' Yearly Meeting in 1777 to visit both commanders-in-chief and present printed copies of the "Testimonies" against participation in war. They went without passports through the lines of both armies and accomplished their mission.

When he was fourteen years old, on his father's plantation in Virginia, one of the younger slaves, talking with him in the fields, had convinced him of the injustice of the slave system. He soon determined never to be a slave-holder. Later, however, he came into possession of several slaves through his first wife and from his father and mother. After a period of indecision, in 1774-75 he manumitted all his slaves (Justice, p. 39). Supersensitive to the promptings of conscience, he even paid them for their services after the age of twenty-one years. Thereafter, he traveled much in Quaker communities urging Friends to free their slaves. In the same cause he appeared before various legislative bodies including, in 1782, that of Virginia, where a law was passed in May of that year removing the former prohibitions against the private manumission of slaves (W. W. Hening, Statutes at Large, volume XI, 1823, p. 39). Between 1783 and 1797 he helped to draw up, or to present to the Congress of the United States various petitions against slavery and the slave trade. One, dated 1789, helped to start an important debate on the powers of Congress over slavery and the slave trade under the new Constitution. In 1793 he published over his own name, A Serious Expostulation with the Members of the House of Representatives of the United States (Philadelphia 1793 and various reprints), in which he presented with no little force the anti-slavery case. In 1796, his motives and methods having been attacked by his opponents, he published in Philadelphia The Defence of Warner Mifflin against Aspersions Cast on Him on Account of his Endeavors to Promote Righteousness, Mercy and Peace, among Mankind. In this pamphlet he sketched the activities of his life and defended his stand on such subjects as slavery, peace, and temperance.

In 1798 he attended the Yearly Meeting of Friends held in Philadelphia and at that time, apparently, contracted the yellow fever which was then so prevalent in that city. He died of the disease soon after returning to his home in Delaware, aged about fifty-three years.

[The most accessible and fullest source of information is Hilda Justice, Life and Ancestry of Warner Mifflin (1905), containing reprints of Quaker records and other important documentary material; the most important manuscript Quaker records for the period are at 304 Arch Street, Philadelphia; about a dozen letters by Mifflin are in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The most reliable of contemporary accounts of Mifflin's life are his own memoir in Defence of Warner Mifflin, cited above, and a "Testimony" by his friend George Churchman, in Friends' Miscellaneous, June 1832. See also J. H. Merrill, Memoranda Relating to the Mifflin Family (privately printed, 1890).]

R.W.K.  


MILLER, Elizabeth Smith, 1822-1911, feminist dress reformer, abolitionist.  Active in women’s suffrage and rights.  Originated bloomer costume for women. 

(American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 479; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 587-589; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936)


MILLER, Jonathan Peckham, 1797-1847, reformer, and anti-slavery advocate. He served in the Vermont legislature, and in 1833 initiated the anti-slavery movement in the legislature by introducing a resolution calling upon the Vermont representatives in Congress to urge the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Miller devoted much of his energy and money to the anti-slavery cause, lecturing throughout the state. In 1840, as one of the two Vermont delegates, he attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London where he took a prominent part in the debates.   

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 328)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 632; 

MILLER, JONATHAN PECKHAM (February 24, 1796-February 17, 1847), Greek sympathizer and anti-slavery advocate, was born in Randolph, Vermont the son of Heman and Deimia (Walbridge) Miller (Vital Records, Office of the Secretary of State, Montpelier, Vermont). Upon his father's death in 1799 he was taken in charge by an uncle, Jonathan Peckham, and on the latter's death, about 1805, by Capt. John Granger of Randolph. In 1813, having completed his common-school education, young Miller went to Woodstock, Vermont, to learn the tanner's trade, but ill health soon caused him to return to the Granger home where he remained for the next four years. A love of adventure and military life, as well as patriotism, led him to join the town volunteers under Capt. Libbeus Egerton who marched to repel the British invasion that ended at Plattsburg. The Randolph forces arrived too late, however, to take part in the fighting. In 1817, he enlisted as a private in the United States army, in which he served for two years, being stationed on the northern frontier. A recurrence of ill health then caused his return to Randolph, where he attended the local academy and fitted for college. In the fall of 1821 he entered Dartmouth, but a few weeks later removed to the University of Vermont, where he pursued his studies until May 24, 1824, when fire destroyed the college buildings. Rather than wait to finish his college course at Vermont, or transfer elsewhere, he now determined to offer his services to the Greek revolutionists, inspired, no doubt, by his classical studies, by the wave of sympathy for Greece then at its height in western Europe and the United States, and by his own spirit of adventure. From Governor Van Ness he secured a letter introducing him to the Greek Association of Boston, which in turn gave him letters to the Greek government at Missolonghi, as well as $300 for his expenses.

He sailed for Malta August 21, 1824, and from there made his way to Missolonghi, where he reported to Dr. Mayer and General George Jarvis, on whose staff he became a colonel in the Greek service. During the next two years Miller's military exploits won for him the name of "The American Dare Devil." He was among those who took part in the valiant but futile defense of Missolonghi, escaping in the last sortie. A few months later he returned to the United States to lecture throughout the northern and middle states in the Greek cause. In February 1827, he returned to Greece as principal agent of the New York Greek Committee. In this service he spent about a year, turning over to the Greeks food and clothing to the value of more than $75,000. On returning to America, he published The Condition of Greece in 1827 and 1828 (1828), being his journal as kept by order of the Greek Committee. At this time he brought back with him a Greek youth, Lucas Miltiades, whom he adopted and educated. He also brought to the United States the sword worn by Lord Byron in Greece, now in the possession of the Vermont Historical Society.

After his second return from Greece, he settled in Montpelier, Vermont, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and opened a law office in company with Nicholas Baylies. For three years, 1831, 1832, and 1833, he served in the Vermont legislature, and in 1833 initiated the anti-slavery movement in the legislature by introducing a resolution calling upon the Vermont representatives in Congress to urge the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. From this time on, Miller devoted much of his energy and money to the anti-slavery cause, lecturing throughout the state. In 1840, as one of the two Vermont delegates, he attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London where he took a prominent part in the debates.

As a public speaker, he was off-hand, bold and earnest. His private life was characterized by a fearless utterance of opinion and a straightforward, unstudied frankness. To these qualities he added a vigorous physical constitution and a soldierly bearing that some thought bordered on roughness. As a citizen he was public-spirited and benevolent. Samuel Gridley Howe [q.v.], with whom Miller was closely associated, describes him as "rather superficially than well educated, with an immense deal of good common sense, an acute mind, but self-opinionated, and bigoted in religion, which he reads and argues about rather to confirm his belief than to examine the subject" (Richards, post, p. 120). He died prematurely in Montpelier as the result of an accidental injury to his spine, leaving a wife and one child. He had married Sarah Arms, daughter of Capt. Jonathan Arms, on June 26, 1828.

[Material for the above was drawn in part from the sketch of Col. Miller's life found in D. P. Thompson, History of the Town of Montpelier (1860); the same sketch appears in A. M. Hemenway, Vermont Historical Gazetteer, volume IV (1882), p. 457. For further light on Miller's Greek adventure consult his Condition of Greece in I827 and I828 (1828) mentioned above, and Letters from Greece (1825) by Miller and others. See also L. E. Richards, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe: The Greek Revolution (1906); M. A. Cline, American Attitude toward the Greek War of Independence (1930); E. M. Earle, "American Interest in the Greek Cause 1821-r'827," in American Historical Review, October 1927; Vermont Patriot (Montpelier), February 18, 1847.]

W. R. W.


MILLER, Samuel F., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888; Congressional Globe)


MILLER, Samuel Freeman, 1816-1890, lawyer, jurist, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  Supported emancipation.  Leader of the Republican Party.  Appointed by Abraham Lincoln as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 328-329; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 637; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 516). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, p. 637; 

MILLER, SAMUEL FREEMAN (April 5, 1816-October 13, 1890), associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, was born at Richmond in the blue-grass region of Kentucky. His father, Frederick Miller, was a Pennsylvania German who had gone west in 1812. His mother was Patsy Freeman, whose family had emigrated from North Carolina. In 1836, without formal education, Miller entered the medical department of Transylvania University, at Lexington. He attended lectures for one year and then settled at Barbourville," county seat of Knox County, on the road leading down from Cumberland Gap. The autumn of 1837 found him back at Transylvania, where on March 9, 1838, he was "examined c1nd received" for the degree of M.D. For the next twelve years he practised medicine in the mountain community about Barbourville. Here he married Lucy Ballinger, whose family was locally prominent. In the spring of 1837 the young men of the town formed a debating society. From the start Miller was its most active member. Here current political questions were threshed out, and Miller came to recognize that he had a flair for statecraft. He became a justice of the peace and a member of the county court. Surreptitiously he studied law, and on March 22, 1847, he was admitted to the bar of Knox County.

Like most of his neighbors, Miller was a Whig. He favored the gradual abolition of slavery in Kentucky, and aspired, unsuccessfully, to membership in the constitutional convention of 1849 where slavery was to be a leading issue. When the peculiar institution was fastened more firmly upon the state, he decided to seek a more congenial sphere of action. In 1850 with his wife and children he moved to Keokuk, Iowa, and formed the law partnership of Reeves & Miller. Shortly afterward he was left a widower, and in 1857, his partner having died, he was married to the latter's widow, Elizabeth (Winter) Reeves. While his practice was increasing he found time to engage in the organization of the Republican party, and in projects for building plank roads and railroads. He was a candidate for the nomination for governor in 1861. During the early months of the war he drew upon his meager resources to advance funds to meet the state's unforeseen needs. In 1862 President Lincoln was under the necessity of making nominations for the Supreme Court. To him a sound view on public questions was a better recommendation than profundity of legal learning, and Miller was actively supported by the Iowa delegation, which circulated a recommendation among the members of both houses of Congress, and by the lawyers of several western states. On July 16, 1862, he was nominated and unanimously confirmed as an associate justice. He was at the time the chairman of the district Republican committee at Keokuk.

The development in power and authority of this self-made jurist is interesting. His training had been woefully unsystematic but was such as tended to develop independence of judgment and capacity for hard thinking. In later years he came to recognize the superiority in education and training enjoyed by leading eastern jurists. Yet with a certain self-satisfaction he insisted that it was "from some western prairie town ... that future Marshalls and Mansfields shall arise and give new impulses and add new honor to the profession of the law" (Albany Law Journal, July 5, 1879, p. 29). His first term was Taney's last but one, and though Miller had cherished a hatred of the author of the Dred Scott opinion, the newest and the eldest of the justices parted fast friends. Throughout the war and reconstruction no judge was more stanch than Miller in the support of national authority. When in Ex parte Garland (4 Wallace, 333) the Court held that the requirement of a test oath of former loyalty from lawyers, teachers, and ministers amounted to an ex post facto law and a bill of attainder, Miller and the other Republicans argued that the measure was constitutional and proper. He was with the majority in the Legal Tender Cases (12 Wallace, 457) when by the advent of Justices Strong and Bradley this feature of the war program was narrowly saved from judicial repudiation.

A characteristic opinion is that in Crandall vs. Nevada (6 Wallace, 35). The legislature had imposed a tax on every person leaving the state. The Court was unanimous in holding the tax unconstitutional. Miller, as its spokesman, relied upon the broadest considerations of policy: "The people of these United States constitute one nation. They have a government in which all of them are deeply interested .... That government has a right to call to this point [the capital] any or all of its citizens to aid in its service .... The citizen also has correlative rights. He has the right to come to the seat of government to assert any claim he may have· upon that government, or to transact any business he may have with it." Thus the tax was objectionable in that it conflicted with these implications of the nature of the union and of federal citizenship. In Loan Association vs. Topeka (20 Wallace, 655), a question of great contemporary importance was raised: Might a state or municipality grant public funds to aid a private enterprise? Miller approached the problem not in the light of constitutional provisions, but of his conception of natural law. "It must be conceded that there are ... rights in every free government beyond the control of the State. A government which recognized no such rights, which held the lives, the liberty, and the property of its citizens subject at all times to the absolute disposition and unlimited control of even the most democratic depository of power, is after all but a despotism . . . . There are limitations on such [public] power which grow out of the essential nature of all free governments. Implied reservations of individual rights, without which the social compact could not exist, and which are respected by all governments entitled to the name .... There can be no lawful tax which is not laid for a public purpose."

A courageous and emphatic dissent was that in Gelpcke vs. City of Dubuque (1 Wallace, 175) in Miller's second year on the bench. The city had issued bonds for the purchase of railroad stock, under the authority of a state law which had been held good at the time of the issue. Subsequently the state supreme court reversed itself and held the statute ultra vires. A foreign bondholder brought suit on the bonds in the federal courts. Would the Supreme Court, as in most other cases, accept the jurisprudence of the state court as the rule of decision ? The mischief seemed so great that the majority upheld the validity of the bonds. Two of Miller's deepest convictions united in compelling his dissent. First, he was always opposed to any tendency to allow a state to grant away its taxing power. Time and again in the next twenty years he dissented on this score. Then again, though a nationalist, he was impressed with the importance of maintaining an ample autonomy for state governments. He was strong in his belief that it was not the function of federal courts to sit in judgment on state courts expounding state law.

The latter conviction appears more maturely in the Slaughter House Cases (16 Wallace, 36). The Carpet-bag government of Louisiana granted a monopoly of the slaughtering business at New Orleans. Rival butchers contended that this action abridged their privileges and immunities as citizens of the United States and was a denial of due process of law and equal protection of the laws. Thus the Fourteenth Amendment came to receive its fir st authoritative construction at the hands of the Court. A majority of five, speaking through Miller, started from the proposition that there is a distinction between those rights which inhere in state citizenship and those which inhere in federal citizenship. It was only the latter with which the new amendment dealt. The monopoly might deny the plaintiffs some right conferred by the state constitution; but no federal privilege or immunity had been abridged. To hold otherwise, said Miller,. "would constitute this court a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States." The argument on due process and equal protection of the laws was briefly answered with the prophecy that "we doubt very much whether any action of a State not directed by way of discrimination against the negroes as a class ... will ever be held to come within the purview of this provision."

This was not a scholastic discussion of state rights: it signified that the majority of the Court refused to read into the words of a Reconstruction amendment a promise of federal protection of vested property rights against the exertions of state power. Thus the nationalizing purposes of some of the Radical Republican authors of the amendment were frustrated. In the long run Miller's effort was somewhat unsuccessful, for those implications which he severed from the "privileges and immunities" clause were later grafted on to the "due process" clause of the same amendment.

Miller was more concerned with the practical result of a decision than with its doctrinal basis. Mere precedents were unimpressive aside from the authority of the judges who made them. He was disposed to let no technicalities stand in the way of what seemed right or just. Thus in United States vs. Lee (106 U. S., 196) he held that "no man in this country is so high that he is above the law," adding that, notwithstanding a government's immunity to suit, an action of ejectment may be maintained against an officer who holds the possession of property under an invalid title claimed by the United States. In the case involving a federal marshal who was being held for the killing of a citizen who had attacked Justice Field on circuit (In re Neagle, 135 U. S., 1), Miller held that it is an obligation of the President, fairly inferrible from the Constitution, to protect federal judges, and that the marshal had been acting in pursuance of "a law" of the United States, and was therefore entitled to be liberated on a writ of habeas corpus from the custody of the state authorities. Notwithstanding this tendency to view legal questions in the large, Miller could, on occasion, engage in minute hair-splitting (Kring vs. Missouri, 107 U.S., 221; Medley, Petitioner, 134 U.S., 160). Of the nobility and generosity of Miller's nature there is ample evidence. Yet he felt that he was, as Chief Justice Chase said, "beyond question, the dominant personality . . . upon the bench" (Strong, post, p. 247). With this confidence came a certain blunt impatience with lesser minds and with futile arguments. The reference to him as "that damned old Hippopotamus" by one attorney in his circuit court was not unnatural (Gregory, post, p. 60). Miller was anxious to accelerate the administration of justice, and advocated a curtailment of the appellate jurisdiction of the Court (United States Jurist, January 1872, Western Jurist, February 1872). He never achieved the chief justiceship, though he was more than once considered for the position.

On the bench Miller retained his interest in the Republican party. He was one of the majority in the Electoral Commission of 1876. Yet he was content to rely upon his judicial labors to win his name immortality, and unlike Chase and Field refrained from gazing toward the presidency. Yet he would have been quite willing to become a compromise candidate if the convention of 1884 had become deadlocked. In stature he was tall and massive. He looked, dressed, and acted the part of a great magistrate. He enjoyed good living and bright company. In the midst of this satisfying life he found no opportunity to save money and died almost penniless. He was in active service on the supreme bench and as circuit justice until the day of his death, which occurred at his residence in Washington. During his tenure of office he participated in more than five thousand decisions of the Court. In more than six hundred cases he was its spokesman. Of 478 cases which required a construction of the federal Constitution, he was the organ of the Court in almost twice the normal quota for one justice.

[See C. N. Gregory, Samuel Freeman Miller (1907); Horace Stern. "Samuel Freeman Miller, 1816-1890," in W. D. Lewis, Great American Lawyers, volume VI (1909); Henry Strong, "Justice Samuel Freeman Miller," in Annals of Iowa, January 1894; Proceedings of the Bench and Bar of the Supreme Court of the U. S. in Memoriam-Samuel F. Miller (1891); Miss. Valley Historical Review, March 1931; Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in U. S. History (1922), volume III; the Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), October 14, 1890. Information as to certain facts was supplied for this sketch by members of Miller's family. In 1891 a series of Lectures on the Constitution by Miller was posthumously published.]

C. F.


MILLS, Samuel John (April 21, 1783-June 16, 1818), Congregational clergyman,  He became particularly interested in the negroes, however, and when the American Colonization Society was formed in 1817 he at offered his services.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 15-16;

MILLS, SAMUEL JOHN (April 21, 1783-June 16, 1818), Congregational clergyman, was the son of Samuel John and Esther (Robbins) Mills. His father was long pastor of the church at Torringford, Connecticut, in which town the younger Samuel was born. His original purpose was to be a farmer, but his religious experiences finally impelled him to enter the ministry. He became much concerned about his spiritual welfare in the revival of 1798, and for two years thereafter felt convinced that he would go to hell. In the autumn of 1801, however, his mother's piety enabled him to rejoice in God's perfections without considering his own future destiny, and he afterwards realized that this was his conversion. Immediately the idea came to him of going abroad to preach the gospel to the heathen, the first time probably that such an enterprise had been seriously considered in the United States.

Accordingly, in 1801, he sold a farm which had been bequeathed to him by his grandmother, and entered Morris Academy, Litchfield. In 1806 he became a student at Williams College, where, during his fir st year, he was a leader in a religious revival. He proposed to several of his friends that they should become foreign missionaries and secured from them a favorable response. Graduating in 1809, he spent a few months at Yale, in the hope of enlisting supporters of the missionary project there, but his stay was fruitless save for his discovery of Henry Obookiah, a native of the Sandwich Islands, who had recently found his way to New Haven. Early in 1810 he proceeded to Andover Theological Seminary taking Obookiah with him; Obookiah was converted soon afterwards, and his conversion resulted in the foundation a few years later of the Foreign Mission School at Cornwall, Massachusetts. While in the seminary Mills talked about missions incessantly. In June 1810, he and three of his friends presented a paper to the General Association of Massachusetts, in which they declared their desire to go as missionaries to the heathen and asked for counsel. As a result the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was formed, which in 1812 sent out ten missionaries to Calcutta, and by 1820 had eighty-one missionaries under its charge.

On his graduation from Andover in 1812, Mills was licensed to preach and was sent by the Connecticut and Massachusetts Home Missionary societies on a tour of the country beyond the Alleghanies, from Cincinnati to New Orleans, in company with John F. Schermerhorn; in 1814-15 he made a second and more extensive journey with Daniel Smith. They preached the gospel, distributed Bibles and tracts, promoted the formation of Bible societies, and collected information about the religious and moral condition of the inhabitants. They endured great hardships and were sometimes in danger of their lives from starvation, Indians, and flooded rivers. In collaboration with Schermerhorn he published in 1814. A Correct View of That Part of the United States Which Lies West of the Allegany Mountains. With Regard to, Religion and Morals, and with Smith, in 1815, part of a Missionary Tour through That Part of the United States Which Lies West of the Allegany Mountains. On June 21, 1815, Mills was ordained at Newburyport, Mass. During the next t wo years he resided at Albany, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington; and in these years he was the instigator and the chief organizer of the American Bible Society, of the United Foreign Missionary Society (formed by the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed churches), and of a school for training negro preachers. He also spent some months visiting the poor in the city of New York, and distributing Bibles and tracts. He planned a missionary tour of South America, and hop ed finally to accompany Obookiah to the Sandwich Islands.

He became particularly interested in the negroes, however, and when the American Colonization Society was formed in 1817 he at once offered his services. With Ebenezer Burgess he was dispatched to Africa to find suitable territory for purchase. They set out for England in November and were almost wrecked in a storm in which their ship was deserted by the captain, but finally made port at St. Malo. After consulting with the leaders of the English antislavery movement they sailed in February 1818 for Sierra Leone, where they spent three months negotiating with a number of native chiefs, and selecting territory for the future colony of Liberia. On the return voyage, begun May 22, 1818, Mills caught a chill, died of fever, and was buried at sea.

Few men with such slender natural endowments have accomplished more. He was quite undistinguished as a scholar, writer, or preacher; he was slow of tongue, inert in manner, and unimpressive in personality. Nevertheless, he was a good judge of men, and had considerable ability a s an organizer. His unquenchable ardor and tireless energy made him the father of foreign missionary work in the United States, and the chief creator of four important philanthropic institutions.

[Samuel Orcutt, History of Torrington, Conn. (1878); Calvin Durfee, Williams Biographical Annals (1871); General Catalog Theological Sem., Andover, Massachusetts, 1808-1908 (n.d.); Gardiner Spring, Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel J. Mills (1820); W. B. Sprague, Annals American Pulpit, volume II (1857); E. G. Stryker, Missionary Annals: A Story of One Short Life (copyright 1888); T. C. Richards, Samuel. Mills, Missionary Pathfinder, Pioneer, and Promoter (1906); Connecticut Courant (Hartford), September 8, 1818; Connecticut Journal (New Haven), September 22, 1818.]

H.B.P.


MILNOR, James, 1773-1845, Pennsylvania, opponent of slavery, lawyer, clergyman.  Member of U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, 1811-1813.  Milnor was an officer in the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in 1798. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress). 


MINER, Alonzo Ames (August 17, 1814- June 14, 1895), Universalist clergyman, president of Tufts College. In 1843, he was drawn into the anti-slavery movement and threw himself into the effort to free the slaves. His love for the church, however, was so strong that he found a double battle on his hands, for he was also opposed to the extreme reformers such as Garrison who advocated "Come-Outism" to church, members. His debates on this subject attracted large crowds.

 Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 21-22;

MINER, ALONZO AMES (August 17, 1814- June 14, 1895), Universalist clergyman, president of Tufts College, was born in Lempster, a small village in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, the second of the five children of Benajah Ames and Amanda (Carey) Miner. He was a descendant of Thomas Miner (or Minor) who emigrated to Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1629, removed to Hingham in 1636, and later joined the voyager Winthrop's colony at New London, Connecticut. Alonzo's parents had rebelled against the strict Calvinism of their time, thus becoming marked people in their community. The boy therefore grew up in the atmosphere of theological debate and early acquired an intense interest in all the issues of his day. His education was somewhat irregular and informal, due partly to the lack of advantages in the sparsely populated country, and more to the fact that a serious accident made him a semi-invalid in his early years. He attended schools in Lempster, Hopkinton, Lebanon, and Franklin, New Hampshire, and in Cavendish, Vermont. Much of his study, however, was carried on alone, with the advice and direction of clergymen.

At the age of twenty he was taken into partnership by the principal of the school at Chester, Vermont, and a year later he was called to become head of the academy at Unity, New York, where he remained for four years. On August 24, 1836, he married Maria S. Perley, whom he had known since childhood, and who now became preceptress at the academy. There were no children. Teaching, however, was only a stepping-stone to his chosen life work. When he was twenty-five years of age, he became a Universalist preacher, conducting services in various small rural communities in the neighborhood, and in 1839 he was ordained.

His first full-time pastorate was in Methuen, Massachusetts, where he quickly earned a name for himself as a public defender of his faith by engaging in frequent debates with orthodox preachers. From Methuen, he was called to a pastorate in Lowell, Mass. Here he became a public man in the ordinary sense of the term, for he began championing public causes and soon found himself in the midst of great discussions and struggles. First, he became a passionate upholder of the temperance movement, taking the extreme stand of absolute abstinence, which in those days was unpopular, and pleading that the church should espouse the cause. Next, in 1843, he was drawn into the anti-slavery movement and threw himself with characteristic abandon into the effort to free the slaves. His love for, the church, however, was so strong that he found a double battle on his hands, for he was also opposed to the extreme reformers such as Garrison who advocated "Come-Outism" to church, members. His debates on this subject attracted large crowds and gave him this reputation as a good logician and fearless fighter. In 1848, he was called to the pastorate of the School Street Church, the Second Universalist Society of Boston, as an associate of Hosea Ballou, 1771-1852 [q.v.]. With this church he remained for forty-three years, rounding out a life of distinguished service in many fields.

In 1862, he became president of Tufts College, largely because the college was in financial difficulties, and because his administrative genius, it was believed, would be adequate to the need. He served without salary, devoting heroic efforts to raising money, teaching classes, and carrying on his work as minister of the church. Through his contacts with men of means and influence, he was able finally to pull the college through its crisis, not only adding largely to the endowment, but also increasing its equipment and faculty. He resigned from the presidency of the college in 1874, and resumed his full-time connection with the church, maintaining, however, his interest in educational institutions, serving as trustee of the college, and being active in promoting the development of Dean Academy in Massachusetts and Goddard Seminary in Vermont. He died in Boston, after a short illness, in his eighty-first year.

[L. L. Selleck, One Branch of the Miner Family (1928); G. H. Emerson, Life of Alonzo Ames Miner (1896); A. B. Start, History of Tufts College (1896); G. H. Emerson, in Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men (1882), ed. by J.B. Clarke; Boston Daily Advertiser, June 15, 1895.]

C.R.S.


MINER, Charles (February 1, 1780-October 26, 1865), editor, congressman. He was opposed to slavery, and on May 13, 1826, offered a series of resolutions in the House of Representatives in favor of its abolition in the District of Columbia and its eventual extinction in the United States. These were not favorably received by the House, but he persistently pressed the question throughout the term of his service.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 22-23;

MINER, CHARLES (February 1, 1780-October 26, 1865), editor, congressman, the son of Seth and Anna (Charlton) Miner and a descendant of Thomas Miner (or Minor) who came to Massachusetts from Somersetshire about 1629, was born in Norwich, Conn . His father was a printer, and after attending the schools near his home Charles worked for some time at his father's trade in New London. During the winter of 1798-99 he studied surveying, and on February 8, 1799, set out for the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania to take charge of preparing his father's lands, held under the Connecticut claim, for settlement. In 1802 he joined his brother Asher at Wilkes-Barre in publishing the Luzerne Federalist and Susquehanna fo intelligencer.

In 1804 Charles Miner bought his brother's interest, becoming sole proprietor of the paper, which he published until 1809 and again in 1810-11. On February 1, 1811, he began the publication of a new journal, the Gleaner and Luzerne Intelligencer, which gained a considerable reputation and became something of a political power. During these years he wrote a series of humorous sketches for the columns of his paper, later collected in book form under the title Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe (1815). In one of them, "Who'll Turn Grindstone?", which appeared in the Luzerne Federalist, September 7, 1810, he originated the phrase "to have an axe to grind," which has since come to have a very definite meaning in American speech. He also wrote and published "The Ballad of James Bird," which was circulated widely. In May 1806 he was chosen a member of the first borough council of Wilkes-Barre and in October 1807 was elected a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in which he served till 1809. He was elected again in 1812.

In 1816 he sold the Gleaner and went to Philadelphia to become editor and part owner of the True American, a daily paper. The next year, unable to stand city life, he returned to Wilkes Barre, and in July 1817 bought the Chester and Delaware Federalist at West Chester, Pennsylvania, to which place he removed his family. He soon changed this paper's name to the Village Record, m1der which title it was for years one of the best-known provincial weeklies in the United States. He was elected as a Federalist representative from Pennsylvania to the Nineteenth and Twentieth congresses (March 4, 1825-March 3, 1829) but was not a candidate for reelection in 1828 because of increasing deafness and the need of his services at home. He resumed the post of editor and publisher of the Village Record but in 1832 sold the paper and returned to Wilkes Barre, retiring to private life. During the next few years he spent a great deal of time and effort in writing his History of Wyoming (1845), a standard work dealing with the massacre of July 3, 1778, and the long-disputed land claims of Connecticut and Pennsylvania. It was based on original investigations and interviews with old residents.

While in Congress he became the close personal friend of the leading men of the times, including President Adams, Henry Clay, and others, who continued to correspond with him on political questions after his retirement. He was opposed to slavery, and on May 13, 1826, offered a series of resolutions in the House of Representatives in favor of its abolition in the District of Columbia and its eventual extinction in the United States. These were not favorably received by the House, but he persistently pressed the question throughout the term of his service. He endeavored to popularize silk-growing in the United States, was one of the first to plant mulberry trees and to undertake the raising of silk worms, and drew up and introduced into Congress the first resolutions on silk-culture. He was an early promoter of the anthracite coal trade in Pennsylvania and of canals as a part of internal improvement. With three others he leased the Mauch Chunk mine from the Lehigh Coal Mine Company, and in 1814 was a member of the firm of Hillhouse, Miner & Cist which was responsible for sending the first boatload of anthracite down the Schuylkill River to Philadelphia. Although this first load was very hard to sell, Miner through his writings did much to introduce anthracite and popularize its use. He married Letitia Wright on January 16, 1804, and was the father of ten children, of whom only three survived him. One of his daughters was the mother of Charlton T. Lewis [q.v.]. He died at his home, "The Retreat," near Wilkes-Barre, at the age of eighty-five. Although he was a man of varied activities his reputation rests upon the fact that he was one of the most original and influential of the Pennsylvania editors of the first part of the nineteenth century.

[C. F. and E . M . T. Richardson, Charles Miner: A Pennsylvania Pioneer (1916); J. T. Sharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia (1884), I, 578; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); O. J. Harvey, A History of Lodge No. 61, F. and A. M., Wilkesbarre, Pa. (1897); Proceedings and Collections, Wyoming Historical and Geo. Society, 1922, volume XVIII (1923).]

J.H.F.


MINER, Myrtilla, 1815-1864, New York, educator, abolitionist.  Opened Normal School for Colored Girls in Washington, DC, in 1851.  (Encyclopedia Britannica). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 23-24; 

MINER, MYRTILLA (March 4, 1815-December 17, 1864), promoter of negro education, was born in Brookfield, New York, to which place her father's family had come from Norwich, Connecticut. That portion of New York State was then a wilderness, the Miners were very poor, and there were no educational opportunities for the children. Myrtilla, though physically frail, was possessed by a desire for learning. She disliked house and farm work and, after teaching herself to read, borrowed books, or purchased them with money earned by picking hops. She wrote naively and with no satisfactory result to Hon. William H. Seward, governor of New York, asking for advice about securing an education. At fifteen, she was teaching a country school, which she was soon obliged to leave because of "spinal trouble." Recovering partially, she secured admission to a school in Clinton, New York, promising to pay her expenses when she was able to teach. Often ill, she studied in bed and after a year secured a position in a public school of Rochester, New York. From there she went to a school in Providence, R. I., and then to Newton Institute, a school for planters' daughters at Whitesville, Miss. The milder climate benefited her health but her first sight of negro slavery shocked her profoundly. She came to believe that in education lay the salvation of the negro, and asked for permission to instruct the slaves on one oi the plantations, but was told that it was a criminal offense in Mississippi to teach a slave to read. After two years there, she returned North, very ill again. During her illness she made a vow that if she recovered he would devote herself to the cause of the slaves.

When she regained a measure of health, without money or influence, she determined to start a normal school for colored girls in Washington, D. C., a stronghold of aristocratic, pro-slavery feeling, Frederick Douglass [q.v.], negro philanthropist, whom she consulted, knowing the difficulties, discouraged her. She begged money, paper, almost anything, and on December 3, 1851, in a small apartment, opened her normal school for free colored girls. The school had six students at the start, fifteen after a month, forty after two months. With her teaching, she carried on a continuous campaign for funds. In 1853, through the kindness of Thomas Williamson and Samuel Rhoads of the Society of Friends of Philadelphia, who loaned $2,000 and consented to act as trustees, and of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who gave $1,000 of her earnings from Uncle Toni's Cabin, she was able to purchase for $4,000 three acres between N Street and New Hampshire Avenue, with a small house, barn, and orchard. In March 1854 the school was moved to this location, which was then on the outskirts of the city. The house was often attacked and threatened, but a high fence, a dog, and the sight of the mistress and her assistant practising with a revolver in the yard warned off intruders. By 1856 the school was placed under trustees, one of whom was Johns Hopkins [q.v.]. Printed solicitations for funds aroused public antagonism and Walter Lenox, a former mayor of Washington, wrote an article, which appeared in the National Intelligencer (May 6, 1857), attacking the school and all attempts at negro education as aids in the abolition movement. The institution was several times under other management, or temporarily closed, on account of Miss Miner's poor health.

In 1861 she went to California, where she supported herself by practising clairvoyance and magnetic healing. An accident in which she was thrown from a carriage was followed by symptoms of tuberculosis, to which she was probably always predisposed. She returned to Washington by steamer, arriving there only a few days before her death, which occurred at the home of her friend, Mrs. Nancy M. Johnson. Her funeral was conducted by Reverend "William Henry Channing [q.v.] of the Unitarian Church and she was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown. Her work did not lapse, however; on March 3, 1863, Congress incorporated the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in the District of Columbia. In 1871 it was joined with Howard University, but separated in 1876, and in 1879 as the Miner Normal School (now Miner Teachers' College) it became part of the public school system of the District.

[E. M. O'Connor, Myrtilla Miner, A Memoir (1885); G. S. Wormley, "Myrtilla Miner,'" in Journal of Negro History, October 1920; Washington Daily Times, December 20, 1864, Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, December 19, 1864.]

S. G. B.


MINTURN, Robert Bowne (November 16, 1805-January 9, 1866), merchant. Minturn was  whig and later a Republican and was first president of the Union League Club. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 32;

MINTURN, ROBERT BOWNE (November 16, 1805-January 9, 1866), merchant, was born to the purple in New York social and commercial circles and went even farther in both fields, winning general respect for his philanthropic as well as his business success. His grandfather, the elder "William Minturn, had moved a profitable business from Newport to New York. His father, William Minturn, Jr., who married Sarah Bowne, was a partner in the firm of Minturn, Champlin & Company, which was prominent until its failure at the close of the War of 1812. Robert was forced to go into business at thirteen upon the death of his father. In 1825 he became the partner of Charles Green, whom he had served as clerk, and in 1829 he entered the counting- house of Fish, Grinnell & Company, a connection probably traceable to the marriage of his sister Sarah to Henry Grinnell in 1822. This firm had been established about 1815 by Preserved Fish and Joseph Grinnell [qq.v.] from New Bedford. Starting as commission merchants for whale oil, the firm expanded into the management of transatlantic packets, ship owning, and general commerce. By 1832 the two original partners retired and the firm was reorganized as Grinnell, Minturn & Company, Minturn joining with Joseph Grinnell's younger brothers, Moses Hicks and Henry [qq.v.].

Under its new name the firm attained a secure position as one of the greatest of the New York commercial houses, ranking with the Griswolds, Rowlands, and Lows. "All is fish that gets into their nets," wrote Scoville about 1E'.5o (post, I, I p. 100). In Latin America they were behind the Howlands, though their Cuban business was so extensive that Minturn sent his son to Spain to learn the language. In China they competed successfully with the houses of Griswold and Low which virtually specialized in that trade. They did a great deal of business with England and extended their influence into almost all parts of the world. They seem to have shared with the Welds of Boston the honor of being the greatest American ship-owners of the day. Their blue and white or red and white swallowtail house flags flew over more than fifty vessels, including regular packet lines to Liverpool and London as well as some of the finest dippers of the day. They owned the North Wind and Sea Serpent and above all, the greatest of the clippers, Donald McKay's Flying Cloud.

Minturn's fortune was estimated at $200,000 as early as 1846. He and his partners were more public spirited than many of the other New York merchants of the day. He himself served as commissioner of emigration to improve the condition of the incoming foreigners and was instrumental in founding the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and St. Luke's Hospital. His wife was Anna Mary Wendell, the daughter of John Lansing Wendell of Albany, whom he married on June 2, 1835. She has been credited with the idea of establishing Central Park and he supported her in the project. At first a Whig, Minturn was later a Republican and was first president of the Union League Club. He has been described, like others of his family, as dark, tall, and handsome. George William Curtis pictured him as "gentle, just and generous; modest, humane and sagacious; his sense of responsibility growing with his increasing fortune, until his devoted life was that of a humble almoner of the Divine bounty" (Harper's Weekly, Jan. 27, 1866). He died suddenly of paralysis at his New York home.

[The sources for Minturn's biography are fragmentary. See R. B. Minturn, Jr., Memoir of Robert Bowne Minturn (1871); J. A. Scoville, The Old Merchants of New York City (4 volumes, 1863-66); The Diary of Philip Hone (2 volumes, 1927), ed. by Allan Nevins; Henry Hall, America's Successful Men of Affairs, volume I (1895); L. H. Weeks, Prominent Families of New York, volume I (1897); F. G. Griswold, The House Flags of the Merchants of New York, I800-I800 (1926); 0. T. Howe and F. C. Matthews, American Clipper Ships (2 volumes, 1927); M. Y. Beach, Wealth and Pedigree of the Wealthy Citizens of New York (1846); New York Times, New York Tribune, January 10, 1866.]

R. G. A.


MITCHELL, Robert Byington, 1823-1882, lawyer, political leader, Union soldier.  Member of the Kansas Territorial Legislature, 1857-1858.  Active in Free State anti-slavery movement in Kansas in 1856.  Colonel, 2nd Kansas Volunteers.  Commander 13th U.S. Army Division.  Fought in Battle of Perryville.  1865-1867 Governor of New Mexico. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 346; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 60; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 15, p. 625).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 60;

MITCHELL, ROBERT BYINGTON (April 4, 1823 -January 26, 1882), soldier, governor of New Mexico Territory, was born in Mansfield. Richland County, Ohio, of Scotch-Irish parents. Whether he graduated at Kenyon College, Ohio, or Washington College, Pennsylvania, is a controverted matter; neither school has a record of his attendance. He studied law in the office of John K. Miller at Mount· Vernon, Ohio, was admitted to the bar, and began practice at Mansfield. In the Mexican War he served as first lieutenant in the 2nd Ohio Infantry. Later he resumed the practice of law, and in 1855 was elected Democratic mayor of Mount Gilead. In the same year he was married to Jennie, daughter of Henry St. John of Tiffin, Ohio.

A business trip to Kansas Territory in 1855 convinced Mitchell that it offered opportunities for advancement; accordingly in October 1856 he migrated thither and settled at Paris, Linn County. Throughout the Kansas struggle he was a conservative, law-and-order Free-State man. He was elected to the lower house of the territorial legislature in 1857 and was reelected a year later. In 1858 he was a delegate to the Leavenworth constitutional convention. The following year he was appointed treasurer of the territory, serving until it became a state in 1861. When the Republican party supplanted the Free-State organization in 1859, he returned to the Democratic party, and was appointed delegate to the Charleston convention in 1860.

After brief service as adjutant on the staff of Governor Charles Robinson [q.v.], Mitchell was commissioned colonel of the 2nd Kansas Volunteer Infantry. At the battle of Wilson's Creek he was severely wounded, but recovered and was transferred to a cavalry regiment. On April 8, 1862, President Lincoln commissioned him brigadier-general, and at the battle of Perryville, Kentucky, he commanded the 9th Division. He was then stationed at Nashville for several months. As chief of cavalry in the Army of the Cumberland he made commendable contributions to Union successes in southeastern Tennessee in 1863. Severe wounds incapacitated him temporarily for field service, and Secretary Stanton ordered him to Washington for court-martial duty. Early in 1864 he was assigned to the district of Nebraska-Territory in the department of Kansas. A year later he was transferred to the district of North Kansas, and when the two divisions of the state were combined, June 28, 1865, he was appointed to the command. Throughout the war he had the reputation of being a shrewd and energetic commander.

Late in 1865 President Johnson nominated Mitchell to be governor of New Mexico Territory. The nomination was confirmed January 15, 1866, and he took office on the 16th of the following July. He soon quarreled with the legislature and his removal was requested. He was accused of making a vacancy appointment of delegate to Congress, of remaining in Washington during an entire session of the assembly, of removing officials appointed by the secretary during his absence, and of usurpation of power. In 1868 the organic act was amended to abrogate the governor's absolute veto. Mitchell relinquished the office in 1869 and returned to Kansas. In 1872 he was nominated for Congress by Liberal Republicans and Democrats, but was defeated. Subsequently, he removed to Washington, D. C., where he died.

[A sketch of his career, published in the La Cygne Weekly Journal, April 26, May 3, 1895, was reprinted in Kansas Historical Collections, XVI (1923-25); material relating to his Civil War career is in War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); for resolutions of the New Mexico legislature consult House Misc. Docs. 64 and 94, 40 Congress, 2 Session See also D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (1886); H. H. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mex. (1889); R. E. Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mex. History, volume II (1912); Harper's Weekly, April 4, 1863; Evening Star (Washington), January 28, 1882.]

W. H. S-n. 


MONTGOMERY, James (December 22, 1814- December 6, 1871), soldier and jayhawker. After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill he purchased a claim at Mound City, Linn County, Kansas. Pro-slavery settlers were in the majority in the southeastern part of the Territory, and Montgomery soon became the recognized leader of the minority. He organized Free-State men into a "Self-Protective Company" in 1857, which drove pro-slavery advocates from the county.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 97;

MONTGOMERY, JAMES (December 22, 1814- December 6, 1871), soldier and jayhawker, was born in Ashtabula County, Ohio, whither his parents had emigrated from New York. He was a great-grandson of James Montgomery, a Scotch Highland chieftain who came to America by way of Ireland. After receiving an academic education in Ohio, he moved to Kentucky in 1837 where he taught school and entered the ministry of the "Campbellite" church. In 1852 he emigrated with his second wife to Missouri, but soon after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill he purchased a claim at Mound City, Linn County, Kansas. Pro-slavery settlers were in the majority in the southeastern part of the Territory, and Montgomery soon became the recognized leader of the minority. He organized Free-State men into a "Self-Protective Company" in 1857, which drove pro-slavery advocates from the county and made predatory excursions into Missouri. He made several attempts to destroy Fort Scott, where a pro-slavery district judge pursued a policy of discrimination, and on one occasion he collided with Federal troops. Disturbances in the "infected district," some of which Montgomery created, were eventually quelled by the intervention of Governor Denver. In 1860 Montgomery and eastern associates planned to rescue two of John Brown's men imprisoned at Charles Town, Virginia (now W. Virginia), but the scheme ' did not materialize. He was elected in 1857 to the "state" Senate under the Topeka constitution, but was defeated for the Territorial House of Representatives two years later. He represented Linn County in the Republican state convention of April 1860.

On July 24, 1861, Montgomery was commissioned colonel of the 3rd Kansas Volunteer Infantry which operated as a part of "Lane's brigade" in southeastern Kansas and western Missouri. His regiment soon gained a reputation for jay hawking or plundering. On April 3, 1862, the 3rd was consolidated with other regiments to form the 10th Kansas with Montgomery colonel. Early in 1863 he was authorized to raise a colored regiment in South Carolina. From Hiltonhead he made expeditions into Georgia and Florida, liberated slaves, and destroyed Confederate property. In 1864 he returned to Kansas and was chosen colonel of the 6th Militia Regiment when its commander refused to lead it against General Sterling Price. As a fighter Montgomery excelled in bushwhacker tactics. With limited mental powers, he was daring and fearless, and usually fought without having formed a plan of campaign. At the close of the Civil War he retired to his farm in Linn County, abandoned the "Campbellite" faith, became a First-Day Adventist, and preached that doctrine at various places in Kansas. He died at Mound City.

[A few of Montgomery's letters are preserved in the Kansas State Historical Library at Topeka. Reports of his military activities are scattered through the Official Records. Wm. P. Tomlinson, Kansas in Eighteen Fifty-eight (1859), contains a chapter on his early Kansas career. Further sources include: A. T. Andreas, History of the State of Kansas (1883); D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (1886); W. E. Connelley, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans (1911), volumes II and III; E. S. W. Drought, "James Montgomery," Trans. Kansas State Historical Society, volume VI (1900); "Col. Montgomery and His Letters," Kansas State Historical Society Collections, volume XIII (1915); and scattered references in the Transactions and Collections of the State Historical Society ]

W. H.S-n.


MOORE, Lindley Murray, 1788-1871, New York, educator, abolitionist leader, temperance activist, Society of Friends, Quaker.  Married to abolitionist, reformer, Abigail Lydia Mott.  Co-founded and was first president and recording secretary of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Society.  Wrote abolitionist book, Autographs of Freedom, 1853. (Sorin, 1971)


MOORHEAD, James Kennedy, 1806-1884.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  In Congress from December 1859-March, 1869.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 385; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 147; Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 1, p. 147;

MOORHEAD, JAMES KENNEDY (September 7, 1806-March 6, 1884), Civil War congressman from Pennsylvania, canal builder, and pioneer in commercial telegraphy, was born in Halifax, Dauphin County, Pa. His father, William Moorhead, had emigrated from Ireland and settled in the United States in 1798. In 1814 he was appointed by President James Madison collector of internal revenue for the tenth district of Pennsylvania, but he died in 1817, leaving his wife, Elizabeth (Kennedy) Young Moorhead, a widow with several children to support and no other form of income than that which could be obtained from a farm. Under these circumstances, James's schooling ended when he was eleven years old after he had completed two years in the district school in Harrisburg. At fourteen he had the full responsibility of the farm and Moorhead's ferry. Two years later he served as an apprentice to a tanner, but he never followed th e trade. Having gained a fair knowledge of building and a familiarity with water transportation, he offered a low bid and obtained the contract for the construction of the Susquehanna branch of the Pennsylvania Canal-a job which netted him almost four hundred dollars. He then remained as superintendent of the Juniata division and was the first to place a passenger packet on the system. During the ten years he spent in navigating the canal he gained a knowledge of the problems involved in managing canal transportation and in 1839 he began a connection with the Monongahela N avigation Company in Pittsburgh. In 1846 he became president of the company, retaining the position until his death thirty-eight years later. In this capacity he built many dams, locks, and reservoirs in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Kentucky, and earned for himself the title "Old Slackwater" because of the slackwater dams. In 1840 he established the Union Cotton Factory in what is now the Northside district of Pittsburgh. Nine years later the factory burned along with his house. He rebuilt the latter but it was again destroyed in 1853 by fire. At this time he also owned a part interest in the Novelty Works in Pittsburgh. Moorhead was one of the first to appreciate the possibilities of commercial telegraphy and it was largely through his efforts and direction, dating from 1853, that lines were established between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. The operating company, of which he was president, was the Atlantic & Ohio Telegraph Company. He was also the president of the various companies owning lines to Cincinnati and Louisville. Afterward, when these lines were consolidated, they formed the basis of the Western Union System. In politics Moorhead was an active member of the Democratic party of that day and for a short time held an appointment under President Van Buren as deputy postmaster of Pittsburgh (1840-41). But in the trying years from 1854 to 1858 he left the party and aided in the formation of the Republican party. In 1859 he was its successful candidate for Congress and served continuously in the lower house from 1859 to 1869. During the term of his membership he served on several important committees -commerce, national armories, manufactures, naval affairs, and ways and means-and was chairman of the two first named. In 1868 he served in his last political position, as delegate to the Republican National Convention at Chicago which nominated Ulysses S. Grant.

Moorhead always exhibited a great interest in the affairs of his church, the Presbyterian, in which he was the ruling elder, and in 1884 he went to Belfast, Ireland, as a delegate to the Pan-Presbyterian Council. Shortly afterward, upon his return to Pittsburgh, he died. He had lived to celebrate with his wife, Jane Logan, to whom he was married December 17, 1829, their golden anniversary. Their family consisted of two sons and three daughters. Moorhead's native ability was the deciding factor in his success, overcoming almost total lack of material means. He brought to each task the experience gained from a previous undertaking and thus advanced step by step through his own efforts to a position of responsibility at the head of a large navigation company.

[Memorial Volume: Jas. Kennedy Moorhead (privately printed, 1885); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Erasmus Wilson, ed., Standard History of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (1898); the Pittsburg Dispatch and Pittsburgh Post, March 7, 1884.]

A. I.



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