Sac-Sco: Sackett through Scott

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


SACKETT, William Augustus, 1811-1895, New York, lawyer, politician.  Elected to U.S. House of Representatives from New York as a member of the Whig Party.  Served in Congress two terms from 1849-1853.  Opposed extension of slavery into the New territories.  Early member of the Republican Party.


SAGE, Russell (August 4, 1816--July 22, 1906), congressman and financier.   He was nominated for congressman in 1850 and defeated, but ran again successfully in 1852. He was reelected representative in 1854, but retired at the end of that term. In Congress he advocated the Homestead Law and free soil for Kansas.

(Who's Who in America, 1906-07; Henry Whittemore, History of the Sage and Slocum Families (1908))

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 292-293:

SAGE, RUSSELL (August 4, 1816--July 22, 1906), congressman and financier, came of pioneer New England stock, being a descendant of David Sage who was living in Middletown, Connecticut, as early as 1652. His father, Elisha Sage, veteran of the War of 1812, his mother, Prudence (Risley) Sage, and five children were emigrating by ox train from Connecticut towards Michigan when Russell was born, in the covered wagon, in Verona township, Oneida County, New York. Observing that the land was good, Elisha Sage settled in Oneida County, and there Russell grew to the age of twelve, working on the farm and getting a few bits of primary schooling. In 1828 he went to work in his brother Henry's store in Troy, New York. Notwithstanding his long hours, he attended a night school, paying a dollar and a half of his monthly salary of four dollars to learn arithmetic and bookkeeping; meanwhile, he also studied markets and read newspapers omnivorously. Before he reached manhood he began to do trading on his own account and at twenty-one, with the capital thus acquired, he bought out the store of his brother Elisha Montague, and a year or so later resold it at a profit. He then (with a partner) started a wholesale grocery business in Troy. The firm had its own sailing vessels on the Hudson, and traded in other things than groceries-Vermont and Canadian horses, for example, fresh and cured meats, and grain.

In 1845 Sage was elected alderman of Troy and later treasurer of Rensselaer County. In 1848 he was a delegate to the National Whig Convention. He was nominated for congressman in 1850 and defeated, but ran again successfully in 1852. He was reelected representative in 1854, but retired at the end of that term. In Congress he advocated the Homestead Law and free soil for Kansas, but his most noteworthy act was a resolution asking that the government take over the old mansion, "Mount Vernon," and make it a permanent memorial to Washington (Congressional Globe, 33 Congress, I Sess., pp. 52-54; December 15, 1853). This was one of the first moves toward its restoration and preservation.

Leaving Congress in 1856, Sage continued to build up his fortune, adding banking to his other activities. A chance meeting with Jay Gould [q.v.] in a railroad station was a momentous incident in his life, for it led to a close association and to Sage's interest in railroad affairs. He had already loaned some money to the La Crosse Railroad, a small line in Wisconsin, and was compelled to advance more to save the first loans. The road was eventually expanded into the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul system, in which promotion Sage made large profits. He was for years a director and vice-president of the corporation. By 1863 he was giving most of his attention to stocks and finance, and he decided to move to New York. His first wife, Maria Winne of Troy, whom he had married in 1841, died in 1867, and on November 24, 1869, he married again, in Troy, his second wife being Margaret Olivia (Slocum) Sage [q.v.], who outlived him.

Sage is credited with being the originator of "puts and calls" in the stock market about 1872. His fortune was greatly increased by advances in the value of securities under the skilful manipulation of his ally, Jay Gould. The methods used in their campaign to gain control of the New York elevated lines in 1881 were bitterly criticized by the press and business men. Cyrus W. Field [q.v.], whom they had taken in with them to court public confidence, was eventually ruined, but Gould and Sage came through unscathed and with the desired control. Sage was one of the shrewdest and most conservative of all great financiers. Though at times a large operator, he was never a plunger. He preferred small, sure profits or those which resulted from manipulation, and his occasional speculative purchase was usually based on very canny foresight. He was caught short only once in his life, in the little Wall Street panic of 1884, when he lost fully $7,000,000. He was, at one time or another, stockholder and director of many railroad corporations. He was actively concerned in the organization of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company, and in its consolidation with the Western Union.

During the last quarter century of his life he was best known as a money lender. At one time he is said to have had $27,000,000 out on call loans. He might have from five to eight millions in cash bank deposits in the morning, and loan nearly all of it before the day was over. His frugality was proverbial; he loved to chaffer, even over the price of an apple, and there was no epicureanism in him. He preferred comfort rather than elegance; plain food and cheap clothing satisfied him as well as the richest. His homes on Fifth A venue and Long Island were comfortably furnished, however; he indulged himself in a love of good horses, and did not question his wife's expenditures. His philanthropies, such as the education of more than forty Indian children and the presentation of a dormitory to Troy Female Seminary, were popularly credited to Mrs. Sage's prompting. In 1891 Sage was seriously injured in his office by a bomb exploded by one Henry W. Norcross, who had first demanded $1,200,000. Norcross and a clerk were killed, but Sage, despite his years, fully recovered. He died at his home on Long Island at the age of ninety, and his fortune at that time was estimated at $70,000,000.

[Among many newspaper references to Sage, see obituaries in all New York newspapers of July 23, 1906; New York Times, December 27, 1881, December 5, 1891, January 11, 1899; World (New York.), April 27, July 10, 1902; New York Daily News, Jan. 30, 1904; R. I. Warshow, Jay Gould; the Story of a Fortune (1928); Henry Clews, Twenty-eight Years in Wall Street (1887); Who's Who in America, 1906-07; Henry Whittemore, History of the Sage and Slocum Families (1908); Bench and Bar, September 1906; New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, October 1906. ]

A. F.H.


SALTER, William (November 17, 1821-August 15, 1910), Congregational clergyman, author, and historiographer.  In the critical years previous to the Civil War he conducted an underground railway station for the assistance of runaway slaves. During the conflict he served as army chaplain in the Christian Commission and ministered to Union and Confederate wounded in several hospitals.

(Hill, Reverend William Salter, D.D., I82I-I910 (n.d.); Who's Who in America, 1908-09).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 314-315:

SALTER, WILLIAM (November 17, 1821-August 15, 1910), Congregational clergyman, author, and historiographer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of William Frost Salter, owner of the ship Mary and Harriet, upon which William played as a youth, and of Mary (Ewen) Salter who had come to New York with her husband from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was a descendant of John Salter, mariner, who emigrated from England about 1680 and settled in Rye, New Hampshire. In 1840 he graduated from the University of the City of New York and then entered the Union Theological Seminary, but at the end of two years transferred to Andover, where he was graduated in 1843. Stirred by the need of religious and educational facilities on the frontier, he, with ten other Andover graduates, went to the Territory of Iowa under the auspices of the Home Missionary Society. The Iowa Band, as this group came to be known, proceeding by train, boat, and wagon, arrived at a point on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, opposite Burlington, on October 24, 1843. Soon thereafter Salter preached his first sermon at Keosauqua, in a little room over the blacksmith shop, and on November 5, 1843, was ordained at Denmark. Becoming missionary pastor in Maquoketa, he served there during a part of the years 1844-46, frequently riding a circuit and preaching whenever he could gather a few persons. In April 1846 he became pastor of the First Congregational Church of Burlington, and continued as such until his death sixty-four years later.

In the critical years previous to the Civil War he conducted an underground railway station for the assistance of runaway slaves. During the conflict he served as army chaplain in the Christian Commission and ministered to Union and Confederate wounded in several hospitals. Returning to Burlington at the close of the war, he resumed his parish work and writing, During his long pastorate, he was in intimate touch with many of the prominent Iowa pioneers, and his published works include a number of biographical sketches among which are: Sermon with Reference to the Death of James G. Edwards (1851); Augustus C. Dodge (1887); and James Clarke, Third Territorial Governor (1888). During the period of the Civil War he published Our National Sins and Impending Calamities (1861) and The Great Rebellion in the Light of Christianity (1864). In the religious field he wrote: On Some Objections to the Old Testament- Their Origin and Explanation (1853); The Progress of Religion in Iowa for Twenty-five Years (1858); Studies in Matthew (1880); The Christian Idealism of R. W. Emerson (1886); Cooperative Christianity (1888). His major works are: The Life of James W. Grimes (1876); Iowa: The First Free State in the Louisiana Purchase (1905); and Sixty Years and Other Discourses (copyright 1907). He was married on August 25, 1846, to Mary Ann Mackintire of Charlestown, Massachusetts

[W. T. Salter, John Salter, Mariner (1900); J. L. Hill, Reverend William Salter, D.D., I82I-I910 (n.d.), reprinted with bibliog. added from Annals of Iowa, January 1911; Ephraim Adams, The Iowa Band (1870); P. D. Jordan, "The Discovery of William Salter's Almanac Diary," Annals of Iowa, October 1930, and "The Life and Works of James Gardiner Edwards," in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, October 1930; Who's Who in America, 1908-09; Register and Leader (Des Moines), August 16, 1910; diary, covering the period 1843-1851, marriage book, containing a list, with dates, of all marriages performed, 1843-1910; and Civil War diaries, containing his experiences as chaplain, in private hands.]

P. D. J.


SANBORN, Benjamin Franklin, 1831-1917, abolitionist leader, journalist, prison and social reformer, Secretary of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee.  Secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859.  Brother of Charles Sanborn.   

(Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 327, 338, 476, 478-479; American Reformers, pp. 715-716; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 326; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 237). 

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

SANBORN, Franklin Benjamin, reformer, born  in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, 15 December, 1831, was graduated at Harvard in 1855, and in 1856 became secretary of the Massachusetts state Kansas committee. His interest in similar enterprises led to his active connection with the Massachusetts state board of charities, of which he was secretary in 1863-'8, a member in 1870-'6, and chairman in 1874-'6, succeeding Dr. Samuel G. Howe. In 1875 he made a searching investigation into the abuses of the Tewksbury almshouse, and in consequence the institution was reformed. Mr. Sanborn was active in founding the Massachusetts infant asylum and the Clarke institution for deaf-mutes, and has devoted much attention to the administration of the Massachusetts lunacy system. In 1879 he helped to reorganize the system of Massachusetts charities, with special reference to the care of children and insane persons, and in July, 1879, he became inspector of charities under the new board. He called together the first National conference of charities in 1874, and was treasurer of the conference in 1886-'8. In 1865 he was associated in the organization of the American social science association, of which he was one of the secretaries until 1868, and he has been since 1873 its chief secretary. With Bronson Alcott and William T. Harris he aided in establishing the Concord summer school of philosophy in 1879, and was its secretary and one of its lecturers. Since 1868 he has been editorially connected with the Springfield “Republican,” and has also been a contributor to newspapers and reviews. The various reports that he has issued as secretary of the organizations of which he is a member, from 1865 till 1888, comprise about forty volumes. He has edited William E. Channing's “Wanderer” (Boston, 1871) and A. Bronson Alcott's “Sonnets and Canzonets” (1882) and “New Connecticut” (1886); and is the author of “Life of Thoreau” (1882) and “Life and Letters of John Brown” (1885). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 384.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 326:

SANBORN, FRANKLIN BENJAMIN (December 15, 1831-February 24, 1917), author, journalist, philanthropist, was born on his ancestral farm in Hampton Falls., New Hampshire, the fifth of the seven children of Aaron and Lydia (Leavitt) Sanborn, and the sixth in descent from John Sanborn, who settled in Hampton in 1640. His father was a farmer and, when his son was born, clerk of the town. The boy's intellectual development was stimulated by his love for Ariana Walker, daughter of James Walker of Peterborough. With her encouragement he completed his preparatory schooling at Phillips Exeter Academy and entered Harvard College as a sophomore in 1852. He enjoyed his college life, but from his teachers he derived far less than from Theodore Parker, whose preaching he attended regularly, and from Ralph Waldo Emerson, on whom he first ventured to call in 1853. On August 23, 1854, he was married to Ariana Walker, who was on her deathbed and succumbed eight days later. Sanborn graduated from Harvard in 1855 and removed to Concord, Massachusetts, where at Emerson's suggestion he had already opened a school.

It was a happy move, for Concord was his spiritual home. Less original than the elder literary men of the village, he was their fellow in vigor and independence of mind and in breadth of interests, and he had a practical sagacity and knowledge of the world that some of them lacked. He was soon in the thick of the abolition movement. As secretary of the Massachusetts Free Soil Association he went on a tour of inspection in the West in the summer of 1856 and, although he did not actually enter Kansas Territory, brought back with him an enduring interest in the problems of that region. The next January he met John Brown in Boston, was captivated by the man, and became his New England agent. He was apprised of Brown's intentions at Harpers Ferry, did what he could to dissuade him, but, when dissuasion proved futile, aided him. Later, he refused to leave Massachusetts to testify before a committee of the United States Senate, grounding his refusal on an appeal to the doctrine of state rights, and on February 16, 1860, the Senate ordered his arrest. Sanborn retreated twice to Quebec but returned on the advice of his friends. The sergeant-at-arms of the Senate delegated the power to arrest him to one Carleton of Boston, who with four assistants apprehended him at Concord on April 3, 1860. He was released at once on a writ of habeas corpus issued by Judge E. R. Hoar; a posse comitatus chased the arresting party out of town; and the next day the state supreme court, by a decision written by Chief Justice Shaw, ordered Sanborn's discharge.

To newspaper work, philanthropy, and literature he devoted the greater part of his long life. On August 16, 1862, he married his cousin, Louisa Augusta Leavitt, by whom he had three sons. He succeeded Moncure Daniel Conway [q.v.] as editor of the Boston Commonwealth (1863-67) and was a resident editor of the Springfield Republican (1868-72). He had been a correspondent of the Republican since 1856 and remained on its staff until 1914. As a newspaper man he was noted for his blistering criticism of various Massachusetts politicians. In 1863 Governor John Albion Andrew [q.v.] appointed him secretary of the state board of charities. This office was the first of its kind in the United States, and Sanborn made it important and influential. He instituted a system of inspection and report for state charities that has been widely copied, made himself an expert on the care of the insane, and drafted many bills that were enacted into law. He retired as secretary in 1868 but remained on the board and was its chairman from 1874 to 1876; from 1879 to 1888 he was state inspector of charities. He was a founder and officer of the American Social Science Association, the National Prison Association, the National Conference of Charities, the Clarke School for the Deaf, and the Massachusetts Infant Asylum, and for all of them he worked hard and effectively. He lectured at Cornell University, Smith College, and Wellesley College, and joined with William Torrey Harris [q.v.] in establishing the Concord School of Philosophy. He knew intimately all the men and women who made Concord famous, was their sympathetic, helpful friend. while they lived and their loyal, intelligent editor and biographer after their death. His publications include: Henry D. Thoreau (1882); The Life and Letters of John Brown (1885), a fourth edition of which was issued under the title John Brown, Liberator of Kansas and Martyr of Virginia (1910); Dr. S. G. Howe, the Philanthropist (1891); A. Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy (2 volumes, 1893), with W. T. Harris; Memoirs of Pliny Earle, M.D. (1898); The Personality of Thoreau (1901); Ralph Waldo Emerson (1901); The Personality of Emerson (1903); New Hampshire (1904); New Hampshire Biography and Autobiography (1905); Michael,. Anagnos (1907); Bronson Alcott at Alcott Ho1tse, England, and Fruitlands, New England (1908); Hawthorne and His Friends (1908); Recollections of  evenly Years (2 volumes, 1909); and The Life of Henry David Thoreau (1917). He published many magazine articles and did much editorial work on the literary remains of his friends. In some conservative circles his reputation as a subversive thinker lingered even into the twentieth century. He made two extensive visits to Europe and in his latter years enjoyed his membership in the Massachusetts Historical Society. Retaining his faculties to the end, he never lost his passion for liberty and justice or his admiration for the great men whom he had known in his prime. He died at his son's home in Plainfield, New Jersey, and was buried in Concord.

[Sanborn's writings contain much biog. material, especially his Recollections of Seventy Years (2 volumes, 1909) and "An Unpublished Concord Journal," ed. by G. S. Hellman, Century Magazine, April 1922. See also: V. C. Sanborn, Genealogy of the Family of Samborne or Sanborn (1899), and "Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, A.B.," New England Hist. and Genealogy Register, October 1917, and Kansas State Historical Society Collections, volume XIV (1918); Lindsay Swift, "Franklin Benjamin Sanborn," Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, volume L (1917); Ed. Stanwood, memoir, Ibid., volume LI (1918); The Report of the Secretary of the Class of 1855 of Harvard College, July 1855 to fitly 1865 (1865); Apocrypha Concerning the Class of 1855 of Harvard College and Their Deeds and Misdeeds during the Fifteen years between July, 1865, and July, 1880 (1880); Springfield Republican, February 25, 27, 1917; Alexander Johnson, " An Appreciation of Franklin B. Sanborn," Survey, March 10, 1917; W. E. Connelley, "Personal Reminiscences of F. B. Sanborn," Kan. State Historical Soc. Collections, volume XIV (1918); H. D. Carew, "Franklin B. Sanborn, an Appreciation," Granite Missouri, Nov. 1922.]

G. H.G. 


SANDIFORD, Ralph, 1693-1733, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist, reformer, called for immediate end to slavery, printed anti-slavery book, A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times, by Foregoing and the Present Dispensation, 1729. For this action, he was excommunicated by the Society of Friends. 

(Basker, 2005, pp. 122-123; Bruns, 1977, pp. 31-38, 39, 46, 50-51; Drake, 1950, pp. 34, 37, 39-43, 48, 51, 55, 136, 160; Locke, 1901, pp. 24, 25, 27, 29, 33, 173; Soderlund, 1985, pp. 23, 25, 35, 166-167, 174, 186; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 67, 72; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 387)


SANDS, David, 1745-1818, abolitionist. With his religious intensity was joined a strong human sympathy for slaves and a passion for the overthrowing of the system of slavery. 

(Journal of the Life and Gospel Labors of David Sands (1848); The Annual Monitor for 1819 (1819); Quaker Biographies, series 2, volume I (n.d.)

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 342-343) 

SANDS, DAVID (October 4, 1745-June 4, 1818), Quaker preacher, abolitionist, was born at Cowneck, Long Island, New York, the son of Nathaniel and Mercy Sands, who were members of the Presbyterian Church. When David was fourteen the family moved to Cornwall on the Hudson, at that time a sparsely settled farming community. He possessed a keen mind and seized every opportunity to promote his education, often studying by firelight in the evening. At about twenty years of age, with his father's help, he started a mercantile business in Cornwall, which took him frequently to New York City. Meantime he had come under the influence of itinerant Quaker preachers and members of the Quaker Society in Cornwall and in New York City. In his twenty-first year he became a member of the Society of Friends, joining the meeting at Nine Partners, New York. He was married in 1771 to Clementine Hallock of Nine Partners, and they settled for life in Cornwall. He began to give religious messages in Quaker meetings in 1772 and quickly revealed a rare gift for public speaking. He was officially recorded a minister in the Society of Friends in 1775 and immediately began what proved to be a life-long itinerant service.

The most effective contribution he made was on his second journey through the New England colonies. The first preparatory journey was in 1775-76. This was followed in 1777 by extensive services in the New England sections, where there were settled Quaker meetings, followed by a journey into pioneer sections of what is now the state of Maine. Much of his pioneer work was in the regions bordering on the Kennebec River, two years after Benedict Arnold's famous expedition. During the years 1777-79 Sands traveled on horseback four successive times through the Kennebec settlements, often cutting the paths for his horse to travel in. He left behind in these regions a long line of Quaker meetings, whose establishment was mainly due to his labors, and he is historically the founder of Quakerism in central Maine. His numerous visits to New England likewise led to an expansion of Quakerism in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He paid a fifth visit to the Kennebec Valley in 1795 continuing through the settlements in northern and eastern Maine and sailing from Halifax for England. The years from 1795 to 1805 were spent in itinerant ministry in Europe. He visited during these ten years many groups of Quakers in Great Britain and Ireland and on the Continent. He was permitted to have an interview with King George III and was received with much kindness and friendly feeling. He was in Ireland in the agonizing period during the "Great Rebellion." His travels in Germany and France were also extensive and were marked by profound religious influence. He represented in the later part of the eighteenth century a strong reaction against Quietism and in the direction of an evangelical awakening. There was an evangelical note in his preaching that was at that time new in Quaker circles. With this religious intensity was joined a strong human sympathy for slaves and a passion for the overthrowing of the system of slavery. In his old age he made a final journey through New England and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. He died in his own home.

[Journal of the Life and Gospel Labors of David Sands (1848); The Annual Monitor for 1819 (1819); Quaker Biographies, series 2, volume I (n.d.); R. M. Jones, The Society of Friends in Kennebec County (1892), The Quakers in the American Colonies (1911, and The Later Period of Quakerism (1921) ]

R. M. J.


SARGENT, Aaron Augustus (October 28, 1827-August 14, 1887), United States senator. He was nominated for the California assembly by the new American Party in 1852. He was active in the organization of the Republican party in California, and for some years was a member of the party's state executive committee. 

(Biographical Directory American Congress (1928 ); H. H. Bancroft, History of California (1890), VII, 291-92, 548-49;  Memoirs of Cornelius Cole, Ex· Senator of the U. S. from California (1908).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 353-354:

SARGENT, AARON AUGUSTUS (October 28, 1827-August 14, 1887), United States senator, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, son of Aaron Peaslee and Elizabeth (Stanwood) Flanders Sargent. He was a descendant of William Sargent who was in Ipswich, Massachusetts, as early as 1633. After attending the common schools, he was apprenticed to a cabinet maker for a short time, and then learned the printer's trade. This he followed for several months in Philadelphia in 1847, and then moved to Washington, where he became secretary to a member of Congress. In December 1849 he went to California, and for a time found employment in the freight-carrying business between San Francisco and Stockton. In 1850 he was on the Sacramento Placer Times, but soon moved to Nevada City, California, and became a compositor on the Daily Journal. Returning to San Francisco, he was compositor on the Placer Times and Transcript and the Alta California, but soon went back to Nevada City, and not long after bought the Daily Journal. As editor and manager, he conducted this paper as a Whig organ, studying law in his spare time. In 1854 he was admitted to the bar. He was nominated for the California assembly by the new American Party in 1852, and from that time he seems to have been dominated by a consuming political ambition which quite subordinated his career as a lawyer. He was active in the organization of the Republican party in California, and for some years was a member of the party's state executive committee.

In 1855-56 he served as district attorney for Nevada County, and in 1857 was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the attorney-general ship. In 186o he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, and was elected representative in Congress, serving from 1861 to 1863. As a member of the select committee on a Pacific railroad, he displayed energy and ability in procuring the enactment of the first Pacific railroad bill to pa ss Congress. Of this measure he and Theodore D. Judah [q. v.], chief engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad, were the authors. At the end of his term, Sargent unsuccessfully sought his party's nomination for the governorship, and then resumed the practice of law. In 1867, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate, and in 1868 and 1870 was reelected to the House of Representatives. After a bitter campaign, he succeeded, in 1872, in supplanting Cornelius Cole as. United States senator. In the Senate, Sargent was a member of the committees on naval affairs, mines and mining, and appropriations. He successfully opposed the nomination by President Grant of Caleb Cushing [q.v.] to be chief justice of the Supreme Court because of statements contained in a letter from Cushing to Jefferson Davis. At the close of his senatorial term in 1879, Sargent again returned to his law practice. In 1882 President Arthur appointed him minister to Germany, but owing to his outspoken criticism of Germany's unfriendly discrimination against American pork, he became persona non grata to the German government and resigned in April 1884. Pres ident Arthur immediately offered him the ministry to Russia, but this he declined. Returning to California, he soon became the Republican candidate for election to the Senate. The legislature chosen in 1884 appears to have contained a majority of Sargent supporters, and the public generally assumed that he would be reelected with little opposition. The Republican legislative caucus, however, unexpectedly nominated Leland Stanford [q.v.], and he was elected. Stanford and Sargent had been close friends and this apparent treachery came as a blow from which the latter never recovered. He died in San Francisco and was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery. On March 14, 1852, he was married to Ellen Clark; his widow, a son, and two daughters survived him.

Sargent was a man of strong and forceful personality, aggressive in political contests, untiring and persevering in pursuit of his ends. He was a good German scholar, well read on all political topics, and an able debater. He spoke with great rapidity; as a contemporary expressed it, "his volubility was manifest both in tongue and pen" (Memoirs of Cornelius Cole, post, p. 235). Closely identified with the militant Pacific railroad interests, he became a masterful machine politician, "placing or displacing men according to the will of a syndicate."

[E. E. Sargent, Sargent Record (1899); Vital Records of Newburyport, Massachusetts (19II), I, 342; San Francisco Chronicle, August 15, 1887; San Francisco Evening Bull., August 15, 16, 1887; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928 ); H. H. Bancroft, History of California (1890), VII, 291-92, 548-49;  Memoirs of Cornelius Cole, Ex· Senator of the U. S. from California (1908); C. C. Phillips, Cornelius Cole (1917), pp. 262-64; E. C. Kemble, A History of California Newspapers (1927).]

P.O. R.


SARGENT, Catherine, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), Boston, Massachusetts (Yellin, 1994, p. 62)


SARGENT, Henrietta, leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS). (Yellin, 1994, pp. 51, 62, 64, 253n)


SARGENT, John T., Massachusetts, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1862-1864.  Counsellor, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1852-1860.


SAUNDERS, Adeline, African American, abolitionist (Yellin, 1994, p. 58n40)


SAUNDERS, Prince (died February 1839), negro reformer and author.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 382:

SAUNDERS, PRINCE (died February 1839), negro reformer and author, was the son of Cuff and Phyllis Saunders. He was born either in Lebanon, Connecticut, or in Thetford, Vermont. In Thetford he spent part, at 1east, of his boyhood and owned property in 1805. He was baptized on July 25, 1784, at Lebanon, Connecticut. He taught a colored school at Colchester, Connecticut, was a student in Moor's Charity School at Dartmouth College in 1807 and 1808 under the patronage of Judge Oramel Hinckley of Thetford, formerly of Lebanon, and in November 1808 was recommended by President John Wheelock of Dartmouth as a teacher in Boston. There he taught a school for colored children, and through his influence Abiel Smith, a merchant, left a legacy for the work. He enjoyed the friendship of such men as William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) and William S. Shaw [qq.v.], and he founded the "Belles Lettres Society" for young white men and was active in its administration. While in Boston he became engaged to the daughter of Paul Cuffe [q.v.], but the engagement was later broken. He was sent from Boston to England by friends as delegate of the Masonic lodge of Africans and probably for other reasons, as he had letters from prominent Americans. He at once stepped into English society, mingling with the nobility, meeting the King, and making the acquaintance of Wilberforce, who was at the time interesting himself in behalf of Hayti and the emperor, Christophe, and had been commissioned by Christophe to send teachers to Hayti.

Saunders was sent with others. He was entrusted with the task of organizing a school system on the English Lancastrian plan and was to aid in changing the religion of Hayti from Catholic to Protestant. In the process he was intimately connected with the family life of Christophe. In 1816 he introduced vaccination into Hayti under the direction of Wilberforce and personally vaccinated Christophe's children. He was sent back to England as messenger or envoy by Christophe, probably more than once, and memoirs of the period indicate that this honor added to his social prestige. While in England he published his first volume, Haytian Papers (1816), being a translation of laws of Hayti and the Code Henri with his own comments. The frontispiece is a striking engraving of Saunders, which was said by a contemporary to be a "perfect likeness." It shows a face of pronounced African characteristics with the air of a man of the world. In 1818 an American edition of this book was published in Boston by Bingham & Company, without the portrait. He apparently overstepped his authority in London, considering himself more ot an ambassador than messenger, and was recalled by Christophe. We find him next in Philadelphia, then a center of activity and culture of the free colored people of America. There he served as lay reader for several months in the African church, later called the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas and published An Address ... before the Pennsylvania Augustine Society (1818) and A Memoir ... to the American Convention for promoting the Abolition of Slavery (1818). He was a gifted man especially in the use of language. His manners were cultivated, and the stories of his life in England show him to have had a shrewd wit. That he enjoyed the attentions showered upon him is evident. The overthrow and suicide of Christophe in 1820 gave Saunders an opportunity to go back to Hayti under Boyer, and at his death he is spoken of as attorney general. He died at Port-au-Prince, Hayti.

[Dartmouth College Archives; William Bentley Fowle MSS., in possession of Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; Schomberg Collections, New York Public Library; records of Lebanon, Connecticut, and Thetford, Vermont; American Almanac ... 1840 (1839), ed. by J. E. Worcester, p. 298; Vernon Loggins, The Negro Author (1931); Wm. Douglass, Annals of St. Thomas' Church (1862); O. D. Hine, Early Lebanon (1880), p. 40; Emancipator, July 4, 1839; spelling of name varies, on title page of Haytian Papers (ante) spelled Sanders and under portrait (Ibid.) spelled Saunders.]

M. B. S.


SAWYER, Leicester Ambrose, 1807-1898, clergyman, opposed slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 407)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 393-394:

SAWYER, LEICESTER AMBROSE (July 28, 1807-December 29, 1898), clergyman, Biblical scholar, was born in Pinckney, Lewis County, New York, the son of Jonathan and Lucy (Harper) Sawyer. His father was a wagon maker and a soldier of the War of 1812, who died in the service. Leicester was prepared for college privately and graduated as valedictorian of his class at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, in 1828. After a year spent in teaching at Clinton and Philadelphia, he entered Princeton Theological Seminary, from which he was graduated in 1831. He was licensed by the Presbytery of Watertown that same year and on February 23, 1832, was ordained.

After serving several churches in Massachusetts and New York, he became, June 1835, pastor of the North (now United) Congregational Church, New Haven, Connecticut. Although his pastorate there was attended by marked success, he resigned at the close of two years on account of delicate health and assumed charge of the recently formed Park Street (now Dwight Place) Church in the same city. Retiring from the latter position in 1840, he became president of Central College, Columbus, Ohio. From 1843 to 1854 he was successively stated supply or pastor of Presbyterian churches at Central College and Monroeville, Ohio, and Sacketts Harbor, New York. From 1854 to 1859 he was pastor of the Congregational Church at Westmoreland, New York, at the end of which time, on account of changes in his theological views, he obtained a letter of retirement from his denomination with the standing of an independent Christian minister. After serving as pastor of the Second (South) Unitarian Church of Hingham, Massachusetts, for the year 1859--60, he retired to Whitesboro, Oneida County, New York, where he spent the remainder of his life. From 1868 to 1883 he was night editor of the Utica Morning Herald, preparing also for that paper a weekly column headed "Religious Intelligence."

Sawyer was an accomplished classical scholar and a competent and conscientious student of the Bible, in the original languages of which he was well versed. He was one of the earliest American scholars to apply to the study of the Scriptures those literary and historical methods which were later known as the "higher criticism." He translated practically the entire Bible, the work, which appeared in sections at various times, being both a translation and an analytical study. He had the satisfaction of knowing that some of his interpretations which were much criticized at the time were supported by the Revision Committee of 1881. His most noteworthy work in the Old Testament field was that on the Prophets, in which he set forth the then revolutionary conclusion that they contained no reference to Jesus as the Messiah. He published two translations of the New Testament, and in his critical studies reached the conclusion that Jesus was merely a social reformer and that the only genuine portions of the New Testament were five epistles of Paul. The second of these translations, issued in 1891, had a rearrangement of the books, putting what Sawyer regarded as the genuine epistles first and the Gospels last, and an accompanying treatise devoted to an explanation and a defense of this arrangement.

The following are his more important works: Baptism by Affusion and Sprinkling (1838); The Children of Believers Entitled to Baptism (1838); A Critical Exposition of Mental Philosophy (1839); The New Testament Translated from the Original Greek (1858); The Holy Bible Translated and Arranged, with Notes (3 volumes, 1860-62); Daniel, with Its Apocryphal Additions Translated and Arranged (1864); The New Testament Translated from the Original Greek (1891). Sawyer was a well-equipped scholar and an earnest seeker after truth. Although he dealt with matters that were highly controversial, he never sought controversy nor attacked those who disagreed with him. On September 26, 1832, he married Pamelia Bert Bosworth of Smithville, New York, who died in 1881. Seven of their ten children survived their parents.

[Hamilton Lit. Magazine, March 1899; Necrological Report ... Princeton Theological Seminary, 1899; Utica Morning Herald, December 30, 1898; information from a former colleague on the Utica Morning Herald.]

F. T. P.


SAYRES, Edward, captain of the Pearl, attempted to free 76 slaves valued at $100,000, caught and imprisoned
(Rodriguez, 2007, p. 51).


SCAMMON, Jonathan Young, 1812-1890, Whitefield, Maine, lawyer, businessman, educator, newspaper publisher, Whig and Republican state leader, member of the Free Soil Party.  Introduced legislation to exclude slavery from the California and New Mexico territories.  Founded the Chicago Journal in 1844, the Chicago Republican in 1865.  T. W. Goodspeed, The University of Chicago Biographical Sketches, volume II (1925)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume XVI, pp. 407-408:

SCAMMON, JONATHAN YOUNG (July 27, 1812-March 17, 1890), lawyer and business man, was born on a farm in Whitefield. Maine, the son of Eliakim and Joanna (Young) Scammon. With a farmer's life in prospect, the boy's future was suddenly changed by the loss of two fingers on his left hand. Since he was thus handicapped in the farmer's important business of milking cows, his parents decided to equip him for a profession. He prepared for college and at eighteen entered Waterville (now Colby) College, but left at the end of his first year, probably for lack of means. He studied law in a law office in Hallowell and was admitted to the bar in 1835. Fired by enthusiastic reports of the rapid development of the Mississippi Valley, he started west and, not expecting to settle there, arrived in Chicago in September 1835. Not being greatly impressed with the town, he was preparing to move on when the temporary job of deputy clerk in the circuit court was offered him. He accepted, and Chicago became his home for the remaining fifty-five years of his life. Admitted to the Illinois bar he rapidly won a place of prominence and leadership. Appointed as reporter of the Supreme Court of Illinois in 1839 he compiled four volumes of its reports, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of ... Illinois (copyright 1840-copyright 1844). Deeply interested in public education, he, probably more than anyone else, was responsible for the establishment of free schools in Chicago. For years he was a member of the board of education and president from 1845 to 1848. One of the city's elementary schools bears his name in recognition of his services. In his early years he was a Whig and later a Republican, being delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1864 and 1872. He served as state senator in 1861.

Throughout his career he was interested in newspaper publishing, in 1844 launching the Chicago Journal on its long career, in 1865 helping to found the Chicago Republican, which was brought to an end by the fire of 1871, and beginning publication of the Inter Ocean in 1872. In the late '40s he became actively interested in banking, insurance, and railroads. He did more than perhaps any other man to obtain better banking laws for Illinois. He established the Marine Bank in Chicago in 1851 and the Mechanics National Bank in 1864, serving as president of each, and he developed the Chicago Fire and Marine Insurance Company, of which also he was president in 1849. He had a prominent part in the development of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad Company and was instrumental in bringing the Michigan Central Railroad into Chicago. Throughout his long life he continued the practice of law, although, as his career developed, business matters occupied an increasing amount of his time. Robert Todd Lincoln studied law in his office. By the early ‘50s he had become one of the leading business men of Chicago and a rich man by the standards of wealth of that day. Financial reverses were, however, encountered: temporary in 1857, when, during the panic of that year, his bank failed while he himself was absent in Europe with his family, irreparable in 1874, when the conflagration of 1871, the panic of 1873, and a second devastating fire a year later combined to give him a series of blows from which he never financially recovered. He was instrumental in founding many Chicago societies and charitable institutions, most of which he served as president. Among these were the Chicago Historical Society, the Chicago Academy of Sciences, Hahnemann Medical College, the Hahnemann hospital, the Old Ladies' Home, the old University of Chicago, of which he was one of the most liberal supporters, and the Chicago Astronomical Society, for which he provided funds for a telescope and observatory, which, by contract between the society and the university, was erected on the grounds of the latter. His name is perpetuated in the new University of Chicago by "Scammon Court" in the School of Education quadrangle, made possible by the gift of land by his widow in 1901. In religion he was a Swedenborgian, very zealous and prominent for years in the national activities of the New Jerusalem Church. He was married twice: first in 1837 to Mary Ann Haven Dearborn, of Bath, Maine, who died in 1858, and second, in 1867 to Mrs. Maria (Sheldon) Wright, of Delaware County, New York. He died in Chicago.

[T. W. Goodspeed, The University of Chicago Biographical Sketches, volume II (1925); Chicago Magazine, March 1857, reprinted with additions in Fergus' Historical Series, No. 6 (1876); H. L. Conrad, "Early Bench and Bar in Chicago," Magazine of Western History, August 1890; Chicago Daily News, March 17, 1890; Chicago Daily Tribune and Chicago Times, March 18, 1890.]

G. B. U.


SCHENCK, Robert Cumming, 1809-1890, diplomat, Union general.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  Three-term Whig Representative to Congress, December 1843-March 1851.  Re-elected December 1863, 1864, 1866, 1868.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 417-418; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 427; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 370; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 427-428:

SCHENCK, ROBERT CUMMING (October 4, 1809-March 23, 1890), congressman, soldier, diplomat, was a son of General William Cortenus Schenck and his wife, Elizabeth Rogers. The father, a descendant of Roelof Martense Schenck who came to New Amsterdam probably about 1650, had migrated from New Jersey to Ohio, where he served in the legislature and is said to have founded the town of Franklin. Here Robert was born. His father died in 1821, leaving the boy under the guardianship of General James Findlay [q.v.] of Cincinnati. Robert graduated from Miami University in 1827, remained there three years longer studying and teaching, was subsequently admitted to the bar, and commenced practising law in Dayton. On August 21, 1834, he married Rennelche W. Smith, whose sister was the wife of his brother James Findlay Schenck [q.v.].

Robert Schenck's political career began in 1838 with a fruitless campaign for election to the legislature on the Whig ticket. More successful later, he assumed the leadership of his party in the Ohio House during the terms of 1841-43. In the national House of Representatives, 1843-51, he proved himself a vigorous Whig partisan, and upon the expiration of his fourth term in 1851 he was named by President Fillmore as minister to Brazil. Here he served until October 1853, acting with John S. Pendleton [q.v.], charge d'affaires of the United States to the Argentine Confederation, in negotiating commercial treaties with Uruguay (1852) and Paraguay (1853), which were never proclaimed, and two treaties with the Argentine Confederation, signed July 10 and 27, 1853. He failed, however, to secure from Brazil a treaty providing for the free navigation of the Amazon.

A strong anti-slavery man, Schenck was one of the first to urge Lincoln's nomination and was an active Republican campaigner in 1860. Appointed brigadier-general of volunteers May 17, 1861, he took part in the first battle of Bull Run, served under Rosecrans and Fremont in West Virginia, and was wounded at Second Bull Run in August 1862, his right wrist being permanently injured. On August 30 he was promoted major-general of volunteers. Eliminated from active fighting, he was assigned in December 1862 to the command in Baltimore, where his measures were not always popular (Richard H. Jackson, To Robert E. [sic] Schenck, pamphlet, 1867, p. 3). In December of the following year he resigned his commission in order to sit once more in Congress.

In the House he disapproved strongly of Lincoln's moderation as shown in the Hampton Roads Conference (J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States, volume V, 1904, pp. 51-52, note). A master of invective and vituperation, he distinguished himself for the violence of his attack on such "Copperheads" as Fernando Wood, whom he called "a specimen of the snake family" (No Compromise with Treason; Remarks of Mr. Schenk ... April 11, 1864, 1864) and for his opposition to President Johnson. He was chairman of the House committee on military affairs and later of the Ways and Means committee. He was an advocate of the contraction of the currency at the end of the war (Public Credit-Gold Contracts: Speech ... February 22, 1869, 1869).

Failing of reelection to Congress in 1870, Schenck turned again to diplomacy. He was appointed, February 10, 1871, a member of the Joint High Commission between the United States and Great Britain and in that capacity signed the Treaty of Washington, May 8, 1871. On Dec. 22 preceding he had been designated to succeed the discredited John Lothrop Motley [q.v.] as minister to Great Britain, and he traveled to his post in May 1871. Here he was called upon to conduct much of the routine business arising out of the Treaty of Washington and the arbitration of the Alabama claims. In spite of his failure to conclude a consular convention with Great Britain and to persuade Derby to support the United States in its demands on Spain for concessions in its Cuban policy (S. F. Bemis, The American Secretaries of State, volume VII, 1928, pp. 194-200), his record in London seems creditable, but in February 1876 he resigned under a cloud. He had allowed himself to be made a director of the "Emma" silver mine in Utah which in 1871 used his name in the sale of stock in Great Britain. He was reproved by the Secretary of State at that time, and the failure of the Emma Mine brought his resignation, which Grant reluctantly accepted. The committee on foreign affairs of the House, which investigated the incident, found no cause to impugn Schenck's integrity, but condemned such transactions by American diplomats (House Report No. 579, 44 Congress, I Sess., 1876). After Schenck's resignation he returned to Washington to practise law, achieved a reputation as an authority on draw poker (he published Draw Poker in 1880), and died in that city in 1890. He was survived by three of his six daughters.

[A. D. Schenck, The Reverend Wm. Schenck, His Ancestry and His Descendants (1883); Robt. C. Schenck, U.S. A. (n.d.), pub. by order of Union Central Com., 3rd Congress District, Ohio; In Memoriam, General Robt. C. Schenck (n.d.), proceedings at memorial service in Dayton; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Beckles Wilson, America's Ambassadors to England (1928); W. A. Taylor, Hundred-Year Book and Official Register of the State of Ohio (1891); Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S., 1871-76; L. E. Chittenden, The Emma Mine (1876); War Dept. records; instructions and dispatches to and from Brazil and Great Britain, in Dept. of State; Washington Post, March 24, 1890.]

E.W.S.  


SCHNAUFFER, Carl Heinrich (July 4, 1823-September 4, 1854), poet, soldier, editor, was a German political refugee in America after the Revolution of 1848. Founded, in October 1851, a German daily, Baltimore Wecker, which stood for popular education, freedom, and enlightenment, and opposed the current "Know-Nothingism."  After his death his widow continued the Wecker in his in his spirit. No English language paper in Maryland was anti-slavery and on the outburst of the Civil War a mob stormed the Wecker office, smashing its windows.

(L. P. Henninghausen, "Reminiscences of the Political Life of the German-Americans in Baltimore during 1850-1860," Seventh Annual Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland, 1892-93; J. T. Scharf, History of Baltimore City (1881).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 444-445:

SCHNAUFFER, CARL HEINRICH (July 4, 1823-September 4, 1854), poet, soldier, editor, was a German political refugee in America after the Revolution of 1848. He was born in Heimsheim, near Stuttgart, Germany, the son of a dyer, Johann Heinrich Schnauffer, and Karoline (Hasenmaier) Schnauffer. Owing to the early death of his father Schnauffer's schooling was cut short and, after serving an apprenticeship in Grossbottwar, he entered the employ of a Mannheim merchant. His employer recognized his literary ability and gave him the necessary time for study. At this time Schnauffer met two men whose ideals influenced the whole course of his life, Gustav Struve and Friedrich Karl Franz Hecker [qq.v.], revolutionary leaders in Baden and emigrants to America after 1848. In 1846 he entered the university at Heidelberg, where he associated with the liberal student groups, and published his first volume of verse, strongly influenced by Pierre-Jean de Beranger and Ferdinand Freiligrath. In the next year he joined the staff of the liberal Mannheimer A bendzeitung, and in 1848 followed Hecker into the field and fought in a number of engagements of the ill-starred uprising of the South-German liberals. He fled to Switzerland, but in 1849 he joined in the renewed fighting, and on June 22 he was taken prisoner at Mannheim and transported to Prussia. He escaped from prison disguised as a locksmith, and once more took refuge in Switzerland where he wrote his Todtenkranze, inspired probably by a work of the same title by Christian von Zedlitz. But instead of the Austrian poet's resignation, Schnauffer sounds a ringing call to battle for freedom in the name of those executed by the reactionaries. In April 1850 he was seized by the Swiss government and forced to leave for London along with other revolutionary leaders. In London he met Struve and together they went to the estate of Thomas Fothergill, a friend from Heidelberg days who offered them asylum. He performed manual labor for his keep, among other things training race horses, and also began a five-act drama in the style of Schiller, Koenig Karl I oder Cromwell und die englische Revolution, which was privately printed in Baltimore in 1854. Characteristically the play ends with the death of the tyrant and the establishment of the British republic.

In Mannheim he had become engaged to Elise Wilhelmine Moos who had, however, emigrated to Baltimore, Maryland, with her family in 1847. For several years Schnauffer had no news of her but, in 1850, correspondence was renewed and in May of the following year he joined her in Baltimore where they were married. He identified himself enthusiastically with the "Turner" movement and founded, in October 1851, a German daily, Baltimore Wecker, which stood for popular education, freedom, and enlightenment, and opposed the current "Know-Nothingism." Unlike some other "Forty-eighters" Schnauffer never preached economic revolution, but in his lyrics he continually elaborated on the theme that the noble man should at all times be ready to fight and die for freedom. The best works by Schnauffer are poems in the style of Arndt or Herwegh, which expressed the ideals of the "Turner" so well that they became their favorite songs. His collected poems w ere published in 1879 under the title, Lieder imd Gedichte aus dem Nachlass van Carl Heinrich Schnaiiffer. He died at the age of thirty-one from typhoid fever, just before news reached him that one of his lyrics had won the first prize at the "Turner" convention in Philadelphia. His widow continued the Wecker in his memory and in his spirit. No English language paper in Maryland was anti-slavery and on the outburst of the Civil War a mob stormed the Wecker office, smashing its windows. At this moment Mrs. Schnauffer, with the smaller of her two children in her arms, stepped out of the building to face the mob and successfully appealed to them to abandon further destruction. Schnauffer was quite short in stature but military in bearing, and he had a personality that inspired enthusiastic devotion in his friends.

[Jahrbucher der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Turnerei, April 1891; L. P. Henninghausen, "Reminiscences of the Political Life of the German-Americans in Baltimore during 1850-1860," Seventh Annual Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland, 1892-93; J. T. Scharf, History of Baltimore City (1881); Baltimore Sun, September 5, 1854; reminiscences and unpublished letters furnished by his grandson, John Dickinson.]

A.E.Z.


SCHNEIDER, George (December 13, 1823- September 16, 1905), journalist and banker.  In St. Louis he founded the Neue Zeit, a paper which soon became conspicuous for its opposition to the extension of slavery. In 1851 the home of the Neue Zeit was destroyed by fire, and in August of the same year Schneider became managing editor of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, a conservative weekly paper. Although more conservative than the Neue Zeit, the Staats-Zeitung bitterly opposed the Douglas program and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

(Who's Who in America, 1903-05; Trans. Illinois State Historical Society, no. 35 (1928); Encyclopedia of Biography of Illinois, volume I (1892).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 446-447:

SCHNEIDER, GEORGE (December 13, 1823- September 16, 1905), journalist and banker, was born in Pirmasens, Rhenish Bavaria, the son of Ludwig and Josephine (Schlick) Schneider. He obtained his early education at the Latin school of his native town. Upon reaching his majority he became engaged in journalism. Keenly interested in public affairs, he denounced the arbitrary government of his native state and in 1848 joined an insurrection against it. Having eventually to leave the country because of his political views, he went first to France and thence to the United States. Arriving in New York in July 1849, he was attracted by the glamorous stories of the new West. Within a few months he had reached St. Louis and founded the Neue Zeit, a paper which soon became conspicuous for its opposition to the extension of slavery. In 1851 the home of the Neue Zeit was destroyed by fire, and in August of the same year Schneider became managing editor of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, a conservative weekly paper which he soon transformed into a thriving daily with a Sunday edition, the first in Chicago. Although more conservative than the Neue Zeit, the Staats-Zeitung bitterly opposed the Douglas program and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. On January 29, 1854, Schneider convoked a public meeting, perhaps the first of its kind in the United States, to draft resolutions against the Nebraska Bill, and on March 16 at a mass meeting of German citizens in which Schneider was an active participant, Douglas was branded as "an ambitious and dangerous demagogue." On February 22, 1856, Schneider was one of a group of anti-Nebraska editors who assembled at Decatur, Illinois, and issued a call for the first Republican state convention in Illinois, to be held at Bloomington in the following May. At the Bloomington convention, with Lincoln's assistance, he managed to get a plank adopted which was a clear-cut pronouncement against Know-Nothing policies hostile to naturalized citizens, especially Germans, who were antislavery men. He also was chiefly responsible for the adoption of the tenth plank of the Philadelphia platform of 1856 which invited the "affiliation and cooperation of the men of all parties." He actively espoused Lincoln's candidacy for the presidency after his nomination in 1860, and the nation-wide circulation of the Staats-Zeitung, one of the most influential German papers in the Northwest, did much to consolidate the great foreign-born vote without which Lincoln would have failed of election (D. V. Smith, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, September 1932).

In 1861 he was appointed consul at Elsinore, Denmark, primarily to influence the public opinion of northern Europe in favor of the Union cause. Resigning from this office in 1862, he returned to the United States and in 1863 became collector of internal revenue for the Chicago district, having in the meantime (1862) disposed of his interest in the Staats-Zeitung. After four years in the internal revenue service, he became chief executive of the State Savings Institution at Chicago, and in 1871 he was chosen the first president of the newly organized National Bank of Illinois, a position that he held until 1897. Although he was now primarily interested in banking, he continued to be active in public life in Illinois. Declining to accept a diplomatic appointment to Switzerland in 1877, he became the treasurer of the Chicago South Park Board in the following year, serving in this capacity until 1882. As a director of the Chicago Festival Association, he was instrumental in 1885 in bringing excellent musical talent to Chicago. He was intensely interested in the formation of relief societies for German immigrants, and he served for many years as a director of the Illinois Humane Society, which through his efforts in 1879 established a separate department for helpless children. On June 6, 1853, he married Matilda Schloetzer, by whom he had seven children, all daughters. He died in Colorado Springs, Colo.

[Who's Who in America, 1903-05; Trans. Illinois State Historical Society, no. 35 (1928); Encyclopedia of Biography of Illinois, volume I (1892); John Moses and Joseph Kirkland, eds., History of Chicago (1895), volumes I, II; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois (1900); A. C. Cole, The Era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 (1919); "Meeting ... Commemorative of the Convention of May 29, 1856," Trans. McLean County Historical Society, volume III (Bloomington, Illinois, 1900); Chicago Daily Tribune, September 18, 1905; information from Chicago Public Library]

A.L.P.


SCHOELCHER, Victor, born 1804, French statesman, prominent abolitionist leader.  Traveled extensively throughout the world (including the USA) to study slavery and advocated emancipation

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 423)


SCHURZ, Carl, 1829-1906, abolitionist leader, political leader, journalist, lawyer, Union general, Secretary of the Interior. In 1856 having espoused the anti-slavery cause with all the ardor and enthusiasm he gave to the German revolution of 1849, Schurz was immediately drawn into Republican politics. Speaking in German, he campaigned for Fremont. The next year he was sent as a delegate to the Republican state convention which promptly nominated him for lieutenant-governor although he was not yet a citizen of the United States. In the campaign of 1858 Schurz campaigned in Illinois for Abraham Lincoln and against Stephen A. Douglas.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 466; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 726-729). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 466-470:

SCHURZ, CARL (March 2, 1829-May 14, 1906), minister to Spain, Union soldier, senator from Missouri, and secretary of the interior, was born in the little town of Liblar on the Rhine, near Cologne. He attended the gymnasium at Cologne (1839-46) and became a candidate for the doctorate at the University of Bonn in 1847. His father, Christian Schurz, was first a village schoolmaster and then embarked in business; his mother, Marianne Jussen, the daughter of a tenant farmer, was a woman of unusual force of character. Both made every sacrifice to help their son to the career of which he dreamed-a professorship of history. Fate in the form of the German revolutionary movement of 1848-49 intervened and altered Schurz's life as it marred or made the lives of many thousands of young Germans who beheld in the United States their ideal of popular government. Of these none was more ardent or more eloquent, and certainly none was more daring, than Schurz. At nineteen he was a leader of the student movement in his university, and was preaching its gospel to the peasants in his neighborhood through the columns of a democratic newspaper, and by word of mouth. His rare gift of oratory he discovered when he suddenly addressed, to great applause, a meeting in the university hall at Bonn to which he came without the slightest intention of speaking.

Profoundly influenced by Prof. Gottfried Kinkel of Bonn, one of the intellectual leaders of the struggle for democratic institutions, Schurz followed him in the abortive revolutionary movement upon Siegburg; on May 11, 1849. Thereafter he became a lieutenant and staff officer of the revolutionary army taking part in the final battles of the united rebel forces of Baden and the Palatinate at Ubstadt and Bruchsal, and those on the line of the Murg River in Baden on June 28-30, 1849. Sent by order into the fortress of Rastatt, just before it was surrendered, he was one of its defenders until the surrender more than three weeks later. Rightly expecting to be s hot if captured, Schurz declined to deliver himself up to the conquering Prussians. With two companions he concealed himself for four days, finally escaping through an unused sewer which was their first place of refuge. (See Schurz's account, "The Surrender of Rastatt," Wisconsin Magazine of History, March 1929.) They crossed the Rhine and entered French territory, Schurz finally joining the large colony of German refugees in Switzerland.

There he might have stayed indefinitely had it not been for the plight of his beloved teacher, Kinkel, who h ad been captured, put on trial for his life, and sentenced to life imprisonment. After being treated as a common felon, Kinkel was at length transferred to the prison at Spandau, a fortified town near Berlin. In response to Frau Kinkel's appeals, Schurz undertook the liberation of her husband. Twice, with the aid of a false passport, he reentered Germany, where he was himself on the proscribed list. The necessary funds were furnished by friends of the Professor. After nine months of preparation and plotting with the complicity of a turnkey, Kinkel was lowered to the street from an unbarred attic window of the prison in the night of November 6-7, 1850. In a waiting carriage Kinkel and Schurz left the city by the Hamburg road, only to alter their course and drive straight to Mecklenburg. They were successfully concealed in Rostock until a tiny schooner conveyed them to England. To this day no single incident of the Revolution is better known in Germany; no other has in it more elements of romantic daring and unselfish personal heroism. Schurz went to Paris in December 1850, but in the summer of 1851 was expelled from France by the police as a dangerous foreigner. He resided in England until after his marriage there to Margarethe (or Margaretha) Meyer, of Hamburg, July 6, 1852. During this period he won the friendship of Mazzini and Kossuth and other great leaders of the democratic movement in Europe. America beckoned him, however. In August he set sail for the United States, following in the footsteps of many of his associates-in-arms of the brief campaign of 1849. He and his wife lived in Philadelphia until 1855.

Before definitely settling, Schurz spent months in traveling through the Eastern and Middle-Western portion of the United States, and set about acquiring that remarkable mastery of the English language which made it possible for him to make campaign speeches in English within five years after his arrival. In 1856 he purchased a small farm in Watertown, Wis., where an uncle's family had settled. Having espoused the anti-slavery cause with all the ardor and enthusiasm he gave to the revolution of 1849, Schurz was immediately drawn into Republican politics. Speaking in German, he campaigned for Fremont. The next year he was sent as a delegate to the Republican state convention which promptly nominated him for lieutenant-governor although he was not yet a citizen of the United States, a point that did not become pressing because he was defeated by 107 votes despite wide campaigning in both English and German. A year later, the campaign of 1858 found him speaking in Illinois for Abraham Lincoln and against Stephen A. Douglas. From that time on he was in demand for one campaign after another; in April 1859 he aided, by request, Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts in his fight against the Know-Nothing movement in that state, delivering one of his most famous speeches, "True Americanism" (Speeches, 1865, pp. 51- 76), which helped to defeat a proposal to deny the ballot to foreign-born voters in Massachusetts for two years after federal naturalization.

Schurz was next put forward for the governorship of Wisconsin; the prize went, however, to another. He was then admitted to the bar and entered into a law partnership, but the anti-slavery cause and politics absorbed most of his time. Chairman of the Wisconsin delegation to the Chicago Republican convention of 1860 which nominated Abraham Lincoln, he and his fellow-delegates voted for Seward until the end. One of the committee which notified Lincoln of his nomination, Schurz spoke for him in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York with great effectiveness among both natives and foreign-born. His greatest forensic effort-he considered it the greatest success of his oratorical career-was his speech in Cooper Union, September 13, 1860 (Ibid., pp. 162-221), which was devoted to a merciless critique of Stephen A. Douglas and was marked by sarcasm, humor, and his unusual power of clear exposition. It lasted for three hours and was received with the greatest enthusiasm. For all of these services, Lincoln, who had written to him on June 18, 1860, that "to the. extent of our limited acquaintance, no man stands nearer my heart than yourself" (Speeches, Correspondence, I, 119), appointed Schurz minister to Spain, although he was in the midst of raising the 1st New York ("Lincoln") Cavalry of which he expected to be colonel.

Arriving at Madrid in July 1861, Schurz devoted himself, like Charles Francis Adams and other American representatives in Europe, to advancing and safeguarding the Union cause abroad, and gave all his leisure time to military campaigns and tactics which he had studied ever since his brief military experience in Germany. Finding, however, that the Northern cause was greatly weakened by the failure of the government to become clearly anti-slavery, and receiving no encouragement in this matter from Secretary Seward, Schurz returned to the United States in January 1862, to put his views before Lincoln. The latter received him kindly, but persisted in his policy of awaiting a more favorable public opinion at home. Schurz then sought to rouse the public for immediate emancipation and to that end delivered an address, previously read and approved by Lincoln, at Cooper Union in March 1862 (Speeches, 1865, pp. 24o-68), which coincided with the President's request to Congress for authority to cooperate with any state which might adopt gradual emancipation. Schurz resigned as minister in April, was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, and was given not a brigade, but a division, in Fremont's army on June 10, 1862, thus being placed in command of troops some of whom were veterans of a year's standing.

That Schurz took his military duties seriously, and soon won the respect of his officers and men for his ability and personal courage is beyond question. He was frequently complimented in dispatches, and on one occasion after his troops passed in review with the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln confirmed the press reports that "the division commanded by General Schurz impressed the Presidential party as the best drilled and most soldierly of the troops that passed before them" (Schurz, Reminiscences, II, 407). At the second battle of Bull Run, August 30, 1862, the new brigadier of two months' service and his division won high praise in one of the bloodiest and bitterest defeats of the Army of the Potomac, whose final withdrawal they covered. It was, however, the misfortune of this division and the corps to bear the brunt of Jackson's sudden attack at Chancellorsville. Badly placed by the corps commander, General O. O. Howard-despite repeated protests and warnings by Schurz-the division broke and retired in disorder before the overwhelming Confederate onrush, but was finally rallied in part to aid in preventing what threatened to be a complete disaster. For this the XI Corps, and especially its German regiments, was violently abused and charged with cowardice in the press of the entire country. There resulted a long controversy between Schurz and Howard, but the farmer's efforts to obtain a court of inquiry and justice for his troops failed. Again at Gettysburg, where, because of the killing of General Reynolds and the consequent advancement of General Howard, Schurz took command of the XI Corps, his troops bore the brunt of the Confederate attack upon the right wing. After heavy losses they retired in some disorder through the town to Cemetery Ridge, again in obedience to orders from Howard. Once more there were unwarranted charges that the Germans had failed to stand their ground.

That Schurz was himself not held responsible for the Chancellorsville disaster appears from the fact that on March 14, 1863, he was promoted to major-general. After Gettysburg, the corps was transferred to the western field. Here Schurz again became involved in a controversy, this time with General Hooker. A court of inquiry subsequently found that his conduct had been entirely correct and proper. After Chattanooga the depleted XI and XII Corps were merged into a new XX Corps, and Schurz was appointed to command a corps of instruction at Nashville. Unable to brook the prospect of inaction, Schurz, after some months, asked to be relieved of his command, conferred with Lincoln, and then made many speeches on behalf of the President's reelection. The end of the war found him chief of staff to Major-General Slocum in Sherman's army. He resigned immediately after the surrender of Lee. Throughout his military service Schurz corresponded irregularly with Lincoln, a most unwise procedure but one welcomed by the President except on one occasion when he found it necessary to rebuke the General, which event, however,- did not interrupt their warm friendship (Schurz, Speeches, Correspondence, I, 2n-13, 219--21). At best it was an anomalous situation; a political campaigner and intimate of the President had been put into a most responsible military command and was known to be in direct relations with the Commander-in-Chief. Had not Schurz displayed real soldierly capacity, and much discretion, the situation might easily have become an impossible one. Instead, he won the regard of Sherman, Hancock, and many others who ranked among the best of the Northern generals.

Before Schurz could decide upon his next course of action, President Johnson asked him, to visit the Southern states and to report at length to him upon conditions there. Schurz traveled from July to September 1865, and wrote a lengthy report that had extraordinary historical value to this day, because of its detailed analysis of the situation, its clarity of statement, and its vision (Speeches, Correspondence, I, 279-374). Since, however, Schurz thought the extension of the franchise to the colored people should be a condition precedent to the readmission of the Confederate states, his report was unwelcome to Johnson, who neither acknowledged its receipt nor allowed it to be published until Congress demanded it (Senate Executive Document No. 2, 39 Congress, 1 Sess.).

With this task accomplished, Schurz accepted an invitation from Horace Greeley to represent the New York Tribune as its Washington correspondent, in which capacity he observed the beginning of the struggle between Congress and the President over reconstruction. Resigning in the spring of 1866, Schurz next became editor-in-chief of the Detroit Post, then just established by leading Michigan Republicans. Here he remained only a year, when he became joint editor, with Emil Preetorius [q.v.], of the St. Louis Westliche Post, and one of the proprietors of this German-language daily. This third chapter in his journalistic career was also destined to be a short one. A delegate to the Republican National Convention which met to nominate Grant for the presidency in 1868, Schurz was at once chosen temporary chairman of the convention, and made the keynote address. He drew up the resolution in the platform calling for the removal of disqualifications upon "the late rebels" (Reminiscences, III, 284-85). As usual, he made many speeches in the campaign which followed. After a bitter contest between the Radicals and Liberals in the party, he was himself nominated for the United States Senate from Missouri, and duly elected by the legislature (Ross, post, p. 29). On March 4, 1869, two days after his fortieth birthday, he took his seat in Washington.

He speedily found himself in the group of anti-Grant senators, joining Sumner in the defeat of Grant's plan to annex Santo Domingo, and opposing at many points the "spoils-loving and domineering partisans" of the President. On December 20, 1869, years before the policy it outlined was adopted, Schurz introduced a bill to create a permanent civil-service merit system (Congressional Globe, 41 Congress, 2 Session, pp. 236-38). William A. Dunning and Frederic Bancroft have written in their addenda to Schurz's unfinished memoirs that his "whole conception of public policy was far above the play of merely personal and party interests"; and that his senatorial career was accordingly one of "exceptional seriousness and dignity" (Reminiscences, III, 317-18). He was at his best in his incessant attacks upon public corruption. The news that he would speak at a given hour usually crowded the public galleries. But the high rank he took and held in the Senate, and his national reputation as an orator and a leader, did not assure him reelection in 1875, for, because of the Republican split, the Democrats had gained control of the Missouri legislature. He was again compelled to turn to journalism and the lecture platform for support.

Schurz, who was disgusted with Grant and distrustful of the Democrats, had probably done more than any other leader to promote the Liberal Republican movement (Ross, pp. 44-50; Schurz, Speeches, Correspondence, II, 5g-69, 254-60). He was the permanent president of the Cincinnati convention of 1872 that organized the new party and, although profoundly disappointed by the nomination of Horace Greeley and without hope of success, was active in the campaign. His speeches "were naturally against Grant rather than for Greeley" (Reminiscences, III, 352). In 1876, to the dismay and anger of many of his Liberal Republican associates, he supported Hayes, being assured that the latter was sound on the money question, would restore the South, and would promote civil-service reform (Speeches, Correspondence, III, 249-59; Reminiscences, III, 368). On March 4, 1877, Schurz entered the cabinet of Hayes as secretary of the interior. His secretaryship is still remembered because of his enlightened treatment of the Indians (much misunderstood at the time), his installing a merit promotion system in his department, his preservation of the public domain, and the beginning of the development of national parks.

On leaving the cabinet Schurz began his fourth venture into journalism. At the invitation of Henry Villard [q. v. ], who had just purchased the New York Evening Post and the Nation, he became head of a triumvirate of remarkable editors comprising besides himself, Edwin L. Godkin and Horace White [qq.v.]. The brilliant chapter in journalism which they thus began ended in two and a quarter years, in the fall of 1883, because of differences as to editorial methods and policies between Schurz and Godkin (Nevins, post, pp. 455-56). The friendship of the three men remained unbroken; until his death Schurz was a valued counselor of the Evening Post. As an editorial writer it was plain that his style was often more oratorical than journalistic, and lacking in terseness. To both the Evening Post and to Schurz, because of his rousing speeches, was attributed to a considerable degree Blaine's loss of New York state in 1884, and the election of Cleveland to the presidency.

Schurz's final venture into journalism began in 1892, when in succession to George William Curtis he for six years contributed the leading editorials to Harper's Weekly. Their authorship was at first kept secret, as had been his contribution of many articles to the Nation, prior to its amalgamation with the Evening Post in 1881, notably some regular letters from Washington in 1872 and 1873. In 1898 his connection with Harper's Weekly was ended by his refusal to support the drift toward the war with Spain. When the war came Schurz warmly opposed it, as he did the annexation of the Philippines, declaring that fatal violence was being done the anti-imperialistic, peace-loving ideal of America, free from all entangling foreign alliances. He once wrote that foreign-born citizens were "more jealously patriotic Americans than many natives are," since they watch the progress of the Republic "with triumphant joy at every success of our democratic institutions, and with the keenest sensitiveness to every failure, having the standing of this country before the world constantly in mind" (Reminiscences, I, 120). This describes his own attitude toward his adopted country.

The latter years of his life Schurz gave to literary labor, to letters upon public questions, and to occasional public speeches. The latter were as always carefully memorized, were marked by a lofty tone, and, like those delivered in the Senate, were "emphasized by graceful diction, and impressive delivery" (Reminiscences, III, 318). An ardent admirer and supporter of Grover Cleveland, except occasionally, as in the matter of the Venezuelan episode of 1895, Schurz championed William J. Bryan in 1900 on the anti-imperialist issue, as he had opposed him on the free-silver question four years earlier. He was for years (1892-1900) president of the National Civil-Service Reform League, and of the Civil Service Reform Association of New York (1893-1906). In every mayoralty election in New York, in which he resided from 1881 on, he made his influence felt in the struggle for good government. Indeed, he held in his last years the unique position of a veteran statesman, a public-spirited citizen, and political philosopher, representing particularly a great group of his fellow-citizens, and battling uninterruptedly for his conception of an America minding its own business, and keeping aloof from foreign aggression and foreign involvements.

Carl Schurz was a man of great personal charm, of commanding presence, despite a very tall and rather lanky figure, of a gay, vivacious, and unusually happy spirit, which was never daunted by his bitter disappointments in the trend of domestic and foreign policy from 1898 on. Devoted to his family, an amateur pianist of talent, blessed with a great sense of humor, together with much playful irony, he took cheerfully those periods of his life when he went counter to public opinion, and willingly paid the price therefor. He remained until his death extraordinarily rich in friends and admirers. His wife died in 1876. Of two sons and two daughters, three survived him; all died without issue. Besides his speeches and unfinished reminiscences (see below), mention should be made of his admirable Life of Henry Clay (2 volumes, 1887), a notable essay on Lincoln in the Atlantic Monthly, June 1891 (also printed separately, 1891 and later), and a pamphlet, The New South (1885).

[There are Schurz papers in the Library of Congress, and there is a collection of private letters in the Wis. Historical Society Various editions of speeches and writings are: Speeches of Carl Schurz (1865); Frederic Bancroft, ed., Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz (6 volumes, 1913); The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (3 volumes, 1907-08), containing, in volume III, "A Sketch of Carl Schurz's Political Career, 1869-1906," by Frederic Bancroft and W. A. Dunning; a German edition, containing letters not in the American, Lebenserinner, (3 volumes, 1906-12); Joseph Schafer, ed. and translation, Intimate Letters of Carl Schurz, 1841- 1869 (Pubs. of the State Historical Society of Wis., Collections, Vol. XXX, 1928). Among works about Schurz are: Anton Erkelenz and Fritz Mittelmann, eds., Carl Schurz, der Deutsche mid der Amerikaner (1929); Otto Dannehl, Carl Schurz (1929); C. V. Easum, The Americanization of Carl Schurz (1929); Joseph Schafer, Carl Schurz, Militant Liberal (1930); C. M. Fuess, Carl Schurz, Reformer (1932). See also T. A. Dodge, The Campaign of Chancellorsville (1881); E. D. Ross, The Liberal Republican Movement (1919); T. S. Barclay, The Liberal Republican Movement in Missouri, 1865-1871 (1926); Allan Nevins, The Evening Post (1922); F. M. Stewart, The National Civil Service Reform League (1929); obituaries and comment, Evening Post (New York), May 14, 1906; New York Times, May 15, 1906; Nation (New York), May 17, 1906; Harper's Weekly, May 26, 1906.]

O. G. V.


SCHUYLER, George Washington (February 2, 1810-February 1, 1888), state official, author. In politics Schuyler was a Whig with strong anti-slavery sentiments which had him follow William H. Seward into the Republican party. His first political recognition came from the Union Republican convention of 1863 which nominated him for state treasurer. Running on a ticket as candidate for secretary of state, and pledged to support the Lincoln administration, he was elected and served two years. 
(G. W. Schuyler, Colonial New York (1885), II, 377; D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume III (1909).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 472-473:

SCHUYLER, GEORGE WASHINGTON (February 2, 1810-February 1, 1888), state official, author, was born at Stillwater, New York, the son of John H. and Annatje (Fort) Schuyler and a descendant of Philip, a younger son of Philip Pieterse Schuyler, founder of the family in America. In 1811 his father left Saratoga County and purchased a farm several miles west of Ithaca, where George spent his boyhood. Having chosen the ministry for his life's work, he prepared for college and received the bachelor's degree from the University of the City of New York in 1837, but his theological studies, at Union Seminary, were interrupted by his decision to engage in business in order to "extricate a brother from difficulties" (Colonial New York, II, 377). He married, on Apr. 18, 1839, Matilda Scribner, daughter of Uriah and Martha Scribner of New York City, a half-sister of Charles Scribner [q.v.], and they established a home in Ithaca, where two sons and three daughters were born. Schuyler was highly successful in his mercantile and banking enterprises in Tompkins County. Always active in religious work, he transferred his membership in 1842 from the Presbyterian Church to the Reformed Dutch Church (later Congregational), which he served for many years either as deacon or elder.

In politics Schuyler was a Whig with pronounced anti-slavery sentiments which prompted him to follow William H. Seward into the Republican party. His first political recognition came from the Union Republican convention of 1863 which nominated him for state treasurer. Running on a ticket headed by Chauncey M. Depew [q.v.] as candidate for secretary of state, and pledged to support the Lincoln administration, he was elected and served two years. The convention of 1865 denied him a renomination, but Governor Reuben E. Fenton [q.v.] appointed him superintendent of the banking department (1866-70) with: full responsibility for the banking institutions operating under state charter. Incensed by the reconstruction policies and the political corruption of the Grant regime, Schuyler joined the "reformers" who organized the Liberal Republican movement in 1872. With the support of Democrats and Liberal Republicans he was elected to the state assembly, where he served (1875) as chairman of the committee on banking and participated in the framing of a general savings-bank law. He enthusiastically applauded Governor Samuel J. Tilden [q.v.] for his exposure of the corrupt "canal ring," and in January 1876 the governor named him auditor of the Canal Department. Here he served until 1880, correcting many of the most notorious abuses and waging a vigorous campaign for the abolition of tolls and the creation of a system of free commercial waterways. He gave generously of his time to the work of Cornell University, serving for twenty years on the board of trustees and acting as treasurer, without compensation, from 1868 to 1874.

Schuyler's interest in the genealogy of his own family drew him into extensive researches in the colonial history of New York, and in 1885 he published Colonial New York: Philip Schuyler and His Family, in two volumes. Although the work was not a comprehensive history of the province, the sketches of the Schuylers were set against the background of seventeenth and eighteenth century New York, which had been carefully, at times brilliantly, reconstructed from manuscript and printed sources. Completed only three years before his death, these volumes stand today as their author's most enduring monument.

[There is a very brief autobiographical sketch in G. W. Schuyler, Colonial New York (1885), II, 377. See also D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume III (1909); First Half-Century Book . .. of the First Church of Christ, Congregational, of Ithaca; New York (1881); Cornell Era, February 4, 1888; New York Times, February 2, 1888.]

J. A. K-t.


SCOFIELD, Glenni William, b. 1817, lawyer, jurist.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.  Congressman December 1863-March 1875.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 434; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


SCOTT, Dred (c. 1795-September 17, 1858), slave, was born of slave parents in Southampton County, Virginia. Defendant in an important legal case challenging inter-state slave laws.

(E. W. P. Ewing, Legal and Historical Status of the Dred Scott Decision (1909); J. D. Lawson, American State Trials, volume XIII (1921); Proceedings ... Missouri Bar Association ... 1907 (1908), p. 233; E. S. Corwin, "The Dred Scott Decision in the Light of Contemporary Legal Doctrines," American Historical Review, October 1911).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 488-489:

SCOTT, DRED (c. 1795-September 17, 1858), slave, was born of slave parents in Southampton County, Virginia. His early years were spent on the plantation of his master, Captain Peter Blow, who, in 1827, removed with his family and slaves to St. Louis, Missouri. Upon his death in 1831, Scott was assigned to Elizabeth Blow, a daughter. He was purchased two years later by John Emerson, a surgeon in the United States Army, with whom, as a servant, he spent three years in Illinois and two in Wisconsin Territory. He married Harriet, a slave woman purchased by his owner in 1836. Left by Emerson at St. Louis in 1838, he became the body servant of Colonel Henry Bainbridge at Jefferson Barracks, and upon Emerson's death, passed to his widow, Irene (Sanford) Emerson. She hired Scott to various families in the city. He was shiftless and unreliable, and therefore frequently unemployed and without means to support his family. He often became a charge upon the bounty of Taylor and H. T. Blow [q.v.], the wealthy sons of his former owner, who seemed to feel partially responsible for him. Mrs. Emerson could have emancipated him but did not do so, and left him in St. Louis when she removed to Massachusetts in the mid~ die forties. It seems probable that Scott attempted unsuccessfully to arrange for the purchase of himself and his family (New York Tribune, April 10, 1857).

In April 1846, Henry T. Blow instituted and financed suits in the state courts to secure the freedom of Scott and of his family. The contention was that a slave, after sojourning in free territory, was free upon his return to Missouri. The ignorant and illiterate negro comprehended little of its significance, but signed his mark to the petition in the suit. While the case was before the state courts, 1846-52, he remained under the nominal control of the sheriff, being hired out for $5.00 per month until the termination of the suit. After an adverse decision had been delivered by Judge William Scott [q.v.] in 1852 (Scott, a Man of Color, vs. Emerson, 15 Missouri 576), it was arranged to take the case to the federal courts, and, for jurisdictional purposes, Dred Scott was transferred by a fictitious sale to his owner's brother, John F. A. Sanford of New York. During the interval when the case was in the federal courts, 1854-57, Scott remained in St. Louis, under practically no restraint, a mere pawn in the game, with no regular employment, running errands and performing janitor service. As a local celebrity, he enjoyed greatly his new and unexpected prominence. The United States Supreme Court in 1857 held that Scott was not free by reason of his removal either to Illinois or to Wisconsin Territory. His status was determined by the courts of Missouri which had decided that he was not free. Not being a citizen of Missouri, within the meaning of the Constitution, he was not entitled, as such, to sue in the federal courts (Dred Scott vs. Sandford, 19 Howard, 393). In May 1857 he was transferred, no doubt by another fictitious sale, to Taylor Blow, who very obviously intended to emancipate him and his family. This action was taken on May 26 of that year (Missouri Republican, May 27, 1857). The fact that Mrs. Emerson had meanwhile become the wife of Calvin Clifford Chaffee of Massachusetts, a radical anti-slavery congressman, was the source of much ironical comment and hastened the manumission. Physically unfitted for steady and hard labor, Scott spent the remainder of his life as the good-natured and lazy porter at Barnum's Hotel, St. Louis, where he was an object of interest and curiosity to the guests. He died of tuberculosis, and Henry T. Blow paid his funeral expenses.

[Sources include Blow MSS., in Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis; E. W. P. Ewing, Legal and Historical Status of the Dred Scott Decision (1909); J. D. Lawson, American State Trials, volume XIII (1921); Proceedings ... Missouri Bar Association ... 1907 (1908), p. 233; E. S. Corwin, "The Dred Scott Decision in the Light of Contemporary Legal Doctrines," American Historical Review, October 1911, reproduced, with some verbal changes, in his The Doctrine of Judicial Review (1914); Helen T. Catterall, "Some Antecedents of the Dred Scott Case," American Historical Review., October 1924; F. H. Hodder, "Some Phases of the Dred Scott Case," Miss. Valley Historical Review, June 1929; J. M. Turner, "Dred Scott" (manuscript copy, 1882, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis); Providence Daily Post, March 17, 1857; New York Tribune, April 10, 1857; Missouri Republican, May 27, 1857; Washington Union, June 2, 1857; New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette (Concord), June 3, 1857; St. Louis News, September 20, 1858. In the official printed reports of the Dred Scott case the name of the owner, correctly Sanford, is persistently misspelled.]

T. S. B.


SCOTT, Orange, 1800-1847, Springfield, Massachusetts, Methodist clergyman, anti-slavery agent.  Member of Congress from Pennsylvania.  Entered anti-slavery cause in 1834.  Lectured in New England.  In 1839, founded and published the American Wesleyan Observer, an anti-slavery publication.  Withdrew from Methodist Church to co-found the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1843 with Jotham Horton. 

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 187, 285, 349; Locke, 1901, pp. 93, 140; Mabee, 1970, pp. 46, 228-229; Matlack, 1849, p. 162; Annals of Congress; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 438; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 497; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 503; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 315). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 497-498:

SCOTT, ORANGE (February 13, 1800-July 31, 1847), anti-slavery leader, was born in Brookfield, Vermont, the eldest of the eight children of Lucy (Whitney) and Samuel Scott, a laboring man. The family lived at various places in Vermont and spent six years in Stanstead in Lower Canada. The boy's total schooling was about thirteen months. Beginning to feel religious concern in his twenty-first year, he experienced conversion at a camp-meeting held near Barre, Vermont, late in 1820. At this time he was working as a farm laborer, but he was soon giving his Sundays to religious work, assisting the Methodist preacher in charge of the local circuit. His success was such that in November 1821 he gave up farming entirely and began the work of a circuit preacher. In 1822 he was received into the New England Conference on trial and by 1825 was a fully ordained minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church. His advancement was rapid, and within a few years he became, through reading and private study, a most effective speaker. His first important church was in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where he achieved considerable distinction through a public discussion with a Universalist minister. On May 7, 1826, he was married to Amy Fletcher of Lyndon, Vermont, who died in April 1835 leaving five children. In 1829, after serving a number of smaller circuits, he was sent to Springfield, Massachusetts, the next year was made presiding elder of that di strict, and in 1831 was delegate to the General Conference. In 1833 he came in contact for the first time with the anti-slavery movement and was soon an ardent abolitionist. Appointed presiding elder of the Providence district in. 1834 he took the leadership in a movement to open the columns of Zion's Herald, the Methodist paper in Boston, to a discussion of the slavery issue. This was accomplished, and he became the most active contributor. He also began to deliver public lectures on slavery in the larger New England cities.

When the slavery question came before the General Conference of 1836 at Cincinnati, he made an Address (1836) on the subject and was a recognized abolition leader. As a consequence of this abolition activity the bishop refused to reappoint him to the Providence district. After a year's pastorate at Lowell, Massachusetts, he accepted an agency for the American Anti-Slavery Society and spoke throughout New England and New York. In 1838 he published "An Appeal to the Methodist Episcopal Church" in the only number published of the Wesleyan Anti-Slavery Review. At the session of the New England Conference in 1838 Bishop Elijah Hedding [q.v.] charged Scott with using coarse and disrespectful language, but the charges were not sustained. In 1839 Scott with Jotham Horton undertook the publication of the American Wesleyan Observer to plead the abolition cause among Methodists in preparation for the General Conference of 1840. He was a member of that Conference and again led the abolition forces. The radicals however were unable to stem the tide of conservative opinion. He became again the pastor of St. Paul's Church in Lowell, Massachusetts, chosen regardless of episcopal authority. This action led to a bitter fight with the appointing authorities, which was one of the reasons that made Scott consider withdrawal from the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The secession movement rapidly developed under Scott's leadership, ably assisted by Jotham Horton and La Roy Sunderland. These three leaders withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church on November 8, 1841. They began the publication of the True Wesleyan on January 7, 1843, to agitate withdrawal of all abolition Methodists to form a new ecclesiastical body, with opposition to slavery as its chief cornerstone. A preliminary convention at Andover, Massachusetts, on February 1, 1843, provided for a general convention at Utica, New York, on May 31. Scott was the president of the Utica convention, and there the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America was formed. In the interests of this new Wesleyan Methodist Church he became the publishing agent in charge of the True Wesleyan, and when this business was moved to New York City he took up his residence at Newark, New Jersey, though his family remained in Newbury, Vermont. In 1845 he made an extended tour of the western states that proved disastrous to his health, which had been failing for some time. In 1846 he published his reasons for his withdrawal in a book, The Grounds of Secession from the M. E. Church: Being an Examination of her Connection with Slavery, and Also of her Form of Government. A revised and corrected edition was published in 1848. In 1846 he took his family to Newark and attempted to continue his work; but his condition grew rapidly worse, and he died at his home in Newark. He was survived by his widow, Eliza (Dearborn) Scott, whom he had married on October 6, 1835. They had two children.

[The chief sources are his writings, ante, and autobiography in L. C. Matlack, The Life of Reverend Orange Scott (1847), which is paged continuously and bound in same volume with his Memoir of Reverend Orange Scott (1848); see also J. N. Norwood, The Schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church (1923); L. C. Matlack, The History of American Slavery and Methodism from 1780 to 1849 (1849).)

W.W.S.


SCOTT, Winfield (June 13, 1786-May 29, 1866), Commanding general U.S. Army, pacificator, and presidential nominee representing the Whig party.

(Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL.D. Written by Himself (2 volumes, 1864); E. D. Mansfield, Life and Services of General Winfield Scott (1852); M. J. Wright, General Scott (1894); L. D. Ingersoll, A History of the War Dept. of the U.S. (1879); Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the U. S. (1904); W. A. Ganoe, The History of the U. S. Army (1924); obituary in New York Tribune, May 30-June 2, 1866)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp.

SCOTT, WINFIELD (June 13, 1786-May 29, 1866), soldier, pacificator, and presidential nominee, was born on the family estate, "Laurel Branch," fourteen miles from Petersburg, Virginia. His grandfather, James Scott of the clan Buccleuch, having supported the Pretender, escaped to the colonies after the battle of Culloden in 1746. His father, William Scott, a successful farmer who had been a captain in the American Revolution, died when Winfield was in his sixth year, leaving four children, two boys, James and Winfield, and two girls. His mother, Ann Mason, was the daughter of Daniel Mason and the grand-daughter of John Winfield, one of the wealthiest men in the colony (Memoirs, I, 3). To her inspiration her son later attributed the continued successes of his long career. Unfortunately she died when he was seventeen. He was already six feet two and of bulky proportions. Two years later he stood six feet five, weighed about 230 pounds, and was physically the strongest man in the neighborhood. He did good scholastic work under the able instruction of James Hargrave and James Ogilvie. It was doubtless fortunate for him that because of legal hindrances he did not inherit the fortune of his grandfather but had to content him self with his modest patrimony. In 1805 he entered the College of William and Mary, but, because of his age and the contention between the student atheists and faculty churchmen, did not remain long. The same year he voluntarily left the institution to study law in the office of David Robinson in Petersburg.

[…]

A resolution to tender him the pay, rank, and emoluments of a lieutenant-general was introduced in Congress, but through political opposition it did not pass until 1855, when he became the first since Washington to hold that office.

In 1852 the Whigs gave him the nomination for the presidency. The campaign was essentially without issues but was marked by exceptionally scurrilous attacks on Scott by newspapers and stump-speakers. Clay and Webster died during the campaign. Other Whig leaders badly advised Scott, whose straight-forwardness was an easy target for the Democrats. He was overwhelmingly defeated by Franklin Pierce [q.v.]. It was the last of his entries into the lists for the presidency, although as late as 1860 he retained some hope of being sent to the White House (Coleman, Crittenden, post, II, 184--85). After the inauguration of Pierce, on account of differences of opinion on policy with the Secretary of War, Scott again removed his headquarters to New York City. In 1857 he opposed the war against the Mormons as unnecessary and undertaken for profit, but he was overruled. In 1859 he was again called upon to perform the functions of pacificator. Though seventy-three years of age and crippled from a recent fall, he set out September 20 for the extreme Northwest, where controversy over the possession of San Juan Island in Puget Sound had again brought the relations between Great Britain and the United States to the breaking point. After he had mingled with both sides and conducted a judicious correspondence, serious complications were averted.

In October 1860, foreseeing the eventual Civil War, he pleaded with the President to reenforce the southern forts and armories against seizure, but to Buchanan and John B. Floyd his was a voice crying in the wilderness. On October 31, and December 12 he renewed his urgings, but with no better success. In January 1861, he brought back the headquarters of the army to Washington, where at his advanced age he actively oversaw the recruiting and training of the defenders of the capital. He personally commanded Lincoln's bodyguard at the inauguration and put the city in a state of defense. Being a Virginian, he was doggedly besought to join the South, but in spite of natural leanings he stuck to his beliefs and remained with the Union. To Lincoln he accorded all aid in his power. Though he did not approve of George B. McClellan as first choice for command of the Army of the Potomac, he supported him even when the younger man's methods were at least discourteous. Had much of his general plan for the conduct of the Federal forces been heeded, the war would have been curtailed; but since he was too old to mount a horse, he was thought to be too old to give advice. On October 31, 1861, he requested retirement on account of infirmities. The next day Lincoln and the whole cabinet left their offices in a body, repaired to Scott's home, and there the President read an affecting eulogy to the old man. Scott was retired with full pay and allowances the same day. In his first message to Congress Lincoln wrote of Scott: "During his long life the nation has not been unmindful of his merit; yet, in calling to mind how faithfully, ably, and brilliantly he has served his country, from a time far back in our history when few of the now living had been born, and thenceforward continually, I cannot but think we are still his debtors" (Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works, 1894, volume II, 104). On his journey to New York, Scott was accompanied by the secretaries of war and the treasury. On November 9, 1861, he went abroad, but in Paris upon hearing of the Trent affair he immediately returned to America, should his counsel be needed. At West Point he received the Prince of Wales and in 1865 presented to General Grant, one of his subalterns in the Mexican War, a gift with the inscription, "from the oldest to the greatest general" (Wright, post, p. 322). When his end was near he was conveyed from New York City to West Point where he died within fifteen days of his eightieth birthday. He was buried in the national cemetery there, some of the most illustrious men of the country attending the funeral. His wife, who died in Rome in 1862, is buried beside him. Of his seven children, two sons and two daughters died early, to his great grief; three married daughters survived him.

Scott had been the associate of every president from Jefferson to Lincoln and the emissary in critical undertakings of most of them. In his public career of nearly half a century he had been a main factor in ending two wars, saving the country from several others, and acquiring a large portion of its territory. Supreme political preferment was doubtless denied him because of conditions and his idiosyncrasies. Called "Fuss and Feathers" because of his punctiliousness in dress and decorum, he often gave the impression of irritability. He possessed a whimsical egotism, was inclined to flourishes of rhetoric, often unfortunate, and was too outspoken in his beliefs for his own advancement. On the other hand, the openness of his generous character led him into acts incomprehensible to calculating natures. He was a scholar, but knew when to discard rules, so that the letter of directions did not shackle him. His initiative and self-reliance never deserted him. He made use of his many talents unsparingly, and the only one of his hazardous undertakings he failed to carry out beyond the most sanguine expectations was that of his own ambition to reach the Presidency.

[Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL.D. Written by Himself (2 volumes, 1864), rhetorical but still valuable; E. D. Mansfield, Life and Services of General Winfield Scott (1852), the best of the campaign biographies; M. J. Wright, General Scott (1894); A. M. B. Coleman, The Life of John J. Crittenden (2 volumes, 1871), containing letters of Scott; Dunbar Rowland, ed.,  Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, volumes II, III (1923), containing Scott-Davis correspondence; James Wilkinson, Memoirs of My Own Times (3 volumes, 1816); M. M. Quaife, ed., The Diary of James K. Polk (4 volumes, 1910); G. T. Curtis, Life of James Buchanan (2 volumes, 1883); Harrison Ellery, ed., The Memoirs of General Joseph Gardner Swift (1890); W. A. Croffut, ed., Fifty Years in Camp and Field. Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A. (1909); correspondence, papers, and documents in Old Files Section, Adjutant- General's Dept., Washington, D. C.; E. A. Cruikshank, The Documentary History of the Campaign upon the Niagara Frontier (9 volumes, 1896-1908); C. J. Ingersoll, Historical Sketch of the Second War between the U.S .... and Great Britain, volumes I, II (1845-49); 2 series, volumes I, II (1852); B. L. Lossing, The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812 (1868); J. H. Smith, The War with Mexico (2 volumes, 1919); L. D. Ingersoll, A History of the War Dept. of the U.S. (1879); Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the U. S. (1904); W. A. Ganoe, The History of the U. S. Army (1924); obituary in New York Tribune, May 30-June 2, 1866; suggestions from Maj. C. W. Elliott, who is preparing a biography of Scott.]

W.A.G.



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