V: Vail through Vinton

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


VAIL, Stephen Montfort (January 15, 1816-November 26, 1880), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, educator,  Vail supported in the abolition of slavery. It led him to cross swords with prominent men of his own calling who defended the institution on Biblical grounds. In 1860 he published a sermon entitled The Church and the Slave Power, and in 1864, The Bible Against Slavery. The latter was a reply to Bishop John Henry Hopkins [q.v.] of the Protestant Episcopal Church who had advanced arguments to the effect that slavery is not a sin because it is not forbidden in the Scripture, and to Nathan Lord [q.v.], president of Dartmouth College, who contended that slavery was divinely ordained, and therefore not to be questioned.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 137-138:

VAIL, STEPHEN MONTFORT (January 15, 1816-November 26, 1880), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, educator, was born in Union Vale, Dutchess County, New York, the son of James Vail, a farmer, and Anna (Montfort) Vail. When he was fourteen years old he entered Cazenovia Seminary, Cazenovia, New York, and in 1834, Bowdoin College, from which he was graduated with honors in 1838. For his professional education he went to Union Theological Seminary, New York City, completing the course there in 1842. That same year he was admitted on trial to the New York Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in September was married 'to Louisa R. Cushman. He was ordained deacon in 1844, and elder in 1846. His pastoral appointments were to Fishkill, New York (1842-44), Sharon, Connecticut (1844-46), and Pine Plains, New York (1846- 47). In 1847 he became principal of Pennington Seminary, Pennington, New Jersey, leaving there two years later to accept the chair of Hebrew in the Methodist General Biblical Institute, Concord, New Hampshire, which, opened in 1847, was the first distinctively theological institution established by American Methodists. In this position he served until 1869.

Two interests which Vail furthered brought him prominence. At a time when Methodists in general opposed education as a requirement for the ministerial office on the ground that the call of God and a vital personal experience were the essential requisites, Vail was a vigorous advocate of theological training. Because of articles in support of his views on this subject, published while he was at Pennington, which were deemed by some contrary to Methodist principles, he was placed on trial before the New Jersey Conference. The charges were so trivial, however, that he was speedily acquitted. During the many years he was connected with the General Biblical institute he was indefatigable in his efforts to build up the school and also to raise the educational standards of his denomination. In 1853 he published Ministerial Education in the Methodist Episcopal Church. A second interest, and one that made him more widely known, was in the abolition of slavery. It led him to cross swords with prominent men of his own calling who defended the institution on Biblical grounds. In 1860 he published a sermon entitled The Church and the Slave Power, and in 1864, The Bible Against Slavery. The latter was a reply to Bishop John Henry Hopkins [q.v.] of the Protestant Episcopal Church who had advanced arguments to the effect that slavery is not a sin because it is not forbidden in the Scripture, and to Nathan Lord [q.v.], president of Dartmouth College, who contended that slavery was divinely ordained, and therefore not to be questioned.

A Methodist and a stanch Republican and supporter of the Union, he was regarded as worthy of recognition by President Grant, who in 1869 appointed him consul at Ludwigshafen, Bavaria, in which position he served until 1874. Returning to the United States, he retired to his farm at Pleasant Plains, Staten Island. He died at the home of a son-in-law in Jersey City, survived by his wife and six children. In addition to the writings already mentioned he published Life in Earnest; or Memoirs and Remains of the Reverend Zenas Caldwell, which appeared in 1855.

[Commemorative Biographical Record of Dutchess County, New York (1897); H. W. Cushman, A History and Biographical Genealogy of the Cushmans: The Descendants af Robert Cushman (1855); General Biographical Catalog of Bowdoin College (1912);. sketch in Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the M. E. Church, Spring Conferences of I881 (1881), reprinted in Stephen Allen and W. H. Pilsbury, History of Methodism in Maine (1887); Christian Advocate (New York), December 2, 1880; Zion's Herald, January 6, 1881; death notice in New York Times, November 27, 1880.]

H. E. S.


VAN BUREN, John (February 10, 1810-October 13, 1866), lawyer, politician, was born in Kinderhook, New York, the son of Martin Van Buren [q.v.] and Hannah (Hoes) Van Buren.  He was influential in organizing the "Barnburners," and in behalf of them and the Free-soil groups he persuaded his father to accept the nomination for president at Buffalo in 1848. His zeal and oratory stirred the Free-soilers deeply. Some of their leaders wanted him for their standard bearer; but he chose to fight for his father, who had lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Polk at Baltimore (1844). John as a delegate to the convention led the enraged "Barnburners" in their withdrawal. He stumped the state, denouncing the Fugitive-slave 1aw and everywhere electrifying his audiences with his Free-soil evangelism. Had he grasped the full significance of the Free-soil movement he could have been one of the chief leaders of the forthcoming Republican party,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 151-152:

VAN BUREN, JOHN (February 10, 1810-October 13, 1866), lawyer, politician, was born in Kinderhook, New York, the son of Martin Van Buren [q.v.] and Hannah (Hoes) Van Buren. He was sent first to the Albany public schools, then to Albany Academy whence he went to Yale. In college he drank and gambled freely, studied little, worried the faculty and president of Yale, and cost his father unnecessary expense and sleepless nights. Upon graduation he read law with Benjamin F. Butler and later with Aaron Vanderpoel, whose niece Elizabeth he afterward married (June 22, 1841). In July 183I he was admitted to the Albany bar, and one month later he sailed with his father to London to become an attaché of the American legation. His fine physique, ready wit and good humor, and aristocratic and gracious bearing made him a favorite at the English court. The Whig press of America dubbed him "Prince John." Before returning home he traveled on the Continent, and in 1838 he again visited England and Ireland.

His activities in politics were so like his father's that he soon won another title, "Young Fox:" By 1834 he was a member of the "Albany regency." For a time he was a law examiner in Albany arid a law partner of James McKnown (1837-45), later taking as a partner Hamilton W. Robinson. In 1845 he joined the radical wing of the New York Democracy and won the office of attorney general (1845). He prosecuted the anti-rent cases and after his resumption of private practice took part in the notorious Forrest divorce suit, in which he lost prestige. Although he was popular with the New York bar and powerful with juries, his political activities during the forties rather obscured his legal career (McAdam; post, I, 505).

Much of his time was concerned in lobbying in the state legislature. His power was felt in in early every Democratic state convention from 1836 to 1848, and especial1y in campaigns for his father. He published a pamphlet, The Syracuse Convention, m 1847. He was influential in organizing the "Barnburners," and in behalf of them and the Free-soil groups he persuaded his father to accept the nomination for president at Buffalo in 1848. His zeal and oratory' stirred the Free-soilers deeply. Some of their leaders wanted him for their standard bearer; but he chose to fight for his father, who had lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Polk at Baltimore (1844). John as a delegate to the convention led the enraged "Barnburners" in their withdrawal. He stumped the state, denouncing the Fugitive-slave 1aw and everywhere electrifying his audiences with his Free-soil evangelism. Had he grasped the full significance of the Free-soil movement he could have been one of the chief leaders of the forthcoming Republican party, but he was unhappy outside the Democracy and returned to it in 1849. He supported the compromise measures of 1850. In 1853 he threatened to denounce Pierce (R. F. Nichols, The Democratic Machine, 1850-1854, 1923, p. 212), but was kept quiet by Marcy and Tilden, and finally came out strongly for popular sovereignty in Kansas. He wanted a convention of states (1860) to arrange for guarantee s to the slavery interests and to prevent war. He denounced Lincoln for calling for troops so soon after the firing on Fort Sumter. In many speeches he defended General McClellan, bitterly assailed the draft, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the use of colored troops. He supported Seymour for governor in 1862 and McClellan for president in 1864, and was himself defeated in his candidacy for the attorney generalship of the state in 1865. He threw his waning influence to Andrew Johnson (1866), but his failing health caused him to seek its improvement in England. He died of a kidney disease while on the Scotia en route to New York, leaving his only child, Anna, and was buried in Albany beside his wife, who had died in 1844.

[Van Buren MSS. and Marcy MSS. in Library of Congress; the private collection of Blair MSS.; Van Buren letters in New York State Library, Albany; D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume II (1906); D. T. Lynch, An Epoch and a Man: Martin Van Buren and His Times (1929); W. L. Mackenzie, The Life and Times of Martin Van Buren (1846) ; E. M. Shepard, Martin Van Buren (1888) H. B. A. Donovan, The Barnburners (1925); John Bigelow, Retrospections of an Active Life, volume I (4109), pp. 86-90; David McAdam and others, History of the Bench and Bar of New York, volume I (1897); Harriet C. W. Van Buren Peckham, History of Cornelius Maessen Van Buren .. and His Descendants (1913); G. B. Vanderpoel, Genealogy of the Vanderpoel Family (1912); obituaries in Evening Post (New York), October 16, 19, 1866;  New York Tribune, October 17, 20, 1866.]

 W. E. S-h.


VAN BUREN, Martin, eighth president of the United States, born in Kinderhook, Columbia County, New York, 5 December, 1782: died there, 24 July, 1862. He had supported Tallmadge's resolution on the Missouri Compromise calling for the non-extension of slavery and had signed a call for a meeting in Albany to protest against the extension of slavery (1820). Supported the Wilmot Proviso limiting the extension of slavery into the territories.  At Buffalo, in August 1848, a gathering of anti-slavery men from all parties, organized the Free-soil party, on a platform of opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories. Van Buren, already nominated by the best organized group in the convention, was chosen to head the ticket. He had become convinced, perhaps at the convention of 1844, that northern Democrats had yielded to the "slavocracy" long enough,  accepted the nomination.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

[…] But on the newly emergent question of Texas annexation he took a decided stand in the negative, and on this rock of offence to the southern wing of his party his candidature was wrecked in the Democratic national convention of 1844, which met at Baltimore on 27 May. He refused to falter with this issue, on the ground of our neutral obligations to Mexico, and when the nomination went to James K. Polk, of Tennessee, he gave no sign of resentment. His friends brought to Polk a loyal support, and secured his election by carrying for him the decisive vote of New York. Van Buren continued to take an interest in public affairs, and when in 1847 the acquisition of new territory from Mexico raised anew the vexed question of slavery in the territories, he gave in his adhesion to the " Wilmot Proviso." In the new elective affinities produced by this "burning question" a redistribution of political elements took place in the chaos of New York politics. The "Barnburner" and the "Hunker" factions came to a sharp cleavage on this line of division. The former declared their "uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery." In the Herkimer Democratic convention of 26 October. 1847, the Free-Soil banner was openly displayed, and delegates were sent to the Democratic national convention. From this convention, assembled at Baltimore in May, 1848, the Herkimer delegates seceded before any presidential nomination was made. In June, 1848, a Barnburner convention met at Utica to organize resistance to the nomination of General Lewis Cass. who in his "Nicholson letter," had disavowed the "Wilmot proviso." To this convention Van Buren addressed a letter, declining in advance a nomination for the presidency, but pledging opposition to the new party shibboleth. In spite of his refusal, he was nominated, and this nomination was reaffirmed by the Free-Soil national convention of Buffalo, 9 August, 1848, when Charles Francis Adams was associated with him as candidate for the vice-presidency. In the ensuing presidential election this ticket received only 291,263 votes, but, as the result of the triangular duel. General Cass was defeated and General Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate, was elected. The precipitate annexation of Texas and its natural sequel, the war with Mexico, had brought their Nemesis in the utter confusion of national politics. Van Buren received no electoral votes, but his popular Democratic vote in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York exceeded that of Cass. Henceforth he was simply a spectator in the political arena. On all public questions save that of slavery he remained an unfaltering Democrat, and when it was fondly supposed that "the slavery issue" had been forever exorcised by the compromise measures of 1850, he returned in full faith and communion to his old party allegiance. In 1852 he began to write his "Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States" (New York, 1867), but it was never finished and was published as a fragment. He supported Franklin Pierce for the presidency in 1852, and, after spending two years in Europe, returned in time to vote for James Buchanan in 1856. In 1860 he voted for the combined electoral ticket against Lincoln, but when the Civil War began he gave to the administration his zealous support. Van Buren was the target of political accusation during his whole public career, but kept his private character free from reproach. In his domestic life he was as happy as he was exemplary. Always prudent in his habits and economical in his tastes, he none the less maintained in his style of living the easy state of a gentleman, whether in public station at Albany and Washington, or at Lindenwald in his retirement. As a man of the world he was singularly affable and courteous, blending formal deference with natural dignity and genuine cordiality. Intensely partisan in his opinions and easily startled by the red rag of "Hamiltonian Federalism," he never carried the contentions of the political arena into the social sphere. The asperities of personal rivalry estranged him for a time from Calhoun, after the latter denounced him in the Senate in 1837 as "a practical politician," with whom " justice, right, patriotism, etc., were mere vague phrases," but with his great Whig rival. Henry Clay, he maintained unbroken relations of friendship through all vicissitudes of political fortune. Asa lawyer his rank was eminent. Though never rising in speech to the heights of oratory, he was equally fluent and facile before bench or jury, and equally felicitous whether expounding the intricacies of fact or of law in a case. His manner was mild and insinuating, never declamatory. Without carrying his juridical studies into the realm of jurisprudence, he yet had a knowledge of law that fitted him to cope with the greatest advocates of the New York bar. The evidences of his legal learning and acute dialectics are still preserved in the New York reports of Johnson. Cowen, and Wendell. As a debater in the Senate, he always went to the pith of questions, disdaining the arts of rhetoric. As a writer of political letters or of state papers, he carried diffusiveness to a fault, which sometimes hinted at a weakness in positions requiring so much defence. As a politician he was masterful in leadership—so much so that, alike by friends and foes, he was credited with reducing its practices to a fine art. He was a member of the famous Albany regency which for so many years controlled the politics of New York, and was long popularly known as its " director." Fertile in the contrivance of means for the attainment of the public ends which he deemed desirable, he was called "the little magician," from the deftness of his touch in politics. But combining the statesman's foresight with the politician's tact, he showed his sagacity rather by seeking a majority for his views than by following the views of a majority. Accused of "non-committalism." and with some show of reason in the early stages of his career, it was only as to men and minor measures of policy that he practised a prudent reticence. On questions of deeper principle — an elective judiciary, Negro suffrage, universal suffrage, etc.—he boldly took the unpopular side. In a day of unexampled political giddiness he stood firmly for his sub treasury system against the doubts of friends, the assaults of enemies, and the combined pressure of wealth and culture in the country. Dispensing patronage according to the received custom of his times, he yet maintained a high standard of appointment. That he could rise above selfish considerations was shown when he promoted the elevation of Rufus King in 1820, or when he strove in 1838 to bring Washington Irving into his cabinet with small promise of gain to his doubtful political fortunes by such an "unpractical" appointment. As a statesman he had his compact fagot of opinions, to which he adhered in evil or good report. It might seem that the logic of his principles in 1848, combined with the subsequent drift of events, should have landed him in the Free-Soil party that Abraham Lincoln led to victory in 1860: but it is to be remembered that, while Van Buren's political opinions were in a fluid state, they had been cast in the doctrinal molds of Jefferson, and had there taken rigid form and pressure. In the natural history of American party-formations he supposed that an enduring antithesis had always been discernible between the "money power" and the "farming interest " of the land. In his annual message of December, 1838, holding language very modern in its emphasis, he counted "the anti-republican tendencies of associated wealth " as among the strains that had been put upon our government. This is indeed the mam thesis of his " Inquiry," a book which is more an apologia than a history. In that chronicle of his life-long antipathy to a splendid consolidated government, with its imperial judiciary, funding systems, high tariffs, and internal improvements— the whole surmounted by a powerful national bank as the "regulator" of finance and politics—he has left an outlined sketch of the only dramatic unity that can be found for his eventful career. Confessing in 1848 that he had gone further in concession to slavery than many of his friends at the north had approved, he satisfied himself with a formal protest against the repeal of the Missouri compromise, carried through Congress while he was travelling in Europe, and against the policy of making the Dred Scott decision a rule of Democratic politics, though he thought the decision sound in point of technical law. With these reservations, avowedly made in the interest of " strict construction" and of "old-time Republicanism" rather than of Free-Soil or National reformation, he maintained his allegiance to the party with which his fame was identified, and which he was perhaps the more unwilling to leave because of the many sacrifices he had made in its service. The biography of Van Buren has been written by William H. Holland (Hartford, 1835); Francis J. Grand (in German, 1835); William Emmons (Washington, 1835): David Crockett (Philadelphia, 1836): William L. Mackenzie (Boston, 1846); William Allen Butler (New York, 1862); and Edward M. Shepard (Boston, 1888). Mackenzie's book is compiled in part from surreptitious letters, shedding a lurid light on the "practical politics" of the times. Butler's sketch was published immediately after the ex-president's death. Shepard's biography is written with adequate learning and in a philosophical spirit. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 152-157:

VAN BUREN, MARTIN (December 5, 1782-July 24, 1862), eighth president of the United States, was born in Kinderhook, near Albany, New York, the third of five children of Abraham and Maria (Hoes) Van Buren, both of whom were of Dutch descent: Abraham was descended from Cornelis, who was the son of Maes of Buurmalsen and came to New Netherland in 1631 as a leaseholder of Van Rensselaer. Maria Hoes was the widow Van Alen and mother of two children when she married the bachelor Abraham. Martin's parents were 'frugal truck farmers and keepers of an inherited tavern who became respectable slave-owning citizens in the village. In the inadequate village schools the boy gained a fair knowledge of English and a smattering of Latin. After graduation at the age of fourteen, he became a clerk in the law office of Francis Silvester, a Federalist. He, read little from law books; but devoured every Republican pamphlet, journal, or periodical that he could find. Obstinately, but good-naturedly, he refused from the beginning to adopt Silvester's Federalism. By 1800 the yellow-haired law clerk had won a local reputation for his clear thinking, clever presentation and summaries of his petty cases, extemporaneous debating, and stanch Republicanism. As a reward for his campaign for Jefferson (1800) he was sent as a delegate to the congressional caucus in Troy. In 1801 he entered as a clerk the almost clientless office in New York City of the young William Peter Van Ness [q.v.], a devotee of Aaron Burr.

Upon his return to Kinderhook (1803) he was licensed to practice law and became the partner of his half-brother, James I. Van Alen. He flung himself immediately into Republican politics as the champion of the Clinton-Livingston factions; in opposition to Burr, thereby annoying the Van Nesses. His income came from the pockets of Jeffersonian-Republican small landholders in whose cases in court he had often to oppose the eloquent Eli sha Williams. By 1807 he was affluent enough to marry, on February 21, the sweetheart of his youth, his kinswoman Hannah Hoes. She bore him four sons: Abraham, John [q.v. ], Martin, and Smith Thompson. Soon he moved to Hudson; whereas the newly appointed surrogate (180~13), he launched himself on an ambitious political career. Already his enemies had pronounced him a hypocrite, a heartless, selfish, intriguing politician. He was a manipulator in politics, but he was honest and generous in his private and public relations. In taverns as  well as court rooms his ready wit, friendly-smile, and cheerful disposition, won voters and juries to his side. He was only five feet six and was slender but stood erect like a soldier. He dressed immaculately, as his preceptor Silvester had taught him. Rarely was he incensed at eve n his worst enemies. He could see no  reason why political opponents could not be personal friends.

Until 1821 he was enmeshed in state politics. In his fight for state leadership he moved in a maze of political intrigue and bitterness, but always remained a partisan Republican. In 1807 he was admitted as counselor to practise before the state supreme court. In a race against Edward P. Livingston he was elected state senator in April 1812 on an anti-Bankplatforn1. In August he was deeply chagrined at his failure to receive the appointment as attorney general of the state; which went to Thomas Addis Emmet, and at first blamed DeWitt Clinton. In November, in the legislative session to select presidential electors, he supported Clinton, as the nominee of the Republican caucus; though the rivalry of the two men was becoming intense. He helped to secure the election of Daniel D. Tompkins [q.v.] as vice-president in 1816 and annoyed Clinton that year by opposing certain details of the canal bill. The next year, however, he supported the canal project against the wishes of his group, defending his course by saying that he could not sacrifice a popular blessing to humiliate Clinton. Van Buren was soon chosen regent of the University of the State of New York (1815) a recognition of his importance. In 1816 he was reelected senator (1816-20) and chosen attorney general of New York (1816-19). He then moved his family to Albany. His wife died in 1819. He never attempted to marry again until late in life when he was rejected by the spinster, Margaret Silvester, who was the daughter of his old preceptor. In the state Senate he was establishing himself as a leader. In 1817, however, Clinton was elected governor, and in 1819, gaining control of the Council of Appointment, he removed Van Buren from the attorney generalship. While bitterly attacking Clinton for cooperating with Federalists, Van Buren acted secretly to reelect Rufus King [q.v.] to the United States Senate (1820) and to gain Federalist aid in defeating Clinton. He asked for a state constitutional convention, which convened in 1821, largely because he opposed the arbitrary power of Chief Justice Ambrose Spencer [q.v.] and favored a reorganization of the judicial system. His chief work in the convention was in securing an agreement between extreme radicals and conservatives that could be accepted by all. As chairman of the committee on appointments, he advocated the decentralization of the power held by the old Council of Appointment, by the distribution of the appointing power among local authorities, the legislature, and the governor. He was unsuccessful in his opposition, probably for the sake of patronage, to the popular election of all judicial officers. (N. H. Carter and W. L. Stone, Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1821 Assembled for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution of New York, 1821.)

Clinton had been reelected governor in 1820, largely because of his canal policy, but the "Bucktails" won control of the legislature and in February 1821 elected Van Buren to the United States Senate. In August 1820 his brother-in-law, Moses I. Cantine, and Isaac J. Leake bought the Albany Argus. The paper was given the contract for the state printing. In 1823, when Edwin Croswell [q.v.] became editor, Van Buren wrote that without a paper edited by "a sound, practicable and above all discreet republican ... we may hang our harps on the willows" (quoted in Mackenzie, post, p. 190). Croswell made the Argus a highly influential organ. Van Buren was chief of a group of leaders, soon nicknamed the "Albany regency," which included William L. Marcy, Azariah C. Flagg, Benjamin F. Butler (1795-1858), Edwin Croswell, Michael Hoffman, and later Silas Wright and John A. Dix [qq.v.]. "They were formidable in solidarity," and achieved extraordinary success (Fox, post, pp. 281-86). Van Buren's primacy among them was not owing merely to his amiability and caution, but to his shrewd judgment of measures and men, to his power of analysis and exposition. His political philosophy was practical and sincere. Reckless opposition to public sentiment seemed to him inconsistent with good statesmanship, and he thought that those who dispensed the public bounty would, to a greater or less degree, influence and control the public mind. However, in attacking Clinton he said that a good administration would rally around "the governmental standard the good the virtuous and the capable" (Lynch, p. 175), and he and the other members of the "regency" faithfully performed the duties of the important offices they obtained.

As United States senator he was still preoccupied with factional fights from which he hoped to emerge as the leader of a unified national party. Not until 1823 did he avow his intention openly to support William H. Crawford for president, hoping that by delay he could avoid party strife in New York and give his state a chance finally to choose between opposing candidates. In Washington he was considered the leader of the Crawford faction and he was active in the last and well-known congressional caucus, called to nominate his candidate (Daily National Intelligencer, February 16, 1824). He considered Jackson unpromising and tried to persuade either Clay or Gallatin to run with Crawford. In New York in 1824, Clinton, who was a Jacksonian, was again elected governor, routing the "regency" (C. H. Rammelkamp, ''The Campaign of 1824 in New York," Annual Report of the American Historical Association ... 1904, 1905, pp. 175- 201 Y, Van Buren tried to produce a deadlock in the House of Representatives while it was voting for presidential candidates, in order that the Clay-Adams men would have to appeal to New York for a decision, but the prayerful Stephen Van Rensselaer [q.v.] blocked that plan by voting for Adams. Van Buren's early bitterness towards Adams was probably caused by the latter's, offer of the -ministerial post in London to Clinton. In the Senate he voted yea on the tariff bills of 1824 and 1828, guided partisan opposition, served on the finance committee and as chairman of the Judiciary committee. He opposed the sending of envoys to the Panama conference, offering the explanation that he was opposed to all forms of international alliances. In his speeches on internal improvements (Register of Debates in Congress, volume II, 1826, 19 Congress, 1 Session, cols. 20-21, 619, 717-18), he laid down a policy of opposition to which he steadfastly adhered. Congress, he said, had no constitutional right to construct commercial roads and canals within states. His practical objections to the program of his political rivals were strengthened by the consideration that most of the projects would deflect trade from the Erie Canal and New York. So adept was he in politics that he was reelected senator (1827) with the aid of Clinton's friends. By this time, however, he was turning to Jackson, and took the liberty of telling Jackson to refrain from answering defamatory pamphlets. He read such pamphlets and planned the answers, advising editors here and there what to say about campaign issues. After pronouncing a touching eulogium upon Clinton, who died in 1828, he ran for governor of New York in order that a "Buck-tail" state administration would be in control after he should become Jackson's secretary of state. He resigned the governorship to enter the cabinet after making to the legislature several recommendations, one of which-the enactment of a safety-fund banking law, as suggested by Joshua Forman [q.v.]-was adopted. He returned to Washington society, of which he was enamoured, and became at once the most influential member of the Jackson cabinet.

As secretary of state he favored the introduction of his New York political spoils system into the federal administration. Approached on the subject, he replied: "We give no reasons for our removals" (Lynch, p. 325). Being a widower, he pleased the President by his friendly course towards Peggy Eaton (see sketch of Margaret O'Neale). He helped Jackson write his famous toast, "Our Federal Union-It must be preserved" (Autobiography, p. 414). So completely did he win the President's confidence that Jackson said that Van Buren was "one of the most frank men" he had known, "a true man with no guile" (Jackson Correspondence, IV, 260). Before the end of 1830 Jackson proposed to Van Buren that they run on the. same ticket, he to resign after a year and leave Van Buren to carry on his policies (Autobiography, pp. 506-07), This Van Buren refused to do and persuaded the President that it was best for him to resign as secretary of state so that the cabinet could be reorganized. His resignation (April 11, 1831) brought about that of other members and enabled Jackson to eliminate Calhoun's supporters, while his prompt appointment as minister to Great Britain, ostensibly taking him out of politics, showed that he was still in Jackson's confidence (Ibid., pp. 403-:08; Bassett, Life of Jackson, II, 522;-25, 532). Although Van Buren seems deliberately to have kept himself ignorant of the Jackson-Calhoun quarrel (Bassett, II, 514-15), he was accused of causing it, and had, heaped upon his head such opprobrious terms as " Flying Dutchman," "Red Fox of Kinderhook," and "Little Magician,"

His unusual tact stood him in good stead as secretary of state. He maneuvered Jackson into appointing young energetic ministers, soon established order and confidence in his department, and quieted the fears of the foreign diplomatic corps, who expected trouble with the frontier. President. He settled the old dispute over the West Indian trade between Great Britain and the United States, secured an agreement with France by which that country ultimately and reluctantly paid claims for Compensation for injuries inflicted upon American commerce during the Napoleonic war, negotiated a treaty with Turkey providing for free access to the Black Sea and a most favored nations clause, and tried to buy' Texas from Mexico, arguing that it was a necessity for the development of the Mississippi Valley and that Mexico would finally lose it through revolution if she did not sell to the United States. Jackson's Maysville Road veto was largely the work of Van Buren, who drafted the message (Autobiography, pp. 315-22; Bassett, Life of Jackson, II, pp. 484-96), and he supported Jackson in his other important domestic policies. In August 1831 he was on his way to London as minister to Great Britain, but in January 1832 his appointment was rejected by the deciding vote of Vice-President Calhoun. He then took his son John with him to travel in France and in Holland.

His return, purposely timed to follow his nomination for vice-president in May 1832, was celebrated extensively in New York City. His graciousness, his courtesy toward even. his bitterest foes, and his charming conversation made him a favored guest at such celebrations as the New York Democrats could provide. In the course of the presidential campaign he aided Jackson in defeating a bill to recharter the Bank of the United States and opposed the theories of nullification, as he did internal improvements at national expense, but he intentionally remained vague on the tariff. Contrary to some opinions, he did not disagree with Jackson over the removal of the government's deposits in the Bank, but he did hesitate about the time of their removal (Jackson Correspondance, V, 17-82, 183-84). When Jackson appealed to him to have the New York Assembly issue a public defense of his message on nullification, Van Buren wrote the report of the joint committee, endeavoring to show the soundness of the party on the state rights question, while supporting the President against the nullifiers (Documents of the Senate of ... New York ... 1833, 1833, no. 34; Autobiography, pp. 548-53; Jackson Correspondence, IV, 504-08).

Elected vice-president in 1832 as Jackson's running mate, he proved to be an able and fair presiding officer of the Senate. Not once did he lose the confidence of Jackson. It has been remarked that toward his chief he had a "perfect bedside manner" (J. F. Jameson, Preface to Jackson Correspondence, Vol. IV, p. v). Accepted by his party as Jackson's protege, he was nominated for the presidency by a convention held in Baltimore in May 1835, Richard M. Johnson [q.v.] being nominated for vice-president. His platform was enunciated in the letters he wrote during the campaign, especially in the able letter of August 8, 1836; to Sherrod Williams (Niles' Weekly Register, September 10, 1836, pp. 26- 30). It was clear that he opposed the distribution of the surplus in the treasury and the improvement of rivers above ports of entry, and that he would not recharter the Bank under any consideration. He had supported Tallmadge's resolution on the Missouri Compromise calling for the non-extension of slavery and had signed a call for a meeting in Albany to protest against the extension of slavery (1820), but in 1831 he had announced himself as a stanch advocate of the right of slave-owning states to control slavery within their respective boundaries; He had advised Governor Marcy in 1835 to condemn the activities of the Garrison abolitionists (message of January 5, 1836), and in 1836, in the Senate, he had given a casting vote in favor of the bill barring abolitionist propaganda from the mails (Register of Debates, 24 Congress; 1 Session, Col. 1675; see also T. H. Benton; Thirty Years' View, I, 587-88).

In the election of 1836 there were Democratic defections in the South to Hugh L. White [q.v.] and to Willie P. Mangum [q.v.], who received the vote of South Carolina; and votes were cast for two Whig candidates, William Henry Harrison and Daniel Webster [qq.v.]; but Van Buren h ad a large electoral majority over the field. A s president, he filled the vacancy in the Department of War by appointing Joel R. Poinsett [q.v.], and retained all the other members of Jackson's cabinet. In his optimistic inaugural address (Richardson, post, III, 313-20), which concluded with a tribute to his predecessor, he urged the preservation of American democracy as a world experiment. His desire to hold together the northern and southern wings of his party was manifested in his avowed opposition to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia against the wishes of the slave states, and to any interference with slavery in the states where it existed. Throughout his administration he was plagued by abolitionist agitators  and those who would silence them, but his chief problems were economic. The panic of 1837 soon burst upon him. In spite of the fury of clamor against it, he held steadfastly to Jackson's specie circular, and in his message to the special session of Congress (September 4, 1837, Richards on, III, 324-46) he properly said that the panic was the result of over-action in business and over-expansion of credit. Adamant in his determination to divorce the "money power" from the federal government, and distrustful of the "pet banks" T C as well as of a central institution, he urged that an independent treasury be established. His recommendations that the installment of the surplus scheduled for distribution to the states in October be withheld, and that treasury notes be temporarily issued to meet the pressing needs of the government, went adopted, but the first independent treasury bill failed of passage. Not until 1840 was Van Buren able to secure the necessary legislation, with some compromise in regard to specie payments, and this was repealed by the Whigs in 1841. The independent treasury was not effectually established until 1846. It has generally been regarded as distinctly creditable to Van Buren's foresight, but at the time of his official advocacy of it he alienated conservative, or bank, Democrats, especially in New York and Virginia, while he was denounced by the Whigs for his "heartlessness" in not undertaking measures of relief and particularly for his failure to resort to paper money. He followed his lifelong policy of refusing to answer villifiers, believing always that "the sober second thought of the people" would uphold him.

Though he was embarrassed by American sympathy with the Canadian rebellion of 1837, and the seizure by Canadian authorities in American waters of the insurgent vessel Caroline, his successful effort to preserve peace between Great Britain and the United States was patriotic and commendable, notwithstanding the accusations of the opposing factions that his officials were "the tools of Victoria." His wise policy of conciliation, however, cost him political support along the northern border, as it did also in Blaine; in connection with the continued controversy over the northeastern boundary. He refused to annex independent Texas because he wanted no war with Mexico and at heart was opposed to the further extension of slavery. Throughout his administration he and his able cabinet were plagued with the terrible depression, to which crop failures contributed. Calhoun's cooperation, Blair's influential Globe, and Jackson's fidelity could not overcome such obstacles. As president, Van Buren had been far more than a wily politician, but perhaps no amount of courage, patriotism, and ability would have availed to carry through an effective program or to gain popular approval in such troublous times. "Little Van" was a "used up man" in the "hard-cider" campaign of 1840. The Whigs, evading issues and appealing to emotions; triumphantly elected William Henry Harrison [q.v.] over the decorous President, with an electoral vote of 234 to 60, and a popular plurality of nearly 150,000. Van Buren even lost New York.

He greeted Whigs and Democrats alike at the White House and shattered precedent by calling on President-elect Harrison at Gadsby's. After the inauguration, he retired to the old William Van Ness farm at Kinderhook which he had bought; he now repaired it extensively and called it "Lindenwald." He presently found occasion to deny a statement that he would not again run for the presidency, but he also informed the public that he would take no step to secure another nomination. He made a tour of the West and Southwest, stopping at ''Ashland" to see Clay, and at "The Hermitage" to pay his respects to Jackson (1842). Many Democrats throughout the North and West rallied to his support. He answered quite frankly, against the advice of informed friends, many inquiries as to his views on political issues; In the well-known "Hammet letter" (Washington Globe, April 27, 1844), published on the same day as Clay's "Raleigh letter," he courageously said that the annexation of Texas would mean war with Mexico and that he saw no need for immediate action, but that he would yield to the popular decision at the polls. This stand probably lost him the Democratic nomination (McCormac, Polk, pp. 224-30). His opponents published a year-old letter of Jackson favoring annexation, and succeeded in getting the two-thirds rule adopted by the Democratic convention at Baltimore (1844). Van Buren withdrew his name for the sake of party harmony and James K. Polk [q.v.] was nominated. His principles, except on annexation, were adopted in the platform. His followers expected recognition, but President Polk soon let it be known that they were not in favor. He offered Van Buren the London mission purposely to exile him, but Van Buren could not be shelved so easily.

The discontent engendered by his defeat at Baltimore, accentuated by bitter factional strife within the party in New York, turned half the Democrats of the state against the administration. The introduction of the Wilmot Proviso in 1846 provided a rallying point for this discontent and the latent anti-slavery feeling that had been steadily increasing. The next year the "Barnburners" seceded from the state convention; and, meeting at Herkimer, adopted a platform, drafted by Van Buren's son John [q.v.], opposing the extension of slavery to the territories to be acquired from Mexico. Van Buren himself drew up a similar address, which, after revision by his son and Samuel J. Tilden, was issued in February 1848 as the address of "Barnburner" Democrats in the legislature. Both "Barnburners" and "Hunkers" sent delegates to the National Democratic Convention of 1848, but the former at length withdrew. At a convention at Utica in June they nominated Van Buren for the presidency, paving the way for a general convention later. At Buffalo, in August, a gathering of anti-slavery men from all parties, organized the Free-soil party, on a platform of opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories. Van Buren, already nominated by the best organized group in the convention, was chosen to head the ticket. He had become convinced, perhaps at the convention of 1844, that northern Democrats had yielded to the "slavocracy" long enough, but accepted the nomination reluctantly, preferring to remain a farmer and to write his memoirs. The Free-soilers helped to defeat Cass by splitting the ticket. For a while Van Buren was popular with the New York Free-soilers, but he alienated them when he supported the compromise measures of 1850. He returned to the Democratic fold in 1852, assured by the elder Blair that he could trust Pierce, but he soon found that his trust was misplaced. He was indignant at the "half baked politicians" who repealed the Missouri Compromise (1854). He hoped the Union would be saved by the election of Buchanan, who promised a peaceful settlement of the Kansas question. Shocked deeply by the Civil War, he found his only solace in his confidence in Abraham Lincoln and refused to be associated with Buchanan, whom he now despised, in holding an ex-president's meeting (suggested by Franklin Pierce) to decide on some course relative to the cause of the Union. After months of suffering with asthma, he died in the summer, despondent over the situation of the Union armies. Funeral services were held in the Dutch Reformed Church of which he had been a faithful member. He left a manuscript, published by his sons under the title, Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States (1867). His uncompleted autobiography was edited by J.C. Fitzpatrick and published as "The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren" (Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1918, Vol. II, 1920).

[Elizabeth H. West, Calendar of the Papers of Martin Van Buren (1910). is an excellent guide to the voluminous Van Buren MSS. in the library of Congress, acquired to the time of its compilation; there is valuable material about him in that repository in the papers of various persons who were associated with him; and there is a collection of his letters in the New York State Library, at Albany. Valuable printed collections are C. Z. Lincoln, State of New York Messages from the Governors (1909), volume III, pp. 230-59; J. D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, volume III (1896); William McDonald, "The Jackson and Van Buren Papers," in Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, L volume XVIII (1908); Van Buren- Bancroft correspondence, in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings; volume XLII (1909); J. S. Bassett, ed., Correspondence of Andrew Jackson (6 volumes, 1926-33). Among biographies may be dated W. M. Holland, The Life and Political Opinions of' Martin Van Buren (1835); W, L. Mackenzie, The-Life and Times of Martin Van Buren (1 846), a bitter attack but contains letters; W. A. Butler, Martin Van Buren: Lawyer, Statesman and Man (1862); George Bancroft, Martin Van Buren to the End of His Public Career (1889), to 1841, written for the campaign of 1844; E. M. Shepard, Marti n Van B1f.ren (1888); D. T. Lynch, An Epoch and a Man: Martin Van Buren (1929.). For particular phases see J. S. Bassett, "Martin Van Buren," in S. F. Bemis, ed., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, volume IV (1928); J. D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New York (2 volumes, 1842); D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volumes I, U (1906); D. R. Fox,. The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York (1919); William Trimble, "Diverging Tendencies in New York Democracy in the Period of the 'Locofocos," in American Historical Review, April 1919; H. D. A, Donovan, The Barnburner; (1925); T. H. Benton, Thirty Years' View (2 volumes, 1856); R. H. Gillet, The Life and Times of Silas Wright (2 volumes, 1874); J. S. Bassett, The Life of Andrew Jackson (1911); E. I. McConnac, James K. Polk (1922); C. G. Bowers, The Party Battles of the Jackson Period (1922); R. C. McGrane, The Panic of' 1837 (1924); W. E. Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics (2 volumes, 1933); F. J. Turner, The United States: 1830-1850 (1935). For genealogy and local materials, see Harriet C. W. Van Buren Peckham, History of Cornelis Maessen Van Buren ... and His Descendants (1913); E: A. Collier, A History of Old Kinderhook (1914). For obituaries. see Evening Post (New York), July 24, 1862; New York Times, New York Tribune, July 25, 1862.]

W. E. S-h.


VAN DYKE, Henry Herbert, financier, born in Kinderhook, New York, in 1809; died in New York City, 22 January, 1888. “He was subsequently  with the Albany "Argus," and was active in state politics as a Free-Soil Democrat, following the lead of Martin Van Buren in the revolt against the "Hunker" Democrats that resulted in the election of Zachary Taylor to the presidency as a Whig. He subsequently joined the Republican Party, and was a presidential elector on the Fremont ticket in 1856.”

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

VAN DYKE, Henry Herbert, financier, born in Kinderhook, New York, in 1809; died in New York City, 22 January, 1888, was apprenticed to a printer early in life, and at twenty-one years of age became editor of the Goshen "Independent Republican." He was subsequently connected with the Albany "Argus," and was active in state politics as a Free-Soil Democrat, following the lead of Martin Van Buren in the revolt against the "Hunker" Democrats that resulted in the election of Zachary Taylor to the presidency as a Whig. He subsequently joined the Republican Party, and was a presidential elector on the Fremont ticket in 1856. He became superintendent of public instruction for the state of New York in 1857, and in 1861 superintendent of the state banking department, holding office till 1865, when he was chosen by President Johnson assistant U. S. treasurer. The failure of his health compelled his resignation of that post in 1869. He was president of the American Safe Deposit Company in 1883-'8, and, among other business offices, held the presidency of the Erie Transportation Company. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 245.


VAN RENSSELAER, Stephen, New York, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1836-41. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 211-212:

VAN RENSSELAER, STEPHEN (November 1, 1764-January 26, 1839), eighth patroon, soldier, congressman, was born in New York, the son of Stephen and Catherine (Livingston) Van Rensselaer, and fifth in direct descent from Kiliaen van Rensselaer, the first patroon. Upon his father's death in 1769, which left the five-year-old child heir to a vast landed estate in Rensselaer and Albany counties, his grandfather, Philip Livingston [q.v.], took charge of his education which was begun at Albany and after numerous changes due to the disturbances of wartime was completed at Harvard, where he was graduated in 1782. On June 6, 1783, he married Margaret Schuyler, daughter of General Philip Schuyler [q.v.], and in 1785 went to occupy the manor house near Albany. By granting perpetual leases at moderate rentals in kind, he brought more of his estate under cultivation than had any of his predecessors, but he refused to sell any part of his lands outright. He. was elected as a Federalist to the New York Assembly in 1789 and 1790, served in the state Senate from 1791 to 1795, and as lieutenant-governor from 1795 to 1801. In 1801 he was the unsuccessful Federalist candidate for governor against George Clinton [q.v.]. He sat in the Assembly in several subsequent sessions and in the constitutional conventions of 1801 and 1821.

Meanwhile he had become a major-general in the state militia, and although without active military experience, was 'called upon by Governor Daniel D. Tompkins [q.v.] in 1812 to take command of the entire northern frontier of the state. He set up his headquarters at Lewiston and by October 1812 had assembled some six thousand troops on the Niagara frontier, but the men lacked discipline and equipment, and their efficiency was further impaired by the refusal of Brig.-General Alexander Smyth [q.v.] of the regular army to take orders from or cooperate with Van Rensselaer. Without the support of Smyth, who held his brigade at Buffalo, Van Rensselaer ventured to attack Queenstown (Queens ton), October 13, 1812. The advance column secured a foothold on the Canadian shore, but when the remainder of the militia refused to cross the river to their support, they were compelled to surrender, with an aggregate loss of nearly a thousand men. Modern critics hold that the possible advantages to be gained by a successful attack at this point were not sufficient to justify the risk,. and that Van Rensselaer was culpable for not having better ascertained the temper of his army (Babcock, post, pp. 55- 56). Van Rensselaer's correspondence shows that he believed an aggressive stroke was expected by his superiors and that he was both-stung and alarmed by criticism of his inaction in the army itself (Solomon Van Rensselaer, post). After the defeat he resigned his command and returned to Albany. In the spring of 1813 he again received the Federalist nomination for governor but was defeated by Tompkins.

In 1822 he was elected to Congress to succeed his kinsman Solomon Van Rensselaer [q.v.], and retained his seat until 1829. In the choice of the president by the House of Representatives in 1825, he cast the deciding vote in the New York delegation and therefore in the election. He was thought to have pledged his vote to William H. Crawford [q.v.], but cast it, on the first ballot, for John Quincy Adams. Van Rensselaer explained to Van Buren that upon taking his seat, being still in doubt how to vote, he had bowed his head in prayer and upon opening his eyes had seen at his feet a ballot bearing Adams' name.

The Patroon's chief services to his state were neither military nor political but economic and educational. An early advocate of a canal to connect the Hudson with the Great Lakes, he was a member of the first canal commission in 1810 and of the second, instituted in 1816, of which from 1825 to his death he was president. In 1820 he was chosen president of the state's first board of agriculture, which he had been instrumental in creating. He bore the expense of a geological survey by Amos Eaton [q.v.] of a belt of land following the Erie Canal across New York and thence across New England, with special reference to soil and agricultural possibilities (A Geological and Agricultural Survey of the District Adjoining the Erie Canal ... Taken under the Direction of the Hon. Stephen Van Rensselaer, 1824). In 1824 he established at Troy a school primarily for the training of teachers "for instructing the sons and daughters of farmers and mechanics" in "the application of science to the common purposes of life" (letter of Van Rensselaer's, quoted by Ricketts, post, p. 64). The school was incorporated in 1826 as Rensselaer Institute and later became Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a pioneer among schools of its kind. He also gave liberally to other educational causes. In 1819 he was elected to the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, of which he was chancellor from 1835 to his death. He was president of the Albany Lyceum of Natural History and of the Albany Institute.

Probably the foremost man in the state in point of wealth and social prominence, Van Rensselaer was loved for his simple tastes, democratic behavior, and genial manners. As a landlord he was lenient to a fault (Cheyney, post, p. 25) and he refused to subject his tenants to political pressure (Hammond, post, I, 161). A genuine aristocrat, he was yet ready to meet the new democracy half way. His integrity was unchallenged, and political opponents held no rancor against him. Van Buren, a member of the opposite party, wrote of him as "that good and true gentleman Patroon Van Rensselaer" ("Autobiography,'' post, p. 514). After the death of his first wife, Margaret Schuyler, who had born him three children, Van Rensselaer married, May 17, 1802, Cornelia, daughter of William Paterson [q.v.]  Cortlandt Van Rensselaer [q.v.] was one of nine children of this second marriage.

[D. D. Barnard, A Disco1trse on the Life, Services and Character of Stephen Van Rensselaer; Delivered before the Albany Inst., April 15, 1839 (1839); J. B. Holgate, American Genealogy (1848); Cuyler Reynolds, Genealogy and Family History of Southern New York and the Hudson River Valley (1914), volume I; L. L. Babcock, The War of 1812 on the Niagara Frontier (rq27); Solomon Van Rensselaer, A Narrative of the Affair of Queenstown in the War of 1812 (1836); "Autobiography of Martin Van Buren," ed. by J. C. Fitzpatrick, Annual Report American Historical Association .... 1918, volume II (1920); Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society (1906), ed. by Gaillard Hunt; P. C. Ricketts, The Centennial Celebration of Rensselaer Poly. Inst. (1925); E. P. Cheney, The Anti-Rent Agitation in ... New York (1887); J. D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in . .. New York (2 volumes, 1842); D. R. Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York (1919); Albany Argus, January 28, 1839.)

J. W. P.


VAN RENSSELAER, Thomas, 1800-1850, New York, N.Y., African American abolitionist, editor.  Executive Committee, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1840-1842.  Co-founded newspaper, The Ram’s Horn.

(Mabee, 1970, pp. 130, 270, 391n27; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 317)


VAN VALKENBURGH, Robert Bruce, 1821-1888, lawyer, Union Colonel.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York.  Member of Congress 1861-1865.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 256; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


VAN WINKLE, Peter G., 1808-1872.  U.S. Senator from newly-formed State of West Virginia.  Served as Senator 1863-1869.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 257; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 219-220:

VAN WINKLE, PETER GODWIN (September 7, 1808-April 15, 1872), lawyer, United States senator, was the second son of Peter and Phoebe (Godwin) Van Winkle. He was born in New York City, and came from an old Knickerbocker family, the American progenitor of which, Jacob Van Winkle, settled in New Netherland about 1634. What formal education he received was obtained in the primary and secondary schools of his native city. In early manhood he moved to Parkersburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), where he began the study of law and in 1835 was admitted to the bar. Although actively engaged in his profession, he was at one time or another recorder of the town, a member of its governing board of trustees, and president of this boards position equivalent to that of mayor. Beginning in 1852 he served as treasurer and later as president of the Northwestern Virginia Railroad Company, which, in connection with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, built and operated a line from Grafton to the Ohio River. He was also for a number of years an attorney and lobbyist for the Baltimore & Ohio.

He was a member of the Virginia constitutional convention of 1850-51, though he seems not to have played a conspicuous role in its proceedings. He did, however, take a prominent part in the convention held at Wheeling in June 1861, in which sat representatives from northwestern Virginia. This convention passed an ordinance providing for the reorganization of the government of Virginia on a basis of loyalty to the Union. The government thus created was to supersede that centering at Richmond. Francis H. Pierpont [q.v.] was chosen governor, and Van Winkle was selected as a member of his advisory council. This convention at an adjourned session (in August) also passed an ordinance which provided for the division of Virginia and the creation of what became the state of West Virginia.

A constitutional convention was assembled at Wheeling on November 26, 1861. Van Winkle was one of the leading members of this body, and had much to do with the framing of the constitution. He urged the inclusion in West Virginia of the counties in th e extreme eastern section, mainly in order that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad should be entirely on West Virginia and Maryland soil. When the government of West Virginia was organized, he was a member of the first legislature and had an important part in the legislation enacted by it. In August 1863 he was one of the two chosen United States senators; he drew the long term and so served for six years.

In the Senate his record on routine policies must have impressed the leadership of the Republican party favorably, for he became a member of the important finance committee and chairman of the committee on pensions. His career as a whole, while not a brilliant one, was characterized by exceptional courage and independence of spirit. Though he went along with his party in voting for the Thirteenth and Fifteenth amendments, he refused to follow its leaders on some measures of prime importance. In a rather lengthy speech (April 21, 1864) in opposition to the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, he declared himself in favor of turning over the government of the Southern states to the loyal local citizens, though they might formerly have been disloyal, and of withdrawing from that section all federal soldiers as soon as safety should permit. He also opposed the granting of citizenship to the freedmen, believing that the majority of them were not equal to this responsibility. Consistently with this view, he voted against the Fourteenth Amendment in opposition to the wishes of a large majority of his party. His greatest offense against party regularity, however, was his refusal to vote for conviction in the impeachment proceedings against President Johnson. This defiance of the leadership of his party was loudly condemned in West Virginia; the Wheeling intelligencer referred to him as "West Virginia's Betrayer," and declared that there was not a loyal citizen in the state who had not been misrepresented by that vote. With feeling so strong against him, there was no prospect of his being returned to the Senate, and so he did not become a candidate for reelection. Leaving Washington at the end of his term, he spent the three remaining years of his life at Parkersburg. In 1831 he married Juliette, daughter of William P. and Martha Rathbun, of Paramus, Bergen County, New Jersey, by whom he had several children.

[Daniel Van Winkle, A Genealogy of the Van Winkle Family (copyright 1913); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); G. W. Atkinson and A. F. Gibbens, Prominent Men of West Virginia (1890); V. A. Lewis, How West Virginia Was Made (1909); J.C. McGregor, The Disruption of Virginia (1922); The Journal of the House of Delegates of the State of West Virginia, 1 Session (1863); Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, June, August 1861, November 1861-February 1862, May 18, 1868, April 16, 1872; State Journal (Parkersburg), April 18, 1872; T. C. Miller and Hu Maxwell, West Virginia and Its People (1913), volume III.]

O.P.C.


VARNUM, Joseph Bradley, 1750-1821, soldier, Member of Congress from Massachusetts 1780-1795.  Opposed slavery as Member of U.S. House of Representatives.  U.S. Senator 1811-1817.  Two-term Speaker of House of Representatives 1807-1811.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 261-262; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 228-229; Locke, 1901, pp. 93, 161; Annals of Congress, I Congress, 2 Session; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 278). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 228-229:

VARNUM, JOSEPH BRADLEY (January 29, 1750/ 51-September 11, 1821), Revolutionary soldier, speaker of the federal House of Representatives, senator from Massachusetts, was born at Dracut, Massachusetts, a son of Samuel and Hannah (Mitchell) Varnum and a brother of James Mitchell Varnum [q.v.]. Later assertions by Federalists of Varnum's illiteracy were malicious, but he was largely self-taught and sometimes betrayed a lack of early educational advantages. He was married, on January 26, 1773, to Molly Butler, the daughter of Jacob Butler, of Pelham, New Hampshire, a woman of strong character and marked domesticity, who bore her husband twelve children. They received as a gift from his father 160 acres of land with half a dwelling-house and a barn. Farming remained Varnum's primary and preferred occupation throughout his career, and he was proud, in 1818, of owning 500 acres with "more than ten miles of good stone fence upon it" (Magazine of American History, post, p. 408). Observance of the British troops in Boston in 1767 interested Varnum in military tactics, and in 1770 one of two militia companies at Dracut elected him captain. He was replaced in 1774 by an older man though still employed as instructor, and in this capacity he was present at the Battle of Lexington. From January 1776 to April 1787, he was captain of the Dracut Minute-men, and he served in the campaigns against Burgoyne in 1777, at Rhode Island in 1778, and later in suppressing Shays's Rebellion.

He represented Dracut in the Massachusetts lower house, 1780-85, and northern Middlesex County, in the Senate, 1786;..85. A mild anti-Federalist, he was sent to the Massachusetts convention to ratify the national Constitution (see his speech on the bill of rights, Massachusetts Centinel, February 6, 1788). He was a somewhat irregular candidate for the Second and Third congresses but was nominated regularly in 1794 for the Fourth Congress against Samuel Dexter [q.v.], a Federalist. He was elected by a majority of eleven votes, most of his support coming from Dracut and the adjoining towns. The election was protested, because the local board of selectmen, of which Varnum was a member, returned sixty more votes than Dracut was entitled to, but, in accordance with the lax rules of the period, he was exonerated in a Republican Congress of charges of political corruption.

In Congress he favored national defense through the militia as against a standing army, opposed building the Constitution and other naval vessels, denounced President John Adams' personal extravagance, and was an early opponent of slavery and the slave trade. He was several times called upon to preside during executive sessions. He benefited from the Jefferson-Randolph dispute when the speaker of the House sided with the latter, and the power of the administration was put behind Varnum in his election to the speakership in the Tenth Congress by one vote. His speakership occurred "in an epoch of commanding mediocrity" (Fuller, post, p. 30), and he was reelected in the Eleventh Congress. A very important adjustment made in his term of office was that of limitation of debate in the House. The speaker, unfortunately for his own standing at home, attached his signature to the Embargo act and brought down upon his head accusations of subserviency to the administration and the South by the New England Federalists (Salem Gazette, January 12, 1810). In 1809 he was nominated by the Republicans for lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, but was defeated.

In 1810, the Massachusetts legislature, deadlocked for several days, finally chose Varnum senator to succeed Timothy Pickering [q.v.]. He took his seat in March 1811 and before long was accused by his opponents, and probably justly, of conspiring with the southwestern "war hawks" to bring on the war of 1812. After the declaration of war he and several Democratic representatives were mobbed in Boston (Boston Gazette. July 12, 1812). He remained the staunchest New England supporter of "Mr. Madison's war." In 1813 he was president pro tempore 'If the Senate and acting vice-president of the United States. He ran for governor of Massachusetts on a "win the war" platform in 1813, but was badly defeated by Caleb Strong [q.v.]. In 1814 he spoke at length in the Senate against Giles's bill for an army of 80,000 men. "The justice of Varnum's criticism could not fairly be questioned," says Henry Adams (History of the United States, volume VIII, 1891, p. 109). At that date he was the only New England war man in Congress.

Still a useful legislator, Varnum served in the Senate until 1817, when he was succeeded by Harrison Gray Otis, 1765-1848 [q.v.]. He reentered the Massachusetts Senate where he opposed the separation of Maine from Massachusetts. He was a delegate to the state convention to amend the constitution in 1820. Despite his record as a militarist he became a pioneer member of the Massachusetts Peace Society, the predecessor of the American Peace Society. Late in life he revolted from the established Congregational Church and joined the Baptists. He was buried without pomp or ceremony in the Varnum Cemetery at Dracut. He was the author of An Address Delivered to the Third Division of Massachusetts Militia, at a Revue, in the Plains of Concord ..., printed by William Hilliard in 1800.

[Biography compiled by F. W. Coburn, Courier-Citizen (Lowell, Massachusetts), August 1-October 31, 19 33; manuscript "Book of Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts," owned by the Town of Dracut; J. M. Varnum, The Varnums of Dracut in Massachusetts (1907); "Autobiography of General Joseph B. Varnum," Magazine of American History, November 1888; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); H.B. Fuller, The Speakers of the House (1909); D. S. Alexander, History and Procedure of the House of Rep. (1916); Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (1872), volume I; Colombian Centinel (Boston, Massachusetts), September 15, 1821.]

F. W. C.


VAUGHN, John C., Ohio newspaper editor.  Active in Free Soil movement.  Stated in editorial that anti-slavery was “the best means by Northern action of securing Southern emancipation…” 

(Rayback, 1970, p. 249; Foner, 1970, p. 118 FN 40)


VAUX, Roberts, 1786-1836, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist, philanthropist, education reformer, supported American Colonization Society. 

(Drake, 1950, pp. 139-140; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 270; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 239; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 304). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 239-240:

VAUX, ROBERTS (January 21, 1786-January 7, 1836), philanthropist, was a descendant of a French family the members of which left their homeland in the seventeenth century and settled in Sussex, England. His father, Richard, son of George Vaux, a London physician, emigrated to Philadelphia in his early youth and died there in 1790 at the age of thirty-nine, leaving two children, Roberts and Susannah, and his wife, Ann (Roberts), who was a descendant of one of William Penn's friends and companions, Hugh Roberts. Both the pa rents were Quakers. Roberts Vaux received his schooling at the Friends' Academy in Philadelphia, and at eighteen entered the employ of a highly respected merchant, John Cooke. Upon reaching his majority he set up a business of his own, which he carried on for a few years. The death of his sister in 1814 created in him an emotional crisis which resulted in his resolving to retire from active business and devote his life to the service of his fellow men. The same year, November 30, he married Margaret Wistar, daughter of Thomas Wistar; she bore him two sons, one of whom was Richard [q.v.].

 In a short time Vaux became associated with almost every worthy public and private activity for social welfare in his community. He took a leading part in the creation of a free public school system and was the first president of the board of controllers of the public schools of Philadelphia, serving in that capacity from 1818 to 1831. Profoundly interested in prison problems, he was one of the officers of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, which his father-in-law had helped to found. He prepared most of its memorials to the legislature and stanchly defended the system of separate confinement of prisoners. In 1821 he was appointed to the commission which planned the Eastern Penitentiary, and it was he who drafted the legislation for its administration. Until his death he took an active interest in the work of this institution. Out of an address which he delivered before the Prison Society grew the movement for the establishment, in 1826, of a house of refuge for juvenile delinquents. His most eloquent and persuasive writing was in exposition and defense of penal reforms; among them may be mentioned Notices of the Original, and Successive Efforts, to Improve the Discipline of the Prison at Philadelphia, and to Reform the Criminal Code of Pennsylvania: with a Few Observations on the Penitentiary System (1826); and Reply to Two Letters of William Roscoe, Esquire, of Liverpool, on the Penitentiary System of Pennsylvania (1827).

Penology was but one of his many interests, however: he was a manager of the Pennsylvania Hospital; as a member of the building committee and later as a manager, he had an active part in the creation of the Frankford Asylum for the Insane; he assisted in the founding of an institution for the instruction of the blind and another for the deaf and dumb. An ardent advocate of temperance, he served as president of the Pennsylvania State Temperance Society, and as vice-president of the United States Temperance Convention. The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, the Philadelphia Hose Company, and the Apprentices' Library Company numbered him among their founders. He assisted in the organization of the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Linnaean Society, the Franklin Institute, the Athenaeum, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; published papers on the locality of Penn's treaty (Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, volume I, pt. 1, 1826); and wrote Memoirs of the Lives of Benjamin Lay and Ralph Sandiford (1815), and Memoirs of the Life of Anthony Benezet (1817). Political life apparently attracted him little. He served as a member of the Philadelphia common council (1814-16), but he declined in 1834 a presidential appointment as director of the Bank of the United States, to which he was violently opposed, and had earlier, 1832, declined an appointment as commissioner to treat with the "emigrating Indians west of the Mississippi River." It was only at the insistence of his friends that he accepted, in the fall of 1835, the position of justice of the court of common pleas. He died in Philadelphia less than three months late r.

[R. W. Davids, The Wistar Family (1896); T. McKean Pettit, "Memoir of Roberts Vaux," Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, volume IV, pt. 1 (1840); Henry Simpson, The Lives of Eminent Philadelphians Now Deceased (1859); G. P. Donehoo, Pennsylvania: A History (1926), volume IX; H. E. Barnes, The Evolution of Penology in Pa. (1927); J. F. Lewis, H ist. of the Apprentices' Library of Philadelphia (1924); J.M. Willcox, A History of the Phila.  ... Saving Fund Society (1916); J. J. McCadden, "Education in Pennsylvania," manuscript thesis, Teachers College, Columbia University, and " Robert Vaux and His Associates in the Pa. Society for the Promotion of Public Schools," Pennsylvania History, January 1936; death notice in Poulson's American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), January 8, 1836.]

T.S-n.


VESEY, Denmark, c. 1767-1822, African American abolitionist.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 339). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 258-259:

VESEY, DENMARK (c. 1767-July 2, 1822), mulatto rebel, because of his intelligence and beauty became at the age of fourteen the protege of one Captain Vesey, a slaver of Charleston, South Carolina, trading from St. Thomas to Santo Domingo. The name "Telemaque" that his owner gave him was corrupted to "Denmark." At Cap Francais (now Cape Haytien) the boy was sold to another, but later was returned as subject to epilepsy and for the next twenty years sailed with his master as a faithful slave. In 1800, having drawn $1,500 in the East Bay Street Lottery, Charleston, he purchased his freedom for $600 and set up for himself as a carpenter. Active and powerful, he accumulated a considerable estate, and was the reputed autocrat of several wives and a numerous progeny. Without particular grievances on his -own account, he resented his children's inheritance of slavery from their mothers, and, stimulated by events in Santo Domingo, he laid the foundation, 1818-22, for his uprising. Admitted to the Second Presbyterian Church in 1817, he joined the African Methodist congregation when they built their church, and acquired great influence through classes organized ostensibly for religious instruction. He was literate and quoted Scripture with powerful effect, identifying the negroes with the Israelites; and he interpreted the debate on the Missouri Compromise to mean that negroes were held by their masters in defiance of law. Exempt from slave restrictions, he carried his message to the plantations from the Santee to the Euhaws, a belt of more than a hundred miles. Meetings were held at Vesey's house, 20 Bull Street, where contributions were taken for arms; a blacksmith was set to making daggers, pikes, and bayonets, and a white barber to fashioning wigs and whiskers of European hair. The plans of the conspirators are not clear, but probably after taking the city they would have been guided by circumstances. Betrayed by a negro, they advanced the date for the uprising to Sunday night, June 16, but such effective precautions had been taken that the conspiracy collapsed.

Next day a court of two magistrates and five freeholders, customary in South Carolina since colonial times in cases involving slaves or persons of color, convened as both judge and jury, and, having laid down the customary rule of evidence that testimony of two should establish guilt, proceeded to the trial of the suspects. Carefully chosen men of integrity comprised the court, but when the Charleston Courier (June 21, 1822) published a communication on the "Melancholy Effect of Popular Excitement," citing the death of an innocent negro some years earlier as the result of a joke, the court protested against the insinuation of disrespect and drew a rebuke from Judge William Johnson - [q.v.], apparently the author of the original communication (Charleston Courier, June 29, 1822). After a three days' search Vesey was taken on the night of June 22 at the house of one of his wives. He had counsel and ably defended himself cross-examining witnesses with skill, but on, the testimony of informers, some of whom thus saved themselves, he was condemned to be hanged (notice of execution, Ibid., July 3, 1822). Of the negroes brought to trial, thirty-five were hanged, thirty-four were sent out of the state, and sixty-one were acquitted. Four whites, at least three of whom were foreign-born, were tried in the court of sessions for misdemeanor, and fined and imprisoned.

The true extent of the conspiracy will never be known, for Vesey and his aides died without making revelations. In the face of the intense excitement that prevailed, it was considered remarkable that the customary machinery of the law functioned and that no unusual punishments were inflicted. The local newspapers kept quiet about the insurrection and referred only briefly to the trials.

[A summary is in W. G. Simms, The History of South Carolina (1840), appendix; a sketch of Vesey is in An Account of the Late Intended Insurrection among a Portion of the Blacks of this City,. Published by the Authority of the Corporation of Charleston (1822); the same sketch is repeated in An Official Report of the Trials of Sundry Negroes Charged with an Attempt to Raise an Insurrection in the State of South Carolina (1822), by L. H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker; see also Achates (Thomas Pinckney?), Reflections, Occasioned by the Late Disturbances in Charleston (1822); T. W. Higginson, "Denmark Vesey," Atlantic Monthly, June 1861; A. H. Grimke, Right on the Scaffold, or, The Martyrs of 1822 (1901).]

A.K.G.


VILLARD, Fanny Garrison [See VILLARD, Helen Frances Garrison, 1844-1928].


VILLARD,  Helen Frances Garrison (December 16, 1844-July 5, 1928), reformer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fourth child of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] and Helen Eliza (Benson) Garrison.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 272-273:

VILLARD,  HELEN FRANCES GARRISON (December 16, 1844-July 5, 1928), reformer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fourth child of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] and Helen Eliza (Benson) Garrison. "We shall demand for her the rights of a human being, though she be a female," wrote her militant father some weeks later. Named for her mother and paternal grandmother, Fanny (as she was always called) grew up a healthy, beautiful child, in a home surcharged with the exciting atmosphere of the greatest reform movement in American history. Educated in the Winthrop School, Boston, she spent her early years in close contact with the abolition struggle. After the Civil War, on January 3, 1866, she married Henry Villard [q.v.], Washington correspondent of the Chicago Daily Tribune. After an extended visit to Europe (July 1866-June 1, 1868), the young couple settled in Boston, where a daughter was born to them in 1868, and a son in 1870. During another visit to Germany in 1872 a second son was born. In 1876 the Villards established their home in New York, and in 1879 acquired a summer estate at Dobbs Ferry, New York, where their fourth child, a son, was born and died. During all these years Mrs. Villard's life was centered in her family and in the career of her husband, which involved much travel in the United States and abroad and another prolonged visit to Germany (1883-86).

The death of her husband in November 1900 marked the beginning of her public career. Possessed of wealth and leisure and her father's crusading spirit, she found she could make an excellent platform appearance and command a loyal following. With intense and widely extended activity, she now gave herself to philanthropy and social reform. In the great tradition of her father, she participated in the militant work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, serving as a member of its advisory committee. Always a woman suffragist, she labored indefatigably until victory came with the pas sage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. For many years (1897-1922) she headed the Diet Kitchen Association, which under her leadership first established public milk stations for infants and children in New York City. In her la st years, she devoted her best energies to the cause of peace, which she interpreted, as did her father, in terms of absolute non-resistance. At the close of the World War she gathered about her a determined group of pacifists and in October 1919 founded the Women's Peace Society, which she led as president until her death. In 1921, at the Conference of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, in Vienna, she presented resolutions calling for "non-resistance under all circumstances ... immediate, universal, and complete disarmament, ... absolute freedom of trade the world over" (Report of the 3rd International Congress of Women, 1921, p. 150). She died in her eighty-fourth year and was buried at her home at Dobbs Ferry.

Fanny Garrison Villard was a woman of infinite charm and grace. Her inward serenity of mind and sweetness of temper matched the outward beauty of her person. Her exquisite refinement was salted by a high sense of humor and an intense absorption in current affairs. Her gentleness and culture as wife and mother revealed themselves in later years as the adornments of a courage and rock-like resolution which were the central elements of her character. Her father lived in her again. No one who saw the spectacle will forget her marching up Fifth A venue in her old age at the head of the women's peace parade, her white head, crowned with its little black bonnet, nodding its defiance at the hostile but admiring crowds. A lady in personal bearing and social caste, she was democratic to the core, an ardent lover of mankind, and a passionate and valiant idealist.

[W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (4 volumes, 1885-89); Memoirs of Henry Villard (2 volumes, 1904); Luncheon Given by Women's Peace Society in Celebration of Mrs. Henry Villard's 80th Birthday (1924), pamphlet, with addresses; personal statement, with data, by Oswald Garrison Villard, New York Times, July 6, 1928.]

J.H.H.


VILLARD, Henry (April 10, 1835-November 12, 1900), journalist, railway promoter, financier,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 273-275:

VILLARD, HENRY (April 10, 1835-November 12, 1900), journalist, railway promoter, financier, whose name was originally Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard, was born in Speyer, Rhenish Bavaria, the son of Gustav Leonhard Hilgard and Katharina Antonia Elisabeth (Pfeiffer) Hilgard. He came from an important family, his father being a jurist who rose to the supreme court of Bavaria, while two of his uncles were leaders in the revolution of 1848 in Rhenish Bavaria. Young Heinrich's sympathy with their republican sentiments estranged him from his father and the boy was sent for a time to a military school at Phalsbourg in Lorraine. He graduated from the Gymnasium in Speyer, and attended the universities of Munich and Wurzburg for a time, but disagreed again with his father and emigrated to America. Fearing that his father would have him returned to Germany and placed in the army, he adopted the name Villard, which had been borne by one of his schoolmates at Phalsbourg. Upon landing at New York in October 1853, he proceeded to the West by easy stages, spent some time in Cincinnati and Chicago, and eventually arrived at the home of relatives in Belleville, Illinois. During the year 1855- 56 he successively read law, peddled books, sold real estate, and edited a small-town newspaper, but made little progress along any line except the mastery of the English language.

Increasing facility in the use of his adopted tongue served to equip him for the field of journalism which was to occupy his attention largely for the next decade. In 1858 he served as a special correspondent for the Staats-Zeitung of New York, observed and reported the Lincoln-Douglas debates for that paper, began a personal friendship with Lincoln, and collected his Lincoln stories, which have since been widely quoted. Service with this German-American paper, however, he regarded merely as preliminary to his real objective-a regular berth with the English language press. Late in 1858 reports of the discovery of gold in the Pike's Peak country so aroused his adventurous spirit that he conceived a plan for a journey to the Rocky Mountains in the role of a correspondent, made a connection with the Cincinnati Commercial, and in the spring of 1859 set out across the Plains. His sojourn of some months in the mining camps not only enabled him to make the acquaintance of several noteworthy men, including Horace Greeley, but provided him with the materials for a guidebook for immigrants which he published in 1860 under the title The Past and Present of the Pike's Peak Gold Regions, a very accurate account of the natural resources of Colorado and a rather extraordinary achievement for a young man of twenty-five who seven years before had not known a word of English.

As correspondent for the Commercial he covered the Republican National Convention at Chicago in 1860, and he served in a similar capacity for that paper, as well as for the Daily Missouri Democrat of St. Louis and the New York Tribune during the ensuing campaign. With the election of Lincoln, he was selected by the New York Herald as its correspondent at Springfield, Illinois Here he remained until the departure of Lincoln for Washington, supplying his paper with regular dispatches, which the Herald was forced to share with other members of the New York Associated Press. Since at the same time Villard corresponded freely with Western papers, a considerable portion of the political news which the country read during those memorable weeks was supplied by the young immigrant who had not yet turned his twenty-sixth birthday.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, he supported the Union cause and became a war correspondent, first for the New York Herald, and later for the New York Tribune, accompanying the Union armies in Virginia and the West until late in November 1863, when ill health forced him to abandon field work for a time. The following year, in conjunction with the Washington representative of the Chicago Daily Tribune, he organized a news agency to compete with the New York Associated Press, and represented his agency with the Army of the Potomac in the campaign of 1864 in Virginia. Upon the conclusion of the war, he served as a correspondent in the United States and Europe until the autumn of 1868, when he became secretary of the American Social Science Association, with headquarters in Boston. This work, in addition to bringing him into the movement for civil service reform, enabled him to study and investigate public and corporate financing, including that of railways and banks, and thus indirectly prepared him for the most notable phase of his career-that of railway promoter and financier.

In 1871, to restore his failing health, he went to Germany and then to Switzerland. In Germany again, in the winter of 1873, he was brought into contact with a protective committee for the bondholders of the Oregon & California Railroad Company. He became a member of the committee, and the following year was sent to Oregon as their representative, to investigate and recommend as to the future policy to be employed by the bondholders. He perfected a plan for the harmonious operation of the Oregon & California Railroad, the Oregon Central Railroad, and the Oregon Steamship Company, which owned a fleet of steamers plying between Portland and San Francisco; in 1876 he became president of the first and last named companies. Meanwhile he had joined a committee for the protection of the bondholders of the Kansas Pacific, Railway, and when in 1876 this company became financially embarrassed he was named a receiver for the road, a position which forced him to match his wits with such redoubtable foes as Jay Gould and Sidney Dillon [qq.v.] of the Union Pacific. It was in connection with this company that he achieved his first important financial success and laid the foundation of his later fortune.

Villard's real love, however, was the Oregon country. On his first visit to the region he had been very favorably impressed with its possibilities and there gradually developed in his mind the idea of building a railway empire in the Far Northwest. Perceiving the great strategic value of the south bank of the Columbia River as a railway route, he purchased the Oregon Steam Navigation Company from Simeon Gannett Reed [ q.v.] and his associates in 1879, organized the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, and proceeded to construct a railway eastward from Portland along that route. His plan was to make this line the Pacific Coast outlet for any northern transcontinental railway which might be built, and to concentrate the trade of the Northwest in Portland. As he progressed with his plans, however, he clashed with the Northern Pacific, then recovering from the financial disasters of the seventies, whose objective was Puget Sound. Appreciating the great advantage which the superior harbor of the Sound would give the Northern Pacific over his own road with terminus at Portland, Villard resolved to prevent the completion of the rival road. When his offer of running rights over his line to tidewater was refused, he decided to purchase a controlling interest in the Northern Pacific. After quietly buying the stock of the Company to the limit of his resources (December 1880-January 1881), he appealed to his friends and supporters for assistance. Issuing a confidential circular to about fifty persons, he asked them to subscribe toward a fund of eight million dollars, the precise purpose of which was not then revealed. It is eloquent testimony to the confidence which he inspired in men that, besides the sum first requested, an additional twelve million dollars was eventually subscribed. This transaction, commonly known as the " Blind Pool," remains one of the notable achievements in the annals of railway finance.

With the means thus secured he established his control of the Northern Pacific; he organized a holding company-the Oregon & Transcontinental-to harmonize the interests of his various railway properties; on September 15, 1881, he became president of the Northern Pacific, and completed the line in 1883. Since he also controlled the Oregon & California Railroad, and had recently organized the Oregon Improvement Company for the development of the natural resources of the region, he now dominated every important agency of transportation in that part of the country. His triumph, however, was of short duration. Because of a combination of circumstances, including faulty estimates of construction costs, the Northern Pacific upon its completion, was confronted with a huge deficit which forced the resignation of Villard from the presidency early in 1884. From 1884 to 1886 he was in Germany, recovering from a nervous breakdown; in the latter year he returned to New York as agent of the Deutsche Bank. With the aid of German capital he saved the Oregon & Transcontinental in September 1887, and reentered the board of the Northern Pacific in 1888, where, for the next two years, he strove earnestly, but unsuccessfully, to effect an adjustment of the clashing interests of the various cities and transportation companies of the Pacific Northwest. His failure in this effort was attended by his retirement from the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, though after a brief interval he continued as chairman of the board of the Northern Pacific until 1893, when his railway career came to an end.

Meanwhile Villard was displaying his versatility by activities along other lines. His early realization of the possibilities of the electrical industry prompted him to extend financial assistance to Thomas A. Edison and to found the Edison General Electric Company in 1889. In 1881 he inaugurated, under the direction of Raphael Pumpelly [q.v.], the Northern Transcontinental Survey, an examination of the Northern Pacific land grant of genuine scientific value. Nor had his activity as a financier dulled his earlier interest in journalism. When, through his financial successes with the Kansas Pacific and the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, he became a man of wealth, his thoughts quickly turned to the possibility of controlling a journal of independence and fearlessness, and of such high editorial standards as to compel attention from the entire country. Accordingly, in 1881, he acquired a controlling interest in the New York Evening Post, placed Horace White, E. L. Godkin, and Carl Schurz [qq.v.] in charge of the editorial department, and, as a guarantee of independence on the part of the paper, promptly abdicated the right of influencing its editorial policy.

During the years 1879 to 1883 Villard was probably the most important railway promoter in the United States. In those years he was frankly aiming at a monopoly of transportation facilities in the Pacific Northwest; yet he showed no disposition to take unfair advantage of such a position, or to victimize the people of the region. Although alert to the protection of his interests against rival companies, he displayed fairness, moderation, and breadth of view in dealing with the cities on the Coast. On January 3, 1866, Villard married the only daughter of William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.]. In 1879 he established a home at Dobbs Ferry, New York, where in his sixty-sixth year he died. He was survived by his wife, Helen Frances Garrison Villard [q.v.], with a daughter and two sons.

[Villard MSS., Widener Library, Harvard University; Heinrich Hilgard Villard: Jugend Erinnerungen, 1835- 1853 (1902); Memoirs of Henry Villard (2 volumes, 1904); Villard's The Past and Present of the Pike's Peak Gold Regions (1860), reproduced (1932) with introduction and notes by Le Roy R. Hafen; E. V. Smalley, History of the Northern Pacific R.R. (1883); Allan Nevins, The Evening Post (1922); J.B. Hedges, Henry Villard and the Railways of the Northwest (1930); New York Times, November 13, 1900.]

J.B. H.


VINTON, Samuel Finley (September 25, 1792-May 11, 1862), lawyer and congressman.  He opposed the annexation of Texas, and opposed a direct tax for the prosecution of the war with Mexico. Vinton was the unsuccessful Whig candidate for election as governor of Ohio in 1851. In April 1862 he was appointed by President Lincoln as one of three commissioners to appraise emancipated slaves within the District, but he died less than a month later.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 284-285:

VINTON, SAMUEL FINLEY (September 25, 1792-May 11, 1862), lawyer and congressman, a descendant of John Vinton whose name appears in the records of Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1648, and the eldest of seven children of Abiathar and Sarah (Day) Vinton, was born in South Hadley, Massachusetts. His father was a farmer; his grandfather, also named Abiathar, was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Young Vinton prepared for college with the aid of his local pastor, entered Williams in 1808, taught school at intervals to meet expenses, and graduated with the class of 1814. He read law under the direction of Stephen Titus Hosmer, subsequently chief justice of the supreme court of Connecticut, was admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1816, and a few months later commenced practice in Gallipolis, Ohio, a village of French emigres. Here, in 1824, he married Romaine Madeleine Bureau, who died in 1831, having borne him two children. He rose rapidly in public esteem as an advocate. In 1822 he was elected to Congress and continued to serve until March 3, 1837. At this time he had declined to be a candidate for reelection, but in 1842 he yielded to the demands of the Whigs, and served again as congressman from 1843 to 1851. He was at various times a member of the committees on public lands, roads and canals, and the judiciary; he was made chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means during the war with Mexico, after he had declined the nomination for speaker of the House.

Vinton's first speech in Congress, in May 1824, was on a resolution which he offered with a view to the protection of the lives of passengers on steamboats navigating the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. As a remedy for the unprofitable management of the school lands in Ohio, he introduced and successfully promoted the passage of a bill to authorize that state to sell those lands and invest the proceeds in a trust fund, a precedent which was subsequently followed in other states. When in February 1828 a bill for the appropriation of funds for the Indian service, and particularly for the removal of Indians from lands east of the Mississippi to a reservation west of that river, was before Congress, Vinton, for the purpose of preventing any disadvantage to either slave states or free states, moved and made a memorable speech in support of an amendment which provided that no Indians living north of 36° 30' should be aided in removing south of that line, nor any Indians living south of it be aided in removing north of it. Vinton spoke frequently, but usually briefly and effectively, on such subjects as the survey and sale of public lands so as to prevent speculation, the Cumberland Road and other internal improvements, the tariff (favoring protection), and the apportionment of representatives. He opposed the annexation of Texas, and opposed a direct tax for the prosecution of the war with Mexico. On February 12, 1849, he reported from the Committee of Ways and Means the bill providing for the establishment of the Department of the Interior, which became a law nineteen days later. Vinton was the unsuccessful Whig candidate for election as governor of Ohio in 1851. He served for one year, 1853-54, as president of the Cleveland & Toledo Railroad, and then returned permanently to Washington, D. C. In April 1862 he was appointed by President Lincoln as one of three commissioners to appraise emancipated slaves within the District, but he died less than a month later. Sarah Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren [q.v.] was his daughter.

[J. A. Vinton, The Vinton Memorial (1858); (S.) M. V. Dahlgren, "Samuel Finley Vinton, a Biographical Sketch," Ohio Archeology and Historical Society Publications, volume IV (1895); "Memoir of the Hon. Samuel F. Vinton," American Review, September 1848; Calvin Durfee, Williams Biographical Annals (1871); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D. C.), May 12, 1862.]

N.D.M.



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