Han-Haw: Hanby through Hawley

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


HANBY, Benjamin Russell, 1833-1867, composer, abolitionist.  Active in the local Underground railroad with his father, Bishop William Hanby. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 217)


HANNA, A. F., abolitionist, Cadiz, Ohio, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-41.


HANNA, Benjamin, abolitionist, Ohio, aided fugitive slaves in Ohio. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 137-138)


HANNA, Robert, abolitionist, Cadiz, Ohio, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-42, 1843-46.


HANWAY, Castner


HARDING, Sewall, Medway, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-40.


HARLAN, James, 1820-1899, statesman.  Whig U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Elected Senator in 1855 representing Iowa.  Re-elected, served until 1865, when appointed Secretary of the Interior by President Lincoln.  Re-elected to Senate in 1866, served until 1873. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 83-84; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 268; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 10, p. 94; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 268;

HARLAN, JAMES (August 26, 1820-October 5, 1899), United States senator, secretary of the interior, was a product of the frontier, of its opportunity and of its limitations. He was descended from George Harland, a Quaker, who emigrated from the vicinity of Durham, England, to County Down, Ireland, and thence in 1687 to America, settling finally in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His parents, Silas and Mary (Conley) Harlan, natives of Pennsylvania and Maryland respectively, were married in Ohio and then joined the stream of western migration, locating in Clark County, Illinois, where he was born. Four years later the family removed to the "New Discovery" in Parke County, Ind., a typical clearing settlement. Monotonous toil was relieved chiefly by visits of Methodist circuit riders who made the Harlan home their "preaching place." The frontier youth supplemented his log-school instruction by books secured from a county library. After teaching district school he attended a local "seminary" and entered Indiana Asbury (later DePauw) University in 1841. College life was interspersed by a trip to Iowa and a term of school teaching in Missouri. As a student his interest in politics was already marked; he was an ardent Whig. In 1845, the year that he took his degree, he was married to Ann Eliza Peck.

The young couple, true to type, sought the pioneer life in Iowa where Harlan became principal of the Iowa City College. Almost immediately his long and stormy political career began. In the first state election, in 1847, he was chosen superintendent of public instruction on the Whig ticket, but the election was declared illegal and in the contest to fill the vacancy he was defeated by methods that he regarded as highly irregular. Following this unfortunate experience, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1850 and in the same year declined the Whig nomination for governor. Before full establishment in his new profession, he was called to head the Iowa Conference University (now Iowa Wesleyan), which he served as president from 1853 to 1855. Under most discouraging conditions, both financial and academic, he was laying the foundations of one of the earliest trans-Mississippi colleges when the Free-Soil agitation put an end to his educational activities and career.

From the beginnings of the Free-Soil movement Harlan had been an active promoter. Put forward by friends as the new party's candidate for the United States Senate he was elected, in 1855, by a rump legislature after one house had formally adjourned. This irregularity led to the vacating of his seat in January 1857. He was promptly returned by a sympathetic legislature and in 1860 was the unanimous Republican choice for a second term. During his first senatorial contest he built up a personal organization throughout the state which he utilized effectively in later contests. As senator he concentrated on Western measures, homesteads, college land grants, and especially the Pacific railroad act, which he personally directed. He gave loyal support to the war measures of the administration and was intimate with President Lincoln; his daughter later married Robert Todd Lincoln [q.v.]. At the beginning of Lincoln's second term Harlan became secretary of the interior. This position was the disastrous turning-point of his career. Departmental policies created bitter enmities and led to charges of improper appointments and of corruption in the disposal of Indian and railroad lands. These charges persisted, although, according to one of Harlan's biographers, "each of the accusations was fairly and squarely met by facts which were a matter of record, and proven to be without foundation" (Brigham, post, p. 250). The most notable of his many dismissals in pursuance of his policy of economy was that of Walt Whitman [q.v.] from a clerkship in the Indian Office (Ibid., p. 208). The reconstruction contest caused a break between Harlan and Johnson, and Harlan resigned his portfolio in July 1866.

Before leaving the cabinet he had been making plans for a return to the Senate, and he had so influential a following that he was elected in 1866, but at the cost of the friendship of Samuel J. Kirkwood and James W. Grimes [qq.v.]. Upon returning to the Senate he was definitely aligned with the radical administration group and his most notable acts were his support of Johnson's impeachment and his spirited defense of Grant's Santo Dominican policy. The growing cleavage in the party, which was to culminate in the Liberal Republican movement, was reflected in the Iowa senatorial contest in January 1872 in which Harlan's opponents combined so effectively that he was defeated by William B. Allison [q.v.]. This defeat ended his official career at a comparatively early age. Though candidate for senator and governor at various times, he was never again successful in an election. His only remaining official service was as a member of the second court of Alabama claims, 1882-86. He was an active member of the Methodist Church, and the support that he received from Iowa Methodists occasionally figured in political controversies. He was president of Iowa Wesleyan again for a short time in 1869-70. Tall, dignified, impressive looking, Harlan was strong of body and of will. He was a zealous partisan and a persistent fighter, tenacious of conviction whether based upon reason or prejudice.

[The Harlan papers, including autobiographical sketch of early years and a large correspondence, are in the possession of Harlan's daughter, Mrs. Robert Todd Lincoln, and were used and quoted extensively in Johnson Brigham, James Harlan (1913). See also Congressional Globe, 34-42 Congress; Report of the Sec. of the Interior, 1865; Diary of Gideon Welles (3 volumes, 1911); D. E. Clark, History of Senatorial Elections in Iowa (1912); A.H. Harlan, History and Genealogy of the Harlan Family (1914); Historical Sketch and Alumni Record of Iowa Wesleyan Coll. (1917); E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers and Public Men of Iowa (1916); Christian Advocate, October 19, 1899; Iowa State Register (Des Moines), October 6, 1899.)

E. D.R.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume III, pp. 83-84;

HARLAN, James, statesman, born in Clarke county, Ind., 26 August, 1820; died in Des Moines, Iowa, 5 October, 1899. He was graduated at the Indiana Asbury university, held the office of superintendent of public instruction, and was president of Iowa Wesleyan university. He was elected to the U. S. senate in 1855 as a Whig, and served as chairman of the committee on public lands, but his seat was declared vacant on a technicality on 12 January, 1857. On the 17th of the same month he was re-elected for the term ending in 1861, and in the latter year was a delegate to the Peace convention. He was re-elected to the senate for the term ending in 1867, but resigned in 1865, having been appointed by President Lincoln secretary of the interior. He was again elected to the senate in 1866, and was a delegate to the Philadelphia loyalists' convention of that year. He was chairman of the committee on the District of Columbia and Indian affairs, and also served on those on foreign relations, agriculture, and the Pacific railroad. In 1869 he was appointed president of the Iowa university. After leaving the senate in 1873 he became editor of the “Washington Chronicle.” From 1882 till 1885 he was presiding judge of the court of commissioners of Alabama claims. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 83-84.


HARMON, David P., abolitionist, Haverhill, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1854-60.


HARNED, William, abolitionist, New York, New York, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Recording Secretary, 1846-47.


HARPER, Charles C., Baltimore, Maryland.  Active in the American Colonization Society movement with his father, Robert Goodloe Harper. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 38, 52, 53; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 101, 110-111, 161, 190).


HARPER, Frances Ellen Watkins, 1825-1911, African American, poet, writer, abolitionist, political activist. Wrote antislavery poetry.

(Hughes, Meltzer, & Lincoln, 1968, p. 105; Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 97, 148, 153, 155-157, 295; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 5, p. 372)


HARPER, Robert Goodloe, 1765-1825, Fredericksburg, Virginia, Baltimore, U.S. Senator, lawyer.  Founding officer, Baltimore auxiliary, American Colonization Society (ACS), 1817.  Active advocate and supporter of the colonization movement.  Invented the name “Liberia” for ACS colony.  Father of ACS activist Charles C. Harper. 

(Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2005, p. 66; Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 21, 88; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 88; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 285; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 39, 65, 70, 84, 104, 110, 169, 174)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 88:

HARPER, Robert Goodloe, senator, born near Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1765; died in Baltimore, Maryland, 15 January, 1825. He was the son of poor parents, who, during his childhood, removed to Granville, N. C. At the age of fifteen he served, under General Greene, in a troop of horse, composed of the youth of the neighborhood, during the closing scenes of the southern campaign of the Revolution. He was graduated at Princeton in 1785, studied law in Charleston, South Carolina, and was admitted to the bar in 1786. He soon removed to the interior of the state where he became known through a series of articles on a proposed change in the constitution. He was elected to the legislature and subsequently sent to congress, serving from 9 February, 1795, till 3 March, 1801, and warmly supporting the administrations of Washington and Adams. He served in the war of 1812, being promoted from the rank of colonel to that of major-general. Soon after the defeat of the Federalists he married the daughter of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, and removed to Baltimore, Maryland, where he attained eminence at the bar. He was employed with Joseph Hopkinson as counsel for Judge Samuel Chase, of the U.S. supreme court, in his impeachment trial. At a dinner given at Georgetown, D. C., 5 June, 1813, in honor of the recent Russian victories, he gave as a toast “Alexander the Deliverer,” following it with a speech eulogizing the Russians. On the publication of the speech, Robert Walsh addressed the author a letter in which he expressed the opinion that the oration underrated the military character of Napoleon, and failed to point out the danger of Russian ascendency. To this letter Harper made an elaborate reply, Walsh responded, and the correspondence was then (1814) published in a volume. Harper was elected to the U. S. senate from Maryland to serve from 29 January, 1816, till 3 March, 1821, but resigned in the former year to become one of the Federalist candidates for vice-president. In 1819-'20 he visited Europe with his family, and after his return employed himself chiefly in the promotion of schemes of internal improvements. He was an active member of the American colonization society, and the town of Harper, near Cape Palmas, Africa, was named in his honor. His pamphlet, entitled “Observations on the Dispute between the United States and France” (1797), acquired great celebrity. He also printed “An Address on the British Treaty” (1796); “Letters on the Proceedings of Congress”; and “Letters to His Constituents” (1801). A collection of his various letters, addresses, and pamphlets was published with the title “Select Works” (Baltimore, 1814). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


HARRIMAN, Walter (April 8, 1817-July 25, 1884), soldier, governor of New Hampshire.  In politics he was a Democrat with antislavery leanings, and beginning in 1848, he became an active political worker. In the spring of 1861 Harriman became editor and part owner of the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Democrat, which he renamed the Weekly Union, and gave vigorous and effective support to the war policy of the Lincoln administration.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 300-301:

HARRIMAN, WALTER (April 8, 1817-July 25, 1884), soldier, governor of New Hampshire, was the son of Benjamin Evans and Hannah (Flanders) Harriman and was descended from Leonard Harriman who emigrated to America from Yorkshire, England, in 1638, and settled at Rowley, Massachusetts. He was born at Warner, New Hampshire. After attending the public schools and Hopkinton Academy he began at seventeen to teach school in Warner and continued in this occupation for about seven years, holding positions in Massachusetts and New Jersey, as well as in New Hampshire. He spent ten years in the ministry of the Universalist Church, first at Harvard, Massachusetts, after which he returned to Warner, New Hampshire, in 1845. Becoming interested in business, he left the ministry in 1851 and conducted a general store at Warner in partnership with John S. Pillsbury, afterward governor of Minnesota. In politics he was a Democrat with antislavery leanings, and beginning in 1848, he became an active political worker. In the following ten years he served two terms in the New Hampshire House and one in the Senate (1849, 1858, 1859); two terms as state treasurer (1853-55); and in 1856 was appointed by President Pierce member of a commission for the classification of Indian lands in Kansas.

In the spring of 1861 Harriman became editor and part owner of the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Democrat, which he renamed the Weekly Union, and gave vigorous and effective support to the war policy of the Lincoln administration, a service of great importance in view of the numerical strength of the Democratic party in the state. In August of the following year he was commissioned colonel of the 11th Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteers and shortly afterward left for Virginia with his command. He took part in the battle of Fredericksburg in December. In 1863 his regiment was moved west and with the exception of a few weeks when he temporarily resigned, he spent the year in various operations in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, including the siege of Vicksburg. In the spring of 1864 the regiment was again attached to the Army of the Potomac and at the battle of the Wilderness, Harriman was captured while leading an attack on the Confederate lines. He was exchanged a few months later, eventually resumed command of his regiment before Petersburg, and participated with credit in the closing operations. He took part in the grand review, was honored with a brevet brigadier-generalship, and was mustered out June 11, 1865.

While still in the field Harriman had maintained an interest in politics and in 1863 accepted a nomination for the governorship from the War Democrats, diverting sufficient votes to force the election into the legislature, where the Republicans, actually a popular minority, were able to elect the governor. This maneuver gained the lasting gratitude of the Republicans and practically ended his former party affiliations. While on furlough after his release in 1864 he was an active campaigner for the Lincoln ticket in the presidential election. On leaving the army he was immediately elected secretary of state for New Hampshire and served two years, and in 1867 and 1868 he was elected governor after closely contested campaigns. After the inauguration of Grant, he was appointed and for the next eight years served as naval officer for the port of Boston. Having established a residence in Concord in 1872, he retired to it in 1877 and spent the rest of his life there, serving a single term (1881) as representative in the legislature, but devoting more attention to writing than to active party work. He contributed frequently to various New England newspapers and journals and in 1879 published a History of Warner, New Hampshire, containing in the appendix another historical study: "The Boundaries of New Hampshire." His last work was a volume entitled Travels and Observations in the Orient, and a Hasty Flight in the Countries of Europe (1883). He was twice married. His first wife was Apphia K. Hoyt, to whom he was married in September 1841. After her death he was married, in October 1844, to Almira R. Andrews.

[Amos Hadley, Life of Walter Harriman with Selections from his Speeches and Writings (1888); "General Walter Harriman," Granite Monthly, October 1879; Leander W. Cogswell, A History of the Eleventh New Hampshire Regiment, Volunteer Infantry (1891); Otis F. R. Waite, New Hampshire in the Great Rebellion (1870); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); Concord Evening Monitor, July 25, 1884.]

W.A.R.

HARRINGTON, Theophilis, 1762-1813, jurist, political leader, abolitionist.  Ruled in court case against a slaveholder in June 1804.


HARRIS, Ira, 1802-1875, jurist.  Republican U.S. Senator from New York.  Served as U.S. Senator from 1861-1867.  In 1861 he was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican. He succeeded William H. Seward, defeating Horace Greeley and William M. Evarts. In the Senate he was a member of important committees and exercised considerable influence. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 91; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 310; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 310:

HARRIS, IRA (May 31, 1802-December 2, 1875), jurist, was born in Charleston, Montgomery County, New York, the son of Frederic Waterman and Lucy (Hamilton) Harris. His father's ancestors came from England to Rhode Island; his mother was of Scotch descent. The family moved to Cortland County in 1808 and the boy worked on the farm until he was seventeen. He attended Homer Academy, then entered the junior class of Union College in 1822, graduating with honors two years later. He began the study of law at home but later he was received into the office of Ambrose Spencer [q.v.] in Albany and in 1827 he was admitted to the bar. He began his career in Albany, where his success at the bar was immediate. In time he was drawn into politics. He was elected to the Assembly, as a Whig, with Anti-Rent support, for the sessions of 1845 and 1846, was a member of the state constitutional convention in 1846, and in 1847 was a member of the state Senate. Later in 1847 he was elected to the state supreme court for the short term of four years. In 1851 he was reelected for a full term of eight years and in the same year became a member of the first faculty of the Albany Law School. In 1861, after a year in Europe, he was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican. He succeeded William H. Seward, defeating Horace Greeley and William M. Evarts. In the Senate he was a member of important committees and exercised considerable influence. Though he generally supported the administration and was a close friend of Charles Sumner, he was never an intense partisan and vigorously opposed the expulsion of Senator Jesse D. Bright, of Indiana, who had given a friend a letter of introduction to Jefferson Davis. While in Washington he lectured in the law school of Columbian College (later George Washington University). At the end of his term he was defeated in the Republican caucus by Roscoe Conkling but was chosen a delegate at large to the state constitutional convention the same year. During Harris' stay in Washington his connection with the Albany Law School had not been entirely broken. On returning to Albany he resumed his place on the faculty and continued to lecture almost up to the time of his death. His interest in education was intense. He was one of the founders of the Albany Medical College (1838), for many years a trustee of Vassar College and Union College, and trustee and chancellor of the University of Rochester (1850-75). Prominent also in Baptist affairs, he was for many years a deacon in Emmanuel Baptist Church in Albany and served as chairman of the American Baptist Missionary Union. He was an eloquent advocate, a graceful orator, and an excellent judge. For almost fifty years he was a prominent figure in Albany and gave lavishly of his time and energy to any movement to advance the intellectual and moral interests of the community. He was twice married: first, to Louisa Tubbs, who died May 17, 1845, and second, to Mrs. Pauline Penny Rathbone, who with two sons and four daughters survived him. His brother, Hamilton Harris (1820-1900), was a prominent lawyer and Republican politician in Albany.

[A. I. Parker, Landmarks of Albany County (1897); G. R. Howell and Jonathan Tenney, History of the County of Albany, New York (1886); Memorial of Ira Harris (Albany, 1876); Irving Browne, "The Albany Law School, " Green Bag, April 1890; D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, Volume II (1906); J. C. Cooley, Rathbone Genealogy (1898); Albany Argus, New York Tribune, December 3, 1875; Albany Law Journal, December 11, 1875.]

H. T.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume III, p. 91;

HARRIS, Ira, jurist, born in Charleston, Montgomery county, New York, 31 May, 1802; died in Albany, New York, 2 December, 1875. He was brought up on a farm, was graduated at Union college in 1824, studied law in Albany, and was admitted to the bar in 1828. During the succeeding seventeen years he attained a high rank in his profession. He was a member of the assembly in 1844 and 1845, having been chosen as a Whig, and in 1846 was state senator and a delegate to the Constitutional convention. In 1848 he became judge of the supreme court, and held that office for twelve years. In February, 1861, Judge Harris was elected U. S. senator from New York, as a Republican, serving from 4 July, 1861, to 3 March, 1867. In the senate Mr. Harris served on the committee on foreign relations and judiciary, and the select joint committee on the southern states. Although he supported the administration in the main, he did not fear to express his opposition to all measures, however popular at the time, that did not appear to him either wise or just. Judge Harris was for more than twenty years professor of equity, jurisprudence, and practice in the Albany law-school, and during his senatorial term delivered a course of lectures at the law-school of Columbian university, Washington, D. C. He was for many years president of the board of trustees of Union college, was one of the founders of Rochester university, of which he was the chancellor, and was president of the American Baptist missionary union and other religious bodies.  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


HARRIS, William Logan (November 14, 1817-September 2, 1887), bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Opposed slavery.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 327-328:

HARRIS, WILLIAM LOGAN (November 14, 1817-September 2, 1887), bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a descendant of James Harris who emigrated in 1725 from Somersetshire, England, to Essex County, New Jersey, was born on his father's farm near Mansfield, Ohio. His parents, James and Mary (Logan) Harris, were Presbyterians, but William, converted at a camp meeting when he was seventeen, became an earnest Methodist, and was moved to prepare for the ministry. He was encouraged in this ambition by his mother, but his father had died, and an uncle, who was virtually his guardian, wished to make a farmer out of him, and would give him no financial assistance. Supporting himself, however, he studied for two years in Norwalk Seminary, Norwalk, Ohio. With this meager education, in 1837 he was admitted on trial to the Michigan Conference, which then included northern Ohio, and embarked on his ministerial career. In 1839 he was ordained deacon, and in 1841, elder. On August 9, 1840, he married Anna Atwell. As a young preacher on circuits and at various stations he proved himself an effective evangelical speaker, and revivals invariably attended his ministry. His administrative ability and sound judgment, together with the fact that he was a person of method, thoroughness, and accuracy, brought him official positions in his denomination. From 1860 to 1872 he was assistant corresponding secretary of the Missionary Society. He was a member of all the General Conferences from 1856 to 1872 inclusive, and served as secretary of each. His work in this position was such that it came to be said that before Harris' time the Methodist Church never had a secretary. During the period when the question of the General Conference's powers with respect to excluding slave-holders from church membership was being hotly debated, Harris, in a series of articles in the Western Christian Advocate (later published under the title The Constitutional Powers of the General Conference, with Special Application to the Subject of Slaveholding, 1860), ably opposed the arguments of those who maintained that slave-holders had a constitutional right to membership. He took an important part in determining the action of the General Conference on the admission of missionary conferences, and in preparing the plan by which lay representation was introduced. In 1872 he was elected to the board of bishops, and immediately became its secretary. […]

[ T. L. Flood and J. W. Hamilton, Lives of Methodist Bishops (1882); S. J. H. Keifer, Genealogy and Biographical Sketches of the New Jersey Branch of the Harris Family (1888); Methodist Review (New York), January 1888; E.T. Nelson, Fifty Years of History of the Ohio Wesleyan University (1895); Christian Advocate (New York), September 8, 1887; J. M. Buckley, A History of Methodists in the U.S. (1896), American Church Historical Series; New York Tribune and other New York papers, September 3, 1887.]

H. E.S.


HARRISON, Benjamin, (August 20, 1833- March 13, 1901), twenty-third president of the United States.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2  pp. 331-335; Lew Wallace, Life of General Ben Harrison (1888)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2  pp. 331-335:

HARRISON, BENJAMIN (August 20, 1833- March 13, 1901), twenty-third president of the United States, was descended from Benjamin Harrison, who came to Virginia from England and was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1642. The Harrisons belonged to the wealthy planter class and held the highest political positions in Virginia. The most prominent of the earlier members of the family was Benjamin Harrison [q.v.], signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor of Virginia. His son, William Henry Harrison [q.v.], established his home in Ohio on an extensive estate on the Ohio River just below Cincinnati; here he was residing in 1840 when elected president. On an adjoining farm lived his eldest son, John Scott Harrison, congressman for two terms. His second wife, Elizabeth Irwin, was the mother of Benjamin.

Private tutors and typical country schoolteachers prepared Benjamin Harrison for Farmer's College. He finished his college course with distinction in 1852 at Miami University. On October 20, 1853, he married a college friend, Caroline Lavinia Scott, daughter of Dr. John Scott, president of the Oxford Female Institute; to them two children, Russell and Mary, were born. From 1852 to 1854 he read law in the offices of Storer and Gwynne, prominent attorneys in Cincinnati. In 1854, he settled in Indianapolis, then a growing Western town, and by indefatigable industry forged gradually to the front of his profession. His active interest in politics began during the first year of his law practice, when the struggle over slavery was at white heat. Harrison at once gave the Republican party unswerving allegiance; to him, moral principles were at stake. He soon established an enviable reputation as a campaign speaker. In 1858 he served as secretary to the Republican state central committee of Indiana; he was elected city attorney in 1857, and in 1860 and 1864 reporter of the supreme court of Indiana. He found the compilation of ten volumes of Indiana Reports equivalent to a postgraduate law course, while the salary and royalties placed him on his feet financially.

He was paying for a modest home at the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1862, he helped raise the 70th Indiana Infantry and was appointed its colonel by Governor Oliver P. Morton. The regiment was hurried to Bowling Green, Kentucky, to assist in stopping Bragg, even though its colonel knew practically nothing of war and its rank and file knew less. Fortunately, it was given the prosaic duty of guarding the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. Two years of devotion to duty and study changed the untrained colonel into a seasoned brigade commander. Harrison soon became unpopular, however, because he insisted on turning raw recruits into disciplined soldiers. In 1864, his command was attached to Sherman's army and participated in the bloody battles of the Atlanta campaign, during much of which Harrison was in comm and of his brigade. His conduct won the praise of General Butterfield and a recommendation for promotion from General Hooker. After the capture of Atlanta, Harrison returned to Indiana at Governor Morton's request to help combat Copperhead influence in the political campaign of 1864. This service prevented his participation in the march through Georgia, but he rejoined his command in the Carolinas and led it in the grand review in Washington. On March 22, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-general "for ability and manifest energy and gallantry." Three years of war had fully matured him.

[…].

[Lew Wallace, Life of General Ben Harrison (1888) is the best of seven campaign biographies. A biography by A. T. Volwiler, utilizing the numerous Benjamin Harrison manuscripts in the Library of Congress, hitherto unexploited by historians, is in preparation. E. W. Halford, private secretary to Harrison while president, published articles in Century Magazine, June 1912; New York Christian Advocate, June 11, 18, and July 9, 1914; and Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, March 8--October 11, 1919. The Indianapolis Journal and Indianapolis Sentinel are invaluable for Harrison's life after 1854. See also Edward Stanwood, A History of the Presidency (1898); Wm. A. White, Masks in a Pageant (1928); articles in North American Review, June, October 1888, June 1892; New York Nation, July 19, 1888, March 21, 1901; From, July 1892; obituaries in Indianapolis Sentinel, Indianapolis Journal, and New York Times, March 14, 1901.]

A.T.V.


HARRISON, Henry Baldwin (September 11, 1821-October 29, 1901), governor of Connecticut. Active in politics, he was successively a Whig, a Free-Soiler, and a Republican. In 1854 he was elected to the state Senate on the Whig ticket. In the Senate he was chairman of the committee on corporations and a member of committees appointed to consider a revision of the statutes and to compile laws regarding education. He introduced the personal-liberty bill which was passed by this session of the General Assembly of Connecticut to nullify in the state the Fugitive-Slave Law passed by Congress.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 341-342;  Journal of the Senate of the State of Connecticut, May Session, 1854; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Connecticut, May Session, 1865, May Session, 1873, January Session, 1884).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 341-342:

HARRISON, HENRY BALDWIN (September 11, 1821-October 29, 1901), governor of Connecticut, the son of Ammi and Polly (Barney) Harrison, was born in New Haven. He prepared for college at the Lancasterian School there under John E. Lovell, its founder, and by private study with George A. Thacher, at that time a student in the Yale Divinity School. While he was a student Harrison taught for a time in the Lancasterian School. He entered Yale in 1842 and graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1846. After leaving college he studied law in the Yale Law School and in a New Haven law office. He was admitted to the bar in 1848 and began to practise in New Haven with Lucius G. Peck. Although he later was known especially as a corporation lawyer, he attracted attention in 1855 by his successful defense of a client charged with murder, on the then unusual plea of insanity. Active in politics, he was successively a Whig, a Free-Soiler, and a Republican. In 1854 he was elected to the state Senate on the Whig ticket. In the Senate he was chairman of the committee on corporations and a member of committees appointed to consider a revision of the statutes and to compile laws regarding education. He introduced the personal-liberty bill which was passed by this session of the General Assembly of Connecticut to nullify in the state the Fugitive-Slave Law passed by Congress. He was the Republican candidate for lieutenant-governor in 1856, but was defeated. In 1865 he was elected to the lower house of the Connecticut legislature as a representative of New Haven, and in this session was chairman of the committees on railroads and on federal relations. He advocated an amendment to the state constitution which would give the negro the ballot. He was again elected to represent New Haven in the legislature of 1873, and served as chairman of the committee on a constitutional convention the bill for which was defeated-and as a member of the judiciary committee. In 1874 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the governorship. Representing New Haven in the lower house of the state legislature for the third time in--1884, he was chosen speaker of the House. In that year he was again a candidate for governor. No candidate received a majority of the popular vote, though the Democrats had a plurality. In the joint convention of the legislature made necessary by this situation Harrison was elected, 164 to 91. He served for two years, beginning J an. 7, 1885. He was a member of Trinity Church (Episcopal), New Haven, and a member of the Yale Corporation, 1872-85, and, ex officio, 1885-87. He was married in 1856 to Mary Elizabeth Osborne, daughter of Thomas Burr Osborne. From this marriage there were no children. Harrison survived his wife. His death occurred in his eighty-first year at his home in New Haven.

[Journal of the Senate of the State of Connecticut, May Session, 1854; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Connecticut, May Session, 1865, May Session, 1873, January Session, 1884; New Haven Morning Journal and Courier, esp. October 30, 1901; New Haven Evening Register, October 29, 1901; Yale College Class of I846 (1871); Obituary Record Graduates Yale University, 1902; E. E. Atwater, History of the City of New Haven (1887); F. C. Norton, The Governors of Connecticut (1905).)

De F . V-S.


HARRISON, Jesse Burton, Lynchburg, Virginia, orator, lawyer, politician.  Agent for the American Colonization Society (ACS) in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Wrote articles advocating for the ACS and colonization. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 109, 183, 205)


HARRISON, Marcus, abolitionist, Decatur, Michigan, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1838-40.


HARRISON, Thomas, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abolitionist leader, co-founder and leader of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, founded 1775, Electing Committee, Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1787.

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 80, 92; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 133, 133n; Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 80, 115, 117, 123-124, 130-131, 163)


HART, Reverend Levi, Connecticut, petitioned against slavery.

(Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 293, 340-348, 365-376; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 41, 41n2; Park, “Memoir of Samuel Hopkins,” in Hopkins’ Works, I, pp. 123, 125-126; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 107, 153, 156)


HARTT, Henry A., abolitionist, New York, New York, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1860-64.


HASKELL, Benjamin F., Cornwall, Vermont, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1841-42.


HASSAUREK, Friedrich (October 8, 1831- October 3, 1885), journalist, diplomat, and politician. Espousing ardently the anti-slavery cause, he organized the Republican party in Cincinnati, a Democratic stronghold, and by his brilliant oratory did much to attract to the new party the large German vote. A delegate to the Chicago convention which nominated Lincoln in 1860.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 383-384; Armin Tenner, Cincinnati Sonst und Jetzt (1878); Max Burgheim, Cincinnati in Wort 1md Bild (1888); Memoirs of Gustave Koerner (2 volumes, 1909), ed, by T. J, McCormack; Das Ausland, December 14, 1885, p. 999).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 383-384:

HASSAUREK, FRIEDRICH (October 8, 1831- October 3, 1885), journalist, diplomat, and politician, was born in Vienna, Austria. Franz Hassaurek, his father, was a wealthy merchant and litterateur who speculated disastrously and died impoverished in 1836. His mother, Johanna Abele, a sister of Baron Vincenz van Abele, then married Leopold Markbreit, who sent Friedrich to the Piaristen Gymnasium. The boy proved a quick student and was editing a school paper at the outbreak of the revolution of 1848. Imbued with radical ideas, he joined the Student Legion and was slightly wounded fighting the imperial troops. After the failure of the revolution, he fled to Cincinnati, Ohio. Arriving in April 1849, he wrote articles for the German-American press and soon was appointed assistant editor of the Ohio Staatszeitung with an intermittently paid salary of $3.50 a week. Within a year he was able to establish with $mo borrowed capital the weekly Hochwaechter, through which the adolescent editor proclaimed vehemently the socialistic views of the most radical and anticlerical German revolutionists. In it he published serially his novel: "Hierarchie mid Aristokratie" and waged a successful campaign against the fraudulent practices of agencies which were swindling German immigrants. Having become known as an impetuous and able public speaker in both German and English, he debated religious questions with Methodist ministers in 1852 and three years later successfully ran for the City Council as an Independent. Meanwhile, he had been studying law, and after his admission to the bar sold his newspaper. Almost at once he attracted attention as a lawyer by preventing the conviction for murder of Loeffler, an insane German criminal. Espousing ardently the anti-slavery cause, he organized the Republican party in Cincinnati, a Democratic stronghold, and by his brilliant oratory did much to attract to the new party the large German vote. A delegate to the Chicago convention which nominated Lincoln in 1860, he was rewarded by appointment in March 1861 as minister to Ecuador. At Quito he arranged the establishment of a mixed commission to settle the claims of both countries and served with distinction as American member. In 1864 he came home to campaign for Lincoln's reelection and obtain the exchange of his half-brother, who was in Libby Prison. Returning to Ecuador in March 1865, he resigned after a year to become editor and part-owner of the Tagliches Cincinnatier Volksblatt. He had now lo st his earlier socialistic beliefs and with great ardor opposed every policy which savored of paternalism, holding that the one essential function of government was the protection of private rights. Such views led him to criticize the Republican method of reconstructing the South, and in 1872 he joined the liberal movement which supported Greeley for the presidency. His backing of Tilden in 1876 caused a disagreement with the Republicans in control of the Volksblatt, and he retired from active editorship to spend a year traveling in Europe and writing delightful letters which the paper published. On his return he again became editor, and in disgust at both major parties conducted the paper on strictly non-partisan lines. In the hope of improving his broken health, he again went to Europe in 1882, accompanied by Eunice Marshall, his third wife, Though he still wrote steadily, his strength gradually failed until he died in Paris. A political orator and journalist of brilliant attainments, he was equally persuasive in English and German and possessed a sense of humor which made him especially popular as an after-dinner speaker. Out of his experience in Ecuador he wrote Four Years among Spanish Americans (1867; German translation, Dresden, 1887), a book full of accurate observation but lacking literary distinction. The same region provided local color for The Secret of the Andes (English edition 1879, German 1880), a fantastically sentimental and romantic novel. He also published an unimportant volume of Gedichte (1877).

[Armin Tenner, Cincinnati Sonst und Jetzt (1878); Max Burgheim, Cincinnati in Wort 1md Bild (1888); Memoirs of Gustave Koerner (2 vols,, 1909), ed, by T. J, McCormack; Das Ausland, December 14, 1885, p. 999; Foreign Relations of the U. S., 1862-66; Cincinnati Enquirer, September 20, October 4, October 20, 1885 and Tagliches Cincinnatier Volksblatt, October 4, 21-23, 1885.]

W.LW-t, Jr.


HASTINGS, Charles, abolitionist, Detroit, Michigan, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-40.


HASTINGS, Erastus P., Detroit, Michigan.  Vice president, 1833-1836, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

(Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)


HASTINGS, Samuel Dexter (July 24, 1816-March 26, 1903), reformer. He was one of the active founders of the Liberty party in Pennsylvania and at the age of twenty-four was chairman of the state central committee. Hastings delivered a powerful speech against slavery and was the author of the resolutions which committed the new state of Wisconsin to its opposition to the extension of the slave trade.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 386-387; Trans. Wisconsin Academy Science, Arts; and Letters, 1903, pp. 686-90; international Good Templar, October 1889; Columbian Biographical Dictionary, Wisconsin, Volume (1895); Proc. Wisconsin Historical Society, Volume XIV, pt. 2 (1904; Dictionary of Wisconsin History, Wisconsin Historical Society)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 386-387:

HASTINGS, SAMUEL DEXTER (July 24, 1816-March 26, 1903), reformer, born at Leicester, Worcester County, Massachusetts, was the son of Simon and Elizabeth (McIntosh) Hastings and a lineal descendant of Thomas Hastings who emigrated from England in 1634 and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts. His early youth was spent in Boston; at the age of fourteen he moved to Philadelphia and there humbly began his mercantile career. Aided by a friend from Leicester, he was established in his own business at the age of twenty-one. During his sixteen years in Philadelphia he maintained a deep interest in social and religious questions. In 1835 he began his long connection with the anti-slavery movement that brought him into intimate association with William "Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and John G. "Whittier. He was one of the active founders of the Liberty party in Pennsylvania and at the age of twenty-four was chairman of the state central committee. On August 1, 1837, he married Margaretta Shubert and in 1846 moved to Walworth County in Wisconsin Territory. Two years later he was elected to the first state legislature by a large majority. In the first session he delivered a memorable speech against slavery and was the author of the resolutions which committed the new state to its opposition to the extension of the slave trade. He moved from Walworth County to La Crosse in 1852 and later to Trempealeau on the Mississippi. In 1856 he was returned to the legislature and the following year was elected treasurer of the state. He held this office for eight years, ably managing the state finances during the difficult period of the Civil War.

During his long career Hastings was a zealous foe of liquor and tobacco. He had spoken frequently, had encouraged legislation, and was an active member of many organizations to suppress these alleged evils. In the Sons of Temperance he became Grand Worthy Patriarch of Wisconsin and was six times elected Right Worthy Grand Templar, the highest office in the international order of Good Templars. In his youth he had been an ardent Presbyterian but withdrew from the church because of his anti-slavery views. He became prominent in the Congregational Church, was influential in establishing a free Congregational church in Philadelphia and, although remaining a layman, became moderator of the Wisconsin state convention. To this convention he made the remarkable address based on the text, "whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God," in which he effectively demonstrated that tobacco could not be used to the glory of God. He spoke for prohibition in nearly every state of the Union, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and six times crossed the Atlantic to further the cause. For many years he contributed to prohibition and anti-slavery papers and in 1883 edited the speeches of John B. Finch under the title, The People versus the Liquor Traffic. He was for many years a member of the executive committee and treasurer of the national Prohibition party. Honest men sometimes quarreled with his methods, but he was never troubled by doubts of the value of his ends or his means to them. Throughout a long and active life he labored indefatigably for two great purposes: the emancipation of the negroes of the South and the imposition of prohibition upon the English-speaking peoples of the world. He died at Evanston, Illinois.

[Trans. Wisconsin Academy Science, Arts; and Letters, 1903, pp. 686-90; international Good Templar, October 1889; Columbian Biographical Dict., Wisconsin, Volume (1895); Proc. Wisconsin Historical Society, Volume XIV, pt. 2 (1904); L. N. H. Buckminster, The Hastings Memorial (1866); Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), March 26, 27, 1903. Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 386-387)

F.M.


HASTINGS, Seth, member of the U.S. Congress from Massachusetts, opposed slavery as member of U.S. House of Representatives.

(Locke, 1901, pp. 93, 150, 151)


HATCH, Asa D., Boston, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Executive Committee, 1846-.


HATHAWAY, Joseph C., abolitionist, Farmington, New York, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-42, Rec. Secretary, 1840-42, 1843-44, Executive Committee, 1840-41, 1842-43, Vice-President, 1844-46.


HAVEN, Gilbert, 1821-1880, clergyman, African American civil rights advocate, abolitionist, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  At Wesleyan University (B.A. 1846), he was noted for his scholarship, his genial personality, his anti-slavery opinions, and his gift for leadership.

(Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 407-408; Erastus Wentworth. Gilbert Haven: A Monograph (1880); George Prentice, The Life of Gilbert Haven (1883); Memorials of Gilbert Haven (1880), ed. by Wm. H. Daniels; T. L. Flood, "Gilbert Haven," in Lives of Methodist Bishops (1882), by T. L. Flood and J. W. Hamilton)

Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 407-408:

HAVEN, GILBERT (September 19, 1821-January 3, 1880), abolitionist, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born in Malden, Massachusetts, being the fifth of the ten children of Gilbert and Hannah (Burrill) Haven, of old New England stock. He was a cousin of Erastus Otis Haven [q.v.]. He attended Wesleyan Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, where he experienced a Methodist conversion; and Wesleyan University (B.A. 1846), where he was noted for his scholarship, his genial personality, his anti-slavery opinions, and his gift for leadership. After five years in Amenia (New York) Seminary, where he taught Greek and German and was for three years principal, he entered the Methodist Episcopal ministry in the New England Conference in 1851. During his early pastorate in Massachusetts he distinguished himself by his interest in public affairs, especially the moral questions that were involved in the political issues of the time. His sermons, and notably his articles in the religious and secular press, were vigorous expressions of fiery convictions on slavery, temperance, et cetera. At Lincoln's first call for troops he volunteered and was commissioned chaplain of the 8th Massachusetts on April 30, 1861.

After a year in Europe (1862) he returned to the ministry in Boston. He was now bent on securing for the freedmen the full fruits of emancipation. He advocated civil rights and absolute social equality, even to racial amalgamation. He resisted the wish of the bishops to send him South as a missionary because they limited his field to the blacks. From 1867 to 1872 as editor of Zion's Herald, the Boston Methodist weekly, he was a powerful ally of Charles Sumner and the radical Republicans, as well as a strong advocate of prohibition, woman's suffrage, and lay representation. He compelled the nation to take notice of him, while his own church echoed with his sayings-" Havenisms." In 1868 he was a member of the General Conference and mentioned for the episcopacy. In 1872 he was elected, to the dismay of conservatives and the rapturous delight of the negroes and radicals. His residence was fixed in Atlanta, Georgia. Socially ostracized and threatened with violence because he practised the racial equality which he preached, he energetically pressed the freedmen's claims, gave his own money and solicited gifts to found schools and colleges for them, and enlisted Northern college graduates to come South and teach the former slaves and their children. By his articles, sermons, and lectures he kept the North informed with regard to the Southern policy of repression, and fearlessly denounced the secret organizations which "murdered people for their opinions." He visited Mexico in 1873 with the Reverend William Butler, and cooperated with him in planting Methodism in the capital. In 1876 he "visited the Methodist missions in Liberia, where he contracted the African malaria which tormented him ever after. He finally succumbed on January 3, 1880, in Malden, Massachusetts, leaving a son and a daughter, both of whom became noted in religious work. His wife, Mary Ingraham, whom he married at Amenia, New York, in 1851, died in 1860. Bishop Haven was of medium height, compactly built, with ruddy face and red hair. His voice was unattractive and his delivery forced, but he carried his hearers and his readers with him by the strength and warmth of his own convictions. As a writer he was journalistic rather than literary. His publications were: The Pilgrim's Wallet (1866); National Sermons (1869);
Father Taylor, the Sailor Preacher (1872), with Thomas Russell; Our Next Door Neighbor: A Winter in Mexico (1875); Christus Consolator (1893), with a preface and notes by his son; and pamphlets including: Parkerism (1860), Lay Representation in the Methodist Episcopal Church (1864), Te Deum Laudamus: the Cause and the Consequence of the Election of Abraham Lincoln (1860), The Uniter and Liberator of America (1865)-a memorial discourse on Lincoln, An Appeal to Our People for Our People (1875). Some years after his death there was published Heavenly Messenger (1890), which, it was alleged, was a communication from Haven through a spiritualist medium.

[Erastus Wentworth. Gilbert Haven: A Monograph (1880); George Prentice, The Life of Gilbert Haven (1883); Memorials of Gilbert Haven (1880), ed. by Wm. H. Daniels; T. L. Flood, "Gilbert Haven," in Lives of Methodist Bishops (1882), by T. L. Flood and J. W. Hamilton; Josiah Adams, The Genealogy of the Descendants of Richard Haven of Lynn, Massachusetts (1843) and Continuation of the Genealogy (1849); the Christian Advocate (New York), January 8, 1880.]

J. R. J.    


HAVILAND, Charles, Jr., New York, abolitionist.  Husband of noted abolitionist leader Laura Smith Haviland.  Helped organize the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society in Michigan in 1832.  Co-founded the Raisin Institute, a progressive racially integrated school.  Operated a station on the Underground Railroad. 

(Danforth, 1961; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 279-281; Haviland, 1882; Lindquist, 1999)


HAVILAND, Laura Smith, 1808-1898, New York, Society of Friends, Quaker, anti-slavery activist.  October 8, 1832, co-founded the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society in Lenawee County, Michigan Territory, with Elizabeth Chandler.  Founded the Raisin Institute.  Helped fugitive slaves. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 279, 401n18, 32; Haviland, 1882)


HAWES, Joel, Reverend, 1789-1867, Hartford, Connecticut, clergyman, author.  Member of the Hartford Committee of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 119; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 86)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 119:

HAWES, Joel, clergyman, born in Medway, Massachusetts, 22 December, 1789; died in Gilead, Connecticut, 5 June, 1867. He was of humble parentage, and had few opportunities for early education. He was graduated at Brown in 1813, studied theology at Andover, and on 4 March, 1818, was ordained pastor of the 1st Congregational church in Hartford, Connecticut, of which he was sole pastor until 1860, senior pastor until 1864, and pastor emeritus until his death. In 1844 he visited Europe and the east, spending several months in Asia Minor and Turkey, where his daughter was a missionary. He was a frequent contributor to the religious press and periodicals, and published “Lectures to Young Men,” which had a large circulation in the United States and Great Britain (Hartford, 1828); “Tribute to the Memory of the Pilgrims” (1830); “Memoir of Normand Smith” (1839); “Character Everything to the Young” (1843); “The Religion of the East” (1845); “Looking-Glass for the Ladies, or the Formation and Excellence of Female Character” (1845); “Washington and Jay” (1850); and “An Offering to Home Missionaries,” discourses on home missions, which he published at his own expense for distribution to the missionaries of the American home missionary society (1865.) Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


HAWKS, John Milton, 1826-1910, Manchester, New Hampshire, physician, abolitionist.  American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1859-1864.  Aided freedmen during and after the Civil War.  Advocate of enlisting African Americans for the Union Army.


HAWLEY, C. M., New York, abolitionist leader.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971)


HAWLEY, Joseph Roswell, 1826-1905, statesman, clergyman, lawyer, editor, opponent of slavery, Union officer.  Member of the Free Soil Party.  Co-founder of the Republican Party.  Chairman of Connecticut Free Soil State Committee.  He opposed pro-slavery Know-Nothing Party and aided in anti-slavery organizing.  Helped organize and found the Republican Party in 1856.  In 1857, became editor of the Republican newspaper, Evening Press in Hartford.  Enlisted in the Union Army, rising to the rank of Brigadier General, commanding both a division and a brigade. 

(Appletons, 1888, Volume III, pp. 123-124; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 421-422; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 10, p. 351)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 421-422:

HAWLEY, JOSEPH ROSWELL (October 31, 1826-March 18, 1905), editor, soldier, senator, was descended in the eighth generation from Joseph Hawley who came from England to Boston in 1629 and later settled in Stratford, Connecticut. Hawley's father, the Reverend Francis Hawley, a native of Farmington, Connecticut, married Mary McLeod of North Carolina and at Stewartville in the latter state Joseph was born. In 1837 the family returned to Connecticut and the boy received his early schooling at Hartford and at Cazenovia, New York. After graduating with honor from Hamilton College in the class of 1847, winning distinction as a speaker and debater, he taught school and read law. In 1850 he was admitted to the bar in Connecticut and secured enough clients to make a living. Drawn into the ranks of the anti-slavery crusaders, he was a delegate to the national convention of the Free-Soil party in 1852. Four years later he called the meeting of a hundred Connecticut citizens among whom was his friend, Gideon Welles [q.v.]-which organized the Republican party in the state. He took an active part in the Fremont campaign, developing a vigorous and epigrammatic style on the stump. In 1857 he abandoned his law practice for the editor's chair when he took charge of the Hartford Evening Press, the organ of the new party. Associated with him on the Press was a college chum and life-long friend, Charles Dudley Warner [q.v.].

While the telegraph was still bringing the reports of the bombardment of Fort Sumter to his newspaper office, Hawley drew up the paper for enlisting the first company of volunteers from his state. He followed this action with a rousing speech on the evening of April 17 before a memorable Hartford mass-meeting. On the following day he was mustered into the service with the rank of captain. On January 15, 1866, he returned to civil life, having been brevetted major-general of volunteers to date from September 28, 1865, "for gallant and meritorious services during the war." He saw service in thirteen "battles and actions," most of them along the eastern coast of the Confederacy. In the operations in Virginia in 1864, he served under Benjamin Butler [q.v.] and later under Terry. He was cited for meritorious conduct at the fir st battle of Bull Run and at the battle of Olustee, Florida, February 20, 1864. Twice during the war his ability as a speaker was capitalized when he was sent North on recruiting duty.

In the year of his discharge he was elected governor of Connecticut by a people anxious to honor war veterans. In 1867 he became editor of the Hartford Courant with which the Evening Press was merged. He liked speaking better than writing, however, and politics remained to the end of his life his primary interest. He was as much at home in the conservative Republican party after the war as he had been in the crusading group in the years preceding it. In 1868, when the proposal to pay government bonds in depreciated currency was gaining favor west of the Appalachians, he uttered, as President of the Republican National Convention, his most quoted political epigram, "Every bond, in letter and in spirit, must be as sacred as a soldier's grave" (Official Proceedings, post, p. 24). Two years later he opposed openly the political aspirations of his former chief, the then discredited Butler who was seeking office in Massachusetts. Butler retaliated with a speech in Springfield on August 24, 1871, in which he accused Hawley, while under his command, of incompetency and hinted at cowardice. Hawley, always impulsive and at times irascible, lost no time in calling his former commanding officer a "liar and blackguard." The resulting controversy, in which Butler hedged, was widely discussed throughout the North with public opinion running strongly in Hawley's favor.

Between 1868 and 1881 Hawley was twice defeated for and thrice elected to the House of Representatives, where he served on committees on cl aims, banking and currency, military affairs, and appropriations. At the Republican National Convention of 1872 he was secretary of the committee on resolutions and in 1876 chairman of that committee, playing no small part in shaping the issues on which his party went before the electorate. He was president of the United States Centennial Commission and disclosed his Puritan heritage by causing the exposition to be closed on Sundays. From 1881 to within two weeks of his death he was United States senator from Connecticut. He was able but not conspicuous. He was a consistent protectionist and advocate of sound money. He did his most useful work as chairman of the Senate committee on civil service and on military affairs. In the latter capacity he had charge in the upper house of bills for increasing the coast defenses, providing for a volunteer army, and reorganizing the regular army which were made necessary by the Spanish-American emergency in 1898. Hawley was married twice: in 1855 to Harriet Ward Foote, who died in 1886, and subsequently to Edith Anne Horner, a native of England. He died in Washington, D. C.

[E. P. Parker, "Memorial Address," in Joint Report of the Commission on Memorials to Senators Orville Hitchcock Platt and Joseph Roswell Haw ley to the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut (1915); letters by Hawley as president of the Centennial Commission and scrapbooks kept by him in Connecticut State Library; Sen. Report 6947, 59 Congress, 2 Session; files of the Hartford Courant; War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), 1 series esp. II, 355, and XXXV (pt. 1), 289; Official Proceedings, National Republican Conventions, 1868-80 (1903); Springfield Republican, August 25, 1871; The Brilliant Military Record of Major General Hawley (pamphlet, n.d.), reprinted from the Hartford Courant at the time of the Butler controversy; E. S. Hawley, The Hawley Record (1890); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Evening Star (Washington), and Hartford Courant, March 18. 1905.]

R.H.G.

Appletons, 1888, Volume III, pp. 123-124;

HAWLEY, Joseph Roswell, statesman, born in Stewartsville, North Carolina, 31 October, 1826. He is of English-Scotch ancestry. His father, Reverend Francis Hawley (descended from Samuel, who settled in Stratford, Connecticut, in 1639), was born in Farmington, Connecticut. He went south early and engaged in business, but afterward entered the Baptist ministry. He married Mary McLeod, a native of North Carolina, of Scotch parentage, and the family went to Connecticut in 1837, where the father was an active anti-slavery man. The son prepared for college at the Hartford grammar-school and the seminary in Cazenovia. New York, whither the family removed about 1842. He was graduated at Hamilton in 1847, with a high reputation as a speaker and debater. He taught in the winters, studied law at Cazenovia and Hartford, and began practice in 1850. He immediately became chairman of the Free-soil state committee, wrote for the Free-soil press, and spoke in every canvass. He stoutly opposed the Know-Nothings, and devoted his energies to the union of all opponents of slavery. The first meeting for the organization of the Republican party in Connecticut was held in his office, at his call, 4 February, 1856. Among those present were Gideon Welles and John M. Niles. Mr. Hawley gave three months to speaking in the Frémont canvass of 1856. In February, 1857, he abandoned law practice, and became editor of the Hartford “Evening Press,” the new distinctively Republican paper. His partner was William Faxon, afterward assistant secretary of the navy. He responded to the first call for troops in 1861 by drawing up a form of enlistment, and, assisted by Drake, afterward colonel of the 10th regiment, raising rifle company A, 1st Connecticut volunteers, which was organized and accepted in twenty-four hours, Hawley having personally engaged rifles at Sharp's factory. He became the captain, and is said to have been the first volunteer in the state. He received special praise for good conduct at Bull Run from General Erastus D. Keyes, brigade commander. He directly united with Colonel Alfred H. Terry in raising the 7th Connecticut volunteers, a three years' regiment, of which he was lieutenant-colonel. It went south in the Port Royal expedition, and on the capture of the forts was the first sent ashore as a garrison. It was engaged four months in the siege of Fort Pulaski, and upon the surrender was selected as the garrison. Hawley succeeded Terry, and commanded the regiment in the battles of James Island and Pocotaligo, and in Brannan's expedition to Florida. He went with his regiment to Florida, in January, 1863, and commanded the post of Fernandina, whence in April he undertook an unsuccessful expedition against Charleston. He also commanded a brigade on Morris Island in the siege of Charleston and the capture of Fort Wagner. In February, 1864, he had a brigade under General Truman Seymour in the battle of Olustee, Florida, where the whole National force lost 38 per cent. His regiment was one of the few that were armed with the Spencer breech-loading rifle. This weapon, which he procured in the autumn of 1863, proved very effective in the hands of his men. He went to Virginia in April, 1864, having a brigade in Terry's division, 10th corps, Army of the James, and was in the battles of Drewry's Bluff, Deep Run, Derbytown Road, and various affairs near Bermuda Hundred and Deep Bottom. He commanded a division in the fight on the Newmarket road, and engaged in the siege of Petersburg. In September, 1864, he was made a brigadier-general, having been repeatedly recommended by his immediate superiors. In November, 1864, he commanded a picked brigade sent to New York city to keep the peace during the week of the presidential election. He succeeded to Terry's division when Terry was sent to Fort Fisher in January, 1865, afterward rejoining him as chief of staff, 10th corps, and on the capture of Wilmington was detached by General Schofield to establish a base of supplies there for Sherman's army, and command southeastern North Carolina. In June he rejoined Terry as chief of staff for the Department of Virginia. In October he went home, was brevetted major-general, and was mustered out, 15 January, 1866. In April, 1866, he was elected governor of Connecticut, but he was defeated in 1867, and then, having united the “Press” and the “Courant,” he resumed editorial life, and more vigorously than ever entered the political contests following the war. He was always in demand as a speaker throughout the country. He was president of the National Republican convention in 1868, secretary of the committee on resolutions in 1872, and chairman of that committee in 1876. He earnestly opposed paper money theories. In November, 1872, he was elected to fill a vacancy in congress caused by the death of Julius L. Strong. He was re-elected to the 43d congress, defeated for the 44th and 45th, and re-elected to the 46th (1879-'81). He was elected senator in January, 1881, by the unanimous vote of his party, and re-elected in like manner in 1887 and 1893 for the term ending 4 March, 1899. In the house he served on the committees on claims, banking and currency, military affairs, and appropriations; in the senate, on the committees on coast defences, railroads, printing, and military affairs. He is chairman of the committee on civil service, and vigorously promoted the enactment of civil-service-reform legislation. He was also chairman of a select committee on ordnance and war-ships, and submitted a long and valuable report, the result of careful investigation into steel production and heavy gun-making in England and the United States. In the National convention of 1884 the Connecticut delegation unanimously voted for him for president in every ballot. He was president of the U. S. centennial commission from its organization in 1872 until the close of its labors in 1877, gave two years exclusively to the work, was ex-officio member of its committees, and appointed all save the executive. He received the degree of LL. D. from Hamilton in 1875, and from Yale in 1886. Of the former institution he is a trustee. Ecclesiastically he is a Congregationalist. General Hawley is an ardent Republican, one of the most acceptable extemporary orators in the republic, a believer in universal suffrage, the American people and the “American way,” is a “hard-money” man, would adjust the tariff so as to benefit native industries, urges the reconstruction of our naval and coast defences, demands a free ballot and a fair count everywhere, opposes the tendency to federal centralization, and is a strict constructionist of the constitution in favor of the rights and dignity of the individual states. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 123-124.


HAWLEY, Orestes K., abolitionist, Austinburgh, Ohio.  Manager, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

(Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)


HAWLEY, Silas Jr., abolitionist, Groton, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-41. 

(Frederick Douglass Papers)


HAWLEY, William, Reverend, Washington, DC, American Colonization Society, Manager, 1833-39, Vice-President, 1839-1841. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 54, 112, 235)


HAWLEY, William Merrill, 1802-1869, lawyer, jurist, State Senator.  Member, Free-Soil Radical Delegation in August 1848. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 124)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p.124:

HAWLEY, William Merrill, lawyer, born in Delaware County, New York, 23 August, 1802; died in Hornellsville, New York, 9 February, 1869. His father, one of the earliest settlers in western New York, was a farmer, and unable to give his children a classical education. William went to the common school, and at the age of twenty-one moved to Almond, Alleghany County, where be cleared a piece of land for tillage. In the spring of 1824 be was elected constable, and began the study of law to assist him in this office. He was admitted to the bar in 1826, moved to Hornellsville the next year, and practised his profession until his appointment in 1846 as first judge of Steuben County. He served in the state senate, was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 22 May, 1848, which met in Baltimore, and was identified with the “Free-Soil radical delegation,” which culminated in the National Convention of 9 August, 1848, held in Buffalo, New York, in which Martin Van Buren was nominated for the presidency. Judge Hawley was one of the committee appointed to introduce the resolutions the essential elements of which were afterward adopted by the Republican Party. After his retirement from the state senate he did not again enter public life, but, devoting himself to his profession, acquired a large fortune, and practised until a short time before his death. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 124.



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

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.