Lip-Lou: Lippencott through Louge

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.


LIPPENCOTT, William, abolitionist, Committee of Twenty-Four/Committee of Employ, the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery (PAS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

(Nash, Gary B., & Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 129)


LIPSCOMB, Phillip D., Reverend, Maryland, clergyman.  Traveling agent for the Maryland State Colonization Society. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, p. 202)


LITTLEHALE, Sargent Smith, abolitionist.  Father of Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney.

(American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 164-165)


LITTLEJOHN, DeWitt C., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


LIVERMORE, Mary Ashton Rice (December 19, 1820-May 23, 1905), reformer, suffragist, author. During the Civil War, she devoted herself to the work of the Northwestern Branch of the United States Sanitary Commission.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, pp. 306-307:

LIVERMORE, MARY ASHTON RICE (December 19, 1820-May 23, 1905), reformer, suffragist, author, was the fourth child of Timothy and Zebiah Vose Glover (Ashton) Rice. Her father was descended from Edmund Rice, who came to Massachusetts in 1638; her mother's father was born in London. In her parents' Boston home on Salem Street, not far from the Old North Church, Mary Rice passed most of her childhood. Here she was indoctrinated with the tenets of Calvinistic religion and with high ethical standards, while she received the education provided for girls by the public and private schools of Boston. Her New England schooling was once interrupted, when her father, infected with the western fever of the thirties, moved to a frontier section of New York state, only to return to Boston two years later, convinced that pioneer farming had few attractions.

Mary, having completed the work of the Hancock Grammar School at fourteen, entered the Female Seminary of Charlestown, where, before the end of her first year, she was teaching as well as studying. After graduation, she remained here as an instructor in French and Latin until an opportunity came to teach on a Virginia plantation. From this experience she later drew the picture of plantation life which is to be found in her Story of My Life. After her return to Massachusetts, while teaching at Dux bury, she met and married (May 1845) the Reverend Daniel Parker Livermore, of the Universalist Church. They lived together fifty-four years, until the death of Livermore on July 5, 1899. The first pastorate served by the young couple after their marriage was at Fall River, where they were indefatigable in their labors with reading and study groups, one of which was made up of factory operatives. Here Mary Livermore's first published work, a temperance story, was written. The next post, at Stafford, Connecticut, was resigned because of Daniel Livermore's advocacy of the temperance cause, in opposition to the majority of his congregation. After serving pastorates in Weymouth and Malden, Massachusetts, they started for Kansas in 1857, but abandoned their intention to settle there and remained in Chicago. Here Daniel Livermore became editor and proprietor of a church periodical, the New Covenant, which he conducted from 1857 to 1869, his wife serving as associate editor. At the same time she cared father two children. took a lively interest in local charities, and did much miscellaneous writing. She was the only woman to report the convention which nominated Lincoln.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, she devoted her extraordinary energy to the work of the Northwestern Branch of the United States Sanitary Commission. Up to this time she had given scant attention to the extension of the suffrage to women, believing that desirable social reforms could be accomplished by other methods than the vote. Her war experience seems to have convinced her that woman's suffrage would be the most direct route to the curtailing of the liquor traffic, improvements in public education, and the alleviation of many problems of poverty; and at the close of hostilities she directed all her efforts to the enfranchisement of women. At the first woman's suffrage convention in Chicago she delivered the opening address, and was elected president of the Illinois Woman's Suffrage Association. In 1869 she established The Agitator, a paper devoted to the cause. A few months later, The Agitator was merged with the Woman's Journal, just established in Boston, and she undertook the editorship of the new periodical. The family then moved from Chicago, and for the remainder of her life she lived in Melrose, Massachusetts.

In 1872 she gave up her editorial work to devote her time to public lecturing, and for the last twenty-five years of the century she was a well known platform speaker, on social questions and topics of history, biography, politics, and education. The lecture she most frequently delivered was probably, "What Shall We Do with Our Daughters?" a plea for the higher education and the professional training of women. The two subjects in which she was most interested arid in which her influence was most largely felt were the education of women and the cause of temperance. For ten years she was president of the Massachusetts Women's Christian Temperance Union; she was also president of the Massachusetts Woman's Suffrage Association, and was connected with the Women's Educational and Industrial Union and the National Conference of Charities and Corrections. Notable among her later publications are her two autobiographical volumes, My Story of the War: A Woman's Narrative of Four Years Personal Experience (1888) and The Story of My Life, or, The Sunshine and Shadow of Seventy Years (1897). In 1893 her name appeared, with that of Frances E. Willard [q.v.], as joint editor of A Woman of the Century, a compilation of biographical sketches, which went through a number of editions, under other titles. Throughout her life her vigor rarely failed, and she spoke from a public platform after she had passed her eighty-third birthday.

[Works mentioned above; Arena, August 1892; Lilian Whiting, Women Who Have Ennobled Life (1915); E. S. Phelps, in Our Famous Women (1884); Mrs. J. A. Logan, The Part Taken by Women in American History (1912); E. L. Didier, in The Chautauquan, July 1906; E. C. Stanton, S. B. Anthony, and M. J. Gage, History of Woman Suffrage (6 volumes, 1881-1922); W. E. Thwing, The Livermore Family of America (1902); Woman's Journal, May 27, June 10, 1905; Outlook, June 3, 1905; Boston Transcript, May 23, 1905.)
E. D.


LIVERMORE, Samuel, 1732-1803, New Hampshire, lawyer, statesman.  Member of Congress, U.S. Senator 1785-1805, Chief Justice of the State of New Hampshire.  Voted against Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 740-741; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 307; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 104; Annals of Congress, 2 Congress, 2 Session, p. 861; 15 Congress, 2 Session, 1818-1819, p. 1192; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 13, p. 761)

“In the present slaveholding states let slavery continue, for our boasted constitution connives at it; but do not, for the sake of cotton and tobacco, let it be told to future ages, that while pretending to love liberty, we have purchased an extensive country to disgrace it with the foulest reproach of nations.” (Dumont, 1961, p. 104). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 307:

LIVERMORE, SAMUEL (May 25, 1732- May 18, 1803), jurist, congressman, senator, was the third son and fourth child of Deacon Samuel Livermore and Hannah Brown, daughter of Deacon William Brown of Waltham, Massachusetts. The Livermore family in America descended from John Livermore (Leathermore or Lithermore), a potter by trade, who left England in 1634 and was admitted the following year as freeman in Watertown, Massachusetts. His descendants became people of substance and of importance. His great-grandson, Deacon Samuel, inherited from an uncle a farm in the township of Waltham, where he took up his residence and held various offices. Here his son Samuel was born. Nothing is known of the boy's early education, but at eighteen he was teaching in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and at nineteen he entered the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), where he expected to fit himself for the ministry. He took his degree in one year, after which he returned to his teaching, at the same time studying law in the office of Edmund Trowbridge. At the age of twenty-four he was admitted to the bar and began to practise in Waltham, but he soon moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he established his reputation as an energetic and fearless lawyer. He also became the warm friend of the royal agent, Governor Wentworth.

When trouble was brewing between the colony and the mother country, Livermore withdrew from Portsmouth to the Scotch-Irish settlement of Londonderry (now Derry), New Hampshire. He was elected to represent the township in the General Assembly of 1768-70 but was recalled to Portsmouth in 1769 when Wentworth appointed him judge-advocate in the Admiralty court, and attorney- general. Five years later, however, he returned to Londonderry, and the next year (1775) he pushed farther still into the wilds to Holderness, at that time accessible only in winter, when vehicles could travel over the s now. Here he made his home, acquiring by grant and purchase more than two-thirds of the whole township, over which he practically ruled as "squire," building a dignified residence, a church, and a gristmill, and personally superintending both farm and mill when the break with England prevented the fulfilment of his duties as king's attorney-general. Despite his apparent withdrawal from the Revolutionary conflict, popular confidence in him led to his election in 1776 as attorney-general, and from this time almost until his death he held office under the state practically continuously, sometimes, indeed, filling two offices at once.

In 1779 he was elected by the General Court as commissioner to the Continental Congress to represent the interests of the state in the controversy over the "New Hampshire Grants" on the west side of the Connecticut River. His services as commissioner led to his being chosen again as a representative to Congress in 1785, 1789, and in 1791. At the end of the last term (1793), he was elected to the United States Senate, and at the end of the six-year term, he was reelected for another six years but resigned in 1801 because of failing health. Twice he. was chosen president of the. Senate, pro tempore, and as such signed the address to the President on the death of Washington. Meantime, he had also been holding other state offices, the most important being that of chief justice of the superior court (1782--90). Thus he did not at first resign when elected to Congress, for there was then no law requiring it. When the Constitution of the United States was being debated, and the vote of New Hampshire hung in the balance, Livermore as a member of the convention of 1788 did great service in bringing about ratification, thus securing the ninth state and ensuring the acceptance of the Constitution. In 1791 he was president of the New Hampshire constitutional convention.

On September 23, 1759, Livermore married Jane, daughter of the Reverend Arthur Browne of Portsmouth, the first minister of the Church of England to settle in New Hampshire. There were five children, the eldest of whom died in infancy. Of his surviving sons, Edward St. Loe and Arthur [qq.v.] both became distinguished lawyers, and George Williamson (1764-1805) held for many years the office of clerk of the court and register of deeds at Holderness. Few more picturesque or important figures than Samuel Livermore are found in early New Hampshire history. Homely and sometimes harsh of speech, he possessed a frankness and kindness of heart which atoned for his brusqueness, while his honesty and common sense as a judge made amends for his contempt for precedents and for his sometimes inconsistent decisions. He died at his home in Holderness and was buried there in the cemetery of Trinity Church.

[A part of Livermore's journal, telling of his journey to college in 1751, is quoted in a manuscript sketch of him (140 pp., undated) by his grandson, in the library of the New Hampshire Historical Society at Concord. This manuscript also contains copies of letters and other memoranda. The journal has been printed in part in Putnam's Magazine, June 1857, pp. 631-35. The New Hampshire Provincial and State Papers, volumes VII, VIII, X, XXII (1873- 1893), contain the records of his activities in the state, and the Journals of Congress and Annals of Congress give his congressional service. A good sketch of his life by C. R. Corning may be found in the Proceedings Grafton and Coos County Bar Association, volume I (1888), and there are also sketches in C. H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894); E. S. Stackpole, History of New Hampshire (1916), volume II; and the New Hampshire Historical Society Collections, volume V (1837). More of his personality is given in the chapter devoted to him by Geo. Hodges in Holderness {1907). For the family genealogy, see Henry Bond, Genealogy of the Families and Descendants of the Early Settlers of Watertown, Massachusetts (1855), and W. E. Thwing. The Livermore Family of America (1902). See also F. M. Colby, "Holderness and the Livermores," Granite Monthly, February 1881. A copy of a portrait by Trumbull hangs in the courtroom in the State Library at Concord and is reproduced in the Proceedings of the Grafton and Coos County Bar Association, volume II, and by Hodges, who also reproduces a portrait of Mrs. Livermore, attributed to Copley.]

E. V. M.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 740-741:

LIVERMORE, Samuel, statesman, born in Waltham, Massachusetts, 14 May, 1732; died in Holderness, New Hampshire, 18 May, 1803. He was graduated at Princeton in 1752, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1757, beginning to practise the following year at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was a member of the general court of that province in 1768-'70, and in 1775 removed to Holderness, of which he was one of the original grantees and the principal proprietor. He was appointed king's attorney in 1769, and after the change of government he was state's attorney for three years. He was also judge-advocate of admiralty before the Revolution, and a delegate to the Continental congress from 7 February, 1780, until he resigned, 21 June, 1782, and again in 1785. He was chief justice of the state supreme court from 1782 till 1789, and in 1788 a member of the convention that adopted the Federal constitution. He was elected a representative from New Hampshire to the 1st and 2d congresses, serving from 4 March, 1789, till 2 March, 1793. In the latter year he was chosen U. S. senator, served as president of the senate during two sessions, and resigned in 1801 on account of failing health. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 740-741.


LLOYD, John I., Maryland, lawyer.  Manager, Maryland Society of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 111)


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

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


LOCKE, Joseph J., Barre, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1851-1852.


LOCKE, Theodore, D., Barre, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1842-1848.


LOCKHART, Jesse, abolitionist, Russellville.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 135)


LOCKWOOD, Julia, abolitionist.

(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, p. 43n40)


LOCKWOOD, Roe, abolitionist.

(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, p. 43n40)


LOGAN, Anna, African American, abolitionist.

(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, p. 58n40)


LOGUEN, Jermain Wesley, 1813-1872, New York, African American, clergyman, speaker, author, former slave, abolitionist leader.  American Abolition Society.  Bishop, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.  Supported the anti-slavery Liberty Party.  Conductor, Underground Railroad, aiding hundreds of fugitive slaves, in Syracuse, New York.  In 1851, he himself escaped to Canada when he was indicted for helping a fugitive slave.  Wrote autobiography, The Reverend J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman, A Narrative of Real Life. 1859.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 334; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 294, 307; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 677-678; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 368; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 13, p. 848; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 7, p. 358; Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 368:

LOGUEN, JERMAIN WESLEY (c. 1813- September 30, 1872), bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, was born near Manscoe's Creek in Davidson County, Tennessee, the natural son of a white resident, David Logue, and a slave mother, Cherry, who had been kidnapped in Ohio. The story of the experiences of Cherry and h er family forms one of the blackest pictures of the slavery system. Growing up without schooling, with many hardships and few glimpses of the sunnier aspects of life, Jermain long planned to break away from slavery, but determined never to buy his freedom. Although his first attempt at escape failed, the sale of his sister aroused anew his resolution. The account of  this flight through Kentucky and southern Indiana (c. 1834-35), antecedent to the organization of the Underground Railroad, shows that the preliminary surveys for that system had been made and that a few lines already ran through the homes of Quakers as unerringly as railroads run through the large towns and cities. Jermain crossed from Detroit to Canada, making his way to Hamilton, Ont., in search of work. Writing to Frederick Douglass in May 1856 (see The Reverend J. W. Loguen, p. 339), he refers to this episode as "twenty-one years ago-the very winter I left my chains in Tennessee" and to himself as "a boy twenty-one years of age (as near as I know my age)." This statement furnishes the best available guide to the chronology of his early life.

In Canada, he learned to read, while by hard farm labor and thrift, in the face of great discouragement, he made a start towards competency. After two years as porter in a hotel at Rochester, New York, he was able to study at Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, where he received the only schooling he had. He then opened a school for colored children in Utica, and later one in Syracuse. At Busti, New York, in November 1840 he married Caroline Storum, a woman with some negro blood. Settling in Syracuse shortly afterward, he became one of the local managers of the Underground Railroad. He subsequently became an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, with successive pastorates (1843-50) in Bath, Ithaca, Syracuse, and Troy. He was presiding elder of the last-named district. He had begun to call himself Loguen, and through the persuasion of his Methodist friends he adopted Wesley as his middle name.

As a speaker against slavery he aroused much interest. Citizens of Cortland, New York, raised a fund to purchase his mother, but her master, Manasseth Logue, a brother of David, refused to sell her unless Jermain would buy his freedom also. His liberty imperiled by the Fugitive-slave Act of 1850, he left Troy and returned to the comparative safety of Syracuse, where his home again became an important station of the Underground Railroad. During the decade before the Civil War, he was a central figure in the activities of that organization, especially such as centered around his Peterboro neighbor, Gerrit Smith [q.v.]. In various ways he assisted some fifteen hundred fugitives. Indicted for participation in the "Jerry rescue" case (1851), he sought temporary refuge in Canada. Just before John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Loguen went again into Ontario with John Brown, Jr., in behalf of the League of Liberty and possibly also to further plans of the elder Brown. In 1864, Loguen declined election as a bishop of his denomination, but accepted in 1868, and was assigned to the Fifth District (Alleghany and Kentucky conferences). After two years he was transferred to the Second District (Genesee, Philadelphia, and Baltimore conferences). In 1872 he was reelected bishop and appointed to take charge of mission work on the Pacific Coast, but he died at Saratoga Springs, New York, before he could go to his field.

[The main source of information is The Reverend J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman, a Narrative of Real Life (t.p. 1859, but the book contains letters dated 1860); although it is written in the third person, its detailed information indicates autobiography. A manuscript note by a Syracuse genealogist in a copy at the Syracuse Public Library states that Loguen died in his sixty-third year, which would place his birth c. 1810. See also W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad (1898); J. W. Hood, One Hundred Years of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1895); death notice in New York Tribune, October 1, 1872.]

W. H. A.


LONG, David, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1835-38.


LONG, John Dixon, 1817-1894, New Town, Maryland, writer, anti-slavery activist.  Wrote Pictures of Slavery in Church and State, in 1857.


LONG, Richard, Ross County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1835-36, Manager, 1838-39.


LONGFELLOW, Henry Wadsworth, 1807-1882, poet. Wrote antislavery poetry.

(Hughes, Meltzer, & Lincoln, 1968, p. 105; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 382)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, pp. 282-287:

LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH (February 27, 1807-March 24, 1882), poet, was born in Portland, Maine. His first known ancestor was Edward Longfellow, a man of property in Yorkshire early in the seventeenth century,, whose grandson, William, settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, about 1676, and married Ann Sewall, a sister of Judge Samuel Sewall (q.v.]. Their grandson Stephen took two degrees at Harvard, and became teacher, town clerk, and clerk of the courts in Portland, Maine. His son Stephen was a Massachusetts legislator and judge of the court of common pleas. The judge's son Stephen [q.v.], the poet's father, a Harvard graduate, was a distinguished lawyer in Portland, member of Congress, trustee of Bowdoin College, and president of the Maine Historical Society. The poet's maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth [q.v.], was descended from Christopher Wadsworth, Englishman, who settled in Duxbury, Massachusetts, before 1632. Peleg, a Harvard graduate, a general in the Revolution, and member of Congress, married Elizabeth Bartlett of Plymouth; and through these grandparents the poet had descent from at least four of the Pilgrims, including John Alden, Priscilla Mullens, and Elder Brewster. His mother, Zilpah, a nervous invalid, was an intense lover of music, poetry, and nature.

Henry, the second child, was educated chiefly in private schools. He began to write early, the Gazette of Maine, Portland, publishing a poem by him on November 17, 1820. (He denied that he wrote the doggerel about Mr. Finney and his turnip.) Entering Bowdoin College as a sophomore, he graduated in 1825, fourth in a class of thirty-nine; Hawthorne was a classmate, but they were not intimate. While in college Longfellow had many poems accepted by the magazines; and by his senior year he had set his heart on a literary career, writing to his father, "I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature." He planned to study at Harvard and then attach himself to a magazine; but soon after graduation he was offered a projected professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin, on condition that he study abroad, and therefore spent the years 1826-29 in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. From 1829 to 1835 he was professor and librarian at Bowdoin, also preparing textbooks and contributing essays and sketches to the magazines. He married, September 14, 1831, Mary Storer Potter of Portland, a beautiful and cultivated woman.

In 1835 Longfellow accepted the professorship of modern languages and belles-lettres at Harvard, and went abroad for a year to improve his knowledge of German and the Scandinavian tongues. In spite of the sudden death of his wife at Rotterdam in that year, he held to his course and made an extensive study of German literature before returning to America in 1836. At Cambridge, where he lodged in the Craigie House, Washington's former headquarters, his life settled into a pleasant routine. His college duties were heavy, for he had to prepare three lectures a week, besides supervising four native teachers and often taking the classes himself. But he went much into society, a jaunty figure immaculately clad; and he made many friends, the closest being Professor Cornelius C. Felton, Charles Sumner, George S. Hillard [qq.v.], and Henry R. Cleveland, who with the poet formed "The Five of Clubs," dubbed by outsiders "The Mutual Admiration Society." After 1837 his relations with Hawthorne were increasingly friendly; and at this time, as always, he kept up by letter his intimacy with George W. Greene [q.v.] of Rhode Island, whom he had met in Italy in 1828. During 1837-40 he contributed five articles to the North American Review; and in 1839 published Hyperion, a romance, and Voices of the Night, his first book of verse. The spring and summer of 1842 he spent mostly at Marienberg, a water-cure on the Rhine; but he formed a lifelong friendship with the German poet Ferdinand Freiligrath, visited Dickens and other men of letters in England, and wrote Poems on Slavery (1842) during the voyage home.

On July 13, 1843, he married Frances Elizabeth Appleton, the original of the heroine of Hyperion, whom he had met in Switzerland in 1836. She was a woman of twenty-six, "of stately presence, of cultivated intellect, and deep, though reserved feeling" (Samuel Longfellow, Life, post, II, 1, 2). Her father, a Boston merchant, bought the Craigie House for the pair as a wedding present. The poet's life now flowed on for many years with full and placid tide. Six children were born to him, among them Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow [q.v.]. Lowell and Agassiz became his intimate friends. In the summer he found congenial society at Nahant, where he and his brother-in-law, Thomas Gold Appleton [q.v.], finally bought a cottage. In 1854 he resigned his professorship, which had grown increasingly irksome; and his life thereafter had more unity and peace-until tragedy suddenly engulfed him. On July 9, 1861, Mrs. Longfellow was sealing up packages of her daughters' curls; a match set fire to her dress, and, in spite of her husband's efforts to put out the flames, by which he also was badly burned, she died the next day. How deep was his wound is shown by the few words wrung from him after some weeks: "How can I live any longer !" is the second entry in his journal, on September 12, n after a long gap. In a letter to George W. Curtis on September 28, he says that although "to the eyes of others, outwardly calm" he is "inwardly bleeding to death." The persistence of his grief is revealed by "The Cross of Snow," written eighteen years afterwards. Next to the care of his children he found most solace in daily labor to complete his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. While the work was slowly going through the press, in 1865, Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton aided in the last revision. "Every Wednesday evening," wrote Norton, "Mr. Lowell and I met in Mr. Longfellow's study to list en while he read a canto of his translation from the proof-sheet. We paus ed over every doubtful passage, discussed the various readings, considered the true meaning of obscure words and phrases, sought for the most exact equivalent of Dante's expression, objected, criticised, praised, with a freedom that was made perfect by Mr. Longfellow's absolute sweetness, simplicity, and modesty. . . . Almost always one or two guests would come in at ten o'clock, when the work ended, and sit down with us to a supper, with which the evening closed Mr. Long fellow had a special charm as a host, the charm of social grace and humor" (First Annual Report of the Dante Society, May 16, 1882, p. 22).

In the poet's remaining years honors were heaped upon him. During a tour of Europe with his family, in 1868-69, he received the degree of LL.D. from Cambridge, and that of D.C.L. from Oxford; breakfasted or lunched with Gladstone, the Duke of Argyll, and other notables; was given a private audience by the Queen; visited Tennyson on the Isle of Wight; and met scholars and artists in Italy, including Liszt, who soon after set to music the introduction to The Golden Legend. To the Craigie House came distinguished visitors year after year-Froude, Trollope, Kingsley, Dean Stanley, Lord and Lady Dufferin, Salvini, Ole Bull, the Emperor of Brazil, and many others. He was more and more lonely, however; Hawthorne and Felton had died before his European tour; Agassiz and Sumner di ed in 1874; Lowell went abroad; Greene became feeble and depressed; yet Longfellow kept at work with calm cheerfulness. The summers he spent at Nahant, except for a week's visit each year with his sister in the old Portland home. On his seventy-second birthday the children of Cambridge gave him an arm-chair made of wood from the chestnut tree of "The Village Blacksmith." His next birthday was celebrated in the public schools of Cincinnati, and the following year many schools throughout the country observed the day. During the last three months of 1881 he was confined to his room by vertigo followed by nervous prostration, and never fully recovered. On March 18, 1882, four schoolboys called, and he showed them the house with his usual courtesy. That afternoon he became ill, peritonitis developed, and six days later he died. He was buried at Mount Auburn. On March 2, 1884, a bust of him was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Longfellow's gentleness, sweetness, and purity have always received due emphasis; Lord Ronald Gower's eulogy in 1878 is typical: "There is a kind of halo of goodness about him, a benignity in his expression which one associates with St. John at Patmos" (My Reminiscence, volume II, 1883, p. 265). Other essential aspects of his personality have often been ignored, however. "Injustice in any shape he could not brook," said his sister of him as a boy; and he proved it as a young man when he hotly refused to accept an instructorship at Bowdoin instead of the promised professorship, and the corporation yielded to the indignant stripling. The sterner side of his nature showed itself at his Boston club one day: "Felt vexed at seeing plover on the table at this season, and proclaimed aloud my disgust at seeing the game-laws thus violated." The comments in his journal and letters are often severe. "The smokers turned my study into a village tavern with cigars and politics, much to my annoyance." "My ways of thinking are so different from those of most of the Bostonians that there is not much satisfaction in talking with them. -- himself is an exception. He has a liberal, catholic mind, and does not speak as if he were the pope.'' "The American character seems often wanting in many of the more generous and lofty traits which ennoble humanity." "The fugitive slave is surrendered to his master ... Dirty work for a country that is so loud about freedom as ours!" This critical edge he may have got from his father; from his mother he inherited nervous sensibility verging on disease. In boyhood he begged to have cotton put in his ears on Fourth of July, to deaden the sound of the cannon; his illness in 1842 was disorder of the nerves; in middle life he was sometimes "half crazed" with neuralgia; a medical examination in 1867 found his "bellswires ... out of order"; nervous prostration preceded the end. This sensibility caused restlessness, fretfulness, and depression. "I pray a benediction on drudgery. It ... takes the fever out of my blood and keeps me from moping too much." "I know not in what littlenesses the days speed by; but mostly in attending to everybody's business but my own, and in doing everything but what I most want to do. It frets my life out.'' Abnormal excitement appears in some entries. "It [Niagara] drives me frantic with excitement. My nerves shake like a bridge of wire." More often his nervous delicacy gave delight. "It is raining, raining with a soft and pleasant sound. I cannot read, I cannot write, ... but dream only." "Like delicious perfume, like far-off music, like remembered pictures, came floating before me amid college classes, as through parting clouds, bright glimpses and visions of Tyrolean lakes." "I have still floating through my brain that crowd of fair, slender girls, waving, like lilies on their stems, to the music as to a wind." He had a marked fondness for good dinners, choice wines, and fine clothes. An English traveler who met him at a reception in 1850 pictures him as "dressed very fashionably ... almost too much so, a blue frock coat of Parisian cut, a handsome waistcoat, faultless pantaloons, and primrose-colored 'kids' set off his compact figure, which was not a moment still; for like a butterfly glancing from flower to flower, he was tripping from one lady to another, admired and courted by all" (quoted by Higginson, post, p. 279, from The Home Circle, London, October 1850). He had not yet begun to be St. John.

This artistic sensibility affected his modes of composition. He worked steadily, so far as moods allowed; but he could not twang off a lyric at will or mechanically grind out a long poem. "I was often excited, I knew not why; and wrote with peace in my heart and not without tears in my eyes, 'The Reaper and the Flowers, a Psalm of Death.' I have had an idea of this kind in my mind for a long time, without finding any expression for it in words. This morning it seemed to crystallize at once, without any effort of my own." "Why do no songs flit through my brain, as of old? It is a consolation to think that they come when least expected."

Longfellow's popularity in his later years was great, both at home and abroad. "No other poet has anything like your vogue," Hawthorne wrote from England in 1855. In London 10,000 copies of The Courtship of Miles Standish were sold the first day. Before 1900 his poems had been translated into German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, Bohemian, Hungarian, and Russian. In German thirty-three different translations had appeared, including eight of Evangeline and five of Hiawatha; in French, nine, including four of Evangeline; in Italian, twelve. The prices he received for poems show the growth of his fame: fifteen dollars for "The Village Blacksmith" in 1840; $3,000 for "The Hanging of the Crane" in 1874. Poe was hostile, but most American men of letters praised the new poet warmly. Bryant wrote of his "exquisite music" and "creative power." Motley found himself "more and more fascinated with Evangeline" and the hexameters " 'musical as is Apollo's lute.' " Hawthorne wrote, "I take vast satisfaction in your poetry, and take very little in most other men's.'' Prescott thought the "Skeleton in Armor" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus" the best imaginative poems since "The Ancient Mariner." European criticism was also very favorable. Professor Philarete Chasles, of the College of France, wrote in 1851: "Longfellow seems to us to occupy the first place among the poets of his country" (Etudes sur la litterature et les meours des Anglo-Americains au XIX siècle, 1851, p. 299). Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine said in February 1852: "In respect of melody, feeling, pathos, and that exquisite simplicity of expression which is the criterion of a genuine poet, Mr. Longfellow need not shun comparison with any living writer.'' The London Spectator (June 20, 1868) spoke of "the sweet and limpid purity, ... and the thoroughly original conception and treatment, of his later poems, especially that which will doubtless live as long as the English language, 'Hiawatha.'"

Longfellow's writings belong to the Romantic Movement in its milder phases: they have nothing of the Storm-and-Stress mood, except in Hyperion, and nothing of Byron's or Shelley's spirit of revolt. He was a Victorian only in his moderation and decorum, which were a part of his Puritan heritage: social reforms, except the abolition of slavery, did not much interest him; and his Unitarian faith combined with his unspeculative nature to save him alike from the theological struggles of Tennyson, Arnold, and Clough, and from the paganism of Swinburne and Morris. His first prose model was Irving, soon succeeded by the florid German school. His poetic style may have owed its purity to Bryant, whose nature poems he imitated in youth, but it also has something of Goldsmith's soft grace and Keats's sensuous beauty. In his nature poetry as a whole he is more like Keats than Bryant or Wordsworth; but Wordsworth may have quickened his sympathy with children and with common men and women. "The Ancient Mariner" clearly influenced his ballads of the sea. From the Finnish Kalevala he got the metre of Hiawatha; and his use of hexameters, an innovation in American verse, was doubtless due to their success in German narrative poems. The strongest single foreign influence was that of Goethe and the German romantic lyrists. Most of the prose works had only a passing value, but Outre-Mer and Hyperion are still worth reading for their pictures of European life in the early nineteenth century; The poems did a threefold service to American readers: they brought a sense of the beauty in nature and the lives of common people; they gave some feeling for Old-World culture; they handled American themes, especially Indian legends and colonial history, more broadly and attractively than had been done before in verse.

Didacticism is the charge most often brought against Longfellow's poetry. If this means merely that his purpose was to teach, he might well be content to stand with Dante, Spenser, and Milton. The true criticism is that his method is sometimes bald preaching, as in "A Psalm of Life," and sometimes silly symbolism, as in "Excelsior"; that at other times he pins a moral to incident or portrait which needs none, as in "The Village Blacksmith"; and that in general his way of presenting truth lacks the imagination, passion, and power of the great poets. But it is also true that most of his didactic poems are pleasing in form, and that the larger part of his poetry is not didactic at all but depicts various aspects of life for their own sake. His nature poems, such as "An April Day" or "Amalfi," are often purely sensuous; and those on the sea give with rare felicity a sense of its magic and its terror. His ballads are astir with spirited incident. In the delightful poems on children he anticipated Swinburne. His sketches of individuals show vivid appreciation of a wide range of human types-men of action, like the hero in "Victor Galbraith" or "Kambalu"; men of science, like Agassiz; poets, like Dante and Chaucer; ecclesiastics good and bad, like those in The Golden Legend and "The Monk of Casal-Maggiore"; women, like Evangeline, Priscilla, and the heroic mother in "Judas Maccabaeus." His sympathy with the joys and sorrows of "the common lot" is genuine and deep, as in "The Bridge" and "The Goblet of Life." The love scenes in The Spanish Student, Evangeline, and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" have delicate beauty although they lack warmth; and "Stars of the Summer Night," in the first named, is one of the best serenades in English. The joys of wine and social drinking -are sung jollily in "King Witlaf's Drinking Horn" and with a connoisseur's discrimination in "Catawba Wine."

As interpreter of the Old World to the New, Longfellow still has no rival among American poets. Even now there is cultural charm in "Nuremberg," "The Belfry of Bruges," "Monte inferior. But no one knows Longfellow fully who is not familiar with the sonnets, some of which are among the best of the century; with "Morituri Salutamus," less buoyant than " Rabbi Ben Ezra" and less venturesome than "Ulysses," but more truthful than either in its statement of the mingled weakness and strength of old age; and with "Michael Angelo," in which the elderly poet and scholar moves thoughtfully in high regions of Italian art and character. Longfellow's fame will n eve r again be what it was in his own century; but it remains to be seen whether, by the pure style and gracious humanity of his best poems, he will not outlast louder men, in popular favor.

The principal works published in book form during his lifetime appeared as follows: Outre-Mer (1835); Hyperion (1839); Voices of the Night (1839); Ballads and Other Poems (dated 1842, issued late in 1841); Poems on Slavery (1842); The Spanish Student, a Play in Three Acts (1843); Poems (1845); The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (dated 1846, is sued in December 1845); Evangeline (1847); Kavanagh, a Tale (1849); The Seaside and the Fireside (dated 1850, issued in December 1849); The Golden Legend (1851); The Song of Hiawatha (1855); Prose Works (1857); The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Other Poems (1858); The New England Tragedy (1860); Tale of a Wayside Inn (1863); The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (3 volumes, 1865-67); Flower-de-Luce (title-page dated 1867, published in November 1866); The New England  Tragedies (1868); The Divine Tragedy (1871); Christus, a Mystery (The Divine Tragedy, The Golden Legend, The New England Tragedies, 3 volumes, 1872); Three Books of Song (1872); Aftermath (1873); The Hanging of the Crane (1874); The Masque of Pandora, and Other Poems (1875); Keramos and Other Poems (1878); Ultima Thule (1880); In the Harbor: Ultima Thule, Part II (1882). The posthumous volume, Michael Angelo, appeared in 1883. A "complete" edition, The Writings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in eleven volumes, was published in 1886.

[Two useful bibliographies are L. S. Livingston, A Bibliography of the First Editions in Book Form of the Writings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (p.p. 1908), and bibliog. by H. W. L. Dana, in The Cambridge H ist. of American Literature, II (1918), 425-36. The most important biography is Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with Extracts from his Journals and Correspondence (3 volumes, 1886-87), by his brother, Samuel Longfellow [q.v.]. See also T. W. Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (I 902); "New Longfellow Letters," Harper's Monthly Magazine, April 1903; E. S. Robertson, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1887); G. R. Carpenter, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1901); G.L. Austin, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: His Life, His Works, His friendships (1883), containing the early poems not republished in Voices of the Night; E. W. Longfellow, Random Memories (1922); Annie Fields, Authors and Friends (1896); E. Montegut, " Oeuvres de H. W. Longfellow," Rev1le des Deux Mondes, October 15, 1849; F. Kratz, Das deutsche Element in den Werken H. W. Longfellows (2 volumes, Wasserburg, 1901-02); A. Johnson, "The Relation of Longfellow to Scandinavian Literature," American Scandinavian Review, January 1915; R. H. Stoddard, ed., The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1884), volume VI; J. R. Lowell, in Atlantic Monthly, January 1859; 0. W. Holmes, in Ibid., June 1882; G. E. Woodberry in Harper's Monthly Magazine, February 1903; T. B. Aldrich in Atlantic Monthly, March 1907; P. E. More, Shelburne Essays, 5 series (1908); W. D. Howells, in No. American Review, March 1907; Bliss Perry, in Atlantic Monthly, March 1907; W. P. Trent, in The Cambridge History of American Literature, volume II (1918); W. H. O. Smeaton, Longfellow and his Poetry (.1919); H. S. Gorman, A Victorian American: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1926).

J. W.C.B.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV:

LONGFELLOW, Henry Wadsworth, poet, born in Portland, Maine, 27 February, 1807; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 24 March, 1882, was the second son in a family that included four sons and four daughters. His birthplace, on Fore street, is shown in the engraving on page 11. He was named for a brother of his mother, who, a youth of nineteen, lately commissioned lieutenant in the U. S. navy, and serving before Tripoli under Com. Preble, had perished in the fire-ship “Intrepid,” which was blown up in the night of 4 September, 1804. The boyhood of the poet was happy. A sweeter, simpler, more essentially human society has seldom existed than that of New England in the first quarter of this century, and the conditions of life in Portland were in some respects especially pleasant and propitious. The beautiful and wholesome situation of the town on the sea-shore; the fine and picturesque harbor that afforded shelter to the vessels by which a moderate commerce with remote regions was carried on, giving vivacity to the port and widening the scope of the interests of the inhabitants; the general diffusion of comfort and intelligence; the traditional purity and simplicity of life; the absence of class distinctions; the democratic kindliness of spirit; the pervading temper of hopefulness and content—all made Portland a good place in which to be born and grow up. Like the rest of New England it was provincial, it had little part in the larger historic concerns of the world, it possessed no deep wells of experience or of culture, and no memorials of a distant past by which the imagination might be quickened and nurtured; it was a comparatively new place in a comparatively new country. The sweetness of Longfellow's disposition showed itself in his earliest years. He was a gentle, docile, cheerful, intelligent, attractive child; “one of the best boys in school” was his teacher's report of him at six years old. He was fond of books, and his father's library supplied him with the best in English. He was sensitive to the charm of style in literature, and a characteristic glimpse of his taste, and of the influences that were shaping him, is afforded by what he said in later life in speaking of Irving: “Every boy has his first book; I mean to say, one book among all others which in early youth first fascinates his imagination, and at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind. To me this first book was the ‘Sketch-Book’ of Washington Irving. I was a school-boy when it was published [in 1819], and read each succeeding number with ever-increasing wonder and delight, spell-bound by its pleasant humor, its melancholy tenderness, its atmosphere of reverie. . . . The charm remains unbroken, and whenever I open the pages of the ‘Sketch-Book,’ I open also that mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth.” Already, when he was thirteen years old, he had begun to write verses, some of which found place in the poet's corner of the local newspaper. In 1821 he passed the entrance examinations for Bowdoin, but it was not until 1822 that Longfellow left home to reside at the college. Among his classmates was Nathaniel Hawthorne, with whom he speedily formed an acquaintance that was to ripen into a life-long friendship. His letters to his mother and father during his years at college throw a pleasant light upon his pursuits and his disposition; they display the early maturity of his character; the traits that distinguished him in later years are already clearly defined; the amiability, the affectionateness, the candor, and the cheerful spirit of the youth are forecasts of the distinguishing qualities of the man. His taste for literary pursuits, and his strong moral sentiment and purpose, are already developed. A few sentences from his letters will serve to exhibit him as he was at this time. “I am in favor of letting each one think for himself, and I am very much pleased with Gray's poems, Dr. Johnson to the contrary notwithstanding.” “I have very resolutely concluded to enjoy myself heartily wherever I am.” “Leisure is to me one of the sweetest things in the world.” “I care but little about politics or anything of the kind.” “I admire Horace very much indeed.” “I conceive that if religion is ever to benefit us, it must be incorporated with our feelings and become in every degree identified with our happiness.” “Whatever I study I ought to be engaged in with all my soul, for I will be eminent in something.” “I am afraid you begin to think me rather chimerical in many of my ideas, and that I am ambitious of becoming a rara avis in terris. But you must acknowledge the usefulness of aiming high at something which it is impossible to overshoot, perhaps to reach.” He was writing much, both verse and prose, and his pieces had merit enough to secure publication, not only in the Portland paper, but in more than one of the magazines, and especially in the “United States Literary Gazette,” published in Boston, in which no fewer than sixteen poems by him appeared in the course of the year 1824-'5. Very few of these were thought by their author worth reprinting in later years, and though they all show facile versification and refined taste, none of them exhibit such original power as to give assurance of his future fame. Several of them display the influence of Bryant both in form and thought. Long afterward, in writing to Bryant, Longfellow said: “Let me acknowledge how much I owe to you, not only of delight but of culture. When I look back upon my earlier verses. I cannot but smile to see how much ill them is really yours.” He owed much also to others, and in these youthful compositions one may find traces of his favorite poets from Gray to Byron.

As the time for leaving college drew near, it became necessary for him to decide on a profession, He was averse to the ministry, to medicine, and, in spite of his father's and grandfather's example, to the law. In 1824 he writes to his father: “I am altogether in favor of the farmer's life.” But a few months later he says: “The fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature. My whole soul burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres in it. . . . Surely there never was a better opportunity offered for the exertion of literary talent in our own country than is now offered. . . . Nature has given me a very strong predilection for literary pursuits, and I am almost confident in believing that, if I can ever rise in the world, it must be by the exercise of my talent in the wide field of literature.” In reply to these ardent aspirations his father wisely urged that, though a literary life might be very pleasant to one who had the means of support, it did not offer secure promise of a livelihood, and that it was necessary for his son to adopt a profession that should afford him subsistence as well as reputation; but he gave his consent readily to his son's passing a year in Cambridge, after leaving college, in literary studies previous to entering on the study of a profession.

Before the time for this arrived a new prospect opened, full of hope for the young scholar. He had distinguished himself in college by his studious disposition, his excellent conduct, and his capacity as a writer, and when their rank was assigned to the members of his class at graduation, he stood upon the list as the fourth in general scholarship in a class of thirty-eight. Just at this time the trustees of the college determined to establish a professorship of modern languages, and, not having the means to obtain the services of any one that was already eminent in this department, they determined to offer the post conditionally to the young graduate of their own college, who had already given proof of character and abilities that would enable him after proper preparation to fill the place satisfactorily. The proposal was accordingly made to him that he should go to Europe for the purpose of fitting himself for this chair, with the understanding that on his return he should receive the appointment of professor. It was a remarkable testimony to the impression that Longfellow had made and to the confidence he had inspired. Nothing could have been more delightful to him than the prospect it opened. It settled the question of his career in accordance with the desire of his heart, and his father gladly approved.
After passing the autumn and winter of 1825-'6 in preparatory studies at home in Portland, Longfellow sailed for Havre in May, 1826. The distance of Europe from America, measured by time, was far greater then than now. Communication was comparatively infrequent and irregular; the interval of news was often months long; the novelty of such an experience as that on which Longfellow entered was great. “Madam,” said a friend to his mother, “you must have great confidence in your son.” “It is true, Henry,” she wrote, “your parents have great confidence in your uprightness and in that purity of mind which will instantly take alarm on coming in contact with anything vicious or unworthy. We have confidence; but you must be careful and watchful.” Sixty years ago Europe promised more to the young American of poetic temperament than it does to-day, and kept its promise better. Longfellow's character was already so mature, his culture so advanced, and his temperament so happy, that no one could be better fitted than he to profit by a visit to the Old World. A voyage to Europe is often a voyage of discovery of himself to the young American; he learns that he possesses imagination and sensibilities that have not been evoked in his own land and for which Europe alone can provide the proper nurture. So it was with Longfellow. He passed eight months in Paris and its neighborhood, steadily at work in mastering the language, and in studying the literature and life of France. In the spring of 1827 he went from France to Spain, and here he spent a like period in similar occupations. It was a period of great enjoyment for him. At Madrid he had the good fortune to make acquaintance with Irving, who was then engaged in writing his “Life of Columbus,” of Alexander Everett, the U. S. minister, and of Lieut. Alexander Slidell, U. S. navy (afterward honorably known as Com. Slidell-Mackenzie), who in his “Year in Spain” pleasantly mentions and gives a characteristic description of the young traveller. In December, 1827, Longfellow left Spain for Italy, where he remained through a year that was crowded with delightful experience and was well employed in gaining a rich store of knowledge. His studies were constant and faithful, and his genius for language was such that when he went to Germany at the end of 1828 he had a command of French, Spanish, and Italian such as is seldom gained by a foreigner. He established himself at Göttingen in February, 1829, and was pursuing his studies there when he was called home by letters that required his return. He reached the United States in August, and in September, having received the appointment of professor of modern languages at Bowdoin college, with a salary of $800, he took up his residence at Brunswick. He was now twenty-two years old, and probably, with the exception of Mr. George Ticknor, was the most accomplished scholar in this country of the languages and literatures of modern Europe. He devoted himself zealously to teaching, to editing for his classes several excellent text-books, and to writing a series of lectures on the literatures of France, Spain, and Italy. The influence of such a nature and such tastes and learning as his was of the highest value in a country college remote from the deeper sources of culture. “His intercourse with the students,” wrote one of his pupils, “was perfectly simple, frank, and manly. They always left him not only with admiration, but guided, helped, and inspired.” In addition to his duties as professor he performed those of librarian of the college, and in April. 1831, he published in the “North American Review” the first of a series of articles, which were continued at irregular intervals for several years, upon topics that were connected with his studies. His prose style was already formed, and was stamped with the purity and charm that were the expression of his whole nature, intellectual and moral. Poetry he had for the time given up. Of those little poetic attempts dating from his college years he wrote, that he had long ceased to attach any value to them. “I am all prudence now, since I can form a more accurate judgment of the merit of poetry. If I ever publish a volume, it will be many years first.”
In September, 1831, he married Miss Mary Potter, of Portland. It was a happy marriage. About the same time he began to publish in the “New England Magazine” the sketches of travel that afterward were collected, and, with the addition of some others, published under the title of “Outre Mer; a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea” (New York, 1835). This was his earliest independent contribution to American literature, and in its pleasant mingling of the record of personal experience, with essays on literature, translations, and romantic stories, and in the ease and grace of its style, it is a worthy prelude and introduction to his later more important work. The narrowness of the opportunities that were afforded at Bowdoin for literary culture and conversation prevented the situation there from being altogether congenial to him, and it was with satisfaction that he received in December, 1834, an invitation to succeed Mr. George Ticknor in the Smith professorship of modern languages at Harvard, with the suggestion that, before entering on its duties, he should spend a year or eighteen months in Europe for study in Germany. He accordingly resigned the professorship at Bowdoin, which he had held for five years and a half, and in April, 1835, he set sail with his wife for England. In June he went to Denmark, and, after passing the summer at Copenhagen and Stockholm studying the Danish, Swedish, and Finnish languages, he went in October to Holland on his way to Germany. At Amsterdam and Rotterdam he was detained by the serious illness of Mrs. Longfellow, and employed his enforced leisure in acquiring the Dutch language. Near the end of November his wife died at Rotterdam. The blow fell heavily upon him; but his strong religious faith afforded him support, and he was not overmastered by vain grief. He soon proceeded to Heidelberg, and sought in serious and constant study a relief from suffering, bereavement, and dejection. For a time he was cheered by the companionship of Bryant, whom he met here for the first time. In the spring he made some excursions in the beautiful regions in the neighborhood of the Rhine, and he spent the summer in Switzerland and the Tyrol. In September he was at Paris, and in October he returned home.

In December, 1836, he established himself at Cambridge, and entered upon his duties as professor. For the remainder of his life Cambridge was to be his home. Lowell, in his delightful essay, “Cambridge Thirty Years Ago,” has preserved the image of the village much as it was at this period. The little town was not yet suburbanized; it was dominated by the college, whose professors, many of them men of note, formed a cultivated and agreeable society. Limited as were its intellectual resources as compared with those that it has since acquired, its was the chief centre in New England of literary activity and cultivated intelligence. Longfellow soon found friends, who speedily became closely attached to him, both in Boston and Cambridge, alike of the elder and younger generation of scholars, chief among whom were George Ticknor, William H. Prescott, Andrews Norton, John G. Palfrey, Cornelius C. Felton, Charles Sumner, George S. Hillard, and Henry R. Cleveland. His delightful qualities of heart and mind, his social charm, his wide and elegant culture, his refinement, the sweetness of his temper, the openness of his nature, and his quick sympathies, made him a rare acquisition in any society, and secured for him warm regard and affection. He employed himself busily in instruction and the writing of lectures, and in 1837 he began once more to give himself to poetry, and wrote the poems that were to be the foundation of his future fame. In the autumn of this year he took up his residence at Craigie House, a fine old colonial mansion, consecrated by memories of Washington's stay in it, which was thenceforward to be his abode for life. Here, in 1837, be wrote “The Reaper and the Flowers,” and in June, 1838, “The Psalm of Life,” which, on its publication in the “Knickerbocker Magazine” for October, instantly became popular, and made its author's name well known. It was the sound of a new voice, a most musical and moving one, in American poetry. In February, 1838, he was lecturing on Dante; in the summer of that year his course was on “The Lives of Literary Men.” He was writing also for the “North American Review,” and during the year he began his “Hyperion.” It was a busy and fruitful time. “Hyperion” was published in New York in 1839. It was a romance based upon personal experience. The scene was laid among the sites he had lately visited in Europe; the characters were drawn in part from life. He put into his story the pain, the passion, and the ideals of his heart. It was a book to touch the soul of fervent youth. It had much beauty of fancy, and it showed how deeply the imagination of the young American had been stirred by the poetic associations of Europe, and enriched by the abundant sources of foreign culture. It was hardly out of press before it was followed by the publication, in the late autumn, of his first volume of poems, “Voices of the Night.” This contained, in addition to his recent poems, a selection of seven of his early poems—
all that he wished to preserve—and numerous translations from the Spanish, Italian, and German. The little volume of 144 pages contained poems that were stamped with the impress of an original genius whose voice was of a tone unheard before. “The Psalm of Life,” “The Reaper and the Flowers,” “The Footsteps of Angels,” “The Beleaguered City,” speedily became popular, and have remained familiar to English readers from that day to this. “Nothing equal to some of them was ever written in this world—this western world, I mean,” wrote his friend Hawthorne. Before a year was out the volume had come to a third edition. From this time Longfellow's fame grew rapidly. Success and reputation were to him but stimulants to new exertions. Essentially modest and simple, praise or flattery could do him no harm. His genial and sound nature turned all experience to good.

During the next two or three years, while his laborious duties as instructor were faithfully and successfully discharged, he still found time for study, and his vein of poetry was in full flow. In 1841 his second volume of poems was published; it was entitled “Ballads and other Poems,” and contained, among other well-known pieces, “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” “The Village Blacksmith,” and “Excelsior.” It confirmed the impression that had been made by the “Voices of the Night,” and henceforth Longfellow stood confessedly as the most widely read and the best beloved of American poets. In the spring of 1842, his health having been for some time in an unsatisfactory state, he received leave of absence for six months from the college, and went abroad. After a short stay in Paris he made a journey, abounding in interest and poetic suggestions, through Belgium, visiting Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, and Brussels, and proceeded to Marienberg-on-the-Rhine, where he spent a quiet but pleasant summer at a water-cure establishment. Here he made acquaintance with the German poet Freiligrath, and the cordial friendship then formed with him was maintained by letters until Freiligrath's death, more than thirty years afterward. In October he passed some delightful days in London, as the guest of Charles Dickens, with whom he had come into very cordial relations in America early in the same year, and in November he was again at home engaged in his familiar pursuits. On the return voyage he wrote “Poems on Slavery,” which were published in a thin pamphlet before the end of the year. They were the expression not so much of poetic emotion as of moral feeling. They attracted much attention, as the testimony of a poet, by nature disinclined to censure, against the great national crime of which the worst evil was its corrupting influence upon the public conscience. It was to that conscience that these poems appealed, and they were received on the one hand with warm approval, on the other with still warmer condemnation. In June, 1843, he married Frances Appleton, daughter of the Hon. Nathan Appleton, of Boston. He had been attached to her since their first meeting in Switzerland in 1836, and something of his feeling toward her had been revealed in his delineation of the character of Mary Ashburton in “Hyperion.” She was a woman whose high and rare qualities of character found harmonious expression in beauty of person and nobility of presence. Seldom has there been a happier marriage. From this time forward for many years Longfellow's life flowed on as peacefully and with as much joy as ever falls to man. His fortunes were prosperous. His books were beginning to bring him in a considerable income; his wife's dowry was such as to secure to him pecuniary ease; Craigie House, with the pleasant fields in front of it reaching to the river Charles, was now his own, and his means enabled him to gratify his taste for a refined hospitality no less than to satisfy the generous impulses of his liberal disposition, and to meet the multitude of appeals for help that came to him from the poor and suffering, who, though they might be remote and unknown to him, felt confident of his sympathy. The general character of these years and of their influence on him is reflected in his work. His genius found in them the moment of its fullest expansion and happiest inspiration. In the year of his marriage “The Spanish Student” was published in a volume. It had been mainly written three years before, and was first printed in “Graham's Magazine” in 1842. In 1846 “The Belfry of Bruges and other Poems” appeared; among the “other Poems” were “The Old Clock on the Stairs” and “The Arsenal at Springfield.” This was followed by “Evangeline” (1847), of which Hawthorne wrote to him: " I have read it with more pleasure than it would be decorous to express,” and which thousands upon thousands have read, and will read, with hearts touched and improved by its serene and pathetic beauty. Then appeared “Kavanagh,” a tale in prose (1849); “The Seaside and the Fireside,” containing “The Building of the Ship,” “Resignation,” “The Fire of Driftwood,” and twenty other poems (1850); and “The Golden Legend” (1851).

During all these years he had continued to discharge the active duties of his professorship, but they had gradually become irksome to him, and in 1854, after nearly eighteen years of service at Harvard, he resigned the place. “I want to try, he wrote to Freiligrath, “the effect of change on my mind, and of freedom from routine. Household occupations, children, relatives, friends, strangers, and college lectures so completely fill up my days that I have no time for poetry; and, consequently, the last two years have been very unproductive with me. I am not, however, very sure or sanguine about the result.” But he was hardly free from the daily duties of instruction before he was at work upon “Hiawatha,” and in the course of the year he wrote many shorter pieces, among his best, such as “The Rope-Walk,” “My Lost Youth,” and “The Two Angels.” “Hiawatha” was published in 1855, and in 1858 appeared “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” with about twenty minor poems.
But the days of joyful inspiration and success were drawing to their close. In July, 1861, an inexpressible calamity, by which all his later life was shadowed, fell upon him, in the sudden and most distressing death of his wife by fire. His recovery from its immediate, shattering effect was assisted by the soundness of his nature, the strength of his principles, and the confidence of his religious faith, but it was long before he could resume his usual occupations, or find interest in them. After several months, for the sake of a regular pursuit that might have power more or less to engage his thought, he took up the translation of the “Divine Comedy.” He found the daily task wholesome, and gradually he became interested in it. For the next three or four years the translation, the revision of it for the press, and the compilation of the notes that were to accompany it, occupied much of his time. The work was published in 1867, and took rank at once as the best translation in English of Dante's poem. The accomplishment of this task had not only been a wholesome restorative of intellectual calm, but had been the means of bringing about in a natural and simple way the renewal of social pleasures and domestic hospitalities. In the revision of the work, Longfellow had called to his aid his friends, James Russell Lowell and the present writer; and the “Dante Club” thus formed met regularly at Craigie House one evening every week for two or three winters. Other friends often joined the circle, and the evenings ended with a cheerful supper. Thus, by degrees, with the passing of time, the current of life began once more to run on in a tranquil course, and though without a ray of the old sunlight, equally without a shadow of gloom. At the end of 1863 he published “Tales of a Wayside Inn,” a volume in which there was no lowering of tone, no utterance of sorrow, but full vigor and life in such poems as “Paul Revere's Ride,” “The Birds of Killingworth,” “The Children's Hour,” and others. The printing of the translation of the “Divine Comedy” was begun about the same time, and the text of the “Inferno” was completed in season to send to Florence the volume, not yet published, as an offering in honor of Dante, on occasion of the celebration in that city of the sixth centenary of the poet's birth in May, 1865. The whole translation, with its comment, was finally published in 1867. In the same year appeared a little volume of original poems, entitled “Flower de Luce,” and in succeeding years, at irregular intervals, he wrote and published “The New England Tragedies” (1868); “The Divine Tragedy” (1871); “Three Books of Song” (1872); “Aftermath” (1874); “The Masque of Pandora” (1875); “Keramos” (1878); and “Ultima Thule” (1880). A little volume containing his last poems was published in 1882, after the poet's death, with the title of “In the Harbor.”

These years had been marked by few striking events in his external life. They had been spent for the most part at Cambridge, with a summer residence each year at Nahant. His interests were chiefly domestic and social; his pursuits were the labors and the pleasures of a poet and a man of letters. His hospitality was large and gracious, cordial to old friends, and genial to new acquaintances. His constantly growing fame burdened him with a crowd of visitors and a multitude of letters from “entire strangers.” They broke in upon his time, and made a vast tax upon his good nature. He was often wearied by the incessant demands, but he regarded them as largely a claim of humanity upon his charity, and his charity never failed. He had a kind word for all, and with ready sacrifice of himself he dispensed pleasure to thousands. In 1868 and 1869, accompanied by his daughters, he visited Europe for the last time, and enjoyed a delightful stay in England, in Paris, and especially in Italy. Fame and the affection that his poems had awakened for him, though personally unknown, in the hearts of many in the Old World not less than in the New, made his visit to Europe a series of honors and of pleasures. But he returned home glad to enjoy once more its comparative tranquillity, and to renew the accustomed course of the day. His last years were the fitting close of such a life. In 1875 he read at Brunswick, on the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation, the beautiful poem “Morituri Salutamus.” It ended with the characteristic verse—

“For age is opportunity no less 
 Than youth itself, though in another dress, 
 And as the evening twilight fades away, 
 The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.” 
On his seventy-fourth birthday, 27 February, 1881, he wrote in his diary:  “I am surrounded by roses and lilies. Flowers everywhere—
‘And that which should accompany old age, 
 As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends.’”

But he had had already warnings of declining health, and in the course of this year he suffered, greatly from vertigo, followed by nervous pain and depression. The serenity of his spirit was unaffected. On the 18th he suffered a chill, and became seriously ill. On the 24th he sank quietly in death. The lines given in fac-simile were the last by the poet, 15 March, 1882, and are from closing stanza of the “Bells of San Blas.” 

No poet was ever more beloved than he; none was ever more worthy of love. The expressions of the feeling toward him after death were deep, affecting, and innumerable. One of the most striking was the placing of his bust in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey in March, 1884. It was the first instance of such an honor being paid to an American poet. His bust stands near the tomb of Chaucer, between the memorials to Cowley and Dryden. (See illustration on page 14.) On this occasion Mr. Lowell, then U. S. minister in England, said: “Never was a private character more answerable to public performance than that of Longfellow. Never have I known a more beautiful character.” A bronze statue of Longfellow, by Franklin Simmons, was erected in Portland in September, 1888. His “Life” has been written by his brother Samuel, in three volumes (Boston, 1886-'7). This work, mainly compiled from the poet's diaries and letters, is a full and satisfactory picture of the man. In this life there is a bibliography of his works. The meadow, across the street, in front of the poet's home, stretching down the river Charles, so often commemorated in his verse, was given by his children shortly after his death to the Longfellow memorial association, on condition that it should be kept open forever, and properly laid out for public enjoyment. The view over the river, of the hills of Brighton and Brookline, as seen from the windows of Longfellow's study, will thus be kept open, and associated with his memory. 

The vignette on page 10 is from a portrait made in 1856 by Samuel Laurence; the frontispiece on steel is a copy of one of the latest photographs of the poet. The illustration on page 12 represents Longfellow's home, Craigie House. It was built by Colonel John Vassall in 1759, and on his flight to England, at the beginning of the Revolution, was confiscated. It served as Washington's headquarters till the evacuation of Boston, and then, after passing through various hands, it was purchased on 1 J an., 1793, by Andrew Craigie, who built the west wing. Mr. Craigie had made a fortune as apothecary-general to the Continental army, and he entertained in the house with lavish hospitality. After his death his widow, whose income had become reduced, let rooms to various occupants, among whom were Jared Sparks and Edward Everett. Finally the house passed into Longfellow's hands, as is related above. It is now (1887) occupied by his eldest daughter. His study remains unaltered as he left it. Mr. Longfellow had two sons and three daughters, by his second wife. His eldest son, CHARLES, entered the National service in 1861, and was badly wounded at Mine Run. His daughters, as children, were the subjects of a celebrated portrait group by Thomas Buchanan Read. –Henry Wadsworth's brother, Samuel, clergyman, born in Portland, Maine, 18 June, 1819, was graduated at Harvard in 1839 and at the divinity-school there in 1846. He first accepted a call to a church at Fall River in 1848, but in 1853 became the pastor of a Unitarian congregation in Brooklyn, New York. In 1860 he resigned his charge and went abroad. On his return he resided at Cambridge, Massachusetts, continuing to preach, but having no pastoral charge till in 1878 he became the minister of a church in Germantown, Pennsylvania In 1882 be again returned to Cambridge. In addition to writing several essays that appeared in the “Radical” (1866-'71), and many hymns that have a place in other collections than his own, he compiled, in association with Reverend Samuel Johnson, “A Book of Hymns” (Boston, 1846; revised ed., entitled “Hymns of the Spirit,” 1864). He published “A Book of Hymns and Tunes,” for congregational use (1859), and a small volume for the vesper service that he had instituted. He is also the editor, in connection with Thomas W. Higginson, of “Thalatta, a Book for the Seaside,” a collection of poetry, partly original (1853). His latest publications are the "”Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow” (2 vols., 1886), and “Final Memorials of Henry W. Longfellow” (1887). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


LONGLEY, Thomas, Hawley, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1837-40.


LONGYEAR, John Westley, 1820-1875, jurist, lawyer.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan.  Served in Congress 1863-1867.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume IV, p. 17; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928);
Congressional Globe)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 17:

LONGYEAR, John Wesley, jurist, born in Shandaken, Ulster county, New York, 22 October, 1820; died in Detroit; Mich., 10 March, 1875. He was educated at Lima, New York, and, removing in 1844 to Michigan, was admitted to the bar in 1846, settling the next year in Lansing, where he acquired an extensive practice. He was elected to congress as a Republican in 1862, served till 1867, and during both terms was chairman of the committee on expenditures on the public buildings. He was a delegate to the Loyalists' convention in Philadelphia in 1866, a member of the Michigan constitutional convention in 1867, and in 1870 became U. S. judge of the southern district of the state. His decisions, especially those in admiralty and bankruptcy cases, were extensively quoted.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 17.



LOOKERMAN, John, founding charter member of the American Colonization Society in Washington, DC, in 1816. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 258n14)


LORD, Nathan, 1792-1870, Hanover, New Hampshire, abolitionist, clergyman.  Founding member American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1833-1834.  Supporter of the Liberty Party.  Later supported slavery as sanctioned in the bible.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 409:

LORD, NATHAN (November 28, 1792-September 9, 1870), Congregational clergyman and college president, was born at South Berwick, Maine, the son of John and Mehitabel (Perkins) Lord and a descendant of Nathan Lord of Kent, England, who settled in Kittery, Maine, about 1652. He was educated at the local academy and at Bowdoin College, where he graduated in 1809. After two years as a teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy, he began the study of theology, completing his work in the seminary at Andover in 1815. In May 1816 he was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church at Amherst, New Hampshire, and on July 24 of the same year he married Elizabeth King Leland of Saco, Maine. His pastorate lasted twelve years and he was considered one of the ablest and most successful ministers in the state. Certain liberals, however, withdrew from membership in his church and formed a separate congregation.

In 1821 he was elected a trustee of Dartmouth College and in 1828, president. At this time conditions there were far from satisfactory, since the institution was still feeling the effects of its contest with the state in respect to its charter (1816-19). The new president assumed the task of rehabilitation with notable success and great improvements were soon in evidence; but his administration as a whole can hardly be considered noteworthy for financial or other material progress. He was not a pioneer in educational policy, although one innovation, the abolition of honors and prizes, introduced in 1830, attracted some attention-mostly unfavorable. He was an able executive and disciplinarian, however, and like his contemporary Mark Hopkins [q.v.] at Williams, a great teacher, whose character exercised a deep influence on students and associates. For many years he conducted courses in theology and ethics.

Intellectually, he represented a school which was rapidly passing, and his views on the great question of the day-slavery-eventually cost him his position. He had at first supported the Liberty Party, but soon after the Mexican War, an event which drove many other New Englanders into the anti-slavery movement, he became a decided supporter of slavery as an institution. His thesis was simple and logical. Slavery was sanctioned by the Bible, it was therefore divinely ordained and not to be questioned on political, humanitarian, or economic grounds. He had no sympathy with "a philosophy which makes happiness the end of living," or with "the sentiment and romance which had infected the descendants of the Puritans." His views on the question are well stated in Letter of Inquiry to Ministers of all, Denominations on Slavery (1854), A Northern Presbyter's Second Letter ... (1855), and in A Letter to I. M. Conrad, Esq., on Slavery (1859). The last-named first appeared in the Richmond Daily Whig, Richmond, Virginia, and denounced the recent raid at Harpers Ferry. A True Picture of Abolition (1863) subjected him to widespread censure, and in July 1863, the trustees, while refusing to remove him from office, expressed such disapproval that he felt obliged to resign. In a dignified statement he defended his views and denied the right of the board to impose any religious, political, or ethical test not authorized by the charter. In spite of the intensity of his views, however, he had what many men of his type have lacked, a genuine sense of humor and a large measure of tolerance and kindliness. Furthermore, he was fond of outdoor life, had athletic tastes and good health, and whatever he may have thought of ultimate human destiny, he enjoyed association with his fellows.

After retirement he spent his last years in Hanover, his friends having provided an annuity in recognition of his long and scantily remunerated services. His last publication, a letter to the alumni on the occasion of the college centennial in 1869, continues to emphasize his opposition to the current philosophy which stressed "the ability, not the weakness of man; his dignity, and not his sinfulness and shame; his rights, and not his duties; and the reorganization of society upon the basis of universal freedom, equality and fraternity."

[Many of his addresses, sermons, and papers were published in pamphlet form and the library of Dartmouth College has, it is believed, a complete collection of manuscript material dealing with his administration. See also C. C. Lord, A History of the Descendants of Nathan Lord of Ancient Kittery, Maine. (1912); J. K. Lord, History of Dartmouth College (1913); Proceedings New Hampshire Historical Society, volume IV (1906); D. F. Secomb, History of the Town of Amherst, New Hampshire (1883).]

W.A.R.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888:

LORD, Nathan, clergyman, born in Berwick, Maine, 28 November, 1793; died in Hanover, N.H., 9 September, 1870. He was graduated at Bowdoin in 1809, and at Andover theological seminary in 1815. He was pastor of the Congregational church in Amherst, New Hampshire, from 1816 till 1828, and at the latter date, on the resignation of Reverend Bennett Tyler, became president of Dartmouth. Under his administration the professorships of Greek literature and language, of astronomy and meteorology, of modern languages, of intellectual philosophy, and of natural history were established, three new halls and a chapel were built, the observatory was added, the “Chandler scientific department” was founded by the gift of $50,000 from Abiel Chandler, and 1,824 students were graduated. He retired in 1863. Dr. Lord upheld the institution of slavery, and thus incurred the censure of most northern people; but while he advocated his views in letters and sermons. Dartmouth was the only college in the United States for many years where colored students were admitted, and while under his care they were treated with uniform kindness and courtesy. He inclined to the old-school system of theology, and to a literal interpretation of the prophesies. Dartmouth gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1864, and Bowdoin that of D. D. in 1828. He occasionally contributed to theological reviews, edited with an introductory notice, the selected sermons of his son, Reverend John King Lord (Boston, 1850), and published numerous sermons, essays, and letters. Among the latter are “Letter to Reverend Daniel Dana, D. D., on Park's ‘Theology of New England’” (1852); “An Essay on the Millennium,” read to the General convention of New Hampshire (1854); and “Two Letters to Ministers of all Denominations on Slavery” (1854-'5), in which he endeavored, by biblical arguments, to prove the lawfulness of that institution. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV.


LORING, Ellis Gray, 1803-1858, Boston, Massachusetts, lawyer, abolitionist leader.  Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), December 1833.  Manager, AASS, 1833-1840, 1840-1843, Executive Committee, 1843-1844.  Husband to abolitionist Louisa Loring of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).  Auditor, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1844-1845.  Co-founded and wrote the constitution of the New England Anti-Slavery Society (NEASS) in 1833.  Financially aided the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator.  Was the attorney for the defense of a slave child in Massachusetts Supreme Court.  This resulted in a landmark ruling that every slave brought to the state by the owner was legally free.  Life member of the BFASS. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 186, 317; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 124; 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, p. 51; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 27; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 416; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 318).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, p. 416:

LORING, ELLIS GRAY (April 14, 1803- May 24, 1858), lawyer and anti-slavery advocate, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the only son of James Tyng Loring, an apothecary; who died in 1805, and Relief (Faxon) Cookson Loring. He was descended from Thomas Loring who emigrated to America in 1634 and settled in Hingham, Massachusetts. From the Latin School, where he was distinguished for scholarship, and where he made Emerson's friendship, he went to Harvard College. He was a member of the class of 1823, attaining membership in Phi Beta Kappa, but he left in May 1823, when members of his class were dismissed for resistance to college discipline. Later he studied law and in 1827 he began a successful career at the bar. Troubled by the existence of slavery, he was "one of the little band who assembled, on the evening of January 1st, 1831, ... to consider the expediency of organizing a New England Anti-Slavery Society" (the Liberator, June 4, 1858, p. 91). These twelve zealots were of divided counsel. Loring favored "gradualism" as opposed to Garrison's "immediateism." The constitution called for "immediate freedom," and Loring withheld his signature. But by January 1833 he was holding office in the society.

There were many aspects to Loring's support of the abolition movement. Unlike Garrison, he had social prominence to lose the movement cost him many clients and the friendly intercourse of leading Boston families. He gave decisive financial support, without which the Liberator could not have continued. On October 29, 1827, he had married Louisa Gilman and together they made their home a center for anti-slavery workers, to whom other doors were closed. Here Harriet Martineau visited and observed the movement at close range. Loring opened his house to fugitive slaves as well and was perhaps the first lawyer to take a colored boy into his office to train him for the bar. More widely known abolitionists, as Dr. Channing, drew strength from his counsel. From his hand Wendell Phillips received his first anti-slavery pamphlet. Though he shrank from speaking in public, Loring could on occasion argue to good purpose, notably in the hearing before the legislative committee considering Governor Edward Everett's suggestion that the abolitionists be repressed.

In anti-slavery as in other matters, Loring was of liberal but moderate views. He opposed third-party sentiment in the American Anti-Slavery Society and also Phillips' view that abolition must be sought either in blood or over the ruins of the church and the Union. In An Address to the Abolitionists of Massachusetts on the Subject of Political Action, printed about 1838, he sketched the tactics by which agitation should be conducted: by petitioning legislative bodies, by interrogating candidates publicly, and by using the suffrage. In his profession he was rather a chamber counsel than an advocate. His best-known argument was for the slave Med, brought to Massachusetts by her mistress (Commonwealth vs. Thomas Aves, 35 Massachusetts, 193). On habeas corpus proceedings Loring won against Benjamin R. Curtis. The case established the principle that a slave brought voluntarily by his owner into Massachusetts could not be removed from the state against his will. Justice Story wrote: "I have rarely seen so thorough and exact arguments as those made by Mr. B. R. Curtis, and yourself. They exhibit learning, research, and ability, of which any man may be proud" (W. W. Story, Life and Letters of Joseph Story, 1851, II, 235). In his petition for the pardon of Abner Kneeland, convicted of blasphemy, he made a splendid defense of free speech. For some years prior to his death he had withdrawn from public observation, being content that others should assume prominence in the movement he had helped to launch. He has sometimes been confused with his distant kinsman, Edward Greely Loring, United States commissioner, who was attacked by the abolitionists for the rendition of Burns, a fugitive slave.

[W. P. and F. J. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1875 (4 volumes, 1885-89), volumes I-III; A. H. Grimke, Wm. Lloyd Garrison (1891); Lindsay Swift, Wm. Lloyd Garrison (1911); W. H. Channing, The Life of Wm. Ellery Channing, D.D. (1880); Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, volume I (1872); C. H. Pope and K. P. Loring, Loring Genealogy (1917); the Liberator, May 28, June 4, 18, 1858; Boston Transcript, May 25, 1858.]

C.F.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 27:

LORING, Ellis Gray, born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1803; died there, 24 May, 1858. He entered Harvard college in 1819, but was not graduated with his class, afterward studied law, was admitted to the Suffolk bar, and became eminent. He was one of the twelve that formed the first anti-slavery society in Boston in 1833. He distinguished himself chiefly in the defence of the slave-child “Med” in the Massachusetts supreme court, where he succeeded in obtaining the decision that every slave brought on Massachusetts soil by the owner was legally free; a case precisely analogous to the celebrated “Somerset” case in England. By this argument he achieved the unusual success of convincing the opposing counsel, Benjamin R. Curtis, afterward justice of the U. S. supreme court, who shook hands with him after the trial, saying: “Your argument has entirely converted me to your side, Mr. Loring.” He also attracted some attention as the author of a “Petition in behalf of Abner Kneeland,” which was headed by the name of Reverend Dr. William E. Channing; Abner Kneeland (q. v.) was a professed atheist who was indicted for blasphemy, and Mr. Loring's petition was a strong plea in behalf of freedom of speech. Several of Mr. Loring's arguments and addresses were published at different times, including “An Address before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society” (Boston, 1838). At the New England anti-slavery convention, 27 May, 1858, two days after his death, Wendell Phillips said: “The great merit of Mr. Loring's anti-slavery life was, he laid on the altar of the slave's needs all his peculiar tastes. Refined, domestic, retiring, contemplative, loving literature, art, and culture, he saw there was no one else to speak, therefore he was found in the van. It was the uttermost instance of self-sacrifice—more than money, more than reputation, though he gave both.” Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 27.


LORING, Louisa, Boston, Massachusetts, leader of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), wife of Ellis Gray Loring.

(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. 47-51, 62, 250n, 253n, 262, 269).


LOTHROP, Stillman, Watertown, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-1840, 1840-1854.


LOUGE, Rebecca, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).

(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, p. 62)



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.