Sha-Sis: Shadd through Sisson

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.


SHADD, Abraham Doras, 1801-1882, Chester County, Pennsylvania, African American, abolitionist leader.  Manager, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Member of the Underground Railroad. 

(Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 10, p. 163)


SHADD-Cary, Mary Ann Camberton, 1823-1893, see Cary, Mary Ann Camberton Shadd


SHANNON, Thomas B., 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)


SHARP, George, Stamford, Connecticut, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1841-53


SHARP, George, Stratford, Connecticut, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1836-1837, 1841-1853.


SHARP, Granville, anti-slavery activist.

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 3, 32, 55, 82, 128, 132, 170, 238, 241, 291, 295; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 79, 108, 193-199, 262-267, 302-306, 310-311, 314, 325, 351, 486, 488, 491; Drake, 1950, pp. 56, 85, 91, 119, 121; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 52, 131, 192; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 101, 290; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 89-90)


SHARPE, Hezekiah D., New York, New York, American Abolition Society, Executive Committee, 1855-59, Auditor, 1858-59


SHAW, Benjamin, Vermont, abolitionist leader, National Convention of Friends of Immediate Emancipation, Albany, New York, 1840

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 297)


SHAW, Francis George, 1809-1882, humanitarian, reformer, abolitionist.  Father of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 707; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 486; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 751)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 486:

SHAW, Francis George, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 23 October, 1809; died in West New Brighton, Staten island, New York, 7 November, 1882, entered Harvard in 1825, but left in 1828 to enter his father's counting-room, and engaged actively in business. In 1841, his health being impaired, he withdrew to West Roxbury, near Brook Farm, where an experiment in associative life, in which he was interested, was begun under the leadership of George Ripley. In 1847 he left West Roxbury, and, after living more than three years upon the north shore of Staten island, he went to Europe with his family. After four years he returned in 1855 to Staten island, where he resided until his death. While living at West Roxbury he was a member of the school committee and one of the overseers of the poor, a justice of the peace, and president of the first common council of Roxbury when that town became a city. He was also foreman of the jury of Norfolk county that first proposed the establishment of the State reform-school of Massachusetts. During his residence on Staten island he was a trustee of the village in which he lived, a trustee of the Seaman's retreat and of the S. R. Smith infirmary, treasurer of the American union of associationists and of the Sailor's fund, president of the Freedman's relief association and of the New York branch of the Freedman's union commission, and connected with various local organizations. He was also a hereditary member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati. Possessed of an ample fortune, he held it as a trust for the unfortunate. All good causes, the help of the poor, the ignorant, the criminal, and the enslaved, had always his ready sympathy and his hearty support. He was the author of several translations from George Sand, Fourier, and Zschokke. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 486. 


SHAW, Robert Gould, 1837-1863, abolitionist, Colonel, 54th Massachusetts Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops, killed in action and buried with his men, in the assault on the Confederate fortification, Fort Wagner.  He is featured prominently in the memorial to the 54th Massachusetts regiment in front of the Massachusetts state-house in Boston.  Son of abolitionist Francis George Shaw.   

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 67, 144; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 486; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 751)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 486:

SHAW, Robert Gould, soldier, born in Boston, 10 October, 1837; died at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, 18 July, 1863, entered Harvard in 1856, but left in March, 1859. He enlisted as a private in the 7th New York regiment on 19 April, 1861, became 2d lieutenant in the 2d Massachusetts on 28 May, and 1st lieutenant on 8 July. He was promoted to captain, 10 August, 1862, and on 17 April, 1863, became colonel of the 54th Massachusetts, the first regiment of colored troops from a free state that was mustered into the U. S. service. He was killed in the assault on Fort Wagner while leading the advance with his regiment. A bust of him has been made by Edmonia Lewis, the colored sculptor, a portrait by William Page is in Memorial hall at Harvard, and it is proposed to place a memorial of him, consisting of an equestrian figure in high relief, on the front wall of the state-house yard in Boston. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 486.


SHAW, William Smith, 1778-1826, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.  Wrote in his historic decision, Commonwealth v. Aves (1836) regarding slavery in Massachusetts:  “How, or by what act particularly, slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, whether by the adoption of the opinion in Sommersett’s case, as a declaration and modification of the common law, or by the Declaration of Independence, or by the Constitution of 1780, it is not now very easy to determine, and it is rather a matter of curiosity than utility; being agreed on all hands, that if not abolished before, it was so by the declaration of rights.”

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 487; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 49)


SHEDD, James A., Iowa, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1854-1857.


SHEPARD, Charles O., New York, abolitionist leader.

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


SHEPARD, George B., Hallowell, Maine, abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1837, 1838-1840, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

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


SHEPPARD, Moses, 1771-1857, Baltimore, Maryland, businessman, philanthropist.  American Friends (Quaker).  Member of the Protective Society of Maryland to protect free African Americans.  The American Anti-Slavery Society.  Society of Friends Indian Affairs Committee.  Lobbied Maryland General Assembly to block legislation to keep free Blacks out of the state.  Sheppard was a Manager of the American Colonization Society (ACS), 1833-1834. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 496-497; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961.


SHERATT, W. R., New York, American Abolition Society

(Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855)


SHERMAN, Henry, New York, abolitionist leader

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


SHERMAN, Jarvis, New York, abolitionist leader

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


SHERMAN, John, 1823-1900, statesman.  Whig U.S. Congressman, 1855.  Republican U.S. Senator.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Brother of Union commander, General William T. Sherman. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, pp. 506-508; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 84; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 813; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 84-88:

SHERMAN, JOHN (May 10, 1823-October 22, 1900), statesman, born at Lancaster, Ohio, was the eighth child of Charles Robert and Mary (Hoyt) Sherman, and a younger brother of William Tecumseh Sherman [q.v.]. His father, a descendant of Edmund Sherman who came from England to Massachusetts probably in 1634 or 1635 and later settled in Connecticut, removed from the latter state in 1811 to Ohio, where he practised law. Charles Robert Sherman rose to the bench of the state supreme court, but his untimely death in 1829 required his widow to share the responsibility of educating some of their eleven children with various friends and relatives. The famous brothers, Tecumseh and John, were bound by rare ties of mutual under standing and affection. John had a lively, careless disposition, that was trying alike to teachers and foster parents; and his education, divided between Lancaster and Mt. Vernon, where he lived for four years with John Sherman, a cousin of his father, g av e him little taste for the college life that was planned for him. He developed a liking for mathematics and surveying, left school at fourteen to work on canal improvements, and at sixteen had grown men working under him, constructing a dam. Fortunately for him, defeat of the Whigs by the Democrats in 1839 led to his dismissal. After a few months of roistering, a change came over him. Helped by material influences, dormant ambitions, inherited from six generations of paternal ancestors addicted to the law and public service, were awakened; a new Sherman emerged-one who realized that Ohio, lush with expansion, was a fertile field for well directed purpose. He substituted extreme self-control for careless abandon, and in 1840 set himself studying law under his uncle, Judge Jacob Parker, and his eldest brother, Charles Taylor Sherman, at Mansfield. In this field, his father's repute and his wide family connections proved stimulating and useful.

Thus arbitrarily shortening his period of immaturity and dependence, Sherman gained an early start on his career. Before formal admission to the bar, May 10, 1844, he was doing much of a full-fledged lawyer's work. Also he launched into business, proving competent as partner in a lumber concern and buying real estate wisely. His rise to local prominence was attested by his marriage, on August 31, 1848, to Margaret Sarah Cecilia, the only child of a prominent Mansfield lawyer, Judge James Stewart. The Shermans had no children, but adopted a daughter. Not content with country-town law and business, Sherman entered state politics. Loss of a job at Democratic hands in 1839 had scarcely cooled his ardor for Whiggery in 1840; thereafter he presented himself faithfully at Ohio Whig conclaves, and he attended the national conventions of 1848 and 1852. He ran for no elective office until 1854, when the wave of anti-Nebraska sentiment carried him into the federal House of Representatives, along with many other comparatively unknown young men.

Unlike most of these, however, Sherman of Ohio remained an official part of the Washington scene continuously through nearly a half century; as representative, 1855-61; as senator, 1861-77; as secretary of the treasury, 1877-81; as senator, 1881-97; as secretary of state, 1897- 98. This was an astounding feat, considering the fact that during these years Ohio four times elected a Democratic governor and thrice sent Sherman a Democratic colleague in the Senate. The explanation lies in Sherman's temperament and situation. His heritage, his mother's oft-repeated precepts, his victory over youthful excesses, and his quick success in local law and business combined to overlay his naturally hot temper with a cautious reserve that was excellently adapted to Ohio's uncertainties. Economically, the conservative, creditor point of view became his personal preference; but, politically, he understood the radical, debtor psychology that flourished among his constituents during the three major and four minor depressions that punctuated his tenure of office. He carefully studied the attitude of the Middle West and helped to stamp national legislation with the influence of that section. While he was compromising his conservative personal preferences with more radical demands from the Ohio electorate, the East was compromising with the West on each piece of major legislation. Thus he and his work in some sense became typical of his political generation.

He had been elected in 1854 because he was a compromise candidate on whom warring factions could agree; and, at Washington, his more moderate utterances on slavery, contrasted with those of men like Joshua R. Giddings and Owen Lovejoy [qq.v.], quickly aided his rise. Membership on a House committee investigating unsavory Kansas affairs was exploited; Sherman wrote a report, scoring the Democracy and all its Kansas works, which was used effectively in the 1856 campaign (House Report No. 200, 34 Congress, l Session, "Kansas Affairs"). He became a hardworking and effective laborer in the young Republican vineyard and at the beginning of his third term (December 5, 1859) was the caucus nominee for speaker. A forgotten indorsement carelessly given Helper's Impending Crisis deprived him of the coveted honor, and increased thereafter his leaning toward compromise and caution in legislative matters. The successful candidate, William Pennington [q.v.], adopted Sherman's committee slate and named him chairman of the ways and means committee. Here his tariff convictions insured equable relations with Eastern Republicans. From loyalty to party he never deviated.  

Campaign labors of 1860 fortified Sherman further, making him, in spite of Ohio's Republican factions, the successor to Senator Chase, whom Lincoln elevated to the Treasury. On a widened stage the tall, spare, impressive junior senator was ready to play his part, especially in his favorite field of finance, for he at once became a member, and in 1867 became chairman, of the finance committee. In the din of war, with its necessities, he helped give the greenbacks the status of legal tender; but he never completely forgot that there must be a clay of reckoning, that order must be wrought out of a chaotic currency. He sometimes tried to encourage a policy of "paying as you go" and led in planning, with Secretary Chase, the national banking system (embodied in the act of February 25, 1863). If Sherman's program of economies and rigorous taxation, especially income taxes, had seemed politically expedient, fewer bond and greenback issues might have sprouted during the war. As it was, he quieted his uneasiness over the greenbacks by reiterating the popular doctrine that the country would "grow up to" the expanded currency.
On the reconstruction issue, war between Sherman's personal preferences and popular dicta waged unremittingly, for political rivalries in Ohio, as elsewhere, imposed irrational tests of party loyalty and defined patriotism without humanity. His desire for moderation was sufficiently well known for many Southerners to write him concerning tolerance, and he spoke out against the fiery Sumner's program. But he did not carry his efforts at moderation so far from the radical path as to stray outside the confines of dominant Republicanism. Opposing Thaddeus Stevens' drastic military reconstruction plan, he advanced a substitute little less rigorous, which became law March 2, 1867; and he voted for most of the radical program. For his former friend, Andrew Johnson, Sherman openly expressed sympathy; he admired Johnson's "combative propensity," and asserted his right to remove Stanton (Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, l Session, Appendix, p. 129). But, knowing the ostracism suffered by the President's supporters, he voted to convict him. When seven other Republicans prevented conviction, he felt "entirely satisfied" (Recollections, I, 432).

On post-war finance Sherman dominated national policy, because of his Senate chairmanship, his interest, and his ability; like most congressmen he was swayed by the strong tide of inflationist sentiment, although as a private individual he cherished anti-inflationist desires. He saw in cancellation of greenbacks the most direct route to specie resumption and declared that a beneficial fall in prices must mark resumption; yet on these very grounds he opposed McCulloch's currency contraction policies of 1866 and 1868. The Middle West being then strongly inflationary, he claimed that resumption would speedily come if the government merely met current obligations. The greenbacks outstanding, he thought, were not too much for the condition of the country. When public opinion blamed McCulloch's contraction policy for the stringency of 1868, Sherman said contraction should cease in deference to that opinion. It did. He realized that national credit must be safeguarded by resumption as soon as political conditions permitted; and he entertained dreams of financial reforms international in scope, aiding Emperor Napoleon Ill's scheme for a stable, unified currency among the great trading nations (Recollections, I, 406-12). His work on the funding act of July 14, 1870, r educed th e burden of public interest and helped restore national credit. While the dollar was still at a premium, he pushed the mint-reform bill which ended the coinage of silver dollars, so that after silver fell he was labeled the arch marplot of the "Crime of '73." On the resumption act of January 14, 1875, he had to yield his own excellent plan, of funding greenbacks into bonds, for the substitute of George F. Edmunds. His preeminence in financial matters, and his aid to Hayes's candidacy, made him the natural choice for the Treasury in 1877.

As secretary of the treasury, Sherman occupied a congenial place, for responsibility for the national finances gave rein to his native skill at economical management and deafened him to inflationist outcry. He strengthened the resumption act by his interpretation of it, declaring that it empowered the secretary to issue bonds after, as well as before, resumption (a position for which John G. Carlisle had reason to be grateful in 1893); and, in the face of congressional clamor, he convinced hard-headed bankers that the government would redeem its bonds in gold, thus immensely enhancing the national prestige. He disappointed bankers who were confidently expecting concessions from the government and amazed them by discarding their advice and achieving sale abroad at a bond price above that of the op en market. Thoroughly informing himself beforehand, he coolly bargained with London and New York syndicates and bankers, playing them off against one another, even when they fought him in the gold market and when exchange rates and London discounts went against him. He facilitated direst sales to investors, independent of syndicates. The loans of 1878 and 1879 were especially skilful.

Sherman's statesmanship while secretary was proved by the political obstacles he surmounted. The political odds against him in Hayes's administration were terrific. Hayes's title to office was uncertain; the House was Democratic for four years, and the Senate for two; and the populace was discouraged by a wearisome depression. Business failures, especially in the West, increased in Sherman's first and second years, magnifying opposition to resumption, while mine-owners and inflationists joined hands in a concerted effort to obtain "free silver." With both parties torn sectionally on this issue, it appeared late in 1877 that inflation politics would prevent Sherman from attaining his main objectives, resumption of specie payments and funding of the public debt. The House stopped resumption operations temporarily by passing two bills: Bland's for a silver dollar with unlimited legal tender and unlimited coinage, and Ewing's for indefinite postponement of the date of resumption (November S. 23, 1877). While these bills awaited Senate action, Sherman's Republican successor, Stanley Matthews, fathered a concurrent resolution (which lacks the force of law) declaring government bonds payable in silver; and both Houses passed it, thus humiliating Sherman.

However, divisions among inflationists ultimately gave Sherman sufficient support to defeat the more extreme objectives of Bland and Ewing. The Bland-Allison Act (February 28, 1878) stipulated a limited coinage of silver, rather than free coinage; and instead of postponing resumption indefinitely Congress, on May 31, 1878, forbade further retirement of greenbacks. Sherman has been severely criticized for failure to oppose the Matthews resolution originally or to support Hayes's veto of the Bland-Allison bill finally. Faced by a fiscal and political exigency, he labored to obtain maximum concessions from the extremists. He judged resumption and funding might be achieved, in spite of Bland-Allison dollars and of 348,000,000 outstanding greenbacks; and they were.

After the passage of the silver bill, Sherman helped to rally conservative support behind the administration, and the insurgents were somewhat discredited in the 1878 elections. Henceforward comparatively free from the opposition that had been hounding him, and aided by favorable trade developments, he carefully protected the final preparations for resumption. He had the New York sub-treasury made a member of the clearing houses at Boston and New York, and made payments to the government receivable in either legal tenders or coin. Consequently, the premium on gold disappeared (December 17, 1878) after nearly seventeen years; and on January 2, 1879, specie payments were smoothly resumed, to the general astonishment.

Whether or not Sherman could continue specie payments thereafter depended upon the demand for gold. The law of May 31, 1878, to which he had agreed, not only had stopped cancellation of legal t enders redeemed in gold but also had directed their reissue. Later, realizing the potential drain, he fabricated a theory that notes once redeemed need not be reissued when the gold reserve became less than 40 per cent. of outstanding notes. Fortunately for him, rainswept Britain and Europe in 1879 had to buy huge quantities of American wheat, corn, and cotton, paying in gold. Trade rebounded beautifully, and specie payments seemed so secure that the Secretary described legal tenders as "the best circulating medium known" (Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury . . . 1880, p. xiv). Not so the Bland-Allison dollars. They soon worried Sherman, since their intrinsic worth was declining, business men were forcing them back on the government, and treasury channels were so choked with them as to threaten the placing of the United States on the silver standard. The Secretary made a futile plea to Congress to impose new limitations on their coinage. Then a rise in interior trade temporarily removed his apprehension and he soon returned to th e Senate and to his political point of view on silver. As the end of his cabinet service approached, the United States still stood on the gold standard. Resumption was an admitted success.

The most distinguished phase of Sherman's career was closing, but he did not suspect it. He planned further achievements in the White House: refunding the public debt at lower interest, perfecting disbursements, settling the silver question without banishing gold or displacing paper, reducing taxes, freeing the civil service from "infernal scramble," breaking down sectionalism in party politics, and turning politics from outworn war issues to "business and financial interests and prosperity" (Sherman, to Richard Smith June 14, 1880, Sherman MSS.). His dreams were of the stuff that made the inner man, but his success at resumption had made him a failure as a candidate for the presidential nomination. He felt that the business cl ass in general and the party in particular owed him th e office; but the unparalleled prosperity that he had helped to create made Republican victory in 1880 so certain as to insure bitter competition for the nomination. Poorly organized Sherman forces, although they helped defeat the unit rule, could not rout the Grant phalanx, or match the Blaine magnetism. Worse, ten Ohio delegates stubbornly refused to vote for Sherman. The nomination fell to the popular and available Garfield, whose presence at Chicago Sherman had thought essential to his own success. In 1880, as in 1888 and to a less degree in 1884, Sherman failed of the nomination because he lacked unscrupulousness in the use of patronage, color in personality and appeal, cordial unity in the Ohio delegation, and skill in manipulating politicians, and because he had an abundance of inflationist opposition. In 1888 he reached the exciting total of 249 votes on the second ballot; but the thread of Ohio intrigue, tortuously unwinding through the correspondence of Foraker, Garfield, Hanna, Hayes, McKinley, and Sherman, shows how futile was his dearest hope.

Through his second period of sixteen years in the Senate (1881-97) Sherman played the role of prominent politician, so cast by his adaptation to the plot of the play in Ohio and in the nation at large. Ohio gave him Garfield's seat only after a contest and he had to keep watch lest he should be shelved, in 1879 and later, with the governorship. Democrats won the state thrice, but luckily Republicans controlled when he came up for reelection in 1885 and in 1892 he succeeded in postponing the candidacy of Foraker (until 1896). In national politics, also, the atmosphere was one of continual uneasiness. Neither Republicans nor Democrats obtained simultaneous control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency for more than a single period of two years during this time (Republicans, 1889-91; Democrats, 1893- 95); and all the political veterans were confused by uncertainties rising from the economic revolution and by cleavages between East and West that were disruptive of party strength. In such a situation Sherman's services seemed indispensable, because of his long experience in legislative compromise, his understanding of Western demands, and his reputation for astuteness in estimating reactions. The newer group of Senate managers--Nelson W. Aldrich, Eugene Hale, O. H. Platt, and John C. Spooner [qq. v. ]-left Sherman out of much of their basic planning, for he, unlike William B. Allison [q.v.], never joined them on terms of close intimacy; but when the time came to compromise with the West, they leaned heavily on him. He functioned most strikingly in connection with the anti-trust and silver-purchase laws of 1890. The final draft of the first came from the pen of Edmunds and the important purchase provisions of the second never had Sherman's hearty approval; but on the one he carried the responsibility, for the finance committee, of initiating tentative drafts during two experimental years (1888-90), and on the other he so adjusted a conference committee stalemate between the two Houses as to save his party from a silver veto and from the defeat of the McKinley tariff. Then, as often during his legislative career, the immediate political exigency faced by him and his fellow partisans warped his judgment on "sound" currency and the protection of the Treasury.

Republican colleagues honored Sherman with the position of president pro tempore (1885-87) and listened deferentially whenever the famous ex-Secretary spoke on finance. He was important in campaigns as keynoter on currency and tariff subjects. Insistence of Ohio wool-growers on protection led him into yeoman's service regimenting Middle-Western Republicans behind a high tariff. His assignment (1886) to the chairmanship of the foreign relations committee proved none too congenial. On minor issues he shifted his position, not always in conformity with popular trends. His economic philosophy always remained basically conservative; for example, he favored general regulation of interstate commerce but questioned the right of Congress to establish maximum and minimum rates and opposed the prohibition of pooling. After he recovered from his nomination fiasco of 1888, Sherman was content in the familiar Senate environment. There were leisure for profitable business undertakings, a never-forgotten sense of service, long evenings alone in his peaceful study and, latterly, preoccupation with the work, published in two volumes in 1895 as John Sherman's Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabin et. In 1879 he had publish ed Selected Speeches and Reports on Finance and Taxation, from 1859 to 1878. Things might have drifted into the usual peaceful Senate demise if Hanna and the embarrassed McKinley had not translated Sherman to the State Department to give Hanna a Senate seat. In the unaccustomed place, under stress of Cuban excitements, it became all too evident that Sherman h ad a growing and humiliating weakness of memory which incapacitated him for functioning out of his usual routine. The fur-seal, Hawaiian, and Spanish negotiations were taken out of his hands. When the cabinet decided for war with Spain he rose to the defense of his anti-expansionist views, and resigned in protest. Two years of unhappy private life ensued before his final release.

[John Sherman MSS. (c. 110,000 letters), and William Sherman MSS., Library Congress; House Executive Document No. 9, 46 Congress, 2 Session, "Specie Resumption and Refunding of National Debt." containing many letters; Annual Reports of the Sec. of the Treasury, 1877-80; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S., I897-98; S. A. Bronson, John Sherman; What He Has Said and Done (1880); T. E. Burton, John Sherman (1906); W. S. Kerr, John Sherman, His Life and Public Services (2 volumes, 1908); R. S. Thorndike, The Sherman Letters (1894); M.A. De W. Howe, Home Letters of General Sherman (1909); J. G. Randall, "John Sherman and Reconstruction," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, December 1932; E. G. Lewis, "Contributions of John Sherman to Public and Private Finance " (unprinted thesis, U. of Illinois, 1932); L. M. Sears, " John Sherman," in S. F. Bemis, ed., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, IX (1929); T. T. Sherman, Sherman Genealogy (1920). A biography by J. P. and R. F. Nichols is in process of preparation.]

J.P.N.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 506-508:

SHERMAN, John, statesman, born in Lancaster, Ohio, 10 May, 1823, after the death of their father in 1829, leaving the large family with but limited means, the boy was cared for by a cousin named John Sherman, residing in Mount Vernon, where he was sent to school. At the age of twelve he returned to Lancaster and entered the academy to prepare himself for college. In two years he was sufficiently advanced to enter the sophomore class, but a desire to be self-supporting led to his becoming junior rodman in the corps of engineers engaged on the Muskingum. He was placed in charge of the section of that work in Beverly early in 1838, and so continued until the summer of 1839, when he was removed because he was a Whig. The responsibilities attending the measurements of excavations and embankments, and the levelling for a lock to a canal, proved a better education than could have been procured elsewhere in the same time. He began the study of law in the office of his brother Charles, and in 1844 was admitted to the bar. He formed a partnership with his brother in Mansfield, and continued with him until his entrance into congress, during which time his ability and industry gained for him both distinction and pecuniary success.

Meanwhile, in 1848, he was sent as a delegate to the Whig convention, held in Philadelphia, that nominated Zachary Taylor for the presidency, and in 1852 he was a delegate to the Baltimore convention that nominated Winfield Scott. His attitude as a conservative Whig, in the alarm and excitement that followed the attempt to repeal the Missouri compromise, secured his election to the 34th congress, and he took his seat on 3 December, 1855. He is a ready and forcible speaker, and his thorough acquaintance with public affairs made him an acknowledged power in the house from the first. He grew rapidly in reputation as a debater on all the great questions agitating the public mind during that eventful period: the repeal of the Missouri compromise, the Dred-Scott decision, the imposition of slavery upon Kansas, the fugitive-slave law, the national finances, and other measures involving the very existence of the republic. His appointment by the speaker, Nathaniel P. Banks, as a member of the committee to inquire into and collect evidence in regard to the border-ruffian troubles in Kansas was an important event in his career. Owing to the illness of the chairman, William A. Howard, of Michigan, the duty of preparing the report devolved upon Mr. Sherman. Every statement was verified by the clearest testimony, and has never been controverted by any one. This report, when presented to the house, created a great deal of feeling, and intensified the antagonisms in congress, being made the basis of the canvass of 1856. He acted with the Republican party in supporting John C. Frémont for the presidency because that party resisted the extension of slavery, but did not seek its abolition. In the debate on the submarine telegraph he showed his opposition to monopolists by saying: “I cannot agree that our government should be bound by any contract with any private incorporated company for fifty years; and the amendment I desire to offer will reserve the power to congress to determine the proposed contract after ten years.” All bills making appropriations for public expenditures were closely scrutinized, and the then prevalent system of making contracts in advance of appropriations was denounced by him as illegal. At the close of his second congressional term he was recognized as the foremost man in the house of representatives. He had from deep and unchanged conviction adopted the political faith of the Republican party, but without any partisan rancor or malignity toward the south.

He was re-elected to the 36th congress, which began its first session amid the excitement caused by the bold raid of John Brown. In 1859 he was the Republican candidate for the speakership. He had subscribed, with no knowledge of the book, for Hinton R. Helper's “Impending Crisis,” and this fact was brought up against him and estranged from him a few of the southern Whigs, who besought him to declare that he was not hostile to slavery. He refused, and after eight weeks of balloting, in which he came within three votes of election, he yielded to William Pennington, who was chosen. Mr. Sherman was then made chairman of the committee of ways and means. He took a decided stand against ingrafting new legislation upon appropriation bills, saying: “The theory of appropriation bills is, that they shall provide money to carry on the government, to execute existing laws, and not to change existing laws or provide new ones.” In 1860 he was again elected to congress, and, when that body convened in December, the seceding members of both houses were outspoken and defiant. At the beginning of President Buchanan's administration the public indebtedness was less than $20,000,000, but by this time it had been increased to nearly $100,000,000, and in such a crippled condition were its finances that the government had not been able to pay the salaries of members of congress and many other demands. Mr. Sherman proved equal to the occasion in providing the means for the future support of the government. His first step was to secure the passage of a bill authorizing the issue of what are known as the treasury-notes of 1860.
On the resignation of Salmon P. Chase, he was elected to his place in the senate, and took his seat on 4 March, 1861. He was re-elected senator in 1867 and in 1873. During most of his senatorial career he was chairman of the committee on finance, and served also on the committees on agriculture, the Pacific railroad, the judiciary, and the patent office. After the fall of Fort Sumter, under the call of President Lincoln for 75,000 troops he tendered his services to General Robert Patterson, was appointed aide-de-camp without pay, and remained with the Ohio regiments till the meeting of congress in July. After the close of this extra session he returned to Ohio, and received authority from Governor William Denison to raise a brigade. Largely at his own expense, he recruited two regiments of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and a battery of artillery, comprising over 2,300 men. This force served during the whole war, and was known as the “Sherman brigade.” The most valuable services rendered by him to the Union cause were his efforts in the senate to maintain and strengthen the public credit, and to provide for the support of the armies in the field. On the suspension of specie payments, about the first of January, 1862, the issue of United States notes became a necessity. The question of making them a legal tender was not at first received with favor. Mainly through the efforts of Senator Sherman and Sec. Chase, this feature of the bill authorizing their issue was carried through congress. They justified the legal-tender clause of the bill on the ground of necessity. In the debates on this question Mr. Sherman said: “I do believe there is a pressing necessity that these demand-notes should be made legal tender, if we want to avoid the evils of a depreciated and dishonored paper currency. I do believe we have the constitutional power to pass such a provision, and that the public safety now demands its exercise.” The records of the debate show that he made the only speech in the senate-in favor of the national-bank bill. Its final passage was secured only by the personal appeals of Sec. Chase to the senators who opposed it. Mr. Sherman's speeches on state and national banks are the most important that he made during the war. He introduced a refunding act in 1867, which was adopted in 1870, but without the resumption clause. In 1874 a committee of nine, of which he was chairman, was appointed by a Republican caucus to secure a concurrence of action. They agreed upon a bill fixing the time for the resumption of specie payment at 1 January, 1879. This bill was reported to the caucus and the senate with the distinct understanding that there should be no debate on the side of the Republicans, and that Mr. Sherman should be left to manage it according to his own discretion. The bill was passed, leaving its execution dependent upon the will of the secretary of the treasury for the time being.

Mr. Sherman was an active supporter of Rutherford B. Hayes for the presidency in 1876, was a member of the committee that visited Louisiana to witness the counting of the returns of that state. He was appointed secretary of the treasury by President Hayes in March, 1877, and immediately set about providing a redemption fund by means of loans. Six months before 1 January, 1879, the date fixed by law for redemption of specie payments, he had accumulated $140,000,000 in gold, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the legal-tender notes gradually approach gold in value until, when the day came, there was practically no demand for gold in exchange for the notes. In 1880 Mr. Sherman was an avowed candidate for the presidential nomination, and his name was presented in the National convention by James A. Garfield. During the contest between the supporters of General Grant and those of James G. Blaine, which resulted in Mr. Garfield's nomination, Mr. Sherman's vote ranged from 90 to 97. He returned to the senate in 1881, and on the expiration of his term in 1887 was re-elected to serve until 1893. At present (1888) he is chairman of the committee on foreign relations, and is an active member of the committees on expenditures of public money, finance, and rules. In December, 1885, he was chosen president of the senate pro tem., but he declined re-election at the close of his senatorial term in 1887. His name was presented by Joseph B. Foraker in nomination for the presidency at the National convention held in 1884, but the Ohio delegation was divided between him and James G. Blaine, so that he received only 30 votes from this state. Again in 1888 his name was presented by Daniel H. Hastings, in behalf of the Pennsylvania delegation at the National convention, and on the first ballot he received 229 votes and on the second 249, being the leading candidate, and continued so until Benjam Harrison received the support of those whose names were with drawn. Mr. Sherman has published “Selected Speeches and Reports on Finance and

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 506-508.


SHERMAN, Roger, 1721-1793, founding father, opponent of slavery. Signer of the Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution.  Sherman opposed a tax on slaves because it would imply that they were property and not human beings. 

(Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 394, 522-523; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 97; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 123, 124; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 502; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 88; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002). 

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 501-502:

SHERMAN, Roger, signer of the Declaration of Independence, born in Newton, Massachusetts, 19 April, 1721; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 23 July, 1793. His great-grandfather, Captain John Sherman, came from England to Watertown, Massachusetts, about 1635. His grandfather and father were farmers in moderate circumstances. In 1723 the family removed to Stonington, Massachusetts, where he spent his boyhood and youth. He had no formal education except that which was obtained in the ordinary country schools, but by his own unaided exertions he acquired respectable attainments in various branches of learning, especially mathematics, law, and politics. He was early apprenticed to a shoemaker, and continued in that occupation until he was twenty-two years of age. It is said that while at work on his bench he was accustomed to have before him an open book, so that he could devote every spare minute to study. At the age of nineteen he lost his father, and the principal care and support of a large family thus devolved upon him, with the charge of a small farm. In 1743 he removed with his family to New Milford, Connecticut, performing the journey on foot, and taking his shoemaker's tools with him. Here, in partnership with his brother, he engaged in mercantile business. In 1745 he was appointed surveyor of lands for the county in which he resided, a post for which his early attention to mathematics qualified him. Not long afterward he furnished the astronomical calculations for an almanac that was published in New York, and he continued this service for several years. Meanwhile, encouraged to this step by a judicious friend, he was devoting his leisure hours to the study of the law, and made such progress that he was admitted to the bar in 1754. In 1755 he was elected a representative of New Milford in the general assembly of Connecticut, and the same year he was appointed a justice of the peace. In 1759 he was made one of the judges of common pleas in Litchfield county. Two years later he removed to New Haven, where the same appointments were given him. In addition to this, he became treasurer of Yale college, from which, in 1765, he received the honorary degree of M. A. In 1766 he was appointed judge of the superior court of Connecticut, and in the same year was chosen a member of the upper house of the legislature. In the former office he continued twenty-three years; in the latter, nineteen. When the Revolutionary struggle began Roger Sherman devoted himself unreservedly to the patriot cause. In such a crisis he was obliged to be a leader. In August, 1774, he was elected a delegate to the Continental congress, and was present at its opening on 5 September following. Of this body he was one of the most active members. Without showing gifts of popular speech, he commanded respect for his knowledge, judgment, integrity, and devotion to duty. He served on many important committees, but the most decisive proof of the high esteem in which he was held is given in the fact that, with Adams, Franklin. Jefferson, and Livingston, he was appointed to prepare a draft of the Declaration of Independence, to which document he subsequently affixed his signature. Though a member of congress, he was at the same time in active service on the Connecticut committee of safety. In 1783 he was associated with Judge Richard Law in revising the statutes of the state, and in 1784 he was elected mayor of New Haven, which office he continued to hold until his death. He was chosen, in conjunction with Dr. Samuel Johnson and Oliver Ellsworth, a delegate to the convention of 1787 that was charged with the duty of framing a constitution for the United States. Documentary proof exists that quite a number of the propositions that he offered were incorporated in that instrument. In the debates of the Constitutional convention he bore a conspicuous part. He was also a member of the State convention of Connecticut that ratified the constitution, and was very influential in securing that result. A series of papers that he wrote under the signature of “Citizen” powerfully contributed to the same end. Immediately after the ratification of the constitution he was made a representative of Connecticut in congress, and took an active part in the discussions of that body. In February, 1790, the Quakers having presented an address to the house on the subject of “the licentious wickedness of the African trade for slaves,” Mr. Sherman supported its reference to a committee, and was successful in his efforts, though he was strongly opposed. He was promoted in 1791 to the senate, and died while holding this office. The career of Roger Sherman most happily illustrates the possibilities of American citizenship. Beginning life under the heaviest disadvantages, he rose to a career of ever-increasing usefulness, honor, and success. He was never removed from an office except by promotion or because of some legislative restriction. Thomas Jefferson spoke of him as “a man who never said a foolish thing”; and Nathaniel Macon declared that “he had more common sense than any man I have ever known.” In early life he united with the Congregational church in Stonington, and through his long career he remained a devout and practical Christian. Mr. Sherman was twice married, and among his descendants are Senators William M. Evarts and George F. Hoar. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 501-502.


SHIELDS, James (May 12, 1806--June 1, 1879), soldier, senator from Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri, A strict Republican party man, he had the courage to fight for a California as a free state. 

(W. H. Condon, Life of Major-General James Shields (1900)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 106-107:

SHIELDS, JAMES (May 12, 1806--June 1, 1879), soldier, senator from Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri, was born in Altmore, County Tyrone, Ireland, the son of Charles and Katherine (McDonnell) Shields. Trained in a hedge school and later in an academy and by a retired priest from Maynooth, he received a good classical education, supplemented by some teaching in tactics and swords play. Probably in 1822 he sailed by way of Liverpool for Quebec and was wrecked on the Scottish coast with only two other survivors. As a tutor, he earned a livelihood in Scotland until he obtained a berth on a merchantman and about 1826 arrived in New York harbor. He settled in Kaskaskia, Illinois, where he taught French, read law, fought in the Black Hawk War, and practised Democratic politics and law. In 1836 he was elected a member of the legislature. As state auditor, he helped correct the disordered finances of the state brought to the verge of bankruptcy by the panic and canal building, but not without sharp criticism in the Whig press. As a result of anonymous charges in the newspaper, traced to the Misses Todd and Jayne, later the wives of Abraham Lincoln and Lyman Trumbull, he challenged to a duel Lincoln, who shouldered some responsibility. The matter was compromised on explanations from the latter, and the principals became permanent friends. In 1843 Shields was named to the supreme court by Governor Thomas Ford, whose manuscript History of Illinois he edited and published later, in 1854. As a jurist, he was honest, industrious, and surprisingly detached in delivering decisions that were marked by common sense and some legal erudition. He was renamed by the legislature for a full term in 1845, but he resigned soon to accept President Polk's appointment to the commissionership of the general land office in Washington.

With the outbreak of the Mexican War he resigned and was commissioned brigadier-general of Illinois volunteers on July 1, 1846. At Cerro Gordo he was dangerously wounded, was brevetted a major-general, and cited by General Scott for his gallant conduct there. At Churubusco, after initial mistakes of some importance (Smith, post, pp. u5-17, 384), he led the charge of New York Irish and South Carolina volunteers that is commemorated in the painting in the national Capitol. In July 1848 his brigade was disbanded, and he returned to Kaskaskia and Belleville to build up his law practice, but he was soon appointed governor of Oregon Territory. This position he resigned immediately to accept an election to the federal Senate. A Whig Senate found a technicality in that he had not been a citizen the required number of years and declared his election void. He, however, was reelected for the same term and served from October 27, 1849, to March 3, 1855. Martial in carriage, scrupulously neat, urbane and courteous of manner, graceful and humorous in debate, he was well informed because of his ability, experiences, and his command of Latin, French, and Spanish. In temper he was sharp and somewhat arrogantly independent. Something of a demagogue, he was intentionally candid. A strict party man, he had the courage to disagree with fanatics on either side of the slavery issue and to fight for a free California, land grants for veterans, railroad construction, and agricultural education. In 1855 he was defeated for reelection by Lyman Trumbull in a legislature in deadlock between himself and Lincoln.

A Douglas appointee to distribute Sioux half-breed scrip, he went to Minnesota Territory, where he settled down on his land grant. He did much to stimulate an Irish movement into the region by organizing the townships of Shieldsville, Erin, Kilkenny, and Montgomery in Lesueur and Rice counties and by establishing with Alexander Faribault the town of Faribault. Elected to the federal Senate, on the admission of Minnesota, he drew the short term that expired March 3, 1859, and a Republican legislature failed to reelect him. He went to San Francisco, where in 1861 he married Mary Ann Carr, the daughter of an old friend in Armagh, Ireland, by whom he had three surviving children. Settled in Mazatlan, Mexico, as manager and part owner of a mine, he sold his interest and offered his services to Lincoln, when he learned that Fort Sumter had surrendered. Appointed as a brigadier-general of volunteers on August 19, 1861, he campaigned in the Shenandoah Valley, where he won recognition at Winchester and at Port Republic. He resigned his commission on March 28, 1863, and retired to San Francisco, where he was appointed a state railroad commissioner. In 1866, he was in Carrollton, Missouri. There he entered politics again, campaigning against the ''ironclad oath," losing an election to Congress when a canvassing board cast out the votes of two counties, and supporting the Liberal-Republican candidates of 1872. He lectured for religious, Irish, and charitable causes such as Southern relief during the cholera epidemic. Serving in the legislature, he promoted an act for a railroad commission to which he was afterward appointed. He was elected to fill out an unexpired term in the federal Senate from January 27, 1879, to March 3, 1879, but lack of health forced him to decline being a candidate for reelection. He died at Ottumwa, Iowa, while on a lecture tour, and was buried with simple Roman Catholic rites at St. Mary's Cemetery in Carrollton, Missouri, where in 1910 a colossal statue was erected to his n1ernory. In 1893 his statue was placed in Statuary Hall in the national Capitol by Illinois and, in 1914, Minnesota, at the insistence of the Grand Army of the Republic, raised a memorial in the state capitol.

[W. H. Condon, Life of Major-General James Shields (1900); H. A. Castle, "General James Shields," and John Ireland, "Address at the Unveiling of the Statue of General Shields," Minn. Historical Society Collections, volume XV (1915); New York Freeman's Journal and Catholic Register, May 4, 1861, June 7, 14, 1879, January 1, 1887; Journal of the American-Irish Historical Society, volume IX (1900), volume XIV (1915); Studies (Dublin), March 1932; W.W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota (1924), volume II; J. H. Smith, The War with Mexico (2 volumes, 1919); date of birth from statement concerning original family records in Castle, ante, p.711.]

R.J.P.


SHIELDS, Thomas, abolitionist leader, Acting Committee, the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1787

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, p. 92; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, p. 515)



SHINN, Asa (May 3, 1781-February 11, 1853), Methodist clergyman, one of the founders of the Methodist Protestant Church. At a General Conference of 1838 the slavery issue brought on an acrimonious debate in which Shinn took the anti-slavery view and defended that position in a speech of great power.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 110-111:

SHINN, ASA (May 3, 1781-February 11, 1853), Methodist clergyman, one of the founders of the Methodist Protestant Church, was born in New Jersey, the son of Jonathan and Mary (Clark) Shinn, and a descendant of John Shinn, who emigrated from England to America and was in New Jersey as early as 1680. Both of Asa's parents were Quakers. When he was seven years of age they moved to one of the inland counties of Virginia, and seven years later to what is now Harrison County, West Virginia. In these frontier communities the boy's only schooling was received from a former sailor who wandered through the country conducting schools as opportunity afforded. In 1798, under the preaching of Reverend Robert Manly, a Methodist circuit rider, Shinn professed conversion and three years later, influenced by the scarcity of ministers in the West, he joined the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was assigned to the Redstone circuit in southwestern Pennsylvania. In 1803 he was transferred to the Western Conference, which included all the territory west of the Alleghany Mountains. Here he remained until 1807, serving circuits in western Virginia, southern Ohio, and Kentucky. He returned to the Baltimore Conference in 1807 and about the same time married Phebe Barnes of western Virginia, by whom he had two sons and two daughters. Until 1816, when he was forced by mental derangement temporarily to discontinue his work, he had charge of circuits in Maryland and the District of Columbia.

During the course of his life Shinn suffered four periods of insanity, resulting from a fracture of the skull in his boyhood. The first three of these, in 1816, 1820, and 1828, were of short duration; from the last, in 1843, he never recovered, and he died in an asylum for the insane at Brattleboro, Vermont. Except for the short periods of inactivity caused by his ailment, Shinn continued to hold important circuits and stations in the Baltimore Conference until his transfer to the Pittsburgh Conference in 1825, where he served as presiding elder of the Pittsburgh district and as minister at Washington, Pennsylvania.

In 1824 he became greatly interested in the agitation for certain reforms in the government of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The reformers established a monthly paper in 1824 called The Mutual Rights of Ministers and Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, for which Shinn became one of the most voluminous and effective contributors. He also wrote several controversial pamphlets, among them, An Appeal to the Good Sense of the Citizens of the United States (1826), A Finishing Stroke to the High Claims of Ecclesiastical Sovereignty (1827). When the Baltimore Conference in 1827 expelled a minister for circulating Mutual Rights, Shinn became active in his defense. Other reformers were also suspended. At the General Conference of 1828 the great issue was the appeal of these persons for restoration. Shinn presented their case in an eloquent speech which won the admiration even of his opponents, and had the vote been taken at once, the reformers would probably have been reinstated; but it was delayed until the next day and their cause was defeated.

Convinced that all chance at conciliation was past, the leading reformers now proceeded to form separate congregations and Conferences, and on November 2, 1830, a convention of delegates from the disaffected groups met in the city of Baltimore and there formed the Methodist Protestant Church. Shinn took a leading part in its organization, was chosen president of the Ohio Conference when it was constituted, and in 1833, was elected president of the Pittsburgh Conference. From 1834 to 1836 he was in Baltimore, editing with Nicholas Snethen [q.v.], the new denominational paper, Mutual Rights and Methodist Protestant, and thereafter for the next ten years held important pulpits in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Allegheny City. At the General Conference of 1838 the slavery issue brought on an acrimonious debate in which Shinn took the anti-slavery view and defended that position in a speech of great power.

He was the author of two considerable books on theology. The first, published in 1812, was entitled An Essay on the Plan of Salvation; the second, On the Benevolence and Rectitude of the Supreme Being, appeared in 1840. He possessed a logical mind and was particularly impressive in public address. After the death of his first wife he married Mary Bennington (Wrenshall) Gibson, widow of Woolman Gibson, and daughter of John Wrenshall, by whom he had one son.

[J. H. Shinn, The History of the Shinn Family in Europe and America (1903); E. J. Drinkhouse, History of Methodist Reform (1899); W. B. Sprague, Annals American Pulpit, volume VII (1859); A.H. Bassett, A Concise History of the Methodist Protestant Church (2nd ed.,1882); R. F. Shinn, A Tribute to Our Fathers (1853); Matthew Simpson, Cyclopedia of Methodism (1878); Daily Commercial Journal (Pittsburgh), February 18, 1853.]

W.W.S.


SHIPHERD, John Jay (March 28, 1802- September 16, 1844), home missionary, one of the founders of Oberlin College.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 111-112:

SHIPHERD, JOHN JAY (March 28, 1802- September 16, 1844), home missionary, one of the founders of Oberlin College, was born near Granville, New York, the third son of Zebulon Rudd and Betsy (Bull) Shipherd. His father, a successful lawyer, served for many years as a trustee of Middlebury College and, for one term (1813- 15), as a Federalist member of Congress. When John was seventeen "the Lord mercifully revealed Himself to his mind" and he determined to become a minister. He was at that time attending Pawlet Academy, Pawlet, Vermont, from which he soon transferred to Cambridge Academy, Cambridge, New York He planned to complete his education at Middlebury College, but an accidental dose of poison so weakened his eyes and voice and so undermined his health generally that he was forced, for a time, to abandon the prospect of further study. After two years spent in unsuccessful ventures in the marble and whetstone industries at Vergennes, Vermont, however, he entered the household of Reverend Josiah Hopkins at New Haven, Vermont, to prepare for ordination. Here he spent a year and a half, depending largely upon the eyes of others for his reading.

He was ordained as an evangelist by a Congregational council at Blanton, Vermont, October 3, 1827, but after preaching for a year at Shelburn, in the autumn of 1828 he accepted the general agency of the Vermont Sabbath School Union and removed to Middlebury. For the next two years he traveled about the state, founding and inspecting Sunday schools; he also published a semi-annual, The Sabbath School Guide, and a tiny juvenile religious magazine, The Youth's Herald. Middlebury College granted him an honorary master's degree in 1830: Already, however, he had decided to go as a home missionary " to Mississippi's vast valley."

Accordingly, in the autumn of 1830, without waiting to secure an appointment, he went West, stopping at Rochester, New York, to receive the advice and blessing of Charles G. Finney [q.v.]. Upon reaching Cleveland he was promptly assigned to the missionary pastorate of a Plan-of Union Presbyterian church in the village of Elyria, Lorain County, Ohio. His experience here was checkered but generally disappointing to him, and in the summer of 1832, in collaboration with a classmate of Pawlet days, Philo P. Stewart [q.v.], he formulated a scheme for the evangelization of the West through a Christian colony and manual-labor school to be founded in the wilderness, far from the polluting influence of established communities. The new enterprise was christened Oberlin in honor of the philanthropist and educator, Jean Frederic Oberlin, a life of whom had recently been published by the American Sunday School Union. In 1832-33 Shipherd traveled through New York and New England, securing money, teachers, pious settlers, and title to a tract of land nine miles from Elyria; while Stewart and other associates forwarded the enterprise on the spot. The first settlement was made in April 1833. Shipherd returned in September and presided at the opening of the preparatory and "infant" departments of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute, December 3, 1833. A full staff of teachers was secured the following spring, and in the fall, the first students of college grade appeared. The initial report of the Institute, published in December 1834, was optimistic, but Shipherd knew that the funds available were insufficient to guarantee the long continuance of the enterprise.

The rebellion of the students at Lane Seminary, near Cincinnati, furnished the means of saving Oberlin. Lane, also, had been founded to promote the evangelization of the West and for this purpose had been liberally endowed by Arthur and Lewis Tappan [qq.v.]. Under the leadership of Theodore Weld [q.v.] the students had beg un the discussion of the slavery question and formed an anti-slavery society. The trustees, mostly conservative Cincinnati business men, prohibited further debate of this dangerous issue and the students walked out, almost to a man. Shipherd read of the situation in the religious periodicals and hastened to Cincinnati, where he discussed with the "rebels" and Reverend Asa Mahan [q.v.], one of the friendly minority of the Lane trustees, the possibility of their coming to Oberlin. His proposition was favorably received, but final acceptance was conditioned upon securing the support of the Tappans and the appointment of Charles G. Finney to teach theology at Oberlin. Shipherd and Mahan therefore proceeded to New York, where they won over the Tappans and persuaded Finney to accept the appointment if the Oberlin trustees would agree to leave the internal administration of the school exclusively to the faculty. Shipherd persuaded his reluctant associates to accept this condition. In the spring of 1835 Mahan became president of the Institute and the Lane "rebels" arrived to study theology under Finney in the newly founded theological department. Oberlin was now firmly established as a center of reform and revival piety.

After 1835, the leadership having passed to Finney and Mahan, Shipherd turned to the founding of other colonies and schools. His Grand River Seminary in Michigan, announced in 1836, and his Lagrange Collegiate Institute, proposed in the spring of 1838, were stillborn. In 1844 he led personally the little group ot people who established the colony and school at Olivet in Michigan. There, early in the autumn of the same year, he died. In 1824 he had married Esther Raymond of Ballston, New York, by whom he had a daughter who died in infancy, and six sons.

[Letters and other manuscripts in the possession of Oberlin College and privately owned; D. L. Leonard, The Story of Oberlin (copyright 1808); New York Evangelist, June 18, 1831, January 30, 1832, September 7, 1833, March 21, July 18, 1835, September 17, 1836, March 31, April 22, 1837; Ohio Observer (Hudson, Ohio), June 12, July 17, 1834, February 5, July 9, 1835; W. B. Williams, A History of Olivet College (1901), and "Two Early Efforts to Found Colleges in Mich.," Historical Collection ... Mich. Pioneer and Historical Society, volume XXX (1906); R. S. Fletcher, "Oberlin, 1833- 1866," in MS.]

R. S. F.


SHIPLEY, Judith, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), Boston, Massachusetts

(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. 61)


SHIPLEY, Simon B., Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1840-1844.


SHIPLEY, Simon G., Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1835-40.


SHIPLEY, Thomas, 1784-1836, Philadelphia, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist.  Manager and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Member of the Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania.  Officer and member of the Board of Education in the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and for Improving the Condition of the African Race.  Member of the Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania.  He assisted slaves in court cases, aiding some to obtain their freedom.  Member of the Anti-Slavery Convention, joining in 1833.  Prominent officer in the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society.  Shipley worked diligently with leaders of the abolition movement, including William Lloyd Garrison, Lewis Tappan, James Birney, Beriah Green, William Jay and others.  He was threatened by pro-slavery mobs.  Shipley was elected President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society shortly before his death in 1831.  John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem in his honor, “To the Memory of Thomas Shipley.” 

(Drake, 1950, pp. 118, 130, 140; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 24, 30, 275, 278; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)


SHOEMAKER, Jacob, Jr., abolitionist, founding member, Electing Committee, Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1787

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 92, 102; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, p. 515; Nathan, 1991)


SHORT, William, 1759-1849, Pennsylvania, diplomat, American Friends (Quaker), anti-slavery activist.  Vice-President, American Colonization Society (ACS), 1840-41.  Supported the ACS with a $10,000 bequest. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 516; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 128; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 126, 243)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 516:

SHORT, William, diplomatist, born in Spring Garden, Virginia, 30 September, 1759; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 5 December, 1849. He was educated at William and Mary college, and at an early age was chosen a member of the executive council of Virginia. When Thomas Jefferson was appointed minister to France in 1785, Short accompanied him as secretary of legation, and after his departure was made charge d’affaires on 26 September, 1789, his commission being the first one that was signed by General Washington as president, but he was not regularly commissioned till 20 April, 1790. He was transferred to the Hague as minister-resident on 16 January, 1792. On 19 December of the same year he left for Madrid, having been appointed on 18 March commissioner plenipotentiary with William Carmichael to treat with the Spanish government concerning the Florida and Mississippi boundaries, the navigation of the Mississippi, commercial privileges, and other open questions. When Carmichael, who was chargé d’affaires, left for home Short was commissioned as minister-resident, 28 May, 1794, with power, as sole commissioner, to conclude the negotiations, which resulted in the treaty of friendship, commerce, and boundaries that was signed on 27 October, 1795. He left for Paris three days later, and returned to the United States soon afterward. His state papers, especially those relating to the Spanish negotiations, are marked by ability and research. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


SHOTWELL, William, New York, New York, abolitionist.  American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Treasurer, 1841-46, Executive Committee, 1846-47.


SIGOURNEY, Lydia Huntley, 1791-1865, Hartford, Connecticut, author.  Outspoken supporter of colonization and supporter of the American Colonization Society.  Leader of Hartford Female African Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 525; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 155; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 127)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 525:

SIGOURNEY, Lydia Huntley, author, born in Norwich, Connecticut, 1 September, 1791; died in Hartford, Connecticut, 10 June, 1865. She was the daughter of Ezekiel Huntley, a soldier of the Revolution. She read at the age of three, and at seven wrote simple verses. After receiving a superior education at Norwich and Hartford, she taught for five years a select class of young ladies in the latter city. In 1815, at the suggestion and under the patronage of Daniel Wadsworth, she published her first volume, “Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.” In 1819 she became the wife of Charles Sigourney, a Hartford merchant of literary and artistic tastes. Without neglecting her domestic duties, she thenceforth devoted her leisure to literature, at first to gratify her own inclinations and subsequently, after her husband had lost the greater part of his fortune, to add to her income. She soon attained a reputation that secured for her books a ready sale. In her posthumous “Letters of Life” (1866) she enumerates forty-six distinct works, wholly or partially from her pen, besides more than 2,000 articles in prose and verse that she had contributed to nearly 300 periodicals. Several of her books also attained a wide circulation in England, and they were also much read on the continent. She received from the queen of the French a handsome diamond bracelet as a token of that sovereign's esteem. Her poetry is not of the highest order. It portrays in graceful and often felicitous language the emotions and sympathies of the heart, rather than the higher conceptions of the intellect. Her prose is graceful and elegant, and is modelled to a great extent on that of Addison and the Aikins, who, in her youth, were regarded as the standards of polite literature. All her writings were penned in the interest of a pure morality, and many of them were decidedly religious. Perhaps no American writer has been more frequently called upon for gratuitous occasional poems of all kinds. To these requests she generally acceded, and often greatly to her own inconvenience. But it was not only through her literary labors that Mrs. Sigourney became known. Her whole life was one of active and earnest philanthropy. The poor, the sick, the deaf-mute, the blind, the idiot, the slave, and the convict were the objects of her constant care and benefaction. Her pensioners were numerous, and not one of them was ever forgotten. During her early married life, she economized in her own wardrobe and personal luxuries that she might be able to relieve the needy, while later in her career she saved all that was not absolutely needed for home comforts and expenses for the same purpose. Her character and worth were highly appreciated in the city that for more than fifty years was her home. She never left it after her marriage, except when in 1840 she visited Europe, a record of which journey she published in “Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands” (Boston, 1842). During her residence abroad two volumes of her poems were issued in London. Besides the foregoing and an edition of poetical selections from her writings, illustrated by Felix O. C. Darley (Philadelphia, 1848), her books include “Traits of the Aborigines of America,” a poem (Hartford, 1822); “Sketch of Connecticut Forty Years Since” (1824); “Letters to Young Ladies” (New York, 1833; 20th ed., 1853; at least five London eds.); “Letters to Mothers” (1838; several London eds.); “Pocahontas, and other Poems” (1841); “Scenes in My Native Land” (Boston, 1844); “Voice of Flowers” (Hartford, 1845); “Weeping Willow” (1846); “Water-Drops,” a plea for temperance (New York, 1847); “Whisper to a Bride” (Hartford, 1849); “Letters to My Pupils” (New York, 1850); “Olive Leaves” (1851; London, 1853); “The Faded Hope,” a memorial of her only son, who died at the age of nineteen (1852); “Past Meridian” (1854); “Lucy Howard's Journal” (1857); “The Daily Counsellor,” a volume of poetry (Hartford, 1858); “Gleanings,” from her poetical writings (1860); and “The Man of Uz, and other Poems” (1862).  Appletons’ Cylocpædia of American Biography, 1888.


SILLIMAN, Benjamin, 1779-1864, Connecticut, educator, scientist, opponent of slavery.  Member and active supporter of the Connecticut Society of the American Colonization Society.  Supported Kansas Free State movement. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 528-529; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p 160.; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 126)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 528-529:

SILLIMAN, Benjamin, scientist, born in North  Stratford (now Trumbull), Connecticut, 8 August, 1779;  died in New Haven, Connecticut, 24 November, 1864, was graduated at Yale in 1796, and, after spending a year at  home, taught at Wethersfield, Connecticut. In 1798 be returned to New Haven, where he began the study of law with Simeon Baldwin, and in 1799 was appointed tutor at Yale, which place he held until he was admitted to the bar in 1802.  Natural science was at that time beginning to attract the attention of educators, and, at the solicitation of President Dwight, he abandoned the profession of law and devoted himself to science. In September, 1802, he was chosen professor of chemistry and natural history at Yale, with permission to qualify himself for teaching these branches. Procuring a list of books from Prof. John MacLean (q. v.), of Princeton, he proceeded to Philadelphia, where, during two winters, he studied chemistry under Prof. James Woodhouse, then professor of chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania. In 1804 he delivered a partial course of lectures on chemistry, and during the following year he gave a complete course. He went abroad in March, 1805, to procure scientific books and apparatus, and spent about a year in study in Edinburgh and London, also visiting the continent and making the acquaintance of distinguished men of science. On his return he devoted himself to the duties of his chair, which included chemistry, mineralogy, and geology, until 1853, when he was made professor emeritus, but, at the special request of his colleagues, continued his lectures on geology until 1855, when he was succeeded by his son-in-law, James D. Dana. While in Edinburgh he became interested in the discussions, then at their height, between the Wernerians and Huttonians, and attended lectures on geology; and on his return he began a study of the mineral structure of the vicinity of New Haven. About 1808 he persuaded  the corporation of Yale to purchase the cabinet of  minerals of Benjamin D. Perkins, and a few years  later he secured the loan of the magnificent collection of George Gibbs (q. v.), which in 1825 became the property of the college. His scientific work, which was extensive, began with the examination in 1807 of the meteor that fell near Weston, Connecticut. He procured fragments, of which he made a chemical analysis, and he wrote the earliest and best authenticated account of the fall of a meteor in America. In 1811 he began an extended course of experiments with the oxy-hydric or compound blow-pipe that was invented by Robert Hare, and he succeeded in melting many of the most refractory minerals, notably those containing alkalies and alkaline earths, the greater part of which had never been reduced before. After Sir Humphry Davy's discovery of the metallic bases of the alkalies, Prof. Silliman repeated the experiments and obtained for the first time in this country the metals sodium and potassium. In 1822, while engaged in a series of observations on the action of a powerful voltaic battery that he had made, similar to Dr. Hare's “deflagrator,” he noticed that the charcoal points of the negative pole increased in size toward the positive pole, and, on further examination, he found that there was a corresponding cavity on the point of the latter. He inferred, therefore, that an actual transfer of the matter of the charcoal points from one to another took place, and, on careful examination, he found that the charcoal had been fused. This fact of the fusion of the carbon in the voltaic arc was long disputed in Europe, but is now universally accepted. In 1830 he explored Wyoming valley and its coal-formations, examining about one hundred mines and localities of mines; in 1832-'3 he was engaged under a commission from the secretary of the treasury in a scientific examination on the subject of the culture and manufacture of sugar, and in 1836 he made a tour of investigation among the gold-mines of Virginia, His popular lectures began in 1808 in New Haven, where he delivered a course in chemistry. He delivered his first course in Hartford in 1834, and in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the autumn of that year. During the years that followed he lectured in Salem, Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, St. Louis, New Orleans, and elsewhere in the United States. In 1838 he opened the Lowell institute in Boston with a course of lectures on geology, and in the three following years he lectured there on chemistry. This series was without doubt the most brilliant of the kind was ever delivered in this country, and its influence in developing an interest in the growing science was very great. Many of the present leaders in science trace their first inspiration to these popular expositions of Prof. Silliman. Through his influence in 1830 the historical paintings of Colonel John Trumbull, and the building in which they were formerly deposited (now the college treasury), were procured for Yale. He opposed slavery in all its forms. Among the various colonies sent out from the eastern states during the Kansas troubles was one that was organized in New Haven, and, at a meeting held prior to its departure in April, 1856, the discovery was made that the party was unprovided with rifles. A subscription was proposed at once, and Prof. Silliman spoke in favor of it. This insignificant action was soon noised abroad, and, owing to the strong feeling between the partisans of slavery and those opposed to it, the matter was discussed in the U. S. senate. During the civil war he was a firm supporter of President Lincoln, and exerted his influence toward the abolition of slavery. The degree of M. D. was conferred on him by Bowdoin in 1818, and that of LL. D. by Middlebury in 1826. Prof. Silliman was chosen first president in 1840 of the American association of geologists and naturalists, which has since grown into the American association for the advancement of science, and he was one of the corporate members the named by congress in the formation of the National academy of sciences in 1863. Besides his connection with other societies in this country and abroad, he was corresponding member of the Geological societies of Great Britain and France. In 1818 he founded the “American Journal of Science,” which he conducted as sole editor until 1838, and as senior editor until 1846, when he transferred the journal to his son and to James D. Dana. This journal is now the oldest scientific paper in the United States. Prof. Silliman edited three editions of William Henry's “Elements of Chemistry” (Boston, 1808-'14), also three editions of Robert Bakewell's “Introduction to Geology” (New Haven, 1829, 1833, and 1839), and was the author of “Journals of Travels in England, Holland, and Scotland” (New York, 1810); “A Short Tour between Hartford and Quebec in the Autumn of 1819” (1820); “Elements of Chemistry in the Order of Lectures given in Yale College” (2 vols., New Haven, 1830-'1); “Consistency of Discoveries of Modern Geology with the Sacred History of the Creation and Deluge” (London, 1837); and “Narrative of a Visit to Europe in 1851” (2 vols., 1853). He was called by Edward Everett the “Nestor of American Science.” Prof. Silliman was married twice. His first wife was Harriet Trumbull, the daughter of the second Governor Jonathan Trumbull. One of his daughters married Prof. Oliver P. Hubbard, and another Prof. James D. Dana. A bronze statue of Prof. Silliman was erected on the Yale grounds in front of Farnam college in 1884. See “Life of Benjamin Silliman,” by George P. Fisher (2 vols., New York, 1866). Appletons’ Cylocpædia of American Biography, 1888.


SIMMONS, Anthony, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1841-1841.


SIMMONS, George Frederick, 1814-1855, Unitarian clergyman, active opponent of slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 532). 

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 532:

SIMMONS, George Frederick, clergyman, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 24 March, 1814; died in Concord, Massachusetts, 5 September, 1855. He was graduated at Harvard in 1832, and, after being employed as a private tutor, prepared for the ministry at Cambridge divinity-school, where he completed his course in 1838. He was ordained the same year as an evangelist of the Unitarian denomination, and at once went to Mobile, Alabama, where he began his ministry. Owing to his decided opposition to slavery, he remained there only until 1840, when he was obliged to fly for his life, and barely escaped the fury of a mob. In November, 1841, he was ordained pastor of the Unitarian church at Waltham, Massachusetts. Meantime he had become deeply interested in certain theological questions which he felt he could not solve while engaged in pastoral work, and so resigned in the spring of 1843 and sailed for Europe, where he remained until October, 1845, spending most of the time at the University of Berlin, and being brought much in contact with the German historian, Neander. In February, 1848, he was called to Springfield, Massachusetts, as the successor of Dr. William B. O. Peabody. Here, while he was greatly admired by part of his congregation, others regarded him with less favor, and in 1851 he was compelled to resign, after preaching two sermons on a riotous assault that had been made in the town on George Thompson, the English anti-slavery apostle. In January, 1854, he was installed pastor of a church at Albany, New York, but in the summer of 1855 he was attacked by typhus fever, from the effects of which he never rallied. Mr. Simmons was distinguished by an acutely philosophical mind, a strong sense of right, and a thoughtful and reverent spirit. “I knew him well,” said his classmate, Samuel Osgood, “loved him much, and respected him even more.” He was retiring in his habits, and his somewhat unsocial nature was no doubt an obstacle in the way of his exercising a proper influence on his flock. He published “Who was Jesus Christ?” a tract (Boston, 1839); “Two Sermons on the Kind Treatment and on the Emancipation of Slaves, preached at Mobile, with a Prefatory Statement” (1840); “A Letter to the So-Called ‘Boston Churches’” (1846); “The Trinity,” a lecture (1849); “Public Spirit and Mobs,” two sermons delivered at Springfield on the Sunday after the Thompson riot (1851); and “Faith in Christ the Condition of Salvation” (1854). Six of his sermons were published in one volume soon after his death (Boston, 1855). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 532.


SIMMONS, William, charter member of the American Colonization society, Washington, DC, December 1816. 

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


SIMMS, Thomas M.


SIMS, James, New York, abolitionist leader

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


SIMPSON, Matthew (June 21, 1811 June 18, 1884), bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, his frank and forceful utterances on public questions, especially those relating to slavery, attracted wide attention and brought him to the favorable notice of Salmon P. Chase.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 181-182:

SIMPSON, MATTHEW (June 21, 1811 June 18, 1884), bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was the son of James Simpson, who at the time of Matthew's birth was manufacturing weaver's reeds and running a store in Cadiz; Ohio, of which town he had been one of the first settlers. His widowed mother ha d migrated with her family from Ireland to the United States in 1793 and settled in Huntington County, Pennsylvania, whence her so ns later moved westward. James died when Matthew, the youngest of three children, was a year old, and the latter was brought up by his mother, Sarah, a native of New Jersey, daughter of Jeremiah Tingley. He had little schooling, but, naturally inclined to books, mastered with practically no other aid the ordinary school subjects, German, and Latin; acquired so me knowledge of Greek during a summer term at an academy in Cadiz; and spent two n1onths at Madison College, Unionville, Pennsylvania, being unable financially to stay longer. He also learned something of the printing business in the office of an uncle who was editor of the county paper, of the law by frequenting. the court of which another uncle, Matthew Simpson, was a judge, and of public affairs from the same uncle, who was for ten years a member of the Ohio Senate. He supported himself by reed-making, by copying in the office of the county court, of which a third uncle was clerk, and by teaching. In 1830 he began the study of medicine under Dr. James McBean of Cadiz and after three years qualified as a practitioner.

In the meantime, having been reared under strong Methodist influences, he had become active in religious work and had been licensed to preach. Deciding at length to devote himself to the ministry, he was received into the Pittsburgh Conference on trial in 1834, and in 1836 admitted into full connection. On November 3 of the preceding year he had married Ellen Holmes Verner, daughter of James Verner of Pittsburgh. On the Cadiz circuit, in the neighborhood where he had been reared, a tall, plain-faced, somewhat ungainly and diffident young man, he began a career of swiftly increasing responsibility and prominence which culminated in his being the best known and most influential Methodist of his day in the United States, a counselor of statesmen, and a public speaker of international reputation. His promise was soon recognized and after a year on the Cadiz circuit he was stationed at Pittsburgh (1835-36), and then at Williamsport (Monongahela). Elected professor of natural sciences in Allegheny College in 1837, he entered the educational field and in 1839 became president of Indiana Asbury University, now De Pauw, Greencastle, Ind., chartered in 1837. During the nine years he served in this capacity he did valuable pioneer work in the development of the institution. Invitations to the presidency of Northwestern University, Dickinson College, and Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, were later declined.

As a member of the General Conferences of 1844 and 1848 he became prominent in the deliberations of his denomination. The General Conference of 1848 elected him editor of the Western Christian Advocate. Through this medium his frank and forceful utterances on public questions, especially those relating to slavery, attracted wide attention and brought him to the favorable notice of Salmon P. Chase. A delegate to the General Conference of 1852, he was by that body elected bishop. His patriotism was as deep and sincere as his religious convictions and, during the Civil War he was a tower of strength for the Union cause. Both his knowledge and his oratorical powers were employed in behalf of the Union, and his address on "The Future of Our Country," delivered in many places, had great effect on large audiences. Already known to Secretary Chase, he soon stood high in the esteem of Secretary Stanton, and was consulted by both Stanton and Lincoln. He preached a notable sermon in the House of Representatives the day after Lincoln's second inauguration and delivered the eulogy at his burial in Springfield, Illinois. His episcopal residence was first Pittsburgh, later Evanston, Illinois, and finally Philadelphia, but his duties carried him all over the United States, to Mexico, Canada, and Europe. In 1857 he was a delegate to the British Wesleyan Conference, Liverpool, attended the Conference of the Evangelical Alliance at Berlin, and visited the Holy Land. In 1870 and again in 1875 he made official visits to Europe, and in 1881 he delivered the opening sermon at the Ecumenical Methodist Conference, London. His address in Exeter Hall at a meeting in commemoration of President Garfield, presided over by James Russell Lowell, evoked an unusual response from an audience of three thousand, the most of whom were English.

The high place which he held both officially and in popular esteem was due to the character of the man himself, to a well balanced if not brilliant endowment, and particularly to his extraordinary power over audiences. He was not preeminent as a theologian, as a scholar, or as an innovator, but he was well informed and combined conservatism, open-mindedness, practical wisdom, ability to discern the adjustment conditions called for, and unadulterated religious devotion in an exceptional degree. While remaining strictly orthodox, he was sympathetic toward science and in general progressive. He early favored higher education for Methodist ministers, and was influential in the movement to secure lay representation in the General Conference. Judged by the effect upon the hearers, few public speakers of the day were his equal. Having remarkable facility of expression and an imagination of wide sweep, he took great subjects and portrayed them on a big canvas with a fervid evangelical earnestness. His aim was not to instruct but to persuade. Thoroughly sincere, he felt profoundly the truths which he expounded, so that his preaching had in it the note of testimony. People believed in him and surrendered themselves to him. Such was his power over them that frequently large numbers rose to their feet, clapped their hands, laughed, or wept. Too busy with many things for much literary work, he nevertheless wrote A Hundred Years of Methodism (1876) and edited the Cyclopaedia of Methodism (1878). His Lectures on Preaching Delivered before the Theological Department of Yale College was published in 1879. After his death Sermons (1885), from shorthand reports by G. R. Crooks, appeared.

[H. A. Simpson, Early Records of the Simpson Families (1927); Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the M. E. Church (1884); E. A. Smith, Allegheny-A Century of Education, 1815-1915 (1916); G. R. Crooks, The Life of Bishop Matthew Simpson (1890); E. M. Wood, The Peerless Orator (1909); C. T. Wilson, Matthew Simpson (1929); National Magazine, October 1855; Methodist Quarterly Review, January 1885; Zion's Herald and Western Christian Advocate, June 25, 1884. Many of Simpson's MSS. have been deposited in the Library of Congress]

H.E.S.


SINGLETON, Benjamin “Pap,” 1809-1900, African American, escaped slave, abolitionist, businessman, community leader.  Active in the Underground Railroad.  Singleton organized migration of Black colonists, called “Exodusters,” to found settlements in Kansas in 1879-1880. 

(Entz, Gary R. “Benjamin ‘Pap’ Singleton: Father of the Kansas Exodus.” In Portraits of African-American Life Since 1865, ed. By Nina Mjagkij. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2003.  Entz, Gary R. “Image and Reality on the Kansas Prairie: ‘Pap’ Singleton’s Cherokee County Colony.” Kansas History, 19 (summer 1996): 124-139.


SIPKINS, Henry, 1788-1838, African American, writer, orator, community activist.  Wrote pamphlet, “An Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade,” in 1809. 

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. xii-xiii, 276-295)


SISSON, Joseph, Jr., Pawtucket, Rhode Island, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-1842, 1846-1847.



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.