N-P: Newhall through Porter

See below for annotated biographies of Liberty Party leaders and members. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

NEWHALL, Benjamin F., 1802-1863, abolitionist. Member, Massachusetts House of Representatives, 1842-1843. Member, Liberty and Free Soil Parties. Active in Underground Railroad.



PECK, Sheldon, 1797-1869, radical abolitionist, social reformer, advocate for women’s rights, temperance, racial equality, education, pacifism. Called for immediate end to slavery. Agent for abolitionist newspaper, Western Citizen. Delegate for the Liberty Party.



PENNEL, Abram, officer Liberty party, member of the National Committee, to collect funds, employ agents, call conventions, and transact other business competent to such a committee.



PENNINGTON, James William Charles, 1807-1870, African American, American Missionary Association, fugitive slave, abolitionist, orator, clergyman. Member of the Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Published The Fugitive Blacksmith in London in 1844. One of the first African American students to attend Yale University. Served as a delegate to the Second World Conference on Slavery in London. Active in the Amistad slave case. Recruited African American troops for the Union Army.

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 330-334; Mabee, 1970, pp. 65, 100, 101, 140, 194, 203, 269, 338, 339, 413n1; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 52, 73, 166, 413-414; Sinha, 2016, p. 467; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 2, p. 441; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 17, p. 300; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).



PHILLIPS, Wendell, 1811-1884, lawyer, orator, reformer, abolitionist leader, Native American advocate. Member of the Executive Committee, 1842-1864, and Recording Secretary, 1845-1864, of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Called “abolition’s golden trumpet.” Counseler, 1840-1843, of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Advocate of Free Produce movement. Liberty Party candidate for alderman in Boston.

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 182, 186, 273, 340; Filler, 1960, pp. 39, 42, 45, 59, 80, 94, 130, 138, 140, 183, 204, 206, 214, 275; Hofstadter, 1948; Irving, 1973; Mabee, 1970, pp. 72, 86, 105, 109, 116, 123, 124, 136, 165, 169, 173, 180, 193, 200, 243, 248, 261, 262, 269, 271, 278, 279, 286, 289, 295, 301, 309, 316, 337, 364, 369; Pease, 1965, pp. 339, 459-479; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 50, 54, 56, 169, 309, 399, 476, 602-605; Sinha, 2016, p. 467; Stewart, 1998; Yellin, 1994, pp. 35, 82, 86, 260, 306, 308n, 309-311, 311n, 333; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 759-762; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 2, p. 546; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 17, p. 454; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 314-315; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Vol. 2, pp. 529-531; Bartlett, Irving H. Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961; Sherwin, Oscar. Profit of Liberty: The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips. New York: Bookman, 1958; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

PHILLIPS, Wendell, orator, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 29 November, 1811; died there, 2 February, 1884, entered the Boston Latin-school in 1822, and was graduated at Harvard in 1831, in the same class with the historian J. Lothrop Motley. As a student he showed no particular interest in reforms; indeed, he bore the reputation of having defeated the first attempt to form a temperance society at Harvard. Handsome in person, cultivated in manners, and of a kindly and generous disposition, he was popular among his fellow-students, and was noted for his fine elocution and his skill in debate. His heart had responded to Webster's fiery denunciation at Plymouth in 1820 of that “work of hell, foul and dark,” the slave-trade. “If the pulpit be silent whenever or wherever there may be a sinner bloody with this guilt within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust.” He had taken a boy's part in honoring Lafayette, and in the midst of such associations he was unconsciously fitted for his career. In college his favorite study was history. He gave a year to the story of the English revolution of 1630, reading everything concerning it that he could find. With equal care he studied the period of George III., and Dutch history also so far as English literature enabled him to do so. His parents were of the Evangelical faith, and in one of the revivals of religion that followed the settlement of Dr. Lyman Beecher in Boston he became a convert, and he did not at any subsequent time depart from the faith of his fathers. While he denounced the churches for their complicity with slavery, he made no war upon their creeds. A fellow-student remembers well his earnest religiousness in college, and his “devoutness during morning and evening prayers which so many others attended only to save their credit with the government.” Though orthodox himself, he welcomed those of other faiths, and even of no faith, to the anti-slavery platform, resisting every attempt to divide the host upon sectarian or theological grounds. He entered the Harvard law-school for a term of three years, and in 1834 was admitted to the bar. He was well equipped for his profession in every respect save one, viz., that he appears to have had no special love for it and small ambition for success therein. “If,” he said to a friend, “clients do not come, I will throw myself heart and soul into some good cause and devote my life to it.” The clients would doubtless have come in no long time if he had chosen to wait for them, but the “good cause” presented its claims first, and was so fortunate as to win the devotion of his life. “The Liberator,” founded by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831, had already forced the slavery question upon public attention and created an agitation that the leaders of society were vainly endeavoring to suppress. It has been said, probably with truth, that the first person to interest Mr. Phillips in this subject was the lady—Miss Anne Terry Greene—who afterward became his wife and, as he himself has said, “his counsel, his guide, his inspiration,” during his whole subsequent life. Of all the young men of Boston at that period, there was hardly one whose social relations, education, and personal character better fitted him for success as an aspirant for such public honors as Massachusetts was accustomed to bestow upon the most gifted of her sons. But if ambitions or aspirations of this sort were ever indulged, he had the courage and the moral power to resist their appeals and devote himself to what he felt to be a righteous though popularly odious cause. The poet James Russell Lowell has embalmed the memory of his early self-abnegation in a sonnet, of which these lines form a part:

“He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide
The din of battle and of slaughter rose;
He saw God stand upon the weaker side
That sunk in seeming loss before its foes.
. . . . . Therefore he went
And joined him to the weaker part,
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content
So he could be nearer to God's heart,
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood
Through all the wide-spread veins of endless good.”

Looking from his office-window on 21 October, 1835, he saw the crowd of “gentlemen of property and standing” gathered in Washington and State Streets to break up a meeting of anti-slavery ladies and “snake out that infamous foreign scoundrel, Thompson,” and “bring him to the tar-kettle before dark”—the same Thompson of whom Lord Brougham said in the House of Lords at the time of the passage of the British Emancipation Act: “I rise to take the crown of this most glorious victory from every other head and place it upon his. He has done more than any other man to achieve it”; and of whom John Bright said: “I have always considered him the liberator of the slaves in the English colonies; for, without his commanding eloquence, made irresistible by the blessedness of his cause, I do not think all the other agencies then at work would have procured their freedom.” The mob, disappointed in its expectation of getting possession of the eloquent Englishman, “snaked out” Garrison instead, and Phillips saw him dragged through the streets, his person well-nigh denuded of clothing, and a rope around his waist ready to strangle him withal, from which fate he was rescued only by a desperate ruse of the mayor, who locked him up in the jail for safety. This spectacle deeply moved the young lawyer, who from that hour was an avowed Abolitionist, though he was not widely known as such until the martyrdom of Elijah P. Lovejoy (q. v.) in 1837 brought him into sudden prominence and revealed him to the country as an orator of the rarest gifts. The men then at the head of affairs in Boston were not disposed to make any open protest against this outrage upon the freedom of the press; but William Ellery Channing, the eminent preacher and writer, was resolved that the freedom-loving people of the city should have an opportunity to express their sentiments in an hour so fraught with danger to the cause of American liberty, and through his persistent efforts preparations were made for a public meeting, which assembled in Faneuil Hall on 8 December, 1837. It was the custom to hold such meetings in the evening, but there were threats of a mob, and this one on that account was appointed for a daylight hour

The hall was well filled, Jonathan Phillips was called to the chair, Dr. Channing made an impressive address, and resolutions written by him, fitly characterizing the outrage at Alton, were introduced. George S. Hillard, a popular young lawyer, followed in a serious and well-considered address. Thus far everything had gone smoothly; but now uprose James T. Austin, Attorney-General of the state, a member of Dr. Channing's congregation, but known to be bitterly opposed to his anti-slavery course. He eulogized the Alton murderers, comparing them with the patriots of the Revolution, and declared that Lovejoy had “died as the fool dieth.” Mr. Phillips was present, but with no expectation of speaking. There were those in the hall, however, who thought him the man best fitted to reply to Austin, and some of these urged the managers to call upon him, which they consented to do. As he stepped upon the platform, his manly beauty, dignity, and perfect self-possession won instant admiration. His opening sentences, uttered calmly but with deep feeling, revealed his power and raised expectation to the highest pitch. “When,” said he, “I heard the gentleman [Mr. Austin] lay down principles which placed the rioters, incendiaries, and murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up.”

These stinging words were greeted with applause, which showed that the young orator had but expressed the conviction and the feeling of the vast majority of the assembly, and that it was not in the power of the dissidents to defeat the purpose for which it had been convened. Freedom of speech was vindicated and mobocracy and assassination were rebuked in Faneuil hall, while the hated Abolitionists rejoiced that they had found a champion fitted to maintain their cause in any presence or emergency. From that hour to the end of the anti-slavery conflict the name of Wendell Phillips was everywhere, and among all classes, the accepted synonym of the highest type of American eloquence. In no half-way fashion did he espouse the anti-slavery cause. He accepted without reservation the doctrines that Garrison had formulated—viz.: slavery under all circumstances a sin; immediate emancipation a fundamental right and duty; colonization a delusion and a snare; the blood-guiltiness of the church in seeking apologies for slavery in the Bible, and the spuriousness of the statesmanship that sought to suppress agitation and held that liberty and slavery could be at peace under one and the same government. He did the work of a lecturing agent, obeying every call so far as his strength permitted, without any pecuniary reward. When he could command fifty or one hundred dollars for a lecture on any other subject, he would speak on slavery for nothing if the people consented to hear him. It is hardly possible to estimate the value to the anti-slavery cause of services so freely rendered by a man of such gifts and attainments, in the years when that cause was struggling under a weight of odium which not even his eloquence sufficed to overcome. As a speaker he was above all others the popular favorite, and his tact in gaining a hearing in spite of mob turbulence was extraordinary. His courage lifted him above fear of personal violence, while his wit illuminated his argument as the lightning illumines the heavens. The Abolitionists were proud of a defender who could disarm if he could not wholly conquer popular hostility, who might be safely pitted against any antagonist, and whose character could in no way be impeached. In every emergency of the cause he led the charge against its enemies, and never did he surrender a principle or consent to a compromise. His fidelity, no less than his eloquence, endeared him to his associates, while his winning manners charmed all who met him in social life. The strongest opponents of the anti-slavery cause felt the spell of his power and respected him for his shining example of integrity and devotion.

In the divisions among the Abolitionists, which took place in 1839-'40, he stood with Garrison in favor of recognizing the equal rights of women as members of the anti-slavery societies, in stern opposition to the organization by Abolitionists, as such, of a political party, and in resistance to the attempt to discredit and proscribe men upon the anti-slavery platform on account of their religious belief. In 1840 he represented the Massachusetts Abolitionists in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, where he pleaded in vain for the admission of the woman delegates sent from this country. He took a prominent part in discussing the provisions of the constitution of the United States relating to slavery, and after mature reflection came with Garrison to the conclusion that what were popularly called the “compromises” of that instrument were immoral and in no way binding upon the conscience; and in 1843-'4 he was conspicuous among those who led the anti-slavery societies in openly declaring this doctrine as thenceforth fundamental in their agitation. This was done, not upon the ground of non-resistance, or on account of any objection to government by force, but solely because it was held to be immoral to wield the power of civil government in any manner or degree for the support of slavery. There was no objection to political action, as such, but only to such political action as made voters and officers responsible for executing the provisions that made the national government the defender of slavery. Of course, those who took this ground were constrained to forego the ballot until the constitution could be amended, but there remained to them the moral power by which prophets and apostles “subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness”— the power of truth, of an unfettered press, and a free platform. And these instrumentalities they employed unflinchingly to expose the character of slavery, to show that the national government was its main support, and to expose the sin and folly, as they thought, of maintaining a Union so hampered and defiled. They accepted this as their clearly revealed duty, in spite of the odium thereby involved; and they went on in this course until the secession of the slave states brought them relief by investing the president with power to emancipate the slaves, under the rules of war.

Thenceforth Mr. Phillips devoted himself to the task of persuading the people of the loyal states that they were honorably released from every obligation, implied or supposed, to respect the “compromises” of the constitution, and that it was their right and duty to emancipate the slaves as a measure of war, and as a means of forming a regenerated and disenthralled Union. In this he was sustained not only by the whole body of Abolitionists of whatever school, but by a great multitude of people who had long stood aloof from their cause, and the effort was crowned with success in the president's proclamation of 1 January, 1863. From that moment the Civil War became an anti-slavery war as well as a war for national unity, and thousands of Abolitionists who had followed the lead of Phillips hastened to enter the ranks.

In all these conflicts Phillips stood shoulder to shoulder with Garrison, and was followed by a body of people, not indeed very numerous, but of wide moral influence. In 1864 Mr. Phillips opposed, while Garrison favored, the re-election of President Lincoln. In the spring of 1865, when Garrison advocated the dissolution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, on the ground that, slavery being abolished, there was no further need of such an association, Mr. Phillips successfully opposed him, contending that it should not disband until the Negro had gained the ballot. This division led to some unpleasant controversy of no long continuance. Mr. Phillips became president of the society in place of Mr. Garrison, and it was continued under his direction until 1870.

In the popular discussion of the measures for reconstructing the Union he took a prominent part, mainly for the purpose of guarding the rights of the Negro population, to whom he thus greatly endeared himself. He had previously won their gratitude by his zealous efforts in behalf of fugitive slaves, and to abolish distinctions of color in schools, in public conveyances, and in places of popular resort. He was at all times an earnest champion of temperance, and in later years the advocate of prohibition. He was also foremost among those claiming the ballot for woman. He advocated the rights of the Indians, and labored to reform the penal institutions of the country after the slavery question was settled. He espoused the cause of the labor reformers, and in 1870 accepted from them and from the Prohibitionists a nomination as candidate for governor. He advocated what has been called the “greenback” theory of finance. “The wages system,” he said, “demoralizes alike the hirer and the hired, cheats both, and enslaves the workingman,” while “the present system of finance robs labor, gorges capital, makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and turns a republic into an aristocracy of capital.” He lent his aid to the agitation for the redress of the wrongs of Ireland. In 1881 he delivered an address at the centennial anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard College, which was pronounced, on very high authority, “an oration of great power and beauty, full of strong thoughts and happy illustrations, not unworthy of any university platform or academic scholar,” though containing some sentiments from which a portion of his audience strongly dissented. As an avowed critic of public men and measures, speaking year after year, almost always extemporaneously, and often amidst scenes of the greatest excitement, nothing less than a miracle could have prevented him from sometimes falling into mistakes and doing injustice to opponents; but it is believed that there is nothing in his record to cast a shadow upon his reputation as one who consecrated great gifts and attainments to the welfare of his country. His last public address was delivered on 26 December, 1883, at the unveiling of Miss Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineau, at the Old South Church, in Boston. A little more than a month after this the great orator passed from earth. The event was followed by a memorial meeting in Faneuil Hall, and by appropriate action on the part of the legislature and the city government. After the funeral the remains were taken from the church to Faneuil Hall, whither they were followed by a vast multitude. Mr. Phillips published “The Constitution a Pro-Slavery Contract” (Boston, 1840) and “Review of Webster's 7th of March Speech” (1850). A collection of his speeches, letters, and lectures, revised by himself, was published in 1863 in Boston. Among his lectures on other than anti-slavery topics were “The Lost Arts,” “Toussaint l'Ouverture,” and “Daniel O'Connell.” His life has been written by George Lowell Austin (Boston, 1888). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 759-762.


Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 546-547:

PHILLIPS, WENDELL (November 29, 1811 February 2, 1884), orator and reformer, was the eighth child and fifth son of John and Sarah (Walley) Phillips, and traced his ancestry back to Reverend George Phillips [q.v.], who landed at Salem on the Arbella in June 1630. He inherited not only a superb physique and family traditions of a high order, but also ample wealth and an excellent social standing in Boston. At the Boston Latin School, to which he was sent in 1822, he won distinction in declamation; and later, at Harvard, where he graduated in the class of 1831, he showed ability as a debater and a student of history. He was obviously a patrician, animated by chivalric ideals and a spirit of noblesse oblige. After three years at the Harvard Law School, he was admitted to the Suffolk County bar and at once opened an office in Boston. Although he was never enthusiastic about his profession, he was able during his first two years of practice to pay his expenses, and he later enjoyed a fair clientage. He married, October 12, 1837, Ann Terry Greene, orphan daughter of Benjamin Greene, a wealthy Boston merchant. She soon became a nervous invalid, confined usually to her room and often to her bed, but their domestic life was very happy. They had no children.

Even before his marriage, Phillips had become identified with the anti-slavery movement, and his wife encouraged him in his abolitionist views. On March 26, 1837, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Lynn, he spoke for twenty minutes announcing his allegiance to the cause, but he at first took no part in the work of the organization. His real opportunity presented itself on December 8, 1837, at a public meeting held in Faneuil Hall to protest against the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy [q.v.], the abolitionist editor, at Alton, Illinois. Phillips listened in the audience while James T. Austin [q.v.], attorney general of the commonwealth, compared the assassins of Lovejoy to the Revolutionary patriots; then, urged by friends, he responded with a stirring indictment of the outrage. His personality and passionate eloquence caught the imaginations of the audience, and his impromptu address was received with cheers. Thus, at the age of twenty-six, he took his place in the front rank of the leaders of the anti-slavery protest.

Possessing an adequate private income which made it unnecessary for him to rely on his profession, he now became a lecturer on the lyceum platform, speaking mainly on the slavery question. His relatives thought him fanatical, but his wife's encouragement counteracted their influence. His ability and family prestige, as well as his charm and persuasive power, made him invaluable as a champion. Broadly speaking, he followed William Lloyd Garrison [q.v.] in his refusal to link abolitionism with the program of any political party and like Garrison he condemned the Constitution of the United States because of its compromise with the slave power, but he was never a non-resistant, and he and Garrison occasionally differed on this point. Phillips contributed frequently to Garrison's Liberator and, in 1840, went to London as a delegate from Massachusetts to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, where he supported Garrison in the latter's insistence that women should have the same rights on the floor as men. On October 30, 1842, speaking in Faneuil Hall on the fugitive-slave issue, he said, "My curse be on the Constitution of these United States" (Sears, post, p. ro2). As time went on, he became more denunciatory in his language, arousing such hostility that on several occasions he was almost mobbed. He opposed the acquisition of Texas and the war with Mexico; and he condemned Webster bitterly for his "Seventh of March" speech, in 1850. Ultimately Phillips, like Garrison, demanded the division of the Union. During the Civil War, he was frequently a severe critic of the Lincoln administration, but the Emancipation Proclamation met with his approval as marking a victory for freedom. When, in 1865, Garrison urged the dissolution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Phillips successfully maintained that it should not be disbanded, and was himself chosen president.

Regarding his mission as one of education, he devoted himself after the Civil War to advocating other moral causes, including prohibition, a reform in penal methods, concessions to the Indians, votes for women, and the labor movement. He was nominated in 1870 by the Labor Reform Party and the Prohibitionists for the governorship of Massachusetts and polled 20,000 votes; the following year he presided over the Labor Reform convention at Worcester and drew up its platform, which contained these words: "We affirm ... that labor, the creator of wealth, is entitled to all it creates ... we avow ourselves willing to accept ... the overthrow of the whole profit-making system .... We declare war with the wages system ... with the present system of finance" (The Labor Question, 1884, p. 4; Austin, post, p. 264). In this same year (1871) he supported General B. F. Butler [q. v. ] for the governorship. His denunciation of the moneyed corporations and his urging that the laboring class organize to further its own interests were regarded by some of his contemporaries as marking aberrations of a noble mind. Actually he seems to have had an unusually clear perception of national trends, but he was even further ahead of his time in his labor agitation than he had been when he championed abolition in 1837. In his seventieth year, he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa Centennial Oration at Harvard College, and showed himself to be still uncompromising by denouncing the timidity of academic conservatives. His last public address was delivered at the unveiling of a statue of Harriet Martineau on December 26, 1883. He died after a week's suffering from angina pectoris, and after lying in state in Faneuil Hall his body was interred in the Granary Burying Ground.

Phillips was an aristocratic-looking man, with a rich, persuasive voice and a graceful, self-assured manner. Although famous as an orator, he was seldom rhetorical, and he was amazingly free from verbosity and pomposity. His subjects were many, among the most popular being "The Lost Arts," on which he spoke more than two thousand times; "Street Life in Europe"; "Daniel O'Connell"; "The Scholar in a Republic"; and "Toussaint L'Ouverture." He spoke before all kinds of audiences, large and small, sympathetic and hostile, and, in his prime, he seemed untiring. An omnivorous reader and a thorough scholar, he knew how to impart his knowledge in an easy and appealing way. His mission was that of an agita tor, aiming to stir his countrymen to eliminate the evils in their midst. Like all extremists, he was frequently sharp of tongue and unfair to his opponents, but he was courageous, self-sacrificing, magnanimous, and lofty in his ideals, and has been rightly called the "Knight-Errant of unfriended Truth."

[Two volumes of Phillips' Speeches, Lectures, and Letters were published, the first in 1863 and the second, after his death. in 1891. The best biographies are Lorenzo Sears, Wendell Phillips (1909); G. L. Austin, The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips (1884); and C. E. Russell, The Story of Wendell Phillips (1914). See also T. W. Higginson, Contemporaries (1900), reprinting a paper first published in the Nation (New York), February 7, 1884; G. E. Woodberry, "Wendell Phillips," in his Heart of Man and Other Papers (1920); and Carlos Martyn, Wendell Phillips (1890).]

C. M. F.



PIERPONT, John, 1785-1866, Massachusetts, poet, lawyer, Unitarian theologian, temperance reformer, abolitionist leader, member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party. Liberty Party candidate for Massachusetts. Free Soil candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1850.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 14; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 586; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 301; A. A. Ford, John Pierpont, a Biographical Sketch (1909)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

PIERPONT, John, poet, born in Litchfield, Connecticut, 6 April, 1785; died in Medford, Massachusetts, 26 August, 1866. He was a great-grandson of James, who is noticed below. He was graduated at Yale in 1804, and after assisting for a short time in the academy at Bethlehem, Connecticut, in the autumn of 1805 went to South Carolina, and passed nearly four years as a private tutor in the family of Colonel William Allston. After his return in 1809 he studied law at Litchfield, was admitted to the bar in 1812, and practised for a time in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The profession proving injurious to his health, he relinquished it, and engaged in business as a merchant, first in Boston, and afterward in Baltimore. In 1816 he abandoned commerce for theology, which he studied, first at Baltimore, and afterward at Cambridge divinity-school. In April, 1819, he was ordained pastor of the Hollis street church, Boston. In 1835 he made a tour through Europe and Asia Minor, and on his return he resumed his pastoral charge in Boston, where he continued till 10 May, 1845. The freedom with which he expressed his opinions, especially in regard to the temperance cause, had given rise to some feeling before his departure for Europe; and in 1838 there sprung up between himself and a part of his parish a controversy which lasted seven years, when, after triumphantly sustaining himself against the charges of his adversaries, he requested a dismissal. He then became for four years pastor of a Unitarian church in Troy, New York, on 1 August, 1849, was settled over the Congregational church in Medford, and resigned, 6 April, 1856. He was a zealous reformer, powerfully advocated the temperance and anti-slavery movements, was the candidate of the Liberty party for governor, and in 1850 of the Free-soil party for congress. After the civil war began, though seventy-six years of age, he went into the field as chaplain of a Massachusetts regiment, but, finding his strength unequal to the discharge of his duties, he soon afterward resigned, and was appointed to a clerkship in the treasury department at Washington, which he held till his death. Mr. Pierpont was a thorough scholar, a graceful and facile speaker, and ranked deservedly high as a poet. He published “Airs of Palestine” (Baltimore, 1816); re-issued, with additions, under the title “Airs of Palestine, and other Poems” (Boston, 1840). One of his best-known poems is “Warren's Address at the Battle of Bunker Bill.” His long poem that he read at the Litchfield county centennial in 1851 contains a description of the “Yankee boy” and his ingenuity, which has often been quoted. He also published several sermons and addresses. See Wilson's “Bryant and his Friends” (New York, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 14.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 586-587:

PIERPONT, JOHN (April 6, 1785-August 27, 1866), Unitarian clergyman, poet, reformer, great-grandson of James Pierpont and grandfather of John Pierpont Morgan [ qq.v.], was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the second of the ten children of James Pierpont, a clothier, by his wife, Elizabeth Collins. He graduated from Yale College in 1804, in the same class with John C. Calhoun, and, after assisting Azel Backus [q.v.] for a few months in an academy at Bethlehem, went to South Carolina as tutor, 1805-09, in the household of "William Alston, father of Joseph Alston [q.v.]. On his return he studied in the Litchfield Law School under Tapping Reeve and James Gould [qq.v.] and on September 23, 1810, married his fourth cousin, Mary Sheldon Lord, who bore him three sons and three daughters. Their eldest child was named for William Alston. Having been called to the bar in 1812, he opened a law office at Newburyport, Massachusetts, and, in the leisure afforded by a total absence of clients, composed The Portrait (1812), a poem surcharged with Federalist sentiment, which he declaimed October 27, 1812, before the Washington Benevolent Society of Newburyport. It brought him renown as a bard but no retainers, and in 1814 he and his brother-in-law, Joseph L. Lord, went into the retail dry-goods business in Boston and soon took John Neal [q.1 1.] into the firm. They started a branch in Baltimore and for a while the venture flourished, but the dizzy fluctuations of wartime prices were more than they could cope with, and in 1815 the business collapsed. Still in Baltimore, Pierpont published the next year his beautifully executed Airs of Palestine (Baltimore, 1816), which was reprinted twice in Boston in 1817, and which put him for the time being in the front rank of American poets. Two later volumes, Airs of Palestine and Other Poems (1840) and The Anti-Slavery Poems of John Pierpont (1843), comprise the bulk of his verse. He was an accomplished prosodist. In some of the temperance pieces he is unintentionally humorous, but as the expression of a vigorous, witty, noble mind his poetry has character and is continuously interesting.

Having graduated in October 1818 from the Harvard Divinity School, he was ordained April 14, 1819, as minister of the Hollis Street Church in Boston. He edited two school readers, The American First Class Book (1823) and The National Reader (1827), which went through many editions and were the first American readers to include selections from Shakespeare; visited Europe and Palestine in 1835-36; published various sermons and lectures; and grew steadily in reputation as an eloquent, thoughtful minister. His penchant for reform was also growing steadily. He worked for the abolition of the state militia and of imprisonment for debt; became an enthusiastic propagandist for phrenology and spiritualism; and pressed to the forefront of the peace, the anti-slavery, and the temperance movements. The pew-holders of the Hollis Street Church did not share these enthusiasms; their temper may be deduced from the fact that the church cellar was rented out to a rum merchant for a warehouse. Several rum merchants who did not attend Pierpont's preachings bought pews in the church; and in 1838 there began a concerted movement, known locally as the "Seven Years' War," to oust him. Pierpont resisted with wit, eloquence, pertinacity, and a fixed determination to maintain the freedom of the Unitarian pulpit. As the war proceeded it became an unscrupulous attempt to destroy his character. He was vindicated by an ecclesiastical council before which he was tried in July 1841, but his enemies continued their campaign against him. Finally, with his back salary paid in full and all the honors on his side, he resigned in 1845. Subsequently he was pastor of the newly organized First Unitarian Society of Troy, New York, 1845-49, and of the First Congregational (Unitarian) Church of West Medford, Massachusetts, 1849-58. His first wife having died on August 23, 1855, he married, on December 8, 1857, Harriet Louise (Campbell) Fowler of Pawling, New York, who survived him. For two weeks of 1861 he was chaplain of the 22nd Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, but the post was too strenuous for his seventy-six years. From then until his death, which took place at Medford, he was a clerk in the Treasury Department at Washington. He was known throughout the eastern United States as a lecturer, and by those who came into immediate contact with him he was remembered as a man with more than a touch of genius.

[F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches Graduates Yale College, volume V (1911), with list of sources and a bibliog. of Pierpont's writings; C. R. Eliot, sketch in S. A. Eliot, Heralds of a Liberal Faith, volume II (1910), with list of sources; O. B. Frothingham, Boston Unitarianism 1820-50 (1890), pp. 184-86; A. A. Ford, John Pierpont, a Biographical Sketch (1909); Henry Ware, A Sermon Delivered in Boston, April 14, 1819, at the Ordination of the Reverend John Pierpont (1819); Proceedings in the Controversy between a Part of the Proprietors and the Pastor of Hollis Street Church, Boston, 1838 and 1839 (Boston, n.d.); S. K. Lothrop, Proceedings of an Ecclesiastical Council in the Case of the Proprietors of Hollis-Street Meeting-House and the Reverend John Pierpont (1841); G. L. Chaney, Hollis Street Church from Mather Byles to Thomas Starr King (1877); H. W. Simon, The Reading of Shakespeare in American Schools and Colleges (1932), pp. 20-22; J. R. Dix, Pulpit Portraits (1854); Boston Transcript, August 27, 1866.]

G. H. G.


PITTS, Hiram, officer and member of the National Committee of the Liberty party.

(Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).



PLUMB, Joseph, New York, Vice President, Liberty Party, 1848.

(Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

PLUMB, Joseph, pioneer, born in Paris, Oneida County, New York, 27 June, 1791; died in Cattaraugus, New York, 25 May, 1870. He settled in Fredonia, New York, in 1816, and after moving to New York City, and to Ithaca and Geneva, he finally established himself in Gowanda, Erie County, New York, on the border of the Cattaraugus Reservation of Seneca Indians. He was active in benevolent and educational enterprises in behalf of this tribe, and organized the first schools and church in that community. He was a founder of the Liberty Party in 1840, and its candidate for lieutenant-governor in 1844. He owned the land upon which the town of Cattaraugus was built, and disposed of it on condition that no intoxicating liquors should be sold thereon. In one case the matter was carried to the court of appeals, and, after years of litigation, was decided in 1869 in favor of Mr. Plumb, the court sustaining the temperance restriction. He was an early member of the anti-slavery party, and declined a nomination to Congress in 1852, and the office of circuit judge. See his "Memorial" (printed privately, 1870).



POMEROY, Samuel Clarke, 1816-1891, Republican U.S. Senator from Kansas. Appointed financial agent of the New England Emigrant Aid Company in 1854, he accompanied the second party of settlers to Kansas Territory in the fall of that year. Active in Kansas “Free State” convention of 1859. U.S. Senator 1861-1873. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 60; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 54; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 17, p. 649; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 54:

POMEROY, SAMUEL CLARKE (January 3, 1816-August 27, 1891), Kansas Free-State advocate and United States senator, was born at Southampton, Massachusetts, the son of Samuel and Dorcas (Burt) Pomeroy, and a descendant of Eltweed Pomeroy who emigrated from England to Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630. Samuel entered Amherst College in 1836 but withdrew shortly afterward. Later he spent four years in Onondaga County, New York, where he taught school and engaged in business. Returning to Southampton in 1842, he joined the Liberty party, filled several local offices, and served in the General Court in 1852. Appointed financial agent of the New England Emigrant Aid Company in 1854, he accompanied the second party of settlers to Kansas Territory in the fall of that year. During the Wakarusa War of November-December 1855 he started for Boston to secure aid, but was captured and detained until the crisis was over. When Sheriff Jones assembled "border ruffians" before Lawrence in May 1856, Pomeroy was chosen chairman of a committee of public safety, but he failed to prevent the destruction of the town. He was a delegate to the first Republican National Convention and received eight votes for vice-president. In a sensational speech he declared that freedom for Kansas must be accompanied by reparation and atonement by the South for depredations committed and lives destroyed. The following year he settled at Atchison, where he served as mayor, 1858-59. During the drought and famine in Kansas, 1860-61, he headed a relief committee which distributed eight million pounds of provisions and seeds, besides clothing and medicine.

When Kansas was admitted into the Union, Pomeroy was elected to the United States Senate. He joined the radicals in opposition to Lincoln's administration, and in 1864 became chairman of a committee to promote the candidacy of Salmon P. Chase [q.v.] for president. The "Pomeroy Circular," a campaign document widely distributed, asserted that the reelection of Lincoln was neither possible nor desirable, and that Chase was an able administrator who possessed just those qualifications which would be needed by a president during the next four years. In a speech before the Senate he declared that old political alignments were dead and recommended the creation of a new party with a vigorous program (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, l Session, pt. 2, pp. 1025-27). The movement, however, met with little popular response. Pomeroy's unexpected election to the Senate in 1861 was not free from charges of bargain; his reelection in 1867 was investigated by a committee of the legislature which reported unanimously that he had bribed members of the General Assembly. He was slated for a third term in 1873, but when the legislature convened in joint session Senator A. M. York announced dramatically that Pomeroy had bargained for his vote for $8,000. The belief in Kansas was almost unanimous that he was guilty, and both houses demanded his resignation. Pomeroy asserted before a select committee of the United States Senate that the money was intended to assist in establishing a bank, and the committee concluded after hearing voluminous testimony that the affair was a plot to defeat him for reelection. Nevertheless, the incident ended his political career, although he was nominated for president in 1884 by the American Prohibition National Convention. After his failure to secure reelection in 1873, he continued to live in Washington for several years, hut eventually returned to Massachusetts, making his home at Whitinsville, where he died. He was married three times. His first wife was Annie Pomeroy, who died in 1843. On April 23, 1846, he married Lucy Ann Gaylord, who died July 30, 1863. His third wife was Mrs. Martha Whitin of Whitinsville.

[Pamphlets relating to Pomeroy in the Kansas State Historical Library, Topeka, include Political Affairs in Kansas, a Review of the Official Acts of Our Delegates in Congress (1870); E. H. Grant, Twelve Years in the U.S. Senate: A Brief Sketch of the Senatorial Record of Hon. S. C. Pomeroy of Kansas . . . from Official Records (1872); S. C. Knight, The Truth at Last: or What I Know About Pomeroy ... Thrilling Disclosures Concerning A. H. Horton and S. C. Pomeroy (1874); several letters of Pomeroy are preserved by the Massachusetts Historical Society; for bribery testimony see Senate Report, No. 523, 42 Congress, 3 Session; consult also D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (1886); Trans. Kansas State Historical Society, esp. volumes IV (1890), VIII (1904), IX (1906); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); A. A. Pomeroy, History and Genealogy of the Pomeroy Family (1912); Springfield Daily Republican, August 28, 1891.]

W. H. S.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 60:

POMEROY, Samuel Clarke, senator, born in Southampton, Massachusetts, 3 January, 1816. He was educated at Amherst, and then spent some time in New York. Subsequently he returned to Southampton, and, besides holding various local offices, was a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1852-'3. He was active in organizing the New England emigrant aid company, of which he was financial agent. In 1854 he conducted a colony to Kansas, and located in Lawrence, making the first settlement for that territory. Afterward he removed to Atchison, where he was mayor in 1859. He was conspicuous in the organization of the territorial government, and participated in the Free-state convention that met in Lawrence in 1859. During the famine in Kansas in 1860-'1 he was president of the relief committee. Mr. Pomeroy was a delegate to the National Republican conventions of 1856 and 1860. He was elected as a Republican to the U. S. senate in 1861, and re-elected in 1867. He was candidate for a third term in 1873, but charges of bribery were suddenly presented before the Kansas legislature, and in consequence he failed of election. A committee chosen by the legislature reported the matter to the U, S. senate, which investigated the case, and a majority report found the charges not sustained. The matter then came before the courts of Kansas, and after some months' delay the district attorney entered a nolle prosequi, stating to the court that he had no evidence upon which he could secure conviction. Mr. Pomeroy then made Washington his place of residence. He is the author of numerous speeches and political pamphlets. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 60.



PORTER, Samuel D., Rochester, New York, abolitionist. Manager of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFASS), 1843-1844. Secretary of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Society. Member of the Liberty Party. Active in Underground Railway.

(Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 181-182)

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.