Col-Cus: Colfax through Cushing

See below for annotated biographies of anti-slavery Whigs. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

COLFAX, Schuyler, 1823-1885, Vice President of the United States, statesman, newspaper editor. Active in Whig Party. Member of Congress, 1854-1869. Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana. Secretary of State. Opposed slavery as a Republican Member of Congress. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Strongly opposed the extension of slavery in the territories.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 687-688; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 297; Congressional Globe; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 297)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 687-688:

COLFAX, Schuyler, statesman, born in New York City, 23 March, 1823; died in Mankato, Minnesota, 13 January, 1885. His grandfather was General William Colfax, who commanded the life-guards of Washington throughout the Revolutionary war. His father died a short time before the son's birth, and in 1834 his mother married George W. Matthews. After attending the public schools till he was ten years of age, and serving three years as clerk in his step-father's store, Schuyler went with the family to Indiana in 1836, and settled in New Carlisle, St. Joseph County, where Mr. Matthews soon became postmaster. The boy continued to serve as his clerk, and began a journal to aid himself in composition, contributing at the same time to the county paper. His step-father retired from business in 1839, and Colfax then began to study law, but afterward gave it up. In 1841 Mr. Matthews was elected county auditor, and moved to South Bend, making his step-son his deputy, which office Colfax held for eight years. In 1842 he was active in organizing a temperance society in South Bend, and continued a total abstainer throughout his life. At this time he reported the proceedings of the state senate for the Indianapolis “Journal” for two years. In 1844 he made campaign speeches for Henry Clay. He had acted as editor of the South Bend ”Free Press” for about a year when, in company with A. W. West, he bought the paper in September, 1845, and changed its name to the “St. Joseph Valley Register.” Under his management, despite numerous mishaps and business losses, the “Register” quadrupled its subscription in a few years, and became the most influential journal, in support of Whig politics, in that part of Indiana: Mr. Colfax was secretary of the Chicago Harbor and River Convention of July, 1847, and also of the Baltimore Whig Convention of 1848, which nominated Taylor for president. The next year he was elected a member of the convention to revise the constitution of the state of Indiana, and in his place, both by voice and vote, opposed the clause that prohibited free colored men from settling in that state. He was also offered a nomination for the state senate, but declined it. In 1851 he was a candidate for Congress, and came near being elected in a district that was strongly democratic. He accepted his opponent's challenge to a joint canvass, travelled a thousand miles, and spoke seventy times. He was again a delegate to the Whig National Convention in 1852, and, having joined the newly formed Democratic Party, was its successful candidate for Congress in 1854, serving by successive re-elections till 1869. In 1856 he supported Fremont for president, and during the canvass made a speech in Congress on the extension of slavery and .the aggressions of the slave-power. This speech was used as a campaign document, and more than half a million copies were circulated. He was chairman of several important committees of Congress, especially that on post-offices and post-roads, and introduced many reforms, including a bill providing for a daily overland mail-route from St. Louis to San Francisco, reaching mining-camps where letters had previously been delivered by express at five dollars an ounce. Mr. Colfax favored Edward Bates as the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1860. His name was widely mentioned for the office of postmaster - general in Lincoln's cabinet, but the president selected C. B. Smith, of Indiana, on the ground, as he afterward wrote Colfax, that the latter was “a young man running a brilliant career, and sure of a bright future in any event.” In the latter part of 1861 he ably defended Fremont in the house against the attack of Frank P. Blair. In 1862 he introduced a bill, which became a law, to punish fraudulent contractors as felons, and continued his efforts for reform in the postal service. He was elected speaker of the house on 7 December, 1863, and on 8 April, 1864, descended from the chair to move the expulsion of Mr. Long, of Ohio, who had made a speech favoring the recognition of the southern confederacy. The resolution was afterward changed to one of censure, and Mr. Colfax's action was widely commented on, but generally sustained by Union men. On 7 May, 1864, he was presented by citizens of Indiana then in Washington with a service of silver, largely on account of his course in this matter. He was twice re-elected as speaker, each time by an increased majority, and gained the applause of both friends and opponents by his skill as a presiding officer, often shown under very trying circumstances. In May, 1868, the Republican National Convention at Chicago nominated him on the first ballot for vice-president, General Grant being the nominee for president, and, the Republican ticket having been successful, he took his seat as President of the Senate on 4 March, 1869. On 4 August, 1871, President Grant offered him the place of Secretary of State for the remainder of his term, but he declined. In 1872 he was prominently mentioned as a presidential candidate, especially by those who, later in the year, were leaders in the liberal Republican movement, and, although he refused to join them, this was sufficient to make administration men oppose his renomination for the vice-presidency, and he was defeated in the Philadelphia Convention of 1872. In December, 1872; he was offered the chief editorship of the New York “Tribune,” but declined it. In 1873 Mr. Colfax was implicated in the charger of corruption brought against members of Congress who had received shares of stock in the credit mobilier of America. The house judiciary committee reported that there was no ground for his impeachment, as the alleged offence, if committed at all, had been committed before he became vice-president. These charges cast a shadow over the latter part of Mr. Colfax's life. He denied their truth, and his friends have always regarded his character as irreproachable. His later years were spent mostly in retirement in his home at South Bend, Indiana, and in delivering public lectures, which he did frequently before large audiences. His first success in this field had been in 1865 with a lecture entitled “Across the Continent,” written after his return from an excursion to California. The most popular of his later lectures was that on “Lincoln and Garfield.” Mr. Colfax was twice married. After his death, which was the result of heart disease, public honors were paid to his memory both in Congress and in Indiana. See “Life of Colfax” by O. J. Hollister (New York, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 687-688.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 297:

COLFAX, SCHUYLER (March 23, 1823-January 13, 1885), vice-president of the United States, was born in New York City. His paternal grandfather, William Colfax, was commander of Washington's body-guard during the Revolutionary War (William Nelson, in the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 2 series, IV, 145-52). His maternal grandmother, Hester Schuyler, was a cousin of General Philip Schuyler [q.v.]. His father, Schuyler Colfax, who married (April 15, 1820) Hannah Stryker of New York, died October 30, 1822, and in 1834 his mother married George W. Matthews of Baltimore. In 1836 the family removed to New Carlisle, Ind., where Matthews, who became auditor of St. Joseph County in 1841, appointed his stepson deputy auditor at South Bend, an office which he held for eight years. Colfax found time to serve as assistant enrolling clerk of the state Senate (1842-44) and as correspondent of the Indiana State Journal (Indianapolis), and also studied law, but was never admitted to the bar. Having bought an interest in the South Bend Free Press in 1845, he changed the name of the paper to St. Joseph Valley Register, made it the Whig organ of northern Indiana, and retained his interest in it until shortly after he became speaker of the House of Representatives. His political activities began early. He made campaign speeches for Clay in 1844, was secretary of the Chicago Rivers and Harbors Convention in 1847, delegate to the Whig national convention of 1848, and sat in the state constitutional convention of 1850. In 1851 he was defeated as a Whig candidate for Congress, notwithstanding a unanimous nomination, but was a delegate to the Whig national convention of 1852. When the Republican party was formed he joined it, and took an active part in organizing the new party in Indiana. In December 1855, he entered the House of Representatives of the Thirty-fourth Congress (1855-57) as a Republican, and served continuously until the end of the Fortieth Congress (March 3, 1869). From the Thirty-eighth to the Fortieth Congress, inclusive (1863-69), he was speaker of the House. On June 21, 1856, he made a speech, of which more than a million copies were said to have been circulated, opposing the use of the army in Kansas until the laws of the Territory should have received congressional approval. His longest and most important service, prior to the speakership, was as chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, in which capacity he directed the reorganization and extension of the overland mail service to California. He was strongly urged for postmaster-general under Lincoln, but was passed over on the ground, as Lincoln wrote, that he was "a young man, is already in position, is running a brilliant career, and is sure of a bright future in any event" (Hollister, post, p. 175). On April 8, 1864, he left the speaker's chair to move the expulsion of Alexander Long of Ohio, who had spoken in favor of recognizing the Confederacy. The resolution was later changed to one of censure.

His position as speaker, together with his "advanced ideas on Negro suffrage" (W. A. Dunning, Reconstruction Political and Economic, 1907, p. 129), commended Colfax as a candidate for vice-president in 1868, and at the Chicago convention, after the fifth ballot, when he received 541 votes, his nomination was made unanimous (E. Stanwood, History of the Presidency, l, 321), and he was later elected. An offer of the secretaryship of state in August 1871 was declined. Consideration of his availability as a presidential candidate by the Liberal Republicans in 1872 aroused the opposition of administration leaders, and at the Philadelphia convention he was defeated for renomination on the first ballot, the vote standing 321½ for Colfax and 364½ for Henry Wilson (Ibid., I, 348). Shortly thereafter he declined an offer of the editorship of the New York Tribune. He was implicated in the Credit Mobilier scandal, the investigation showing that he had agreed to accept twenty shares of stock in the company and had received a considerable sum in dividends. His denial of the charge was not convincing, and in his examination before the committee "it is impossible to believe that he told the truth" (Rhodes, VII, 13-15). He escaped formal censure on the ground that his misconduct, if any, had been committed before he became vice-president, but although he claimed to have been "fully exonerated" (Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1928, p. 834), his political standing was ruined. His part in the Credit Mobilier affair was somewhat overshadowed by the disclosure that he had received in 1868 a campaign gift of $4,000 from a contractor who had supplied envelopes to the government while Colfax was chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads. He continued after his retirement to be in demand as a lecturer, and devoted much time to the Odd Fellows, of which order he had been a member since 1846. He died suddenly at Mankato, Minnesota, and was buried at South Bend. His first wife, Evelyn Clark of New York, whom he married October 10, 1844, died at Newport, Rhode Island, July 10, 1863. On November 18, 1868, he married Ellen W. Wade, a niece of Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio [q.v.].

[The chief authority, aside from the Journal of the House of Representatives, the Congressional Globe, and the reports of House committees, is O. J. Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax (1886), able and thorough but overfriendly. A. Y. Moore, The Life of Schuyler Colfax (1868), a campaign biography, is valuable for the texts of speeches, letters, newspaper comment, etc. The Poland and Wilson reports on the Credit Mobilier scandal form House Report No. 77, 42 Congress, 3 Session; their facts and findings are judiciously summarized and appraised in J. F. Rhodes, History of the U.S., VII (1906), ch. 40.)

W. M.



COLLAMER, Jacob, 1791-1865, lawyer, jurist. Whig Congressman. Supported the Free Soil-Party and the non-extension of slavery into the new territories. U.S. Senator from Vermont. U.S. Senator, 1854-1865. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, p. 689; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 297; Congressional Globe)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 689:

COLLAMER, Jacob, senator, born in Troy, New York, 8 January, 1791; died in Woodstock, Vermont, 9 November, 1865. In childhood he moved with his father to Burlington, and, earning his own support, was graduated at the University of Vermont in 1810, studied law at St. Albans, made the frontier campaign as a lieutenant of artillery in the militia, and was admitted to the bar at St. Albans in 1813. Until 1833 he practised law in Washington, Orange, and Windsor counties, Vermont, and in 1821-'2 and 1827-'8 represented the town of Royalton in the Assembly. In 1833 he was elected an associate justice of the supreme court of Vermont, and continued on the bench until 1842, when he declined a re-election. In 1843 he was chosen as a Whig to represent the 2d District in Congress, was re-elected in 1844 and 1846, but in 1848 declined to be again a candidate. In March, 1849, he was appointed Postmaster-General by President Taylor, but on the death of the president resigned with the rest of the cabinet. He was soon afterward again elected judge of the supreme court of Vermont, holding that office until 1854, when he was chosen U. S. Senator, which office he held at the time of his death. He served as chairman of the committee on post-offices and post-roads, and was also chairman of that on the library. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 689.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 300:

COLLAMER, JACOB (January 8, 1791-November 9, 1865), judge, United States senator, postmaster-general, was born in Troy, New York, third of the eight children of Samuel Collamer, member of an early Massachusetts family, and Elizabeth Van Ornum, of colonial Dutch descent. The family moved to Burlington, Vermont, when Jacob was about four. Here he prepared for college under members of the faculty, and graduated from the University of Vermont in 1810. At once he began the study of law at St. Albans, Vermont, under Mr. Langworthy and later under Benjamin Swift, afterward senator. His studies were interrupted by his being drafted into the detailed militia service in 1812. He served as lieutenant of artillery and as aide to General French, with whom he went to Plattsburg, arriving in the evening after the battle was over. Admitted to the bar in 1813 he practised at Randolph Center until he removed to Royalton in 1816. He married Mary N. Stone of St. Albans, daughter of Abijah Stone, on July 15, 1817. He served four terms in the legislature as representative of Royalton, and was one of the assistant judges of the supreme court of Vermont from 1833 until 1842 when he declined reelection. As delegate to the Vermont constitutional convention (1836) he actively supported the movement to substitute a state Senate for the old Governor's Council. "That amendment has been largely attributed to the ability and zeal with which he urged it" (Barrett, post). This year he moved to Woodstock, Vermont, his home for the rest of his life. His national career began in 1842 when, after a close and hotly contested election, he was chosen member of the House of Representatives for the 2nd Congressional District. Reelected in 1844 and 1846, he declined a fourth election. As representative he made speeches on the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, and the tariff, his address on "Wools and Woolens" attracting most attention. Recommended for a cabinet position by a legislative caucus, he became postmaster-general in the cabinet of President Taylor (1849). His service was short, for upon the death of President Taylor in July 1850 he resigned with the rest of the cabinet.

A few months after his return home, the Vermont legislature elected him, under the recently remodeled judicial system, circuit judge for the 2nd judicial circuit. In 1854, a candidate of the young Republican party as an anti-slavery Whig, he was elected senator. As a Republican he belonged to the conservative wing. In the Thirty-fourth Congress he served on the Committee on Territories under the chairmanship of Senator Douglas, and on March 12, 1856 made a vigorous minority report on the disorders in Kansas, defending the character of the free state leaders. He was one of three New England senators to vote against the tariff bill of 1857. In 1860 Vermont presented his name to the Republican convention for the presidential nomination, but after the first ballot, on which he received ten votes, his name was withdrawn. In the same year he was reelected to the Senate "with almost unprecedented unanimity." He and Fessenden refused to vote against the Crittenden compromise of the winter of 1861, though they did not vote for it. He drafted the bill, enacted July 13, 1861, which, according to Senator Sumner gave to the war for the suppression of the rebellion its first congressional sanction and invested the President with new powers" (Address of Senator Charles Sumner, December 14, 1865). On the problems of Reconstruction he held that Congress should control. While not an orator, and rarely speaking in the Senate, he was always listened to with attention, the logic of his arguments commanding respect. From June 1855 to October 1862 he was president the last-of the Vermont Medical College at Woodstock, in which he had lectured on medical law. He died at his home in Woodstock after a brief illness. Judge James Barrett, long his law partner, said of Collamer, "His mind was made up of a clear and ready perception, acuteness of discrimination, a facile faculty of analysis, an aptness and ease in rigid and simple logic, excellent commonsense, and withal a most tenacious memory of facts." [The chief source is the Memorial Address read by Judge Jas. Barrett before the Vermont Historical Society, October 20, 1868 (Rutland, 1868; Woodstock, 1868). Consult also Addresses on the Death of Hon. Jacob Collamer delivered in the Senate and House of Representatives, December 14, 1865 (1866) and Addresses on the Presentation of the Statue of Jacob Collamer of Vermont, by Jas. M. Tyler, Geo. B. Long, and Alexander H. Stephens, delivered in the House of Representatives February 15, 1881 (1881); and Henry Swan Dana, History of Woodstock, Vermont (1889).]

C.R.W.



CONKLING, ROSCOE (October 30, 1829-April 18, 1888), War Republican and radical Republican U.S. senator. One of the great "spread eagle" orators of his day, before he was thirty years of age he was a valued figure at Whig conventions of his county and state. He became mayor of Utica in 1858, was elected to Congress in the autumn of the same year, and represented his district at Washington, 1859-67, except for the single term 1863-65.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 327)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 327:

CONKLING, ROSCOE (October 30, 1829-April 18, 1888), senator, was born at Albany, New York, but lived most of his life in Utica, New York. His father was Alfred Conkling [q.v.]; his mother, Eliza Cockburn, was of Scotch extraction and was noted for her beauty. His older brother, Frederick, was congressman for a single term, and a colonel in the Civil War. The family removed to Auburn, New York, in 1839 and in 1842 Roscoe entered the Mount Washington Collegiate Institute in New York City. He went to Utica in 1846 to study law in the office of Spencer & Kuman, was admitted to the bar in 1850, and was immediately appointed district attorney of Albany. At the close of the term he entered into partnership with Thomas H. Walker of Utica. One of the great "spread eagle" orators of his day, before he was thirty years of age he was a familiar and valued figure at the Whig conventions of his county and state. He became mayor of Utica in 1858, was elected to Congress in the autumn of the same year, and represented his district at Washington, 1859-67, except for the single term 1863-65. He married in 1855 Julia, a sister of Horatio Seymour, Democratic governor of New York in 1853 and 1863. He remained temperate in a day when strong drink was a pervasive enemy of American men, he detested tobacco, and he built up his body by systematic exercise and boxing, so that he enhanced the dignity and impressiveness of a figure of which he was inordinately proud, and which his jocose critics described as the "finest torso" in public life. On a notable occasion soon after his entry into Congress, and not long after the attack on Sumner in the Senate, he stood up beside the crippled and sharp-tongued Thaddeus Stevens as a body-guard, and discouraged interference. He not only protected Stevens, but he agreed with him, becoming a sturdy War-Republican, and an advocate of vigorous repressive measures in the Reconstruction period. His ambitions in Congress and in the Republican party collided more than once with those of James G. Blaine, and produced a biting description by the latter, who jeered at Conkling's "haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, super-eminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut" (Congressional Globe, April 30, 1866, p. 2299). The words could not be forgotten.

The decision of William H. Seward, leader of the New York Republicans, to remain loyal to President Andrew Johnson, and to support the latter in his Reconstruction policy, caused a break in the party and gave opportunity for the appearance of a leader among the radical Republicans of the state. Conkling was elected senator in 1867, and in the following autumn dominated the Republican convention, establishing an ascendancy over Governor Reuben E. Fenton. In the next ten years, with the support of the federal patronage and the New York City "custom-house crowd," he became the almost undisputed leader of his party in the state, and an aspirant to greater things. He was reelected to the Senate in 1873 and 1879. In 1876 he was the favorite son of New York as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, in rivalry to James G. Blaine, but met with disappointment when Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio secured the nomination and became president in 1877. Conkling's intimacy with and support of President U. S. Grant, to which he owed much of his strength as leader of New York, had procured for him in 1873 an offer of the post of chief justice of the United States, to succeed Salmon P. Chase. He had declined the honor, recognizing that his talents were those of a partisan rather than of a judge. He was again later to be offered an appointment to the Supreme Court by his friend Chester A. Arthur, and was again to decline.

Conkling was a bitter opponent of President Hayes. He claimed to believe that the latter had no right to his position, he had reason to fear that the power of the Grant dynasty was broken, and he was outraged by Hayes's selection of a New Yorker whom he hated, William M. Evarts, as secretary of state. He regarded the New York patronage as his special preserve, and fought to defend it when the treasury department under John Sherman began to inquire into the management of the custom-house and the services therein of Chester A. Arthur and Alonzo B. Cornell [qq.v.], who were Conkling's chief assistants in the control of the party organization. He led the opposition to the desires of Hayes to separate civil service officials from the direction of party affairs, and his presence and spirit pervaded the New York Republican convention of September 1877, where the President was openly flouted. In substance he asserted the privilege of a senator to control the federal administration in his own state; and he denied to a president the right to select and direct his subordinates. The Tenure of Office Act, passed in 1867 to restrain Andrew Johnson, made it harder for the President to win his point; but eventually in 1879 Hayes had his way arid got rid of Conkling's friends. New York, however, remained loyal to its leader. Cornell was made governor, Conkling was triumphantly reelected to the Senate, and another of his lieutenants, Thomas C. Platt [q.v.], was chosen as the other senator in 1881. Arthur had meanwhile risen to greater rewards.

Disgusted with Hayes, and anxious for the return of the old order of politics, Conkling was a leader in the movement for the renomination of Grant in 1880. His success went only far enough to deadlock the Republican convention, and prevent the nomination of either Blaine or Sherman. Garfield, who was chosen after a long and destructive fight, represented the anti-Conkling or "Half-Breed" wing of the Republicans; and the selection of the "Stalwart," Arthur, for vice-president failed to heal the breach. It was only after much persuasion that Conkling ceased to sulk in the canvass of 1880, and gave any support to the ticket of Garfield and Arthur. His friends and he believed, that as the price of his final and lukewarm support, Garfield had made him sweeping promises of presidential patronage; but to this belief the selection of Blaine as secretary of state gave contradiction. Within a few days after the organization of the new administration, Conkling was again in opposition, and again over the right to control the jobs in the New York custom-house. He fought the confirmation of Garfield's appointees until defeat came to him in May 1881. He then resigned his Senate seat in protest, May 14, 1881, and induced his colleague to resign with him. He turned to the usually pliant legislature at Albany for vindication and reelection, but discovered that his power to dominate it had departed. Even the open support of Arthur, now vice-president, was in vain. For the remainder of his life, Conkling was outside of politics. He removed to New York City, and entered into the practise of his profession, where he made a large fortune and a great name. He died in the spring of 1888, as the result of over-exertion during a severe snow-storm. His personal character and integrity were never challenged; he was, said the New York Times (January 18, 1879), on the occasion of his third election to the senate, "a typical American statesman-a man by whose career and character the future will judge of the political standards of the present."

[Robt. G. Ingersoll, Memorial Address on Roscoe Conkling (1888), includes many obituary notices. There is a family biography by Conkling's nephew, Alfred R. Conkling, The Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, Orator, Statesman, and Advocate (1889). Many of the details of his career may be traced in De Alva S. Alexander, Political History of the State of New York (3 volumes, 1906-09), but no one has yet assembled and evaluated the material upon his public life that fills the press from 1859 to 1881.]

F.L.P-n.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I:

CONKLING, Roscoe, senator, born in Albany, N. Y., 30 academic education, and studied law under his father. In 1846 he entered the law-office of Francis Kernan, afterward his colleague in the senate, and in 1850 became district attorney for Oneida county. He was admitted to the bar in that year, and soon became prominent both in law and in politics. He was elected mayor of Utica in 1858, and at the expiration of his first term a tie vote between the two candidates for the office caused him to hold over for another term. In November, 1858, he was chosen as a Republican to congress, and took his seat in that body at the beginning of its first session, in December, 1859 — a session noted for its long and bitter contest over the speakership. He was re-elected in 1860, but in 1862 was defeated by Francis Kernan, over whom, however, he was elected in 1864. His first committee was that on the District of Columbia, of which he was afterward chairman. He was also a member of the committee of ways and means and of the special reconstruction committee of fifteen. Mr. Conkling's first important speech was in support of the fourteenth amendment to the constitution. He vigorously attacked the generalship of McClellan, opposed Spaulding's legal-tender act, and firmly upheld the government in the prosecution of the war. Mr. Conkling was re-elected in the autumn of 1866, but in January, 1867, before he took his seat, was chosen U. S. senator to succeed Ira Harris, and re-elected in 1873 and 1879. In the senate he was from the first a member of the judiciary committee, and connected with nearly all the leading committees, holding the chairs of those on commerce and revision of the laws. Senator Conkling was a zealous supporter of President Grant's administration and largely directed its general policy toward the south, advocating it in public and by his personal influence. He was also instrumental in the passage of the civil-rights bill, and favored the resumption of specie payments. He took a prominent part in framing the electoral-commission bill in 1877, and supported it by an able speech, arguing that the question of the commission's jurisdiction should be left to that body itself. Mr. Conkling received 93 votes for the Republican nomination for president in the Cincinnati convention of 1876. In the Chicago convention of 1880 he advocated the nomination of Gen. Grant for a third term. In 1881 he became hostile to President Garfield's administration on a question of patronage, claiming, with his colleague, Thomas C. Platt, the right to control federal appointments in his state. The president having appointed a political opponent of Mr. Conkling's to the collectorship of the port of New York, the latter opposed his confirmation, claiming that he should have been consulted in the matter, and that the nomination was a violation of the pledges given to him by the president. Mr. Garfield, as soon as Mr. Conkling had declared his opposition, withdrew all other nominations to New York offices, leaving the objectionable one to be acted on by itself. Finding that he could not prevent the confirmation, Mr. Conkling, on 16 May, resigned his senatorship, as did also his colleague, and returned home to seek a vindication in the form of a re-election. In this, however, after an exciting canvass, they failed; two other republicans were chosen to fill the vacant places, and Mr. Conkling returned to his law practice in New York city. In 1885-'6 he was counsel of the State senate investigating committee, appointed for the purpose of disclosing the fraud and bribery in the grant of the Broadway horse-railroad franchise by the board of aldermen in 1884. After the taking of testimony, lasting about three months, Mr. Conkling, together with Clarence A. Seward, made an argument which resulted in the repeal of the Broadway railroad charter. Appletons’



COOPER, James, senator, Union general, born in Frederick county, Maryland, 8 May, 1810; died in Camp Chase, near Columbus, Ohio, 28 March, 1863. He was elected to Congress as a Whig, and served for two terms, from 2 December, 1839, till 3 March, 1843. Elected to the U. S. Senate as a Whig, holding office from 3 December, 1849, till 3 March, 1855.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 724:

COOPER, James, senator, born in Frederick county, Maryland, 8 Mav, 1810; died in Camp Chase, near Columbus, Ohio," 28 March, 1863. He studied at St. Mary's College, and was graduated at Washington College. Pennsylvania, in 1832, after which he studied law with Thaddeus Stevens. In 1834 he was admitted to the bar, and began to practice in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was elected to Congress as a Whig, and served for two terms, from 2 December, 1839, till 3 March, 1843. He was a member of the state legislature during the years 1843, 1844, 1846, and 1848, and its speaker in 1847. In 1848 he was made attorney-general of Pennsylvania, and he was elected to the U. S. Senate as a Whig, holding office from 3 December, 1849, till 3 March, 1855. On the expiration of his term he settled in Philadelphia, and later in Frederick City, Maryland. Soon after the beginning of the Civil War he took command of all the volunteers in Maryland, and organized them into regiments. On 17 May, 1861, He was made brigadier-general in the volunteer service, his appointment being among the first that were made during the war. Later he was placed in command of Camp Chase, where he served until his death. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 724.



CORWIN, Thomas, 1794-1865, Lebanon, Ohio, attorney, statesman, diplomat, opposed slavery, U.S. Congressman, Governor of Ohio, U.S. Senator, Secretary of the Treasury. Director of the American Colonization Society, 1833-1834.

(Mitchell, 2007, p. 33, 35, 160, 172, 173, 266n; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 403; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 751; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 457; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 5, p. 549; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 138, 207; ); Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 751:

CORWIN, Thomas, statesman, born in Bourbon county, Kentucky, 29 July, 1794; died in Washington, D. C., 18 December, 1865. In 1798 his father, Matthias, moved to what is now Lebanon, Ohio, and for many years represented his district in the legislature. The son worked on the home farm till he was about twenty years old, and enjoyed very slender educational advantages, but began the study of law in 1815, and was admitted to the bar in May, 1818. His ability and eloquence as an advocate soon gained him an extensive practice. He was first chosen to the legislature of Ohio in 1822, serving seven years, and was chosen to Congress in 1830, from the Miami District as a Whig, of which party he was an enthusiastic member. His wit and eloquence made him a prominent member of the House of Representatives, to which he was re-elected by the strong Whig constituency that he represented for each successive term till 1840, when he resigned to become the Whig candidate for governor of Ohio, and canvassed the state with General Harrison, addressing large gatherings in most of the counties. He was unsurpassed as an orator on the political platform or before a jury. At the election he was chosen by 16,000 majority, General Harrison receiving over 23,000 in the presidential election that soon followed. Two years later, Governor Corwin was defeated for governor by Wilson Shannon, whom he had so heavily beaten in 1840. In 1844 the Whigs again carried the state, giving its electoral vote to Mr. Clay, and sending Mr. Corwin to the U. S. Senate, where he made in 1847 a notable speech against the war in Mexico. He served in the Senate until Mr. Fillmore's accession to the presidency in July, 1850, when he was called to the head of the treasury. After the expiration of Mr. Fillmore's term he returned to private life and the practice of law at Lebanon, Ohio. In 1858 he was returned once more a representative in Congress by an overwhelming majority, and was re-elected with but slight opposition in 1860. On Mr. Lincoln's accession to the presidency he was appointed minister to Mexico, where he remained until the arrival of Maximilian, when he came home on leave of absence, and did not return, remaining in Washington and practicing law, but taking a warm interest in public affairs, and earnestly co-operating in every effort to restore peace. His style of oratory was captivating, and his genial and kindly nature made him a universal favorite. His intemperate speech against the Mexican War hindered his further political advancement. He was a faithful public servant, led a busy life, lived frugally, and, although he had been secretary of the U. S. treasury, failed to secure a competency for his family. See the “Life and Speeches” of Thomas Corwin, edited by Isaac Strohn (Dayton. 1859).—His brother, Moses B., born in Bourbon county, Kentucky, 5 January, 1790; died in Urbana, Ohio, 7 April, 1872, received a common-school education, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1812, and practised at Urbana. He was a member of the legislature in 1838-'9, and was elected as a Whig to Congress in 1848, against his son, John A., who was nominated as a Democrat. He was again elected in 1854. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 751.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 457:

CORWIN, THOMAS (July 29, 1794-December 18, 1865), governor of Ohio, senator, secretary of the Treasury, traced his ancestry to Matthias Corwin who settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts, about 1634. When Matthias Corwin, a descendant of the first Matthias, settled at Lebanon, Ohio, in 1798, he had only $100 with which to buy a farm, but he possessed qualities of mind and character which brought him to the speakership of the state Assembly, and endowed his children with an excellent inheritance. His wife, Patience Halleck, is reputed to have been a person of marked intellectuality. Thomas, their fifth child, born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, early exhibited bookish tendencies which the father did little to encourage, less, it appears, through lack of sympathy than through lack of means. From his large family he selected an older son to be educated as a lawyer, leaving Thomas to acquire what learning he could by the diligent use of a scanty leisure and his brother's books. At twenty-one, Thomas began to read law and in due course was admitted to the bar. In 1822 he married Sarah Ross, daughter of a congressman, related on her mother's side to the Randolphs of Virginia. He was elected to the General Assembly in 1821, 1822, and 1829, and became a supporter, in national politics, of the Clay-Adams group, by this path passing into the Whig party. Following Jackson's election, Corwin's party put him forward in his home district, a community favorable to Jackson, as its strongest candidate for Congress, and elected him with one-fourth more votes than his opponent received. During a decade in Congress, a period of Democratic control, his speeches, although infrequent, made an excellent impression. Most notable of these was his reply to General Isaac Crary (February 15, 1840).

His canvass for governor in 1840 made him famous as a campaign orator. He won by a majority of 16,000, but was defeated in 1842, in consequence of party strife over matters for which he had slight responsibility, and he refused renomination in 1844. He campaigned actively for Clay, however, on the Texas issue. The Whigs lost the presidency, but, regaining control of the Ohio legislature, sent Corwin to the United States Senate. Here, during the Mexican War, he reached the climax of his career. Convinced that the war was waged for territory, he besought Webster and Crittenden to stand with him against further appropriations. When they failed him, he pursued his opposition alone, delivering a powerful speech on February 11, 1847, in which he denounced the war as unjust, and with prophetic vision as well as eloquence predicted the sectional conflict which would follow the acquisition of Mexican territory. A few radicals talked of him for the presidency, but most Whigs as well as Democrats regarded such sentiments uttered in actual time of war as traitorous. Petitions to the legislature, however, demanding that his resignation be required, brought forth as a committee report a resolution of confidence.

Taylor's death brought Fillmore to office and Corwin to the post of secretary of the Treasury; this he filled without distinction, retiring with his chief in 1853. As the slavery controversy developed, he reluctantly abandoned the Whig party, being elected to the House in 1858 as a Republican, although he did not wholly accept the party program. He advocated the abolition of slavery in the territories, but upheld the right of each new state to decide the slavery question for itself. After Lincoln's election, he earnestly sought means of allaying the fears of the South, and served as chairman of the House committee of thirty-three. As minister to Mexico during the critical years 1861-64, he filled acceptably his last public office. Returning to Washington, he opened a law office, but died only a few months later.

Corwin's face was remarkably expressive, and his voice, although neither deep nor powerful, was musical and far-reaching. As a lawyer he was brilliant rather than learned; politics diverted his attention from profound study. A natural wit, he came to believe that fun-making had hampered his career, but his brilliant satire seldom left a sting. Though not a church member, he was permanently influenced by the religious atmosphere in which he was reared. His speeches are saturated with Biblical allusions and quotations. His chief fault was laxity in financial affairs. He was careless in collecting fees, and during most of his life was handicapped by a burden of debt. After leaving the cabinet he was impoverished by an unfortunate investment in railway stocks. He suffered loss frequently through becoming surety. He was much loved, and nowhere more so than at home and by his neighbors, for he was kind and generous.

[See E. T. Corwin, Corwin Genealogy in the U. S. (1872); Josiah Morrow, Life and Speeches of Thos. Corwin (1896); Addison Peale Russell, Thos. Corwin, A Sketch (1882), a somewhat laudatory character study containing valuable anecdotal material. Some sidelights are provided by letters of Thos. Corwin to Wm. Greene, 1841-51, in "Selections from the Wm. Greene Papers," ed. by L. Belle Hamlin, in History and Philosophical Society of Ohio Quarterly Publication, Volume XIII (1918). See also Speeches of Thos. Corwin with a Sketch of his Life (1859), ed. by Isaac Strohm; Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society Quarterly Publication, Volume IX (1914). The Library of Congress has twelve volumes of Corwin Papers covering the years of Corwin's term as secretary of the Treasury.]

H. C.H.



COVODE, John, 1808-1871, abolitionist. U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania, serving 1855-1863, representing the 35th District and the Republican Party. He was elected to Congress as an anti-masonic Whig in 1854, and re-elected as a Republican in 1856.

(Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 756; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 470)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 756:

COVODE, John, Congressman, born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, 17 March, 1808; died in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 11 January, 1871. He was of Dutch descent, spent his early years on a farm, and, after serving a short apprenticeship to a blacksmith, engaged in the coal trade. He afterward became a large woollen manufacturer, and a stockholder and director in several railroad lines. After two terms in the legislature, he was elected to Congress as an anti-masonic Whig in 1854, and re-elected as a Republican in 1856, serving four terms, from 1855 till 1863. In his second term he made a national reputation by his vigor and penetration as chairman of the special committee appointed to investigate charges against President Buchanan. His report, published by order of Congress (Washington, 1860), attracted much attention. He earnestly supported President Lincoln's administration, being an active member of the joint committee on the conduct of the war. President Johnson sent Mr. Covode south to aid in the reconstruction of the disaffected states; but he did not see matters as the president desired, and was recalled. Mr. Covode was again elected to Congress in 1868, his seat being unsuccessfully contested by his opponent, and was active in opposing the president. He was chairman of the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania in 1869, and declined a renomination to Congress in 1870. He was recognized in his state as a strong political power. His unthinking impetuosity made him many bitter enemies, but his honesty and geniality won him innumerable friends. He was known as “Honest John Covode.” Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 756.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 470:

COVODE, JOHN (March 18, 1808-January 11, 1871), congressman, son of Jacob Covode and -- Updegraff, was the grandson of Garrett Covode, who was kidnapped on the streets of Amsterdam by a sea-captain and brought as a child to Philadelphia where he was sold as an indentured servant. John Covode received a scanty education in the public schools of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. After working for several years on his father's farm and serving an apprenticeship to a blacksmith, he found employment in a wooden-mill at Lockport. Of this mill he became owner in his early manhood and continued in the business of manufacturing for the remainder of his life, although from time to time he was interested in other business enterprises, such as the Pennsylvania Canal, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Westmoreland Coal Company. At his death he had a considerable fortune.

Through his conduct in his first public office, that of justice of the peace, Covode gained for himself the sobriquet, "Honest John," which clung to him all his life. He served two terms as a Whig in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and was twice a Whig candidate for the state Senate, being defeated both times. He was elected to the national House of Representatives as an anti-Masonic Whig in 1854 and reelected as a Republican in 1856. In this position he served continuously until 1863 when he declined the nomination. He reentered the House in 1867 and remained a member until his death.

In Congress he first became prominent in the spring of 1860 by reason of his chairmanship of the Covode Investigation Committee, appointed by the House on the adoption of Covode's resolution of March 5, 1860, to inquire into the alleged use of improper influence by President Buchanan in attempting to secure the passage of the Lecompton Bill (Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, I Session, p. 997). In moving this investigation Covode was probably retaliating for a charge made by the President that bribery had been used in the Congressional elections in Pennsylvania in 1858; his pretext was the charge by two members of the House that the President had attempted to bribe and coerce them in the Lecompton affair (Ibid., p. 1017). Buchanan sent to the House a protest against this investigation so far as it related to himself, but the House disregarded the protest and the investigation proceeded. It resulted in a majority and a minority report (House Report 648, 36 Congress, 1 Session), but the House took no action on either. In all probability the investigation was meant to produce nothing more serious than ammunition to be used by the Republicans in the presidential campaign of 1860; Covode was a member of the Republican Executive Congressional Committee for this campaign.

During the war Covode was a strong supporter of Lincoln. In December 1861 he was appointed a member of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War and took an active part in its work until his retirement in 1863. In the summer of 1865 he was sent by the War Department into the South, "to look into matters connected with the interests of the government in the Mississippi valley." Upon his return President Johnson declined to accept his report, in which he urged the removal of Governor Wells of Louisiana and opposed the policy of withdrawing the troops from the South (Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866, pt. 4, p. 114). The President suggested that he file it with the War Department under whose authority he had been acting. From this time on Covode was an opponent of the President and upon his return to Congress steadily supported the congressional policy of reconstruction (Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 2 Session, Appendix, p. 462). He introduced into the House the resolution calling for the impeachment of Johnson. The results of Covode's mission to the South do not appear to have been of any special importance nor does he appear to have exerted any considerable influence in Congress at any time during the Reconstruction period.

[Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of John Covode, delivered in the House and Senate (1871); Congressional Globe; John M. Gresham, Biography and Historical Cyclopedia of Westmoreland County (1890); J. M. Boucher, History of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania (1906), Volume I; Biography Dir. American Congress (1928); Press (Philadelphia), January 12, 1871.]

R. S. C.



COWEN, Benjamin S., Physician, born in Washington County, New York, in 1793; died in St. Clairsville, Ohio, 27 September, 1869. In 1840 he was elected to Congress by the Whigs, where he succeeded Joshua R. Biddings as Chairman of the Committee on Claims. He took strong ground in favor of the tariff of 1842, and throughout his Congressional career was looked upon as a consistent anti-slavery man.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 757:

COWEN, Benjamin S., physician, born in Washington County, New York, in 1793; died in St. Clairsville, Ohio, 27 September, 1869. He was educated in his native place and studied medicine. In 1820 he moved to Moorefield, Harrison County, Ohio, subsequently studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1829. He moved to St. Clairsville in 1832, and after a time edited the Belmont " Chronicle," of which he was proprietor and principal editor until 1852, when he relinquished it to his son, now Brigadier General B. R. Cowen. In 1839 he was a delegate to the convention that nominated General Harrison for president, and in 1840 was elected to Congress by the Whigs, where he succeeded Joshua R. Giddings as Chairman of the Committee on Claims. He took strong ground in favor of the tariff of 1842, and throughout his Congressional career was looked upon as a consistent anti-slavery man. During 1845-6 he was a member of the Ohio legislature, and from 1847 till 1852 was presiding judge of the court of common pleas. At the beginning of the war he was active in raising men and money, and during its continuance his efforts to aid the government never relaxed. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 757.



COWLES, Edwin (September 19, 1825-March 4, 1890), journalist. Published the Forest City Democrat, a Free-Soil Whig newspaper. In 1854, the name was changed to the Cleveland Leader. He was one of the founders of the Republican party. At the beginning of the Civil War he became an advocate of immediate emancipation of the slaves.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 472)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 472:

COWLES, EDWIN (September 19, 1825-March 4, 1890), journalist, was born in Austinburg, Ohio. A Cowles, originally Coles or Cole, had come to Massachusetts in 1635, and a year later had joined the pioneer band that the Reverend Thomas Hooker led from Cambridge to Connecticut. In 1810, a descendant, Dr. Edwin Weed Cowles, settled at Austinburg, Ohio, among Connecticut neighbors who had been lured into the West. When Edwin, the son of Dr. Edwin Weed and Almira (Foote) Cowles, was seven years of age, the family took up its abode in Cleveland. Edwin's education was limited to a few years in the local schools and one at the Grand River Institute in Austinburg. At the age of fourteen, he entered a printer's office. Five years later (1844) he and T. H. Smead became partners in the printing business. In 1853, the partnership with Smead was dissolved and another formed with Joseph Medill and John C. Vaughn (Medill, Cowles & Company). The new organization published the Forest City Democrat, a Free-Soil Whig newspaper. In 1854, the name was changed to the Cleveland Leader. A year later Cowles became sole owner and shortly afterward editor as well. His enterprise rapidly grew to include both a morning and an evening daily newspaper.

His connection with political history was intimate. He was one of the founders of the Republican party. At the beginning of the Civil War he became an insistent advocate of coercion of the Southern states and immediate emancipation of the slaves. In 1861, Lincoln appointed him postmaster in Cleveland, an office he held five years. In 1876 and 1884, he was a delegate to the National Republican Convention. On the second occasion he was vice-president of the convention. He was a regular party man, loyal to Grant, and throughout his life a believer in Blaine. Finding that Blaine could not be nominated in 1876 and 1880, he threw his influence behind Ohio's favorite sons, Hayes and Garfield. Working all his life under a handicap of deafness that would have baffled a weaker personality, he was an editor of remarkable courage, unchangeable convictions, and relentless dogmatisms, and such qualities made his pen a power in northern Ohio for a generation.

He was married in 1849 to Elizabeth C. Hutchinson of Cayuga, New York. In his later years he aided his sons, Eugene and Alfred, in the development of new methods in electric smelting. The aluminum, carborundum, calcium carbide, and acetylene industries grew out of their work. A company was formed for the manufacture of such products and Edwin Cowles, who supplied most of the capital, was its president. His interests in this company kept him in Europe much of the last two years of his life.

[The chief sources are Cowles's newspapers, files of which are in the Western Reserve Historical Society The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Leader, and the New York Times, March 5, 1890, each published an estimate of his work. See also the Cleveland Weekly Leader and Herald, March 8, 1890; Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham, The Pioneer Families of Cleveland (1914), II, 394 ff. A History of Ashtabula County, Ohio (1878), contains a sketch prepared under Cowles's direction.]

E.J. B.



COX, JACOB DOLSON (October 27, 1828-August 8, 1900), Union general, governor of Ohio, secretary of the interior, author. Took a prominent part in bringing about the fusion of Whigs and Free-Soilers, and in 1855 was a delegate to the convention in Columbus which organized the Republican party in the state.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 476-478; Ewing, Public Services of Jacob Dolson Cox (1902), Jas. Ford Rhodes "Jacob D. Cox" (Historical Essays, 1909, pp. 183- 88)

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 476-478:

COX, JACOB DOLSON (October 27, 1828-August 8, 1900), Union general, governor of Ohio, secretary of the interior, author. was descended from one Michael Koch, who came from Hanover and settled in New York City in 1705. Jacob Dolson Cox, Sr., received his middle name from his mother, a member of a Dutch family of New York: his wife, Thedia R. Kenyon, was descended from Elder William Brewster and from the Allyns and Kenyons of Connecticut. To them was born, at Montreal, Jacob Dolson Cox, Jr., while the father, a building contractor, was engaged in the construction of the roof of the Church of Notre Dame. Returning to New York City soon after this event, the family suffered business reverses during the crisis of 1837. The boy's hope of obtaining a college education was impaired by the misfortune, and, under the state law, the alternative path to a lawyer's career, to which he aspired, was a seven years' clerkship in a law office. Entering upon such an apprenticeship in 1842, he changed his mind two years later, and went into the office of a banker and broker, where the shorter hours permitted him, with the aid of a friend, to pursue the study of mathematics and the classical languages. After two years more, through the influence of Reverend Charles G. Finney [q.v.], then professor of theology at Oberlin College, he was led to enter the preparatory department of that institution. Three years later (1849), while still an undergraduate, he married Helen, the daughter of Finney who was now president of the college. Graduating in 1851, Cox served for two years at Warren, Ohio, as superintendent of schools and principal of the high school, reading law at the same time, and beginning to practise in 1853.

Cox was at this time a Whig, but his Oberlin associations, his marriage, and other influences, combined to make him strongly anti-slavery in principle. He voted for Scott in 1852, but took a prominent part in bringing about the fusion of Whigs and Free-Soilers, and in 1855 was a delegate to the convention at Columbus which organized the Republican party in the state. A few years later his party friends, against his protest, nominated and elected him to the state Senate. Entering the Senate in 1859, he found there his friend James A. Garfield, and Governor-Elect Dennison, with whom he soon became intimate, this trio, together with Salmon P. Chase, then governor, forming a radical anti-slavery group.

With the outbreak of war in 1861, Cox's activity in organizing volunteers brought him a commission as brigadier-general of volunteers. During the summer he had a part in the Kanawha Valley campaign under McClellan, and a year later, in the Army of the Potomac, he participated in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam, commanding the 9th Corps at the former after the fall of General Reno. He was advanced to the rank of major-general on October 6, 1862, but the following April was reduced to his former rank because the number of major-generals permitted by law had been inadvertently exceeded. This bungling, which resulted in the promotion of less deserving officers, was a discouraging episode in his military career; but after repeated urging on the part of his superiors he was at length recommissioned in December 1864. During the winter of 1862- 63 he commanded the forces in West Virginia, and from April to December 1863 was in charge of the Ohio military district. During the Atlanta campaign he led a division of the 3rd Army Corps, and after the fall of Atlanta for a time commanded the entire corps. He took part in the battle of Nashville, and early in 1865 was sent into North Carolina to open communications. along the coast with Sherman, who was nearing the end of the march to the sea. On this expedition Cox defeated Bragg's troops and effected a junction with Sherman at Goldsboro.

After the war, while engaged in superintending the mustering out of the troops in Ohio, Cox was elected governor of the state. During the campaign in response to the inquiries of friends at Oberlin, he expressed himself as opposed to negro suffrage. He could not assume as they did, he wrote, that the suffrage, while whites and blacks dwelt in the same community, would cure all of the ills of the freedmen. Carrying these ideas further, he declared while governor, that the large groups of whites and blacks in the Southern states could never share political power, and that insistence upon it on the part of the colored people would bring about their ruin. As a remedy, he advocated the forcible segregation of the negroes, a plan which found little or no support. By such views, and by his indorsement of President Johnson's reconstruction policy, which he thought essentially the same as Lincoln's, he lost favor with his party, and was not renominated. He tried in vain to mediate between Johnson and the radical Republicans, and finally himself abandoned the President because of the latter 's obstinacy and pugnacity. In 1868 Cox declined Johnson's tender of the post of commissioner of Internal Revenue.

Upon Grant's accession, Cox accepted the office of secretary of the interior. He had become a prominent advocate of the new cause of civil-service reform, and in his own department he put the merit system into operation, resisting the efforts of the party spoilsmen to dictate appointments and to collect campaign assessments. He and Attorney-General Hoar were regarded by the Independent Republicans as the only strong men in Grant's cabinet. When Grant's extraordinary Santo Domingo embroglio forced Hoar from the cabinet-the story of which episode Cox gave to the public twenty-five years later (see Atlantic Monthly, August 1895)-Cox lost hope of maintaining his fight without the support of the President. Already he had clashed with Grant over the fraudulent claims of one McGarrahan to certain mineral lands, as well as over the Dominican situation and on October 5, 1870, he submitted his resignation. " My views of the necessity of reform in the civil service," he wrote, "have brought me more or less into collision with the plans of our active political managers, and my sense of duty has obliged me to oppose some of their methods of action" (New York Tribune, October 31, 1870).

The breach with Grant hurt Cox deeply. He held Grant's military talent in high esteem, and did not allow his judgment thereof to be affected by their difference (see, e. g., his review of Grant's Memoirs, in the Nation, February 25, 1886, July I, 1886); but in private conversation he permitted himself to criticize the President's course severely. Grant on his part, with his military instincts and experience, regarded Cox's independence of mind as a kind of insubordination. "The trouble was," as he put it, "that General Cox thought the Interior Department was the whole government, and that Cox was the Interior Department. I had to point out to him in very plain language that there were three controlling branches of the Government, and that I was the head of one of these and would so like to be considered by the Secretary of the Interior" (Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, p. 427). Progressive opinion supported Cox, and his political "martyrdom" undoubtedly hastened the triumph of the reform movement.

Upon leaving the cabinet the former secretary became conspicuously identified with the Liberal Republican movement, and was much talked of as its probable nominee for the presidency in 1872. At the Cincinnati convention, however, he was defeated by the more available Greeley. Meantime he had resumed the practise of law, at Cincinnati; but in 1873 he removed to Toledo to become president of the Wabash Railway. This position he gave up in turn upon being elected to Congress in 1876, from the 6th Ohio District, by an unprecedented majority.

He served but one term in Congress. He seems to have hoped to be able to do something to support President Hayes in his reform efforts, and his helplessness under existing political conditions probably discouraged him. At any rate he abandoned politics, even refraining thereafter from comment on political events, with the exception of a single speech during the Garfield campaign. Resuming his residence at Cincinnati, he became dean of the Cincinnati Law School (1881), a position which he held for the next sixteen years. During part of this time (1885-89) he also served as president of the University of Cincinnati. In addition to high repute as a lawyer, his reputation as a business man was enviable, and brought him in the middle nineties the tender of the post of railroad commissioner in New York City. This offer he declined, preferring to continue his connection with the Law School. In 1897 he declined President McKinley's offer of the Spanish mission, but in the same year he presented his library to Oberlin College and retired thither to write his Military Reminiscences. This work was barely completed and still unpublished when his death occurred, after a brief illness, while he was enjoying his customary summer outing along the coast of Maine, in company with a son.

Cox was tall, graceful, and well-proportioned, with erect, military bearing, and a frame denoting great physical strength. A man of many interests, he devoted much time in his later years to the study of microscopy, in which field he won international distinction. He was also a student of European cathedrals. His wide information, conversational gifts, and courteous manners made him an agreeable companion. The artistic genius of a son, Kenyon Cox [q.v.], doubtless bears witness to undeveloped talents of the father.

No small part of Cox's reputation rests upon his work as a writer. From 1874 until his death he was the Nation's military book critic. In addition to contributions to this and other journals, he wrote several books on military topics, the most important of which are: Atlanta, and The March to the Sea; Franklin and Nashville (volumes IX and X in the Campaigns of the Civil War series, 1882); The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 30, 1864 (1897); and Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (2 volumes, 1900). He also contributed four chapters to M. F. Force's Life of General Sherman (1899). A work of less consequence is The Second Battle of Bull Run as Connected with the Fitz-John Porter Case (1882). Some critics of these books regard his attitude toward Rosecrans as unjust and not well informed, and his judgment in the Fitz John Porter case is open to question. In general, however, he is recognized as an elegant and forceful writer, of fine critical ability and impartial judgment, one of the foremost military historians of the country.

[The autobiographical nature of the Military Reminiscences makes it the chief source of information for Cox's life as a soldier. It contains a portrait. See also Bibliotheca Sacra, July 1901, pp. 436-68. J. R. Ewing, Public Services of Jacob Dolson Cox (1902), is a slight sketch of about twenty pages which contains some data not found elsewhere. Jas. Ford Rhodes touches the high points of Cox's civil career and appraises his personality in "Jacob D. Cox" (Historical Essays, 1909, pp. 183- 88). He tells the story of the cabinet controversy in History of the U. S. from the Compromise of 1850, VII (1910), 3-7. See also L.A. Coolidge, Ulysses S. Grant (1917); Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, His Life and Character (1898); Nation, August 9, 1901, p. 107. Estimates of Cox's writings may be found in the American History Review, III (1898), 578-80, and VI (1901), 602-06.]

H.C.H.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I :

COX, Jacob Dolson, statesman, born in Montreal, Canada, 27 October, 1828. His parents were natives of the United States, but at the time of his birth were temporarily sojourning in Canada. He spent his boyhood in New York, removed with his parents to Ohio in 1846, and was graduated at Oberlin in 1851. After leaving college he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1853, and settled in Warren, Ohio. In 1859-'61 he was a member of the state senate, having been elected by the republicans. At the beginning of the civil war he held a state commission as brigadier-general of militia, and took an active part in raising troops. He entered the national army on 23 April, 1861, and three weeks later received the commission of brigadier-general and was assigned to the command of the “Brigade of the Kanawha” in western Virginia. On 29 July he drove out the Confederates under Gen. Wise, taking and repairing Gauley and other bridges, which had been partially destroyed. Gen. Cox remained in command of this department, with the exception of a short interval, until August, 1862, when he was assigned to the Army of Virginia under Gen. Pope. He served in the 9th corps at the Battle of South Mountain, 14 September, 1862, assuming command when Gen Reno fell, and also at Antietam, three days later. For his services in this campaign he was commissioned major-general. On April 16, 1863, Gen. Cox was put in command of the district of Ohio, and also of a division of the 23rd army corps. He served in the Atlanta campaign, and under Gen. Thomas in the campaigns of Franklin and Nashville. On 14 March, 1865, he fought the battle of Kingston, N.C., and then united his force with Gen. Sherman's army. At the close of the war he resigned his command, and entered into the practice of law in Cincinnati. He was governor of Ohio in 1866-'67, declined the office of commissioner of internal revenue tendered him by President Johnson in 1868, and was secretary of the interior in President Grant's first cabinet from March, 1869, till December, 1870, when, on account of disagreement with certain measures of the administration, he resigned. Returning to Cincinnati, he resumed his legal practice. In October, 1873, he was elected president of the Wabash railroad, and removed to Toledo to take charge of his new work. In 1876 the republicans elected him representative to congress, where he served from 15 Oct., 1877, till 3 March, 1879. The degree of LL.D. has been conferred upon him by the University of North Carolina, and also by Davison university, Ohio. He has published “Atlanta” and “The March to the Sea; Franklin and Nashville” (New York, 1882). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I.



CRESWELL, John Angel James, 1828-1891, statesman, lawyer. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, 1863-1865. U.S. Senator 1865-. Supported the Union. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. From 1863 to 1865 he was a member of the national House of Representatives; but in March of the latter year he was elected to the Senate to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. In January 1865, after Maryland had freed its slaves, he made a strong impression by a speech in the House in favor of general emancipation. As senator, he stood for manhood suffrage, the compensation of loyal owners of drafted slaves, and strict enforcement of the Civil Rights Act.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 8; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 541; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 5, p. 726; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 541;

CRESWELL, JOHN ANGEL JAMES (November 18, 1828-December 23, 1891), postmaster-general, was born at Port Deposit, Maryland. His father, John G. Creswell, was a Marylander of English ancestry, and his mother, Rebecca E. Webb, a Pennsylvanian, whose forebears were German and English, one of the latter being the famous Quaker missionary, Elizabeth Webb. Creswell received his advanced education at Dickinson College, graduating with honors in 1848. After studying law for two years, he was admitted to the Maryland bar, in 1850, and soon began to practise. Early in his career he married Hannah J. Richardson of Maryland, a woman of considerable wealth.

In politics, Creswell was a strong partisan. He first affiliated with the Whigs, then after that party broke up, was for a short period a Democrat, and attended the Cincinnati convention which nominated Buchanan. After the Civil War opened, however, he became and remained a staunch and influential Republican. In the critical days of 1861 and 1862 Creswell filled his first public office, as loyalist member of the Maryland House of Delegates, and did much toward keeping the state in the Union. A year later, as assistant adjutant-general, he had charge of raising Maryland's quota of troops for the Northern army. From 1863 to 1865 he was a member of the national House of Representatives; but in March of the latter year he was elected to the Senate to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. In January 1865, after Maryland had freed its slaves, he made a strong impression by a speech in the House in favor of general emancipation. As senator, he stood for manhood suffrage, the compensation of loyal owners of drafted slaves, and strict enforcement of the Civil Rights Act.

Creswell 's most important public work was done as head of the Post Office Department, to which he was appointed by President Grant in March 1869. The country has had few, if any, abler postmasters-general. The changes made by him in the Department were sweeping, reformatory, and constructive. The cost of ocean transportation of letters to foreign countries was reduced from eight cents to two, and great increase in speed was secured by giving the carriage of the mails to the best and fastest steamers, four of which were to sail each week, and by advertising a month in advance the vessels selected; the pay to railroads for mail-carriage was rearranged on a fair basis; there was great increase in the number of railroad postal lines, postal clerks, and letter-carriers, and in the number of cities having free delivery of mail and money-order departments; one-cent postal cards were introduced; the system of letting out contracts for the internal carriage of the mails was so reformed as ultimately to do away with straw bidding and to secure fair competition among responsible bidders; the laws relating to the Post Office Department were codified, with a systematic classification of offenses against the postal laws; and postal treaties with foreign countries were completely revised. Creswell also denounced the franking system as the "mother of frauds," and secured its abolition, and he strongly urged the establishment of postal savings banks and a postal telegraph.

Pressure of private business led him to resign from the Post Office Department in July 1874, but he later accepted the position of United AT States counsel before the court of commissioners on the Alabama claims, and served until the court expired by law in December 1876. Thereafter, he spent most of his remaining years at Elkton, Maryland, where he had his home, and gave his attention to banking and the practise of law. Here, following two years of general ill health, he died of bronchial pneumonia.

[Journal of the Maryland House of Delegates, 1861-62; Congressional Globe, 1863-69; Reports of the Postmaster-General, 1869-74; Biography American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928); sketch in Biography Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland and the D. C. (1879), based, apparently, upon data furnished by Creswell himself. The short biography included in Sams and Riley, Bench and Bar of Maryland (1901), was founded upon the account given in the Biography Cyclopedia just mentioned. An editorial on Creswell's appointment as postmaster-general appears in the Baltimore (Weekly) Sun, March 6, 1869, and an obituary in the supplementary issue of the same paper for December 26, 1891.]

M. W. W.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume II, p. 8;

CRESWELL, John A. J., statesman, born in Port Deposit, Cecil county, Maryland, 18 November, 1828. He was graduated at Dickinson college, Pennsylvania, in 1848, studied law, and was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1850. He was a member of the state legislature in 1860 and 1862, and assistant adjutant-general for Maryland in 1862-'3. He was elected to congress, and served from 7 December, 1863, till 3 March, 1865; and, having distinguished himself as an earnest friend of the Union, was elected as a republican to the U. S. senate in March, 1865, to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. On 22 February, 1866, he delivered, at the request of the House of representatives, a memorable eulogy of his friend and colleague, Henry Winter Davis. He was a delegate to the Baltimore convention of 1864, the Philadelphia loyalists' convention of 1866, the Border states convention held in Baltimore in 1867, and the Chicago republican convention of 1868. In May, 1868, he was elected secretary of the U. S. senate, but declined. On 5 March, 1869, he was appointed by President Grant postmaster-general of the United States, and served till 3 July, 1874. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 8.



CROSBY, Fanny, 1820-1915, poet, lyricist, composer, abolitionist. Supported anti-slavery Whig Party, later Lincoln and the Union. Wrote patriotic poems and songs.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 567)



CUSHING, Caleb, 1800-1879, Boston, Massachusetts, statesman, soldier, lawyer, politician, U.S. Attorney General. Argued against slavery and defended the principles of the American Colonization Society and colonization. He supported the nomination of John Quincy Adams for the presidency, and was a whig until the accession of John Tyler. When the break in the whig party occurred, during the administration of President Tyler, Mr. Cushing was one of the few northern Whigs that continued to support the president.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 38-39; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 623; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 210)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 38-39:

CUSHING, Caleb, statesman, born in Salisbury, Massachusetts, 17 January, 1800; died in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 2 January, 1879. He was graduated at Harvard in 1817, and for two years was a tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar, and settled in Newburyport. He rose rapidly in his profession, and, although busily engaged with his practice, found time to devote to literature and politics, and was a frequent contributor to periodicals. In 1825 he was elected a representative to the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature, and in 1826 a member of the state senate. At this time he belonged to the then republican party. In 1829 Mr. Cushing visited Europe, and remained abroad two years. In 1833 he was again elected a representative from Newburyport to the Massachusetts legislature for two years, but in 1834 was elected from the Essex north district of Massachusetts a representative to congress, and served for four consecutive terms, until 1843. He supported the nomination of John Quincy Adams for the presidency, and was a whig until the accession of John Tyler. When the break in the whig party occurred, during the administration of President Tyler, Mr. Cushing was one of the few northern Whigs that continued to support the president, and became classed as a democrat. Soon afterward he was nominated for secretary of the treasury, but the senate refused to confirm him. He was subsequently confirmed as commissioner to China, and made the first treaty between that country and the United States. On his return he was again elected a representative in the Massachusetts legislature. In 1847 he raised a regiment for the Mexican war at his own expense, became its colonel, and was subsequently made brigadier-general. While still in Mexico he was nominated by the democratic party of his state for governor, but failed in the election. From 1850 till 1852 he was again a member of the legislature of his native state, and, at the expiration of his term, was appointed associate justice of the state supreme court. In 1853 President Pierce appointed him U. S. attorney-general, from which office he retired in 1857. In 1857, 1858, and 1859 he again served in the legislature of Massachusetts. In April, 1860, he was president of the Democratic national convention in Charleston, South Carolina, and was among the seceders from that body who met in Baltimore. At the close of 1860 he was sent to Charleston by President Buchanan, as a confidential commissioner to the secessionists of South Carolina; but his mission effected nothing. Mr. Cushing was frequently employed during the civil war in the departments at Washington, and in 1866 was appointed one of the three commissioners to revise and codify the laws of congress. In 1868 he was sent to Bogotá to arrange a diplomatic difficulty. In 1872 he was one of the counsel for the United States at the Geneva conference for the settlement of the Alabama claims, and in 1873 was nominated for the office of chief justice of the United States; but the nomination was subsequently withdrawn. A year later he was nominated and confirmed as minister to Spain, whence he returned home in 1877. His publications include a “History of the Town of Newburyport’ (1826); “The Practical Principles of Political Economy” (1826); “Historical and Political Review of the Late Revolution in France” (2 vols., Boston, 1833); “Reminiscences of Spain” (2 vols., Boston, 1833); “Growth and Territorial Progress of the United States” (1839); “Life of William H. Harrison” (Boston, 1840); and “The Treaty of Washington” (New York, 1873). Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.

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.