P: Palfrey through Putnam

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

PALFREY, John Gorham, 1796-1881, author, theologian, educator, opponent of slavery. Member of Congress from Massachusetts from 1847-1849 (Whig Party). Early anti-slavery activist. Palfrey was known as a “Conscience Whig” who adamantly opposed slavery. He freed 16 slaves whom he inherited from his father, who was a Louisiana plantation owner. While in Congress, Palfrey was a member of a small group of anti-slavery Congressmen, which included Joshua Giddings, of Ohio, Amos Tuck, of New Hampshire, Daniel Gott, of New York, David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, and Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois. In 1848, Palfrey failed to be reelected from his district because of his anti-slavery views. In 1851, he was an unsuccessful Free Soil candidate for the office of Governor in Massachusetts.

(Rayback, 1970, pp. 82, 95, 97, 245, 248; Appletons’, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 634; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 7, Pt. 2, p. 169; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 16, p. 932)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 634:

PALFREY, John Gorham, author, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 2 May, 1796; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 26 April, 1881, received his elementary education at a boarding-school kept by the father of John Howard Payne at Exeter, and was graduated at Harvard in 1815. He afterward studied theology, and was ordained pastor of the Brattle street Unitarian Church, Boston, 17 June, 1818, as successor to Edward Everett. His pastorate continued until 1830, when he resigned, and in 1831 he was appointed professor of sacred literature in Harvard, which chair he held till 1839. During the period of his professorship he was one of three preachers in the University chapel, and dean of the theological faculty. He was a member of the House of Representatives during 1842-'3, Secretary of State in 1844-'8, and was a member of Congress from Massachusetts, having been chosen as a Whig, from 6 December, 1847, till 3 March, 1849. In the election of 1848 he was a Free-Soil candidate, but was defeated. He was postmaster of Boston from 29 March, 1861, till May, 1867, and after his retirement went to Europe, where he represented the United States at the Anti-slavery Congress in Paris in the autumn of 1867. After his return he made his residence in Cambridge. He was an early anti-slavery advocate, and liberated and provided for numerous slaves in Louisiana that had been bequeathed to him. He was editor of the “North American Review” in 1835-'43, delivered a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1839 and 1842, contributed in 1846 a series of articles on “The Progress of the Slave Power” to the “Boston Whig,” and was in 1851 one of the editors of the “Commonwealth” newspaper. He was the author of two discourses on “The History of Brattle Street Church”; “Life of Colonel William Palfrey,” in Sparks's “American Biography”; “A Review of Lord Mahon's History of England,” in the “North American Review “; and also published, among other works, “Academical Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities” (4 vols., Boston, 1833'52), “Elements of Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan, and Rabbinical Grammar” (1835); “Discourse at Barnstable, 3 September, 1839, at the Celebration of the Second Centennial Anniversary of the Settlement of Cape Cod” (1840); “Abstract of the Returns of Insurance Companies of Massachusetts, 1 December, 1846” ( 1847); “The Relation between Judaism and Christianity” (1854); and “History of New England to 1875” (4 vols., 1858-'64). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 634. [Grandson of William Palfry 1741-1780]. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 634)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 169-170:

PALFREY, JOHN GORHAM (May 2, 1796-April 26, 1881), Unitarian clergyman, editor, historian, was a grandson of Major William Palfrey who was paymaster of the American forces in the Revolution, and the son of John and Mary (Gorham) Palfrey of Boston, where John Gorham was born. He received his earliest education at a private school, and then went to Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, where he prepared for Harvard. He graduated from college with the degree of A.B. in 1815, having for a classmate Jared Sparks [q.v.]. After graduation he studied for the Unitarian ministry and in 1818 was ordained as minister of the Church in Brattie Square, Boston. He remained with that church until 1831, when he was appointed Dexter Professor of Sacred Literature in Harvard, a post which he filled until his resignation in 1839.

He had long before begun to write for the press, his earliest articles appearing in the North American Review, of which Sparks was editor. In 1825, during Sparks's temporary absence in Europe, Palfrey acted as his substitute. In 1835 he bought the Review and -conducted it with much success until he sold it to Francis Bowen [q.v.] in 1843. Between 1817 and 1859 he contributed thirty-one important articles to it. In 1842 and 1843 he was a member of the Massachusetts legislature. Meanwhile, he had become known as a lecturer, mainly on the evidences of Christianity, the Jewish Scriptures, and similar topics. He was interested in education, was chairman of the committee on education in the legislature, and cooperated with Horace Mann [q.v.] in his educational work. From 1844 to 1847 he was secretary of the Commonwealth and from 1847 to 1849 a member of Congress. In 1861 he was appointed postmaster at Boston, retaining that position until 1867. In politics he was at first a Whig and held his earlier offices as such; he was also an abolitionist, and himself freed a few slaves that he had inherited from his father, who had lived for a while in Louisiana.

Among his writings may be mentioned: Sermons on Duties Belonging to Some of the Conditions of Private Life (1834); Academical Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities (4 Volumes, 1838-52); Lowell Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity (2 volumes, 1843); "Life of William Palfrey," in Sparks's Library of American Biography (volume XVII, 1848); and the History of New England (4 volumes, 1858-75). A fifth volume of the History, which he had almost finished but had not had time to prepare for the press before his death, was published in 1890. Palfrey's claim to fame rests on this work. He appears to have been esteemed by his contemporaries, but his curious career-minister, professor, politician, postmaster, editor, writer, lecturer, and historian-indicates a certain lack of definite purpose and aim, a weakness of some sort in his character. A s a recognition of his historical work, he was twice elected to the Massachusetts Historical Society and twice resigned, and the Society took no notice of his death in the usual form of memoir. The History of New England was the result of a vast amount of research, and he was both painstaking and usually accurate in detail. Although there are minor errors, some of which only subsequent research has corrected, the innumerable foot-notes, which are a feature of the volumes, are still a convenient and useful mine of information as to events and characters in the period he treated. (It may be noted that owing to his advancing age, the last two volumes are considerably inferior to the first three.) By frequently alternating his chapters on colonial affairs with chapters on contemporary events in England, thus attempting to provide the reader with a more adequate background, he introduced what at that time was rather an innovation. For this he deserves much praise. He probably tried to be fair in his judgments and when the volumes appeared they were much acclaimed for their impartiality; but from the standpoint of today, the whole work must be considered as biased in several respects. In the relations between England and the colonies, Palfrey could see little but tyranny on the one side and Godfearing patriotism on the other. Now here does he show any real understanding of motives and problems. The work is strongly biased, also, by his inability to admit any flaws in the Puritans. So far as respects them, the volumes are special pleading throughout. Furthermore, the work is called a History of New England, although Palfrey writes as a retained advocate for Massachusetts when dealing with any conflict between that colony and the others, a notable example of this being his treatment of the Massachusetts-Rhode Island dispute over the Quakers. It may also be noted that he wrote as a clergyman and his sympathies were all with the ecclesiastical organization rather than with the laymen throughout the early struggles. Although his work has now been superseded for the general reader, it still retains much value for the special student, and for nearly half a century was the one standard work on New England.

He received the degree of LL.D. from St. Andrew's College, Scotland, as well as honorary degrees from Harvard, and was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. On March 11, 1823, he married Mary Ann, daughter of Samuel Hammond of Boston; they had six children, among whom were John Carver Palfrey [q. v.] and Sarah Hammond Palfrey. The latter, a woman of varied intellectual attainments, shared her father's interest in liberal theology and was prominent in the social and philanthropic movements of her day. Besides contributing to periodicals, she published poems and several novels.

[Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, n.s., volume I (1882); Report of the Proceedings of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia... 1881 (1882); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); J. S. Loring, The Hundred Boston Orators (1853); Boston Transcript, April 27, 1881.]

J. T.A.



PARKER, James (March 3, 1776-April 1, 1868), legislator. During his legislative career he was particularly interested in the act of 1817 establishing free schools in the state, the act authorizing aliens to purchase and hold real estate in New Jersey, and the act passed in 1820 prohibiting, under the severest penalties, the exportation of slaves from the state.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 227-228:

PARKER, JAMES (March 3, 1776-April r, 1868), legislator, was born in Bethlehem township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, the son of James and Gertrude (Skinner) Parker. His father was a member of the Provincial Council and of the Board of Proprietors of the colony. The family had taken refuge in Hunterdon County during the Revolutionary struggle but returned in 1783 to the ancestral home in Perth Amboy. Here James Parker was educated by the Reverend Joseph I. Bend, Rector of St. Peter's Church, before going to a preparatory school at Amwell, Hunterdon County. He entered Columbia, College, New York, in 1790 and was graduated second in the class of 1793. He was placed in the counting house of John Murray, then a leading merchant in New York, but the death of his father in 1797 obliged him to return home to take up the management of the family estate. In 1806 he was elected to the New Jersey Assembly from Middlesex County. He was reelected annually until 1811, and again in 1812, 1813, 1815, 1816, and 1818. During his legislative career he was particularly interested in the act of 1817 establishing free schools in the state, the act authorizing aliens to purchase and hold real estate in New Jersey, and the act passed in 1820 prohibiting, under the severest penalties, the exportation of slaves from the state.

Parker returned to the legislature in 1827 chiefly for the purpose of promoting the construction of a canal between the Delaware and Raritan rivers. Although the bill which he reported did not pass in the legislative session of t827-28, he had the satisfaction a few years later of witnessing the actual construction of a canal essentially the same as that which he had proposed when the Delaware and Raritan Canal Company was organized, he became a director and held this post until his death. His interest in the boundary question between New York and New Jersey led him to serve on the different boundary commissions until a settlement was reached in 1829. In 1815 and again in 1850 he was chosen mayor of Perth Amboy. Although he had always been a Federalist, he supported the candidacy of Andrew Jackson for the presidency and served as presidential elector in 1&'24. "When Jackson became president in 1829, Parker: was appointed collector of the port at Perth Amboy, which at that time had considerable foreign trade. While serving in this office, he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1832 and was reelected in 1834. His distrust of Martin Van Buren led him to align himself with the Whig party in 1840 and to support its candidates until the fifties, when he joined the Republican party. He was one of the most influential members of the convention called in 1844 to frame a new constitution for New Jersey and served as chairman of the committee on the bill of rights. His interest in education was recognized by his election to the boards of trustees of Rutgers College and of the College of New Jersey. He was elected vice-president of the New Jersey Historical Society at its formation and subsequently became its president. For many years he was a vestryman of St. Peter's Church, Perth Amboy, and usually represented that parish in the Protestant Episcopal Convention of New Jersey. Freed from the necessity of earning his own living by a generous patrimony, he was always willing to answer the call to public service. He was twice married: on January 5, 1803, to Penelope Butler, daughter of a once wealthy Philadelphia merchant, who di ed in 1823, and on September 20, 1827, to Catherine Morris Ogden, sister of David B. Ogden [q.v.]. John Cortlandt Parker [q. v. ] was a son by the first marriage.

[R. S. Field, "Address on the Life and Character of the Hon. J as. Parker," Proceedings New Jersey Historical Society, 2 ser. I (1869); K. M. Beekman, "A Colonial Capital: Perth Amboy and Its Church Warden, Jas. Parker," Ibid., n.s. III (1918); Jas. Parker, The Parker and Kearney Families of New Jersey (Perth Amboy, 1925); W. N. Jones, The History of St. Peter's Church in Perth Amboy, New Jersey (1923); Daily State Gazette (Trenton), April 3, 1868.]

W.S.C.



PARKER, Joel (January 25, 1795-August 17, 1875), jurist. In politics he was Whig, then Republican. When Senator Charles Sumner was brutally attacked in congress over the issue of slavery, he made a speech of protest which, according to a correspondent to the Edinburgh Review (October 1856, p. 595), "for earnestness and solemnity of denunciation has not been anywhere surpassed."

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, pp. 231-232:

PARKER, JOEL (January 25, 1795-August 17, 1875), jurist, was born in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. He was descended from Abraham Parker, a native of Wiltshire, England, who had settled in Woburn, Massachusetts, by 1645. His father, Abel Parker, a Revolutionary soldier, was married in 1777 to Edith Jewett of Pepperell and three years later moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and cleared a farm. Joel Parker studied at Groton Academy and at Dartmouth, graduating in 1811. He read law in Keene, New Hampshire, and was admitted to the bar in 1817. In 1821 he went to Ohio with a view to opening an office, but he returned in 1822 to resume his practice at Keene. He followed the law with singleness of purpose and achieved a success which was substantial but not sudden. In 1833 he was appointed to the superior court-the highest court in the state and five years later was promoted to be chief justice. As a trial judge he inspired juries with courage. Lawyers might call him obstinate, but as a colleague explained, this was excusable in a judge who was almost always right. In deciding cases he reasoned to his own conclusions. Upon declining to follow a multitude of decisions sustaining a certain rule, he said: "they are so many that their very number furnishes cause of suspicion that the rule is not quite sound .... It would seem, if the rule had a solid foundation, that one fifth, or one tenth, of the number might have settled the question. Its numerical strength, therefore, is weakness" (14 New Hampshire, 215, 228). This independence came to notice through his clash with Justice Story. The New Hampshire court gave one construction to the word lien in the Bankruptcy Act of 1841, while Story (who had framed the act) enforced a contrary view in the federal circuit court. Neither would recede, but after Story's death the Supreme Court upheld Parker's construction (14 New Hampshire, 509 and 48 U.S., 612).

In November 1847 Parker was appointed Royall Professor of Law at Harvard. On January 20, 1848, he was married to Mary Morse Parker, of Keene. In June he resigned from the bench after having moved to Cambridge. In his new position he was ill at ease and was tempted to go back to New Hampshire. The moot court was a pleasure, but lecturing required a painful adaptation, and he had to begin with unfamiliar subjects. His method was formal and thorough rather than vivid. The poorer men could not follow. "His law . . . was . . . exasperatingly sound; but he could no more give a comprehensive view of a whole topic than an oyster, busy in perfecting its single pearl, can range over the ocean floor" (Batchelder, post, p. 223). Yet such men as Joseph Choate and Henry Billings Brown [qq.v.] found him a fountain of knowledge, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, another pupil, referred to him as "one of the greatest of American judges, ... who showed in the chair the same qualities that made him famous on the bench" (Speeches by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1891, p. 35). In 1868 he resigned his professorship. For years the great triumvirate, Parker, Theophilus Parsons, and Emory Washburn, had reported that "there have been no new arrangements in relation to the organization of the School or the course of instruction." Unlike Langdell who presently came to invigorate the school, Parker in his methods had not been ahead of his time.

He served in the New Hampshire legislature for three years (1824, 1825, 1826); as delegate from Cambridge to the constitutional convention of 1853, and as commissioner to revise the statutes of Massachusetts. In politics he was Whig, then Republican. When Sumner was attacked he made a speech of protest which, according to a correspondent to the Edinburgh Review (October 1856, p. 595), "for earnestness and solemnity of denunciation has not been anywhere surpassed." He opposed the doctrine that secession was constitutional and criticised Taney's opinion in the Merryman case (J. D. Lawson, American State Trials, IV, 1918, p. 880). He defended the capture of Mason and Slidell. But as the drama of war and Reconstruction unfolded, his conservative nature recoiled. The Republicans had "dug the grave of the Constitution" (To the People of Massachusetts, 1862, p. 10). When Parker's conduct or opinions were impeached, he retaliated. "A good stand-up fight was meat and drink to him" (Batchelder, p. 225). He was especially irritated by clergymen who argued that the president might abolish slavery, saying that their "impudent assumption" that they had a greater knowledge of constitutional law than men trained to the profession was a "nuisance." "If any of them have D.D. attached to their names, that does not disqualify them from being also ASS, and mischief-makers besides" (Constitutional Law and Unconstitutional Divinity, 1863, pp. 6, 10). But he had a more genial side. He read poetry and loved flowers. At home and among friends he was affectionate. Students invited to dine were surprised to find he could regard a glass of wine with real enjoyment, and that he was witty. He published more than a score of articles and pamphlets, among which may be mentioned Daniel Webster as a Jurist (1852); Non-Extension of Slavery, and Constitutional Representation (1856); Personal Liberty Laws (Statutes of Massachusetts) and Slavery in the Territories (1861); Habeas Corpus and Martial Law (1862); International Law (1862); The War Powers of Congress, and of the President (1863); Revolution and Reconstruction (1866); and The Three Powers of Government ... The Origin of the United States, and the Status of Southern States (1869).

[G. S. Hale, "Joel Parker," American Law Review, January 1876; Emory Washburn, memoir in Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, volume XIV (1876), and in Albany Law Journal, August 28, 1875; C. H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894); Charles Warren, History of the Harvard Law School (1908), volume II; The Centennial History of the Harvard Law School (1918); S. F. Batchelder, Bits of Harvard History (1924); New England Magazine, July 1912; F. C. Jewett, History and Genealogy of the Jewetts of America (1908), volume I; Boston Transcript, August 19, 1875.]

C.F.



PHILLIPS, Stephen Clarendon, 1801-1857, philanthropist. U.S. Congressman, Whig Party. Also member of anti-slavery Free Soil Party.

(Mabee, 1970, p. 161; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 437; Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, p. 763)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography1888, Vol. IV, p. 763:

PHILLIPS, Stephen Clarendon, philanthropist, born in Salem, Massachusetts, 1 November, 1801; died on St. Lawrence River, 26 June, 1857. He was graduated at Harvard in 1819, and began the study of law, but soon discontinued it to engage in business in Salem. He was in the lower house of the legislature in 1824-'30, was elected to the state senate in the latter year, and in 1832-'3 was again a member of the legislature. He was then chosen to Congress as a Whig to fill a vacancy, and served during three terms—from 1 December, 1834, until his resignation in 1838—when he became mayor of Salem, which place he then held until March, 1842. On his retirement from this office he devoted the whole of his salary as mayor to the public schools of Salem. He was the Free-Soil candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 1848-'9, and a presidential elector in 1840. Mr. Phillips discharged several state and private trusts, and was many years a member of the State Board of Education. Retiring from public life in 1849, he engaged extensively in the lumber business in Canada, and met his death by the burning of the steamer “Montreal” while coming down the St. Lawrence River from Quebec. Mr. Phillips was president of the Boston Sunday-School Society, and author of “The Sunday-School Service Book,” in several parts (Boston). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 763.



PIERPONT, Francis Harrison (January 25, 1814-March 24, 1899), governor of the "restored" state of Virginia, 1861-68. Being an ardent antislavery and Union man, he supported Lincoln in 1860. When Virginia in 1861 decided in favor of secession, Pierpont organized a mass meeting at Wheeling in May which called a convention to meet in that town during the following month. This convention, holding that the secessionist officials of the state had vacated their offices, elected Pierpont provisional governor of Virginia. He thereupon organized the Unionist members of the legislature from the western counties into a rump legislature; a constitution was framed, and the name West Virginia adopted. Representatives from this government were seated in the Federal Congress, and in 1863 the state was admitted to the Union.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 384-385:

PIERPONT, FRANCIS HARRISON (January 25, 1814-March 24, 1899), governor of the "restored" state of Virginia, 1861-68, was the son of Francis and Catherine (Weaver) Pierpoint. The name was spelled Pierpoint by the Virginia branch of the family until 1881 when Francis Harrison returned to the older spelling, Pierpont. His grandfather, John Pierpont, removed from New York State in 1770 and established a farm near Morgantown, Monongalia County, in western Virginia. Here young Francis was born in 1814, but during the same year his father removed from the old homestead to the neighborhood of Fairmont, in what is now Marion County, West Virginia. As the boy grew up he helped his father on the farm and in his tannery. In 1835 he entered Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania, and was graduated with the bachelor's degree in 1839. For two years he taught school in Virginia and in 1841 went to Mississippi to engage in the same occupation, but his father's poor health necessitated his return home the next year. Having read law in his spare time, he was now admitted to the bar. In 1848 he became local attorney for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and in 1853 engaged in mining and shipping coal.

From 1844 to 1860 Pierpont took an active interest in politics as an adherent of the Whig party, serving as a presidential elector on the Taylor ticket in 1848. Being an ardent antislavery and Union man, he supported Lincoln in 1860. When Virginia in 1861 decided in favor of secession, Pierpont organized a mass meeting at Wheeling in May which called a convention to meet in that town during the following month. This convention, holding that the secessionist officials of the state had vacated their offices, elected Pierpont provisional governor of Virginia. He thereupon organized the Unionist members of the legislature from the western counties into a rump legislature; a constitution was framed, and the name West Virginia adopted. Representatives from this government were seated in the Federal Congress, and in 1863 the state was admitted to the Union. A new governor was elected for the new state, but meanwhile Pierpont had been granted a four-year term as governor of the "restored" state of Virginia; that is, governor of the few counties which were in Federal hands and not in West Virginia. He now moved his capital to Alexandria and carried on under military protection. Upon the fall of the Confederate government, he moved his capital to Richmond and became in fact the governor of Virginia. Under the Johnson regime he conducted the affairs of the state until the reconstruction act went into effect and he was replaced by a military commander on April 16, 1868. While at the head of affairs in Richmond he did what he could to alleviate the suffering and the bitterness which oppressed the people during those ghastly years. Upon his retirement from office, he returned to his home in West Virginia and resumed the practice of law. Subsequently he sat for one term in the legislature (1870) and was collector of internal revenue under Garfield. He died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where for two years he had lived in the home of a daughter. He was buried at his home near Fairmont, West Virginia.

Pierpont was apparently one of that large class of men who are selected as leaders in troubled times because they possess strength of conviction rather than strength of intellect. In 1910 a statue of him was placed by West Virginia in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol. In 1854 he married Julia Augusta Robertson, daughter of Samuel and Dorcas (Platt) Robertson of New York.

[The material dealing with the establishment of West Virginia is voluminous and largely of a partisan nature; the best study is J. C. McGregor, The Disruption of Virginia (1922). There are sketches of Pierpont in T. C. Miller and Hu Maxwell, West Virginia and Its People (1913), volume II; M. V. Smith, Virginia, A History of the Executives (1893); R. A. Brock, Virginia and Virginians (1888), volume I; L. G. Tyler, Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography (1915), volume III; Encyclopedia of Contemporary Biography of West Virginia (1894); Statue of Governor Francis Harrison Pierpont: Proceedings in Statuary Hall (1910), being Senate Doc. No. 656, 61 Congress, 2 Session; F. S. Reader, History of the Fifth West Virginia Cavalry (1890); Pittsburgh Post, March 25, 1899; Wheeling Register, March 25, 1899.]

T . P. A.



PIKE, James Shepard, 1811-1882, journalist, diplomat, anti-slavery activist. Washington correspondent and associate editor of the New York Tribune. He was as an uncompromising anti-slavery whig, and later as an ardent Republican.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 18; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 595-596; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 17, p. 512).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 7, Pt. 2, p. 595-596:

PIKE, JAMES SHEPHERD (September 8, 1811 November 29, 1882), journalist, author, was born in Calais, Maine, the son of William and Hannah (Shepherd) Pike, and died in that town in his seventy-second year while en route from his home at Robbinston, Maine, to the South for the winter months. He was a descendant of John Pike and his son Robert [q.v.], who came to Massachusetts from England in 1635. His parents were among the early settlers of Calais, where his father was conspicuous in town affairs and was instrumental in establishing the first schools (1810). In these, maintained with difficulty through the War of 1812, young Pike received his only formal education, which he later described as "not worth mentioning." The sudden death of his father in 1818 left the family in straitened circumstances; and, at the age of fourteen, James entered upon a series of business ventures in his native town, first as a clerk, later in a grain and shipping business, and in 1836, as cashier of the short-lived St. Croix Bank.

By 1840 his success in business was such as to permit him to devote himself to the more congenial work of journalism, in which he had already shown an interest by editing the Boundary Gazette and Calais Advertiser (April 12, 1835-July 28, 1836), distinguished for its Whig sympathies and its early advocacy of Harrison for the presidency. Despite his limited education, he had acquired literary taste, a vigorous and picturesque diction, and forceful style. After 1840 he lived during the winter months in Boston, New York, and Washington, becoming actively associated with newspaper work. As correspondent for the Portland Advertiser, and especially for the Boston Courier, he became familiarly known through letters signed "J. S. P." As Washington correspondent for the Courier he described with characteristic vigor and effectiveness the persons and events in Washington during the debates on
the compromise measures of 1850. Of Henry Clay; on the occasion of the Compromise speech, he said, ''he was neither profound, brilliant, nor soul stirring," and he characterized Robert Toombs as "burly, choleric, and determined, "while Foote was described as "the coltsfoot of the bed of senatorial eloquence." The embarrassed editor of the Currier was moved to explain that "we do not look singly at the dark side, which he presents in his letter" (Boston Courier, April 10, 1850, p. 2). In 1850 he was the Whig candidate for Congress from the seventh district of the state of Maine in opposition to T. J. D. Fuller. Although this district had been strongly Democratic, the seat was closely contested and it was not until ten days after the election that Fuller's victory was assured (Portland Advertiser, Sept 11-13, 1850). In April of that year Pike was. invited by Horace Greeley to become a regular correspondent of the New York Tribune, and in 1852 he was made an associate editor. Most of the time between 1850 and 1860 he was Washington correspondent for the Tribune. His letters during that period, together with the earlier letters to the Boston Courier, are the most interesting of his journalistic achievements, a vivid and colorful description of official Washington during the decade preceding the Civil War. Widely quoted, bitterly attacked or enthusiastically praised, they exerted a profound influence upon public opinion and gave to their author national prominence, first as an uncompromising anti-slavery whig, and later as an ardent Republican.

When Lincoln was elected to the presidency he named Pike as minister resident to The Hague, and on March 28, 1861, the Senate confirmed his appointment. He arrived at The Hague on June 1, 1861. His diplomatic correspondence reveals him chiefly as an observer of the economic effects of the Civil War upon Europe. The relatively quiet life in a country which offered but few diplomatic problems proved uncongenial, and he returned to the United States on May 17, 1866, although his recall was not presented to the King of the Netherlands until December 1, The remaining years of his life were devoted chiefly to writing, to collecting and publishing his earlier correspondence, and to the attractions of his summer home in Robbinston, Maine. He was twice married: first, in 1837, to Charlotte Grosvenor of Pomfret, Connecticut; second, in 1855, to Elizabeth Ellicott of Avondale, Chester County, Pennsylvania. He published successively The Financial Crisis: Its Evils and Their Remedy (1867); The Restoration of the Currency (1868); and Horace Greeley in 1872 (1873). All of these works were based upon what he had previously written for the New York Tribune. In 1873 he published his Chief Justice Chase, and in the following year, The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government, the result of his observation of the working of the reconstruction government in South Carolina, also published in a Dutch translation in 1875. In 1875 his Contributions to the Financial Discussion, 1874-1875, appeared, and was followed in 1879 by The New Puritan, a study of seventeenth century New England, based primarily upon the career of Robert Pike, and by First Blows of the Civil War, a contemporaneous exposition of the ten years of preliminary conflict in the United States from 1850 to 1860.

[G. F. Talbot, "James Shepherd Pike," Colls. a11d Proceedings Maine Historical Society, 2 series I (1890); New-England Historical and Genealogical Register, April 1883; C. W. Evans, Biographical and Historical Accounts of the Fox, Ellicott, and Evans Families (1882). Joseph Griffin, History of the Press of Maine (1872); I. C. Knowlton, Annals of Calais, Maine, and St. Stephen, New Brunswick (1875); Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, 1861-67 (1861- 68); Portland Advertiser, April 10-20, 1850, November 29, 1882; Boston Courier, esp. April 10, 1850, and November 30, 1882; New York Tribune, March 29, 1861; Sun (New York), November 30, 1882.]

T. C. V-C.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 18:

PIKE, James Shepherd, journalist, born in Calais, Maine, 8 September, 1811; died there, 24 November, 1882. He was educated in the schools of his native town, entered mercantile life in his fifteenth year, and subsequently became a journalist. He was the Washington correspondent and associate editor of the New York “Tribune” in 1850-'60, and was an able and aggressive writer. He was several times a candidate for important offices in Maine, and a potent influence in uniting the anti-slavery sentiment in that state. In 1861-'6 he was U. S. minister to the Netherlands. He supported Horace Greeley for the presidency in 1872, and about that time visited South Carolina and collected materials for his principal work, “A Prostrate State” (New York, 1876). He also published “The Restoration of the Currency” (1868); “The Financial Crisis, its Evils, and their Remedy” (1869); “Horace Greeley in 1872” (1873); “The New Puritan” (1878); and “The First Blows of the Civil War” (1879). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 18.



PORTER, Alexander, 1796-1844, St. Martinsville, Louisiana, jurist, U.S. Whig Senator, 1834-1837, 1843-1844. American Colonization Society (ACS), Vice-President, 1834-1841. President, Louisiana auxiliary of the ACS.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 71; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 81; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 147)



POULSON, Zachariah, 1761-1844, abolitionist, publisher, “American Daily Advertise, Reformer,” Active in the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society. Published the American Daily Advertiser, a Whig journal.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 92-93; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 139; Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, p. 239n1).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 139:

POULSON, ZACHARIAH (September 5, 1761- July 31, 1844), publisher and philanthropist, was born and died in Philadelphia. His mother, Anna Barbara Stollenberger, had come to America from Germany with her parents eight years before her marriage to Zachariah Poulson, Sr. The latter, born in Copenhagen, Denmark, had been brought by his father to Philadelphia, where he learned printing in the office of the second Christopher Sower [q.v.]. Later he became one of the leaders among the Moravian Brethren.

The younger Poulson spent his formative years in the atmosphere of the printing house at a time when the press of Philadelphia was reflecting every phase of the struggle of the colonies for independence. He wrote later, "James Humphreys [q.v.] was to have taught me printing. Before I was bound he was necessitated to fly on account of the troubles which then agitated our country. After his materials were pack ed up and secreted, I went with my Father to Hall and Seller's office, where we remained until the fir s t rumor of the approach of the British army. We then worked with Joseph Crukshank until they [the British] took possession of the city, when we returned to James Humphreys and remained with him until it was evacuated. After its evacuation, we went again to Joseph Crukshank. While here we experienced all the hardships which malicious neighbors and unfeeling fine-collectors could occasion. As my father could not, from religious motives, p ay militia fine s, his property was sacrificed in the most wanton manner." (Letter to William Rawle, 1791, American-Scandinavian Review, July 1920, p. 513.) Among the conscientious objectors who suffered most was Sower, whose wife's sister, Susanna Knorr, Poulson married April 23, 1780.

Not until 1785 did the young printer meet with even a modicum of success. Then began his connection with the Philadelphia Library Company which was to continue for nearly fifty-nine years. For twenty-one years he was its librarian, for six years its treasurer, and for thirty-two years a director, Meanwhile he began to prosper in the printing business. Among the many valuable works he published were Paulson's Town and Country Almanac, 1788-1801 (continued by J. Bioren); Robert Proud's History of Pennsylvania (2 volumes, 1797-98); The American Tutor's Assistant (1797); the curious mystical works of John Gerar William De Brahm; and the Journals of the General Conventions of Delegates from the Abolition Societies of the United States, from 1794 to 1801. He printed in folio the Minutes of the convention which was appointed to revise and amend the constitution of the state in 1789, and was for many years printer to the Senate of Pennsylvania.

In 1800 he purchased Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser, successor of the Pennsylvania Packet, the first daily newspaper in the United States. For some time it had been the official organ of the government. Poulson moved its office to his residence, No. 106 Chestnut St., opposite the Bank of North America, changed its name to Paulson's American Daily Advertiser, and continued its editor and publisher until December 28, 1839, when it was sold to the owners of the North American and passed out of existence. During all these years it remained essentially an "Advertiser," with about twenty-two columns of advertisements to six of reading matter. It seemed, however, "to suit the family hearth and fireside comforts of good and sober citizens" and like the good old times from which it descended carried with it "something grave, discriminative, useful, and considerate" (Watson, post, II, 397-98). It was a Whig journal and the last number proclaimed support for Harrison and Tyler as "Candidates of the People and of the Whig National Convention."

Throughout his long life Poulson gave earnest and untiring support to many philanthropic organizations. He was a founder and president of the Philadelphia Society for Ameliorating the Miseries of Public Prisons, was a manager of the Pennsylvania Hospital, and was interested in the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. For thirty-five years he served as a director of the Philadelphia Contribution ship for the Insurance of Homes from Loss by Fire, the first fire-insurance company in America. Unassuming and unostentatious, he had to a rare degree the gift of inspiring affection and veneration in those who knew him. The year before his death the Library Company had a portrait of him painted by Thomas Sully that still hangs on its walls and impresses the passerby with the beauty and serenity of his expression.

[J. T. Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia (1884), volumes II, III; J. F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia (1844), volume II; Minutes (MSS.) of the proceedings of the Directors of the Library Company of Philadelphia, volume III; Henry Simpson, The Lives of Eminent Philadelphians Now Deceased (1859); Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America (2nd ed., 1874), volume II; M.A. Leach, in American Scandinavian Review, July 1920; Public Ledger (Philadelphia), August 2, 1844; further information furnished by Agnes Poulson Opie.]

A. L. L.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 92-93:

POULSON, Zachariah, publisher, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 5 September, 1761; died there, 31 July, 1844. His father, of the same name, was brought from Denmark to Philadelphia in infancy, and became a printer. The son was a pupil of Christopher Sower, in whose printing establishment at Germantown, Pennsylvania, was printed, in German, the first edition of the Bible published in the United States. For many years he was printer to the senate of Pennsylvania. On 1 October, 1800, he began the publication of the “American Daily Advertiser,” the first daily in the United States, which he had purchased from David C. Claypoole, and he continued as its editor and proprietor till its discontinuance, 28 December, 1839. He issued “Poulson's Town and Country Almanac” (1789-1801), and was the publisher of Robert Proud's “History of Pennsylvania” (1797-'8), the mystical works of William Gerar de Bram, and other valuable books. He was a founder and president of the Philadelphia society for alleviating the miseries of public prisons, and a member and benefactor of various other benevolent associations. He was also for twenty-one years librarian of the Library company of Philadelphia, six years its treasurer, and thirty-two years a director, and his portrait, by Thomas Sully, hangs in its hall in that city. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 92-93.



PRINGLE, Benjamin, jurist, born in Richfield, New York, 9 November, 1807. He was judge of Genesee County courts for one year, served two terms in Congress in 1853-'7.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, p. 125:

PRINGLE, Benjamin, jurist, born in Richfield, New York, 9 November, 1807. He received a good education and studied law, but gave up practice to become president of a bank at Batavia, New York. He was judge of Genesee County courts for one year, served two terms in Congress in 1853-'7, having been elected as a Whig, and in 1863 was in the legislature. Subsequently he was appointed by President Lincoln a judge of the Court of Arbitration at Cape Town under the treaty of 1862 with Great Britain for the suppression of the slave-trade. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, p. 125.



PUTNAM, James Osborne (July 4, 1818-April 24, 1903), lawyer, diplomat. He was a consistent Whig and sorrowed over the dissolution of the party, then joined new American party. He was influential in bringing many who had joined it into the Republicans. In 1860 he was one of the two Republican presidential electors-at-large, and was active in the campaign.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 283-284:

PUTNAM, JAMES OSBORNE (July 4, 1818-April 24, 1903), lawyer, diplomat, was the son of Harvey and Myra (Osborne) Putnam, and a descendant of John Putnam who emigrated to Salem, Massachusetts, before 1641. James was born in the village of Attica, New York, a few miles east of Buffalo, with the interests of which city he was connected almost all his long life. Entering Hamilton College in 1836, he transferred to Yale two years later, but was compelled by ill health to leave college at the end of his junior year, Yale awarding him the honorary degree of M.A. in 1865. On January 5, 1842, he married Harriet Palmer, who died in 1853; and on March 15, 1855, he married Kate Wright, who died in 1895. By his first wife he had three children, and by his second, four. He was admitted to the bar in 1842, and nine years later, at the age of thirty-three, was appointed by President Fillmore, his fellow townsman, postmaster at Buffalo, in which office he served until May 1853. In that year he was elected to the state Senate, where he served 1854-55 and became noted as an orator. "As a speaker he was polished, smooth, and refined, and even when impassioned kept his passion well within conventional bounds" (Alexander, post, II, 156). A volume of his utterances, entitled Addresses, Speeches and Miscellanies appeared in 1880. He was a consistent Whig and sorrowed so intensely over the dissolution of the party that for a time he was attracted to the new American party; but it did not take him long to realize its ephemeral character, and he was influential in bringing many who had joined it into union with the Republicans. In 1860 he was one of the two Republican presidential electors-at-large, and was active in the campaign. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed him consul at Havre, France, where he remained until 1866. Returning to Buffalo, he resumed the practice of law, but was agd.in for a brief time drawn into the public service as minister to Belgium, which position he held from 1880 to 1882.

His chief influence, however, was in his community. He loved Buffalo with almost a fanatic devotion and chose to remain in that city. At the beginning of his career it was sadly lacking in educational and cultural institutions, and Putnam exerted a considerable influence in changing this condition. He took an essential part in establishing, in the early sixties, the Buffalo Historical Society and the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, with both of which he was officially connected. Especially noteworthy was his service to education. He was one of the group which in 1846 founded the University of Buffalo, and he served for thirty-two years on its board of trustees. In 1895 he accepted the chancellorship, which was then an unpaid office. Old age and weakened physique were upon him, yet during his term the university saw considerable enlargement. In 1902, a few months before his death, he resigned the chancellorship.

[Eben Putnam, The Putnam Lineage (1907); Obituary Records Graduates Yale University (1910); J. N. Larned and L. G. Sellstedt., in Buffalo Historical Society Publication, volume VI, (1903); D.S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume II (1906); H. W. Hill, Municipality of Buffalo, New York, A History. (1923); Who's Who in America, 1901-02; New York Tribune, April 25, 1903; information supplied by the family.]

J.P.

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.