Sad-She: Sackett through Sherman

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

SACKETT, William Augustus, 1811-1895, New York, lawyer, politician. Elected to U.S. House of Representatives from New York as a member of the Whig Party. Served in Congress two terms from 1849-1853. Opposed extension of slavery into the New territories and the fugitive slave laws. Early member of the Republican Party.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 364-365; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 364-365:

SACKETT, William Augustus, Congressman, born in Aurelius, Cayuga County, New York, 18 November, 1812. His ancestors came from England in 1632, settled in Massachusetts, and continued to live in New England until 1804, when his father moved to Cayuga County, New York. He received an academic education, studied law in Seneca Falls and Skaneateles, was admitted to the bar in 1834, and soon secured a lucrative practice. Elected to Congress as a Whig, he served from 3 December, 1849, till 3 March, 1853. He took part in the controversy in relation to the admission of California as a free state, and both spoke and voted for admission. He earnestly opposed the Fugitive-Slave Law, and was uncompromisingly in opposition to slavery and the admission of any more slave states. From the committee on claims he made a report on the power of consuls, which had an influence in the final modification of those powers. He moved to Saratoga Springs in 1857, where he still resides. In 1876-'8 he travelled extensively in Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land, and wrote letters describing his journeys that were published. He has been a Republican since the organization of the party, and has been active as a public speaker.—His son, WILLIAM, was colonel of the 9th New York Cavalry, and was killed while leading a charge under General Sheridan at Trevillian Station, Virginia. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 364-365.



SAGE, Russell, (August 4, 1816--July 22, 1906), congressman and financier. He was nominated for congressman in 1850 and defeated, but ran again successfully in 1852. He was reelected representative in 1854, but retired at the end of that term. In Congress he advocated the Homestead Law and free soil for Kansas.

(Who's Who in America, 1906-07; Henry Whittemore, History of the Sage and Slocum Families (1908); Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, p. 367:

SAGE, Russell, financier, born in Oneida County, New York, 4 August, 1816. He received a public-school education, and then engaged in mercantile pursuits in Troy, in 1841 he was elected an alderman, and he was re-elected to this office until 1848, also serving for seven years as treasurer of Rensselaer County. He was then elected to Congress as a Whig, and served, with re-election, from 5 December, 1853, till 3 March, 1857. Mr. Sage was the first person to advocate, on the floor of Congress, the purchase of Mount Vernon by the government. Subsequently he settled in New York City and engaged in the business of selling " privileges " in Wall Street. At the same time he became interested in railroads, and secured stocks in western roads, notably the Milwaukee and St. Paul, of which he was president and vice-president for twelve years. By disposing of these investments, as the smaller roads were absorbed by trunk-lines, he became wealthy. In late years he has been closely associated with Jay Gould in the management of the Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific, the Missouri Pacific, the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western and the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroads, the American Cable Company, the Western Union Telegraph Company and the Manhattan Consolidated System of Elevated Railroads in New York City, in all of which corporations he is a director. Mr. Sage was for many years closely connected with the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad, of which he was a director. He has been a director and vice-president in the Importers and Traders' National Bank for the past twenty years, also a director in the Merchants' Trust Company and in the Fifth Avenue Bank of New York City. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, p. 367.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 292-293:

SAGE, RUSSELL (August 4, 1816--July 22, 1906), congressman and financier, came of pioneer New England stock, being a descendant of David Sage who was living in Middletown, Connecticut, as early as 1652. His father, Elisha Sage, veteran of the War of 1812, his mother, Prudence (Risley) Sage, and five children were emigrating by ox train from Connecticut towards Michigan when Russell was born, in the covered wagon, in Verona township, Oneida County, New York. Observing that the land was good, Elisha Sage settled in Oneida County, and there Russell grew to the age of twelve, working on the farm and getting a few bits of primary schooling. In 1828 he went to work in his brother Henry's store in Troy, New York. Notwithstanding his long hours, he attended a night school, paying a dollar and a half of his monthly salary of four dollars to learn arithmetic and bookkeeping; meanwhile, he also studied markets and read newspapers omnivorously. Before he reached manhood he began to do trading on his own account and at twenty-one, with the capital thus acquired, he bought out the store of his brother Elisha Montague, and a year or so later resold it at a profit. He then (with a partner) started a wholesale grocery business in Troy. The firm had its own sailing vessels on the Hudson, and traded in other things than groceries-Vermont and Canadian horses, for example, fresh and cured meats, and grain.

In 1845 Sage was elected alderman of Troy and later treasurer of Rensselaer County. In 1848 he was a delegate to the National Whig Convention. He was nominated for congressman in 1850 and defeated, but ran again successfully in 1852. He was reelected representative in 1854, but retired at the end of that term. In Congress he advocated the Homestead Law and free soil for Kansas, but his most noteworthy act was a resolution asking that the government take over the old mansion, "Mount Vernon," and make it a permanent memorial to Washington (Congressional Globe, 33 Congress, I Sess., pp. 52-54; December 15, 1853). This was one of the first moves toward its restoration and preservation.

Leaving Congress in 1856, Sage continued to build up his fortune, adding banking to his other activities. A chance meeting with Jay Gould [q.v.] in a railroad station was a momentous incident in his life, for it led to a close association and to Sage's interest in railroad affairs. He had already loaned some money to the La Crosse Railroad, a small line in Wisconsin, and was compelled to advance more to save the first loans. The road was eventually expanded into the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul system, in which promotion Sage made large profits. He was for years a director and vice-president of the corporation. By 1863 he was giving most of his attention to stocks and finance, and he decided to move to New York. His first wife, Maria Winne of Troy, whom he had married in 1841, died in 1867, and on November 24, 1869, he married again, in Troy, his second wife being Margaret Olivia (Slocum) Sage [q.v.], who outlived him.

Sage is credited with being the originator of "puts and calls" in the stock market about 1872. His fortune was greatly increased by advances in the value of securities under the skilful manipulation of his ally, Jay Gould. The methods used in their campaign to gain control of the New York elevated lines in 1881 were bitterly criticized by the press and business men. Cyrus W. Field [q.v.], whom they had taken in with them to court public confidence, was eventually ruined, but Gould and Sage came through unscathed and with the desired control. Sage was one of the shrewdest and most conservative of all great financiers. Though at times a large operator, he was never a plunger. He preferred small, sure profits or those which resulted from manipulation, and his occasional speculative purchase was usually based on very canny foresight. He was caught short only once in his life, in the little Wall Street panic of 1884, when he lost fully $7,000,000. He was, at one time or another, stockholder and director of many railroad corporations. He was actively concerned in the organization of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company, and in its consolidation with the Western Union.

During the last quarter century of his life he was best known as a money lender. At one time he is said to have had $27,000,000 out on call loans. He might have from five to eight millions in cash bank deposits in the morning, and loan nearly all of it before the day was over. His frugality was proverbial; he loved to chaffer, even over the price of an apple, and there was no epicureanism in him. He preferred comfort rather than elegance; plain food and cheap clothing satisfied him as well as the richest. His homes on Fifth A venue and Long Island were comfortably furnished, however; he indulged himself in a love of good horses, and did not question his wife's expenditures. His philanthropies, such as the education of more than forty Indian children and the presentation of a dormitory to Troy Female Seminary, were popularly credited to Mrs. Sage's prompting. In 1891 Sage was seriously injured in his office by a bomb exploded by one Henry W. Norcross, who had first demanded $1,200,000. Norcross and a clerk were killed, but Sage, despite his years, fully recovered. He died at his home on Long Island at the age of ninety, and his fortune at that time was estimated at $70,000,000.

[Among many newspaper references to Sage, see obituaries in all New York newspapers of July 23, 1906; New York Times, December 27, 1881, December 5, 1891, January 11, 1899; World (New York.), April 27, July 10, 1902; New York Daily News, January 30, 1904; R. I. Warshow, Jay Gould; the Story of a Fortune (1928); Henry Clews, Twenty-eight Years in Wall Street (1887); Who's Who in America, 1906-07; Henry Whittemore, History of the Sage and Slocum Families (1908); Bench and Bar, September 1906; New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, October 1906. ]

A. F.H.



SARGENT, Aaron Augustus (October 28, 1827-August 14, 1887), United States senator. He was nominated for the California assembly by the new American Party in 1852. He was active in the organization of the Republican party in California, and for some years was a member of the party's state executive committee. He bought the Daily Journal in Nevada City. As editor and manager, he conducted this paper as a Whig organ.

(Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); H. H. Bancroft, History of California (1890), VII, 291-92, 548-49; Memoirs of Cornelius Cole, Ex·Senator of the U. S. from California (1908).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 353-354:

SARGENT, AARON AUGUSTUS (October 28, 1827-August 14, 1887), United States senator, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, son of Aaron Peaslee and Elizabeth (Stanwood) Flanders Sargent. He was a descendant of William Sargent who was in Ipswich, Massachusetts, as early as 1633. After attending the common schools, he was apprenticed to a cabinet maker for a short time, and then learned the printer's trade. This he followed for several months in Philadelphia in 1847, and then moved to Washington, where he became secretary to a member of Congress. In December 1849 he went to California, and for a time found employment in the freight-carrying business between San Francisco and Stockton. In 1850 he was on the Sacramento Placer Times, but soon moved to Nevada City, California, and became a compositor on the Daily Journal. Returning to San Francisco, he was compositor on the Placer Times and Transcript and the Alta California, but soon went back to Nevada City, and not long after bought the Daily Journal. As editor and manager, he conducted this paper as a Whig organ, studying law in his spare time. In 1854 he was admitted to the bar. He was nominated for the California assembly by the new American Party in 1852, and from that time he seems to have been dominated by a consuming political ambition which quite subordinated his career as a lawyer. He was active in the organization of the Republican party in California, and for some years was a member of the party's state executive committee.

In 1855-56 he served as district attorney for Nevada County, and in 1857 was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the attorney-general ship. In 186o he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, and was elected representative in Congress, serving from 1861 to 1863. As a member of the select committee on a Pacific railroad, he displayed energy and ability in procuring the enactment of the first Pacific railroad bill to pa ss Congress. Of this measure he and Theodore D. Judah [q. v.], chief engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad, were the authors. At the end of his term, Sargent unsuccessfully sought his party's nomination for the governorship, and then resumed the practice of law. In 1867, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate, and in 1868 and 1870 was reelected to the House of Representatives. After a bitter campaign, he succeeded, in 1872, in supplanting Cornelius Cole as. United States senator. In the Senate, Sargent was a member of the committees on naval affairs, mines and mining, and appropriations. He successfully opposed the nomination by President Grant of Caleb Cushing [q.v.] to be chief justice of the Supreme Court because of statements contained in a letter from Cushing to Jefferson Davis. At the close of his senatorial term in 1879, Sargent again returned to his law practice. In 1882 President Arthur appointed him minister to Germany, but owing to his outspoken criticism of Germany's unfriendly discrimination against American pork, he became persona non grata to the German government and resigned in April 1884. President Arthur immediately offered him the ministry to Russia, but this he declined. Returning to California, he soon became the Republican candidate for election to the Senate. The legislature chosen in 1884 appears to have contained a majority of Sargent supporters, and the public generally assumed that he would be reelected with little opposition. The Republican legislative caucus, however, unexpectedly nominated Leland Stanford [q.v.], and he was elected. Stanford and Sargent had been close friends and this apparent treachery came as a blow from which the latter never recovered. He died in San Francisco and was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery. On March 14, 1852, he was married to Ellen Clark; his widow, a son, and two daughters survived him.

Sargent was a man of strong and forceful personality, aggressive in political contests, untiring and persevering in pursuit of his ends. He was a good German scholar, well read on all political topics, and an able debater. He spoke with great rapidity; as a contemporary expressed it, "his volubility was manifest both in tongue and pen" (Memoirs of Cornelius Cole, post, p. 235). Closely identified with the militant Pacific railroad interests, he became a masterful machine politician, "placing or displacing men according to the will of a syndicate."

[E. E. Sargent, Sargent Record (1899); Vital Records of Newburyport, Massachusetts (19II), I, 342; San Francisco Chronicle, August 15, 1887; San Francisco Evening Bull., August 15, 16, 1887; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); H. H. Bancroft, History of California (1890), VII, 291-92, 548-49; Memoirs of Cornelius Cole, Ex·Senator of the U. S. from California (1908); C. C. Phillips, Cornelius Cole (1917), pp. 262-64; E. C. Kemble, A History of California Newspapers (1927).]

P.O. R.



SCAMMON, Jonathan Young, 1812-1890, Whitefield, Maine, lawyer, businessman, educator, newspaper publisher, Whig and Republican state leader, member of the Free Soil Party. Introduced legislation to exclude slavery from the California and New Mexico territories. Founded the Chicago Journal in 1844, the Chicago Republican in 1865. T. W. Goodspeed, The University of Chicago Biographical Sketches, volume II (1925).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume XVI, pp. 407-408:

SCAMMON, JONATHAN YOUNG (July 27, 1812-March 17, 1890), lawyer and business man, was born on a farm in Whitefield. Maine, the son of Eliakim and Joanna (Young) Scammon. With a farmer's life in prospect, the boy's future was suddenly changed by the loss of two fingers on his left hand. Since he was thus handicapped in the farmer's important business of milking cows, his parents decided to equip him for a profession. He prepared for college and at eighteen entered Waterville (now Colby) College, but left at the end of his first year, probably for lack of means. He studied law in a law office in Hallowell and was admitted to the bar in 1835. Fired by enthusiastic reports of the rapid development of the Mississippi Valley, he started west and, not expecting to settle there, arrived in Chicago in September 1835. Not being greatly impressed with the town, he was preparing to move on when the temporary job of deputy clerk in the circuit court was offered him. He accepted, and Chicago became his home for the remaining fifty-five years of his life. Admitted to the Illinois bar he rapidly won a place of prominence and leadership. Appointed as reporter of the Supreme Court of Illinois in 1839 he compiled four volumes of its reports, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of ... Illinois (copyright 1840-copyright 1844). Deeply interested in public education, he, probably more than anyone else, was responsible for the establishment of free schools in Chicago. For years he was a member of the board of education and president from 1845 to 1848. One of the city's elementary schools bears his name in recognition of his services. In his early years he was a Whig and later a Republican, being delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1864 and 1872. He served as state senator in 1861.

Throughout his career he was interested in newspaper publishing, in 1844 launching the Chicago Journal on its long career, in 1865 helping to found the Chicago Republican, which was brought to an end by the fire of 1871, and beginning publication of the Inter Ocean in 1872. In the late '40s he became actively interested in banking, insurance, and railroads. He did more than perhaps any other man to obtain better banking laws for Illinois. He established the Marine Bank in Chicago in 1851 and the Mechanics National Bank in 1864, serving as president of each, and he developed the Chicago Fire and Marine Insurance Company, of which also he was president in 1849. He had a prominent part in the development of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad Company and was instrumental in bringing the Michigan Central Railroad into Chicago. Throughout his long life he continued the practice of law, although, as his career developed, business matters occupied an increasing amount of his time. Robert Todd Lincoln studied law in his office. By the early ‘50s he had become one of the leading business men of Chicago and a rich man by the standards of wealth of that day. Financial reverses were, however, encountered: temporary in 1857, when, during the panic of that year, his bank failed while he himself was absent in Europe with his family, irreparable in 1874, when the conflagration of 1871, the panic of 1873, and a second devastating fire a year later combined to give him a series of blows from which he never financially recovered. He was instrumental in founding many Chicago societies and charitable institutions, most of which he served as president. Among these were the Chicago Historical Society, the Chicago Academy of Sciences, Hahnemann Medical College, the Hahnemann hospital, the Old Ladies' Home, the old University of Chicago, of which he was one of the most liberal supporters, and the Chicago Astronomical Society, for which he provided funds for a telescope and observatory, which, by contract between the society and the university, was erected on the grounds of the latter. His name is perpetuated in the new University of Chicago by "Scammon Court" in the School of Education quadrangle, made possible by the gift of land by his widow in 1901. In religion he was a Swedenborgian, very zealous and prominent for years in the national activities of the New Jerusalem Church. He was married twice: first in 1837 to Mary Ann Haven Dearborn, of Bath, Maine, who died in 1858, and second, in 1867 to Mrs. Maria (Sheldon) Wright, of Delaware County, New York. He died in Chicago.

[T. W. Goodspeed, The University of Chicago Biographical Sketches, volume II (1925); Chicago Magazine, March 1857, reprinted with additions in Fergus' Historical Series, No. 6 (1876); H. L. Conrad, "Early Bench and Bar in Chicago," Magazine of Western History, August 1890; Chicago Daily News, March 17, 1890; Chicago Daily Tribune and Chicago Times, March 18, 1890.]

G. B. U.



SCHENCK, Robert Cumming, 1809-1890, diplomat, Union general. Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Three-term Whig Representative to Congress, December 1843-March 1851. Re-elected December 1863, 1864, 1866, 1868. A strong anti-slavery man, Schenck was one of the first to urge Lincoln's nomination and was an active Republican campaigner in 1860. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Son of James Findlay Schenk, naval officer.

(Appletons’, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 417-418; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, p. 427; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 19, p. 370; Congressional Globe)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 417-418:

SCHENCK, Robert Cumming, diplomatist, born in Franklin, Ohio, 4 October, 1809, was graduated at Miami University in 1827, and remained as a resident graduate and tutor for three years longer, then studied law with Thomas Corwin, was admitted to the bar, and established himself in practice at Dayton, Ohio. He was a member of the legislature in 1841-'2, displaying practical knowledge and pungent wit in the debates, and was then elected as a Whig to Congress, and thrice re-elected, serving from 4 December, 1843, till 3 March, 1851. He was a member of important committees, and during his third term was the chairman of that on roads and canals. On 12 March, 1851, he was commissioned as minister to Brazil. In 1852, with John S. Pendleton, who was accredited to the Argentine Republic as chargé d'affaires, he arranged a treaty of friendship and commerce with the government of that country and one for the free navigation of the river La Plata and its great tributaries. They also negotiated treaties with the governments of Uruguay and Paraguay. He left Rio Janeiro on 8 October, 1853, and after his return to Ohio engaged in the railroad business. He offered his services to the government when the Civil War began, and was one of the first brigadier-generals appointed by President Lincoln, his commission bearing the date of 17 May, 1861. He was attached to the military department of Washington, and on 17 June moved forward by railroad with a regiment to dislodge the Confederates at Vienna, but was surprised by a masked battery, and forced to retreat. On meeting re-enforcements, he changed front, and the enemy retired. His brigade formed a part of General Daniel Tyler's division at the first Bull Run battle, and was on the point of crossing the Stone Bridge to make secure the occupation of the plateau, when the arrival of Confederate re-enforcements turned the tide of battle. He next served in West Virginia under General William S. Rosecrans, and was ordered to the Shenandoah Valley with the force that was sent to oppose General Thomas J. Jackson. Pushing forward by a forced march to the relief of General Robert H. Milroy, he had a sharp and brilliant engagement with the enemy at McDowell. At Cross Keys he led the Ohio troops in a charge on the right, and maintained the ground that he won until he was ordered to retire. General John C. Frémont then intrusted him with the command of a division. At the second battle of Bull Run he led the first Division of General Franz Sigel's corps. He was wounded in that action by a musket-ball, which shattered his right arm, incapacitating him for active service till 16 December, 1862, when he took command of the Middle Department and Eighth Corps at Baltimore, having been promoted major-general on 18 September After performing effective services in the Gettysburg Campaign, he resigned his commission on 3 December, 1863, in order to take his place in the House of Representatives, in which he served as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. He was re-elected in 1864, and was placed at the head of the same committee, where he procured the establishment of the National Military and Naval Asylum. In 1865 he was president of the board of visitors to the U. S. Military Academy, and was one of the Committee of Congress on the Death of President Lincoln, serving also on the Committee on Retrenchment. In 1866 he attended the Loyalists' Convention at Philadelphia and the Soldiers' Convention at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He was re-elected to Congress in 1866 and in 1868, when his opponent was Clement L. Vallandigham, serving as chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means and of the Ordnance Committee. On 22 December, 1870, he received the appointment of minister to Great Britain. In 1871 he was one of the “Alabama” commission. He resigned his post in 1876 in consequence of the failure of the Emma Silver Mine Company, in which he had permitted himself to be chosen a director, and resumed the practice of law in Washington, D. C. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 417-418.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 427-428:

SCHENCK, ROBERT CUMMING (October 4, 1809-March 23, 1890), congressman, soldier, diplomat, was a son of General William Cortenus Schenck and his wife, Elizabeth Rogers. The father, a descendant of Roelof Martense Schenck who came to New Amsterdam probably about 1650, had migrated from New Jersey to Ohio, where he served in the legislature and is said to have founded the town of Franklin. Here Robert was born. His father died in 1821, leaving the boy under the guardianship of General James Findlay [q.v.] of Cincinnati. Robert graduated from Miami University in 1827, remained there three years longer studying and teaching, was subsequently admitted to the bar, and commenced practising law in Dayton. On August 21, 1834, he married Rennelche W. Smith, whose sister was the wife of his brother James Findlay Schenck [q.v.].

Robert Schenck's political career began in 1838 with a fruitless campaign for election to the legislature on the Whig ticket. More successful later, he assumed the leadership of his party in the Ohio House during the terms of 1841-43. In the national House of Representatives, 1843-51, he proved himself a vigorous Whig partisan, and upon the expiration of his fourth term in 1851 he was named by President Fillmore as minister to Brazil. Here he served until October 1853, acting with John S. Pendleton [q.v.], charge d'affaires of the United States to the Argentine Confederation, in negotiating commercial treaties with Uruguay (1852) and Paraguay (1853), which were never proclaimed, and two treaties with the Argentine Confederation, signed July 10 and 27, 1853. He failed, however, to secure from Brazil a treaty providing for the free navigation of the Amazon.

A strong anti-slavery man, Schenck was one of the first to urge Lincoln's nomination and was an active Republican campaigner in 1860. Appointed brigadier-general of volunteers May 17, 1861, he took part in the first battle of Bull Run, served under Rosecrans and Fremont in West Virginia, and was wounded at Second Bull Run in August 1862, his right wrist being permanently injured. On August 30 he was promoted major-general of volunteers. Eliminated from active fighting, he was assigned in December 1862 to the command in Baltimore, where his measures were not always popular (Richard H. Jackson, To Robert E. [sic] Schenck, pamphlet, 1867, p. 3). In December of the following year he resigned his commission in order to sit once more in Congress.

In the House he disapproved strongly of Lincoln's moderation as shown in the Hampton Roads Conference (J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States, volume V, 1904, pp. 51-52, note). A master of invective and vituperation, he distinguished himself for the violence of his attack on such "Copperheads" as Fernando Wood, whom he called "a specimen of the snake family" (No Compromise with Treason; Remarks of Mr. Schenk ... April 11, 1864, 1864) and for his opposition to President Johnson. He was chairman of the House committee on military affairs and later of the Ways and Means committee. He was an advocate of the contraction of the currency at the end of the war (Public Credit-Gold Contracts: Speech ... February 22, 1869, 1869).

Failing of reelection to Congress in 1870, Schenck turned again to diplomacy. He was appointed, February 10, 1871, a member of the Joint High Commission between the United States and Great Britain and in that capacity signed the Treaty of Washington, May 8, 1871. On December 22 preceding he had been designated to succeed the discredited John Lothrop Motley [q.v.] as minister to Great Britain, and he traveled to his post in May 1871. Here he was called upon to conduct much of the routine business arising out of the Treaty of Washington and the arbitration of the Alabama claims. In spite of his failure to conclude a consular convention with Great Britain and to persuade Derby to support the United States in its demands on Spain for concessions in its Cuban policy (S. F. Bemis, The American Secretaries of State, volume VII, 1928, pp. 194-200), his record in London seems creditable, but in February 1876 he resigned under a cloud. He had allowed himself to be made a director of the "Emma" silver mine in Utah which in 1871 used his name in the sale of stock in Great Britain. He was reproved by the Secretary of State at that time, and the failure of the Emma Mine brought his resignation, which Grant reluctantly accepted. The committee on foreign affairs of the House, which investigated the incident, found no cause to impugn Schenck's integrity, but condemned such transactions by American diplomats (House Report No. 579, 44 Congress, I Sess., 1876). After Schenck's resignation he returned to Washington to practise law, achieved a reputation as an authority on draw poker (he published Draw Poker in 1880), and died in that city in 1890. He was survived by three of his six daughters.

[A. D. Schenck, The Reverend Wm. Schenck, His Ancestry and His Descendants (1883); Robt. C. Schenck, U.S. A. (n.d.), pub. by order of Union Central Com., 3rd Congress District, Ohio; In Memoriam, General Robt. C. Schenck (n.d.), proceedings at memorial service in Dayton; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Beckles Wilson, America's Ambassadors to England (1928); W. A. Taylor, Hundred-Year Book and Official Register of the State of Ohio (1891); Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S., 1871-76; L. E. Chittenden, The Emma Mine (1876); War Department records; instructions and dispatches to and from Brazil and Great Britain, in Department of State; Washington Post, March 24, 1890.]

E.W.S.



SCHUYLER, George Washington (February 2, 1810-February 1, 1888), state official, author. In politics Schuyler was a Whig with strong anti-slavery sentiments which had him follow William H. Seward into the Republican party. His first political recognition came from the Union Republican convention of 1863 which nominated him for state treasurer. Running on a ticket as candidate for secretary of state, and pledged to support the Lincoln administration, he was elected and served two years.

(G. W. Schuyler, Colonial New York (1885), II, 377; D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume III (1909).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 472-473:

SCHUYLER, GEORGE WASHINGTON (February 2, 1810-February 1, 1888), state official, author, was born at Stillwater, New York, the son of John H. and Annatje (Fort) Schuyler and a descendant of Philip, a younger son of Philip Pieterse Schuyler, founder of the family in America. In 1811 his father left Saratoga County and purchased a farm several miles west of Ithaca, where George spent his boyhood. Having chosen the ministry for his life's work, he prepared for college and received the bachelor's degree from the University of the City of New York in 1837, but his theological studies, at Union Seminary, were interrupted by his decision to engage in business in order to "extricate a brother from difficulties" (Colonial New York, II, 377). He married, on April 18, 1839, Matilda Scribner, daughter of Uriah and Martha Scribner of New York City, a half-sister of Charles Scribner [q.v.], and they established a home in Ithaca, where two sons and three daughters were born. Schuyler was highly successful in his mercantile and banking enterprises in Tompkins County. Always active in religious work, he transferred his membership in 1842 from the Presbyterian Church to the Reformed Dutch Church (later Congregational), which he served for many years either as deacon or elder.

In politics Schuyler was a Whig with pronounced anti-slavery sentiments which prompted him to follow William H. Seward into the Republican party. His first political recognition came from the Union Republican convention of 1863 which nominated him for state treasurer. Running on a ticket headed by Chauncey M. Depew [q.v.] as candidate for secretary of state, and pledged to support the Lincoln administration, he was elected and served two years. The convention of 1865 denied him a renomination, but Governor Reuben E. Fenton [q.v.] appointed him superintendent of the banking department (1866-70) with: full responsibility for the banking institutions operating under state charter. Incensed by the reconstruction policies and the political corruption of the Grant regime, Schuyler joined the "reformers" who organized the Liberal Republican movement in 1872. With the support of Democrats and Liberal Republicans he was elected to the state assembly, where he served (1875) as chairman of the committee on banking and participated in the framing of a general savings-bank law. He enthusiastically applauded Governor Samuel J. Tilden [q.v.] for his exposure of the corrupt "canal ring," and in January 1876 the governor named him auditor of the Canal Department. Here he served until 1880, correcting many of the most notorious abuses and waging a vigorous campaign for the abolition of tolls and the creation of a system of free commercial waterways. He gave generously of his time to the work of Cornell University, serving for twenty years on the board of trustees and acting as treasurer, without compensation, from 1868 to 1874.

Schuyler's interest in the genealogy of his own family drew him into extensive researches in the colonial history of New York, and in 1885 he published Colonial New York: Philip Schuyler and His Family, in two volumes. Although the work was not a comprehensive history of the province, the sketches of the Schuylers were set against the background of seventeenth and eighteenth century New York, which had been carefully, at times brilliantly, reconstructed from manuscript and printed sources. Completed only three years before his death, these volumes stand today as their author's most enduring monument.

[There is a very brief autobiographical sketch in G. W. Schuyler, Colonial New York (1885), II, 377. See also D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume III (1909); First Half-Century Book . .. of the First Church of Christ, Congregational, of Ithaca; New York (1881); Cornell Era, February 4, 1888; New York Times, February 2, 1888.]

J. A. K-t.



SCOTT, Winfield, (June 13, 1786-May 29, 1866), Commanding general U.S. Army, pacificator, and presidential nominee representing the Whig party.

(Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL.D. Written by Himself (2 volumes, 1864); E. D. Mansfield, Life and Services of General Winfield Scott (1852); M. J. Wright, General Scott (1894); L. D. Ingersoll, A History of the War Department of the U.S. (1879); Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the U. S. (1904); W. A. Ganoe, The History of the U. S. Army (1924); obituary in New York Tribune, May 30-June 2, 1866)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

SCOTT, Winfield, soldier, born in Dinwiddie County, near Petersburg, Virginia, 13 June, 1786; died at West Point, New York, 29 May, 1866. By the death of General Macomb in 1841 Scott became Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United States. In 1847 he was assigned to the chief command of the army in Mexico.[…] In 1852 he was the candidate of the Whig Party for the presidency, and received the electoral votes of Vermont, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Tennessee, all the other states voting for the Democratic candidate, General Pierce. […] Age and infirmity prevented him from taking an active part in the Civil War, and on 31 October, 1861, he retired from service, retaining his rank, pay, and allowances. Soon afterward he made a brief visit to Europe, and he passed most of the remainder of his days at West Point, remarking when he arrived there for the last time: "I have come here to die."

“Letter on the Slavery Question” (1843); “Abstract of Infantry Tactics” (Philadelphia, 1861): “Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott, written by Himself” (2 vols., New York, 1864). Biographies of him have been published by Edward Deering Mansfield (New '' 1846); Joel Tyler Headley (1852); and Orville James Victor (1861). See also “Campaign of General Scott in the Valley of Mexico,” by Lieut. Raphael Semmes (Cincinnati, 1852). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, p. 440-442.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, :

SCOTT, WINFIELD (June 13, 1786-May 29, 1866), soldier, pacificator, and presidential nominee, was born on the family estate, "Laurel Branch," fourteen miles from Petersburg, Virginia. His grandfather, James Scott of the clan Buccleuch, having supported the Pretender, escaped to the colonies after the battle of Culloden in 1746. His father, William Scott, a successful farmer who had been a captain in the American Revolution, died when Winfield was in his sixth year, leaving four children, two boys, James and Winfield, and two girls. His mother, Ann Mason, was the daughter of Daniel Mason and the grand-daughter of John Winfield, one of the wealthiest men in the colony (Memoirs, I, 3). To her inspiration her son later attributed the continued successes of his long career. Unfortunately she died when he was seventeen. He was already six feet two and of bulky proportions. Two years later he stood six feet five, weighed about 230 pounds, and was physically the strongest man in the neighborhood. He did good scholastic work under the able instruction of James Hargrave and James Ogilvie. It was doubtless fortunate for him that because of legal hindrances he did not inherit the fortune of his grandfather but had to content him self with his modest patrimony. In 1805 he entered the College of William and Mary, but, because of his age and the contention between the student atheists and faculty churchmen, did not remain long. The same year he voluntarily left the institution to study law in the office of David Robinson in Petersburg.

[…]

A resolution to tender him the pay, rank, and emoluments of a lieutenant-general was introduced in Congress, but through political opposition it did not pass until 1855, when he became the first since Washington to hold that office.

In 1852 the Whigs gave him the nomination for the presidency. The campaign was essentially without issues but was marked by exceptionally scurrilous attacks on Scott by newspapers and stump-speakers. Clay and Webster died during the campaign. Other Whig leaders badly advised Scott, whose straight-forwardness was an easy target for the Democrats. He was overwhelmingly defeated by Franklin Pierce [q.v.]. It was the last of his entries into the lists for the presidency, although as late as 1860 he retained some hope of being sent to the White House (Coleman, Crittenden, post, II, 184--85). After the inauguration of Pierce, on account of differences of opinion on policy with the Secretary of War, Scott again removed his headquarters to New York City. In 1857 he opposed the war against the Mormons as unnecessary and undertaken for profit, but he was overruled. In 1859 he was again called upon to perform the functions of pacificator. Though seventy-three years of age and crippled from a recent fall, he set out September 20 for the extreme Northwest, where controversy over the possession of San Juan Island in Puget Sound had again brought the relations between Great Britain and the United States to the breaking point. After he had mingled with both sides and conducted a judicious correspondence, serious complications were averted.

In October 1860, foreseeing the eventual Civil War, he pleaded with the President to reenforce the southern forts and armories against seizure, but to Buchanan and John B. Floyd his was a voice crying in the wilderness. On October 31, and December 12 he renewed his urgings, but with no better success. In January 1861, he brought back the headquarters of the army to Washington, where at his advanced age he actively oversaw the recruiting and training of the defenders of the capital. He personally commanded Lincoln's bodyguard at the inauguration and put the city in a state of defense. Being a Virginian, he was doggedly besought to join the South, but in spite of natural leanings he stuck to his beliefs and remained with the Union. To Lincoln he accorded all aid in his power. Though he did not approve of George B. McClellan as first choice for command of the Army of the Potomac, he supported him even when the younger man's methods were at least discourteous. Had much of his general plan for the conduct of the Federal forces been heeded, the war would have been curtailed; but since he was too old to mount a horse, he was thought to be too old to give advice. On October 31, 1861, he requested retirement on account of infirmities. The next day Lincoln and the whole cabinet left their offices in a body, repaired to Scott's home, and there the President read an affecting eulogy to the old man. Scott was retired with full pay and allowances the same day. In his first message to Congress Lincoln wrote of Scott: "During his long life the nation has not been unmindful of his merit; yet, in calling to mind how faithfully, ably, and brilliantly he has served his country, from a time far back in our history when few of the now living had been born, and thenceforward continually, I cannot but think we are still his debtors" (Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works, 1894, volume II, 104). On his journey to New York, Scott was accompanied by the secretaries of war and the treasury. On November 9, 1861, he went abroad, but in Paris upon hearing of the Trent affair he immediately returned to America, should his counsel be needed. At West Point he received the Prince of Wales and in 1865 presented to General Grant, one of his subalterns in the Mexican War, a gift with the inscription, "from the oldest to the greatest general" (Wright, post, p. 322). When his end was near he was conveyed from New York City to West Point where he died within fifteen days of his eightieth birthday. He was buried in the national cemetery there, some of the most illustrious men of the country attending the funeral. His wife, who died in Rome in 1862, is buried beside him. Of his seven children, two sons and two daughters died early, to his great grief; three married daughters survived him.

Scott had been the associate of every president from Jefferson to Lincoln and the emissary in critical undertakings of most of them. In his public career of nearly half a century he had been a main factor in ending two wars, saving the country from several others, and acquiring a large portion of its territory. Supreme political preferment was doubtless denied him because of conditions and his idiosyncrasies. Called "Fuss and Feathers" because of his punctiliousness in dress and decorum, he often gave the impression of irritability. He possessed a whimsical egotism, was inclined to flourishes of rhetoric, often unfortunate, and was too outspoken in his beliefs for his own advancement. On the other hand, the openness of his generous character led him into acts incomprehensible to calculating natures. He was a scholar, but knew when to discard rules, so that the letter of directions did not shackle him. His initiative and self-reliance never deserted him. He made use of his many talents unsparingly, and the only one of his hazardous undertakings he failed to carry out beyond the most sanguine expectations was that of his own ambition to reach the Presidency.

[Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL.D. Written by Himself (2 volumes, 1864), rhetorical but still valuable; E. D. Mansfield, Life and Services of General Winfield Scott (1852), the best of the campaign biographies; M. J. Wright, General Scott (1894); A. M. B. Coleman, The Life of John J. Crittenden (2 volumes, 1871), containing letters of Scott; Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, volumes II, III (1923), containing Scott-Davis correspondence; James Wilkinson, Memoirs of My Own Times (3 volumes, 1816); M. M. Quaife, ed., The Diary of James K. Polk (4 volumes, 1910); G. T. Curtis, Life of James Buchanan (2 volumes, 1883); Harrison Ellery, ed., The Memoirs of General Joseph Gardner Swift (1890); W. A. Croffut, ed., Fifty Years in Camp and Field. Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A. (1909); correspondence, papers, and documents in Old Files Section, Adjutant- General's Department, Washington, D. C.; E. A. Cruikshank, The Documentary History of the Campaign upon the Niagara Frontier (9 volumes, 1896-1908); C. J. Ingersoll, Historical Sketch of the Second War between the U.S .... and Great Britain, volumes I, II (1845-49); 2 series, volumes I, II (1852); B. L. Lossing, The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812 (1868); J. H. Smith, The War with Mexico (2 volumes, 1919); L. D. Ingersoll, A History of the War Department of the U.S. (1879); Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the U. S. (1904); W. A. Ganoe, The History of the U. S. Army (1924); obituary in New York Tribune, May 30-June 2, 1866; suggestions from Major C. W. Elliott, who is preparing a biography of Scott.]

W.A.G.



SEATON, William Winston (January 11, 1785-June 16, 1866), journalist, editor. Seaton was a Whig, a Free Mason, and a Unitarian. For many years he was an official in the American Colonization Society; he favored gradual emancipation and freed his own slaves, but opposed the Garrison abolitionists. American Colonization Society, Manager, 1833-1839, Executive Committee, 1839-1841. Editor of the National Intelligencer in Washington, DC. Elected Mayor of Washington, DC, in 1840, serving 12 years in office. Co-published Annals of Congress.

(Josephine Seaton, William Winston Seaton of the "National Intelligencer" (1871); Atlantic Monthly, October 1860, July 1871; Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the U.S. from 1690 to 1872 (1873).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 541-542:

SEATON, WILLIAM WINSTON (January 11, 1785-June 16, 1866), journalist, was born at the stately homestead "Chelsea" in King William County, Virginia, the son of Augustine and Mary (Winston) Seaton. The Seatons, whose forefather, Henry, settled in Gloucester County, Virginia, in 1690, were of Scottish, and the Winstons of English, ancestry; both were of the Virginia gentry. First trained by tutors, William entered Ogilvie's academy in Richmond, where he acquired a taste for drama, literature, art, and journalism. At eighteen, having already gained a practical knowledge of printing in a Richmond newspaper office, he entered on his journalistic career. After brief service as an assistant editor of the Richmond Virginia Patriot, he edited successively the Petersburg Republican and the North Carolina Journal of Halifax, North Carolina. In 1809 he moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and became associated with the elder Joseph Gales [q.v.] of the Raleigh Register, a Jeffersonian newspaper; on March 30 of the same year he married Gales's daughter, Sarah Weston Gales. In 1812 he joined his brother-in-law, the younger Joseph Gales [q.v.], as associate editor of the National Intelligencer of Washington, D. C.

Seaton's policy as an editor of the "Court Paper" for fourteen years became conservative, nationalistic, and free from partisanship. His characteristically short and dignified editorials can hardly be distinguished from those of Gales. His ablest work, however, was done as a reporter of the debates in the Senate while Gales reported the debates of the House. Masters of shorthand, the brothers-in-law were the exclusive reporters of Congress from 1812 to 1829. Upon the authorization of Congress their shorthand reports, with those of the earlier reporters, covering the years from 1789 to 1824, were published by Gales & Seaton (42 volumes, 1834-56), as The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, better known by the half-title, Annals of Congress. They also issued the Register of Debates in Congress, covering the years 1824-37 (14 volumes in 29, 1825-37), and the monumental series, American State Papers (38 volumes, 1832- 61).

Seaton was sanguine in nature and amused by the bitter attacks made upon him by editors and congressmen of opposite views. He preferred Crawford to Adams for president in 1824, and never accepted the leadership of Jackson, whom he respected as an honest, patriotic citizen but considered a rough frontiersman and an advocate of a low type of democracy. Seaton's personal tastes were aristocratic, although he sympathized with the laboring class, gave freely to the unfortunate, and died a poor man. He was genial, generous, captivatingly courteous, and a good conversationalist; in appearance he was tall, vigorous and handsome. He traveled in America and Europe. Among his friends he counted the leading Southern politicians and planters, and also Daniel Webster. He maintained a farm and a shooting-box in Prince George County to which he could retreat with friends of like tastes and his fine dogs to relax after a strenuous season in Washington. He was skilled in the use of the rod and gun. His witty and charming wife, who translated Spanish documents for him to use in the National Intelligencer, was a capable and attractive hostess, maintaining an elegant house to which came men and women of the higher circles of society.

Seaton was a Whig, a Free Mason, and a Unitarian. Much of his time was given to public service. He was an alderman of Washington from 1819 to 1831 and mayor from 1840 to 1850. He served on many committees, made numerous addresses, gave the city a progressive administration, developed the local educational system, led the movement for the Washington Monument, was active in the organization of the Smithsonian Institution and acted as its treasurer from 1846 until his death. He served in the state militia in Virginia, enrolled as a private in the War of 1812, and saw service at Bladensburg. For many years he was an official in the American Colonization Society; he favored gradual emancipation and freed his own slaves, but opposed the Garrison abolitionists and maintained that the national government should not interfere with slavery. Though he was at a11 times a compromiser on slavery, he was stanchly Unionist. He retired from his editorial work in 1864. His two sons died in 1827 and 1835, respectively; his wife died in 1863, leaving only his daughter, Josephine, to survive him.

[Josephine Seaton, William Winston Seaton of the "National Intelligencer" (1871); Atlantic Monthly, October 1860, July 1871; Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the U.S. from 1690 to 1872 (1873); A. C. Clark, "Colonel William Winston Seaton and His Mayoralty," Records of the Columbia Historical Society, volumes XXIX-XXX (1928); Joseph Henry, "A Sketch of the Services of the Late Hon. W. W. Seaton in Connection with the Smithsonian Institution," Annual Report ... Smithsonian, Inst . . . . 1866 (1867), reproduced in W. J. Rhees, The Smithsonian Inst. (1879); O. A. Seaton, The Seaton Family (1906); Daily Nat. Intelligencer, June 18, 19, 20, 1866.]

W.E.S.



SERGEANT, John, 1779-1852, lawyer. U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania. Opposed extension of slavery into the territories. Stated in Congressional debate of 1819: “It is to no purpose, to say that the question of slavery is a question of state concern. It affects the Union, in its interests, its resources, and character, permanently; perhaps forever. One single State, to gratify the desire of a moment, may do what all the Union cannot undo; may produce an everlasting evil, shame and reproach. And why? Because it is a State right… Sir, you may turn this matter as you will; Missouri, when she becomes a State, grows out of the Constitution; she is formed under the care of Congress, and admitted by Congress; and if she has a right to establish slavery, it is a right derived directly from the Constitution, and conferred upon her through the instrumentality of Congress.” Further, Sergeant said, “If Missouri be permitted to establish slavery, we shall bring upon ourselves the charges of hypocrisy and insincerity, and upon the Constitution a deep stain, which must impair its lustre, and weaken its title to the public esteem.”

(Appletons’, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 462-463; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, p. 588; Dumond, 1961, pp. 103, 105, 107, 213-214, 383n24, 29; 16 Cong., 1 Sess., 1819-1820, II, p. 1201)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. V, pp. 462-463:

SERGEANT, John, lawyer, born in Philadelphia, 5 December, 1779; died there, 25 November, 1852, was graduated at Princeton in 1795, and, abandoning his intention to become a merchant, studied law, and was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar in 1799. For more than half a century he was known throughout the country as one of the most honorable and learned members of his profession and its acknowledged leader in Philadelphia. He entered public life in 1801, when he was appointed commissioner of bankruptcy by Thomas Jefferson, was a member of the legislature in 1808-'10, and of Congress in 1815-'23, 1827-'9, and 1837-'42. In 1820 he was active in securing the passage of the Missouri Compromise. He was appointed one of the two envoys in 1826 to the Panama Congress, was president of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention in 1830, and Whig candidate for the vice-presidency on the ticket with Henry Clay in 1832. He declined the mission to England in 1841, and his last public service was that of arbitrator to determine a long-pending controversy. The question at issue concerned the title to Pea Patch Island as derived by the United States from the State of Delaware, and by James Humphrey claiming through Henry Gale from the State of New Jersey. This involved the question of the boundary between the two states, or, in other words, the claim to Delaware River, and the decision in favor of the United States incidentally decided the boundary dispute in favor of Delaware. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 462-463.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 588-589:

SERGEANT, JOHN (December 5, 1779-November 23, 1852), lawyer, congressman, was born in Philadelphia, the third child of Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant [q.v.] and Margaret (Spencer) Sergeant, and elder brother of Thomas Sergeant [q.v.]. He was orphaned at fourteen, and at sixteen, in 1795, was graduated from the College of New Jersey. He then began an apprenticeship in the house of Ellison & Perot, where he learned the rudiments of finance. In March 1797 he entered the law office of Jared Ingersoll [q.v.] and on July 17, 1799, was admitted, in Philadelphia, to the practice of law. Within six years, aided by a comfortable fortune, he had established himself, and for the next half-century he was an acknowledged leader of a famous bar.

In 1800 he was appointed by Governor Thomas McKean [q.v.] to be deputy attorney general for Chester County and Philadelphia. Two years later Thomas Jefferson made him commissioner of bankruptcy for Pennsylvania (Luzerne Federalist, July 12, 1802). He was elected to the legislature in 1805, and in 1806 declined reelection as well as an offer of the recordership of Philadelphia (Meredith, post, p. 9). Elected to the legislature again in 1807, he served as chairman of the committee on roads and inland navigation, and, though he did not (as claimed, Ibid., p. 9) report the first bill giving direct aid to internal improvements in Pennsylvania, he did demonstrate a deep and lasting interest in transportation and also in banking. At this time, furthermore, he revealed one of his fundamental traits of character as a public man by introducing a bill prohibiting masquerades as dangerous to public morals. Probably his growing law practice among a wealthy clientele and his identification with the vested interests brought about his temporary retirement from politics and, with it, his transition from a McKean-Jefferson Republican to a firm Federalist. Having scholarly tastes, he naturally fell in with the circle of intellectuals led by Joseph Dennie, Nicholas Biddle, and Joseph Hopkinson [qq.v. ]. His resulting friendship with Biddle lasted until the latter's death and in consequence Sergeant had an influence in the banking affairs of the nation that has never been fully recognized.

He was elected to the Fourteenth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Jonathan Williams, and served in that body from 1815 to 1823, from 1827 to 1829, and, again, from 1837 to September 15, 1841. He gave entire support to the "American system," despite bitter opposition to a high tariff by the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and the mercantile interests of his constituency. The woollen manufacturers of the Middle States, however, wrote him that "the Manufacturing Part of Society ... observe your zealous regard for their interest" (Sergeant MSS., Historical Society of Pennsylvania, post, January 20, 1816). He opposed the Missouri Compromise, favored uniform bankruptcy laws, championed internal improvements, and throughout his terms in Congress was the chief legal and political adviser to the Second Bank of the United States. In 1816, armed with plenary powers and letters of introduction, he was sent by the Bank on a mission to Europe to obtain specie to bolster the banking structure of the country. The skilful diplomacy which this thirty-seven-year old lawyer used in wresting a signal victory from stich lords of the world's financial capital as Baring Brothers and Reid, Irving & Company is a significant index to his abilities. A historian of the Bank, R. H. C. Catterall, criticizes the "pitiably inadequate" amount of specie kept on hand, but does not mention the strategic victory won by Sergeant in the face of great difficulties (The Second Bank of the United States. 1903, p. 29); yet Sergeant's successful mission undoubtedly had an ameliorating effect upon the depression of 1819. Besides serving as a director of the Bank and as its adviser, Sergeant fought some of its most notable legal battles before the Supreme Court (Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 1922, II, 90, 108, and passim). He is credited with having had more influence than anyone else in inducing Biddle to apply for a renewal of the Bank's charter (Catterall, pp. 217-18; but cf. R. C. McGrane, The Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle Dealing with National Affairs, 1919, p. 147) . His position on public questions made him an ideal, but unsuccessful, National Republican candidate for vice-president in 1832 (E. M. Carroll, Origins of the Whig Party, 1925). In 1834 the Bank sought Sergeant's election to the United States Senate, and, though the attempt failed, it did prevent the election of Richard Rush [q.v.], an unfriendly candidate (Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, volume IX, 1876, p. 40).

He was president of the board of canal commissioners of Pennsylvania in 1825-26, and was named a member of the Panama Congress of 1826, though he never proceeded farther than Mexico city on his way to Tacubaya. He was president of the constitutional convention of Pennsylvania in 1837-38 and took the lead in the fight over the judiciary. His stature can be measured by the offices that he declined: these included a seat on the bench of the United States Supreme Court, a cabinet position under Harrison, and the embassy to England under Tyler (H. A. Wise, Seven Decades of the Union, 1872, p. 219; H. L. Carson, The Supreme Court of the United States, 1891, p. 343; Meredith, post, p. 27). His great strength was as a forensic legalist, less eloquent than intellectual, but powerful enough to win such battles as the Girard Will Case (2 Howard, 127) over such opponents as Webster. In the famous cases he conducted before the Supreme Court-Osborn vs. United States Bank (9 Wheaton, 738), Worcester vs. Georgia (6 Peters, 515), etc.-he was the advocate of national powers as opposed to state rights, and though he usually defended the strongholds of vested interests, he also fought legal battles for purely humanitarian ends, as in the Cherokee cases (5 Peters, 1). He headed several humanitarian and scholarly enterprises in Philadelphia, and his printed lectures were so extensive and well received that his admirers in 1832, possibly as an aid to his campaign of that year, gathered a number of them into a volume, Select Speeches of John Sergeant of Pennsylvania, in an effort "to rescue from the precarious tenure of ephemeral publications the reputation of an eminent man." He was married June 23, 1813, to Margaretta Watmough, by whom he had ten children.

[Sergeant MSS., 5 volumes, Conarroe MSS., Etting Papers, and Poinsett Papers in Historical Soc . of Pennsylvania; Hopkinson MSS. in hands of Hopkinson family, Philadelphia; Biddle, Sergeant, Clay, and Webster MSS. in Library of Congress; Sergeant MSS. and Canal Board Papers, in Pennsylvania State Library; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); W. M. Meredith, Eulogy on the Character and Services of the Late John Sergeant (1853); Horace Binney, Remarks to the Bar of Philadelphia on the Occasion of the Deaths of Charles Chauncey and John Sergeant (1853); S. R. Gammon, The Presidential Campaign of 1832 (1922); Edward Stanwood, A History of Presidential Elections (1884); Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of ... Pennsylvania, to Propose Amendments to the Constitution ... 1837 (volumes I-XIII, 1837-39); Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, October 1924; Public Ledger (Philadelphia), November 25, 1852. ]

J.P. B.



SEWARD, William Henry, 1801-1872, statesman, U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, U.S. Senator from New York, abolitionist, member Anti-Slavery Republican Party.

(Baker, 1884; Dumond, 1961, pp. 292, 302, 355-356; Gienapp, 1987; Holt, 1999; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 9, 10, 54, 119-121, 160, 162, 165-167, 168, 177, 191-192, 198, 247; Pease, 1965, pp. 177-181, 483-485; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 52, 62, 136, 138, 240, 513, 634-636; Sewell, 1976; Van Deusen, 1976; Wilson, 1872, Vol. 2, pp. 164-166; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 470-472; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, p. 615; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 19, p. 676; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Vol. 2, pp. 613-616)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

SEWARD, William Henry, statesman, born in Florida, Orange County, New York, 16 May, 1801; died in Auburn, New York, 10 October, 1872. His father, Dr. Samuel S. Seward, descended from a Welsh emigrant to Connecticut, combined medical practice with a large mercantile business. His mother was of Irish extraction. The son was fond of study, and in 1816 entered Union, after clue preparation at Farmers' Hall Academy, Goshen, New York. He withdrew from college in 1819, taught for six months in the south, and after a year's absence returned, and was graduated in 1820. After reading law with John Anthon in New York City, and John Duer and Ogden Hoffman in Goshen, he was admitted to the bar at Utica in 1822, and in January, 1823, settled in Auburn, New York, as the partner of Elijah Miller, the first judge of Cayuga County, whose daughter, Frances Adeline, he married in the following year. His industry and his acumen and power of logical presentation soon gave him a place among the leaders of the bar. In 1824 he first met Thurlow Weed at Rochester, and a close friendship between them, personal and political, continued through life. In that year also he entered earnestly into the political contest as an advocate of the election of John Quincy Adams, and in October of that year drew up an address of the Republican Convention of Cayuga County, in which he arraigned the “Albany Regency” and denounced the methods of Martin Van Buren's supporters. He delivered an anniversary address at Auburn on 4 July, 1825. He was one of the committee to welcome Lafayette, and in February, 1827, delivered an oration expressive of sympathy for the Greek revolutionists. On 12 August, 1827, he presided at Utica over a great convention of young men of New York in support of the re-election of John Q. Adams. He declined the anti-Masonic nomination for Congress in 1828, but joined that party on the dissolution of the National Republican Party, with which he had previously acted, consequent upon the setting aside of its candidate for Andrew Jackson. In 1830 he was elected as the anti-Masonic candidate for the state senate, in which body he took the lead in the opposition to the dominant party, and labored in behalf of the common schools and of railroad and canal construction. He proposed the collection of documents in the archives of European governments for the “Colonial History of New York,” advocated the election of the mayor of New York by the direct popular vote, and furthered the passage of the bill to abolish imprisonment for debt. At the close of the session he was chosen to draw up an address of the minority of the legislature to the people. On 4 July, 1831, he gave an address to the citizens of Syracuse on the “Prospects of the United States.” On 31 January, 1832, he defended the U.S. Bank in an elaborate speech in the state senate, and at the close of that session again prepared an address of the minority to their constituents. In 1833 he travelled through Europe, writing home letters which were afterward published in the “Albany Evening Journal.” In January, 1834, he denounced the removal of the U. S. bank deposits in a brilliant and exhaustive speech. He drew up a third minority address at the close of this his last session in the legislature. On 16 July, 1834, he delivered a eulogy of Lafayette at Auburn.

The Whig Party, which had originated in the opposition to the Jackson administration and the “Albany Regency,” nominated him for governor on 13 September, 1834, in the convention at Utica. He was defeated by William L. Marcy, and returned to the practice of law in the beginning of 1835. On 3 October of that year he made a speech at Auburn on education and internal improvements. In July, 1836, he quitted Auburn for a time in order to assume an agency at Westfield to settle the differences between the Holland land Company and its tenants. While there he wrote some political essays, and in July, 1837, delivered an address in favor of universal education. He took an active part in the political canvass of 1837, which resulted in a triumph of the Whigs. He was again placed in nomination for governor in 1838, and after a warm canvass, in which he was charged with having oppressed settlers for the benefit of the land company, and was assailed by anti-slavery men, who had failed to draw from him an expression of abolitionist principles, he was elected by a majority of 10,421. The first Whig governor was hampered in his administration by rivalries and dissension within the party. He secured more humane and liberal provisions for the treatment of the insane, a mitigation of the methods of discipline in the penitentiary, and the improvement of the common schools. His proposition to admit Roman Catholic and foreign-born teachers into the public schools, while it was applauded by the opposite party, drew upon him the reproaches of many of the Protestant clergy and laity, and subjected him to suspicion and abuse. His recommendations to remove disabilities from foreigners and to encourage, rather than restrict, emigration, likewise provoked the hostility of native-born citizens. His proposition to abolish the court of chancery and make the judiciary elective was opposed by the bench and the bar, yet within a few years the reform was effected. At his suggestion, specimens of the natural history of the state were collected, and, when the geological survey was completed, he prepared an elaborate introduction to the report, reviewing the settlement, development, and condition of the state, which appeared in the work under the title of “Notes on New York.” In the conflict between the proprietors and the tenants of Renselaerwyck he advocated the claims of the latter, but firmly suppressed their violent outbreaks. He was re-elected, with a diminished majority, in 1840. A contest over the enlargement of the Erie Canal and the completion of the lateral canals, which the Democrats prophesied would plunge the state into a debt of forty millions, grew sharper during Governor Seward's second term, and near its close the legislature stopped the public works. His projects for building railroads were in like manner opposed by that party.

In January, 1843, Seward retired to private life, resuming the practice of law at Auburn. He continued an active worker for his party during the period of its decline, and was a frequent speaker at political meetings. In 1843 he delivered an address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Union College on the “Elements of Empire in America.” He entered largely into the practice of patent law, and in criminal cases his services were in constant demand. Frequently he not only defended accused persons gratuitously, but gave pecuniary assistance to his clients. Among his most masterly forensic efforts were an argument for freedom of the press in a libel suit brought by J. Fenimore Cooper against Horace Greeley in 1845, and the defence of John Van Zandt, in 1847, against a criminal charge of aiding fugitive slaves to escape. At the risk of violence, and with a certainty of opprobrium, he defended the demented Negro Freeman, who had committed a revolting murder, emboldened, many supposed, by Seward's eloquent presentation of the doctrine of moral insanity in another case. In September, 1847, Seward delivered a eulogy on Daniel O'Connell before the Irish citizens of New York, and in 1848 a eulogy on John Quincy Adams before the New York Legislature. He took an active part in the presidential canvass, and in a speech at Cleveland described the conflict between freedom and slavery, saying of the latter: “It must be abolished, and you and I must do it.”

In February, 1849, Seward was elected U. S. Senator. His proposal, while governor, to extend suffrage to the Negroes of New York, and many public utterances, placed him in the position of the foremost opponent of slavery within the Whig Party. President Taylor selected Seward as his most intimate counsellor among the senators, and the latter declined to be placed on any important committee, lest his pronounced views should compromise the administration. In a speech delivered on 11 March, 1850, in favor of the admission of California, he spoke of the exclusion of slavery as determined by “the higher law,” a phrase that was denounced as treasonable by the southern Democrats. On 2 July, 1850, he delivered a great speech on the compromise bill. He supported the French spoliation bill, and in February, 1851, advocated the principles that were afterward embodied in the homestead law. His speeches covered a wide ground, ranging from a practical and statistical analysis of the questions affecting steam navigation, deep-sea exploration, the American fisheries, the duty on rails, and the Texas debt, to flights of passionate eloquence in favor of extending sympathy to the exiled Irish patriots, and moral support to struggles for liberty, like the Hungarian Revolution, which he reviewed in a speech on “Freedom in Europe,” delivered in March, 1852. After the death of Zachary Taylor many Whig Senators and representatives accepted the pro-slavery policy of President Fillmore, but Seward resisted it with all his energy. He approved the nomination of Winfield Scott for the presidency in 1852, but would not sanction the platform, which upheld the compromise of 1850. In 1853 he delivered an address at Columbus, Ohio, on ”The Destiny of America,” and one in New York City on “The True Basis of American Independence.” In 1854 he made an oration on “The Physical, Moral, and Intellectual Development of the American People” before the literary societies of Yale College, which gave him the degree of LL. D. His speeches on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and on the admission of Kansas made a profound impression. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1855, in spite of the vigorous opposition of both the Native American Party and the Whigs of southern sympathies. In the presidential canvass of 1856 he zealously supported John C. Frémont, the Republican candidate. In 1857 he journeyed through Canada, and made a voyage to Labrador in a fishing-schooner, the “Log” of which was afterward published. In a speech at Rochester, New York, in October, 1858, he alluded to the “irrepressible conflict,” which could only terminate in the United States becoming either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation. He travelled in Europe, Egypt, and Palestine in 1859.

In 1860, as in 1856, Seward's pre-eminent position in the Republican Party made him the most conspicuous candidate for the presidential nomination. He received 173½ votes in the first ballot at the convention, against 102 given to Abraham Lincoln, who was eventually nominated, and in whose behalf he actively canvassed the western states. Lincoln appointed him Secretary of State, and before leaving the Senate to enter on the duties of this office he made a speech in which he disappointed some of his party by advising patience and moderation in debate, and harmony of action for the sake of maintaining the Union. He cherished hopes of a peaceful solution of the national troubles, and, while declining in March, 1861, to enter into negotiations with commissioners of the Confederate government, he was in favor of evacuating Fort Sumter as a military necessity and politic measure, while re-enforcing Fort Pickens, and holding every other post then remaining in the hands of the National government. He issued a circular note to the ministers abroad on 9 March, 1861, deprecating foreign intervention, and another on 24 April, defining the position of the United States in regard to the rights of neutrals. Negotiations were carried on with European governments for conventions determining such rights. He protested against the unofficial intercourse between the British Cabinet and agents of the Confederate States, and refused to receive despatches from the British and French governments in which they assumed the attitude of neutrals between belligerent powers. On 21 July he sent a despatch to Charles F. Adams, minister at London, defending the decision of Congress to close the ports of the seceded states. When the Confederate Commissioners were captured on board the British steamer “Trent” he argued that the seizure was in accordance with the British doctrine of the “right of search,” which the United States had resisted by the war of 1812. The release of these prisoners, at the demand of the British government, would now commit both governments to the maintenance of the American doctrine; so they would be “cheerfully given up.” He firmly rejected and opposed the proposal of the French emperor to unite with the English and Russian governments in mediating between the United States and the Confederate government. He made the Seward-Lyons Treaty with Great Britain for the extinction of the African slave-trade. The diplomatic service was thoroughly reorganized by Secretary Seward; and by his lucid despatches and the unceasing presentation of his views and arguments, through able ministers, to the European cabinets, the respect of Europe was retained, and the efforts of the Confederates to secure recognition and support were frustrated. In the summer of 1862, the army having become greatly depleted, and public proclamation of the fact being deemed unwise, he went to the north with letters from the president and Secretary of War, met and conferred with the governors of the loyal states, and arranged for their joint proffer of re-enforcements, to which the president responded by the call for 300,000 more troops. Mr. Seward firmly insisted on the right of American citizens to redress for the depredations of the “Alabama,” and with equal determination asserted the Monroe Doctrine in relation to the French invasion of Mexico, but, by avoiding a provocative attitude, which might have involved his government in foreign war, was able to defer the decision of both questions till a more favorable time. Before the close of the Civil War he intimated to the French government the irritation felt in the United States in regard to its armed intervention in Mexico. Many despatches on this subject were sent during 1865 and 1866, which gradually became more urgent, until the French forces were withdrawn and the Mexican empire fell. He supported President Lincoln's proclamation liberating the slaves in all localities in rebellion, and three years later announced by proclamation the abolition of slavery throughout the Union by constitutional amendment. In the spring of 1865 Mr. Seward was thrown from his carriage, and his arm and jaw were fractured. While he was confined to his couch with these injuries President Lincoln was murdered and on the same evening, 14 April, one of the conspirators gained access to the chamber of the secretary, inflicted severe wounds with a knife in his face and neck, and struck down his son, Frederick W., who came to his rescue. His recovery was slow and his sufferings were severe. He concluded a treaty with Russia for the cession of Alaska in 1867. He negotiated treaties for the purchase of the Danish West India Islands and the Bay of Samana, which failed of approval by the Senate, and made a treaty with Colombia to secure American control of the Isthmus of Panama, which had a similar fate. Secretary Seward sustained the reconstruction policy of President Johnson, and thereby alienated the more powerful section of the Republican Party and subjected himself to bitter censure and ungenerous imputations. He opposed the impeachment of President Johnson in 1868, and supported the election of General Grant in that year. He retired from office at the end of eight years of tenure in March, 1869. After a brief stay in Auburn, he journeyed across the continent to California, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska, returning through Mexico as the guest of its government and people. In August, 1870, he set out on a tour of the world, accompanied by several members of his family. He visited the principal countries of Asia, northern Africa, and Europe, being received everywhere with great honor. He studied their political institutions, their social and ethnological characteristics, and their commercial capabilities. Returning home on 9 October, 1871, he devoted himself to the preparation of a narrative of his journey, and after its completion to a history of his life and times, which was not half finished at the time of his death. The degree of LL. D. was given him by Union in 1866. He published, besides occasional addresses and numerous political speeches, a volume on the “Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams” (Auburn, 1849). An edition of his “Works” was published, which contains many of his earlier essays, speeches, and addresses, with a memoir by George E. Baker, reaching down to 1853 (3 vols., New York, 1853). To this a fourth volume was added in 1862, and a fifth in 1884, containing his later speeches and extracts from his diplomatic correspondence. His official correspondence during the eight years was published by order of Congress. The relation of his “Travels Around the World” was edited and published by his adopted daughter, Olive Risley Seward (New York, 1873). Charles F. Adams published an “Address on the Life, Character, and Services of Seward” (Albany, 1873), which was thought by some to have extolled him at the expense of President Lincoln's fame, and elicited replies from Gideon Welles and others. Mr. Seward's “Autobiography,” which extends to 1834, has been continued to 1846 in a memoir by his son, Frederick W., with selections from his letters (New York, 1877). The vignette portrait represents Governor Seward in early life, and the other illustration is a view of his residence at Auburn. There is a bronze statue of Mr. Seward, by Randolph Rogers, in Madison square, New York. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 470-472.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 8, Pt. 2, p. 615;

SEWARD, WILLIAM HENRY (May 16, 1801-October 10, 1872), statesman, was born in Florida, Orange County, New York, the son of Dr. Samuel S. and Mary (Jennings) Seward. After preparatory studies in Florida and the neighboring village of Goshen, he was sent at the age of fifteen to Union College. Graduating in 1820, he began to read law and was admitted to the bar in 1822, establishing himself the next year in Auburn, New York, which was to be his home for the rest of his life. Seward's convivial temperament as well as his profession fitted him for politics; the question was with what political group he would affiliate himself. His family had been Democratic-Republicans of the strictest persuasion, but with praiseworthy independence the rising young lawyer chose to ally himself with the opposing elements. In this decision the principal factors, according to his Autobiography (p. 54) written nearly fifty years later, were his distrust of the Southern Jeffersonians, and his great interest in internal improvements. At any rate, Seward voted for De Witt Clinton for governor, and John Quincy Adams for president in 1824, and wrote a good "Address" in support of the former (Works, III, 335). The enthusiasm which he then felt for Adams was never dimmed, and undoubtedly had its part in forming his own political ideals as time went on.

The closing years of the 1820's saw the rise of the Anti-Masonic movement in western New York. To this Seward found himself drawn, both by expediency and by conviction. In the deliberations of the new organization, as indeed in previous political discussions, the rising young politician was drawn close to Thurlow Weed [q.v.], whose casual acquaintance he had first made in 1824 and with whom he was to maintain one of the most intimate and long-standing friendships in American political annals. It was due to Weed's influence that Seward stood for and was elected in the fall of 1830 to the state Senate. In this body he served for the next four years, as a distinguished member of the minority and later as its leader. He played a prominent part in the debates on Andrew Jackson's bank policy; he sustained the President in his opposition to Nullification; he continued to advocate internal improvements; he supported abolition of imprisonment for debt. Defeated for reelection in 1833, he was unanimously nominated for governor in 1834. By this time the Whig party had supplanted the Anti-Masons, and it was under the Whig banner that Seward was to fight for the next twenty years. In this first Whig candidacy, however, he was defeated, by William L. Marcy [q.v.]. The next few years Seward devoted to the practice of law, and he acquired a modest competence through his success as agent for the Holland Company, in settling disputes with settlers in Chautauqua County (Autobiography, p. 328; Works, III, 461).

The Whigs carried the New York legislature in the election of 1837 and Seward's political ambitions, which he professed were dead in 1834, rapidly came to life again, with the governorship as their objective. The contest for the nomination lay between him and the dignified Francis Granger [q.v.], nearly nine years his senior. Seward professed to be willing to let the convention decide, but an active organization was set on foot, the young voters being particularly active in his favor. Weed, after some hesitation, decided that his protege should have the nomination, and in a closely contested convention battle Seward was chosen. In the electoral campaign itself, he was compelled for the first time to face the issue of slavery. His attitude in 1838 can hardly be called an advanced one. By the abolitionists he was asked three questions, whether he was in favor of (1) a law granting trial by jury to all fugitives, (2) of abolishing the special qualifications for negro voters, and (3) of repealing a law permitting the importation and detention of slaves in the state of New York for a period of nine months. He answered the first question in the affirmative, but the other two in the negative, declaring that the subjects with which they dealt did not enter "into the political creed" of his party (Works, III, 426-32).

The election of 1838 resulted in a victory for Seward, as did that of 1840, though by a reduced plurality. His four years in the governorship reveal the natural ardor and optimism of his temperament, his strong humanitarian sympathies, and also his impulsiveness and tendency to challenge majority opinion. Always warmly convinced of the desirability of internal improvements, Seward courageously urged them upon successive legislatures (see his message of 1840, Works, II, 212-55). In the midst of the depression, he refused to acquiesce in the suspension of activities already undertaken, and from first to last boldly defended large expenditures. In this particular case the policy cannot be said to have succeeded. The state's credit was adversely affected, its bonds selling at a discount of twenty per cent in 1841. When the Democrats regained control of both houses of the legislature in the fall elections, they proceeded to suspend virtually all but the most necessary expenditures, and to levy additional taxes. Seward, however, stoutly insisted that his policy had been wise, and that the obstacles to its accomplishment were merely a blind distrust of the future, on the part of foreign investors and of the American people. His natural impulsiveness, as well as his generosity of feeling, was illustrated also by his attitude on the question of public education in New York City. The schools there, conducted by a private corporation, the Public School Society, had been unacceptable to the rapidly growing Catholic population, and, furthermore, did not attract the children of the immigrant classes. In his message of 1840, after consulting with his old friend, Dr. Eliphalet Nott of Union College, Seward recommended "the establishment of schools in which they (the children of New York) may be instructed by teachers speaking the same language with themselves and professing the same faith" (Works, II, 215). This recommendation caused a storm of criticism from the nativist elements in the state, stronger in the Whig than in the Democratic party. Seward was compelled to retreat from the position which he had assumed, though he succeeded in securing the establishment of public schools free from sectarian influence in the city.

On the slavery question Seward took advanced ground during his term of office. He refused to surrender three sailors, who had instigated the flight of a fugitive slave to New York, when the extradition of these men was demanded by the state of Virginia. His act provoked so much irritation in Virginia as to bring about reprisals against New York shipping. But it was typical of his humanitarian spirit, and it won him the ardent support of the growing abolitionist element (for the controversy, 1839-41, see Works, II, 449 ff.). No one would maintain, however, that Seward was an uncompromising idealist in the governorship. He dispensed offices on the strict spoils basis, as was the custom of the time; he signed a law requiring registration of voters in New York City under party pressure and very much against his personal convictions; and it may be that other motives than humanitarian interest were operating in the evolution of the policies above described. But he declined to be a candidate for reelection in 1842, and his letters show that he felt himself at this time to be too far in advance of public opinion to prosper politically.

The years in the governorship depleted Seward's financial resources. During the next seven years he worked assiduously to restore them, at first in his old field, the court of chancery, but, after a little, more and more in patent cases. From time to time he took criminal cases, involving trial before a jury. One of the most striking involved the death sentence on a poor imbecile negro, Freeman, in whose defense Seward made in 1846 one of the most eloquent of his speeches (Works, I, 391-475); this he afterwards declared he would have repeated without the alteration of a word. A case which won him still more fame was that in which in a suit for damages he unsuccess fully defended in 1846-47 Van Zandt, an Ohio farmer, who had assisted in the flight of fugitive slaves (Ibid., I, 476 ff.). In these years of private practice Seward was very far from abandoning his interest in politics. He took part in almost every campaign, often outside the borders of the state. He also ardently championed the cause of Irish freedom, gaining the support of the Irish-American voters as a result. The tide was running more and more his way, also, with regard to the question of slavery. By 1848 anti-slavery sentiment had become so strong that it was possible for him to be elected to the United States Senate, many Democrats, as well as all the Whig members of the legislature, voting for him.

When Seward entered the Senate the slavery question had become acute, and the question of its relation to the disposition of the territories just acquired from Mexico was assuming portentous proportions. In the celebrated debate growing out of Henry Clay's famous resolutions of 1850, Seward took his stand firmly against all compromise, and in favor of the unconditional admission of California as a free state. In his well-known speech of March 11 he declared that there was no reason to jumble together a variety of important questions in a single measure, as Clay had wished to do; he boldly asserted that the fugitive-slave law was impossible of enforcement in the North; he wished to abolish, not only the slave trade, as proposed by Clay, but also slavery in the District of Columbia; he was opposed to leaving the territories to organize themselves with or without slavery. In a prescient sentence he declared that the slave system would either be removed "by gradual voluntary effort, and with compensation," within the framework of the Union, or the Union would be dissolved, and civil wars ensue, bringing on violent but complete and immediate emancipation he had been passed over in 1856 in the Republican National Convention for Fremont; and some of his shifts of attitude may be attributed to the fact that he had his eye on the presidential nomination of 1860.

In 1859 Seward went abroad, meeting many celebrities in England and France, and returning to a great reception in New York. In February 1860, he again advocated the admission of Kansas as a free state, and made a speech which may be regarded as an expression of the platform on which he would stand for the Republican nomination (February 29, 1860, Ibid., IV, 619-43). Its general tenor was extremely conciliatory and moderate; with rare exceptions, Seward optimistically believed that Republicanism involved no threat to the unity of the American people. When the Republican National Convention met in Chicago in June 1860, he was undoubtedly the leading candidate, but the hostility of Horace Greeley, the opposition of the Know-Nothings, and Seward's own too widely known radical utterances, conspired to deprive him of the nomination. It was a severe blow, but he bore it with his usual outward equanimity and with very real generosity. He campaigned for the Republican ticket throughout the North, minimizing the Southern threats of secession, and urging the election of Lincoln. In the crisis which followed the election Seward showed characteristic elements of strength and weakness. His invincible optimism inclined him to minimize the dangers that lay ahead; yet, in the face of secession, he employed the language and the method of conciliation. He was also one of the Senate committee of thirteen constituted to consider means of composing the situation; as the spokesman of the section, and at the suggestion of Weed, he proposed on December 24 that Congress guarantee slavery in the slave states, and request the repeal of the personal liberty laws in exchange for the grant of jury trial to fugitive slaves (Senate Report No. 288, 36 Congress, 2 Session, pp. 10, 11, 13). His speech of January 12, 1861, made after three more states had seceded, was admirable in its spirit (Works, IV, 651-69). Clearly avowing his loyalty to the Union, he again spoke in the most conciliatory vein, advocating a constitutional convention to settle outstanding difficulties, and even suggesting, in departure from the Republican platform, the admission of the remaining territories as two states without regard to slavery. It is entirely possible that he personally favored the Crittenden Compromise; but the influence of the President-elect was thrown on the other side, and Seward voted against this proposal when it came before the Senate on March 2.

As early as December 8, Seward had been offered the office of secretary of state by Lincoln. He accepted on December 28; and although he was deeply displeased at the selection of Chase and Blair as cabinet colleagues, and even sought to reverse his decision as late as March 2, he yielded to the entreaties of the President. He took office on March 4, no doubt believing that he would be, and deserved to be, the dominant figure in the administration, and the man who could best avert the perils of civil war. In the critical period from March 4 to April 12, 1861 (the date of the firing on Sumter), Seward appears at very far from his best. He still retained the delusion that he might determine the course of the administration; and his famous memorandum, "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration, April 1, 1861," admits of no apology. In this reckless document he advocated embroiling the United States with most of Europe and waging actual war on Spain and France, as a means of solidifying the Union (Nicolay and Hay, post, II, 29). The only concrete grievance on the horizon was the Spanish re-annexation of Santo Domingo, and this had not been officially consummated. A madder or wilder project than Seward's could hardly have been devised. Nor is it possible to imagine anything more arrogant than the last sentence of his memorandum, in which he virtually suggested that the President abdicate his power to the Secretary of State. Seward's course with regard to secession itself is not easy to justify. It is understandable that he entered into negotiations with the Confederate commissioners sent to Washington to demand the surrender of the forts still held by the Union government in the South; but it is not so easy to justify machinations behind the back of the President, by which the reënforcement of Fort Pickens was delayed, and the expedition to Sumter, when it sailed, weakened by the absence of the Powhatan. Seward was not even resolutely pacifist; on one occasion he spoke of using force to collect the revenue, and in general he was in favor of holding the Gulf forts, perhaps with a view to a possible war with Spain, though not of holding Sumter. No doubt much to his discomfiture, and with many a wound to his pride, he saw himself overruled and the decisive events which culminated in the opening of the Civil War directed by the chief whose real measure he had not yet taken.

Seward's conduct of the office of secretary of state during the four years of the war deserves high praise. More than any preceding secretary he conducted his diplomatic correspondence with an eye to public opinion at home. It is no chance that the publication of diplomatic dispatches in one or more annual volumes put out by the State Department begins with him (Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 2 volumes, 1861). He no doubt wrote almost too much for the American public, as compared with those to whom his dispatches were actually directed. But in so doing he did much both to inspirit and to restrain public opinion as occasion demanded. His early dispatches were too blustering in tone, and might have gotten him into serious trouble sometimes had it not been for the wisdom of Lincoln. As time went on, he dropped the truculent tone and expressed the views of the United States with dignity and force. On the occasion of the seizure of Mason and Slidell on board the Trent, an act received with something like ecstasy by Northern opinion, he behaved with great coolness in the midst of popular excitement. When the protest of the British government against such action arrived, it was the Secretary, this time somewhat against the opinion of the President, who decided that the protest must be heeded. The dispatch in which he conceded the surrender of the Southern commissioners is a masterpiece (Works, V, 295-309). Written with an eye to making palatable an act sure to be violently condemned by the hotheads in the United States, it flattered Northern opinion by its specious reasoning, and made the action appear as in accord with fundamental American traditions.

The possibility of European intervention in the Civil War Seward met, on the whole, with similar adroitness. The optimism of his dispatches, their profound self-confidence, and their array of facts, could hardly fail to make an impression. This tone, maintained through good fortune and bad, and coupled with warning after warning of the dangerous consequences of intervention, was, in general, just what the situation demanded. At times Seward was still a little bumptious, and his habit of publishing many of his dispatches was often irritating, but the general principle was sound. He could depend, too, on the tact and high diplomatic skill of Charles Francis Adams in interpreting his instructions. Seward made skilful use abroad of the question of slavery to check the anti-Northern agitation in France and England. On the Emancipation Proclamation he was at first conservative, because of his fear of its domestic consequences. When it was first discussed in July 1862, he urged Lincoln to postpone action, at least until a Federal victory (Nicolay and Hay, II, 479). But when the preliminary proclamation was issued after Antietam, he used it with great effect in his dispatches to Adams and W. L. Dayton. The danger of intervention seemed greatest in the fall of 1862 and the winter of 1863. At the end of October, the French government sought to secure joint action with Great Britain and Russia looking to an armistice. The proposal was rejected, and Seward wisely made no protest. But when the French directly proffered mediation early in 1863, Seward responded in one of his most effective dispatches (February 6, 1863, Senate Executive Document No. 38, 37 Congress, 3 Session, p. 11-16).

In his correspondence Seward adroitly defended the broad interpretation of continuous voyage in dispatches that suggest Sir Edward Grey's half a century later, and he protested vigorously against the outfitting of Confederate privateers in British ports. His steady pressure, combined with the skill of Adams, finally led the British government to take due precautions, in the case of the Laird rams, while his protests in the case of the Alabama laid the basis for solid pecuniary claims later. Nowhere was Seward more adroit than in his treatment of the French intervention in Mexico, and the establishment of Maximilian on a Mexican throne. From an early period he made the distaste of the United States for the whole project obvious; yet he suavely assumed the rumors of monarchy to be ill-founded as long as he could do so, and until the end of the war never let anything like menace enter into his tone. When the House of Representatives on April 4, 1864, condemned the schemes of Louis Napoleon (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, l Session, p. 1408), Seward penned a masterly dispatch in which he soothed French susceptibilities, explaining that the opinion of the legislative branch of the government did not alter executive policy (April 7, 1864, Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, 1865, volume III, 356-57). When the Civil War was over, there was much sentiment for vigorous action against the French. Seward handled this delicate situation magnificently. He temporized while he could; the situation of the French grew more and more difficult; and then in dispatches gradually mounting in tone he edged his adversary, Drouyn de L'huys, from one position to another, until he finally secured the promise of the evacuation of Mexico in a fixed period of time. In the latter part of the correspondence Seward fell into his old habit of writing for domestic consumption; and the same may be said of his correspondence with Austria on the same subject; but the total effect of his activity is admirable.

Seward was, in temperament and conviction, an expansionist. During the 1850's this sentiment came in conflict with his anti-slavery views, and led him to oppose such projects as the purchase of Cuba. But when the war was over the strong instinct revived. In 1867 he negotiated the cession of Alaska, and with the aid of Sumner secured the prompt ratification of the treaty by the Senate. He sought to acquire the two most important islands of the Danish West Indies; but this agreement was never ratified. He encouraged overtures from the Dominican Republic looking to incorporation in the United States, again unsuccessfully. In his instructions to the American minister at Honolulu he advocated the annexation of Hawaii. Seward's views were those which a later generation was to accept.

In domestic affairs Seward exercised a constant influence both on the Lincoln and the Johnson administrations. He had a large, indeed it may be said the chief, responsibility for the treatment of political prisoners at the beginning of the war, and contrary to his general temperament he here showed much rigor. He exercised, as has been seen, a positive influence on the policy of the administration with regard to the border states and emancipation. He performed heavy labors as a sort of political liaison officer, and his interest in problems of patronage, while not always wisely exerted, was continuous. In the Johnson administration he was a central figure. He advocated a conciliatory policy towards the South, wrote some of Johnson's most important veto messages, and supported the President in many speeches, making "the swing around the circle" with him in 1866. By doing so he lost both popularity and influence, and he valued both dearly; but whatever the reaction of the moment, the judgment of time has been that he was wiser than his opponents.

The burdens of his last four years at Washington Seward sustained in circumstances that would have daunted a man less tenacious and industrious. He had suffered serious injury in a carriage accident in the spring of 1865, and this had been followed by the brutal attack upon him in his house which was contemporaneous with the assassination of Lincoln; yet he was soon transacting the public business with as much skill and coolness as ever. At the end of his term of office, despite the fact that he was partially crippled, he went around the world, the first important American political figure to do so, and much enjoyed the enthusiasm which his visit evoked. He returned to Auburn in the autumn of 1871, and there increasing paralysis overtook him. He died on October 10, 1872. On October 20, 1824, he had married Frances Miller, the daughter of his law partner. A woman of liberal sympathies and humanitarian views, she undoubtedly influenced his later career, and especially his attitude toward slavery. They had three sons and two daughters, one of whom died in infancy. Fredrick William Seward [q.v.] was closely associated with his father. A nephew, Clarence Armstrong Seward (October 27, 1828-July 24, 1897), who became an orphan in childhood and was brought up in his uncle's family, served for a brief time in 1865 as assistant secretary of state and attained prominence as a corporation lawyer. His cousin, George Frederick Seward [q.v.], another nephew of William H. Seward, was launched upon his diplomatic career under the latter's influence.

In Seward the politician and the statesman are interestingly, and on the whole happily, commingled. It is easy to discover occasions on which he equivocated, as politicians do; it is easy to discover occasions on which he sought the applause of the multitude, not always careful of the consequences. Even in his diplomacy, and strikingly in his early utterances on questions of foreign affairs, this is true. Yet Seward chose his early political creed, it would appear, from conviction; he associated himself with definite policies, and loved to do so; much earlier than most anti-slavery leaders of the political stripe, he adopted that important cause; he often showed real courage in advocating it. He made serious blunders, and might have made more, in estimating the true value of the conflicting forces at the end of 1860 and the beginning of 1861 but his years at the State Department are years of steady growth, and of very creditable achievement, while his role in maintaining national morale must not be underestimated. He was the partisan of a wise policy of reconciliation when the war was over. The unswervingly independent mind has its uses in the world; but its possessor is not apt to succeed in politics. It may be fairly argued that Seward combined devotion to principle, and flexibility as to means, in such proportions as to make him most effective.

As a human being, few could have been more lovable. Cheerful, generous, loathing personal controversy, he had a wide range of interests and of sympathies. He read much and widely; he traveled extensively, going to Europe several times, and seeing a great deal of his own country. He was a little vain, and he had his political enemies; he is dwarfed by the master-spirit of his great chief; but, compared with the irascible Stanton, the pompous Sumner, the intriguing Chase, and many others, he looms up as one of the most attractive, as well as most important, figures in a critical period of American history.

[Autobiography of William H. Seward, from 1801 to 1834, with a Memoir of His Life, and Selections from His Letters, from 1831 to 1846 (1877), ed. by F. W. Seward, the continuation of this by F. W. Seward, Seward at Washington (2 volumes, 1891); G. E. Baker, ed., The Works of William H. Seward (5 volumes, 1884); Life of Thurlow Weed (2 volumes, 1883-84), including his autobiography, ed. by Harriet A. Weed, and a memoir by T. W. Barnes; J. D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New York (3 volumes, 1842-48); D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume II (1906); Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S. (2 volumes, 1861), and Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs (14 volumes, 1862-66), bound and usually cited as Diplomatic Correspondence of the U.S.; Gideon Welles, Lincoln and Seward (1874); F. W. Seward, Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat (1916); Olive R. Seward, ed., William H. Seward's Travels Around the World (1873); J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works (2 volumes, 1894); Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (2 volumes, 1900), which is sympathetic yet critical, and is exceedingly well proportioned; T. K. Lothrop, William Henry Seward (1896) and E. E. Hale, Jr., William H. Seward (1910), of less importance; an interesting sketch in Gamaliel Bradford, Union Portraits (1916); C. F. Adams, Seward and the Declaration of Paris (1912); Tyler Dennett, "Seward's Far Eastern Policy," in American History Review, October 1922; studies of Seward's Mexican policy in J. M. Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations (1932), and Dexter Perkins, The Monroe Doctrine, 1826- 1867 (1933); detailed study of his policy toward Great Britain in E. D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War (2 volumes, 1925); general treatment by H. W. Temple in S. F. Bemis, ed., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, volume VII (1928); unpublished materials in the possession of Mrs. Thomas G. Spencer, Rochester, New York, and W. H. Seward, Auburn, New York; unpublished correspondence in Department of State, Washington, D. C.]

D.P.



SHERMAN, John, 1823-1900, statesman. Whig U.S. Congressman, 1855. Republican U.S. Senator. Brother of General William T. Sherman. His attitude as a conservative Whig, in the alarm and excitement that followed the attempt to repeal the Missouri Compromise, secured his election to the 34th Congress. He acted with the Republican Party in supporting John C. Frémont for the presidency because that party resisted the extension of slavery. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’, 1888, pp. 506-508; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 9, Pt. 1, p. 84; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 19, p. 813; Congressional Globe)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, pp. 506-508:

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

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

He was re-elected to the 36th Congress, which began its first session amid the excitement caused by the bold raid of John Brown. In 1859 he was the Republican candidate for the speakership. He had subscribed, with no knowledge of the book, for Hinton R. Helper's “Impending Crisis,” and this fact was brought up against him and estranged from him a few of the southern Whigs, who besought him to declare that he was not hostile to slavery. He refused, and after eight weeks of balloting, in which he came within three votes of election, he yielded to William Pennington, who was chosen. Mr. Sherman was then made chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means. He took a decided stand against in drafting new legislation upon appropriation bills, saying: “The theory of appropriation bills is, that they shall provide money to carry on the government, to execute existing laws, and not to change existing laws or provide new ones.” In 1860 he was again elected to Congress, and, when that body convened in December, the seceding members of both houses were outspoken and defiant. At the beginning of President Buchanan's administration the public indebtedness was less than $20,000,000, but by this time it had been increased to nearly $100,000,000, and in such a crippled condition were its finances that the government had not been able to pay the salaries of members of Congress and many other demands. Mr. Sherman proved equal to the occasion in providing the means for the future support of the government. His first step was to secure the passage of a bill authorizing the issue of what are known as the treasury-notes of 1860.

On the resignation of Salmon P. Chase, he was elected to his place in the Senate, and took his seat on 4 March, 1861. He was re-elected senator in 1867 and in 1873. During most of his senatorial career he was chairman of the Committee on Finance, and served also on the committees on agriculture, the Pacific Railroad, the Judiciary, and the Patent Office. After the fall of Fort Sumter, under the call of President Lincoln for 75,000 troops he tendered his services to General Robert Patterson, was appointed aide-de-camp without pay, and remained with the Ohio regiments till the meeting of Congress in July. After the close of this extra session he returned to Ohio, and received authority from Governor William Denison to raise a brigade. Largely at his own expense, he recruited two regiments of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and a battery of artillery, comprising over 2,300 men. This force served during the whole war, and was known as the “Sherman Brigade.” The most valuable services rendered by him to the Union cause were his efforts in the Senate to maintain and strengthen the public credit, and to provide for the support of the armies in the field. On the suspension of specie payments, about the first of January, 1862, the issue of United States notes became a necessity. The question of making them a legal tender was not at first received with favor. Mainly through the efforts of Senator Sherman and Secretary Chase, this feature of the bill authorizing their issue was carried through Congress. They justified the legal-tender clause of the bill on the ground of necessity. In the debates on this question Mr. Sherman said: “I do believe there is a pressing necessity that these demand-notes should be made legal tender, if we want to avoid the evils of a depreciated and dishonored paper currency. I do believe we have the constitutional power to pass such a provision, and that the public safety now demands its exercise.” The records of the debate show that he made the only speech in the Senate-in favor of the National-Bank Bill. Its final passage was secured only by the personal appeals of Secretary Chase to the senators who opposed it. Mr. Sherman's speeches on state and national banks are the most important that he made during the war. He introduced a refunding act in 1867, which was adopted in 1870, but without the resumption clause. In 1874 a committee of nine, of which he was chairman, was appointed by a Republican caucus to secure a concurrence of action. They agreed upon a bill fixing the time for the resumption of specie payment at 1 January, 1879. This bill was reported to the caucus and the Senate with the distinct understanding that there should be no debate on the side of the Republicans, and that Mr. Sherman should be left to manage it according to his own discretion. The bill was passed, leaving its execution dependent upon the will of the Secretary of the Treasury for the time being.

Mr. Sherman was an active supporter of Rutherford B. Hayes for the presidency in 1876, was a member of the committee that visited Louisiana to witness the counting of the returns of that state. He was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Hayes in March, 1877, and immediately set about providing a redemption fund by means of loans. Six months before 1 January, 1879, the date fixed by law for redemption of specie payments, he had accumulated $140,000,000 in gold, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the legal-tender notes gradually approach gold in value until, when the day came, there was practically no demand for gold in exchange for the notes. In 1880 Mr. Sherman was an avowed candidate for the presidential nomination, and his name was presented in the National Convention by James A. Garfield. During the contest between the supporters of General Grant and those of James G. Blaine, which resulted in Mr. Garfield's nomination, Mr. Sherman's vote ranged from 90 to 97. He returned to the Senate in 1881, and on the expiration of his term in 1887 was re-elected to serve until 1893. At present (1888) he is chairman of the committee on foreign relations, and is an active member of the committees on Expenditures of Public Money, Finance, and Rules. In December, 1885, he was chosen President of the Senate Pro Tem, but he declined re-election at the close of his senatorial term in 1887. His name was presented by Joseph B. Foraker in nomination for the presidency at the National Convention held in 1884, but the Ohio delegation was divided between him and James G. Blaine, so that he received only 30 votes from this state. Again in 1888 his name was presented by Daniel H. Hastings, in behalf of the Pennsylvania delegation at the National Convention, and on the first ballot he received 229 votes and on the second 249, being the leading candidate, and continued so until Benjamin Harrison received the support of those whose names were withdrawn. Mr. Sherman has published “Selected Speeches and Reports on Finance and Taxation, 1859–1878" (New York, 1879). See “John Sherman, What he has said and done: Life and Public Services,” by Reverend Sherlock A. Bronson (Columbus, Ohio, 1880). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. V, pp. 506-508.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J.P.N.

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.