Web-Whe: Webb through Wheeler

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

WEBB, James Watson (February 8, 1802- June 7, 1884), journalist and diplomat, He became a chief supporter of the Whig party. He was an anti-abolitionist but a Free-Soiler, and during the 1850's urged the preservation of the Union even at the cost of war.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 574-575:

WEBB, JAMES WATSON (February 8, 1802- June 7, 1884), journalist and diplomat, was born at Claverack, New York Through his mother, Catharine Hoge boom, he came of old New York Dutch stock; and through his father, General Samuel Blachley Webb (1753 -1807), an aide of Washington, of old Connecticut stock, his first American ancestor being Richard Webb who was admitted freeman in Boston in 1632 and went to Hartford in 1635. Early orphaned, he was educated at Cooperstown, New York, under the guardianship of a brother-in-law, but at seventeen ran away to join the army. Appearing in Washington (1819) armed with a letter of identification from Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, he persuaded Secretary of War John C. Calhoun to give him a second lieutenant's commission. He was assigned at first to the artillery at Governor's Island, New York, but was transferred in 1821 to the 3rd Infantry at Chicago. There, in 1822, he had a notable frontier adventure, when he volunteered to carry to Fort Armstrong on the Mississippi news of a meditated Indian attack on Fort Snelling, Minnesota, crossing the forests and prairies of Illinois in the depth of winter while trailed by hostile Indians. As impetuous as he was audacious, Webb fought two duels with fellow-officers, came near fighting many more, and finally (1827) resigned from the army in consequence of one of these embroilments. At this time he was a first lieutenant; his later title of general was conferred at the time of his appointment as minister to Austria (A Letter ... to J. Bramley- Moore, post, p. 5).

On leaving the army young Webb went to New York City and plunged into a journalistic career, eventually to become one of the most influential editors in that age of personal journalist. In 1827 he acquired the Morning Courier, and in 1829 acquired and merged with it the New-York Enquirer, thereafter continuing as editor and proprietor of the Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer until he sold out to the World in 1861 and retired from the field. At first stanchly Jacksonian, he deserted Jackson in 1832 on the United States Bank issue, and became a chief prop of the Whig party. He was an anti-abolitionist but a Free-Soiler, and during the 1850's urged the preservation of the Union even at the cost of war. The Courier and Enquirer was one of the old sixpenny "blanket sheets" destined to be starved out by the smaller, cheaper papers, two of which were founded by one-time assistants of Webb's, James Gordon Bennett, the elder, and Henry Jarvis Raymond [qq.v.]. With its chief rival, the Journal of Commerce, the Courier and Enquirer waged a war of size which eventually produced folios containing over two thousand square inches of type. In the 1830's the rivals sent schooners fifty to a hundred miles to sea in a race for incoming news, and established pony expresses to hasten the news from Washington. With the editors of the penny papers Webb later exchanged plentiful invective, until he was called the "best abused" of them all. He was frequently involved in affairs of honor growing out of his editorial activities, on one occasion (1842) escaping prison under the New York anti-dueling law only by the pardon of the governor.

At the outbreak of the Civil War Webb sold his paper and, somewhat to his own surprise, found himself in the diplomatic service. He had journeyed to Vienna in 1849-50 under appointment (January 7, 1850), as charge d'affaires to Austria, only to be greeted with the news that the Senate had refused to confirm his appointment, perhaps because of a widespread desire to break with Austria in protest against the Hungarian war. He was now (May 31, 1861) made minister to Brazil, and went to his post via France, where he presented the Union cause to Louis Napoleon, his friend and correspondent since their meeting in 1835 while Napoleon was in exile. Later, through correspondence and another fateful interview (November 1865), Webb was instrumental in securing a promise of French withdrawal from Mexico. The record of his eight strenuous years in Brazil is marked by an alert patriotism and a bold energy verging on rashness. He had the satisfaction of seeing the unfriendly British envoy sent home in disgrace. He fought tirelessly against the aid extended to Confederate privateers, protected the interests of Americans during the Paraguayan War, and secured the settlement of several long-standing maritime claims. Retiring from the service in 1869, he traveled in Europe for two years, and then lived quietly at home, mostly in New York, until his death. His publications include a number of pamphlets: To the Officers of the Army (1827) on the occasion of his resignation; Slavery and Its Tendencies (n.d.), written in 1856; A Letter ... to J. Bramley-Moore, Esq., M.P. (n.d.), on the affair with the British envoy; and A National Currency (1875.). He also wrote Reminiscences of General Samuel B. Webb (1882).

Webb was twice married: first (July 1, 1823) to Hel en Lispenard Stewart, daughter of Alexander L. Stewart, who died in 1848; second (November 9, 1849) to Laura Virginia Cram, daughter of Jacob Cram, millionaire brewer. Of the eight children born of the first union, five grew to maturity, the youngest being Alexander Stewart Webb [q.v.], the well-known Civil War general. There were five sons born of the second marriage. Webb's tall figure, massive head, and piercing eyes gave him a dignified, even imposing presence, which he retained until old age, in spite of a half-century's battle with hereditary gout.

[In addition to, Webb' s pamphlets, see for family data Webb's Reminiscences of General Samuel B. Webb (1882); for the Fort Snelling adventure, dedication to Altowan; or, Incidents of Life and Adventure in the Rocky Mountains (2 volumes, 1846), ed. by Webb; for charges arising out of the Carolina claims, General J. Watson Webb .. . vs. Hamilton Fish (1875), and J. B. Moore, A Digest of international Law (1906), volume VI, pp. 749-50. See also G. H. Andrews, in Sketches of Men of Progress (1870-71), ed. by James Parton; N. A. Cleven, in Revista do Instituto Historico e Geographico Brasileiro ... Congresso Internacional de Historia da America (.1925), pp. 293-394; F. E. Stevens, fames Watson Webb's Tri p across Illinois in 1822 (1924); Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the U.S. (1873); obituary in New York Times, June 8, 1884. Webb's dispatches from Brazil were published in Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, 1862-69.]

E. M. S.



WEBSTER, Daniel, 1782-1852, statesman, U.S. Secretary of State, orator, author, strong opponent of slavery. Vice President of the American Colonization Society, 1833-1841. President of the Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade in 1822.

(Baxter, 1984; Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 175, 197, 261, 291, 307; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007; Peterson, 1987; Remini, 1997; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 331-332, 508-509; Shewmaker, 1990; Smith, 1989; Webster, 1969; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 406-415; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 585-592; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 865; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 865; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 27, 76, 245; Longacre, James B. & James Herring, National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans. Philadelphia: American Academy of Fine Arts, 1834-1839).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 585-592:

WEBSTER, DANIEL (January 18, 1782-October 24, 1852), statesman, was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire. He was descended from Thomas Webster, who was brought to Ipswich, Massachusetts, c. 1635 as an infant and later removed to the southern New Hampshire frontier. His father, Ebenezer Webster, an unlettered but intrepid colonial, took part in General Jeffrey Amherst's invasion of Canada in 1759 and was allotted some 225 acres of land in the upper Merrimack Valley, where he became a founder and local official in the exposed frontier town of Salisbury. Ebenezer was an early and active revolutionary leader and served with distinction as captain in the militia. He also served capably in the state legislature and participated in the ratification of the federal Constitution as a member of the New Hampshire convention. Later in life Captain Webster, who kept this title even after he had been made a colonel in the state militia, was made a lay judge of the county court of common pleas. Webster's mother, Abigail Eastman, of Welsh stock, was a second wife who, like her predecessor, bore Ebenezer five children; of these Daniel was next to the youngest.

A lad of delicate health, Daniel was spared the heavier tasks which his brothers and sisters shared on the rugged New Hampshire farm. He found opportunity instead for the cultivation of his precocious mind and strongly emotional nature. In the random schools of the neighborhood the boy found that in reading he "generally could perform better" than the teachers in charge but his crude achievements in the irksome task of writing caused his masters to wonder whether after all his fingers were not "destined for the plough-tail" (Writings and Speeches, National ed., XVII, 7). His father, however, not satisfied with his clumsy efforts at certain rural tasks, was determined to save him from a life of arduous toil and shortly announced his intention to give Daniel "the advantage of knowledge" that had been denied to himself. Accordingly, in 1796, Captain Webster enrolled his fourteen-year-old son in the Phillips Exeter Academy. The boy was shy and sensitive about his unfashionable attire and clumsy manners, but he made rapid headway with his studies. Only in declamation was he unable to match his fellows: at the weekly public exhibitions, despite careful preparation, he "could never command sufficient resolution" to leave his seat and present his offerings (Ibid., XVII, 10).

In December 1796 Daniel returned with his father to Salisbury without having completed his course. A brief period of school-teaching ended with an arrangement for him to study under the Reverend Samuel Wood of Boscawen, who had offered to prepare him for Dartmouth College. By August 1797 he had achieved fair success in Latin and Greek and in the meantime had satisfied his omnivorous appetite for reading in 'the village library. With this uncertain equipment he presented himself for admission to Dartmouth at the opening of the regular fall term. Arriving on horseback with baggage and bedding, Webster began a college course that cost him in four years considerably less than two hundred dollars. The swarthy youngster, who was often taken for an Indian, soon acquired the nickname of "Black Dan." He pursued his studies with energy, yet found time for his two youthful enthusiasms, reading and playing. He graduated not far from the top of his class. He dabbled with enthusiasm in poetry and earned part of his board temporarily by contributing to the village newspaper. In contrast with his failure in Exeter days, he was outstanding in one of the college debating societies and developed a reputation as a speaker that led to his being invited by the citizens of Hanover to deliver, at the age of eighteen, the local Fourth of July oration. In this he revealed a florid style and a tendency toward bombast along with the "vigor and glow" that characterized his early oratorical efforts.

Following graduation Webster began the study of law in the office of Thomas W. Thompson of Salisbury. He had no great enthusiasm for the legal profession and seems to have had doubts as to whether he had the "brilliancy, and at the same time penetration and judgment enough, for a great law character" (Ibid., XVII, 92, 95). But he read "Robertson, Vattel, and three volumes of Blackstone," meantime learning the routine of the law office, and began to "feel more at ease" (Ibid., XVII, 100). After some months, however, he gave up these studies to accept a position as teacher in an academy in the small village of Fryeburg, the salary ($350) making it possible for him to aid his father in keeping his elder brother Ezekiel, in college. Offered reappointment at "five or six hundred dollars a year, a house to live in, a piece of land to cultivate" and the probability of a clerkship of the court of common pleas, he was tempted to settle down to spend his days "in a kind of comfortable privacy" (Ibid., XVII, 1 10). But father and friends advised him to pursue the study of law and with a careful definition of his ideals he returned, in September 1802, to Thompson's office. The embryo lawyer pondered the limitations of his calling. Conceding the power of the law to help "invigorate and unfold the powers of the mind," he tried to offset the hard didactic style of the legal treatise with excursions into history and the classics and made random attempts of his own at expression in verse and rhyme.

He long expected that only a miracle would make it possible to transfer to "the capital of New England." Now, upon the urge nt invitation of Ezekiel, who was teaching school there, he went to Boston and had the rare good fortune to be accepted immediately as a clerk by Christopher Gore [q.v.], who had just returned from a diplomatic mission abroad. Influenced by the stimulating scholarship of such an employer and his circle of distinguished associates, Webster's fertile mind developed apace. Upon Gore's advice but to his father's surprise and disappointment he declined the profitable clerkship of the court of common pleas which paternal influence had proudly arranged for him. Admitted to the Boston bar in March 1805, he was recall ed to Boscawen by a sense of filial obligation. His intention had Leen to set up an office in Portsmouth, but his father's illness made it a duty "to drop in the firmament of Boston gayety and pleasure, to the level of a rustic village, of silence and of obscurity" (Ibid., XVII, 200).

In September 1807, some little time after his father's death, he transferred his labors to Portsmouth where he remained for nine "very happy years." To this new home he brought his bride, Grace Fletcher, daughter of a New Hampshire clergyman, whom he married on May 29, 1808 (Fuess, post, I, 101n.). In his practice of law, the young attorney promptly won distinction. Following the superior court in most of the counties of the state, he found it possible to achieve a practice worth nearly $2,000 a year. He enjoyed the professional rivalry of Jeremiah Mason [q.v.], whom he once rated as the greatest lawyer in the country. From their frequent clashes in court he learned the importance of the most careful preparation of his arguments and of the most effective diction. Webster consciously dropped his earlier florid style and sought to achieve the short incisive sentences with which Mason was so masterful. Meantime, the two rivals at the bar became the best of political friends.

During the Portsmouth period Webster was being drawn more and more into politics. Temperamentally a conservative, he had inherited from his father strong Federalist convictions, which were reinforced by other associations, especially by his contacts with the "bigwigs" of Boston. Satisfied that wealth and intelligence should play a dominant role in public life, he early reached the conclusion that the Federalist party combined "more than two thirds of the talent, the character, and the property of the nation" (Writings and Speeches, XVII, n5). He grew to maturity amid the fear of French revolutionary ideals of democracy and came to picture them as threatening civil war "when American blood shall be made to flow in rivers, by American swords!" (Ibid., XVII, 79). It was this fear that produced his early devotion to "the bonds of our Federal Union." The Jeffersonian victory of 1800 seemed an "earthquake of popular commotion" under a Constitution which he was free to admit left "a wide field for the exertions of democratic intrigue" (Ibid., XVII, 111-12). He therefore labored in his humble way-in Fourth of July orations and in occasional political pamphleteering-to contribute to the revival of Federalism, to arouse those who were disposed to "sit still and sigh at the depravity of the times," while the "contagion of democracy" threatened to "pervade every place and corrupt every generous and manly sentiment" (Ibid., XVII, 158, 175).

He soon become a champion of the shipping interests of New England and of their protection against the retaliatory measures of Great Britain and France in their war for European supremacy. When Jefferson instituted a policy of economic coercion that struck a ruinous blow at the commercial prosperity of New England, Webster contributed a pamphlet, Considerations on the Embargo Laws (1808), which effectively voiced the Federalist opposition. By the time that the controversy over neutral rights had led to the outbreak of hostilities with Great Britain, Webster had achieved a recognized place among the Federalists of Portsmouth. In a Fourth of July oration in 1812 he vigorously condemned the administration for having led the nation into an unjustifiable war (Ibid., XV, 583-98). But, unlike the Federalist die-hards who had been for years at least toying with the idea of separating New England from the Union, Webster renounced the idea of resistance or insurrection and took his stand for full freedom of criticism and "the peaceable remedy of election" (Ibid., XV, 594). A month later in his famous "Rockingham Memorial,'' presented at a Federalist mass meeting in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, he reiterated his anti-war views even more forcefully (Ibid., XV, 599--010).

The enthusiastic reception of this memorial, both by the convention which proceeded to nominate him for Congress and by Federalists generally, launched Webster, with his election in November, upon a national political career. Made a member of the committee on foreign relations, he presented, on June 10, 1813, a series of resolutions calling upon the government to explain the events immediately preceding the outbreak of hostilities and had the satisfaction of making a powerful impression and of seeing his resolutions adopted eleven days later (Annals of Congress, 13 Congress, 1 Session, cols. 149-51, 302-1 I). Aiming to embarrass the administration as much as possible, he loosed his eloquence against bounties to encourage enlistments and in favor of the repeal of the Embargo Act; in ringing words he proclaimed the constitutional right of the opposition to voice its protests and to utilize full freedom of inquiry. He himself refused to vote taxes in support of the war and denounced the government's draft bill, not only as an "infamous expedient" but as clearly "unconstitutional and illegal" (Writings and Speeches, XIV, 55-69). Webster even suggested the expedient of state nullification of a federal law under "the solemn duty of the State Governments to protect their own authority over their own militia, and to interpose between their citizens and arbitrary power" (Ibid., XIV, 68). Since the conscription bill failed, there was no contemporary test of this doctrine. Webster was careful, however, to repudiate any thought of disunion. During the sessions of the Hartford Convention he was busy at Washington and had in the meantime advised the governor of New Hampshire against appointing delegates to a body that might be unduly influenced by the separatist forces (Curtis, post, I, 136).

Reelected in 1814, Webster became influential in the attempts to make peacetime adjustments to the economic lessons taught in the recent war. Legislation to reestablish the United States Bank was modified by Calhoun to meet Webster's objections to the lack of adequate safeguards for financial stability and was passed by Congress only to receive a presidential veto. He later voted against the bank bill which did not contain such safeguards but which was signed by the President in April 1816. In the discussions of fiscal policy, including the matter of specie payment for government revenues, Webster revealed an amazing knowledge of and devotion to sound principles of public finance. In the discussion of the tariff he proclaimed himself not an enemy of manufactures, but as opposed to rearing them in hotbeds. His loyalty to the mercantile interests of his section, however, caused him to oppose the high protective duties of the tariff of 1816, especially those originally proposed for cotton, iron, and hemp, which menaced the imports of New England and threatened to add to the cost of ship-building.

In August 1816, midway in his second term in Congress, Webster transferred his residence to Boston, where he sidetracked politics for a law practice that was soon bringing in $15,000 a year. During his last winter at Washington, he had given much of his time to legal work. He was retained before the Supreme Court in three important prize cases and was soon to add to his laurels in the Dartmouth College case. As a result of the complicated operation of party politics in New Hampshire, Webster's alma mater had become. a pawn upon the political chess board. A Republican legislature in 1816 enacted a law changing- the character of the institution and its governing body, placing it under the thumb of the general court. A suit in which the college trustees sought to defend their rights against the new political forces was carried to the New Hampshire superior court, from which it was appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Webster, after accepting a small fee from the other side, had revealed his sympathies with the college trustees (Fuess, I, 220-21). He had closed the argument for them before the superior court and now for a fee of $1,000, out of which he was to engage an associate, he was placed in charge of the case in the Supreme Court. The notes and briefs of his colleagues furnished most of his materials, but these he carefully overhauled and brilliantly presented (Writings and Speeches, X, 194-233). He closed with an appeal in which with consummate pathos he presented the case of the small college which he loved as the case of every college in the land. When on February 2, 1819, the Court in its decision completely upheld the college and its counsel (4 Wheaton, 518), Webster became in the opinion of many the foremost lawyer of the time. Three weeks after the Dartmouth College victory he appeared for the Bank of the United States in McCulloch vs. Maryland (Writings and Speeches, XV, 261-67) and received a fee of $2,000 for his services. In three other important cases involving grave constitutional issues that shortly came before the Supreme Court, Webster was to play an important part (Gibbons vs. Ogden, Osborn vs. Bank of the United States, Ogden vs. Saunders; Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 1922, I, 476-88; II, 59, 90, 147-48).

In the midst of a busy law practice Webster could not keep out of the public eye. In December 1819 he opposed the admission of Missouri as a slave state and drafted the memorial of a Boston protest meeting. He made the feature address in favor of free trade at a meeting of New England importers in Faneuil Hall in the autumn of 1820. He was chosen as a presidential elector in the campaign of that year. He played an influential but conservative role in the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1820-21 and helped to hold the democratic forces in check (Fuess, I, 273-80). On December 22, 1820, he delivered at Plymouth a powerful oration in celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. Achieving another great oratorical triumph at the laying of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill monument on June 17, 1825, he made popular the occasional oratory that was to thrive for decades. He served for a brief period in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in the spring of 1822. In the fall he was drafted to represent Boston in Congress and was promptly made chairman of the judiciary committee when he took his seat in December 1823. A brilliant oration on Greek Independence (January 19, 1824) signalized his return to the national political arena, but he was soon busied with less romantic topics. The tariff question-to him at this time "a tedious, disagreeable subject"-was now to the fore and the financiers, merchants, and ship-builders of Boston expected him to challenge Henry Clay's arguments for protection. Accordingly, on April 1, 2, 1824, Webster attacked the proposed bill and its principles and announced his inability to accord it his vote (Writings and Speeches, V, 94-149).

In the preliminaries of the presidential contest of 1824 Webster's private choice was Calhoun; he shared the distrust of New England Federalists for John Quincy Adams. Busied with his own reelection he avoided any formal commitment, but in the contest in the House he gave his vote to Adams and influenced others in the same direction. Webster had hopes of the mission to Great Britain but Adams showed no inclination to gratify him. Yet, as party lines reshaped themselves under the new administration, Webster became an increasingly loyal supporter. He supported the President's doctrine on internal improvements, pleading for a truly national interest to justify federal aid; he led the futile fight for a revision of the federal judicial system; he made an eloquent appeal for representation in the congress at Panama. Reelected to Congress almost unanimously, he championed the President in the bitter dispute with Georgia over the Cherokee lands. All the while Webster kept up a busy practice before the Supreme Court and other courts of the country.

In June 1827 he was elected to the United States Senate. The death of Mrs. Webster (January 21, 1828) temporarily destroyed his zest for work and his interest in public affairs. But soon he was in the thick of the fight that accompanied the passage of the tariff act of 1828. The Webster of this period was less satisfied than hitherto with economic theories and more concerned with the realities of life. He had established intimate associations with the Lawrences and Lowells and the mill-owners of his state generally, and had taken a small block of stock when the Merrimack Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1822 (Fuess, I, 341). The tariff of 1824 had been followed by a vast increase of investment in wool manufacturing and Webster was now (May 9, 1828) frank in stating that nothing was left to New England "but to consider that the government had fixed and determined its own policy; and that policy was protection" (Writings and Speeches, V, 230). Since the new bill, with all its "abominations," did grant the protection to woolens which the act of 1824 had by implication pledged, he accorded his active support to the measure and helped accomplish its passage. Henceforth, Webster was an aggressive champion of protection.

The months that followed brought bitter disappointments: Adams was defeated for reelection by Jackson, and Webster's favorite brother, Ezekiel, whom he helped launch a career in New Hampshire politics, died. His energy seemed to ebb, and he wondered at times whether he was not growing old. But life took on new meaning following his marriage on December 12, 1829, to Caroline Le Roy, a young and popular representative of New York sophistication, and new and stirring events were ahead. Another month and he was in the thick of the battle against the Calhoun doctrine of nullification. With leonine grace and energy and in the rich tones of his oratory, he met the challenge of Calhoun's mouthpiece, Robert Y. Hayne [q.v.]; rising to the height of his forensic abilities in this famous debate of January 1830 (Ibid., V, 248-69; VI, 3-75), he won what his admirers hailed as a brilliant victory over the cause of state rights and nullification. Praising the Union and what it had accomplished and still promised to achieve for the nation, he declared that in origin it preceded the states and insisted that the Constitution was framed by the people, not as a compact but to create a government sovereign within the range of the powers assigned to it, with the Supreme Court as the only proper arbiter of the extent of these powers. Nullification could result only in violence and civil war, he proclaimed; he was for "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" No wonder that, with the plaudits of his audience still ringing in his ears, with the nation-wide fame achieved in this great outburst of eloquence, rosy dreams of the White House continued henceforth to play in Webster's mind.

The tariff problem which had aroused Calhoun and the South still remained. Southern efforts to force a reduction of duties led to the measure of July 1832 in which Webster was concerned primarily with maintaining protection upon woolen cloths. But even the lower duties of this act did not satisfy South Carolina which forced the issue of nullification in the ordinance passed by a convention of that state in November. Webster made clear his intention to support the President in his defiance of the nullifiers and crossed lances with Calhoun in an important debate the following February (Ibid., VI, 181-238). Meantime, against his advice, Clay joined with the anti-tariff leaders in pressing legislation agreeable to the latter; finally in March 1833 the "Compromise Tariff" was enacted. Bitterly disappointed, Webster voted with the opposition. The only satisfaction he could find in the outcome was in the thought that "the events of the winter have tended to strengthen the union of the States, and to uphold the government" (Ibid., XVII, 537). To this end and for the honor of being known as the "Defender of the Constitution," Webster had sacrificed for the time even his lucrative Supreme Court practice.

Politics had developed even new intricacies. The opposition forces of varying views but with common interests in vested rights had combined in the Whig party. Naturally, Webster joined the new coalition. Any temptation toward continued cooperation with Jackson was removed by the latter's war on the Bank of the United States, which Webster supported both on principle and as a profitable client. There was the further fact that Webster, who was as careless in handling his own money as he was profound in his mastery of the principles of public finance, was heavily indebted to the bank for loans extended to him. He had actively advocated the recharter bill and had vigorously condemned Jackson's veto, especially the constitutional grounds that it set forth. Reelected to the Senate in 1833, Webster regarded Jackson's removal of deposits from the bank as presenting an issue that might lead to the presidential office. He distinguished himself, however, by the constructive quality, in contrast to the personal vituperation of his associates, that marked his reply to Jackson's protest against the resolution of censure which the Senate had adopted. As the election of 1836 drew near the Whigs of the Massachusetts legislature nominated him as their candidate. With other Whig nominees in the field, however, he had few enthusiastic supporters outside of New England and Pennsylvania, despite the friendly visit he had paid to the West in the summer of 1833, and he received only the electoral vote of Massachusetts.

Following this defeat, he gave serious consideration to retirement from active politics, either to recoup his fortune, which had suffered with his law practice, or to improve his presidential chances for 1840. Just at this time, one of the worst for profitable investment, he was acquiring with borrowed money extensive land holdings in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. His interests were largely speculative, except that he planned a huge country estate near La Salle, Illinois, which was for a time operated by his son, Fletcher. His own personal interests continued in his seaside home at Marshfield where, with the continual lure of "the sea, the sea," he lived in almost feudal ease among devoted retainers and entertained with a lavish hand. Unable to realize upon his ill-timed investments, he was increasingly harassed by his creditors and financial embarrassment haunted him to the end. Only the willingness of his wealthy friends to be levied upon in emergency saved him from actual disgrace.

His Massachusetts followers, however, would not consent to his retirement. After another Western tour-which was a veritable series of ovations-during which the panic of 1837 broke, he returned to the special session of Congress and took a brilliant part in the Whig fight against Van Buren's sub-treasury plan, again breaking lances with Calhoun.. The question of slavery and the right of petition brought similar clashes and Webster was impressed with the storm clouds so ominous for the future. In the summer of 1839, following reelection, he and his family visited England where he hoped to find buyers for his western lands and to acquaint himself still further with the details of the menacing boundary dispute between Maine and Canada. He returned to find that the Whigs had nominated General Harrison for the presidency and he participated in the campaign with all the more zest because he expected it to bring to a close his senatorial career, with retirement to the bar in the event of Van Buren's reelection and the prospect of a cabinet appointment if Harrison should succeed.

The victorious Harrison made Webster secretary of state, after having paid a tribute to his knowledge of public finance by offering the alternative of appointment to the Treasury Department. On Harrison's death a month later, John Tyler, his successor, retained the cabinet in office. Webster had anticipated the enactment of a series of Whig measures such as those for which Henry Clay made himself the spokesman in the ensuing months (Writings and Speeches, XVIII, 100). Soon, however, President Tyler, a Southern Whig of the state-rights school, became involved in a dispute with the Clay following when he successively vetoed the two measures by which the Whigs sought to reestablish a United States bank. In the split that followed all the members of Tyler's cabinet except Webster resigned. The latter, who was extremely unhappy about these conditions and suspicious of the leadership of Clay, tried to play a conciliatory role. He regretted "the violence & injustice" which had "characterized the conduct of the Whig leaders"; he was determined, moreover, not to "throw the great foreign concerns of the country into disorder or danger, by any abrupt party proceeding" (Ibid., XVI, 386; XVIII, I 10). He was referring to the, complicated negotiations over the Maine boundary which, with consummate skill, tact, and dignity and with the cordial cooperation of the President, he carried on and brought to a successful adjustment in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. In this agreement was included an arrangement for joint cruising squadrons to operate off the coast of Africa in the suppression of the slave trade, which was expected to terminate a long-standing controversy over the right of search. His eminently satisfactory discharge of his duties in the State Department included successful negotiations with Portugal, important discussions with Mexico, and the preliminaries to the opening of diplomatic relations with China which led to the commercial treaty negotiated by Caleb Cushing in 1844. Meantime, he rejoiced in the enactment of a Whig tariff (1842) which wiped out what seemed to him the iniquities of the measure of 1833 and returned to the principle of protection.

Webster, who had for some time been under strong Whig pressure to resign, at length with some. reluctance (May 8, 1843) left the only office which had ever allowed reasonable satisfaction for his ambition and his talents. He had aspired to a diplomatic mission to England and had tried to juggle events to that end, but fate dictated his retirement to private life (Fuess, II, 125-28). Burdened with debt, he returned to meet the heavy demands for his legal services that promised to replenish his exchequer. A seat in the Senate was awaiting his convenience and the returned statesman, convinced that the sober business men and conservatives of Massachusetts had never deserted him, took satisfaction in a reconciliation with his old party associates in which he felt no necessity for offering apologies for his recent independent course. He cooperated cheerfully in support of Clay's candidacy for the presidency in the campaign of 1844 and in the following winter allowed himself to be returned to the Senate.

Devoted to the vested interests of his state indeed, a virtual pensioner dependent upon their bounty-Webster deemed it his "especial business" as a member of Congress "to look to the preservation of the great industrial interests of the country" from Democratic free-trade propensities (Writings and Speeches, XVIII, 231; see also Ibid., IV, 47, -XVI, 431-32). All the activities of the protectionists, however, did not prevent the reductions under the Walker Tariff of 1846. Meanwhile, as he had feared, the annexation of Texas had been followed by war with Mexico. Webster had opposed the acquisition of Texas and the resulting extension of slavery and now joined in the Whig policy of condemning the war. He held, however, that supplies should be voted as long as the war was not connected with territorial aggrandizement and that the struggle should be brought to a speedy and successful termination. To this end he gave his second son, Major Edward Webster, who died of exposure in service near Mexico city.

Though Webster, impervious to the lure of empire, introduced resolutions repudiating all thought of the dismemberment of Mexico (Congressional Globe, 29 Congress, 2 Session, p. 422), the war ended in a treaty which gave the United States a vast domain carved out of this neighbor republic. Should the new territory be dedicated to freedom or be thrown open to the westward march of negro slavery, was the inevitable question that arose. Webster had been from the start a strong critic of
the peculiar institution of the South as "a great moral and political evil," but had conceded that within the Southern states it was a matter of domestic policy, "a subject within the exclusive control of the States themselves" (Writings and Speeches, XVIII, 353; XII, 210). He voted consistently for the Wilmot Proviso, but preferred the " no-territory" basis that would prevent a controversy from arising over slavery. With the triumph of the expansionists he saw nothing in the future but "contention, strife, and agitation" (Fuess, II, 171). Dreams of the presidency still haunted him. In the spring of 1847 he had made a Southern tour in which he was dined and wined until his body and spirits drooped. Even after his recuperation at Marshfield and his return to court for many a strenuous session, he took it for granted, at the age of sixty-six, that people were beginning to say, "He is not the man he was" (Writings and Speeches, XVIII, 267). The death of his daughter Julia, who had married Samuel Appleton. Appleton, and of his son Edward depressed him even more. Of his children only his son Fletcher survived him. When out of sheer expediency his party turned to a military hero, General Zachary Taylor, he acquiesced in his own repudiation with what grace he could.

In the first winter of the new administration Webster beheld with alarm a serious crisis in the sectional controversy. The abolitionist extremists were advocating a dissolution of the Union and the anti-slavery forces in Congress were bent upon pressing their strength to accomplish the exclusion of slavery from the territories, while Southern leaders, increasingly conscious of the seriousness of the minority status of the South, were developing a sense of Southern nationality and preparing, if need be, to launch a movement for a separate Southern confederacy. Like other conservative statesmen, Webster came to feel that the Union was seriously at stake and was determined to do all in his power to avert the danger. It must not be overlooked that Webster, as the champion of protection, was alarmed to find tile continued discussion of the slavery question an obstacle to Whig efforts at tariff revision, causing Southern Whigs whose rights, property, and feeling had been constantly assailed to argue that they would never "give a single vote for the Tariff until this Slavery business is settled," and that North- ern men would have to "take care of their own interests" (Ibid., XVI, 541; XVIII, 391). To Webster the more important public question of the tariff was being sacrificed to the slavery controversy (Ibid., XVIII, 370). He had, therefore, become increasingly annoyed at the militant intransigentism of the anti-slavery forces, especially those who would not believe that "I am an anti-slavery man unless I repeat the declaration once a week" (Ibid., XVI, 498). While he believed in the power of Congress legally to exclude slavery from the territories, he had stated as early as 1848 that there was "no longer any important practical question" as to slavery extension (Ibid., XVIII, 283). He therefore rose on March 7, 1850, "to beat down the Northern and the Southern follies, now raging in equal extremes" (Ibid., XVI, 534).

In a well-considered speech he declared himself for Clay's compromise measures and poured oil on troubled waters. He spoke "not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but a s an American" (Ibid., X, 57). Slavery was an evil but not so great an evil as disunion. There could1 be no peaceful secession, he informed the South. On the other hand, he condemned the unnecessary severity of the anti-slavery forces and admitted that Northerners had not lived up to their obligations to return fugitive slaves. Congressional prohibition in the territories was useless since a law of nature had settled "beyond all terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist in California or New Mexico" (Ibid., X, 82). To the conservative element of the country Webster's performance seemed "Godlike"; but the anti-slavery men, including those of his own party, could see him only as a fallen star. Nor did he recover their good graces. Webster became, after Taylor's death, secretary of state in Fillmore's cabinet (July 22, 1850). He supported the legislation that substantially covered the ground of Clay's compromise measures and followed with concern the storm that still raged. Even as late as the summer of 1851 the question of secession was being discussed in certain Southern states and Webster felt called upon to write a timely letter denying the right of secession and denouncing it as revolution (Ibid., XVI, 622- 23). In the State Department Webster conscientiously and creditably performed the duties of his office, writing the famous "Hulsemann letter" in reproof of the attitude of the Austrian charge toward American policy in the Hungarian revolution and dealing with more than ordinary diplomatic difficulties with Spain, Mexico, Peru, and Great Britain. His presidential aspirations were again revived in 1852, without serious embarrassment to his relations with Fillmore who was also a candidate. But both men were shelved by the Whigs and, sick in mind and body, Webster repudiated General Scott's nomination and prophesied the downfall of his party.

As the summer progressed, serious illness and suffering stared from his dark countenance. Always fond of the good things of life, he had found since his second marriage increasing opportunity for self-indulgence. Lavish hospitalities, with good food and good drink given and received, made him grow portly though rarely sluggish. Only his active life and early rising kept down the inroads of disease. His annual hay fever became increasingly more distressing. Financial worries pressed down upon him and made him wish at times that he "had been born a miser" (Ibid., XVI, 636). By autumn the inroads of a fatal malady, cirrhosis of the liver, had marked his days and he died on October 24, 1852, murmuring, "I still live."

Two score years in the political arena revealed in Daniel Webster two seemingly contrasting but naturally allied forces. Eloquent champion of the American Union, he was also the special advocate of the new industrial interests then so rapidly forging to the fore in the national economy. In their behalf the leonine Daniel, idol of the "best" people of his state and of his section, sacrificed the popular following that would gladly have rallied to the standard of a great democratic chieftain. The penetrating logic and burning eloquence of his oratory, the masterful and magnetic quality of his personality, contributed little toward bringing to him the support of the toiling masses. Life therefore became for Webster a series of great frustrations. A great constitutional lawyer, he found his equals, or betters, among his eminent contemporaries. His victories in statecraft and diplomacy were never on a par with his soaring ambitions. The presidential office seemed to have been reserved for men of less distinction. Even his personal fortunes failed to bring him the sense of security that often assuages frustration. Withal, however, perhaps no Northerner left so strong an impression upon the political life of this great "middle period," or made a more substantial contribution to the preservation of the Union in the supreme test of the sixties.

[The first attempt at general publication of "Webster's works resulted in The Works of Daniel Webster (6 volumes, 185 1), ed. by Edward Everett; and in The Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster (2 volumes, 1857), ed. by Fletcher Webster, which included his brief autobiography as written in 1829. Collections of his manuscripts were later made, the most complete being that of the New Hampshire Historical Society at Concord. The Sanborn collection in New York City is less extensive; the Greenough collection in Washington (Library of Congress) is made up largely of letters received from Webster's correspondents; and the Massachusetts Historical Society collection is very limited. Important additions, largely of unpublished items selected from the New Hampshire collection, were made available in The Letters of Daniel Webster (1902), ed. by C.H. Van Tyne; an effort at publishing his complete works was made in the National ed. under the title, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (18 volumes, 1903), ed. by J. W. McIntyre. The earliest biography, prepared with Webster's approval, is S. L. Knapp, A Memoir of the Life of Daniel Webster (1831). C. W. March, Reminiscences of Congress (1850), later published as Daniel Webster and His Contemporaries (1852), is a reminiscent account by a wealthy friend. Immediately following Webster's death, a reminiscent biography appeared in the account of his private secret ary, Charles Lanman, The Private Life of Daniel Webster (1852), which the family made an attempt to suppress. Other gossipy narratives are Peter Harvey, Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Daniel Webster (1877); and the brief "Reminiscences of Daniel Webster" by William Plumer, included in the National ed., XVII, 546-67 Personal recollections give value to the work of his literary executor, G. T. Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster (2 volumes, 1870). H. C. Lodge, Daniel Webster (1883), the first brief formal biography, is colored by the abolitionist tradition and influenced by the highly prejudicial chapter on Webster in James Parton, Famous Americans of Recent Times (1867). After a number of rather perfunctory lives came the more penetrating work of S. G. Fisher, The True Daniel Webster (1911). Recent biographies, including F. A. Ogg, Daniel Webster (19 14) and S. H. Adams, The Godlike Daniel (1930), have been overshadowed by the excellent and more nearly definitive C. M. Fuess, Daniel Webster (2 volumes, 1930). Among numerous special works and articles particularly worthy of mention are G. T. Curtis, The Last Years of Daniel Webster (1878); E. P. Wheeler, Daniel Webster, The Expounder of the Constitution (1905); Gamaliel Bradford, "Daniel Webster," in As God Made Them (1929); R. L. Carey, Daniel Webster as an Economist (1929); H. D. Foster, " Webster's Seventh of March Speech and the Secession Movement, 1850," in American Historical Review, January 1922; V. L. Parrington, "Daniel Webster, Realist and Constitutionalist," in The Romantic Revolution in America (1927); articles by C. A. Duniway in S. F. Bemis, The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, volumes V, VI (1928). There is an excellent bibliography in The Cambridge History of American Literature, volume II (1918), pp. 480-88. For an obituary, see Boston Daily Advertiser, October 25, 1852.]

A. C. C.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 406-415:

WEBSTER, Daniel, statesman, born in Salisbury (now Franklin), N.H., 18 January, 1782; died in Marshfield, Massachusetts, 24 October, 1852, was the second son of Ebenezer Webster by his second wife, Abigail Eastman. […]

[… In] 1845, Mr. Webster was re-elected to the senate. The two principal questions of Mr. Polk's administration related to the partition of Oregon and the difficulties that led to war with Mexico. The Democrats declared that we must have the whole of Oregon up to the parallel of 54° 40', although the 49th parallel had already been suggested as a compromise-line. In a very able speech at Faneuil hall, Mr. Webster advocated the adoption of this compromise. The speech was widely read in England and on the continent of Europe, and Mr. Webster followed it by a private letter to Mr. Macgregor, of Glasgow, expressing a wish that the British government might see fit to offer the 49th parallel as a boundary-line. The letter was shown to Lord Aberdeen, who adopted the suggestion, and the dispute accordingly ended in the partition of Oregon between the United States and Great Britain. This successful interposition disgusted some Democrats who were really desirous of war with England, and Charles J. Ingersoll, member of congress from Pennsylvania and chairman of the committee on foreign affairs, made a scandalous attack upon Mr. Webster, charging him with a corrupt use of public funds. Mr. Webster replied in his great speech of 6 and 7 April, 1846, in defence of the Ashburton treaty. The speech was a triumphant vindication of his public policy, and in the thorough investigation of details that followed, Mr. Ingersoll's charges were shown to be utterly groundless.

During the operations on the Texas frontier, which brought on war with Mexico, Mr. Webster was absent from Washington. In the summer of 1847 he travelled through the southern states, and was everywhere received with much enthusiasm. He opposed the prosecution of the war for the sake of acquiring more territory, because he foresaw that such a policy must speedily lead to a dangerous agitation of the slavery question. The war brought General Zachary Taylor into the foreground as a candidate for the presidency, and some of the Whig managers actually proposed to nominate Mr. Webster as vice-president on the same ticket with General Taylor. He indignantly refused to accept such a proposal; but Mr. Clay's defeat in 1844 had made many Whigs afraid to take him again as a candidate. Mr. Webster was thought to be altogether too independent, and there was a feeling that General Taylor was the most available candidate and the only one who could supplant Mr. Clay. These circumstances led to Taylor's nomination, which Mr. Webster at first declined to support. He disapproved of soldiers as presidents, and characterized the nomination as “one not fit to be made.” At the same time he was far from ready to support Mr. Van Buren and the Free-soil party, yet in his situation some decided action was necessary. Accordingly, in his speech at Marshfield, 1 September, 1848, he declared that, as the choice was really between General Taylor and General Cass, he should support the former. It has been contended that in this Mr. Webster made a great mistake, and that his true place in this canvass would have been with the Free-soil party. He had always been opposed to the further extension of slavery; but it is to be borne in mind that he looked with dread upon the rise of an anti-slavery party that should be supported only in the northern states. Whatever tended to array the north and the south in opposition to each other Mr. Webster wished especially to avoid. The ruling purpose of his life was to do what he could to prevent the outbreak of a conflict that might end in the disruption of the Union; and it may well have seemed that there was more safety in sustaining the Whig party in electing its candidate by the aid of southern votes than in helping into life a new party that should be purely sectional. At the same time, this cautious policy necessarily involved an amount of concession to southern demands far greater than the rapidly growing anti- slavery sentiment in the northern states would tolerate. No doubt Mr. Webster's policy in 1848 pointed logically toward his last great speech, 7 March, 1850, in which he supported Mr. Clay's elaborate compromises for disposing of the difficulties that had grown out of the vast extension of territory consequent upon the Mexican war. (See CLAY, HENRY.) This speech aroused intense indignation at the north, and especially in Massachusetts. It was regarded by many people as a deliberate sacrifice of principle to policy. Mr. Webster was accused of truckling to the south in order to obtain southern support for the presidency. Such an accusation seems inconsistent with Mr. Webster's character, and a comprehensive survey of his political career renders it highly improbable. The “Seventh-of-March.” speech may have been a political mistake; but one cannot read it to-day, with a clear recollection of what was thought and felt before the civil war, and doubt for a moment the speaker's absolute frankness and sincerity. He supported Mr. Clay's compromises because they seemed to him a conclusive settlement of the slavery question. The whole territory of the United States, as he said, was now covered with compromises, and the future destiny of every part, so far as the legal introduction of slavery was concerned, seemed to be decided. As for the regions to the west of Texas, he believed that slavery was ruled out by natural conditions of soil and climate, so that it was not necessary to protect them by a Wilmot proviso. As for the fugitive-slave law, it was simply a provision for carrying into effect a clause of the constitution, without which that instrument could never have been adopted, and in the frequent infraction of which Mr. Webster saw a serious danger to the continuance of the Union. He therefore accepted the fugitive-slave law as one feature in the proposed system of compromises; but, in accepting it, he offered amendments, which, if they had been adopted, would have gone far toward depriving it of some of its most obnoxious and irritating features. By adopting these measures of compromise, Mr. Webster believed that the extension of slavery would have been given its limit, that the north would, by reason of its free labor, increase in preponderance over the south, and that by and by the institution of slavery, hemmed in and denied further expansion, would die a natural death. That these views were mistaken, the events of the next ten years showed only too plainly, but there is no good reason for doubting their sincerity. There is little doubt, too, that the compromises had their practical value in postponing the inevitable conflict for ten years, during which the relative strength of the north was increasing and a younger generation was growing up less tolerant of slavery and more ready to discard palliatives and achieve a radical cure. So far as Mr. Webster's moral attitude was concerned, although he was not prepared for the bitter hostility that his speech provoked in many quarters, he must nevertheless have known that it was quite as likely to injure him at the north as to gain support for him in the south, and his resolute adoption of a policy that he regarded as national rather than sectional was really an instance of high moral courage. It was, however, a concession that did violence to his sentiments of humanity, and the pain and uneasiness it occasioned is visible in some of his latest utterances.

On President Taylor's death, 9 July, 1850, Mr. Webster became President Fillmore's secretary of state. An earnest attempt was made on the part of his friends to secure his nomination for the presidency in 1852; but on the first ballot in the convention he received only 29 votes, while there were 131 for General Scott and 133 for Mr. Fillmore. The efforts of Mr. Webster's adherents succeeded only in giving the nomination to Scott. The result was a grave disappointment to Mr. Webster. He refused to support the nomination, and took no part in the campaign. His health was now rapidly failing. He left Washington, 8 September, for the last time, and returned to Marshfield, which he never left again, except on 20 September for a brief call upon his physician in Boston. By his own request there were no public ceremonies at his funeral, which took place very quietly, 29 September, at Marshfield. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 406-415.



WEED, Thurlow, 1797-1882, journalist, political leader opponent of slavery. He shared Seward's humanitarian views but never to the point of endangering the serious business of elections, and while he recognized Horace Greeley's power, he cast a dubious eye on his "isms," especially in the field of social reform. His own anti-slavery sentiments were sincere, but he was more desirous of getting anti-slavery men to accept Whig candidates than of committing the party openly to their cause; for the abolitionists who clamored for a party of their own […].

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 63; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 419-420; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 598-600; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 882).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 598-600:

WEED, THURLOW (November 15, 1797-November 22, 1882), politician and journalist, the eldest son of Joel and Mary (Ellis) Weed, was born in Greene County, New York, where his grandfather, formerly of Stamford, Connecticut, had settled with his family after the Revolution. Joel Weed, a hard-working but never prosperous farmer, sometimes in jail for debt, moved in 1799 to Catskill, where his son enjoyed a brief schooling. When he was eight years old Thurlow began to earn what he could by odd jobs at the blacksmith's, the printer's, and on Hudson River boats. In 1808 the family moved to Cortland County, and not long afterward to Onondaga, where young Weed was apprenticed to a printer. Several years in various printers' shops in central New York, broken by a few months' militia service in 1813, brought him little pecuniary gain but gave him an unrivalled education in local affairs. In 1817 he became foreman on the Albany Register, and tried his hand at writing news paragraphs and editorials in support of DeWitt Clinton's canal policy. On April 26, 1818, he married Catherine Ostrander of Cooperstown.

During the next four years Weed tried to publish Clintonian papers at Norwich and Manlius, and after both had failed he moved on, almost penniless, to Rochester. There he secured a position on the Rochester Telegraph, for which he wrote editorials advocating John Quincy Adams for president. Sent to Albany in 1824 to lobby for a bank charter, he promptly set about uniting the friends of Adams and Clay in a common opposition to William H. Crawford, the candidate of Martin Van Buren. He returned to Rochester with the charter, and also with the knowledge that his time and efforts had become essential to his party (Life, post, I, 107). Soon he was campaigning through the western counties in behalf of Adams for president and Clinton for governor of New York. Weed himself was elected to the Assembly. Fortune favored him in business as well as in politics, and in 1825 he was able to buy the Telegraph.

Throughout the anti-Masonic excitement that followed the disappearance of William Morgan [q.v.] in 1826, Weed was an active member of the local Morgan committee, and gave up the Telegraph to publish the Anti-Masonic Enquirer. As local political organizations were formed, Weed exerted himself to secure candidates who were "sound" on issues other than the Masonic. He held the "infected district" in line for Adams in 1828 and supported National Republicans locally. Leading Anti-Masons raised a fund to establish a paper at Albany, and employed Weed as editor; he was elected to the Assembly in 1829 to make his presence at the capital possible. On March 22, 1830 the first issue of the Albany Evening Journal appeared, Weed being reporter, proof-reader, and often compositor, as well as editor, legislator, and political manager. He remained officially an Anti-Mason through 1832, supporting William Wirt [q.v.], the party's presidential candidate, but, as before, saw that the nominees for state offices were National Republicans. Most Anti-Masons, he was convinced, were in sympathy with Clay's "American system," and were inevitably opposed to the dominant "Albany Regency," so closely linked, through Van Buren, to President Jackson. He himself ignored the Bank issue, believing it inexpedient to oppose so popular a movement against "moneyed aristocracy." Drilling his party through the unsuccessful campaigns of 1834 and 1836, he was ready for the opportunity offered by the panic and hard times, and helped create the victories that made William H. Seward [q.v.] governor in 1838 and Harrison president in 1840.

Weed was now generally regarded as the dictator of his party, and was charged with dominating Seward, to whom he was bound in closest personal friendship. His great influence, however, was exerted in the field of political management. Others formulated the principles and Weed secured the votes. Patronage he regarded as indispensable; he derived "great satisfaction ... in bringing-capable and good men into public service" (Life, post, I, 209), the good men being Whigs. Bribery and legislative favors were in his opinion legitimate party instruments, but he was above taking corrupt profits for himself. His paper was a party organ, providing usable facts and arguments, in terse paragraphs, to gain and hold Whigs to the true faith. He shared Seward's humanitarian views but never to the point of endangering the serious business of elections, and while he recognized Horace Greeley's power, he cast a dubious eye on his "isms," especially in the field of social reform. His own anti-slavery sentiments were sincere, but he was more desirous of getting anti-slavery men to accept Whig candidates than of committing the party openly to their cause; for the abolitionists who clamored for a party of their own he had nothing but scorn.

As the fruits of victory vanished with Tyler's accession to the presidency, followed by Seward's defeat in 1842, Weed lost heart, traveled abroad, and even talked of giving up the Evening Journal. The campaign of 1844 was not only unsuccessful but ominous of dissensions to come. Too astute to oppose the government in wartime, he directed his efforts to the future of the territories to be acquired, and supported the Wilmot Proviso. With equal astuteness, early in 1846 he recognized General Zachary Taylor's possibilities as a candidate for the presidency, and advised him not to commit himself on controversial questions. Taylor's election, with Fillmore as vice-president and Seward as senator, promised to establish Weed's power firmly, but with Taylor's death the outlook was changed. Fillmore accepted the compromise measures of 1850; Seward, backed by Weed, was their great opponent; and the Whig division was hopeless. Need, sure of his party's defeat in 1852, went abroad. Thoroughly anti-Nebraska in sentiment, he was slow to join the new Republican party in 1854 until Seward's reelection to the Senate was assured. He was opposed to Seward's being put forward by the Republicans as a candidate for the presidency in 1856, believing that his chances of election would be better in 1860. His presidential ambitions for Seward were doomed to disappointment, however; and no little of the feeling against Seward in 1860 was due to his long and close connection with Weed, who was highly unacceptable to former Democrats.

Weed was consulted by Lincoln, during the latter's campaign and after, and had considerable influence on appointments, though he was credited with more than he had. In 1861 he went, with Archbishop Hughes and Bishop Mcllvaine [qq.v.], on an unofficial mission to conciliate English and French opinion after the Trent affair. He was willing to accept the Crittenden compromise in 1861, and, distrustful of "ultra abolitionist" influences on Lincoln, would have preferred an untainted and active War Democrat as the Union candidate in 1864, but McClellan's acceptance of the Democratic platform kept Weed in the Republican lines. His influence in New York, badly shaken by Seward's failure in 1860, declined steadily as the Radicals gained strength after Lincoln's death. He had given up the Evening Journal and moved to New York City in 1863, where in 1867 he returned to journalism, becoming editor of the Commercial Advertiser. Failing health and sight soon compelled him to abandon editorial work, however. Retaining his deep interest in public affairs, he was a frequent contributor to the press on political subjects and was often consulted by political leaders. For some time he had been writing a desultory autobiography. In 1866 his Letters from Europe and the West Indies was published. After his death some of his articles on bimetallism were reprinted in The Silver Dollar of the United States and Its Relations to Bimetallism (1889).

He was tall and robust, rather awkward in appearance. His charm of manner, unruffled good-nature, and ready generosity drew into the circle of his friends even those political opponents who had suffered most from his vigorous attacks and rough wit. Seward wrote in early years that he had "had no idea that dictators were such amiable creatures" (Life, II, 63), and young Henry Adams, meeting Weed in London, won by "his faculty of irresistibly conquering confidence . .. followed him about ... much like a little clog." He was, thought Adams, "the model of political management and patient address," "a complete American education in himself" (The Education of Henry Adams, 1918, p. 146). He died of old age in his eighty-sixth year and was survived by three daughters, his wife and a son having died many years before.

[Weed's "Autobiography" was published by his daughter, Harriet A. Weed, as volume I of the Life of Thurlow Weed (1884); volume II is a "Memoir" by his grandson, T. W. Barnes. Other sources are: D. S. Alexander, A Polit. History of the State of New York, volumes I-III (1906-09); S. D. Brummer, Political History of New York State During . .. the Civil War (1911); Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (2 volumes, 1900); F. W. Seward, Autobiography of William H. Seward .. (1877) and Seward at Washington (2 volumes, 1891); F. H. Severance, "Millard Fillmore Papers," volume II, being Buffalo Historical Society Publications, volume XI (1907); Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (1868); Gideon Welles, Diary (3 volumes, 19II), and Lincoln and Seward (1874); Atlantic Monthly, September 1883, pp. 411-19; Magazine of American History, January 1888; New York Times, New York Tribune, and Albany Evening Journal, November 22, 23, 1882.]

H. C.B.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 419-420:

WEED, Thurlow, journalist, born in Cairo, Greene county, New York, 15 Nov., 1797; died in New York city, 22 November, 1882. At twelve years of age he entered a printing-office in Catskill, New York. Soon afterward he removed with his father's family to the frontier village of Cincinnatus, Cortland county, New York, and aided in clearing the settlement and in farming, but in 1811 returned to the printing business, and was successively employed in several newspaper offices. At the beginning of the second war with Great Britain he enlisted as a private in a New York regiment, and served on the northern frontier. In 1815 he removed to New York city, where he was employed in the printing establishment of Van Winckle and Wiley. They were the publishers at that time of William Cobbett's “Weekly Register,” and Weed became acquainted with the eccentric author by carrying proof-sheets to him. He went to Norwich, Chenango county, New York, in 1819, established the “Agriculturist,” and two years afterward removed to Manlius, New York, where he founded the “Onondaga County Republican.” In 1824 he became owner and editor of the “Rochester Telegraph,” the second daily paper that was published west of Albany. While Mr. Weed was editing that journal Lafayette visited the United States, and Weed accompanied him in a part of his tour throughout the country. Difficulties arising out of the anti-Mason excitement caused Mr. Weed's retirement from the “Telegraph” in 1826, and in the same year he founded the “Anti-Mason Enquirer.” He was a member of the legislature in 1825. In 1830 he established the Albany “Evening Journal,” which took a conspicuous part in the formation of the Whig and the Republican parties, being equally opposed to the Jackson administration and to nullification. During the thirty-five years of his control of that organ it held an influential place in party journalism, and brought Mr. Weed into intimate relations with politicians of all parties. His political career began in 1824 in the presidential conflict that resulted in the election of John Quincy Adams. He succeeded in uniting the Adams and Clay factions, and was acknowledged by the leaders of his party to have contributed more than any other to their success in that canvass. He was active in the nomination of William Henry Harrison in 1836 and 1840, of Henry Clay in 1844, of General Winfield Scott in 1852, and of John C. Frémont in 1856. In 1860 he earnestly advocated the nomination of William H. Seward for the presidency, but he afterward cordially supported Abraham Lincoln, whose re-election he promoted in 1864. He subsequently aided the regular nominations of the Republican party, and did good service in the canvass of General Ulysses S. Grant for the presidency. Especially in his own state he influenced the elections, and in the constitutional crisis that arose from the presidential election in 1876 he guided in a powerful degree the decisions of his party. He had visited Europe several times before the civil war, and in 1861 with Archbishop Hughes and Bishop McIlvaine he was sent abroad to prevail on foreign governments to refrain from intervention in behalf of the Confederacy. In this service he stoutly defended the national interests, and, through his influence with English and French statesmen, brought about a result that permanently affected the feeling of Europe toward the United States. His “Letters” from abroad were collected and published (New York, 1866). He became editor of the New York “Commercial Advertiser” in 1867, but was compelled to resign that office the next year, owing to failing health, and did not again engage in regular work. Mr. Weed was tall, with a large head, overhanging brows, and massive person. He had great natural strength of character, good sense, judgment, and cheerfulness. From his youth he possessed a geniality and tact that drew all to him, and it is said that he never forgot a fact or a face. He was a journalist for fifty-seven years, and, although exercising great influence in legislation and the distribution of executive appointments, he refused to accept any public office. He was one of the earliest advocates of the abolition of imprisonment for debt, was a warm opponent of slavery, supported the policy of constructing and enlarging the state canals, and aided various railway enterprises and the establishment of the state banking system. He took an active part in the promotion of several New York city enterprises—the introduction of the Croton water, the establishment of the Metropolitan police, the Central park, the harbor commission, and the Castle Garden depot and commission for the protection of immigrants. He gave valuable aid to many charitable institutions, and devoted a large part of his income to private charity. He published some interesting “Reminiscences” in the “Atlantic Monthly” (1876), and after his death his “Autobiography,” edited by his daughter, appeared (Boston, 1882), the story of his life being completed in a second volume by his grandson, Thurlow Weed Barnes (1884). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 419-420.



WELD, Theodore Dwight, 1803-1895, Cincinnati, Ohio, New York, NY, reformer, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery lobbyist. Co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in December 1833. Manager, 1833-1835, and Corresponding Secretary, 1839-1840, of the Society. Weld was a prominent leader in the abolitionist movement. He converted many late leaders to the cause. Among them were the Tappan brothers, Congressman Joshua R. Giddings, Edwin Stanton, Henry Ward Beecher and his wife, future author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriett Beecher Stowe. While at Lane University, Weld led debates on slavery. These were very controversial. As a result, the university ended the debates. This led to many of the students at Lane leaving in protest and going to Oberlin College. Many of these students became Agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Weld published American Slavery, As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839). Also wrote The Bible Against Slavery (1839) and Slavery and the Internal Slave Trace in the United States (London, 1841). In the 1840s, he worked with prominent anti-slavery Whig Congressmen.

(Barnes, 1933; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 138, 140, 158, 173; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 161, 176, 180, 183, 185, 220, 240-241; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 32, 56, 67, 72, 102, 148, 156, 164, 172, 176, 206; Hammond, 2011, pp. 268, 273; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 17, 33, 34, 38, 92, 93, 104, 146, 151, 152, 153, 187, 188, 191, 196, 348, 358; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 94-102; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 42, 46, 106, 321-323, 419, 486, 510-512; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 42-43, 53, 60, 64, 67, 70n; Thomas, 1950; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 425; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 625-627; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 681-682; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 928; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 318; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Volume 2, pp. 740-741; Abzug, Robert H. Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform, New York, 1980; Dumond, Dwight L., ed., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké, 1822-144, 1965).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 625-627:

WELD, THEODORE DWIGHT (November 23, 1803-February 3, 1895), abolitionist, was born in Hampton, Connecticut, the son of Elizabeth (Clark) Weld and the Reverend Ludovicus Weld, a Congregational minister. He was descended from a line of New England clergymen whose progenitor was the Reverend Thomas Weld [q.v.], first minister of Roxbury; his ancestry also included Edwardses, Dwights, and Hutchinsons. In Weld's childhood his family moved to western New York, near Utica, where he passed an active, vigorous youth. Here he met Captain Charles Stuart [q.v.], principal of the Utica Academy, a retired British officer, who was to influence profoundly his character and his career. In 1825, when Charles G. Finney [q.v.], the Presbyterian revivalist, invaded Utica, Weld and Stuart joined his "holy band" of evangelists, and for two years they preached throughout western New York. Weld labored chiefly among young men; and when he entered Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, New York, to prepare for the ministry, scores of them also enrolled. Here he remained for several terms, his expenses being borne by Charles Stuart, who had long considered him "beloved brother, and son, and friend." During vacations Weld labored for the cause of temperance with such effect that by the end of the decade he was accounted the most powerful temperance advocate in the West. Meantime he had met those philanthropists of New York City; led by Arthur and Lewis Tappan [qq.v.], who were financing Finney's revival. Attracted by Weld's talents, they repeatedly urged him to head various reforms which they were backing; but he steadfastly refused to abandon his preparation for the ministry.

In 1829 Charles Stuart went to England to preach the abolition of West Indian slavery. He soon became noted as a lecturer for the British Anti-Slavery Society, and even more as a pamphleteer; but his most eloquent appeals were addressed to Weld. His persuasions were successful. From 1830 on, Weld was consumed with anti-slavery zeal. His first converts to emancipation were the New York philanthropists. In June 1831 the Tappans called a council in New York City, which propose d the immediate organization of an American anti-slavery society on the British model. After Weld's departure, however, the Tappans decided to postpone organization until emancipation in the British W est Indies, which was now assured, had become a published triumph. Previously, Weld h ad urged the New York philanthropists to found a theological seminary in the West to prepare Finney's converts for the ministry. In the fall of 1831 they acceded, and commissioned Weld to find a site for the seminary. On this journey he advocated the anti-slavery cause at every opportunity. In Huntsville, Alabama, in 1831, he converted James G. Birney [q.v.], and at Hudson, Ohio, he abolitionized the faculty of Western Reserve College, Elizur Wright, Beriah Green [qq.v.], and the president, Charles Backus Storrs. For the seminary he selected a project already begun, Lane Seminary at Cincinnati, Ohio. The Tappans secured Lyman Beecher [q.v.], most famous preacher of his time, as president, and a notable faculty. Weld supplied the bulk of the students from the converts of Finney's revivals. Among them he organized in 1834 a "debate" on slavery (Barnes, post, p. 65), which won not only the students, but also Beecher's children, Harriet and Henry Ward, and several Cincinnatians, among them Gamaliel Bailey [q.v.].

Meanwhile, the New York philanthropists had organized the American Anti-Slavery Society. Unfortunately they adopted the British motto of "immediate emancipation"; and though they defined the motto as "immediate emancipation, gradually accomplished," the public interpreted it as a program of immediate freedom for the slaves. The pamphlet propaganda based upon this motto failed disastrously both North and South, and the society's agents, almost without exception, were silenced by mobs. Weld saved the movement from disaster. Forced out of Lane Seminary by its angry trustees in the fall of 1834, he trained the ablest of his fellow students and sent them out as agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Adopting Finney's methods, they preached emancipation as a revival in benevolence, with a fervor which mobs could not silence. Among them, Henry B. Stanton [q.v.] and James Thome became well known; but thirty- two other "Lane rebels" did their parts in establishing the movement in Ohio, western Pennsylvania and New York, Rhode Island and western Massachusetts. Weld, "eloquent as an angel and powerful as thunder," accomplished more than all the rest combined. Indeed, the anti-slavery areas in the West and the field of Weld's labors largely coincide. Among his converts, Joshua R. Giddings, Edwin M. Stanton [qq.v.], and others were later prominent in politics; while the anti-slavery sentiment among New-School Presbyterians was largely due to his agitation among the ministers.

By 1836 the success of Weld's agents was so apparent that the American Anti-Slavery Society decided to abandon the pamphlet campaign, and devo te all its resources toward enlarging his heroic band. Weld himself selected the new agents, to the number of seventy, gathered them in New York, and for weeks gave them a Pentecostal training in abolitionism. One of the new agents at this conference was Angelina Grimke [q.v.], daughter of a prominent South Carolina family, whom Weld specially trained in the months that followed. During the next few years the "Seventy" consolidated the anti-slavery movement throughout the North. After the agents' conference, Weld, whose voice was permanently injured, continued to work for the cause. He took over th e society's publicity, and initiated a new and successful pamphlet campaign among the converts of the "Seventy," in which the most widely distributed tracts, though publish ed anonymously or under the signatures of other authors, were all from his pen. In addition he directed the national campaign for getting anti-slavery petitions to Congress. On May 14, 1838, he married Angelina Grimke, by whom he had three children.

The last phase of Weld's agency was the most significant of all. Certain of his converts in the House of Representatives, having determined to break with the Whig party on the slavery issue, summoned Weld to Washington to act as their adviser. H ere he helped secure the adherence of John Quincy Adams; and when Adams opened their campaign against slavery in the House, Weld served as his assistant in the trial for censure which followed (C. F. Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, volume XI, 1876, pp. 75-79). For two crucial sessions, 1841-43, he directed the insurgents; and then, an antislavery bloc within their party being well established, he withdrew from public life. His influence, however, remained paramount. His lobby at Washington was continued by Lewis Tappan; and its organ, the National Era, was edited by Weld's convert, Gamaliel Bailey. In its columns was first published Uncle Tom's Cabin, which, as Harriet Beecher Stowe herself declared, was crystallized out of Weld's most famous tract, American Slavery, As It Is (Barnes, p. 231). Moreover, as the movement spread westward, in almost every district it centered about some convert of Weld or his disciples.

Measured by his influence, Weld was not only the greatest of the abolitionists; he was also one of the greatest figures of his time. His anonymity in history was partly due to his almost morbid modesty. He accepted no office, attended no conventions, published nothing under his own name, and would permit neither his speeches nor his letters to be printed. His achievements as evangelist for W es tern abolitionism were not recorded in the press, largely because he would not speak in the towns, where Eastern papers then had correspondents. Convinced that the towns were subject to the opinion of their countryside, and that "the springs to touch, in order to win them, lie in the country" (Weld-Grimke Letters, post, I, 287), Weld and his agents spoke only in the villages and the country districts of the West, away from public notice and the press. After the Civil War, Weld took no part in the controversies among the abolitionists as to their precedence in history, and he refused to let friends write of his own achievements. He survived all of his fellow laborers, dying at the age of ninety-one at Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where he had made his home for thirty-two years.

Weld's chief works are: The Bible Against Slavery (1 ed., 1837); "Wythe," The Power of Congress over Slavery in the District of Columbia (I ed., 1836); J. A. Thome and J. H. Kimball, Emancipation in the West Indies (1 ed., 1837); American Slavery, As It Is (1 ed., 1839). With J. A. Thome he prepared Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States, published by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1841.

[This account of Weld's life was pieced together from newspapers, letters and pamphlets of the time. It 1s more fully presented in G. H. Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse, 1830-1844 (1933); and G. H. Barnes and D. L. Dumond, eds., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke, 1822- 1844 (2 volumes, 1934). See also C. H. Birney, The Grimke Sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke (1885); obituary in Boston Evening Transcript, February 4, 1895.]

G.H.B.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 425:

WELD, Theodore Dwight, reformer, born in Hampton, Connecticut, 23 November, 1803. He entered Phillips Andover academy in 1819, but was not graduated, on account of failing eyesight. In 1830 he became general agent of the Society for the promotion of manual labor in literary institutions, publishing afterward a valuable report (New York, 1833). He entered Lane theological seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1833, but left that institution on the suppression of the Anti-slavery society of the seminary by the trustees. Mr. Weld then became well known as an anti-slavery lecturer, but in 1836 he lost his voice, and was appointed by the American anti-slavery society editor of its books and pamphlets. In 1841-'3 he labored in Washington in aid of the anti-slavery members of congress, and in 1854 he established at Eagleswood, New Jersey, a school in which he received pupils irrespective of sex and color. In 1864 he removed to Hyde Park, near Boston, and devoted himself to teaching and lecturing. Mr. Weld is the author of many pamphlets, and of “The Power of Congress over the District of Columbia” (New York, 1837); “The Bible against Slavery” (1837); “American Slavery as it Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses” (1839); and “Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States” (London, 1841). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 425.



WELLING, James Clarke, educator, born in Trenton, New Jersey, 14 July, 1825. Adhering to the old-line Whigs as against the Republican and the Democratic Parties, he supported the Bell-Everett ticket for president and vice-president in 1860. Steadfastly resisting the disunion movement at the south in all its phases, he gave to the war for the Union his loyal support. He advocated Lincoln's proposition of emancipation with compensation to loyal owners, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and its abolition throughout the Union by constitutional amendment.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 427-428:

WELLING, James Clarke, educator, born in Trenton, New Jersey, 14 July, 1825. He was graduated at Princeton in 1844, and, after studying law, renounced that profession in 1848 to become associate principal of the New York Collegiate School. In 1850 he was secured by Joseph Gales and William W. Seaton as literary editor of the " National Intelligencer" at Washington, and he was afterward associated with them in the political conduct of that journal, becoming charged in 1856 with its chief management, for which post he was qualified by his accurate scholarship, his facility in writing, and his judicial temperament. His editorship continued through the crisis of the Civil War. Adhering to the old-line Whigs as against the Republican and the Democratic Parties, he supported the Bell-Everett ticket for president and vice-president in 1860. Steadfastly resisting the disunion movement at the south in all its phases, he gave to the war for the Union his loyal support. He advocated Lincoln's proposition of emancipation with compensation to loyal owners, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and its abolition throughout the Union by constitutional amendment; but he questioned the validity of the emancipation proclamation, and strenuously opposed the constitutionality of military commissions for the trial of citizens in loyal states, which practice was subsequently condemned by the Supreme Court. The discussions of the " Intelligencer during this period often took the form of elaborate papers on questions of constitutional or international law, and exercised an acknowledged influence on public opinion. Some of them have been republished, and are still cited in works of history and jurisprudence. Dr. Welling withdrew from journalism in 1865, and spent the following year travelling in Europe for health and study. He had been previously appointed a clerk of the U. S. Court of Claims, and served in that office till 1867, when he was chosen president of St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. During his presidency the number of students advanced from 90 to 250. In 1868 he received the honorary degree of LL. D. from Columbian College, Washington. In 1870 he was appointed professor of belles-lettres in Princeton, but he resigned the post in the following year to accept the presidency of Columbian College (now University). Under his administration that institution has been enlarged, has received a new charter from Congress, erected a building in the heart of Washington (see illustration), added new professional schools, and laid the foundation of a free endowment. At the same time he has been connected with many literary, historical, and scientific societies. As president of the board of trustees of the Corcoran gallery of art since 1877 he has devoted much time to its development, visiting in 1887 the studios of the chief artists of Europe in its interest. In 1884 he was appointed a regent of the Smithsonian Institution, and soon afterward he was elected chairman of its executive committee. He is an active member of the Philosophical and Anthropological Societies of Washington, was chosen in 1884 president of the former, and has contributed valuable memoirs to the published proceedings of both bodies. He is president of the Copyright League of the District of Columbia. For many years he has been a contributor to periodicals. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 427-428.



WHEELER, William Almon, (June 30, 1819-June 4, 1887), vice-president of the United States. He was active in politics, at first as a Whig, and after 1855 as a Republican. He was district attorney of Franklin County, 1846-49; assemblyman, 1850-51, serving during his second term as chairman of the ways and means committee; state senator and president pro tem Pore of the Senate, 1858-60; member of Congress, 1861-63.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 57-58)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 455:

WHEELER, William Almon, statesman, vice-president of the United States. Born in Malone, Franklin County, New York, 30 June, 1819; died there, 4 June, 1887. He studied at the University of Vermont for two years, but was compelled by the death of his father to leave college without being graduated. He then began the study of law under Asa Hascall in Malone, New York, was admitted to the bar in 1845, and succeeded Mr. Hascall as U. S. District Attorney of Franklin County, which post he held till 1849. At that time his political sympathies were with the Whig Party, by which he was chosen to the assembly in 1849, but in the early part of the Fremont canvass in 1856 he supported the newly formed Republican Party, remaining in it until his death. An affection of the throat compelled him to abandon the practice of law in 1851, and from that year till 1866 he was connected with a bank in Malone. He became president of the Northern New York Railroad Company about the same time, and for twelve years was supervisory manager of the line from Rouse's Point to Ogdensburg, New York. He was a member and President pro tempore of the state senate in 1858-'9, and was chosen to Congress in 1860 as a Republican, but, after serving one term, returned to his railroad and banking interests. He was president of the New York Constitutional Convention in 1867, returned to Congress in 1869, and served continuously till 1877. During that time he was chairman of the committees on the Pacific Railroad Company and commerce, a member of those on appropriations and southern affairs, and was the first in either house to cover his back-pay into the treasury, after the passage of the back-salary act. He was also the author of the famous "compromise" in the adjustment of the political disturbances in Louisiana, by which William Pitt Kellogg was recognized as governor, and the state legislature became Republican in the Senate and Democratic in the house. In 1876 he was nominated for the vice-presidency by the Republican National Convention, and he took his seat as presiding officer of the Senate in March, 1877. On the expiration of his term in 1881 he returned to Malone, and did not again enter public life. Mr. Wheeler was a man of most excellent character and of great liberality. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 455.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 57-58:

WHEELER, WILLIAM ALMON (June 30, 1819-June 4, 1887), vice-president of the United States, was born at Malone, New York, the only son and the second child of Almon and Eliza (Woodworth) Wheeler. He came from early Puritan stock, an ancestor, Thomas Wheeler, having been a resident of Concord, Massachusetts, in r637 and later a founder of Fairfield, Connecticut. Both his grandfathers were Vermont pioneers and soldiers of the Revolution. In 1827 his father, a promising young lawyer, died leaving no estate, and his mother supported herself and her children by boarding students at Franklin Academy. Young Wheeler worked his way through the academy and in 1838 entered the University of Vermont. During the next two years he led a studious and undernourished existence, once living on bread and water for six weeks.

Leaving college because of financial difficulties and an affection of the eyes, he returned to Malone and studied law under the direction of Asa Hascell. He was admitted to the bar in 1845, and on September 17 of that year married Mary King. After six years, during which he seems to have been unusually successful, he retired from active practice to manage a local bank. In 1853 he was appointed trustee for the mortgage holders of the Northern Railway and in that capacity conducted the business of the company until 1866.

Meanwhile he was active in politics, at first as a Whig, and after 1855 as a Republican. He was district attorney of Franklin County, 1846-49; assemblyman, 1850-51, serving during his second term as chairman of the ways and means committee; state senator and president pro tem Pore of the Senate, 1858-60; member of Congress, 1861-63; and president of the state constitutional convention, 1867-68. His honors in state politics came to him probably because he was capable and independent; yet never openly attacked the Republican state machine. In 1869 he again entered Congress and was at once made chairman of the committee on Pacific railroads. Four years later Senator Roscoe Conkling [q.v.], with Grant's tacit approval, intrigued to make him speaker instead of James G. Blaine [q.v.]. Wheeler refused to become a party to the plan, partly because Blaine promised to make him chairman of the committee on appropriations-a promise that was never kept-and partly perhaps because of a morbid obsession that his health. was precarious which afflicted him in his later years. But for the influence of his wife and 'his friends he would have resigned his seat and retired to Malone to die. In 1874 he was appointed on a special committee to investigate a disputed election in Louisiana, which had threatened to result in the collapse of civil government in the state. The so-called " Wheeler adjustment" which he proposed proved satisfactory to both parties. With these exceptions his Congressional career was uneventful. He rarely spoke except when he had immediate charge of a bill on the floor. Then he was forceful, persuasive, and adept in parliamentary tactics. In a period when public morals were low he maintained a reputation for scrupulous honesty. Once he indignantly rejected a gift of railroad stock. When the "salary grab" Act of 1873 became law he converted his excess salary into government bonds and had them canceled so that neither he nor his estate could benefit from the measure. He refused to approve a complimentary appropriation for a post-office building at Malone.

When Wheeler was first suggested for the vice-presidency he was practically unknown. Hayes wrote to his wife in January 1876, "I am ashamed to say, Who is Wheeler!'" (Diary, post, III, 301). His nomination that year was the result of an attempt to secure a harmonious balance of sectional elements in the party. During the campaign he spoke logically, though not eloquently, in favor of civil service reform, honesty in administration, and federal assistance in raising educational standards in the South. As vice-president, he was a good presiding officer of the Senate. He cared little for the office, however.. His wife had died March 3, 1876, and he found his chief diversion in frequent calls on the Hayes family. Hayes thought him "a noble, honest, patriotic man" (Ibid., IV, 50). If he had succeeded to the presidency, Wheeler would probably have made few changes in policy. In 1881 he became an inactive candidate for one of the senatorial seats made vacant by the resignations of Conkling and Thomas C. Platt [q.v.], and the next year declined an appointment to the newly created tariff commission. He had no children. At his death nearly all his estate was bequeathed to missions.

[A. G. Wheeler, The Genealogical and Encyclopedia History of the Wheeler Family in America (1914); F. J. Seaver, Historical Sketches of Franklin County (1918); C. R. Williams, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, volumes III (1924), IV (1925); W. D. Howells, Sketch of the Life and Character of Rutherford B. Hayes (1876); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume III (1909); G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903); New York Tribune, June S, 1887.]

E. C. S.

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.