DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY
— •"<&
PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES
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AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, Cambridge, Massachusetts
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA, Albany, New York
ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS, Minneapolis, Minnesota
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LINGUISTIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA, Washington, District of Columbia
MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY OF AMERICA, Cambridge, Massachusetts
POPULATION ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, Washington, District of Columbia
DICTIONARY OF
American Biography
Edited by A lien Johnson & Dumas Malone
6
Echols - Fraser
Charles Scribner's Sons
• NEW YORK
Prompted solely by a desire for public service the New York Times Company and its President, Mr. Adolph S. Ochs, have made possible the preparation of the manuscript of the Dictionary of American Biography through a subvention of more than $500,000 and with the understanding that the entire responsibility for the contents of the vol- umes rests with the American Council of Learned Societies.
Copyright, 1931, by AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES
Printed in the United States of America
The Dictionary of American Biography is published under the auspices of the Amer- ican Council of Learned Societies and under the direction of a Committee of Manage- ment which consists of J. Franklin Jameson, Chairman, John H. Finley, Alien Johnson, Frederic L. Paxson, ]phigene Ochs Sulzberger, Carl Van Doren,
Charles Warren.
The editorial staff consists of Allen Johnson, Dumas Malone, Harris E. Starr, George H. Genzmer, Eleanor R. Dobson.
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CONTRIBUTORS TO VOLUME VI
Thomas P. Abernethy . . . T. P. A.
Adeline Adams A. A.
James Truslow Adams . . . J. T. A.
Robert Greenhalgh Albion R. G. A.
Edmund Kimball Alden . . E. K. A.
Edward E. Allen E. E. A.
William H. Allison . . . . W. H. A.
Katharine H. Amend . . . . K. H. A.
John Clark Archer . . . . J. C. A.
Edward C. Armstrong . . . E. C. A.
Benjamin Wisner Bacon . . B. W. B.
Ray Palmer Baker R. P. B — r.
Thomas S. Barclay T. S. B.
Claribel R. Barnett . . . . C. R. B.
Harold K. Barrows . . . . H. K. B.
J. Henry Bartlett J. H. B.
Ernest Sutherland Bates . E. S. B — s.
William James Battle . . . W. J. B.
Carl L. Becker C. L. B.
Elbert J. Benton E. J. B.
Percy W. Bidwell P. W. B.
Theodore C. Blegen . . . . T. C. B.
Arthur R. Blessing . . . . A. R. B.
George Blumer G. B.
Ernest F. Boddington . . . E. F. B.
Sarah G. Bowerman . . . . S. G. B.
William K. Boyd W. K. B.
Benjamin Brawley B. B.
Robert Preston Brooks . . R. P. B — s.
Everett S. Brown E. S. B — n.
L. Parmly Brown L. P. B.
Frank J. Bruno F. J. B.
Solon J. Buck S. J. B.
Guy H. Burnham G. H. B.
William B. Cairns W. B. C.
Isabel M. Calder I. M. C.
Robert G. Caldwell . . . . R. G. C.
James M. Callahan . . . . J. M. C.
Robert C. Canby R. C. C.
Charles F. Carey C. F. C.
Richard S. Cartwright . . . R. S. C — t.
Henry S. Chapman H. S. C.
Arney R. Childs A. R. C.
Francis A. Christie . . . . F. A. C.
Dora Mae Clark D. M. C.
Hubert Lyman Clark . . . H. L. C.
Oral Sumner Coad O. S. C.
Frederick W. Coburn . . . F. W. C.
Fannie L. Gwinner Cole . . F. L. G. C.
Edward S. Corwin E. S. C.
Robert Spencer Cotterill . R. S. C — 1.
E. Merton Coulter . . . . E. M. C.
Dorothy P. Cutler D. P. C.
Chalmers G. Davidson . . . C. G. D.
Clive Day CD.
Roy Day R. D.
Roy Floyd Dibble R. F. D.
Gilbert H. Doane G. H. D.
Eleanor Robinette Dobson . E. R. D. Dorothy Anne Dondore . . D. A. D.
Elizabeth Donnan E. D.
Edward A. Duddy E. A. D.
Raymond S. Dugan R. S. D.
William B. Dunning . . . . W. B. D. William Frederick Durand . W. F. D.
Lionel C. Durel L. C. D.
Harrison Griswold Dwight . H. G. D. Edward Dwight Eaton . . . E. D. E. Walter Prichard Eaton . . W. P. E. Edwin Francis Edgett . . . E. F. E.
Milton Ellis M. E.
Arthur Elson A. E.
Ephraim Emerton E. E.
Charles R. Erdman, Jr. . . . C. R. E., Jr.
Paul D. Evans P. D. E.
William Purviance Fenn . . W. P. F. Alexander Clarence Flick . A. C. F. Percy Scott Flippin . . . . P. S. F.
George T. Flom G. T. F.
Blanton Fortson B. F.
Louis H. Fox L. H. F.
Kuno Francke K. F.
John H. Frederick J. H. F.
Claude M. Fuess C. M. F.
Joseph V. Fuller J. V. F.
John F. Fulton J. F. F.
Herbert P. Gambrell . . . H. P. G. George Harvey Genzmer . . G. H. G.
Virginia Gerson V. G.
W. J. Ghent W. J. G.
Lawrence H. Gipson . . . . L. H. G. Harold C. Goddard . . . . H. C. G. Armistead Churchill Gordon,
Jr A. C. G., Jr.
Henry Solon Graves . . . . H. S. G. Charles W. Hackett . . . . C. W. H.
Percival Hall P. H.
Philip M. Hamer P. M. H.
J. G. deR. Hamilton . . . . J. G. deR. H. Talbot Faulkner Hamlin . . T. F. H.
Alvin F. Harlow A. F. H.
Ralph V. Harlow R. V. H.
Vll
Contributors to Volume VI
Fairfax Harrison F.
Mary Bronson Hartt . . . M George E. Hastings . . . . G.
Paul L. Haworth P.
Fred E. Haynes F.
Marshall DeLancey Hay- wood M
Atcheson L. Hench .... A
Emily Hickman E
Frederick C. Hicks . . . . F John Donald Hicks .... J.
Charles E. Hill C.
Homer Carey Hockett . . . H.
Frank H. Hodder F.
Jean MacKinnon Holt ... J. Walter Hough W
H.
B. H. E. H. L. H. E. H.
Leland Ossian Howard . . . L. Clifford Chesley Hubbard . C. Theodora Kimball Hubbard T. William Jackson Humphreys W
Albert Hyma A.
Asher Isaacs A.
Joseph Jackson J.
Edward H. Jenkins E
Allen Johnson A
James R. Joy J.
Louise Phelps Kellogg . . . L.
Rayner W. Kelsey R.
Allen Marshall Kline ... A. H. W. Howard Knott . . . . H. Harry Lyman Koopman . . . H.
Edwin W. Kopf E.
Leonard W. Labaree . . . . L. William Coolidge Lane . . W
John W. Lang J
George M. Lewis G.
Lawrence T. Lowrey . . . . L.
Robert Luce R.
Clarence H. McClure . . . C. Thomas Denton McCormick T. Philip B. McDonald .... P. Reginald C. McGrane . . . R.
Eva Anne Madden E.
William Francis Magie . . . W
H. A. Marmer H.
Howard R. Marraro . . . . H Frederick H. Martens . . . F.
Asa Earl Martin A.
Albert P. Mathews .... A. David M. Matteson . . . . D
Lawrence S. Mayo L.
Edmond S. Meany E.
Leila Mechlin L.
Newton D. Mereness . . . N
George P. Merrill G,
Herman H. B. Meyer . . . . H Douglass W. Miller . . . . D Edwin Mims, Jr E.
. DeL. H. L. H. H— n.
C. H.
D. H.
E. H.
C. H. H. H. M. H. . H. O. H.
C. H. K. H.
JH. H. I.
J- H.J.
J-
R.J. P. K. W. K. M. K. W. H. K. L. K. W. K. W. L. . C. L. W. L. M. L. T. L. L. H. M.
D. M. B. M. CM. A.M.
. F. M. A.M. R. M. H. M.
E. M. P. M. M. M S. M. S. M. M.
D. M. P. M. H. B. M. W. M. M., Jr.
Broadus Mitchell B. M.
Carl W. Mitman C. W. M.
Frank Monaghan F. M — n.
Thomas L. Montgomery . . T. L. M.
Fulmer Mood F. M — d.
Albert B. Moore A. B. M.
George T. Moore G. T. M.
Harrison S. Morris . . . . H. S. M.
Richard B. Morris . . . . R. B. M.
Jarvis M. Morse J. M. M.
George S. Myers G. S. M.
Allan Nevins A. N.
Charles L. Nichols . . . . C. L. N.
Robert Hastings Nichols . . R. H. N.
Roy F. Nichols R. F. N.
Harold J. Noble H. J. N.
John S. Nollen J. S. N.
Walter B. Norris W. B. N.
David Edward Owen . . . . D. E. O.
Catherine W. Palmer . . . C. W. P.
Victor H. Paltsits V. H. P.
Scott H. Paradise S. H. P.
John I. Parcel J. I. P.
Stanley M. Pargellis . . . S. M. P.
Julius H. Parmelee . . . . J. H. P.
Merrill R. Patterson . . . M. R. P.
Charles O. Paullin . . . . C. O. P.
Frederic Logan Paxson . . F. L. P — n
Henry G. Pearson H. G. P.
Theodore C. Pease T. C. P.
Donald Culross Peattie . . D. C. P.
Edgar Legare Pennington . E. L. P.
Ralph Barton Perry . . . . R. B. P.
Frederick T. Persons . . . F. T. P.
A. Everett Peterson . . . . A. E. P.
James M. Phalen J. M. P.
Paul Chrisler Phillips . . . P. C. P.
Deets Pickett D. P.
David deSola Pool D. deS. P.
Julius W. Pratt J. W. P.
Edward Preble E. P.
Frederick Clarke Prescott . F. C. P.
Herbert I. Priestley . . . . H. I. P.
Richard J. Purcell . . . . R. J. P.
Lawson Purdy L. P.
Belle Rankin B. R.
Charles Dudley Rhodes . .CD. R.
Irving B. Richman I. B. R.
Doane Robinson D. R.
William A. Robinson . . . . W. A. R.
Miriam Theresa Rooney . . M. T. R.
Frank Edward Ross . . . . F. E. R.
Ralph L. Rusk R. L. R.
Carlton Savage C.S.
Joseph Schafer J. S.
Carl F. Schreiber C F. S.
Montgomery Schuyler . . . M. Sc — r.
Kenneth Scott K. S.
Vlll
Contributors to Volume VI
Muriel Shaver M. Sh — r.
William Bristol Shaw . . . W. B. S — w. Cornelius Lott Shear . . . C. L. Sh — r. George N. Shuster . . . . G. N. S. Constance Lindsay Skinner C. L. Sk — r. Alice R. Huger Smith . . . A. R. H. S. David Eugene Smith . . . . D. E. S.
William Smith W. S — h.
Thomas M. Spaulding . . . T. M. S. Samuel Peter Spreng . . . S. P. S. Harris Elwood Starr . . . H. E. S. George M. Stephenson . . G. M. S.
Walter B. Stevens W. B. S — s.
Wayne E. Stevens W. E. S.
Witmer Stone W. S — e.
Charles S. Sydnor C. S. S.
Edwin P. Tanner E. P. T.
David Y. Thomas D. Y. T.
Holland Thompson H. T.
Irving L. Thomson I. L. T.
Leah Townsend L. T.
William T. Utter W. T. U.
Mark Van Doren M. V-D.
Henry R. Viets H. R. V.
Eugene M. Violette . . . . E. M. V.
John D. Wade J. D. W.
Theodore B. Wagner . . . . T. B. W.
William Cushing Wait . . . W. C. W.
James Elliott Walmsley . . J. E. W.
James J. Walsh J. J. W.
Langdon Warner L. W.
W. Randall Waterman . . . W. R. W.
Elizabeth Howard West . . E. H. W.
Allan Westcott A. W.
Arthur P. Whitaker . . . . A. P. W.
Charles Adams White . . . C. A. W.
Horatio S. White H. S. W.
Melvin J. White M. J. W.
Walter Lincoln Whittlesey W. L. W — y.
James F. Willard J. F. W.
George Edward Woodbine . G. E. W.
Herbert F. Wright . . . . H. F. W.
Walter L. Wright, Jr. . . . W. L. W — t., Jr.
James Ingersoll Wyer . . . J. I. W.
Edna Yost E. Y.
John Zeleny J. Z.
IX
DICTIONARY OF
AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY
Echols — Fraser
ECHOLS, JOHN (Mar. 20, 1823-May 24, 1 896), lawyer, Confederate soldier, railroad pres- ident, was born in Lynchburg, Va., the son of Joseph and Elizabeth F. (Lambeth) Echols. He graduated with honor from Washington College (now Washington and Lee University), did post- graduate work at the Virginia Military Institute, and studied law at Harvard. Returning to Vir- ginia in 1842, he taught in Harrisonburg, and was admitted to the bar of Rockbridge County in November 1843. After practising at Staunton for a short time, he made his home in Monroe County (now W. Va.) till 1861.
He was elected commonwealth's attorney and later a member of the General Assembly, and was one of the two delegates from Monroe Coun- ty to the convention of 1861. While the conven- tion was in session, but after the adoption of the ordinance of secession, he resigned as a member and on the following day was nominated a colonel of volunteers. Before this nomination was con- firmed on Dec. 6, 1861, he had returned to his county and organized a company which was as- signed to the 27th Regiment. He commanded this regiment at the first battle of Manassas and afterward until he was severely wounded at Kernstown, Mar. 23, 1862. Returning to the army after his recovery, he was commissioned a brigadier-general and served in the Kanawha Valley for a time under Gen. Loring, whom he afterward succeeded as commander of the De- partment of Southwestern Virginia. In the sum- mer of 1863 he served, with Howell Cobb and Robert Ransome, on the court of inquiry held at Richmond to determine the cause of the fall of Vicksburg. In 1864 he took his brigade to the Valley under Gen. John C. Breckinridge and played a conspicuous part in the battle of New
Market. After fighting with the Army of North- ern Virginia from Hanover Junction to Cold Harbor, he went with Gen. Early on his cam- paign into Maryland, and in the fall of 1864 re- sumed command of the Department of South- western Virginia. After the surrender at Ap- pomattox he led the remnant of his command into North Carolina, escorted President Davis from Greensboro to Charlotte, returned to Greensboro, and was paroled with Johnston's army. He had been commissioned major-gen- eral in the last days of the war but the commis- sion failed to reach him.
Identified in sympathies with the older part of the state, he removed soon after the war from Monroe County to Staunton, became the senior member of the law firm of Echols, Bell, and Cat- lett, and represented Augusta County in the Gen- eral Assembly. His business abilities were so well recognized that when the National Valley Bank of Staunton was organized he was elect- ed president, continuing in that office after the bank was consolidated with the First National Bank of Staunton. About the same time, with Col. John B. Baldwin and others, he undertook the reorganization of the Virginia Central Rail- road, later known as the Chesapeake & Ohio & Southwestern. He served as receiver and gen- eral manager, and, after its reorganization as the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, he secured its ex- tension through Kentucky, and for twenty years was a director and played a large part in deter- mining its policy. His duties as an officer of the Chesapeake & Ohio and its associated roads com- pelled his residence in Louisville, Ky., for the last ten years of his life, but he remained a citizen of Virginia, returning to cast his vote in elections and keeping in close touch with the state's prob-
I
Eckart
lems. He was an active member of the board of visitors of the Virginia Military Institute and of Washington and Lee University. In a memorial minute of the board after his death it was said that "he rarely made an enemy and never lost a friend."
Echols was a man of commanding presence, six feet four inches high, weighing two hundred and sixty pounds, with a massive rugged face, a sonorous voice, and the confident manner of an executive. He was twice married : first, to Mary Jane Caperton, sister of his colleague in the con- vention of 1861 ; second, to Mrs. Mary Cochran Reid of New York City. He died in his seventy- fourth year at the home of his son in Staunton.
[There is a short sketch of Echols, inaccurate in some details, in Confed. Mil. Hist., Ill (1899), 591-93, and a longer and better sketch by A. C. Gordon, in Men of Mark in Va., V (1909), 124-29. See also Report of Brig.-Gen. Echols of the Battle of Droop Mt. (1864) ; Official Records {Army) ; Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. IV (1884). Brief biographies and edi- torials published in newspapers at the time of his death are in the possession of his son's widow in Staunton, Va.] J.E.W.
ECKART, WILLIAM ROBERTS (June 17, 1841-Dec. 8, 1914), engineer, was born in Chilli- cothe, Ohio, the son of William Roberts and Eleanor (Carlisle) Eckart. In 1842 his parents moved to Cleveland where his father had ship- ping interests on the Great Lakes. The boy's edu- cation, begun in private schools, was continued in the public schools of Cleveland and at St. Clair Academy in that city, where he followed special studies with a view to becoming a civil engineer. In the early fifties his father took his family to Zanesville, Ohio, where he had a man- aging interest in the Putnam Flouring Mills, the power for which was derived from water-wheels. William's work as an assistant to the millwright in the installation of improved wheels led to an apprenticeship in the shop of Griffith, Ebert & Wedge, and later to an association with the part- ner Wedge, an engineer trained in the precision methods of the famous Whitworth shops of Lon- don. To the high ideals insisted on in all of the work of Griffith, Ebert & Wedge, Eckart at- tributed much of his success in later years. Con- tact with the marine work of the shop strength- ened his taste for naval service, already formed by travel on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and in 1 86 1, after the outbreak of the Civil War, he passed with high honor the examination for naval engineer, was appointed, and ordered to join the fleet on the Pacific Coast. Here he met B. F. Isherwood [q.v.J, chief engineer of the navy, and was brought into intimate contact with the prob- lems of marine engineering practise. In 1864, because of ill health, he resigned from the navy
Eckart
and took up his residence in San Francisco. In California and in adjacent states he spent the re- mainder of his life. As a chief draftsman in 1865, he prepared the designs for the first steam loco- motive built in California. As superintendent of steam machinery at the United States Navy Yard, Mare Island, he designed and prepared the equipment for a notable research on marine pro- pellers, and served as Isherwood's associate in carrying out this work, the results of which have now become classic in the literature of marine engineering. Later, as partner in an engineering firm at Marysville, Cal., he constructed a small steamer to be used on Lake Tahoe ; it had a guar- anteed speed of twenty-one miles per hour and was perhaps the fastest boat of its size known at that date. In connection with the great mining boom at Virginia City, Nev., and elsewhere, 1870-80, he encountered, as consulting engineer, the difficult problem of handling enormous quan- tities of scalding-hot water under pressures rep- resented by thousands of feet of head, a combina- tion of conditions perhaps unprecedented up to that time. Under his direction and guidance, however, mining was successfully carried on to the exhaustion of the ore bodies. With the de- cline of deep mining in 1880 he again took up his residence in San Francisco. Here as consulting engineer he became responsible for the design of the machinery for the Anaconda Copper Com- pany, with the new and difficult problems which this work presented, and later, as consultant for the Union Iron Works in all matters relating to naval construction, was associated with the pio- neer work of building the new steel navy. Final- ly, to round out the scope and variety of his pro- fessional experience, in 1899 he became, as con- sulting engineer for the Standard Electric Com- pany, responsible for the design and construc- tion of the hydraulic work connected with their first hydroelectric power plant, taking water at a 9,000-foot level and under 1,400 feet head gen- erating 15,000 horse-power — perhaps the pio- neer among high head long distance transmis- sion power plants. This work was brought to a successful completion in 1903.
Eckart was always on the firing line of prog- ress and delighted in nothing more than in deal- ing with new and difficult problems. He was eminently a student in his manner of handling them, and spared no pains in insuring a sound foundation for his proposed solution or mode of treatment. He was notable as a collector of books and professional literature and of fine pre- cision apparatus used in engineering measure- ments ; was a member of many engineering socie- ties and technical organizations, and occasionally
Eckels
contributed papers of value to their transactions. In 1872 he married Harriet Louise Gorham; to them were born three sons and one daughter. After a long period of failing health, during which he retained his keen interest in engineer- ing, he died in Palo Alto, Cal., at the home of his eldest son.
[Trans. Am. Soc. Mech. Engineers, XXXVI (1915), 1090 ; Builders of San Francisco (1912) ; San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 9, 1914; statement by living sons ; personal acquaintance.]
W.F.D.
ECKELS, JAMES HERRON (Nov. 22, 1858- Apr. 14, 1907), lawyer, comptroller of the cur- rency, financier, traced his paternal ancestry to an emigrant from Belfast, Ireland. Both his parents were natives of Cumberland County, Pa. His father, James Starr Eckels, after graduating at the Albany Law School in 1857, took his wife, Margaret Herron Eckels, whom he had married in 1854, to the little town of Princeton, 111., where his son was born. James Eckels achieved suc- cess as an attorney. His son, choosing to follow in his father's footsteps, also attended the Al- bany Law School, from which he graduated in 1883. While at Albany he made the acquaintance of Gov. Grover Cleveland, a momentous event in young Eckels's career. Establishing himself at Ottawa, 111., he gained ground rapidly both as a lawyer and as a Democratic politician. He cam- paigned for his friend Cleveland in 1884 and was consulted in regard to the distribution of patron- age in his congressional district. In the cam- paign of 1892 he made speeches against the tariff and for Cleveland. He rejoiced in the Demo- cratic victory and had hopes of receiving the ap- pointment as United States attorney for Illinois. The country was surprised, as was Eckels, when Cleveland proposed that the thirty-five-year-old attorney should become comptroller of the cur- rency. He took over the duties of that office Apr. 26, 1893.
Within a month after Eckels entered upon his new work the panic of 1893 broke. Bankers who had had misgivings at his appointment now prophesied disaster. That Eckels stood the test of this crisis and came to have the respect of the financiers is the best evidence of his ability. His most important work in this period was the han- dling »of the tangled affairs of national banks which were forced to suspend payment. During the period from 1865 to 1898, 369 national banks were forced into receiverships. Of this number, 181 met disaster in the four years and eight months during which Eckels was comptroller. The energy and efficiency which he demonstrated in meeting the problems of his office showed that Cleveland's confidence in him had not been mis-
Eckert
placed. His annual reports contained a number of constructive suggestions for the improvement of the national currency system. He advised, in order to give the currency greater elasticity, that an asset security be devised to take the place of bonds as the basis of the issue of national bank- notes. He made a suggestion, later adopted, that a non-partisan commission be appointed to study exhaustively the needs of the nation's monetary system.
In 1896 he was a leader among the Gold Dem- ocrats. He was continued in his office by McKin- ley, but he resigned it on Dec. 31, 1897, to be- come president of the Commercial National Bank of Chicago. He was one of the leading financiers of that city when heart trouble caused his sud- den death on Apr. 14, 1907. He was small in stature. One of his admirers said that "there was not much to Eckels, but what little there was was three-quarters brains." He married Fannie Lisette Reed of Ottawa, 111., Dec. 15, 1887. A daughter was born to them. .
[Thos. P. Kane, The Romance and Tragedy of Bank- ing, I (1922), 187-214, is an excellent study of Eckels's service as comptroller by his secretary in that period. See also John G. Heinberg, The Office of the Comp- troller of the Currency (1926); Francis M. Huston, Financing an Empire : Hist, of Banking in III., IV (1926), 156 ff. ; The Ann. Report of the Comptroller of the Currency, 1893-98 ; Chicago Daily Tribune, Chi- cago Daily News, Apr. 15, 1907.] W.T.U
ECKERT, THOMAS THOMPSON (Apr. 23, 1825-Oct. 20, 1910), telegrapher, was born at St. Clairsville, Ohio, and spent his boyhood on his father's farm, at the same time receiving a common-school education. Catching the en- thusiasm for the telegraph at an early age, he went to Wheeling, W. Va., hoping to enter a newly opened telegraph office there. Failing in this he went to New York, after many difficul- ties, and learned telegraphy in the office of the Morse Telegraph Company. He was next em- ployed by the Wade Telegraph Company on their line between Pittsburgh and Chicago. In 1849 he was appointed postmaster at Wooster, Ohio, but still retained his position with the telegraph company. In 1852 he was made superintendent of the Pittsburgh and Chicago branch line of the Union Telegraph Company, which position he held, with extended jurisdiction, when the line became part of the Western Union Tele- graph Company in 1856. In 1859 he resigned to become superintendent of a gold-mining com- pany in Montgomery County, N. C, where he stayed until the outbreak of the Civil War. He went to Cincinnati, Ohio, as head of the United States military telegraph at that place, but in 1862 was called to Washington, D. C, as super- intendent of military telegraph, Department of
Eckert
Eckford
the Potomac, and, with the rank of captain and assistant quartermaster, accompanied Maj.-Gen. McClellan to the Peninsula. In September of the same year he was appointed general superin- tendent of military telegraph, with the rank of major, and established headquarters in the War Department. In 1864 he was breveted lieutenant- colonel, then colonel, and lastly (Mar. 13, 1865), brigadier-general of volunteers, "for merito- rious and distinguished services." On July 27, 1866, Eckert was made assistant secretary of war, resigning Feb. 28, 1867. He had a distinguished war record, always commanded the full confi- dence of President Lincoln and Secretary Stan- ton, and was intrusted with military and state secrets. On several occasions he was charged with special commissions of the utmost impor- tance.
Upon resigning from the government service he accepted the position as general superinten- dent of the eastern division of the Western Union Telegraph Company, which he held until 1875. His strong personality and diplomacy were shown by the manner in which he handled, in 1870, the threatened universal strike of the teleg- raphers' Protective League, which would have tied up the railways and paralyzed business in general. In 1875 Jav Gould and his associates gained control of the Atlantic & Pacific Tele- graph Company and began to compete with the Western Union. Eckert was appointed presi- dent of the Atlantic & Pacific and remained as such until 1881, when the company was sold to the Western Union. Gould, however, soon or- ganized another competing company, the Ameri- can Union Telegraph, and retained Eckert's ser- vices as president. This position he held until Gould ended the rivalry by purchasing control of the Western Union. Eckert was vice-presi- dent and general manager of the Western Union until 1893, when he was elected president, re- tained this position until 1900 when he was made chairman of the board of directors, and served in the latter capacity almost until his death. He was also a director in several other corporations. He died at his summer home in Long Branch, N. J., after a long illness. He was survived by two sons ; his wife, Emma D. Whitney of Woos- ter, Ohio, had died in 1868.
Eckert was a pioneer on the administrative side of the telegraph to almost as great an extent as was Morse on the inventive side. A man of great aggressiveness and vigor and a born leader, he organized the government telegraph during the Civil War so that it was of real use. and built up a staff of associates, many of whom stayed with him in later activities. Jay Gould
recognized him as a force he needed and shifted him from company to company according to the exigencies of the situation. This made him a leading figure in the struggle between ambitious companies for the telegraphic control of the country. As a man, he had qualities which en- deared him to his friends and subordinates.
[Official Records (Army), 1, 2, 3, ser. ; D. H. Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office : Recollections of the U. S. Mil. Telegraph Corps during the Civil War (1907) ; Who's Who in America, 1910-11 ; Electrical Rev. and Western Electrician, Oct. 29, 1910; Jour, of the Telegraph, Nov. 20, 1910.] J.H.F.
ECKFORD, HENRY (Mar. 12, 1775-Nov. 12, 1832), marine architect, and shipbuilder, was born at Irvine, Scotland, the son of John and Janet (Black) Eckford. At the age of six- teen he went to Quebec, Canada, and began studying the principles of ship designing in the yards of his uncle, John Black. After five years of such schooling he settled in New York City, where he soon began shipbuilding on his own ac- count. At the opening of the nineteenth century his yards were on the Long Island side of the East River, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Be- cause of the abundance and accessibility of tim- ber, American ships could be built for $35 a ton, as against $50 in England, and $60 in France. Even without the aid of the discriminating laws enacted by Congress, American shipbuilders had a clear advantage. Eckford's ships came to be known for their qualities of strength and speed. The most noticeable change that he brought about in designing was the reduction in the size of the stern frames, but there were also many alterations in the details of the rigging. It was his custom to question the captains of his ships on their return from voyages, learning thus what the behavior of the vessels had been in various circumstances and taking advantage of the knowledge so obtained in planning his next ship. His business was prospering when the War of 18 12 came on. After the United States navy decided to build war vessels on Lake Ontario, Eckford supervised the work. The sloop-of-war Madison, 24 guns, was constructed by him with- in forty days from the cutting of the timber in the forests. After the war he returned to New York. During the Monroe administration he was appointed naval constructor at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and held this office for three years, 1817-20, the Ohio and five other line-of-battle ships being constructed on his models. There is no doubt that J. Fenimore Cooper in paying tribute to Eckford's genius and resourcefulness as a naval constructor (see History of the Navy of the United States of America, 1839, U, 44Q) voiced a prevalent opinion. He resigned because
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of differences among some of the Navy Depart- ment officials. Resuming work in his own yards, he built the Robert Fulton, which made the first successful voyage by steam from New York to New Orleans and Havana (1822) and after con- version into a sailing vessel made the swiftest sloop-of-war in the Brazilian navy; and frig- ates for Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Chile. During the Jackson administration he sub- mitted, at the request of the president, a plan for the reorganization of the navy.
In the twenties Eckford became keenly inter- ested in New York Democratic politics. He in- vested money in the National Advocate and in the campaign of Crawford for the presidency (1824) he controlled that journal, in association with Matthew L. Davis and Jacob Barker (see Statement of Facts Relative to the Conduct of Henry Eckford, Esq., as Connected with the National Advocate, by Mordecai M. Noah, New York, 1824). On Apr. 13, 1799, Eckford was married to Marion, daughter of Joseph and Miriam (Dorlon) Bedell. He bought a coun- try estate on Manhattan Island (between Sixth and Eighth Avenues, 21st and 24th Sts., New York City), and there entertained among others, James E. De Kay, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Joseph Rodman Drake [qq.v], and kindred spirits. One of his daughters was married to Drake and an- other to De Kay.
In Eckford's later years the failure of an in- surance company in which he was interested took away a large part of his fortune. The last ship that he built was a corvette for the Sul- tan of Turkey. Aboard this ship, commanded by Commodore George Colman De Kay [g.v.], Eckford sailed to Turkey, where he was placed in charge of naval construction, and there, while organizing a navy yard, he died.
[G. W. Sheldon, "Old Shipbuilders of N. Y.," in Harper's Mag., July 1882; and S. G. W. Benjamin, "The Evolution of the American Yacht," in the Century Mag., July 1882 ; Jas. G. Wilson, The Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck (1869) ; J. H. Morrison, Hist, of N. Y. Ship Yards (1909) ; Frederick Hudson, Jour- nalism in the U. S., 1680-1872 (1873) ; T. H. S. Ham- ersley, Gen. Reg. U. S. Navy 1782-1882 (1882) ; J. E. De Kay, "The Book of the Children of De Kay" (1838), MS. in Lib. of Cong. For additional information see I. C. Pray, Memoirs of Jas. Gordon Bennett and his Times (1855). A portrait of Eckford is owned by the Long Island Hist. Soc] y/ B g w
ECKSTEIN, JOHN (c. 1750-0. 1817), painter, sculptor, and engraver, was born in Germany, probably in Mecklenburg, about the middle of the eighteenth century, and was active in Pots- dam after about 1772. In 1786 he made a death- mask and a plaster bust of Frederick the Great, and in the exhibitions of the Berlin Academy of that year, of 1788, and of 179 1, was represented
by an equestrian statue of Frederick, in imperial Roman costume. About the year 1794 he settled in Philadelphia, where he resided until 1817. He described himself variously in the city direc- tories as "limner," "engraver," and "merchant," and the directory for 1797 lists John Eckstein & Son as "statuaries." Eckstein was one of the original members of the Columbian Society of Artists, at whose exhibitions he showed exam- ples of modeling, and was also an associate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. While in Philadelphia, he engraved in stipple several portraits and a design for a "Monument of General Washington" which he proposed for erection — one of the first public suggestions for such a memorial of the first president of the United States. In his "Proposals" for pub- lishing this design (Poulson's American Daily Advertiser, Philadelphia, Feb. 19, 21, and 24, 1806), the artist referred to himself as "for- merly historical painter and statuary to the King of Prussia." For the third edition of Freneau's Poems (Philadelphia, 1809), he engraved fron- tispieces for the two volumes. They are de- cidedly of the mixed style, but are full of artistic feeling. In 1812 he exhibited at the Academy Exhibition, in Philadelphia, a model for an equestrian statue of Washington, and in 1813, a "model in burnt clay," entitled "Genius of Amer- ica." Thomas Sully wrote of Eckstein that he "was a thoroughgoing drudge in the arts. He could do you a picture in still life — history — landscape — portrait — he could model — cut a head in marble — or anything you please. ... I found him when I removed to Philadelphia [1800] an old man, and he has been dead many years" (Dunlap, post, edition of 191 8, p. 292). Eckstein's name was apparently dropped from the city directories after 1817 and the exhibition catalogues of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts state that he died in that year, al- though according to Stauffer (post) he "was painting and engraving as late as 1822."
[Wm. Dunlap, A Hist, of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the U. S. (1834 ; rev. ed., 1918) ; D. M. Stauffer, American Engravers upon Copper and Steel (1907); Michael Bryan, Diet, of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical (1902) ; Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Kunstler, X (1914), 331-32.] J t
EDDIS, WILLIAM (fl. 1769-1777), Mary- land Loyalist, emerged from years of obscurity during which he had a passion for the drama and experienced certain disappointments, to find in Robert Eden [q.v.~\, governor of Maryland, a pa- tron and benefactor. After a stormy voyage from an English port, he arrived at Annapolis on Sept. 3, 1769, and immediately assumed the duties of
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secretary to the governor. The following June he was joined by his wife and young son, Eden Eddis. As secretary he acquired an intimate knowledge of the province and as a deeply inter- ested spectator he watched closely the progress of events leading to the Revolution and through its early stages. He traveled on the Eastern Shore and to the back woods of the Western Shore. With the governor he visited many of the lead- ing families. He had an artistic temperament and a fluent pen. From what he saw and heard he wrote letters to friends in England, which were published in London in 1792 under the title Letters from America, Historical and Descrip- tive; Comprising Occurrences from 1769, to 1777 Inclusive. They cover a wide range of subjects, including the personality of the governor, his daily custom, the political disposition of the peo- ple, sumptuous fare, rude construction of houses in the back country, the elegance and culture of many of the women, marriage ceremonies, social events, the theatre, horse-racing, servants and the conditions under which they lived, industrial resources and progress, waste of timber, prices, and conditions retarding the growth of towns. In 1772 Eddis was appointed a commissioner of the loan office. He also held the office of surveyor of the customs at Annapolis.
Prospering under the governor's favor, he was anxious for the entire repeal of the Townshend revenue acts in order that cordial relations be- tween the colonists and the mother country might be restored. He did not deny that the grievances of the colonists were genuine but contended that the measures adopted to obtain redress were not justified on "principles of reason or sound pol- icy." He made an appeal for "common sense and common equity" in a communication to the Mary- land Gazette (Annapolis) which was published Feb. 16, 1775, over the signature, "A Friend to Amity," and reprinted in other colonies. On the departure of his wife and son for England, in September 1775, Eddis became one of the family of Gov. Eden, who advised him to remain as long as the proprietary government was in any degree acknowledged and continued. When summoned before the committee of observation, in June 1776, to give security for his behavior or leave the province, he declared that such security was incompatible with his oath of office. The com- mittee proposed to give him only a few weeks to remain, but the adjustment of accounts and clos- ing out of his business with the loan office occu- pied him until the last day of May 1777. License for his departure was granted by the Council of the State of Maryland, June 3, 1777. With his arrival in London, Dec. 27, the record of his
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career is lost, although his grandson, Eden Upton Eddis, was a distinguished portrait-painter.
[Nearly all that is known of Eddis is contained in his Letters from America, etc. (1792).] N D M
EDDY, DANIEL CLARKE (May 21, 1823- July 26, 1896), Baptist clergyman, author, was born in Salem, Mass., the younger of the two sons of Daniel and Martha (Honeycomb) Eddy. In 1842, on his reception into the Baptist church, he decided to become a minister. After attending the New Hampshire Theological Institution for several years, he was installed, Jan. 2, 1846, as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Lowell, Mass., which flourished under his vigorous, youthful leadership. On Apr. 9, 1846, he mar- ried Elizabeth Stone of Salem, who with two of their four children survived him. In 1850, to re- cover from an illness, he visited Europe. Years later he made two other excursions to Europe, North Africa, and Palestine. In 1849-50 he pub- lished a hortatory volume entitled The Young Man's Friend. It sold well, establishing Eddy's reputation in evangelical circles as a sage ad- viser of the young, and thereafter he gave much of his time to authorship, producing a number of devotional, missionary, ethical, and travel books. In substance his books are thin and commonplace, but he wrote pleasantly, and for many years he was one of the most popular authors in his de- nomination. Eddy was the sort of man to whom the Know-Nothing party made an irresistible appeal. He preached its principles in church and out, was deep in its conclaves, and when the Know-Nothings carried the Massachusetts elec- tion of 1854 he was one of the horde of cracker- box politicians who were swept into the General Court. In the confusion he was elected speaker of the House. In his speech of acceptance he ac- knowledged that he was ignorant of parliamen- tary law and usage, and throughout the session the fact was painfully evident. The next election retired him to private life. In 1856 he left Low- ell to become pastor of the Harvard Street Bap- tist Church in Boston. Later he ministered to Baptist congregations in Philadelphia (Taber- nacle Church), Boston, Fall River, Boston again, and Hyde Park. In 1876 he was candidate for lieutenant-governor on the Prohibition ticket. In 1881 he was called to the First Baptist Church of Brooklyn, N. Y., where he remained for the rest of his life. He was moderator for four successive terms of the Long Island Baptist Association and served as a president of the Church Extension Society. As pastor and preacher he was much esteemed. Intellectually, however, he did not rise much above his class. He was a friend of the negro and of temperance, but he denounced
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the noveis of Charles Dickens as "tending to bad- ness" and was vociferously intolerant of Catho- lics, Unitarians, and "higher critics." He died at Cottage City on Martha's Vineyard after an illness of a year.
[The Eddy Family (2nd ed., 1884) ; Vital Records of Salem, Mass., to 1850, vols. I and III (1916-24) ; Bos- ton Transcript and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 27, 1896 ; Salem Daily Gazette, July 29, 1896 ; The Exam- iner, July 30, 1896; G. H. Haynes, "A Know-Nothing Legislature," Ann. Report Am. Hist. Asso., 7596(1897), I, 175-87] G.H.G.
EDDY, HENRY TURNER (June 9, 1844- Dec. 11, 1921), mathematician, physicist, was born at Stoughton, Mass., the eldest son of Henry Eddy, a Congregational minister, physician, farm- er, and inventor, and of Sarah (Torrey) Eddy, a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary (now College) where she taught mathematics for three years. In his boyhood Henry Turner Eddy ex- celled in mental arithmetic, constructed a me- chanical model illustrating a cubic algebraic equa- tion, and was interested in birds. He was ear- nestly religious and prayerful, and lived a shel- tered life on the farm where industry was insisted upon and where sports met with no encourage- ment. While a student at Yale College, from which he was graduated in 1867, he was interest- ed in music and was a member of a church choir, the chapel choir, and the Yale Glee Club. As an undergraduate he received three first prizes and a gold medal in mathematics, a first prize in as- tronomy, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
After graduation he studied civil engineering in the Sheffield Scientific School and then, since he was not attracted by other professions and his associations were all educational, turned natural- ly to teaching. After serving one year at the University of Tennessee, he became in 1869 as- sistant professor of mathematics and civil en- gineering in Cornell University, acted for a time as head of the department, and received there the degrees of C. E. and Ph.D. In 1873 he went to Princeton as adjunct professor of mathematics and the following year joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati where he remained for sixteen years as professor of mathematics, as- tronomy, and civil engineering, being dean of the academic faculty from 1874 to l&77 and also from 1884 to 1889. The year 1879-80 was spent abroad in study. In 1890 he was the acting presi- dent and president-elect of the University. From 1 89 1 to 1894 he was president of the Rose Poly- technic Institute. He then went to the Univer- sity of Minnesota as professor of engineering and mechanics, became dean of the graduate school in 1906 and also, in 1907, head of the department of mathematics and mechanics in the college of
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engineering. After retirement in 1912 he spent several years on a study of the properties and stresses in reinforced concrete floor slabs. He contributed most by his discerning application of the methods of mathematical physics to the solu- tion of engineering problems. His published writings include : A Treatise on the Principles and Applications of Analytic Geometry (1874), New Constructions in Graphical Statics (1877), Thermodynamics (1879), Neue Konstructioncn aus der graphischen Statik (1880), Maximum Stresses under Concentrated Loads (1890), The Theory of the Flexure and Strength of Rectangu- lar Flat Plates applied to Reinforced Concrete Floor Slabs (1913), and numerous papers in scientific journals.
Eddy was married on Jan. 4, 1870, to Sebella Elizabeth Taylor of New Haven, Conn., who died Sept. 3, 192 1. They had one son and four daughters. He was a man of quiet scholarly tastes and regularly worked late into the night over abstruse problems in mathematical physics. He had a splendid physique, was courtly in bear- ing, genial in his intercourse, firm in his convic- tions, and always an inspiration to his associates who constantly sought his counsel because of his wide, accurate knowledge and sound judgment. He helped many young men in special courses outside the class room and for years was an in- defatigable leader of a group of faculty members engaged in regular advanced study. He was a member of the leading scientific and education societies of the country and from time to time held chief offices in several of them. He was a deacon of the First Congregational Church in Minneapolis, a director of St. Anthony Falls Bank, the Pillsbury House Settlement, and the Barnard-Cope Manufacturing Company.
\Yale Univ. Obit. Record, 1921-22; Minneapolis Journal, Dec. 12, 1921 ; Report of the Trigintennial Meeting . . . Class of 1867, Yale (1897) ; Supplemen- tary Record of the Class of 1867 in Yale Coll. (1912) ; a copy of a biographical article by Eddy's colleague Prof. A. E. Haynes in the Minn. Engineer, Mar. 1912 with margin notes made by Eddy himself ; letters from his brother Willard Eddy and his daughter Ruth Eddy Keyes ; personal acquaintance.] j Z.
EDDY, MARY MORSE BAKER (July 16, 1821-Dec. 3, 1910), founder of the Christian Sci- ence Church, was a product of New England. She was born on a hillside farm in New Hamp- shire; she traced her descent from English set- tlers in Massachusetts in the seventeenth cen- tury; and she found her inspiration and her first followers among people who sprang from the same racial stock as herself. She was the young- est of six children born to Mark Baker and his wife Abigail Barnard Ambrose, daughter of Na-
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thaniel Ambrose of Pembroke, all belonging to plain yeoman stock. According to tradition, Mark Baker was a shrewd, hard-working farmer, somewhat self-assertive, but honest and pious. The farm which he cultivated and on which Mary was born, lay in the village of Bow ; but he gave up the attempt to make his hillside acres produc- tive when Mary was fifteen, and moved to San- bornton Bridge (now Tilton). She is described as a delicate child, dainty and rather fragile in appearance, and subject to hysterical seizures (Georgine Milmine in McClnre's Magazine, January 1907). Just what pathological condi- tions may have caused this hysteria can now only be conjectured. That the child suffered from some nervous ailment seems clear ; but that she made the most of it when her will was crossed seems equally clear. At her best she was bright and winsome ; and as the youngest member of the family she was treated with indulgence. Inevi- tably she became an object of interest to herself and to village folk. She gave herself little airs as one to whom consideration was due ; and she rather enjoyed the distinction which delicate health gave. She was described by elderly folk who remembered her as fair of face, with wavy brown hair {Ibid.). Her expressive eyes, shaded by long lashes, reflected her moods and remained indeed throughout her life her greatest charm.
Mary's education was desultory. She said in later years that her father kept her out of school a great deal, believing her brain too large for her body. She read much, however, and even, ac- cording to her own statement, studied Hebrew, Greek and Latin under the tutelage of her brother Albert {Retrospection and Introspection, p. 10, edition of 1898). There is nothing in her writ- ings to suggest that she progressed far in the study of languages, ancient or modern ; and de- spite her statement that she was familiar with Murray's Grammar at the age of ten, she ex- hibited little regard for syntax to the end of her days. Her early letters reveal a characteristic that persisted throughout life — a disposition to see things through the prism of her emotions and to embroider the humdrum facts of everyday life. In a God-fearing household like that of Mark Baker, religious training was as much a part of the daily regimen as eating and drinking. Mary's experience differed in no wise from that of the average New England girl of the time. She was received into membership in the Tilton Congre- gational Church at the age of seventeen, after some doubts had been expressed of her soundness on doctrinal points. In New England at this time there were currents of thought that must have impinged upon her mind directly or indi-
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rectly. The transcendental movement was in full swing as she grew to womanhood. Within a few miles of her home were colonies of Shakers whose strange ideas and practises were matter of com- mon talk. Believers in Spiritualism were nu- merous in these frontier areas of New England. Mesmerism too was much discussed. The family physician of the Bakers dabbled in mesmerism and even tried the effect of mental suggestion upon Mary Baker for the relief of her hysteria {Mc- Clure's Magazine, January 1907). A sensitive girl might well have fancied that she heard mys- terious voices {Retrospection and Introspection, PP- 7-~9) and felt herself surrounded by occult forces which she could not define or understand.
In December 1843 Mary Baker married George Washington Glover, a friend of her elder brother, who had removed to Charleston, S. C, and there become a contractor and builder. After a few brief months of married life he fell a victim to "bilious fever" and died in Wilmington, N. C. {Wilmington Chronicle, July 3, 1844), leaving her dependent upon the charity of the local lodge of Masons. With their aid she returned to her old home, where she gave birth, in September 1844, to her only son George. Unhappy years followed. Ill-health, slender means, and a sense of humiliating dependence upon relatives, left her in no enviable position. For a time she taught school, with indifferent success. She had indeed no training for self-support, and more and more she gave way to hopeless inertia, living some- times with her married sister Abigail and some- times in her father's house. She soon became a chronic invalid, suffering — so her official bi- ographer states — from "a spinal weakness which caused spasmodic seizures, followed by prostra- tion which amounted to a complete nervous col- lapse" ( Sibyl Wilbur, The Life of Mary Baker Eddy, edition of 1929, p. 54). At such times her father would take her in his arms and rock her to sleep like a tired child. The practical Abigail had a huge cradle made, which the man-of-all- work or some village boy would keep in gentle motion. In 1849 Mary lost her mother and a year later saw the vacant place occupied by a step-mother. Then her four-year old son was sent away to live with her former nurse who had married and moved to North Groton, N. H., and the young widow was left to her own devices.
Release from this unhappy period of widow- hood came in 1853 when she married a relative of the second Mrs. Baker, Dr. Daniel Patterson, an itinerant dentist and homeopathist. They first took up their abode in Franklin, but soon moved to North Groton and finally to Rumney — little New Hampshire villages, where for nine years
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they almost disappear from view. That they lived in indigent circumstances is clear. Patterson was frequently absent, leaving his wife to a lonely and cheerless existence. In these long years she was often ill; and when in 1862 Patterson in- judiciously visited the battlefield of Bull Run, fell into the hands of the Confederates, and was sent to Libby Prison, she returned to her sister's home in Sanbornton Bridge, a helpless invalid. Two or three months in a sanitorium did little for her, and she determined to carry out an earlier purpose and consult Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby [<?.?'.] of Portland, Me., who had ac- quired a more than local fame by his cures. In October 1862 she presented herself at his office, a rather pitiful figure. Three weeks later, in a letter published in the Portland Courier, Nov. 7, 1862, she declared that by virtue of the great principle discovered by Dr. Quimby, who "speaks as never man spoke and heals as never man healed since Christ," she was on the highway to complete health. She returned to her sister's an ardent disciple of Quimby (letters to Quimby, printed in Horatio W. Dresser's The Quimby Manuscripts, edition of 1921, pp. 146-59). Sev- eral times during the following year, she wrote to him and received absent treatment for various small ills. The death of Quimby in 1866 caused her deep distress and evoked an affectionate trib- ute in verse, which was printed in a Lynn news- paper (Ibid., pp. 163-64).
Meantime her husband had reappeared and sne joined him in Lynn, Mass., where he opened a dentist's office; but they separated in the sum- mer of 1866, and seven years later Mrs. Patterson secured a divorce on the ground of desertion, with permission to resume her former name, Mary M. Glover. She was now (in 1866) forty- five years of age. She was in destitute circum- stances ; she had lost her father ; she was es- tranged from her sister ; she had not seen her son for many years ; she was not in good health ; she had no certain means of earning a livelihood ; and she had no friends to whom she could turn for help. Referring to these years in after life, she wrote : "I then withdrew from society about three years, — to ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind" (Retro spection and Introspection, p. 29). Glimpses here and there behind the curtain which she let fall over these years reveal that she resided in at least five different towns in eastern Massa- chusetts and found domicile in seven families in turn (affidavits and depositions printed in Mc- Clure's Magazine, April 1907). From time to time she sought a livelihood by teaching and practising what she called a new system of heal-
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ing. Her pupils and patients seem to have been chiefly among Spiritualists. Four of the seven households in which she lived professed Spiri- tualism and one of her first advertisements ap- peared in a Spiritualist publication (the Banner of Light, July 4, 1868). She was still loyal to Quimby and professed no higher purpose than to disseminate his teachings, making use of copies of one of his manuscripts which she called "The Science of Man" (for the origin of these copies see statement of George Quimby in H. W. Dress- er's The Quimby Manuscripts, pp. 437-38). She was wont to impress people by intimating that she was writing a book ; and as early as 1866 she endeavored to find a publisher for a manuscript which may have been a first draft of Science and Health (McClure's Magazine, April 1907).
On her return to Lynn in 1870, she took into partnership an engaging young man by the name of Richard Kennedy. They rented an apartment of five rooms which served for offices and lodg- ings, and he hung out his shingle as Dr. Kennedy. Despite his youth — he was barely of age — and want of credentials, he soon enjoyed a thriving practise, while his partner devoted herself to teaching and writing. It was a profitable alli- ance while it lasted. When they separated two years later, Mrs. Glover had accumulated enough capital to buy the two-and-a-half story house at 8 Broad Street which later became a veritable shrine for her followers. Her first students paid a hundred dollars for their lessons. Subsequently the tuition for twelve lessons was raised to three hundred dollars. This fee, she afterward said, greatly troubled her ; but "a strange providence" finally led her to accept it (Retrospection and In- trospection, p. 61).
Gradually Mrs. Glover lost her sense of de- pendence upon Quimby and his teachings. The manuscripts which she put into the hands of her students no longer bore his name but contained matter of her own composition (McClure's Magazine, May 1907). Little by little, with in- finite effort, in her third-floor study under the roof, she was trying to give coherent expression to the "metaphysical" system which she believed would mark an epoch in religious thought and practise. Except for her indomitable will, the task would have been beyond her powers, for she was essentially an ignorant woman — ignorant not only of the very metaphysical terms which she employed, but of some of the elementary facts of human anatomy and physiology and of the re- quirements of correct usage in composition. Yet few manuscripts have had a more remarkable in- fluence upon American religious history than that which finally found its way into print in
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1875 under the title Science and Health. Only a thousand copies were printed and these were paid for in advance by two of the author's students (Ibid.). Eternal Mind, she wrote in her first chapter, is the source of all being. There is no matter. The dualism of mind and matter is an error. What the five senses report are only be- liefs of mortal mind. "Disease is caused by mind alone" (p. 334). Science is the wisdom of the Eternal Mind revealed through Jesus Christ, who taught the power of Mind (i.e. Truth, God, Spirit) to overcome the illusions of sin, sickness, and death. Hence the appropriateness of calling metaphysical science "Christian Science." The mission of the metaphysical healer is to put an end to the illusory conflict of mind and body by dispelling the belief in disease and so bringing the patient into harmony with Truth. "The basis of all disease is error or belief ; destroy the belief and the sick will recover" (p. 418). "You can prevent or cure scrofula, hereditary disease, etc., in just the ratio you expel from mind a belief in the transmission of disease, and destroy its men- tal images" (p. 398). Moreover, "Healing the sick through mind instead of matter, enables us to heal the absent as well as the present" (p. 348). In subsequent editions, this doctrine is given more pointed application. "We must under- stand that the cause and cure of all disease rest with the mind, and address ourselves to the task of preventing the images of disease taking form in thought and effacing the forms of disease in the mind" (edition of 1883, p. 139). "If the audi- tory nerve is destroyed and the optic nerve para- lyzed, that need not occasion deafness and blind- ness, for mortal mind must say, I am deaf and blind, and believe it, to make it so" (p. 159). "Recollect it is not the body, but mortal mind, that says food is undigested, that the gastric juices, the nervous tissues, and mucous mem- brane are diseased" (p. 202). "Mind constructs the body, and with its own materials instead of matter; hence no broken bones or dislocations can occur" (p. 220).
Here is the essence of the gospel of Mary Baker Glover and the key to her system of therapeutics. That she owed much to Quimby cannot now be doubted, in the light of his published manuscripts (H. W. Dresser, The Quimby Manuscripts, edi- tion of 1921). It is highly probable, however, that she owed much also to the writings of War- ren Felt Evans \_q.v.~\, who had been a pupil of Quimby and who had published The Mental- Cure as early as 1869. It remains true, never- theless, that in spite of her literary helplessness, her tiresome reiterations, and her faulty logic, she gave a certain propulsive force to her thought
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which both Quimby and Evans lacked. The glow- ing assurance that mind working in harmony with the Eternal could triumph over bodily in- firmities often brought comfort and faith where mere logic would not convince. In later years, she and her followers laid emphasis on the es- sential unreality of evil, holding that even sin was primarily wrong thinking (article on "Chris- tian Science" by C. B. Smith in The Encyclo- pedia Americana, VI, 613). Christian Science thus appeared as a spiritually educative force, "interpreting and demonstrating the divine Prin- ciple and rule of universal harmony" (Mrs. Eddy, Rudimcntal Divine Science). In this as- pect it made a strong appeal to those who felt the need of a sustaining faith in eternal goodness. It is significant of her compelling personality that Mrs. Glover could always find men and women to become willing servitors in her little court, yet no queen could have been more arbi- trary or more difficult to serve. She soon found a substitute for Kennedy in Daniel H. Spofford, who became her ardent admirer and devoted disciple and her first sales-manager. On New Year's Day 1877, Mrs. Glover startled Spofford and her other followers by marrying a new re- cruit, Asa Gilbert Eddy. She was then in her fifty-sixth year. Eddy was a simple soul of humble origin, capable of a sort of animal-like devotion, but possessed of limited intelligence. Even his bride wrote of his "latent" noble quali- ties of mind and heart (McClure's Magazine, July 1907). Within a year Spofford went into exile in disgrace, for the Christian Scientists' Association notified him that he had been ex- pelled for "immorality." What Mrs. Eddy meant by immorality is best explained by a passage in the second edition ( 1878) of Science and Health. This rare "Noah's Ark" edition, of which only two hundred copies were hastily printed, con- sisted of two chapters from the first edition and of three new chapters, of which that on mesmer- ism is most significant. In it the author gave public utterance for the first time to that belief in mental malpractise which offers such a strange contrast to her fundamental tenets. She had come firmly to believe in malicious animal mag- netism ("M.A.M."), a mental influence which evil-minded persons could exert, to produce dis- ease or misfortune in others. The doctrine had particular application to Spofford and Kennedy, who, she believed, possessed the power to do her and her cause irreparable harm. Kennedy be- came in her overwrought imagination a "mental assassin" capable of the darkest crimes. Her prose style never rose to greater heights than in the chapter on "Demonology," in the third edi-
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tion (1881) of Science and Health, when she denounced "this Nero of today." To counteract this baleful influence she devised a method of treatment which became a regular routine for her household in later years. Singly or in groups the inmates would set their minds upon warding off the evil that she vaguely apprehended or specifically mentioned. (These "watches" are de- scribed in minute detail by Adam H. Dickey in his Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy, 1927, pp. 45, 107, 123-24.)
The years of Mrs. Eddy's married life with her third husband can hardly be described as happy, nor her mental outlook as generous and charitable. Between 1877 and 1879 she was in- volved in several litigations both as plaintiff and defendant. Three times in 1878 she brought suit to recover funds which she alleged had been wrongfully withheld. Two of these were decided against her. She was sued by a former student and compelled to pay the referee's award for secretarial and other services rendered by this student. She countenanced at least the strange suit brought by another student against Spof- ford for injuries sustained from Spofford's prac- tise of malicious magnetism. This suit never came to trial (McClure's Magazine, May, July 1907). When Asa Eddy's health began to fail, his wife was certain that he was also a victim of malicious animal magnetism. His condition be- came so serious after their removal to Boston, however, that, not trusting to her own therapy, she called in a physician, who reported the patient as suffering from an organic disease of the heart. On June 3, 1882, Asa Eddy died of this malady, according to an autopsy performed by this same physician, at Mrs. Eddy's request. In an inter- view published in the Boston Post, June 5, 1882, however, she declared that her husband had died of "mesmeric poisoning" mentally administered by one of her former students, "a malprac- tioner" who had been heard to say that "he would follow us to the grave." Had she herself treated her husband in time, she averred, she could have saved his life ; but "after a certain amount of the mesmeric poison has been administered it can- not be averted." This malpractitioner was prob- ably Edward J. Arens, whom Asa Eddy had denounced in a preface to the third edition of Science and Health as "a certain man" who was publishing parts of the book in a pamphlet of his own. In 1883 Mrs. Eddy brought action against Arens for infringing her copyright, and won her case.
Though Mrs. Eddy did not at first desire an organization to support the new faith (Science and Health, 1875, PP- 166-67), she yielded to
practical exigencies. The informal group of stu- dents who called themselves Christian Scientists in 1875 formed "The Christian Scientists' Asso- ciation" in 1876; and with her active support they sought and secured a charter as "The Church of Christ, Scientist," Aug. 23, 1879. For many years the membership was small, so small that the Lynn meetings were held in private houses, and it was weakened in October 1881 by the withdrawal of eight prominent leaders who stated that they could no longer follow Mrs. Eddy, because of her "frequent ebullitions of temper, love of money, and the appearance of hy- pocrisy" (McClure's Magazine, August 1907). Two others withdrew because they "could no longer entertain the subject of mesmerism," which seemed to form the main theme of Mrs. Eddy's Sunday talks. Though the faithful rem- nant indignantly repudiated these charges, Mrs. Eddy found herself a prophet without honor in Lynn and determined to take up her residence in Boston. She had already (1881) secured a charter for another organization, the Massa- chusetts Metaphysical College, which was to be the training school for practitioners. When she and her husband took up their abode at 569 Co- lumbus Avenue, in the spring of 1882, the college moved with them. In the nine years of its exist- ence, it had no other regular instructor but Mrs. Eddy, and for a short time, her adopted son.
On Apr. 14, 1883, appeared the first number of the Journal of Christian Science, a small eight- page publication, with Mary B. Glover Eddy as editor. It not only gave her desire to write free rein, but it carried her influence beyond the con- fines of New England. It reveals many facets of her interesting personality, for it printed not only her editorials, sermons, and Bible lessons, but her verses, her answers to questions, her ac- knowledgments of personal gifts, and her caustic replies to critics. But she found the burden heavier than she anticipated, and after a year shifted the responsibility to a succession of un- happy editors, while never allowing control to pass out of her hands. She continued to contrib- ute to its columns and many of her contributions were afterward printed with substantial changes in her Miscellaneous Writings (1896). These were not always original productions. She took freely from printed sources without acknowl- edgment whatever she needed to give pith and point to her thought (The Christian Science Watchman, vol. V, 1929. See also Appendix B in E. F. Dakin, Mrs. Eddy, ed. of 1930). The "Healing Department" of the Journal with its reports of alleged cures undoubtedly won many recruits. Institutes and academies sprang up
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which became feeders for the Metaphysical Col- lege ; and every graduate with a diploma became in turn a practitioner and a missionary. In Jan- uary 1886 the National Christian Science Asso- ciation was formed and in February a general convention was held in New York.
In this same year appeared a new edition of Science and Health. Never content with her handiwork Mrs. Eddy published edition after edi- tion, with various and sundry alterations. This sixteenth edition differed from preceding revi- sions, however, not merely in general outward form — it was printed in one volume instead of two — but in literary style and content. It had been prepared by Rev. James Henry Wiggin, formerly a Unitarian minister and then employed as literary adviser and editor by the University Press at Cambridge. After her contacts with people of cultivation, Mrs. Eddy had become somewhat conscious of her literary deficiencies ; and she never exhibited greater shrewdness than when she brought her manuscript to Wiggin for final revision (Livingston Wright, How Rev. Wiggin Rewrote Mrs. Eddy's Book, n.d., re- printed from the New York World, Nov. 4, 1906). What Wiggin did was not merely "to defend my grammatical construction," as Mrs. Eddy afterward alleged (New York American, Nov. 22, 1906), but to rewrite large portions of the book as only a skilful literary editor could, giving clarity to the thought so far as it could be understood, excising irrelevant matter, and reducing vague forms of expression to simple, idiomatic language. Yet Mrs. Eddy continued to make changes from time to time, and the changes were always a source of profit, for the faithful were always warned to use the latest edition. Her yearly royalties, never less than a dollar a volume, amounted to nearly $19,000 in 1895 (McClure's Magazine, April 1908), and could not have fallen short of $50,000 by 1900. In January 1888, the Journal announced that Mrs. Eddy had moved into her new house at 385 Commonwealth Avenue, which had been pur- chased for $40,000.
Already letters printed in the Journal and un- signed editorials were suggesting that Mrs. Eddy was "God-sent to the world as much as any char- acter of Sacred Writ" and that perhaps it was left to her to supplement the New Testament and explain the miracles of Jesus. "We are witness- ing," said one enthusiastic follower, "the trans- fer of the Gospel from male to female trust" (ser- mon reprinted in the Journal, April 1889). When Mrs. Eddy appeared in person to address the delegates at the third annual convention of the national association at Chicago June 13, li
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the entire audience rose to greet her; and after she had finished, scores of believers who had been cured of disease or hoped to be, pressed forward so that they might perchance touch the hem of her garment (letter to the Boston Travel- ler, printed in McClure's Magazine, February 1908). She might well have believed that her apotheosis had come.
Signs of dissent in the Boston organization, however, were not wanting. Julius A. Dresser, who had also sat at the feet of Quimby, now point- ed out with damaging particularity the indebt- edness of Mrs. Eddy to the doctor (The True History of Mental Science, 1887) . Then a Chris- tian Science practitioner who had attended her own daughter in child-birth was prosecuted for the death of the mother and child; and Mrs. Eddy, thoroughly alarmed, tried to clear her skirts by having the "Committee on Publication" state in a public letter (Boston Herald, Apr. 29, 1888), that while the woman had attended her course in obstetrics at the Metaphysical College for a term, she was not fitted to be an accoucheur (sic). The Christian Science Association, how- ever, came to the defense of the unhappy woman and she was acquitted. These and other incidents shook the faith of some of the Boston Scientists and thirty-six dissenters withdrew from the or- ganization.
Soon after the death of Asa Eddy, there en- tered into the employ of his widow, Cal . in A. Frye, a young machinist from Lawrence, Mass., who had become a Christian Scientist. Of all her many followers he is in many ways the most re- markable. From 1882 until her death, he served her as steward, secretary, bookkeeper, and foot- man. In July 1888, another individual entered her household who was regarded with some jeal- ousy by the faithful Frye. This was Dr. Ebenezer Johnson Foster, a homeopathic physician of Waterbury, Vt., who had been a student in the Metaphysical College. In November, though he was forty-one years of age, he was formally adopted as a son, taking the name of Ebenezer J. Foster Eddy. "Mother Eddy" was now sixty- eight and in sore need of the sustaining strength of youth. She was tired of students, tired of tur- moil, tired of the endless struggle against mali- cious animal magnetism. In the following spring she transferred her residence to Concord, N. H. "Our dear Mother in God," announced the Jour- nal (May 1889), "withdraws herself from our midst and goes up into the Mount for higher communings"; and Mother Eddy further forti- fied her retreat by issuing Seven Fixed Rules, forbidding the faithful to consult her "verbally or through letters" on matters public or private.
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A rude awakening, however, awaited those who fancied that she had withdrawn from active con- trol of the church. It was in these years of re- tirement that she built the church organization which, next to Science and Health, is her most enduring monument.
By a much-criticized financial transaction in 1888, Mrs. Eddy had secured ownership of the lot on Falmouth Street, Boston, which had been ac- quired as a site for the church by individual gifts (McClure's Magazine, March 1908). On Sep- tember 1, 1892, she conveyed this lot to four trustees, constituting them a perpetual body to be known as the Christian Science Board of Di- rectors, with power to fill vacancies (Deed of Trust, Church Manual, 1895). Within five years this board was to build a church edifice costing not less than $50,000 and to maintain regular Christian Science services therein. If the board failed to carry out the terms of the deed, title was to revert to Mary Baker G. Eddy, her heirs and assigns. On Sept. 23, 1892, twelve loyal followers whom she had selected established The First Church of Christ, Scientist, by adopting the rules and by-laws which, she declared, were "im- pelled by a power not one's own." These twelve with subsequent additions were known as "First Members" and passed upon all candidates for ad- mission. Membership in branch churches did not confer ipso facto membership in The Mother Church, nor for that matter did previous mem- bership in the Boston church. There was only one Mother Church. It was officially "The" Mother Church. Branch churches might take the title of First Church of Christ, Scientist, or Second Church of Christ, Scientist, but might not use the article "The" (Art. 12 of By-laws, Church Manual, 1895). Here, then, was a na- tional organization made to hand, deriving its powers, its body of doctrine, and its property from a single source.
Mrs. Eddy masked her autocratic authority under the gentle title "Pastor Emeritus" ; but she could no more refrain from consolidating her authority by changes in the Church Manual than she could desist from revising Science and Health. The subsequent history of the Mother Church in her lifetime is written in the steadily expanding by-laws which she dictated. Two other institutions attest her business sagacity : the board of lectureship and the committee on pub- lication. Members of the first were charged with the duty of defending Christian Science against critics and of bearing testimony to the facts pertaining to the life of the Pastor Emeri- tus. The committee on publication, consisting of one man responsible to the Board of Directors
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and through it to Mrs. Eddy, was to correct false newspaper articles, and, if need be, bring pres- sure to bear upon editors who did not yield readily to suggestion. Such a "committee" was to be named in every state of the Union (Dakin's Mrs. Eddy, 1929, pp. 259-72, 392-95, contains an excellent account of these institutions).
Whatever may have been Mrs. Eddy's motives for retiring to Concord, it proved to be one of the most sagacious moves in her career. In these long years of absence from the Mother Church — she visited Boston only four times in nineteen years — she escaped the daily contacts with her followers which often brought a degree of dis- illusionment to them. In retirement she acquired a reputation for saintliness which added im- measurably to her influence. To those who saw her daily, however, she was no saint, but a frail elderly woman pursued by delusions of persecu- tion, forever talking about malicious animal magnetism, and beset by strange superstitions. She was indeed a curiously complex personality, capable of moments of religious exaltation, but capable also of conduct that was unlovely and ruthless, when her will-to-power was crossed. Though she could be gentle and gracious, she cannot fairly be described as unselfish or gen- erous. She often berated Frye like a common scold (E. F. Dakin, Mrs. Eddy, ed. of 1930, Appendix A). She evinced no real affection for her son, though she kept up an irregular corre- spondence with him, had his children vaccinated at her expense, and loaned him considerable sums of money. His illiteracy worried her. "I am even yet too proud to have you come among my society," she wrote in 1898 (N. Y. World, Mar. 11, 1907). She crushed possible rivals ruthless- ly; and in the case of Mrs. Josephine Woodbury she had to meet a libel suit for a scorching mes- sage to the Church on "the Babylonish woman." Only one witness would testify, however, that this outburst was directed specifically against Mrs. Woodbury, who lost her case (see Dakin, Mrs. Eddy, Ch. XXII).
Her nocturnal paroxysms, as Foster Eddy called her strange seizures, increased in fre- quency. At such times either Frye or Foster Eddy would administer a morphine tablet or a physician would be called in to administer a hypodermic (Frye diary, May 3, 4, 1903). From these attacks, nevertheless, she would rise with amazing energy, her mind never more on the alert. Her intimates remarked that some of her most important coups followed these seizures. It was out of this tragic experience that another "revelation" came. In the edition of Science and Health published in 1905 appeared for the first
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time the significant statement (p. 464), that, whenever pain too violent for mental treatment occurs, a Scientist may call a surgeon to ad- minister a hypodermic injection. When the pain has ceased, he should "handle his own case men- tally." In 1896, after Foster Eddy had been dis- missed, Frye became her main support, not only ministering to her personal needs, but acting as confidential secretary, steward, and financial agent. As she grew more feeble with advancing years and a serious disease, she became almost a mythical figure, so that even her directors rare- ly saw her. Rumors spread that she was in the power of Frye and designing men who were di- verting her income to their own use. It was even said that she was dead and that another woman rode behind the drawn curtains of her carriage.
It was these rumors that moved the New York World and other newspapers to ascertain the true state of things at Pleasant View. With amazing courage Mrs. Eddy yielded to their im- portunities, granted an interview, and faced nine reporters on Oct. 30, 1906 — a shrinking, pathetic figure. Not satisfied with this achievement, the World set on foot the inquiries which eventuated in the suit brought by the "Next Friends" — her son and his daughter and a nephew — to secure the appointment of a receiver of her properties, alleging that she was mentally incapable of man- aging her affairs and that she was under the con- trol of designing men, naming the chief officials of the church. Thereupon Gen. Frank S. Street- er, counsel for Mrs. Eddy, advised her to exe- cute a deed of trust, placing all her assets in the hands of three trustees. At once Senator William E. Chandler, counsel for the plaintiffs, challenged the competence of Mrs. Eddy to create such a trusteeship. Three masters appointed by the court then examined her to test her sanity, but there the prosecution halted and the defendants settled out of court by liberal financial provisions for the heirs, including Foster Eddy.
These sensational news items appeared in the press just at a time when McClnre's Magazine was publishing the biography by Georgine Mil- mine. Greatly perturbed, Mrs. Eddy determined that the church should have a trustworthy news- paper of its own ; and eventually she gave her ap- proval of an official biography. The founding of The Christian Science Monitor and the publica- tion of Mrs. Sibyl Wilbur O'Brien's Life of Mary Baker Eddy followed. One other decision she made : she would leave the place where she had been humiliated and where "M.A.M." was so actively at work. On Sunday, Jan. 28, 1908, pre- ceded by a pilot locomotive for safety's sake, and accompanied by a physician, she took train for
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Chestnut Hill, where a spacious mansion had been prepared for her. From her carriage she was carried, a mere shadow of her former self, in the arms of a stalwart coachman to an up- stairs room in her last domicile (private infor- mation).
Her days were now numbered and she knew it (MS. letter to Archibald McLelland, Aug. 18, 1908). For some years she had suffered intense- ly from a fatal disease, probably gall-stones, and she had sought relief from several Concord phy- sicians at various times (printed statement of A. A. Beauchamp and J. V. Dittemore, Oct. 9, 1928 ; Frye diary, May 3, 1903). As the disease pro- gressed, only hypodermic injections of morphine would relieve her agony. At Chestnut Hill sev- eral Christian Scientists were instructed how to give hypodermics (E. F. Dakin, Mrs. Eddy, ed. of 1930, p. 514 note), and she frequently had the services of a regular physician (Frye diary, Aug. 3, 1909). There were times when the pain became unbearable and the Chestnut Hill man- sion little better than a "mad-house" (Dickey, Memoirs, passim; Frye's diary; the testimony of inmates). In her rational moments Mrs. Eddy was harassed by fears of the growing pres- tige of Mrs. Augusta Stetson \_q.v.~\ in New York. Not less concerned were the directors of the Mother Church to know who would succeed the Pastor Emeritus whose consent was still necessary to every by-law. Mrs. Stetson finally went the way of every rival. At a word from Mrs. Eddy she was expelled from the Mother Church. But the question of succession remain- ed unanswered, when a year later the body of the Pastor Emeritus was borne to its last resting place at Mount Auburn. Three notable achieve- ments survived her : a religious organization with nearly one hundred thousand members, a book of which about four hundred thousand cop- ies had been sold, and an estate appraised at more than two and a half million dollars.
[The most useful source of information in print is still the series of articles by Georgine Milmine in Mc- Clnre's Magazine, 1907-08: "Mary Baker G. Eddy: the Story of her Life and the History of Christian Sci- ence." Though sharply critical of Mrs. Eddy, they con- tain invaluable documentary maferial. The papers of William E. Chandler in the custody of the New Hamp- shire Historical Society yield interesting information about the origin and course of the Next Friends' suit. The writer has also been allowed to examine the unique collection of Mr. John V. Dittemore, which contains many unpublished letters of Mrs. Eddy and large por- tions of the diary of Calvin Frye for the last few years of her life. Her own reminiscences and her official biography have little historical value except as they reveal the impression which Mrs. Eddy desired to make upon her readers. The most impartial and scholarly biography is Edwin F. Dakin's Mrs. Eddy (1929), which contains a bibliography of her writings and of the controversial literature about her and her work. A new edition (1930) has additional footnotes and two
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valuable appendices, one of which contains extracts from the Frye diary.] A.J.
EDDY, THOMAS (Sept. 5, 1758-Sept. 16, 1827), reformer, was the son of James and Mary (Darragh) Eddy of Ireland, who had been Pres- byterians in early life, but had joined the Society of Friends before removing to Philadelphia. In this city Thomas Eddy was born. He was ap- parently influenced even in early youth to serious ideas and unselfish purposes by the religious at- mosphere of his home and especially by his asso- ciation with William Savery, who later became a famous Quaker preacher. His family was of Tory sympathies and Eddy felt the "bitter spirit of persecution" shown by the "Whigs" in Phila- delphia after the war. On Mar. 20, 1782, he mar- ried Hannah Hartshorne. After experiencing business reverses in various localities he settled in New York City and became successful as an insurance broker. "About 1792," he writes, "the public debt of the United States was funded ; this afforded an opportunity for people to speculate in the public funds. In this business I made a good deal of money." He was also successful as an insurance underwriter, and was soon free to devote himself largely to philanthropic activities. His greatest work as a humanitarian was in the field of prison reform. He became imbued with the progressive ideas of Beccaria, Montes- quieu, William Penn, and John Howard. In 1796 he and Gen. Philip John Schuyler journeyed to Philadelphia and examined carefully the peni- tentiary there (the Walnut Street jail), which then embodied advanced ideas. Eddy and his friends persuaded the New York legislature to authorize two similar penitentiaries in New York. Only one was built at the time, the so- called "Newgate Prison," in Greenwich Village. Thomas Eddy helped superintend the building operations and then acted for several years as in- spector and agent of the penitentiary. This prison had no single cells, however, and Eddy soon be- came convinced that the single-cell system, es- pecially for hardened criminals, was desirable. It had been tried in a small way in England, and in Philadelphia, and Thomas Eddy, by his ardent advocacy of it, aided in its further ex- tension. For more than twenty-five years he devoted himself unsparingly to the reform of prisons and of the penal code in New York. His Account of the State Prison or Penitentiary House in the City of New York ( 1801 ) is an im- portant document in the history of prison reform. His last great service in this field was to defend and justify the main features of his penitentiary system in 1825 when it was being sharply criti- cized because of lax administration.
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Eddy was apparently interested in or actively associated with most of the progressive move- ments of his day. He helped DeWitt Clinton initiate and carry through the project of the Erie Canal, and was active in the New York Corre- sponding Association for the Promotion of In- ternal Improvement. In 1810 he published "Ob- servations on Canal Navigation" in the American Medical and Philosophical Register (N. Y.). He was an active supporter of the New York Hos- pital and helped to found the Bloomingdale Asy- lum for the Insane, and wrote Hints for Intro- ducing an Improved Method of Treating the Insane in the Asylum, published in 18 15. He opposed imprisonment for debt. In 1805 he helped establish a free school for poor children in New York City, which was one of the impor- tant steps toward a public school system. He helped found the House of Refuge, the New York Savings Bank, and the New York Bible Society. He was an anti-slavery advocate, and he served on Quaker committees to visit and aid the Amer- ican Indians. Yet prison reform was his great life-work, and because of his labors in that move- ment he was sometimes called by his contempo- raries, "The John Howard of America."
[S. L. Knapp, The Life of Thomas Eddy (1834), an unorganized collection of narrative and eulogy by the author and others, and reprints of the autobiography, correspondence, and reform writings of Eddy ; H. E. Barnes, The Repression of Crime (1926); W. W. Campbell, Life\ and Writings of DeWitt Clinton (1849) ! Letter of John W. Francis (on Eddy) in N. Y. Pub. Lib. ; brief biographical sketches in the N. Y . Mirror, Mar. 8, 1834; Freeman Hunt, Lives of Amer- ican Merchants (1858), I, 329-43.] R. W. K.
EDEBOHLS, GEORGE MICHAEL (May 8, 1853-Aug. 8, 1908), surgeon, was the son of German immigrants, Henry and Catherine (Brull) Edebohls, who came to the United States about 1843. His father, a Hanoverian, was a dairyman in that part of Manhattan known as "Little Germany." As a boy Edebohls attended De La Salle Institute and St. Francis Xavier's College, from which he went to St. John's Col- lege, Fordham, N. Y., graduating B.A. in 1871. He then studied medicine at the College of Phy- sicians and Surgeons of Columbia College (M.D. 1875), and for nearly five years thereafter served as a house officer in St. Francis' Hospital, New York City, where he received a wide training and came into close contact with the poor of the East Side. In 1880 he went to Europe intending to study diseases of the eye and ear. He evi- dently abandoned this idea and occupied his time by filling in the gaps in his theoretical knowledge. On his return he engaged in general practise, but with only moderate success. He then turned his attention to gynecology and in 1887 was ap-
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pointed gynecologist to St. Francis' Hospital. Possessing a cool head, dextrous fingers and an excellent knowledge of anatomy, he soon earned a reputation as a gynecologist of sound judgment. His minor contributions to medicine were techni- cal. He invented an operating table, a speculum, leg holders, needle holders and other devices. His name will go down to posterity, however, as the originator of Edebohls's operation for Bright's disease, which consisted in exposing the diseased kidneys and stripping off their fibrous coverings or capsules. Though the practise received much unfavorable comment at the time and is now sel- dom used, the idea underlying it was original and theoretically plausible.
Edebohls's contemporaries held him in high esteem both as a surgeon and as a man. He was tall and erect, grave, dignified and polite, withal somewhat retiring and excessively modest. He disliked controversy, feeling that whatever he contributed to the advance of the medicine of his day should stand or fall on its merits. He was an excellent teacher, presenting his subject clear- ly and simply. He also wrote well, and in addi- tion to his Surgical Treatment of Bright's Dis- ease (1904) contributed freely to the medical lit- erature of his day. On Sept. 19, 1882, he mar- ried Barbara Leyendecker, by whom he had sev- eral children. While visiting his married daugh- ter in Mexico in 1907 he, with his wife and two sons, contracted typhus fever, of which his eldest son died. The disease is said to have left him in a weakened condition. He died in 1908 of Hodg- kin's disease, and was buried at Blauvelt, N. Y., where his father had owned a farm when he was a boy.
[Who's Who in America, 1908-09 ; H. A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Diet, of Am. Medic. Biog. ( 1928) ; Am. Jour, of Obstetrics, May 1909; Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, vol. XXXIV, 1908, p. i860.] G. B.
EDEN, CHARLES (1673-Mar. 26, 1722), gov- ernor of North Carolina under the Lords Pro- prietors, 1714-22, used the armorial bearings of the family of Eden of the county palatine of Dur- ham in the North of England. Of the same con- nection was Sir Robert Eden \_q.v.~\, last Royal governor of Maryland. Charles Eden's appoint- ment to the governorship received the approval of Queen Anne at a meeting of the Royal Coun- cil on May 18, 1713. It was a year, however, be- fore he came to America, where he was sworn in before the North Carolina Provincial Council "holden at ye house of Capt. John Hecklefield in Little River on ff riday the 28th day of May, Ano. Dom. 1 7 14." Gov. Eden was deeply interested in the religious development of the province, and on Jan. 3, 1715, was chosen a vestryman of "the
Eastern Parish of Chowan Precinct" (still exist- ing under the name of St. Paul's Parish) on Queen Anne's Creek. Under the constitution or "Grand Model" framed for the government of Carolina by John Locke, several grades of soci- ety were created, the highest title of nobility be- ing "Landgrave." At a meeting of the Lords Proprietors held at St. James's Palace on Feb. 19, 1718, Eden was made a landgrave, being the last person ever to receive that title. His reputa- tion suffered somewhat at one time during his ad- ministration from his reported leniency toward the ex-pirate Edward Teach, commonly known as "Black Beard," who had accepted the King's par- don in 1717, but had not, it was believed, entirely discontinued his lawless practises. Enemies of the governor even hinted that he had shared in some of the pirate's questionably gotten gains. Eden, however, presented before the Council a complete story of his dealings with Teach, and ultimately received their approbation. He mar- ried Mrs. Penelope Golland, a widow, but left no children. In the eighth year of his governorship he died and was buried at Eden House, his seat in Bertie County. Shortly after his death the name of the town of Queen Anne's Creek was changed to Edenton in his honor. In 1889 his re- mains, those of "Penelope Eden, his virtuous Consort," and the original monument over them both were removed to the burial ground of St. Paul's Church in that place. His original epi- taph, which is in a fine state of preservation, de- clares that he "governed the province eight years to ye greatest satisfaction of ye Lords Proprie- tors & ye ease & happyness of ye people. He brought ye country into a flourishing Condition & died much lamented march ye 26, 1722, setatis 49-"
[Colonial Records of N. C, vol. II, pp. 129, 150, 207— 08, and 256 ; Edward McCrady, The Hist, of S. C. Under the Proprietary Govt., 1670- 1 7 19 (1897), p. 718 ; sketches by M. DeL. Haywood in S. A. Ashe, Biog. Hist, of N. C, vol. I (1905), and in N. C. Booklet, Dec. 1903 (repr. in R. A. Eden, Hist. Notes of the Eden Family, London, 1907) ; F. X. Martin, Hist, of N. C. from the Earliest Period (1829), vol. I; Hugh Wil- liamson, Hist, of N. C. (1812), vol. II ; J. H. Wheeler, Hist. Sketches of N. C. from 1584 to 18 51 (1851).]
M.DeL.H.
EDEN, ROBERT (Sept. 14, 1741-Sept. 2, 1784), colonial governor, was descended from a prominent family of northern England, the head of which for three generations had borne the title of baronet. His father, Robert, and his grand- father, John, sat in Parliament for Durham. His father married Mary, daughter of William Davison, and to them were born eight sons and three daughters. Four of the sons had notable careers. Robert, the second son, was born in
I
Eden
Durham. Nothing is known of his school days except that he became proficient in Latin and learned to write fluently. His father died when the boy was not quite fourteen years of age and less than two years later he was commissioned as lieutenant fireworker in the Royal Regiment of Artillery. He served two years in Germany during the Seven Years' War, first as ensign and later as lieutenant and captain, in the Coldstream Guards. He married, in 1765, Caroline Calvert, who was a sister of Lord Baltimore, proprietor of Maryland, and in 1768 he was commissioned governor of that province.
With his wife and two infant sons, Eden ar- rived at Annapolis on June 5, 1769. His first im- portant act as governor was to prorogue the Gen- eral Assembly to prevent it from voicing a pro- test against the passage by Parliament of the Townshend revenue acts. In his first address to the Assembly he recommended more adequate provision for education, but during his entire ad- ministration he was engaged chiefly as a diplo- matist, in the dispute between the two houses of the Assembly over the right to regulate the fees of officers, and in dealing with relations between the colonies and with the mother country during the outbreak of the Revolution. For the difficult situation which confronted him he was admi- rably qualified by integrity, prudence, affability, and large capacity for making friends among the gentry, enhanced by his fondness for horses and racing. Fees were regulated by his proclamation until the proprietary government ceased to func- tion. In his letters to England he was an apolo- gist for the people of the province. He mani- fested sympathy with their point of view but deprecated their militant methods and intem- perate zeal. "It has ever been my endeavor," he wrote Lord Dartmouth, "by the most sooth- ing measures I could safely use, and yielding to storm, when I could not resist it, to preserve some hold of the helm of government, that I might steer as long as should be possible, clear of those shoals which all here must, sooner or later, I fear, get shipwrecked upon." In April 1776, an inter- cepted letter from Lord George Germain gave rise to suspicion that Eden was an enemy of the colonists. It was sent through irregular and im- proper channels to the Continental Congress and that body passed a resolution requesting the Maryland Council of Safety to arrest the gov- ernor. Because the suspicion was considered groundless the Council did not do so, but in the following month, on account of orders he had received requiring him to give facility and as- sistance to British armament, Eden was request- ed to quit the province. He accordingly left An-
Edes
napolis, June 26, 1776, on a British warship and after a delay of some weeks in the Chesapeake Bay returned to England aboard another vessel. His conduct in Maryland and the judicious man- ner of his leaving were highly commended and he was created a baronet, Sept. 10, 1776, as a reward for faithful service. Immediately after the close of the war he returned to Maryland to recover some property and died at Annapolis, in 1784.
[For source of material relative to Eden's adminis- tration see Archives of Md., and Wm. Eddis, Letters from America (1792). The only important secondary source is B. C. Steiner, "Life and Administration of Sir Robert Eden," Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies in Hist, and Pol. Science, 16 ser., nos. 7-9 (1898).] N.D.M.
EDES, BENJAMIN (Oct. 14, 1732-Dec. 11, 1803), journalist, was one of the most influential and active newspaper editors and political writers of the Revolutionary period. He was born in Charlestown, Mass., the son of Peter and Esther (Hall) Edes. His great-grandfather, John Edes, came over from England about 1674. After re- ceiving a meager education in the schools of Charlestown or Boston, he founded, on Apr. 7, 1755, in partnership with John Gill, the Boston Gazette and Country Journal, the third paper of its name in that city. Both Edes and Gill were described as "men of bold and fearless hearts." Their paper became the organ of the Patriots, who gave it their undivided support and encour- agement. Unwavering in its opposition to the British policy, it fought the political battles of the day continuously in its columns, especially those against the Stamp Act, the tea tax, and the Boston Port Bill. Its office became the re- sort of the leading opponents of King George III, many of whom contributed to its pages. Report says that the members of the Boston Tea Party assembled at Edes's house on the afternoon of Dec. 16, 1773, later using the Gazette office at the corner of Court St. and Franklin Ave. to as- sume their Indian disguise. The temper and spirit of the time, largely voiced through Edes's own writings, are revealed during a long period of years in the files of the Gazette. It was de- scribed by Lieut.-Gov. Andrew Oliver in a letter from England as "that infamous paper," and the arrest of both Edes and Gill as instigators of sedi- tion was advised by Sir Francis Bernard, the governor of the colony. During the siege of Boston, Edes secretly conveyed his press and types into the suburbs of Boston and set up his printing office in Watertown.
After the dissolution of his partnership with Gill in 1775, Edes and his two sons, Benjamin and Peter, continued the paper until 1794, when the father took over the business alone. The pop-
J7
Edes
ularity of the Gazette waned during the years fol- lowing the Revolution, its patriotic mission being apparently completed and all of Edes's efforts to obtain the financial aid of his friends proved un- availing. Its publication was discontinued on Sept. 17, 1798, after a remarkably long and not- able career of over forty-three years. He con- tinued his printing business for a short time thereafter, but with little success. Largely be- cause of the depreciation of paper currency, he lost the competency he had acquired before the Revolution, his last years being marked by ill health and poverty. His wife was Martha Starr, to whom he was married about 1754.
[Jos. T. Buckingham, Specimens of Newspaper Lit- erature, with Personal Memoirs, Anecdotes, and Remi- niscences (1850), vol. I; Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the U. S. from 1690 to 1872 (1873) ; Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial Hist, of Boston, 1630-1880, vols. II, III (1881-82) ; Jas. M. Lee, Hist, of Am. Journalism (1923); New-Eng. Hist, and Gcneal. Reg., vol. XVI (1862), 16.] E.F.E.
EDES, ROBERT THAXTER (Sept. 23, 1838- Jan. 12, 1923), physician, author, was born at Eastport, Me., the son of Richard Sullivan Edes, a Unitarian clergyman, and Mary (Cushing) Edes. He came of English ancestors, being de- scended from John Edes who settled in Massa- chusetts about 1674. He graduated from Har- vard College in 1858 and from the Harvard Medi- cal School in 1 86 1. After a short period of hos- pital service, he was appointed an acting assistant surgeon in the United States navy, Sept. 30, 1861. He resigned May 31, 1865, after serving as medi- cal officer on a mortar flotilla on the Mississippi River below New Orleans and in Pensacola Bay, in addition to doing duty in various hospital posts. Twice promoted, he finally attained the rank of passed assistant surgeon at the age of twenty-seven.
Returning to Boston, he began to practise medicine and to teach in the Harvard Medical School and at the Boston City Hospital. His first publication was a prize essay on The Part Taken by Nature and Time in the Cure of Disease ( 1868). In 1871 he was appointed assistant pro- fessor, and in 1875 professor, of materia medica, and in 1884 Jackson Professor of Clinical Medi- cine, in the Harvard Medical School. He is said to have been a scholarly and erudite instructor, his differential diagnoses being models of accu- racy and thoroughness. In 1885 he founded, with Delafield, Osier, Pepper, and others, the Asso- ciation of American Physicians. A year later he resigned from the Harvard Medical School be- cause of illness in his family, and went to Wash- ington, D. C, where he remained for five years ; during this period he wrote his Text-Book of
Edg
ar
Therapeutics and Materia Medica ( 1887), in ad- dition to lecturing at Columbian and Georgetown universities. He then became superintendent of the Adams Nervine Asylum in Boston, a po- sition which he held for six years. Here he wrote The Story of Rodman Heath; or, Mug- wumps by one of them (1894), an anonymous novel, based partly on his Civil War experiences. The next year he delivered the Shattuck lecture before the Massachusetts Medical Society on "The New England Invalid," a lecture which reviewed his experiences at the Adams Nervine Asylum and "foreshadowed with extraordinary perspicacity the modern trend in the treatment of the psychoneuroses" (Taylor, post). After an unsuccessful attempt to establish a small pri- vate sanatorium for patients with nervous dis- eases, Edes retired from practise. The death of his son at the age of thirty-two, in 1901, a young man of exceptional promise in medicine, was a blow from which Edes never recovered. He con- tinued to write, however, for the daily papers of Springfield, Mass. His last publication, Parson Gay's Three Sermons; or Saint Sacrement (1908), appearing a few years after he retired, was a novel of the Indian Wars of 1757-58. He died at Springfield in his eighty-fifth year, after a long period of semi-invalidism.
Diseases of the nervous system always inter- ested Edes, and he wrote many medical papers on brain tumors, anemia, and allied subjects. "He was always in the forefront of progress and often distinctly ahead of the thought of his time" (Taylor, post). Many societies honored him, including the Philosophical Society of Washing- ton, the American Academy of Arts and Sci- ences, the American Neurological Association, and the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. He v/as twice married: first, in 1867, to Elizabeth T. Clarke of Boston, by whom he had three daugh- ters and a son ; second, in 1881, to Anna C. Rich- ardson, of Dorchester, Mass. She died in 1921.
[E. W. Taylor in Archives of Neurology and Psychi- atry, IX (1923), 506—09; Boston Medic, and Surgic. Jour., CLXXXVIII (1923), 117; Jour. Am. Medic. Asso., LXXX (1923), 418; Who's Who in America, 1922—23; Boston Evening Transcript, Jan. 13, 1923.]
H.R.V.
EDGAR, CHARLES (Apr. 9, 1862-Feb. 15, 1922), lumberman, inventor, was born in Me- tuchen, N. J., the son of Benjamin Winant and Phebe (Dunham) Edgar. Until he was eigh- teen years old, he attended the public schools of his native town and upon graduation from high school in 1880, went to Chicago, 111. He found employment with the lumber interests of Chi- cago, his first job being with the Shepard Lumber
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Edgar
Company. After four or five years of service, during which time the first real steps were being taken in the development of the lumber industry of Wisconsin and Michigan, Edgar moved with his family to Wausau, Wis. Here he entered the employ of the Jacob Mortensen Lumber Com- pany of which he soon became general manager. He continued with this company for four or five years and then formed, with Walter Alexander, the Alexander-Edgar Lumber Company. Edgar was then but twenty-eight years old and had had approximately ten years' experience in the lum- ber business. In spite of his youth he possessed unusual business ability, and in the succeeding twelve years under his leadership his company played a prominent part not only in the develop- ment of the northern lumber areas of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but also of the south- ern pine districts as well. Throughout this period Edgar maintained a close contact with all branches of the lumbering industry and even found time to perfect certain improvements in saw-mill machinery. As the band saw was origi- nally applied to cutting logs, the backward move- ment of the log carriage would, if there were any slivers on the cut face of the log, be liable to force those slivers against the smooth edge of the band saw and either distort or break it. To obvi- ate this danger, there was developed a lateral ad- justment on the back movement of the carriage called an "off-set," so that the log returned for a new cut out of contact with the saw. Edgar first made an improvement on the "off-set," and then designed a band saw with teeth on both its edges so that the saw cut in both directions and thus eliminated the off-setting mechanism. He pat- ented this device in 1894 and 1895, and subse- quently sold the rights to a manufactory in Mil- waukee. The process has been in general use by lumber manufacturers for sawing certain classes of small timber ever since. On account of ill health Edgar was compelled to retire from active busi- ness about 1902, and for the next ten years lived on his farm near Charlottesville, Va. In 1914, however, because of the death of one of his asso- ciates, he was again obliged to take up active work as president and general director of the Wisconsin & Arkansas Lumber Company of Malvern, Ark., and he continued in that capac- ity until his death. During the World War he was identified with the Southern Pine Emer- gency Bureau, later was a member of the Lumber Committee of the Council of National Defence, and finally was lumber director of the War In- dustries Board, in which capacity he served un- til the end of the war. A distinguished service medal was awarded to him on Apr. 7, 1922, after
Edgerton
his death. On Dec. 18, 1884, Edgar was married in Chicago, to Gertrude Pomeroy of Pottsville, Pa., daughter of George W. Pomeroy. At the time of his sudden death in Miami, Fla., he was survived by his wife, three sons, and a daughter. He was buried at Essex Fells, N. J., where he had resided for a number of years.
{.Lumber World Rev., Feb. 25, 1922; Am. Lumber- man, Feb. 18 and Feb. 25, 1922; E. W. Byrn, The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century (1900) ; A. A. Pomeroy, Hist, and Gencal. of the Pom- eroy Family (19 12) ; Newark Evening News, Feb. 16, 1922; Patent Office Records; U. S. Nat. Museum cor- respondence.] q w. M.
EDGERTON, ALFRED PECK (Jan. 11, 1813-May 14, 1897), politician, was born at Plattsburg, Clinton County, N. Y., the son of Bela and Phebe (Ketchum) Edgerton. He was educated at the Plattsburg Academy and after graduation was for a short period editor of a newspaper in that town. In 1833 he removed to New York, where he was a clerk in a mercantile house. Four years later he became the agent of the American Land Company, and of the Messrs. Hicks, and settled at Hicksville, Ohio. He was married, Feb. 9, 1841, to Charlotte, daughter of Charles Dixon, of Portland, Conn. In 1845 he was elected as a Democrat to the Ohio Senate where his ability as a debater made him a promi- nent leader in his party. After serving in this body 1845-46 and 1846-47, he was elected to Congress from the Toledo district, and served jSsi— 55. Always a strong opponent of slavery on constitutional grounds, in Congress he vigor- ously opposed the rescinding of the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He was chosen financial agent of the state by the Board of Fund Commissioners of Ohio, and in this capacity resided in New York City from 1853 to 1856. The following year he removed to Fort Wayne, Ind., but remained a citizen of Ohio until 1862. In 1859, in association with Hugh McCulloch and Pliny Hoagland, he leased the Wabash & Erie Canal, of which he was the gen- eral manager for nine years. In 1868 he was the Democratic candidate for lieutenant-gover- nor of Indiana but was defeated. As a Democrat, he refused to support Horace Greeley in 1872 and came within six votes of being nominated for the vice-presidency on the O'Conor ticket, over John Quincy Adams, second. He was then nominated by the O'Conor Democrats — the "Bourbon" or "Straightout" Democrats — for governor of Indiana, but declined. After many years of retirement from active public service, early in November 1885, he was appointed by President Cleveland a United States Civil Ser- vice Commissioner, succeeding Dorman B. Ea-
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Edgerton
ton [q.v.~\ as president of the Commission. His appointment was sharply criticized on account of his advanced age and a fear that he was not in sympathy with civil-service reform. Presi- dent Cleveland grew dissatisfied with his work on the Commission and summarily removed him, Feb. 10, 1889. Edgerton published a letter de- claring his dismissal was due to the fact that the President was a "mugwump — a mugwump of mugwumps," which, he defiantly announced, "I am not." For many years Edgerton was presi- dent of the board of education of Fort Wayne, Ind., where he resided for two decades, but he died at his country home at Hicksville, Ohio.
[For biographical sketches see Henry Howe, Hist. Colls, of Ohio (1896) ; B. J. Griswold, The Pictorial Hist, of Fort Wayne (1917) ; Biog. Hist, of Eminent and Self -Made Men of the State of Ind. (1880), 12th Dist., p. 44 ; Ohio Statesmen and Hundred Year Book 1788-1892 (1892); Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928); obituary in N. Y. Times, May 16, 1897. See also E. J. Benton, "The Wabash Trade Route in the Development of the Old Northwest," in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, Jan.— Feb. 1903 ; and for the controversy over his ap- pointment and dismissal as Civil Service Commissioner, see N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 5, 1885, Feb. 19, 1889; Cin- cinnati Enquirer, Nov. 5, 1885, and Nation (N. Y.), Nov. 12, 1885.] R. CM.
EDGERTON, SIDNEY (Aug. 17, 1818-July 19, 1900), Abolitionist, congressman, first terri- torial governor of Montana, was born in New York of old New England ancestry. His par- ents were Amos and Zerviah (Graham) Edger- ton. His father died while Sidney was an infant, and the boy had to educate himself. He studied and taught and in 1844 went to Akron, Ohio, where he again taught school and studied law. In 1846 he graduated from the Cincinnati Law School. Beginning his public life as an Aboli- tionist, he was a delegate to the Free-Soil Con- vention of 1848, and continued his fight on slav- ery during the years following. In 1856 he was delegate to the first Republican National Con- vention. Elected to Congress in 1858, he served two terms. His efforts were directed toward the abolition of slavery in the territories, in the District of Columbia, and on the public property of the United States. As a Union man he felt the need of holding the West to the East. He was an ardent advocate of a transcontinental railroad and voted for every measure which he thought would promote its construction.
When the territory of Idaho was organized, Mar. 3, 1863, President Lincoln offered the posi- tion of chief justice to Edgerton. He took office at Bannack in eastern Idaho (now in Montana) and there remained in charge of the eastern ju- dicial district of the territory. This assignment was distasteful to him for he felt that as chief justice he should have a district nearer the capi-
Edg
ren
tal. The court had no marshal and no power to enforce its decisions. With bands of road agents infesting the country, Edgerton gave his ap- proval of the vigilantes who were trying to ex- terminate them. The counties east of the Bitter Root Mountains, dissatisfied with their connec- tion with Idaho, sent Edgerton to Washington to work for a separate territory. He was well ac- quainted with James M. Ashley, chairman of the House committee on territories, with other con- gressmen, and with Lincoln. Following the ap- proval of the act forming Montana (May 26, 1864), Lincoln appointed Edgerton governor, legal provision for a temporary government be- ing made May 27. His territory had been over- run by bandits and the majority of its population were opposed to the Union. It was his work to organize government among a hostile people and establish obedience to law. With firmness and tact he undertook the task and during the year of his administration made progress. He fore- saw in Montana a great commonwealth and he urged the building of roads and the founding of schools. He was unable to conclude his pro- gram, since the succession of Johnson to the presidency led to his resignation.
Edgerton was a man of unusual intellect, pleas- ing personality, and notable oratorical ability. He had great courage and frankness. He was an Abolitionist when abolition was unpopular, and an agnostic among a people thoroughly de- voted to Christianity. He married Mary Wright in 1849 and to them were born eight children. After 1865 he devoted himself to the practise of law, but he did not lose interest in public affairs. When Mark Hanna invited him as a member of the first Republican Convention to sit in the one of 1900, Edgerton declined, stating that there was little in common between the principles held by him and the "fore ordained work" of the lat- ter convention (Great Falls News, July 5, 1900).
[Wilbur F. Sanders, "Life of Gov. Sidney Edgerton," in Rocky Mountain Mag., Feb. 1901, and Martha Ed- gerton Plassmann, "Biog. Sketch of Sidney Edgerton, in Contributions to the Hist. Soc. of Mont. Ill (1900), are sympathetic but fair. See also Biog. Directory of the Am. Cong., 1774-1927 (1928).] P. C. P.
EDGREN, AUGUST HJALMAR (Oct. 18, 1840-Dec. 9, 1903), soldier and scholar, was born in Vermland, Sweden, the son of Axel and Mathilda Edgren. He was graduated from the Lyceum of Stockholm in 1858, and from the Swedish Royal Military Academy in i860. His interest in the issues of the American Civil War led him to emigrate to the United States and en- list in the 99th Regiment, New York Infantry, which was incorporated in the Army of the Po- tomac. He participated in many battles and was
20
Edgren
promoted to a first lieutenancy for "bravery in action" in 1863 ; he was then detailed as staff en- gineer in charge of the construction of fortifica- tions at Yorktown. He returned to his native land in 1863, and remained a lieutenant in the Swedish army until 1870.
By this time the life of the soldier had begun to pall upon him. He had been enabled to follow his scholarly bent during a leave of absence in 1867-68, which he spent studying in France and Germany, and teaching English and German at the Lycee Saint Quentin in Paris. On his return home in 1869 he was promoted first adjutant, but the experience of the two previous years had so whetted his natural appetite for study that he re- signed his commission in 1870, returned to the United States, and entered Cornell University, where he received the bachelor's degree in 1871. After a year on the staff of the Riverview-on-the- Hudson Military Academy at Poughkeepsie, he entered Yale College from which he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1874. He had meanwhile be- come instructor in the Sheffield Scientific School in 1873, and continued there until 1880, when he returned to Sweden to become privat-docent in Sanskrit in the University of Lund. In 1880 he married Marianne Steendorff of Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1881 he spent the summer in fur- ther study at the University of Berlin, and was awarded the Norberg Prize of the University of Lund for his work in linguistics.
From 1885 to 189 1 he was again in the United States, as professor of modern languages at the University of Nebraska. After an interval of two years (1891-93) at the University of Gotenburg, Sweden, as professor of Germanic languages and rector, he returned to Nebraska, first as professor of Romance languages, later as professor of lin- guistic science and Sanskrit. To his teaching du- ties were added, in 1896, the functions of dean of the Graduate School. In 1900 he was recalled to Sweden to represent the United States as a mem- ber of the Nobel Institute at Stockholm, at which place he died in December 1903.
Edgren was a linguist and philologist of ex- traordinarily wide range. He published a long series of monographs and articles on Sanskrit philology and literature, Germanic and Romance languages, and comparative philology, written in Swedish, German, French, and Latin ; he edit- ed German, French, and Italian dictionaries, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Sanskrit grammars, and French school texts. Through translation and criticism he did much to introduce Sanskrit masterpieces and English and Ameri- can literature to the Swedish people, and to in- terpret to them American life and educational in-
Edmands
stitutions. He also published two volumes of his own poems. He was a member of many learned societies in both Europe and America, and in 1893 was president of the Royal Society for Sci- ence and Literature in Gotenburg. Among his many published works are the following : A Compendious German and English, English and German Dictionary (with W. D. Whitney, 1877) ! "On tne Verbal Roots of the Sanskrit Language and of the Sanskrit Grammarians" (Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1878); A Compendious Sanskrit Grammar (Trubner, London, 1885) ; A Compendious French Grammar (1890) ; Kalidasa Shakuntala ( 1894), translated from the Sanskrit ; "The Kin- dred Germanic Words of German and English, Exhibited with Reference to their Consonantal Relations" ( Transactions of the American Philo- logical Association, 1880, vol. XI) ; "American Graduate Schools" (Educational Review, 1898) ; "En serie af resebref och skildringer fran Ame- rika" (Goteborgs Handelstidning, 1871-73) ; Sommarferier i Monte sumas land (Stockholm, 1898) ; Dikter i orignal och bfversdttning (Lund, 1884) ; Blaklint : Ny Diktsamling (Stockholm, 1894) ; A French and English Dictionary (1901), with Percy B. Burnet; An Italian and English Dictionary (1901), with Giuseppe Bico.
[Data from a son, Arthur Edgren, Esq., Lincoln, Nebr. ; Who's Who in America, 1901—02 ; Obituary Record Grads. Yale Univ., 5 ser. (1910) ; Nordisk Fa- miljebok (Stockholm, 1927), VI, 303 ; Salmonscns Kon- versations Leksikon (Kb0nhavn, 1917), VI, 716; Lincoln The Capital City and Lancaster County, Nebr. (19x6), II, 793; N. Y. Times, Dec. 11, 1903.] T.S.N.
EDMANDS, JOHN (Feb. 1, 1820-Oct. 17, 1915), librarian, a descendant of Walter Ed- mands who emigrated from England and settled in Concord, Mass., in 1639, was the son of Jona- than and Lucy (Nourse) Edmands and was born in Framingham, Mass. He lived and worked on a farm, attending the district school for about three months each summer and winter, until about 1836, when he was apprenticed to a carpen- ter and house-builder. He was graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1843, and entered Yale College. During the latter part of his col- lege course he became librarian of the Brothers in Unity, a society in Yale College, and he then prepared a booklet of eight pages, indicating ma- terial of assistance to the students in writing or speaking, which was printed in January 1847 un- ler the title, Subjects for Debate, with References to Authorities. This was the beginning from which developed the Index to Periodical Litera- ture compiled by IV. F. Poole [q.v.], who follow- ed Edmands as librarian of the Brothers in Unity. After his graduation in 1847, Edmands spent a
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Edmands
Edmonds
year in teaching school in Rocky Mount, N. C. He then entered the Yale Divinity School, was licensed to preach by the New Haven West Asso- ciation of Ministers in 1850, and graduated in 185 1. In that year he became assistant in the Yale College Library, serving until 1856, when he went to Philadelphia, to become librarian of the Mercantile Library. With this institution he was connected for fifty-nine years. Doubtless it is due to the fact that he was a retiring, modest person that he has never been given full credit for his pioneer work. He was a much better practical librarian than was Poole, who had a wide interest in books but contributed very little to practical librarianship. Edmands devised a system of classification and put it into operation about the same time that Melvil Dewey began work on his decimal classification. (See Ed- mands's Explanation of the New System of Clas- sification Devised for the Mercantile Library of Philadelphia, 1883.) Although the use of deci- mals in the Dewey system proved rather more practical in the expansion of the different classes, and won a wider popularity, which it has main- tained to the present, Edmands's classification has proved satisfactory wherever it has been em- ployed. He prepared for publication book lists that were of great interest, placing under the titles of important additions to the Library criticisms and discussions of the views of the authors. His list of historical novels, Finding List for Novels in the Mercantile Library of Philadelphia (1878), was one of the first efforts in that direc- tion. He was a careful bibliographer, as is proven in his bibliographies of the Latin hymn Dies Irae (Bulletin of the Mercantile Library of Philadelphia, Oct. 1, 1884, Jan. 1, 1885) and the Junius Letters (Ibid., July 1, 1890-Jan. 1, 1892). He also published a Catalogue of the Mercantile Library of Philadelphia (1870), Reading Notes on Luther (1883), and Reading Notes on Wyc- liffe (1884). He was one of the original mem- bers of the American Library Association, found- ed in Philadelphia in 1876, and the first president of the Pennsylvania Library Club, founded in 1890. From time to time he contributed to the Library Journal practical notes collected during his long service. He was a founder of the Cen- tral Congregational Church in Philadelphia, in 1864, and was the clerk and one of the deacons from its organization. He was married three times : first, on Aug. 1, 1854, to Abigail Jane Lloyd, who died in January 1883 ; second, on June 17, 1889, to Ellen Elizabeth Metcalf, who died in July 1892; and third, on Aug. 23, 1893, to Clarinda Augusta Roberts. Edmands was physically well adapted to his profession ; of slight
build, with white hair and ruddy cheeks, he moved nimbly but silently in his domain and he had a low voice with clear enunciation. He was ninety-five years of age when he died, and had maintained his mental alertness and interest in current affairs until the last. He left in trust for publication the manuscript of a book which was issued posthumously under the title, The Evolu- tion of Congregationalism (1916).
[Who's Who in America, 191 5-16; Yale Univ. Obit. Record, 1915-16; Hist. Sketch of the Mercantile Lib. of Phila. and the Ninety-third Ann. Report, 1915 ; Library Jour., Nov. 191 5 ; Pub. Libraries, Nov. 191 5 ; Evening Bull. (Phila.), Oct. 18, 1915; Phila. Inquirer and Pub. Ledger (Phila.), Oct. 19, 1915.] T. L. M.
EDMONDS, FRANCIS WILLIAM (Nov. 22, 1806-Feb. 7, 1863), genre painter, was born in Hudson, Columbia County, N. Y., son of Sam- uel and Lydia (Worth) Edmonds, and brother of John Worth Edmonds [g.f.]. Francis gave early promise of artistic talent, but financial necessity turned his attention from art to an im- mediate source of income. The youngest of a numerous family, he could not enjoy the educa- tional opportunities afforded his elder brother. When he was sixteen he was offered a position in the Tradesmen's Bank in New York by his uncle, Gorham A. Worth, then its president, and he re- mained there until 1830 when he returned to Hudson to become cashier of the Hudson River Bank in his native town. He was later cashier in New York City, first in the Leather Manu- facturers' Bank, 1832, and later in the Mechanics' Bank, 1839. He assisted in establishing the New York Clearing House in 1853 and the same year helped to organize the Bank Note Engraving Company, later called the American Bank Note Company. He was at one time city chamberlain of New York, and was closely identified with the New York Gallery of Fine Arts, the Sketch Club, Century Association, New York Society Library, and New York Historical Society. In 1855 he retired from business and settled in a country home, "Crow's Nest" on the Bronx River.
Although he lacked conventional art education, throughout his business career he pursued his art in his leisure time with perseverance and devotion to his ideals. Soon after 1826 he became a stu- dent at the National Academy of Design, was made an associate in 1837, and National Acade- mician in 1840. He was recording secretary of the institution for a while and became one of its trustees. He first exhibited at the Academy in 1836, under the assumed name F. Williams, the painting "Sammy the Tailor." He gained much through a visit to Europe in 1840, and his study of the art of the Old World, especially in Italy. In the early fifties he made several drawings for
22
Edmonds
notes produced by the American Bank Note Com- pany, among them being "Sewing-Girl," "Grind- ing the Scythe," "Barn-yard," and "Mechanic." Other notable works are: "Scene from Butler's Hudibras" (1827) ; "Dominie Sampson" ( 1837) ; "The Epicure" (1838); "The Penny Paper" ( 1839) ; "Sparkling" ( 1840, engraved by the Art Union); "The Bashful Cousin" (1842); "Boy Stealing Milk" (1843); "Vesuvius and Flor- ence" (1844); "The Image Peddler" (1844); "The New Scholar" (1845) '■> "Facing the En- emy" ( 1845 ; engraved, a popular illustration of temperance reform) ; "The Sleepy Student" (1846); "Bargaining" (1858); and "Gil Bias and the Archbishop."
Edmonds was twice married: first, while he was cashier of the bank at Hudson, to Martha Norman; and second, on Nov. 4, 1 841, to Doro- thea Lord. He died at "Crow's Nest" in his fifty-seventh year.
[C. E. Clement and Laurence Hutton, Artists of the Nineteenth Century (1879), I, 235 ; H. T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (1867) ; J. D. Champlin, Jr., Cyc. of Painters and Paintings ( 1886), II, 9 ; Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Kiinstler, X (1914), 345 ; N. Y. Times, N. Y. Evening Post, Feb. 9, 1863.] J. M.H.
EDMONDS, JOHN WORTH (Mar. 13, 1799-
Apr. 5, 1874), jurist, was the son of Samuel Ed- monds, a native of New York City, who, after the Revolution, settled at Claverack Landing (Hud- son), N. Y., became prominent in public life, and married Lydia, daughter of Thomas Worth, one of the first settlers of Hudson. He was born at Hudson, and received his early education in the public schools and the Academy there. In 1814 he entered Williams College, Williamstown, Mass., transferring, in 1815, to Union College, Schenectady, N. Y., where he graduated in 1816. He then began to read law at Cooperstown, N. Y., six months later entering the office of Martin Van Buren at Hudson, and completing his studies at the latter's Albany office. On his admission to the Columbia County bar in 18 19, he commenced practise at Hudson, at the same time interesting himself in local politics on the Democratic side, and becoming editor of the Hudson Gazette, the party organ, at a salary of three dollars a week. In 1827 he was appointed city recorder, which office he retained till his election in 1830 to the state Assembly. In 183 1 he was elected to the state Senate, in which body he became prominent, being a member of the judiciary committee and chairman of the bank committee. At this period the resistance of South Carolina to the tariff laws had raised the subject of nullification, and he was a member of the joint committee of the two houses of the legislature which considered
Edmonds
and reported on the matter. His able justifica- tion of the committee's report procured its adop- tion in the face of prolonged opposition. He was also chairman of the joint committee which considered the subject of the United States Bank. He did not complete his term, however, resign- ing in 1836 on his appointment by President Jack- son as commissioner to procure the carrying out of the provisions of the treaty between the United States and the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians bordering on Lakes Huron and Superior — his duties therein requiring him to spend some months at Michilimackinac. On his return from the West in 1837, he moved to New York City, where he engaged in practise and obtained a large connection in mercantile circles. In April 1843, Gov. Bouck appointed him inspector of state prisons, in which capacity he effected great and lasting reforms at Sing Sing. The prisons at that time were in bad condition, with little dis- cipline and a large yearly deficit, and the only punishment administered to refractory prisoners was whipping. Prior to his resignation in 1845 he had established order, systematized adminis- tration, practically eliminated the deficit, and hu- manized punishments. In addition he inaugu- rated a system of rewards for good conduct, and founded a society to aid discharged convicts to earn an honest living. He was appointed judge of the first New York circuit, Feb. 18, 1845. In 1847 he was elected a justice of the state supreme court. Shortly afterward the state justiciary was reorganized under the new state constitution, and, though he had rendered some unpopular de- cisions, he was nominated for justice of the new supreme court by Tammany and indorsed by the bar. In 1852 he became a judge of the New York court of appeals, but resigned from the bench in 1853 and resumed practise in New York City. He had for some years conducted investigations in the subject of spiritualism. In 1853, becoming convinced that the living could communicate with the dead, he openly announced his belief, and, in collaboration with Dr. Dexter, published Spiri- tualism, a work which provoked much comment, though the honesty of his convictions was never impugned. In 1863 he published Statutes at Large of the State of New York (5 vols.), con- taining the Revised Statutes and General Stat- utes up to 1863, with elaborate notes and refer- ences. The labor involved in this compilation was immense, but so accurate was his work that it was at once accepted by the profession as the standard authority, superseding all former edi- tions. He subsequently prepared two supple- mental volumes and an index. In 1868 he com- piled Reports of Select Cases decided in the
23
Edmunds
Courts of New York, consisting of cases heard
before him on circuit. Several of his occasional
addresses were published in pamphlet form and
he was a frequent contributor to the Albany Law
Journal. He died in New York City.
[An excellent contemporary appreciation of Edmonds appeared in Wm. Raymond, Sketches of the Distin- guished Men of Columbia County (1851), p. 79. His career is also detailed in P. F. Miller, A Group of Great Lawyers of Columbia County, N. Y. (1904), p. 172. See, in addition, D. McAdam and others, Hist, of the Bench and Bar of N. Y. (1897), I, 317 ; 1 Central Law Jour., 163 ; 9 Albany Law Jour., 244; 4 U. S. Monthly Law Mag., ed. by John Livingston, 335 ; AT. Y. Times, N. Y. Tribune, Apr. 6, 1874.] H.W. H.K.
EDMUNDS, GEORGE FRANKLIN (Feb. 1, 1828-Feb. 27, 1919), lawyer, senator, was born and spent his childhood on a farm near Rich- mond, Vt. His parents, Ebenezer and Naomi (Briggs) Edmunds, were both of Rhode Island Quaker origin. His education, conducted in vari- ous schools and by private teachers, was fre- quently interrupted by illness, and poor health eventually forced him to give up the college course for which he had planned. In later years, however, he received numerous honorary de- grees. Whatever he may have lacked in formal education seems to have been more than out- weighed by an early acquired taste and capacity for individual study. When about seventeen he began the study of law in the office of his brother- in-law, but the threat of tuberculosis obliged him to spend the winter of 1845-46 in the milder cli- mate of Washington, D. C. The opportunity to use the great law libraries of the capital and to hear the leading lawyers of the day in proceed- ings before the United States Supreme Court constituted what he always considered one of his most valuable educational experiences. He con- tinued study after returning to Vermont and was admitted to the bar in 1849.
He began practise in Richmond but in less than two years moved to Burlington, where pro- fessional opportunities were better. In 1852 he married Susan Marsh, daughter of Wyllys Lyman and niece of George P. Marsh, then minister to Turkey. Their married life lasted until her death in 1916 and she was generally considered to have been an influential factor in his professional and political career. Success at the bar came early and throughout the rest of the decade his name appears with increasing frequency in the Ver- mont Reports. Later, after entering the United States Senate, he devoted himself largely to fed- eral practise and handled many important cases before the United States circuit courts in various parts of the country as well as before the Su- preme Court in Washington. There was at that time no legal or ethical objection to a senator's
Edmunds
engaging in such work. While Edmunds had much of the conservatism of the legal profession, he showed, both in practise and in his work as a legislator, a clear realization that the changing economic and social needs of the nineteenth cen- tury were rendering many common-law concepts inadequate and that these obsolete principles should not be permitted to protect abuses. He continued active work after leaving the Senate, accumulated a comfortable estate, and finally re- tired about 1897. One of his greatest legal suc- cesses came in 1895, when he argued successfully against the constitutionality of the income tax in the famous case of Pollock vs. The Farmers' Loan and Trust Company (157 United States, 429; Edmunds's argument, pp. 482-99). His standing as a legal authority is also shown by the fact that in 1885 he was invited to testify, on a technical matter involving the marriage laws of New York in 1770, before the Committee of Privileges of the British House of Lords.
Important as was Edmunds's professional ca- reer, it was overshadowed by his public services. Like many other New Englanders he first at- tracted the attention of his fellow citizens in town meeting. Then followed a period of service as representative in the legislature 1854-59, the last three years as speaker. In 1861-62 he was a member of the Vermont Senate and president pro tempore. His first distinctly national service came in 1864, when he was appointed special counsel by Secretary Seward in an unsuccessful effort to secure the extradition of the St. Albans raiders. He had been, naturally, a supporter of the anti-slavery movement, and became an active Republican. The death of Senator Solomon Foot of Vermont, Mar. 28, 1866, came at a time when the Republican party needed every possible vote for the contest with President Johnson. On April 3, Gov. Paul Dillingham appointed Edmunds to the vacant place. He left promptly for the capi- tal, was sworn in on April 5, and on the following day supplied the one vote necessary to carry the Civil Rights Bill over the President's veto. His career in the Senate, thus begun, covered the next twenty-five years and made him an active and influential participant in most of the impor- tant constitutional, legislative, and political de- velopments of the period. Although he was interested in some aspects of foreign policy, es- pecially in the extension of American interests in the Caribbean and in transisthmian canal prob- lems, his most important contributions were in the field of domestic legislation, the ensuing dec- ades offering unusual opportunities to a legisla- tor of his ability and constructive temperament. Edmunds, for the most part, supported the Rad-
24
Edmunds
ical policies throughout Reconstruction. When he opposed them, it was usually much to the credit of his sense of honor and decency. With- in a few weeks after entering the Senate he had attracted public attention and drawn special com- mendation from Sumner by a speech against the admission of Colorado with a "white" suf- frage qualification in its constitution (Congres- sional Globe, 39 Cong., i Sess., p. 2176). His rapid advance to a position of power and impor- tance was seen a year later when he was made chairman of the committee to arrange rules of procedure for the trial of President Johnson. He was prominent in the proceedings preliminary to the trial, voted for conviction, and filed a lengthy and closely reasoned opinion on the President's alleged offenses (Supplement, Congressional Globe, 40 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 424-28). He had been active in securing adoption of the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, and opposed its total repeal in 1869 when it was urged that to President Grant should be restored the entire power so long exercised by his predecessors in office. Almost twenty years later he had a notable clash with the Cleveland administration and a Senate majority when the obnoxious restrictions were finally re- moved by the act of Mar. 3, 1887. On Dec. 14, 1886, he delivered one of his most notable con- stitutional arguments (Congressional Record, 49 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 136-40), dealing at consider- able length with the removal power and declar- ing that the existing statutes constituted "a wholesome restraint upon the temptations to abuse in executive power," and that they were necessary for the security of public offices which could not, without them, carry any assurance of "honorable and responsible employments of the Government for fixed terms."
With the passing of Fessenden he was gen- erally considered the ablest constitutional lawyer in Congress, and it must have been a painful ex- perience for him to see many of the principles for which he had contended and which he had suc- ceeded in having embodied in legislation, such as the Ku Klux Act of 1872 or the second Civil Rights Act of 1875, the latter largely his per- sonal handiwork, rejected by the Supreme Court. He became chairman of the committee on the judiciary in 1872 and held this important post until his retirement in 1891, with the exception of the two years of Democratic control, 1879-81. Perhaps his best-known achievement was the act of Jan. 29, 1877, providing for the appointment of the electoral commission, "to regulate the counting of the votes for President and Vice- President and the decision of questions arising thereon," in the disputed election of 1876. Pos-
Edmunds
terity has not agreed as to the equities involved in the original controversy, and the act itself has been criticized as unfair and legalistic, but Ed- munds unquestionably made a great contribution toward the settlement of a dangerous crisis, and by securing the adoption of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 rendered less probable its recurrence in the future (see Century Magazine, May, June 1913, for interesting interchanges between Ed- munds and Henry Watterson on the disputed election of 1876 and the electoral commission). One of his notable legislative successes was the Thurman Act of 1878, framed in collaboration with Senator Thurman of Ohio, also a member of the judiciary committee, and pushed through Congress by their joint efforts in the face of a most determined opposition. By this measure the Central and Union Pacific railroads were compelled to fund their debts to the government and make adequate provision for a sinking fund. The act was intrinsically an important measure and is also a notable step in the development of governmental control of the railroad business.
The act of Mar. 22, 1882, adopted for the pur- pose of suppressing polygamy in the territories, especially Utah, is the only enactment of his long career which was known by his name. Polygamy he declared to be "an inherent and controlling force in the most intense and anti-republican hierarchy, theocracy, as an organized and sys- tematic government that, so far as my small read- ing has gone, has ever existed on the face of the earth" (Congressional Record, 47 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 1213). The statute itself, although unsatisfac- tory in its operation until strengthened by the supplementary enactment of 1887, eventually broke the Mormon power and resulted in impor- tant changes in the polity of the organization. One of the objects, he stated, was "to take the political power in that Territory out of the hands of this body of tyrants," and the administrative clauses were such as to guarantee adequate en- forcement by responsible and independent officers and juries. He was the author of the greater part of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, a fact not generally known until many years later. In 191 1, in a magazine article of extraordinary interest and historical value, he explained the objectives of the men who drafted the law. It was directed against the "unnatural and unequal distribution of wealth and power," he said, and intended to apply to combinations of labor and capital alike. He pointed out that it was impossible to frame specific definitions for the various offenses at which it was directed, and that literal construc- tion, till then attempted by the courts, had not been intended by the original framers (North
25
Edmunds
American Review, December 191 1, p. 801).
Throughout the long financial contest which covered his entire period of service he fought against all forms of public debt repudiation, was a powerful influence in securing the passage of the Specie Resumption Act of 1875, opposed remonetization of silver, and denounced those members of the Republican party who went over to the free silver heresy. In 1897 he was appoint- ed chairman of the monetary commission author- ized by the Indianapolis conference, and the re- ports of this organization exerted great influence on subsequent banking and currency legislation. His support of civil-service reform was consistent and courageous, beginning with his appointment on a retrenchment committee soon after entering the Senate. In 1871 he introduced a bill "to regu- late the Civil Service of the United States and promote the efficiency thereof" which in many re- spects anticipated the Pendleton Act of 1883 to which he gave generous support. In tariff mat- ters he had the views of the orthodox Republican of his time.
He was on confidential terms with Presidents Grant, Hayes, and Arthur, and is reported to have been called into frequent consultation on public business. He declined several important appointments in both the executive and judicial services. Following the death of President Gar- field he was elected president pro tempore of the Senate, an action which was generally regarded as a special tribute, inasmuch as it made him, un- der the existing law, next in succession to the presidency of the United States. Edmunds re- ceived some support for the presidential nomina- tion in 1880, and four years later a similar move- ment had a great, if not decisive, influence on the result of the election. He was strongly backed in 1884 by the reform element of the party, includ- ing such men as George W. Curtis, John D. Long, who placed his name before the convention in an admirable address, Henry Cabot Lodge, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew D. White, George F. Hoar, and others. He received a maximum of ninety-three votes. Blaine, the nominee, failed to hold the support of a considerable number of the independents who had backed Edmunds and lost the election as a result. Edmunds himself, while not anxious for the office, had a profound distrust for the Republican candidate and refused to campaign in his behalf, a defection which at- tracted popular attention and caused considerable dismay in party circles.
During the greater part of his career in the Senate political morality was far from high, but Edmunds came through unsmirched. He had a profound contempt for hypocrisy and humbug
Edmunds
and a tongue which on occasion could blister op- ponents like sulphuric acid. He was never popu- lar with a majority of his colleagues and was often feared. One of them once remarked that if led blindfold into the Senate chamber, he could tell at once, from the nature of the business under discussion, whether or not Edmunds was in his seat. When he was absent, the members usually tried to rush through the petty jobbery which they were reluctant to submit to his keen scrutiny and merciless sarcasm (quoted by F. E. Leupp, in "The Father of the Anti-trust Law," Out- look, Sept. 20, 191 1, p. 271). It was said of Ed- munds, when at the height of his powers, that "his bald head and flowing white beard gave him a resemblance to the classic portrait of St. Je- rome, but, unlike that portrait, his head is dome shaped, symmetrical, while his temples are wide apart and full between. He debates a question in a clear, half-conversational manner, occasionally indulging in a dash of sarcasm which makes those Senators who are the objects of it wince. What he says goes into the Congressional Record with- out revision or correction" (Poore, post, II, 208). He had few intimates, but his friendship with Thurman, a Democrat, became one of the traditions of the Senate. His lack of amiability and his contentious nature are attested by many of his contemporaries. Senator G. F. Hoar tells how, after making some disparaging remarks about the attractiveness of the presidency, "he smiled and his countenance beamed all over with satisfaction," when reminded of the pleasant pos- sibilities inherent in the veto power.
His resignation in 1891 caused wide-spread comment inasmuch as his hold on Vermont was such as to have insured an indefinite tenure. He gave the illness of his only daughter as the chief reason, though a fellow senator adds that Ed- munds believed the Senate was deteriorating and that service therein was losing its attractions (Cullom, post, p. 208). In retirement he never lost touch with public affairs, and from time to time, in letters, published articles, or interviews, he expressed opinions with all his old cogency and force. He remained a strong partisan to the end but showed his characteristic independence by occasional criticism of Republican policies, notably the "imperialism" resulting from the war with Spain. For some years after retirement from the Senate he lived in Philadelphia, but his last years were spent in Pasadena, Cal. There his death occurred on Feb. 27, 1919, but his re- mains were interred at Burlington, Vt. For many years he had occupied the position of an elder statesman, and there had been ample op- portunity to weigh his merits and defects. The
26
Edwards
editorial comment of the New York Times, Mar. I, 1919, can be generally accepted : "He had the dry wit, as he had the twang and the fine, solid, simple, rugged characteristics of his native state. . . . He was . . . one of the most thoughtful, most patriotic, most useful, and most independent of American Statesmen."
[The importance of Edmunds's position in the Sen- ate gave him prominent mention in the memoirs of the period, such as: S. M. Cullom, Fifty Years of Public Service (1911) ; J. B. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life (1916) ; S. S. Cox, Three Decades of Federal Legis- lation (1886) ; G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903) ; Ben P. Poore, Perley's Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (1886) ; John Sherman' s Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate, and Cabinet (1895); J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress (1884-86) ; A. W. Dunn, From Harrison to Harding (1922). The Nation and Harper's Weekly contain frequent references and edi- torial comments. Walter H. Crockett has a brief me- morial sketch, privately reprinted from The Vermontcr of August 19 1 9. See also the same author's Vermont, The Green Mountain State (1923), IV, 13 ff., V, 271— 72; Geo. F. Edmunds Centenary Exercises, 1828-1928 (1928) ; and Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, Feb. 29, '928.] W.A.R.
EDWARDS, BELA BATES (July 4, 1802- Apr. 20, 1852), clergyman, editor, was born in Southampton, Mass., the son of Elisha and Anne (Bates) Edwards. He was a second cousin of Justin Edwards \_q.v.~\, and was descended from Alexander Edwards who came to America from Wales, about 1640, and settled in Springfield, Mass. He attended Williams College for one year (1820-21 ) and then entered Amherst, grad- uating in 1824. After a year at Andover Theo- logical Seminary, he returned to Amherst as a tutor (1826-28), but then reentered Andover, taking his degree with the class of 1830. While still in the Seminary he became assistant secre- tary of the American Education Society, and af- ter his graduation he spent five years (1830-35) in the Boston office, beginning there his long ca- reer as editor of educational and religious pub- lications. For nearly sixteen years (1827-43) he was in charge of the American Quarterly Register, in which he garnered facts which are of much value to the historian of that period. He founded the American Quarterly Observer in 1833 and continued to direct the magazine when it was merged in 1835 with the American Biblical Repository.
In 1837, Edwards accepted an appointment as professor of the Hebrew language and litera- ture in Andover Theological Seminary and was ordained to the ministry on Oct. 3, 1837, at Methuen, Mass. In 1842 he and Prof. Edwards A. Park established the Bibliotheca Sacra, which he edited during the years 1844-52. Supersed- ing the Repository and published in Andover, this quickly became the most scholarly and au-
Edwards
thoritative of American religious periodicals. He was appointed in 1848 professor of Biblical litera- ture at Andover. During this period he declined the presidency of both Amherst and Dartmouth, as well as the secretaryship of the Board of Com- missioners for Foreign Missions. He was a trus- tee of Amherst College and of Abbot Academy. When, because of his arduous labors, his health broke down in 1845, he made a visit to Florida, followed by a year of travel in Europe. He died at Athens, Ga., of malarial fever, when he was just under fifty years of age. He had married, Nov. 3, 1831, Jerusha Williams Billings, daugh- ter of Col. Charles E. Billings of Conway, Mass., who survived her husband forty-four years. Of their three children, only one daughter was liv- ing at the time of his death.
Besides the numerous criticisms and special articles which he printed from time to time in his magazines, Edwards published several books, in- cluding Biography of Self-Taught Men (1832), The Missionary Gazetteer (1832 and 1833), Memoir of Elias Cornelius (1833), Selections from German Literature ( 1839), in collaboration with Prof. Park, and a translation of Raphael Kiihner's Grammar of the Greek Language (1844), m collaboration with Principal Samuel H. Taylor. A selection of his sermons and ad- dresses, edited, with a memoir, by Prof. Park, was published posthumously as Writings of Pro- fessor B. B. Edwards (2 vols., 1853). Edwards was a remarkably energetic and persistent man, whose restless energy drove him into many proj- ects and eventually wore him out. He was a sound scholar, an excellent linguist, and a fas- cinating lecturer. A born philanthropist, he was interested in missionary enterprises and social reforms, including temperance and anti-slavery.
[Edwards A. Park, "Life and Services of Prof. B. B. Edwards," in Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1852, and memoir in Edwards's Writings (1853) ; W. L. Montague, ed., Biog. Record of the Alumni of Amherst Coll., 1821-71 (1883); W. B. Sprague, Annals Am. Pulpit, vol. II (1857) ; Gen. Cat. Theol. Sem., Andover, Mass., 1808- 1908 (n.d.).] C.M.F.
EDWARDS, CHARLES (Mar. 17, 1797-May 30, 1868), lawyer, author, was born at Norwich, England, and educated at Cambridge University, emigrating later to New York, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar. Shortly after commencing practise he became standing counsel to the British consulate general in New York City, a position which he occupied for twenty- five years, and through this connection attracted a select and influential but never extensive clien- tele. Thorough and reliable, but not brilliant, his untiring zeal, sound judgment, and wide ac- quaintance with the principles of municipal and
27
Edwards
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international law enabled him to appear to signal advantage in a number of leading cases in the United States courts. He was counsel for the British government and for the owners of the Crenshazu and Hiawatha in the Prize Cases (1862; 2 Black, 635-99) — involving the status of the seceding states and perhaps the most mo- mentous in its consequences of all the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States during the Civil War — where the President's right jure belli to institute a blockade of ports in posses- sion of insurgent states which neutrals are bound to regard was established. He also represented the British Government in in re Thomas Kaine (1852; 14 Howard, 103), where vital matters of jurisdiction in extradition proceedings were ar- gued before the Supreme Court in banc. Follow- ing the sensational trial of Mrs. Cunningham in 1857 for the murder of Dr. Burdell, he success- fully contested on behalf of the heirs and next of kin her claim to the murdered man's estate (see Cunningham vs. Burdell, 4 Bradford, 343).
He was a prolific writer on a variety of sub- jects and his books had considerable vogue in their day. Among his legal works were : The Juryman's Guide Throughout the State of New York (1831) ; A Practical Treatise on Parties to Bills and Other Pleadings in Chancery (1832) ; On Receivers in Chancery (1839) ; On Receivers in Equity and under the New York Code of Procedure (2nd ed., 1857) ; The Law and Practise of Referees under the New York Code and Statutes (i860). These, though fa- vorably received by the profession, were by the nature of their subject ephemeral, but he made a permanent contribution to the legal literature of the State of New York by his Reports of Chan- cery Cases Decided in the First Circuit of the State of New York by the Hon. William J. M'Coun (4 vols., 1833-51), known as "Edwards' Chancery Reports," containing the decisions of Vice Chancellor McCoun from 1831 to 1846. "The reports are well drawn and are often cited, although the tribunal was not of leading author- ity" (Abbott, post). Of his miscellaneous works, the more prominent were Feathers from my own Wings (1832), a miscellany of prose and verse; The History and Poetry of Finger-Rings ( 1855), a work of much erudition, containing a large amount of curious out-of-the-way information, conveyed in somewhat turgid language ; and Pleasantries about Courts and Lawyers of New York (1867).
[Apart from his professional record, source material dealing with Edwards's life and career is scanty. Jo- seph Sabin states {Diet, of Books Relating to America, vol. VI, 1873, p. 97) that he changed his name from Charles Edward Ellis to Charles Edwards in order to
inherit some property, but cites no authority in support of his assertion. See D. McAdam, Hist, of the Bench and Bar of N. Y. (1897), I, 318 ; B. V. Abbott and Aus- tin Abbott, A Digest of N. Y. Statutes and Reports, I (i860), xvi ; H. L. Clinton, Celebrated Trials (1897), pp. 84 ff. ; obituary in N. Y. World, June 1, 1868.]
H.W.H.K.
EDWARDS, HENRY WAGGAMAN (Oc- tober 1779-July 22, 1847), lawyer, congressman, governor of Connecticut, was born in New Ha- ven. His grandfather was the famous New Eng- land divine, Jonathan Edwards [g^r.] ; his father, Pierpont '\_q.v.~\, was a lawyer of repute, a mem- ber of the Continental Congress, and federal judge for the district of Connecticut ; his mother, Frances Ogden, was a New Jersey woman. He was graduated from Princeton with the class of 1797 and, after attending the Litchfield Law School in Connecticut, was admitted to the bar and began practise in New Haven. Shortly after 1800 he became active in the Republican party. He was associated with the local section known as Tolerationists, whose primary purpose was to secure a new state constitution. In 1819 he was elected to Congress on the Republican ticket. He remained in the House until 1823, when he was appointed by Gov. Wolcott to the Senate, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Elijah Boardman. At the next regular election Ed- wards was chosen to the Senate in his own right, remaining in office until 1827.
Upon his return to Connecticut, he was for two years a member of the state Senate, and in 1830 was speaker of the House of Representatives. He was first chosen governor in 1833. During that year President Jackson visited the state, and was enthusiastically received by Edwards and the Connecticut Democrats. In the election of 1834 Edwards was defeated by Samuel A. Foot, but the following year he was successful, being then reelected regularly until 1838. His latter period of office coincided with that era in the de- velopment of the state marked by great progress in the construction of railroads. In his messages to the Assembly, he advocated the abolition of property qualifications for voting (Connecticut Courant, May 11, 1835), the districting of the state for the choice of national representatives (Ibid., May 14, 1833), increased governmental control of large business interests, and strict- er legislation regarding joint-stock companies (Ibid., May 9, 1836). The Hinsdale Act of 1837 was in line with the governor's desires. Edwards advocated the granting of financial aid to rail- roads, but he was not able to effect any immediate change in the conservative policy of the state (Ibid., May 6, 1837). Finally, he favored the making of a geological survey, as a means of de-
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veloping the natural resources of the state. Lit- tle is known about his family life. His wife was Lydia Miller (Moffatt, post, p. 56). A son, Henry P. Edwards, took up the legal profession and became a judge of the supreme court of New York State. In character, Edwards was deter- mined and straightforward. Although a member of a distinguished family, he was hardly a man of brilliance. As a politician, he did not rise above the level of other men of his day.
[The best sketch is contained in The Governors of Conn. (1905), by F. C. Norton. Scant information can be gleaned from Wm. H. Edwards, Timothy and Rhoda Ogdcn Edwards of Stockbridge, Mass., and Their De- scendants (1903) ; and R. B. Moffatt, Pierrepont Gen- ealogies from Norman Times to 1913 (1913). An obitu- ary notice is in the New Haven Evening Register, July 23, 1847. Letters in the Conn. Hist. Soc, written by Edwards from Washington to Gideon Tomlinson, are the personal property of the librarian, Mr. A. C. Bates.]
J.M.M.
EDWARDS, JOHN (c. 1671-Apr. 8, 1746), silversmith, was born, and probably served his apprenticeship, in Limehouse, London, England, from which place he migrated to Boston. His father, John Edwards, a "chirurgeon," was men- tioned in the diary of Samuel Sewall in 1689. Ac- cording to the records, the younger Edwards was a faithful citizen. He served as tithing-man in 1 70 1, 1708, 1 711; as a sergeant of the Boston Artillery Company in 1704; as a constable in 1715; as an assessor from 1720 to 1727; and he was an attendant of the Brattle Street Church. He produced a great deal of silverwork of fine quality, marked with crude capitals in plain qua- trefoil, or in quatrefoil with four projections ; or Roman capitals in two semicircles with two pro- jections; or crude capitals crowned, fleur-de-lys below in shield (Hollis French, A List of Early American Silversmiths and their Marks, 1917). His first wife was Sybil Newmann, the grand- daughter of the second John Endecott ; his sec- ond wife was Abigail Fowle, the widow of Wil- liam Smith, whose grand-daughter, Abigail Smith, became the wife of John Adams, the sec- ond president of the United States. His sons Thomas, Samuel, Joseph, and his grandson Jo- seph, followed his trade. His sister was the wife of the silversmith, John Allen, who was relat- ed by marriage to Jeremiah Dummer, another worker in precious metal. These interrelation- ships among the craftsmen were the natural re- sult of the apprenticeship system. Prosperous in his business, at his death he left an estate of £4,- 840, a fairly large sum for his day. In the Sup- plement to the Boston Evening-Post of Apr. 14, 1746, appeared this notice: "Tuesday last died, and Friday was decently interred, Mr. John Ed- wards, Goldsmith, in the 75th Year of his Age ;
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a Gentleman of a very fair Character, and well respected by all that knew him."
[Stephen Ensko, Am. Silversmiths and their Marks (1927) ; F. H. Bigelow, Historic Silver of the Colonies and its Makers (19 17) ; S. G. Drake, The Hist, and Antiquities of Boston (1856) ; C. L. Avery and R. T. H. Halsey, Am. Silver of the XVII and XVIII Cen- turies (1920) ; Records of the Church in Brattle Square (1902).]. K.H.A.
EDWARDS, JOHN (1748-1837), planter, sen- ator, was born in Stafford County, Va., a son of Hayden and Penelope (Sanford) Edwards. He moved in 1780 to that part of Virginia which later became the state of Kentucky, where he speculated in land and got title to about 23,000 acres. This competency made him a leader in a region where the people were soon intent upon gaining statehood. The district of Kentucky was at this time divided into three counties, Jefferson, Fayette, and Lincoln. Edwards settled in Lin- coln County, and the year following his arrival he was elected to represent it in the Virginia House of Delegates. He continued to act as a representative in 1782, 1783, 1785, and 1786. In 1783 he became a justice of the peace, which position automatically made him a member of the county court. In 1785 Bourbon County was cut out of Fayette. Edwards took up his resi- dence in this new county, and the next year he became the clerk of the first court to be held there.
In the meantime this western part of Virginia had begun its long and tortuous course toward statehood. Edwards was a member of the two preliminary conventions held in Danville in 1785, and after the formation of Bourbon County he represented that division continuously until state- hood was secured. The sinister Spanish activi- ties in connection with the proceedings of 1787 and 1788 did not directly implicate him as they did certain other Kentuckians. In fact Edwards assumed the leadership of the opponents of the Spanish conspiracy. In the convention of No- vember 1788, he reported and read the petition to Virginia for the independence of Kentucky, but he opposed the doctrine that Kentucky would thereby become sovereign and might enter the Union or not as she pleased. He also took part in framing the constitution of 1792.
He first served the new state by acting as one of the electors provided for by the constitution to choose the state senators. Then, in June 1792, he was appointed on a commission to choose a per- manent state capital, but was not present when the decision was made giving the honor to Frank- fort. As a fitting reward for his service to the district and state, he was unanimously elected one of the two first United States senators to rep- resent Kentucky, but took no very prominent
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part in the deliberations of the Senate, lie re- turned to Kentucky in 1795 never to leave the state again in an official capacity. He was im- mediately elected to represent Bourbon County in the state House of Representatives and thereaf- ter, from 1796 to 1800, he was a member of the state Senate. At the latter date he retired to private life on his Bourbon plantation where he died thirty-seven years later. Ninian Edwards [q.v.~\, chief justice of Kentucky in 1808 and later governor of Illinois Territory, was his nephew.
[Lewis and R. H. Collins, Hist, of Ky. (1882), I, 23. 35L 354-56, II, 71, 771 ; Georgie Hortense Ed- wards, Hist. Sketches of the Edwards and Todd Fami- lies (1894) ; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; The South in the Building of the Nation (1909), XI, 313-14 ; T. M. Green, The Spanish Conspiracy (1891), pp. 197, 221— 28 ; Wm. Littell, Pol. Trans, in and Concerning Ky. (1806), reprinted as Filson Club Pub. No. 31 (1926) ; Breckenridge MSS. (1794), in Lib. of Cong.]
E.M.C. EDWARDS, JONATHAN (Oct. 5, 1703- Mar. 22, 1758), Congregational clergyman, theo- logian, philosopher, was the son of Rev. Timothy Edwards of East Windsor, Conn. He was de- scended from Rev. Richard Edwards, a London clergyman in the age of Elizabeth, whose widow with her second husband, James Coles, and her son William Edwards came to New England about 1640. William and his son Richard were merchants in Hartford, Conn. Timothy, oldest son of Richard, was born in 1669, graduated from Harvard College 1691, and became pastor of East Windsor, May 1694, serving the parish until his death, January 1758. By his marriage with Esther, daughter of Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton, he had eleven children, Jona- than being the fifth child and only son. For lack of schools, the son was taught with other pupils at home, developing precociously under a learned father and a mother of uncommon intellectual power. In September 1716, not yet thirteen, he entered Yale College, which after an initial peri- od of scattered groups of students was now, by vote of the trustees, to open in New Haven. One tutor, however, Rev. Samuel Smith, and his stu- dents, refused to come from Wethersfield ; and discontent with another tutor, Rev. Samuel John- son, led the New Haven students, including Ed- wards, to join the Wethersfield group until, in the summer of 1719, under Timothy Cutler as Rector, the college was finally established in New Haven. Since, after some months, Johnson re- signed his tutorship, Edwards cannot have been much affected by this eminent thinker, later a Berkeleian philosopher and president of King's College ; but the revolutionary effect already made on Johnson's mind by Newtonian science,
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emancipating him from the old scholasticism, was paralleled by the formative action of Newton and Locke on Edwards, who at the age of fourteen read Locke's Essay with more delight "than the most greedy miser finds when gathering up hand- fuls of silver and gold, from some newly dis- covered treasure" (Works, Dwight edition, I, 30). In these college years, as if planning a Summa of human knowledge, the youth began to record his reflections on the nature of the human mind and on natural science (Ibid., vol. I, Ap- pendix H, I, pp. 664-771), as well as "Notes on the Scriptures" and "Miscellanies," which he continued in later life (Ibid., vols. VII, VIII, IX). Even at the age of twelve he had shown close and delicate scientific observation in an ac- count of phenomena relating to "flying spiders" (Ibid., I, 23-28), and in college he added a pow- er of theoretic reasoning in terms of Newtonian science. Before him opened a world ranging from the indiscernible atoms of which all bodies are composed to the enormously distant stars that, by his reasoning, must be blazing suns attended like our own by encircling planets. It was a world of natural laws, yet not a mechanism of bodies acting purely by themselves, for body is only intelligible as a resistance of divine power exercised at points of space. Our idea of space is only colored space, and if color be taken away, gone is all space, extension, motion, figure. Color, however, is only in the mind. "The secret lies here: That which truly is the substance of all Bodies, is the infinitely exact, and precise, and perfectly stable Idea, in God's mind, together with his stable Will, that the same shall gradually be communicated to us, and to other minds, ac- cording to certain fixed and exact established Methods and Laws" (Ibid., I, 674). This was a boy's venture in Berkeleian Idealism without knowledge of Berkeley.
Even more remarkably" the youth divined an- other aspect of reality than that of orderly re- lated fact, and a mode of apprehension other than that of the logical understanding. In his notes on "Mind" he said : "There has nothing been more without a definition than Excellency; al- though it be what we are more concerned with than anything else whatsoever : yea, we are con- cerned with nothing else" (Ibid., I, 693). In this beginning of a study of value, or perfection in any degree, lurks the master idea of his whole career. He discovers a functioning of conscious- ness independent of intellectual reason with- out, however, distinguishing the esthetic and the purely religious. Excellency, he finds, consists in greatness — degree of being — and beauty, which is consent or love of being to being. Di-
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vine majesty is more, then, than the infinitude of being and power from which the Calvinistic in- ferences had been chiefly made. It is an infini- tude of beauty which is God's love of himself, or, since all things are communications of himself, a love of all things made manifest in the tran- quillity and peace that overspreads the world. Later he was to argue that the due apprehension, the direct sense of the sweetness of beauty in the divine being, was God's redemptive disclosure of himself to the privileged elect.
Graduating from Yale in September 1720, Ed- wards spent two years in theological study in New Haven, and in August 1722 began a minis- try to a Presbyterian church in New York, from which, owing to meager support, he withdrew in the following May. On May 21, 1724, he was elected to the office of tutor at Yale, though his services were not needed until June. His teach- ing was interrupted in September 1725 by a long illness, and a year later he resigned to become the colleague of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, in Northampton, Mass. The incongruity of his spiritual history with the tradition of this parish was destined to end in painful conflict.
An exquisite charm belongs to Edwards's own narration of his religious development, written about 1740 (Ibid., I, 58-67). Even at the tender age of seven or eight the boy shared in the awak- ened fervor of the village church, and in a se- cluded woodland spot led other children in mo- ments of prayer. Absorbing college study check- ed these susceptibilities, but at the end of that period distress of soul made seeking salvation the main business of his life. Early in 1721 thought and emotion culminated in an experience which was evidence of a heart visited by regenerating grace. Holiness was revealed to him as a divine beauty, in comparison with whose ravishing love- liness everything else was mire and defilement. Rapt by such majesty of worth, his heart panted "to lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that God might be all, that I might become as a little child." This experi- ence brought with it an acquiescence in the cen- tral Calvinist doctrine of absolute divine sover- eignty. God's arbitrary apportioning by his sheer pleasure of eternal happiness or everlasting tor- ment in hell had from childhood been a repellent idea. "It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me." Now objections began to fade. The overwhelming sense of divine infinitude of will pulsing in every object of the vast cosmos and the rapturous experience of supreme beauty and worth in that infinitude convinced him that sheer sovereignty in the bestowal of salvation is the essential glory of divine majesty. This is the
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view offered in his sermons on divine sovereignty (Ibid., VI, 293 ; VIII, 105). It is clear that elec- tion and reprobation are implicit in the identifi- cation of saving grace with an esthetic intuition too intense for all men to share. The notes on "Mind" and his diary (Ibid., I, 76-106; Dec. 18. 1722, May 25 and Aug. 12, 1723) show that Ed- wards was aware of some divergence here from older divines. It was in any case discrepant with the religiosity typical of the Northampton parish, and the contrast was even more marked by the emotional fervor of his wife, Sarah Pierpont of New Haven, whom he married in July 1727. Four years earlier Edwards had recorded re- ports of her privileged communion with God when a child of thirteen. She was "always full of joy and pleasure and no one knows for what." In solitude, which she loved to keep, she seemed "to have some one invisible always conversing with her" (Ibid., I, 114). Twenty years later she herself recorded her maturer experiences of di- vine presence in extreme emotional form and Ed- wards seems to have valued them as a standard for judging the experiences of others (Ibid., I, ch. XIV). In that household divine grace and human faith had intensities of manifestation rare in the lives of others.
Originally the Congregational churches were formed of those only who by a profession of an experience of saving grace could be accepted as visible saints, but, owing to the great decline of such professions, the Massachusetts Synod of 1662 sanctioned an additional "covenant mem- bership" of such as could offer an intellectual faith and a desire to assume the obligations of the Christian life. In the Northampton neighbor- hood Edwards's grandfather had brought about another relaxation by admitting all the parish to the Lord's Supper, viewing the sacrament as a possible means of grace for the unregenerate. Membership tended thus to rest on "moral sin- cerity." Such changes diminished the difference of a Congregational church from the Church of England parish, which embraced all the baptized. Another dangerous possibility opened. The alarming defection of Samuel Johnson, Timothy Cutler, Rector of Yale, and one of the Yale tu- tors, to the Church of England in 1722 meant an adoption also of the Arminian theology prevalent in the English Church, a theology which rested salvation on human moral effort as well as divine grace. Attention to the Arminian Episcopalian propaganda in Connecticut was stirred the more, in 1729, when Daniel Dwight, born in Northamp- ton and related to the distinguished Partridge family in Hatfield, abandoned Congregational- ism for the English Church. From this time,
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also, Edwards feared an Arminian tendency in neighbors who failed to support his psychology of saving grace. These were his own relatives of the dominant Williams family of Hatfield, and especially his imperious and worldly cousin, Is- rael Williams, who, graduating from Harvard in 1729, began the prominent career of landholding and public office which won him the style of "Lord of the Valley." Their real opposition was to Edwards's insistence on the "sensible perceiv- ing of the immediate power and operation of the Spirit of God." With them in mind Edwards later defined the controversy (A Treatise Con- cerning Religious Affections, 1746; Works, Dwight edition, V, 45) : "They say, the manner of the Spirit of God, is to cooperate in a silent, secret, and undiscernible way with the use of means, and our own endeavors ; so that there is no distinguishing by sense, between the influences of the Spirit of God and the natural operations of our own minds." From his view of divine im- manence Edwards agreed to an undistinguished mingling of the human and divine in the action of the moral conscience ; but the vision of divine beauty, which for him meant salvation, came only by supernatural illumination and was sensibly perceived as such. The Rev. Solomon Williams, brother of Israel, held that assurance of saving faith was a man's inference from his moral im- provement and the sincerity of his obedience, and "that there is not any spiritual and gracious dis- covery made to the soul of the infinite beauty and amiableness of God, but as he is in Christ" (A Vindication of the Gospel Doctrine of Justifying Faith, 1746, pp. 41, 46).
In his parish, with meager aid from books and limited bodily energy, Edwards lived the life which before the age of twenty he had vowed in his seventy "Resolutions" ( Works, Dwight edi- tion, I, 67 f.), a life of stern discipline over the springs of impulse and of intense mental applica- tion ; rising at 4 : 00 A. M., devoting thirteen hours of the day to study, finding recreation in solitary woodland rambles, during which he jotted down memoranda of his thoughts for later elaboration. After Stoddard's death, Feb. 11, 1729, his own distinctive thought began to find recognition and effect. His discourse in Boston, God Glorified in the Work of Redemption by the Greatness of Man's Dependence upon Him in the Whole of it (1731; Works, Dwight edition, vol. VII), was published at the request of the Boston minis- ters. It was a protest against reliance on moral effort, and viewed redemption as known by the spiritual joy attending an effusion of God's beauty on the soul. At home, the younger people became increasingly responsive, and by the au-
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tumn of 173^ formed neighborhood meetings of their own foi prayer. The parish, too, procured the publication of another sermon typical in title and content : A Devine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soid by the Spirit of God, Shown to be both a Scriptural, and Ra- tional Doctrine (^734; Works, Dwight edition, vol. VI). Here again, moral discernments and repentant misery lie only in the sphere of God's common grace, his universal causative action in the limitations of natmal law, while saving grace is enacted from God's transcendent freedom. This is a supernatural illumination of the mind, by which the loveliness of God's holiness is seen, and the mind acts here not ivith ratiocination but with direct intuitive awareness and self-evident certainty. "Reason's work is to perceive truth, and not excellency." As other sermons argued, the natural man has a sottish and brutish blind- ness even when he repents and prays. Though he had the mental faculties for it, he is ignorant of the excellency of God's nature a^ one born blind is of colors (Discourses on Various Important Subjects,A72$; Works, Dwight edition, vol. V). Objections began from those vfho were ac- customed to milder tests of election but in spite even of an arrogant categorical veto from Israel Williams of Hatfield, Edwards continued the theme in sermons on Justification by Faith (Ibid.) He exhibited faith as a divinely wrought union with Christ by which Christ's righteous- ness is imputed to the elect without the < ondition of any qualifying excellence in the recipient. Though openly abused for this, Edwards felt himself divinely vindicated by the striking re- vival that ensued, the only movement ol extent and power since the passing enthusiasm attend- ing the early preaching of John Cotton a c entury before. In December 1734 there were six sudden conversions and in the following spring they were counted as thirty a week. Since visitors from other towns flocked to Northampton, the revival spread throughout the county and many places in Connecticut. Religious themes ab- sorbed the thought and talk of the whole popula- tion of Northampton, even at weddings. Chil- dren formed their own religious meetings. One notable conversion was that of Phcebe Bartlett, a child of four, though the majority of conver- sions counted as indubitable by the critical and cautious Edwards were of people over forty years of age. The revival was skilfully guided by a pastor unsparing in the logic of Calvinism and, like Ignatius of Loyola, a psychological expert in the exercitia spiritualia. At the outset the hearer must know his guilt as an actual hater of God : "You object against your having a mortal
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hatred against God ; that you never felt any de- sire to kill him. But one reason has been, that it has always been conceived so impossible by you, and you have been so sensible how much desires would be in vain, that it has kept down such a desire. But if the life of God were within your reach, and you knew it, it would not be safe one hour." ("Men Naturally God's Enemies," Works, Austin edition, VII, 180.) "When you come to be a firebrand of hell . . . you will ap- pear as you are, a viper indeed. . . . Then will you as a serpent spit poison at God and vent your rage and malice in fearful blasphemies." (Ibid., VII, 198; Dwight edition, VII, 58.) Creatures of such iniquity were useful only in their de- struction. "The devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them and swal- low them up. . . . All that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will and uncov- enanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God." (Works, Dwight edition, VII, 168.) "Though he will know that you cannot bear the weight of omnipotence ... he will crush you under his feet without mercy ; he will crush out your blood, and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his garments, so as to stain all his raiment." (Ibid., VII, 173.) With a change of imagery the preacher pictured the vast liquid mountains of fire and brimstone flowing without rest, giving no rest day or night to all eternity.
Brought thus to the anguished conviction that God was absolutely just in their condemnation and made completely submissive to divine sover- eignty, the hearers passed from depth of terror to a calm acquiescence, with a bare hope of pos- sible divine mercy. Regeneration was a third stage of experience in which the submissive heart felt a disinterested joyful adoration in contempla- tion of the unmerited mercy that would elect any of a race so fallen and corrupt to eternal felicity. Often Edwards had to persuade the penitents that this admiring awe was in fact the imparta- tion of a supernatural light and evidence of a new heart. They did not easily distinguish the divine from the human in this frame of soul. In May the high tension began to subside, partly because despairing seekers now had morbid impulses to commit suicide. Edwards inferred that Satan had regained control.
For some years quieter conditions prevailed and the preaching of Edwards dealt more with Christian love as manifested in the heart and life. This is the theme of Charity and its Fruits, a series of sermons preached in 1738, first publish- ed by Tryon Edwards in 185 1. Edwards was not alone, however, in expecting repetitions of re-
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vival fervor, and his communications, private and public, contributed to this result. A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in North- ampton, and the Neighboring Towns and Vil- lages, published in Boston and London in 1737 (Works, Dwight edition, vol. IV), is linked with intenser interests in Scotch churches, and pre- pared the great social response to the evangelistic tour of George Whitefield in 1740-42. That "Great Awakening," however, evoked divisive tendencies in New England life. Whitefield's de- nunciations of ministers as devoid of grace, and the fanatic extravagances of unlearned lay itiner- ants who intruded in the parishes, brought pro- tests against disorderly excitements and con- vulsive physical effects. Edwards himself offered judicious criticisms in The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741 ; Works, Dwight edition, vol. IV). In 1742, also, partly in answer to Charles Chauncy of Boston, he pub- lished Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (Ibid., vol. IV). Here he defends the awakening of 1740 by its moral results, but frankly admits remedial faults incidental to it. His sense of living in a momentous time appears in his argument that Scripture prophecies of the Latter-Day outpour- ing of the Spirit apply to America as the scene of a prelude to that great manifestation. This was no momentary thought. When not yet twenty he had been eager to see in contemporary events foregleams of some great Advent, and from now on apocalyptic expectancy and calculations were a powerful interest. The theme has place in his correspondence with the Scotch clergyman, Wil- liam McCulloch (Ibid., I, 196 f., 261 f.), and in the sermons of 1739 which John Erskine of Edin- burgh made into A History of the Work of Re- demption (Edinburgh, 1774) ; and it dominates An Humble Attempt to Promote Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion (1747; Works, Dwight edi- tion, vol. III). It is obvious that the revival was supported by the conviction of a crisis in human history. Since, however, in Connecticut and cen- tral Massachusetts, revivals resulted in social cleavage and church divisions with partisan con- flict between exponents of religion as violent emotion and those who regarded it as rectitude of conduct, Edwards needed to intervene further by a series of sermons in 1742-43 which became A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, published in 1746 (Ibid., vol. V). This is the supreme expression of Edwards's psychology of religion. The mind has two activities : under- standing, and inclination or will, the latter having
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inseparable aspects of affections and choice, since man wills what he loves. True religion involves both activities. While in great part it consists in holy affections, there must also be light to the understanding implied in all reasonable affec- tions. At great length he cautions against reli- ance on mere intensity of feeling, on its effect on the body, on fervor of speech, or on a confidence in righteousness which may be only exalted nat- ural feeling. The conversion of a child of Satan to a child of God lies in the birth of a love of God originating in the disclosure to the soul of God's moral perfections : "A true love to God must be- gin with a delight in his holiness, and not with a delight in any other attribute ; for no other at- tribute is truly lovely without this." (Ibid., V, 143). This is no gift of new doctrinal informa- tion, no initiation into mystical meanings of Scripture. It is a new discernment of the truth already furnished. It is a direct, intuitive vision of the beauty that is in God and Christ, which by its perfect joy convinces the soul of the reality and certainty of divine things. The soul's nature is changed. It shares in the divine light, shares in the character of Christ. Now the affections are brought into beautiful harmony, and new con- duct manifests the divinity of the principle from which it flows, a union of Christ with the facul- ties of the soul. To this analysis of piety Ed- wards soon added a study of an illustrious ex- ample of divine movements in the heart of one who sounded the depths of sorrow and joy. This was An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd (1749), compiled from his diary and papers. (Ibid., vol. X.)
Republications of the Treatise Concerning Religious Affections in England and Scotland led to more extensive correspondence with Scotch di- vines, who initiated a Concert of United Prayer for the Coming of Christ's Kingdom. To the Rev. John Erskine (1747) he announced his in- tention of writing a systematic attack on Armini- anism, beginning with the topic of the Will and moral agency, and from Erskine he received a number of Arminian works of use for this pur- pose. The project, however, had to be post- poned, for in the meantime Edwards was in- volved in serious difficulty with his parish. He had already in preaching on Religious Affections made known his disapproval of the long standing Stoddardean practise of admitting to full mem- bership without satisfactory evidence of a re- generated heart. Examination of Scripture and the older divines convinced him of the error in this practise. Originally, a Congregational church consisted of visible saints, known as such by a recital of experiences accepted as evidence
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of a renewal by divine grace. Stoddard, often inconsistent in expression, could be quoted as say- ing that moral sincerity in professing faith and repentance made a man a visible saint in the sense of the New Testament, and "moral sincer- ity" had become the catchword of some of his Williams descendants. Edwards could find moral sincerity only in the regenerate, and he would limit membership to those at least who humbly trusted that their heart was now capable of a true Christian life. Gossip exaggerated the rigor of the tests that he would demand. He was in any case placing himself in opposition to the settled usage of all but two churches in the county, and to his socially and politically eminent relatives unfriendly to revivals and revival tests. Israel Williams, now in high military station in the first French and Indian war, fomented dis- content in Northampton. No test came until De- cember 1748, when an applicant refused to ac- cept the terms of a profession of Godliness offered by Edwards. Unfortunately, by his own maladroitness in a very different matter, Ed- wards had alienated many parishioners. In 1744 on hearing of the circulation of books provocative of indecent speech among the young, he had the church appoint a committee of inquiry, and at once from the pulpit read a list of names of those who were to meet the committee. Nearly all the important families found themselves compro- mised by the publication of the long list in which there was no distinction of witnesses and accused. Their indignation stopped the investigation.
After the difficulty concerning admission to the church in December 1748, Edwards asked the Standing Committee of the church to consent to an exposition of his views in the form of ser- mons, but the committee preferred an explanation in print. Well aware that dismission from the pastorate would be the probable result, but con- scientiously unwilling to admit applicants with- out the public profession, Edwards offered on Apr. 13, 1749, to resign his charge if, after read- ing his projected book, the members, with the approval of a mutual council, should so vote. This was the beginning of a long and compli- cated series of negotiations involving disputed rights of the precinct (the civil community sup- porting the church) to direct the action of the church organization, the right of Edwards to be heard from the pulpit in defense of his position, his right to secure churches from outside the county (then comprising the three present coun- ties of Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden) to represent him in the council, as well as the defi- nition of the council's functions when formed. Edwards has left an accurate, detailed record of
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every incident in the controversy in an unim- passioned, scrupulous journal, which is a monu- ment to his intellectual integrity ( Works, Dwight edition, I, 313-99). The church finally conceded to him the calling of a mutual council of ten churches, two of the five selected by himself to be drawn from outside the county, and the coun- cil to be free to proffer any advice. It met June l9> !750, but it was incomplete ; one church called by Edwards failed to send delegates. Nevertheless, the majority refused to postpone action until the disparity could be remedied. Af- ter vain attempts to bring church and pastor to agreement, it voted by its partisan majority of one that the pastoral relation ought to be at once dissolved if the church persisted in that desire. Thereupon more than 200 of the 230 voting (that is, male) members of the church voted for his dismission, and the council on June 22, again by a majority of one, so gave final judgment. The minority united in a published protest. On July 1 Edwards preached his farewell sermon (1750; Works, Dwight edition, I, 626), a discourse of the highest dignity and restrained intensity, marked by a strong sense of ministerial authority. His conception of the cause of all the trouble is shown by his warning to watch against the en- croachments of Arminianism: "If these prin- ciples should greatly prevail in this town, ... it will threaten the spiritual and eternal ruin of this people, in the present and future generations."
"I am now," he wrote to Erskine, July 5, 1750, "thrown upon the wide ocean of the world, and know not what will become of me, and my nu- merous and chargeable family" (Ibid., I, 411). Erskine already had offered aid in procuring a call to some Scotch parish, but Edwards, while ready enough to accept the Presbyterian polity, shrank from the uncertainties involved. The Northampton people, long unable to secure an- other pastor, asked occasional preaching from him, but in November determined opponents got the town to end such service. A friendly minor- ity proposed to join with him in forming a new church, but he refused from an unwillingness to divide the parish. He did, on further solicitation, invite a council of ministers to advise in the mat- ter (May 15, 1 751), but in view of an abusive remonstrance addressed to the council, he wel- comed the advice of that body that he should ac- cept another charge already offered him. He had been called to be missionary to the Indians in Stockbridge and pastor of the church formed by the Indians and a few white settlers. After two visits of investigation, he settled in Stock- bridge, Aug. 8, 1 75 1. A meager church support was to be supplemented by mission funds from
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the provincial legislature and the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New Eng- land.
Until his Northampton house could be sold he struggled with adversity, being heavily in debt for land and house in the new field and for the marriages of two daughters. Wife and children eked out the family living by selling in the Bos- ton market their handwork of lace, embroideries, and painted fans.
More painful still was the necessity of conflict with the greed and intrigues of a resident mer- chant, Ephraim Williams, a relative of the fam- ily which in large part had brought about the catastrophe in Northampton. Education of In- dian boys was supported by a grant from the King, by the London Society, and by individual philanthropists in London ; and now another English benefactor proposed a school for girls. To remedy previous mismanagement, Edwards secured from the legislature the appointment of three trustees for all the funds. Two of his Wil- liams kinsmen, however, got from London ap- pointment on the Boston board of commissioners of the Society, and brought about the nomination of a woman relative as mistress of the girls' school. Furthermore, one of the new trustees, marrying into the Williams family, came to Stockbridge to assume control. Under this re- gime, on request from the Boston commissioners Edwards could only report lax arrangements profitable to private pockets ; whereupon the Williams group tried to have him and Gideon Hawley \_q.v.], teacher of the boys' school, re- moved, and to buy out the lands of settlers who supported them. Owing to the courage and skill of Edwards, however, these intriguers found themselves thwarted and repudiated by settlers, Indians, commissioners, and the legislature. Dur- ing this time there occurred another skirmish growing out of the Northampton controversy. In August 1749 Edwards had defended himself by publishing An Humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God, Concerning the Qualifica- tions Requisite to a Complete Standing and Full Communion with the Visible Christian Church (Works, Dwight edition, vol. IV). Though alienated parishioners refused to read it, Elisha Williams \_q.v.~\, former Rector of Yale, began a work in reply, but on going to England gave the material to his half-brother, Rev. Solomon Wil- liams of Lebanon, who in 1751 produced a work : The True State of the Question Concerning the Qualifications Necessary to Lawfid Communion in the Christian Sacraments. In Stockbridge Ed- wards found time to answer with Misrepresenta- tions Corrected, and Truth Vindicated (1752;
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Works, D wight edition, vol. IV), a wearisome masterpiece of controversial subtlety. Done now with these personal battles, he resumed the plan of a general campaign against Arminian theol- ogy. Before his early death in his fifty-fifth year he had completed four notable works and had others in prospect.
The youthful notes on "Mind," which evince a philosophic talent of the highest promise, were unknown to his contemporaries. His fame was that of preacher and revivalist. But the publica- tion in 1754 °f ^ Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will which is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Vertue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame {Works, Dwight edition, vol. II), revealed him as the first great philosophic intelligence in American history. The work shows his debt to Locke but also a pro- found originality, logical acumen, and critical dis- crimination in the use of terms. Its purpose was to maintain the dogmas of absolute divine sover- eignty and unconditional predestination against Arminian objections found especially in Whit- by's Six Discourses (1710). There is freedom, for the mind can freely act out its choice. The origination of the choice is nevertheless abso- lutely determined. It is determined by the mo- tive— that which has the greatest tendency to excite volition by being seen as the greatest ap- parent good. Man has the natural power to serve God, if he is so inclined ; but he will not be so inclined unless God reveals himself as the man's highest good — a revelation which is not for all. Moral responsibility lies in the choice, whatever be its origin, not in the cause of the choice. Necessitation cancels no liberty or moral responsibility. Liberty means only that man can do what he wills, but, as appears from the fact of divine foreknowledge, volitions are determined. God's foreknowledge, which is evidenced by the fulfilment of prophecies, means the certainty of events, and only the will of God establishes their certainty. Adam's fall was a choice caused by motives. In the last analysis the motives were due to God. God wills the system under which sin infallibly comes to pass. The system is God's. The sin is man's.
What then is man's inclination? In 1758 Ed- wards published his work The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended {Ibid., vol. II), chiefly in reply to works of John Taylor of Norwich, England, which were widely circulated in New England in the propaganda of Episco- palian churches. Taylor regarded all human pro- pensities as in themselves good, since they act as incentive to the development of controlling rea-
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son and virtue. Edwards determines the human tendency by abstracting all restraining divine action — all that insures moral behavior. Man is born depraved and in conditions that infallibly lead to sin. The sin is infinite, for it is sin against infinite being. We were depraved when Adam was depraved. We committed Adam's sin. For what is personal identity ? It is a sameness of consciousness explicable only as due to conti- nuity of divine action. Our identity is a consti- tuted identity. God constitutes us one person with Adam. This ingenious novelty was a mode of escape from Taylor's plea that God cannot hold us guilty for the sin of one who represents us without our knowledge or consent.
Between the last two works Edwards had writ- ten two others which he then laid aside. One is an essay, "The Nature of True Virtue," a study of the genuine Christian character (first pub- lished in Two Dissertations, 1765; Works, Dwight edition, vol. III). Possibly the formu- lation may owe something to his disciple Hop- kins. Certainly Hopkins and Bellamy, theologi- cally trained in Edwards's home, effectively carried on the formulation here found. Never- theless, it is an elaboration of what belonged to the notes on "Mind." Virtue, it is argued, is a kind of beauty — that moral beauty which is the form of love, .the beauty of a disposition of good will to being in general. "If every intelligent be- ing is in some way related to being in general, and is a part of the universal system of existence ; and so stands in connection with the whole ; what can its general and true beauty be, but its union and consent with the great whole" {Works, Dwight edition, III, 95). This propensity seeks the highest good of being in general. The ob- ject that has most of being draws the greatest share of the heart's benevolence. God, then, is the supreme object of virtuous propensity. The ethi- cal thus merges in the religious attitude. All men, to be sure, have "natural conscience." They ap- prove justice and benevolence, they even perceive its beauty, but to love, to taste its primary and essential beauty, belongs only to him whose con- science is enlightened by saving grace. The natu- ral virtues are spurious ; they rest on self-love. Disinterested love belongs to God and the re- deemed.
Apparently Edwards left this aside for some revision. Did he find that the development of this thought was somewhat incongruous with his Calvinism ? The surmise has been made also with reference to the other unpublished work of 1755, "Concerning the End for which God Created the World" {Ibid.). This is a high flight in the pantheistic mysticism of his boyhood, and an
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elaboration of reflections recorded in his "Mis- cellanies" without use in his sermons. Why a world? An ultimate question. The briefest ex- pression of this hovering contemplation is "that a disposition in God, as an original property of his nature, to an emanation of his own infinite fullness, was what excited him to create the world ; and so that the emanation itself was aimed at by him as a last end of the creation." The uni- verse, then, is an exfoliation of God, an ema- nation, not a creation out of nothing. Nothing has real existence save as it partakes of God. His final end in the great manifestation is Himself. The world exists for His glory. He, the supreme and only excellence, necessarily loves Himself. If God has pleasure in the creature, it is because the creature is His emanation, has the divine essence in him. It is difficult to see how in this view the human self has any distinctive reality, and the surmise again is offered that speculative thought has become independent of the theo- logical system.
Obviously this stern logician had a singular capacity for esthetic joy. The exquisite narra- tive of his religious experience, almost a poem, exhibits a rare delight in the beauty of nature. His answer to the question, "Why a world?" is that God is the supreme artist who gives Himself expression in infinitely varied perfections. Ed- wards the theologian could not be content with a rational ethical relation to God. The soul's real response must be the delight of the lover of beauty.
His end was not in Stockbridge. His third daughter, Esther, was married June 29, 1752, to Rev. Aaron Burr, president since 1748 of the College of New Jersey, which in 1756 removed from Newark to Princeton. Two days