Green, Duff, 1791-1875

Journalist, politician, and industrial promoter.

Businessman, publisher, printer for U.S. Congress, 1827-1833.

Editor, industrial promoter, and resident of Dalton (Whitfield Co.), Ga.

Journalist, politician, entrepreneur, and industrial promoter.

Epithet: American politician

Duff Green was a journalist, politician, and industrial promoter.

American politician and journalist.

Journalist, politician, industrial promoter.

Biographical Note

Commodore James Barron, born 15 September 1768 in Hampton, Virginia, died 21 April 1851 in Norfolk, served under his father, Commodore James Barron the Elder, in the Revolutionary War. He was made Captain in the Virginia Navy in 1799 and transferred to the newly formed U.S. Navy in 1803. During the War with Tripoli he commanded the U.S. Frigates New York and President when his brother, Commodore Samuel Barron, was commander of the Mediterranean Squadron. He assisted his brother in that command when the latter's health failed and returned with him to Norfolk in 1805.

Appointed Commander of the Mediterranean Squadron in 1806 with the rank of Commodore, which title he retained for the rest of his life, he sailed aboard the U.S. Chesapeake. The British ship Leopard attacked the Chesapeake when Barron refused to allow his ship to be boarded in a search for British deserters. After a brief battle, Barron surrendered and on the request of his junior officers he was brought before a Naval court martial. The command was turned over to Capt. Stephen Decatur who in the Algerian War of 1815 became a national hero. Barron was suspended from the Navy for five years in a decision criticized by many, including B. Cocke of Washington and Robert Saunders of Williamsburg.

Barron took command of the merchant ship Portia, and after several voyages was caught in a Danish port by the outbreak of the War of 1812. He attempted to get passage home but was refused it because of the Danish neutrality and remained in Copenhagen until 1819. During this period he supported himself with his inventions including a new type of mill, a rope spinning machine, a cork cutter, and a dough kneading machine. Upon his return he sought a command in the Navy and in the course of this an argument by mail with Decatur resulted in the famous duel in which Barron was seriously injured and Decatur fatally. His second in the duel, Capt. J. D. Elliott was coupled with Barron in responsibility for the duel, though perhaps unfairly.

A Naval Court of Enquiry was held in 1821 to clear the name of Barron for his absence in the War of 1812 and other charges brought against him. The decision was very noncommittal and was criticized by many, including Carter Beverley and John Taliaferro of Williamsburg.

In 1824, Barron was given the command of the Philadelphia Navy Yard, largely through the influence of his friend, General Andrew Jackson. While there he participated in the entertaining of General Lafayette when he visited the U.S.

Commodore Barron took command of the Gosport Navy Yard in 1825 where he remained until 1831 when he returned to the command of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. In 1837, he resigned that command because an officer junior to him had been appointed President of the Naval Board in Washington, and was without command until 1842. From 13 March to 30 November 1842 he commanded the Navy Asylum, a retirement home for Naval men in Philadelphia. In that position he was also in charge of the training and examination of Midshipmen for the Navy, and his advice was asked when plans were being made for organization of the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1847. In 1845, he returned to Norfolk where he lived in retirement until his death in 1851.

During all this time he continued his interest in inventions which included a new type of pump and bellows ventilator for ships, a steam-powered battleship, a new type of dry dock, and a cylinder steam for ships developed with Amos Kendali. He was instrumental in the development of the Naval flag signal, which he first revised in 1798.

Commodore Barron supported the education of his grandson, James Barron Hope, whose early letters, a poem on Washington, and other poems are included at the end of Box 11. (See the James Barron Hope Papers for a continuation of these papers, and the Samuel Barron Papers for a chart to the genealogy of the Barron family.)

Duff Green was born on 15 August 1791 in Woodford County, Ky. At the age of seven, he was sent to a field school attended chiefly by children of his father's tenants. At fourteen, he entered Danville Academy, but returned home a year and a half later and remained until 1811 to educate his brothers and sisters. He was briefly a teacher at Elizabethtown Academy before he enlisted as a private in the War of 1812. Green served at Vincennes and Fort Harrison under General William Henry Harrison and later was made a captain. After the war, he married Lucretia Maria Edwards, sister of Governor Ninian Edwards of Illinois, with whom he had nine children.

In 1816, Green went to Missouri to survey public lands and remained there for almost ten years engaging in profitable land speculation, building up a large mercantile business in and around St. Louis, and securing contracts for the carrying of mails. During this time, he founded the town of Chariton, Mo., near St. Louis. He also studied law, was admitted to the bar, and built up a large and lucrative legal practice. His political affairs included being a member of the state constitutional convention in 1820, serving in both houses of the state legislature, and being appointed by President Monroe a brigadier general in the Missouri state militia.

Green purchased the St. Louis Enquirer in 1823, through which he supported Jackson in the election of 1824. After he purchased the United States Telegraph in 1825, he moved to Washington, D.C. Through the Telegraph, he assailed the Adams administration and advocated Jackson and reform.

Green was a member of Jackson's Kitchen Cabinet and acted as printer to Congress, 1829-1833. His political views changed during the Eaton controversy when Green opposed Jackson and Van Buren in favor of John C. Calhoun, whose son had married Green's daughter. Throughout the 1830s, he continued to attack the Jackson and Van Buren faction through the Telegraph, the Reformer (1837-1838), and the Pilot (1840).

Green supported Harrison in 1840 and was largely responsible for Tyler's placement on the Whig ticket. Tyler later rewarded him by sending Green as an unofficial representative of the United States to England and France. Here, through personal contracts and publications, he advocated reduction of duties, direct trade with the South, a modification of England's attitude toward slavery and the United States' interest in Texas, and the settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute.

Green returned to the United States and vocalized his support for the Southern cause in the Republic (1844) and later in the weekly American Statesman (1857), advocating expansion into Texas, Cuba, and Santo Domingo. Tyler appointed him consul at Galveston, Tex., in 1844 and sent him to Mexico with the view of acquiring Texas, New Mexico, and California. Green strongly supported the Mexican War, and, after the war, acted as agent in making payment to Mexico under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Green's conviction that the South either had to develop to the fullest its natural resources or be crushed by the North motivated at least partially a wide variety of business enterprises. He purchased and mined vast tracts of land in Maryland and Virginia, but the difficulty of obtaining railroad and canal links limited the success of the scheme and turned Green's attention to building these links in the forties and fifties. Green projected plans for a canal from the Sabine River south to the Rio Grande River and north to the Red and Mississippi Rivers; secured a contract for the construction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad sixty miles beyond Cumberland, Md.; and built the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad from Knoxville to Dalton, Ga. Green also sought to consolidate the railroads of the South and envisioned a line that would extend from Washington to the Pacific coast of Mexico. To further this mammoth design, he organized the Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency, reorganized by Northern capitalists during the Civil War as the Credit Mobilier of America. This agency was to provide the necessary capital for railroad construction, but the Civil War cut the scheme short.

Although Green was neither a slaveholder nor a secessionist, he supported the Confederacy by sending large amounts of guns, munitions, and other support to Southern troops from his iron works in Georgia and Tennessee. He remained, however, a man respected by both North and South, and, in 1865, he had a private audience with Lincoln at Richmond concerning peace proposals.

During the war Green published Facts and Suggestions on the Subjects of Currency and Direct Trade (1861) and Fact and Suggestions Relative to Finance and Currency (1864). These books were followed by Facts and Suggestions, Biographical, Historical, Financial, and Political (1866), A Memorial and A Bill Relating to Finance, National Currency, Debt, Revenue, etc. (1869), and How to Pay Off the National Debt, Regulate the Value of Money and Maintain Stability in the Values of Property and Labor (1872).

After the war Green sought to raise capital for rebuilding the defeated South by organizing the American Industrial Agency, with branches in several states. He also revived his interest in railroad construction and drew plans for the establishment of a model industrial city in Tennessee. These plans failed because of turbulent political and uncertain economic conditions. Green died in Dalton, Ga., on 10 June 1875.

Benjamin Edwards Green, lawyer, diplomat, and industrial promoter, was closely connected with many of his father's business enterprises. He received his education at Georgetown College and the University of Virginia Law School. He served as charge d'affaires in Mexico in 1844 and was sent to the West Indies in 1849 to investigate the possibility of purchasing Cuba and to negotiate with the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Upon his return to the United States, he settled in Dalton, Ga., and, both before and after the Civil War, devoted himself with his father to the industrial development of Georgia and the South. Among the enterprises in which he was interested were the Dalton and Morganton and the Dalton and Jacksonville railroads, the Central Transit Company, the Cherokee Iron Foundry, the Texas Land Company, and the American Industrial Agency. Green played an important part in Georgia politics after the war, being largely instrumental in the calling of the Georgia state convention of the Greenback Part in 1880. He died in Dalton, Ga., on 12 May 1907.

[ Dictionary of American Biography . Fletcher M. Green: Ben E. Green and Greenbackism in Georgia,   Georgia Historical Quarterly, XXX (March, 1946), 1-13; Duff Green: Industrial Promoter,   Journal of Southern History, II (February, 1936), 28-42; and Duff Green, Militant Journalist of the Old School,   American Historical Review, LII (January, 1947), 247-268.]